Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, folks. Uh, welcome to our planning commission for uh, February 9th. We will call our meeting to order. All right. Good evening, commissioners. I will call the role. Shane Banks, present. Mariah Bishop, present. Ralph Carson, present. Philip Jefferson here. Jhon Hodes present. Ben Mills present. Michael Boland. I am here and I promise I'll stay here. I just have my coat on till I warm up. All right. That is seven members present. Thank you so much. Mr. Carson would like to do our invocation.

Yes. Our heavenly father, we come to you this evening in thanks. We ask you guide us to guide us to be thoughtful and deliberate in our discussions and considerations this evening for the betterment of Garner. We lift up the families of two of our veterans we recently lost at Legion Post 71 and ask that you comfort the families as only you can. We ask these things in your name. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Thank you so much. All right. It is time to adopt our agenda. Are there any items that need to be adjusted on our agenda? If not, can we uh have a motion to approve our agenda as written? I'll make that motion. Thank you, Mr. Borderland. Do we have a second? I'll second. Thank you, Mr. Carson. We have a motion and a second. All right. There's a motion on the floor to adopt the agenda and I will call the vote. Shane Banks, I. Mariah Bishop, I. Ralph Carson, I. Philip Jefferson, I Johanna Hodes, I. Ben Mills, hi. Michael Boland, I. The agenda is adopted.

Thank you so much. Um, you have received your meeting minutes from our January meeting. Um, if is there anything that needs to be updated, Mr. Carson?

Um, refer to page five of 8. Um, there seems to be two very similar paragraphs near the bottom, but they're kind of slightly different. Um not sure which one actually accurately reflects uh what was discussed. If staff could take a look at that. And if we go back to the quality oil discussion. Um there seems to be quite a few things missing in that description. So I would ask the staff to go back and perhaps review that. Uh just by recollection. Um there was discussions about access to the dumpster area for the disposal trucks. Uh there was discussions on the bus shelter on the bus parking in the culde-sac. Um I had concerns about the seating area next to the dumpster pad. I just think there was a lot of things that appear to be missed in that summary. What was the first

uh page five of eight? Mhm. Uh the I guess it' be the fourth and fifth paragraph. Oh, okay. I see. So, not directly at the end. Yeah, it's it's kind of kind of very close to the same, but it's it's a little bit different. We can go back and have them for you next next month. Okay. And just just if they could go back and look at the full discussion on the quality oil because I know the commissioners had some lengthy discussions on a lot of different things, pros and cons. And I think a lot of it seems to be missing.

That app something that may have gotten just overlooked in the transfer of duties. Okay. So, we want to um resubmit our minutes for next meeting or assume our comments. I just move that we table that meeting. All right. So, we need to vote on that. Correct. Or do we just move to table that until next? It would help to have a motion. So we have a motion. Mr. Carson has a motion to table our meeting minutes to be approved in our next meeting with our the update. So we have a second. I'll second. Okay. Thank you so much. Um have a motion and a second.

And just to confirm, there's a motion to table the minutes until next meeting. All right. Um Shane Banks, hi Mariah Bishop. Hi Ralph Carson. Hi. Philip Jefferson. Hi. Ke Hodgeges. Hi. Ben Mills. Hi. Michael Boland. Hi. All right. The minutes will be tabled until next session.

Thank you so much. We'll get those updated. Mr. Carlson. Thank you so much for catching those. Okay. We have our um old and new business. Our first item on the agenda um ZTA24001. All right. So, you all came with the laundry list of questions about this text amendment package, right? Can I help steer the discussion or you just don't have any?

Can we defer to your learned expertise?

Oh, dear. All right. Well, I didn't give you the the entire overview last time. So, um we did not hit on uh kind of the purpose groupings for six and seven. Um so, I will at least highlight those for you tonight and then we can move to whether or not you have any questions if you'd like to look at something a little different to hopefully understand it better. Um, and I will highlight the one item that was added um to to the staff report since last time. Um, but purpose number four was uh particularly again we're looking at the residential side of the UDO and the comp plan and trying to get those things married up and residential does bleed over into our mixeduse districts. So there are a few things that are related to our mixeduse zoning districts as well. Um but in particular uh there were a few things that we wanted to further distinguish within our residential zoning districts. Um one of those was to make a little bit more differentiation also between the multifamily residential districts. So our MFA and our MFB. Um there hasn't been in the in up until now much of a distinction. pretty much everything that you could do in MFA, you could also do in MFB. And there wasn't a whole lot that you could do in MFB, but you couldn't do MFA. Um, it's just that the densities were different. Um, I think MFA was probably at, don't quote me, but I'm going off the top of my head here. Um, I believe MFA was probably like 20 dwelling units per acre, and I think MFB was either 30 or 50. Um so

other than the density of units per acre that really for the most part um has been the only what I would say is even somewhat significant difference. Um so over the past few years we when apartment projects have come before us um there has been some discussion about uh you know traditional garden style apartments or other styles of apartments. We've seen some that now come in more like town homes. Um, which I was actually looking at um some things in my former jurisdiction of Nightdale um earlier today and I actually was going back and looking at some some different apartment projects over there and I actually discovered that there was one that was built in the late 60s early 70s that was actually a town home style apartment. Um I was like oh things maybe have kind of

somewhat come full circle. I didn't really realize that that was a thing back then. Um but apparently someone had that idea uh 40 50 years ago and it's kind of come back. Um but we've had that discussion about garden style and other types versus truly taller midrise type, you know, at least four stories, things that are um tall enough to be required to be served with elevators. Um maybe the enclosed interior hallways that are airond conditioned. um much more of a central entry controlled access um to get into the building and then once you're in the building you've got the the interior corridors just to get to your unit. Um so and that was kind of emphasized and it wasn't really emphasized I would say in the comp plan but it was certainly supported um that kind of idea to make more of a differentiation from a a truly suburban style apartment product to something a little more urban in character. Um, so it made sense in our minds to go ahead and try and push the MFA and the MFB districts in that direction with the MFB um, being the more urban style and the MFA being or more traditional what we've seen in Garner over the years um, garden or shorter. We do have some twotory product um, here in Garner as well. Um, and so with that, along with that distinction, when we're introducing a district that wants to encourage more of an urban style apartment, um, we also started then looking at our vertical mixed use. Where can we do vertical mixed use in our zoning code? Um, which again that's clearly very much supported by the comp plan. Um, but other than

probably the activity center district, which we still don't have on the ground. It's on the books, but it's not yet on the ground, uh, and being used anywhere there. You could have that product maybe in commercial mixed use, probably not in neighborhood mixed use. Neighborhood mixed use again is looking at a much smaller scale. nothing quite so big. Um, so that was kind of the other thing that we brought in with MFB in terms of the text amendments was trying to get another district um where vertical mixed use would be more of a priority. Um, so along with that, of course, if you're going to have vertical mix and those apartments are on the upper floors, you've got to have some non-residential uses on the ground floor. and MFB traditionally did not provide or allow for that. So, we also went back to the use table, looked at some of those uses that are truly again when you think of even in your residential neighborhood, the type of uses that you would want close to where you live. We wanted to allow for those kind of uses to be on the ground floor. So, it might be a restaurant, it might be a bank, it might be some kind of professional service, um it might be a daycare. Um, so those types of things we went back under the MFB column. And so you'll see those now as proposed to be permitted again with the idea that they they can be if they're part of a vertical mixeduse proposal, not as a standalone, but as part of a vertical vertical mix. So, we looked at the purpose statements um for both of the districts. And again, to kind of reinforce what I was just

talking about, we had to propose some modifications to those introductory, you know, kind of visionary type statements in the UDO. Um, so those were updated. Again, MFA, the focus is on kind of that more house scale walk up. Uh, it does include town homes. MFB does not include town homes. So that's again is a very hard distinct difference between the two. Um MFB traditionally has also mentioned a little bit about being near major transportation corridors. Um, we chose again to kind of focus more on within the comp plan as well on high capacity, which is supposed to convey the idea that it's not just vehicles. Um, it's really emphasizing that if you're close to a transit line or close to a train uh stop that again, anything that's higher capacity. So, it can be also a wider roadway. Um, but clearly the idea there is not to have MFB on your little residential street. Um, mixeduse structures again should be encouraged and included, not necessarily every building. Um, the AC district would tend to imply every building, but that you should at least have some buildings within that MFB district that are that vertical mixed use. Uh, in terms of specific uses, um, let's see, adjust definition of multif family to distinguish as five or more units. Again, I think we talked last time about the fact that the building code has kind of moved their residential

building code off point. I think it used to be a one or two unit dwelling, but now it includes three and four unit dwellings as part of their residential code.

Um, which basically means that they get treated like a single family house when it comes to the building code. Um, so again, we kind of wanted to reinforce that that when we are talking about multif family, um, just to be a little more in sync for those on the development community side that when they hear us talking about multif family versus single family, there is a little bit more of a a correlation between residential code versus the other commercial codes. Um, so again, we removed housecaled residential and town homes from MFB. So those plexes, uh, as well as town homes are now no longer in MFB. They're targeted in the MFA instead. Um, and allowing again for those supporting non-residential uses where we talked about needing to have those ground floor um, non-residential available. We touched briefly on purpose five last time. I kind of gave it just a little bit of lip service at the last one, but I was like, that was a long meeting.

I didn't want you to glaze over too much more than maybe you already were

because I know I was uh beginning to feel it myself. Um, so we did want to add some new uses in and one of the things that the comp plan did talk about, but we just did not have, we still don't to, you know, this moment. We don't really have these in the code. We don't have a live work unit as a type of use. So a live work unit again is your kind of your individual I think of them as town homes with a commercial use on the ground floor. So, it's kind of that mix of town home and vertical mixed use, right? Um, going back to the days of when you could have your shop downtown, but you actually lived above it.

Um, and then we actually have a building or two downtown where there is residential on the second floor over some um, in some cases I think those are probably a little bigger than a live work unit, but um, that's the idea. I think Fugquway has a small development that was done a few years ago that has those. I forget the name of it right off the top of my head, but um again, the idea is like for you to be able to have have your shop on the ground floor and be able to live above it and hopefully still, you know, kind of have it in probably a little bit more of a traditional type of mortgage setup. Um, again, that's always a complicating factor when it comes to these things and how the lending industry wants to provide loans. Um, they don't like to mix a whole lot of commercial in with residential. Um, but it is possible. And, um, so, you know, to the degree that we can, we'd like to allow for these uses, take a look at trying to encourage them when we're talking to developers. Um, but first, we kind of have to allow for them. Um so this would this would amendment package would also introduce that live work unit as a new type of use and also specify which permitted um ground floor uses are are allowable because it is in a residential setting. We still want it to be very residential friendly.

Jeeoff is that restricting that just to one unit above their possible commercial or Yeah. The idea is is it's the same the same ownership. Okay?

So, a single ownership like a town home, it's just that you have a more than just a home occupation space where you might use one of your bedrooms as a home office. Um, but truly a retail kind of space or a professional office kind of space where you're actually allowed to bring in a little bit more in the way of a customer base than in a home occupation. Yeah. Um, so yeah, you see the again here in section 6.4.4 when we get to the specific use, we want to keep it, you know, an urban but residential character. So we want to limit the size of that non-residential space. We don't want the shop to be gigantic. Um, we want to limit the number of employees. again, more than what a home occupation, usually a home occupation, you can only have one other person be coming to the house to assist you with whatever you're doing. Um, this would allow slightly more um but still have a cap. Um, it would control the access and really require a building orientation to the street um so that you can have people parking out on the street, get out of their car, and walk up to your front door, which would be your business door. Um, residential would be parked in the back. Um, limit the hours of operation. Again, trying to keep it somewhat residential in character. So, not allowing businesses that operate until 2 3 in the morning. Um, and limiting again your outdoor activities, which has always been historically a focus of Garner's UDO. Um, and if I had to pick one thing that I think is just a common theme throughout Garner's history when it comes to zoning is there has always been a pretty clear focus on trying to

make a make a good distinction across the board in all uses as to whether there are outdoor activities or not. And if there are outdoor activities, that is something that our UDO has always put a lot of parameters around um to protect neighboring uses and residences. So yeah, when you get down to again this this is similar to the the uses that would be allowed in an MFB mixeduse apartment building. um that other office, personal professional services. Um the artisan shops, which again is a new use that we would be introducing. Again, kind of going back to the idea of what you might be able to do as a home occupation kind of hobby, but taking it a step further again with introducing that in-person retail um and giving you more space. Um, there's some things that I can think of from an artisan type perspective you might not actually be able to do as a home because it just requires too much space.

Hey Jeff. Yeah. So, I guess someone if someone built one of these um and they had their business below and then they went out of business, are they able to get a building permit to change the inside of the ground floor to make it like all residential or is that going to be against it still be allowable? Right.

I I feel like where we've proposed to allow these, we would also allow just plain town homes. So, we tried to mirror those two. So, anywhere town homes were allowed, live work units were also an option. Um, because that's a that's a good point. Um, somebody may they may may not take off. Um, or they may decide to retire, but they want to have that space back. Um, so you know there's there's obviously some building code issues, but it is usually easier to go from commercial to residential because it's fewer fewer or less strict requirements than the other way. Um, so yeah, I do think that should be possible. Was that forefront of my mind? Maybe not exactly, but I think in in a roundabout way and that that kind of was part of it. So, we can definitely take another look at that before it goes back to council. Um, and just kind of make sure that that does marry up because that that's a good point.

And so, a question I guess kind of in line with that, would you be able to lease this the owner who owns the town home wants to lease the space below to somebody else for a business? Would that case if their business goes out of business, but they wouldn't still use it as a commercial space? Technically, that wouldn't be meet the definition of live work. Okay,

live work implies the same ownership. Now, I'm not sure what I'm looking in the back corner because I don't know what legal might tell me. Um, but from the planning perspective, um, yeah, the definition of a live work unit should be that it's owned and operated by the same people. Jeff Terry's nodding her head. So,

do do you envision this as like you said kind of married up with town homes, but could somebody come before the planning department and say, "Hey, I want to make a live work unit on this site. There's a residential house next to it." Then all of a sudden, you're going to have traffic coming in even though it's restricted. But do you see that popping up here and there as opposed to an area where it's going to be here's here's really just town homes and these live work units? Like I could almost see an issue coming up with people buying in a residential area

and then either just adjacent or just outside those boundary limits, they want to start doing something that's going to be bringing people right into a pseudo commercial. Yeah. So I think when when you go I'm thinking through this as as I'm thinking through your question. Um, so I think when you go back to the revised use table, what you'll see is that for most traditional neighborhoods, they're going to be in that R4 district, right?

Or maybe R2 and some of the ones that had really big lots. Um, we have taken town homes out of those districts. And so town homes don't really get introduced until you're in R8, which is supposed to be a transitional district anyhow. So the idea of having a town home and a well, again, by the time you're at R8, you're also going to need to have more than four units per acre. So we're we're mandating a smaller lot and mandating the higher density with this amendment package. Um, so it's going to be a different feel. Um, and so with town homes already kind of being introduced, there's going to be if it's all together in an RA district, right, there's no buffers. Um, but I think through site design and with the required access

being that it has to be rear rear accessible because the parking has to be in the rear, they're either going to have to have a a long shared driveway that goes down the side of the building from the front or they're going to have to have an alley. Um, so I I feel like 99% of the time that's going to be known upfront. Um, you're going to know what you're buying into. Um, and the fact that we've not allowed those in R4 um should should take care of those concerns because we're we we really are trying because we've had that issue, right, with R8 kind of being used as this what really should be R4 because we've only got we're only getting proposals with like two and a half to three units per acre. Um, and so forcing that R8 to be truly what it is and protecting R4 as what it is. Um, that should be reinforced. Does that help? It does. I I'm having I'm having I'm just kind of envisioning this being almost like a a mini downtown where you're where where you're going to have

commercial. you're going to have people living up above. So then it comes down to what happens if Mhm. that that business goes under, right? What happens if in that same zone you start having multiple businesses go under? What does that do to the residential upkeep, residential facade? Is that then going to become a blade area? like if it's commercial, it's commercial and there's things that can be done. But when that's I guess I'm just kind of doing the whatif scenarios. Sure. No, and that and that's good. I mean, there's always there's always the whatifs, right? You know, even in a traditional downtown, um

businesses going out on the on the ground floor and there might be some office space on the second floor that's still in use. Um, you know, Bedford, are you familiar with Bedford and North Raleigh? Um, they were very ambitious 15 years ago. Um, and it started off, you know, I I think I think their downfall was a little bit geographic, right? Because it's it's sandwiched in it's, you know, people think, oh, it's right off of Durant Road. It's right off of Falls of the Noose. Yes. But um the other two sides are hemmed in by the Noose River

and there's no crossings.

So there's no real good direct access into there from two directions. Um, real nice idea. And again, thinking that probably maybe that the density of the other residential that they were going to build might have been higher, but then they really just ended up building a lot of single family. Um, there's some nice Charleston homes um in there and and stuff. Um, but they just didn't have a big enough residential project to support their live work unit. So they ended up with kind of one block from their uh clock tower

um that had the live works and there were supposed to be like three or four blocks um and then it just didn't materialize. So but that one block is still there. Um it would be interesting to go back and look and see if they're actually still live work. Um but yeah, the rest ended up becoming town homes. Um it was easy for them to make that switch, you know, from a form perspective at least, but um it was a different it ended up being different than what they they envisioned. I think the one in Fugquway will probably do better. It's not really a downtown, but it is kind of a little court area right off of a more of a main street type thing. Um, so it's got good traffic going by it and you can get off of it, but it's really just kind of in a court, an extended court area.

Um, so yeah, it coming back to form um is really critical to making sure that it's will be a successful project. And fortunately, we've got a few good examples now, I think, to kind of draw from because it is a unique

product. I think we just need to keep an eye on what they're proposing when it comes before planning and if it's going to be a oneoff or like you said, a little culde-sac, little courtyard. Yeah. And chances are um it's going to have to come through for some kind of reasoning again because you have to have R8 and R8 was not something that we prescribed in advance. Um you have to ask for it. Um so Okay. Well, thank you. Okay. Other questions? I don't want to kill the momentum if that's going to

What? what kind of brought about this um I guess live work has probably been out there but what kind of brought this to your attention to add is there demand people asking for it or um a good trend that seems to be going to that other cities are adopting

um yeah I mean I think it's certainly been on my radar for the last 15 years at least um and I think with that project in Fugquway that kind of raised and And I' and I've heard of some small projects in other places, but I don't know that there's really a whole lot of them yet. Um, part of me feels like there's an untapped market for it. Um, just because people may not think about it because the there's not a lot of that product out there today. I will say what we notice is that there's a lot of people um who really want to stretch the home occupation. Um, and we have to rein in some people and say you're, you know, that the activity at your house is getting to be a little too much. Um, that's probably one of the more common complaints that we get from a code enforcement perspective in the planning department is neighbors who are unhappy with their neighbors, right? Um, I think my neighbors doing this out of their house. I'm seeing seeing people being dropped off or it seems like there's customers coming a lot um and picking things up. Um so yeah, I think I kind of feel like again with the whole kind of entrepreneurial, you know, one person maybe staying at home but trying to have a little business on the side. Um, and I think it potentially also gives somebody an option not to have to, you know, if if you're going to do like a pottery shop, right, you got to find a place to do that. You don't need a big commercial space. Um, you know, if you have a nice old warehouse district where maybe some, you know, warehouses like up in Asheville

did there in the River Arts District. Um, where you can just divide up these big warehouses into small spaces that folks can just rent. Um, but yeah, it it seems like there's a need. I hear a lot of people talk about it. I kind of feel like maybe it is the financing side that may prohibit it because I do know that the project in Fiway was done by local developers. Um, but you know, it takes sometimes those folks to kind of go out and lead the way and show the larger,

right? And if that zoning doesn't exist and and and it's not a comparable element that they're looking at, then there's not a way for that to really recognize as a way to finance. So giving that option that opens the door for that kind of method. Yeah. All right. Thanks, Jeff. Yep. Anything else? I think the one thing I had a question on was back at the MFB or

um I need to go back um was you know I think we've had sometimes in in our mixed use where we ask for public um spaces or commercial spaces on the ground floor and then or incorporated and then the you know there's this one little piece of commercial they say Oh, will that be the requirement? Just one little one little piece. We have a project that's coming making its way through that I'm I'm curious what how y'all are going to view it. Interesting.

Aaron may know which one I'm talking about, but yeah. You know, we have we have an we have a multif family project coming forward that has at least two or three of their buildings with non-residential space um allocated on the ground floors. So, I'm curious what y'all how y'all will react to that. What you might find good, maybe what you might find still being a little lacking,

right? Yeah. I think the question is you know when we have this particular introduced in the um in the MFB do we need to kind of specify that there is a a percentage of right so you will see in the package um as a result of recent not fairly recent discussions about another project um in the CMX district that if you are going to do apartments in the CMX district, which by name is commercial mixeduse,

um that there should be some consideration given if you're going to do a residential project in a commercial mixeduse district, um that there should be a commercial use incorporated. So, so that would really kind of fall more in the CMX than the MFB. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Yeah. So if you look at it from that perspective, it is trying to kind of okay in a district that is called what it is um rather than just relying on the fact that there's a commercial next door um actually trying to encourage that even more for them to bring commercial into their project. Right. Right. Okay. Yeah.

Um Yeah. So artisan shops again we talked about that a little bit. um very much similar to the live work units, focusing on that urban residential character. Um so again, limiting the size, limiting the hours of operation, uh limiting those outdoor operations. They they kind of go hand in hand. You can still have an artisan shop outside of a live work unit, but the idea really was to try to tie those two together um and to introduce that artisan shop as part of the live work proposal. Um the grouping number six um was to as incentivized preferred neighborhood design um through the provision of density bonuses were appropriate. We already had some bonuses built into the current UDO but it really didn't wasn't working like we thought and it was kind of encouraging the wrong things. Um, so this again kind of comes back to the idea of letting R4 and R2 be what they are, be your very traditional residential neighborhoods. Um, but trying to make the R8 and those denser districts more what they should be. Um, so you won't see a proposal for density bonuses in R4 or R2. You will see them now only in R8 or denser. Um, that that's really the crux of the modifications here. Um, so you'll see builtin for R8 and denser districts only, builtin for R8 and MFA, builtin for R8, MFA, and NMX. um allowing up to a 50% bonus.

Again, that's the one thing we hear from folks is they want to be able to, you know, every unit helps them balance their perform. Um, understood, but we want that to be in districts where that density is appropriate and not where it shouldn't be. Um, also just cleaning up a little bit. We've had for the most part the ordinance um treats corner lots, the two sides that that face the streets for the most part. It treats them the same. Um, quite often a side setback or a side yard requirement is narrower. Um, but when you're on that corner, you kind of want both streets to feel the same. A lot of times they're both regular residential streets. Um, you might have it gives an opportunity for somebody to have a side garage, but you still need that kind of front yard setback to make sure that you've got enough room to actually park your car and not overhang the sidewalk. Um, so there's just a little bit of cleanup there to try to make that consistent and no residential um, density bonus just because you do a corner side garage. that was kind of built in there that if you had side entries, I guess you could have a real narrow blocks going one direction. Um, it just didn't make sense. So, only a residential density bonus um if you're doing alleys and you're actually investing a little more in the infrastructure.

And then group number seven was to just eliminate other redundant regulatory language. Um clarifications by moving some of the language around or expanding the language where needed. Um we look to make a few other residential use adjustments. Um again in a manner that didn't reduce density, right? because we still we have that new state law that doesn't allow us to change the rules to limit or lessen somebody's density options or buildable area um and not to create any nonconformities in your commercial zones. Um, so one of the things that staff um was the building height for residential homes in particular. I don't know exactly where 35 ft came from, but if you go back in old zoning ordinances, almost every ordinance said in a in your residential neighborhood, your height limit was 35 feet. um which is great for a one-story and a twostory house for the most part. If you had a real funky kind of steep high-pitched roof and a half basement kind of situation, you might start to run into issues. But where you do have homes that have a third floor, which is getting more common, um, or they build at least a third floor into the attic, um, sometimes you're pushing that 35 ft. And it also depended on where you measured from on the ground. Um, if the ordinance used the highest point on the grade, things were usually okay. Like you were still within 35 ft. But a

lot of ordinances, including ours, um said to use either the average or kind of the midpoint along the side. And as soon as you start to do that, the point at which you're starting your measurement starts dropping. And then that peak of your roof gets further and further away. And we've had some issues with some folks. I think my house is actually probably 36 feet. Um, and we don't want to be in that kind of situation. Um, so we we've proposed to change that so that you are measuring from the front, the street side, which was typically your highest point. Um, and allowing for those roof peaks to go a little bit further. the bulk of your roof structure can't go over 35 feet, but we already allowed for like a chimney feature or something like that to pierce through that 35 ft cap. Um, so again, keeping it focused on a minor type of projection above that 35 ft. Um, but we do feel like that should solve the majority of issues that we've run into. And it's certainly much simpler.

Do you see other jurisdictions doing Yes. that now? Yes. Always been complex for I mean for decades. Yeah. Um so it's kind of good to hear that. It does simplify that much more. Yeah. Especially when you know you have sites that are um more complex and sloping. Yeah. Start that from and it doesn't penalize you that way for keeping the grade. Yeah. I think that may help us to not have so much manipulation of our landscape, right? Yeah. Cuz kind of by default, I mean, they want it it kind of encourages you to flatten the site because

you don't want your you don't want your starting point um dropping like it like it does. Um there was also uh we eliminated we're proposing to eliminate some redundancies on front yard impervious surface allowances. Um I get that there's a time and a place to really hammer something home. Um but you don't want to confuse the matter either. So keeping things where you most primarily want to see them and making sure that it's consistent um where you do repeat um let's see add to the dimensional standard figures for zoning districts that were missed before or needed to be modified due to other use table changes. So our figures in chapter or article five in some cases they didn't reflect um where you could all the districts that you could build that particular style of structure. Trying to give an example and I don't know that this one is actually true of our ordinance but just to give you the idea. Um, take a townhouse style building that has its garages in the front. We may have had standards for setbacks and building heights and all that for the MFA and MFB district, but for some reason the table was missing R8. But if you went to the east table, town homes were permitted. and then suddenly

we go over to the the performance standards and there's nothing there that matches. Um it's that it was that type of thing. I think most of the ones that we were missing were related to our town center district because that was a little that was a little more uncertain during the drafting of the UDO how that was going to finally fall out. And in some cases I think then we just missed going back and having that district added to the table in article five. Mhm.

Um, so in the meantime, staff has been using, you know, what we believe, okay, if this was, you know, traditional business district and they were missing, okay, MFA was probably the closest. And so we would just direct folks to use what we felt was intended. Um, but to go ahead and get that on the books, is needed. In fact, yeah, you um you see down here for 5.6H, we had to do an addition for TBD. Um and actually here for 56D, it was actually the other end of the spectrum. There were some things allowed in RA and R2. Um, again, things that got tweaked in the use table towards the end of the process and we didn't realize that, oh yeah, we needed to go back and put in standards. Um, removing the minimum lot size for large multif family. Um the original purpose was for town homes, but now that town homes are no longer considered a large multif family structure. Um that's no longer applicable. Um so in some cases there's some things that we've now taken out of the realm of possibilities to do. So we need to go back and eliminate the standards um that would have applied to that in the past um so that there's no confusion that it can still be done. Um there was also the need to clarify which dimensional standards we use for upper story residential. There was a little bit of confusion and in some cases a lack of direction that if you had upper

story residential use, which setbacks, which building heights are you applying? Is it the use on the ground floor? Is it the apartment use? Is it? So there had to be some direction given as to what's what's the prevailing type of setback and feel that we want. Is it more of an apartment style feel or is it more of a commercial feel? for story residential. That usually means we want more of an apartment style feel because the commercial typically is the type of setbacks that you think of when you go over to, you know, Garner Square, Town Square, you know, to a shopping center. And that's when you've got vertical mixed use, that's not the type of uh feel you want. Um, the same kind of thing was missing for dimensional standards. What do we use for nonresidential uses that are permitted in a residential district? Um, so again, as we're kind of tweaking and trying to encourage folks to think more about mixed use in your neighborhood mixeduse district, your MFB district to a much limited more limited extent than MFA, um, which setbacks are you using? We didn't have really direction for a non-commercial standal or for a commercial standalone building in a residential district. Um and then that last one is really really technical just access to lots where the driveway has to come from. There was a couple things we needed just to clarify on that. Um, another one that came from the request of developers, which again was something

we kind of just wasn't on our radar, um, but made sense in our limited access highway overlay district. That is the overlay that applies to I40 and to 540. So things that are controlled with interchanges. Um, that that overlay extends for a,000 ft. So any additional restrictions under that overlay applies to anything within 1,000 ft of the highway. We had added because we had good intentions. Um, when do or the turnpike authority builds new interstates these days, you see the sound walls going up and you see them go up next to existing neighborhoods because again, they're required because the the the neighborhood was already there. It makes sense. they have to do a sound study and provide a sound barrier when they're putting a new highway through and there's existing residential impacted. However, we all know as humans um we're we're kind of creatures of, you know, we have a something happening next door to us that we don't like. We're going to complain more than likely a good percentage of the time. And what has happened over years is then you have the residential subdivision that comes in a year or two later after it's built.

Okay. Well, you bought your house knowing it was next to the interstate, right? Well, that doesn't, you know, we know that doesn't prevent people from some people from then saying we need to have a sound wall. Um, so, uh, DOT will not come back and provide a soundwall after the fact. Um, so the intent was to use this overlay to make an to make an amendment because the previous UDO did not did not prevent this. um was to limit residential subdivisions, so a single family subdivision or a town home subdivision from being constructed too close to the new interstate. Um but 1,000 ft was a lot. Um that's almost a quarter mile. Um, so if you're thinking about city blocks, you could have a good two, sometimes three or two and a half city blocks in that first thousand ft. Um, so we went and looked at current subdivisions. They're usually about the lots are about 150 ft deep. So we were kind of like, okay, two 150 foot lots, one backs up to the interstate. Then you have your street. The other one backs up the other way. So if we restrict it down to, okay, no subdivisions, uh, residential subdivisions within 300 ft, that at least pushes the residential back to what would be at least the second street and it would force there to be at least some kind of commercial. And in many cases, your commercial lots might be actually a little bit bigger. So it might push the residential even further. But at a minimum, we felt 300 ft was appropriate

because at least then you would be preventing houses in kind of the space that where the first two rows of houses might otherwise be. Um, and typically the sound it it does according to the studies, it dissipates pretty swiftly from there. Plus, we also have a 50-foot vegetative buffer that's required. Um, so we do have some developers that have projects coming up that have part of their property within that thousand feet, but still probably 500 600 feet away. That just didn't make sense to us when we put pen to paper and really started drawing it out.

Jeff, what So, apartments could be right up against it. There's no limit. Apartments could be So, I guess what's the uh I mean, what's the reason if you could put apartments 100 feet from 540 or 40,

right? So the apartments will still have to be at least so you have that 50ft vegetated buffer. You can't grade any closer than 10 to 15 ft to that. So there's still going to be 65 70 ft at the closest. Um and maybe there's a little bit of housing choice bias there. Um, I mean, we we we could force apartments to be pushed further back. I guess I just think of going down the interstates, apartments are not unusual um to see

in closer proximity and it in its density and you're up and once you do go up to that second or third story, it the sound probably carries more to be honest. Um, so I don't know, but that's that's a good you're not you're not the only person who's asked that. Um, but it is just kind of the conscious choice of subdivisions. Yeah. Apartments, commercial enterprise maybe. Okay. Yeah. Um, I don't know if this is possible. Are developers able to put in if they pay for it a soundwall after the fact on the highway? They could.

Yeah. Does that if someone did that with that um would they still have to follow the 300 feet? I guess they chose they say, "Hey, I'm gonna put a soundwall in. Can I, you know, have the houses or subdivision a little bit closer to the highway?" Um, that's a good question. Hadn't thought of that. Um, we could consider that. Okay, I'm mute. It was just a thought. It seems like maybe

Yeah. Um, because I feel like in some cases, I could be wrong. I haven't seen the sound studies. Maybe two 200 feet away with a sound wall is going to be better than 300 feet away with no sound. Yeah, that's something we can take a look at. Okay. I don't The rest of you tell me, do you feel strongly about that? Something we should allow for or I like the idea. I feel like that would be good. kind of a

if if this then this. It's because you said even with the current the closest they could be anyway would be about 65 70 ft, right? And on a and on a single family, the rear setback is going to be measured off of that 50 foot buffer. That could even be It's not gonna be a huge amount more, but it might be 75 to 80 feet. I think they're still within that, but giving them the option to be closer.

I think I think that would be fairly easy to word in that if you do provide if if at the developer's expense you provided a sound wall um that met the DOT standard um that you could bring it in. Again, I don't know that I would bring it in the whole way, but maybe you can come to 200 feet or 150 feet. Yeah, maybe provide a um a sound study showing that's equivalent to the 300 feet away or something like that. Yeah, I have no problem with it. But it's fun because we're working in a in a millure a mix of people making choices

for homes they want to buy or don't want to buy. And there's the expression, people are free to be foolish when they buy or make decisions. So, I have no problem with that option of giving the developer that choice, but also you're you're playing into this whole mix of people making choices of where they want to live. Yeah. And of course, if they don't like it, once they're in there and it's apartment, they can move. Sounds harsh, but that's that's the reality. And I think we we want to kind of limit a sliding scale that would begin to right, you know, we don't want to make it super

keep coming back with like, well, what if we do well, what if we do that? Well, what if we do this? There is there there is a limit. Yeah. Like we're really trying to do something to really improve the residential neighborhood. Yeah. Um it's not just so you can build more houses. I think we have to continue to keep that in mind as well. Unless there is like data that shows because of the slope and because of this and because of the sound wall we saw like this is going to reduce this distance and the travel of sound they can really designate that because honestly when I'm you know I think when the average person is probably traveling down the interstate seeing nothing but sound walls is probably not

preferable. I think that most of us would probably rather look at the trees and the shrubs or even if it's undergrowth and not the most attractive per se, you're going 70 miles an hour. Um but yeah, having that kind of travel experience versus unless you're truly in an urban urban urban area, right? Yeah. Do any of these u amendments or maybe some amendments that are coming up correct any of the issues that were expressed? I think it was the December 16th council meeting, the whole Jurgen Road development.

Do any of these or future ones address some of those? That's yeah, that's the one that I was speaking to you earlier about the commercial mixeduse district that if you're proposing a residential if you want to propose a primarily residential like residential only would no longer be permitted. You would it would the amendment that we've drafted would require there to be um an upper story residential component which by default means you have to have a commercial element on the first floor for you to qualify part of your use as upper story residential. Yeah, we had a little bit of a hiccup with uh continuing care facilities. They were kind of called out um as an exception to household living. Um but under the household living residential use continuing care is um so that was just a contradiction that we needed to to eliminate. Um and then there was some redundancy you see there between 6.43 and 6.41. Um in addition I didn't this didn't make it into the slide. Um, but you will see in your report, and I should have flipped this ahead of time so I didn't have to dig to find it. But one of our other common questions is regarding fences for single family residential lots.

24. Thank you. Of course, I just got to it.

So, um, staff did some research for me. I said, "Well, I think we can walk this on. This is fairly minor and it actually provides probably more relief to some folks in Garner as opposed to creating a new hurdle. It actually is more flexible. Um so again thinking about your corner side yard. So not you're on that corner lot. You have your front yard where your front door faces. Currently, the way the ordinance is written, if you want to have a six-foot fence, you can only fence in the backyard. So, on your corner side, you can only come up to the back corner of your house, but on the other side,

you can actually come to the front corner of your house. And we get a lot of folks that are like, "Oh, I'm being penalized. I can't, you know, have a six-foot more of a privacy fence for some of this side of my yard." Um, and again, there's a delicate balance there. You don't want to have it, we want to kind of keep the front yard and this corner side feeling a little bit the same, but I'll admit, tying your fence into the back corner of the house is just kind of an awkward thing. Anyhow, um so we surveyed our surrounding communities and we really land we landed on Holly Springs's uh example. They will allow you to fence in with that six feet up to the midpoint of your house in that corner side yard. The biggest concern from a, you know, a a neighborhood community safety standpoint is that you don't want that six-foot fence coming too close to the intersection because then you're blocking line of sight. And so that's really the the impetus behind not allowing folks to come all the way to the front corner. Um but we couldn't really we couldn't find any example where coming halfway would interfere with that sight triangle. Um, so that's what this proposal, this new proposal in the package is all about is just allowing again wherever single family detached is allowed. And so all those districts there are listed um that we would allow that fence, that 6ft fence to come a little bit further up in that corner side yard. Once you're in the front or the remainder of that

corner side, you can still have a fence, but it can only be four feet tall. Any questions or thoughts on that? Seem reasonable.

And admittedly, we um you know, we don't do a we require a permit. Does everybody get one? It's one of those education things where, you know, they don't have to get a building permit. So, there's really not a good mechanism other than education and with new subdivisions, HOAs, um, to really get the word out. And so occasionally um we'll get called to do some other type of code enforcement inspection and then it's oh yeah have this fence that's too tall. Um technically in very few cases it does it come so far that it's been a true issue where we've just had to say we really you're gonna have to fix this. you can bring it so far, but you're going to have to replace this part because you're blocking a sight uh triangle. So, like I say, this should give reasonable relief to folks um in that regard. So, that's all I'm going to plan to talk. The rest is up to you as to what questions you have or what kind of scenarios you might want to run through. Um, the floor is yours. Would we be best to table this until you review some of the comments that were made to flush out a couple of those things or or do we

I don't know in in my mind I don't know that anything really rose to that level of needing to do that. If you want me to do that, we can certainly do that. Um, we can also we always make the motion with those changes to be Yeah. I mean it still has to go before council anyway. So you got you have time to Yeah. tweak that. Yeah. And some of those things are always things that again I didn't really sense anything critical

maybe might be nice to consider. um you know if if there's something and and we'll we'll go back and look at those and we'll decide whether you know we think something should be proposed if it's reasonable. Um and if for some reason something doesn't make it in we can always talk about it again but there will be another text amendment package coming very shortly.

Um so yeah.

Okay. Well, if there's any other discussion or questions, I think you answered a lot of things the overview. Um, so if there are no other questions, is there a motion from the commission? I'll make a motion. Um, I move the planning commission accept the consistency statement drafted herein as her own rec written recommendation regarding the consistency of the requests of the town's adopted land use plans. recommend approval of case ZTA-24-00001 to the town council with any text amendments that may come out of further review.

Okay, we have a motion. Is there a second? I can second that. Thank you, Mr. Borland. We have a motion and a second. All right, that is the motion on the floor and I will call the vote. Shane Banks. Hi, Mariah Bishop. Hi, Ralph Carson. Hi, Philip Jefferson. Hi, Gianhon Hodes. Hi, Ben Mills. Hi, Michael Boland. I That is seven eyes. The motion passes. Thank you so much. We have passed the motion. Reports from the our director.

I do not have a formal report for you tonight. Um, I was telling some folks I was planning to kind of collect my thoughts yesterday because I knew today was going to be a busy day. Um, but unfortunately I had to spend most of the day with my mother-in-law um, in the hospital. So, that was always fun. Um, but she's doing fine. She's doing good. Um, but had to had to take that time. Um, but uh I would like to I would be remiss not to uh put in a plug again for the transportation plan. Um I know we've got our various folks assigned to the different committees. Um but we're really starting to push hard with that process. We had our first uh technical committee meeting of you know technical staff u to kind of kick off. It wasn't um it wasn't ideal because we had it scheduled for the Monday that town hall was closed after the the snow.

Um so we did it virtually and and it you know anytime you you switch to virtual it's sometimes hard to really get the conversation going. We we did um but it was a little unfortunate that we had to do that. We delayed it then it was like well we really don't want to delay it further. Um, so we we had that first technical committee meeting though and it did go good. I think it by towards the last half hour it really kind of people were getting their wheels turning around some things. Um, we're very excited though for the upcoming advisory committee meeting. Um, we had a had a little prep for that earlier today. Um definitely going to be a lot more talking from advisory community members and more listening on the consultants part. Um so they're really prepping. So I know um Mariah you had something come up. Um I'm sure there will be a way um for us to frame that and be able to give that um to you to provide some some feedback offline as well. um because we certainly don't want to miss miss anything that you might want to add. Um so yeah, just continue to be on the lookout if you know of anyone who has a particular interest in a transportation item but doesn't you know have a whole lot of time. We are looking to we are in the process of scheduling some um stakeholder interviews in small groups um at towards the end of the month probably be the last week of the month. Um, so if you do know of anybody right off hand in the next couple of days, um, feel free to let us know and, um, we can put them in contact with

Julian and, um, he's kind of fielding. We've got feelers out in as many places as we can and as names are coming in, we're trying to group people with somewhat similar interests um, to sit in on those and just provide some very specific um, feedback. Um but then we will have our I think in March um our big communitywide open house um which if you were around for the first part of the comprehensive plan um we did at the rec center and was very well attended um got lots of people moving through and we hope to be able to repeat that and hopefully maybe even improve on it. Um, so more to come on that. Probably have a little more deta probably have details on that actually for you at your next meeting. And when you say stakeholders, do you mean like you guys are going to be serveing like people in the community or

Yeah. Um, it's it's really more along the lines of people who might be either, you know, just have a very specific transportation interest

maybe related to either, you know, just from their everyday life. Maybe there's something about their commuting pattern or they're with an organization that does deliveries um you know and uses the road network or somebody who's more into um you know the affordability issues and how trans transportation intersects with that. Um so really anything we we've really not tried to narrow it down too much. Um, but just kind of just say anybody who really has a a passion about something transportation related and they'd like to have the opportunity to share um their perspective with us.

All right. Okay. Hey, anything from the planning commissioner?

Um, about the Benson Bridge over 70. Just one comment. I'm just surprised at how quickly that happened. Um, it it looks good. Um, I'm surprised that the on and off were developed as quickly as it was, that the receding of of sod and grass is all complete. Um, will Benson Road be that wide, that is the new bridge and the old bridge, or is the old bridge coming down? Old bridge is coming down. Oh,

so they're gonna move traffic to the new one and then take the old one down. Correct. Yes. Because of the proxim particularly because of the proximity of Garner fire station one. Um they were required to build the new one while keeping the old one optimal. So it had to be a side by side. Second question out. Second question, and this may be that I'm just forgetting. Um, we approved the project that's being built some residences behind the post office. Yes,

there's a building there that says outpatient surgical center. Yes. I don't remember that. Did Did I totally miss that? I don't think so. Um, I believe that was actually a permitted by right because that property did have a commercial zoning to it. So, the town homes actually had to come in, I believe, because they needed to be reszoned to more of a residential district. Yeah. Um, but that same day surgical center, um, I feel like it's dental. Yeah, it's a dental same day surgery center that was a permitted by right.

Okay. So, they just had to go through the site plan process and we had to coordinate the two to make sure that they got their shared driveway together, which was a little bit of a challenge, wasn't it, David? Was it really was it was it a challenge to do? Um, just just a little bit. You know, any any time that you have two developers building a shared piece of infrastructure, it can be a little bit of a challenge, but ultimately they came together and we got it. That's it. That's awesome.

I got a question for Miss Jones, but I don't need an answer tonight, but something that was mentioned tweaked tweaked my uh memory. Uh last May we talked about House Bill 765 and there was some uh concerns about loss of control from council and commission and commission and perhaps planning. Um that was one aspect of it and then another aspect was the personal liability. If if you don't have an update on that House Bill 765, maybe you could look at that and let us know next month, the next meeting. I'm just curious where that kind of come down on um there was there was personal liability on council side and there may or may not have been on the planning commission side and I think the board of adjustment was kind of rolled under the council umbrella if I recall correctly. But like I said, I don't need an answer tonight. I just wanted to uh something that got brought up kind of

brought that back in my memory.

Terry Jonestown attorney so we get this on the record. um that bill did not pass. So we have continued to monitor whether those types of provisions pop into another bill, but so far they have not. So um the League of Municipalities, which the town of Garner is a member, you know, is looking at this pretty closely. Okay. Oh, thank you.

Yes, we don't want personal liability on behalf of our volunteer board members. However, if that would become a law, then my guess is the town would end up buying an insurance policy to cover to cover you like other employees are covered. But while I have this opportunity, if unless you had another question, I would like to introduce Diamond Spain. She is our new assistant town attorney. Uh we will have two assistant town attorneys and me as the town attorney. So, a three member legal department going forward when when Miss Pierce returns from her um her extended leave of absence.

Wonderful. Well, welcome. Thank you so much for being with us. Welcome to Thank you so much, Miss Jones. Uh so, if there is no other business, um we will call our meeting ajourned. Thank you all.