Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We'll call the meeting to order. On behalf of the Planning Commission, I'd like to welcome our residents and viewers to this regular meeting of July 14th, 2026. On tonight's agenda, we have one public hearing. Before we open that public hearing, we have one housekeeping item, and that would be the minutes from our June 9th regular meeting. Are there any additions or corrections to those minutes? If not, is there a motion? Motion to approve. If a motion, is there a second? Motion and second. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All right. All right minutes are approved with that then we'll open up the public hearing This is a conditional use permit for a grocery store within the b1 zoning district. The address is seven zero five a street The applicant is mr. Sultan Hawk and Tony you're gonna take this I am Thank You mr.

Chair commission members Uh, yes, before you this evening is a conditional use permit to allow grocery store at the property at 705 a street. Uh, the applicant as a chair, Roddy had mentioned is salt and Hawk property owners, trading properties, LLC. The property is on B, 1 highway business and grocery store is a conditional use within that specific zoning district. The property is guided commercial in the 2040 comprehensive plan as far as adjacent land uses, commercial slash offices to the north, single family homes to the east, townhomes to the south and trunk highway three to the west. A conditional use permit was approved by the Planning Commission about three years ago, September 12th of 2023, for a grocery store at this location by the same applicant. Due to the use not being implemented within one year, that use becomes null and void per the code. Mr. Hock has obviously reapplied and is going through that process again in order to establish that use at that property. As far as existing conditions, the property itself consists of the 1.34 acres located at the northeast intersection of Larch Street and 8th or Trunk Highway 3. The property does contain a one-story, just over 5,000 square foot office slash retail building and approximately 1,000 square foot accessory building that used to be a former car wash located near the southeast corner of the site. Both buildings are currently unoccupied. The property was a former Oasis Market or Budget Mart gas station. The tanks that were at that site were removed back in 2013. This is the overall site plan showing parking as well as trash location. The potential use, again, Mr. Hawk is naming this the Farmington Food and Spice House. The product inventory would include things such as meat, frozen fish, dairy, halal, slaughtered animals, fresh produce, dry food, canned food, spices, coffee and beverages, packed tea, ethnic personal care and beauty product, and also a delicatessen. So it would have everything you would need for a grocery store.

Proposed interior.

Farmington Food and Spice would utilize the southern half of the existing building. The floor plan is arranged in an open floor. Concept was shelving in the center. Deli is located in the northwest corner. Coolers and freezers along the eastern and southern walls. And then the checkout would be along the western wall of the site or building, I should say. As far as the exterior is concerned, there is no building expansion proposed with this application. They do show a trash container located near the northeast corner of the site. That container should be screened on three sides and screening can consist of either a six foot high privacy fence or masonry walls. If this is approved, a condition of approval should be that a screening plan for that trash container be provided and approved by staff. As far as parking is concerned, the site plan that I previously showed you shows 23 off-street parking stalls. Per the code, 25 would be required and that's based off of the square footage of the building. I gave you the calculation or how you would calculate that is up there. It is one off-street parking space for each 200 square feet of floor area. That's how we get to that 25 number. So, 2 additional spaces would be would need to be accounted for on the site. We do feel that there is room to accommodate 2 additional parking stalls on the site. They will just need to provide us a parking lot and striping plan that shows those 25 stalls. Also, we would. request that bollards be provided in the front of the parking spaces that are adjacent to the entrance to the store. This was a discussion that was had back in 2023 when this originally came through and that was placed as a condition of that original approval. So we're essentially carrying that over. Site lighting, no new or additional exterior site lighting has been identified by the applicant. If additional exterior lighting is to be provided, the reflective glare or spill light cannot exceed certain foot candles. In this case, 0.5 foot candle as measured on the property line adjacent to the residential zones that are located to the east and south, and one foot candle measured on the northern and western property lines. If additional exterior lighting is to be installed, we will require that they provide us a photometric plan that shows what those foot candles will be to staff so we can review that and make sure they're not exceeding those requirements. As this commission is aware, there are six conditions or criteria that must be looked at as part of a review of a conditional use permit. Those six criteria are listed here and also in your memorandum. I won't go through those unless you would like me to, but we feel that this application meets those six criteria. Therefore, the action as requested this evening is to approve the requested conditional use permit for the establishment of a grocery store at 705 A Street contingent upon the following. Number one, all necessary building permits are obtained. Two, a sign permit shall be obtained for any exterior signage. Three, a minimum of 25 off-street parking stalls must be provided on site. A parking lot and striping plan will have to be submitted and approved as part of the building permit application. Four, bollards shall be provided at the front entrance of the store. Five, a screening plan for the trash container must be submitted and approved by planning staff. And number six, a photometric plan shall be submitted and approved by planning staff if additional exterior lighting is to be installed on site. I will stand for any questions. And Mr. Hawk is here as well this evening. Thank you.

Mr. Hawk, you heard the staff report. Do you have anything to add to the staff report? Do you have anything to add to the staff report?

Good evening, everybody. So, I mean, we are planning to have a, you know, the effective grocery store for Farmington City. And we are only focusing on the Farmington population mostly. And then, you know, a part of the ethnicity. So that will be added. So mostly we are thinking for the Farmington society. Then you know we will we will try to provide we initially we start our grocery at the beginning and Definitely we we are going to extend that billing so that we can make it bigger and provide more options for the Farmington citizens

Okay. Well, thank you if you'd stay available. There's maybe some questions by commissioners. I suspect there will be I do want to add to the record that we did get a email letter from a myth miss Beth Benson that will add to the to the official record And just for the record also we have no residents in the audience so we'll start with Commissioner Rutherford Thank You chair

One of the concerns raised by Ms. Benson in her letter to the commission revolves around safety and concerns with the building and the added traffic, things of that nature. And I wanted to comment on that a little bit. One of the things that a lot of people maybe don't realize is that the longer a building, whether it's a commercial building or a residential building, the longer it stays vacant, the more it generally starts to become blighted and it starts to become an attractant to criminal behavior. I don't know that we've seen that yet with this property. It has obviously been largely vacant for a fairly decent period of time. There is a little bit of disrepair going on around the property. I visited it today. I think personally that getting that building occupied with something like a grocery store is going to help those concerns rather than hurt those concerns. There's going to be activity there throughout the day, and I would assume into the evening. Sir, you're not planning on this being a 24-hour operation, I assume?

No, no.

Okay, yeah. So in my wandering around the property this afternoon, I mean, it appears to me that the property owner is taking a fair amount of responsibility for his property. There are security cameras on the exterior of the building. I can't comment whether or not they work, but there's cameras on the building. There are no loitering and no trespassing signs posted at various points throughout the property. I don't share the concerns as far as loitering and criminal activity being a problem. Traffic, it's going to increase traffic to that property. That's the hope, anyway, I think. But... That property being situated where it is right on Highway 3 with access directly from Larch Street, I don't think it's going to have a huge impact on traffic in the neighborhood. There's no reason for anybody visiting that store, unless they live in that neighborhood, to be driving through the neighborhood. They're going to come in off of Highway 3, probably either onto Larch Street or they might pop onto 8th Street, the frontage road maybe from Spruce. Okay. but I don't think, I just don't think those are significant enough concerns to delay any action on this motion before us.

All right, well, thank you, Gary.

Commissioner Byrd. Yeah, so a couple comments. First of all, I agree with Gary and his comments here. Tony, I had a question about this was approved in 2023, Is there anything fundamentally changed from what was approved at that point?

No, if anything, we just incorporated a lot of the discussions and conditions that were approved back in 2023. Okay.

That's kind of what I remember, but I want to just check with you on that. Personally, I used to live in that neighborhood right behind there when the Oasis was still open. So I remember that. And to Gary's point, it didn't generate traffic through the neighborhood. It generated traffic off 3. And I think, frankly, the change in turn lanes there right at that intersection that they did – Five six years ago. I don't remember exactly when it was actually helps the flow of traffic getting out of that neighborhood It makes it much safer than it was trying to get out on three and playing the who's going first game Um, so so I think we have some things that have actually helped this site Um, i'm frankly glad to see someone willing to do something with it um and and take the time and invest in it because it's been empty for quite a while as gary was referencing too, so No, I'm quite excited to see this go in. Yeah. Thank you, Andy. Commissioner Ellis.

When are you planning to open? You know, when will you be operational?

This time I'm just thinking to do a little bit extended renovation so that I can, you know, do the building. Due to, you know, I had some loan issue and all these things, so we overcome with that. So now we have enough fund to do extra work so that we can do it nicely and then start it in a bigger way so that, you know, we can provide Farmington citizens at least better food quality and other stuff.

I have a question about the parking lot. So 23 stalls right now, but you're confident that they can fit an additional two stalls in? So will any improvements be made to the parking lot other than restriping?

Yes, sure. We're going to re-carpet that parking lot again and then completely redo the parking lot. Like a mill and overlay or just a... No, we're going to re-carpeting with the asphalt. Okay. So that in that way, at least it lasts for another five, seven years. then just one final question any plans to the exterior doing any modifications yes that's that's what i'm thinking to do some exterior uh improvement improve that okay so ever lighting and other security cameras and everything thank you those are all my questions mr chair thank you lisa commissioner lehmeyer

All right, so this was approved back in 2023 under the conditional use permit, and at that time, the loan proceeds and things like that couldn't go through. That's why it didn't proceed, correct?

Yeah, I mean, we was trying to both ways. Even Tony helped us about the grant and everything, but actually, it didn't work out the proper way. And we also used the SBA, but we had to go through another way to get another option.

So have those hurdles been, are you saying that those hurdles are now no longer in front of you? No. You have the financing and everything's ready to go, so this isn't going to be something that's going to come up again? Yes. Like it's not going to take another year where it's going to pass and, okay, all right.

We are trying to do it until it's possible.

Awesome, good. One other question for Tony here. I'm just new to it and I was reading and I saw a foot candle. Could you help explain a little bit of what a foot candle is and what the 0.5 and the one foot candles actually mean?

It's a unit of measurement for light. Basically, you would take a, the one foot candle would be like if you have a candle. it would cover one square foot of area wherever you put that candle. So that's basically what that means. I wish I had a better, more elegant way to put it, but that's really it. It's like if you're literally holding a candle,

No, that makes sense. And I guess the reason why I was asking that question is one of the concerns from the resident was making sure that there's adequate lighting in this area, especially, you know, during maybe, you know, nighttime. You know, they don't want people loitering and things like that. Like, I guess we won't know until that. Is it the poly?

The photometrics.

photometric is done to kind of see what that all looks like but it's not going to be invasive to the residents behind them as well like this should have a very low impact on those individuals that are in the residential area that are really close the hope yes okay all right And yeah, personally, when I drive down three, I think I look at that building every single time and I'm like, what's going to go in there? What can go in there? You know, like I'm not saying that it's an eyesore by any means, but to have something that's viable that can add to the aesthetics of the community. And you hit a buzzword with the grocery store, you know.

Yeah.

and to have more variety in our community for a growing population and also a growing ethnicity in our community as well, I think is only a positive view on what we're trying to do here. And it being part of the 2040 comp plan and something that kind of drives where we want to go is that comp plan and it being commercial and kind of pushing it that way is very beneficial in my eyes as well. So, thank you.

Thanks Nate, good questions. Your question on lighting is kind of twofold. You need enough lighting for the site itself, but the spillover can't be too much. In another lifetime, I used to calculate that. And for our residents out there that go by it and see that building that hasn't been open for a few years, a number of years, I should say, at one point, that was a very vibrant store. I mean, it was a busy store. It predated the quick trips. But it served the same purpose, a very similar purpose, I should say. But I do have some questions, Mr. Hawk, and I want to touch on Lisa's question because I either didn't hear it or maybe didn't hear it right. Your timing, timeline, if everything works out the way you want it, when do you anticipate the grand opening of this? You can just give me a season if you can.

Like?

Fall, winter, next spring?

Winter.

Okay, winter time. That's good enough. And we talked a little bit about that then. What are your hours of operation do you plan on?

Hours of operation? I think in the summertime, we would like to start with like 8 to 8.30. Okay. And then if the city allow us, we would like to, for the Farmington citizen, we would like to do it up to 9 p.m. We will see on the thing. And then wintertime, we would like to do it 8 to 8 p.m.

Okay. And we're just, you know, as much for our residents that may be listening or have questions later on. We talked a little bit about lighting. Do you anticipate any additional lighting for your parking lot?

Yes.

You do. Okay. And again, that's the study that Tony's looking at. How about signage for your store itself? What additional, if any, signage are you looking at?

Yeah, because we have two signage on the on the roadside, you're gonna add one sign on there and then of course on the top of the building.

Okay, and city staff will guide you, help guide you before you get too far down the road on what you're allowed to have and how big and how close and everything else. So before you start ordering it, maybe call the city planner or Jared and just confirm it. So I appreciate that. Do you have any use for what I'll refer to as the old car wash, that 5,000 square foot building in the back? Anything for that?

We are planning to, because at this moment it is using as a detailing, but we have a plan after we are starting the grocery store, we'll convert it a car wash, complete car wash, which will be run by us. so that we don't want to go through all the thing, so that it will be a properly one, so that if somebody comes to shopping, and then how the budget market used to do it, we don't want to do it.

It used to be a car wash years ago, but.

Complete car wash, we were thinking of that one too.

Tony, do you see any issues with that?

Not being that it was previously a car wash, we don't.

All right. Actually, I think you've answered most of my questions. Hopefully the rest of the commission. Anybody else got anything else? I did think of one more, Dirk, if you don't mind.

Go ahead, Andy. You have it noted on the site plan for fence repair along that back fence. That's the residential side. Yes. So would that need to be coordinated with the corresponding resident or can that be done?

I think the fence is completely on there.

It is completely, okay.

In between, there is a gap.

There is a gap, okay, perfect. That's what I was wondering. I couldn't remember. I haven't been over behind the building for a while. But you're planning to have that repaired before opening?

Yeah, the neighbor has their own fence, and we have our own fence. Okay, good. There is a walkway.

Okay, perfect. And then I'm going to ask a dumb question. Tony and I apologize. Nate got to ask one, so I'm going to ask one. What are bollards? Can you remind me? Bollards are metal... Like the big cement.

So you don't drive through the door.

So cars don't, it stops vehicles.

So nobody can ram the building.

Yes.

That was actually offered at our previous.

By Phil.

Yeah, by a police officer on the commission at the time. He's the one who suggested that strongly. So we opted to add that also. That's great. And you know what? for the commission, and they know this, but for our residents' sake, whenever we get a business adjacent to residential, we always make sure that the transition is there. As a number of commissioners mentioned, they've been out to the site. You have a fairly high fence on the east side, which would be residential. A little bit of disrepair, but you mentioned earlier you were gonna repair that, and that's what I think Commissioner Berg was talking about. You have a somewhat of another fence on the north side and you have a vet clinic to the north of you. Nice looking fence. I leave it there on the south side. You've got a city street and then on the west side, you got a state highway. So, you know, the transitions I think are there as far as a buffer for what we have. And again, I tell everybody be a good neighbor there. You know, again, Nate talked about lighting, you know, make sure you're, Your lighting doesn't shine into some neighbor's window or yard or something because they'll let staff know and then you'll have to deal with it then.

Yeah, sure.

All right.

We got soffit lighting plus, you know, we're going to add some lighting for the parkingways. Okay. For the parking lot, whole parking lot.

All right. Well, that concludes our questions, public hearing. Is there a motion to close a public hearing? Motion to close. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Motion and second. Call the roll, please.

We marr.

Yes.

Ferg? Yes. Roddy? Yes. Ellis? Yes. Rutherford?

Yes. All right, Mr. Hawk, this is a question directly to you. You know, staff has listed six contingencies. He went through them, he explained them. Do you understand them? Do you agree to them?

Yes.

You do, okay. We're gonna hold you to those now.

Yes.

All right, with that, then I'd look for a motion on this conditional use permit at 705 A Street along with six contingencies. Is there a motion? Motion to approve. We have a motion for approval. Is there a second? Second motion a second. Is there any more discussion?

If not, call the roll, please Yes Yes, yes Yes, I thank you.

Mr. Hawk for coming. Good luck with your grocery store. We're looking forward to it All right, Tony. Was there anything else from staff?

No, sir.

Was there anything else from the Commission? If not, I'll remind the commission and our viewers, our next regular meeting, and this is a bit of a change, is Wednesday, August 12th. That's due to the primaries on the day before. So with that, I look for a motion to adjourn. Motion. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Motion and second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.