Board of Zoning Appeals - Regular Meeting

I almost got a word. Is this Baker Park something you overlook?

Yeah.

Good evening, everybody. We're going to open the Columbia City Board of Zoning Appeals regular September 1st meeting to order. Can we have a roll call?

Kathy Gardner. Here.

Patricia Hatcher. Here. John Pittenger.

Here.

Michael. Here. Kenneth Horne.

Here. Thank you. Previous meeting minutes of August, we don't have those yet. So, We are going to go to the witness of oath. Anybody that wants to speak tonight, our legal advisor here will swear you in.

If you're going to speak, please stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm under the penalties of perjury the testimony you are about to offer will be the truth? If so, answer I do. Put your hands down and be seated. Thank you, gentlemen.

Old business, we have 26-C-VAR-4, the Swihart Properties LLC for side yard setbacks.

Nathan? Oh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. So you probably remember this from last month. It is a variance request, blanket variance request for the property located north of Walmart generally. I'll go through the slides again for those of you who weren't here last month. But this was continued because of only having three members and having a split vote on the final action. I pleasantly watched your video.

I did, too. Thank you.

So having a full membership tonight, we likely will not have a split vote. So I'll just go through these slides fairly quickly then. The overall property is zoned GB general business, which as you know, general business does allow for single family and two family dwelling by right in the zoning district. So having a residential subdivision in GB is perfectly acceptable under zoning. Overall area is about 40 acres. Primary flat for this was approved in October. The first phase, which is comprised of basically two parts, was approved or went through Tech Review in July. Overall, it is 137 lots of two different lot sizes. The northern part, which would be larger, roughly equivalent to our two standards. The south part would be smaller using the smaller lots that are afforded in the GB zoning district. So they're actually smaller than our pre-standards. The intention being smaller lots makes more affordable. It also offers a different type of home than we have been seeing before. in our different sized lot than we've been seeing in our community for a few years. The homes themselves are very similar to, or are proposed to be similar to the recent homes being built in Cambridge Crossing and Rivers Edge. The lot size being the major difference. So looking at the lot areas, widths, setbacks, and so on, what is being requested is a side setback variance. The GB zoning district requires a side setback of 10 feet and a rear setback of 10 feet. What is being requested is a setback of 5 feet on each side. You can compare that to the R3 district, which currently requires seven, R2 requires eight, and R1 requires 10. So this would be the next step smaller if you're looking at that trend as residential. But again, the zoning district primarily is set up for commercial purposes. And that then is the core of the request, is that variance. So property in question, The western portion is where this is located. This is the primary flat F groove. Overlaid over the aerial. Highlighted, not highlighted in yellow, is the area that's the first phase. So the western portion. You've got, these are larger lots. These are the smaller lots.

And I guess I have that also marked that way.

So this is the draft secondary flat, if we have to refer to it, for the northern one and the southern section. The petitioner offered, and I believe these are fairly sketched renderings, but reasonable renderings of what they might offer if this variance is not approved to decrease the required setback. So they can still put houses on the lots with the required 10 feet, just not trying to do a compromise or anything, just doing 10 feet. And that's what this would look like. You've got one-car garages. They're fairly narrow, but still not tremendously narrow. But at 24 feet wide and 20 foot separation between houses, the house and the separations are almost identical, if that gives you a context. 27 feet wide is a little different there. Again, still single-car garage and so on. Doing the five-foot setback, you widen that out. You can have two-car garages, not to say that everyone wants one, but most people do. That is the market currently. And then it changes the nature of what's offered. With the larger setbacks, there would be a lot more two-stories. With the smaller setbacks, you have more variety in what's offered. And I won't go through all of that again, but those are some of the differences. I will say an idea of a compromise instead of 10 or five, of course, there are other options that the residential zoning districts do have eight and seven, mainly. So you might give that some consideration as well. Something for, for thought if you want to go that way. Going through the review criteria and keep in mind that what the state code has versus what is written in the current ordinance are slightly different. But here's our review criteria. It really comes down to, in my opinion, the idea of practical difficulties or unnecessary hardship being specific to this property. I would say that there are practical difficulties owing to what is being proposed and the market niche that is trying to be met, as well as the fact that the GB zoning district, while it does allow for residential uses, is set up more for commercial uses. And so that setback is more for commercial purpose than it is for residential purpose. It doesn't line up, as I said, with the residential districts. So that does seem to be a difficulty in the code itself. If you're looking at the unnecessary hardship criterion, a little bit different there, similar thinking. The code is, again, not exactly applicable. However, unnecessary hardship, especially for a blanket variance, I will say, and we talked about it last time, is a difficult criterion to meet. And Kathy, you had some good points last time regarding that and how difficult blanket variances are. Usually it's very specific to a property or an individual parcel. So if you consider this a whole development rather than a collection of individual lots, you might be able to better overcome some of those thoughts of a blanket variance. But again, I have to tell you that as a blanket variance, it is difficult to meet that. The alternative would be for every house to be coming before you, which is impractical. So I won't go through the other criteria. You've watched the videos, you've heard me before. But again, I do think that the biggest thing is this practical difficulty or unnecessary hardship component of it all. So with that, any questions, thoughts for me?

okay nathan had it been discussed and i don't know if that was a question that i asked before um when the um mr bushey came in and first began the conversation about this development had it been discussed a possible rezoning to one of the residential districts for this project right uh rezoning to residential was discussed as an option however uh the gb district uh

has 50 foot wide lots that are required as lot width and smaller lot areas which would be the natural progression of a residential district it's simply the side yards that then run the other direction they go jump back up to 10 feet and so it didn't meet with what they were wanting to do for the smaller area the large area as i said pretty much lines up with r2 so that could have been rezoned uh without deviating from what the plan subdivision is. The smaller lots that have that issue.

Thank you. Anyone else? All right. I'll ask the petitioner to come up and state your name and address and

Hello, David Brown with DA Brown Engineering, 5491 County Road 427, Auburn, Indiana. Thank you for letting me speak again, and I'll make it short because some of you heard me, and then others had to watch me on video, and I apologize for that. So I've been told that's not a pleasant task, so thank you very much. So just really quick, and we'll just hit the really quick high spots. On this particular issue of the rezoning, Keeping this GB, because we're doing this entire area right behind Walmart, with the anticipation of having business in this, it kind of makes it one cohesive idea. So that was the premise behind leaving it general business. And that kind of, in my opinion, leaves it as the highest and best use for this piece of ground. Because this, for lack of a better term, this is a test. We're trying to get more houses into Columbia City. And we're trying to make sure that this works and leaving a good zoning in place right behind Walmart, all the other commercial area back there. It gives us some flexibility on the east side of the project. With this, I understand the angst behind, quote unquote, a blanket variance granted for this entire area. But we're doing a cohesive development. We're not cherry-picking. I didn't go in and buy up a bunch of vacant lots inside of an existing subdivision that had half-acre lots, and I didn't come in and split them and then said, well, these lots, I want them to be closer to the road. I want them to be tighter. I want this entire community, those developments, those lots, and those areas to be cohesive. I want them to look the same. I want them to feel like they were planned. Like, this is what I want people to live in. So that's a theory behind this. And I won't hash over that. We're trying to come up with a market that people are looking for at this point. I beat that like a dead horse last time, so I won't go through that. But we're trying to come up with an economically viable product that we can sell to people so that they can buy these homes and live in them. I mean, the costs are just going through the roof. And any time that you start making wider, the costs just go. So we're trying to come up with a nice product that we know that works. It's in Timbers Edge or very similar. It's in Chesapeake, which is right across the road. And then we have it all around Northeastern Indiana, very similar products. So we know that that's the product people are looking for. They need the two-car garage for space. They've got kids. They've got all the accoutrement that goes with that. We're trying to come up with a good house to go with that. And with that, we're behind a Walmart. So it's not like I said before, where I'm coming into an existing subdivision or an existing community here in Columbia City where the houses are 20 feet apart, and then I come in and I want to start slamming in various bits and pieces around. No, I'm coming in with a, this is the development that I want to do at this particular location, and I know it'll all work hand in glove. So that's the other reason behind it. And not a particularly hard hardship. But you see there's a lot of wetlands on this property that are causing us issues and we can't develop as much as we need. So that's one of the reasons. That's everything in the northwest corner. You kind of see it's hatched orange. And there were other wetlands that are on the project that we're doing now that we're still jumping through hoops so that we can get that developed as well. That's really quick. I know you all, you listened to me last time. I'm trying to just do a quick and overview on this thing. And once again, we're only asking for this on the residential. The commercial, that's still going to be coming through. All of those site plans have to come through plan commission. They probably are not going to be coming to BZA because they're going to meet the zoning ordinance. They're going to meet their commercial, so they're meeting the 10-foot setbacks or more. You know, it's a commercial development. That's just the name of the game. They got to get parking and whatever else on the project. So this is, we're talking about this isolated, contiguous property that we're trying to ask for this. You know, we're not asking about it in other areas. It's just very isolated and specific to our development.

So your next phase over here, is that, Is that as tight as what you're looking at here? Or is that something like once this has grown up, you'll be able to make a decision on if that's still the route you want to go or if you will open that up?

So at this stage in the game, based on our best guess at market, because once again, this is the future. Our best guess at the market is everything on that south, we'll call them the south end, those will be the smaller lots, the 50-foot wide, just to meet the market rate. The only, and I shared this last time, but really the only one that's building houses right now, it's a significant number in this area is Horton. So DR Horton is doing that. And they're doing 50 foot wide lots, period or less. And that's the only thing that's really moving through right now. We either have that lower end or it's people that have money. So now we're talking 600 plus, you know, thousand dollar houses. And those are on much bigger lots. So what we're anticipating is. for the starter home and the market that's out there with the kids that need to find houses or right out of college or high school and they've got a job, they've got a family now, is that smaller footprint. And home ownership, and not to beat this horse either, we're not doing an apartment complex. We want these people to be able to buy a house. That's what keeps them in the community and that's what benefits the community. So that's what we're going with. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

Anybody else have some questions?

Thank you.

I was going to say, I saw these samples that you had back here of the different houses that was being, they look very similar to the ones that are on Hannah and extended clear back books where you've got the condos that you've built back there, back in that area. They look very similar to that. And with the small stamp, I'm going to say, like a postage stamp yard, where Children don't even have a swing set because they're so small. They have enough grass that they have to have a lawnmower, but why? I'm just saying the yards are extreme. Is that what this is going to look like?

These lots are... You say 50 foot.

That's the width.

Sorry. That's the width of the lot.

And how deep are they?

So I can't. Oh, they're, they range, um, they meet the ordinance. So they're 5,000. So they're, they're at least a hundred feet in depth. So, and then we have a 15 or 20 foot rear setback because of easements and whatever else. So the rear yard, uh, is an excessive, but, um, once again, land value goes into the cost of the house. So the wider and more expensive the lot, the more expensive the house is. So ideally it would be great that everyone had a half acre lot that they could put a giant house on. But unfortunately, yeah. So we're trying to come up with a market to where people can buy a house rather than spend the $2,000 or $2,200 to rent a house for that same area. So that's the market that we're going for at this point.

So to answer the question, the lots are nominally 50 feet wide by 100 feet deep to meet that 5,000. However, they have designed it such that there is common area as well behind all the lots, whether it be this strip here behind the lots. So it adds effectively another 10 or 15 feet, depending on where you are, of buffered area to the street, basically.

So we have a, there'll be an HOA, Homeowners Association. So the common area allows for recreation use, you know, larger area for the residents to use because they all own that, you know, quote unquote own it. But it's owned by the association.

So the common area will be mowed in the summertime.

Yeah, the HOA is responsible for that. So they'll have covenants and restrictions on this as well. And we're putting in sidewalks on both sides of the street. One of the things I didn't really hit on, but we don't have them on the through road. These are off of the through road. So these are more quiet streets. The people that are going to be driving there are the residents. So we're trying to, that'll be kind of a traffic calming thing. idea to where people will be able to walk on the sidewalks, have the kids out on tricycles, and not have issues with, you know, along State Road 109 or something where, you know, people are going at a much higher speed.

Yeah, that is a very nice feature of that road. It doesn't, it's not like the 300 and some apartments that all dump into the same road.

And we do, one of the things that is not on this, but this is part of the tech review that we did with the city, is there will be sidewalks along Armstrong Road. So that's the stub road into Walmart. And we have our interior streets. We'll have sidewalks on both sides of the street. But we're also putting a path at this, we'll call it the eyebrow cul-de-sac if you can look up on the screen, that'll connect over to those sidewalks as well to give people a quicker path to get to Walmart because we know that's where they're going. So people will want to go down there either to shop, they're going to find food, at the restaurants, it's just a nicer thing to do. You know, walk, ride a bike, take the dog out, something of that nature.

Okay. Does anybody else have any questions?

Real quick, we are amenable to a negotiation on the sidewalk. The issue is the 10 feet doesn't work. Um, as I discussed, it works, it's just not a marketable product that we think we can make work correctly. So thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Um, if you'll allow me a bit of reference, I guess, uh, we don't have very many 50 foot lots in Columbia city for the reason that we're here because they're not a residential, uh, district standard. However, where I used to live in Greenfield had 52 foot wide lots with 10 foot side yards. So I'll just show you what that looks like here. So my house is the one on the left, the blue one, neighbor here, but then just going on down through the street here. If you were here last night, this is the house that had the camper top, but this is what it would look like relatively similar lot size but with the 10 foot wide setbacks so 20 foot separations here and let me see if i can drop it back to 2015 when the trees were smaller you can easier see the the distances here so the home sizes are actually a little bit smaller because of again that uh required 10 feet on each side So again, see how much is in between. That one's a bit different because it's on the inside of a curve.

And you said these are 10 foot setbacks as far as the front?

Size.

Just the size.

Yeah. So right here, this distance is 10 feet, and that's a bad one because the house is blurred out. So that distance between the two houses is 20 feet, 10 and 10, as opposed to what they're proposing at 5 and 5, making 10 total. So apparently a little bit of a windstorm went through a couple of years ago. So again, just wanted to give you that reference. It's not exactly comparable, but similar lot size. And again, if maintaining that 10 and 10, that's what it could look like.

I know you mentioned like a lot of them.

Housing additions in the Allen County area are small. We do a lot of home generators in housing additions. And, yeah, I can't even think of one where we put a generator in that I can't. There's some of them I can't even get my tractor between the buildings to get the generator behind the house.

Yeah. So we're meeting the ordinance that this is the building separation by the state. So yeah, they are tight, but that's the same villa has a five foot side yard. Various spots in Auburn have a five foot side yard. Angola has a five foot side yard. Ligonier has a seven foot on particular ones. Warsaw has a five foot side yard. Roanoke has a five foot side yard. Huntington has a five foot side yard. So we're, I get that we want to have further distance. Everyone would like to have that. But the problem is every foot, as I went over last week, that's $1,300 in lot sales that the person who's paying for it doesn't benefit other than having to mow it. They can't get more house space for a nursery or a master on the first floor, which is a huge selling point that people are wanting. So if we're trying to get houses here in Columbia city, And you can get any one of those houses within a 15 or 20 minute drive of Columbia City. They're not going to be here in Columbia City. They're going to go to where they can get a house. What they're looking for is probably the same or cheaper cost just because they didn't spend the extra in the lot. So that's what we're asking for at this point is just the flexibility to come up with a house that works. And we could eliminate lots to make it work. But then... price because right and uh as i keep telling people god has not made any more ground so what we have is what we're dealing with and we can't move to another spot because we're dictated by is there sanitary sewer service is there water sewer service do we have gas do we have cable do we have fire protection and now you're starting to go way out in the county if you want to find ground to work with but you're spending 20 million dollars to extend sanitary water sewer out there to those properties, and then the lot price goes up. So that's what we're asking for at this point. So thank you. Thank you.

Does anyone else have any questions?

Is there anyone else here in the audience that would like to speak on behalf of the petitioner?

Chip Hill, community development director with the city. I'm not going to be as long as David, sorry. But we had the meeting last night. I'm not throwing these facts out, but the state wants us to get housing. This has been Mr. Boshy's. I remember the day I was trying to look it up on my text. When he got the property, he reached out to the city to see what the city needed. He knew what he needed with housing for his workforce and not throwing Nathan under the bus, but the planning department was with us. I mean, this is kind of Nathan's concept, not saying that the setbacks. So from the city standpoint, it's, I hate to say this, but I'm gonna say it out loud. It's more houses, more tax revenue, more residents. I mean, it's a win for us and it's just that area. We're not thinking about doing it you know, at the next development, this is, we want, this is our test and we'd like to see it happen. So.

Thank you. Is there anyone else here that would like to speak on behalf of the petition?

We didn't give you your address. I'm sorry. 316. I love it.

Brooks Langlo, 818 Newport, North Newport run. Um, yeah, the, The meeting last night, again, they talked about getting down to, you know, some of you were there. I mean, the state was pushing getting down to the five-foot setbacks, smaller lots, because they know that's what's driving affordability. Plus, it's also conserving land. You know, again, we can eat up. We keep talking about the farming communities want to be protected, so we just can't keep gobbling up land and putting, you know, Just for exaggeration, why buy 100 acres and put three houses on it when you can put 60 on it? Then you can save all that other acreage instead of going and going and going and gobbling up more acreage. Again, the first thing is safety. And the state said a five foot setback is safe, 10 foot between buildings. I know I was going to lose my train of thought here. Kathy, I get to pick on you. Just because I love you like my sister. Probably more so because I don't like my sister very much. This isn't being recorded.

Not at all. I'm sure she's not watching though.

I mean, a couple things you mentioned. I watched you last week, or not last week, but the last meeting a couple weeks ago. But anyway, the In phase one of Timber's Edge, we only had like, I think, five lots that we asked for the five-foot setback on. Those were the smaller lots because we thought, well, maybe some people will be interested in tiny homes. And you had mentioned you went out and talked to people that they would like more room in between our houses. I think we could go to every district and even out in the country, and everybody's going to say, that neighbor's too close. whether they're five feet away, whether they're 20 feet away, whether they're a quarter mile away. We've heard it with subdivisions and developments out in the country. I don't want them that close. I moved the country because I don't want to look at anybody. So you're going to get that argument. To back that up, the people bought the house. It was a house they could afford, and they bought it. And I think the affordability is a big chunk of it. Yeah, they may want a bigger lot. And the plus with Columbia City is we've got all these zoning districts already. So if somebody doesn't want to move into here because they don't like the side yard or they don't like the small lot, they've got a lot of choices to go out and somewhere else. You know, this may, again, housing kind of feeds on itself and availability. You know, there may be an older couple that wants to move in here. I don't want to mow a yard. You know, I don't want a big yard to take care of. I want something small. This gives them the opportunity. Now they move from somewhere else and their house is available. So it's kind of a snowball effect of, you know, right now we need people moving out of houses to open up more houses from a real estate standpoint. And I'm kind of speaking on behalf here, even though we're kind of a competitor development wise. Um, because I just think it's important. Kathy also mentioned we probably need a district that, that a district will take care of this, a new residential district, which I've been talking to Nathan.

I concur. We talked about that last night. And I would say that if this could be a model for that, that's a way we're going. But even if it's not, we need to have more districts.

Yeah, because again, it, When we went out to Timbers Edge, we're looking at, you know, R2 zoning. Well, how can we get our costs down? So now we got to go to an R3 zone and then ask for a special exception to try to get some, we got some smaller lots in there with some smaller setbacks. We basically did a blanket, I think in there of six, because I knew it was going to be tough to get Kathy to vote for five. So we kind of said, well, let's just, just so it's not confusing in the subdivision, we do a blanket six and those houses are selling as quick as we can get them up. Um, so there's obviously a need for, I mean, personally, I wouldn't live in here and many of you may not want to live in there and they're going to, if they're not selling them, they're going to change. they're going to start combining lots and doing things. But if there's a market out there that people want them, I mean, that's what we need right now is, is that availability. And I think, you know, again, is it the ideal place for, for everybody? No, but it's going to be ideal for some people, especially kids start now. And again, maybe retired people that want that smaller area. So, you know, again, I said for, for, years I've been talking to Nathan that there's got to be an easier way than just, you know, I always hate going in and rezoning because now we're R3 and everybody's thinking multifamily here. No, that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to get our lot sizes smaller so we can have more affordable homes because there we're keeping our lot prices under 50,000. You know, again, when I've watched other Granite Ridge, everybody's raising theirs up to around 60. So we're already 10 grand less trying to, again, provide affordable housing for people. And then two, yeah, I know side yards are important to you, but if you look at attached villas, there's no side yard. And those are selling as quick as you can get them built. So yeah, you do have one side yard, but you don't have two. Those are attached. So again, it may not be ideal for what you're looking for, but again, the market's driving most of this. And builders are going to build what people can afford, what they can buy. So if people don't like it, they're not going to buy it. And then they're going to have to change the development, I said, by either combining lots or changing things. But I think this is a good test that if we do have, you know, I kind of spoke with Nathan today after last night's meeting that, I think another zoning district that allows this to where somebody can just go in and say, hey, we want to rezone to this or not. Yeah, we want to rezone to R4 or R2, you know, R4 sounds bigger than R3. So I said something like an R2-1 or R2-B where, you know, it's a different, it's not multi, people aren't thinking multifamily, but it's getting a lot size down smaller. And then, you know, Then you can have that discussion at that point on rezoning, whether that's working in our community now, if it makes sense, if it makes sense in that area. It just gives us another opportunity. And again, if people aren't buying them, builders aren't going to build them and developers aren't going to develop them. They're going to try to target what's going to sell.

These aren't the only lots in Willie County that have a five-yard setback. We've got other lots.

So...

Chesapeake and Granite Ridge are all five foot setbacks.

Right. Chesapeake, Granite Ridge, or yeah, Cambridge Crossing, Chesapeake are five foot. And that's a legacy from Heritage Place originally, which was not, I will say it was badly executed. Chesapeake and Cambridge was better executed. And then up at the lakes, we have five foot setbacks. If you're lucky. On the smaller lots, on the older lots. But yeah, those vary so much down to, I think some of them have longer two foot setbacks even in some of the lake areas. But those are the two primary areas. But yeah, historic areas, we've got fives. I showed an example last night on Walnut Street. You had two fairly decent sized domes. Again, 10-foot separation between them. I'm not sure if it was five and five or seven and three or something, but whatever, 10-foot separation. So there are examples. It's just not common because our zoning's been in place for 70-some years. That precludes it.

I mean, that's the thing. These zoning laws have been around since land was plentiful and nobody really cared so much about how much land we're going to burn up and things. It hasn't progressed with the way society has and the way the market has. And I did like the pictures of, you know, again, look at what they can build if they don't get the setbacks changed. You know, it's a one-car garage, which I don't like the look of that at all. Again, it doesn't matter what I like or dislike, but at least a two-car garage gives people more room to pull things in and, you know, whether they fill it up with stuff instead of being outside or whatever. But I personally would rather see a two-car garage than a one-car on houses if it's possible. So I did like that concept that was thrown up to be able to do that with the variation. And two, I know, again, on Timbers Edge 1, we kind of did a, you know, hey, these we let you do a five foot, you know, bigger lots, we wanted it six or seven. So, I mean, that's, again, an opportunity. They've got the bigger lots in the back there if you're not, Happy doing them all at the five foot. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on behalf of the petitioner? Is there anyone that would like to speak against the petitioner?

Clarify the HOA. Clarify that it's going to take care of everybody and not just the common ground.

Can we ask that? Sure. Go ahead and ask the question.

The HOA. You were talking about that and sharing. You said something about that being the common ground. Is that also going to be for all of their landscaping needs around? I mean, are they going to own property? I take it they're owning more than their footprint. They're going to own this 50 by 100 foot plot. So that there happened to take care of. And then the common ground is the HOA. Is that correct?

No.

Yes, that is correct. So they're going to buy the lot, fee simple is the term for it. The common ground is just tacitly owned by the... So the HOA is only in place to, one, have architectural control, make sure people aren't having a drug house, that sort of thing. And they also oversee... making sure they'll collect dues for maintenance, and they will be doing the maintenance on just the common ground. Just the common ground. I think the other term we use around in this area is called villa product, which is where you would pay increased dues, and then that would do your landscaping and maintenance for all of the ground.

I live in the community. Okay. Kathy and I live down together. Okay. We own our footprint, and that's all we own. So the HOA fees pay for everything outside of the little bit of landscaping around your home itself.

This would be a much smaller dues that they're going to pay, and you're buying your entire lot. So these people will be required to maintain all of their lot. It's just that you would have an HOA that oversees the common crowd. That's it.

I'm used to this. I understand. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify that.

All right, I close the floor for a board discussion or a motion.

And I don't know if anyone can answer this question or not. I think one of my concerns with that close proximity between homes up to 10 feet is fire protection. John commented on trying to get in to install generators when you've got just this narrow area between. I had spoken to the fire chief about this development and his concerns about it. On being able to provide fire protection, the homes themselves will be constructed with standard construction because they won't be closer than five feet. But then getting fire protection, I don't know what the requirement is on how many fire hydrants have to be within a particular area. you know, spacing area along the street for the people to be able to get that fire protection.

May I address that? I know it's been closed. Go ahead.

He knows. Yes, go ahead, please. I appreciate it.

So we, yes, the buildings are being constructed in accordance to the Indiana Building Code, which is part of the USA's building code. So that is the houses are five feet apart or 10 feet apart, five feet off the side yard. So it'll be standard construction. And then as part of that, we are for the city, when we're putting in our water line that's going in, we have to put fire hydrants within 500 feet of each other. So that meets the local fire department has their rating that's handed down, and that's how the insurance is handed out for the community because they know if the fire department has a triple A, double A rating, and then that's how they're able to determine that. And so the city's very jealous of that. Chip can verify if you have more questions, but they want to make sure they have really good fire rating.

And so when we put in the fire hydrants,

We're putting them to all of their specs. Every department has a little bit different on what type of fire hydrant they want. So we're making sure we put in exactly what they want. And in this particular location for residential, it's 500 feet. Commercial gets down to 400 feet. So when we do the commercial side, we'll tighten those up a little bit. And then if you're doing industrial and something else where you're more prone to fires or you need more flow out, they can be a lot tighter. But residential uses is 500 feet apart. So they can put in an apparatus, lay out their hose, and adequately fight the fire. And that's pretty standard for this area of the world is 500 feet. And actually, just because of the way it works, I know we have more fire hydrants than that. Just because of the way it works, we have more fire hydrants. So that meets the ordinance. That meets the state building code, the fire department code that they're painted down for NEPA. They have other stuff that's required. So all of We're meeting all of those requirements. So the state building code, the fire department code, locally and nationally, they say this is what we want to have, and then they have to provide data so that they meet all of these requirements for the insurance. I'm sorry. I have really long-winded answers. Oh, no, that's fine.

I apologize. I do know in discussing it with him, that's what his comment to me was, too, that he feels like that the fire department is brought into the loop after the loop is closed, so to speak. So that's, you know, I'm just concerned about that.

No, I completely understand that, and not to take up more of your time, but this is, like I said, this is handed down. There's other people that are concerned about this, so that's why we have state rules, national rules, and then it's handed down to the locals to whether or not you want to have those bigger or not. And we have, this has been empirically tested that this works. So I live in Fort Wayne. area and you know we have hydrants who set up the same thing i am unaware you know i've been doing this for near 30 years i am unaware of two structure fires you know one structure fire has started another one it's always one house and i think that's due to our firefighters are really good they train really well every community is very proud of that Um, but I think it's just the standard of construction and people know, Hey, if you have them at least 10 feet apart, we're not going to have this issue now, commercial, you know, downtown areas. Where you have a lot more stuff and you have structures that are really tight. You start to hear about that spreading, but, um, I have not heard of that in a residential, um, area.

Um, well. He was talking, I did look up some of the commentary from the ICC on why the 10 foot separation. I won't really, it's commentary, so I can't really show it, but it largely comes from the ladder space, space needed to have a ladder at a one to four ratio. So up four feet, you put the ladder out one foot. If you have a five foot, separate or a five foot setback, five feet gets you up 20 feet. So if you have 10 feet between buildings, you can put that ladder in and have room to get up to the top of that building. So I can't say that's everything that that is based on, but that was, uh, seemed to be a pretty critical point. And maybe it's a legacy thing because I don't know how many firefighters are really climbing ladders too frequently now. as opposed to other mechanisms, but I'm sure it's still an important thing. So that's what it's based on. That's why that minimum before you start getting more fire rating, or at least part of it.

Thank you. Does that answer your question, Kathy? Yes, it did.

Okay, Mr. Chairman, I would make a motion. It's a compromise motion, okay, that the side yards set back. Should be eight foot.

I'm fine with five. I have five at the lake. I have five in...

Okay, I will change it then. I will give you an extra foot. I'll make it seven foot.

I'm going to second this motion.

I have a motion and a second. All those in favor, raise your right hand. Opposed? Okay, that didn't work. Okay. Try again. I'll try again. Let's go for the one you had last month. Which one was that? The one that you wanted to approve.

Just approve at the five foot. Okay. I'll make that motion. Did it get approved at five foot? Second.

I have a motion and a second. All those in favor, raise your right hand. Oppose? Passes, three to two.

And if I may make a statement here. Before Dennis made his original motion here, I was just, I'm falling back to on 1207 of our zoning orders. It didn't meet any of the requirements for the board approving a variance. In order for me to approve a variance, I feel like I need to be told from my board members here how I'm to prove that based upon what their criteria is that we're supposed to vote on.

Well, I think after the meeting last night, if the state goes through what they're going to do, we're just going to have more restrictive And have smaller lots. They're wanting us to go in that direction. The way it sounded to me.

The thing is, you can take your, those, as far as, it's all kind of a personal opinion on how some of that, some of that is stated. So, you know, I mean, I get, I get what you was, was, saying about it didn't pass any of the only feeling pass one of the four but in somebody else's opinion it'd be like well okay if if we nailed them four down every time we would never pass anything i had ever you know i i i get it but but i guess if you really if we really wanted to stick to our ordinances And pin everybody down. We wouldn't have half the subdivisions we have now. We would, and we wouldn't pass anything. So, I mean, I think you can see what the...

So we give in to everything?

No, we don't give in to everything.

Well, I hope that development, because the word test had been used three different times, you know, by three different people. This is a test, so this is a test. So I hope that this test works out well.

Thank you.

Okay, Nathan, we're going to move on to some new business. I can tell he's getting really antsy right now.

We have 26-C-DAR-5, Rhodes Enterprises.

I'll see he's looking for a setback on 105 North Walnut Street. Nathan? Nathan?

Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 105 North Walnut Street is on GD General Business. There is a zoning commitment dealing with screening required along the western edge that was attached when this was recently rezoned. The subject property is about 3,800 square feet. However, the total property area is about 11,500. It's comprised of three parcels, one platted lot. The residence that you'll see on the aerials was recently demolished. What is being proposed is to construct approximately a 2852 square foot building, which would be an expansion of the existing auto repair business. It would be connected to the building to the south in the current proposal. You can see there the proposed, on the table, the proposed setbacks, the minimum code standards for the GB district, and the variance required. So the front setback along the east side along Walnut is proposed at 6.2 feet from the right-of-way line, not from the street curb, for example. The north setback is 6.4 feet, the rear six feet, the south is not applicable because it is again being connected to the building to the south. It is worth noting and I noted it in the Britain staff report that if this was residential, we could apply at least on the front side, an average setback. Doing the averaging, it comes out to be approximately five feet and that's the average of the other buildings in the block. In this case, because it's commercial, you can't do that. And we would still be here for the other variances as well if that were the case. So the variances there are shown in the far right column. Highlighted in blue is the subject lot. Again, the petitioner owns all three parcels as one platted lot. I said lot. The subject parcel The platted lot is actually this overall, it will up 1,500 give or take square foot piece. Little bit closer view and at this point you can see that Walnut Street is again as one of our historic streets, platted wider than what we would see if this was a newer street. It's approximately 80 feet wide right of way as opposed to our local street standard of 60 feet. The proposed plot plan, The original building is on this parcel, the newer building, the existing building is here, and then this is what is being proposed up here. So overlaid, overlay, aerial. And this is a little bit clearer than the one that was sent out in your packets, which had some other information on it too. But you can see the proposed front setback of this new structure is roughly in line with the now demolished home, maybe a little bit farther back than the existing home. The northern line, it is set back either equivalent to or slightly more than the old home. And then the west line is, because this is a larger building, quite a bit farther back than the old home. So you do have more of an encroachment all on the west side. The front and north sides are approximately the same, if not slightly less of an encroachment. Going to the review criteria, it is a historic area. Typically, we do give some deference to the fact that modern construction and historic development patterns are different. So fitting into the overall area does come into play. Let's see here, where are my notes? Not likely to, staff doesn't feel that this would be likely to be injurious to public health morals, general welfare, safety being a piece where whenever we have a front setback variant, you always have to be very mindful of the proximity of the structure to the street for traffic safety in particular. But in this case, it's again, it's farther back than what was there before and in line with other buildings in the area. The Board of Works has reviewed this from a parking encroachment standpoint, and the petitioner can give you more details on that. But that too, you have a driveway area that will be placed between building and the street to help alleviate some of the traffic safety issues with that not necessarily related to the variance request but contributing to use and value of the area this is becoming a business area the existing home that was there that was zoned residential was actually more of the abnormal as you've Because of the expansion of this business, you have businesses on the east side and south side of this intersection. So this is kind of the progression. Because of that, these variances would allow commercial construction. So it would be unlikely to have substantial impact on the use and value of the area. And again, The property to the west, which is the one that is still residential and most likely to be impacted by use, has that required buffer zoning commitment. So that too helps to reduce the impact of the requested variance. Finally, practical difficulties. I'll speak on that first. I already mentioned this is a historic area. This was Zone CB, which is a very constrained area, it is immediately across the street. We wouldn't be here because setback encroachments in central business go through a different review process because they're administratively handled rather than handled through a public hearing variance process. If we applied the averaging, again, that front setback would be taken care of administratively. So there is some difficulty being created with this. Is it a hardship? The location of the property in this area perhaps is a hardship. However, the petitioner did know what the conditions were going into this. He already has business here and so on. He started out with the building on the corner, which was legal nonconformity to start with. applying codes to these historic lots are difficult as well. So again, as an unnecessary hardship, perhaps I would say that there's probably greater finding for saying, yes, there's a practical difficulty for various reasons.

I'll let you guys figure out what you want to discuss on either of those two types of criteria.

With that, any questions for me?

I have just one question, Nathan, I'll just ask you. As far as lot coverage, because these are three separate lots, however, it's going to be attached to an existing, so it kind of makes it kind of a moot point, so to speak, because you can't sell one lot off without... Right.

It's not a moot point. It is something that we have discussed, and He will need to do a development plan. That is still forthcoming. That development plan will be for the entire platted lot, all three parcels together. And when you consider the entire lot coverage, it does come out okay.

Good. Thank you.

Anyone else have questions for Nathan? All right, I'm going to open the floor, have the petitioner come up, state your name and address.

Yeah, my name is Lamont Rhodes, 2276 North Airport Road, here in Columbia City. So thank you for this evening and taking your time to look at this. Just a little bit of background. Started at just a small, across the street in the old carousel, and started the car lot and turned out Columbia City accepted us quite well and we ended up taking down the old Fisher's gas station across the street that the rats and mice were running it around and the rope was caving in and we were able to acquire that and added those lots and then I forget what it was called the stop and go the stop and go had been abandoned for a while and I did some research and found out that that was a 1919 gas station. And sure enough, the front door that we put on that, the front garage door, was the original framed garage door. So we actually converted that to a one-car service center, which I laugh about that today because you don't do much in one bay car lot with that. service center and it grew and so we were able to acquire the house behind it go through this process in the past did the same thing with that one was able to build on two more bays those two bays helped us become much more viable and the community started really accepting us not just to service our cars but to service cars that we didn't actually sell a lot of people started coming. And so for the last couple of years, we've been, uh, thinking, how are we going to continue to service our customers? And that's been a challenge with three days. So this house became available and this gives us, um, the ability to put in four more bays. So we would have seven days total, um, One of the bays would be a state-of-the-art alignment rack that actually does all of the sensors for all of the cameras and all these mirrors and all these self-driving apparatuses. There is none in Columbia City right now except for the collision centers. So to be able to do that at an affordable price for somebody who just has a windshield replaced but now needs alignment for all of their cameras, we will be able to do that if we can fit all of this in there. Which at this size, which is a 42 by 62 building approximately, just to give you kind of an idea, 42 by 62 is what we've got with the setbacks that we have there. We did meet with the Board of Works. We have talked to the street department. They came out. We've looked at it. We are going to be able to replace the – we're going to take all of the sidewalk from the north edge of the new property, clear down to Van Buren, and we're going to put a new side five foot all the way. Because right now we just have blacktop. that we put in the new building in the center section. We just have blacktop with no sidewalk. So with this, we would be able to drop the sidewalk all the way to the road level, like an inch above the road, and take that all the way to the new sidewalk that was put in on the Van Buren, which I think would look really nice. And then we would be blacktopping that setback.

It's called, not a setback, what's the section?

The right-of-way, yeah. We will be blacktopping that as well so that we'll be able to put cars parked in front of that new building on Walnut.

So will all the bays for the new building enter off of the street? Walnut.

There's one door.

We're not doing anything on the alley.

Alley is completely no windows, just a wall. And if you look in close, the overlay of the old house was literally on the road and the lines were touching the house. All the telephone lines and everything were actually touching. That's how close it was to the line. So we would actually be bringing that back, but not fully 10 feet down. When we did the survey, I think it was six foot two. You showed that a second. Like six foot two back instead of being right on the line. We are, yeah, there you go. Six foot two and then six foot four and then six foot to the rear. The rear of the building is also, the current building we have there right now, that we put in. We put in a screen fence, five foot high, completely enclosed so you can't see either way. And we would extend that all the way to the alley. So all of the residential outside will see nothing but a vinyl fence all the way, assuming they keep their trees trimmed and their scrubs trimmed out of there. But yeah, that would extend as it is now. We would turn it and move it to the end. And then you just have the building connected. So on the alley side, you would just see the building. There would be one entrance door on Walnut pulling into the bays. Just the reason, I think just so you all know that... For some reason, when Riggs went out, we increased about 40 new customers that we didn't even know we were going to try to accommodate. That doesn't seem like a lot, but when you have three bays and you're booked two weeks out, that's a lot that you want to accommodate. So it's like that's an additional service that we weren't expecting and we are already starting to get two weeks out on service, and that's just not good. People need car space.

So will you be adding employees, or have you already?

Yeah, so a new one starts September 14th, so in a couple weeks, and we will be adding another tech, which, you know, these are not low-paid people. These are, you know, ASC-certified, high-quality people electrical engineering type tags that can fix a lot of these electrical issues on these cars, which is a lot today. So yeah, we will be adding two total, and one starts in a couple weeks.

Lamont, what is the height of that building?

14 feet.

Okay.

Same as the other one, identical to the building right beside it.

Okay. And did you say, too, one overhead door? It's one large overhead door? On the east side, there on the Walnut Street side is one.

There's one main door on that side. If you're looking north, there'll be another door on the south side of that new building. You won't really see it from the road, but you'll see it from this way. And the reason we're doing that is we can pull out from the other building and pull into there for the alignment rack. So it won't be used a lot as much as the others pulling in off of that road, but we'll have an access door to go in. And these still have to be approved by the state. We don't have state approval drawings on, and we've got to get through this phase next before you can submit it to the state. But that is the, yeah. And there'll be no windows in it anywhere.

So it just opens the bay.

It just opens the bay. Yep.

It's not any windows. It can't break in.

Can't break in. Can't see in.

Can't have trash. They don't look in. They don't look out.

You know what I mean? And that's the way the other building is. And it's worked out phenomenally well. Our middle building that we built is just really good. It's worked out really well.

All right. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions? Is there anyone else here that would like to speak on behalf of the petitioner? Anyone here that would like to speak against the petitioner? You got one, there we go. All right, I'm going to close the floor and open for discussion or a motion. Does anybody have any questions for Nathan?

There ain't no one else speaking. I'll make the motion for the approval of 26C-VAR-5.

I have a motion and a second. All those in favor raise the right hand.

Opposed?

So now my trivia question. You know why that street's wider than most streets? Because that was U.S. 30.

Oh. It's platted the same as all of our streets. Is it?

But I'm assuming where it came in, because that was U.S. 30.

Wow. Because it went by the old high school?

And then went out, turned right north of the high school and went out.

Okay. All of our streets are Really pretty wide. Yeah, they are.

Blind Street, Main Street's wider than that, aren't they?

I don't know if they're all equal. They didn't know which street was priority street, so they just made them all equal. I mean, it really kind of, I have to think that may have been the law. It is unusually wide, how wider streets are. That's nice. If only Chauncey was still around, we'd ask him.

Mm-hmm.

I do have one other piece of business or report for everybody. I literally just added it as a couple minutes ago. We were notified earlier today that we are not immune from fraud attempts, scam attempts. So you can't really see this too well. Let me zoom in a bit here. but this was an email that Lamont received specifically requesting that in regard to case number 26 CVAR, et cetera, submitted by the applicant at such and such, with all of this information being correct about the hearing and so on, please be advised that the attached invoice represents the application review Approval fee associated with this case. Staff have reviewed the application and have recommended approval, which that right there is a red flag because I don't recommend things. You can tell how I'm swinging, but I don't ever give you a recommendation.

Anyway, so this is the first time we've ever known about something like this, right?

This is the first time Hamilton County, Johnson County, other places have. um received almost identical letters from other email addresses at usa.com because it's a free email service so where's the money go i mean not in my pocket says that you need to wire them yep oh yeah down there in the yellow it says please reply back to this and we will give you wiring instructions so we do not accept wires We don't send invoices for additional fees like this. We don't do anything remotely. I have been able to track using the language used in here. It's a relatively sophisticated bot because the only place that we used a couple terms that are referenced in here are in the public notice that's published in the newspaper. So it's grabbing that information with the name of the applicant and hearing time, the Board of Zoning Appeals, doing a search for that applicant's name, which given the business name that this was in, it's relatively easy to find business information as opposed to somebody's name. So tying that in and then doing a search for the Board of Zoning Appeals to Columbia City and finding who the contact person would be, which I'm prominently named on the county's website as their director. If this was legit, there would be, and it's very much not something we would ever send out, but if it was, we wouldn't put it under my name. It would be under probably Amanda's name as the secretary handling the paperwork for the petition. I already mentioned the recommendations. There's quite a few different things that are red flags for us internally, let alone the huge red flag of a $3,900 bill for

So being they got all that information, they knew about it, it's almost got to be someone that has local connections. Not necessarily.

Not even. It's all very, yeah. I hesitate to say it's full AI, but it's verging on that. It's a very sophisticated bot. It just goes out, crawls the web, searches for public notices, plucks information. Notices are very standardized. It's easy to pull those bits of information. Once you have that, either the bot continues to crawl for additional information, or potentially you might have somebody sitting in India or Pakistan or wherever, pulling that information, doing manual searches, that could be, but this is definitely not local. The level of it, I will say that it's actually written in pretty good English, as opposed to many of the old fashioned, Scam email spam emails Yeah, the zip code is missing a number And we don't for official documents we don't use Whitley County planning and building it's the Columbia City slash Whitley County Joint Planning and Building Department yet another red flag We shorten it to that

But nothing official.

I requested cash. So, yeah, just so you guys know, EMA did share that on their Facebook page as well as their other outlets because they do have a good following just to start to put it out there. We do have more information on the county's cases. I'm surprised that it was actually a city case that we first were made aware of.

Because we do put more names and stuff out for the county.

Anyway, I wanted to share that. Yeah, but I'm glad it was caught in reasonable time and we got it off to IT and the powers that be and hopefully they're doing something with it. That's what I had.

Okay.

I make a motion to adjourn.

We have Kathy made a motion to adjourn. Second. Second from Lyle.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.

. . .