Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Test Test

Good evening everyone and welcome to the August 27th, 2026 meeting of the City of Clovis Planning Commission. Members of the public are encouraged to participate in meetings by accessing and listening to the webcast on the city's website, providing written comment at the same website or coming here in person and participating. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Commissioner Bedstead will lead us in our flag salute. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Commissioner Secretary, if you could please call roll.

Commissioner Heber.

Here.

Commissioner Hinkle. Here. Commissioner Hatcher? Commissioner Bedstead?

Here.

Chair Antuna?

Here.

Four present with one, Amy Hatcher, absent.

Good. If we can open, I'd like to open the motion to approve the minutes for the July 23rd, 2026 Planning Commission meeting.

So moved. Second.

I have a motion from Commissioner Hebert, seconded by Commissioner Bedstead to approve the minutes, the January 23rd, 2026 Planning Commission meeting. Commissioner Hebert? Yes. Commissioner Bedstead? Yes. Commissioner Hinkle? Yes. Chair Antuna?

Yes. Are there any Planning Commission Secretary comments?

Good evening. I have just three. So first I wanted to introduce Lupita Mendoza. She's our assistant planner. So this will be her first presentation tonight. So I just wanted to introduce you to her. And we have our planning commission meeting. We have a special meeting on September 10th. The meeting on September 24th will be canceled. There will be no items. And then I just wanted to update you quickly. Our next general plan advisory committee meeting will be September 17th at the Clovis Transit Center. Thank you.

Are there any planning commission member comments? Seeing none, we're gonna go ahead and open the commission. We'll hear the public comments. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address the Planning Commission on any matter within the Planning Commission jurisdiction that is not listed on the agenda. And we ask that in order for everyone to be heard, please limit your comments to three minutes. And anyone wishing to be placed on the agenda for a specific topic should contact the Planning Division and submit correspondence with at least 10 days prior to the desired date of appearance. Do we have any comments from the floor? Seeing none, now we're going to move on to our public hearing portion of our meeting. I'll go ahead and be reading in the item. Item number two, consider approval for CUP 2026-002 adopting class one categorical exemption from further environmental review under CEQA and approving a conditional use permit to amend the Sierra Pavilion's use schedule to allow a 24 hour use in building C and F and operate fitness facility in building C and F located at 1155 Shaw Avenue at the Sierra Pavilion Shopping Center in Clovis. I don't want to say this incorrectly. Is it Chaz? Shoes. All right. Shoes fitness applicant. And Lupita, welcome, by the way. And she will be presenting today.

Thank you for the introduction. So tonight I'll be discussing CUP 202602. The project is located within the Sierra Pavilion Shopping Center in the northwest area of Shaw and Sunnyside Avenues. As you can see outlined in the blues, the shopping center and the project is outlined in the red. It is currently planned as a general commercial. It's zoned as PCC and the surrounding uses currently are multifamily residential to the north, commercial to the south, east and west. The proposed project is a fitness facility, and based off on the current Sierra Pavilion use schedule, a CUP is required for the operation of the fitness facility. The project is requesting a modification to this use schedule to include a 24-hour use for Building C and F. The site here, you can see the locations of both Building C and F. The proposed project will occupy the 35,000 square feet space. The hours of operation will be seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Some of the amenities offered are various fitness classes, zero gravity chairs, as well as a kids club. The parking, the project is not proposing any expansions or modifications to parking. The parking was calculated for the entire shopping center. Initially, this shopping center was initially proposing 819 parking spaces at a ratio of 4.5 PARKING STALLS PER 1,000 SQUARE FEET. BASED OFF ON NEW DEVELOPMENT AND OVER TIME, THIS LOCATION IS CURRENTLY EXISTING AT 753 PARKING SPACES. BASED OFF ON THE USE AND THE SQUARE FOOTAGE OF THE PROPOSED PROJECT, THE PROJECT IS REQUIRED TO PROVIDE 350 PARKING STALLS. Due to the high demand of fitness facilities and the current existing uses of the shopping center or parking analysis was conducted. The parking analysis was conducted over a two-day period between a Friday and a Saturday between the hours of 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. The analysis determined that the peak hour for the shopping center is between the hours of 6 to 7 p.m. And the survey did indicate that the weekend, that 460 of the 753 stalls are available during peak hour, as well as the weekday survey indicated that 354 of those parking stars are available during that peak hour. So based on the parking analysis, there is sufficient parking for the proposed project, as well as the current existing uses the shopping center. The project was noticed in the Business Journal on August 7th. Property owners within 450 feet of the property received notice. To this day, no public comments have been received. Staff has determined that this project is exempt from CEQA through the class one categorical exemption due to the existing buildings. The proposed project will occupy the existing facility with no expansion to the square footage. Staff does recommend approval for CUP 2026-002. That concludes my presentation and I'm available for questions.

Are there any questions or clarification for staff from the Commission? We're going to go ahead and open the public hearing now. And I'd like to invite the applicant to speak. Please state your name and address for the record.

Hi, good evening. My name is John Eckman, Chief Development Officer with Choose Fitness. And just wanted to take the opportunity to thank you all for considering this request. And we are looking very forward to serving this community and bringing our first class fitness facility to Clovis. So just wanted to say thank you.

Any questions of the applicant?

I do have one question for you on the 24 hour status. Is it going to be occupied or staffed all around the clock or will it just be like remote keypad accessible during certain timeframes?

Yeah, there would be a short window of time kind of between that midnight and 4 a.m. range when it would not be staffed and keyed entry only. You know, of course, 24 hour surveillance um, you know, inside of the facility. Um, you know, but that is, that is how we operate in the facilities that we operate 24 hours today.

Okay. Thank you.

Yep.

Any other questions for applicant? Should, uh, your CP be approved tonight? When do you anticipate, um, opening your facility?

Um, Timeline to get fully open and operating is closer towards the beginning of 2028. You know, that would be the timeline that I would want to represent to you this evening.

Very good. No further questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

At this time, I'd like to invite anyone on the floor who would like to speak in support of this item. Seeing none, I'd like to now open and invite anyone who'd like to speak in opposition of this project. Seeing none, we're going to go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back for commission discussion. Okay, very good. I'll just comment that I'm excited to have you coming in to Clovis. We definitely need another facility. Most gyms in this area are very impacted, so hopefully you'll be here to alleviate that. Okay, ready for a motion.

All right, I'll make a motion to approve CUP 2026-002. I'll second.

We have a motion from Commissioner Bedstead, seconded by Commissioner Hebert to approve CUP 2026-002. Commissioner Bedstead?

Yes.

Commissioner Hebert?

Yes.

Commissioner Hinkle? Yes. Chair Antuna?

Yes.

Motion carries, four with Hatcher absent.

Moving on to item number three, consider approval of CUP 2026-003 adopting a categorical 32, I'm sorry, adopting a CalAS 32 categorical exemption from further environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act and approving a conditional use permit to formally allow an existing church at 434 Fifth Street to operate and authorize an expansion chris may owner crossover church of god and done i can't say that then then there we go having issues with naming today eric garcia will be presenting good evening commissioners good evening chair

So yeah, so this project here located on the southwest corner of 5th Street and Woodworth Avenue. The land use designation is Mixed Use Village and it is zone C3 for downtown commercial. The church is surrounded by a variety of uses. There is residential to the north and the west and to the east and south there is commercial. So this request is for the allowed the use of an expansion and expansion of an existing church and classroom. The existing church highlighted here in orange and the existing classroom highlighted here in orange. What they're proposing is to add a 904 square foot lobby highlighted in red and then a 734 square foot terrace highlighted in blue. There's going to be two vehicular access points to the site. One would be on Woodworth Avenue, and the other is going to lead into an alley to the west of the project. Churches do require one space per each five fixed seats. And based off of their operational statement, this church will require 25 parking stalls. However, only 18 stalls will be provided. So the church is requesting a parking reduction. With the CUP process, it does allow for custom parking standards based off specific features. For this site, the site is landlocked. There's limited opportunity to grow and expand beyond their property boundaries. Staff looked and we could not find any documented history for any parking or circulation issues on the site. The church is also not expanding their assembly area. It's only a lobby and a terrace and the assembly area is a primary generator of their parking demand. Lastly, they are in proximity to the Parking and Business Improvement Area, or the PBIA. The PBIA is an assessment district in Old Town Clovis which waives parking for individual businesses. So the church is right outside, it's highlighted here in green, right outside of that district. But there is public parking right across the street on Woodworth, and there is on-street parking all on Woodworth Avenue as well. The church really only meets a couple of times a week. They have Monday night recovery meetings from 6.30 p.m. to 8 p.m., Wednesday Bible studies from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday services from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. So this item was noticed to the Business Journal on August 7, 2026. Notices were also mailed to property owners within 300 feet of the area. Staff did not receive any public comments. The city has determined that this project is exempt from CEQA through a class 32 exemption. And with that, staff has determined that this CUP did meet all the required findings. It is consistent with the general plan and no outside agency comments opposing the project came in. And based off that, staff is recommending that the planning commission adopt a resolution approving this conditional use permit. That concludes my presentation. I am here for any questions if you have any.

Are there any questions from the commission for staff? I have a question. What is the max capacity of this structure? I didn't write it down on my notes. I'm sorry.

I don't think I have it down on my notes.

Was it like 140 something? I just can't remember. Were you looking for maximum capacity of the building or what they are proposing as their use? Maximum of their use. That may be something I'm not sure if the applicant is aware of what their capacity is for their meeting hall. Okay.

Why don't we have you come up to the mic? Are you the applicant? Okay. Why don't you go ahead and come up to the mic and introduce yourself and provide your address? There's a little button there. The mic will turn red. There you go.

Got it. Okay. Well, thanks for letting us come out tonight. So do you want me to continue on with that?

Yes, please.

Okay. So we normally have, on an average service, we have about 40 to 50 people and honestly the times that we have that many in this church to fill up the pews is a wedding or a memorial service and those are often you know one offs and in that case there's parking we've always used parking in the street we use the parking across the street and the Elks or the Elks Lodge is and we've never had any issues never had any issues with parking. I just want to clarify that. We on the paperwork it says this is an expansion. What we're trying to do is our building is very unique it's over 100 years old. It's a historic building and we love it. We love the history of it and we've we try to take good care of it but it's got its own quirks that's for sure. And one of the quirks is that it was built when it was a floodplain. So the sanctuary is about six feet off the street level and the fellowship hall down below is four feet below the street level. There's nothing street level. You walk in there's literally about a four foot by four foot landing you either go up or down. And so for years we've turned away people with wheelchairs and it's broken our heart. We don't we hate that. And we've tried multiple times to put different lifts in and different things and we've been turned away because of easement issues or structure issues. And so what this lobby is that you that you see is is it's a lobby to house a three stop elevator so we can get accessibility to our building. Finally over after 100 years and then and better flowing stairs to that so we can have gurney access to the basement in case it was an emergency. But that's really all it is. We're not trying to expand the church. We're not expanding assembly. or anything like that. That's solely what we're trying to do is get accessibility to this historic building.

So the structure that you will be constructing is going to house that elevator that will get ADA to become ADA compliant and get people up.

Yes. So we'll have street level entrance and you know a little bit area there for people to either get in the elevator or go down the stairs or up the stairs. And that's that's really what that lobby is for is solely to house that. And yeah.

OK. Very good. Are there any questions for the questions of the applicant. Thank you very much.

I have a question. Will you be using this facility for different types of activities. Different let's say a group wanted to come in and use it.

Well we don't we don't run it now. We don't run it for functions now. I mean, it's not hard to say what we do in the future, but that's not what we're geared up for now. We don't have staff. It's a small church, and we don't have staff there during the day. So we are there only when we're using it for a function, a church function.

Okay, thank you. So I needed to know. Okay.

No further questions. Thank you very much. At this time I'm going to go ahead and open for the public hearing. I'd like to invite anyone who would like to speak for this project. Seeing none is there anyone who would like to speak in opposition of this project. Seeing none, I'm going to go ahead and close the public portion and bring it back to the commission for discussion.

Questions?

Okay. Go ahead and ready for a vote.

I'd like to make a motion to approve the CUP 2026-003. Second.

I have a motion from Commissioner Hinkle, seconded by Commissioner Bedstead to approve CUP 2026-003. Commissioner Hinkle? Yes. Commissioner Bedstead? Yes. Commissioner Hebert?

Yes.

Chair Antuna? Yes. Motion carries four with one absent.

Okay, very good. This now concludes our meeting. I'm going to go ahead and adjourn it at 6.