Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right.

All right, folks, we have a new layout, hopefully between the layout. Don't mind me. I haven't just lines in it, like, keep me from being really loud for some reason. I don't have, but if you can't hear just wave us down, we'll try, but we're trying to make this more accessible. Um. All right, so good evening and welcome to the. August 6, 2026 meeting of the planning commission. If you're watching on YouTube, you will find a meeting agenda dot com slash planning. For those of you here in person, there's a sign in sheet and copies of the agenda on the table by the door. Here's the process for the items on the agenda 1st, staff will make a presentation and we move to public comment in support of the application. We allowed 10 minutes for the applicant to address the commission followed by members of the public speaking in favor who received 3 minutes each after comments in support of the application. We moved to comments and opposition. All speakers received 3 minutes, but if you are here representing a specific interest groups, such as a neighborhood association, please let us know. So we may allocate the appropriate amount of time. When addressing the commission, please provide your name address and nature of your interest in the project after public comment, the applicant or their representative may request a 2 minute response. Please note the timer it will display a yellow light when you have 30 seconds left a red light when your time has expired. Once we have heard from members of the public, the planning 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 and is part of the public record. Any additional written materials to be placed into the record must be read during the public comment period. Please direct your comments to the planning commission and not to the applicants and please refrain from applauding or cheering any of the speakers. And finally, please note that this broadcast is being broadcast. This meeting is being broadcast live and our microphones are sensitive. Please silence yourself.

Thank you.

And with that, does anybody want to make a motion to introduce staff reports and documents to the record? All right, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All right. Next is meeting minutes.

Move to approve.

Okay.

Second.

Second. All right. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay. May 4th.

Uh, no report from a course this evening.

Um, any public comment related to make. Great, so that will move to all business item.

Number 1, 490 Clover street. Okay.

Um, so, or 90 Clover streets 1st, heard this back in June. Um, it's 2 part request. Um, to update the future land use map from neighborhood residential to mixed density residential. Um, and then subsequently, um, reason the property from what is currently split zone and R. S. 8 and commercial general to. Um. See, this is the property that we discussed previously. There are currently 2 existing structures. So part of the objective stated by the applicant to preserve these. Um, but given its legal nonconforming status. Some things need to be brought brought in line with current code and updated to facilitate rehabilitation improvement. This is what the property looks like currently. Actually, I think this specific photo might be about a year old, but this is Clover Street, and I don't believe we included these photos in the last presentation. So I wanted everybody to be aware of kind of what we're talking about. Of course, frontage, and then you can see left and right looking down the street, just to get an idea of the feel for the neighborhood. This would be the update to the future land use map. Excuse me, so it goes from neighborhood residential, as I said, to mixed into residential a little bit of a darker yellow there. This is what jumps out. This is the proposed reason. So it is a, it's an existing neighborhood. The proposal is to zone it to are into you can see what's currently split down there on the left. That would be rectified as part of this, this reason proposal. This is another aerial view, so you can kind of see the footprints a little bit clearer. This was the plan that was submitted previously back in June. Again, those are the existing structures. Really what's being shown here is parking improvements to facilitate extra beds that would come with RM2. This is the new site plan, so it was a response to staff comments previously. As you can see, they're no longer double stacking cars. They've widened the access of the street to 20 feet, which is a requirement for any kind of mixed density or multifamily development helps provide better fire access. That sort of thing. Generally speaking staff does find it compatible with the 2023 comprehensive plan a little bit strange, but it does increase the supply and variety of quality housing units price points. What we're talking about here is missing though. So we'll circle back to that here shortly. It's redevelopment of an existing. 2 existing structures, which is good because it doesn't expand anything into anything new to adapt to reuse and. As the last bullet notes, this is a very unique area in a unique neighborhood. I think everybody's at least semi familiar with it. Inherently, it is not compatible with the future land use map. It does kind of stick out when you look at those color shades. It does create a spot zone. But it is also an attempt to meet the stated objectives of comprehensive plan. So got some photos in here of some neighboring properties. These are actually two separate duplexes that are on the same parcel. Block and a half away, I want to say that these are at the corner of Gloria and Sunset. And they look nice. They kind of match the feel of the neighborhood that everybody's familiar with. These are interesting. On the top, those two top photos, those are also existing duplexes, I believe. Those mailboxes have A and B units on them. So these are on Clover. So you can't really tell by looking at them. It's very similar if we want to go back. To this now, granted it is on a larger lot. It does have a large structure in the back that, of course, does encroach on the rear setback. Like, we talked about 2 months ago. So that will have to be contended with or. Avoid it in the rehabilitation if they want to keep that nonconformity. But again, the point was. To see how it is in kind with what exists that bottom photo is just a guest house that was under construction. There are a couple of guest houses that were permitted in this neighborhood just in the last. 2 or 3 years generally speaking. That does recommend approval with conditions on this. As we talked about minutes ago, it does kind of align with the with comprehensive plan and it stated objectives. It's definitely unconventional. The map is uncomfortable to look at. But again, we think it is. Our goals as a community. Corrective actions things to be aware of and things that would need to be addressed in the. Plans review, if it were to be approved, um, parking standards are. Difference, depending on the configuration of a multi family unit. So, um, parking standards are based on the unit size of bedroom count. So specifically, you know, studio beds under 500 feet at 1 space. 1 bedrooms above 500 square feet get 1 and a half spaces. 2 beds and up get 2 spaces. So it kind of goes up and it increases and it's going to be a pinch point in the. Plans review, but it's not something that can't be overcome. And of course, fire safety that will need to be. Confirmed and, um. really thought through specifically for Building B in the back. And then speaking to the nonconformity, again, according to 915 , the area of encroachment is considered nonconforming. They do not have to remove it. However, they can't alter it. You can't increase or intensify that nonconformity. So that's going to be another pinch point in the design. Recommended conditions if this were to move forward. half the floor area ratio at point four. So last time this was heard, there were some questions about how staff arrived at some of these. So we got here by taking the existing FAR, which I believe was point two eight and padding it just a little bit to add some flexibility in the improvements. Recommended condition that this site does not allow for commercial uses other than home occupation permits. So this would be in line with any other residential property. And then the property shall be limited to no more than 4 independent dwellings. So the wording changed on that just a little bit to delineate. How we treat dwelling units in RM, which is by the bedroom and as a reminder, the acreage on this property, if it were to be rezone to RM2, it would be 7 beds for the parcel. So this would be 7 beds split across 4 units. Whatever mix works, especially with parking and that kind of thing. Here is the final product. Well, the proposed product. So, again, we included the photos just to. Kind of identify that the mixed density elements are already in this area and it's part of what makes the neighborhood. Right? Um, it does have a lot of character. There are a lot of small single family homes. Um, it is not all this by any means. Um, but the entire neighborhood is zoned and it doesn't really walk like walk and talk like RSA. Um, there are elements.

The staff believes are in kind with the proposal already in existence. And staff support.

All right, now we'll hear from the elephant.

My name is Franklin Frost. I live at 180 Indale Avenue. 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. We're looking to rezone the property located at Randy Clover from CG and RSA to RM2. The property already has two buildings, as has been described, and we're looking to increase density for housing that we believe this community needs. Even the property size, it will over point 3 acres that would allow for a maximum of 7 bedrooms versus, which is why we're pursuing the orange 2 designation, which is what is not conforming in the future land use map. The difference between the orange 1 in our destination. We're looking to develop the 2 existing buildings to complete renovations to address the continued need that we see as housing as 1 of the biggest. Issues in our community. We believe this property is in a neighborhood that already has a number of multi family units. And in appropriate location, as that density is needed, but it require is on the edge of the neighborhood coming from the often commercial corridor into the normal town neighborhood. So, by our calculations, there are at least 18 multifamily properties that are within the normal town neighborhood already in existence under that RSA zoning designation. Most of those were already built prior to that zoning establishment. This zoning change that we're proposing or pursuing allows existing conditions on site to be brought into conforming nature and allow for additional housing units. We agree with the plan departments comments of not allowing commercial use other than a whole market permit. We agree this property doesn't make sense based on location to have a commercial use. So we would only be looking to have residential units at this location. We also agree with the other 2 conditions, the point for as well as capping it to 4 individual dwelling units. The point for limits the possible building size to about 5300 square feet. So, just to kind of quantify that in a square foot terms based on the law. So we believe that there are some single family homes that are larger than that in this neighborhood. So it is again the scale of the project. Is within the size of the neighborhood and something that can be support. We understand the neighbors hesitancy about the reason in regards to the possible increased traffic and parking. We share your concerns about the increased cut through traffic on Clover. As well, and would support any community led measures to mitigate that cut through traffic because we agree a safer neighborhood is the desired outcome. With plan department's conditions on residential use only, we believe that the traffic will be less than the previous use, which was an active daycare. The rezone application is also just the beginning of this process. And the final design will be dependent upon the vote for approval. Um, when we, we will then work with the planning staff to ensure that the final design meets all county requirements, especially the required off street park. So it is. That is always going to be flux of what what will the site support and what can we park? And so we understand that we are required to make sure that all tenants will have on site parking and we will be working through that as we develop this overall cycle. this project is being undertaken by people who live and care about this community and we're trying to renovate two existing neglected buildings but to create additional housing for this community thank you for your time is there anyone here to speak in support of the application

And so the 1, I'll try to keep it brief.

My name is Joel hats that I currently live at 330 Ashton drive. Just read what I got here. My name is Joel hats that I live 1 block from the clover property on some said drive for 13 years. I'm speaking as someone who is familiar with Clover street animal town from daily experience. Ryan and Franklin are friends of mine, and I want to disclose that, but my support is based on the project, their reputation, and my years of living in the neighborhood. Bormaltown has never been exclusively made up of detached single-family homes. It has always contained duplexes, small apartment buildings, accessory units, rentals, owner-occupied houses, and neighborhood commercial properties. Many of these multifamily buildings predate the current zoning, map and are now grandfathered into the RSA. They are not intrusions into Normaltown.

They are actually part of the neighborhood that people value, in my opinion.

In my experience, seven bedrooms distributed amongst these small units would not fundamentally change the character of Clover Street or Normaltown. Renovating these empty buildings and returning the site to useful residential occupancy seems like an appropriate transition between the residential neighborhood and the commercial properties on Hawthorne. I understand concerns about parking noise and future development and I believe reasonable solutions can and will address those concerns. I do not believe four units and seven bedrooms at this particular site represents an incompatible level of density. This is the kind of neighborhood housing that already exists in normal town. And is increasingly difficult to create. So, with that, I respectfully ask that you evaluate the proposal as submitted and I support this submission. I support approval. Thank you.

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

All right. Excuse me.

Hi, my name's Eva Claire Schwartz. I live at 750 Boulevard right now, which is a subdivided unit. It's important to note that I live in a one bedroom dwelling. So I'm a social worker in this community. I went to graduate school here. I went to undergrad here. And when I graduated my master's program, it was really important to me when deciding between two jobs to return to Athens, because I think Part of the reason we're all here is that there's nothing quite like Athens. I was really excited to come back under the prospect of being like a young professional here. That's a totally different identity, as a lot of us know, than being some sort of student in Athens. And it's really important to me in my social work practice that I reside in the county in which most of my clients and my patients also reside in and live in and work in. I feel like that brings a certain level of authenticity to the work. So, basically, when I came back, and I was excited to put down roots here in Clark County, it was important to me that I have options as a single individual that was coming back to live. And I. You know, it was not out of place financially. I just paid for a master's degree. I came from nonprofit executive leadership. These are not like large salary jobs. And so I wasn't ready to put down a down payment on a home. So, I feel like the search for a 1 bedroom safe, independent community connected space is something that's very singular. Really a massive apartment complex geared towards 18 to 22 year olds just wasn't going to be a big and good fit for me. um i wanted to know my neighbors i wanted to put roots in the community i wanted to start building uh neighborly connections and um by the time i weeded through my personal contacts um game day rentals um some questionable things that were you know being advertised as one room um i was left with quite literally two options when i came when i was moving back um i literally toured two places and those were the two places that weren't rented out Before I could go see them with 1 of the 2, and I just feel like I support this 7 bedroom complex because 1st of all, the individuals in charge of the project, both of who I consider friends are long term dollars of Clark county. They continue to live their mission out. They. or trying to better the community, not just talk about it, but actually do something. If there's a lack of young professional housing here, they're actively trying to address it. They care about feedback. They want to work with the neighborhood on solutions and they want to provide more non-student options. During my own housing search, it would have been really nice to have alternatives at an affordable budget. A young, eager, professional, excited to contribute to Athens really shouldn't have to sacrifice their dream of a residential non-student living situation if that's not a good fit for them and they don't feel safe to do that. So thanks.

Anybody else to speak in support of the application? All right, I'm hearing none. Is there anyone to speak in opposition to the application?

Y'all can line up to our new layout allows for a line.

Hi, I'm Shannon Bushway. I live at 250 Clover street. I spoke last time here. I'm here to oppose and are into zoning. I spoke a lot before about my concerns. I just happened to also be a social worker. As well, and I do believe in affordable housing. I do think. There is a housing crisis in Athens, and we need to address it. I do think there's a lot of interesting or there's some. Duplexes and triplexes that are scattered through normal town, but I think they're pretty rare on Clover street. Almost every single house on that street is a branch style, single family home. Um, and I think the picture they even depicted of the duplex is actually a corner lot. And so there are 2 duplexes that sit on that lot, but they each have their own separate driveway. 1 is the entrance on Edwards and 1 is on sunset. There's nothing a normal town that looks like anything that's being proposed. Here, I think 1 of my concerns to come back and speak to this committee was when it was brought up last time was if this gets zone for an arm to their plan. Is 1 thing, but an investor could come in. And purchase this and do what they want with it and. I believe it was Mr. Sam's if I'm pronouncing that correctly that brought up that point. And honestly, for me, that's what really, really concerned me about this. I don't think these guys are. Trying to do anything horrible to our neighborhood, but every, every neighbor that I spoke to after that meeting wasn't concerned about them. changing the lot. The lot needs to be changed. Something needs to happen here. Their concern was this becoming an R and 2 zone. In our neighborhood where there's nothing like that. I don't I think we're all fine if they wanted to build a couple of. Duplexes on this property to homes already exists there. We know something needs to happen, but there is nothing in normal town. Like, what they're proposing there are not 7 bedroom essentially apartment complexes. In the middle of Clover street, or around this area. And I, I do want to note that the only people who are, you know. Proposing like, therefore this don't live on Clover street. They don't live in our neighborhood. So I just wanted to express my concern about that. I'm really concerned. Of what's going to happen if this changes to an arm to zone and I do think it's a real possibility that someone else could come in and buy the property from them.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I am Julia. I live and own a house on clover street for ninety five clover street directly across from this development. And I think we can all agree that changing from is a big step. And the outcome of how this property is developed is going to affect our street, even our neighborhood. And I understand after a lot of research after the last meeting, how really difficult it would be for them to create a workable rental situation under an R and 1 zoning, which would be. More agreeable to all of us, so I have some concerns about that. I appreciate that. Mr frost address the parking issue. I'm now confused about they're only in 4 units. So. 4 units and 7 bedrooms changes the whole parking thing. The, my personal concern with parking is. The property has a yellow curb as do the adjacent property. So any excess parking is in front of my house or my neighbor Christie's house. So that is a somewhat of a issue. And, but my, my main concern is that, um. This this plan is very vague. We don't have any real idea of what exactly is going to happen what it's going to look like. I looked on the website when I was getting my notes from what was presented for us to look at and other plans have renderings and drawings. And so I have concerns about that. If because this is non binding, there's not a plan if they choose not to go forward. Anything can happen, we could have a 3 story apartment building go up instead of this lovely plan that they're talking about. If the general rezones approve that whoever. Has that property can do whatever they want with it based on the RM 2 designations and that's a real issue for me. It leaves no protection for any of the neighboring properties. So it's a great plan. But nobody has to stick to a big plan that's non binding. So that's that's my main issue. It's not binding. Anything could happen or too wide open. So. So, that's really my thing. I feel like we're being asked to trust. And I appreciate that these are people in our community and they're friends with people here and that's great. But what if they get in there and they can't, they realize they can't really rehab these, these buildings. I want something to happen too. It's an eyesore. It's derelict. And I appreciate that they want to do something, but I think we need a binding plan with an actual plan that they have to stick to. So it doesn't leave us open to what happened later on. Thank you.

Yeah.

My name is I, unlike these people speaking in favor, I don't know the builders and I live in the neighborhood. So, I live on 698 with my wife and 2 small children. The problem with this plan is not the parking, it's traffic. So exactly 3 years ago on 7th of August 2023, I emailed the city about traffic speeds on Clover. Doing Gilbert and sunset, there is nothing to slow down traffic. There's not a single stop sign, not a speed bump. Unlike sunset. There's nothing to slow down traffic and there's a lot of families with small children who live here to increase density here. It's going to increase traffic speed more more and more traffic in neighborhoods. That's the best main problem with this.

Thank you.

My name is Colin Marine. I also live on Clover street at 360. My mother just spoke don't let that influence the. The veracity of my comments, I have a lot. I agree with most of the things that already been said by other residents in opposition the. And my mother's main point of this is not binding. They, we have no idea what the house is going to look like every other plan that you see on the planning commission website. There's at least like a rendering what the exterior of the house might look like more detailed floor plans. And that uncertainty of whether or not they decide to go forward with it after the rent zoning is redone, which I think that was one of the points he made. We're waiting to do a final plan until we receive the zoning change approval. And, you know, I know Ryan personally. I consider him a friend and have for many, many years. I don't know Mr. Frost. And I think that their parts are in the right place, but I don't know. I'm not in their head. They could be seeking this... This zone change in order to just then sell the property, which to my mom's point could then end up being a 3 story apartment building right in the middle of the neighborhood. And I feel like that should be a genuine concern of the planning commission in this. Equation with the non binding agreement that that's maybe my largest problem with it. The traffic is also another concern. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else to speak in opposition.

Hello, hi, I'm Christie club.

I live at 485 clover street straight across from their property. All the concerns brought up, I just want to reiterate that particularly particularly the traffic and the parking and the fact that we had the great picture of the place on sunset. You know, the duplex beautiful. Yeah. So that looks like that. However, they're talking 7 apartments instead of 2 duplexes.

So it's a different it's a different picture. So I appreciate you.

Listening to this, thank you. Anyone else to speak in opposition. All right, I'd like to invite the applicant up for a 2 minute response.

Okay, so I think that there get that in a minute. I think there is a bit of confusion about characterizing this as 7 different things. What we're talking about is 2 duplexes totaling 7 rooms. This is directly like the place on Edwards. We'll have a duplex in the front to duplex in the back. There will be 7 bedrooms total. It will be the residential scale of the neighborhood. It'll look just like house. It'll look like houses that exist everywhere else on the street. We're not trying to do anything crazy. I think that the binding cycling that people are talking about, we're going to be bound by the 0.4. We're going to be bound by not allowing commercial. There's lots of things binding us in the recommendation from the planning commission or the planning department. Um, a lot of this stuff needs to get worked out. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of money and we are trying to do this as efficiently as possible. We're not big developers. I build houses. He draws houses we're putting our money where our mouth is trying to sort something out. And before we dump a lot of cost in rendering while we're already absorbing the financing cost of this, as we go forward through this process, we're trying to be very efficient. So that's why there's not a lot of pretty renderings that exist here. They're expensive. We'd love to, but yeah, I think that there's nothing that is really when you, when this thing is viewed from the lens that we have it, and I know it's hard for us to convey what that lens is without pictures, without renderings. This is essentially two duplexes. A couple of them are one bedrooms, a couple of them are two bedrooms, and it's, there are direct analogs throughout the neighborhood currently. Thank you.

All right, so we'll take it over here for discussion. So, who wants to start there?

I think the staff did a really good job of placing recommending conditions. That, I think actually address the residents concerns. I think that limiting it to point for. Limiting it to for you for dwelling units to 7 bedrooms. I don't think the conditions limit to 7 bedrooms or is it just the zoning? The calculations for every ratio. Yeah. And so. Even if worst case scenario, these. Her property owners sell the property, those conditions would go along with it. So, only have 4 units, you can still only have 7 bedrooms. The only thing is that 2 questions.

And 1 of them is, um.

Did staff talk about, like, any sort of height limitation or. Did that come up at all? Like, what is the height limitation and try them to.

The high limitation in arm to Zach, do you want to come up and talk about the discussion? Y'all had about hikes? I think there was some discussion about. Yeah, so we use the property line. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, if the commission wanted to entertain an additional condition for height, that's not incorrect. Our thinking was more on the 4 area ratio and. Not to make any corrections, but I believe your question how how we arrived at the 7 beds. It's actually based on the acreage of the property, right?

Like, just the calculation of right?

That's right. So so beds and different things. So, so the beds are set by the size of the property, the floor area ratio is, it's quite literally how much floor is there compared to size of the property interior floor space. So, again, what's shown if I'm remembering correctly comes out to about about 0.28. Um, in order to rehab or provide some design flexibility, we bumped that up to 0.4. Just because it's, it's more in line with with what they're asking and, um. Still enforces a limitation so that, you know, if. If they wanted to go 3 stories, that's going to. That's going to come up against that point for pretty quick.

So it's the point for limitation kind of. Encourages the maximum of 2 stories.

I don't want to say there's not a configuration that would totally preclude it.

It would just be really weird.

It would be very weird. Um, and it does that point for does. Does try to tamper down the mass and scale of the structure.

It might be that that point for was 300 square feet.

I believe that was the number.

So, and that works out to about 1300 square feet per unit. So, 2 duplexes each side of the duplex has the ability for. 1300 square feet, it doesn't have to be even across each unit, but just to kind of think about it. Sometimes it's helpful to break it up.

Yeah, the unit mixes is really what's going to play into it.

Yeah. Great. I think these conditions are great. Um.

I would like to make a motion, but if anyone wants to talk, I have another discussion point, I think 1 of the things that's missing in the conditions is aesthetic. To ensure that the aesthetic quality or the massing.

Of whatever happens here, maybe it's not this project, but what follows it matches the community.

Because I do think in spite of, it's kind of back to what you started with. There are ways that. And this new zone, in spite of the, in spite of height restrictions, that would still feel. Like, uh, something very different. And so there's a way to ensure that.

At least know what fronts. Clover street continues to match what else is along Clover street. I think that's important. Okay, so.

I'm not, I don't see. How we can start putting our into that's not going to be a shocker to most of y'all. It introduces new rules. It does leave a lot of unanswered questions. It's not even binding. The value of this is going to go up immediately with the RM to typically. Can't see the future, but that's what might happen there. We keep the term even from it keeps being called a development. And in a single family neighborhood, and that's a word that did not really mix into single family. And so, in the majority, I know there's just a little bit of. CG to RM2. That's just a small part of it. So I'm concentrating on the RSA to RM2. And I would also say on the future land use, this is a spot change that just does not make sense. I understand there's two buildings there, but just because a property has two buildings anywhere in Athens doesn't give it the right to automatically be RM. And there are a lot of places with RM, or rather with two structures on it and a single family. And this is just another one of those. So I would be opposing this.

I mean, we don't have to call it a development. We can call it a couple of buildings. Um. I do think that that to Sarah's point and staff's point. The combined with the 4 dwelling limit in. The conditions, which would travel. Which would which would travel with the property, whether or not. The people who have it build on it, right? Anyone who buys this property is going to be bound by those same conditions. Uh, until and unless someone seeks a reason. Um, I, uh. We talked a lot during the future land use process, but which is still ongoing, I guess about, like, round truthing. Which was seen as a good thing to do during the future land use process. So, I don't see if I mean, it seems similar to me here. If we've got buildings, 1 of which had a commercial use. How this would not just be ground tree thing. It's, it's a slightly uniquely situated parcel in that it is right at the tip of this. Streets that is pointing directly towards a minor corridor. It's a couple of duplexes, which I heard I heard in in public comments. Find a couple of duplexes don't want anything crazy. We have these conditions that would make anything crazy. Practically practically very unlikely unless someone just had millions of dollars to burn and was like. I want to I want to build a. 100 square foot around tower. which would be tight restrictions for RS2, RM2. I appreciate the applicant's comment, which is something that I see through a lot of comments that we get here, that renderings are expensive, planned developments are expensive, and requiring those things for a small redevelopment, a granular, gentle density increase by a local developer, that's how we discriminate against our local developers. In favor of, you know, the big builders who have a lot of capital, a lot of cash in the bank, they can shell out for all the renderings, they've got all their stuff in house, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. One other thing I wanted to note, Having more people living on the street is statistically correlated with making people on the street safer from speeding cars. There is a curve through which, it's been studied, there's a curve through which increasing density leads to speeding on streets there's just more people coming in and out there's less opportunity for the dashing through uh and then you're talking about people who actually live on the street right people who call that place home obviously people are gonna there's gonna be speeders who live anywhere at any time but on the whole adding housing to a less dense neighborhood does not increase and can decrease the likelihood of traffic fatalities. A question for staff. Are there design standards within our code?

Yes, there are design standards for multi family development. There are elements that you would have to work in from that are designed to kind of a residential scale or residential. Sensibility towards the front is typically where we see these treatments taken, whether it's a porch or a window. They're very simple things, but there are some things you would pick from for those types of improvements. The forward building on this was constructed as a residence. So. I would say, we would look at the plans review on what elements are currently there and if they satisfy those standards, well, then they'd be encouraged to be retained. If they're going away, they would have to add something to those standards.

Okay, so the question of like, you know, design, are they going to put something crazy looking in here? That is another question that gets handled in plans review, right?

I wouldn't say plans review handles crazy. But, but plans review will administer the code and and there are some real baseline expectations for residential design. That's all.

Yeah, so I guess my, my big picture view on this is. And as a way to address our shortage of housing. I think it's good on balance to have 1 bedroom units in our neighborhood so that professionals non students can find a place to live if they are tired of having our mates and. Not be forced to live in big buildings with predominantly student populations. I think that that's. Undoubtedly good for a neighborhood. I think that to the extent that this proposal keeps the existing buildings, which are already part of the existing neighborhood character. That that seems good. I take it that that's not binding at this point, although perhaps we could create a condition that says, you know, that the. The applicant intends to keep the buildings. That's what they say. They're going to just. Got renovate that, you know, perhaps maintaining the existing building footprints. Could be a condition that would alleviate those sorts of concerns on traffic. It sounds like the problem is cut through traffic on Clover street more than it is resident traffic on Clover street. And I'm sympathetic to that and, you know, we have a program that was. Revised in the last year or 2 to make it easier for neighborhoods to request and get. The city to put in speed bumps and so if the Clover street neighbors have tried that in the past and haven't gotten very far. Some of my neighbors. Trying to do the same thing on my street and a few years ago, and it was a, the county's process at the time is very difficult. I understand that it has become. Easier and so that sounds like maybe a solution that. People in the neighborhood would be interested in pursuing, but. But Sarah is absolutely right that having. A few more neighbors on the street who live there and are driving slow, because they're about to pull into their driveway or whatever is not the kind of traffic problem that people are concerned with. If anything, it reduces speeds of other traffic because there's more people pulling in and out. I did wonder if. The, I, I understand the applicant's point about a binding site plan being expensive to develop and get perfect. And then if there's something that's a little bit wrong when they get to plans review, they could run into trouble. But I did wonder if we could condition any aspect of the site plan Bruce, like, perhaps. The existing building footprints make that a binding aspect as a condition of any rezone if if we were to. That may be a good question for the applicant. Okay. If that would be a problem for them, yeah, I'll ask them that in a second. And the other thing I wondered about that's kind of related is about lot coverage. As I understand it, the existing two buildings on the site and driveways and so on already exceed the allowable lot coverage in RS-8. Is that correct? Correct. I suppose another condition could be just that the lot coverage shall not exceed that shown on the plan because I understand the neighbors don't want some other person to buy the thing and tear everything down and just put up. You know, a single apartment building that's out of keeping with the neighborhood, but but having the lot coverage limited to what's shown on the plan and having the building footprints. A binding aspect of the plan, I think would address. Any reasonable neighbor concerns about specifically about the character. Of the neighborhood, so, I guess, let me ask the applicant if you would approach the podium just. You can answer the question of if. Um, 1, or the other, or both of those conditions. Would appear problematic to either keeping the building footprints or limiting the lot coverage to not to exceed that shown on that version of the plan.

So so this is where we get into the design of the actual project. And so if parking, if this off off street on site, parking is the driver that we hear from the neighbors. We're going to try to increase that on site. So. If we bind it to what's shown here, and then we are able to. Add 2 additional sites during or 2 additional parking spaces in design, say, at the front of the building, because now with the addition on the north side of the property being a new front porch. Working with planning is that the new front yard and so is 1 more parking space available in front of that existing front porch. So, those types of questions now. Become a little bit. more more challenging to do in this next phase of going to uh the design and through the permitting process which has all of these steps that are of concern will be addressed in this next phase so in the same instance so the 20 foot wide drive aisle originally it's a about a 10 10 and a half foot wide driveway but because we're now have more than five parking spaces we're required To have a 2 way drive file, so the current property is already non conforming because there were more than 5 parking spaces on this property when it was a commercial use. So we're trying to bring everything up together. And by 7, oh, well, we're only going to have this amount of square footage of paid surfaces. That could be. Limiting in and again, we are trying to go through this process in understanding what the community needs with neighbors concerns are as we develop this project and. we are constantly juggling all of these decisions where if we hear one idea, okay, well, what are the ramifications of that? And so in the same way of we need the 20 foot drive aisle, that 20 foot drive aisle may need to extend to the back in order for a fire truck to get back there. And we're pinching down to about 14 feet. So we may. Have to remove an existing exterior porch on that house to continue that 20 foot drive out. And that's something that we'll have to talk with the fire Marshall about and access. And so all of these things are this next round of information and design that has to happen before we get. before we move forward for permitting and construction. So there's still a number of things that will be resolved in this process. And so that's why we're in agreement with all of the recommendations that the planning department has put forth because we feel like that is a very fair representation of a challenging site that sat on the market for a very long time before it was like, hey, let's try to make something happen here. And so we're trying to make something happen here and we are like, we're doing this project and that's why we're here in front of you trying to make something happen. So I think that there are conditions in which you're just like, okay, well, let's bind it to this footprint. That becomes, that opens up different issues versus If it is very much, you're just like, there's 5300 square feet of of that point. If they are like. 5300 and like, 28 square feet is what is buildable across the entire point. 3 acre site, whether it's on a single story, 2 stories, 3 stores, but then with 3 stories, there are maximum height. So, like. The footprint is of a residential nature just by that point for and then with having the. Only residential use, we're not increasing traffic for a commercial building. It is it is going to be residential. So, I think that that's a long winded way of saying that there are so many other things that aren't. Able to be discussed at this moment without probably taking up everyone's evening. That are in that are part of the design. And so, I mean, we were trying to do a thoughtful project because I am an architect and. I'm a part of the development team, and we're trying to do this. Um, as citizens of that.

Thanks so. As I said, the last time this is my neighborhood, I know this. Street and this house as well. And Sarah is right. This is. This is ground true thing. If we were to do this in 5 points or Boulevard or new town. We would have this kind of zoning all over the place and spots because I live next door to a 7 bedroom multifamily house on Holman. Nobody would ever know. And I think. The conditions that we put on this alleviate a lot of the neighborhoods concerns about what this could be. It can't be a big. 3 story building for story building, it can't become something else. And if their main concern is the parking, I think, allowing the applicant the flexibility to be able to flesh that out to keep that main concern. If we just keep putting more on them to try to. Make it be what we want it to be or steer this. They're not going to ever get it done and it's going to sit there empty. So I'm in support of this. I think it's great that they're trying to keep the houses. If they can't keep the houses. I wouldn't want to put a burden on them that wouldn't be on a regular single family home within the neighborhood. And I feel like that's what we're asking. We're trying to do and I don't feel it's fair. So, I would be in support of second, seconding Sarah's motion. With the conditions that it'll have a motion.

Yeah, I'll make a motion. Okay. I had technically suggested a motion. Yeah, I really do. I think that staff's conditions are kind of an elegant solution to this property. I don't want to limit the developer. I, so I would like to make a motion that we recommend approval with staff's conditions.

Right?

You don't think so? Second.

Any other discussion I just want to point out that. Right now there are 3200 square feet built on this lot. The way that it's written right now, you could, you could basically add another back building to this lot in the front. But you wouldn't be able to get parking. Who knows? I mean, you could then make the middle building 2 stories and smaller and add your parking there.

It's still might be 3 units and 7 bedrooms.

Yeah, but you still could do it. You put 1, 1 bedroom in the front. And that's 2000 square foot, but. Like, I'm not well, Alex.

No, I understand what you're saying to. Go back and do all of that. Which makes me nervous, but the, I do just want to clarify on this ground truth thing. And connecting it to the future land use. Those were typically neighborhoods, like, everybody got ground truth, not just spot here and there and. It's I want to get the, I maybe don't know this. It sounded like you were saying 5 points has RMT scattered throughout.

Is that saying that if they were to actually. Have zoning that was representative of what was going on in those homes. There's multi family there. You have duplexes you have triplexes, right?

Okay. I just, I thought that was just a shocker. I didn't hear that. And also, anyway, I just wanted to clarify how the future land use went across with ground truth.

All right, let's do let's do this 1. All right, Gary. Yes. Please yes, yes, Paul. Yes.

Yes.

Uh, Sam's.

And Lord, yes.

All right 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6 years and a few days motion carries. You just want to get your land.

I'm sorry yeah, I needed to be to 2 votes.

So that was that was the motion to change the feature land use from neighborhood residential to residency residential with staff's conditions.

And I think that would be the reason to make another motion.

Or so another motion for the reason request. So, assuming that 1st motion related.

To the future land use, so make a 2nd motion to approve the zoning conditions. All right.

All those in favor, raise your hand. Say aye. All right. All right. Great item to 940 college having a new.

Okay.

Sorry.

All righty, this is another old business 940 college Avenue. It's a master plan development. There is no future land use map change requested. For this plan development, there is a zoning map change request from employment, industrial to residential. The site is currently used as a concrete masonry unit plant. So quality block. Located on college as another thing that is unique about this site as we talked about last time is it is surrounded by railroads tracks, which limits the parcel and we can also see, I mean, it is everything we've got going on. We've got a lot of industrial buildings, not a lot of trees and it's an active site. Uh, some photos of the current site, but this is on college at facing East. We've got some topography that's looked upward as we're going for as we enter the site from college. These are some views of me climbing behind the fields at park, giving you some overhead views again. We've got a little bit of topography going on. We see the railroad here and this is actually a slope increase for these. This tree line is. Again, looking at this topography along the south boundary of the parcel, and this is a little bit of what's going on on the inside. Again, we've got railroad tracks right here. We can see the industrial use currently happening on the site. This is just from a service road facing northeast. A little bit of context in the neighborhood. These are the homes on Elizabeth Street that is adjacent to the applicant parcel on the north. You can see the scale of the development happening already. Part of this again, no future land use change is currently slated on the future land use map as mixed density residential. This proposal would align with that definition. So there's no change as part of the application we've received. But there would be a zoning change again. Currently it's used for concrete masonry work, which falls under employment, industrial, switching this over to as part of the plan development to allow for residential use. A little bit of environmental areas, not quite touching the parcel, but there was enough on the street buffer close by. I wanted you all to have that context. And this is the plan that we received as the application again, we can see there is a mix of uses. A big part of the application was focused on keeping this development and scale with the surrounding neighborhoods. So, you can see, we have a few larger buildings as well as some smaller options. There is a kind of central onsite amenity proposed 1 change from that 1st plan to now is fairly certain the pool was not a part of that 1st application we received. So that's a new addition. But a lot of the other design elements are largely the same. We're not seeing a lot of shift from that 1st review. Um, so with not a lot of shift in that site plan, there's also not a lot of shift in our staff analysis. We believe it is compatible with the 2023 comprehensive plan. It's redeveloping an existing site, which aligns with our goals. It is removing an intense industrial use and providing a transition from the surrounding residential areas. And the commercial mix of downtown that kind of stepping down approach that we've heard not only in our comp plan, but also in our future land use efforts, it encourages development close to downtown with the county counties interested in seeing, and it increases and diversifies housing types available, which is also an ongoing conversation for the housing needs in the county. Echoing that we find staff finds it compatible with the 2045 future land use map. maintains the mixed density residential classification that exists and moves the parcel more in alignment with those future land use goals than the current zoning of EI. Similarly, there is some consistency with other adopted Athens-Clarke County plan studies and programs. The Greenway Network Plan and Network Plan Max have proposed trails that would be close to this parcel. So, seeing a mixed density residential use could allow folks to have more access to those future amenities. Also wanted to mention part of housing and community developments consolidated plan is to have more housing and more affordable housing available. Of course, we can't analyze that without details on what the pricing of these units would be. We just want to note it could potentially align with that based on those details. Um, and again, this is within the East downtown tag tag number 4. so there are opportunities potentially for this applicant to partner with that that tag committee. Staff finds that it's partially compatible with the zoning map and ordinance. There are 2 waivers and 1. Accommodation that was presented in the application staff does support both waivers that you receive the conserved tree canopy. We wanted to make 1 note on there that the application doesn't propose any additional planted canopy to cover the conserved canopy loss. We do see that as an offer in these applications. So we support the waiver, but just wanted to note that that could be a potential condition or something that the commission could look at the block size and orientation. We support that request due to the railroad at topography, the site. We talked through that a little bit last time and applicant did confirm. They tried a few different design approaches and what we see before us is what works best for the site. And then also, we do have a little bit of follow up questions still about the design accommodation that was requested as part of the application. We do feel like we need some more detail on the scope of those anticipated changes. Um, and also would say, if design flexibility is approved, we would recommend limiting the lot coverage to 65%, which matches up the proposed current plan. So, allowing for that flexibility, but blocking in a little bit, because we do want to see some of that commitment to finding site plan as part of the PD. So, based on that, we do think that mixed mixed density residential aligns with future land use vision again, that transitioning that stepping down and providing housing options that the county is looking for. But we do have a few of those unresolved staff concerns specifically around the trees and also the scope of the design flexibility request. So, with that, our recommendation is to table so that we can work out those details. The applicants, and so we have specific recommended conditions for that. If you didn't move forward with an approval. other thing i did not talk about is these trestle modifications which i know the applicant will speak to you in more detail um that was something we saw change in the application as well there was mentioned there's been coordination with um one of the railroads to potentially raise one of the bridges they're exploring a few options there we think As a condition of approval, we would need more assurances of where we are at with that. Um, what those agreements are looking like, what approach the applicant wants to move forward with. Um, we also would like to see again, if the design flexibility is improved, um, looking that lot coverage to 65%. Uh, so that concludes the staff report and, uh, I will sit down.

Thank you. Now, we'll hear from the applicant.

Brett name 100 some value studio being the architect. I'm going to cut my time short. It's going to help me 2 and a half minutes. Maybe 3. so try not to speak too fast because Joseph has a lot of things that talk about somebody's condition. Can you speak louder? I apologize. That happens to me all the time. Joseph's going to speak on some items for me for us here. I want to talk to you about a few things we didn't get to talk about last time, which is the mixed. Unit types, the type of different types of housing we. We focused here on a lot of 1 and 2 better units. We only have 156 units total 96 of them. 62% are 1 and 2 better units. Some are outages and duplexes and. Almost all of them are designed to be in that middle center area. We also have 6 buildings that are 3 bedrooms and those are the F buildings that you see throughout the site. Some in the front, some through the middle. Those are scaled like some of those. Um, residential units, like, in the earth fair fire department area and 5 points, we tried to go from little cottages to duplexes to that scale. And we have a few larger buildings that are lining the edges as you can see 1 quick thing. Just since that Ellie mentioned, what are these design accommodations requested on the last page of your reports? Item number 1 at the bottom. Wrote all that out outside tweaking paralysis and maybe we need to move a spot to choose that item. Number 1. Is the negative for that Joseph can speak a little bit about that as well, but I didn't want you to hopefully. I hope you guys really like this and we work very hard on this, trying to create that differential scale throughout here. We, we've got a little bit of frontage on college and we make point to keep very small there. Kind of wind the smaller units back through the middle of the pool by the way was in the 1st. Iteration, the thing that we changed in that area that may have been a little confusing is also on that last page in our design accommodations. We asked for the ability for 1 of those pickleball courts and probably the 1 on the right to have flexibility to change it. Maybe to a turf court, or maybe to a stand volleyball. We don't really know. Like, you're going to probably do some interviews and figure out what we think potential residents might like. So that that's really the only thing that changed in there other than maybe we made that blue and it wasn't. I'm going to go ahead and stop because I think. We talked about the left a lot the last time. Um, hopefully you guys like that and I'll be here. Yeah.

Joseph with SPG. Thank you for your time. My goal is to. Hopefully work through some of the clarifications that are needed so we can get an approval tonight instead of tabling. If it is okay, I have some slightly modified and if I could pass these out. So just everybody has the language for these conditions. That is okay. So there's 4 conditions into our.

And all in favor say, I pass those around.

I will talk to them while those are getting passed around. There are 3 different areas that planning 1 and clarification on the trellis. The tree management plan, and then the design flexibility. So I'll try to go through these relatively quickly here. It's just for clarity for everyone. There are 2 train trestles on college, right? There is the trestle on the South. You see the 3 lines there that is the active line. And then there is a trestle on the North, which is just to the Northwest of this property here. And that's owned by Athens rail and that was not active. Right? we can't fix the the trestle to provide um the fire fires uh marshall access to our site um on that southern trestle but we have been in negotiations discussions with athens rail athens clark county to provide uh the 13-6 clearance that is needed currently it is 13 feet clear on that northern truss so We have 2 viable options, but there are a lot of parties involved here, Athens, Clark county's attorney attorney, the developer's attorney. They have been looking at historical data, like, ownership going back 100 years. And this process is going to take 6 months most likely to get to the bottom of this. But there are 2 viable options here. 1 is lower the road or the other is adjust the. Adjust the trestle and what you see on the modified condition here, the condition that was in the staff report was to modify the trestle. We changed the language to just give flexibility of lowering. The road is the best option. If we table, I mean, we're still looking at 6 months here before we really get that solved. So that's the TMP. We provided basically arborist detailed calculations, illustrating that 99% of our trees were in compliance with the open soil surface. So there were a few trees that were 3 square feet off in some areas and. We've agreed that we can work those out during plans review and we'll do better at giving detailed calculations for every 1 of our trees next time. So it's easy to review and everybody knows where we're in compliance there. Barbers did request to add some additional plan and canopy because we talked about there's actually lots of room to plant trees here. And we are asking for a conserved canopy waiver. So we are agreeing to this condition to go from 45%. Which is the required minimum of what we're showing here to 50%. It's adding like 15 more trees. There is space for that with the open soil surface there and we are good with that condition that the arborist has has discussed. And finally, the planning condition requesting to limit us to 65% pervious shown. I do believe we've given mentioned the explanation for why we want design flexibility. It's for improvements for maybe some additional pedestrian areas. Maybe some additional outdoor gathering spaces. We've got to think about transformers. We've got to think about by cracks and all this stuff comes during during detailed plans. So that's a request. We did a detailed calc on where we are with impervious right now. We're at sixty five point four percent. So if we limit ourselves to sixty five percent, that is going to be problematic. Seventy five is what is allowed with arm three. We are willing to accept a condition to meet. You got me planning halfway at seventy percent. If that is amiable to you, that would give us the flexibility we need. And I think that comfort planning is looking for that. This plan is not going to change very much. Yeah, our goal is to get approval tonight. Appreciate that consideration. Got any questions on details for me to answer questions.

Thank you. Anybody here to speak in support of the application. Anybody here to speak in opposition to the application. Okay, you're done sir.

Um, a question for the applicant, which 1. I'll say the question and you can decide who will answer. Would a table tonight. Negatively impact y'all sometimes that happens where we get a table can. People recommend denial, just don't table us, anything but table us. And so my question for y'all is would a table cause a severe problem for y'all?

Take a shot at that and tell me if I hit what you're getting at.

We have a little bit of time. Not a lot, but just because how things work and carries and so on. Ideally, we think we've covered all of the conditions that warranted the. Bringing up the table and everything we've worked with, I've been talking with Mark about this forever and everything we've heard is everybody. And planning actually likes this project and the table was just on some little technicalities actually have those technicalities worked out. Some of the comments, like, from and so on were actually leftovers from the previous staff report. They didn't get changed. It wasn't that they were still comments. So, I think that and Joseph knows a lot more about this. So maybe they'll do better, but I think we would love for you guys. If we can talk through each of these, we need to bring up some of the rest of the staff that they have. You know, information on this, we can maybe talk through that and you might see that past those items that. Causing potential table so.

1, quick thing we have scheduled a meeting on August 18th for the tad committee to talk about this. There are tad funds that is interested in and maybe participating to get some more life safety concerns resolved here. So we would like to have approval going into that and to keep keep it forward with our schedule as it is.

Thank you.

Um, yeah, I said that, like, this project last time we saw it, and I still like it. It seems like a very good use of that parcel. And I like the step down density as you move away from downtown toward. Some mixed departments and homes and it seems like a really good. Use a difficult. Piece of land, so. I'll make a motion. I will make a motion to approve with the. Versions of the conditions that were passed out to us by the applicant today.

Awesome. Okay. Any other discussion. Future land use or there's only 1.

I'll just.

All right, so all those in favor, raise your hand and say, aye.

Aye.

All those opposed. Raise your hand. All right. Thank you. All right. Next item number 3, 1295, 1465. 1465 a U. S. 29.

All right, this is staff report for 1465, 1465, a 1200 and 1295 us 29 highway North. Otherwise known as final states special use. Request in agricultural residential zone, there is no zoning and future land use change request. The core of the request is to add 110 additional paths for mobile homes within the existing Pinewood States neighborhood. Updated plans we received for this round included fire suppression lines and hydrant locations, which was a big part of the conversation. Also, as a reminder, this is related to, but not dependent on another special use, which will be right after this country corners unity, which is directly. So, reminder, this is the site that we are speaking of here is the highway 29. you can see the existing manufactured home use. These are the mobile homes. There is a large parcel is also included in this request. That would be housing a lot of the additional homes. And this is some of the existing streets and homes in pine woods currently, just to give you an idea of the scale. That we talked about last time we'll speak about again, that is how the proposed essential paths agree with scale of the neighborhood. Again, looking at future land use, there would not be a change with this request and same with the zoning since it's a special use looking to extend an existing legal nonconformance. And in terms of environmental areas on the parcel, we do have a stream going through and some wetlands to consider. And this is the revised plan that we received is a little bit harder to read than last time, because there's a lot more detail going on, which is what we score. Um, so they were a little bit more clear on the expansion areas that are part of this proposal. So we have the applicants requested for additional residential pads right here in the front of the development as well as in the back. And then there are a few homes that are also scattered throughout. Um, there are storm water facilities and, um, but there is a need for a little bit more clarity, which we heard from on that. Um. And I'm also, and I believe I have another map in here that will show the hydrants and the water lines for fire suppression. Again, larger picture of all the applications you've received give context. So we are focusing here in the pine woods area. This is country corners, which we will hear next. And then this reason will be coming up next month. Um, so here proposed fire suppression lines, hydrant locations as well as Senator Terry sewer. These are details we requested from the applicant and they did come through with that request. So this would be adding hydrants throughout the front of the existing neighborhood as well as in the new residential pads and in the back as well. And that was. Coordinated with the fire Marshall's office and has met approval for their standards. Um, this is a kind of on the ground. This is what it currently looks like the area in the back of the development where they are proposing a decent amount of additional pads. And then this is going to be that front area closer to the highway also where a decent amount of the pads are proposed. Staff analysis is that the application is partially compatible with the comprehensive plan again, showing those existing homes, the homes that are proposed as part of this are of a similar type and existing scale with the current community, which would support growth while minimizing financial displacement risk for existing residents. That aligns very much with Athens Clark county goals of housing security for folks. A combination of resident owned and least to own agreements also supports goals for housing pricing information would help us accurately assess that affordability. Of course, developing undeveloped land rather than redevelopment of. Approving or excuse me, it does not align with the comprehensive plans. It would be developing undeveloped land and is not dealing with existing structures. Also, there was a little lack of clarity on water management treatment facilities, which again, we heard from on. This is just some examples of new homes next to existing homes to show again how it would mesh in with the existing neighborhood. And these are some of the proposed new manufactured homes that were submitted as part of the application. It is incompatible with the future land use map again, this is a request to expand a legal non performing use. So not conform with that future land use designation of a major border rule or neighborhood sensor. And also by nature, it is incompatible with the zoning map and ordinance for the same reasons. Want to do a little bit of math for y'all the request for 110 additional pads would be for raise it to 415 total residential pads. in the about 70 acres of developed area for this application, which works out to a density of about 5.9 residential pads per developed acre, which falls within our manufactured home design standards. Just wanted to give you a little bit of context. It is partially compatible with other plan studies and programs adopted by the county. specifically with affordable housing investment again the mix of rent-to-own models and rental models would apply with that developing homes of similar type to help limit financial displacements and also again staff would encourage the applicant to explore inclusionary zoning opportunities to amp up that benefit somewhat and there are no adopted plans for sidewalk or bicycle infrastructure but there is currently a bus route that is would continue service to the Pinewood area. In terms of special use criteria, mostly we are meeting all that criteria. The few things that I did, the one thing I did note is the lack of stormwater management and treatment facilities and also a loss of conserved tree canopies. There are just a few environmental concerns still with the request. Um, and the overarching recommendation for this entire application was big part of our conversation last time as well is very much tied to domestic water service for these residents. Um. So, in order for we are asking, if you move forward with approval, the condition would be domestic water service shall be designed and approved by a CC monitor installed and accepted by a CC prior to permitting for any new units residential pads. the Pinewood Estates and Country Corners mobile home communities. Here again is that site plan and thus concludes the staff report.

Thank you. Now we'll hear from the applicants.

Good evening, Jeff Carter with partner engineering, 10, 10 commerce drive in Bogart. I did just want to point out 1 thing on the staff report on the overall location map article to the South. We're just taking a small portion of that. It's not the whole parcels that you're listening to this or seeing that it doesn't include that whole parcel. Mike Warren and Ed Barber are here. They're representing the ownership group. So if I can't answer any questions, I'm sure they will be able to. They're sitting in the back. Let's address, I think, the biggest issue on everybody's mind and that's the water situation. So since our last meeting, permits have been obtained from Appleton County to replace the water system in Pinewood Estates. Also to add fire protection, fire mains, fire hydrants, that sort of thing. In reality, we've been working on it for about eight months. But engineers like me take a long time permitting takes a while. So it's not something that we just dawned on us that need to be done. But the owners have been committed to replacing the water system all along. Had a pre construction meeting with public utilities. Pay fees, and I've got receipts here if you'd like to see them paid the fees, had the meetings, got a contract signed. We got 1 more. Pre construction meeting with transportation works once we get past that water will be replaced in Pinewood estates. Okay. So everybody gets new domestic water. They're also get much needed fire protection. And so that is coming. That is imminent. These guys are not waiting on this special use approval to do that. They've been actively pursuing that for quite quite some time. It is expensive. It's it's over around a 1.5 dollars. Every construction project overseen costs more than that than you think. So it's going to be at least a 1.5 dollars. How do you, how do you pay for that? This group is not, they don't have stacks of monies like most people laying around. So we have to be able to offset those costs somehow. So part of what they're wanting to do is increase the density to pay for the infrastructure upgrades. So that's a big part of this. The other issue that we talked about last month was Getting clarity on fire protection, we've met swapped emails with the fire marshals office. And I would like to just read you a quote from an email received from the division chief fire Marshall. I have reviewed the plans for the Pinewood and country corner space use permit based on the information provided. The proposed water supply and fire protection infrastructure satisfy the fire Marshall's office requirement. For this stage of the project, so what we did was after our last meeting, we met with the fire department. We talked about how to get more. Fire hydrants within the park, and we've added a, but there's actually a separate sheet in these plans. So, where the fire hydrants are going to go in the expansion areas. So, just wanted to make that note. The other issue that was brought up was the traffic. Since our last meeting, we've done a comprehensive traffic study. We've actually studied every intersection from country corners all the way up to Highway 72. And so it was a really expensive traffic study. It was like 15 grand. Went through a lot of the analysis, submitted that to Transportation and Public Works. uh they reviewed it and i can just read you quickly their um their synopsis after reviewing the tia which is the traffic study submitted by the applicant tpw shared the report with gdot and has arrived at the following assessment the impacts of the additional traffic loads from this project do not have substantial impact on the levels of service with the intersection at country corners drive and trail creek drive and highway 29. And so that study has been done has been vetted. It's been reviewed and that's it does not change the level of service there at the at the intersection. So, the other the other factor, I think that's significant for for us here in Athens is the affordable housing component. Um, this, um, by allowing this density. Um, we will be as staff said around 6 building pads per acre. You look in the code for the manufacturer housing development in chapter 916, it allows 8 building pads per acre. And so we're still significantly, even with the addition, we're still significantly below what could be approved with 8 building pads per acre. The cost of a 3 bedroom unit is between 90 and 120,000 dollars. So, you can't obviously go buy a house for that stick built house. And so it's very affordable. Very affordable for, and they're nice that they're, they're options to to purchase outright. or there's an option to lease to own. And these manufactured homes, a lot of the materials, especially on the exterior, are the same kind of materials that are used on stick-built homes. So there's pictures in our packet that reflects the theme and what they look like. And they're nice looking units. And there's even examples of ownership here that have actually sold them for more than they paid for them. So it is in some cases an increased value there. And so the corrective actions in the report, I'll just briefly touch on those. and really it came down to the water situation. And so again, the owners, the ownership group have signed contracts with the actual people that are putting the water lines in, and they are chomping at the bit to get started. There's many things you got to go through to get to that point, but it will start as soon as we have the Transportation and Public Works pre-con. Once we get past that, everything's signed, agreements have been made, everything's been permitted. And really what this is is an improvement to a community that's been here for a long, long time. I grew up in Athens, and it's been here as long as I think, as long as I've been alive. So this ownership group is not a group from New York that bought this for an investment. They are hands-on. They're out there all the time. Um, and so, yeah, they're all all the time calling me saying, hey, we need to do this. So they do that. So they're, they're definitely hands on developers. Um, and just to kind of, I was really surprised at this. So I asked him twice to verify this. But in this can be verified, but they've hauled out 100 tons of debris from the park. That's a lot. Uh, they followed off over 1200 old tires. And so this just proves, what does this prove? It proves that they are very interested in this community and want to improve it. It's revitalizing an older community, and there's already a substantial amount of redevelopment and revitalization that has been going on for several years since they purchased the park. You can't do it all at one time. It's a big park, so you can't do it overnight. It takes time, so we would appreciate your supports. This will allow for funding much needed obviously water replacement and that's going to happen anytime. It's going to bring affordable housing for families. It's not students living out there. Their families. And it'll allow them to continue the revitalization of a part that's been there a long, long time. So research is for be glad to try to answer any questions that you that you have. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone here to speak in support of the application? Oh, good evening there.

My name is George Barnes. I'm a proud owner of a new house that's been there 3 years and the Pinewood estate. They've done very good extensive work and cleaning up. And freshening up the security community as well. The only thing that might be a little issue right now is storm water. It does drain very naturally though. Topography of the area, it does drain for a while. I can attest to that living there. The water has been the issue, but will be rectified. So. Like, to see a green light, be able to put forward to get that all moving and. More bill, thank you.

Anybody else to speak in support of the.

My name is and I'm here to represent representing that community. We're very glad to hear that. Well, they're very glad to hear that the water is going to be fixed and it's already working. We have received emails with these updates. So, yeah, I mean, we've been waiting for this for 20 years. And I think everybody feels a little bit afraid, you know, knowing that. Is something that is going to happen and finally, we won't be receiving more wider donations. And for a while, we're very glad in that. And yeah, just looking forward for that to happen and to finish and sell the new things for that to start.

Hi, I'm Mickey.

I didn't know when to come up to be honest, because I want to speak in support of approving the special zoning request. But I would like to ask you all to consider approving it at a lower density than is being requested. Some may be wondering why I'm here tonight. I do not live in that area. I live on the west side of Athens. The community members in those neighborhoods, many of them are feeling very vulnerable in this time for multiple reasons. I believe they are vulnerable and so are not able and willing to be in this space to speak on their own behalf. There is also some concern, I believe, about the possibility of retaliation against some of these who are feeling vulnerable if they continue to speak out too much on their own behalf. And so I'm here to speak on their behalf. Um, I want to express appreciation, of course, for the many improvements that have had the investors that landowners have made to their property there for their commitment to get the internal water infrastructures corrected. They say, as they recently said, they currently have those funds and plan to have those repairs made for the current residents by the end of the year. But a couple of things that we're just asking for you all to keep in mind in this recommendation. 1st. We keep saying these tenants at Pinewood and unfortunately, my comments are also including country corners. We're calling them homeowners, they own mobile homes that they do on the mobile homes they live in, but they do not on the land and mobile homes. I know there's apparently been some exceptions, but they don't hold equity and that's well known. So, if the tenants, when they're ready to resell the option, the possibility that they have earned value in the mobile home is very low. And additionally, if they want to make upgrades to their home and want to get a mortgage. They're not able to borrow against the equity of the land, the land and the equity is held. In fact, by the landowners, the investor. So I want us to be mindful of this kind of telling this as well. Home ownership opportunities. They do not get the benefits of home ownership that those of us who live in the single families on neighborhoods, for example, on our homes and the land enjoy. They do get the burden though, because if there's a problem with the mobile home. It's on them to repair, right? And then at any point, if the landowners ask them to leave and the burden of the cost of moving the mobile home, they would have to submit to that and find that. So. I want us to just be transparent and really clear what this is and but keep in mind that we do truly want the investors, the landowners to make money. Obviously, if they're making real money, then the whole community is sustained because this is a tenant landowner arrangement. Um, so we've, um, they've asked for, we know special permission for the plots to install a total of 279 again. I'm sorry, because I'm talking about both Pinewood and country corners. So we ask you all to consider recommending approval for the special zoning request, but at a lower density that has been requested. We ask you to seek a balance in the approved additional units permitted so that the investors will be able to earn additional revenue as they are requesting. We do not. Disagree with their ability to earn revenue.

Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening. I'm here in support of the powers development as well with the conditions. That the water is taken care of and it sounds like from the engineer and the developers that there were plans on the way to do that. We're giving them a good faith effort that they are going to follow through with that. Regardless of this approval tonight or denial. I just want to give a little bit of context to the water situation. I've been working and advocating and working alongside neighbors in the Pinewoods community since about 2017. More recently, I was able to do a project there, an art project to the Pinewoods library. While I was there on a daily basis, I saw pallets of water being dropped off. Um, you know, during addition and adding additional units in the community, there's a disruption in the water. They have to cut the water mains off. So, residents have to be subjected to that and sometimes there's notification. But at the same time, if you don't have access to water for cooking, cleaning yourself, using the restroom, it can cause a huge inconvenience. And so I'm glad that they are talking about rectifying that situation again. It's been a historical issue in this neighborhood and in this community. I was grateful to the developers for allowing us to have a conversation in a meeting and I learned a lot learning a lot about their plans as well as what the community needs. So we are asking for those things and. You know, I'm a homeowner owner myself, you know, and I understand that sometimes property taxes go up, you know, like development and nearby neighborhoods. And so I want to say also that, you know, something like this is coming to a neighborhood around me and. Oh, and that same breath, I understood that residents will be getting clean access and consistent access to water and I would definitely make sure that. You know, when my, my property taxes going up a little bit. To to help take care of other residents. Um, and so hopefully this issue will pass. And, uh, yeah, we can keep it moving, but again, it's a good faith effort. No, there are no binding agreements with the community. And so I'm hoping that the developers and engineers hold true to their word. Thank you all for letting me speak.

Thank you.

Anyone else to speak in support of the application. Good evening.

I met Barbara, one of the owners of the property. I just want to correct a couple of things that were said. The idea that they don't, that the homes depreciate and are not worth anything is old information, incorrect, their reports. Having owned over 400, well, sorry, over 200 something homes that we run on the lease to own program, we've never lost money on a home. When a tenant has to leave medical reasons, death in the family. Occasionally very rarely an eviction that we have to do because we get paid. We take the homes back and we've never lost money on the home. So, I think another very important thing is 80% of our tenants live there in the park, and they pay less than 600 dollars a month. But the life rent, the insurance, the garbage, the water. Because they already own their homes, they've owned those homes for years. So, this idea that you don't experience the benefit of ownership, because you're all manufactured home. That was probably correct prior to the HUD regulations that were put in in 1978, 1982. Now, and especially because we buy homes that are upgraded that. Full US, I mean, full OSB wrapped homes, farm sinks, stainless steel appliances, hardy plank siding. You know, we buy a quality home. There are cheaper homes to buy. And I think Jeff said the number of, you know, 970 to 110,000 is our home range. We could drop that down as low as 50 to 65. But that home is not a home that you or I, we would want to put somebody in, you know, plastic tubs, plastic fixtures, thin linoleum. So our homes are built to last and built to stand value. People do make They did benefit from the ownership of the home over time. I think those were the main points. Oh, the water system, the gentleman's right. We have water problems. We inherited them. Well, we got it. Somebody said to us once, well, we didn't have these problems before and you did, but you didn't know it. The former owners, because it's on a well, didn't repair the water lines. You wouldn't believe the leaks we found. We've repaired over 200 leaks in Pinewood. We finally came to the conclusion about 14 months ago that we just got to rebuild the whole water system. It's just what we got to do. Working with the fire marks sort of needed the fire hydrants in there. Like, well, now's the time to do it. So we've already got the money. It's in the bank. We've left the contracts and we're going forward with it. So we acknowledge there is a big problem with the water there. We couldn't even find it. We can't even find all the lines. And so we just got to replace it all and we've signed the contracts to do that. The work will start. We've already ordered the material, the, the ductile iron disorder today. So we're moving forward with that. It will happen. Thank you.

Anyone else to speak in support of the application. Anyone to speak in opposition to the application. Okay, hearing none. What was the start of? I have a question. I just wanted to.

Could you all put the map that showed that or the water and blue? I guess my question is. Oh, does this represent all existing and proposed new. That's having both sewer and water.

Yes, it does.

Okay. And so even though, like, so the mobile homes that are existing on kind of the right half of that. A plan, what is what sewer line are they tying you to.

They are tied into the Athens Clark County sewer line runs along the. The top of the drawing there, there's a public line that runs a dead ends of country corners. You can kind of see it on there and we're a little laser pointer.

We can help you absolutely.

Colorblind, so I'm sure you try to. If the storyline comes right through here. I'm sorry through here then comes up. Now, I messed up all right hold on. 1 more, yeah, and it goes up there. So. When we bought the part, there was an oxidation fund. And we connected to the public sewer. We're currently on a health flow meter and we get filled monthly. We spent the money we. 250,000 dollars or more then we spent the money and close out sedation by. you'll see coming up in a little bit, Country Corners is still on an oxidation pot, but it's on public water. So we have fine wood on private water, public sewer, Country Corners on public water, private sewer. Our plans are to connect it to the public sewer and we've already been working with the staff and the planning department on that as well. We will bear the cost of those things. Okay, and the water line, just to be clear, so this, the blue borderline, that's all a ditched up the line. The water system will still be private. It'll be master meter. We will have multiple meters in the part in itself and we work staff on it. But then we put in the lines, because we, we wanted to give it to the county, but we can't do that because we, there's not enough room to put the easements they need to service public lines. And we're directional boring a lot of it just because it's, there's just no way to get it in there any other way.

Are you directional boring both sewer and water?

No, the sewers there. We don't have to do anything with the sewer. The sewer system is in for both parts. All we've got to do is connect the country corners. If we're done when we convert to the. Water public water, we will go to, um, we'll do away with the outflow meter on the sewer.

Okay, and so the sewer that we're seeing on the left hand side, that's what. The 1 that says proposed sanitary sewer. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Sorry.

Yeah, that's that's the service. So that services these units here in these units here, and it comes down and goes through. Um, Mike, he was out there, I mean, they micro measured everything to make sure we could get a 20 foot easement to get that sewer line in. And that was really with Jeff that was really the. Only place we could get it through and get it down and get the easement that we needed to get to the public works for that.

Okay, great.

Thank you. Okay.

Um, I would like to make a motion to approve with staff's conditions. Mission.

Hello. I'll give you the next 1.

All right all those in favor raise your hand and that's good.

Sorry. Yes. Um, sir, staff.

In addition, is that the corrective action that's listed 7 and 8 or. That is probably do you want to put it on the screen?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

That's sort of taking those corrective actions and putting them in a condition. Is that what that?

Okay. Yeah. So that was just, I guess my question is that does address the corrective action. Okay.

So I have another question. I thought I just heard that the water service to the individual pads was going to be private. This says domestic water service shall be designed and approved by ACC and accepted by ACC.

So the design would be accepted.

Oh, not the lines? Correct.

That you have to address that. Would you like some clarification from the property?

Well, he said that it was going to be a private. Water system, but it's connected to public.

Do you want to? Yeah, there is a big difference there. So, right now this is a private water system. There's no public water inside the park. What's going to happen is we'll bring in public water. There'll be the public fire hydrants throughout the park. But once it goes from the public fire hydrant to from the, from the meter to the, to the home, it's it's. And so, but there'll be no, the water supply will be a public water supply, but the water lines, the distribution lines will be. Yeah, there'll be distribution lines to be private. The domains will be. That's right.

The water bill goes property owner, not the individual. Yeah.

Yes, but we individually meter, we put metron meters in when we bought the park. So, everybody gets built on their own, uh, use the way to do it. And we replaced every leader and both well, and. And added in country corners, but everybody said, so they're all.

Anybody to the other thoughts question. All right, so all those in favor, raise your hand and say, aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? All right. All right, so item number 4, 1495, 1599, 1525. US Highway North.

All right, staff report for 1495, 1499, 1525 US highway 29 North otherwise known as a country. So, again, this is another specialist request in an agricultural residential zone. There's also commercial rural zoning in this request. This 1 is asking for 169 additional pads for mobile homes in the existing country corners neighborhood. Again, it is related. but not dependent on the case you just heard for Pinewood Estates. This is the parcels included in this request. So, just for a little bit of context, Pinewoods that we just discussed is right here to the south. You can see this is a little bit of a heavier wooded site. The oxidation pond, which we will mention a little bit, is located right here. We've got Highway 29 north, up the planning descent as well. And then just to point out, there is a parcel here in the middle that is not included in the requirements. All right, current existing conditions inside the neighborhood. There's a playground and kind of an example of existing streets off the main entrance to the neighborhood as it exists. No request to change future land use. And also no request on zoning as well again, because it's looking to extend a legal non conformance and environmental areas oxidation pond again. So we do have some streams and some environmental areas running through the requested parcels. This is the current plan. Um, same story as with time was a little bit harder to read at this scale, but it is giving us more detail that the staff requested. So, the expansion areas are highlighted. So the concentration of the pads are going to be both on this side of the parcels that are adjacent to the highway. Both of these are currently wooded areas and then there are also additional pads tucked in and scattered a little bit throughout. In for context, so we're talking country corners. This is pilots that we just discussed showing how those interplay. I'm looking at the proposed site for the additional residential pads. This is looking at that area that is on the South of the site. We're looking on the North access road or facing West. You see, there's a good amount of wooded area where this proposed pads would be. Um, right here, we were looking at the post side of additional residential pads. That would be kind of tough behind this amenity area. Again, mostly that is a wooded area currently. Death analysis similar to pine woods is going to be partially compatible with our 2023 comprehensive plans. For the same reasons, proposed homes of similar type of the existing community can support growth while minimizing risk for financial displacement for existing residents. A combination of resident owned lease to own agreements. Again, it's looking at the development of undeveloped land rather than redeveloping an existing structure. Um, and then there is impact on existing infrastructure specifically here with, um, we've got some comments on storm water again, um, and store, which need to be addressed. Examples of new homes next to older home showing that proposed mix. That's part of the application. And these are those new manufactured homes included in the proposal that we received to give you an idea of scale and massing. It's going to be incompatible with the future land use map as well as incompatible with the zoning map and ordinance again, because this is looking to extend an existing legal nonconforming use. We also recognize that didn't say this last time, but we recognize the legal nonconforming status kind of shows the limitations of our existing code. This is an opportunity to bring this property into code compliance specifically for the health safety and general welfare of our residents. Little bit of the math Sam is last time this is the application is requesting 169 additional pads, which totals us out to 351 total pads across about 78.7 or 68.7 acres of developed area. That's going to bring us to the total density of 5.1 residential pads for developed acre, which is within the design standards of 8 units per acre in our current code. It's gonna be partially compatible with ACC government plan studies and programs. Again, for all of the same reasons we just discussed, Pinewoods. And looking at special use criteria specifically for country corners, there was some additional notes specifically around transportation. Again, it meets the criteria for the special use, but there was an added note from TPW just noting that the corridor of U. S. 29 highway in high injury network. So there are some safety concerns just to note with the application and again, making a note of the tree canopy loss and a suggestion to maintain a 10% tree canopy with this proposal. Our staff recommendation is to approve with the following conditions. I'm looking for storm water management treatment facilities to be provided for comments we received from also again, this is the community that is needing sewer access. So sewer access must be provided with adequate spacing between utility lines, which is specified in comments we received from public utilities department. And again, this carries the same condition as time woods and country corners are related, but not dependent. But it would carry the condition that domestic water service needs to be. Designed approved, bonded, installed and accepted for Pinewood.

And there's our site plan and thus concludes the staff report.

All right. Thank you. No, we hear from the applicants.

All right, so, you know, I'm Jeff Carter, 1010 Commerce, driving a BOVAR, a friend of Carter Engineering Consultants, we're civil engineers on the project. There's a lot of similarities with this in Pinewood, so I will try to be brief, but there are a few things I did want to point out. First of all, This park is already connected to public water, and so that's a big difference between this and Pinewood Estates, the water issues. There are no water issues. There was, however, fire protection issues. And so, just like Pinewood Estates and Country Corners, we met with the fire marshal's office. We swapped emails. We had meetings since our last meeting with you guys. And the ownership group has shown on the plans new fire hydrants in the expansion areas. And so I just wanted to make sure that it's just the same as Pinewood Estates as far as the the fire hydrants go. Same thing with the traffic study. The traffic study that was submitted included both parks, Pinewood and Country Corner, so we have the exact same outcome as we saw in Pinewood Estates. the same type units in country corners that we just talked about in Pinewood Estates. Same type of mix, same type of call structure. I did want to point out one thing that I should have pointed out in Pinewood Estates is when you see these units here, this is not an overnight bring in 100 units. The owners, based on the market feel like, and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, around 20 a year. And so it's not like this is going to happen overnight. So I just wanted to make sure that to.

To point that out, if we only sell 20 a year, we're going to fire ourselves. People get somebody else in there. It probably be closer to 40 a year. Okay.

I stand corrected him 40. sorry. All right. As far as the corrective actions, I did want to make just a couple of comments on that, especially if if they're going to go to conditions. Corrective action A has to do with stormwater management. We have absolutely no problems with that. It's very difficult to show details on stormwater management at this scale, but I can assure you that everything that's in the stormwater manual will be followed here. For the expansion areas, item corrective action B provides access with adequate space in between utility lines per comments that that really needs to say for the expansion areas. There's already there's already water. So we're here. So it's really for the expansion areas. And same for item C, and we're assuming that we're talking about domestic water service shall be designed and approved by. We're talking about the for the expansion areas, so I just wanted to clear that up because I don't want to be there in confusion later on as we're looking at construction plan approval. So that's all I got to say, but I'll be glad to try to answer any questions. Thank you very much.

Yes, anybody to speak in support of the application.

Again, broader planning and field box, you know, 5, Athens, Georgia. Here in a similar fashion is speaking support of this item as well. If I'm not mistaken, the financing to do more and power was contingent on both being approved. Um, and again, in classic corners, she talking about the quality of life issue as well with the sewage. Um, sometimes her story that I mean, I talked to actual residents, but her stories about. So, he's been backed up sometimes into the yards and so again, that's a health issue quality of life. And so I want to make sure we get that taken care of. I mean, I didn't want to speak to something else as well, just related to. Future developments and, like, probably when products come up like this in some cases, and in this particular case, the developers are amenable to some things that the community needs and wants. But I think we need to explore in the future, some type of community benefits agreement policy, maybe not for this particular project here. Because I don't want to like the word or anything or postpone it or make it a developer engineer is not go forward with the project and the promises. But I think because of vulnerable communities like this. Especially when you're dealing with developments of a certain size, like over 100 units or 100 bedrooms. I think there needs to be some kind of policy that kicks in or that's optional. Or you can create a community benefit remit alongside partners in the community. Who know the neighborhoods very well. And can speak to, and it says to some of the things that are needed in order to hold some of these developers accountable for some projects. There's a project later on the agenda where there was affordable housing metrics. There was. You know, business agreements with minority businesses, the daycare and all kinds of other things. That may not happen now, because the community benefits agreement. And for whatever reason, it wasn't through the finance and wasn't approved. I don't know all the details behind it, but again, just speaking to the need for. Us to explore and or recommend to the mayor commission that we need some type of policy to start to. Get better parameters around these conversations, because there are no leverage that the community has when these things comes up. Sometimes. We're at the whims of capital and people's desires with capital. And again, I'm in support of this project for a similar reason I spoke to earlier. But I just have not a lot of space for public comments. I wanted to also share that context for some of the future plans that may come up next year or down the road. Because there's limited land space in Athens and our community. I was born and raised there. I've seen it change so much over the years. And a lot of communities, especially black and brown communities, are under pressure A lot of pressures, so thank you again.

Thank you. Anybody else speak in support of the application. Anybody here to speak in opposition to the application. Okay. All right.

I'll make a motion to approve that. Any discussion.

We'll say 1 thing I like. I don't know how or when or.

No, I thought it was a good reminder.

I feel like there or what that looks like.

I think interesting thing to think about the benefit agreements. Yes, it's a full scale. Like you said, I'm glad he brought it up.

Yeah, I think it's just something put it, you know. Put it in for now, but something to think about.

Yeah.

That's all I think you should. Yeah, I think it's a.

Go forward with it. Okay.

Do we want to amend the condition to include the phrase or the expansion areas? That's your question?

Yeah, I think the wording of the conditions inclusive, but the clarification was.

Yeah, I'll just note as the motion that. That's how I read the staff's condition as applying to the expand the new sites.

All right, so all those in favor, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Raise your hand, say nay. Thank you very much. On to new business. 660 West Broad, West Broad and 363 Reece Street and North Finland.

Yes, presenting the staff Report for this project, this is number 20, 26, 0, 7 dash 13, 6, 6, 9 for comments only. It is 1 request, so future land use map change from mixed density, residential and major quarter to downtown. And the zoning map change from commercial general and. excuse me, mixed density residential RM2 to commercial downtown with a planned development in the west end downtown design area. This is for a multi-use development. It'll be a mixed-use building along Broad Street, multi-story building on Broad Street, townhomes, and a restoration project of tenure branch that includes the addition of green I'm so sorry, my voice is going with the addition of green space. There are 4 waivers requested. 1 is supported by staff. 3 are not supported. So, this, this is the aerial from 2025 showing the properties. It comes out to 2.47 acres total. And there's some older commercial buildings along broad. The. Family street property is currently undeveloped and there is a single family house on the property at street that is included in the restreet local historic district. There's also the 2 outside of these 4 properties, the 2 properties on the Northwest corner are historic and part of the historic district. The remaining 2. Our ACC on properties, the Reese Reese hope park on the opposite quarter. Uh, Athens, Clark county also holds a sewer and water easements that crisscross across these properties and those will have to be moved as part of this project. So, the future land use change is shown here major quarter along the broad street, mixed density, residential off of recent Finley. Those would all go to. Commercial downtown as shown on the right or excuse me, downtown, not commercial, downtown, just downtown. The zoning shown here CG along broad street are into. Along the backside, all of those with. Are proposed to go to commercial downtown with the PD. I think the only change I would point out is the green line outlining the design district would be extended to include these 4 properties. This is the. Current picture of the environmental areas. It's a little weird right now because. It only includes the daylighted portion of tenure branch. The portion that's piped does not currently have any. Any buffers, so. These tracks have been granted multiple variances over the years to address. Concerns with the environmental area buffers. The most recent was approved in June of this past year, and it grants a reduction of the. A C. C. 75 foot riparian buffer to be co, terminus with the 25 foot state waters buffer. So that's why it has this kind of crazy shape. So it only applies to the properties that it touches the excuse me as it's Clark county properties maintain the 75 foot buffer. Until a final plan for the stream restoration is approved, this is what we have. And even with this reduced buffer, the plans that have been submitted do show encroachment into the 25-foot buffer, and that encroachment will have to be addressed. This is kind of a view from the corner of Reece and Finley. Kind of just that the parking situation, the left side is already yellow curd. It's been proposed for the right side for parking to be removed from that side as well to allow fire access. And this is going to put stress on an area where on street parking is already a concern. Okay, so the plan that has been proposed shows. The 7 story building that faces West broad street, including. On street or excuse me on site parking. 14,000 square feet of commercial and apartments ranging in size from studio to 4 units. There are 8 town homes. Here on facing Reese and streets. They requested a waiver for these to allow brown floor residential, which would provide 6 bedrooms in each town home. The 6 bedroom townhouse meet the definition of a boarding house use, which would require a special use permit in. The greenway shown on this plan. Is conceptual until we have a final approved plan. Um, it includes work done on the ACC property, and that will require a memorandum of understanding with the county and access agreements will be required before any work and commence. I'm so sorry these are the front. Front and rear elevations of the broad street property. I would just point out that looking at the rear facing view, the view facing the greenway, I think staff has some concerns that a building this tall with that amount of shade, kind of what the effects are on that green space and the proposed plants that are going to go in with the intention of supporting the stream bed and controlling water flow in that space. These are the side elevations. The left is facing Finley. The right is facing Pope Street. These are the townhome elevations. It would be nice to see the neighboring buildings for scale. For instance, that top left are the townhomes facing Finley Street. So, directly to the right would be a 2 story historic home next to it. Oh, thank you. 1, 2nd. Love summer cold the picture just below that is the are the town homes that would be facing Finley street. So that how some of the 2 story house on the corner would. Be in front of the town home on the left, there's a 1 story. Um, house that would be in front of the town homes on the right. So that kind of gives you an idea of the scale. So, 7 analysis. And finds that it is partially compatible with the 2023 comprehensive plan in that it prioritizes and fill and it does incorporate green space. It will increase access to affordable housing via. The payment in lieu. Inclusionary zoning option, but the units on site will not provide diversity of housing type or price point. It's incompatible with future land use the recent future land use mapping effort. Set a firm line for the downtown future land use designation at Finley street. And advise that future developments along the edges of downtown area should seek to step down in intensity. It is incompatible with the zoning map and ordinance. In that CD allows a maximum of 25% of the, uh. Total number of units within a multi family development to be. 4 or more bedrooms with the current plan, the number of 4 and 600 units exceeds that maximum out. Um, the parking reduction and stated earlier, we'll put additional stress on the already limited on street parking. Um, staff finds that aren't 3 is a more appropriate zoning. It's compatible with the existing future land use designations. And would provide a better transition between the more intense commercial downtown and surrounding CG and aren't. Um, stated earlier the 4 waivers 1 to renew the requirement for the ground floor commercial only for the town homes. This is not supported by staff. They've also requested for tandem parking in the onsite parking. It's it's been staffs. Interpretation of code is that a parking stall is for 1 color so stacking cars in a mixed use. Parking that just is not supported. The, the 3rd waiver regarding transparency, I think the, the, the narrative from the applicant states that there's a 50% transparency requirement, but that actually applies to the West downtown.

Yeah.

Yes, West Athens, downtown design area. This would be in the West end, which has a 30% transparency requirement. So it's not really clear if this 1 is really needed or not. And the waiver to allow studio apartments below 450 square feet is supported. We have a few corrective actions, and I'll try to go through these really quickly. The project shows work on properties that are under control by the development team. These will require a memorandum of understanding. Um, the parking reduction is going to cause a burden and that needs to be addressed. Provide the permit from the army Corps of engineers for the stream restoration. We need to see how much of the proposed buildings and payment will encroach in that 25 foot buffer. So that they can provide the an encroachment permit from the Georgia as well as perhaps get a required variance from. Um, information is needed to understand the impacts of a structure that tall on the adjacent green space and those plantings there. No, more than 25% of the total number of dwellings within a multifamily development. She'll have 4 or more bedrooms for dwelling. This will either be an additional waiver or an amendment to the plan. Sorry. The six bedroom units are defined as a boarding house, so that will require a special use permit. The ACC arborist has recommended a condition that CV tree ordinance standards should be used to better reflect what's happening with the stream restoration. Public utility comments regarding encroachment within the sewer main, So our main location should be outside of the stream and addressing the need for each building to have separate and water services. They need to develop and submit traffic impact assessment, address comments from leisure services regarding easements needed for improvements on park property, as well as issues with sidewalks, such as their location, proximity to trees, and construction materials. And is requested a level 3 bus stop. At that site, and the historic preservation needs to review a revised plan for appropriateness. They did hear comments on an earlier plan. We're here, so we're on street, it's showing kind of a oval green space. The plan they reviewed parking in that spot, which was not at all supported by the HPC. So they would need to review this for a plan. Excuse me for appropriateness. So, I'll leave you with the slide and that concludes the staff report. Thank you for the water.

Thank you. Now, from the applicants.

Good evening, David Ellison, behalf of the applicant. And just to start my presentation with showing, this is what the stream buffer looks like before the variance. You can see how the 75 foot buffer really prevents any use of this property, any of these properties here. So that's why we requested and obtained the variance for the ACR to be coterminous with the state buffer. We believe that variance and the opportunity to develop this site with the OCD is going to buy considerable environmental benefits. For example, these are the existing stream conditions right now. There is no stormwater facilities on this site. I think this was built in 1956. And so by new development on this property, we're going to have to bring up the code. This property is, the stream is filled with invasive species. And part of the requirements of the variance is that we're going to have to get a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit, EPD permit, and an agreement with Atlas-Clark County to make sure that the work is done appropriately and replace these invasive species with native vegetation. And not only is this going to stabilize stream bank, We believe it's going to improve the water quality, the entire watershed and we think it's a nice homage to the 1st side for the state of the gardens right there.

Just representative.

What's noteworthy is that by our proposed restoration plan is going to actually increase the existing state water buffers from 0.31 acres to 0.55 acres. And so we believe this is going to be advanced 1 of the new goals of the future land use plan of having sound fiscally responsible environmental development. And so this is a slightly revised site plan, because we could continue to work with our neighbors at Hills first Baptist church to get their input as to the proposed green space and easement area. We're proposing if you see right here. we're proposing to have a park easement in favor of the church for their use. The genesis behind this was that we were first going to have surface parking here in order to comply with the parking requirements, but the community did not want surface parking. So we looked at the opportunity for the inclusionary zoning ordinance, and by participating in the inclusionary zoning ordinance, we can actually reduce the amount of required parking that we need and then convert that to a green space. And so we don't need the actual use of the dirt, but we can use that area for our density calculations. And so we've offered the church to have it for their own use for a permanent park easement that will run with the land. Uh, we prepared initial documentations, their lawyers reviewing it, and we'll continue to work on that throughout this process. And we continue to talk with the church and the community to see how we can be a partner of them and help tell them, help them tell their story. Part of the benefits here, what we're trying to do is part of the relocation of the strain is to have a more rational line here. So that you have towards broad street towards a major corridor. You have this 7 story building here, mixed use building and the townhomes right here. Okay, so this is 1 of the 1st, 1st thing I've brought since the new future land use map has been adopted and we're really leaning into this. And we think we need many of the guiding principles. on the steering committee. The first one is redeveloping corridors and nodes that are ripe for transformation. So Broad Street from Varsity on down towards downtown is just thriving right now, but this property is languishing. A large part of that is to deal with the fact is the strain. Plus, it is downtown. It may not be zone downtown right now, but it's downtown prices right now. And so a lot of problems here, but and so we need that CD density in order to get all this work done. We believe that this is also going to advance the 2nd goal of minimizing sewer expansion and growing capacity within the existing network. There is water and sewer available. We're building from the core. And so basically, so 1 of the key goals that feature lane use map was to avoid the expense of expanding sewer across accounts across the county and have density where it exists. We also believe we're advancing the goal of reducing travel distances because we're increasing the density of this area and adding more walkable opportunities between downtown, University of Georgia, Milledge, and Prince Avenue. So this was an urban three study that was used as part of the guiding steering committee, which really shows the value of the density for Athens-Farke County. And so you can see the value for all the densities in the downtown area here. And so you also see all this gray area that's not being taxed at all. And so what we're trying to do Is having a CD zone is we get to get density and actually help. Increase the value for the county and provide services and infrastructure for everywhere else around the county. Just by way example, you know, 3, these 3 properties right now. I believe are assessed at around 2.1. $2.1Million dollars for annual tax revenues. 22,000. But we're anticipating investment around 70Million dollars, which will result in annual taxes from these 4 parcels becoming 1.3Million the year immediately after completion. And so this provides minimal cost to the county because you already have sewer. Any sewer utility improvements are going to be done at developers expense. And then the entire county is going to benefit from this increased revenue at this particular location. This also helps increase the goal of improving the corridors. As you may drive by, it's an old rundown building and an old turkey shop, and we're trying to replace it with something like this. This is a view from Hillsborough Baptist Church, and you see that by incorporating the stream, we're providing a natural buffer between the commercial side on Broad Street and the Reese-Pote neighborhood, West Hills First Baptist Church. You see the green space right here. Here again, here's from the other view of what we're trying to propose. You can see again how the broad street side is going to have the density in the height. Then this is going to be the townhomes that's going to be compatible with the next density residential. Now, there's been some criticism that we should not be CD. But I submit that if you look at the characteristics matrix, we are complying with the goal with the major corridor and the mixed density residential. We are not going to have 10 stories. We're not going to be 100 foot tall or 100 foot building. We're going to be a 7 story building along broad street. You know, even though we're participating in the inclusionary zoning, we're not going for the maximum density or allowed by right. The reason for doing that is so that we stay below the 7 stories here. For the major quarter, and on the back side, we're going to comply with the mix. It's in the residential. And so. So, you see, we're going to have a step down between the broad street side, which is major corridor. Strain and then step down to mix this residential rather natural transition between the dense commercial side and the neighborhood in the back. And so we believe that this. Satisfies all the goals of the future and we'd ask obviously was just for comments tonight, but we ask that you please keep it over mind and ultimately recommend approval. So, if you comments 1, in regards to the waivers. We're going to drop this 6 bedroom townhouse. So we don't have to deal with special use. And we believe we'll be able to redesign our plans to satisfy the 25% requirement. We also think that we're not going to need the. The waiver in respect to.

transparency report.

One thing we are interested in hearing your comments on is on tandem parking. This is a new one for me, but since there is a concern about parking in the area, we have proposed tandem parking to try to keep as much parking on site as possible. We don't need the tandem parking or comply with the county code, but we have proposed that and we wanna hear your thoughts about that so we can know if we wanna include it going forward. We can assign the tandem parking to be by rooms. So we can have roommates share the tandem parking and coordinate that. But again, we believe that this is going to be a great project with the community and the entire neighborhood. Thank you.

I'm here to speak in support of the.

I'm representing the Reese West Hancock neighborhood association. So I like the 6 minutes is it 6 minutes. However, many minutes that evening chair members of the planning commission. My name is and I am coming before you tonight as a lifetime, a lifelong member of the street community and a member of Hill 1st Baptist church. and someone who has dedicated much of their life to the work of preserving, protecting, and advocating for the historic Reese neighborhood. For me, this is not simply about a development application or a line on a map. This is my home. My family has been connected to this community for generations, and I have spent years working to ensure that the progress in Athens does not come at the expense of the people, the institutions, the church, and the history that have made Reece what it is. Tonight, I want to acknowledge the proactive effort for the Cardinal Group because they have made strong efforts to engage our community regarding this project. Previous developers who are currently selling these parcels to the partner did not make a meaningful effort to engage us plans were presented, but the people who would be most directly affected were not brought into the process. Cardinal has approached this differently. We have communicated regularly, sometimes weekly about design concepts, traffic, green space, the church, and the impact of the development could have on the historic neighborhood. And most importantly, they have listened. For the beginning of our highest priorities have been clear, keep the development, Off of street and on to broad, we have asked that the commercial component of the project remain oriented toward broad street where the commercial development belongs. We ask that vehicle access and traffic be directed towards family street. away from Reese and Pope Street because we do not want the traffic generated by a project of this magnitude flowing deeper into our historic residential neighborhood. Cardinal listened to those concerns and has worked to orient the project accordingly. We have also had meaningful conversations about easements for 363 Reese Street, And the repo part becoming a commemorative part and another parcel where the Athens original original botanical garden is into green space that could benefit Hill 1st Baptist church, the street community and the surrounding neighborhood. We appreciate those conversations and we are appreciative willingness to work proactively with us. But I also want to be very clear tonight, our support for this project should not be interpreted as the restrict community abandoning the protections. We have worked so hard to preserve. In fact, those protections are precisely why I'm speaking tonight. It represents the transition between commercial development appropriate for broad street and the historic residential character of restrict. So, our request to this commission is simply simple, but extremely important. Our position is to be both supportive and protective. This property sits directly against the future land use boundary separating Broad Street's commercial corridor from the historic Reef Street community. We support moving the boundary for this one development located at Broad Street and Finley beside the large development already constructed on Finley. We support this project and ask that you move the line for this 1 development for the land use plan and not other future developments. We're asking you not to allow the approval of this project to become a precedent for other commercial development to begin creeping further entries. This one development on the corner of Finley Street and Broad can accommodate the developments in vision for the project because it will be beside the massive development that has already developed on Finley. But the Reece Street community must remain protected. Development must respect the communities that were here before the development arrived. There is a difference between development that happens to a community and a development that happens with a community. Cardinal has demonstrated a willingness to work with us. And we want to continue that conversation. And we deserve to be a part of the define of defining what progress looks like. Thank you, Tommy, Joseph, and Muhammad for the thoughtful work you have put into the project to keep it off of REES and to work to accommodate the demands of the community. Thank you.

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

I would like to say something just for a moment. I am more concerned about the traffic.

Oh, we'll do, um, we'll do people against it and.

No, I'm not I'm not ever guess the project. I'm Mabel Mitchell. I live at 1 of 5 bar age court and I'm just a number of the historic first Baptist church. And we are there all the time and the community has changed 100% from when I first joined the church and. I am concerned about the traffic flow in the community and wonder if anyone is doing anything about perhaps maybe. Setting up maybe 1 way streets or some kind of way to. The traffic is getting to be very difficult. We have a fraternity house in the neighborhood that brings in a lot of students. We have a lot of student housing in the neighborhood and the traffic and the streets and now the streets were built when there were wagons and horses. So now we have cars and buses and everything else. So. 1, if y'all have any consideration about the traffic flow, why are you doing all of the other plans in the buildings and everything? But no, I'm not in opposition. I just want to. Make sure that we're doing the right thing so that the community will be the community that it is the historic community. Our church is 100 and. Uh, uh, 159 years old, it is designated as a historic. Building, and we just like to keep the neighborhood the way it is. Thank you.

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

Anybody to speak in opposition to the application.

Yes, my name's Ellen Harris. I live at 126 during street and I want to call your attention to the proximity of this building to the 100. Block end of during street there is. Broad street is there, but that's in a care or anything we anything that goes on over there. Comes into our backyard. So, I'm going to ask you, I have lived on during straight for 55 years. Now, and I own and live in a 200 year old house on the corner of during and family, which happens to be. The residents of the founder of the botanical garden. Please take time to consider the impact of this proposed construction project on my beloved house and on the during street national historic register neighborhood. This is 1 of the big 1st, historic. Neighborhoods in this city. My neighborhood, along with others in the inner city, is struggling to maintain its character and desirability as student housing closes in on us. And yes, the traffic is horrible, absolutely horrible. We cannot get workers in to fill trees, to cut our grass. The plumber has trouble because Deering Street is parked If Athens can call itself the classic city still that's because of fragile neighborhoods like ours. And they are fragile life on on the family end of hearing is not it is not easy. Taxes are high houses require constant there during the construction of that mixed use. Complex on the Northeast corner brought in thinly we suffered through at least 2 years of Jack hammering constant. And the incessant backup, the construction machines, and I'm going to stop for a moment and observe that my husband was on at home on. Hospice. For 6, 9 months, and those backup sheet machines went the entire time. Beep beep beep. Horrible absolutely horrible. When it was finally complete more problems, parking spillover, traffic, noise, all that. For all this, this misery, we've obtained no benefit. Over the last 4 years, the city got rich, the developers got rich and my taxes went up. 27%. Since receiving our notice, we've had very little time to organize and navigate. The website is my time.

Yeah.

3 minutes 3 minutes is up. Okay. I'm going to say my last thing then. Um, your notice to us included a map showing that the Western limit of the CD zone is Finley street. That's where it has to stop. You put it there. You keep it there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anybody else to speak in opposition.

Good evening. Thank you guys for listening today. My name is Bruno. Jerry. I live at 112 whitehead road. And I also represent a environmental nonprofit. Called the county watershed network, we've been around for almost 30 years and what we do is monitor. Water quality and at this part, Kenny, but also in the entire watershed. Uh, so tenure is 1 of the. Freaks that we monitor, and we have monitored for a long time. We oppose this development primarily on environmental grounds, the impact on the tenure. Creek is questionable. The potential impact is great. It's already an impacted stream. According to the EPA, it's listed as a 303 D. And it's regretful that the variance was even granted in the 1st place because, and as the staff report mentioned the word encroach. Encroach encroaching into a repairing buffer is a mistake. Repairing buffer is there to protect water quality in that spot in downstream. So I'm concerned. That this development would be detrimental to the environmental quality. Of the tenure Creek, and on that grounds alone, we, we oppose that the development. So thank you for your time. Thank you for what you guys do.

Thank you. Anybody else is taking opposition?

Hello, Liz DeMarco, 327 Hill Street. So I am strongly opposed to rezoning these parcels to accommodate this development that is oversized for this area. I definitely appreciate the amount of work that they have in reaching out to re street historic district but i just want to push any developer a little bit further even um with consider with considerable effort and thoughtfulness our athens community has made a future land use plan protection of the re street historic district which includes the vibrant community of hill first baptist church should be the primary consideration here He'll 1st Baptist to me is 1 of the most stunning historic buildings and Athens. It is elegant, beautiful. And luminous, and I feel like the size of this development. Impacts that and definitely the community also important are the green spaces, Reese park and tenure branch. Another aspect of this development impacts the experience of traveling down Broad Street, which I have done for the 48 years of my life. So I can say that here is tremendous potential for development that honors the topography and feels more in keeping with Athens. This development is too large in scale, both in number of bedrooms and height of the building. The current zoning protects this area and needs to be upheld going forward rather than bending to the pressure of building student housing where people with no ties to Athens make money for their investment portfolios. Maybe I'm going out on the limb on that, but I feel like that's been happening a lot in Athens. Finally, I want to thank ACC planning staff for their staff report that explains the multiple ways that this plan is incomplete and just wrong.

Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else to speak in opposition?

Just real quick.

I'm Julie Roth. I also live on during street. I don't like to speak in public, but I feel very strongly about this. I am on the block of during street that Miss Harris is also on and my property is really the only. Property that goes all the way down to fraud street. Pretty much right where the 7 story building is wanting to be corrected. So, I, I just, you know, I heard the concerns from the hill street church hill church. No, 1st, 1st church, thank you about, you know, let this be the last 1 and we can't keep encroaching on it. And I, you know, I thought the 1 that was at the edge of the downtown district would be the last 1, but now we're going to bend the rules. And before we know it, it's going to be all the way to the giant 1, they're building where the varsity was. It's we, it's got to have some kind of consideration for how it all looks and. Feels when you go down there, and I just, I feel like. You know, I'm counting on the, um. Planning commission to uphold the land use map that we have and. Hopefully not allow a 7 story residential building to be constructed there. Thanks.

Anybody else to speak in opposition.

Yes, my name is Farley Richmond and 264 during street and along with my friends here. I'm opposed to this idea. I did, it's not a match. It's very common. There are already built the structures that you could see that they're talking about across the street. And what appears to me is that the imagination should be. Focuses are suggesting on the church and on the potential for changing the way this area looks. But we came to Georgia in 1979. And we were very pleased to be living in a house. It was a very old house along the lines that have just been described here. But I don't see imagination in the objection of what should be done with the splits. Certainly, we've not been consulted. And I think it would be appropriate for you to come up with an idea to get the community to sit and talk with you specifically about the idea of changing this in the way that's been suggested. Thank you very much.

Anybody else?

I'd like to invite the developer up for 2 minutes.

Anything.

Yeah, just a few comments. Yeah, in respect to the height and the size, you know, we're consistent with the future land use map that was just recently adopted. And while we hope this is ultimately approved, no matter what, any project that comes in here is going to be likely five to seven stories high. Again, even though we're going for CD, it's going to be a binding site plan. It's not going to be a 10-story building. The height is going to be fine. And just the other point too, in regards to environmental, I mean, this stream is likely impaired because there are absolutely no stormwater management facilities on this site. The strain bank is not stable in order to do the work that we're going to do here. With the brand of the code, you have to get approval from the US Army Corps of engineers, get approval from Georgia, and we have to get approval for at the start county transportation public works. We're going to be solving an environmental problem here. Finally, there was a. Common about traffic, we do have a traffic study and we've also been talking with the church as to what they want regards to traffic improvements and we'll do whatever the church wants and or what the county recommends with respect to traffic. We also have members of the development team here as well. There are any other specific questions. Thank you.

Okay, so. So, for our discussion, we could make about the future of the issues 1st, and then go to the. So, name is like a 2 part. Question so, but if I want to talk about. Thank you.

I'll step down on that. As a member of the steering committee land use. we talked about the corridor. We put some time into looking that area of major corridor and where downtown begins and stops. And it wasn't just looked at and, eh, that looks good. We put time into it. We put the line there because downtown needs to stop there.

That's really all I've got to say about that.

Y'all know I've been out of the loop for a moment. The proposed future land use map has not been adopted yet, right? It has? Yeah. Okay. Amazing. Okay, so I guess I have a question for the applicant about this change because it's currently a major corridor and it sounded like That on the height on the height area that. Don't see that chart. Yeah, that that that.

I was going to put the future in use.

That's good. Yes. I mean, it's it the way that you described it, it sounded like you. Were meeting the requirements of the future land use as it is stated. Why? Why? what element of this needs to be downtown as opposed to major corridor, mixed density residential?

Density.

Density.

Density, that's it.

We have the, do you want to start other slides that have the different colors? Yeah, do you know which one to talk about? It was like on the chart. Yeah. Yeah, that one.

You see density on there, so it's got this.

Number what's it? Yeah, what's the density? What's the density max density difference between CD and arm?

3 or 3 is 50 plus. 50% under inclusionary zoning, so it'd be 75. okay.

Thank you.

Thank you are on 3 property would not be eligible for the payment of Lou.

That's good. That's good to know.

Would not be eligible for the payment loop. So it would not go to 75. The CD zone has that option.

Okay, they would, they would only be able to get the inclusionary zoning bump if they included them on site in arm 3.

Or if they right exactly or if it was included as part of the PD. To pull that aspect into the approval of the plan development. That would be 1 path as well.

Okay. Okay. So it could be included in the PD. That would be a little outside of the. That ordinance that by right ish, which was this. Okay.

All right.

I'm sure I'll have more to say, but just to relay the question about that. Can you say a little more about that? Like, so, so. 3 with a density bonus. go to 75 are you saying that the payment in lieu could be added to the pd in an rm3 zoning or are you saying that density could exceed 75 as part of a pd they could get a waiver from the density limit and for both uh the first scenario okay so rm3 pd as part of the request they could ask for

the inclusionary zoning benefit of the payment in lieu as part of the plan development. PDs are not designed to get a density bonus. If you read the PD chapter, that is not the purpose of the PD is to just get density. So asking for the inclusionary zoning benefit is a way to achieve that by using another section of code. But that comes with that understanding of the programmatic requirements to go along with inclusionary zone rather than just like, we want 125 units per acre or whatever they would ask for. It's indexed against inclusionary zoning performance. That helps.

Yeah, that does help. And I guess relatedly then the column on that chart says. Buildings of 3 to 7 stories, which sounds inconsistent with. The RM 3 limit, because. 3 would never need to be a 3 to 5 or 6 or 7 story building.

So, so our 3 has a 40 foot. Maximum height again, the PD. That asked for additional height. You know, I would, I would note. The future land use map does have a compatibility matrix to the right hand column of existing zones in the code. That would be appropriate. There was definitely discussion amongst the future when you student committee about investigating the. Potential for revisiting our zoning categories development standards. So. Future land use is thinking in 20 years, the zoning code is today and the future land use goals stated there may lead at some point to us having code revisions. That allow for taller buildings or new zoning categories entirely longer for example.

Just to recap with the, if you're talking about the. So, what's happening is the payment in lieu is paying. Into the funds inclusionary housing fund to get. More apartments that are not. So, affordable, so how that works, the density bonus. Yeah.

In exchange for the payment and lose, so that would run a number rather than offering the apartment a lower rate. And to get a parking and to get parking really, because I think part of what the applicants looking for, so they're paying for the result instead of offering it.

Yeah, okay. Just wanted to make that clear.

Yeah, I was gonna have a couple of quick thoughts.

I, I agree with what Alex said about, you know, the intent was for downtown and Finley and I don't seem to reason.

I don't really support expanding, extending downtown past that. And also about the riparian buffer variants.

I agree with the Everett County watershed network that I don't think that should have been granted either. Yeah, I had a few comments. First of all, I really appreciate the applicants engagement with the community. I think it's extremely important to. Protect the street community and so my, my. Starting point on this was, I think, to agree with Alex and Mike that. Downtown ends at Finley and, you know, although we have a. 7 story building or 5, whatever it is across the street on Finley. It ends there and and I would need a really good reason to. Be persuaded to extend it. Um, and, uh, so I think if the, if the. Restrict neighbors, um. Said this is bad. We don't want it. You know, I, I would tend to stick with my kind of initial. Sense on that, um. I there's a lot that I love about this project though. I think student housing with less parking is great. When it's walkable to campus, I don't think that. You know, every student in town should have a parking place in their apartment building and when they do, they just drive more and that makes it a nightmare for everyone. And so I think generally less parking is good. In student developments that are close to campus. I think the stream restoration and park expansion aspect of this. Project are really commendable. I think that those are great for for the residents of the neighborhood who would not be living in. A building on this site, I think that's all wonderful. And on the subject of tandem parking, I think that's fantastic too for student housing that is near campus because many of those students will not drive the three blocks to campus and pay to park on campus. They will walk to campus. And I would take the bus and so tandem parking seems. Like a great idea in student housing developments, and I wish we saw more of it. I'm glad to see it here and let me just put in my vote for generally allowing it for what my opinion may be worth to staff when you guys are looking at projects that people want to do. I think we should be nudging developers in that direction. And. Yeah, that all seems good. I have no problem with density on Broad Street. I think it's a corridor. That building is absolutely terrible looking. Increasingly, students are either, as UGA expands, they're either going to live in buildings like this Or they're going to put further pressure on the street neighborhood and every other neighborhood trying to rent the existing houses because they can pay far more than most local residents can. So, I think. You know, everybody says they want to build dorms and then some people say, you know, when they see essentially a dorm, that's not on campus. they get mad about that and I don't really understand that leap because I think students should live in dedicated dorms, whether they're privately owned and paying millions of dollars in taxes or whether they're on campus and paying zero dollars in taxes to Athens-Clarke County. I think students should live in dorms rather than putting further pressure on the rental market in town here. So I guess the last thing I'll say is, I really do wish we had something in our code between commercial downtown with 200 bedrooms per acre. Plus the density bonus under inclusionary zoning and RM3, which is the next most dense. Like we have, which is 50, they can go up to 75, you know, it'd be, it'd be nice to have something. Maybe a project like this would be better at 150 bedrooms per acre or something like that. And so I endorse what you said Bruce about that. Maybe we'll look at. Adding some other zoning categories, and I think on the corridors, particularly, that's a great place to have housing. You know, the, in terms of traffic, you know, to the extent that students are driving, if they're driving. What if we're home or they're driving elsewhere in Athens being right on broad street is great. In terms of reducing traffic impact. In neighborhoods, so there's a lot that I really like about this project. I think the park is great. The stream restoration seems like a huge improvement for the stream. From an environmental standpoint to me. and most of tenure branches already piped and underground under other parcels in the vicinity. And so daylighting it again and restoring it and incorporating it into a neighborhood park seems like really a significant community benefit.

Yeah, I'm currently In between, I'm with Matt on the tandem parking. I think that the 6 bedroom townhouses seem fine. When we saw this parcel in the planning commission, 4 years ago, 3 years ago. I remember. saying, I think, when folks first came and spoke out against it, when there was a lack of collaboration there. I remember saying, too, in my comments then, you need to get the support of this community. And it looks like someone has. And that's really a valuable endorsement to me. I don't like the idea of doing a future land use change when we just changed it through a very, very important involved process. The fact that this is a planned development that appears to be, and anyone's welcome to push back on this, It appears to be within the spirit of the existing future land use in form, in height and build, though not in number of people living there. And that it is a PD and it is not a straight rezone makes me think that it could be acceptable. It could be an acceptable change. Um, that that still keeps in with the. Work that was done by the future land use by all by all, you know, future land use steering committee all of us in the future land use map. Uh. while still allowing this to be built before we get around to coming up with a zoning category for major corridors that is in between CD and RM3, which will take 10 years from now probably.

I don't know if I'm going to say anything new, but I do really feel like the Future Land Use Map process was robust and intentional. And so I don't really see why we would immediately update the future land use when it was just. Updated and this property up on on the broad street part of this property is already zone CG. So, it's just kind of doing my homework real quick to make sure I understood that. So they can already get 65 feet of height. The proposed 8 story building, if I'm understanding this building correctly is actually taller than the Rambler. And so the whole intention, I think. My read and my understanding of the future land use path was. That that would step down from downtown. In fact, this is proposing to step up. And so I really like the sort of effort being made. To daylight and restore the stream it. I actually feel like the current zoning was sort of makes sense, right? Where you've got the zoning up on broad. It goes into as you get as you kind of. Go into the neighborhood a little bit. Honestly, I, I feel like that. I just want to point out you can already build. I don't know why a PD is necessary. It feels like it's kind of taking advantage of a process. When I drive on Broad Street right there, I think having been on the planning commission now for several years, you drive around town and you look at things and you're like, we got that wrong. I've had that several times where I felt like we got something wrong. And when I drive on Broad Street and I drive next to the Rambler, and I feel what it feels like to drive and what's kind of starting to feel like a canyon, I kind of wonder if we got that wrong. And so I don't know if I want to extend that or, yeah, that's it. I'm just gonna repeat myself four times, so.

I too don't want to have too much new to say. I came into this feeling like, I wouldn't like this project it was too much and was going to move a needle that we just said. But I really do appreciate that. They have support of the street neighborhood. And of the church, and I feel like this is going to be a difficult parcel to develop in any way between the land costs, the topo. The stream, it's going to have a lot of challenges, which means that whatever. Ultimately comes here is going to need to have some density to offset that cost. I understand and appreciate that. I don't know if this is it, but I do really want to support. A developer that's making effort to try to. Work with the community, because at the end of the day, that is what's most important to me is making sure that the street neighborhood Hancock neighborhood that's all protected. And they're not having something. put on them that they don't want to have.

Can I just ask the developer one question? Can you put the site plan back up? One thing that kind of bubbled up in my head as we were talking, so there's the stream buffer, is that approved? Is this plan for the stream approved or is this pending approval of this being okay to do?

We are currently getting the site survey and we are working on, we have an environmental engineer who's delineated the stream and we are working on plants. It's going to be a long process getting EPD. We've got to get a PT as well as army core proof. Now we've reached out to the directors there. We have talked to them. We've shown them what we're doing. We've explained we're increasing the buffer. We're fixing what is a, you know, invasive covered stream with lots of waste in there. So we're fixing that. They're on, they're in support. And they agree this is a benefit. So it's just a matter of doing the plans.

But this could actually completely change.

No, it would minor changes.

Okay.

Yes, but. There's only so far we can direct that stream or make it move. So it's going to be essentially it's coming out of a pipe on pump street and it's going to go back into a pipe on family kind of in that same location. So the undulation might move like a couple feet north south.

So, would that change where the buildings could be located because of any of that?

It's not going to impact where we have our buildings because we are increasing the buffer. That's currently there. Available to the stream, so repairing buffers, big deal Bruno, and would love to talk to you more about this. I want to understand what you're thinking. This is very different than other environments. We're talking about, but we're increasing the repair and buffer. So always usually a benefit if you're increasing right? We're not going to have 25 feet on both sides. But that is all part of the variance process with. And with the army core that we're sorting out, and they understand that they see the benefits of look at a map and see, there's the buffer 25 feet either side.

You're saying, well, maybe it's 15 feet here and it's 40 feet on that.

Precisely. And more like, sorry, Tommy developer, more like 23 feet on this side, 40 on that side. So, as he mentioned, the current riparian buffer is. 0.23 acres, we're increasing that almost double to 0.4 acres. So we're actually.

No, I understand that.

I just wanted to make sure, like, what we were looking at was actually, and so I want to emphasize, I want to emphasize to you there can realistically from our perspective, we can't really change it any further from where we have today. The reason why we are going through this is because currently the stream cuts through the parcels in a way that basically, I mean, developers have been trying to develop this now for over 10 years. The two parcels fronting Finley and Broad have been vacant for eight years. So Broad Street has a commercial building that's been vacant for more than eight years. The whole building along Broad Street that you all mentioned, it's 50% vacant as well. And it's been that way for eight years. So and the stream that cuts through here it makes it very very difficult to and so that's kind of the hardships that we've been like navigating through um and that's kind of why this is you know a situation where pd was really the only path forward with all of these different kind of puzzle pieces forming together um but i want to give you the confidence that we've been putting we've worked with so many different results we work with the neighborhood to try to find a way to make sure that the stream and riparian buffer Is it is kind of a best case scenario for everyone and so we don't expect there to be really any changes. And as he mentioned, we've spoken with the Army Corps of engineers and EPA, and they are in support of this. So we're all right. Yeah. Yeah, of course.

Yeah, I just wanted to respond to something Jen had said earlier about kind of implying that the neighborhood was on board because I heard something very different.

I heard that the church was on board, but every neighbor that I think was against those 2 different names.

Yeah. Yeah. So, and so, yeah, so so the, the, the neighborhood on the other side of broad street. Primarily, or entirely the folks who were speaking against.

Yeah, so I wouldn't necessarily say they have the support of the neighborhood.

They have the support of. At a neighborhood a neighbor.

Yeah.

Would you like to like to characterize the support of the neighborhood?

So, I spoke for the restrict community, which. This is actually affecting during my neighbors here. live on the other side of Brock Street in Deering, where they look at us, right? And then my neighbor, Liz, lives in Cobham, which is neighbors to us. So they are very much, you know, concerned about what happens with Reese, but they don't live in Reese. I live in Reese and I have been the steward of Reese. it helping to get the local historic designation, right? So, yes, I am very concerned about what happens, Maurice, because this has been part of my life's work.

And I'll just say, so thank you. I was like, almost physically angry when I 1st saw this and hearing Miss I will heart speak has completely.

It's just like a way of like, I don't still don't feel great about it.

I still wish it was 2 stories shorter, but I don't get about that. So what do I matter? Yes.

And I just want to clarify my point. It's it's not that I. Don't hear the concerns in the street neighborhood. I do. I understand traffic. I understand the noise. Being that close to downtown, I do think that some of that is going to happen. My immediate concern is what's going to go on right behind property in the street neighborhood. I do feel like I lived in the White House. That's right next door to that in college. I understand that anything that happens right there is going to impact the people that are directly behind it. More intensely than the people that are across the street from it. So no slam on during street. It's just.

Just wanted to just pointing out that there was some.

So, along the lines, and I think, like, everybody, I think we have to say it is great that the developers did reach out to the neighborhoods because that is. That is the golden ticket out of town. If you don't do that, you need to include the neighbors and it's good for us to hear the neighbors. And what they say, but, um. I would also say that kind of back to the. Future land use, I kept my remarks very short, but I'm going to keep these short on that too. If you look at intensity and that's what they're looking for, height is not what they're looking for. They're buying the intensity. And I mean, in very simple words, it says it right there majors corridor, high intensity. Downtown very high intensity and. My college English teacher, I think don't ever use the word very come up with something better, but that we actually talked about that. I mean, it's an emphasis that it's. you know it's just more and the numbers prove that and so it will spill into reese the neighbors at reese maybe for this or some of the neighbors and the church it will spill out into reese just like these others do and i cut through a lot uh through there and their cars lined up already and it sounds like they're going to have more parking available per unit That's the ones that are already built and this will so I don't know if their parking is less. They're not parking on broad, they're parking in the neighborhood and they're going to drive through the neighborhood. So. But even if they built something that matched with a major corridor, that's not like, it's going to be invisible to the neighborhood. But. Um, I still, you know, like I said, if it were me, I wouldn't have downtown going to family. I think downtown and the way I see that side of downtown, it should stop and blast me because of the types of buildings that were already there. They were not at all downtown buildings. Um. That was before my head that happened when Alex was younger. So. But, yeah, that's that's just kind of on this 1 and kind of like, and I'm not against ever not moving. The future land use a little bit, it's not like, it's just perfect and it can't breathe and move a little bit. But I think this is a pretty strong line, like we've seen in other things where we're like, that just makes sense. And at the moment that line does make sense. And, um, I mean, the general public's gonna. Yeah, they're already saying it's what we need is what we don't need is 1 more building that looks like all of this. But if they can stay in by right, if they can do what they are allowed. They can build just a lot easier once they start asking for these kind of things. This is just a comment and that's what we're seeing. You start asking for more right now. It's something that a lot of the public wants. It's going to be very hard to get through. Because we're not the last say, we're just recommending.

If we haven't, you know, we've got 7 stories. There, I think there's a possibility, at least that could embolden future developers to say, well, we've got 7 stories right here. There's this massive development. It's now there, it's been approved. Why can't we do another 1 there? Decide all again, I forget who said all the way up to. Yeah, I guess the new public. so varsity right which is which is the problem so you know what i understand they're saying you know now it's like this wouldn't happen this would be the only thing once it's there it's hard to stop it i don't know just just an observation i think i would add is that i do think the

applicant has done a really great job of how this transitions back into the neighborhood. But I don't think what's happening on Broad Street is just about the neighborhood. Broad Street is really a corridor. It's really one step, one block literally away from downtown. So I don't think that Like, I'm really glad to hear about the engagement the developer has had, but I have an interest. And then the folks across the street up in Deering have an interest as well. I think it's fair to care about that, even if one isn't living in the neighborhood. So, yeah.

Just one final comment. The 7 stories does seem awfully tall, you know, as another comment to the applicant, the. The. As I said, something in between commercial downtown and RM3 would be great if we had it on the books. But a commercial downtown rezoning that doesn't utilize the full density allowed in commercial downtown might be more palatable to some people if it was a five-story building, not a seven-story building. I realize that means fewer apartments and fewer bedrooms and so on. And the economics of that may or may not work out. But just something since you're here for comments, and you've heard what everyone has commented. If there is a version of this, that is. As all of the benefits, but a little less height that might be some that might make the difference to some people. Can I respond to that?

Really want to take right? So.

Yes, I want to piggyback off of that comment if we're moving away from the future land use discussion and talking more about the form of the buildings. Yeah. Changing the height can also be changing the mass. And so instead of a, a block. That is consistently the same height stepping in. Might be a way to address the perception of the height. And still allow for development density at a number. It is perhaps higher than you would normally see. What you're appreciating from the roadway is something that steps back from the roadway. Either, and perhaps from the neighborhood, maybe it's fine on broad street and I'm posing this for planning commission really to kind of. Think through, but if on the side streets stepped in. Towards the neighborhood, certainly on the north side of it stepped in. It might actually daylight the street because what we're really doing is taking it out of a pipe, but keeping it in the dark. And so I think that is something that's probably worth consideration. And if you all find that to be something that's reasonable, it could be part of the guidance moving forward. I also want to comment on the math of the buffer. The buffer is smaller. The buffer is smaller. The amount of stream that's being buffered is greater. Because they're daylighting stuff. Yeah. So I just want to make sure we're all understanding where the numbers are coming from. The buffer is smaller. Like, by quite a bit, the amount of stream is greater. So, okay, but yeah, if that's the massing of what's being proposed is something worth talking about that might be super helpful guidance for the applicant.

It's similar to what we did at the varsity property where we went from a larger structure to that stepped back. It's different on different blocks, but that same effect, because we were kind of like, really big. So.

And everybody looks at the bus cluster and thought, oh, yeah.

All right, let's take a 5 minute phrase. Come back at 930. 930 930.

I'm just not sure I'm going to stay away forever. Are you ready?

Our next 2295 and 174. Start with the staff reports.

We all ready? Yes.

All right. So, yeah, next up 2295 Charles road and 170 forest road. This is for a preliminary plans development. Including running that change from RS 25, single family residential to RS 5. Plan PD, so simply residential plan development consisting of a cottage core residential style development. With 22 lots total, including 24, be simple, single family lots, 1 carriage house lot and 3 simple attached single family units all oriented around a shared space parking spaces and on site. 15 waivers were requested. Which we go into a little bit here on the next couple of slides. So, staff supports most of the request waivers understanding that a plan development allows for some design flexibility. While still ensuring that all life safety measures as well infrastructure and storm water standards are still being met. This design takes the notion that notion and allows the project to fit the dwellings. In the compact space, while also providing open space. It ensures that what is proposed will be built staff has deemed that 2 of these requests for reducing the, um. Minimum lot area, not depth as not necessary due to the code already allowing some flexibility for projects that are over 2 acres. Staff would like some additional information to re, evaluate a couple of these requests specifically regarding the street parking and the minimum side yard set back from 60 to 0 feet. regarding the administrative waiver for the increase in the amount of conserved canopy from the 57%. Staff would like to see a little more consideration given to that request. Here we have the subject property. It is about 4.8 acres total. Currently, it's two parcels. This large one fronting Barnett Shoals Road here, Um, slightly offset from this intersection at Barton Schultz road and college station. With the 2nd, road frontage along forest road here. That parcel here currently has a single family dwelling on it. The driveway, the rest of this property, as you can see here is undeveloped the heavily wooded lot. Um, as you also see, the subject property is situated between this financials commercial corridor and the single family residential neighborhood green acres neighborhood here. Just some photos from the frontages along Brian shows road to the left. Um, right next to the intersection and then 170 forest road and you see it's currently has a. Family residents and driveway on a lot. The current future land use here, as you can see is neighborhood residential for the financials. Road portion and minor forward over for this parts in forest road. You have to mention no change in future land use. It shows the zoning change currently zoning of RS 25. And the proposal for RS 5 PD, I'm still seeing family residential, but the RS 5 instead of 25. And you can also see that. These properties are in between situated between the single family residential 25 zoning neighborhood and this commercial corridor. There are no environmental areas on or nearby on adjacent properties. This is the site plan that was included with the application. It shows 1 vehicular access along forest road here. With internal circulation. Each road frontage, it does have pedestrian access. The proposal, as mentioned earlier, so it includes 3 single family. Fees simple attached lots here. Uh, 1 cottage lot and 24 other fee, simple, single family lots all oriented around that central green space right here. That's shared common open area. On site, strong water management, a few other amenities. Uh, 72 parking spaces internal. Some designated for specific units, some for guest parking and shared parking. And. The applicant mentioned preserving this house fronting Forest Road, whether in terms of renovating it, remodeling it, or demoing and rebuilding another house facing the Forest Road to keep the feel of the single residence along Forest Road. Here's another version of the same site plan. So for our staff analysis, staff finds it compatible with the comprehensive plan regarding transitional zoning from the residential in between commercial, kind of stepping up the residential zoning there, adding varieties of housing options, increasing the supply, infill development. Similarly, staff finds it compatible with the future land use map. with that variety and supply of quality housing options and compatibility with the designing map and ordinance, adding higher density single family residential as a transition zone and staff opinions on the waivers, which we talked about a little bit earlier. Staff supports 11 of the requested waivers, deems two of the waivers as not necessary and would like to see some more information and consideration given to two of the waiver requests. So, a few corrective actions to consider. We'd like some clarification from the applicant if the request is to change the future land use of the 170 forest road parcel for minor corridor to neighborhood residential, or to remain as is. If there are any considerations of any fencing or landscaping screening buffers along the Western property boundaries, as it currently shows on the Eastern property boundaries. And. Due to the age and health of the existing canopy, ACC Arborist would recommend a more thoughtful design that incorporates more additional existing canopy in the proposed design. Also additional information regarding the fire apparatus load bearing surface, some clarifications on how the surface is designed. to support the imposed loads of fire department apparatus be requested from the fire marshal's office and from public utilities, some additional conditions to consider or corrections, minimum 10 foot of horizontal separation between water and sewer mains, water and sewer lines to be located outside of bioretention pond areas, minimum 19 feet of horizontal separation between the trees and the water and sewer mains and to show the proposed fire hydrants on the findings as well. And an overall staff summary, the cottage court style residential development could provide a transitional zone between the commercial properties and the RS-25 single family residences. And the design and scale are intended to fit within the surrounding neighborhood and provide additional housing options.

And again, this is just comments only, but it concludes the staff.

Thank you. Now we'll hear from the applicant.

Good evening, Joseph Bates with SPG. The developers, Lev and McDougal here, a friend of mine, a decent soccer player, and he does some pretty cool stuff around town, local, and I like all the stuff he's built, so happy to partner with him on this project. Yeah, I'll talk about the vision, community engagement, and then walk through the plan and maybe get to some of the technical stuff at the end. The vision, we wanted to design a pocket neighborhood that we would want to live in and raise a family. We want to design a neighborhood we thought was cool. So happens is cool. We have a lot of neighborhoods that are cool, but not a lot of. Neighborhoods that are being built right now that I would consider cool. We 11 zone this property for 2 years, and we've done a lot of plans. Some were very conventional and had a lot less sharing of space. Uh, plans that attorneys and bankers could understand, but they just weren't inspiring to us. And so life is too short to live on inspired. So we stuck with with this plan that has gone through multiple iterations with community engagement. We've had a very successful collaborative engagement experience. We've found Green Acres input invaluable and we believe our plan is much better because of the constructive feedback we received. So thank you, Green Acres. We've held multiple stakeholder meetings. We've had three neighborhood meetings, thanks to Green Acre Baptist Church letting us use their facility. And we've had one-on-one conversations with many of the adjacent landowners, walked aside with them, understood the challenges they have. on their side and their preferences and desires. So we've had three meetings, like I said, we've made changes after the first and the second. And I think every time our plan was getting a little bit better. And when we presented the third one, we didn't have any comments from the community. It felt like they were all in support. I believe they're all in support. So I feel pretty good about that. Some have written letters of support. I looked at the agenda and some were gonna come and speak in support. And I said, this might not be the meeting If you, you know, I don't get a decent hour. Oh, yeah. So, if I could walk through the plan, that would be great. Is there a way I can go back to that color version? Yeah, I got you.

Okay.

Okay, well, I'll just start at forest road and then kind of work our way back. Yes, there is currently an existing house there. It is a brick ranch. It has had a small addition on it that is on this side, right? Where our driveway was going to be. We always intended 1st, 2 iterations that we brought before the neighborhood. We wanted to keep that existing house and it was like, we didn't see any other way, but we're going to take out that addition. And it's making the grants a little bit smaller, but we didn't want to create a gap in an existing neighborhood. But after considering this, we've met with other developers, builders, and we thought about this more. We realized we needed a gateway to this little pocket neighborhood. We want to have some modest signage and honestly, the existing house there isn't all that amazing. So we're going to replace that. And what we love about this idea is that will be like phase 1, our sales office. So that can be built relatively inexpensively without building everything else out to get some synergy with the community. We can make sure that it stays attractive on forest road as people are driving by and does become an eyesore during construction. Pretty excited about that, that kind of change and thought and idea we will have this driveway will be some kind of a decorative paving. They're a nice entry and then and then once you come in, you terminate on this screen and that's where you parse off on either side to some crushed stone drives and parking spaces. It's a very flat out there. We like the idea of crushed when you can get it flat and the maintenance issues aren't as much as if it's like a real step. The common green here, most of the homes are all these right here are fronting that common green and. We envision that having yes, lawn, but trees, some seating areas, garden areas, maybe there's a community herb garden, cut flower garden, maybe some veggie boxes. These don't always look that great. A lot of time in the year, but. You know, I think that's going to evolve over time as we build out the houses and that's 1 of the things we're asking for design flexibility. You know, like, we might come up with some great ideas as this thing gets built out to make that communal space really special done a lot. I've done lots of greens, lots of communal spaces. Some are loved and used and somewhere. So. We like that idea of having flexibility and then we've never shown here. You know, what we'd like to do is I would love to do a timber frame structure there with masonry chimney. Maybe maybe a pizza and get a TV there and a space where every Friday people can come out there, you know, bring a bottle of wine, have dinner together, hang out and then a nice spring or fall evening. Maybe summer summer. Some are a little bit cooler than others. Let's talk about and then we come around here. This is shown illustrated in blue, but it will be our buyer retention facility. And that's going to be a very shallow storm facility only 2 feet deep. So, during. Non storm events, it will be long and it can be a usable functional space for planning during storm events. It'll be really usable for the kids, especially my kids who love to go find all the puzzles and then and then just continue the vein of stormwater. Our detention facilities are back. here and here there is a lovely swale that has already been upgraded by Athens-Clarke County back here and an easement that we'll be tying into that will continue to make sure they don't have flooding problems because there was flooding problems that were There are challenges up here. We're working with these neighbors because it's really tricky right now. Just like, sits in their backyard and then their front yard. And so we're working, we've got some ideas where we've engaged them on how we can solve this stormwater. This is 1 of the oldest, maybe the oldest neighborhood on the East side. I should know that, but they don't have stormwater infrastructure on this side. Of the high point, there's a high point right there. Yeah, let's talk about we wanted to create a variety of outdoor spaces. So we have the common green talked about that. That's our public realm. All of these homes have functional front porches and that's a binding component for us. That means they are a minimum of 6 feet deep, but more like 6 to 8 feet deep. So you get a table chair there. You can have your coffee outside in the morning and read your newspaper and wave at your neighbors. That's our semi public space and then all of these also have if I could just stop shaking. It's not that I'm shaking. It's just like far away, but there's these spaces in between the houses. Those are side yard gardens or patios. Everybody's got 1 of those. They're 10 feet by 30 feet. And that is why we're asking for a 0 lot line set back there. We've done this at water park on the homes that are getting built right now. And in the documents, you just have a maintenance agreement for that owner. Who's got 0 feet to go paint the side of their house. To do those spaces, we think are really cool. That's our private space. Everybody gets a private space. Everybody gets semi public space. Everybody gets public space. On the edges, we did a great job of listening to the neighbors and put an opaque fence, which we're all about all the way here here here. And when we forgot to do it on one forty right there. Thank you for catching that planning department. We've talked to Mr. Stephen Bush, who also called us. Why didn't he get a fence? And we're going to add that for the master PD, so get that sorted out. Let me talk about architecture real quick before I close. Yeah, these cottages are going to be nice. They are going to be a traditional style, so nothing trendy here. They will not be slab on grade because that's not traditional architecture. Our homes were meant to be elevated and each will have a function of course, like I said, side yard, private outdoor space, simple massing and quality architecture detail. And we've explained some of the binding elements of that. That makes sure that gets perfectly. And then the town homes on barn and Charlesville brick just felt right for the residential on this busy corridor. And I don't know if there are images of you, because you have images of the architecture there that we've got in there. Yeah, I guess the last thing I'll say is that comment on trees. We're gonna work with Mateo, our buddy Mateo and talk about trees and how we can conserve as many here. We will have an arborist on board with the construction team. And we have found that essential, maybe more important than getting the credit for saving trees on site. So to get credit for a conserved canopy and a conserved tree, He followed the Athens court county has, like, the general arbiter arborist rules where you avoid getting in the critical zone. Now, that's the way that it's done in Athens code. It's blanket across all trees. Doesn't matter whether it's an oak tree, which really bulletproof or it's like a maple tree that doesn't handle a lot of roots disturbance. But what we've found really important is bringing an arborist on so that if we're getting around any trees, and we've got examples like Mathis Apartments, El Barrio, and then Wire Park's another one, there's no way we're getting credit, according to an arborist, for saving those trees. But here we are seven, eight years later, those trees are still looking good because we worked with an arborist to make sure they were getting the nutrition they need, they were making sure no pests were installing them, Fruit fruit and properly, instead of how they often do it in construction sites. So. We were with an arborist to get that sorted out. So, thank you.

Hi, anybody here to speak in support of the. And here speaking opposition.

Okay.

That's a question for the applicant.

Do you mind coming back up so I can. Yeah, I love it. It's great. I have a couple of just questions about your thinking pattern and what you. And what your intent was, I was wondering about, I was running to be explained to me a little bit more about the side. Patio or whatever that kind of private for private spaces is that an actual built.

Um, deck type of thing, or what so that'll be up to the homeowners to evolve and whatever they want it to be. So maybe they want a deck component. They could do that. Maybe 1 steps kind of crushed patio or brick paper patio, or maybe they just want to be garden with a couple of flagstones.

Okay. So it's kind of just a 10 by 30 ish space. That is really their private side yard.

Yeah, technically it'll be 12 because we have to have 12 feet separation. Okay. Well, if I. If you went out to wire park, you can see some of these and the new houses that are getting built. Now, those houses are ginormous. They're like 35. 100 square feet, these are going to be like 2000 square feet. So the space is not going to feel as cavernous.

Okay, and then another question for you real quick. I was wondering about the decision to put the bio retention area. Where you did versus sort of the edge like, you. You sort of had this. Interrupted the, the, you that the drive could have been and. I wondered a little bit about how far away, you know, I like the walkable nature of this, but just wondering about. The folks in cottages or houses 12 through 19, sort of what their parking. What would be the parking thing we'd use?

Yeah. Yeah. This isn't for everybody. If you want to go straight out of your car into your house, this is not the development for you. And I know that eliminates a lot of people, but I think it attracts. The other side having to walk a bit attracts the kind of people we do want this community who are more communal thinking, maybe more active lifestyle. um there's some very interesting writing about having the and and other pocket neighborhoods have been done like the fact that you've got to walk to your walk from your car to your house actually forces communal engagement and that's what people need like they really want right as much as we on the other side want to not talk to anybody and just drive in our car exactly from parking space so yeah That's kind of the thing. And then as far as the summer, it goes, like, I'm going to skip architect. I love artful stormwater whenever I can have, like, those low and back kind of development stormwater facilities. I like to do that instead of, like, the big hole in the ground in the back of the development. And so, again, like, the idea is to be a feature to be really cool and celebrated and known amongst the community of, like, hey, this is how we treat stormwater. It's a really educational thing.

Okay, great thanks.

Yeah, and I am so sorry this is in here somewhere and I've not been able to find it. I tried. What? I'm just curious when you, when you say on the report, like, the homes will be of a modest scale. What is the square footage about? Like, the square footage range you're looking at for the detached single family?

Yeah, no, thanks. Good question. I think it will be in the range of, like, 1800 square feet to 2000, maybe 2200, but these will be 3 bedroom homes. Like. We've, we've, we've done some of these pocket neighborhoods. We've done our research. This is not necessarily an entry home. I think some people, this could be their 1st time. I think more, it's going to be 2nd, maybe and that's going to allow us to have some of the finishes that we wanted to have some of the finishes the neighbor was asking for. And I kind of designed that that was maybe more family oriented than some of the smaller, like, 1400 square foot homes that they only have 2 bedrooms that. Would be really, really expensive for a square foot and not be for families.

Thank you.

So, just a general comment.

I like this. I don't have a lot of. I get the comments to make about it, so just overall positive comments. Yep, like it.

I also, I mean, this looks great. I love it. It has my support with the issues brought up by staff. They're sitting and worked out assuming those are that worked out. On the nature of the scale, it is interesting that this is this is the thing that has gotten the support of the neighborhood. The neighborhood did not like. The projects that we've seen that had smaller and cheaper house. Some people don't like affordable housing, but they won't say it. They won't say it like that, but this is still good people. It is still got spaces for people that want to live here. And I totally support it, but I did just want to know that.

I also love it.

Yeah, it's great.

I wanted to note that I know we've seen projects and they, you see the variances and all the different waiver and everything and. And we get some comments that are like, see, this wasn't supposed to happen because of all these requests. And I was counter that. This is where our code isn't quite up to where. Should be allowing things like this, some of these things should be able to happen.

So they all exist for a reason. Sometimes we make the better. I think it's a very, I'm sorry.

No, you go.

I think it's a very well thought out design. Kudos to the landscape architect developer.

I've got a question and you don't even have to come up with this. I don't think. Same developer as the last 1 from a couple of years ago, you were mentioning the. I just can't remember who to recognize, but when the last project came up. And I think you've owned this property for years, so you've you're you're the new owner then. Okay, just because what I was going to say is, and I'm going to eat my words on something. I see rarely because we, I think that last project that came through, I believe we unanimously. Recommended it different type of project. And then the mayor commission, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And it was a fear, I think of condo style sales, and it would end up being students or the fear. I don't know that it was the absolute intent either way. Mayor commission voted not to move it forward. And I just. And it is probably 99 out of 10 times when you have a good project. And it gets beat the next 1 is not as good. It's just that is just sort of the rule of thumb on things. I will eat my words on that because I thought it. I thought that would be the case and this is far better than. In my opinion on what we had voted through a couple of years ago. The detail you mentioned that the architecture. Landscape architect that this definitely feels. More like a good neighborhood, and it's on the edge of the neighborhood where I like things that a little different. I love that transition instead of plopping in the middle, but. I mean, I could probably find, I wish I could find some more negatives that help you out so that you can, because I don't want to slam a negative on you when you bring it for a vote, but definitely a good direction and a well thought out project from my view.

Is it going to be phased structure or do you anticipate it at all?

I think it will be phased like how, you know, anybody would phase even 100 lots in increments of four and sixes. And as sales pick up, and let's say sales are really good, you start building, you just keep going in blocks of six and then eight.

All right. Great. Thank you, guys.

All right, so 4320 Atlanta Highway. All righty, good evening.

This is the staff report for 4320 Atlanta Highway zone 202607138. You clicked the.

We just click on the black.

Perfect. Thank you. All right. The request is a type 2 reason request change from employment office arm. 3 makes density residential. There is no change to the future land use necessary with this request. The purpose of the request is to go to arm 3 for a multi family development in their application reports. The applicant stated. The goal is for a 60% development for 100% of the units to be served towards a 60% average median income audience. This is a 2025 aerial of the property along Atlanta highway. Right here is and there is a gas station right here. This is the former site of a salvage yard which ceased operations in the early 2000s and it operated for several decades prior to that. I have here an aerial photograph from 1998 showing the extent of the salvage yard on the subject parcel. As you can see, it was quite extensive. There was a lot of salvage cars on the site as well as a lot of drive aisles. Remnants of those drive aisles are Somewhat still there today, I've included some photographs of the site right here is the entrance off Atlanta highway in the top right. And sort of progressing through the site, you can kind of see there's still some. To try to surround on the on the site, but it is largely wooded with pine trees with the exception of some of the drive files. As stated earlier, the current future land use is to remain. That's a general business designation. RM3 is consistent with the general business future land use, so no change necessary there. As you can see right here, the current zoning is EO, employment office, and the change would go to RM3. This would be an isolated zoning district around some largely other commercial developments in the general vicinity. There are not the actual environmental areas on site. There are some riparian buffers that bleed over from some adjacent parcels as you can see there to the north and to the west. The analysis from staff's point of view is that the comprehensive plan, this project is supported by the comprehensive plan on a couple of policies here, specifically for the increase access to affordable housing as this is targeted at 60% AMI as the primary point that is supported by the comprehensive plan. The site plan and the report are not binding. Staff has identified a number of questions regarding this project specifically relating to vehicle egress as well as sewer connection and some environmental questions on site. The. Egress the property through discussions with the applicant. There have been a couple of different things discussed as well as access to fire where the 2nd point of access is going to be located again. The site plan that was provided is not binding. So that could be rearranged depending on what the fire Marshall's office would like to see there. There's also some negotiations with car max that staff is a little bit unclear as to what the status of that is. I'll let the applicant speak a little bit more to. What's going on there? Staff is also, as stated earlier, a little bit unclear about the environmental condition of the parcel given that it was a salvage yard for many years and had a lot of automobiles on it. And it's unclear from the application report. And again, I'll let the applicant speak a little bit more to that as to. To what level the physical environment of the parcel was affected by that salvage drug use over the years. So staff would like to see some answers to those questions.

And that concludes the staff report.

Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll hear from the applicant.

My name is Scott Haynes.

I work for W&A Engineering at 355 Anita Street. We're here tonight to present this project at 4320 Atlanta Highway. We're representing Dominium on this. To clarify a question that came earlier before this hearing, 811 Enterprise Inc. is the property owner. Dominium is the developer who's seeking to purchase the property. And they're here tonight, we'll be able to answer some questions if there are some for them. Project is a piece of grants, approximately 18.57 acres. It is currently zoned and we were asking it to go to. It is the former location of an automobile salvage yard that has remained largely vacant since the operation ended in the early 2000s. This proposal provides an opportunity to return a challenging site to a productive use, deliver binding affordable housing, address potential legacy environmental conditions, and extend sanitary sewer infrastructure that can also support neighboring economic development. Here's an aerial looks very much like the 1 you saw just a moment ago. As you can see, the traces are very faint here, but where the old rows were with cars restored. Today, there's a bit of debris from broken concrete things of that nature still on site. You can also see this site is very insular and this very large block. Site history, of course, there was a salvage yard in operation here, and it ended in about early 2000s. This property has been available for employment-related development for more than two decades, but it has otherwise remained vacant, no takers. We believe two practical barriers have likely contributed to that condition. One is the absence of sanitary sewer, and the second is the additional investigation and potential cleanup associated with the former salvage yard use. And we're not arguing that the development under is theoretically impossible, but we are saying that the history of the proposed property demonstrates substantial practical barriers to realizing productive development under the existing zoning. We get into the environmental issue here. We agree that the historic salvage yard use for its careful investigation. And a phase 1, environmental assessment has been completed and a phase 2 investigation is currently being mobilized. Phase 2 will evaluate the identified conditions and determine whether remediation is required. We're certainly not asking the commission to assume that this property is clean before the process is complete, but rather we are demonstrating that the owner and developer are following the appropriate environmental diligence process. And will address and require response for development or occupancy of the property. Also, redevelopment may provide a practical means to investigate and address legacy conditions that could otherwise remain. On a vacant site. It's also worth mentioning that the requirements of the LIHTC funding, which we'll talk about momentarily, will require that this site is fully remediated if environmental issues are determined. This project will extend sanitary sewer to a property that is not currently served. We see this as a major public benefit because that infrastructure will not only benefit this development, it will also place sanitary sewer within reach of several neighboring parcels, including properties owned by Athens-Clarke County that have been earmarked for economic development. Staff has raised concerns about maintaining employment capacity in this area. The sewer installation through this project may improve that. It may improve the development potential of the surrounding employment parcels that are zoned EO but are currently and have been vacant for some time. Public utilities has confirmed that capacity is available for the sewer and has recommended approval.

I mentioned Dominion as their client on this project.

This developer specializes in affordable housing supported by low income housing tax credits or LIHTC as I've mentioned earlier. According to the developer, that financing model allows them to consider difficult properties, carrying costs that may be prohibitive for conventional development. Here, those challenges include extending sanitary sewer, completing environmental investigation, addressing any required remediation, and developing a property that has remained vacant for approximately 2 decades. Regarding the future land use, This request does not require a feature landing amendment staff expressly concludes in the report that are in 3 is compatible with general business designation and with the feature landings description for this area. Step also identifies increased access to affordable housing as a comprehensive plan policy supported by this proposal. But we all know that's an important issue for many times tonight and many other applications before this. Looking at our proposed concept plan. This plan checks the density of 38.39 units per acre. Those are bedrooms per acre. For RM2, if you were to include the inclusionary bonus, you're allowed up to 36 units per acre. So we were just slightly above that, which is one justification for the RM3 request. The other justification for the RM3 request is timing. RM3 fits within the current future land use, making this request a Type 2 request. which means that the zoning decision on this application is scheduled for the beginning of September rather than a Type 1 request, which would conclude no earlier than November 3rd. This is important because the 2026 CA application deadline is at the end of September. Essentially, the request for RM3 allows this project to not only reach its density goals, but more importantly, it allows it to deliver affordable housing one year in advance. Once the staff report was prepared, the affordability component was described as non-binding. The applicant, we are prepared to make that commitment to 60% AMI for 100% of the units in this project. The Commission can therefore evaluate this request knowing that affordable housing will remain an essential component of the project rather than simply an expression of current intent. We provided language here that if you choose that you included in any motion for recommendation by this body tonight. This essentially says that 100% of the product project will be at 60% for 30 years. The technical reviews for this for this item have not identified a reason that aren't reasons suitable for the property public utilities has recommended approval. Our Marshall has no objections to the rezoning as we have revised the concept plan to meet the requirement of providing to remote fire access roads. Transportation and public works offered a comment step also raises concerns about the loss of employment zone land and creation of an isolated district. We understand the importance of protecting viable economic development opportunities, but this property has remained vacant for nearly a quarter of a century. And it has produced no employment activity today since it has ceased to be a salvage yard. This proposal would place one constraint parcel into productive use while extending sewer infrastructure that may improve the development potential of several other neighboring employment parcels. The proposed district would be geographically distinct, but geographic isolation does not by itself establish an adverse land use impact. The parcel is large, located on a major corridor, and it's not being inserted into an established low density neighborhood. In conclusion, we respect staff's review and understand the concerns raised in the report. We ask this Commission to consider several important clarifications. Environmental due diligence is already underway. Phase 1 ESA is complete and Phase 2 ESA is in progress. The affordability commitment will be binding. The straight RM3 route was selected because of density goals and is the available process that can preserve this year's LIHTC funding opportunity. We believe that the proposed extension of sewer will open up additional economic development opportunities that could offset any that might be lost to the resounding of this. But most importantly, this project directly addresses the most pressing issue that our community faces, which is a severe lack of affordable housing. With this in mind, we humbly ask that you support this request and recommend approval. As mentioned, members from Dominium are here tonight and will be available and say a few words at the moment as well. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to speak in support of VIA. How's it going everyone?

My name is Robbie Eisenman. I'm here on behalf of Dominium. Just going to say a couple words to introduce ourselves. Dominium is a national affordable housing developer. Right now we are developing, we've been developing for over 50 plus years nationally. Dominium was founded in 1972 and today is in over 25 states nationwide. In the state of Georgia, we currently own and operate over 5,000 homes, which is across 30 communities owned, managed, operated by Dominium. So that's a key piece that I want to make sure everyone understands that Dominium will own and operate this community for a minimum of 15 years, and the community will remain affordable for at least 30. 1, other thing to touch on again is the random income restrictions that Scott just talked about. This is a 100% at 60% of my proposal. What that means today is that the 1 bedroom rents would be a 1067 up to 4 bedroom rents of 1650. This is again a key commitment that we would be making to Athens. For us to remain a long term community partner. Additionally, we strive in bringing key quality, I'm not sure if we can get there, but back to the presentation we had, key quality and high quality finishes in every unit. This also includes high quality amenities such as clubhouse, pool, playground, and fitness center. And again, it's really important to us to focus on this quality because sometimes people hear the words affordable housing and we want to make sure that people are proud of the homes that they live in. Um, again, this will be a 3 story garden style apartment community, 250 units and dominion will remain a community member for at least 15 years. And any other questions we're happy to answer them and we're here in the back. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else to speak in support.

John Williams engineering. Won't take up much time. I know everybody's tired and still got 1 more item to go, but I will say that if you're like me, and you've been going to these commission meetings, and you've been going to the county commission meetings for the last 25 years in the last 5 years, every 1 of them, they've been talking about. We've got an inclusionary housing code that for 60% of requires 10% for most districts. This is 100% of these units at 60% for 30 years. There hasn't been another proposal in that city of Athens as far as I know the developer is just told you they're willing to buy this restriction. So if it. If something happens, the deal falls apart, this property gets on. It stays at 60% am I nothing can be done with about without going back to the mayor commission. I think Scott did a good job of addressing the other concerns that staff had. You know, some of them just happened during the course of development. A bank's not going to finance project. The environmental areas and. Taking care of, we've developed several brownfield projects. We've developed several sites in Athens. Matter of fact, the standard in downtown Athens. It's about an old salvage yard. You know, I can't remember when we did that staff ever asking about it because it was taken care of through the finance and through the proper channels. So that's not a concern at all. As far as far as I am what we are concerned about tonight is making sure that this moves forward. On the path, so that we can apply for the tax credits for this year. Because it just saves 365 days. Of being able to offer affordable housing. To the Athens community, I think this is a great location for it. You know, I don't know of another project that we brought forward that is probably, you know, on bus lines and in transit corridors and things like that, where we can get to provide those type of facilities. So, we really appreciate your support and I hope that you'll consider moving this forward to the mayor and commission so we can get this thing done and get into tax credit supply.

Thank you. Anyone else to speak in support?

Anyone to speak in opposition. Good evening everybody.

I will also try to keep this short so we can everybody can get out of here because I do know there's another item. My name is Caroline Connerly. I'm with Troutman Pepperlock. It's a law firm in Atlanta and my address is 600 Peachtree Street in Atlanta. And I am here on behalf of CarMax, which as staff mentioned is located I'm going to attempt to use the pointer, but it is located immediately adjacent to this property. Just a couple of quick notes, because I know that staff mentioned that there was some confusion on whether there were discussions with carmax carmax actually only recently became aware of this application upon receiving notice from the planning department. Um, yesterday, our law firm actually submitted a letter to the planning department, outlining for Max's concerns with respect to this application. I don't respect for race time. I won't make you guys listen to me read it word for word, but I will highlight some of their big concerns that were contained in that letter. And additionally, to climax his knowledge, the applicant has not reached out to climax at any point to discuss this proposal. In general, CarMax really wants to know that they are not opposed to multifamily development in general. However, CarMax does have significant concerns about this specific development as depicted on the site plan, which was attached to the application. 1st, and foremost is primary concern is the proposed access arrangement. There is an existing access easement agreement between the current property owner and that provides access to and from Atlanta highway. This access point is used daily by by customers by employees and more importantly by vehicle delivery trucks. Coming to, and from the proposed development includes approximately 496 parking spaces over to serve over 250 units containing 700 bedrooms. which is a substantial residential population. Mixing that volume of residential traffic with CarMax's active commercial operations on the single-share driveway will create significant problems, including extensive traffic backups, not only on property, but also in the development, as well as spillover congestion onto Atlanta Highway. Additionally, in addition to the access concerns, the site plan submitted with the application to fix large islands along the driveway. So, if you look up there with car Max's property is right on the property line, which was not in this. And the schematic, it appears, and Carmax believes that these islands may actually be located on Carmax's property. If you look at that plan, they look, they appear to be crossing the line because of this particular Carmax respectfully request that the planning commission, or the planning department investigate this matter forward before any tax, any action is taken on this application. Finally, the applicant proposes to place a residential use in the middle of an area that, as staff noted, is comprised of extensive commercial development. The proposed site plan positions residential units with no meaningful buffer between those units and the CarMax facility, and the proximity foreseeably will generate numerous complaints. And for all of these reasons, CarMax is opposed to development.

Thank you.

Anyone else to speak in opposition to the proposal? Okay, if I could invite the applicant up for 2 minutes.

Regarding the issues raised about traffic, I'm going to let book address some of those that were raised, but the car makes the access road.

Yeah, certainly. So a couple of things that I'd note. Multifamily residential is one of the most least impactful traffic Conditions, so, for instance, here in our case, we're proposing our proposed development would create 1,553 vehicle trips per day as opposed to, say, a car dealer who would create. 3341 cars per day. On the same entrance or hotel use 2399 or grocer 4441 vehicles per day. Our development, we're proposing 1553 per day. Well, under that those conditions, and then the other, the other fact is that there is a, there is an existing. Access easement that shared between the 2 property owners.

Also, to mention this plan is, of course, not binding. So there are details that can be sorted out. Pass the approval of it that those can be dealt with between the individuals that are Max and the, and the property owner. And we definitely be willing to take strides for that and work with them.

Thank you. All right. There you go.

so we got a little bit of public comment about the design of this the location uh it's uh it's towers in a park except it's uh mid-rises and a car park um just buildings and parking and and a little pool mostly buildings and parking uh and i just wanted to acknowledge that i think that that comment was generally correct Um, this is not a place that people will be really be able to live without a car unless they are. Struggling enough that they are going to take the bus from. The once an hour that it comes down that far on Atlanta highway.

And all that being said.

I think we lose sight of the fact that affordable housing in this country has never been a great place to live. I think we romanticize the ways that it used to be less than ideal. You think of grandma and her little house and all the family living in it, and it feels very homey to think about that now. But at the time you're all crowded, you can't move around. There's always the affordability to the people at that 60% area. It always has drawbacks and the only way around that is going to involve changes at the federal and state level that are way beyond what we can do here. So this is all the way out there. Another thing that affordable housing often is way out. I don't, I don't think we need to, you know, there's a 30, 30 year commitment. To affordability, which is great. I don't think we really need to worry about after that 30 years because. I think that this is going to remain a place that people mostly want to live for the price. When these buildings are 30 years old, they're still going to be a cheap place to live. Because it's not going to, it's not going to seem appealing to people who can pay more. And that being said, when we don't build. and we don't allow for these more affordable options, we get increased homelessness. We get worse outcomes. We don't get better affordable housing by refusing to allow the ugly stuff. We just get less housing and more homelessness, and we've seen homelessness go up. So all that being said, this is a straight rezone, and so I'm not concerned about The islands may be being on property. No offense to. I'm not concerned about the. Issues with the site plan, because it's not finding. I think this would be a good use. For this, because we desperately need affordable housing and there will be people who will be happy to live here. Compared to the other options.

Yeah, I. Obviously, we desperately need affordable housing and this provides 250 units of it, which seems great. That's 250 more than we have now. Obviously, if the islands are drawn on car Max's property, that's not where they're going to be built because. You know, but that's between car Max and the applicant, you know, that's not really our concern. I'm sure they're not going to be built there. The site plan is certainly not binding. So. That's strikes me as a non issue and. You know, there's a lot of jobs out in that area of Athens and. Some of which I imagine don't pay. So, well, I've never looked at what Sam's club pays or car max or anyone else for that matter, but out there, but there's a lot of jobs catapulted right out there. And so housing out in that vicinity. Seems like not a bad thing. Well, I agree it's heavily it's highly car dependent, but, you know. Most of Athens is so it seems like an easy. Yes to me.

Question from the developer, so you're committed to holding this project for 15 years and you provide management. Will you have someone from them? From your company be on site managing?

Yes, we will be the manager. So it's not 3rd party management that we're paying. Dominion has come up. Comments are up here, so dominium has a property management branch that is part of dominium. So a lot of other developers will have their 3rd party management. That's not us. We are the property.

And that is the most important thing for me that they will. Remain on the property and a point for some.

While you're up there, I didn't see the access easement on our plan and but I see it up there. And can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, so you should have received in your package the survey of property and that shows the 30 foot access easement. That's shared between the site and.

Oh, yeah, what about the secondary.

That is a great question. So the secondary egress again, this is not a binding site plan, but the secondary egress is based on conversations that we've had with the Athens Clark county manager's office. That parcel that is just. Just north of the 4 dealership is owned by Athens Clark county. And we've been in coordination with Athens-Carr County leadership to explore and access easement. The same applies to the sanitary sewer. Sanitary sewer would have to come across Athens-Carr County property.

Because with that second access, that would take you out at a light. That's correct. I'm sorry with that 2nd access, you'd come out at an intersection with the light.

They're correct. You would come out that is correct.

Yes, that was my concern was it would be a nightmare taking a left turn onto Atlanta highway there. So.

Is there a light there now?

There's actually a light. Here, so you would circle around white tail way. And come out onto trade street. And then there's also some interconnectivity over to Cleveland road. Which I may add is adjacent to the 4 H extension office co-op office, which would serve many of the participants or residents here. Cool.

Yeah, the, um, am I that the 60% is calculated on what is it?

No, no, no.

What is the actual number? Like, is it $5,000 a year? Is it?

Yeah. So that's 60% is 42,000 a year.

It does change with the number of residents in the household.

Correct.

So there's a, there's an AMI for 1 bedroom, 2 bedroom, 3 bedroom, 4 bedroom.

Yes. So the area that you're using for this location. The median income is 42,000 for 1 bedroom.

Correct.

40,000 is 60% of the area median. Yeah. So our area median income is like.

55 or 56 or something like that, right? It's a little more. It's like 75 ish, but for 1, correct.

So, 42 to 60, yeah, the media median income for this area, which is calculated by head.

But those are the numbers that will. The government gives to realize I just wanted to know. I appreciate it.

I want to make a motion I would, I wanted to ask a question of staff. In in the real world, what is the buffer that would be required between this. Property and the Jason, is there any landscape offering required or anything like that at all?

I mean, typically the buffering comes from the commercial properties to the residential, not from the residential to the commercial property. Um, but the buffering standard is 10 foot with events or 20 foot planted densely or 50 foot natural. Separating residential from commercial.

Yeah, I guess the, um. I guess I'm a little concerned about. Like, I'm in favor of this in general in favor of getting more affordable housing, but I guess I. I'm just concerned I was kind of trying to get a sense for what is already. Kind of baked into our development regulations that would make this a slightly. Nicer place to live for these apartment dollars like. But what you're saying is, there's not really on the part of the residential properties. Responsibilities there wouldn't really be a requirement like a lens get buffer between this property and the adjacent commercial the way.

Yes. I mean, the way the proper reads, it goes the other direction. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly their option to provide. Yeah, but but as far as a requirement goes. The way this reads is whenever there's any non residential use, a budding residential zoning district. that's when you have, or when multifamily residents are adjacent to single family. So if this, you know, if this was multifamily and we had RS adjacent, then the multifamily would provide the buffer.

Right.

Right. So, yeah, there's, as far as buffering goes, it would be their option to buffer.

Would we have had a condition on that?

Certainly could. Oh, I want to kind of work with what you're saying.

So, let's say the neighbor car max at the moment wants to add on to their building. That's when I understand all of a sudden we open up all the all the codes and now you got to do this this and this. Uh, if you didn't have a sidewalk, um. A paternity we work with a year ago in order to do this, you're going to now have to put in a sidewalk, which had nothing to do with what was added. But that's the rule. I mean, that's that's that's no big deal. So, if if this were built, and then the car max property. Builds on to their building, are they now going to have to pay for a buffer that they wouldn't have had to pay for had residential not gone there?

So in this particular location with an undesignated corridor, which this section of Atlanta Highway is undesignated, CarMax or any commercial entity along here, those buffering requirements in our site design standards would not kick in until an increase of 25% or more. So if they stayed south of that 25% number, the standards of 925, including the buffering, would not. 25% of the square footage? Well, it's one of two calculations. It's either 25% of the lot site improvements or 25% of the building. Either one.

Which just at a glance, it's been talking to y'all to looks like that's a very. That has potential somebody going in there would have the potential of adding at least 25% to that building or parking lot based on what I'm seeing. I'm just looking into the future because I mean, that was actually a good a good question that was brought up. I would hate for this and I'm mostly in favor of it, but I would hate for it to. You know, flank and the neighbor who's kind of not wanting it there now and saying it shouldn't be. Um, so perhaps if there were okay, go ahead and put it in the buffer. I don't I don't know of any other flank that could come in there and and cost. The neighbor who's doing their job the way they're supposed to. It shouldn't they shouldn't be charged with anything just because they want to add on their building in 5 years.

We made an exception happy to agree to a condition to put in that 10 foot plan and buffer with defense along the property line. Okay. You guys will add that tonight.

Well, and I do sort of understand that when you're putting together. A DCA application, you're not, this is not a very complete site plan, right? The landscaping, et cetera. And I get that. Like, I think it probably, you know, just thinking about the public comment we received about sort of towers and pavement and I think. It's also in the best interest of the developer for this to be a nice place to live with absolutely green stuff. So. I, despite asking the question, I guess that I. Sort of ask the question, open the door to that, but I, I also. I'm kind of of 2 minds about whether to. Require a 10 foot landscape buffer, but. If it's not really that big a deal to you all to include that, then.

If we can just, you know, this is karma to speak and come up.

Yeah.

Then you may want to call me Chris.

If you could, if you could just specify the condition is adjacent to the formats where I think the biggest concern is for expansion and I think we're fine with doing that. And I think it's probably something like you said that would come out in the wash anyway, as we get out here for the site development, they're going to want the buffer. They're going to want the visual screen. Right? So not not a problem. Let's just, let's just. You just add it to a 2nd condition in addition to the 1 of 60% affordable. And we'll use the 10 foot buffer standard with the defense that's required in the code that would have to do if they were building Jason to us after the fact. And then correct me if I'm wrong, but. If we do that on our side and then expands, you guys wouldn't make them plan another buffer with it.

I mean, typically know if it's on the property line.

Yeah, we put it right on the property line by 10 feet.

That's great.

I just want to make sure that we're not.

We're clear on that having a double up above.

Yeah.

Yeah, I guess I'm interested in the condition, but also in in. I don't want it to interfere with resolving what's going on with that property line in the driveway.

That well, I mean, the 10 foot buffer would only would would need to be only required past where the 30 foot access easement is is that because it's a shared access easement. So, right.

That's right. And we would so. We're going to design that road frontage between the along the access road, similar to a public street. So there will be street trees every 30 feet and certainly don't have a problem incorporating. Other screening materials along that drive.

Okay, great.

Just as long as it doesn't inhibit our ability to put in the shared access that is right.

Yeah. Okay.

Thanks so is the access easement just for 30 feet in from the street? Is that what you said?

It's alone. I'm not looking at the plat there that you guys have made in front of you. Thank you. So, it runs the entire link of the shared property line between car Max and essentially 6. you don't really talking about the property line on the back line.

It's going to be like Max's 6, 10, 1, 6, 10, either. So the total 32. Oh, yeah, in crafting the condition, we just have to be careful about what it applies to and what it doesn't because there's. The driveway into a bunker.

Yeah, the property line and that. So, and this kind of demonstrates a little bit industry doesn't necessarily care for residential, but come near it and the industry tends to want to be away from residential because they don't want the complaints. They don't want to bother people and. And so it is a little tedious kind of dropping this in there. Now, this isn't loud industry. So if it were, I don't know, Olympic or something like that, it'd probably be a quick no. But this is, again, not industry, but it's commercial. And it's sort of louder commercial. You've got doors and cars and this and that happening.

So, there's the risk of complaints, the residents are going to hear some noise and.

All the more reason a buffer is a good idea. But I'm just kind of pointing that out is that is why this is just not quick and easy to do because the manager doesn't want to be called every day because they're working on the transmissions and it's gotten loud out there.

Yeah, and and what I was also thinking about was, I think we were on the commission when the car max was approved and we had a long conversation about lighting that lighting is that the lighting of the cars in the parking lot even overnight is a. Is important was important to the for obvious reasons to car max, but also. Um, is going to be something that just needs to be kind of. Incorporated in the planning of site to some extent, and I'm not sure if a landscape landscape buffer is really going to address that unless they're tall trees, which they could eventually become that but. Yeah, so I, I don't know, like. Matt, do you, when you were, do you have a attempt at how that would be worded as a condition like.

I don't actually think we would just have to, um. Use a dimension, like, along the property line. You know, from the point, whatever some number of feet in from the. That'd be the simplest thing to do it. I don't know what that number is, but yeah. Um, whatever is not going to be in use as a, as a driveway. Um, I was also just going to point out on the same point that there are 2 other commercial properties, 1, fronting broad street adjacent to the little narrow. Portion and 1, fronting trade street just to the left of that. Lowest building on the site plan, those are commercial as well and and. I don't know what they are, but there's a bunch of paving. There's a bunch of cars and. They might be in a similar position next year if they come in wanting to expand their building and being told they've got to put a buffer in now. So. As a lawyer here, but if we're interested in protecting the adjacent commercial. Landowners from an unfair imposition of a buffer.

You might want to apply it to those 2 properties as well. I guess from the applicant's perspective, would you all have.

About that, I think it's an interesting. Puzzle of putting residential in this. Yeah, like, with surrounded by commercial and we're a few warning potential as much as it's needed. Like. It just shows these are the issues that pop up.

And understood the challenge and, you know. I don't think we would be here if we weren't in full compliance with the future land use map. And this is only being allowed to use in the land use map for this area, right? We'd be pushing up pushing water uphill and engineering speak. I don't think our client has any, I think the way to craft it, it would be. If I could suggest that we would put. a 10-foot planted buffer along those existing commercial property lines that are currently developed everywhere that there is no access easement that we're dealing with because we don't know exactly how far back we're going to go or how far back we need to go. But as Buck said, you know, I mean, it's in our interest. We're going to plant street trees along that road. And somebody mentioned lighting that you guys talked about with car max, right? Bruce can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe our lighting coordinates would say that they have to be a 0 foot candles at the property line right now. Right?

Uh, like, yeah, like, trespass for that to be at 0. yeah.

So they should have no lights fill over. Downward full cut off lights. At their property line today, and that's for any residential or commercial property in Athens Park County. So, I wouldn't worry about that 1. I think more to worry about is just, let's be fair to the commercial properties that are that are existing out there that may want to expand. So, I mean, if you're looking at the map, do we have the pointer. It's there right there I can do this without so you're talking about, like, this area from here here here. And then for sure this area here, and we really don't know how far that's going to go on that side. Right? Because that access easement, if you look at the plot in there. Does run our shared access easement that car max. And the current owner have together runs all the way from here to here. At some point, we may peel away from that property line a little bit once we get back past their access. And if we do that, we'll, we'll plan the buffer in that location. Where we put where we peel away.

If that works for you guys, I'm just not sure how to word that exactly. But, yeah.

I think to give the applicant some flexibility, rather than specifying the 10 foot with the fence. Just saying areas adjacent to existing commercially developed properties. Would meet the standards found in 915 3 for buffering. Because, you know, and this is not binding, but let's say it was built as drawn.

Yeah, we could be that we could meet a 20 or a 50 foot buffer even in this. Possibly here, right? I think that that's a better solution.

Yeah.

As long as we include the fact that we're not required to do that. If we're in that existing 30 foot access easement.

Right, because you wouldn't be right. So, I mean, it almost goes without saying, but I think I think the distinction I'm hearing the discussion is adjacent to developed commercial property as opposed right? Because you wouldn't. Should the other vacant ones be developed? They would have to provide the buffer, right?

And, you know, there's, you could flip. I mean, there's some environmental areas and stuff back here. They're not going to get back on anyway. So, I mean, but yeah, I think the existing developed commercial property is a play to go. So that if somebody goes and expands that by 25%. You know, as couple thousand square feet on their building. We've basically taken, we basically paid for the buffer that they would be required to do adjacent to us at that point in time. And that's fair.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, well, I'll make a motion to move the request with the offered condition. And then this condition we just discussed, which, if I think I got it right was that. A buffering requirement adjacent to all previously about commercial properties. Shall be undertaken as per whatever chapter the code that was. I'm 15, 3, 9, 15, 3. And do we need to make the exception for within 30 feet of an access easement or. Yeah, I would.

Okay, except for we've been very beaten except for along the existing access.

Yeah.

Yeah, second. Any other discussion from the second?

Yeah.

So, I would just like to point this out. Affordable housing is very important. But here we are again, looking at a environmentally challenged site.

They have already had to do with phase 2 and this is where we're relegating affordable housing to. In an area where there are not compatible uses, we're saying You know, yeah, this is because you can only afford this. This is where you have to go.

I'm not sure that that's right.

I would like to 2nd that I don't think it's right. I think that and just to clarify my earlier comments, I don't think that that's how it should be. I do not think that this is how we should organize our world. And I think that people who can't afford to live in, you know, the nice cottages, green acres still deserve to live in a nice place.

It's just that and, you know, sometimes we get nice affordable housing.

Proposals, it's just that we get like 2 units a year. And in order to get enough affordable housing to meet the need that we have here. In the meantime, while we work on fixing whatever is wrong in our top down government system that has brought us here. I'm in support of this, but in general, I think that what you're saying is right.

Yeah, I completely agree with Jennifer's point. You know, I would also note that the applicant will have to remediate any environmental problems here. And so it's not going to be polluted land with affordable housing on it. You know, they're doing a phase two study to determine what remediation is necessary. But your point's welcome.

You always can salvage it. All right, so all those in favor raise your hand and say, aye.

All right.

Okay. All right, that's 1. oh, my God. 3,650,3704,3706,3708 and 3710 Atlanta highways. There otherwise known as. We're just square mall area. All right. So the request this evening is a 2 part request.

Uh, this has been brought to us by resolution from the mayor and the commission. Um, that we're talking about here is looking to have a zoning map change from the commercial general plan development. That was adopted 3 years ago, commercial general straight zones. 2nd part would be to institute a mall area special district overlay. An area slightly larger than the. So, just to put this in the record on March 3rd of this year, the Marin commission approved a resolution directing planning commission to consider a special district overlay. or the properties included within the approved plan development associated with Georgia Square Mall. The resolution specifically listed seven items. Those are on the screen. So those items were to be by direction included in the special district overlay. This is the area that was associated with the PD when it was approved. The additional lots being considered beyond those shown in the PD include the ones that the owners of the mall property have acquired since the PD was adopted. So Pep Boys, Zaxby's have been added. So the overlay boundaries would be expanded beyond the PD boundaries if approved to include those parcels as well. This is the current future land use map. This is the representation of the 2045 future land use map, so this is current. The zoning map showing the CG zoning with the PD on the left, and on the right, if approved, the proposed mall overlay is in the hatch area, and you notice the PD designation has been removed. This is showing the environmental areas. To the north of the mall property, there is a draw that runs into Lake Miller, and then that spills over. There is really just a very, very small amount of riparian buffer that's within the subject area that we're talking about tonight. Some photographs. Don't have to linger on these too long, I don't think. But as far as analysis goes, There's no specific development proposal that's accompanying these zoning map amendments or the special district overlay regulation. And that's precisely the point. What is being proposed here is to have the small area special district overlay sit on top of these subject properties with the underlying CG zoning to achieve purposes to guide development in the future without a binding function necessarily that specifies building placement, building height in exact locations. But there are some standards for building height buffering, landscaping, and we'll get into those in just a second. There is a purpose statement that is associated with this, and I wanted to make sure that this was a part of it. This is very consistent with other overlays that we've got adopted, that this is to address public safety, health, and general welfare. It's to control for the visual and architectural character of the area. And the use of design requirements would help ensure that the new development is compatible with the unique character of this area. The notion here is that it would accommodate commercial residential and institutional uses. So, this is some imagery that was associated with the PD at the time that it was adopted. This is the binding site plan that is part of the PD that exists on the property now. There was phasing anticipated as part of that development, and that's represented in the colored shading that you see in this particular depiction of it. And then within that, there was anticipated to be a mix of uses. So retail, multi-use residential, residential, senior residential, a transit facility, and office and retail to some extent was anticipated in here as well. The overlay would not preclude these things. It just wouldn't specify where what type of where they should be. The architecture that's part of the PD includes these these images. So, it's a mix of residential multi story commercial mixed use. And it also included anticipated townhomes. That is still something that is contemplated as part of the overlay. The overlay provides some flexibility for more units to be attached than what code would normally allow. Future land use analysis I think is a key factor here. Since the PD was adopted, we've amended our future land use map. And now this property is under a designation called urban center. So, the description of urban center is on the screen. The notion here is that urban centers are areas of planned density. They should incorporate shared use facilities listed. There are greens plazas or other 3rd spaces parking would be handled at the district level rather than piecemeal the nodes. And this was 1 of those areas that was described as a node. Would have opportunities for mixed use thinking vertically. At the core, and then step down to the lower. A lower height to the edge. Auto-oriented uses such as vehicle repair, maintenance, drive-through restaurants, vehicle sales, those were not anticipated as part of this designation. Neither were surface parking lots. So, the PD as adopted aligns very nicely with the urban center description. Um, no change to the future land use map as part of this discussion. So that. Urban center designation would remain, but it's worth noting that going to the overlay. Because it doesn't have those binding elements. that directly advance or ensure that urban center description is played out, it just sets the table for those to be possible. So it doesn't preclude it. It just doesn't have the same prescriptive quality that a PD would have. So for the overlay, there's a handful of elements. These largely come out of the resolution. There's been some additional text Brought to bear with this during the development of the overlay. But in Athens transit facility is very much a part of the discussion. That is a key feature of the PD. Having a transit facility required by zoning is a little awkward. So, instead of it being a prescriptive element in the same way that it is in the PD. What is being proposed here is that the transit facility would still be. Adopted by reference. with in conjunction with the overlay, but would not be a requirement of the overlay. And we get into that in a minute. But a minimum two acre site was anticipated in the PD. The minimum two acre site was part of the resolution. So that is still a part of this consideration. It's just not a requirement in the overlay. It would be a requirement as part of the development of the overlay that there would have to be something set aside to be worked out between Athens-Clarke County and the property owner. The other request here is to have arm 3 density. So that's 50 beds to the acre to have that allowed by right in all areas within the overlay. Affordable housing is being anticipated here, but what's being asked for is the ability to have all of the aspects of the inclusionary zone zoning ordinance. So that payment in lieu would be available. As we discussed earlier this evening, CG zone properties don't have the benefit of that. It's really applied to CD presently. So, payment in lieu would be available. Which would allow for if that option is exercised up to 75 bedrooms per acre, but the base density would be 50 beds per acre as part of the overlay. Brown floor residential is. permitted by right in the wording of the overlay. The notion here is that that would be something that helps advance the redevelopment and provide additional flexibility for housing opportunities. That would not be the case along the 250 feet of the property that fronts Atlanta Highway. That would be reserved for commercial development on the ground floor. Some additional standards that were included the allowance for up to 8 attached town home units, as opposed to the 4 that. The code allows for now that allows for some flexibility for more density and more of an urban housing form. Multi family housing would also have a requirement here, though, of no more than 2 full baths per unit. and no more than two and a half parking spaces per unit. This is a standard that's consistent with what was adopted with the overlay for the redevelopment of the varsity property. The notion behind this is that is something that is more in line with family housing, at least is in character, aligns with that rather than the ratio of one bedroom to one bathroom that you often see in purpose-built student housing. Building height. Um, interesting concept that's being proposed, and this is was part of the resolution also is to allow for up to 100 feet in building height. In the areas that aren't in close proximity to residential. Properties, so what's been specified here is that. If you're outside of 250 feet of being adjacent to residential current residentially developed land, you would have the ability to go 100 feet tall. If you are within 250 feet of those properties, you would be limited to 45 feet in height. So the notion of stepping into the adjacent area. Korean landscaping standards would be noticeably flexible in the overlay. When you look at the conditions at the mall now, The existing canopy out there, if you can call it that, is pretty meager. The notion here is that there would be no conserved canopy requirement, but an anticipated 15% tree canopy minimum per development site with the ultimate goal of 20% for the mall area total. Some design standards were included regarding parking structures. Mostly these are specifying architectural materials and treatment. And that's also very consistent with the overlay that was adopted for the varsity. By comparison, just a couple of things to keep in mind. The PD presently allows for 2057 beds. Actually, that was. the binding cap that was part of the PD. The overlay would open the door using the 50 beds per acre at 3,970 beds with the potential for certain developments in there if they wanted to participate with inclusionary zoning to go to 75 beds per acre. So there is possible to go above the 3,970 by right the way the overlay is worded. There's some other things in the staff report that were noted comparing the PD to the overlay. I think 1 of the things that is worth pointing out. is the, well, we mentioned building height. The notion that when we had lot coverage specified, the PD was really whatever the binding plan showed you was your lot coverage. This opens the door to the more by right option of the 80% lot coverage under CG. Minimum lot size in the overlay, there would be no minimum lot size. The PD specified where lots would occur and at what size. So that's a difference. But that is the proposal that's in front of us. I think I've pointed out the key differences here. I wanna talk a little bit about the public engagement that has occurred. Commissioner Johnson, who is with us tonight, hosted a town hall meeting on the proposal with the wording as proposed in your packet on July 23rd. It was very well attended. There was another town hall opportunity proposed for next Thursday night, and she has provided invitations for all of you. Um, so I have these here for you to take, uh, with you when you're finished or anybody. Uh, you all know, but, um. But, um, those 2 opportunities for public input, um, I think have been influential. Um. Certainly next weeks, I would imagine would be as well attended as the 1 on the 23rd. But that concludes staff report and happy to answer any questions as you all deliberate.

All right, thank you. I guess I should have asked this in a general setting. So it's the owner presenting as the, we have an applicant.

The applicant is Athens far down.

So, is there a presentation from the that's that is the presentation? Okay. Okay. Um. So, then a comment in support.

I was thinking that's the way that might go. This hasn't happened very much, right?

Not really.

Not really. So I don't even know how much time I have for this.

Are you speaking on behalf of all the people saying that you're pro? Are you representing everybody who's in the pro?

Yes.

I'm a pro.

I think she, would you like to speak or can I?

It's not freaking ours.

You can speak. Okay, I'll try to do, I'll try to do a quick 3 minutes and then you guys can ask you some questions if you got any questions. 1st of all, I'll bring your attention to the conclusion. The staff report. Go ahead and say your name. John Williams W. A engineering. The last sentence in the staff report, the overlay zoning will allow for the most of the uses allowed the CG zone while restricting specific features that are otherwise permitted. Establish a maximum residential density, maximum building heights and vary by proximity to existing residential uses allow for landscaping flexibility and provide for residential developments opportunities while preserving the commercial development potential along Atlanta highway. We agree with that in total. I would also like to say that the development team, the ownership. Is a full support overlay district, so that's why I'm here speaking in favor of it. I would like to point out that book that's in front of Bruce right there at 300, 400 page zoning and development code book. Basically, what this overlay is doing for us and allowing us to do is develop this property in a manner. In accordance with your zone and regulations and guidelines with some very specific. Things that are being introduced and it's the same mechanism that we use when we did the varsity overlay. Some of you may love that some of you may hate that. I heard you talk about it at night how the building step back from the street. Right? Um. They actually had some different challenges and different issues and there were some different reasons why that 1 was done like that. But in essence, the biggest reason for this 1 to be done like, this is this team has worked for they spent. They bought them all they bought the pet boys as soon as we finished the PD. We own it right? We spent 3 years trying to get it financed with the tab in place. It was unfinanced across the country. Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, the biggest boy you can imagine these guys have met with. They could not get this project financed with the incremental TAD payout. Where it was getting paid out over 30 years, because the financing institutions were not giving them credit for that money. There was so much public benefit banked into the first phase of this development when we got through the PD process, it couldn't be built. It couldn't be financed. So, we have a big piece of property, a 75 acre piece of property. I think 1st, how big it was almost size of downtown. It's going to take years to develop and it's going to have to be responsive to market conditions. And that's the reason why the overlay is the best tool in the toolbox to do something like this. We maintain the most critical things are important that commercial along the highway, the stepping down and stuff like that from the residential areas. It go with the future land use plan for urban center, a more density that's more aligned to 50 units breaker here. We're given some flexibility with people that want to do the inclusionary housing. And pay for it and pay into the firm, which we've seen success with in downtown Athens. I think she's got a 8Million dollar check for the core property that we did. So, for all those reasons, being able to respond to the market along the next 101520 years is 75 acres will develop out in small phases and small projects in there is critical for it to be able to be a success. And move forward at this time, so we appreciate your support on that. And I'll be happy to answer any questions. As a fast 3 minutes.

All right, who's next? Speaking in favor.

I'm just waiting in it.

My name is Susan Powell. I live in Lake Miller. If you saw on there, our neighborhood. But it's up to the mall property. When I retired and moved back to Athens, I bought this house with the understanding that there was a really exciting redevelopment going on at the old dead mall. And so our commissioner had a meeting last March when we met Mr. Jennings and Mr. Williams. And we were so excited about all the things that were planned. And then we saw progress, some demolition, some other things going on. And then all of a sudden everything stopped. And then, of course, you know, I don't know everything about business. I don't have a, I have a background in customer service, so I don't have a business or political. Background, but everything I read said. Something happened with the agreement this. 1st, private public agreement between the mall developer and Athens, Clark County. And I don't understand all of the parameters, but in my view, from what I've heard, and then we had this recent meeting with Mr. Jennings and our commissioner, it seems to me that Athens Park County committed to something they couldn't deliver because it was supposed to be a partnership. He bought the mall. He owns it now. What's he going to do with it if he can't develop it? He can't sell it to someone else who's going to come encounter the same problems with funding with Athens-Clarke County. So for me, as a homeowner, I feel like he got a wrong deal. And so I don't know who was responsible. Athens-Clarke County agreed to this money from what I understood, but yet now it's not available.

Although we're going to spend, what, $225 million on a new building here.

I just feel like what the other gentleman said that left about pool developments, the West Side is not a cool place anymore. But it was when I was in school 100 years ago. The West side deserves a little love and affection to we need this small to be developed. And the only way he can do that is if you approve this overlay and give him. The power to develop it because he has he owns them all. I just learned in our meeting the other day that all this time. He's been paying for all of the security out there and all the lights and all these other things. I didn't even consider. Our neighborhood needs this to be developed somehow and as far as I understand it, this overlay gives him what he needs to get it developed and let's see your approval.

Anybody else to speak in support. Anybody to speak in opposition. All right.

I kind of feel like I want to kind of set the record straight because I don't know if everybody has the full story and I don't know if anybody here can say that. I feel like it's weird saying as far county didn't. I'll pull some end of the deal when this is a privately owned development and I'm really. Confused about some of these statements, and I don't know if there's anybody in the audience who can I feel like the chat is involved in some capacity and the PD. Confinements or constraints are part of the issue and I don't know if there's anybody here properly speak to that. I just want to go into this knowing what what the real story is.

I'll do my best.

Okay.

So the TAD was originally approved as a pay as you go funding model, right? Knowing that more than likely we're gonna have to come back and ask for some bonds to get the money up front to help get it financed. That bonding process, that process takes a really long time. So we agreed to go forward with the pay as you go. There wasn't an appetite to do TAD bonds to fund it up front necessarily. And that's a political decision and that's fine. But without having that TAD money up front, the financing is not feasible.

Because that was helping with the deal on your end.

Right, exactly. Particularly because the way the plan was structured, that we agreed to as well, there was a lot of public benefit in that very first phase. I think three round about, three rounds. 3 roundabouts, the massive, you know, 5Million dollar stormwater facility, public park. You know, just a really, really expensive 1st phase. So, without dollars in the bucket to start with. you couldn't get it off the ground. You couldn't make it pencil. I mean, you guys know enough to know about development. If it doesn't pencil, the lenders aren't gonna loan the money, right? So that PAYGO model was ineffective in being able to do this. And they tried. I mean, Zach and Mark and Brian, I mean, they went all over the country meeting with the largest banks in the country and presented I mean, I've been right there with them and the whole time, let me just add to you the whole time. To date, not including the land purchase and the carry calls, they spent 7Million dollars. On plans, and I mean, I've got a fully fully engineered set of plans, ready to break around. I mean, that went through the planning department went through all our site development stuff for phase. 1 is done.

And I asked since you're up to, so the overlay, where did that come from? American mission did not sit down and write that right? Where did that come from?

Well, I mean. The mayor and commission passed a resolution. That that held the criteria that directed. Staff to write the overlay, I would guess would be the way I would explain it. Bruce may explain it differently.

I mean, those criteria were endorsed by the Marin commission as the directive for you all to write the overlay.

Okay, which is the exact same way the last overlay was written. And the exact same way the Gainesville road overlay was written as far as I know, way back when it was done the very 1st, 1. yeah.

Yeah.

And there's an overlay on Gainesville road. We did the overlay at the varsity.

You know, I was just curious about the process and that was the process for typical submitted application.

That's exactly right. And we were, we were, we were, we were part of the conversation. To develop to to to help develop the overlay that and it's a give get right? I mean, you know, we're lowering the building height, the Jason, the residential we're increasing it where it's not we're getting ground floor residential, but we're bound to. No, not having that bath parody. So, I mean, there's some give get in there, right? Okay, but that's how that's how it came to pass.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Before I open up to you all just my, my 2 cents on this is like, what are we losing by. And I think it's interesting after we saw that cottage short, right? And like, my thought was separate from this. My thought was look at all the things that our code doesn't allow that. We have to get all these variances for. To have something to happen. So now I'm saying, okay, well, let's just let code let them all do what it needs to do. Well, are we still getting a green space? Are we still getting some of these public benefits? That we work so hard on the PD and I get the constraints, the PD and why that was problematic, but also, like, what would have trade offs for, like, what we're. Getting with the so.

Oh, I just have a quick question that I may have more later. Yeah, and it may be for y'all to answer Bruce. You may know. Is there a tad attached to this overlay? Is the tab gone from this project? Or is it still there?

Ted still exists. It's independent overlay.

So, the tab connection, I know the tab exists for that area. That's the task.

Nothing committed from the Ted associated with the public dollars going and that's gone on the project now. Correct. Yeah, but the district still exists. Yeah. Yeah. So so if if this overlay is approved, and we go out there and build. 250Million dollars worth of development in the 1st, couple phases, it will be filling up the tab bucket. Then. There will actually be real dollars, not future dollars in that bucket. But is that coming back to y'all? Not like the original not in any way. Okay. For that to happen, we would have to make another application. And whatever, let's just say we decided that we needed to put it around about somewhere or whatever that was on a road. And we wanted to do that after there was money in the tab bucket that we could access. We could come back 5 years and reapply and we'd have to reapply. We had to reapply to another go back to the American mission. They'd have to approve it. And then we'd have access to those dollars, but 0 dollars. From the tab bucket for we're not requesting anything. It's just a wholly private development.

Okay. There is no longer a development agreement.

Correct. Yeah.

Yeah. That's what I was looking to hear 1 way or the other. That's right. Perfect.

Can you can you all put up a slide that showed the description of. The urban center, future land use designation. And while he's doing that, am I correct in saying that we're talking about sort of two actions tonight? One being whether to remove the 3D and the second one being whether to adopt the overlay or recommended option. So the thing that I... Okay, is this one wanted?

Can you speak louder?

Sure. So actually, will you go to the slide right before this in the presentation? Okay, you got that. There was one where... where there was a statement made about um having some um okay here's where it is it's in the spot it's in the purpose of the mall area special district overlay on page two of our staff report and one of the things it says is the purpose of the overlay includes controlling the visual architectural character of the mall special district overlay i don't really see And then talks about design requirements, but then where is that in the overlay? Text what is it? What in the overlay? Description on page 3. Controls architecture or design visual elements. Is it just in some other development regulations? Like, I don't see that.

So the actual text of the overlay or the last 2 pages of your report, I didn't see it there either. And in what you have. As far as standards or standards for the design of the parking structure. But I think, okay, get on. Part of what you're asking about, I think. There are general sort of massing standards as related to the building height. Where, you know, you have a maximum height of 45 feet tall on the edges adjacent to residential. But no, there is nothing that is prescriptive to the level of what's associated with the PD. If that's if that's what your question is.

So, yeah, I just try to get it. It just seems like we went from. This is just a really huge swing back to. I mean, I don't see if there's anything in here, I mean, except for this 250 fit thing, which. I did see that there there seemed to be a, um. There's a contradiction, I think, in the description. On page 3 of the staff report. Under building a, it says allowance for maximum building height, about 100 feet in areas, not within 250 feet of residential. Property.

And then on page 9.

See, maybe I'm misunderstanding it. Is it 250 feet within adjacent residential property or within the, or from Atlanta highway?

So there's 2 times 250 feet is used.

And so is it those things? So adjacent residential or Atlanta Highway?

Two different things. So the 250 feet from Atlanta Highway is where you can't do ground floor residential. You have to have commercial uses on the ground floor. From Atlanta Highway frontage, 250 feet into the mall property. The other time that 250 feet is used is talking about the trigger for when you have to step down the building height to 45 feet tall.

Because there's an adjacent residential or...

Right and where there's adjacent residential, it was worded to not just pick up holiday estates, but also to pick up the retirement facility that's along the mall access drive. So within 250 feet of those residential uses, the maximum height is 45 feet. Away from those, the maximum height allowable is 100 feet.