Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

It's 6 o'clock on September the 10th, and this is the Dallas Planning Commission regular scheduled meeting. So we're going to kick off the meeting right now. We've got three public hearings on our agenda this evening, and we'll walk ourselves through the process and make sure that everybody gets a chance to participate as they wish. So... I'm going to kick off the meeting. I'm going to call the meeting to order. This is the Dallas Planning Commission, September 10th, and we are in order. Could we have the roll call, please?

Commissioner Swanson.

I'm here.

Commissioner Groh.

Here.

Commissioner Schulte. Commissioner White. Here. A quorum is present. Commissioner Newell, Commissioner Banford, and Commissioner Kowalsch. Let staff know that they wouldn't be present tonight.

Quorum present. Okay. Item number three, approval of the minutes. Regular meeting of August 13th, 2026. I read through them. They looked okay to me, but I wasn't here, so I have no comment on them or how it was conducted. I'm assuming that Andy did a good job. So any commissioner comments on, no comments permitted on that, yeah. I'm watching you. So does anybody have any retractions or additions to the minutes as presented? Seeing none, I'm going to take that as approved.

Don't we need to vote on it?

Well, I guess so.

All in favor say aye.

Somebody has to move. Yeah, that's all right. I move to the minutes being adopted as reads.

Thank you. Now we can vote. Now let's have a vote. I missed one meeting and I forgot how to do this. So let's have a vote. All those in favor of the minutes as presented say aye. Aye. Okay, approved unanimously. So... We're now going to go into our public hearings and we have three this evening. And our first one is conditional use, uh, 2603, a short-term vacation rental at 1866 Hankel street. So because this is a public hearing, we go through an official public process, uh, and a legal process. So I'm required by law to read some script of legalese to make sure that we're handling everything correctly. So this public hearing is regarding property located at 1866 Hankel Street. And it's a continuation of a conditional use hearing that was last month when I was not here. This is an official public hearing before the Dallas Planning Commission. And I now declare the public hearing open at 6.02 p.m. As the application is subject to land use proceedings recognized by state law, I read the following statement. Failure to raise an issue with sufficient detail to afford the Planning Commission and the parties involved an adequate opportunity to respond to each issue precludes appeal to the State Land Use Board of Appeals based upon that issue. So please direct all testimony to the record and the applicable criteria listed in the staff report or to the criteria in the Dallas Development Code you believe applies to this decision. The applicable approval criteria are found in the Dallas Development Code Chapter 4.4.040. At this time, I will ask any members. So that means that everyone's going to get a chance to make testimony when the time comes. And I'll walk everybody through that. That's why I was asking if there is anybody online, because there is an opportunity for folks to participate remotely. So at this time, I'm going to ask any of the members of the Planning Commission if they have a conflict of interest, a site visit, or an ex parte contact to declare upon this meeting. Permit application. Commissioners? No? You've all heard it. So. An ex parte contact is an out of hearing communication regarding a matter of fact currently at issue in this case. Under Oregon law, a decision is not invalidated by ex parte contact if it is fully disclosed and the public is given an opportunity to respond. Therefore, I'm now going to ask those members of the public that are in attendance and any participant of record, does any participant wish to challenge the qualifications, impartiality, or jurisdiction of this body or any individual member to hear and decide on this matter, or does any participant wish to rebut the substance of any ex parte communication or site visit? So as planning commissioners, we've all said we've had no outside contact or out-of-order discussions. We've not talked to the applicant. We've not visited the site. We are deciding this matter. not like a courtroom, but we're deciding these decisions in the room. So the question then to you folks that are present, does anyone have, would like to challenge our declaration of no ex parte contact? Thank you, sir. Please step forward. State your name and your address for the record and specify which member or disclosures you mean to address. And you're permitted to state your objection. This is a new addition for us. I should have added that. We usually just do the ex parquet, take contact thing and call it good. But we've added this on the advice and recommendation of one of our planning commissioners. Thank you, Commissioner White. So... You're permitted to state your objection or provide evidence or arguments to rebut the facts introduced via ex parte contact. So name, address, and let's go from there.

Am I refuting like all of your able to participate or am I just refuting the permit?

Yeah. This is particularly our declaration of ex parte non-bias. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's okay. That's okay.

We'll get to the other parts real soon.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Benjamin, for straightening me out with the new text. This hearing will be conducted in the following manner. We'll begin with a staff report, followed by questions of staff by the planning commissioners. Thereafter, we will hear from the applicant, including members of the applicant team, for a total of 15 minutes, and this may be followed by questions from the planning commission. Thereafter, we will hear from all other interested parties in presenting testimony on this item before the commission. Each person will be provided five minutes to testify. And that's if you have an objection or want to testify in support of this application, that's your time to raise your hand and give your testimony. After everyone that's here that would like to testify on this particular, and we're going to go through this for every one of our hearings this evening. If anyone has any objections or states anything that requires rebuttal, the applicant is permitted five minutes to rebut the testimony that was received. After we've heard all testimony, I will close the public hearing and ask the Planning Commission to deliberate and then ask if there is a motion in response to this proposal. In this case, this commission's decisions is final unless the decision is appealed, and then it would be referred to the city council to hear an appeal of our decision. So this time we'll start with the staff report. Jess, may we have the staff report, please?

Yes. So as mentioned, this request is for a short-term vacation rental at 1866 Southeast Henkel Street. It's in the kind of the northwest or northeast part of town, as you can see there on the map. Here we have a closer in air photo showing that it is a subdivision that is being developed and is developed residential subdivision there. The houses on that particular block are townhome houses, so they share a common wall on one side. During the previous hearing on this, the Planning Commission asked questions of staff regarding the number of short-term vacation dwellings that are here in Dallas, and so staff have come back to you with that data. There are eight of them. And the map there shows you where they are. That list of eight includes the one that's being considered today. So there are eight short-term vacation rentals that have been permitted by the City of Dallas or have gone through a land use process. The other information that the Planning Commission had requested of staff is unfortunately not available. The Christopher McConkey- granularity of the data that comes to us through the transient lodging tax is. Christopher McConkey- Not sufficient for that sort of data analysis funding is provided through the tax on a on a gross basis so it's essentially the the sum total of all of the rental rather than like a per night kind of breakdown so.

Christopher McConkey- question was how much revenue. Are these short-term rentals generating?

So revenue, that I could have gotten you. Sorry, I apologize. I was focusing more on like how many night occupancies there were.

I'm sure I don't recall that being a part of the discussion of the first hearing, that how much was being generated was not a matter of... The best of my recollection, yeah.

Sure.

It was sort of occupancy rates and then sort of what demographic, I would say, is renting them. How many, how often? Yeah, and that unfortunately just is not available. The data that we have is just sum total of monies received. And then from that, we subtract a percentage as tax. Unfortunately, I don't have any further information to give you on that, but we do at least have this map showing the ones that have gone through the land use process. So approval criteria there's three approval criteria for conditional uses the site has to be adequate for the need the negative impacts on adjacent properties can be mitigated. And public facilities have to have adequate capacity to support the development. Conditional uses are ordinarily also subject to the standards of site design review. This property is not proposed for development. It is already constructed as a single family attached dwelling. And so the approval criteria for site design, you don't really apply in this case because there's no development being proposed on the site. For short term vacation rentals, there's an additional set of criteria. I'm realizing now the typo where it says three criteria that is actually a lot more than three. But essentially, short term vacation rentals have to provide two off street parking spaces, those parking spaces have to be on the same lot as the vacation rental unit. They have to have a maximum occupancy of one person for every 200 square feet, no more than 16, whichever is more restrictive. The other standards that apply to single-family dwellings generally in that zone also have to be met. Property owner has to subscribe to solid waste collection and provide receptacles for that. have to provide for the transient lodging tax, and then have to have a local representative for the short-term vacation rental who either resides within the Dallas urban growth boundary or a licensed property management company that is within 10 miles of the boundary. And so the staff report, the written staff report goes into greater detail showing how staff believe all of these approval criteria have been met. The staff recommendation for this proposal is approval. And so, yeah. There are four conditions of approval that staff are proposing. That it be obviously performed in the manner is consistent with what was presented to the Planning Commission. That's a standard boilerplate condition of approval. Has to comply with all building and fire code requirements. Again, standard boilerplate. applicant has to register with the city for the collection of the transient lodging tax, and then the number of occupants be limited to eight persons. So, yeah. Thank you.

Commissioners, do we have any questions? Again, I apologize that I missed the first half of this hearing. So do we have any questions of staff? Commissioner White.

uh thank you staff for returning with the information on past of conditional use approvals by the city for short-term rentals and uh one of the things i just thought i'd ask on that slide that was up there with the eight um you mentioned that those are past approved um i would assume that not all eight are operating today, right? There's not been a check of what's there. It's just reflective of what we've approved.

So yeah, it appears that they all are operating at least intermittently. The thing about short-term vacation rentals is sometimes they are owner occupied and other times they're available for rent. So it seems as though they have all been operating at least in the recent past. The way the web listings work is It's not quite like a hotel where there's a vacancy every night, so it's a little hard to judge. But we don't seem to have any evidence that any of them have discontinued use, I should say.

All right. I was just curious if you went deeper than just kind of compiling the number of conditional uses. So thanks for the follow up on that. And it's my understanding short term rental estate has a definition that's kind of a key distinction in a short term rental, enabling the cities throughout the state to regulate. And that's it's fewer than 30 consecutive days. Is that correct?

So 28 consecutive days.

Oh, 28 now? Okay.

Because February only has 28 days in the month. Oh, wow. Okay.

There's even a reef? I learn something every day now.

Yes.

But beyond that, if it's longer than 28 days, there is no conditional use. You can rent to anybody.

Then it's just month-to-month rental, and that sort of thing happens all throughout the city.

I just wanted to make sure that's kind of included as part of the record, that short-term rental doesn't look any different than a long-term rental in physical appearance for most.

Physical appearance, it should be essentially identical. It should still be resembling the existing dwelling that is there.

Okay, thanks. That's it.

Yeah, little information we got we've been talking about all 8 of them being in use there are only 8 on the map. One of the pieces of information submitted appears that this one which is not yet approved has been operating. One question would be do we know if they're registered with the city to be providing the tax that they're required to

So when I was speaking with Cecilia earlier in the month, that was not the case. They had not registered. Now, that does not, however, mean that the booking site isn't collecting the tax and remitting it to the city. And so that's the other part of this that is complicated, because if you make your listing through a third-party provider, say hotels.com, what have you, They will be the one taking in the money, and so they're the ones paying the percentage tax on that money. And again, not really breaking down where it was for room nights, what have you. You just get a check in the mail from hotels.com for X amount of money. And it's a very interesting way of accounting, and I... Good luck to them.

Does this consist of a violation of city code? And is there any enforcement that either has happened or will happen? Do you even know? I know that's a hard question.

Right. So Code Enforcement certainly is aware of the report that we received. Next steps regarding that I think will depend on the outcome of today's hearing. If it is approved for use, then that will be one set of procedures. And if it is denied, that will be a different set of procedures.

So the main thing I wanted to know was code enforcement is aware of this situation.

So whether and what action they take. That's all I wanted to know.

It's not part of our purview.

That's what I was going to do. I don't believe we have any purview here at all on the city's administrative enforcement capacity.

I just have one question, and if it's not, if it's outside of our purview, you tell me. This was brought to the city's attention through an inquiry or a complaint. They didn't try this out and then decide, well, our short-term rental is working out. Maybe we should apply for the application. Or was this reported? Is that how it came to our attention?

That is a good question, and I don't know the exact timeline.

Well, get your chance.

On when things were initiated. So, yeah, I don't have the information.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. It looks like we're going to get to the bottom of that before we're done this evening. Commissioner Schulte.

One more. One more. One more.

Well, that's the beginning of the slide.

It may have been later.

The Planning Commission.

There was earlier, we're talking about approval criteria, correct?

So there is approval criteria there for conditional uses and then the specific ones for short-term vacation rentals.

Where it spoke in effect to no bad effect on others. Where is that in there?

Yeah, so that's the second conditional use approval criteria. This is a little bit of a paraphrased recitation of it. The actual text is longer. But yeah, to the extent that negative impacts can be mitigated through the appropriate application of city code or other mitigation measures, yeah.

Does that belong as a condition of approval?

That's the main point, right? Right. I suppose that's possible that you might have some language around that. It hasn't come up on previous short-term vacation rentals, so I don't have ready-made language if you were to do a condition of approval on that.

I think that if we approve it, it's because it can be mitigated. If it couldn't be mitigated, we wouldn't approve it. So I'm not sure that's, I don't think that that's necessary to point out, because since that's one of the conditions that we have to decide can happen, if we couldn't decide that or we thought it couldn't be, I don't see that we could approve it.

A good example would be the parking requirement. What is it, two vehicles? You need to have space on the property, not on the street, for two vehicles. Someone could come in and be like, well, I've got one, but I can make it work. Then we have to deliberate on whether or not that's enough mitigation to permit the code requirement to be varied from. Okay.

Yes, I appreciate the clarity.

Sure, sure. We just want to get this right. I think that's the main thing. So, commissioners, do we have any other questions of staff before we invite the applicant to speak? Hearing none, we now invite the applicant to step forward, have a seat, give us your name and your address, and give us a presentation on your application. That's that's okay. That's okay.

My name is Courtney Chandler and I'm do you need my mailing address?

Uh, we have that on file. Yes.

Um, okay. So I just want to start out by saying thank you for reviewing this. I would have been here at the last one. I, it wasn't conveyed that it was super important for me to be here. It didn't sound like any of these had been rejected. And so I thought it was okay, but I clearly should have been here. I First of all, I want every single thing that's up there. I'm adhering to my property would adhere to. I got the parking. I have all of the issues that were asked of me. And. See, I have a list here of some stuff I wanted to point out here. I just want to point out a couple of things. I don't have very much time. First of all, I live. probably a half a mile from this house. I go buy it probably five times a day. So I am constantly checking on it. Airbnb is a great platform. not so much a furnish finder, furnish finders more for the longer stays. And that's what I was doing pretty much up until now, but Airbnb is shorter term and everyone has to be vetted that's on the website. So they have to have a standing, um, history of good stays or they get kicked off. They cannot use it. We charge a lot of money. Um, they have to adhere by there's quiet time and all of that. I have neighbors that I've been in contact with me saying, Hey, if anything looks weird, please let me know. So I'm very hands-on with this property. Um, I left the townhomes. I live there. I left there because it is so loud. It is so loud that the townhome next to me that I'm not even attached to, there's two barking dogs. There's two crying babies. I mean, I couldn't do one more day there. So that being said, um, I'm watching what's going on in my house more so than anything going on in the neighborhood. I mean, those people are going to be there forever. My person is out the next day. So if it's a problem, they're gone. Lodging tax, obviously all that would be paid. I think it's taken directly through Airbnb. So I don't really have a choice to not pay that. I just, yeah, I, I think, I feel like I have the wrong page. They're not the things. Um, Oh, occupancy. Uh, I only allow six. I think max is eight or whatever. So I'm under that two off street parking spots. I have actually parking in the garage for them. So I actually have four spots on my property. Um, everyone parks in front of the townhomes. It's open. There's no set parking. There's no homeowners association, nothing like that. Um, but like I said, I'm on top of this property. I'm not living in another city. I am on top viewing it. And, um, kind of checking who's in there and I can see it all. So, and then quiet hours, 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. I do not allow parties, loud music, all of that stuff. And so if that were ever, God forbid, something like that to happen, I'm there pretty much driving by. I have neighbors that will call. So that being said, did I leave anything out on all that?

I would talk about how you had it listed.

Yeah, and I had the house listed for sale for a while. Yeah, for a while. And it was one of the lower priced homes in the city and no action. I mean, it was pretty bad. Right now, there was something that came up. I believe one of the commissioners said that short-term rentals don't belong in a high-density residential zone during a housing shortage. I'm actually a realtor and... There's not a housing shortage. There's actually more homes on the market right now than a very long time. Numbers are up as of August, 2026, there's 232 homes for sale with active listings up 39.9%. So, I mean, that's, I don't feel like that's a apples to apples problem with my conditional use application. So, but I'm happy to answer anything else. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, again, like you, I wasn't here last time, so I'm going to defer to the rest of the commissioners. I have some opinions that we'll get to at the end when we deliberate, but thank you very much. So, commissioners, questions for the applicant? Commissioner White?

First, thank you for attending. Yeah, I have a question. I did read the materials that you presented, and you have a written statement that was included into the record as part of the First hearing, the last sentence under the title Neighborhood Compatibility and Quiet Hours, there's a sentence that reads, all guests will be required to comply with established house rules that include mandatory quiet hours between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. I'm just curious, are these Airbnb rules or are they your rules? My rules are.

You can kind of customize the rules on the Airbnb platform, but those are my rules, given that it's in a townhouse. Okay.

I just, yeah, with the mandatory, so I thought, oh, is that what Airbnb does?

I wish it applied to all the townhouses, but it's not.

OK, I appreciate that clarification. I'm just going to write in. And the other question that I have, you just also said, I do not allow parties and loud music. Again, that's kind of your decision.

Airbnb gives us the opportunity to basically kick them out. If there's a problem, then I have the right to do something about it that day. They give you that option. And then there's consequences. I mean, they can't continue to do that. So most people typically in the other properties that we've done, most people stick to the rules because they want to be able to use that platform. They don't want to abuse the privileges. So-

My final question is, I don't know, you know, after we'll hear testimony and be able to rebut the testimony and all that stuff. But the commission will deliberate thereafter and discuss kind of impacts of I would imagine noise and things like that. I'm just kind of curious if we start talking about conditions of approval. Would you be receptive to a condition of approval that would require posting of quiet hours, those quiet hours that you mentioned, 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. inside the dwelling?

Absolutely. My name is Marianne McKay, and I'm here on behalf of Courtney. So when you book through Airbnb... That all those rules and regulations already on there so once you accept that you are renting they're already there there's also a manual in the House that states every rule that is provided with air and be airbnb so there's no confusion.

OK, that's nice. I'm just kind of curious, though, if we do get to the point here of talking about conditions of approval through our deliberations, ways to ensure that I imagine The customers are also privy to what rules Airbnb would do, or if you did Vrbo or some other, there might be different rules. We're not here to necessarily lock in any type of company. I don't think that the conditional use works that way. It's a matter of what you would agree to through the city's approval. And so I'm just kind of, is that something that if we started fashioning conditions, one that I think that I have seen in short-term rentals is something posted inside to remind people manual too. And okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

I'll just add to the conversation in that VRBO, Airbnb, I use them regularly and not just in the United States, in foreign countries as well. And there is standardization applied to the way they handle this. And if someone is... a non-compliant renter uh they'll ban you from the platform unless you know it's kind of like getting kicked off of a comment board online it's like if you don't play by the rules then you can't rent through us anymore and there's new ones that are coming up all the time there's vrbo airbnb there's hip camp is a new one that's out there in you know uh in in my daily life i uh Work for Benton County and in the vicinity of Oregon State University, where there's huge football games several times a year and everything that's going on with graduation. Short term rentals are a huge problem. deal in the community development department where I currently work. So I'm familiar with the rules and the standardization and the way it's controlled. So I appreciate you bringing that to everyone else's attention, that it's not up to the owner to decide how they're going to display the rules or make sure that their clients know what the rules are. I mean, there's a requirement that it's there so that they can take action if they're not met. So they're pretty buttoned up in that way.

Any other questions, Scott? I have no other questions of the applicant.

Any other commissioners have questions of the applicant? Commissioner Groh.

My only question is, and you don't necessarily have to answer it because I'm not sure it's totally pertinent, but how long have you been renting this house out short term?

So I had with Furnished Finder, I had some people in there. I've only had a couple of months going that way. I just moved out recently. I've had some people doing a long-term rental. And then what?

Midterm. Midterm. Yeah, Furnished Finder is midterms. Your 30-day minimum.

Oh, yeah. They don't even have the option of doing that. But, yeah.

How long has it been used as a short-term rental?

Short-term rental?

How long has it been listed, I think? Yes.

It's been listed a couple of months. But when I found out, I thought when I paid my permit, I thought it was okay to go. And then if it got denied or something, I could not do that. So we went ahead and switched it back to 30-day minimum. So if you get on right now, it's the 30-day minimum.

Thank you. That's relevant. I appreciate that.

When you say you paid your permit, which permit was that?

Something like that.

Oh, I mean, I mean, was it for the conditional use? Oh, the application for the conditional use.

Yeah, no, I, I, I, yeah. And she did that prior to ever putting it on Airbnb. She only had it on Furnished Finder.

That's, that's pertinent. Thank you.

But the problem is when you don't have renters, you have no income coming in to pay your mortgage.

And completely. So, and I'm sorry it's taken so long, but we'll see how it goes. Thank you.

Okay, well, we're gonna hear testimony from other folks that have an opinion on this hearing, and then you will be granted an opportunity to rebut any testimony that's presented, okay? Yeah, thank you. Okay. So we'll now hear from those in attendance tonight that would like to address the Dallas Planning Commission on this item. So please raise your hand if you would like to testify. I think this is your opportunity, sir. Okay, that's okay, that's okay. Is there anyone else that would like to testify on the facts of this conditional use application? I'm not seeing any. Is there anybody online in the queue? Or no callers? There's no callers in the queue. So this is the last opportunity. If anyone would like to testify for or against or ask for clarifying questions, this is your chance to do that in this public hearing format.

Sounds like none.

Sounds like none. Okay. are there any final comments from staff or our city council on how on this application or how it's gone so far is there anything that we'd like to add just to make sure that we're take covering all of our bases none from me i think staff has gone over the conditions of approval okay So at this time, I now declare this public hearing closed at 6.37 p.m. So this is our opportunity, commissioners, to deliberate on this topic. So how would we like to begin? I'll go last. And again, I'm going to go last because I'm sure I might have questions or comments or concerns that have already been addressed at last month's meeting when I was not present.

John? Just from my point of view, the continuance was basically this issue of negative effect on others. So that was my take on it. Those questions have been answered to my satisfaction. So that's kind of my conclusion.

anything else Commissioner way good okay um the first place go second to last second to last is that a strategy that oh I see the strategy that I implemented when I took over as a share I mean These meetings from different sides of the table, that's just the way I like to do it. When he's not here, I go second to him.

I go left. First of all, I appreciate the applicant attending tonight. I certainly had a couple of questions that I was ready at the last meeting to ask. I'm not here. I think it helps. I will make some general observations about impact here. I see this dwelling to have a very small yard, if anything. I think it's rear-loaded. There isn't any yard. So the opportunity for impact is as far as outdoor noise that you might have, like a single-family house on a 10,000-square-foot lot, or you might have a pool or some kind of jungle gym or something like that. You just don't have... the ability to introduce that here in this particular case. As far as noise, it's probably limited to indoor activity. amplification of something uh you know this is there's gonna be a book there inside the um dwelling uh and that would be part of the rules to the extent that people would have it and probably would say something with regards to 10 p.m to 7 a.m um we could add some conditions of approval uh that stipulate that and have i've seen it as far as the uh airbnb and verbose that i've rented where that is part of it it's kind of you know well known that oh there's there's actual signs uh that are front and center is maybe on the kitchen counter or something like that fridge with a magnet on the fridge with a magnet you know something that doesn't uh necessitate somebody to open up a binder and start searching through it now to the extent that the planning commission feels that that should do it uh then that I think that is a good thing as a reminder, and that's the only thing that I'm sort of thinking here. I do want to—the applicant said, hey, what was all of this about the past conditional uses and the shortage of housing? I'm pleased that staff provided that, but it's rather— The past conditional use approvals is rather irrelevant, in my opinion. We're looking at just this one site. The city is absent any sort of distancing requirements that some cities have. Some cities on the coast, they have them. In fact, it does. There's a percentage of the housing stock that they're impacting, and that's an issue for some cities in more of the... amenities of attractions you would go like on the coast and things like that. But I just don't see that, you know, as far as future legislation and the fact that we don't have anything in distancing requirement. And clearly to me, we don't have We're probably less than 1%. The short-term rentals, I would say, is less than 1% of our overall housing stock. So pleased that staff did that, but it doesn't have any value to me and my vote on this.

Excellent. Okay. Thank you. Any other commissioners?

Andy? It seems like the biggest concern we heard was impact to the neighborhood. What I've heard tonight regarding what Airbnb and anybody else will do to you if you violate this once, this house is going to be far better regulated than any other house on the block, as the example was given. I have no doubt that. I mean, if it happens once, it's never going to happen again, in my view. And I doubt if it'll ever happen. And she seems very responsible and on top of it. So I'm completely confident.

Great.

Okay. Well, I'll... Got a couple of comments, general comments. Again, I'm familiar with this, and short-term rentals aren't having a big impact on the city of Dallas yet. I'm familiar with other jurisdictions. There's a city that I'm familiar with that I won't name that's further north than us, well in the heart of wine country. And they have so many short-term rentals applications that they have code that requires a density standard. Like if there's one within a quarter mile of the one you're proposing, it's not permitted so that they're spread out. And that prevents corporations or developers or investors to buy up many, many houses in a community and turn them off. That's what happens at the coast a lot. And I think that the remark that was made about the housing shortage, Dallas is recognized officially as rental housing. What's the word?

I had never— A severely rent-burdened community.

Rent-burdened. That was more, I think, that we were speaking to—and I can't speak— We weren't there. But that wasn't there. But I think if that subject came up, I think that that was a reference to the fact that we are rental housing burdened, not available market real estate availability. So, yeah, it would – I believe that these short-term rental companies that run these platforms have figured out the way to do it right. It's difficult. The question that I would ask rhetorically, because it doesn't apply to our decision here tonight, I wonder how many are out there in the city of Dallas that we don't know about. It's just a question. And as we move forward, as wine country continues to creep southward, I think that we may be seeing more of these. So I think it's important that we get this one right. But I think I'm in concurrence with the rest of the commissioners present that we don't have any kind of a problem entertaining wine. a motion to approve this conditional use permit. So I'll ask for that now. Would anyone like to make a motion regarding CUP 2603 for a short-term rental at 1866 Hankel Street?

Conditional use permit with the conditions stated in the staff report. Is there a second?

You or me? I second.

I'm going to have a discussion on the motion. So we've got a second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. Is there a discussion?

Yeah, discussion before a vote. I'm already in approval of this and will vote yes, but I brought up the question of... Another condition that calls out for a sign interior to the site is mostly, I think Adam was the person that was, who testified in the last, and you didn't hear his testimony in the first hearing. I read it, yeah. he was concerned about about noise it's rather i mean there is a message to anybody who stays here um in a binder but it's not front and center uh we could add a condition that requires the applicant to post a sign within the dwelling informing occupants of the noise hours So that's just an option. It would be a matter of the motion maker and the second to say yes. But I will just leave that as an option to add another condition if the commission feels that it is something worth adding.

My view is that it's hardwired in the system. I agree. You can't not do that.

I would agree. The other thing is, if you're required to post a sign, If the sign falls off, does that mean it's no longer approved? Who's checking? And who's checking it?

And it just seems... Yeah, I'm not going to fight this one, by the way.

Okay. I'm just saying... This is not the last item we're going to be discussing.

This is, you know, being responsive to concerns that have been raised. One thing that we do have are, you know, Attached walls. This is an attached product. And so that's kind of my own only thing. I don't believe that the person who testified is necessarily the person next door. But it is that that's the only thing that I was thinking about with respect to noise is that, you know, you never know. Uh, but, um, I'm taught, I guess, you know, it's been asked an answer as far as there is something there for, uh, so, so I am not, you know, hard pressed to say, yeah, we need a condition with this one.

20 other conditions. Yeah.

And I, and I can also, I can, uh, through experience and having you know my wife is a part-time travel agent and we set people up on trips and help them find accommodations when you go through one of these platforms there's a lot of fine print that most people don't read but you are going to check a box that says you're going to adhere to all of their conditions which i think would cover above and beyond anything that we could add to our conditions And I can also say anecdotally from personal experience that there can occasionally be interpretive disagreements on it. I rented an Airbnb in Seaside, Oregon three or four summers ago, dogs permitted for an extra fee. I showed up with both my dogs and one of the neighbors called the property managers and said they've got two and they're only allowed one. And I said, show me where it says that. And we were gone before, you know, it was like one of those things, we're going to be gone tomorrow anyway, so let's just not fight about it. But they came right over and knocked on the door and said, hey, we've got a clipboard and a badge, and we understand that you've got unpermitted – guests, canine guests. And, you know, we had to have the whole discussion. It was just an interesting case. So this is something that's not going to go away. We're going to start seeing this more and more. Appreciate you coming in. And I also appreciate you clarifying that you didn't get away with this for as long as your chair.

we still have the city wrote you a nasty letter that says we're still in discussion of the motion here and so that's that's that that was my my discussion item i don't sense that the com the commissioners here are receptive to adding any conditions so that's all i have to say on on on that and so i i am now receptive to uh a vote on this on this item and that's good okay

We've got a motion and a second to approve with conditions as mentioned in the staff report, without any additions. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, the same. Motion passes unanimously. Did you vote?

Yeah, did you vote? Is that...

Okay, I just... Am I allowed to vote? No, I guess you are, yeah.

Oh, okay, I didn't... Yeah.

I've been working on keeping my big voice at a lower volume. Maybe I've taken it a little too far. Okay, so let me... The announcement, the motion has carried unanimously an order reflecting this commission's decision tonight will be mailed to the applicant and all participants of record within 10 business days. So thank you very much for coming in. And what I meant to say inappropriately when we were discussing is I appreciate the fact that you did the process correctly and you didn't wait to get caught before you came in here. And I imagine that we'll see some of those because those are the ones that I'm more used to dealing with.

And if you ever do another permit, when you pay the initial fee, that doesn't mean you've got your permit yet. That just begins the process that lets us get paid for it.

You bet.

You bet.

Okay. Moving on. Our second public hearing tonight is a conditional use permit again, number 2605, located at 1156 Southeast Ugalo Avenue for West Valley Hospital to relocate their oxygen farm for hospital use. So I'm going to go through the same required procedure. This is a Type 3 quasi-judicial public hearing, and this public hearing is regarding property located at 1156 Southeast Uglow. This is an official public hearing before the Dallas Planning Commission, and I now declare the public hearing open at 6.50 p.m. As the application is subject to land use proceedings recognized by state law, I'm required to read the following statement. The failure to raise an issue with sufficient detail to afford the Planning Commission and all involved parties an adequate opportunity to respond to each issue precludes appeal to the State Land Use Board of Appeals based upon that issue. So please direct all testimony to the record in the applicable criteria listed in the staff report or to criteria in the Dallas Development Code you believe applies to the decision. The applicable approval criteria are found in dallas development code chapter 4.4.040 that's our conditional use requirements at this time i will ask any planning commission members if they have a conflict of interest a site visit or an ex parte contact to declare on this application seeing none we then move on to Our new section, an ex parte contact is an out of hearing communication regarding a matter of fact currently at issue in this case. Under state law, a decision is not invalidated by ex parte contact if it is fully disclosed and the public is giving an opportunity to respond. We have all declared ourselves to have no ex parte contact in this particular application, so I'll now ask the audience or any participant of record, does anyone wish to challenge the qualifications, impartiality, or jurisdiction of this body or any individual member to hear and decide on this matter? Or does any participant wish to rebut the substance of any ex parte communication, which is not applicable because we didn't have any? So is there anyone that would like to challenge our ex parte contact declaration? Seeing none, I think that's going to turn into a – it's a good addition.

I didn't put the words in there.

No, that's okay. That's a good addition. I think that's the attorney's verbiage. It's very good, and I think it's necessary.

If we did declare something, then that's – The day will come when it happens, and what do we do now?

Exactly. I see it all the time. Okay, so this hearing will be conducted in the following manner. We'll begin with a staff report followed by questions of the staff by us, the planning commissioners. Thereafter, we'll hear from the applicant, including members of an applicant team for a total of 15 minutes. And this may be followed by questions from the planning commission to the applicant. Then or after, we'll hear from all others interested in presenting testimony on this item, and each person will be provided five minutes to testify. Any testimony received, the applicant will then have an opportunity to come back and rebut the testimony that we've heard this evening. So we'll start off with the staff report. Jess, go ahead.

Okay.

Okay. Okay. I said that earlier. Yep. That's okay.

That's okay.

Keep us on our toes.

This new section on ex parte contact is confusing to all of us. Okay. So as stated, this is a conditional use permit application for 1156 Southeast Euglo Avenue. That's in the vicinity of West Valley Hospital. We can see here that it is essentially a parking lot there on the West Valley Hospital campus, sort of on the same block that formerly had the pillbox. So approval criteria for conditional uses, there's three of them. The site has to be adequate for the need. Negative impacts on adjacent properties and public can be mitigated. Public facilities, that's being the water, the sewer, the streets, have adequate capacity to support development on the site. There's also site design review approval criteria that the application is complete. There's underlying land use district standards. The basic zoning standards are met. Any non-conforming development is upgraded. We'll come back to that in just a moment. The design standards of Article 3 are met, and any pre-existing conditions of approval are met. Staff were not able to find any pre-existing conditions of approval, so that one doesn't really apply in this instance. As far as upgrading non-conforming development, the development code does require that where a parking or maneuvering area is adjacent to a street, then landscape screening be provided between the parking area and the street. um in the form of an evergreen hedge decorative wall arcade trellis or similarly partially opaque structure this is relevant in that they are doing development in that area and so non-conforming development to be upgraded and so that shows itself in the conditions of approval Staff are recommending that the proposal be approved. The developer to obtain required building permits and receive final inspection from the building department or a contracted special inspector in the event that that's necessary. It is a medical gas proposal and that does require certain special certifications for inspection that I'm not certain our staff have internally to do that. So A little wiggle room on that one. And then, yeah, a condition of approval that the developer install visual screening between the parking lot. The developer shall make reasonable efforts to protect the existing trees. Any trees that end up being removed as part of the construction need to be replaced. And then prior to installing the proposed gas line underneath Uglow Street, the developer has to obtain from the city council a revocable license to occupy the public right-of-way. My understanding is that that is currently in negotiation with the city manager's office. So they are working towards that as we speak. So yeah, so that's kind of the staff report that I have. The applicant has also prepared their own PowerPoint presentation, and so I tried not to duplicate their presentation too much. So, yeah.

Commissioners, do we have any questions of staff on the staff report? I have none.

I have one. Andy? To what extent are they required to provide that visual barrier?

visual barrier. So there's there's two requirements. There's a requirement that the machinery and the storage area itself be screened. And then the parking lot screening that specifically tied to when they're doing development, they have to upgrade anything that's for the entire lot, both sides. So the way the condition was proposed as written was for Southeast UGLO Street, because that's where they're doing the development. The storage facility and the underground pipeline serving it will be running along that frontage there on UGLO. So as they're digging that area up for the utility,

replanting it in conforming conformance with the landscaping standard the buffering standard would be Kind of the proposed requirement, but if the entire lot is non-conforming It seems unusual that we would only require them to fix One side since they are developing Something on that lot is that not? appropriate

So in crafting the proposed condition, I did try to limit kind of the scope of it to be more closely tied to the area specifically being impacted. There's always the concern of nexus and proportionality when we're requiring specific conditions of approval exactions. I don't know if the applicant would be opposed to increased landscaping on the Miller Street side, For sure, there's the nexus for the improvements to the Euclid Street side.

With the trees again? Yes. I'm looking at the drawing on page... It's drawing A1 showing the site and where their trench is going. We talked about impacting trees. It appears... they're going to dig both on their lot on that side and in the right of way, which would appear to impact those trees significantly. I don't see any reason why we wouldn't minimize the impact and their impact into the right of way by making them run their trench in their parking lot, and then just go straight across the street. So I guess that's something I can bring up with the applicant at the time. But I just, cause it seems like our condition for trees, their representation of where they're gonna dig is gonna take every one of those trees out. or at least cut the roots in half. And so that's my concern.

That was my question. Yeah, they may be able to speak in greater detail as to how they propose to construct it, but yes.

Any other question? I'm good. I'm good. Commissioner White.

Yeah, I just want to make sure, I know this is kind of connected to A conditional use approval for the expansion of the hospital on the opposite side there of the street. And I think I recall asking staff through that past hearing about... this particular site that we're looking at now across the street and how much it was part of the campus and um and all of a sudden now we're kind of looking at something on the opposite side of the street here that is directly related although kind of ancillary um it's not really a an expansion of the hospital per se is in the way of beds or offices, it's just kind of an ancillary function that's there now that just has to be moved over because there's a... And my understanding, I think in the staff report I read, or the applicant's narrative, the applicant as well, but just to clarify, there is some net loss of parking on this site, right? Is that...

Yeah, so there would be a net loss of parking on this site to accommodate the new facility.

There's a little bit, they were finagling it on the other site there, so I think it may be like four or something.

Right, so the net loss, I believe, was two spaces in total. But yeah, so there's some loss on this site, some gain on the other site.

Okay, and I guess the key thing was that We did not. This is my recollection when we talked about the other conditional use that this particular site, the former pillbox site and whatever this is here, really is not connected. I think that we sort of said, well, if they wanted to develop somebody independent, if the hospital wants to sell drugs, the pillbox site to somebody else, they can do so, right? The parking that's here on this particular site, even though it might be utilized, it is independent. You can develop the pillbox site and it's not required to do analysis of the parking impact on the on the hospital.

That was my recollection of the previous conditional use proposal, that it did not impose any encumbrances on the adjoining properties.

Very good. I appreciate that. Thank you. Okay.

Any other questions? Let's move on. Applicant, this is your opportunity to come and show us your presentation. Please State your name and your address and walk us through it. And thank you for being here tonight.

It's voice activated.

Oh, fancy. Hi, my name is Hillary Harris. My mailing address is 205 Southeast Spokane Street, Suite 200 in Portland, Oregon. I'm a senior planner here at HHPR, and I am representing the hospital this evening in their conditional use permit. So... Nice to see you all again. Earlier this year, we had the approval of the conditional use permit to expand the emergency room and the north entryway on West Valley Hospital, which is right across the street from this property. After we got more into the details of grading that specific site in the southeast corner, The oxygen tank enclosure that was originally going to be on the West Valley Hospital site got too close to the building to meet safety distance standards between the oxygen tank and the hospital. And so we decided to move it across the street to 1156 Southeast Hugo Street. This is kind of a zoomed out version, I think, of the page you were looking at. And it shows the enclosure as designed. So on the west side of the enclosure, which is the side on the right of way, it'll be a 12-foot wall. And then the other three sides will be like a louvered fence, so fully screened, but not masonry. And then there'll be bollards along the side that's in the parking lot to kind of protect that from any kind of incidents. um and then here is also where the gas line will run to connect the hospital to the new oxygen tank so it will go across the street which is currently being um in the works with city council um to get the revocable easement and then it'll go along the parking lot and landscape strip down into the tank um And there will be... Here, I'll go back to just kind of this guy here. So we will lose six parking spots as talked about, but removing it on the West Valley Hospital site will add four. So there'll only be a net loss of two parking spots. And then... I think that there will be lighting on the, within the, um, oxygen tank facility, but it'll be internally and wall mounted. So there's no anticipated issues with light trespassing, um, on adjacent properties and the tank will be over 50 feet from the Southern property, which is a residence, I believe too. So it's set back quite a far from that to avoid any kind of negative impacts to the property. I think that was all of the questions I heard, but I'm available to answer anything more that you guys have.

Do you have any comments on the proposed conditions or the trees?

Yeah, we don't have any issues with the proposed conditions at all. I think Maybe this one shows, or can I go back to your, just a visual if I just keep going back right there. So I think there'll be no impact to the trees on the south side of the driveway into the site. So the ones closer in this image, I believe there's going to be impact possibly to the tree to the north, but we will try to avoid that. And if it has to be removed, we don't have any issues with planting a replacement tree if required.

Anything else you'd like to add before we start asking questions?

I don't think so.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Commissioners, this is our opportunity to ask the applicant questions.

If I may, while the trees are up, you're talking about putting your trench through that landscape strip on the east side of the sidewalk, I believe, which means you're going to put it directly under those trees. Are you planning on boring this, or is that part of your plan?

your proposal or have you gotten that far yet um i believe so i'm not the civil engineer on the property i know it'll obviously be bored across the the public right-of-way and then um i assumed down i don't know if your drawing on a1 appears to be

I mean, it's which is going to take out those trees and replacing them with little bitty ones isn't the same as leaving them if you can. So I'm wondering if there was any thought to trenching or doing whatever in your parking lot, because we all know that a tree is affected all the way out to the drip line and you're proposing to go directly through them. And that's my biggest concern. We are kind of a tree city USA and being on the parks board, that's something they drill into me. So that would be my concern with because we do have a condition that you make every effort to not disturb the trees. And your current proposal seems to not be in conformance with that.

Oh God, almost went down there. Good evening, everybody. My name is Alden Kazowitz. I'm with Scott Edwards Architecture. My address is 2525 East Burnside. I'm the principal in charge, architect, and representing Salem Hospital for the last 15 years and West Valley Hospital for about the same time. So I just wanted to come up and kind of clarify a couple of things with the site plan you're looking at. So the green line that you see here is the actual office on the coast. It's only currently, as you're pointing out, the most. So it's missing all the trees to the south, as I showed here. But all these diagrams that you're seeing here are diagrams. We really won't know exactly where it's going to go until we get in there, start excavating and seeing where the periods are, see if we didn't know about it. It's a long process. They're not just going to go in and start. It's a very current process. And so the tree to the north is the one that's the most at risk based on the proposed diagrammatic outline here. But to Hillary's point, the intent is to avoid the tree if possible.

I believe she stated the intent was to put the gas line in the landscape strip, which is where the trees are. Okay. Is there some reason you don't want to do it on your property in the parking lot? Okay. I guess my biggest concern is we have a condition that says make reasonable attempt to protect the existing trees. That's going to be, you know, where I come down. And it doesn't appear that that's being considered in the plans I'm looking at. That's my concern.

And again, I will be impacted if one of the trees, well, we've got a cross right there and it's going to be it's going to be impacted enough. We can just say replace it with a two inch caliber tree, that kind of thing. You know, if we feel in response to Mr. Gros concerns.

OK. So now we move on to our third public hearing of the evening, conditional use number 2606 combined with a variance number 2603 for 223 Southwest Washington Street, Center Market, a drive-thru coffee shop and retail store. So as we've gone through with the other two hearings, public hearings this evening. We've got to go through the same script as required by law. This is a quasi-judicial type 3 public hearing. I'm going to do that right now. This public hearing... You like it when I'm gone, I can tell. No, I don't. I just thought we opened it before we started talking all this stuff. This is an official public hearing before the Dallas Planning Commission, and I now declare it open at 7.28 p.m. As the application is subject to land use proceedings recognized by state law, I read the following statement. Failure to raise an issue with sufficient detail to afford this planning commission and involve parties an adequate opportunity to respond to each issue precludes appeal to the State Land Use Board of Appeals based upon that issue. So please direct all testimony to the record and the applicable criteria listed in the staff report or to criteria in the Dallas Development Code you believe applies to this decision. The applicable approval criteria are found in Dallas Development Code 4.4.040, that's the conditional use part, and Dallas Development Code Chapter 5.1.030, which is the variance. So now I'll ask if any members of the Planning Commission has a conflict of interest, a site visit, or an ex parte contact to declare. Seeing none... The ex parte contact is an out of hearing communication regarding the matter of fact. Is there anyone in the audience or any participant of record that would wish to challenge the qualifications, impartiality or jurisdiction of this body of any individual member to hear and decide on this matter? Or does any participant wish to rebut the substance of any ex parte communication, which we have all notified that there is none. So is there anyone that would have an objection to our statement of ex parte contact and I guess our statement that there has been none? Seeing none, this is new to us. Seeing and hearing no challenges or requests for rebuttal, we'll proceed with the order of the hearing, which starts with... The staff report. This hearing will be conducted in the following manner. The staff report will be followed by questions of staff. Thereafter, we'll hear from the applicant, including any members of the applicant team, for 15 minutes. This will be followed by questions from the commissioners. Thereafter, we'll hear from all other interested parties in presenting testimony on this item before the commission. Each person will be provided five minutes to testify. And then... If applicable, the applicant will have five minutes to rebut any testimony that we've heard. After we've heard all testimony, I'll close the hearing and ask the Planning Commission to deliberate and ask for a motion in response to this proposal. In this case, the Commission's decision is final unless the decision is appealed and I'll remind everyone in the room that we are considering both a conditional use permit in combination with a variance request. So we will now, uh, ask for the staff report. So staff, please go ahead.

Yes. So, uh, as mentioned, this is a conditional use and variance request, uh, 233 Southwest Washington Street. Um, and so that, uh, is just a couple blocks from here. So some landmarks that are called out there is the Center Market Shop, Tim's Automotive, which the Planning Commission had matters on a year or two ago. Bowman's Tribute Center, which I believe we're all familiar with. So those are some of the surrounding uses there. The property itself, the one in red, it has the pink building that is a former gas station. that you've probably driven past a million times without really noticing. So that is the property that we are talking about, and that is the building that we are talking about. And so the approval criteria, again, for conditional uses, there's three. The site has to be adequate for the need, negative impacts on adjacent properties can be mitigated, and public facilities have to have adequate capacity to support development of the site. In addition to that, there is the site design review approval criteria. And so the application has to be complete. The underlying land use district standards, that's the zoning, are met. Any non-conforming development is upgraded. The design standards of Article 3 are met. And then any pre-existing conditions of approval are met. Again, didn't find any pre-existing conditions of approval for this property, so that one doesn't really apply in this case. For the variance, there are five criteria. The first being that the variance is necessary because the subject code provision does not account for the special or unique circumstances of the subject site, the existing development patterns, or adjacent land uses. Second being that the variance is the minimum necessary to address those special or unique physical circumstances. If the subject relates to certain additional items, then subject three is that it conforms to subsections C through G. That's things like site access variances, street tree variances, those sorts of things, not necessarily relevant in this case. The fourth being that variance does not conflict with other city policies and applicable regulations. And finally, that the variance results in no foreseeable harm to adjacent property owners or the public. Looking at the site design, the core of the variance is an adjustment or variance to the drive-through orientation standards. So one of the requirements that we have for drive-throughs is that the drive-through facilities, that's the queuing areas, the windows, teller machines, those sorts of things, they are not located within 20 feet of the street and not oriented to a street corner. Because they're attempting to reuse the existing building, and the existing building is obviously where it is, that's a challenging constraint to try and work around. And so you can see from the illustration there on the site plan that the proposed queuing lane wraps around the building and as a result does exist between the building and Washington Street, which would be against that standard. So they are requesting a variance to that standard because of the constraint of the existing building. Looking through the other sections of the code, there were some additional segments that were highlighted. One that I'll call out here is the maneuvering area adjacent to buildings. So development code does require that when you have vehicle areas that are adjacent to a building, which is not a drive-through lane because those are adjacent to a building for a reason, that there has to be a buffer between the building and the vehicle area, either a walkway with a curb or a landscaping area, something of that nature. And so that will be relevant when we come to talk about conditions of approval, but that's highlighted here as being a deficiency. Another interesting point on this particular application is the proposed exterior cladding material. So ordinarily, the development code requires that the primary exterior cladding of the building be brick, wood, fiber cement, stucco, stone, or other kind of masonry material. It specifically says that metal may be used as an accent, but not as the predominant siding material in any street-facing facade. But, fun fact, I've been doing this job for 10 years, and it's uncommon that someone pays my attention to a section of code I was not already familiar with. This application did that. Kind of exciting. So there is actually a section of the code in the material section that talks about substitute materials. And so it does say that substitute materials are those that are equal in appearance and durability to those in subsection one above, which is the primary materials that I have paraphrased for you. That may be approved through the site design review process, which is concurrent with conditional use approvals. And so the applicant is required to provide specifications from the manufacturer, which is why you have such a thick application from the applicant. A lot of those pages are the manufacturer's specifications, and I believe they have a physical mock-up here as well. So hopefully I'll be able to show you that. But the proposal here is to have basically metal paneling as the exterior cladding material of the building. It does have a bit of a texture to it. So there is that in its favor. It is, however, a metal product. And so whether that is a substitute material that is equal in appearance and durability is ultimately for the Planning Commission to kind of make a decision on. If the Planning Commission believes that to be the case, then so be it. And if not, then there is a condition of approval that would disallow that use on street facing elevations. So if you think that that's suitable, we would delete that condition of approval. And if not, then you would approve with it. As far as conditions of approval go, there are six of them. The first is the standard boilerplate that the developer obtain required building permits prior to occupancy. We have that kind of condition for basically everything. Second is that prior to issuing the permits, the applicant's plans include at least 30% of the wall length of the sides and rear of the new retail building as transparent windows. And so that is another deficiency from the building elevations. There were no windows on those facades or the window wasn't 30% of the length of the facade. So condition of approval to modify the plans to conform with that standard. This third one is the one that addresses the exterior metal cladding on the proposed buildings. If you don't believe the metal cladding to be equivalent in appearance and durability, then you would specify this condition of approval that it be replaced with wood or masonry or such material as otherwise approved by the section of code that was there. well as having that material wrap around the corner at least two feet onto the adjoining walls as per the requirement that materials wrap around the corner fourth approval criteria was that prior to occupancy a three foot high side obscuring fence wall or hedge be installed along washington street to visually screen the drive-through lane from the street essentially it's the same section of code that we were previously talking about with the hospital and their oxygen line So same section of code here. Fifth is that prior to issuance of the building permits, the applicant's plan provide for a minimum separation of five feet between the south wall of the new retail building and the driveway. That was the part that was highlighted on the site plan earlier. And then the sixth being that prior to issuance of building permits, the applicant's plan shall provide a five foot deep pedestrian shelter along at least 75% of the wall length of the new retail building where the wall is about a pedestrian walkway. So the proposed building does show canopies along the street facing side. This would actually require that there be canopies anywhere there's a walkway abutting the buildings that would include from the site plan. both the north and also the west walls as there are walkways on those sides of the building. And so that is the proposed conditions of approval that I have. Staff, as I said, are recommending approval with conditions. We do have the applicant's representative here to provide additional commentary.

Commissioner, do we have any questions of staff before we proceed with the presentation by the applicant?

You want to go first? No.

Nobody knows. Well, yeah, I have some questions that are related to, mostly related to the variance proposal here. First of all, I'd like to kind of maybe acknowledge to the record here that the staff report has maybe an abridged or shortened version of the relevant section of code 2.3.100 drive up and drive through uses and facilities. Is that not correct? You have just provided a shortened version.

Screen, yes.

And in the staff report too, I believe there's not an attachment of the full reading of that section of the standards that we have.

Oh, yes, you're right. That was a shortcut. It was a shortened version.

I don't think that was my intention. Okay, good. I want to make sure that that's acknowledged because there is a figure that is a part of that code section, and it does kind of have what is acceptable and what is not acceptable, and I just want staff to acknowledge that. I can... We can pull it up from the website or so. Give me one quick moment and I'll put it on the screen. And I also just have some other questions of staff. I just kind of want to iron out. what is and is not a constraint physical constraint to this to the site um i in particular the the existing building that's there this is not just a proposal to remodel an existing building this is substantial redevelopment of the site would you agree to that And I just, in view of the variance where the first criterion speaks to hardships and the physical constraints of the site, I'm just kind of curious. if it were not a proposal to remodel the existing building where it is, if it were moved closer to the street, aligned with what is acceptable by the code, what's shown, what you have right there under acceptable, if they were to move it or reconstruct a new one, Is there any barrier of sorts? Is there underground fuel tanks? Is there a special tree or rock outcropping? Anything physical, if the applicant were to... I know it's not proposed, but I'm just kind of curious if the applicant were to... redevelop this particular building, move it or whatever. Anything that you can speak to with regard to hardship of not doing what's acceptable according to code.

Um, that's a good question. And I don't have that level of detail. Presumably, the applicant could speak to that if there are such constraints. Generally, when I was writing the staff report, I kind of assumed the existing building itself to be the constraint. But you are correct that there may be other factors as well.

Let's talk about the existing building is not recognized as a historic structure on the city's inventory or anything like that. That is correct. Okay, thank you. That's all I have is questions.

And so, yes, you are correct. So that section of code 23100 does include a pair of graphics illustrating the kind of the acceptable configuration for drive-thrus and the unacceptable configuration. the unacceptable one having the drive-through lane between the street and the building.

And this is eligible for variance consideration, even though we have code that looks pretty strong here. And we just have the two figures, but there's also additional text above it there that speaks to, has a word shall in it too. And even, yeah, it just sort of has a preamble to speaking of calming traffic and providing pedestrian comfort and safety. And then goes into all of these things. It has that word shall, which I understand is mandatory. Shall conform. The word shall is defined in the code, is it not, as mandatory? It is, yes. Okay, thank you. That's all I have questions of staff.

If it says shall, does that mean we can't change it with a variance?

If there is a mitigating...

I don't believe that's a restriction, no. There are certain... So the variance chapter does specify certain things that are not eligible for variance. So, for example, you cannot vary the types of uses that are allowed in a zone... there are other procedures that you would have to do for such a thing. And so this isn't one of the things for which a variance is listed as being prohibited. Yeah.

And the city attorney will concur with that?

There's no...

blocking because it says shall of approval yeah the staff and the city attorney have said this is eligible and now it's a matter of us evaluating it to the variance criteria so i was just there's some i just want to make sure for the record we have some really restrictive language that was not part of the staff report but uh you know all right thank you

The driveway here would be very close to Washington Street that they're proposing for the entrance to the drive-thru. Is it within the driveway standard? And what's the classification of Washington Street?

So Washington Street, I don't have that in front of me. I do believe it's classified as... It's either a major collector or a minor arterial. Right, and it is an ODOT highway, so that's one of the reasons that it's been kind of configured the way it is. It's closing the three existing driveway accesses from Washington, so there won't be driveway access onto Washington any longer. So it is moving in the direction of conformance with regards to that. There is already an existing driveway approach where the entrance to the drive-thru facility is proposed so that that driveway approach already exists. It would be upgraded to current ADA standards as part of the development, but that does already exist. And so I think part of the consideration is recognizing that. So the issue is that church is classified as a local street and local streets you measure from center line of the street to the center line of the driveway. Given the size of the right-of-way on Washington Street, I would be hard-pressed to think it doesn't meet. But

question to the access here. Situated along the highway was the first part of the question was ODOT provided opportunity to Did they provide opportunity? Did they respond to that opportunity?

They did not.

They did not. We also have something added tonight to the record, a.k.a. memo, a trip generation, which we were just given here on the dais as a copy here that's entered into the record. And I'm sure the applicant will have it. an opportunity to address it. But given that it's along an ODOT right of way and the proximity of the proposed access there, even though it's not being not there's no access to Washington, but I'm just kind of wondering if ODOT would be interested in reviewing the the traffic memorandum and commenting on the proximity of the access is proposed as it's very close to the highway. Is that any?

I mean, that's a good point. Really kind of what we were looking at with the memorandum from AKS was does it kind of meet the thresholds in our code for requiring a TIA? And it does not. Their finding was that it does not meet that threshold. That was kind of the key part of that memorandum. So I suppose something in that may be of interest to ODOT, but since their standards for requiring a TIA are actually significantly higher than ours, we have a more restrictive standard. I would imagine it would also not trigger a TIA under ODOT's rules. So, yeah.

And maybe this is more appropriate when we talk to the applicant, but it appears they've located the drive-up window a lot closer to that will limit how much they can queue in their line than they would have to if it was farther down the building. And I'm concerned with having seen other coffee places and how much queuing space they have. It doesn't appear they've left as much as they could have, especially with that driveway being so close to Washington Street. There's no place to queue obviously upstream of the driveway, which would mean any other queuing is going to happen on the opposite side of Church Street. which I could see as a problem, but I will be happy to address that with the applicant.

And this is not part of the staff. No, I'm looking at the plans. Oh, I see.

Yeah, where the driveway location window is. And a whole bunch, at least two car lengths left of building where it could be. So I want to express that concern since we're talking about driveway location and where this is all located.

And just to follow up on that one, for clarification to the staff, the question is, is there any, I don't assume queuing analysis is a requirement as part of the development code, but But as far as what the applicant has submitted, including this thing that we just received tonight for just more so to addressing the threshold for traffic impact, we don't – there isn't that part of the record. There isn't queuing analysis part of what we've been provided as –

Correct. I did not believe that that was something. All right.

So we don't have anything to the record for evaluating what concerns that Mr. Groh has stated there. But yeah, that's it for staff.

I just have one. It's just a clarifying question, and it has to do with the note. There is a mechanism, and there was an effort to reach out to ODOT and contact them for comment on this application, and we got no response.

Yes, both during the pre-application conference and then also once we had the actual application.

Thank you. I just wanted to ask that question. They got it. They looked at it.

But they didn't state no comment to the record, correct? They just didn't say anything.

That's the ODOT way, yeah. Okay.

Well, you never know. There are other proposals that we have that are working their way through the process to which they are commenting. So we know there is someone awake at the switch over there.

Oh, yeah, they're awake, but yeah, they do things their own way.

We don't need to comment anymore on this. We're in public hearing here with our friends.

I'm sure that they took note that a driveway access was taken off of their facility.

They didn't say anything. We cannot speculate on anything that's not been said. Good call, Scott. Thank you.

looked at this drawing with that driveway back close to Washington Street, which I believe they know is a highway, and didn't address it in any other way. So it's on them as well.

That's it. Very good. Yeah. Okay. So let's move on to the applicant's proposal. So applicant, please step forward, have a seat, state your name, your address, and we will hear your presentation.

Please keep that up.

I apologize that the only site plan I have on the PowerPoint is the one I drew upon, so I should have had a blank one.

It's okay.

Steven Gerber, architect representing Center Market, 9340 Southwest Youngburg Hill Road, McMinnville, Oregon, 97128. I'm going to start off before I speak specifically to what we proposed. There's a bit of history here. We've been working on this, what, a year and a half? And so the way the site sits now, it's just a warehouse. The land behind it, they just store stuff in the land and then within the building. And so we started kicking around. They've got drive-through tobacco shops in and around the area, one in McMinnville. And so we actually were looking to do, an original proposal was a drive-through cigarette shop. And then where the retail shop is was to be a warehouse, right? Well, we produced the drawings, spoke with Jess, and the issue was we were accessing the drive-through from Washington Street with those three existing aprons. And it became apparent that that was not going to fly. And so we kind of shelved it. We just said, this is not... it's not going to go anywhere. And we actually started looking at redesigning the site. I did some real conceptual drawings of doing actual apartments with some retail on the first floor, possibly a laundromat worked in there. And again, we kind of didn't go too far with that. I don't even know if I discussed that with you.

You mentioned it, but you didn't send anything.

Yeah, we did. We did. It was literally just diagrams. And so then, then the client, they've got some relatives that have coffee shops elsewhere in the, in the United States and they, they, decided to look into this drive-thru coffee shop. It's not just a drive-thru. It's also a little, will be a little coffee shop you can go in. And so once we started revisiting that, it became apparent that we needed to, we had to shut down all those access points from Washington. And we ended up with this way of accessing the site, was this horseshoe shape, because the building is where it is. We're trying to utilize the existing facility. It is a structure. It's there. And then we started kicking around the warehouse idea and Jess mentioned that there's a couple big developments across the street that are going in that are apartments, housing of some sort, and spoke to the client and was like, look, you might have a better opportunity doing some sort of retail shops. Again, they haven't abandoned the idea of a laundromat. I think we were trying to figure out exactly what's going on with their apartments. Do they have laundry facilities integrated? And so that would dictate kind of what we do with that retail. So I'm sure we're just kind of showing it as a shell. So in our mind, as far as speaking to the way it lays out, building is where it is for the coffee shop. The building is where it is and we're shutting down the three access points of Washington. The way we're accessing our drive-through is a in only nearest to the church Washington intersection. And the queuing line seemed in our mind was long enough that we wouldn't be carrying back onto church. Valid point by Mr. Groh. that the the window was was shown further to the west and i think what the idea was that again we're trying to provide seating area and keeping that that east end open the east end of the building open where there's that existing faceted storefront window we try to maintain or we'd be upgrading it with materials and the window wall system but but hearing your concerns i'm starting to think that might I'd look to push that further to the east to make more queuing on the site. You mentioned the traffic study. In speaking with them, the thing is that, for instance, Dutch Brothers, they have their own category, same with Arby's, for drive-through coffee shops. People go out of their way to go to Dutch Brothers. Whereas a smaller coffee shop is more what they consider drive-by users. So it's a far less rate. So there is some mention of that in their report, but nothing too in-depth.

To me, the constraint is... financial in the cost of moving or rebuilding the building.

The fact that you want to use the respect to the 120 days, I would hope that there's not a limited waiver of that 120 days. So there's kind of this concert of requesting continuance, but also...

I mean that sincerely. You really know what you're doing. You really do, at the detail of it. And it shows. And our community is better off for it. I don't