Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

started with um our planning Commission meeting start with a roll call chairperson Evans here vice chair Lynn secretary Lynn member wickenheiser here member Chris Hartman here member LeClaire here

i will note that the lens did contact us prior to the meeting there is a a personal issue so unfortunately cannot make the meeting um tonight okay um so we'll move on to uh our moment of silence and then pledge to the flag 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. Okay. Thanks for everyone. show up it's good to have folks interested in planning um also want to welcome our friends from dcd who are helping us with uh with a project related to the zoning ordinance i'm trying to simplify it making it more user friendly for the borough and citizens and landowners they have a program for us but we are going to take on um you know number eight and move right into a conversation about a proposed ordinance from council about changes in where data centers are permitted within the borough of Columbia. So we want to do our job as a review body of such land use matters. Hopefully we can do so where everyone can present their opinions and facts or whatnot, and what the intent of the ordinance is, but also try to be efficient all possible just so we can conduct the other business but this is very important to the community so I'm not saying it's a rush situation so I'll just go ahead and start by saying that we as the Planning Commission a review body of the borough of such land use matters sorry what minutes okay all right let's do the minutes and then let's get into the business okay motion by Mary second second but uh thank you for the reminder any comments okay all in favor say aye aye okay the minutes are approved thank you yeah hard ahead of the horse but um but you know important stuff for our meeting which is So we were forwarded a proposed ordinance from council that would amend the zoning ordinance, specifically the table of permitted uses in regard to the data center land use. Currently, it is a permitted use, a permitted by-right use in the light business as well as the light industrial and general industrial districts. The proposed ordinance would change this so that it is not permitted in the light business district and then change from being a permitted by-right use in the light industrial, general industrial districts to a conditional use, which is a use that's permitted through a hearing before the Borough Council. So if there's anyone, we have council members who can provide some context.

Would you care to put this on the floor as a motion in one way or the other? Okay.

And then we would open it to any comments from those in attendance.

And at this point, I would motion to approve the ordinance as submitted, changing like business. data centers to a non-committed use and as a conditional use in the right industrial, general industrials and industries.

Okay. Mary, you have a motion, which would be to recommend the adoption of the ordinance by Borough Council as presented. We'll take a second for that motion and then we can open it up for discussion. okay so we have a motion and a second um for recommendation of approval of the ordinances as presented uh but we will now open it up for discussion i guess you know if we the planning commission members want to have comments first and then open it up to the floor

I feel this is a move that needs to be made, that the adoption of the proposed data center ordinance is something that's going to take a bit of time. This is on. It's right in my face now. Okay. This is something that I feel when we did the ordinance with regard to the light business, I know I had no concept of the impact of data centers. And since then a lot has come out. that light business district is totally surrounded by residential zone properties and by doing this you would be still making data centers a use within the borough which we need to do we need we can't just say we don't want it and making them even a conditional use what i was told is that someone who would want to put a data center even in the limgi a conditional use hearing is held before council it is not held before the zoning hearing board so anyone requesting that use in even those areas would have to come before council to get approval excuse me light industrial and general industrial I'm sorry and at this point the amount of time that's going to take for both council to put a data center ordinance together for us as the local Planning Commission to review and make any recommendation and for Lancaster County Planning Commission to review is going to be timely. I think even at this point with Lancaster County Planning to send something to them now, it would be September. We passed that timeline for cutoff for things to go. So you're looking at a long period, an extended period of time for data center ordinance to even be back to council for any kind of action. And this kind of anyone interested in the light business property, this is kind of telling them right now it's not going to cut it out. And that would be one reason. I think I've laid out the reasons. i support this change which is basically a change in the table of permitted uses within the zoning ordinance for the borough thank you thank you mary

yeah my comment you know my comment echoes mary's you know especially the latter half which is the importance of adopting the standards especially in regard to something that would go before council and for a hearing um that there be standards that an applicant would have to meet and obviously the borough is working on that but that is something that is very important um granted that this amendment would scale back where as well as the process or make it add that extra step at the conditional use so there is a little bit of that in favor but um you know the the criteria and the standards and certain things that can help protect residential areas and look into you know require things that would address all the important topics electricity water usage things of that nature um you know at least having those codified will you know require an applicant to bring that to the public to bring that to Council um so that is obviously very important as well as a change to where it is to be located so agree with Mary there okay

um we'll go ahead and open it up to the floor you know we have council members here if they wanted to speak specifically um or any members of the public hi my name is todd alshaus i'm a columbia resident i'm at 657 chestnut street um try to keep it brief because it seems like you guys are all have a strong grasp on this, but a bit of background. I am the head of procurement for an MSP, which is just a long-winded way of saying that I am part of running a company that builds data centers and manages IT for businesses. So I have firsthand experience with the wide range of facilities that we call a quote unquote data center. And I think that ambiguity has been used by a lot of people to push projects on areas that if they knew the actual scope of the project, would not be okay with it. Because when I say my company builds data centers, I mean, we build the traditional sense of a data center, which is a small, maybe two or three racks of switching equipment and a fiber optic connector. They're small, they're unobtrusive, they're quiet. And proponents of AI centers will point to that completely different type of project and say, well, that's a data center and it's unobtrusive. and sort of use that as, in my view, a very dishonest way of getting AI centers into light business where they really don't fit or belong. So a large language model processing facility truly is industrial in every sense of the word. It's industrial in its scope. It's industrial in its resource usage. It's industrial in its impact on the environment. it slots in a community in a very similar way that a large manufacturing plant slots into a community which is to say not well it's very obtrusive you notice it it has a very very immediate impact on the area it goes into what would be more appropriate for light business are those old school style of you know telecommunications hubs or even web hosting and so because we don't have good language to differentiate between web hosting and ai unfortunately we kind of just have to make our zoning ordinances and our decisions on stuff like this, assuming that if somebody says data center, they mean this specific type of data center, because this is an industrial use. And sure, that stinks for somebody who wants to come in and build a telecoms facility or a web hosting facility, but quite frankly, at least at the moment, those aren't getting built. The market is very saturated on web hosting. So anybody who would be looking to build web hosting simply isn't. There's no money in it right now. So we can rest assured that anybody who says, hey, I'm building a data center, they're building an AI facility. Telecoms facilities by their very nature don't actually need to be all that close to the population hubs that they serve. so the idea that we would need another we already have one in columbia actually it's tiny it's unobtrusive you'd never notice and that's one of the people will point to that go oh see we already have a data center we have a 400 square foot room with four switches it's not the same thing um And that's great. And I love that we can have that here, but also that's not what we're talking about when we're talking about data centers. And I think you guys properly understand that. So I'm going to stop wasting your time, but it's important to understand the scope and just the, different nature. I mean, we're talking about racks and racks and racks of GPUs running at full tilt constantly 24 seven, which need very intense cooling versus passively cooled network switches. It's just not the same world. It's a completely different technology. It's a completely different use case. It's a completely different approach to earning money. And the one we are talking about is in every way industrial. So I think it is appropriate to make that change.

Thank you. Thank you for your input.

So a good takeaway there plays into the, you know, the ordinance that would create standards, which is it needs to make sure it addresses the impacts from scale and intensity, right? Thank you.

anyone else okay heather what's that i just wanted to let you guys know as one of the legislative leads for council um i have pretty much the ordinance the proposed ordinance done um i'm pretty happy with it last week i also i got new Some new examples from West Donegal Township, they actually use Penn Townships, which was written by Josel. And I always thought she did a good job on legislation, so I was pretty excited to see theirs. Ours is actually a lot more robust than theirs, which I would expect because a township by nature is more rural, whereas we're more urban. I mean, just page number, they have seven pages, we have 17. So, but I do have to, if this goes through, I do have to look at it in terms of our properties that are currently in the industrial zones. because we can't require setbacks that would not allow that building to happen. Justin, you know what I'm talking about. I have to make sure they would fit and I'm waiting to get the dimensions of those properties to make sure that our setbacks are not overly cumbersome we wanted the larger setback i think council and planning commission wanted the larger setbacks in the light business district because we have a lot of residential areas yes and yes and that's you know but so i have to i have to look at the ordinance in terms of that and i'm waiting for um excuse me derrick said he can help me out with those just to make sure that we're not i mean because you can't say you allow a usage and then make the restrictions so much that they can only put you know 25 foot by square building due to setbacks so i mean that's not really good so i just wanted to let you guys know that we do have it done i'm just waiting for

council to consider it and mary you were right the deadline for county planning to be considered in august has passed we're now up to september so until council would do something in august during to yes october and then it comes to us and just looking at the light and general industrial within the borough right now that's mainly occupied land And there would be some question about the old colonial metals property out there, what's happening with that. But I think what got me when all this discussion about the noise from the AI data centers, all I kept thinking about is the Summers living in the 600 block of Chestnut Street hearing Colonial metals were you could you could still, you know, but you got used, unfortunately.

Well, you know, we all say, well, those properties are occupied, so we don't have to worry about that.

You don't know what's happening.

But the reality is this is what's happening out there. Right. This is what's happening out there. They are going to people. We developers are going they're waving giant checks and saying, how about you sell to me?

And right now there are questions about that North 2nd Street property.

Exactly. And so if they're waving a check for four times the appraised value in someone's face, you don't know what that person's going to do. You know, and what's to say... they're not gonna because that it's not just that property out there that's in that zone there are homes they could purchase them and since they're a existing non-conforming use they can tear down those homes without any without any question and there would be nothing for us to stop that at this point right so

That's what I'm trying to look forward. Yes.

Yes. So I just wanted to let you know it is in the works. It's it's pretty much done. I still had a couple of things I wanted to to side by side with the. I also have one from Peckley Township that I just got last week. So I'm side by side in that one. But I think that's not quite as robust either, because, again, Township.

What does Lancaster City look like?

um there they just passed theirs yeah and we we always kind of said you know lancaster is we're actually more we're actually more restrictive than the city but what i've put together is more restrictive than the city okay forward to seeing it so yeah it took a long i mean i put a lot of time into it um but we initially got it from a township in in york but then had to make it our own kelly was helping work on it so okay we'll see but yes it is coming thank you other moving forward

Hi, Sharon Lentner. I just had a question about the ordinance as I was looking at it. It almost looked like we went to a smaller description of decommissioning. And I find that to be a little troubling because some that I've looked at set forth timelines. I'm sorry?

We don't have that ordinance in front of us. Oh. We do not have, all we have in front of us is the change

from permitted I'm sorry I thought you know that's what Heather was talking about she hasn't finished the draft yet we haven't even seen that which I mean you can you can voice your opinion but we well I just I just think it should be more restrictive in decommissioning we should have some of them have advanced notification if they know they're going to have to decommission then they alert the borough And, you know, there's timelines involved where this doesn't really, I mean, it says that a plan shall be submitted, but there's nothing really. And my fear is that if someone does put a data center in anywhere in here, you know, if something falls through financially or otherwise and they walk away, we're going to be left with a mess to clean up maybe a bunch of.

We already cleaned up.

Yes, we did. We don't need to start over. Thank you.

Thank you, Sharon.

she is referring to the draft to what what heather was talking about which is the graph that outlines everything about us kathy veza do you like to tell you where i live you live in columbia um first of all i would like to thank ethan byers and the people who voted to move this along at the last meeting um took a little guts to stand up against all that nonsense so i thank you I have a few questions, and a lot of this stuff is always surrounded by rumors, so if I'm misspeaking, just tell me. It was my understanding that the company looking to build this AI center was party to the document that we were working on to give input.

We don't have that information.

We don't have that document.

That's bid information that would go to council. We don't see that.

so you also don't have the thing that she was reading which is the same thing so how are you to make a decision without anything we aren't making a decision not on that so we're just asked to uh recommend recommend this ordinance which has to do with where they're allowed okay so the and and that's what you know mary commented on the importance of having standards in place so where if you do get an application for something, there's standards for the council.

Very good idea.

Yeah. And that's what Heather's working on. But that's also what you are talking about and sharing as well. But we haven't received that. And I guess, as she said, it's still in draft. It hasn't even presented to the full council. But that's a fair, fair question.

And then another thing and I'm new to this because and it's my fault, I should have gotten involved many, many years ago. If indeed one person is doing the lion's share of the drafting of this, shouldn't that person be an expert at this? And nothing against you, but

this is a pretty big decision i think we've heard heather state that she has been working with other members of council she has been working with the borough solicitor it is it's not a case of her doing this on her well and i understand it's not a one right and the borough engineer and the borough engineer you know and nothing against any of those people right

As part of the Lancaster County Planning Commission, I sat on a whole big fact-finding thing that what came out of that was the county planning department's data center information that they put out. I sat in on all of those. I listened to all of the

And I give you kudos for that because it's boring, and many people would not want to bother. However, my point is this, though. Kathy, would you please address us? Yes.

My point is this.

This stuff comes upon us very quickly, this AI data center stuff. The way I would describe the difference between a data center and an AI data center is building NASA in the middle of Columbia as opposed to giving someone a notebook to take down some information. That's the gigantic difference in these things. And I know it's a very unpopular thing to say I'd be willing to pay more taxes to not have that place built here because I'll be paying way more money If we build it and my property value goes down and everything else. And it's not, I think people that are against this are being portrayed as boogeymen that are afraid of change. That's not what this is about. This is a monumental thing. and it would impact the entire community, not just Columbia. All the money that we spent in Columbia working on the riverfront and all of the things that are there, nobody wants to sit down at the river after they build one of these places here. And that's a fact because it's happening all over the country. It's not by accident that they're coming to a community like ours small community they have a legion of lawyers behind them we don't and thank you to the people that are willing to work on this but we're not experts you know and I think I think experts need to and when I say experts people technical people not just well-meaning people well right what I'm saying is You wouldn't want to pull me in after I read a book on brain surgery and have me work on your brain. So that's what you do.

And that's fair. And I will say, you know, to Heather's credit, you were a regional representative to the Planning Commission and you you definitely did take the time to do so. And the county's guidance on this as a land use issue is a very good document. So thank you for working on it. But, you know, the concerns are fair.

There is. currently a member of the Lancaster County Planning Commission.

Eric. Eric Hoffman, 914 Spruce Street. Congratulations, Justin. I'm going to respectfully ask you to vote no on this and return it back to Council. When Council met at joint session with Planning Commission, And they were developing the criteria for McGinnis property for the light business use. Data centers were put in there. They were put in there because data centers had to go into a zone in Columbia. And all other locations exposed Columbia to data centers. This zone we can control because the borough owns the property. current ordinance uh there's both general and light industrial so when you combine those two and you look at the properties on the map the properties are both properties are larger than the guinness property so somebody could come in buy those two areas and probably has very little authority over it Columbia does have full authority over McGinnis, and that's why we put it there. And I was agreed upon by both Council and Planning Commission. The second thing I would say is the only vote for a data center was 0-7. That's the only recorded vote in Columbia for our own data centers. I think you ought to wait until the ordinance is done, and then if you want to move it out of light business, then you have protection for the people of Columbia. Right now, there's no protection. This is my thought.

Scott Frederick, South 5th Street. I would ask that you vote in the affirmative to this, reason being if there are zones that, by law, there's gotta be an area where the data centers can be in. If it doesn't have to be one lot, as was mentioned, I believe it was you, Mary, before, they'd have to buy up numerous ones to make it. Well, some of us are old enough to remember Trump's casino down in New Jersey. That was the same deal. was the same deal he had the eminent domain kick people out of their homes old ladies old people that 80s and 90s kick them out of their homes they didn't get for a market fair market value for those homes but you know you either sell or you don't sell that's up to the data center's developer how bad do you want it how bad are you going to throw money around Basically, what it comes down to is the town overwhelmingly has said, we don't want them in here. By law, we have to allow them somewhere. That's fine. But by our zoning and our ordinances, we can dictate more than likely the size of it if it's going to be put in. And if not the size, then certainly zone it with certain ordinances as far as the constant humming, how many decibels, that kind of stuff. So they have the areas where they could build them, maybe not one 41 acre lot all in one shot like this is, but they can certainly, like I said, on the internet, on Facebook, let them put it from front street to right here, third street. so that the whole town can enjoy the constant humming and the loud noise. And as I've said also, my wife and I, we've been in town for 10 years, coming up on 10 years this fall. Our house has paid off. In just the last five years, we've put a ton of money into that house, solar panels, carpet, sheds, fences, a new walk-in shower. We're 66 and 67 years of age. We want to retire here. We want to live here. If a data center comes in, you're going to see a mass exodus of residents of this town. And I, for one, will be looking for somebody to sue if my property value goes in the tank because I did not invest all this time and all this money to make this quote unquote my forever home, our retirement home, to have some people in my opinion, they're just trying to right a wrong in the past by getting out from underneath debt. As this lady has said before, most people would be willing to pay some extra in taxes, although now is not the time to even discuss that. And this isn't the body to bring it up beforehand. But That can also be offset by things such as single hauler trash. That will recoup some or most or possibly even in a few examples, all of the tax increase. If we're a million dollars in the deficit in the red right now, and we have 4,000 homes in this or 4,000 tax paying properties, that's $250 a pop. do the math you can recoup it you can recoup it but i respectfully ask you people to vote in the affirmative to change this thank you okay we have a motion oh sorry jenny

I just wanted to reiterate what he said in the line up. May 26, we had a meeting at the fire hall. It was built to capacity. We had to ask some people to leave, and they all stayed outside. We had over between 300 and 500 people there, so say 400. Say 75 to 100 didn't live in town. That's still a considerable number of people. that came out to say no on the data center over there behind Manor Street. It is a neighborhood. It has no business putting a data center there. And I don't want one in my backyard. Nobody's going to want one in their backyard. But the neighbors were there before. In light in the general industrial and heavy industrial, there's already places there that are noisy um people are used to the noise or the sound that comes out of them asc and metals um so i just i just want to say i would appreciate it if you would vote yes um to pass this ordinance thank you very much

Frank Delford. Lived here all my life, and I come to these meetings to educate myself. And then all the nights I forget my hearing aids. I was glad somebody asked about speaking up, but I almost left, but I thought, no, I don't want to miss nothing. I can piece it in. Justin, I don't mean to pick on you, you work in Moundjoy Township? Is that what Messick's is in? I followed that when they built it and I've never seen a building so big, so put together It would take probably half a day just to go through the whole place. I never made the open house, but I looked at that, and I looked. It wasn't long after that, right across the street. I don't know what that place is that they built there. Do you know what that is?

I don't. That's in Rappah Township. But I think, I mean, there's an Amazon warehouse down there, all sorts of things in the business park that really build up.

But I look at the construction that's going on there. Is there any of these proposed up in there or are you going through this or not?

I'm not sure. No, I don't think there are proposed there, but I also don't

They have so much open land. Here, we just got one parcel. The one thing I want to touch on, Colonial Metals was mentioned. I know a friend that probably the previous owner, I don't know what's going on. I do know that they removed all the structural steel and everything on the inside. And it's not for sale. It's for lease. They have the rentals there, the buildings, they have the place where they put the wrecked cars. That's how I guess we're going to look at that out there. I don't know how this would figure into the new type of ordinance that you're talking about. But like I said, I come here to educate myself. I would hope council would do a day trip and go somewhere where they have one of these so we can get the true answers. I'm up in the air. I hear this, I hear that. I would like to go with them if I had to pay my own way, talk to the leaders, talk to the people that live there and get a true picture so I would know what to vote on. Where do you use people go to enhance your information to make a decision on what you're going to make a decision on? Where do you go for that information?

I guess it depends on the topic. It depends on the topic, land use things, zoning. land uses like this that are kind of a big deal, big impact, but are also kind of ubiquitous in the United States. It's an everywhere issue. There is a lot of information. Some of it could be biased, misleading or whatnot, but often we lean to our friends at the county, You know, DCD will often prepare guidance materials on what municipalities should be considering that they're not always offering. Here's the answer, because it's always context, right? There's always a context, but at least prompting you as to what sort of things you should be looking at. and what those those potential impacts are and that goes back to the proposed ordinance um that it's important that we get this right but as with anything that kind of hits swiftly with a lot of impact you're almost guaranteed that you're not going to get the perfect but it's very important that we at least address what's important to our community and that sort of thing. So that's fair. It's a very fair question. We rely upon the borough engineer, we rely upon staff for a lot of things. Sometimes it's just personal research or even knowledge of particular topics.

Am I correct, you're the township manager?

I was. I gave that up.

Any reason?

Any reason? Have you ever had to manage people, do personnel? Not for me.

Yeah, I talked to previous borough managers, and the stress and all that they go through, it's a wonder they last as long as they do. I knew you was, and I heard that. I wasn't sure what your status was.

Yeah, that was a few years back. Yeah, personnel not my forte.

i appreciate your comments thank you hi kathy embleton 1028 locust street um i would urge you to vote to accept the or make a recommendation to accept the proposal to change the zoning ordinance One of my big concerns is that I don't know how we can trust council to come up with a data center ordinance that will support and protect the people of Columbia versus coming up with a data center ordinance that is geared towards a data center developer to get them in there to sell the property. I'm not sure if everyone is aware of the Lancaster online article that was published a couple weeks ago. There was a data center ordinance that was prepared. It was up for discussion at the June 23rd meeting. Eric started off by saying that he wanted to be clear that Saudi was still in the picture. They were still interested. that they had been in contact with borough officials and then Heather admitted that she well and Eric said that we had sent our data center ordinance to Saadia they reviewed it sent it back to Heather it was redlined and then she made some changes based on the Saadia recommendations I believe that's a conflict of interest. We should not be working with the data center developer who is intent on purchasing that property. That should be developed within our council alone, outside of their purview. Thank you.

I would just like to because I've been accused several times now of working with the developer, and I just wanted to clear something up. As you guys know, in the Municipality Planning Code, in the MPC, which is state law, it allows a developer to come in here with a proposed ordinance and present it to Columbia Borough. And by law, we have to consider that. So it's not unusual, for someone writing municipal codes ordinances to work with a developer to get language in there. Because honestly, had I not taken their suggestions and looked at things and stuff, They could have come in here and presented exactly what they wanted to do. And do you know how much a zoning, how much it costs for us to do a hearing to change the zoning ordinance? It's thousands of dollars. And we would have been obligated to do that with just their ordinance alone without having it. it's not that I took, and you guys, honestly, you don't have to trust me, but I'm telling you, but I'm telling you, when I looked at the red line copy that they gave us, there was a lot in there that I did not include because it does not protect Columbia Borough. There was a lot that they wanted taken out that I did not take out. I kept it in there because that's what's best for Columbia Borough. Yes, I did, but there was a lot that I did not include. And the things that I did change were thought out and everything else. And because what was proposed was excessive based on the sites within the borough, the setbacks that were originally proposed. Like I said, it's not that and a lot of what I changed it was mechanical and you know looking at it it was it was better written the way they worded things so it's not like I'm not trying I'm trying to screw the burrow and I'm doing whatever Saadia wants because honestly that was not my intent and honestly I have never felt from day one, I was never convinced that they were the right buyer for this property, but no one has let me say that. because I understood what they were about and everything else. And yet I keep hearing you guys saying, oh, you're working with Saadia, you're working with Saadia. No, I'm not. I'm doing what's best for the borough, but we also have to comply with the law. And you guys know that, that they would be able to come in here, plop down what they want, and we would have to consider it. And it would cost us thousands of dollars to do what the law requires us to do. So it's better if we can work together before we get to that point, talk to them and say, no, you know, we really don't want to do this. I mean, I think the best example I can give, the most recent example was when the developer that wanted to put the billboard out by the highway, by the old visitor center, The zoning ordinance change that was done to accommodate that billboard came to us from a developer. It was not developed in-house. It was done by their attorney. And they came to us and said, this is what we want to do and this is why we want to do it. Council had no say in that ordinance at all. So that's what I'm trying to prevent by doing it and by trying to work together because nothing stops them from coming in here and saying, I want you to consider this. And by law, we have to consider it.

Thank you, Heather. I mean, I think it's a good stopping point in terms of substance of it. It's fair to address that. Yeah, we're certainly... We're calling a field. Yeah.

If you have a question for Heather, you can address it to her.

Yeah, so we'll wrap on that. I mean, obviously that'll come when we're looking at the standards for the data centers. You know, one last comment for myself. I mean, I probably, you know, when we discussed adding data centers as a use when we had our joint meeting, I think most of us had the concept of, you know, a lower impact, clean technology, good jobs, all this sort of thing. um but that's what the standards will hope to differentiate between something that's very high impact heat water electricity versus you know kind of a clean technological type of building i think if if we had that separation and we were looking at making it a conditional use in light business but only for the you know the less impactful half of a data center i think that would make just as much sense but since we don't have standards in place and we do have this um ordinance that did come from council despite it being a split vote um you know i'll leave it at that i think you know the the bottom line is making sure we have good standards in place and then that kind of opens the door to saying what type where even more so after the fact this doesn't necessarily have to be closed in terms of the discussion as to where um the type different types of data centers can go in our burrow it just i think it starts the conversation okay so we have a motion that has been seconded on the floor um all in favor say aye aye aye okay passes 4-0 and we look forward to seeing the standards for the data centers in the coming months yes sir yeah the motion um from mary and seconded by deb was to recommend that the ordinance be adopted by council as presented so yeah Okay. All right. Thanks. We will move on to our workshop with DCED. We appreciate their patience, obviously, as we work through some very challenging topic for the time.

We do still have a meeting going on right now. We have DCED coming to talk for their workshop.

Welcome back, Nick. Good evening. Thank you for your patience. Absolutely.

Welcome to Columbia. I'm sure you're familiar.

This is a topic everywhere. I'm sure you guys are very familiar in seeing this community. Thanks for experiencing it with us.

Yeah. We've been getting our fair share of Pauls, for sure.

Trust me, Heather, if you want to go to antiques, it's much more fun. Or a plant store, I haven't decided yet. That would be fun too.

Well, the crowd thinned out a little bit, but I appreciate you guys who stayed. So yeah, Elise, did you get my slide deck?

Did you send that to me?

Via email towards the end of the day, but we also have.

All right, I will find that.

while you're looking that up, I will relay we did have some comments from Brad just in general about the importance of the work that we did on the zoning map and we were working through how to consolidate. But, you know, I think you're more focused you know the project you're working is more focused on you know how do we i mean it's not just the zoning districts but you know how are we making the guts of this work right i mean i think that's a fair assessment yeah yeah so a lot of the analysis we had been working on the districts and the geography it's not still still valid and not lost you know so certainly want to reiterate that for their sake since we've worked on that quite well you guys are helping get us over a bit very big

I'm going to go run and put it from my email to this computer, so if you want to just stall on the agenda, it needs to be explained really well.

Did you guys all get those sort of pre-workshop questions? Again, I wasn't expecting any kind of, like, prepared.

You're talking the workshop number two discussion.

Yes.

Yes. We all got that. We all got that.

Good, good. Any thoughts on any of those questions? That's a good place to start.

Well, that's loaded. There are a lot of questions here. But I mean, I think, you know, your prompts about, the mass and the style of buildings is very valid. We have a harm. I think that is one of the reasons why people come here, people stay here. You have architecture and the town feel, the walkability is very important to a lot of people. So a lot of that has to do with that. I mean, I think overall, to strive for higher quality housing, continue to see that through. So there's a little bit of tug of war between maintaining the historic character as well as providing better housing. So those, I think, have always been kind of common themes amongst the borough. So to me, those were some of the things that popped up, and I think that is important, which kind of leads into where some of the things are going with the forum. walkability is big so having mix of commercial uses in amongst the residential neighborhoods was something we had continued to talk about through our kind of planning meetings and workshops you know you had called attention to that as well basically going back to the idea that years ago you had so many

like stores or family businesses within the residential areas where they had the first floor or maybe even just the first room was the business and the rest was their residents. And we had looked at somehow being able to encourage that within the residential neighborhoods. And the walkability is a big thing in town. When you get into form-based, I know we've discussed form-based before.

How long ago was that? Just curious.

It was a while ago.

This goes back to 21. Jessica, I actually ended I was going through some files and found this it was November.

Jessica from CS Davidson is our engineer, but she's a planner. She was helping us with our workshops. We were in the years prior, working on various topics.

And that was found out in some stuff. So that was from November of 21. We were getting into some of that discussion with FormBase.

Which loops back into, you know, encouraging additional commercial flexibility, that mix of like this person you know residential scale commercial activity amongst uh you know residential area we expanded the downtown commercial you know where I live um it's row homes but you've seen you got the kind of the variety shop on that block you've got the school of music which is directly next door to me and it's been perfectly fine it's actually been really cool right So those sorts of things, but again, you know, go back to the previous topic, but scale and impact versus, you know, like, whether it's strictly downtown, I think is an important.

Right. Right. Well, with that prequel into our workshop, let's get it rolling. Just a quick agenda note. I'm going to just recap workshop one so that we kind of remember some of the things we did. So for workshop one, we did, I think, come away with at least six takeaways from the notes. First takeaway was that, you know, simplification seems like it's generally supported amongst everyone here. It's supported overall, but again, I heard a lot of comments about preserving character, you know, not sacrificing anything about character and integrity. And so that should preserve meaningful distinctions between districts. I know I brought a couple of materials and kind of highlighted some things between districts, and some districts were just not that different. And there's also a comment about how residential probably is one of the easier places to start. a little bit more so than maybe commercial, how that could be a little bit more of a complex thing to tackle. But overall, simplification is generally supported. Number two, Columbia is a built-out borough. I asked the question that y'all kind of kind of laughed at and smiled at a little bit. I was like, so what's the deal with Columbia? Why is it, you know, like, landlocked, you know? And you're surrounded by, you know, West Hemphill Township. And the story behind that's kind of fascinating. And it's also fascinating how, like, the river is, like, a thing, too. Yeah. Crazy. But Columbia is a built-out borough, so there's an importance placed on neighborhood form and compatibility rather than simply regulating land uses.

The future growth is going to be primarily through infill.

and um maybe potential reuse options and existing sites and i know there's been some unfortunate events so even after fire demolition what will replace what's you know um taken down so um that's an important takeaway um i'd say number three um Form may be more important than use in certain areas. There's definitely some concern around new development that fits within the built environment here. particularly where multiple lots could be assembled. Compatibility may be better addressed through building form and scale and placement and design standards than through really detailed use, dense regulation, and it's more about the form. And then, of course, parking is something that seems to always come up in any planning-related discussion.

But parking here can continue to influence redevelopment.

Parking is often a barrier for some small businesses and things. So that's not something to totally overlook. Number five, I would say, yeah, certain districts deserve special attention. You know, I learned that from you guys that Columbia once functioned with only three residential districts, which was some time ago, but that's pretty interesting. As you know, Columbia does not have three residential districts anymore. The DC and NC have only two differences between them that we highlighted. The light business district, we talked a lot about that earlier. And data centers, right. I think that's kind of all that needs to be said there. And then number six, which is also really important to consider for the built environment, is its history. If you want to understand a place, you've got to understand its history. And so a lot of history in Columbia. And I heard kind of a theme come up too on the first workshop, how industry and mom and pop shops were historically mixed. There was definitely a great mixture of uses. So that's just kind of a recap of workshop one, I think. Does that sound about right?

Could you forward that to us?

Yeah, I will do that. tomorrow morning when you get back to the office. Alright, thank you.

Okay, so now I want to do something a little bit interesting to kind of frame the conversation. One of the things that I wrote in the SOW for Columbia was to discuss other model ordinances and examples throughout the state. You know, every place is different, so is it comparing apples to apples or citrus to citrus? I don't know, but I think it's a useful comparison. Clymer Borough, Western PA, Indiana County, I don't know if you all have heard of it, but it's a nice little town, about 1,200 people. Their form-based code is short and sweet at about 80 pages total. It uses five zones. And there's a zone use table, a building table, and street typographies. And they did not have form-based code at all before this. I think this was adopted, I think, almost 20 years ago now when they switched over to form-based. It was a while. I think they worked in conjunction with Indiana University to kind of come up with this. But it's a pretty good example of what can be done with form-based code. Next slide. Okay, yeah, so it's a little hard to see, but basically on the right side of the screen on the slide is a table. It's a zone table. And there's five zones. You kind of see the five columns all the way to the right. And then on the left side are all the kind of like uses listed down on the table. And the five zones in Climber Borough is a slope zone where it's kind of like, you know, it's what it sounds like. It's a It's kind of a conservation zone. There's steep slopes. It's environmentally sensitive. Neighborhood zone A, neighborhood zone B, a downtown zone, and a rail trail zone. So those are the five zones in Clymer Borough. And the key is like those black squares are what's allowed on a lot or any building. And the hollow square is a use allowed in any outbuilding only. The triangle is a secondary use allowed on a lot. And the filled in circle is allowed by special approval by borough council. And then if there's nothing there, it's not permitted. So it's kind of a simple thing to look at. It's kind of a thing of beauty, you know, as far as planners are concerned. And then on the left side of the screen is another interesting table. That's a building table. Yeah. Yeah, it's very interesting. And so again, the columns in the center there are the zones. On the right side is examples of building types. And then on the left side is the different uses, like highway frontage, or big box, or drive-through convenience, downtown store. And it kind of fills in where those building types are allowed. So that's the form, and that's kind of the zone, all in one with those two different tables. Then on the next slide, I think I have, yes, their actual zoning map, which is, looks like kind of like a weird, you know, weird shape, yeah. But you can see the five zones very clearly there. It's pretty simple. on the legend is also the streams, the major highways, the lot lines, and those five zones. That big green chunk there is neighborhood zone B. And the lighter green chunk is neighborhood zone A. So you can kind of see where that is. And the rest there in the central part of that oddly shaped borough is their downtown zone. I think, yeah, I think that kind of illustrates the point. I'm not going to go deep dive into their zoning ordinance other than just say, you know, this isn't like a template or anything, but this is a cool, you know, sort of example just to kind of generate some ideas. So next slide. Oh, yeah, one last thing about the zoning ordinance that's kind of cool. And it probably works because they're a very small burrow. I can imagine this would get a little bit unwieldy if it was a larger place. Those are all the main streets in the borough. And there's a street typology to this. And so based on street typology, there's some form and rules based on how frontage works and how form will work on different streets, which is very interesting. And they've labeled the main thoroughfare. They've sort of categorized. the smaller arterials and the neighborhood streets and, you know, kind of the main area in their central downtown core. So I think the Yeah, I mean, they've listed this types, like type A is that big red line there on the left side. And that's from Franklin to Lick Creek to Third Street. So like it's literally defining what section of road that is. Which again, I think works really well because they're a small borough. But that type of typology is pretty interesting.

Makes sense, you know, in our context. lot of the form that we're either trying to keep intact is is there to already to inform the ordinance which is a similar situation there yeah i've worked in a township where they went with a form-based code and it was just little bit out of place because all of the almost all the commercial development balked at wanting to put the thing next to the road and do this and you know all these sorts of things it was like well we'll just go somewhere else and of course you know caves but that's less of an issue you know for the infill and things here because you know a lot of the properties are already small even if you buy multiple properties and assemble them you know you're limited in how you develop so having something that says you know we want to retain this as much as possible um you know kind of like with the hotel redevelopment it's like look i mean you want updated housing but we don't want to lose that on the mainstream facade the form the mass you know those sorts of things are are probably more important um than you know like what a lot of greenfield development has to consider across the state Yeah, yep. Oh, yeah, that hotel as well. But yeah, you're right, that and the other two. But specifically that, because of the way that we had already lost chunks of these old buildings, and you didn't want to lose any more of them. It became even more important.

Because most of what you're seeing in that picture is still here.

Yeah.

Not the office house. The bottom floor is.

Yeah, you're in it. Yeah, a lot of that form is still there today.

So like a planner, I give everything a title. Workshop one was emerging themes. Now I'm titling this emerging directions. So kind of going along with kind of what we've been saying, there's levels to this and there's levels of integration to this and there's a lot of options and there's, you know, could even explore a whole other set of options. But I wanted to kind of interrogate the form-based and hybrid sort of options here first and call it like a three-option ladder. But the very first like immediate direct sort of step on that ladder could just be targeted cleanup. where there's more clarity on district purposes and definitions, use categories, cross references, just really kind of tightening things up. Maybe a little bit of simplification as well. Just kind of like a lot of those practical steps. And then another step into that world, into that ladder, would be maybe like a simplified hybrid kind of option or direction. There's a reduction in overlapping districts, and then there's an addition of form and context. different standards for infill and mixed use, basically. And then a step even further, if Columbia is feeling extra bold, would be a broader restructuring of the zoning ordinance, which could incorporate further foreign-based standards. Reorganization of portions of the ordinance around zones, building types, streets, and frontage. So all those things going a little bit deeper into that world basically. You know, conventional zoning still does useful work, you know, kind of in that first option. Basic use permissions, you know, a lot of things would really kind of stay similar. In that second run, you know, there'd be more form-sensitive standards that fill the gap. You know, building placement, the scale, frontage, facade, parking location. Those things would be considered a little bit more in-depth. With a more, with that broader form-based restructuring, there'd also be targeted overlays. I know the historic district here already does a lot of heavy lifting. That's kind of another takeaway from workshop one, honestly. So that'd be kind of an easy thing to tap into is just doing some lifting through overlays. So I think that sets up our conversation well. We prepared more analysis and some maps. I know everybody loves maps, so. Next slide. Okay, yeah. This slide basically says what I've been saying. The form-based stuff, Climber Borough, it's not a template, it's just a useful comparison. It's development that's focused around form and function. And a very useful zoning ordinance can indeed connect use, building form, street context, and info quality. We can accomplish all those goals. So in terms of zone, when we think of the zone of a form-based code, where is the lot? The use, what activities fit there? Building type, what form fits? Street type, how does it meet the street? Standards, that's all the inner workings. How should parking and all the signage and transparency work? But I want to get to the next slide. This is our analysis. of the, basically of the zoning, the whole zoning area of Columbia. We reviewed the central business and commercial core, residential, did a little bit of a comparative review, and then we mapped out some potential concepts. So, might be a little hard to see, but The purple is the high density residential. and the pinkish, reddish color shaded areas are the medium density residential. We also have an outlined sort of red lines and some orange lines in there. And the historic district is that dotted shape and kind of make out there too. Lisa will come up here in a couple of minutes and explain that a little bit further. But just for reference, so that's where the higher density residential lies, right? As it currently is in Columbia. Next slide. So they're coming in a little bit more. You can kind of see, we'll explain the red boundary and that orange boundary a little bit more in a few minutes, but all of those yellow shaded parcels are single family lots, basically. Next map. And this is all of the, again, all of the more dense sort of residential as well as institutional residential. And that's kind of where all of that lies. Next slide. And this is where all the low density residential is. It's kind of almost the inverse of that, almost, right? You see that rural residential and light density, lower density residential, kind of in the outer portions of the borough. And with that, I'll turn it over to Lisa to kind of further explain the residential, well, the mapping analysis. That will make the residential make a little bit more sense too.

thank you so I know that you've done some studies of the districts in the past and I just want to be clear that these are just kind of like study maps that we were doing for ourselves as you know last week we were looking at all the or last workshop we're looking at all the different districts and kind of when in in making this study matt looking at if you boil it down how many if i was looking just at for example in this case um the commercial mixed use districts what does that boil down to and it kind of came down to what i was looking for on the spreadsheet is about three um and so i think it's hard to separate the where the districts are on the map from what the permitted uses are like they they just have to be kind of they're they're so intertwined um so i'm going to go through how i got here and again these are just concepts for discussion um so the red is intended to show what could potentially be um the like high density mixed use downtown core so this would be like the highest density probably the the most permitted flexibility of commercial uses and mix of uses the orange the light orange is intended to show what could be a like a transitional commercial maybe a smaller more maybe more more limited use maybe more less dense form so sort of like a transition from that the most intense core to the the residential districts kind of on the periphery the dark gray and the dark orange those are existing general industrial and then the the purple is intended to indicate just sort of like a general commercial or like a commercial corridors um districts um they could have um you know auto oriented um form standards or river oriented trail oriented standards potentially having sort of the same underlying permitted uses if you go to the next slide so here this is again kind of started with those red and orange lines started looking at the existing zoning districts and what's there and trying to group some of those together so that one's not super easy read but if you go to the next slide so here so a lot of this data we took from Lancaster County their housing housing dashboard so if you look at the the hatched areas which are a little hard to see but it's so the black horizontal or diagonal lines those indicate those are Housing types excluding single family detached, senior living, and mobile manufactured homes. So kind of three categories that you would not typically see in any DEN survey report. The blue indicates the oldest, this is from the assessment data, the oldest residential structure was built before 1939. you can see within the red center there as well as most of the orange area you have housing types that are not single family not mobile home manufactured or senior living and they're all older buildings and so you definitely have a clear concentration there and next slide please all right so this is So again, the hatched areas in this case represent something different. They represent lots that are less than or equal to 3,000 square feet. So again, you can see that those are not unexpectedly concentrated within the red area. the red lines um and then the blue indicates this is from again from leicester county data dashboard um residential mixed use zones so not included and i took out the institutional residential and it also includes so and i also added the highway commercial and the riverfront commercial and then you can see that apart from I guess in the southeast corner of the city it's again largely concentrated within the red and orange lines in this case the blue indicates dwelling types and Everything excluding one family dwellings, rural residents, estates, seasonal residents, mobile homes, all excludes all industrial transportation utility except railroad terminals, bus transportation, parking garage. Excludes auto dealer, car wash, storage, warehouse distribution, drive-in, bank branch, billboards, stadiums, auditoriums. So the list kind of goes on, but it excludes those kind of larger type commercial uses. Again, those kind of uses that you would not typically see in a dense downtown urban floor. And then it is for those parcels are further filtered for parcels three acres or less. and we have a concentration within the red zone, somewhat less in the orange, and then even less outside of that. You can go to the next slide. So this is so the red just for like working purposes or the downtown high-density mixed-use You can see that the so the percentage of single-family housing type on a per parcel basis is on acreage Next slide so this is sort of the downtown transition still mixed use the number of single-family parcels goes up a bit percentage-wise and as well as fits by acreage again none of this is i guess is really surprising given the development of the borough over time but i think it helps to kind of put on the ground with where these districts could potentially be. And then the next slide. So I kind of blocked out the red area and the orange area, and then just showing here, if I, outside of those, the red and orange area, if we exclude places where single family residential would not be typically general industrial, you can see the list there. The percentage of single family parcels on per parcel basis is 81%. And on acreage basis is 30.6. Next slide.

By single family, you're saying just detached?

Single family detached, yeah. And so that's as classified under the land. So this is just kind of putting it all together. It basically just shows you where concentration of putting what is there now and putting that to kind of a general district i think you can see that that sort of in that southeast corner kind of just down below the dark gray section that's residential but that's like a real pocket of high density residential being separated from the main part of the downtown by the river there's some industrial parcels there that sort of makes sense it's sort of emerging as like a high density residential whereas in the north yeah north central areas a pocket of single family detached residential And this is just showing the purple lines on that and sort of how that fits in to everything else. That's it for me. I think Nick has a few more.

Yeah, that's really mostly it. After kind of like going through those maps and kind of going through the context, just coming back to those questions. The point of this workshop is to have discussion and feedback and thoughts on this. So really just kind of open the floor back to you guys on what you kind of see from all that.

I feel like we're kicking the tires on this sort of way to approach zoning for town that is mostly most of the development we see is infill type things or reuse type projects and you know i mean i think this is the right lens you know so but the you know the decisions it's a big change to the zoning ordinance and how it's administered and you know thinking of a practice from the practical sense you know to have a consultant working listen do it right and make the proper visuals so that is useful and administratable, you know, will take money. But I think we're going through this period of, you know, we needed nudged to kind of get us, get us some help to say, well, what if you look at it this way? You know, what happens when you merge these districts? And we were able to get so far. Um, but additional inspiration is good. That's kind of my, the way that I've been looking at this is, you know, getting a nice third party view and say, and a good one that's knowledgeable and has these experiences to say, maybe this is the way you need to look at it. So like when you say what part of the ladder, I mean, I think like ideally you would go the full bore. and do something that's really going to kind of keep the character of the town but also try to promote investment people but i think we're like on this learning you know mission right now to see like how far do we want to go is there like a hybrid type of thing or you know do you say you know there's a lot of commonalities in big areas of the borough you know how do you find a better way to keep what's important. I think even going back to when we did the economic development plan in 2006 or 2008, and the themes of the comprehensive plan has always been like, we want to preserve the history, we want to preserve what makes the town unique, but we also need to progress, whether that's improving walkability and livability or getting good industry businesses in here that's like always been the theme for 20, 30, 40 years. But we've had a hard time kind of coming up with the right tool to deal with land use matters. And that's just my opinion, but I'm also a planning person. So I get it. And sitting on this side, that's been the most challenge is how do you shake it up enough to where it's better? and to where we it's something that we can actually get followed through and this to me this is helping kind of explore that that's just me looking at the questions yeah i went to the fourth question already well i'm i'm skipping down to the third and

I feel that our residential zones match what's there. When you look at our residential zones, I feel they really match what is in place. When you get into your downtown commercial, your highway commercial, your neighborhood commercial, I'm not sure that they all in those places probably the downtown commercial most fits but i think with our expansion of the downtown commercial we lost some of that downtown area yeah because to me when you say you're going downtown you're going to locust street You're not going to Cherry Street, you're not going to Walnut Street. You're going to Locust Street. And I think we've lost something there. The institutional, they are what they are. That's what's there. And for simplification, we've kind of we kind of touched on that with lancaster county planning and i i don't know that i feel i'm far enough knowledgeable on the simplification to answer the question as to where it makes sense in the confusion i like we have a medium density residential business.

Yeah. And it's not very...

So what is the difference between a medium density residential business and a neighborhood commercial? If in fact what it's designating a medium density residential business is like a place where you have doctor's offices and maybe beauty shops and things like that in those areas well what's the difference between that and the neighborhood commercial you know why couldn't that all be classified if you're going to have a neighborhood commercial why wouldn't they fall into that anything is there then you run into the fact that we allow the residential units the residential rental units in medium density residential

Yeah, see, that's no longer the crisis right now. But it is. Yeah, that's a really good point, Mary, because that the zoning districts were the tool to say where to put that. And that's more controversial than an oddity shop opening up on the street as you know but I mean in terms of the importance and the divide and trying to figure out where you know so like we don't want that to be the end-all be-all it is right as much as I like

I'm not good sure of the incentivizing, which is really interesting. I find that very challenging to incentivize that much. There's so much going on in different parts of the town to just say, this is the only time, this is the only time. It all blends together sometimes. That's why our kids just don't care. It's not uncommon to have three grocery stores, little mom and pop grocery stores in one block. And that's with the safety of growing up in that era because our mom and dad would let us go to the store and get something. Today, there's no way to go to the store. Even up to Andy's, which is three or four blocks away from my house, and it's just, I didn't have to go up there. You just don't know who's renting what. But I just think simplification is our goal, but I find it very challenging to get it to that point.

And just so that I'm clear, simplification in this context is almost synonymous with consolidation, right? So the goal would be to not have 17 or so districts.

In that sense, because Marilyn's right, you know, I mean, it's all that's that's always been the stomach. There's so much nuance in town because of the way it was built. It does. But that's the challenge, right? So can you consolidate? But there's other parts, there's other tools in the zoning ordinance that does preserve kind of the nuanced approach, right? And that's that's where the that's where it gets hard.

yeah yeah when when we did the the comp plan like that what we used was that future land use plan out of there and that looks at combining low leading density yeah into one district and i think the high density is what it is

Those were great views of that on the map to see, you know, the types of housing and you've got it colored and you see the concentrations and then it's like, oh yeah, it makes sense. We walk, you walk by it all the time, you drive by it, but to see it on a plan view, you know, it really makes sense. So that was appreciated.

So are you thinking just having two residential districts? That's what the comp plan is suggesting, just the two residential districts, that you would combine the low and medium. And according to that, that would take in 37% of the draw out, 575 acres.

Just to kind of like go along with that too, spend some time looking at the zoning ordinance. and looking at which districts are most similar, both in terms of use and bulk dimensions.

Dimensional.

Rural residential and low-density residential are pretty close. I mean, they're pretty close. They're the same at heart, right? Medium density is a little different. than I would say in looking at the ordinance the way it is right now.

It's a little bit different than rural residential and low density. It's a transitional neighborhood.

It's a transitional. It's what it is. And if you were to lump that in with another district, know i would almost say it'd be more suited to be lumped in with the higher density rather than the low just based on how the ordinance is written right now but um but it is kind of its own little transition so so you know i'm not trying to make a case either way you could have you know two districts or you could have three you know what you're saying is you would lump the low

The medium and the high.

Because the other kind of lower density residential district that we have is the rural residential district which has very very similar

Yeah, as lower density.

In the table of permitted uses, you can even see they're in the same exact column, and then you have the special differentiated in each square. That's the same with the high density residential and the high density residential multifamily, which just allows for apartments. And Marilyn, to get to your point, um about you know how you like that the houses are so you are able you were able to walk down the street to a grocery store i think that high density is you know when we get into that high density we kind of cut off a ton of those commercial we kind of get rid of that mixed use element so it's now this is just residential we're not allowed to have any commercial in here and there's a really stark line between the downtown commercial district and then the high density residential. And that's kind of where we see the little pop ups of the medium density residential light business and like the neighborhood commercial. Whereas, I mean, in my opinion, if you were to makes a high density residential a little more mixed use and have more, maybe higher standards for the certain commercial businesses that are allowed in there, but still having it you know them able to be in there then that could kind of get rid of a lot of the smaller districts that kind of make up for that to make that bridge yeah exactly so it's kind of like we have these commercial spaces and then we're like oh well we didn't zone for these ones that have already been here and then you're that's kind of where we're starting to see a little more of like spot zoning and just kind of like changing the zoning to catch up with what's already there which i think to make it blend more with our future land use and plan and like comprehensive plan we want to try to like avoid that um so i mean and then yeah the the lower density residentials with the rural residential like those are pretty synonymous with each other um And then, yeah, you can either combine the high density and medium residential. Or if you do want that distinction of like, hey, we're still pretty close to downtown, but we don't want any commercial space in here, then you could leave that medium density residential. But again, in such a small borough, that low density to medium, it's like there's not a ton of space between the two residential spaces so yes if you want to continue to yeah yeah so to be able to facilitate hey we do love when certain commercial businesses are in our residential districts because it does make it more walkable and you know invites more you know people to come and grow businesses here

Yeah, right.

I think that was one of the comparison. So so with the best approach be to keep three residential and more some of the neighborhood commercial into the high density and get rid of those smaller areas and then have medium and low or keep medium and high together and morph those small commercial ones into something else like downtown commercial or I mean, is a high density like a mixed use to allow small businesses? I don't know.

It's almost as if starting over with the map makes the most sense, right?

Because the more that, you know, we were doing this when we were trying to consolidate the districts and it was kind of like, well, you know, you run into the, yeah, but you get this little tail of this district and it's like, well,

almost just want to say well if you start over and that's kind of like what you threw out there and whether three districts or two districts is too few i mean that's that's that's a good discussion but the point being is you're saying like this larger area has a lot more in common than the zoning ordinance makes it look and then this area surrounding it has a lot more common with itself than the four different districts that's within it and now and then it starts to make sense like okay now we're identifying these areas where it looks and has a similar look and feel in the types of housing now the the devil becomes the details in like you showed well Yeah, but if you get up here and you're starting to transition out and you have the different standards for the different roads, right? You know, as you showed in that example. So that allows you to deal with the nuance splits more than, okay, this intersection as you can have commercial here. It's like, well, it's not so much the intersection that matters. It's, you know, whatever it may be. And then that's where you start. you look at bigger areas. And I think that's what we were really trying to do. You know, the geography of these districts are larger, but they're also more like cohesive versus you got a pocket of this over there, a pocket of that over there. And like you said, we just looked at all the ages and all these sorts of things. And it's like, well, this is actually what's in common, not, you know, little pockets of things. That's what we're trying to get at.

What I'm seeing here is neighborhood commercial. is the cbs yeah which is in surrounded by a high density residential and then you go over to ninth and right street and i guess that was because of peter lumber and peel courtyard and the other industries that were in that area. That's the other part of the neighborhood commercial that is surrounded by So do you make mixed use? And the thing is, those are there any changes? Sure, but that amazed me that. And that probably happened with the acne.

residential mansion. Okay, we're not going to digress there. One thing, when you think about this, and I've heard you guys talk about simplifying and everything else, but then I also hear, well, we don't want to simplify too much because we don't want to lose the characters and things like that. But I would just encourage you to look at it through the lens of when we Future land use is not just a buzzword. We have to make sure that our ordinance is not such that it's difficult to determine what could go where for a developer. We want to encourage development and we want to encourage that investment. We have to be able We have to make sure our zoning ordinance encourages that and makes it easy to determine that and not one of those where, you know, I've heard people say before, well, if you want to open a business here, you come in and talk to us and we'll tell you where to go. That's not the reality and that's, I don't think, I don't think that that is a good way to operate nowadays. in years past that may have that you know yes everything was gone on the good old boys the the waving the handshake and the nod that is not reality anymore and i would encourage you to look at the zoning ordinance and to try and find that balance between keeping character but also making it easy for investment to happen because the reality is if it's not If it's not apparent and it's too much work, they're going to walk. We have to be friendly to and open to those new uses. And rather than spot zoning to accommodate a lawn format on Union Street, just say it's all mixed use and that and in that mixed use we allow a laundromat we allow if it fits in the building you know if it fits in there those kinds of things you know a doctor's office whatever because in reality doctors are not opening offices in a house right it's not happening doctor for others right now they're not opening like that it's not fast but we can say we would allow these different things.

And then also, sorry, just to that point too, if you're kind of expanding your districts and allowing more mixed use out, because you were talking earlier about how that downtown commercial district has gotten so big, which does make it a little difficult to maintain a central character of a few streets. If you expand, you know, some more residential space to more of a mixed use space, that also could potentially help a little bit of parking issues, too, from such a congested downtown area where everyone is like, like if you just allow laundromats in the downtown commercial district because no commercials are supposed to go in the residential districts, then, you know, everyone has to drive their I've been in it where I've only done laundry once every couple weeks. I'm not carrying that down a couple blocks. I'm going to drive my multiple baskets of laundry and spend all day at the laundromat. So just kind of like simple things that could make it, I can just walk down to the laundromat or to the grocery store instead of having to drive to the one that's on Locust Street.

So now we do have the laundromats in the residential area. Yeah. So

we were about 45 minutes behind and we obviously want to yeah but i mean this is no no i didn't mean it like that so much is you know like if you know we want to try to get you out of here by nine but we also want to make sure that you're getting the right amount of feedback yeah in terms of you know the next step absolutely and you know so that kind of puts the ball back in your court you know what yeah what do you i mean you've heard a lot yeah are we giving you enough yeah no i think so um

Sorry, I spent a lot of time in Ohio and that's a problem itself. But yes, I'm getting a lot of good feedback. I want to add, though, one more, just, you know, I've only got a few minutes left here, but Elise, if you could go back to one of the first maps that we had up. Yeah. A little more. Yep, right there, all the yellow.

This one? Yep.

Alright this one now after our conversation right about you know all this stuff I want to go back to this map real quick because. I know there's a lot of nuance every place is a living organism and there's always going to be a lot of nuance but. All those yellow parcels. Is where the single family like homes are like for the most part that's that use and it. It really kind of opens up Columbia. For some future opportunities, you know I will just say that, like. the orange and the red kind of boundaries that Lisa described and, you know, the opportunities for mixed use and stuff. Back to that ladder, you know, I was talking about, you know, there's steps you can take to kind of move the needle too, right? Like you can start to create these blanket you know, areas, but then you have a lot of tools that will help regulate those nuances that are of concern within those sort of blanketed areas, you know. And so, I was really glad when I, for this workshop, like, I'll just let you in behind the curtain a little bit. This workshop, like, I didn't know what was going to happen because I, My plans changed so many times. And then when Lisa started doing these maps, I was like, whoa. It didn't take that much GIS analysis. She just put these maps together. And I was like, oh. this they say a lot these maps are worth like a thousand words you know um so i'm happy to share all this material you know share with your peers um but i do think the maps maps do say something and um yeah and I hope, you know, if there's any other comments, you know, before time's up, please, you know, otherwise I'll just kind of go into next steps. But I do want to say that, too, about sort of the latter options, you know. And, like, we want to provide a The end deliverable is giving Columbia a zoning ordinance report. It's information. And you will have that important information to do what you want to do with that. There will be recommendations in there and stuff. So it's really up to you guys how you want us to shape that report. um tailor it you know um these workshops are just showing like what we're discovering what we're finding and i kind of it's kind of fun for me too because i feel like i'm like winding up the toy and then like seeing what happens but um so yeah just you know keep that in mind you know this this document can be a little bit dreamy or it could be like real practical pragmatic I can tailor it whichever way, but there's definitely a lot of tools that you can use to sort of regulate the nuances.

Do you feel that looking at the map is the first step to get us where we want to be? to look further at the form base of the simplification and deciding what zones we even want to deal with is that one of the first baby steps to take

yeah uh i do um i think looking at that in in tandem with looking at the rest with the ordinance um and so yes i do and i i think that's kind of why this workshop went in this direction you know with a whole slew of maps but because once you do that then you actually look at your zoning coordinates

And see how that has to be married together to get what you want the map to be able to do.

And what, I mean, again, this is up to you guys, but if what you want is to sort of make a conceptual map, right? Like for us to kind of make a

You know, I mean, to me, it's also like how I mean, again, you're not writing the ordinance, you're not proposing. Yeah. Right. But, you know, how do we how does it work underneath? You know, so kind of like it's it's like, you know, let's just say that. So in our eyes, I think we have based on the maps and the possibility to have bigger areas to address. Right. And that's in a way simplification. But that it's like, OK, this is great. And then it's like, OK, well, how does it work? and that's the part that you were showing like how the how the tables work and what they're looking at and those sorts of things to me you know sounds helpful you know because i think if you're looking bigger picture and you're looking at how do we really kind of revolutionize the way the zoning ordinance is to do exactly that and again for decades it's we want to protect the good stuff and we want to reinvent we want to attract reinvestment to get you know kind of improve the other stuff I mean that's the really simplified way of saying that but how does the zoning ordinance do that with different types of tools like maybe a little more exposure to that because like what Marilyn's saying is yeah I like the idea of I want to boil these down, but how do we make sure that we do it right and the mechanics underneath? And how does the zoning officer, you know, say, okay, somebody comes in and wants to do this. You know, like, what am I, how do I, what am I looking at? So I think that's my perspective is the maps helped a lot. Makes a lot of sense. I think we want to do that sort of thing, you know, but what has, how has the sausage made it, you know, behind the scenes, some exposure there. We also realize your guys' time on the project is limited and you're only coming out so many times. So the next step has to be a reasonable next step. We're not asking for anything.

Does that come from us, the next step?

Yes. Yes, it does. And it's based on the workshops.

It's based on what we've kind of gone over here. So... Yeah. Yeah.

I have a feeling that you two kind of know what we're trying to say better than we do. You know what I mean? I think you can kind of read as to where we're coming from.

I think it's been very helpful. And to your point, Marilyn, if there's more time needed, that's totally understandable. Time to kind of digest and time to kind of help formulate what you want that next workshop to really look like as well. My initial thought was to kind of have some... Actually, if you go to my last slide, I have it out there. just start to introduce some draft modeling and draft report stuff in the next workshop. Because that will be our final workshop here with the Planning Commission. The next one will be you know, the final one, the borough council, so.

Schedule that wisely.

Yes, we'll be in touch for that. I have something that might be interesting to look at if you guys are kind of bringing in more examples from other municipalities. I'm interested to see kind of how other municipalities kind of use like overlays and whatnot. Now, I mean, I don't want to go overlay crazy because, you know, as a planner it's really cool to like have those things to you know kind of have a secondary zoning on top of you're already zoning but for like enforcement purposes as well as just like transparency for residents it can get pretty crazy to know what's what so I'm kind of interested in seeing what other municipalities how they balance that and if there if you could find any examples of like really good overlays especially if because we do have a like a really good historic district overlay but like kind of what are other places also making overlays for are they doing like a more downtown place like I'm interested to see what other places are doing and then also kind of what other people are doing in regards of like, you know, conditional uses and special exceptions and whatnot. You know, obviously I don't want to also make everything a conditional use and have the borough council meetings like six hours long, but we do have, we don't have a lot of conditional uses. We definitely rely more on special exceptions as kind of an added control over what the borough says, which is a layer of protection, but also can be a difficult barrier for um you know like a mom and pop shop coming in and they can't fit or you know if they need a special accession it's like 500 bucks to even seen before be seen before the zoning hearing board so kind of just seeing how other municipalities handle that might be interesting um yeah noted sure we're trying to think of these

form or something that just sounds familiar.

Yeah. I think... I think you're right. I think either Lititz or Mannheim. One of them does use some kind of form.

Yep.

Yeah.

... ... ... they're adding a Horry overlay district that would allow for Horry accessory uses

So that's Warwick Township.

Yeah, that's Warwick. I couldn't remember which township it was, but yeah, we were considering that.

Interesting.

Yeah, it was. It was pretty interesting. I learned all kinds of stuff in there.

I'm sure, yeah. Okay, did that help? Yeah. Yeah, that's it. It helped us.

Yeah. Did he say he's dust?

I think she said clear as mud.

Yeah.

Well, we appreciate it. Thanks again. Thanks again for your patience.

Thank you for the information.

Yeah, it's helped. I think it kind of gets the wheels turning a little bit. So that's what we did.

Okay. Go back to the agenda.

Do you have anything to add?

No.

Anybody else for the good of the order?

Would you entertain a motion to adjourn?

Absolutely. So moved. Do we have a second?

Second.

All right. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay. 908. We're adjourned.