Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

what they have accomplished and what they have produced as far as the future land use map and uh policies that we hope to send forward to the mayor commission. After we get these summaries, we'll have time for uh discussion among the planning commission members. Uh after that discussion, we will have time for public input. Uh, anyone who is wishing to make public input at that time will be asked to come to the podium. Give your name and you will have three minutes to speak. Keep an eye on the traffic lights right there. It'll go yellow when you're about to run out of time and when it's red, you'll have to step away. While you are speaking, um, we ask the audience to please refrain from jeering, applauding, making a lot of noise. And uh for everyone's awareness, this meeting is being recorded. Um so please speak forward while you are making your comments so that it can be picked up by the microphones. Uh and for everyone else, these microphones can be kind of sensitive. So please refrain from talking, making a lot of noise, and silence your cell phones. For those of you doing the meeting remotely, you will find the meeting agenda on the planning department website at accccclgov.com/planning. Um, and those of you who are attending in person have had a chance to receive one of the agendas that were handed out by planning staff. With that, Chris, thank you. Um, we typically present to the planning commission, but what I'm going to do tonight is maybe stand up a little bit, walk around. I know when Mark is talking, we're going to kind of interact a little bit more. This is a work session format, slightly less formal. Um, I do want to reinforce

Sarah's point about the public comment. We want to hear from folks, but we want to make sure we have time to hear from everybody. Um, so that's why we're having that little bit of rigor about the threeminut time limit. Um, I will say this to the extent that we're able tonight, if a question arises that we can answer tonight, we want to do that. If there is something that we need to take away and look into to provide an answer, we may have to do that, but we'll let you know. Um, everything that we hear from the podium is meaningful. So, what we can answer tonight, we want to. What we can't, we promise to look into and provide that answer the best way possible. Okay. Um, I'm going to go fairly quickly from what I had prepared kind of get us on track. The main thing I want to point out is the steering committee's work. This was a group that was appointed by the mayor uh to begin work. Um they had their first meeting April 30th of 2024. They met monthly plus for 14 months. Um this was a group of folks that really leaned in to the charge that they were given by the mayor to listen, learn, find out about the community in ways that they've never heard before. Where do we have sewer? Where don't we have sewer? Where do we have traffic issues? Where do we have opportunities for growth? and where do we have some spots we need to leave alone because we can't serve those areas properly. We talked about all of that and with that information we also folded in all the public input that we heard in 20123 in the fall and that produced it'll be in on the screen in a minute that produced a setting guided principles and a growth concept map. I want to focus on the guiding principles. There were five guiding principles and they are on one of these boards. I swear they are in the hallway. But those five guiding principles have lasted through this entire process. It was to make good use of our infrastructure, to

do no harm with our environment, to cut down on trips through our community by bringing growth to areas that can handle it, but then also to put destinations closer to where people live so you don't have to rely on a car to get to a doctor or to get to the bank or to do anything. Nobody Nobody goes to the bank anymore, right? That's a bad example. But to do that, do you go to the bank? Thank you. All right. So to do the things you have to do on a daily or weekly or monthly basis, you shouldn't have to go entirely to the west side or entirely to the east side. We should start to look at these pockets of of communities within our community to find some efficiencies. And they did. So here's what they produced after 14 months worth of work. Two rounds of public input. one at the beginning that kicked them off in the spring of 2024 and one that just wrapped up in the spring of 2025. What they are sending forward to the planning commission is really entirely represented on this one board. It's a lot of work though. It's a brand new future land use map. It's a brand new future land use map that translates those guiding principles that translates a growth concept map that the community said that they valued and they wrote largely um new words in categories to explain this orderly growth that they think is appropriate for the next 20 years. So there's a few things to remember in there. This is a 20-year plan. This is not something that's going to be built in 18 months. It's meant to be a long play. It's meant to organize us for a generation. So the things that are on here, we may have some things that happen quickly. That'd be great to have proof in the pudding right away, but we may have some things that take the full 20 years to play out. And having been here for the big rewrite of a of a future land use plan 25 years ago, we're just now seeing the end of the buildout of that future

land use map from 25 years ago. So that's really how it works. So this this is a policy document. It's a new map. It's new words. And those are the recommendations that are coming from the steering committee. Nothing more. There is a report that's going to come out that explains the story of how it was created. And that's coming out probably in the next couple weeks. So you'll be able to see and you'll be able to dig into detail, all the detail you'd ever want, frankly. But tonight, the point of this is to talk about the process that was followed. Um, to get the planning commissioners comfortable with the story of how this was created and then to talk about next steps for this group to think through those recommendations and have a schedule for that. So, I'm glad you're here to hear that discussion. Um, I'm going to stop right there and chair. I'm going to hand it off to the future landing steering committee chair, Alex Sams. Thanks, Bruce. Um, you took half of everything I was going to say, so this will be good for everybody here to ramble. But, uh, there are a couple of things and and I'm going to speak primarily about, uh, the steering committee, which I was chair of, and, um, I'm not going to name all the people on it. It's a large list, but we had uh I'd say a most of the people showed up all the time. When they didn't show up to our meetings, they had a reason. We met for from basically u spring of 2024 until this June, so summer of 2025, monthly, sometimes couple weeks in a row if we needed to. Sometimes we took a little time off if there was a need for a pause uh where staff would get uh some of our notes together. And um but

something that I told Bruce when I agreed to do this was I got an understanding of what we were supposed to do and I got an understanding. I already knew what the future land use map was of course, but I told him it had to be the the committee's map. And this I want y'all to understand um and I definitely need y'all to understand this. This is not staff's map. They had a right. There's no law that says there has to be a steering committee. They could have mayor and commission and staff could have done this whole thing, but they chose to bring a committee into this citizens to do this and go through the process so that it came from a committee of citizens and that's what we are. So, if you don't like the math, it starts with me. It's going to be my fault. Then I'm going to blame the committee. But um but staff did take all of everything we talked about in every meeting. They would go do their staff thing and bring it all together and bring it back to the next meeting. So, we would see what we did in an orderly fashion. And so for the um first couple of I don't even remember but um a couple of months worth of meetings we met with groups and entities in the community. We learned about uh what chamber of commerce feels and needs. We learned what hospitals feel and need, what educational institutions feel in need. When I say feel, it's just what they they they need and believe they need in the future. Because again, we kept having to think what we see today is not necessar well is not what we're here to do. We're here to build a map that carries us for 20 years. And that's what that map is going to be. Um, so we did uh, but prior to that in 2023, that fall, y'all may remember, and y'all know

y'all do that, uh, staff had meetings all over town where they would bring groups in and they would do exercises to try to find out what the citizens wanted out of their community, where they wanted growth, if they had growth, what it would look like. And so that was compiled and then brought to later to the future land use steering committee and we saw that and then we heard from the public and then we finally got to sit down and start working and start the grind of the language of the categories. Do we take this category and leave it and that name or do we redefine it or do we break it up into other categories? And so you'll notice that there are more categories in this draft of a future land use map for the future um than there were in the past. There's no right or wrong. That's just what we felt the community would need and anyone looking at this map would need to better understand what we were doing. So uh we put all of that together and without boring you with all of the details, but the meetings were in the middle of the afternoon. uh when I chair something, we leave when the meeting is over. I don't do a stopwatch and from 2:00 to 4:00, we leave at 4:00 no matter what. We leave when business is over. And so some of those meetings did go over four. Um and but it was because we were going and everybody wanted to stay and my policy was always if you have to leave, you go ahead and leave. We're adults. So um we went through all of that and then um and came up with this. Now there was another thing that I think is important and my goal as chair and it always is is to build a comfortable environment an atmosphere. If the people at the meeting aren't comfortable talking then it's not the

right feeling. They're on the committee so that we can hear from it. doesn't mean they have to speak every single meeting. Some people have uh uh points that they want to speak about or that that they're interested in or that maybe they know more about. Uh some people in our we had a loan officer and that was always the person that we needed to speak up when it talked when we talked about financing of this or that. But uh I wanted the atmosphere to be the atmosphere that people were comfortable coming to the meeting and comfortable speaking at the meeting. So I think we did achieve that. Uh engagement is important and I will even say it doesn't bother me and I sometimes like it and I don't mean in a bad way but if the temperature rises in a conversation if somebody has a little bit of a hot point and somebody else is maybe they're not agreeing. I think it's important to not extinguish that immediately. Let it rise a little bit and sometimes it'll sharpen what we end up with. So, we did that and we did that pretty well. Another thing that uh I had told Bruce and this uh went forward was that the um we we didn't really have a deadline time limit this map had to be delivered. Uh they were they were thoughts. We'd like it then. This would be good if so, but it was important to me and the committee that we just got it done and we heard enough and we got through all of our conversations until we got to the point where we were ready to go. So, um I think we did a good job at that. Um there's another thing and I'm just going to kind of hit it. Bruce already said it and it's going to come up, but just speaking for me as a member of the committee and not as chair. Uh, and I see it on some notes that staff had localized trips. And this was something that I really began to feel and learn

and understand. We talk about walkability. We talk about bikeability. And to some extent, but not really much, short driveability. And that is not necessarily a term we talk about a lot, but what Bruce hit on this a little bit. If you live in say Five Points Beachwood area, it's good if you can get most of your work done or or driving done right there or at least your day-to-day resources. So that's what we're talking about and that's what the map's going to show and the language is going to show a lot of. You shouldn't have to always drive five miles to go get bread and milk. In other words, if you live in certain areas, obviously if you live way out uh on the exterior of the town, that's a little different, but you'll sort of feel that that it's that we we're going to talk nodes and we're going to talk uh town centers and we're going to talk these things and but the whole thing is you shouldn't have to drive a long way for your provisions. It'd be nice if you can go a short distance and if you do want to drive a further distance for something special, that's fine. But uh and then that creates an atmosphere too where biking and walking is a little bit easier. And um I've said on another committee, ebikes, just just ebikes or electric bikes, that's going to change the perspective of a lot of things. We didn't really get into that here, but uh an easy way to move without getting in a car, a little more distance. Uh that's what future land use is trying to prepare for something we don't really know about yet but we need to be somewhat accurate. Um I'm jumping from one note to another but that is the feeling of this and again I do want the um planning commission to understand it and since we're sort of talking to the audience as well uh this

is the citizens the group of citizens put this together. It's not staff. Don't get mad at them for anything you see up there. Come to me if you want to. If you're if you're not happy. I appreciate what staff has done. I uh we couldn't have done it without their ability to combine and put all of this together, but these are our notes. We've reviewed everything that's up there. We'veed it and we're ready for it to go further and finally make it up here to the planning commission. So, that is everything I need to to mostly cover. I'm going to hand it over well back to the chair and then but just know I hit high. We're going to come into some details next and you're going to see a lot of slides and a lot of things that are going to bring it all together so you get to hear and know exactly what this is because a lot of people don't even know what a future land use map even is and that's understandable. Five years ago I didn't know what one was. Thank you. Could I let that be my handoff for the purpose? Yeah. Yeah. You got more? Yes. Here we go. what a future land use map is. Let's just start right there. I can tell you what it's not. So, what it is not is a zoning map. There's not a regulation that's going to be represented on the future land use map. So, that begs the question, okay, so why are we doing this? What's the point? Whenever you do anything that leads to a law, you want to have proper research in the first place to make sure that the law you're passing is relevant, that it is addressing your community's concerns, and it is substantial and can be substantiated. So, this future land use map is a policy. It's a policy document. It's a it's a a um path forward and it helps arrange things. Now in Athens clar county unlike other counties in Georgia when we pass the future land use map we don't sit on it for 10 years we have the opportunity through ordinance that if we find a reason that it needs to be

changed we have a process locally to change it so as important as this policy document is and the work that we're doing right now to put it together one of the things that's unique about Athens clar county is we are able legally to reit pivot it faster than 10 years and we have a public process for doing so. Go through two rounds of comment, right? And we make an applicant make their case about why the future land use map needs to be amended to, you know, here's an opportunity that maybe popped up that nobody realized, right? And maybe it's a good thing and maybe it's a reason for us to change that policy document. So our county commission will take two votes and you'll sometimes see this do see them do this. They'll take a first vote to change the future land use map and that unlocks a door to then be able to consider the change in zoning. If they don't pass the change to the future land use map, the vote on the zoning never happens. So this map is powerful. It's a policy document. But is it law? No, it's not. Is it zoning? No, it's not. It's a statement of goals. It's a wish list, but it's an educated wish list. And that's what we want everybody to understand is is this is us trying to express community values in a map. So those community values include things like rural preservation. These community values include things like neighborhood stabilization. Community values also include traffic reduction and increasing opportunity for growth. The minute we don't grow is when we're going to have some other real big problems. So we need to manage the growth. And so that's that is the purpose of this and the steering committee was put together to thoughtfully check this process. Other communities don't necessarily do it this way. Athens were special and and I like it like that. I like the fact that we engage people and we don't try to get things done in three months. Legally, we could

have. That's not the right way to do it. So, um, this is where we are in this process. Having come through kind of a robust community input and engagement, um, it's now to kind of take that engagement to the next step to the planning commission who's appointed by the mayor and commission to do exactly this kind of work. A lot of times they do sight specific things, but also in their purview are these larger policy documents, and they don't often get the chance to to dig into these kinds of things. But this this sets the course for this board and future pol planning commissions in the future to be able to gauge growth and to look at those sight specific requests and make sure they're rational. Are they checking down against those community values? So that that's I think what I need to say about purpose. Okay, thank you for all that introduction there. I will say um while feel free to send Alex as much uh correspondence as you would like. Mark Pichchuk, please send stuff our ways. We'll get it to Alex or got other questions. I'd be happy to help out. So, thank you all. No one was listening to me anyway. Was brave about that. Okay. So, I'm going to go through a little bit of background about how we got here and then we're going to really go into the maps a lot more. Um, and I hope we can get my part done relatively quickly here so we can hear from all of you and hear what the planning commission has to say. So, why are we going through this trying to determine where development density can be realistically increased? I'm going to give the answer right now. We're shooting at about less than 6% of the community. So, we're going to get to that map, but I want to tell you part of this is is to use space efficiently. And if we can do that, we can keep a lot of everything we absolutely love. I think we will also be building things that many of us will love in the future. Um, and opportunities for future residents,

for your children, grandchildren, everyone who wants to enjoy the classic city. So, what are the possible trade-offs? There is going to be trade-offs. That's part of what we have to deal with. We're going to talk a little bit about infrastructure here and what balance we have to deal with that. Um, but there are things that will be traded off in terms of changing these. But what we want that to be is good for that potential change, but also good for everyone who lives around that. We do not want to displace people. We do not want to uproot people and make lives uh difficult for folks. We want to find that balance between those things. We'd also like to look at how affordability and quality design can both be achieved. That last one gets in a little bit to the zoning. And as mentioned here, we're not talking about zoning, but we know zoning's coming. So, some of the things that we looked at there. This thing was working a second ago. You click on it. See? Okay. Right. Okay. I'll give it a go here. So, we've got a future land use map right now. This is our future land use map as it exists today. What we're going to be showing you is what we're calling the 2045 future land use map. This is a 20-year look out into the future. Um, but you can see there we've got nine future land use categories currently. Uh, a lot of what we did was changing the intention, the characterization of some of those things. Some of those things aren't changing. Downtown is downtown. We heard the steering committee say that over and over again. Downtown is staying downtown. So employment is uh where a lot of our big job sectors are. And by big jobs, we're talking office space, industrial space, things like that. We obviously have a major uh job source right here in the center of our community at the University of Georgia. General business today is a fairly autooriented style of future land use category. You can see that along a lot of our major corridors. We're going to focus in on that quite a bit so that we can be a little bit more intentional um as we move forward and as zoning code changes happen. We've got our government zone that gets broken up

into government, education, and parks and open space. So, we'll show that. Main Street business is that localized smaller scale. Um mixed density residential is our multif family zones. We've got our rural green belt that um we are looking to keep strong and mostly intact. And then we've got two more of our um regular residential categories that we think of single family residential and traditional neighborhood. The breakdown there is a little bit more of the in town versus the out of town. Now I will show you this map when we get into those but both of those are being carried forward. So single family is more of just the single family detached product. Traditional neighborhood is more of that in town product where you might have a townhouse next to a house or you might have a house that gets broken up into, you know, an apartment like some of the old Victorian stuff. Um things like that, but it is still predominantly a lot of single family detach products still to this day. This is not the map that's in your handouts. Correct. This is what this is what we're working with today. Okay. So in terms of guiding conditions, um, one of the first groups we talked to was our public utilities department. Our infrastructure is incredibly important. Um, and so we talked with them, we talked with transportation public works, we talked with leisure services, we talked with our economic development department, and we came up with a few guiding conditions. And you can think of these as sort of rigid to a little bit more malleable as we go across the screen from left to right. So our natural environment, our topography, rivers, buffers, not going to be changing a lot of those. That's really hard to change. We don't want to change those things. Those are things we work around. Our built environment we have put in place, but very expensive usually to change. So we are trying as best as we can to work with that built environment. We are quite blessed to have a highly gravity- based sewer system. We currently have one lift station. We should have another one coming online um probably this year. and we have looked at, you know, a potential for one more, but that's very

unique for a community of 130,000 residents. Um, so changing that is feasible. Changing roads not usually the greatest idea. It's a little bit tough. Um, changing the sewer system and the water system. Sometimes we can add to that, but again, something we're pretty firm on, but something that does have the potential to be changed, something that definitely needs maintenance. Very high quality here in the built environment. Um but also some things like amenities like our greenways and trails that you know we see that through community values all the way down to our policy side on the right hand side. So this is the easiest to change but this takes all the political will right this is the reason people come and speak and why our commissioners are hopefully hearing all those things and while they're listening in. Um we had a meeting right before this and we're happy to have a few commissioners there. So wonderful for folks to be able to do that. So easier to change, but a lot of political will coming out of that to try and change it. You trying to help me there? Thanks. Um, in terms of some of the big ideas, the numbers are showing us that growth pressure will remain constant. We've been at a fairly steady 1% growth rate since uh before the 1970s. That notion shows that about 30,000 residents, new residents, could be here by 2045. So, how do we accommodate the space? Again, we're hoping about 6% of the community can do the heavy lifting. We would like a little bit of lifting throughout the rest of the community, but we're going to get there. So, 30,000, that's that's a lot. That's uh that's substantial. Um but again, as Bruce said, we're talking 20 years. So, hopefully that filters in nicely, comes into the system. those people can be put into the community, absorbed without a whole lot of pain or pressure, um, and put into ways that are beneficial for them to come to the community and be valuable residents and citizens and business owners and things like that, but also provide um, good opportunities for the existing community that's already here and wants to maintain the

high standards that we have. Housing variety and availability needs to increase. For many years, we've built apartments really well. We built single family houses really well. uh we haven't done everything in between there a whole lot and so the mismatch of the housing structure and type versus the average home buyer and resident now has shifted quite a bit that that process has been going on since the end of World War II since the 90s there's been a lot of thinking about redoing that you've probably seen urbanism throughout many cities across the the country definitely in the southeast here we have urbanism coming back but we also have pressure coming in because of the affordable living, the wonderful life, the wonderful weather, things like that. So, we've got sort of a double pressure there. So, we need to find that we're getting the proper amount of housing, the proper type of housing um to satisfy all the different people that would be here. That's people coming in and people who exist here today. Um and then lastly, we do need to work on replacement of expensive and aging infrastructure hopefully before we go out and expand it a bit more. So, we began in the fall of 2023 We had 26 public events. We had community walks. We had sitdown events. We did a east side and a westside bus tour. We tabled at a few events. And we even got out into the schools to hear from what some of the youth are thinking about and what they would love to see in our community. That provided about 2,000 a little over 2,000 responses there. You can see quite a bit about the right of way. So, everyone thinks of the street, but there's a little bit beyond that street that is part of the street network that can incorporate sidewalks and street trees. Um, but that also incorporates the front yard of a lot of places. So, this is where we get a lot of interaction between cars, people, movements, business fronts, all of those things. Um, so it was really interesting to get a lot of that. I think it's because we did some of those community walks. People were experiencing that a little bit differently than they may

have or or coming out because they were excited about that. We heard a lot about open space and landscaping. We heard this from the steering committee a lot. Make sure as we grow we're keeping those spaces that everyone needs to be able to, you know, spread out and breathe a little bit once in a while. Um, we did hear a lot about residential. a lot of the things that the planning commission and the planning department deals with is how do we accommodate residential properly and efficiently around town. So big a big point that we heard a lot from um but if you put all those three together we're looking at um you know almost 60% of the comments that came out of that. So a lot of good stuff that we then built off of. We had these sitdown meetings. So we had some creative engagements that got people thinking a little bit differently. We had a presentation and Q&A. Um appreciate everyone who came out to those. We did some neighborhood walks. So we got to engage and see that built form possibly from a new new uh new viewpoint. We got to demonstrate how things are currently arranged within our growth pressure. So walking along the street is a little bit than different than driving. So you kind of understand that pressure a little bit differently. And then the consideration of how the right of way impacts everything that surrounds it. Two bus tours were very interesting. Allowed us to see a whole range of developments on the east side and the west side. see how things are connected. A lot of what we're looking here for is also to make good connections. And then at the tableling, we got a lot more general comments. We got to meet people out where they were at. Um and then in the schools, engaging the youth and thinking creatively uh was a great benefit from the um that input the function mixed use. We heard a lot about mixed use. And again, a lot of what we're talking about in that approximately 6% of the community is finding ways to mix uses a little bit uh better. Um to put people close to those things they need, as Bruce stated earlier, to give people options for transportation trips, to get people to school, to get people to jobs

a little bit easier and not have to go across town. Um in terms of form, we heard a lot about design standards. We heard that from the steering committee a lot. Something that's going to be looked at as we go forward. A lot of people like this idea of a human scale. So, a lot of people in the planning world see that as two and a half stories. We don't see a whole heck of a lot of halfstory buildings all the time. So, two to three stories is um generally considered to be that human scale that you can walk by and feel um safe and that it's not overbearing. Parking, we've got a lot of um extra parking. We've got a lot of parking in front of areas that that could be used in a better fashion. um setbacks again gets to zoning, that neighborhood blend, that context sensitivity, very important, utilizing shared parking arrangements inside these business districts where possible. That could be structured, that could be on street, that could be a designated um lot as opposed to every single business having to have a maximum amount of parking. It allows for those businesses to expand a little bit more and bring more value to our community. Downtown is downtown. We wanted to stay historic and be the core of this community. And then we heard a lot about the cluster nodal development. So that's where we kind of went towards. You'll see that in a minute. Again, scale, variety, opportunities for senior housing, opportunities for more housing, density where it's appropriate, and affordability. Um, on the on the residential side, in terms of commercial vacancy, we've got a reasonable amount of commercial vacancy. We've had a lot of changing commercial patterns over the years that we could account for and hopefully get people into those locations a little bit better. uh that commercial vacancy is often very close to all those things that I just mentioned that people need on a daily basis. Everyone loves good restaurants, so it's always nice to talk about food with people. You heard about about excuse me a bit about that. Um making sure that commercial is small and local so that people who want to create businesses can that that money is recirculating in the community. We didn't just hear about trees, we heard

about trees, trees and trees over and over again. So um we are a very hefty tree city. We are doing quite a bit of work, but you probably have all seen new development come in and that development often takes away quite a few trees. It takes a long time to get them back. So, ways we can preserve and ways we can get stuff in. Activating green space, getting to parks, if that's smaller and on a neighborhood scale or closer to where everyone is, everyone enjoys a connection to water. I shouldn't say everyone, but the the um the notion of being close to water and being able to utilize that good um preservation of that green belt. And then we even heard about some parts on the edge of town that have that agricultural opportunity, have some of those other outdoor uh recreational. People wanted to see institutions as neighborhood centers. So, opportunities there to talk with our school districts. There are a lot of these used. A lot of people go play basketball, tennis, or use ball fields at a lot of these places, a lot of afterchool programs and things like that for family members. Um, and then obviously making sure that medical is spread around. Again, that's a little bit more of a zoning code, but we heard that a lot in terms of the rightway safety, considering traffic, multiple options for transportation, dealing with topography. If we're going to be serious about those opportunities, we're going to have to realize that a lot of people aren't just going to bike up and down a lot of the hills that we have throughout this town. So, finding ways to make good connections and put those people together, being able to walk places, being able to use our transit system, and hopefully one day have a train network here. So, Bruce went over these guiding principles, but real quickly, develop those redevelop those corridors and nodes, and we'll show that on the map. minimize that sewer expansion. High cost to sewer expansion. You need high value things around sewer expansion to pay for it. So, keeping ourselves economically

um sustainable as a community. That's, you know, the bottom line for Athens, Clark County, we want to keep that in the black. Uh grow that capacity. So, if we're going to minimize that expansion, we need to grow that capacity within the network. We need to do that wisely. Reducing travel distance. And then this is the small one. So, I talked about that 6%, but this number four on here, small amounts of incremental growth in all neighborhoods that are served by sewer. So, this is that idea that everyone can do a little bit of a lift. Um, and so we're not just putting people on the corridors, we're not just putting people in the nodes, we're doing a little bit everywhere around. And that can come in a variety of forms. Um, that would also again speak to the zoning code. And I'll speak a little bit more about that as we get into some of the finer points of the future land use categories. Lastly, support environmentally and fiscally sustainable growth. So out of that effort, the growth concept map was born. These nodes that are the the the blobs on the paper there are areas we are focusing. That's um a lot of the areas the steering committee ended up focusing on. The gray dotted lines are our corridors that they also focused on. And then you'll see the green dotted line which is our trail system. So the greenway and the Firefly Trail. There are opportunities for small things to be done along those for alternative transportation networks and alternative options to be used there to help people get around and experience the community. You can see a lot of the green belt is still maintained. um you can see a little bit more of the in town area versus where it gets a little bit more suburban in the gray and then gets to the rural. So, we kind of looked at this and we think the context of these different areas and the neighborhoods that are within them should be treated a little bit differently. They should be thought about a little differently. They should probably have a few different uses and functions. A lot of them are going to have some of the basics. So, we're going to have housing. We're going to have,

you know, hopefully things to get your groceries at and yourarmacies and things like that. Um, small office opportunities, stuff like that. Um, but you can you can drive around and you can see this and this is common through throughout all developed cities in the United States. that pre-war development in town, that compact development, and then the what is generally the suburban expansion. In our case, some of that was a little bit of expansion of that in town neighborhood feel, but also we do have the um the sort of car centric neighborhoods there. And then we have a nice green belt around our community, which is wonderful. A lot of people ask, well, how why aren't the surrounding communities the green belt? Why aren't we just going out to the edge of Athens, Clark County? We'll use up all our space. Part of that is that sewer expansion, expensive proposition, but also we can't control what the surrounding counties do. So, we are providing that within the community. It is also future development opportunities. We realize that if Athens continues to grow, there's probably some need if we can continue to build up in a in a good fashion to go out into those, but we don't see that need yet in this future land use effort. We rolled into the spring input after the growth concept map. Um, we had an online survey. We did some visual preference surveys. Um got uh what 700 or so uh uh points of feedback from there. We did eight meetings around town. We had dropin meetings here in the building. We did two more school events. Um and so we came away with a few ideas out of that. So distributing those folks throughout. So while we're looking at some of these spaces purposefully, we also see that distribution throughout the community. That recent development has been sprawling. And this is probably looking back a few decades at this point. Um, very reliant on the car as we've grown outwards. How can we make those opportunities for everyone to travel in the ways they want to to get around? Um, in terms of neighborhood growth, there's been development that's been good because there's more

experiences and amenities and things for people to enjoy. That's hopefully what we see when we talk about 30,000 people potentially here in the next 20 years. We hope those people are all bringing positive things to this. Now, everyone sees people come in and it's a little more traffic. It's um a new face around town. You you got to get to know them. But hopefully those people all translate into wonderful Athenians and bring a lot of those amenities and experiences and then redeveloping those quarters and those nodes again. Oh, sorry. Go back. Just one final point here on some of the other opportunities. We have been in front of the mayor and commission a few times. We've been to the planning commission a few times. We've had some interest from neighborhoods to go specifically out to them and talk to them uh directly right before this meeting. Uh the five points crowd was able to do that. We did that in a few other locations. We did a very extensive econometric analysis. We hired a firm urban 3 that just wrapped up right around the same time that we wrapped up this spring input which is on the right hand side here. So they're showing the value based on um the land use type and the location in town. So they gave us a whole lot of information about what types of land use are beneficial to the community. And then also what types of land use are essentially getting a subsidy because they're they're not paying enough in due to that property value. It showed that small things Five Points the Five Points business district you know crushing it. Downtown doing a phenomenal job bringing a lot of value to this community. uh Prince Avenue, just having two and threetory buildings along Prince Avenue, um the the numbers just begin to skyrocket. So, we've got all of that online. We're putting a few more pieces. They're getting us all their final deliverables um for folks to go back and look. Very um interesting data analysis and storytellers at Urban 3. They use data to tell the story very well. They used Athens, clar county data. They if you heard them talk they talked about a few

other things but all the data they're giving us is Athens Clark County specific so primary source data and then we're also in the media a little bit with Athens news matter uh articles in flag pole and Athens politics nerd and then some online story mapping which led us to through the map from the steering committee and we had a final input here in the spring we had 10 meetings around town a little over a hundred comments at those meetings we had online story map that received some more comments. Um, and then we got out for a few events as well for that. Okay, so getting into the map of the translation, we've got our nine categories that we currently have in play. The steering committee turned that into 16 categories. So you'll see here general business in red there. We have some general business still on the map. We have some major corridor on the map which is along those pathways. We want them to be connected a little bit better. We want some of that vertical or horizontal mixed use to be able to go in there. We want to provide the opportunities for transit where it makes sense. Um and then we've got two nodes. So town center and urban center. Those are our two two um highest nodes that aren't downtown. We've got downtown urban center, town center, neighborhood center. if you want to kind of step down in intensity. Uh we've got a few other we had an interesting discussion about our rural network and whether or not all of it is necessarily rural or if there are opportunities for rural residential. We've got quite a few neighborhoods that are in our AR zone, our agricultural residential zone. Again, zoning um that really function more like a neighborhood. So, they thought there's some opportunity to have some smaller scale rural but not extend the services there. So, if we're talking one and two acre lots up to maybe five acre lots, those don't need sewer. Those don't they're going to have water because water is throughout almost all the county. Um, don't necessarily need the traffic infrastructure and everything that goes along with that. So, a little

bit of a step down there. Um, one other big one was main street business. So, that's that's the smaller scale of the general business. So, think in town neighborhoods, the boulevards, prince avenues, five points, the triangle, the block, those neighborhoods. Those translate into minor corridor and neighborhood center. Uh single family residential stays on there. Traditional residential, excuse me, traditional neighborhood changes names into neighborhood residential character very very similar. Um allowances very very similar employment to employment and then the government breakdown into education, government and parks and open space. So out of all that um we went through this process with the steering committee. This is all of the parcels that were touched by the steering committee. Everything they discussed, everything we talked about to a degree. So, breaking up the government was a big one. That's I think somewhere between around 12% of our land mass. So, just breaking that up into um three different ones. Um the rural residential you can see there in the green. And then a lot of everything else is what we're really going to talk to. So this was 27% that the steering committee touched and and suggested things about a lot of that like the changing of the government is is kind of a change in name only. They will stay in those same types of uses. Education, parks, open space and government all will function in the similar capacity. So we wiped that off the map and we got down to um around 13% of our community. Part of this was also some ground truthing. So the rural residential was a ground truthing. We have these neighborhoods already. They aren't 10acre lots like the rest of our rural area. We had some other parcels that over time have just developed and aren't exactly the way the future land use was. So, we wanted to kind of write that map. We call that ground truthing. So, from that ground truthing again, not not really any fundamental changes, just sort of some changes on the map, some

changes in name. So, when we wipe that off, we get down to our 5.56% of the community here, which is what we really want everyone to focus on. These are where there is some change to it. Now, a lot of these are changing fairly similar. That main street business to neighborhood node is is a very similar change. Um that main street business around a neighborhood node might be a minor corridor. So, it has some of those similar allowances. What you will see when I get into it here is that the big change is probably along the corridors. Um, so we we did remove quite a bit of general business out of there. And then the steering committee was very intentional about how those nodes in those corridors expanded. So just some of the nodes, you know, we've got the mall out here. That's our one urban center that is proposed. Um, that would be the most intense. There's a little bit of downtown change. You can't see most of downtown because most of it's the same. It eaked out a little bit there on the corners. Uh, we've got the Alps Beachwood Shopping Center, big node. The East Side Shopping Center, another big node. Um, we've got Lexington Road. Quite quite a bit of activity going on Lexington Road. Area around the Willowwood shopping center where the Ali's and the Goodwill is. Um, some potential growth around the Walmart shopping center. We've got Kroger out at 72 and 29. Um, we've got the General Time up here on North, excuse me, on Newton Bridge. probably an area that maybe a lot of folks aren't familiar unless you're going out to Terapin or one of the the businesses that are out there, but we've got some dying industrial in that area. Um to be able to change that to a new opportunity. Uh and then other than that, we're kind of going along the corridor. So, we've got Prince Avenue, we've got Baxter, we've got uh you know, Five Points Intersection, we've got the Triangle, the block here. Uh, and then we've got a little bit of area in and around um the chicken plant that has really changed over there in the Boulevard neighborhood.

So, just a little bit of information. So, we we talked about all these categories and all those words, very very small words that are over there on that proposed map didn't exactly um make enough sense to everyone. So, we broke this down into some category descriptors. We've got six categories and so we tried to be very consistent as we go through. So we talk about that character. So the type of anticipated activity there, the use, um the types of land uses that will be allowed, the intensity, so that's a combination of building proximity, so tighter setbacks versus looser setbacks, the building height, taller versus shorter, lot coverage in the activities specifically. Everyone is quite concerned about height. So we put height on there, the design and form. So whether something is a little more in line with how we build now or something's a little bit more intentional and mixed use the difference there. And then something that was really we thought was interesting to help people understand is this frequent frequency and proximity. So do you need this place for your daily needs, your weekly needs, monthly needs or something you just sort of get to on on an annual basis. So whether or not you know those levels would would be there as to uh how intense it would be and then what kind of um customer base does it serve. Is that just serving our local community? Is that serving our entire municipality or is that serving more of our region? We are the regional hub for northeast Georgia. So we're hoping that people understand that those categories are in in those um those two uh realms there of frequency and proximity. So, downtown, I'm going to go through a few maps here. Uh, and this is more just to sort of show you where it's at. If we want to get into some specifics about where it is, uh, we can. Not a lot of expansion. We had a little bit of northward expansion. We had a little bit of turning some, um, government zone properties into just downtown. And then we also had a little bit of uh,

southwestern expansion there. So, not a whole heck of a lot of growth to downtown, but a little bit of growth. This is our most intense um designation uh in terms of character. You know, we've got historic downtown. We've got shared parking throughout downtown. Very rare that you're able to park, you know, in a parking lot that the business owns that you're going to downtown. Excuse me. There is some of that, but a lot more sharing going on. We've got a lot of mixed use. Our highest intensity up to 10 stories currently. Um in terms of design, we've got the historic character. We've got shared spaces. We've got buildings pulled up to the street. And this serves a lot of our, you know, this is a regional hub, but it also has some daily features for the folks who live and work around there. We're very happy that, you know, there's some grocery opportunities coming in here we can run over to real quickly. Um, but for the average citizen, it's probably a little bit more of a weekly or maybe even a monthly draw to come downtown and have a bite to eat or meet a friend or go to an event that's done. Um just some images here we have of you know what our downtown looks like. This was one of our bigger changes. So general business um a good majority of this outside of where you see some nodes. So the general time area and the Kroger at 72 and 29. A lot of the rest of this was general business. So, taking this from general business to either general business, which is still red on there, a major corridor, the dark gray on there, urban center, the orange, or a town center, the lighter orange, is to change that characteristic to um bring some of that intentionality to those areas to make them connect a little bit better and allow for some of that mixed juice, be it vertical or horizontal. So, we've got these four characteristics and they step down in intensity. So urban is our next next biggest node after downtown. Town center gets down to

that five yeah five and kind of six story range. Um uh major corridor. So this is the opportunity to build up on our corridors to bring some people and bring more opportunity to it that would allow for multimmoal transit is a big part of that. Um reutilize some of that vacancy we have in our commercial areas. And then also we recognize that you know everything doesn't need to be in that style. So, we do have some general business. It's left on there. The steering committee wanted some left on there. We have places where you would just expect to drive to. You would expect to go, you know, car shopping and mattress shopping um that you're not going to just obviously walk down the street and get to or I don't know too many people who ride the bus to go buy a mattress, but um so that's that's kind of stepping down there. You see some of the heights that should correspond. You can kind of see the intensity levels. This is probably some of our most intense areas here. So, when we're talking about accommodating 30,000 people, we're talking about a big lift in all four of these areas. Um, and then we start to break down how they meet. You know, a lot of this is your weekly trips. You're going to the grocery. You're, you know, you're running that errand. You're hitting up the pharmacy. You're going out and grabbing some quick food that, you know, that night when you've got ball practice and you can't get something cooked. Um, so all those types of intensities there. This is an urban center. So, this is a very intense urban center. This is probably a bit more intense than we're ever talking about. Um, but we did talk about that urban center getting up into the seven eight story range. Again, the only opportunity for that is is currently at the mall that is proposed on the map and and everyone sees those maximums. Just just to be clear, everyone sees those maximums and that's a little bit concerning. But keep in mind that we hope this builds out incrementally and that obviously everything's not going to get maxed out. This would be like the core of an urban center and then it disperses as it gets out into the neighborhood. town center, a little less intense, but you can see the activity. You can see the shared spaces that are going on

here. We're talking about a three, fourtory building here. Um, opportunities for commercial below residential, but also probably commercial adjacent to residential. As we get towards the edge, you know, this is a little bit more of a suburban town center rehabilitation type design. Again, we're up to about four stories. I think you can see some commercial along the main areas, but then as you start to step away, you know, maybe the ground floor here is is able to be residential. You know, it's not fully mixed use. It's got some of those connections. You've got some on street parking. You probably got a shared parking facility here as opposed to everyone pulling into their garage. So, this is that edge of a corridor, edge of a town center um type development. Jumping in down into our next scale of u of commercial activity and mixeduse development, we get into the main street business. This translated into minor corridors and neighborhood nodes. So, some of the notable ones, we've got a lot of Five Points being a uh a neighborhood node. Currently, a lot of it owns Main Street Business. As you pull away from Five Points, it gets a little bit minor corridor and then it just goes into the neighborhood. Um, we've got the small node that's um, you know, coming along at Timothy and Epsbridge. You know, we had development there of a mixeduse development many years ago. There's some opportunity to potentially complement that. Parts of the east side as you get away from the uh, the Kroger Publix shopping center uh, begins to filter down into the community. So again, we've got that slightly more intense at the center. And then we step as we get towards the community uh around the east side Walmart, the area around Lowe's, the area that is now currently known as the Scholes, the Lakewood development on um Barnett Scholes Drive as you're driving out there. A lot of you see that as the woods today, but if you guys have heard about some of the developments that have been passed, the opportunity to create a nice node along there as well as our newest east side library. And then some development out along uh Prince Avenue as we get towards the loop and Hawthorne

and then also around the chicken plant which um has been growing in a very unique way and and some interesting opportunities out there. So again we're talking lower in intensity here, medium to low intensity in these locations. One to four stories almost positive we had that at three stories. We will correct that. We will double check all those notes. Minor corridor as well. I think two to three stories is where we actually ended up at. Apologize for that. Um, walkability, intentional green spaces, places for people to get together, smaller scale transit, um, accessibility there. Again, some mixed use, whether that's that's probably a little bit more horizontal at at this scale, but we have, you know, some nice buildings along Prince and in five points that have even at just three stories or two stories have some of that mixed use in the building. uh we are talking about, you know, polling buildings a little bit closer to the street. Um utilizing some of that space. And then again, these are talking a little bit more about our locally local and weekly trips. Um possibly municipal stuff. So things you need to go to to deal with on a regular basis to keep up your insurance and things like that. So here's a nice look at what's close to a uh um a neighborhood center. We probably have a little bit of a pop here um in the center. This is probably, you know, larger ceilings here. This is actually probably only functioning as about a two-story building. But for the most part, you're seeing, you know, one and twotory structures here. Places you would walk along and enjoy. You might sit out in front of and enjoy, you know, a coffee or an ice cream or something like that. Um this is also a boulevard. So, we talked a little bit about the rightway. this this um project does not really get into the rightway. That's a little bit more of what our transportation public works department's going. But how those two things can correspond, how you can create this nice area around here by doing things like a

boulevard. Again, here is Parson's Alley over in Decar if you've been there. So, we're talking one and twotory buildings. We're talking about community gathering space, roads that can potentially be shut down for an event or a fair or something like that. And then again, just another uh another version of this. This is probably a little bit more of a redevelopment version um that's going in. You can kind of see some of the the older in town neighborhood around this be able to walk to. Now, we would love for this interior to be a little bit nicer. We would love we would be requiring street furniture. We'd be requiring street trees. You can see this development's a little bit newer. They've got the the small willows going in there. Um but as this develops, you know, we would get those things going along with it. And then here's, you know, a little bit more of a um fleshed out, more mature version of this. I think this is actually in Baltimore here, walking along where you've got, you know, the first floor shops and then you've got, you know, apartments and condos above it. So, single family residential stayed single family residential. We heard from a lot of people, please keep the single family residential opportunities. Um, we basically just, this is just one words, it went the words didn't even change here. single family residential, staying single family residential. Um, we're talking low intensity here. These are neighborhoods that are, you know, there's probably a neighborhood open space as opposed to like a a community park. Um, safe, kid-friendly, single family detached house scale, one to two and a half stories, variable setbacks as we range throughout town, and, you know, serving our our kind of local needs here. Here's your standard looking single family detached products. Um, we would love for them to be even nicer looking than this, but this is, you know, a wonderful opportunity to bring housing and opportunities for people in the community. Traditional neighborhood is that in town version of this. Now, you will see as town expanded a little bit more of this

traditional neighborhood over here. This is actually a little bit some of the newer stuff as opposed to the east side which has a little bit more of the the suburban type development. Um, this was mostly in town. Again, this did not change other than in name. So, we went from traditional neighborhood to residential neighborhood. Now, we see these opportunities as good connections. You can see all the in town stuff built organically over time, built out a largely without a heck of a lot of zoning code actually to it. Um, so there's a little bit more mixing going on there. You see houses turned into offices, you see a duplex next to a house, you see small apartments and town homes mixed in there. Um so again this is one translation to the future one with um barely any change on this map to where that is that is going. Talked a little bit about the the features there. We're going to breeze through a few looks here. This is just all the range of housing. So accessory dwelling units, an optional unit in the backyard. You've got the option here of an accessory dwelling unit over a garage. Um we've got duplexes. We know what what the idea of duplexes is. Um, but this is here in Athens, clar county. This is a duplex neighborhood on the east side that I think most people would say that shared wall provides a little bit more value and affordability to their unit without taking away from the neighborhood. This is also a duplex. This is a little bit more of an intown style duplex um that you could see. You know, this this structure could have been renovated into this or this structure could be built this way and fit into a community triplex. Now, we're stepping up in intensity here a little bit. We're probably looking at these more along the corridors that abut these neighborhoods. Quadruplex, very same story. So, as you, you know, as you slowly go away from those neighborhood business districts and things like that, we would expect the opportunities for, you know, the break up of a quadruplex. You can see multiple of those along Boulevard. Um,

town houses. This is becoming a very hot product um throughout the country and throughout a lot of the cases we have seen. So, a little bit more space, a little bit more affordable option with shared walls. Um, sometimes you're tucking the parking behind. A lot of times there's on street parking to go with that. Uh, be able to provide a little bit more of that value, uh, but still at a human scale. So, we've got, you know, some some town houses here on the left from another community. And then we've got Anenboroough here. If you've ever been back into Anenboroough, beautiful community that allows people to get right to a restaurant. Um, if they want to, they can easily walk down to Publix and Kroger and do some grocery shopping. They've got some common space, things like that that can all go together. Few more images of a townhouse or townhouse. Wanted to show you all the options for townous. Um, so a bungalow court or a cottage court is usually a nicer, smaller mix. And so we're talking about using space a little bit more efficiently. Um, this is a newer product out in Oklahoma, I believe. Um, I'm sure those are not the cheapest ones on the planet. This is more of what we've kind of seen throughout the Atlanta area. So, you've got a central green and there's about 10 or 12 of these. Um, I think this might actually be in Charlotte. I'm not exactly sure. Um, but we're talking about a little bit smaller unit around a shared space. So, everyone doesn't have to take care of their own property. There would be a combined opportunity there. This is this is perfect for the people who are just getting into it. you know, a small kid running around playing um or people wanting to get out of that big house. So, a good opportunity to possibly have singlestory living to have neighbors around that might be able to help you out, give you a cup of sugar, um every now and again, get you to the mechanic when you need. Um but also, again, we're talking about using space here a little bit differently because everyone doesn't have their own personal yard and major driveway. A lot of those are shared and then you're you're building a little bit. So these are

small sort of infill type things that can go in and we're talking, you know, probably usually in the realm of one and a half to three acre lots here. So you put a few lots together right on the edge of a neighborhood and you can build a little bit more of that intensity into there. Couple more views of a cottage court and then bungalow courts. This is the California style the U-shape that's very common out there. This functions a little bit more as a as an apartment, but usually have a little bit of your own space. So you got that back patio um or that front stoop or something like that. So you kind of have that compact living with a little bit of extra breathing room. Mixed density residential. This is our multif family zone. Um again, not not much change here on the map. We're um we're just recognizing where that mixed density is. It's in and around. It's that next step away from a lot of those corridors and a lot of those nodes. So we're talking about a little bit more of a medium intensity here. you know, we're talking two to four stories, shared spaces, opportunities for families, still uh multif family arrangements, but also in a lot of these areas, we have single family detached products, possibly single family detached products, excuse me, with a cottage in the back that you can get a little bit of um extra income out of, your your in-laws could move into, your adult child could live in, you know, all those sorts of arrangements that we have going on nowadays. Here's some of our mixed density residential. This is um Columbia Brookside over um off of Hawthorne. We've got smaller apartments in this size. So this is pretty reminiscent of you know style Oh, this is the Styles building. Excuse me. So um we've got that right here. So smaller apartment units, ones that fit in a little bit better ones. A lot of the apartment complexes we see nowadays become these kind of monolithic things. You can't get from one side to the other. So you used to maybe have a neighbor there. Whereas this apartment, you can get around pretty easily. If you wanted to walk from one side of Five Points to the other, you wouldn't feel like you're

going through someone else's personal home. You're kind of going by it and it's at that scale that you can you can accommodate. Again, we're talking about that human scale. This is on the high side. Three stories at the styles apartments probably a little bit on that high side, but most people still feel comfortable. Don't feel overwhelmed by that. a little bit larger version of that kind of in our U-shaped court that we would see a lot um back throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s style development. Just again here is our government being turned into government education, parks and open space. We can pop through that. That's all very institutional. Employment center again mostly staying the same. where we saw a little bit of that change is is up there on that Newton Bridge corridor where we're hearing from our economic development team, where we're hearing from developers out there um that there's not a lot of viability. They would like to be in the Athena Industrial Park or out along some of the um industrial employment job opportunities that are along Atlanta Highway. So again, uh pretty much leaving the map very similar other than that Newton Bridge location. We've got a lot of job centers here. We've got some medium intensity. You can actually get quite tall in those areas. Um that is an allowance. Um some of these are those campuses that are coming in those industrial campuses. Um but also some of those are just a multi-tenant structure like we have out in Coggins Industrial Park there off of Atlanta Highway. Lastly, we get down to rural going to rural and rural residential. I think I talked a little bit about that, but you can see the the little bit of infusions there in the light green throughout the rural um some of that intensity. So, I just want to show you that we zoomed in a little and I just put these on here so we could probably jump back to them. Um but we do have the west and go ahead and breeze through these three real quick. Um so, we can jump back to these as we go into discussion. I just

wanted them to be a part of our presentation. And then I think lastly, we have just the full map. So we can get back to this as we have I believe that's the last slide, Max. Yes. Okay. I've talked for way too long. I will turn this over to you all. Thank you. All right. Thank you for that wonderful presentation. Um so uh planning commission we have time to discuss this amongst ourselves now. Um just to start us off, provide a little guidance maybe container for the discussion. Two things that uh we should be thinking about. Um any questions or concerns that pop up to us um or if you like any questions or or concerns that you can imagine someone that you know having like you know I get it. I've been here this whole time. I saw the whole growth concept map and I'm very versed in this but I think that this is going to be concerning to someone else. I think this is going like my neighbor would have something to say about this and I would I would want to hear the answer to that question. Um also uh before we leave tonight we need to figure out are are we ready to vote on this on August 7th or do we need to have additional information, additional discussion um or some other opportunity? um in order to make that vote. So, with those questions in mind, thoughts? Um yeah, I'll just um kick it off by uh saying, you know, I think something that we hear a lot at the planning commission when people propose to do some sort of new thing is people u expressing two concerns. new housing is not affordable to my, you know, they say like my kids are grown up now and my grandkids and they, you know, their grandkids and they had to move to Charlotte or they had to move to Atlanta

and I wish they were closer because housing here has gotten too uh unaffordable. Um, and yet at the same people will say like, you know, but I oppose this new housing because it's not affordable enough. It's not the right kind of housing. It alters my neighborhood or or whatever. Uh, and I think it's important to just like the the starting point of all of this is that Athens is growing and they that growth is inevitable and some of that is just, you know, I have two kids who are both around 20 years old and and probably in the next 10 years they'll start families of their own, right? So, some of it is just Athens is growing because all of us have kids who grew up here and they're they may have grandkids if we're lucky and uh and so on. So, they start new households of their own. Plus, of course, people come here because UG grows and new companies come in and start new, you know, medical manufacturing facilities or what have you. And the medical school's growing and and so the population is growing and that's inevitable and that's going to happen um whether people or not. Um and so you either plan for growth, which is what this process is, or you get unplanned growth, which is sometimes what you know u people complain about. They say like, "Well, I don't like what this thing that got built." I've heard a lot of people saying they don't like what's being built at where where the varsity used to be. That's not what they wanted to see there. That's what the zoning allows. Um, and so that, you know, uh, what gets built is what the what the current future land use map and the current zoning map allows except to the extent that we change it, which is what this process is. So, it's planning for more of the growth that we want to see. Um and the growth is going to happen regardless, right? So, uh no growth is not on the table. It's either planned growth or relatively unplanned growth or or growth that you know is based on a plan that

was adopted in the year 2000. Um which which u has produced a lot of stuff that a lot of people don't like. So, um, I think that that's, you know, as I think about it and as I've talked to friends and neighbors about it, it's why why do we do this? It's because we're trying to plan for more of the kind of growth that we want to see. Um, relatively gentle density. I see people sitting here who are friends of mine and who I know have a garage apartment, you know, and um, in in Five Points in Cabbam in Boulevard, there's a there's hundreds of those, you know, carriage house apartments. I have one myself. Uh, and those are great and and um more of those allow more people, you know, young single people who are teachers or nurses or or whatever, uh, to to have a place of their own that's in a nice walkable neighborhood and stuff like that. It doesn't alter the character of the neighborhood because it's very consistent with the character of those old historic neighborhoods. And so, um, I just want to commend the committee for all the a lot of, um, really hard thinking about this stuff. And I think that that what what I've seen here and over the course of the last 18 months while you all have been doing your work on this um is a tremendous amount of really thoughtful consideration of the community's needs um and how we can accommodate the people that are going to move here in the next 20 years um without um you know having uh just unplanned growth and and um unattractive growth. So, I commend the committee and with the staff support um for what seems like really excellent work to me. Anyone else got some initial thoughts? I just agree with everything. I agree

with everything that Matt just said and um I really do think Alex and the committee like this is serious work and we were really grateful for it. And I heard something today in the meeting prior to this that was so disheartening um where our elected commissioner said he was not going to be approving this land use map um because planning staff informed by committees and boards like us have no business making policy. And I totally disagree in the sense that our job and staff's actual job is to make recommendations on policy. I mean, the mayor commission can decide to not approve it. Um, but that's kind of the job of all these citizen boards and committees and planning staff. And you know, I think we've on this body over the last, you know, I've been on this body now for seven years, and I think the last couple of years have been in a lot of ways the most challenging that we have elected officials who just openly say that what we say doesn't matter. And um I I guess I bring that up because like even the commissioner who said that and all of the people were here in the meeting prior to this didn't stay to listen to what we just listened to for an hour and a half. And I think if a lot of them had listened to that, they'd feel better about the process. They'd understand better. I think there was some problem with how the the time of that meeting earlier was posted because a lot of people showed up at 5:15 and um didn't hear Mark go into the process. How many years? This is actually

something you all started in 2023, but this kind of started and when I started in the planning commission and Kristen, you and I start at the same time. We went right into it was like sort of trial by fire. went right into the comp plan. And basically the this process was seen as, if I understand correctly, Bruce, this process was seen as so important and so worthy of its own effort that it the can was kind of kicked down the road because that was the time when like the Envision Athens was happening then just more stuff happened the pandemic. There's a lot of reasons why this process, the actual real focus part of this process got put to 2023, but in a lot of ways it was being talked about and thought about for as long as I've been on the commission and the number of times where especially um especially in like the industrial employment industrial area on the east side where we really we really need this guidance to be able to make the decisions we make like the number of times where we're like, "This property is not, you know, I understand why it was zoned this way in 1999. The zoning doesn't make sense with how it was actually used or the economic situation or whatever. Um, we need this document. It's so important." And I feel like in a lot of ways for me, I've been just waiting and watching and hoping we could get to this point. Um, and I'm really, you know, there I have a lot of questions, but I I mean I think you guys did a really good job. I think splitting these um land use categories made a lot of sense. And um I think just to echo what Matt was saying about planning, growth is absolutely inevitable. And if

we you know, especially when you're talking about housing, if you make people are still going to want to come here no matter what. So you don't make enough housing, you don't have enough housing supply, and then the only people who live here are people can afford to live here. Like is that what we want? Do we only want a community of people who can pay a million and a half dollars for their house? I don't want that as the only people live in the community I live in. So, we have to plan for this growth. We have to accept a little bit more density. And what this map does a really good job of is and what Mark did a really good job of communicating was we want to plan where that density is appropriate like and and make sure we're protecting the areas where it's not appropriate and sort of asking in some ways the entire community though to absorb some of this growth in a way that makes sense. So maybe I'll just leave it at that because I think there's probably other people have more general comments. I I do have a lot of like little just like what's this, what's that sort of questions, but I'll stop now so you guys can can make more more general comments if you want to. I don't have a ton of questions. I'm incredibly appreciative of this process and the committee that you've steered and and all of the work and effort you put into this and and really just to piggyback on what you have both said so eloquently already. This is why I want to live in Athens. I like being part of a community that is this intentional and this outreaching with our citizens to get this input and to have this be something that we've deliberated on as a community for 18 plus months intensely and certainly longer than that. And so in my work, every facet of it, these additional categories help guide real estate. They help guide decision. help guide development more thoughtfully

and I'm just really appreciative that the collaboration of this effort. So, thank you. So, yes, to echo everything that's been said, yes, I agree wholeheartedly. Um, I wanted to applaud the different rural and open space categories. Um, that was something like when Urban 3 came, I had a question about like, well, what if you build something near a park? and we never really had a way. It was just government and it was impossible to tell what was actually there. So, this um is really helpful just looking at all these colors. I I'm curious like I I do like drilling down more into the different levels of intensity maybe and I'm not sure who's the best person to answer this one, but I'm curious like when we're posed with something in a neighborhood residential versus a single family residential versus maybe even mixed density residential, like what would be the degrees? I'm thinking like when we see these um like a proposal come that requires a future land use change, what what would necessitate I mean I'm I'm thinking like maybe there's something that is neighborhood residential and the proposal would bring it to single family residential. Like what would be that difference? Are we setting ourselves up for like a lot of little tiny changes like that? That kind of thing. Let me take a swing and then Alex or or Mark um for Stephen. You know it there is in your handout that that multicolored summary got it out right here. Nope. That one and that that I think helps answer the kind of question you're reaching for. Okay. That you can create a disinal bandwidth of land use and with residential they do speak to different types of intensity.

um height, number of units, but then they also speak a little bit to the context and where they're located. Um we're not talking about plunking down that kind of density in the middle of an existing subdivision necessarily. What we're talking about is focusing on corridors, looking at intersections that already have high traffic and they already have infrastructure. So when somebody would come in, let's say they come into our office and talk to staff and say, "Well, look, I'm interested in this property. um this future land use category is half the density that I need it to be. Um I I would need to change that future land use category to to be able to proceed with this project. We have a very frank discussion with them about why those categories were assigned. It's usually very empirical stuff. Um there is insufficient sewer, for example, or the type of build that you're going to do generates far more traffic that can be handled on that local street in which this property is located. um or it's out on the edge of town in a place that couldn't support that because you don't have water and you don't have sewer. Um and you have rural section roads, it doesn't work. So when you look at that comparative image, maybe it answers your question, but we want that to be a guide stone. Um there is some overlap though, right? So you will see one category may have two to three stories and then the next one may have two to four and then this one may have you know up to five. And there's Mark Mark touched on that. We want we need the flexibility to build up into those nodal areas. When we say node we're talking about intersections. Sometimes that's one of those planner speak things that we throw around like everybody understands what a node is. A node is an area where things can concentrate. A node is an area where density can happen and it doesn't do it. It it it's not a problem. It can handle it. So those things build to allow for

more intensity in the centers of those nodes and then they step down as they transition out onto a corridor and certainly as they transition into a neighborhood. That help? It does. And it I like as I was asking the question, I was like thinking that what you were saying might have been where that was going to go, but I wasn't sure because because I do feel like right now there's a bit of like a white like sometimes we'll see things we'll be like, h maybe I feel like this gives us a lot more context clues than what we currently have. Trying to flesh it out a little bit. Yeah. And we've we have we've already got developers coming in. They're like, "This is really helpful. I this makes sense to me. Um is this something I could ask for? And right now the answer is well no. It's not a policy yet, but thank you for enjoying, you know, but but the reason why they're responding well to it is because it is a little more prescriptive. It does reach into some other things that that are more than just a character-based narrative statement. You know, we we try to have some images to show, well, this is this is what we're talking about. Here's an example of what it is. So, we want more of those images to be part of the discussion to help demystify a bunch of long words on a sheet of paper and and does this also like for example we've seen a couple cottage court proposals and they always come with like a string of variances because they're not really I know that's getting into zoning and this is not zoning right but does this start to lay the groundwork for those types of wiggle room things? It absolutely does because it and I think the comment was made. It locates where these things would be appropriate. Right now we wrestle with the appropriateness discussion. What we want this policy document, this this map to do is to say the community's looked at this and and it's appropriate to do

that kind of style of build here. And then the zoning code will dictate the how, you know, what what material materials are we talking about? What what's the parking ratio? Are we going to change that? um what is the height that we're going to talk about? Not a range. What is it going to be? And we can be way more prescriptive in the ordinance in the zoning ordinance. Future land use map is not an ordinance. Future land use map is not law, but it does help translate community values into law. And so that's what we want to use it for. Thank you. I had a similar question around that, but I think I can see the difference between your general business and your employment center because I was going to ask it was this developed with the anticipation of business growth or are we just designating space and with the anticipation of business growth and where is located? A little bit of both. I mean it does anticipate there will be growth but the honest answer is there there in those employment the big purple on the map a lot of that as Mark showed is actually contracting because we have a bunch of that that isn't built out yet so we still have opportunity on the map in that sector and the employment um general business what we're anticipating that's sort of call it highway business some folks Atlanta highway you know or further out um 441th. Um that general business category can be expanded to pick up like research and development where once upon a time that was seen as light industry only. Well, these days research and development is smaller scale. It can be in a 5,000 foot building and do exactly what it needs in that amount of space. Why can't that exist on a corridor in a general business category? So those the nature of doing business, the nature of developing has shifted in the 25 years since we did a big change. And

what we're trying to do is reflect that change in these categories. Can I make a just a quick comment what Christian had said? Um, the readability of this was important to me and every meeting that the committee had, I would have a meeting days before that with staff looking at what was put back together from our last meeting. And yeah, I I love color. I like to be able to find information quickly, and I assume everyone else does. My hell is having to get out of a room and nothing but black and white words to tell me how to do it. Little bitty things. So, some people love that. I think developers or anyone that's interested that wants to see needs to you it all leads you to this. You start here, you start here, you go to this, and then you go to the big definitions. And and we had that conversation even just the other day about how to do that. But but it the coloring and the the way one leads to another I think is important. It's not just the map itself. It's not just the words that define the map. It's how somebody's going to come through and understand to answer a question like you were you were beginning to figure it out. And so I thought that was important. And the committee obviously did as well. Simplicity sometimes is important. people, the quicker they can find the right answer, better. Um, we don't need to lead them into a direction that gets them frustrated or they just start assuming the wrong thing. It was really cool to work with a group of people like the steering committee that pushed us to make sense. their expectation was bank sense and and we

did have we did have a conversation and we we watched their conversation where they were really wrestling with how to arrive at something that makes sense and um in public discourse that I'm just going to this is my plug for the work of the group and being able to sit and watch you all work and how the leadership of it was so focused on the end result it wasn't about anybody's agenda Uh it wasn't really about anybody's individual experience, although they brought those to the discussion. Um and the fieldwork they did was commendable as well, going to places they'd never been to before, stretching their familiarity with Athens. Um I think it shows in the end result that came out of y'all's work. Um you guys were saying things, we look at maps every day, all day, and you were saying things we hadn't thought about. So that's when you know a a group of residents, a group of citizens have got it. They've they're they're into it and they're thinking about it the right way. And and definitely the last six months of this process where where the creative juices were flowing, that's where you guys were. I appreciate that. And as I drive through Athens, I see it in color now. I'm a gray road. I'm in a yellow neighborhood. That's That's how Yeah. Um, yeah. I just wanted talking about colors and I'm not going to lie, I would love I'm sure there's an online version of this where I can zoom in actually because I feel like I know Athens and I look at this map and I'm like, wait, where is that road again? But there there are a couple and and maybe only because it's red and so it popped out at me, but like there's a couple spaces where I see red next to um residential and that to me is always either even on the current map is a bit

of a red flag. And so I was just like I feel like there's some instances where it's correcting what's on the ground, right? Like it might be like I'm looking up maybe this is 441 or no that's North Avenue. Um where there's some like there's some commercial like PJ Harris I think that is um and then on the east side like there's just like little pockets of these bread I think there's one like kind of across Lexington from the airport. Is that what you're talking about? I think those my understanding is that those are shifting to be what's actually there. their existing friendship. Yeah. When I get to our point last week about popcorn exactly. Yeah. And so and it's really hard to tell on this print out, but it was the same kind of thing where I'm looking at like the gray down popcorn and it does seem to kind of butt in to that neighborhood more than just being a one corridor. So when you read the description of minor corridor particular um I think it's important to point out the fact that we're promoting that the committee wrestled with this about minor corridors major corridors how to interact with neighborhoods how to be a good neighbor if you're commercial and the notion of mixed use not just being high but mixed use being horizontal so that you can have commercial up on Hawthorne and have it step down into town homes as you approach a Hawthorne extension. That's the description of minor corridor. So, it gives that bandwidth of not pure highway business. It allows for contextually appropriate growth on those corridors and then the zoning would actually break it up. I I I I hear you and I don't disagree with you, but

when you have a neighborhood like like Hawthorne Extension as an example where I mean right now the Z is completely messed up, but even even with what you're talking about, this idea that we have existing houses there and they could be replaced with something stepped down with like a smaller apartment building, which again like okay, fine. But then we just had a meeting of people that were so upset at the idea of having like a duplex in their neighborhood. So why does that neighborhood get a get preference over something along Hawthorne that was clearly in this zone 20 years ago can so bunch of things in what you're saying. Um fixing the map is exactly what we're trying to do. So let me focus on that. So this this change and the wording that goes with that category and this might be one of those where if the summary is not doing justice, you may not in the handout on your corridor. Okay. But the point here is to create something that can coexist within town neighborhoods. I get that. Okay. He said that say I mean I'm saying like okay bad example because it wouldn't be appropriate but Pinerest for example should also be a minor corridor and we can say well it's it can still coexist with neighborhood. I just feel like the push back we get from that would be different. Okay. So Hawthorne not being a local street like Kleinrest Horn extension I'm talking about one block in. I'm not talking about Hawthorne Hawthorne. Yes, that that needs some redevelopment. So yes, future land use is not zoning, right? So it's worth saying again the zoning that would go along with this that would translate that future land use category would not put commercial on

Hawthorne extension in this exercise and what we're planning to do. We would not be putting CG zoning at the risk of getting into a zoning discussion on Hawthorne Extension. This sets the table for us to have a policy to change that. And not just on Hawthorne, but in other places where it exists. We can walk some of those things back and make it appropriate. And that's what we intend to do following adoption of this. This gives a policy document for then us to take an implementation step and bring forward resign with future land use maps. Does that help? I mean, I yes, I I get what you're saying, but it's one of those like, well, why would why would that one block in from Hawthorne Avenue where we're talking about Hawthorne Extension that could be neighborhood residential and still capture a lot of the same zoning compatibility as minor corridor, but it keeps minor corridor from bleeding over into an established. Okay, those are all one parcel. Maybe this helps answer the question. So where something goes, it's a throughb block parcel. We didn't have we I won't say there's none, but we didn't have many examples at all where the future land use was broken on the parcel. No, I I know what you're saying. And I think this is just a case where I need to zoom in. It's so tiny and I don't want to like take up a lot of time on like this one tiny thing, but um but I think this is a case where I I would like to zoom in because I I think I think I would like to see something for the purposes of this discussion. That slider tool that we sent out earlier in the year, that link still works. We will resend it to y'all in case that's but um it it would allow you to get all the way down. you know, you can zoom all the way in and slide that thing back and forth and see current versus proposed and have aerials and that's available to the public as well. So,

and it is uh Oh, let me just address that real quick. And from what I'm seeing and what I remember, you you kind of hit it just right. The the minor corridor is the lot that touches the road and if it goes all the way through to Pawthorne Extension, it's going to catch that. Um, and but I'm looking with barely can see it, but it appears that there are several own Hawthorne extension only that don't pass all the way through to Hawthorne that are mixed and uh that or Oh, I just Yeah, an extensity rather. Yeah. So, you have to zoom in. It's Athens, Georgia. It's tiny. Yeah, I do that when I read a magazine. I'm still doing that. You have to zoom in on this. Um, can we actually go back to uh to that uh East Side Gaines School Lexington because we moved on from that general business. We were saying it's ground truthing, but the fact that it's on that that red general business there is on this map indicates to me that it's not ground truthing, right? Because this is the fully stepped down, which means that anything in here is a a significant enough change, right? Do we know why that general business is in there now? Why are we changing the future land use to general business? It's there today. It's general business today. This is It got changed and then it got changed back because the airport overlay the airport overlay goes right through those properties and limits a lot of opportunities for development. Sarah, this this is one of those things where where we're trying to be as transparent as possible. The steering committee did have discussion about that and as Mark said it went to corridor and then the commission the steering committee's discussion brought it back to the red. Okay. And so we've left it because there was a touch on it that changed it during the course of we left it on the map but that

you know you can barely see it in the lot lot lines on there but the airport is right there. Oh yeah. Yeah. And so there are some restrictions. Yeah. There are some restrictions on what can happen in those airport overlays. Yeah. So, that was that was the discussion on that. Okay. Um, great. That was just a point of confusion that ground truth thing and then I see it on that map and I'm like, wait a minute. Okay. So, I I got you. Um, I had a couple questions that you Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, one of them I just uh on the growth concept map special district. What was that? Forgot, but I think you guys told us that. Well, we had we had a couple on the map. Okay. And so, one of the special districts, we we put those on there because they deserved some special discussion. What are we going to do with these areas was essentially the question that those blue blobs represented. One of the blue areas that was a special district was the property that was going to be the amphitheater off of 441. Oh, yeah. um you know it has satow since that project um kind of fell apart but that's a key that's a lynchpin piece for the potential of providing sewer service into that basin. So we left that on there as a discussion topic um for the community for planning commission for the steering committee but also for our county commission to say this is something we need to we need to put a focus on in our public policy discussions. what's our directive on that? The other one was right across the river from the entertainment district of downtown, the new arena. Um, we wanted to again put focus on that discussion. If downtown's going to grow and have intensity as is proposed with the classic center and the anticipated things that would come next to the

arena, we need to be thinking very clearly about what pressures that will or will not create on the neighborhood immediately across the river. Um, so th that's what this is intended to do is let's have a very frank policy discussion in our community about where we see things going and and that's why those blue I think those are the two big blue ones sort of a placeholder for later focused policy discussion. Exactly. It's not it's not a side with a future land use map. didn't turn into something on this future land use map as worked on by the committee, but we still think they're important enough that um they could turn into recommendations down the line and they are they are issues in the now that we want to make sure are part of that public community discussion. Okay, great. And so within those two areas, did you all do much with the future land use designation for those parcels or like did those get treatment? So the image that's on the screen right now, the the area across the river, no change. So future land use for that, I believe, is still in a residential labor um that's currently on the future land use map. That did not change. Okay. And that did come up in our discussion to not just leave it alone. There were people like, "No, no, no. We're not taking downtown across the river." Uhhuh. And we didn't intend to, but that was a a pretty good stronghold. It just needs sort of a later, more focused session on this on that. And then conversely, you can see what I believe is Town Center shown on the amphitheater site, which is almost right in the middle of of the screen. I don't I don't have a point or anything. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, dude. Hold on. Hold on.

Yeah. So, uh you know, whereas across the river from downtown, hands off. This was okay, we have a site that has been prepped for development that is not getting development, hands on. Let's let's open the doors for something in this policy document that says this is okay. this this is a spot where we would like to see something happen. Um so that's why that's on the map. Okay, that's great. And then another question I had got a couple more. One of them is um the new residential rural future land use designation. So, just looking at the zoning compatibility, I'm wondering about and I I know we're not talking about zoning, but the smallest parcel residential that's currently allowed or or that's proposed to be allowed is the RS40. So, that's a about an acre lot minimum. Um but then we see a lot of the light green which are much more small lot development than than 40,000 ft. Not too many. But I and I thought where you're going with this is there there are some of those that got the light green that are two acre or three acre lots. Would that mean that if they became RS40 they could be subdivided further? That's a good question. That that's where I thought you were. Uh what we don't have is a tool in the toolbox in the zoning code yet and we may not have one um that that does something that is a 5 acre lot minimum. Um but that was a part of the committee's discussion was okay so let's talk about this rural residential how does it work what would it be like if it had a zoning category and I think we spent I don't know 45 minutes or so one day just talking about that. Um, so to your point, the way it's represented on the map

right now, the steering committee's comfort level sort of stopped at let's reflect something that is already currently on the ground. Yeah, there you're not going to see a large track of rural that has rural residential on it that isn't already subdivided. It's only going to be on areas that are already subdivided. And frankly, well, those subdivisions have been around since the 70s and 80s, most of them. Yeah. And I guess where I wondered about that is like for example on the west side of the county. Um what is that right there? The let's see if we can pull it up. There's sort of a diamond shaped light green with a blue in the middle of it. Middle school. And so what's the what's the area around the middle school? So that's zone. So that's so that has a PD that was adopted. Oh, okay. Or a subdivision. Okay. That is that is a little frankly a little less than an acre lot subdivision. Okay. But because they haven't done it and subdivided, we just have to show it as the one big. Correct. But it is on the books as a PD. Okay. Yeah. Um Okay. I think that answered that that question. And so the couple other places where I see that that's probably what's going on. Like there's one out um that's I guess that's out Newton Bridge Road. Is that Newton Bridge Road? No like green. Yeah, I guess41. Is that what's going on there? Kind of. No, that's more that's Sandy that's that's um that's that's the park. at Sandy Creek Park up at the the little circle with you're you're off to the right. Yeah, they're more target ground truthing. We already have lots out there that are less than 10 acre lots.

Got it. Okay, so they've just been Okay, that makes sense. Um and then and the none of the sort of zoning compatibilities include like there's a conservation subdivision ordinance just own separate thing that just doesn't come into this at all yet like if somebody wanted to do a conservation subdivision that wouldn't be on future land use that wouldn't change the future land use. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then the other question I had really all over the place. So, can we build 10 stories downtown now? Okay. Oh, we have. Yeah. Yeah. Going any higher that it becomes a problem. Yeah. So, the whole like the river, whatever that one was called, that's 10 stories. Is the park 10 stories? Yeah. High. None of them are 10 stories. You don't if you go above eight, you have to change that whole fire. Well, it's concrete and steel as opposed to like sticks over a podium and it's vastly more expensive to build. Yeah. So, so what you see though where we do have 10 stories is you have the way we calculate height it's an average and so where we have grade change it is AC it's able to accomplish a story below grade still counts as a story. So the way our zoning is set up now this again this is not future land use. Yeah. Future land use was really what we were trying to say with downtown is the future of downtown outside of our historic districts. Um there is a desire, there's an interest to to have more than 100 feet tall and the future land use category was trying to anticipate that by saying that that that could be possible from a zoning standpoint. Y'all have been in on those discussions. the rivermill discussion I I think is a best case of the things we've got to work through with our fire marshall and the things we have to work through with the building code to do building differently to be able to get to that height.

Yeah. But that's kind of kind of outside. Yep. Yeah. Um and then um you know think kind of back to residential you know I live in the five points area and kind of thinking about what I hear people express about their concerns when it comes to housing typologies and um I think there's a lot of different kind of incompatible feelings links that are expressed by people who live in Five Points. And one of them is there's a lot of folks who don't want to have their street designated as historic district. Um, and the streets that some people that that are not currently in historic districts, but have some historic structures on them. Um, yeah, there's just been a lot of resistance over the years to those streets becoming historic districts. That just is what it is. But I one of the concerns that I have heard from time to time if you're if we're kind of moving to where it you know there's there's already a ton of missing middle housing in Five Points. We know this. We've done missing middle housing tours. We know that there's garage apartments and ADUs and all sorts of things or you know quadplexes that you can't tell that it's a quadplex unless you chunk the water meters. You know, we have a lot of that. And while I think there's some fear around that, I often find that when you point out to somebody that they live next to it and didn't realize it, they you can they can soften a little bit, realize like, oh, that's actually not that offensive. But I do see some fear coming into play when it comes to people being worried about um this beautiful historic house. Not technically historic, but you know, historic because it's older. um now is

going to be a place where somebody could come in and build maybe same scale but build a duplex or something a little bit more dense and they're going to be I think concerned that they're going to lose these structures. I personally think that for the most part the economic forces are going to make that like prohibitively expensive. But I think as we've all seen in that neighborhood, there's some people with like dumb money who will come in and um demolish a house they've bought for a million dollars. So I guess what I'm getting at is how to I can see the sort of wave coming where people come and they're concerned about that and what is what kind of talk conversations did you all have in the committee about that issue where you sort of have this desire to protect to protect structures from being turned into something more where there's more units on one lot but yet a no desire to actually historically protect it kind of this so um and you're talking to a former u chair of the historic preservation commission so um I don't ever let that just fly out with without some conversation in it and while we didn't officially speak about historic preservation uh because it is not in the review of of this map. It is important. And so what this this again and and Bruce will correct me if I'm wrong on this, but there's there's still the zoning catch first of all. And and then secondly, we really didn't this map doesn't really touch those five points neighborhoods. Um it's it's left it as the same as it was. And but as far as

preservation goes, um you know, it it doesn't have to be designated in a uh his local historic district to be historic. The house is historic where the this person says it is or isn't. Uh that's my view on it. And so what what people need to do need to understand as well, I'm getting a little bit out of the lane here. I apologize, but if I buy a house on a historic road and I look out at this beautiful 100-year-old house that's historic, I don't want it torn down because, as I say, that's the ocean I bought a house on in a sense instead. It's not an ocean, but it is a historic district. Without without it being in a historic district, that can all change uh just based on I don't like the house. So, that's more reason why it actually is smart to have your neighborhood or your street uh designated as a local historic district for the protections of what you bought. Um, again, outside of what we worked with, but to go back to what you were saying, we we really didn't touch uh we didn't touch those neighborhoods into a different uh didn't didn't categorize them differently. They might have a new name, but it's not it has the same restrictions, but the um the zoning is going to catch anything else like that. And we did stay away, if I can just take one more of it. The word duplex, that's that's like we're not throwing that word all around. That is a quick way to start tearing up this map. Uh so you hear duplex and you think the duplexes we don't like uh that are tend to be ugly and and ill. Um but so again still falls back into zoning

more on that. I don't know if that exactly um got to it but the person perhaps in um the neighborhood is still going to experience what was what was there any. We're not we're not this map is not going to say on I'm just picking a road out of nowhere. Um University Drive now we can jam you know duplexes and triplexes in there. That's that's not touched. Right. Yeah. The um I hadn't pul it up the the parts where there is any change to the future land use in five points um all commercial related to the business district. It's and and I will add that from what I can tell the future land use designation that has been put here as a neighborhood center um the zoning compat like the the range of zoning compatibilities that are currently imagined for the neighborhood center. Um, I'm pretty sure that that the nothing inside of that neighborhood center is not currently like zoned compatibly. Like it's already commercial neighborhood or RM1, RM2, commercial office. Like there's nothing about changing the future land use here that necessitates some kind of change to the zoning. Um, it might be what I'm talking about is really it's going to come into play more with zoning later. I think I think I'm just getting ahead of myself and kind of I mean you all listen to me talk long enough that you you know that I'm a fan of house scale multif family and I think it's a great way to get um people living getting to enjoy the neighborhood I get to enjoy and um having a more kind of walkable lifestyle or at least a carike lifestyle. Um but but yeah, I'm just getting ahead of myself and trying to think about what people will say later, but it will be much later.

Yeah. So, I'll just let it for now. Yeah. And I I mean I think that a lot of um I I think that it it's been said several times and it will need to be said many more times that that the future land use is not zoning. Um, and just to reiterate that with with another related piece of information, any zoning changes that would come would also go through these processes where there are public meetings, multiple public meetings, probably town halls, the it'll go to the planning commission, it'll go to the mayoring commission. Um, nothing. So, I think that maybe some people might be afraid that like, oh, well, you say it's not zoning, but you're just going to go in and change the zoning in in uh in your office and you're not going to tell us about it. Um, like you'll you'll do this future land use map change and then you'll do the zoning changes where I can't hear about it and and uh and this is my only chance to say something about the zoning. It's not it's not zoning. Um, I think that's that is that's important. Um, I think now would be a good time to transition to our public input and uh we can come back for a wrap-up roundup afterwards. Um, kind of come to a consensus about do we need another meeting for this. Um, so for members of the public who are still here and wish to speak, thank you for your patience. Um, just a reminder, you'll have uh three minutes to speak. Uh, you'll have a beautiful traffic light there to let you know. Uh, when it goes to red, I will uh ask you. Uh, yes. Yes. I've got a big cane. I will I will politely let you know that

your time is up. Um, when you come up, hit your name. Uh, and uh, thank you so much for for her for being here to contribute. Go ahead. Um, Rita Kelly, FivePoint resident, uh, we came to the wonderful meeting that they held at five o'clock. I wanted to talk about Pinerest, which you brought up as an example. I'm very disappointed in the six to one uh, decision to recommend. Um, R2 is much more dense than R1. And I think if you really saw the neighborhood, you'd understand. We've got so much traffic. Students drive everywhere. I don't know if you live near students, but I do already. Students drive everywhere. They have cars. They have much better cars than I own. So, you're, you know, to think that they don't is wrong. There's going to be a lot more cars. He went from like nine bedrooms allowed under R1 to 21. Also, the setback is different. It's very disappointing for us in Five Forks because we walk that area and we like it the way it is. The guy has never taken care of those two houses anyway uh that he owns. But we like the grass. We like it the way it is. Um a there are going to be a lot more cars, parking issues. I feel like a lot of times maybe you're cowtowing to developers. Um the developers is not going to do middle income or anything. I've heard from good sources there 1.2 million going for those town homes. So it's going to be a rich alumni or rich parents of students. This is no way making it more diverse or other people can move in. it's going to be more rich people if

that's what you all want. Um there also we have very narrow streets. So when you think about corridors or perhaps even the land use map for the five points node um where are you going to get these boulevards or things to make with trees and street? I mean they're so narrow already. Five points intersection with millillage and lumpin is just known for traffic accidents traffic pedestrian issues. You know I don't know how you can get more dense in our area. I just think you need to think about some of those things when you're passing that. So thank you. We appreciate these meetings but it's changing five points too much. That's why we moved to five points. Thank you. Um I I have a question about it. It's it's always we it's about color. It's about the varsity property and it's particularly about five points. I'm a millage terrace. Put your name in. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Julie Lee Nolton. Yeah. And um before we start, um if you have uh just for all of our sakes, I think that ask your questions. the questions are appreciated. Um, and I think that we wait till the end of public input to address the questions as as a as a body. So, I'll be writing them down. Yes. Well, I was just going to ask that before you um approve the map is that you do pay very careful attention to what Mark and Bruce have labeled the transition area from the minor corridor or the the neighborhood center in five points. Um, it I have too four of eyes to be able to

tell for sure, but didn't look like it was only lumpin that was pink. It looks like it does, for example, in my case, include the block where the properties might face Lumpin, but like right across the street from me, a developer owns a lot that goes from Lumpin through to Village Terrace. So, it looks like based on the future land use plan, which takes effect as early as 28, did you say? It depends when the mayor and commission should they adopt this, they'll they'll set the start. All I'm saying is that's pretty quick when you think about the lifetime of a neighborhood or you know, you bought a house and you did pay a lot or not. If you it's it's like the ocean like you say you expected that to be residential but all of a sudden it might be really difficult for you approving a zoning change or you say the developer says well it's on your land use map that's what I went by I should be able to build my fourstory business threetory whatever it is my business on that lot. And I just think the it's the transition Rutherford that we discussed earlier where they put on a street that borders a school. It's historically always been residential, single family, small, you know, modest homes, affordable, and a developer. I don't I don't know if he had to change ask for anything but he built to you know

student housing um I source and it just seems like when we just I'm just saying not this is doesn't it is going into just preferences but I just would like y'all to be very very careful about exactly where that color goes. those because I have no problem with any of the color blocks until you look at the detail of the bleed. And when you say transitional, that sounds good. But in reality, it nobody wants a developer to come in and do what they did on Rather Rutherford except the developer. And nobody wants Unreal Stairs. I can promise you 100% of the residents there would say, "No, we don't want commercial to be on our street." But it looks like it's the color that you're saying, "Well, sure, that would be fine." That's just natural transition where we would say, "Ble." Sorry. That's okay. Thank you. Hi, I'm Amy Cassain 5 by 2600 Avenue and just um really glad that I came tonight and saw all the work that had been done and a lot of really interesting things. I hope the presentation will be available um online somewhere. But I guess I just really want to ask I was wanted to ask a question. I was I know that affordable housing is a major um goal, a major concern for our community and I also understand that increasing density is one of the primary tools that we are talking about to address that affordable housing but I was wondering it's not mentioned in the guiding principles and I just was curious if that had been a discussion um and I guess I like some of the ideas that were thrown out about how to add density in

in different places in the 6% I that it's going to be focused in. But I was just wanted to throw out I mean is it possible that if affordable housing was part of a guiding principle that it would encourage developers to be more creative in how to do that and and in in the you know maybe even in the green belt in those areas. So um so yeah that was I'm just throwing that out. And my other question is just something is why why are we so why do we always want to have the setbacks not have setbacks in certain areas like I I see like the this I just don't always understand it. I see these multif family apartments in the middle of nowhere built up against the road and or on a major corridor. Why wouldn't you want a setback? which I think I saw in the characterizations of the categories that the setback in the major quarter was near or close to the street and I'm just curious about I'm just I mean I know I get new urbanism but I don't think every place should have new urbanist principles so that's that's my other question. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Ken Portier. I live in 160 Spruce Valley Road in Cedar Creek. Liveable, bikable neighborhood. Um, I have really no issue with the map, but the map is useless without the legend and the legend titles are useless without description. And as Mark pointed out, the current descriptions are a little hard to work through. Hence, he did this what he called descriptive index. And I would ask that the powers that be and maybe the steering committee go back and actually think more carefully about these descriptions. While this document is a policy

document, it's also a vision document. And I was thinking of this descriptive index. I mean you you basically say character, but really that's the 2025 character and part of our vision is the 40 20 45 character that you envision. And it's very unclear right now. And and I I'll make a quick point. The uh the difference between a minor quarter and a neighborhood center. If you look at the description, you you kind of scratch your head like what is the real difference? And I think the real difference there is a vision for what this area is going to look like. A minor corridor is going to still have a road through it and it's an important road. Whereas a neighborhood center, the road is secondary. It's the the community you're trying to build in that center, the walkability, the public transit. So somehow that vision has to come across in this document. And I think it will definitely help developers because then they'll be able to say, does my vision match this area's vision? If it doesn't, yeah, then they got to go talk to the planning department. But if it does, they may be encouraged to keep going. Um, and then finally, two things. One, I think roads are land use. And really, I think as somebody mentioned, you really need to think about roads as part of this landscape and especially comes up in the quarters, major corridors, the minor corridors, but also in the town centers. You know, it it's nice to to visualize a town center, but getting from where we are right now to that vision is going to involve roads and traffic lights and sidewalks. Um, and the other one is

I would argue that growth is inevitable is an assumption. It's not a statement. Change is inevitable. We know that things are going to change and this is a change document. Growth is one of the factors that impact change. But if you look at I'm a statistician. I look at demographic statistics all the time. If you look at the demographics right now, growth is iffy, right? Populations are flattening out. People aren't moving as much as they were 20 years ago. So growth may or may not happen in Athens, Clark County, but change is going to happen and this document helps us think about change. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, I'm Hillary Weston and I live at Village Terrace. And um I do want to say thank you for letting us speak in the public and uh thank you for the folks that put together this land use um plan and I know it was a lot of work and um and I do think it's important to guide the growth. Uh I also have noticed recently that the planning commission has thought about concentrating student growth in the area of downtown and um utilize that to leverage dollars that can build affordable housing. And I hope that one of the things that the planning staff does is look at groups like the university to partner or the hospitals or the schools with communities to build bungalow courts and cottage courts for that will be made to be um affordable to teachers and nurses and and people that

live in the community. and through that maybe a tool would be a zoning overlay and um within that so I'm not going to refer to my notes but um I think that for instance in that area that transitional area I don't think it's as transitional as you think I know a lot of people that live there our school counselor lives there a librarian lives there's live there's a lot of people when you walk up and down that street as I do every day that are not students that isn't a student transitional area. People are living in duplexes and cottages and really happy living there. They're afraid that the Pine Crest reszone is going to increase taxes, increase density, and also increase the hunger for developers to go in and really change that neighborhood. And so it scares us to hear transitional like it's going to transition to something where missing middle folks are living now happily. And it and um so I I just think that that um that's true. And then the other thing I wanted to bring up is setbacks because I also agree with what Amy was saying. Um if you look in that neighborhood, the setbacks are 30 feet. And I think that it's important not to assume that that's the future to get rid of those setbacks. that I think setbacks create um nature and safety and they're there, you know, if you can afford them um for good reasons for privacy as well as but just beauty and safety for kids who might run out or cats and dogs and um so that would be another thing that an overlay could look at a historical characteristic of a neighborhood and uh and say well in this area RM1 would have the higher setbacks um and it would and cottage courts would uh you know would be the sort of variable there that would that you could increase density further back but maintain the feeling of that neighborhood. Um so just some kind of

random thoughts um there. I think you could do some surveys and you would find that the majority of people would want those um setbacks to be higher. Certainly that's all the folks coming out about East Rutherford um and they're sort of shocked at seeing that appear and certainly the great fear of the pine crest um if it goes through being right on the street is going to be very jarring. Um and I don't think that welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Hi Darcy San. I lived in five points. Um I just want to thank you for Mark especially for your presentation. It was a very thorough stellar job. Um one thing that made me a little nervous is that there was no mention of students when you spoke and and this is one meeting that I've been at. This is all very new to me. Um so forgive my ignorance. I'm sure you've talked about students a lot and how they impact our neighborhoods. Um but it just was a little um concerning to me that you didn't mention students. Um I used to live on Cloverhurst. I now live on Mel Street and I moved to Mel Street specifically because I wanted to live in a mixed kind of area and it was very different than Cloverhurst and on Mil Street it's a historic district and so I'm in a historic house on my street I think there are 10 structures and I think five of them are single family zoned and then we have two duplexes two quadriplexes and one I think is like a triplex with an accessory building in the back that's also um a housing Um, all of the ones that aren't single family zoned are occupied by students. So, when I hear that we're, you know, this mixed complex kind of thing, that's what I hear is like more students moving into my neighborhood. Um, and actually even the house next to me, which is single family zoned, zoning didn't protect that. So, we've been like fighting with the zoning people and with the owners of the house

to not have students live in that home because it is zoned for single families. And currently, well, last year I think there were six kids who lived in it. The year before there were four. Um, so zoning doesn't always protect the historic nature of the neighborhood or the actual number of occupants in homes. So, just want y'all to consider that as you make recommendations. Thank you. Thank you. There any other member of the public who would like to give input tonight? All right. Um, thank you uh for all who spoke. Um, a a lot of um a lot of things brought up by folks um both in uh through public input and in our conversation tonight that is very much looking out outside of the future land use, looking forward to what will happen with zoning. Um, I think that there's just a desire, a a human curiosity, uh, whenever we're looking at one step to think three steps ahead. Um, that being said, we are not going to be voting on zoning for the entire county. Um, when we vote on this, we are only going to be voting on the future land use. Um, a few folks mentioned the description. Um, and I just wanted to um, at least uh, speak for myself. This might apply to other people as well. I saw this very beautiful colored chart and I was immediately on it like this is what I'm looking at. This has information for me and I love it. Um, but some of the some of the concerns that were brought up, um, very, uh, very salient made me think, well, let me go look at the big blocks of text. And

they're actually very, uh, very, very descriptive in a more qualitative rather than quantitative way. Um, I highly encourage a close read of those. Um there is some interesting conversation about uh Pinerest which uh we don't need to talk about behind the rail tonight, but um definitely interesting and worth considering. I I recommend people watch that meeting, the conversation that happened if you hadn't. I know some of y'all were here, some of y'all weren't. Um, so given um given this this public input um how do we feel about voting on these deliverables send voting on a recommendation and sending them on to the mar commission at the August 7th meeting? Does that feel like something that we're ready to do? Are there too many questions? Is there too much concern? Do we feel like not enough time? Matt, sorry. Um, I'm not what I was gonna say does not answer your question, but it addresses something else that a couple comments that were made that I think are are um uh I can say something very briefly that that may address them. Uh I think it was um Miss Nolton uh who commented about whether the pink area near Five Points there includes parcels that are not fronting on Lumpin and and are on millillage terrace and whether this creates a risk of commercial development on millillage terrace. And so um I think the the um the answer is no, it doesn't. That's not going to happen. And here's why. Um, and I think this is something that's important to clarify is this is what staff meant when they said this is not zoning. The future land use map is not zoning, right? Um, we deal with zoning stuff on a monthly

basis. I think we can all sometimes forget that. Um, the statement the future land use map does not address zoning or make any changes in zoning. We understand a lot of what that means in a way that lay people may not fully understand. And and one of the things that that means is that um though Millage Terrace is zoned I believe RS15 um maybe it's RS8 but I think it's RS15 and that means that all you can do there is single family detached homes on 15,000 foot minimum lot sizes. um nobody's going to be able to come in there and put any kind of commercial development with that zoning and and nothing in this would um result in any change to the zoning on any of those surrounding streets. So I I just think you know uh sometimes u people get nervous about um will this cause other changes and the answer to that I think is no. The second thing that um example of something very where my response is very similar is a couple people spoke about setbacks changing and would this change setbacks and and the answer again to that is no because setbacks are provided in the zoning code. Um and uh nothing here is going to change the whatever the setback requirements are in RM1 I think it may be 15t front yard set back to the sidewalk. Um that's not going to change. Nothing here is going to change that. Um and so to the people who two two different people who spoke about that, just rest assured the future land use map does not change setbacks. Um only a change to the zoning code, which is not before us um and I think not going to be before us um anytime uh real soon. Only that could accomplish a change in in the

setbacks. So uh fear not for whatever that's worth. Couple things. Um I was thinking about the setback setback question because it is coming up and um I think when I've seen mention of setback in here it really relates to those much more commercial areas where you know you see that in any communities around the state who are redoing their zoning seem to be reducing setbacks in their commercial zones in a way to activate streetscape. It usually is it it goes along with also like sidewalk requirements and kind of public space requirements. So it's it's not necessar I mean we do have a couple for sure a couple of places in Athens where I really don't like the zero setback thing. The best western on millillage is awful. Um, and I wouldn't want to I don't love that as the example of no setbacks as such a uninspired um non street statecape activating setback situation. So I I think once the conversation moves down the road to zoning that that that should be talked about. Um the other thing I wanted to I think you know not to spend too much time on one parcel in five points but the millage terror terrorist parcel that they're bringing up is kind of an interesting example because I I can't see it on on the future land use map but what I think they're saying is that that parcel is owned by the same person and and where it touches Millig Terrace and where it touches Lumpin And so like what what you were just saying Matt I'm not sure so if it is being am I correct in that the designation is

neighborhood center for that one it's pink and so if you look at I think the concern is that by sort of it's an example in the past of something that would maybe have ended up being splitz zoned in in the sense that it doesn't I think the concern is that that allowing that kind of more commercial development out on Lumpin could by virtue of the fact that it is one parcel I guess which I didn't really ever realize it was is not I'm looking at on the zoning map and I see what you're talking about it's right next to earth fair and ad drug and there's two parcels fronting on lumpin and a third that uh it's contiguous and goes to milled terrace um and they do all appear to be owned by some Barrett investment properties LLC, but the Mill Terrace one is um half of that depth and the Lumpin fronting ones are half of that depth and they're zoned commercial and RS15 respectively. Okay. And the future land use designation proposed applies to the one that fronts Lumpkin only. I'll defer to the chair on that. That would be my understanding. Yes, it comes from Lin. Okay, good. Because in some ways that's kind of related like to the discussion last week Hawthorne extension. You had some old weird zoning that was coming through from Hawthorne in a place where it wasn't didn't seem appropriate today. So anyway, it sounds like that's not that's we don't need to worry about that because that would be terrible actually to have that happen right there on those chairs. So, I think that was um also um does any one from staff or maybe Alex from the committee want to

is there something that should be addressed or acknowledged regarding Amy's comment about sort of the role of affordable housing in discussion? Happy to. And I wrote that I feel like it's been all over. Yeah. So, so let let me touch on that. The guiding principles were related to the execution of future land use. So, future land use doesn't get into financing. Now, the discussion with the committee was absolutely positively folding in economic realities and and that's part of the reason why we had urban 3 come to town during this process was to appropriately fold in the notion of economics, right? um as it relates to land use when it comes to affordability of housing the thing the exercise that was done here was creating opportunity for variety. So, so the more variety we can have, not just of housing, but of other things in appropriate locations, the more chance we have to create smaller units that might be more affordable or units in places right now that are underdeveloped, which may help them be more affordable or to rediscover some land that right now is overlooked um and maybe doesn't, I defer to the many realtors in the room, doesn't have a price point that draws the 1.2 $22 million interest. It it is more affordable because it is located next to something that is not typically seen as something where you know it's not this bucolic setting. It's it's maybe next to a parking lot or it's next to a aging out singlestory commercial structure or it's the redevelopment of that singlestory structure. So the affordability component was addressed by putting opportunity on the map. Um, as a policy document goes, that is a significant first step. Then allows for a variety of actions to be taken to achieve some degree of affordability. Whether it's programming for

redevelopment on these corridors, maybe these sync up, and many of them do, with TAGs, right? Or maybe these sync up with opportunity zones. Or maybe these sync up with CDBG programming. And this becomes another piece of justification for doing something in Athens when the state or the federal government's making decisions about where to send money to help defay cost of development. Maybe this policy document helps build a case for coming to that location. But this document in and of itself does not do affordability. It creates opportunity for affordability. Yeah. And I think that I mean we see affordable housing developers in here on a semi-regular basis asking for things to do with zoning and future land use. um who are then going out on a limb to say, "Hey, we want to build we want to build subsidized affordable housing here." But but it but in order to do that, we need to run the gauntlet and we need to perhaps face an angry mob of people who don't want affordable housing tenants living near them. Um and we have to we have to convince the commissioners. We have to hope that they like us. And there's this great deal of uncertainty that yeah, there's more opportunity in in down the road from this map. And yeah, I I think that that you hit the nail on the head. Um, and that's really I'm glad you said that because the it's been to me it's like foundational to what we're doing is that is the what you always say boo is sort of that you know that the way that this intersects with affordability is we're setting a table and I I it's not even really just a belief. The data bears out that housing increasing how housing supply increases affordability. like one of the problems

is scarcity and so anything we can do to increase supply in the right places where it's appropriate is is by its very nature part of creating conditions for affordability down the road. So I think this is a huge step in that direction. I just want to say as one of the realtors in the room to piggyback on the comment I said earlier this does help us tremendously. It helps us from an economic development standpoint to be able to show the story of what we're trying to do with our county. And it opens up a lot of avenues for a lot of mixing middle housing that we don't currently have in spots where we have really no housing. And I think some of these new town centers, speaking to Bruce's point, in areas where there's really nothing going on right now, this really helps us be able to get out that story to those developers and say, "Hey, there's opportunity here and we have a very thoughtful way that we want to grow." Yeah, there was um I get you in a second. There's also a a comment about, you know, we haven't talked about students um in this process, which I thought was mostly accurate, honestly. Like I didn't hear a lot about students in in that discussion. Um but to me, having been in this for years now, it it made sense to me that students we weren't talking about like where where are the student nodes, you know, where are the students going to live? Because students live anywhere. They live anywhere they want to. The only kind of development that you can really keep a student out of, the only kind of new development you can keep a student out of is extremely expensive. The only way the only way you can build something and a student isn't going to want to live there is making it so

making it so expensive that it that it is it's economically unfeasible. Um, I thought you were gonna say retirement communities. Hey, students. Students of all ages, man. Students. That's okay. Students, there might be some students at those retirement communities. Can I say something? Um, you can finish. I would love to talk to you afterwards. Well, no. Committee and and I would like to address the student issue. Unfortunately, Maxine E is not here. She probably has five volumes of hundreds of pages of everything that we did. We discussed students ad nauseium. I honest to God believe we did. And I don't think that if you build a million and a half dollar structure that's going to keep students out and I think we discussed that. Okay. Okay. I mean, just as a personal committee, I just wanted to address that. Yeah. And and thank you for letting me break in. I wish Maxine Eim were here. She would really break in. Um agree, Mr. Sams. I absolutely agree. Yes. Yes. And and I I I didn't mean to discount that that I'm sure that y'all talked about it at Sure. I was just agreeing about Maxine. Yes. I still want to go over you, but the max Yeah, I I'll I'll hand it to you. There's absolutely that. Sure. There's nothing you can build. There's no type of housing that you can build that students won't want to live in. Um I, you know, I know that I live there. We we think about students. We we plan around them. Um, but that would be why they don't go into the guiding principles of the form necessarily of everything because this is a college

town. Um, that they they don't stay in their boxes. They're human beings and they and they move around. Um, and they're assumed to be included in some of that 30,000 and they are assumed to be included in in some of the 30,000 additional people um that we anticipate to uh come in. Um, can I keep on that just I promise not to get longwinded, but yes, we did we talked thoroughly about that. We have people on the committee that are involved with student housing. Uh, they were extremely useful and um so that was nice to hear. And by all of my knowledge, uh, with the real estate license, we we really can't say what type of person can live in a house and and the the the map will guide. We hope, but we we we can't say certain things and and didn't, but we definitely uh you know run rang that towel pretty hard to make sure we were understanding because that is that is a force no matter what. Um so we address that in in most any way possible. I'm looking forward to reading the report. And while you while you're talking, I just want to put you on the spot because I wanted to ask if you would had any thoughts about Mr. For um comments about roads being land use and maybe talk for a second about how transportation networks featured in your discussions on the committee because I think they did. Um and I just I don't know I just kind of wanted to hear what you had to say about that because obviously we're not assigning future land use categories to roads but it's important part of what you all did. Yeah. And and it is it it you take a

Prince Avenue versus a Lumpin versus a Gain School um versus I don't want to use Boulevard because we use that in a different kind of definition but boulevard and going in neighborhoods and and so we did discuss the the speed the number of of this is getting to where you uh the number of uh traveling that goes through the in and outs Um, Prince Avenue, we looked at hard and uh that's a that's an interesting street because it turns into so many things and just a short couple of miles and uh then all of a sudden you've got a few drive-throughs and then you don't have any drive-throughs on the entire road. So, that was addressed uh as as that goes. We we didn't go as far as some of the pictures did and put like a beautiful medium in between or any of that. That's that's nothing we address directly. I don't think it was in our our wheelhouse to to do that. But um but we did and and I will I'm going to take this opportunity if I may to step over here. I was going to brag on one of our members but he left. Um so I will not brag on. No, but I will say it was Kent Middleton and he was next to the gentleman that asked this question about uh and I was just impressed how this went, but it happened a lot. Um, so we we do our thing in a meeting and it goes back to staff. Staff takes all of that, puts it in a form we can all come back and look at again. I think go over and I believe it was Town Center on Gain School Road where uh Kroger and all of that we we've um given Town Center and we also sat across the street at um the little uh

strip center right there. We we were we were going to call it a a town center and Kent was one of the ones that brought it up and then we talked about it, but that moved over to was it neighborhood res? No, no, no, sorry. Neighborhood center because it backed into a neighborhood. And so what I'm trying to do a little bit is t Yeah, Bruce is is showing that. So you see the left side is not the same color as the right side just to put it in uh simple use there. So town centers on the left and neighborhood center on the right. So that's the kind of detail that we did. We we talk about it, we do it, it gets put into something, then we come back and look at it and go, "Not quite." Because the street the way that is you the street is not the same on that side as it is on that side, but it might be to somebody driving through. but it backs up to a neighborhood where people can walk into that and not have to cross a street to go dine uh because there are restaurants there. So, uh so that's that's a little bit of how that street in a sense was not just how it kind of did divide like we've talked about that some of the zoning issues we've had or or future land use uh in the past. So, we we did take it there. And then the the other thing I just mentioned that is the detail we put into this. We go back, we look at it, somebody per up, says something. Sometimes somebody says no, I think it needs to be this. There are a couple areas on the map that it the noise got got loud. I loved it. I mean, that is what I wanted was was the banter back and forth. It was all respectful, of course. But um so anyway, that hopefully answered your question a little bit. And can I throw something in that this policy document is going to be used by public utilities and their capital programming. It's going to be used by transportation of public works and their

capital programming. It's going to be used by leisure services and their park planning. So all of these priorities that are being pulled and twisted and kind of understood and made plain are going to inform all kinds of other work of this government and our partner agencies honestly and one shining example of that is there is a connect Athens grant that has been awarded and we are currently selecting we're going through a process to select a consulting firm to work on equity issues for this corridor that starts on Elps Road. It goes all the way up Hawthorne to to Prince and includes Ogulthorne. So there is a sizable grant that is going to address equity with land use and transportation is what's funding it, but transportation is a third tier consideration. It's in there, but the purpose of that grant isn't just to come up with new striping between the curve. The purpose of the grant is to revisit land use policy development patterns and how to have the transportation reinforce better land use patterns addressing equity for access and also just neighborhood stability. So this exercise that's going through is not some static document. It is absolutely positively connected to things that are already in the chute trying to use this. So we had a meeting two days ago. They were asking what's the timeline on this? I said, 'Well, I'll let you know. Like, I that's that's what we're working on. Um, but they want to use the community values that are expressed in this to help do the work on a corridor. You can't ask for more than that. Getting back to Sarah's question that I blew off the first time about whether we feel like we're ready to vote. It it seem in our next meeting

on August 7th. Um it seems to me like we probably are. There have been just a couple of issues raised that I think I would want to see more detail that I cannot see on this map. And one of those is um I mean they're both kind of the same issue. And Kristen talked about the Hawthorne Extension area and uh the same question was raised sort of about that Mill Terrace Lumpin thing and I would just like to see a blowup of that and and um I don't think this requires further committee work. This is more just you know um maybe part of what staff could show us in August. Uh just a blowup to you know like if what you said is is accurate that the minor corridor designation applies only to the you know uh property on Hawthorne extension that is a through lot from Hawthorne that's one thing but if it applies to anything that's not a through lot then I would have the same concerns that Kristen expressed about that and so I would just like to have certainty about that that I I just can't zoom in enough my eyes don't work that well on this map to see it. Um and uh the same thing I think is is uh equally valid about the the lumpin uh and you know the five points area just to be sure that we're not inadvertently and I gather that that the committee has been very granular and and um and looked at this kind of stuff um very closely and carefully but I think u you know uh I'll want to do that as well but that doesn't seem like something that needs more time um and and if little tiny tweaks need to be made um to address those sorts of concerns in those two areas, I feel like we can certainly handle that in August. So, I don't know that further. Yeah, I agree. Thank you everybody. Yeah, I do have a question about the again and I don't think this should slow it down either. Is the decision process behind um how the

colors are presented? What order they're presented in? Like is that random? Is it was it intentional? Kind of want it to match. I want this table to I want things to be in the same order as that. Yeah. Part of me. So, I wanted to know if there's any method behind it because I kind of feel like it should go in the order of intensity. The the I hear you. It makes a lot of sense. Um the intensity here is sort of serpentine. Yeah. It's not this straight linear sort of transsect thing. thinking about that in the like the ones that are um the ones that kind of more correspond with nodes on the growth concept map or like yeah I don't know maybe that is what types of land use rather than intensity like you have these sort of nodal places you have the residential adjacent places you have these government institutional type places I I would say this I think Um yeah, that makes more sense than what I just said, I think. So, so the the the rainbow sheet, um it was largely organized in Max Prep, if I'm wrong, you know, the minor quarter, major corridor, and um the uh general business were together because they split out of general business on the old on the current future land use map, the one that we're changing. So they're they were lumped together because they were taking that and breaking it up and that's why at the bottom it's government. So so the format of that was it intentional answering your question? Yes it was. Did it organize it by hierarchy? No it did not. And um there is a representation of intensity there for sure. It does step down. Yeah.

Um I think I I wouldn't ne sorry to interrupt you. I just I I think by the time this lives by itself, these categories being subcategories of a old category will not be a relevant concept anymore. And you won't be adopting that sheet of paper either. Okay? Like what what you're adopting is all the categories and we can put them in any order ever. They should just be in the same order. This these should be in the same order as this should be in the same order as on the legend. All right. Yeah. At the very least. And as far as how they're grouped, that's fair. It could be Roy Saturday Saturday morning. It could be Roy Gio. It could be any of that. But it I just it has to even if the even if these are not what we're what will be voted on, but just more like understandability. There's a better word for what I've said. So, I could see why you all would make this distinction, but in your world that makes sense. But outside of that world, no offense, it could be completely different. It makes sense. Does anyone else have anything else that uh you want staff to know before August 7th that you want on the record? Do we have anything else that we need to say about this tonight? Got to say one last thing. You can have the last word. You you burned it, man. Um, one of our best members, I should say, well, best members, most attended, no favorites. Rank them all. Please rank them all. I want to Anyway, Lorraine back there that had a few words to say, I'm gonna embarrass the heck out of you. Rain Fuller. And it's funny because she come she goes to everything. She went to as

many of the public viewings and public input as I did. Um, I think there were two you weren't there, but there were at least two that I wasn't at. The two you were at. I missed two of those and I was at them and I saw you not there. All three urban threes. Yes. No, she did all of that and then I'll just even say she saw me volunteering at Taylor Grady House and she was like, "You're at everything." And then I go to vote the other week and she's at the voting volunteering to do that. Uh that lady does everything in town. So uh recognize that face if you don't know her. You'll see her. So anyway, thank you very much. Um and I do believe you're the only one else. Oh, I sorry David. And then there's David Matheni. Anyway, David, you're you're very much appreciated. I did not know you were in the room. You show your appreciation by wrapping this up. All right. Uh we don't need any motions to do anything because this is a work session. It's