Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

It's not body to body.

Yeah, I probably got, I don't know. Yeah, it's 8 hours. Yes. I don't think what's like, that I tried to get to.

I love it. It's like my favorite place.

I've been a few times in the winter because it's not hot. I wouldn't Christmas.

I really think I'm only going to go back Christmas time. It's like on Christmas day.

The clock is like, a little bit.

It's actually close. It's included.

All right. We get started.

Okay.

All right. It is time. All right. Hello. Good evening. Welcome to the June 4th, 2026 meeting of the Athens, Clark county planning commission. You're watching this meeting on YouTube. You can find the meeting agenda at dot com slash planning. For those of you here in person. There is a sign in sheet and copies of tonight's agenda on the door as well as some lovely flowers. Here's the process for the items on the agenda. 1st, to make a presentation. I'm going to preface this where we have 2 proposals in addition to text amendments on the agenda. And so the 2 proposals will not be voting on them for comments only. So, we will hear 10 minutes for the applicant person move to. Sorry, let me cut this over. Here's the process for item from the agenda. 1st, I'll make a presentation. Then we moved to public comment and support the application. We allow 10 minutes for the applicant to address the mission. Followed by members of the public speaking in favor who received 3 minutes each after comments in support of the application, we moved to an opposition. All speakers receive 3 minutes or presenting a specific interest group, such as a homeowners association. Please let us know. So we may allocate the appropriate amount of time. Addressing the name address and the nature of your interest is. After public comment, the applicant or the representative, they requested. That's a timer that will display a yellow light when you have 30 seconds left and a red light when your time has expired. Once we have heard from members of the public and the Commission will discuss the item. We will not receive additional public comments unless there is a specific question to be addressed. Exhibits may be displayed by the applicants or public at the podium. Written correspondence received by noon yesterday has been forwarded to the Commission as part of the public record. Any additional written materials to be placed in the public record must be read during the public comment period. Please direct your comments to the planning commission and not the applicants and please refrain from applauding or during any of the applicants. For the speakers, finally, please note that the meeting is being broadcast live and our microphones are sensitive. Please silence yourself and as a geeky planning note. I appreciate you all coming out and if you want to dig deeper into planning. Things we're going to have a staff presentation and a discussion after our voting items on corridors in Athens Park County. And so it's kind of an interesting deep dive into how the future land use map translates into real world usage. So you're welcome to stay for that. That's. Anybody like to introduce staff reports and other documents. Okay. All right. Before we go to the next spot, I wanted to. Propose moving up the. Planning commission chairs, of course. To the next item, rather than having it at the end, so we can talk about our. Slate of officers for the new year, so could. Somebody I moved to approve that. That'd be wonderful. All right. And Taylor just like, awesome. All those in favor. All right. So, with that. Would you all like to talk about the slate of nominees?

Yes, we would like to nominate. So, Morales to continue your roles chair for a year and nominate Jennifer, please use that then as vice chair.

Great discussion or.

Acceptance of the nomination any discussion from the people being nominated.

For a motion, the motion come from the nominating not be inappropriate.

Okay.

So I would like to make that motion.

All right, and all those in favor.

All right.

Fabulous. Okay, the approval of the minutes from our main meetings. Okay, all right all those in favor. Make works for any. Before any public comments related to make points. All right, that's cool. So, we'll go to item number 1 under new business for 90 Clover street.

Good evening.

Make sure the toys up your work.

All right. So the request is for 490 Clover Street. It's a twofold request. It's type one. It's gonna be a request to change the future land use map from neighborhood residential to mixed density residential, and then subsequently to rezone the currently split zone parcel from RS8 and CG to RN2. So that would be residential single family and commercial general to residential mixed use. This is the site. I believe it was spoken about very briefly in the agenda setting. It backs right up to Hawthorne. And we'll see it on another page, but this back portion of it is where the split zone actually occurs. And so it has a commercial designation in very rear. But here we go, this is what the change to the future land use with map or map would look like. It's it's a different shade of yellow and it primarily just denotes a slightly higher density than what currently exists. This will be the change to the zoning map. And so it's taking what's currently in RSA and CG property, changing it to RM2. Again, it allows for a slight uptick in density there. And it would, of course, clean up that split zone that currently exists in the rear. Um, just kind of an aerial image of above, so you can more clearly see the structures and how they relate to the property lines. It's worth noting out that this portion of the building actually encroaches on the setback. So, if it was built today, it would have to be, I believe, 10 feet off of that line as opposed to its current 3 feet. But we can get into that. This is the concept plan provided by the applicant. It's worth noting that as part of a rezone process, I think you guys know this. This is not a binding plan. So it is subject to change. It is subject to plans review. So any deficiencies in the plan presented here would in theory be caught and captured in that plans review and resolved then. But again, this is more or less what exists today. So we've got an existing structure here and we've got an existing structure here. They've been used in the past as various mixes of dwellings. Most interestingly, this building, building A, was actually a daycare for a period of time that was set up in the back of this neighborhood. I believe it was called Tiny Tots. Some people might remember that some, maybe not, but it's, it's not a, I write use in. An neighborhood anyway, so a lot of what this application does is. It's an attempt to bring this property into conformance with the code and kind of formalize some of the oddities that that currently exist. So, generally speaking, it is compatible with the 2023 comprehensive plan staff finds that it does increase the supply and variety of quality housing units. Right? The pitch is to. allow both structures to stay and again bring them into conformance with the code, which is not something that you could do by right anywhere else in the neighborhood. Though the existing neighborhood does have a number of other non-conforming properties throughout. So there's already an element of what's called a variety throughout the neighborhood. It's a rehab project at this time, the developer, the applicant is not proposing to clear this lot. They are proposing to reuse as much as is feasible and really just kind of renovate it and make it usable for. Housing units and again, I think. There's probably a fair number of neighbors here, and everybody can agree this is kind of a unique neighborhood. It's the normal town area. Everybody's pretty familiar with it. It's got some character to it. So something a little bit more colorful isn't that off base. It is not compatible with the future land use map though currently. So currently the designation is neighborhood residential. they're looking to up it to mixed density residential. And we can get into the nuance between those two momentarily. Generally speaking, we also find that it would be compatible with the zoning map if it were to be rezoned. It is a spot zone. There's no denying that. Looking at that colored map, you can pretty clearly see that stark brown right in the middle of that sea of yellow. But it does so in a manner that kind of maintains the character of that neighborhood and moves things forward while retaining the feeling of what's currently there. Um, and we're gonna look at the plan 1 more time, but this is what staff observed as as part of the review and putting this report together. The parking counts that that were shown aren't quite sufficient for the units that. The applicant is proposing the applicant is proposing 7 beds. And in between the 2 structures. That brings up fire safety, the current driveway is likely. substandard for that kind of use. So what was shown will likely need to be widened, which in turn will likely impact Building A and require that to be downsized a little bit. If that's not the case, I believe that it is, if that's not the case, the existing access would still likely need to be updated and kind of improved to support the additional units that would be permitted in the rear. Then again, the legal non-conforming structure, Building B up against that Hawthorne property line. Any changes to the structure are going to have to contend with that. And that is something that it takes creativity to get around. You cannot increase a nonconformity that exists. You can't intensify it. So the only thing they can do in that area is really reduce that footprint. They can't go taller. They can't expand it. So if there are any changes to that portion of the structure, it's just going into the interior of the lot by code. Again, the spot zoning staff feels it does land as a little unconventional. We don't see that very frequently. But we also believe that it meets the state objectives of. Our priorities, I didn't want to talk about the mix density versus neighborhood residential just to kind of identify that. do so your neighborhood residential future land use designation right now that houses the following zoning designations um you've got rs5 8 15 and 25 rm1 you've got commercial neighborhood government and parks um mixed density residential is rm1 2 and 3 commercial neighborhood institutional government and parks. So the primary difference in this case is the density, right? And I have a feeling that's going to be most people's concerns, what would be allowed in RM2. That's why staff is recommending conditions and the maximum floor area ratio should be capped at point 4. the property shall not allow commercial uses as permitted by right or through special use in the zone, other than through a home occupation. Those those are. Or home based businesses, typically online businesses, or just home offices kind of deal that there is no retail component. There's no commercial. Traffic or anything of them of that sort and that's what that's attempting to. Mitigate it's meant to keep it as truly a neighborhood product and then. Again, the property shall be limited to no more than 4 dwelling units. brought up in the agenda setting i believe um in rm dwelling units can that that term can be a little misleading because rm dwelling units typically refers to a bedroom the way we're using it in this instance is to refer to the actual units that contain the bedrooms so the applicant based on the size of the property which i believe is 0.308 yeah so about 0.3 acres the most they can have on that property in terms of bed is seven um The staff believes that this should address and kind of work to rein in those concerns about upping the density in this location. And then one more time, just get another look at this. This is that area of nonconformity. This driveway for multi-use, I'm sorry, for multifamily purposes, I believe the drive usually needs to be about 20 feet. So that's substandard. We wouldn't allow this to be counted as two spaces. This is one. You can't double stack. And of course, if you're going to have that many beds, there has to be a requisite amount of parking. But again, that is something that is all able to be captured and planned for you.

Good evening. My name is Franklin Frost. I'd like to thank the Planning Department for their efforts and communication through this process. I've been a resident of Athens since moving here in 2013 to start working for an architecture design build firm. In that time, I've seen the community grow and develop in a number of ways. One of those is housing and the ever-evolving needs of the citizens and community members. We are looking to rezone property located at 490 Clover from a CG and zoning to an RM2 property as described already has 2 existing structures. And this reason will bring the property into a more conforming zoning while allowing needed increased density for housing. Given the properties size at point through 1 acres, this allows a maximum of 7 bedrooms. We were looking to redevelop the 2 existing buildings with complete renovations to address the continued needs. And we believe that this property in this neighborhood. That already has a multi family units and by our research, there are 18 multi family properties in the normal town area underneath that are zoning. And that this property being zoned or into yes, it does create a spot zoning on a map, but in the neighborhood, it is a continued use that is. Conforming with with its neighbors. Also, the zoning change allows for the existing conditions onsite to be brought into, to actually be used rather than its current state where there are additional complications on being able to use two individual buildings on a single family zone block. We agree with the plant department that not allowing commercial use on the ground floor or on the property at all makes sense other than the home occupant department. Given its location, we agree there is no need for any commercial property at this address. The reason for the rezone is strictly for the increased density. If we are trying to increase the number of places to live in this community, one way to do that is through density. And our proposal, I think, reusing the existing footprints of those buildings in the greatest form possible will allow that opportunity to happen. One thing I would like to get a little Clarification on is the reason for the point for based on the property size of roughly point three one acres that allows for a maximum of fifty three hundred and sixty six square feet of buildable area across all levels. So that's not just a ground floor or into zoning has regulations that require. overall height setback adjacent to uh single family zoning and and we're wondering why this 0.4 far it would be included in addition to the uh already rm2 regulations and uh we we aren't proposing anything that would be uh exceeding that number but uh just was wondering more for clarification um with that the RM2 zoning also has strict regulations on bedroom count. So the four dwelling units, I guess what is the, we'd like to just understand the reasoning behind the four dwelling units when there are already limits on overall bedroom count. The the additional stipulation of the forward-flowing units may influence the number of possible layout and then that then affects the design. So it's more of a combination of trying to gain information in this comments agenda and be able to influence the design moving forward for our next application and that's why we're We're here tonight to kind of get some feedback understanding that we are, you know, the people who are doing this project are members of the community have lived in this neighborhood and are not trying to do anything that would be detrimental to the community. Because, I mean, I have friends that live on the street. I lived 2 blocks away and. Have renovated help friends, renovate homes on on the street. So we're not trying to. To do anything that would that we see as a detriment to the community, but are trying to take a non conforming. Property renovate to neglected buildings and create much needed housing in our, in our town. So, thank you for your time and would be happy to answer any, any questions. Thank you.

I just speak in support of the application.

I'll speak in support of it.

I'm 1 of the developers, and I've been talking to some members of the community. There was letters going around the whole town. So your name and your it's Ryan Oliver.

I live at 850 branch street. Thank you. Um, so I did a bit of call it around, see if I could switch some of those concerns. Seems like parking is a big 1. People are concerned that this plan doesn't reflect the necessary amount of parking and it's true. You know, we were told that this plan wouldn't reflect the appropriate of parking appropriate amount of parking for the 7 bedrooms that we plan on putting here. That would be caught in plans review. That's something that's remediable and we plan on remedying that. Um, we do want to put 5 units here as opposed to 4. that's part of our plan because we're trying to do smaller single bedroom units. We see it as a need in the community. We've done it in a few other places and they rent very quickly. People eat them up. They enjoy having the single bed units. So, if we had to limit this to 4 units, we're still going to do the same number of bedrooms either way. It just causes an awkward split. So we'd like to provide that necessary market for the community if you guys see fit. But either way, we're happy with everybody being okay with the project. We're happy to get a thumbs up and none of the stipulations that we saw seem to be detrimental. There are also that we can work with and we're happy to. So I'm here to say I'm for it and nice to meet you guys.

Thank you. Anybody else to speak in support of the application?

Okay, anybody here to speak in opposition?

My name is Shannon Bushway. I've been a homeowner in Athens for over 20 years. I've lived in Norrelltown for over 10 years, and I currently live at 250 Clover Street about a block from 490 Clover Street. I'm here today to express my concern as to this property not be permitted to become RM2 zone. 1, very happy to see this property change from a business that costs a lot of safety issues regarding high speed traffic in and out of our neighborhood. I have a number of concerns about the current proposal. 1st, clever street has no street lights. We have no sidewalks there's a severe 90 degree curve just a couple of houses down from this location walking on the street can already be very unsafe adding any additional street parking will only add to safety issues for our children dog walkers and cyclists. Every house, except for 2 on Clover street is a 1 story ranch. This proposal is completely out of the realm of anything currently in this historic neighborhood and does not provide ample off street parking. As a homeowner, I had limits to the height requirements I was allowed to build when adding an additional structure to my current property on clover. So, why are we not holding investors the same requirements? They do not have enough parking allocated for the amount of housing that they are trying to build in this very small lot as a homeowner. I am required to provide off street parking to any short term rentals on my property. Why are we again not not holding investors to the same requirements to provide ample off street parking? Approving this is going to set a precedent for investors to start doing this throughout our neighborhood and soon our neighborhood is going to turn from single family homes and to essentially multi complexes. We don't have the parking or the infrastructure to handle the traffic flow. We already deal with traffic flow from people cutting through from Hawthorne and Oglethorpe. This proposal serves the needs of investors and wealthy students who are attending the medical college. UGA demolished housing on the medical college campus and that land now is sitting empty. UGA has the funds, the space and the infrastructure that we do not have on Clover to address student housing. Of the three households on my block alone that house employees or students of the Medical College campus, not one walks the campus daily. I'm a believer in the need for both dense housing and affordable housing in Athens. My parents and I jointly own my property and we have two very small houses that combined are less than 1700 square feet on a third acre of land. Sharing property with my parents allowed me as a single parent to afford a home for me and my daughter. That's what dense housing looks like. That's what affordable housing looks like. We are in a housing crisis, but this proposal is not serving the need for affordable homes. This housing is designed for profiting wealthy investors and housing wealthy students. There are ample other options for this type of housing outside of this neighborhood without destroying our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else to speak?

I'm Julia Marine. I live at 495 Clover Street, right across from this proposed development. I have a written statement that after hearing what I heard from the 2 developers, it seems to me that there's actually not a real clear plan based on this that they were talking about also the parking. So that that might be a concern right there that we actually have a plan before we can even decide whether this is suitable for our neighborhood. However, I appreciate that there's interest in redeveloping and approving this property. I support thoughtful, appropriate development in our neighborhood, and I understand that increased density is part of the future land use plan that we chose as Athenians. I do have several concerns. One is the density. I am concerned that the proposed density is excessive and is not aligned with the character of the existing neighborhood. I understand that from talking to Ryan that RM1 would only allow for four units, but it's a little confusing as to what the actual size of the acreage is. The document that was proposed, the application said 0.32. Our line, it says something else on the public property search. If it was 0.313, they could have five units. At an arm 1, so I'm not sure if they've done a survey if we actually know what the actual size of this property is, but that might be something to consider. Let's see also, I noticed that in their thing, it was a non binding. I'm not. I'm not sure I know exactly what all that means, but if we choose RM2 zoning, that stays with the property. Should they decide to abandon the redevelopment, RM2 stays, and you can have multiple different things. Not as nice as what I think they're proposing. So I'm real concerned about the RM2 part. I think everybody on Clover Street is concerned about the parking. That's not sufficient. Obviously, I've seen another plan that added 2 more and now he's talked about the driveway, not being wide enough. So I think the parking is an issue and the parking the curve in front of that house and the adjacent house have a yellow curve. All that overflow parking is going to be in front of me. And my neighbor, Christy, so that's a concern that could prevent a leaf Olympic up. It could hamper trash and recycling. and make it so it's not enjoyable to sit on my front porch and wave at all my neighbors. That is the most walked street I have ever seen. Oh, I'm out of time. Shoot. You got 30 seconds. I got 30 seconds. Okay. Clearly the addition of nine or more vehicles will impact traffic on a street that currently lacks sidewalks and traffic control measures. Let's see. Let me skip around. If RM2 zone is granted, I'd like to know what mechanisms are in place to ensure that we adhere to the proposed plan or future owners which the non-binding I think eliminates. Is there a possibility of shifting it to? Thanks.

Anybody else speak in opposition?

My name is Colin Marine. I live at 360 Clover street. I've been at that location for coming up on 10 years now. I am in agreement with everybody here. I'm sure that we need density. We need it in Athens terribly. We need affordable housing. The concerns mainly are for safety and maintenance of the character of the neighborhood as the other 2 speakers have mentioned. The whole neighborhood, not just Clover street has a terrible issue with street parking there. Every single house in the neighborhood has. A driveway where 3 cars could park and yet it seems like people prefer to park on the street. So, regardless of whether there are 5 parking spots. 12 parking spots provided whatever there will be people parking on the street and it causes issues for all the pedestrians and for traffic going through the area because it's a narrow street. The other issues I see. Trash collection for 7 units. Is there space for a dumpster on this property? Is there a space for a trash truck to come empty that dumpster once a week? There will be multiple extra trash cans individually on the street. Yet again, more stuff in the street that really just doesn't need to be there. So, you know. I don't want to oppose this project completely, but I would like to see some maybe concessions or. Compromises made as far as improvements to. The street as a whole that could make this more feasible. Traffic calming measures a speed bump here there. You know, a re, examination, perhaps of. The section of Clover street, that's closest to turn it into a 1 way so that people can't come in from over for to cut straight through the neighborhood right there on Clover street might force people to use sunset, which has traffic calling measures and actually goes to the main street that they're actually trying to get to rather than going down Clover street. So, I think there is room to. Make this better for everybody and perhaps let it happen in some. form. But currently the information that we have, it doesn't seem like the people that live in the neighborhood will benefit in any way from having the current project go forward. Thank you.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Hello, my name is Brandon Hevern. I live at 496 Clover Street. So there's two houses between me and this development. I don't really have anything prepared. I just kind of wanted to see how all this was working. I do feel strongly about development opportunities on our street. I echo everything everyone has said about parking, about street traffic, about the lack of street lights and sidewalks. It's a very congested, overutilized street that I think is underserved. And if we were planning amendments or any sort of improvements to that street, I'd love to talk about those things. top street lights etc as opposed to density housing of this type i mean i think when we talk about the capping the number of units you know and having single bedroom houses i think we all need to be realistic and know that often there's going to be two people living in that single bedroom people have partners that live with them so i think that the car count already is going to skyrocket a little bit more than just seven again Issues with street parking and yeah, I think that. Lot is in need of improvement. I'm not completely opposed to any sort of development of it, but I think that. Capping the units and also considering all the things we've mentioned is important and would be appreciated by members of your community that cared to come here and speak to you. So. Thank you for your time.

Hello, my name is Kate Cassidy Duffy. I live at 245 Clover Street. I've lived in Athens for 20 years and on Clover Street for about five years. I echo all the concerns of my neighbors, especially the non-binding agreements. I find that kind of concerning, especially considering the way things work. And I'm also really concerned about the number of units. Again, I think this property needs to be fixed up. I support multifamily housing in Athens. We need housing, but I do think we need to be realistic that most of this housing will go to university students and not residents. I just also want to say that you can't see from this map that hairpin turn right on the corner is very concerning. I have two small children. I'm already terrified of that curve. I don't like walking in myself. And more cars, more parking could create a really dangerous situation. So I think we need to see better plans capped number of units and making sure that this is fitting into the neighborhood and not just a development. Thank you.

Anybody else.

Okay.

Oh.

Hi, I'm Christy club. I'm at four, eight, five Clover street, right? Straight across from it as they pointed out that marketing situations will be a little problem, particularly since my house has the white, no red, yellow lines and there's does. So we will have people parked in front of the house all the time. And that's not a great way to have. And also, we are credibly busy street as far as strollers dog walkers all that. I just hate to see that slow down because it's so treacherous to go on our street because of because of the term at the end. So, I appreciate really considering. The amount of density at that particular one, third acre. Thanks very much.

Thank you. Anybody else. Okay, hearing none, I'll turn back to the applicant. I'll give you two minutes for any sort of response.

I guess I would just say that it is our intent to make sure that we are going to address the needs of the community, understanding their comments, and there are Ideas that we are going to be pursuing that we'll take these into account. I understand that there are concerns about traffic and parking in Clover. The fact that Pullman and Sunset have speed bumps and Clover does not naturally pushes traffic to the street. I think this is a response to really. The fact that there are 2, 2 buildings on this, this property. And we're trying to bring them to a conforming nature rather than operating. In a non conforming way by putting housing in this location or operating a commercial. business out of a residential family, a residential zoned house. Yes, there are some There has to be a little bit of an understanding of what the process is to take on a project like this. I am part of the development team. I live in Athens and would be willing to have anyone come to the house that I currently live in that was literally falling in and rebuilding. So we're not trying to do anything as a rich developer. We're just trying to use our skill sets to try to make Athens a better place. Thank you.

Thank you. I actually, I know you all have questions. I have questions too, and if you all don't mind, I wanted to call the developer up because I have some sort of like baseline questions for you about the project.

Architect or me? We can both stand.

Maybe the architect version first. So, could you kind of just walk me through, like, your, your, your narrative talked about adding the porch, like, helping understand, like. What you plan to do to present buildings.

Just kind of okay so so basically everything in this kind of dark gray is existing front porch back porch this back porch already exists so right now, the way that the building is shaped there is a primary gable here. For the roof, and so basically, we're going to unfortunately, given the condition of this house, we're going to be taking it down to studs. We're going to be replacing the floor system, reworking basically everything while maintaining the exterior footprint of that house. because we're trying to maintain the scale of the neighborhood. This volume here is an addition on an addition, and we will be essentially ripping the roof off, putting in a new enclosed space here in that dark gray as an addition, and then a front porch to have this section be a second unit. The front house will be divided into two units. Then is there a 2nd floor or is no, it is all single store. And then currently proposed with, and we're still working through the design on parking because there are a lot of combinations as was mentioned. A portion of this building is nonconforming already. So we can't touch. Basically anything within that rear setback. So we are proposing potentially if. we get the in the zoning for the additional bedroom count is basically what the combination of the rezone to make sure that more than one or two non uh relative people can live on the same address bringing it into conforming so that's why we went with the multi-family designation the rm2 then goes from uh just increased bedroom count to a cap of seven so with that this volume stays single story because it's non-conforming and then a small uh second story addition as great as falling away um would potentially be there if we are in If we, if the, it's approved to get that bedroom count. 1 thing I would like potentially to get qualifying or just clarification from the planning department. In my understanding, the parking count above 2 bedrooms. Is still 2 is that an act? Is that accurate? That's correct. So, if we did 3 bedrooms, we only need 2 parking spaces, but by having more units, we are then required to have more onsite parking. And for all of the parking for the residences has to happen on site. so if we did so again i don't want to i would i just want to have everyone be aware of how the code is written in the sense of if there are if we do three bedroom units we are only required to park two of those bedrooms we only need two spaces for the three bedroom unit correct

And you can have off-site parking, I should have said. But I get off-site parking agreement.

Correct. But we are hoping to accomplish all of the parking on-site. And by having smaller one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, we are actually taking on the burden of more on-site parking. Whereas if we did, if this was approved and then we did two three-bedroom units, which is not our intent, then we're required to park less. So again, I'm not trying to use that as a fear tactic or anything. I'm just wanting to let everyone know that there are other stipulations based on how the bedroom counts. Calculate to the onsite parking requirements.

And so, but let me ask you to go be. The arm 1 versus RM 2 is the difference of 1 unit. It's bedroom count. So, so the difference and maybe sorry if this stuff, but what what tell me your rationale for going with RM 2 instead of RM 1.

uh it is strictly density i mean the so in this exactly in the sense of you get seven bedrooms versus uh either four or five so um and it it just basically comes down to um the condition of the homes both of them are going to be complete guts and everything is going to be new within them so just the cost of doing the work uh the the increased bedroom counts just realistically provides provides more beds which what is what athens needs from the housing um we can't control who lives in it but we can put uh for rent signs up to say here are one bedroom and two bedroom new construction i mean there's not a lot of one bedroom and two bedroom places to live that are uh Being built in a scale like this.

Um, so yeah, but that's a question.

Absolutely.

How is the back building being used now? Or how is it historically been used?

I mean, it was also part of the daycare. I mean, there's blue walls with, uh. Children's paintings on it, so it was part of the daycare. So they were using both the front and the back and we're parking on the side. No, no, they were parking. The whole back of the lot is basically paved. We're actually removing paving from on site to to increase the. Service, so we're removing paving.

And then another question I have is from sort of site design standpoint, do you guys have the. Ability to get that wider driveway that's needed.

So, and that's something that I spoke with the plan department about earlier this week. We have, there's about 60 feet between the curb and the front porch. So, if we widened the existing drive to be the required 20, 22 feet for a two aisle access, you could park or you could have six cars in that 60 feet. And this is just something that we're going to be in discussion with the planning department because of trying to minimize altering the existing conditions from a buildable or the building footprint. Because right now the front porch, the rear porch and what is currently the dining room in this kind of smaller volume. So, here is like, kind of where the dining room is, there's a little mud room and then you have access to a back porch and then the front porch, but the front door is actually over here. So, if if that is in fact needed to be removed in order to create that drive aisle, you know, that is going to be altering the footprint of the existing house, which we would. Hopefully be able to work with with planning to. To work around that, or if that's the case, and that needs to be removed and altered the footprint, then then that will be part of the rounded design that will happen before our submittal in July. And so that's again, we're here to. an understanding of thoughts and comments and certainly listen to the the community because again we are part of the community but um there is kind of a back and forth in this process and also with with the the amount of work that needs to be taking place on on the site so this is my neighborhood i'm your neighbor a little few blocks away from this um know it very well and especially that curve

Um, what is the relationship with the owner of the Hawthorne parking lot? And would that be incorporated? Would you have the ability to so that access to get back out to Hawthorne or would all of the traffic be coming on to close?

So all so the previous owner of this lot and the lot that backs up to, or that is on Hawthorne that previously it was the same owner. And so that's why we have the weird. back 30 feet of this property is CG. And unfortunately, there is no access easement through that other lot to access Hawthorne.

And that's not acquirable? Um, I can maybe speak to that. I, we were in communication with him when we 1st, bought the property as 1 way to resolve. This was to sell that back building to him and just get it off our plate to a single family. The reason he wanted to purchase it was to turn that into an office and get more car parking and room to work. We didn't end up following through with that, but knowing his needs, it doesn't seem like something he would be willing to part with. He wants more space to put cars.

So, basically, all of the traffic will be coming off to Hawthorne or to Clover, but it also means that there's no opportunity for foot traffic. From Hawthorne to cross through the complex.

Correct. There's a fence.

That would definitely be a concern of mine.

Yeah, we plan on putting, you know, an eight-foot fence there with some shrubbery, you know, some large plants because it's not a very inviting scenario at the moment. So part of our plan to make it, you know, a little more habitable is to put some measures to isolate our lot from theirs.

Okay. And with the seven bedrooms, do they not need another fire point, an access point for fire?

The unit configuration will determine what kind of egress layout needs to occur.

I just have a question about the current conditions and it's more for staff, I think, but. If we need you guys, we'll let you know the. Grandfathered status with respect to its non conforming. elements such as not having much of a rear yard setback and having two different units on one mostly single family parcel and all that. Can you speak a little bit to exactly what's grandfathered in? Is it the footprint? Is it a particular number of dwelling units greater than one?

So because these weren't used as dwelling units in its most recent use there, the zoning, the single family zoning, if the owner had put in another daycare operator within 12 months of the previous daycare operator ceasing, they could have continued the daycare use. A single family home is allowed on an RS zone lot, a single single family. Because these weren't used as single family structures. There is no administrative way to default. The 2 single family homes being converted here. So, other than occupying the front structure as a home again, and using the back structure of some personal use, that's not commercial in nature. There almost had to be some sort of repositioning of this property to make use of those 2 buildings. Repositioning meaning a rezone of some sort. Otherwise you have a really awkward. Mix of zoning and and a build condition. That doesn't really meet any kind of standards that we currently have in code.

You said, and using the back building as a personal use, but not commercial, but they could use. Some of it is commercial, couldn't they under the current zoning occupation? I mean, the split zone part of that back building is zone CG.

Part of that back building is on CG. That is correct. And so. I love your question, but also hated it. Susan has to be, you know, we also have standards that say you can't have commercial access coming through an RS lot.

You'd have to have back access.

Well, but if you have a property owner, who's not going to grant you access. So, I don't have a really good answer for that back 30 feet question if that's. Where you were trending with the current zoning. With it being all on the same parcel with the parcel being predominantly. There is a provision in code that does allow us to make some administrative adjustments to the zoning line. But 30 feet, I think it's just over what that allowance would let us do. So this is a. This is a tough one. And so to use this with the current zoning on the ground, at a minimum, we'd probably be looking at some sort of variance to introduce a new use other than the daycare function or a single family home with some sort of ancillary single family home use. So if they occupied the front and had a single family home, I don't know, a home office of their own in the back and, you know, you could maybe cobble together a series of uses that are allowed by right in that back building.

But it would be tricky, I guess. To me, it seems like the. We do have a policy in our code that says when we have. you know, stuff that does not, existing conditions that don't conform with the zoning of the parcel that we favor changing the zoning to bring it in line with existing conditions. And so it sounds like something ought to change here with the zoning. I'm not sure that's the right answer. You know, RM1, among other things, would not require a change to the future land use map. And so it's a much smaller change. And I guess my initial comment is just that that might be more, that feels like an easier ask here is to rezone at RM1 to then, I mean, the existing structures could then be used for students or families or whoever wanted to rent the units that the builder wants to build there. It sounds like you know a lot of the neighbors agree that something's got to happen here different from what was there before the commercial use that had been there that public was a little disruptive and so maybe a change to RM1 is that's a much easier I think pill to swallow. Interested in hearing what the other planning commissioners have to say, but that's kind of my initial.

I like the thought that you're.

The direction you're heading or in 1 versus 2. 1 thing I don't like, and it's always been fairly clear is trying to solve the problem of a piece of property at the expense of the neighborhood and and. yet if it makes sense and there's some roads where this would make sense um there are some places where this would make sense if this connected to hawthorne it makes sense it doesn't connect to hawthorne uh it's got a couple of buildings on it that weren't being used for what the proposal is um yet it's And again, we always have to take caution. We throw in, we pass it in as RM2. Unbeknownst to them, somebody's watching this and goes, ooh, I'd pay plenty of money for that property now and do what I want to do because they already did the work of getting RM2. They give them a heap of money. They innocently take it. They didn't mean this, but they made a lot of money. I don't blame them. I'd do the same thing. And next thing you know, you got this whole thing that definitely isn't fair. That's just where I lean toward caution on this type of thing. It. It apparently is something the neighborhood has. Some issues with, and the current residents, another question. Bruce, and I didn't like this. Staff report mentions that there are already some duplexes throughout the neighborhood here and there. Are there any properties about this size that would have for. Yeah, different residents on it.

I'm not aware. Is there. There's definitely a 2 duplexes on the corner of sunset and where the roundabout is.

That's asking about other properties with 4 units.

You're saying there's 2 new places on 1 property, but there is there's a. That's a yes. It's kind of around the corner, a couple blocks.

There's a couple other with corner lots that have two single family units. I don't know if they're split up at all within about a six or eight block radius. I think I saw three. That one duplex one's the one that stood out the most at the roundabout there on Sunset.

I can speak to Alex's question a little bit. So I'm on Holman in the 300 block. We've got a multifamily grandfathered house next door to us. It's a triplex. On the corner of Millard and Holman, there's a duplex. There's also a triplex at the corner of Holman and Price, a street down. And then there's six duplex units within three buildings at Gloria and Sunset. and then a small apartment complex at the end of Holman. There's multifamily sprinkled all throughout the neighborhood. Most of it is innocuous. You'd never know it was there because they were older houses that were broken up. So I think for me, this is an appropriate use for the neighborhood as long as we could create conditions that help it stay in scale. Because I think that's a valid concern. If you just go to RM2 without any restrictions of how that RM2 could be realized, It could easily get out of scale for the neighborhood, but multifamily within normal town proper. It's everywhere. Yeah. Completely appropriate.

Yeah. And I agree there. I see it everywhere, but you mentioned 1. Was it a property with 3 duplexes on it? Okay.

Yep.

Yeah.

3 separate building 3 separate buildings. between Gloria and sunset, but all presenting like, I mean, you can look at the porches and tell their duplexes, but they are at scale where they feel harmonious with everything around it. In fact, the large house that was built by right across the street feels totally out of scale, but still lovely. So it's kind of a hodgepodge, but I mean, this, it feels, I had shown this property several times before, both as residential and commercial, And it's tough, it's tough to find something that would really work in this space. So I applaud them at least trying to use the buildings that are there. Because it's tricky, but parking will be an issue and it does come at a really dangerous curve and on street parking. It's tough while the popcorn connection would be nice. Not having the walk through traffic come more on to clover where it's dark that there's value in that too.

and I don't want to interrupt you. I think that with regard to parking, I feel like the applicants parking it, suggesting parking it better than anything else around it. Like the problem with Clover is that it's a cut through. I don't think a person has a right to have no car parked in front of their house on a public street. Like I know people don't love it, but like I would never be able to go and expect in front of my house that somebody can't park there unless there's a yellow curve. So I feel like, We had a very similar conversation years ago when there was a cottage proposed right at this corner. It is tricky. It's like this larger problem of the cut through. That makes applications like this sort of seem to exacerbate the problem. I don't. I actually don't think it would really exacerbate it that much. And I think for parking. Suggested for this then. then any any, you know, that's that's a lot of parking. I do think it's worth exploring that are one idea that's a little bit less. I know that it's not as attractive For the developers, I can sort of see, though, how it might bring that density down enough to. Feel even more like you could get the get the property. I mean, I think this larger problem of clothes are being cut through. And having street parking on it already is neither going to be exacerbated or solved by this 1 properties development. So, I do. I do, I would love to see something happen with this weird, like, and. I understand how expensive it is to do this kind of work, but I also very much believe that there's a market. And a demand for 1 story, I don't mind. Yes, med students and law students living in my neighborhood for only 3 years that happens all the time. I'm okay with it. There's a demand for it. And in some ways, it kind of gets us away from some of the concerns that show up in some single family neighborhoods about jamming for students into a house. It wasn't meant for that. So, I think, yeah, I guess sort of maybe back to exploring the option in this discussion, just to kind of see what you all think. But I, for me, I just hate to when someone comes to. Planning willing to invest in something like this. This is exactly the kind of incremental development that we. Try to advocate for people fixing up single family properties and the communities where they live. I would assume that the neighbors would rather see residential here than some sort of. Yeah, I guess I, I guess commercial is just not an option on this and that. And so anyway, I'm kind of all over the place, but interested to hear what other people think.

I'll agree with that. Ironically. This is where my daughter went to daycare, so I know exactly where it is and what it looks like. But I do think having that residential pieces is relevant. It could be for college kids, or it could just be for a single person who doesn't need the land and doesn't have to have the traditional house. This is a question for planning. Is it I know it's an eyesore, but is it like. Unlawful to make that lawn parking area. Yes, it is.

Okay. Yeah. And it's not, it's not the eyesore aspect. It's. It's a soil erosion and also kind of a safety concern. Gotcha. But you talking about the front yard? Yeah. Yeah, the, the opportunity for front yard parking here. is already being absorbed by the existing driveway um however there is you know when and if this would get into plans review i think we did find ourselves having a discussion about this spot right here accessibility yeah with this being added we now have a new front facade line and so the front yard is defined by the most forward wall of the structure So having an L shape like this puts a new facade line out here. So a parking spot right here potentially could meet code if this came out far enough to where this was sitting behind that line. So that's the potential for a seventh parking space. What's shown on the screen is really six. The tandem one counts as one for a multifamily development.

OK.

Okay, thank you back.

Units are sprinkler does the with fire with minimum. Apply to that driveway fire Marshall respond.

Oh, that's okay.

Sorry.

I mean, we can't just have you come here for nothing.

Yeah, it could be a regular thing.

I have to look that up if that building B, I think, even with my glasses, I can't see that building B, if that is sprinkler, but we would still need to be able to get an ambulance back there. So that's it's still very narrow right there at the property line and building a so. I mean, that's something that we could consider during plans review.

Thanks.

Related to that, actually, this may be a fire marshal question to while you're up here that. Getting back to the grandfathering question, like, they have a building right now that leaves them. 9 or 10 feet or whatever it is of driveway.

Sure. Which.

There that's grandfathered in, like, if somebody wanted to just live in the front house. Require them. Tear down part of the house, so that an ambulance could get in there. Right?

So. Talking about for the, if somebody were to make building a, just a single family home.

Yes. If people were living in building a, and people were living in building B. There, there would be grandfathered in. Right? So. Is it I don't know if this is a Bruce planning question or a fire question, but. How does grandfathering affect the idea of making people tear down a chunk of their house fire truck?

Maybe, maybe I'll take your question. Give it a turn. Does an ambulance need to be able to get all the way to the back of that lot for the 2nd building or is ambulance access where the width is appropriate sufficient?

Essentially, like, right up to the point right there probably would be sufficient for an ambulance. Yeah, because, I mean, we do carry people, you know. To the, to the ambulance. Yeah. Yeah. So that could be, you know, obviously our main concern is the 20 feet to provide the fire department access without a doubt that building B is over the 150 foot hose length that we require to be able to reach the furthest point of the house to be able to affect firefight in building B. So, yeah.

Sorry, I didn't I took a little bit there that answer your question or yeah, no, I think it does.

So I was going to ask about the 150 foot thing is. You bring a fire truck up to the choke point there. You, you measure from that fire truck to the farthest away corner of building B. that needs to be 150.

Really, it needs to because that the, the driveway is not 20 feet wide. We would be counting it from Clover street. We can't bring the fire truck up onto something. That's not 20 feet wide. So, really, you're counting it. You're still counting it from Clover street.

Unless they widen the driveway up to the house to 20 feet, then then you would count.

Yeah. Okay, thank you.

I know I don't necessarily get a vote in the matter, but I'll just say my main hangups were the RM2, knowing that RM1 wouldn't require the type 1 rezone, so we could just change it to RM1 instead, and it still aligns with the underlying . And I also like the property itself, there's so much pavement. And so that was the 2nd point for me was like, we got to remove some of this pavement for this property to get better. So. Having 1 fewer apartment means, like, there's less pressure to fit 7 parking spaces on the site. Right? third element for me was that back building honestly i'm kind of obsessed with that back building it's really cool um and i i was a little saddened to hear the idea that it would be turned into two stories at least in a portion of it because i feel like it's just such a cool thing so um I don't know, I mean, not into designing stuff, but it's that to me, it was kind of like it and maybe not that excited about it. So that's why. If this were my world, and I got to vote that I would lean toward our 1, just. Just for that, those 3 reasons never another could be a tie. It could be a time. Guidance for the applicant.

You should put on the 2nd story. You want to put up the 2nd story?

I wouldn't do it. All right. Well, hopefully we've given. You enough to go by, so see you.

All right.

All right, so moving on to item number two, 940 college. All right.

I'll wait for groups to return or should I just go for it? Go for it. Beautiful. All righty, y'all. We are going to be talking about 940 College Avenue, which is a preliminary plan development for review. So we are looking at comments only this evening. No recommendations moving forward. Maybe. Or maybe not. Hey, all right, so the request again, preliminary plan development, there's no future land use map change required for this proposal, but we are looking at a zoning map change from employment industrial to mixed density residential. Starting off with existing conditions, this is an aerial shot of the site. This has operated as a concrete masonry factory and distribution center since 1995. You all can see that it's mostly paved area. We've got industrial buildings and storage throughout. Um, we have a live park on the South. You can see kind of the corner of the ballpark there. Let's see. It's not what gets me a laser. Hey, all right. Right here on college on the West side. We've got some offices and residential also on the North side of the parcel. We have a neighborhood on Elizabeth street and then we are also bounded all layer pretty much by some railroad tracks. And going a little bit more into this site, I provided a good bit of site photos because I know it's a bit challenging to get to. So this is the access point on College Avenue facing east. You can see that we've got a little bit of an incline going up into the site. So climbing around that fence on Lay Park, this is looking facing northwest onto this site. Again, you can see the existing industrial buildings and the track. And you're also starting to see a little bit of the topography. So we're level here and the ground starts going up. So we've got kind of a canyon effect where this track runs. This is a little bit more detailed on that topography we're dealing with. So we've got the track here and the ground level is actually all the way up here along this tree line. So pretty intense drop along that South boundary of the site. And this is a view more into the internal portion of the site from a service road. That's off of college. Y'all can tuck in there. If you do want to do site visit before the next time this comes around, I would definitely recommend it. I think this gives you kind of the best view of what they've got going on. And then. For a little bit of context, this is the neighborhood that is just the north on Elizabeth street. So this is the residential use that you're seeing directly next to. This property looking at future land use again, not much to discuss here is it is not going to be a change from our new 2045 future land use map that was just adopted. So we do see this proposal as moving this parcel more into alignment with that vision. Looking at zoning. There's going to be a change. Currently, we're looking at employment industrial. We would be shifting into mixed density residential. And again, that does align more with the longer term vision for this area. And you can see, again, kind of the uses. We've got residential zone at the top. We've got also mixed density to the west and lay park down here on the south. Environmental areas, there's not any technically inside the parcel lines, but we've got a flood zone pretty close to our property line over here. So I thought that was worth mentioning for additional context. And jumping into the site plan itself, this is what we received as proposed. On this site, we have a mix of five different residential building types. You can see we've got a bunch of different footprints at play. inside of the parcel. All of those added up is a total of 374 bedrooms proposed for this development. 324 parking spots you can see are dispersed throughout the property as well. And we also have a central amenity sensor where it's got some gym facilities, a pool and pickleball courts. And again, this clearly shows how it is pretty hard bounded by those tracks. So in terms of staff analysis, it is compatible with the 2023 comprehensive plan. The proposal redevelops an existing site. It removes a really intense industrial use and starts transitioning the surrounding residential areas into that mix we see in downtown. Encourages development close to downtown, which is a goal of that comp plan. And it also would increase and diversify housing types available to our community. Um, also, as addressed before, it is compatible with the 2045 future land use map and report. It maintains the mixed entity residential classification and moves that parcel more into alignment with the overall future land use goals. I apologize for the text getting really tiny. This is a big idea, so it deserves a big thought. I did a lot of review of existing plans and policies and programs that we've got, how this idea might align with it. So three that I thought were of note, looking at the Greenway Network Plan and the updated maps that we got in 2020. There are some proposed trail lines that would be coming near this area, so residents having residents here would allow them direct access to the Greenway. Also looking at the housing and community development consolidated plan, which deals a lot with affordable housing and homelessness in our community. One thing there, there was not any information in the proposal about potential pricing or specifically if there's going to be a mix of rental units or home ownership. So getting those details about how they kind of want to program the ownership and rental of the parcel will help us figure out if it's an alignment with those housing goals for us. And also worth mentioning this parcel is within one of our tax allocation districts. It's within TAD number four, which is east downtown. So that group's got their own redevelopment plan as well as some community identified priorities that they established through their own engagement. And that specifically was for goals and staff would encourage the applicant to review those goals and see if there are any community benefit agreements that could be parcel package with this proposal to increase that benefit for Athens. Great, so, in terms of looking at zoning map and ordinance compliance, there were a few waivers that were requested in this application. 1 is about the conserve tree canopy just because there are not a lot of trees that we're working with from the get go with this parcel. so staff is inclined to support that waiver however there is a condition on that we would want to make sure that the surface soil requirements are added to their tree canopy calculations those are currently missing so we can't really check if the tree canopy proposed is what could actually be planted that is something that can be worked out in plans review but worth noting on the front end as well In terms of block size and orientation, there was a waiver around requiring 50% of the units to be street facing. And we said that we could support this waiver with a little bit of a nudge to explore some different design options or talk to us about their process of how they landed where they did. Um, we were interested in design options that would have parking and circulation around the edges of the development rather than so centrally located what that could potentially look like. Um, so that the residential structure be concentrated more towards the center of the site. And then the last waiver request was for a design accommodation and we would just request some more details of what exactly that's going to mean. Are we looking for. design accommodations that don't comply with current code or not. We just want a little bit more drill down so that we would be able to say one way or another how we're landing on that. So final summary, we do think that redeveloping the College Avenue parcel to mix into residential aligns with the future land use goals and the vision for the area. Again, it transitions those surrounding residential areas into the commercial mix of downtown and provides housing options However, there are a number of details that we would like added and a few changes to the plan as well. Most of which I already addressed a few that were not that we got some technical notes from other departments on include wanting to have a plan for onsite sewer storage facilities, which was addressed in our public utility department comments. We also would love to have some detail added into the narrative that tells us the bedroom count per residential building type. didn't have those on the plans right now so just knowing how many bedrooms are in those units that were proposed would help us in our analysis um we also would like to see the lot coverage calculations included on the plans um those details were also not included and we need that in order to finish our analysis as well um if it exceeds the 75 that goes along with this mixed density uh zoning request we would need to have a waiver that accommodates that um and Yes, so I already talked about the design accommodation and then again, just the encouragement to explore Athens Clark county programs and plans to see if there are more opportunities for added benefit for Athens residents. And that includes the staff report.

Thank you.

Now, what your family applicants. Brett and Abe, two hundred and twelve million. I'm a studio architect.

Thank you for the first time. Yeah, this one is one that we got actually started talking. I actually started talking to Mark about. Couple of months before we changed the future land use map and this is how we were planning it anyway. So this kind of work working out. Well, then we turned it yellow, you know, previous. Not applicants previous developers. So I understand we're looking at. Another version of the hub that's just happened or is happening on the South side of lay park building the big wall there and the South side of the house and. We feel like this is the appropriate approach here to do a transitional neighborhood. Component where we can work with a diversity of unit sizes and mix and scales. Kind of let this blend its way down over the tracks. It's about a 25 foot drop before you hit that little neighborhood. That's to the north down there. we have just great access we we hope you know obviously the greenway is there and we really hope that that athens line kicks in that's the track along the north side there because that's uh the athens line if i understand it correctly is bike and pedestrian um which is just perfect i mean as much of that as we can get in athens would be great and we i also I'm going to kind of simultaneously talk about that block suggestion. When we were initially kind of, I guess where I'm headed, but it's not quite what I'm telling you. We were looking at a lot of different ways to lay this site out with the idea that the middle or at least a big swath of this could feel a little more neighborhood-y, even though we knew we had to get some density out of it. And that's why we've got the RM3 designation request. But hopefully you can see in the plan, there's a lot of sidewalk and path through here. On this particular plan, you don't see, we have our own little trail network through this as well, but we tried to keep it green with the buildings. We had to use our setbacks and get kind of close every now and then, like right in the middle, you see where G and C and F are close together, but they're still 15 feet apart. And we were looking for ways that you could have different pockets for different personalities, a little bit of green space all over the place. And we even, with the six Fs on the right, The 2, the 2 groups of apps that are closest to the plan East create a little quad in the middle. So we're looking at ways. How can we do like, little house sizes, duplex sizes. Little quads, like, we're sort of kind of in 5 points. And then we do, we knew we needed some dense buildings. We did look at. Driving around the outside and first, it's kind of the 1st, obvious thing, but what happened a couple of things happen there is. 1, it may is way too dense in the middle. We couldn't get that lighter, more green neighborhood feeling in the middle when we did that. And it creates kind of this race track vibe to it, like, kind of the way a mall is set up where all the buildings are in the middle and just drive around it. Didn't really like that because it feels like we're trying to do here is have little strips where you drive and there's parking and then there's trees and you drive and obviously we had to get the required parking in here. But we, it breaks up a lot more like this. I didn't like the. Putting a retaining while at J at the top up there, it drops off as I showed you in those pictures. That's quite the drop to get at future Athens line. And I'd rather see. The corner of the back wall, the building drop down because we can grow IV up that and then neighbors overlook that. So when you're on that line, you're going through a little piece of the neighborhood versus going along. A retaining wall of parking lot lights, and then think would be that nice. And then also, we're trying to be good neighbors fill a part where not all projects are good neighbors to some of these things. And we're in the backyard of London house. If you can imagine the topography, if you're at Lay Park and Linden House, it drops to get to this property quite a bit. College is going downhill. This drops quite a bit. And so the top floor of E, the two E's and the H, are really all you see from the ballpark. But then those people are looking out over the ballpark and looking out over the backyard gardens at Linden House. And it just feels like a better neighborhood than putting up parking lights all around it and kind of making this Mega dome in the middle, plus it was so dense, all the buildings with arm 3, we have a height limit. It just made them all big. So this didn't do that. So I don't mean that as it's just 1 of those many things we looked at, you know, and all of this, but. We just simply, I mean, it's kind of hard to beat them. Obviously we're landlocked with the railroads, but it's kind of a nice landlock. Because the greenway is right there is a great little spot. We do have. There's some things to work out the ads going to talk to you about Atlanta, the Smith group. I'm going to go ahead and let him do that because I want to equally share. But here, if you guys have any questions.

Good evening, Ed Lane with SPG Planners and Engineers, 1725 Electric Avenue. I think Brett did a great job of explaining some of the vision and some of the thinking on the site design and layout. So I'm just going to address some of staff's comments as it relates to the infrastructure and some of these technical things. And I'll say I feel confident that we can work with staff to solve those. And I'll just kind of go through some of that with people. So, 1st, PUD's note about the onsite sewer storage facility. It's a great point. Our thinking was that the timing of this, we didn't believe that'll be necessary as the Hub 2 project and the sewer improvements that they are going to do would coincide with the timeline of this project to where it'll just have gravity sewer like any other project. However, to PUD's point, That is making a future prediction about something. And so they just wanted us to address what if something happens North entrance and turn right that we have room there and it is the low point of the site. We can direct both Sue remains there. And that is where that storage hypothetical storage facility would be. And so that we will address that both in narrative form and in plan form in the recent middle. And then regarding the lot coverage, I can understand if you look at this, you know, there's a good bit of surface parking. So it doesn't look like we meet the lot coverage and we'll do a better job of quantifying that. But we do have just over thirty percent open space, which twenty five is required. So we feel confident we can clarify and address that. And then a little more about the design accommodation request where that is coming from. And of course, we'll be more explicit about this in the recent middle, but. There's a lot of competing constraints here with the infrastructure, the trees, the open soil surface that was mentioned that we need to show how we meet that. So we wanted a little flexibility since the binding nature of the site, just to say, we believe we're probably gonna have to scoot some sidewalks around, trees, The utilities, the storm design is pretty complex on this, but I mean, this is the concept and the layout of the site that I don't think can change. And also, we don't anticipate the changes that we're talking about necessitating waivers that we haven't anticipated already. I mean, we just wouldn't be allowed to make that change anyway, but we will be more clear about that. so that there aren't any concerns. And then finally, the fire access and the height of the trestle, getting emergency vehicle and fire access here is a very important part of this. And so there are multiple solutions to the problem, we just don't know which one. And the reason for that is I can briefly explain. So, to to the north, the rail crossing to the north, that is how we believe their solutions to get fire access here. And it would be by lowering the road bed. So that then the acceptable clearance is there for emergency vehicles and the fire fire truck. Now, to do that is a pretty invasive procedure to find out more about what's entailed there. It includes, you know, pot-holing machines, wet vac machines, getting surveyed there, partial lane closure. And so all of that together is pretty costly, something to undertake during entitlements. But during plans review and engineering, that is cost of doing business. And so there are several, routes to pursue there we just don't know how complex or expensive it is to to to fix those but we're confident with those routes so we're here to answer any other questions you may have um but i appreciate your time and interested in hearing y'all's comments thank you all right is there anybody here to speak in support of anybody here to speak in opposition yet

All right, hearing none.

Who wants to start?

I like it. I think it looks real good and I appreciate the RM3 approach and stepping down the density from the density rehab downtown. That seems like the right approach for this parcel as opposed to doing commercial with ground floor commercial and then 200 bedrooms per acre. And I like the unit mix that the applicant proposed as well. It seems conducive to more than just student housing. There's a lot of smaller units for potentially. Professionals couples, et cetera. And. The other thing of the flexibility that the applicant asked for on moving sidewalks and trees, et cetera, all seems. Totally fine, and I think that from my perspective, that's responding to. A problem in our code, which is that PD is because the site plan is binding. If you want to move a sidewalk. A little bit, you got to come back through and go to the planning commission and the Marin commission with an amendment to the PD. For any change, and so I support granting that kind of flexibility here and I think we should. You know, with PDS generally be granting that as a matter of course, and maybe looking at. changing the code so that that sort of thing is just built in because I trust our planning staff to keep with the spirit of the design that's shown on a site plan and allow minor deviations know for for the sort of thing that the applicants talk about so i support it here but i also think it should maybe be something that we should look at so that every pd that staff is empowered to grant that sort of small um thing as you know they discover where the rock is underground and other things like that they just inevitably are going to have to make some changes to the site plan but that don't alter the design principles of it

I completely agree with everything Matt said, especially having that flexibility within the code to make changes. I just also want to say that this doesn't feel super student centric, which is really nice for downtown. It feels like it opens up the opportunity for other types of housing that would be attractive to non undergrads. And I'm really grateful that we would still have some carve outs downtown that aren't student centric.

There are a couple questions. One is the trestle height, a problem at both points. Both South and North the site.

It is, and if you want a little more. Background on that, or I might ask transportation to public works or fire either. Yeah, speak to that.

I am curious generally about that problem.

We just require 13 states, so.

This trestle is lovely and fun. Everyone likes dealing with it. Kyle Dalton, TPW land development engineer. The southern trestle is the concrete one that CSX uses. Basically, I'll say that thing is a non-touchable entity. It's low. If you live in this area, or you come up and down the street, it's a can opener multiple times a year. Sometimes getting broken open on that thing. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot to do about it because raising it. We require raising the entire railroad and we're looking at miles of profiles in each direction to actually be able to do that. Lowering it isn't really an option because it's already on rock. So if we tried to blast or do anything around it, you're having to take the whole structure down into the structure. That's a non-starter with CSX. The other railroad is kind of defunct. It's broken up. There's a group that now owns it. There's a lot more leeway in it. It can definitely be lowered underneath it to create more room. But I do know for a fact there's a sewer main right in the middle of it. So you only have so much room that you can adjust out on either side of those. And right now, I don't think they need any clearance requirements for fire department to come in from any direction. So one of them's got to get fixed for something like this.

How are the homes, like the Elizabeth Street homes, are they served by... Not downtown fire station, are they served from the north? Is that how that comes out with? Or how do you do with that?

They're served by station. So they have to go all the way around down. Okay.

Yeah. So that's still faster, more efficient. It is that way. Okay. Yeah. And so the concern with fire here is just. Putting that moment groups there and just. Having to do that more often, which while that's more efficient, it's still not very efficient. Right? Okay. Okay. That makes sense.

Just a related question. What is the height that you require for fire? 13 feet 6 inches. Okay. And the north trestle here on Google maps looks like it says 12, 6 right now. So. So, lowering the road bed, it sounds like that may be. You said there's to remain, you can only get out so far, but we need 12 more inches. So. In your as far as you all know that is possible. To do.

We released it. Oh, okay.

I don't think it's actually because they're looking at it. No, I'm not aware and that's where the.

Yeah.

So, just so we're clear, the can opener bridge is a non starter, but the 2nd bridge that addresses that northern kind of defunct line is where the digging would happen. That's that is the 1 that and the fire trucks would leave the station by London house and go down around up North Avenue and go around that way. That's good.

Um, I had a thought about the. To the 2 kind of super options, depending on. Um, whether the sewer development happens with the. Property that I forgot the name of, um. Oh, up to up to. Okay. So I guess what I'm wondering about that sort of logistical standpoint and a plan development and a finding site plan is. Maybe this is a question for you, Ed is sort of how you all would. Like, when you're talking about that, that if you did end up having to have on sites who are storage, you would, that would probably be the spot for it. And so presumably you would, the design would change a bit in terms of your residential buildings. And so, or would it.

No, no, it wouldn't in your packet. There is a utility plan. So it shows the suit, the gravity sewer network that goes to that upper corner. So only the, that kind of connection point would be different in the two. Okay.

So it doesn't really change your residential building layout.

All the inside gravity would be the same. It's just when it leaves the property, it would either go in a tank or go public.

Okay. That's great.

Monique, did I see your hand?

No.

I'll just say that overall I'm in favor of this. I think it looks pretty good, so go on record as thinking it looks good.

It looks good, build it.

That's right.

Alec?

Similar. I've kind of been thinking about when things are called student housing. Um, what makes it student housing? Uh, there's no rule that says only students can live here and. It does have a little bit of lean toward a mix of students and adults, but. I know from experience that is not always what happens, but. doesn't bother me really either way, but I like at least the opportunity to mix in. I've got a condominium for sale and I'm listing another one that is a little bit of a mix. There's students and there's what I call grownups, professionals that live among each other and it looks like harmony to me. I don't see a issue. It's not the party scene necessarily. So, it does well, and that would be really cool if this could turn into this. And and eventually be that way, so I liked it there at least trying to design something that at least a professional might go. Okay. I could live there and. And get that next and provide a good community there. The other thing, or 1 of the thing. And this is back to Bruce, and this is about the sewer storage, sewage storage. That's the we're talking about the same type of deal that the project and. On what hills was going to have the same function same function. Okay. So it's the same same function. Same reason. And I just want to say it to be on the record. So once again, sewer. Capacity and sewer condition. Is doesn't it just keeps on. Busting into a lot of the development going on. And even though this may not based on the applicants idea of when this would actually go live, maybe it doesn't have to be. That way, so there is repair on its way, which I am aware of. And and I'm not pointing fingers at anybody for any reason about the sewer, but that just, it just keeps coming up and it's not that. Okay. Yeah. The developer has to now spend extra money on that, which maybe isn't good or. But the, it's just putting. cog or a wrench in the movement of a good development. It's not helping. And so it will be nice one day if the county will continue to just allocate as much money as possible and decide where money needs to go and avoid the shiny objects sometimes to to eat our vegetables and do that and be a healthy community so that we can do things properly but the design is good uh this architect has been before so many projects one is going up right now on tony street and it's looking good from what i've seen another project will come up i think it's something that That will benefit and just coming from the future land use steering committee. This, even though that shifted a little bit. With what we had it, what our original recommendation was, this is the kind of project. That was playing in our mind, regardless of where what color that piece of property might have been on the map. We saw it coming and we just knew there was going to be growth and this is this is this proper. Textual growth and number of beds growth.

I think it's a great project a great transition and, um. I fantasize about a funicular going from here to downtown, but, you know, I realized that I'm sort of imagining this very cool. Connection that people that live here will have the downtown not via a particular, but just generally speaking, I think. Putting more residents downtown, it's kind of what the. You know, it's controversial as the as this new development. That we're talking about hub to has been, I think getting the sewer capacity. Um, really important kind of to your point, Alex, that we do. Sewers expensive and, um, and so if. If the end results of that project is just supply sewer for this project, then. Then that community benefit agreement is doing what it was intended to do. So. I, I think this is great.

I think my only thoughts I might add. So I get about, but, um. The any sort of additional relationship to the street and neighborhood to the north is the 1. Thing that I'm not saying it doesn't exist is just something I wanted to keep in mind. I don't mind the, the being sort of like a wall. Um, and I, I, I kind of. Like that those larger buildings are there. Um. But my, my only thought was, as we're thinking about. I would love to see that railway turned into a trail, but how this neighborhood relates to the neighborhood just on the other side of the railroad tracks and. You know, just I know we can't predict the future, but that would just be. Nice to have those connections or those relationships. Exist in this development, but otherwise, I think it's very nice.

Actually, that reminded me of something I did want to say before is that. I think that looking at the site plan, I think that has been kind of contemplated, but like all of these current connections that can't happen for various reasons, like sort of accommodating the fact that maybe down the road, they could like, obviously the topo at the north end of the site is really restrictive, but who knows what things look like in 20 years and maybe there's some sort of ability to have an aerial walkway across that. So I think just, sort of considering that in site design that something like that could maybe be something that's interesting in the future, but certainly not possible yet. But again, not quite a funicular pedestrian connection or some sort of way to get those neighborhoods maybe in the future to relate to each other a little bit would be cool. Not really the responsibility of this developer so much, but just sort of considering the future that could be there for that.

All right, well, cool. All right, so now we're going to do our next one on this.

Unit 5.

All right.

2 text amendments to talk to you tonight about. These are the 1st, 2 of 9. Out of the subcommittee, the gel formed to at the mayor's request to start wrestling with some housing issues identified by the gig committee.

And we've been meeting in earnest.

I think the progress has been really good. Our meeting this morning, I think was really good. We covered a lot of. So, what's interesting here is usually you see these text amendments coming from staff and it's only staff's voice that you're going to hear. We have 4 members of that committee. on the planning commission that can speak to these so what i'm going to do is speak very well and just get the nuts and bolts of what's going on here and then open it up for discussion after comments received amongst the committee members i'm going to do that for both text amendments so with the minimum dwelling unit size what we are doing here is and there's been no change since what was presented to you in may um this is removing a hard number from the code for what a minimum Habitable area requirements might be code presently has a 1000 square feet. For single family homes, we have 600 square feet for RS 5 development and our RM or mixed density. And then we have 450 square feet for anything that's a multi family dwelling. This text amendment takes all that away and indexes the minimum square footage against a safety measurement. So, the international property maintenance code, but we already use as as a local government to. advise to review to issue permits for habitable square footage and when we have a code enforcement issue of something that's too small or doesn't have proper clearance between fixtures or whatever that's what we use so this code is just lifting that and using it as the tool for deciding how much square foot you should be for a unit so there is no longer anything other than what is safe to determine what is how small you can get we also added some language here that helps clean things up so um what you see on the screen are the strikethroughs um the yell of what's going away the yellows is what is what's new i would point out that we're adding We're keeping the caveat that we already have about minimum floor area required doesn't include porches, patios, garages, or carports. We added habitable because we now have a definition for habitable floor area. So, in a nutshell, this is the first of nine coming through. This is by far the simplest of the nine as far as a solution for the code. and this is responding also to some legal changes that we've seen throughout the state where having a hard number has been called into question um is being arbitrary and and being outside of the bounds of health safety and welfare what zoning is supposed to protect and achieve in advance so we feel like we're in good shape with this particular set of wording that's the end of the staff presentation on this one okay um all right i want to get you in

Favor of the test amendment or anyone to speak in opposition to this. Okay, comments from folks.

I just have 1 that I want to be clear about and I think that. There's probably a good answer, but these international code council that publishes all these. Different codes is a private for profit organization that charges like. You know, thousands of dollars to get a book that contains their code and I want to I think it's important that we not force people to pay for those proprietary codes to get an answer to the simple question. So, how many square feet is the minimum. Right? And can you just talk about like how you think, I know we don't want to say, you know, and in today's version, that's 180 square feet or 200 or whatever it may be. You don't want to put that in here. But how do you, how do we make sure that we're not forcing a developer who's trying to do tiny homes or trying to do small hotel room style Very small apartments, how do we ensure that we're not forcing them to. By somebody else's for profit.

Well, when we adopt something by reference, that means. And we've already paid for it. We're, we're using something that the code is also. At the state level is being referenced. We have to have that resource available. On premise, what we're going to be working through is how much of that information can be represented on our website. Make sure that we're not overstepping any kind of copywriting or trademarking kind of issues. But we are definitely going to have illustrative guides on what this language means not intended to be. We've designed this for you and it's pretty approved. necessarily, but here's an example of what meets these standards. And here's how it works with dimensions on it. So you can see, cause that's what a lot of this is coming from is how much clearance do you need from an oven or, or other, Appliances and swing out swings of doorways, remote access in and out of a building has a distance. If you have a staircase, there's a clearance at the bottom of the stairs. It's those types of things we can represent that. And we have shown you images and I apologize that they're not available tonight. But those types of images are going to be part of the educational process. For everyone for homeowners for builders, anybody who's licensed in Georgia for residential construction already knows this, or at least they know. So we should be in good shape because we're not referencing something that they're not already using. but to your point we will have those uh tools available to help demonstrate visually what it is we're talking about okay so anyone who comes into the planning department to talk about a project they want to do would at the very least have access to honestly staff's going to need that yeah so it'll we'll have to have that great thank you if i could add though i'd argue that if you're building

A tiny house, for example, it's less about like, oh, what can I fit in 150 square feet? And more like, because you have to meet certain code requirements. So it's. Like, what, what is, you know, do I have 24 inches in front of my stove? Do I have 36 inches to get into the bathroom? So there's certain, so it's those measurements that you're looking at, not the, oh, did I get. 250 square feet, you know, so you could have your footprint, but you still have to make things work inside footprint to meet code.

So there is a reality to this where we're going to need to see the floor plan. Yeah, whereas right now. To your point, you can kind of show a box. If the box measures out to be a 1000 square feet plus. Well, okay, we'll carry on. So there is a little more information we're gonna need, but what we're seeing is a lot of these builders, especially our single family builders, they are buying some of these plans already. And so they have that information. We just don't often need it unless we're in a position where we're having to count bedrooms. Well, now we've got it already included. And by and large, all of those plans have met some sort of spec already when they've been drawn. Um, we're not asking for those floor plans to be sealed by an architect. I'm hoping that we don't have to get to that point. Um. But we should be able to do this kind of review at the staff level. With those resources that we're going to put together and also with the assistance of our building inspections department.

And it's still going to be the case that they do not have to send out patients.

With new construction, they are, they do have to submit elevation anyway. That's already the case. Okay. We have variable setbacks by building, for example, we have to have elevations to be able to understand.

Do you have to have construction documents like stamped construction documents?

The only thing sealed that we require is a sealed site plan for new construction or any addition beyond 50%.

So that's good. I just wanted to make sure that a.

single family you know a person building a a small home doesn't then suddenly find themselves having to have a whole set of construction property owner can function as their own contractor and um as long as they're giving us enough information um the only sealed thing that they would have to have is a site plan okay to work from

These 2 items are to be voted on.

Yeah, yeah, that's so. I will so we just talked about the minimum dwelling size. We have to get you're going to do some presentation on the. Secondary dwellings. Yeah. So I will entertain a motion. For the minimum home size. Can the members of the committee make motions?

You are planning commission. So, absolutely. I was going to make a question.

But I would make a motion to approve the text amendment. Okay. Okay.

All right. Any other discussion. All right, we'll do a vote. All right.

1 moment. Sorry.

All my document kind of stole that. Okay, perfect. Here we go. Starting to fleece. Yes. Yes, all yes. Yes, yes. Sanders yes.

And Lord, yes, beautiful. So we've got 2 absent. So we just received 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7. Yay. So that's this.

The next set of the next text amendment is a series of text. Time to great opportunity for secondary dwelling units in our code. To get you up to speed quickly on this, our code already has these as something that you could do. It's just in a very limited way. And so the committee has worked with. The notion that this is expanding this and it's bringing clarity to it. It's also putting, I think the term that was used this morning was guardrails. On how these could be. um instructed developed so some terminology that's being um put out there we're wanting to not necessarily brand this but we want to make sure that we're articulating what these are with what the committee has talked about. So, big heading of secondary dwelling units, meaning something other than the primary dwelling unit. Those that are detached would be called backyard cottages and we have a definition for that. Those that are within under the roof of the primary structure would be secondary suites. Maximum size is something that has been proposed. A thousand square feet is the maximum of what they can be. We've just had a text amendment that says how small they can be. So this was a notion of compatibility and scale and relationship to existing structures. A thousand being the cap. This would apply in RS, RM, commercial zones, and AR neighborhoods. So remembering that AR neighborhoods are those, if you're not in an AR neighborhood, there would be no specified maximum square footage, but we have a definition for subordinate for how these things are placed and scaled, that would still apply. The thinking there is if you have larger lots, you're not really worried about context as much. It's just very different. With subordinate, the concepts here have three points for what makes it subordinate. It's behind the front building plane of the primary structure. That ends up leading it into a side yard or a rear yard. They're oriented toward the primary structure or toward the interior of the property or toward the right-of-way. What are we talking about? They're not oriented towards the neighbors. So the notion here is, is try to have these secondary units relate to the property that they're on or relate to some right away a street, a public space. Okay. And then the third with scale, the unit, the secondary unit just has to be smaller than with fewer bedrooms than the primary structure. And that is what's keeping it subordinate. Another key point of discussion from the committee was how parking is going to be handled. So there is no requirement to provide additional parking, but there is a cap. Of 1 additional parking space for a secondary dwelling in a lot of discussion on that a lot of discussion as to whether it should be a requirement or shouldn't be a requirement. Um. And this is off street talking about, so the opportunity for on street parking to be utilized if appropriate. And that was a good bit of discussion also is when is it appropriate? When is it not. These secondary dwelling units would be permitted with some limitations. Those limitations are enumerated in the text, RS, RMC, and AR. They would not be permitted in our institutional, our light industrial, our E, which is the I, the EO, which is kind of office park zone, and the I. So essentially where you don't do residential now, these would not be introduced as a residential use. um this was presented to you in may i'm not going to go through this exhaustively but um just understanding where this was coming from where we started with this we have had accessory dwelling units discussed before and the approach that was taken in 2022 to introduce this concept really just said there's a section of code that talks about separate cooking facilities are what defines an accessory dwelling unit. If you don't have those, you're a guest house. In 22, we just changed that wording and kept it very simple. What we found when it got to political discussion and consideration was that was inadequate. There was a desire to have some edges on and talk about scale and talk about placement and and maybe anticipate design. So, the other thing that I want to throw into this talking is the notion is that of a design competition. So, the part of the proposal here is the timing of this adoption, which is unique coming from this body that the proposal from the committee is supported to be. adoption but a delayed implementation of the code change to allow time for a design competition to take place for an educational opportunity but also to create a bit of a pattern book Um, that is designed to help property owners and maybe democratize this type of housing type a little bit. So it's not just something that's available to somebody who already knows how to build. But so that it also gets put into the hands and put into the common thinking. Of homeowners as an option, so if you have any specific questions about the text. Happy to answer those, but would love for the committee to be able to respond to this 1 as well.

Committee members any public comment in support of the text.

Yes, Stephen, thank you. My return.

Hello, my name is Steven Jaques, live at 150 Breckenridge Lane. First, let me thank my wife who's getting our kids fed and in bed tonight. Young families are underrepresented at these meetings, but we could really benefit from these zoning changes. My wife and I recently bought our first home. We're frugal folks in our mid thirties. We have master's degrees in professional public sector jobs. We're not officially housing burdened yet. The cost of housing has imposed painful trade offs. Nonetheless, the market says we got a fair deal, even a slight discount yet. This very same house was 60% cheaper just 6 years ago. If we had bought in 2020, even at today's interest rates, our monthly mortgage would be $1,800 less than it is today. Imagine. Imagine what that 1800 could do. It could grow our family. It could actually save for retirement. It could buy in our old school zone so that our son could continue attending with his best friend. What do you say to my five-year-old? Sorry, kid, you can't go to school with your best friend because someone's afraid of on-street parking or a new starter home next door. Son, if we built new homes for your family, you might change the character of this neighborhood, and we can't have that, so the law says you've got to go. I tell you this not to sit on opportunities and settle in for less. 83% of our residential land is zoned exclusively for big single-family homes. No backyard cottages, starter homes, and certainly no apartments. In other words, we don't permit the variety of homes we need within our existing neighborhoods to allow everyone the opportunity to find the right amount of house at the right price as their age, finances, and household needs change. You can find backyard cottages, garage apartments, and starter homes throughout our most popular and pricey neighborhoods already. We're just asking to re-legalize them. My grandfather attended UGA while living in the spare bedroom of a lady on Lumpkin Street. He got a cheap place to live close to everything he needed, and she got extra income, a win-win. What could these options do for us? For my family, we would use a secondary suite to help pay our mortgage while providing a home for a young teacher or med student or an aging parent, making cookies with grandkids instead of wasting away alone. In closing, I ask you not to mangle these bills with special conditions. They've already been vetted by a table of experts, skeptics, and advocates alike. Please don't punish thousands of people with expensive housing and denied opportunity because someone somewhere might do something annoying. These bills aren't silver bullets, but they are meaningful steps in the right direction. So let's pass them tonight just as they are. Let's say yes to more housing choices for regular folks. Let's say no to fear and exclusion. Let's say yes to cookies with grandma. I'm for cookies with grandma. Are you?

Anybody else to speak in support of the next amendment?

Franklin Frost currently in favor of the the text amendment. I do have a couple questions. I know I bug people in the planning department all the time with the more complicated projects and was interested in how the bedroom counts would be classified. I see that it's, you know, the text amendment deals with both single family zoning and RM. Currently bedroom count is only classified in the RM districts. So I see that the text amendment includes secondary structure has fewer bedrooms than the primary. So how is that going to be interpreted in multifamily zoning when the bedroom counts are capped? So, so, yes, is there is there 0, like, you're, you're still going to be capped at the bedroom.

We can just kind of take that question and kind of re, ask it. Perfect. Thank you.

But, but all in favor of ways to increase the housing in our.

Thank you. Anybody else speak in favor. Hearing none anybody to speak in opposition to that. Okay. All right. So, before it leaves my brain. First, you want to talk about parking requirements. Bedrooms parking and how it relates you want to talk about parking.

So, in response to bedrooms, this text amendment doesn't change how we count bedrooms in our multi family, or in our commercial zones when it comes time to do residential. We anticipate, and I think our future land use plan suggested. That we would be revisiting our densities in those zones or creating new zones. To introduce different densities, but for now, the bedrooms in a secretary dwelling unit would count towards they'd be calculated just the same as a bedroom. Today, that's not changing anything. So, the scenario here would be, we do have in town neighborhood single family homes. That. You know, in the RM today, you can do accessory dwelling units. That term is in our code today. It's just only possible in the RM. So, this is really expanding and. Putting guard rails on the performance of these for other zones, but RM is the only zone that has that notion of an accessory dwelling unit. I think in the form that the committee was thinking about.

So, how do you do the bedroom count thing? I think that is what Franklin was getting at. Like, if you have an RM.

yeah go ahead um and and how does that be affected by also two different families living on is it still captive to anticipating that if you build a say you have a three-bedroom home and then you build a two-bedroom unit you're still only renting to a single additional person to meet The other verbiage in the code, we definitely talked about that.

We did.

So, and that's more of the quantifying of how that's processed.

I think the 1st, 1, the 1st question that I kind of ordered to was. If somebody is building a backyard cottage. On our own property, and you need to achieve the secondary nature of it, the subordinate nature. I mean. Where what are you using for your bedroom count? Just saying we're bedrooms, we're still counting better of the whole of the whole arm structure of the entire project. So just 1 less than that. Okay. So that's that's clear. And then the 2nd thing.

Wait, I'm sorry. I'm not sure that was clear. So if somebody has 2 tenths of an acre and RM 1, they're allowed 3.2 bedrooms. And if they have a 3 bedroom house, and they want to build an, they. can't build an ADU. Correct. Okay. But if they have a two bedroom house, they could build a one bedroom ADU. Correct. If the 16 bedrooms per acre allows them three.

Correct. Okay, I don't understand that.

There is no bonus. Right. So whatever the bedroom yield is by your acreage is what you get. How you arrange it in the structures is what this offers an opportunity for. And the wording that's proposed, and this does come to parking, ironically, is the relief is that if you do it as a backyard cottage, You don't have to provide that parking space, but if you were to do a multi family development, you're going to be parking at the ratio that multi family developments have to park with. So there's actually a little bit of incentive to use the backyard cottage approach because you don't have to pay. Or if you don't have the space, you're not. You don't have that as a hindrance to being able to build that structure. So, where we have larger rm tracks, I don't imagine we're going to see this development form used where we have smaller rm in our in town neighborhoods. This is something that is going to open the door possibility largely because of that relief on the parking space.

Got it.

Okay.

Okay. And then this other question that came up. Relating to sort of the definition of family. He's like, how many and I think what we. what you clarified for us, Bruce, is that the backyard cottage as defined in this new text would, that would be a separate dwelling. So the definition of family or whatever we call that ordinance applies to each structure separately. Correct.

And the RMs deal with bedrooms versus an RS. Correct. We're not counting bedrooms.

RS, we don't count bedrooms.

Here's 1 line just this is silly, but if I build a, you on an RM parcel, that's a studio cottage with 0 bedrooms. Does that like, let's say I've maxed out I've got I'm allowed 3 bedrooms. I have a 3 bedroom house. I want to do an. Can I get around that? You know, I'm not adding a bedroom. I'm just doing a little tiny cottage. It's very small. It doesn't even have a better. It doesn't have a bedroom, but it's an 80 have any sleep.

Okay. Is that not having a bedroom? Doesn't mean somebody's not sleeping there isn't right. So, yeah, it's a battery studio. Then we're not talking about an, but if it's. If it's a studio apartment.

Then it's a 1 bedroom studio as 1 bedroom.

That's what I thought you defined. This is the whole place though. Is that the kitchen? Like, what changes that 1 open room. From something that's a pottery studio to.

I mean, somebody living there itself is you're going to call it what it is. And so, you know, we do. This question kind of is a great 1, because it does point out the code enforcement side of where we're headed potentially on some of this. Right now with guests. the guest house notion and the no stove there's a little bit of gamesmanship to that that gets played out when these get built this removes the need for that type of gamesmanship but it doesn't satisfy everything and so we may have somebody who does come in and say well yeah it's just my home office or you know it's cool we're not renting it out and then lo and behold Evidence and behavior starts to suggest otherwise, and then we have to work through it, but this at least gives us a path towards getting them a permit. Whereas code today doesn't let us do that. in the no stove, there's a little bit of gamesmanship to that that gets played out when these get built. This removes the need for that type of gamesmanship, but it doesn't satisfy everything. And so we may have somebody who does come in and say, well, yeah, it's just my home office, or it's cool, we're not renting it out. And then lo and behold, evidence and behavior starts to suggest otherwise, and then we have to work through it. But this at least gives us a path towards getting them a permit Whereas code today doesn't let us do that, right?

Because this makes it like, there's not really a reason to try to hide your guest cottage and putting them to show about. In fact, this allows people just do it outright because you're not trying to hide anything with standards. Yeah.

Because it would only be in the, and then you're worried about bedroom numbers, right? Because if you're just, you're just in commercial. Yeah, so if it was just a neighborhood and you had your backyard thing, that was a studio, it wouldn't really matter.

As much as long as it's subordinate, if it's, if it's already worried about the bedrooms, we'd be worried about making sure it's subordinate by that definition. Yeah. And yeah, and proper properly permitted and properly constructed because that's the other thing that. is occurring right now is without a path to build a legal secondary dwelling. It's not that they're not being built, but they're being built under the guise of something else, which means the inspections aren't for them to be as a dwelling. Inspections are thinking they're a shed or they are some other sort of storage structure or something that's not designed for somebody to sleep in. And the minute you have somebody stay overnight in something, code requirements and safety issues go up for all the right reasons. At least we get that level of scrutiny, I guess. Yeah, that's good.

Can you tell us a little bit about, um, I can see being 1 of the county commissioners and asking about the timing you had said that. This proposal is going with sort of a suggestion that it not necessarily be in place right away while. Um. while the design competition other things to kind of make it available for everyone what is your thinking there about the amount of time between a vote and the actual um implementation yeah when does it go into effect we were assuming six months would be adequate i mean that that means that we we have our game together

um for that design competition so that we can actually get it up and running have people participate meaningfully and have results for it during that time frame so that we end up with something that is available prior to implementation it's possible that As these text members come through the planning commission and make it into the hands of the mayor and commission, that timeline could get extended. It could get manipulated a little bit. They may, they may not be in favor of that approach. We don't, we don't really know that just yet, but if they are in favor, they may say, well, we want a little more than 6 months. So, that's a discussion point, but we were starting with the assumption that 6 months would be adequate.

I mean, I would suggest. That we also provide as an option for them. And it just goes into effect right away. Like, is it. I, I sort of want myself wanting them to know that that would be an option if there was a general sentiment that. Education piece would be necessary or something. That there's something about, like, slowing that down a little bit. For the county to build up resources and. You know, I guess what I'm saying is, do we actually want to start with that? Do we want to say that it is 1 way to go? Could that happen? Like, in my view, it's also just would be fine to go in effect right away. And that happened. That, you know, it's going to go in effect on on this date, and the planning staff is intending by the state 6 months down the road or down the road to have all the resources in place to support that. I guess my, I'm just wondering. But you're, you know, I think the idea of suggesting that not only do we think it's a good idea to have a design competition and educational. Materials available on the website, but we also want to. We want to lay concerns people might have. We also want to. I mean, I think the idea is to encourage this kind of development and so. I don't know, I'm just a little bit of 2 minds about whether we. Want to introduce an element of delay to it.

So, because that's curious, it's been rolling around my head a little bit. So, in other words, this gets voted forward by mayor commission and goes into effect on a certain date. And then there's the education process and the design competitions and all that. But let's just say Mr citizen over here. I already know what I want. I don't need all that and I'm willing to. Get ahead and I still have to go through, of course, the process, but. But why do I have to wait 6 months for all of this when I don't even need their plan? Is that kind of what you're saying?

Yeah, I think that there's plenty of small scale developers around or people who are wanting to kind of I mean, there's people paying attention to what we're doing and we're kind of chomping at the bit to do it. I think they know that they spent the guest house now, but they.

You know, a lot of people are talking about this and well, some could convert a guest house into a for sure. I mean, all they got to do is. Just in essence, maybe it's like stuff is.

Willing to support a public education campaign that either runs concurrently with the adoption of the ordinance, or is prior to the adoption for the to be effective effectiveness.

Is there more to it than just the design competition that staff wants. Time for that to go into effect, or is it.

I will say that, I mean, staff did suggest this, the committee did discuss it. And so. The committee was, but what you have in front of you is what the committee said should come in front of the planning commission. So it's not that the planning commission can't do something different than what was discussed at committee. Certainly can. But the reason why it was even brought up admittedly came from staff. and the thinking was sort of lessons learned from prior discussions about introducing this into the code so this will be the third time we've tried and and some of the things that that we've learned from the prior two experiences was that there is a community education component to this that's very important and that i think in the last effort if that had been part of it it may have been adopted then But it wasn't. And so this is coming just from experience. And it doesn't have to be necessarily a part of what the Planning Commission recommends. But it was a thought to give elected officials a chance to feel like the idea can be put on the books and then have a chance to breathe and be talked about and have a chance for folks to kind of not see an explosion of something occur. And to get people almost maybe to feel good about it, who don't presently find comfort with the notion. And so that's where that was the spirit in which the suggestion was coming from. It is not an approach that we've taken in my memory. Here with a text amendment, it's not illegal to do it. It can be put into the ordinance to read that way. We have had loop back provisions upon adoption. Where we're going to adopt this, but in 12 months where staff is to report on performance of what's occurred. And that has been paired with the adoption of an ordinance. So, this was kind of taking that idea and sort of turning it a little bit. with the notion that the whole point of this is to help people who don't necessarily know how to build something have resources to be able to do it and have everybody have a chance to gather that in a reasonable way before it becomes a tool in the toolbox. But I hear your point. If the time is now to get it adopted and implemented and active, and that you were to send this forward with a strong suggestion that the design competition would follow immediately after, That's that's fine too.

Yes, I'm just saying that. It's more just tweaking the wording of that. Along with this ordinance, there would be a public education campaign that could either happen. Prior to the application of it, or in conjunction.

Sure, you know, so it's not contingent, right?

It just opens up that discussion of, oh, we have stuff that wants to support a public education campaign with this and opens up that door. Regardless, I like the idea generally. It puts the ball back in their court of how they want to proceed. It gives instead of setting it up immediately as you don't have to adopt this right now, you can wait 6 months instead puts the public education campaign 1st. And then whether this is adopted now, or in 6 months, or whatever you feel like it, you know, so I don't necessarily, I want the.

Mission to take a vote in August and whether. This ordinance goes into effect that night or. At a date that they determine, I want that to be. And, you know, it might, it might mean they, they might need a couple of meetings to discuss it, but I wouldn't want to be, I wouldn't want to. Give the option of, you don't have to pass this right away. I mean, we're suggesting I do so.

No, the idea is we're passing it and we're including an education.

That's the proposal that came out of committee. Yes. Adopt in August. With the notion that that it doesn't take effect for 6 months to allow time for the education component. Not that it's not adopted, but it would be adopted.

Right?

I mean, it's on their schedule when they adopted, but. Yes, the anticipation would be when they receive it, it would be up for consideration for adoption.

I'm kind of okay with how it is and that it came out of the committee and letting the commission decide if they need to when they want it to go into effect. I'm sure that's something they'll discuss. So I'm okay just passing it along kind of as it is and I'm sure it'll come up with them.

Just to be clear, the document that is in our packet doesn't say anything about the effective date.

But in the presentation, and in the discussion with the committee, that was absolutely part of how it would be conveyed. But yes, that there's no effective date written into the ordinance text.

So, yeah, I mean, I, I think I'm. I agree with what I heard Sarah and Kristen. Talk about, which is recommending adoption and. saying that there's an education campaign and a design competition um contemplated right that staff intends to do that or wants to be directed to do that if that's how it needs to be you want that you know whatever um and then say you know and and um we discussed whether the ordinance should be immediately effective so that people who um have a you know elderly parent that wants to move to town soon can just get going on their ADU, immediately let them do it. There are plenty of designs that you can buy online that are very lovely little ADU cottage designs. Nobody needs to wait for our competition. So I think be reluctant to recommend that they delay effectiveness. i'd be fine with saying you could either delay effectiveness pending this design competition or make it immediately effective it's up to y'all which it is anyway whether we say that or not but i i just the extent that they might be inclined to defer to a recommendation i would just hesitate to recommend delay as opposed to telling them that that's a one of two options

And we would need not 2 options to come out of planning commission. We would need. A recommendation and.

So, of a single sort, could it not be a recommendation to adopt this ordinance? And to. Decide whether it be effective immediately or effective 6 months hence pending the design competition.

I think that may money things. Or the commissioners, if if if this group feels like. The design competition is a good idea, and it's strongly recommended to pursue it. But what you really want to do is have this adopted. And not wait for it to go into effect. I think if that's the majority thinking here, then that needs to be the motion.

Okay, because that is that is my sense, because, you know, 1 way in which a recommendation of delayed effective date. Could backfire is it might lead someone to say, like, well, why don't we just vote on it in 6 months rather than voting on it tonight? You know, in August, rather than voting on it in August, if you're saying it wouldn't even be effective until February, let's just vote on it. February, right? It's just a excuse to kick the can down the road and I don't want to. provide that. So I would suggest just recommending adoption and saying that this design competition and educational campaign is something that staff is working on.

Want to make that decision?

Sure.

I'll second that.

Yeah, I would move that we recommend adoption of the proposed text amendment regarding secondary bonds.

And do you want to add to that?

Like, how would that would that encourage consideration of an educational component that would include a design competition? I really like the words right out of my mouth.

And it sounds like Bruce not having those elements for a big part of what held it up from passing for right?

Not having any sort of sense that we're going to do education.

In any way, yeah, I mean, if that's what's needed to get it past, I would, you know, whatever it takes.

From that, are we clear on the, I get that wording again.

So, the motion is to recommended option of the proposed text amendment regarding secondary dwellings and to.

Encourage encourage.

The Commission to direct staff to conduct an education campaign, including a design competition for pre-approved plans.

Quick question. Is that an example of something, Bruce, that you all would need a direction to do?

It's super helpful.

Okay, great.

Is that what I'm sorry is.

Does the planning director need a directive from the planning commission or from the mayor commission to. That I think the answer is not necessarily, but it's helpful.

It's very helpful. Yeah, probably always nice to.

My commission back in, so we have a motion. We have a 2nd. Great. Right. All right. Let's vote it. Please. Yes.

I'm sorry, I actually had just one discussion item. If we can discuss the motion for a moment.

Yeah. Do you want some comment on the motion? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to raise 1 question, which is the definition of subordinate, which is on page 2. Does not include something that was on a slide you had earlier Bruce. Could we just jump back a slide to actually. yeah or subordinate there the second item says oriented towards the primary structure or the interior of the property or a right-of-way and that's not what it says in the text amendment so my inclination would be to include in my motion using the definition of subordinate from the slide in lieu of the one that is in the piece of paper in front of me thank you

And we'll make that change before we send it up for sure. Thank you.

Does that mean that that needs to be included in the wording on the motion itself?

I think that would be helpful. Yeah. Yeah. So just. Revising my motion to replace or substitute for the definition of subordinate. That, which is on your slide and in presentation.

No, no discussion, mostly for the record and to make sure I did that and in our subcommittee. Just would not allow someone to own a piece of property with a main resident. And a backyard cottage to rent both out. That is. Someone from out of town or anywhere else could not own the primary structure and build a backyard cottage and rent both out to separate people.

Yes, it could. They could do that. It would regulate in an RS circumstance the type of occupancy, the number of people, the definition of family applies. But there's nothing in our code that regulates owner occupancy.

Yeah, yeah, there's not an owner occupancy requirement in this as for the primary. Okay. Yeah.

We're just like, let's start thinking of short term rentals and that's a different animal unless what listen to get short term rentals and that's the thing.

Let's talk about short term. Yeah, I would. So someone could buy my house. Build that structure and rent it out to 2 different families.

Okay.

Hal Hallstein, If you buy one that already exists now, like if you bought a property with a brand new flat in the backyard rented both of them, and I want that kitchen well if it was already existing about yeah.

Karen Hollweg, ready all right, please, yes, there is, yes, Paul yes pass.

Karen Hollweg, sam's.

Now.

And Sanders is not here. Lord.

Yes.

All right. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, we've got 5 years. 1 day we carry grace passes. Thank you.

All right, so now we move to our long range discussion item. It's a land use for doors, fancy presentation.

I'm just doing a little intro, so I'm going to stand up here and I'll let our actual presenters stand back there. So thank you all for getting on to this. This is a big step for us. This is the beginning of our hopes to implement aspects of the future land use map update that was approved just recently. So we're doing this because there's a lot of opportunities in our corridors. We are going to vaguely touch on nodes, but then we're going to pull them away from you all and we'll talk about nodes a different day. But just want to let you know that they are tied together. So we're going to show that just a little bit. As you see here, most of our corridors go into a node, about a node, and the nodes function in a similar way. But we want to focus on corridors tonight. Pretty important part. to carry some of the development capacity. I think you all saw a lot of this through the future land use efforts and we expect a lot of these areas to carry the biggest lift as we grow and evolve in Athens-Clarke County. We also still of course expect some of that growth throughout the rest of our community. So this is a 20 year plan, so we don't want anyone to forget about that. We're looking well out into the future. The corridors are a little bit different than the nodes because the nodes have Well, we're going to determine that a little bit later, but we need to get a little bit of cohesiveness in those nodes. They're going to have some plans. They're going to have other things, other tools. Think things like overlays on them. However, the corridors are a much more linear thing, and they have the ability to be developed a little bit more on a parcel by parcel basis. So cohesive would be wonderful. Compatible is what we really need to at least get to. So that's what we're going to discuss tonight. We've got a bit about how our roadways and our right of way work from Nell with our May Quartz office. Then I'll be back for a little bit of bumper music. And then we'll get on to Ellie for how we'd like to see the implementation and the land use on the sides of these corridors.

So I'm going to start by talking about The roads, rather than the land use. So, looking at how traditionally we have planned how to do our roads are, which I like to call transportation systems is the traditional way of doing it is looking at each mode separately. What are we prioritizing? Oh, this is for cars. How can we make this the most efficient to get cars moving through as quickly as possible? And then looking at the next level down as we're prioritizing it. Right now we're going through sort of a paradigm shift where we're starting to look at people, right? Because that's really who's using our roads. It's not cars, it's people. And so looking at what do people need? What are our human needs? Looking at proximity first. You're not gonna jump in your car to drive to the coffee shop that's next door. Right? And so having areas of town that things are accessible and when I say accessible, I mean, you have the ability to reach it, right? That's when transportation talks about accessibility is like, how easy is it to get there? Because if it's close by, then being able to drive fast isn't as important. And so looking at that proximity, keeping things close around and work with people's habits. What are things that you go to once a year versus things that you go to? once a month versus once a week versus where you go every day, right? And so looking at all of these different pieces and how you move around in spaces is part of how transportation planning is really changing. So we have a system that GDOT requires that we classify our roads, Loop 10 is a highway, which is a fancy class of arterial. Our arterials are your main roads. The idea is to get person from point A to point B quickly. So you're talking about the Atlanta Highway, Lexington Highway, your Jefferson Road, and that idea is to get you from Athens to Jefferson, right? And not stopping along the way. So those roads should be ones that you are driving 45, 55 miles an hour on. Because these classifications were done back in the 80s, we have some roads that are officially classified as arterial, such as Baxter, because I think they were thinking of which routes are important. So it has an arterial designation. Please don't drive 55 miles an hour down Baxter Street. And then as you move down, you have your minor arterials, which are sort of that 35, 45 miles an hour. Once again, you're still trying to move rapidly getting from one place to another. And then we have our collector roads, which are ones that are kind of move you from residential to commercial, which is their sort of designation. So think Whitehead Road, Barnett Shoals, and the idea is there that you're going to have more places that you stop along the way. And any road that you don't see on here, all the rest of them are considered local roads, which are ones where you're expected to drive less than 35 miles an hour, right? So you're going to be pulling in and out of driveways a lot. But as we know, a lot of our roads that even have that higher level classification still have a lot of driveways on them, whether it's commercial or residential. GDOT owns a certain amount of roads. I'm going to be talking about how we can change some of our roadways and know that just because GDOT owns them doesn't mean we can't change them. It just means that they have to partner with us. And it just adds another layer of complexity to the process. But other than 78, which is Broad Street coming through, and then Prince Mellage, which is State Road 15, most of the roads that GDOT controls are ones that are leaving Athens. Those are those kind of more high-speed roads to get you from one place to another, right? To get you to the next town over. So, if you'll notice our bus routes all go along the major and minor corridors. The ACC Transit is working on a reimagining of our buses, the Better Buses for Athens, I think is what they're calling it. So we're really excited about that. But even though they're about to change some of the routes and do some redesign, they will still go up and down these major and minor corridors because that's where things that people need to get to are. And so this is our current bus routing system, but just know that that is in the process of changing. So I want to talk a little bit about what does it mean to change what our roadways look like? So Baxter Street has 60 feet of right-of-way, which means that in the top picture is what it looks like right now. But in that same 60 feet, we can put medians, we can put the bicycle lanes that are separated from the cars unlike the way they are now. There are a lot of safety features that we can implement, you're still in that 60 feet. And so even though you see all these changes, you're still in that right away. And so these kinds of changes are not what you're looking at for your land use, but I want you to keep them in mind because they are possible and We are also looking at making some of these changes simultaneously, not this 1 specifically. I'm just kind of made up some fun things that I would like to see, but not anything that's actually currently being.

Can I say actually 1 thing on that slide? If you go back, there is 1 land use change, which I will also talk about. You'll see that there's parking in front of the building on that top 1. and when you look down that parking is not in front of the building, that is a concept that will come back later. So just wanted to mentally mark that.

And, you know, think about which 1 would be more pleasant to hang out on. Right? And then so that would be a minor corridor, Lexington Highway, which is one of our major corridors. The top one is what it looks like. And the bottom one is what it potentially could look like. And a multi-use trail is actually part of our Greenways plan along there. So this one is a little more something that we could do, but there's 90 feet of right away in this area. So we have a lot of leeway of what we can do to increase the safety for our vulnerable road users, which are your pedestrian, cyclist, et cetera. So I just wanted to show you kind of like how these things can play together. So these are two streets. I picked streets that are the same width. They have the same land use. They're both row houses. They're approximately the same size. but one street has a little different in the right of way because they've added a grass strip between the curb and the sidewalk with street trees in it. But it also has some land use regulations in the sense that there's a little bit more setback with greenery in it. And I know which street I would prefer to walk down and live on, but it really can change, like these minor changes really can change the feel and the place, sense of place, Um, with it, so then I wanted to show you 2 places in Athens. So this is on Alps road. This is Chipotle. Um, so this right here. Is there seating there? There's outdoor sitting there. There's a little, there's like 3 or 4 tables. The day I was there, there was nobody sitting out on those tables, which sit and face onto the parking lot in front of it, but immediately next door is Shake Shack. I took the pictures within five minutes of each other. It also has a little sitting area in the front, but you can see right here, three tables have people sitting on them. It was just a mediocre cloudy day. There's no blue sky in this picture, but it was still nice enough to sit outside because you've got those plantings and the grass that are between you and the cars. So that's kind of, they're right next door to each other. And so that really shows you how some of these things can make a big difference in what it feels like. And so now I'm gonna let Mark talk about, zoning corridor designations.

I'm going to stand on this side instead of right in front of the camera.

Okay, yes, so now I'm working with our May courts and our transportation public works team has focused a lot on what happens inside the right of way. We want to get into some of the aspects alongside the right of way where planning zoning comes in and has a lot more control. We'd also just want to let you all know, want to lead you all to a discussion. We have some ideas that we think are important, but what we're hoping to get is some ideas from you all about how the zoning code can change and morph. We have 2 opportunities currently on on the books for how we can regulate areas around and this is land use regulations here around some of our corridors.

So we have a level 1 and a level just ask a question. I was just curious. I'm looking at the YouTube here and and what people at home are watching is not our slide. Is there a way that we can include the slides? get to see. All they're seeing is us sitting around the table.

Thank you. We will definitely have this available on our website. So if people need to go back and check it out, we will make sure it gets put up on there. So thank you for that. You can see a lot of these areas are probably places you have shopped at, gone to a business at. They conform a lot with where we are suggesting these minor and major corridor changes. Some of the basics are about FAR and limitations on drive-through. So not a huge tool we use right now, but a tool we would like to empower a little bit more with some potential changes. We also think there's a possibility for another level. So Broad Street's a pretty easy example. And I should say, we've got level one and level two. Everything else has some other general regulations on it. So we've got street trees and sidewalk requirements depending on renovation or new builds. We're also thinking there's a possibility there might be even like a level three corridor. So if you just went out broad from downtown, fairly urban, all the way out to at least millage, maybe all the way down the hill to where the roadway widens. And then even from there out to Alps or the river is still has this in town feel. But beyond that, it gets to be a little bit more car centric. So there might be some opportunity there for a little bit of change. But if we can jump to the next slide. I think a lot of what we're talking about here is the value that is created by the road network and the way the road interacts with the land use around it. So one way to think about this is to separate these into four different categories or here labeled as zones, not to be confused with our zoning districts. So we've got the curb to curb area. We've got everything that you're traveling on, be you in a car, in a bus, maybe on a bicycle. We then often have in the remainder of the right of way before you get to the property line, so we're talking about the green shaded area here, we would generally have the sidewalks. In some places we will have the street trees there. Then we have the main area facing the block. So a lot of our commercial centers or commercial strips here, you all might be able to tell what roadway this is from the layout of it. We'll have that commercial fronting. And then it has the transition to the residential neighborhood behind, and that's usually done in a variety of multi family, some small scale, single family uses and some of this neighborhood where we have some historically nice houses. There are a few larger houses. Some of those have been cut up into apartments, but we have that step effect. So. Now, and our transportation public works team deal with that gray and that green area a lot, but it really matters how we relate to that gray and green area with some of our land use policies along the side. So just 1 more reiteration of that on this next slide. You can see that stepping effects. We've got. Two main roads here, you can see larger commercial, potentially multifamily structures along the roadways that front on the two larger roads there. And then you can even see it begin to step. Some of those are sort of grayed out in the little bit of single family. And then we kind of have some. townhouse look a feel here. So what we want to make sure that people understand and that we want, this is what we heard from the steering committee. This was kind of what you guys all heard on the College Avenue planning case earlier this evening is that stepping effect. So we've got that intensity along the corridor. We have that more opportunity we've got a lot of that commercial value and then we step down so that college project was stepping down from downtown sort of into those neighborhoods we would expect some opportunities to step into the the adjacent corridors with that i will allow ellie to take it away and then looking forward to some great discussion from you all perfect

So, again, this conversation is going to be grounded in our future land use effort, but y'all are all familiar with, but it's been a minute. So we're going to get back to basics a little bit the definition of major corridors in that 2045 feature land use those recently adopted. So, a few of those main things we are looking at high intensity, commercial and multifamily a little bit of what Mark was just talking about. We do still have pedestrian circulation on these corridors. We are looking for reduced curb cuts, some interpersonal connections where possible, main entrances that are facing the street with direct pedestrian access to those entrances. And kind of what I mentioned as well, emphasizing that shared off-road parking facilities where we can. And another thing to note in these major corridors, they're going to be larger roadways with heavier traffic that have heavier development, right? So this is really going to be a conversation you'll see that's bounded by an issue of gradation. There's Something that's more intense, something that's less intense. That's really what bounds this few visual examples for what we're talking about with major corridor, the National Association of city transportation officials, which y'all might have heard back to thrown around in a few rooms. That's what that actually means. They have a lot of great design standards for a bunch of different kinds of streets. What they put forth as a boulevard seems to be pretty synonymous with what we are talking about with major corridors. So there is a sample for you there. as well as another picture example of a current corridor in Brooklyn. Bringing it back to home though, one of our major corridor examples is going to be West Broad. So you can see here we've got a lot of pavement, we have a large roadway, we've got a mix of uses that are ranging from St. Mary's Hospital to food and retail along this corridor as well. opportunities for change or growth in this area. So we can see we've got a whole bunch of curb cuts, which is not exactly what we'd love to see on a major corridor. We also are seeing a mix of bunch of parking lots that are directly adjacent to the road. And there are a few facilities that have tucked a little bit behind or on the side as well. So you can kind of see a mix of what's happening on our major corridors today, as well as some opportunities for change there. So, similar looking at our minor corridors, the way we've got that defined again, this is an issue of gradation. So we're looking at medium intensity, commercial and residential schools, day cares, churches, community organizations, things like that. More of the main street storefront vibe is what we're going to see on these roads. Cafe seating, street trees, street furniture, a little bit of what Nell was talking about of people kind of really occupying those public spaces that are directly adjacent to the right of way. Again, encouraging parking behind or beside buildings, and these corridors are going to have accessibility via transit, pedestrian facilities, bike facilities, as well as vehicles. Looking at the same kind of pictorial examples, again, NACTO coming through with an example, their neighborhood Main Street seems similar to our minor corridors. And then we've got two other examples that were included in the future land use work, one in St. Paul, Minnesota, as well as one in Boston. Bringing it back home, Prince Avenue is a great example of what we're thinking about when we're looking at minor corridors. So here we're going to see a roadway that is four lanes or less. We've got pedestrian as well as bike facilities happening on this road. You will notice right away very minimal curb cuts, and we don't have any parking lots that are adjacent directly to the road. Everything's going to be tucked behind or to the side, which definitely changes the character of the street and how people feel comfortable using it. All right, so another way to think about this, and another connection that happens in future land use, our corridors and our centers are fast friends, right? So major corridors are buddies with town centers, minor corridors link up with neighborhood centers. In the major corridors and town centers, more intense mixed use. It's a major corridor that's transitioning from larger multifamily developments. minor corridors, neighborhood centers, smaller scale mixed use, transitioning smaller commercial, smaller duplexes, smaller offices, and single family residential. Another thing that is interesting to note is in this conversation, the design elements of everything we're talking about are really similar, but the contexts are different enough and the configurations are different enough that they need to be considered in a different way. So we're talking about roadways, we're talking about right-of-way, street trees, street furniture, where the parking is, but these different contexts demand different treatments. In terms of tools that we currently have in our toolbox, we do have some existing design standards that govern what land use and building can look like along corridors. So right here, we're looking at 9, 10, 6, which is our setbacks and massing. One thing that's important to note about these design standards is they are geographically limited to specific downtown design areas. So one thing I want you all to consider is, is that working for us? Is it not? Are we getting that right? How can it be changed? Also showing in this graphic is that the setbacks are based on the percentage of the wall that touches the sidewalk. Again, just looking at what we're working with and asking you all to partner with us in considering what's in it, right? What isn't quite hitting the mark? How can things be adjusted? Similar looking at vertical definitions and horizontal definitions. Again, these are also bounded to those downtown development areas. So same questions to consider with these stipulations. And now going through a few examples that we have existing in our community of corridors in general. This is at Findlay and Broad. These are two large apartment developments. And one thing to point out immediately is the scale of these creates a pretty intense canyon effect on this road, which makes you feel quite minuscule as a pedestrian when you are walking through that roadway. Another thing to notice in this area is we do have a pretty significant streetscape discrepancy between the two developments. Over here, we've got a protected planted barrier between the pedestrian and the roadway as well as a buffer between the building and the sidewalk. Over here, not as much going on. And then also this, I'm sorry, it's a little bit small, but she was a little bit of a context conflict on this roadway on this side of the street that we've got smaller homes that are looking straight up to a much larger development. So, again, when we're talking about that transition away, and we want to see those gradual steps down, this has a little bit more of a harsher feel. Looking at Prince Ave, we've got a good example of human scale design. Does anyone need me to break down what I mean by human scale design? Do we feel good about that term? Yeah. Okay. Great. Perfect. Um, and then a good example of cafe seating in front of the building as well as in the side. Um, and then we see our pedestrian or our bicycle facilities as well. Um, this is also an interesting example that Mark brought up, which I love to include here, Anson burrow and gain school road. Um, so here we have, uh, I almost think of this as like a commercial cottage court in a lot of ways. So we've got one entrance off of gain school road that goes to a shared parking facility and all of these uses, all of these buildings are sharing that parking lot. Um, we have examples of cafe seating right next to a roadway and a sidewalk. Um, everybody's got some plants and going on some fencing. There's the street separation for the seating areas. that make people feel like they can use that space and be safe and be comfortable. And then also throughout the development, you've got sidewalks and patios creating kind of a more cohesive feel. One thing to note, this was developed as one development, right? So when we're talking about corridors, which I'll get into in a little bit, it's a lot of parcel by parcel development. So another thing we'd love for you to think about is how can we get a cohesive feel when we are talking parcel by parcel development as a corridor builds up. Lumpkin and Millage. This is interesting to point out. I think most people feel this is one of our most successful main streets, but also it does have perpendicular parking directly next to a street. Backing up into Lumpkin is maybe not ideal. So something for us to consider from the driver's perspective, as well as from the pedestrian experience, right? This feels a little bit different than being surrounded by some plantings. So again, things to consider as we're having this conversation. Oh, a little too much. Another tool we've got in our box right now, plazas. So if there is a development that is larger than 60,000 square feet in most commercial zones, except for city and industrial, they are required to provide a public plaza that encourages pedestrian use. What that looks like is all up there. There are a bunch of different technical standards. Please peruse. Main things that I will highlight, it needs to link the development to the public right of way. Again, needs to be designed in a way that people feel like they can use it. Again, talking about that comfort and accessibility. There needs to be some shade that's some sort of permanent structure or tree. There needs to be seating. They've got kind of a... Pick as you want, a la carte, two of the following design elements, dining tables, artwork, water features, things like that, as well as lighting, and also it can't be used for product display, advertising, or sales. A few examples of that being put into use to varying degrees of success. Here we have a plaza that is at Broad and Billups. This was developed as part of a Dollar General. Um, what is interesting about this, the location and context kind of technically work. There's a bunch of residential right on this street. This could be a place that could operate as a pocket park. However, the lack of maintenance completely makes it unusable. That does not feel welcoming or safe. And there ain't nobody in all those seats, right? So how can code or whatever changes we talk about in this room potentially improve those conditions? Another case on Lexington and Cherokee. This plaza was developed as part of the Midgard self-storage unit and facility there. It's got some functional design elements. We've got a little meandering path. We've got some planters that should have plants in them, right? And that could be used as seating. However, the context doesn't make anybody want to hang out here. We don't really see much shade. Also, maintenance carries over here too. We've got some dead spots of grass. Planters aren't really thriving. Again, not a space that makes a pedestrian feel welcome or want to linger. How can our codes improve that outcome? So all of that shared, we would love to have a conversation with y'all. Go at it at will. And if we stall out at all, we've got some questions that can kind of move us along as well. But that's report for us.

Cool. How should we start? Something that was brought up earlier in the discussion was Baxter Street. And so there's pockets on Baxter Street that I think work really well. I'm forgetting what that, there's like a little kind of commercial residential Like, if you're heading toward else.

It's on the left extra street loss. Yeah.

Yeah, it's cool. Right? And I went to the restaurant on their stuff, but then there's other sections mostly where you have, like, the. Parking in front of, like, the convenience store type strip mall. Maybe it doesn't work so. So, but but what what happens. Because it seemed like there was a point, like, we had some nice streetlights, put it along Baxter. They did the improvements along there seemed like there was a little bit of spark. And then it kind of fizzled out to know what what the dynamics were there. Was it just development related or I would, I would defer to some of our.

Realty folks here, but I will say this, there was a coming out of the adoption of of the new zoning code. We also had that paired with a really big capital improvement program project to stop flooding. And when that was done, we also paired that with some right away improvements with the decorative lighting. There were some banners for a period of time. We had a pedestrian mid block crosswalk that was developed that I think has been somewhat successful. We had improvements to the bus stops. We had changes made to the library. So we had this wave of home investment that occurred between Rock Springs and Alps that scented on a trajectory where we saw two or three developments pop up that used the code, the brand new code, and did some mixed use and some interesting things. And then it stopped. So I'm not really sure. The code didn't change. The improvements were still there. What we started to see though was adaptive reuse of some of those aging structures. Some things that had languished and maybe bumped along with some tenants that were sort of, you know, we started to see a more competitive approach to reusing those. And we saw some facade ectomies take place on some of those older commercial buildings. So they didn't tear down and rebuild to meet code, but they did dress them up a little bit, some of them more aggressively than others. But no, it didn't turn into a renaissance for Baxter Street.

I would say that some of the irony there is that the project that shut down Baxter Street or the sewer line actually put some of those places out of business because they just couldn't function when all that was going on. It was temporary, but it did choke it off and it kind of shut it down. And then it was hard for some of that to come back because of the parking. They just didn't have enough parking then to support a meaningful business without being able to have arrangements with other places. Other places parking was tight. So those agreements were hard to come by. And I think that that leads to a little bit of a catch-22 in that if somebody comes in to revitalize it, they are going to be looking at less parking. to increase some of the things that we'd like to see, that becomes prohibitive for our business to function. And then it gets really expensive to implement some of these things when they go on the developer's dime. And I've heard a lot about that, you know, the conversion costs for moving that parking lot from the front of the building to the side and how restrictive that could be from a cost perspective, even if there's a land to do it. But I love what this is moving towards, so I don't know how I bounce that.

We'll say this is intended to set the stage for further discussion.

I think Mark said that at the jump where we are going to be talking about corridor specific planning. We're going to be talking about changing some things in the code that apply to corridor broadly. But then we also have a corridor study that's soon to be very public on the Alps Hawthorne corridor. We're in contract negotiations with the consultant who's going to work on that. Corridors were intended to be a future land use priority number one, apart from the other housing things that we're working on, which were kind of a community wide thing that honestly probably would have happened without the future land use plan. But the real product out of that future land use map that I think was brand new, a fresh idea, and meant to turn the corner on development potential in our community are these corridors. And what's really cool is we have, I want to recognize the staff that we have here. We have representatives from transportation, public works. Right and make course, which you heard from now and so there's a multidisciplinary process that we're, we're using this time. We're not just going to poke at it from a zoning thing and then we're going to poke at it from a capital improvement project where we're looking at curve and gutter. We're looking at. Bus stops independent transit. I think Tina was going to be here. But anyway, transit's involved very much, and Dave, I think it was mentioned, Nell mentioned, there's a very intensive reimagining of our transit system. From my understanding, from bottom to top and side to side, it's getting a whole new look at how it's functioning, how it's gonna be set up for success in the future. These corridors obviously are at the heart of that. And so if we're going to think about transit oriented design, that's a land use thing, right? So there's all kinds of stuff that we've been hungry to do in a comprehensive way. The future land use map, I think we're taking that as this invitation to say it's time. And from a staff perspective, we're sweeping all of that into one combined effort and hitting it from a bunch of different angles simultaneously.

And so are you all... Is planning thinking about you don't really need. An overlay district on top of the border, right? Because the quarter itself is kind of a. Both feature land use designation, or are you all what are you sort of moving toward? Is it sort of designating or they've already been designated, but like, identifying. From the standpoint, not just of land use, but also. Transportation. Utility provision, et cetera, like, looking at sort of all of that together and doing.

What I guess, so the, what is that multi multi disciplinary approach? So, while we're trying to improve transit, we're also going to be looking at. What is the land use positioning that we're talking about? High concept that's on the future land use map. But then immediate implementation is how does the zoning code enable a developer or require a developer to do things differently on these corridors? And so we've got long term view, short term view, transit, but also passenger vehicle use. And then that public realm that we're trying to kind of up our game. A little bit so Mark was touching on it with the level 1 level 2 order designations and the notion of a level 3 being something that might be really useful. We want the baseline to be revisited for how these corridors function everywhere. And then across the board where we have minor and major, let's use those goal statements that were in the future land use map to then beef up our zoning code wherever those corridor designations exist. And then on top of that, we can have corridor studies, corridor specific planning efforts that in all likelihood could and should result in an overlay, zoning overlay. to make sure that that corridor planning effort is not just from curve to curve or from property line to property line, but it's also talking about how we imagine the development to occur along that corridor in a specified segment. So the Alps Hawthorne effort, although the scope of work is still kind of coming together, Um, it really is designed to look at segments. So it would be Baxter to broad for out. So that when it turns into Hawthorne, you take it from there to old West broad and then it would change again. You know, as you extend up to over for, and then from over to Prince and. And how does the character change and what should happen in the right of way and what should happen on the land used to make good use of the right of way and not overburden the right of way, but at the same time, improve everything along the way.

So, so part of the early part of that process is looking at. If this is the vision for these various levels for doors, do our. Does our zoning code support that or specifically. Prohibit that is it or do you all already kind of note that is only code is not necessarily deliberate that.

I think our zoning code is okay. I mean, it's a 25 year product, you know, so it needs to be revisited. We've changed, the community has changed since these standards were put in place. And the reason why transit's being reimagined right now is it largely hasn't changed in 20 years or so. So we're seeing this moment in time where these corridors are an opportunity for us to let our community grow in a sensitive way, in an appropriate way. But we can also be improving efficiency at the same time and livability at the same time. And that's taking this coordinated effort. So I don't think the code's in the way. In fact, I think Code has tools in it that are that were in the presentation that are really fine. But let's do better than fine. Let's and let's maybe change them a little bit so that they're more responsive to what we just heard in the future land use effort.

And I think for me, looking at some of the imagery you all putting on the slides, like the. You know, no slide that shows the street profiles, like, that's just like music to my ears. Right? Like, I want to see. I want our orders to accommodate. Multiple modes safely, because the sort of lip service type of. Bike lanes or is, it's just increasing the danger of our roads. And so whenever I see a separate. Lane for non car traffic and separate. Pedestrian where we have the width. I mean, I know that there can be sort of a. Conflict in in Athens and sort of. Larger conversations people have, because people really want to use Prince Avenue is like a speedway out to Jefferson, right? That there's always going to be. That problem, and that part of that conversation, but. Prince is a really good example actually of a pretty complicated corridor in the sense that. It really is it does really need to be needs to be something that takes the people who are using that to commute in from. That that side of town and but also really is right in a neighborhood has this, you know, you showed the, the building that the group was in. As an example, and that's a good example. Of a conflict, like, I'm never sitting out front of that restaurant. Like, it never has felt safe to me. I know there's like a. Metal utility box and the telephone call there that might protect me if I sit over all the way to the right. But it's a good example of what's challenging about Prince Avenue. And so for me, that's one of the biggest things that makes cities feel livable is that you're accommodating multiple modes of transportation. I know we are a car-centric society. I know that moving to where more people are using their own bodies or their own personal vehicles to get around is aspirational, but you can't get there until you build the safe infrastructure to get there. It's not quite if you will build it, they'll come type of thing, but it kind of is. More people are going to use their bikes or whatever. There's probably some modes of transportation that will occur that we can't think of right now. Anyway, that's a priority for me. Then the second thing is, I think this conversation about Baxter is interesting, right? Like, what makes something start and stop? What are the what's the difference between? I mean, there's just some properties that are going to be owned by the same person forever. Who's never going to budge. They're always going to. There's some limitations on what can be done on private property. And so. still think we should be aspirational with talking about these corridors just knowing that that will be a pretty long process to get to that but i don't think that's a reason not to try i think it's just something to take into consideration and then use any of these sort of road improvements as opportunities when and where necessary to improve our stormwater commands and our sewer and anything that you know everything that goes with that, right? Anytime you're tearing up a road, you probably need to look at those opportunities. So just some general thoughts I had.

Alex?

A couple of things. Having just chaired the TSPLOS advisory for TSPLOS 26, and Nell was on that as well, We, in general, the, the idea of the bike lanes and as 1 member said, he. He's not a biker, but he said he, he does not. Want to see any more bicycles and car tires on the same piece of asphalt. That's and he wouldn't be necessarily somebody you would think would be in favor of bike lanes, but he, he sees the danger and I'm just saying, but we all in general saw that. The other thing we learned it is is extremely expensive to build all of what we're talking about and wanting and I want it. Badly too, so it is going to be a slow process because guess what? We got sewers and then we got this and then we got there's so much that. Our money has to go to, and we are maxed out on taxes right now. So. That, but that is something that will. Slowly got these losses working here. Future land use is working here and having sat on this and this and this and East lost oversight. you're seeing the web and then connecting the web and all of a sudden money can kind of come from here and there and next thing you know a corridor has this nice look that we're looking for and um but it just can't be poured out immediately but but the more we discuss and the more uh more people jump in and go hey i like that too i don't like but i think that's a great idea The easier it settles in and becomes a priority. And then kind of speaking on the corner of Baxter and 1 of y'all kind of hit on it a little bit. Like, why hasn't it. You know, why isn't it really all changing together? And that's up to the owner. The owner decides what they're going to do with their property and they should they're taking the risk. But. In any town, including Athens, you've got a piece of property right here. That's been owned by 1 family for 70 years. It's paid for cash cow. There's no risk. Just don't let it leak. That's what you do. You go in as roughly. Okay. Good day for me. They patch the roof. There's not a lot of incentive for them to move that to do anything because they're going to have to now take risk, make less money for a little while and hope that risk works. And that's business. But a lot of times when you're sitting in that position of the cash cow piece of real estate, You just live with it until you don't live with it anymore. And then you get, it goes on the market and somebody like just say David Mulkey, I'll use his name, that bought Beechwood and has bought properties all around and fixes them up and does exactly what we all want because he is new blood in a sense buying these and I don't want to look like I'm promoting him but anyone like that is new blood coming in whether it's maybe the corporation you never heard of or a local person like him and many others that are buying these properties and seeing the They see 1 do it and they're like, wow, Matt's done this with his property and that's he's full and I'm only 70% occupied here. And then it leads, so it is again, it's a slow move, but eventually people will sell. Or decide, maybe the sign decides, okay, I am going to take that risk. So it will happen. It's just slow and it's up to the individuals, but, but it does work.

I just piggybacking with Alex's comments. I mean, you hear a lot about the burden of. Developing in Clark county, and I think that we've got tools like tags in several of these corridors. that could serve to help offset the cost for private developers to do some of the things that we'd like to see. But we don't really have a way to educate people on TADs. I think there's people within our own community that don't fully understand how they work. And so I think that if we worked a little bit more with economic development to get that information out there and to start beefing up some of the TADs that we have in place to start functioning like they should, We could get over some of these homes a little bit quicker and defer some of the burden of cost on our developers that we'd like to see come in. And so it's not all just monkeys or people corporations with big money that we leave room for local developers to be able to reimagine the space. But we like it as community by sharing some of that cost with the tools that we've already gotten our box. Yeah, to help incentivize some of those property owners that don't cut, but they seem like they're operating in separate. Containers and buckets, and there's an opportunity there to bring that together. Even if it's more just from an educational standpoint of what's available.

I just wanted to say, I'm glad you guys are working on this. I feel like since I've been on the planning commission, it certainly seems like. Almost everything we work on is just micro parcel by parcel, you know, and sort of like, big picture planning of public spaces. They suspect is what most people who go to planning school want to spend time doing. We don't seem to spend a lot of time doing that and spend about you guys are. Great effort. Be able to make some things up.

I have this 2 thoughts 1 is. as far as the corridors go, like, I'm wondering if, and I don't, I don't want this to be like one more thing that staff has to do, but from the staff report perspective, would there be an opportunity to insert like in reference to like, if there's a thing that you saw tonight, like we saw a small proposal next to what I think is a minor corridor. And then that massive development on college Avenue, which I don't even think is on it's like, is that even considered a, a minor corridor, it's not, right? So just thinking about that perspective of like where this property sits in relation to a minor corridor might help in the thinking of just how that process plays out. I mean, I think the one on College Avenue is interesting because you have that development right across the street and they had townhomes that it kind of made sense what they were planning there. But, um, and it was just a tiny little section of that road. Right? But, but just understanding, like, oh, this actually isn't a minor corridor. So we don't necessarily have to think about that and. Maybe kind of related Plaza thing. I'm kind of glad you brought that up. I feel like the plazas are just the most throw away. Under used. Like there's a plaza at the corner of CVS on Hawthorne and it's laughable because nobody's going to sit out there.

It's crazy.

And I would much rather there be like extra street plantings or some sort of extra buffer to help encourage walking through the CVS rather than sitting there and having your lunch because that's never going to happen. But I don't know what, I don't know what mechanisms we would have because again, I'm not going to be like designing a street frontage, but I'd rather if somebody's going to spend resources for a, Public space, I'd rather it be more usable than. The bench in the next to Bravo, you know, it's silly.

It makes no sense to have a Plaza at a storage. That's right. Like, that is just a wasted expense, funky things, but still, like, no.

Can I say thank you for that? I also wanted to address the fact that Matt, you were. grateful that we're thinking that way. And I think a big part of this presentation is we're also inviting y'all to think that way with us. It's like we are coming to you and wanting you all to be partners in this effort. So while you are making decisions on that micro scale, we want you to be thinking about these pictures as well. And really kind of zooming out and seeing how is this playing with the larger vision that you all have also been a part of. And also to invite you, Kristin as well, think about how you would design that corner. Think about what you want that positive look like, because again, wanting you all to be collaborators with us, like, please send us ideas with these things. That's definitely what our ask is tonight is for you guys to flex your brains in the same way and really work with us on what this vision looks like. And how can we write code that would allow for that kind of development? And what are we doing that isn't right? And where are those adjustment points? Just wanted to underline that.

Thanks for the presentation. I liked it information. Great job.

Thank you for having great stuff that can give us this kind of presentation.

Right? It was very informative.

Yeah. No, we have a lot of we got a deep bench of talent going on. So awesome. All right, do we have any. Do you have any?

I have a quickie announcement to share. The mayor, if you were watching Tuesday nights, towards the end of the meeting, the mayor introduced three work items that you want to direct to the Planning Commission that is going to be coming forward in a resolution at their special call meeting to vote on the budget next Tuesday. Those three items are these are the words received from the mayor item one update the inclusionary zoning code to include payment in lieu option for all multi-family rm and commercial c zones with the full array of bedroom unit combinations so right now payment in lieu is not an option every place that inclusionary zoning can apply it is for downtown um His interest is expanding that as an option, especially now, if another part of the discussion on Tuesday night was about having a contract. With a service provider to help us develop affordable housing, using the affordable housing funds that we've gathered. Through a variety of sources, including payment. So the notion is that account's gonna grow, especially with a text amendment to offer an opportunity for it. There's gonna be a lot of discussion about this one, I think, because there's a, a design intent of inclusionary zoning that is intended to get scattered site development of affordable units using the efficiencies of scale with a developer building those units rather than some other entity starting from scratch to build units. It's far cheaper for them to build them as part of a development than it is to do it as a standalone effort. So we'll see how that plays out, but that is item number one. Item two, increase commercial zone height limits. Increase commercial zone height limits to include four additional stories in commercial downtown, two additional stories in other commercial zones, all with a buffer retaining the current height limits for property segments that are within 100 feet of single family zones. So, well, these will all kind of begin to take shape. 3rd, 1 is. This is interesting, create the ability to purchase and move residential development density within the commercial downtown district. So, transferable development rights within the commercial downtown zone. When we have looked at transferable development rights in this community in the past. Um, we have come up with mechanisms for making that work. We can dust those things off and try to apply it to the commercial downtown zone. I think we're going to do. All 3 of these are with a timeline for completion by December. Similar to the 9 items that are it with the subcommittee that are to be completed by December. So. Hold on tight, because we're gonna have more of these discussions about text amendments. And we'll see if this wording holds, I think it will Tuesday. But once that is received, we will begin working in earnest on these three to be able to fold it into our work program and actually make sure that we get done what we've been asked to do.

Can I make a comment about text amendments in general? Sure. I sometimes find that when we put them last in the agenda late at night, I know I kind of don't have a lot of energy left to talk about them. So on some of these ones, I noticed particularly with like the data center one, which was like a pretty big issue. And I kind of feel like when we're just throwing things out, we're not really discussing it. We're almost kind of like, I would like to maybe think of for issues like that, having like work sessions where we can have more of like a freewheeling discussion. Second, I feel like we just kind of go around and we all talk. We don't discuss. We just kind of like monologue. So I would like maybe some opportunities to have more discussions on text.

If possible, rather than just doing it now late at night, if that, if there is interest amongst the planning commission as a whole. To have separate sessions that are just about text amounts. That may be super helpful. I would like it's a tie.

We can talk about it. It's a time commitment either way. Yeah, and I would rather have that time commitment be when I'm more awake. Even like now, I don't have a lot to say anymore.

You know, we had both and 2, like, we could also put something up the front of it. That would be good too.

Yeah.

And it kind of seems like, given the list of things that we have to do over the next 6 months. We might need to work in an extra meeting or 2 anyway.

Yeah, because I, you know, I would also kind of be in favor. This is just like a larger idea of like. you know instead of having super long meetings dividing it up into two meetings you know and i know that's probably not possible but that would be my preference because you know i would rather see us i feel like i have more to contribute earlier than the evening than later because i get up early and by this time i'm by 10 i'm definitely tired drink a red bull that's true too but that doesn't you know i'm saying good ideas

No, it's coming out and we could just we could just advertise. This is a meeting on this text about that. If you have thoughts, like, come for this.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

When will it come up 8 o'clock?

And I would like a little bit less formal discussion opportunities where we can. You know, kind of like bounce ideas around more than just I feel like sometimes we do just like. You know, 1 person talks and then the next person. the next person talks and we don't really like discuss the ideas that we're bringing up in real time you know like oh yeah that's a good idea what about this you know that kind of thing because i like to discuss that way but i know that's when i get told to be quiet so back off

Practices that is not ordinance required, but I think it's appropriate to the priority is to always have. A meeting with this body to discuss a text amendment before you have to take action. Yeah, and that has been something we've tried to do over the last couple of years is when there's a text event, we're going to have at least 1 meeting for public comment. And you guys to have a thoughtful moment with it before you're expected to go on.

especially when we're making like amendments on the fly and then like not really discussing it and being like you know somebody has an idea and they're like oh yeah then it just all of a sudden it kind of gets becomes part of it without really talking about it you know and i'm like oh i had a lot of things to say about that but we never got around talking about it you know okay yeah i noticed that on the data centers i noticed that on the strs you know

We'll look at that if we can find an off cycle meeting date to have kind of work session format on the text amendments. And then coming out of that, maybe part of the discussion is. And it's the onus is on staff to have something ready and in your inbox so that you're not seeing it that night. Obviously. But if there is a dividing up of the topics where. These look pretty straightforward. We'll put them at the front of the meeting. These are a little bit weightier. We'll put them at the end of the meeting. That's the kind of direction we can also take from that discussion. Yeah, sure.

I wonder a little bit like, how long do you see something like that happening? Like, could that be. The 1st hit our planning commission agenda setting meeting. Um. Proceeded by a, you know, public could come and watch us have this freewheeling discussion, but it would be sort of earlier the same evening that it would maybe it is the 1st thing. Maybe. Maybe there's a 5 o'clock. Excellent discussion followed by a 6 o'clock. Yeah, I mean, we can start a little bit early. I guess I say that only because I know for me over the years on this, like, in terms of planning my life, like, this year, it's a little bit different because of the. So, this committee work we're doing, and having a group think about, like, okay, I need to to the extent possible and need to make sure I'm in town the 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month. And I just, that's a little bit of a challenge and I would, I would just maybe making an argument that maybe it still is happening on the 1st Thursday or kind of trying to plan around that. But. Or maybe it's also something where someone could, if it were off cycle, maybe it's something a person can attend as well. It's not ideal, but it's also no big deal. If that were the way that's the case, there would be no action. Right, I actually don't think I don't think that the thing that Mike is recommending isn't necessarily no discussion. Yeah. Yeah.

Just think when we're working out any changes. I think it's like, when we start changing stuff is when I really think we're not. And honestly testing it as much as we could given the volume that you're about to hear. That's why I brought it up because I've kind of been thinking about this like tonight. It was easy. We had already seen it. We didn't, you know, we didn't really need a special, but like on other ones, the data center 1 really comes to mind about how. You know, we could have spent a lot more time talking about that. I kind of feel like. But it was like, 1130 at night. I didn't talk about it more.

We also have another do we have back to us?

It was directly thought to happen or on Tuesday night, the government operations committee, they had made a recommendation to pass out with no further action. And that was affirmed by the commission. Okay. So there.

The ordinance we have is the ordinance if there's some, you know, I was every time I run into 1 of the mayor candidates around, I was always like, hey, what do you think about it? Because, you know, it's me. So, but I heard, you know, somebody told me that there's like a lawsuit going on and they were supposed to wait.

Can I just wrap this up? Can we only kind of do that after? I'm sure whatever.

No, I'm done. That was those 3 items.

I wanted to say goodbye to Monique, because this was her last meeting, right? I know I felt bad. I wanted to, like, thank you acknowledgement.

She always watches we all do say the thing we like best about it. It'll be part of the official record.

Do we get a new planning commission?

I was supposed to look at that before. Name right now, and this is embarrassing because we are still.

That's okay.

You don't know him yet.

Is there somebody already selected? Yes. Okay, we're good. That answers the question. You won't be surprised.

I've got just too quick.

We're into miscellaneous now.

Yes, we are in miscellaneous. Sorry about my curveball vote on the, well, I'm not sorry for it, but I still need to know something. I either need to talk to you as chair of the subcommittee or you as that, because I need to get my head straight on what I misunderstood in our meetings. So that's for another thing. And you all know how I like generational Athens, and I would like to welcome Cassie Jackson I've known her since she was a little one little soccer player. She has played soccer with my daughter. Many, many, many years and know her parents. Well. But I love to see, and I've already texted your parents about the meeting earlier. I think it is super cool. To be a generation older and having somebody now out of college and working alongside of me and us. So I just did not want that to just blow through. And I know you're mad at me, but you can't do anything about it while it's on camera. Anyway, welcome and I just thought that was a cool thing.

I'll say this to raise the nose on that a little bit and make it just more professional and personal, which the personal is great. But Cassie comes to us with a master's degree newly minted in planning. The University of Illinois, Chicago, and she had worked for the mothership, the national headquarters, the American planning association. And what I'll describe as the research division, if that's fair. Her job description that she's here, not surprisingly, is long-range research. And so we've got a bit of an insider, somebody who's fresh in studying it, but also has been in the heart of it and has access to a lot of things that we're going to be making use of over the 12 topics that we're talking about over the next six months. So everything you said is true, but value added professionally as well. So we're really fortunate to have somebody with that very recent work experience that wanted to come home, wanted to apply in their hometown, and I think is very sincere and energetic in wanting to get started.

Awesome. Welcome. Welcome. Okay. Want to adjourn us?

We can adjourn. Second.

All right. All in favor? Aye. Yes. All right. Thank you.