Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for watching. Thank you.

Okay, welcome everybody to the City of Grand Rapids Planning Commission meeting for May 28th, 2026. We have a few public hearings today, but before we get started, I'll just quickly run through kind of how each case will go. So first, we'll have a member of the city staff, planning staff, come up and give us their report. The applicant will then have an opportunity to come to the microphone and tell Commission any additional information that you'd like us to consider. At that point, we will open up a public hearing. If you are here from the public and want to give us your thoughts on a case, we'll ask you to come up to the microphone, introduce yourself, and then you will have up to three minutes to provide your comments to the Planning Commission. So we ask that you don't talk to the audience. We've asked folks in the audience to be respectful of everyone's comments and quiet and not clap or boo or any of that. So we just want this to be a comfortable environment for folks to give us their thoughts. After that the applicant will have an opportunity to address any comments that were raised and then the Commission will deliberate and make a decision. We are being streamed live on Facebook and YouTube. And then for folks who may not be aware, staff drafts provides us some draft language with findings both kind of for and against. each case for us to use at our discretion. So if you see folks reading when they're making a motion, we do have that language to work from, but nothing has been decided beforehand and we have complete discretion to modify that language. And with that, we can get back to the agenda and we'll start with conflicts of interest. Any conflicts of interest today? Okay, then we can move forward with 755 Michigan Street. Or, yeah. Avery will walk us through this.

All right, the first item on the agenda is 755 Michigan Street Northeast. A little bit of background on this property. So in 2021, the Planning Commission approved this existing restaurant, which is known as Taco Bracho, with alcohol service until 2 a.m. Along with that approval, outdoor seating was also approved on this east patio until 1.30 in the morning, as well as a 20-seat outdoor seating area on the west patio that could also be accessed through pocket doors shown here. This area was all supposed to be for events and overflow seating for the restaurant. The operating hours for that outdoor seating area were until 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. At that time, a parking waiver was also approved in association with the outdoor seating. Today, the applicant is before you to request approval to establish mobile food vending operations within a converted shipping container. This is the area that they are proposing for that on the west patio. and this is what is proposed. The request was originally submitted through the qualified review process, which allows mobile food vending operations for 90 days or more, and as part of that process, notices are mailed to property owners within 300 feet of the site, and that allows them to have the opportunity to request a public hearing. With that process, we received one request for a public hearing, and so that is why this request is before you today. The 2024 Community Master Plan identifies this property as a community activity center, which provides walkable places to live, work, and shop around key intersections and corridors. We have TNMDR zoning to the north, and the site is surrounded by TNTBA zone districts to the east, west, and south. To the north and west, we do have medium-density residential uses, and to the south and east, we have mixed-use commercial uses. Relative to the site itself, it is located at the northwest corner of Eastern Avenue and Michigan Street, and the existing building is located at the southeastern portion of the property with parking on the northern portion of the site. Operationally, the applicant is proposing to expand that western patio and the pergola area to accommodate for the shipping container. The shipping container will function as an outdoor kitchen that will serve quick order fast food items such as hot dogs. And the area is proposed to have 20 seats. which is consistent with what was previously approved in 2021, and so no additional parking is required for this use. The proposed hours are also consistent with what was previously approved with 10 p.m. on Sunday through Thursday and then 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. For the site improvements, the proposed pergola will measure approximately 35 feet long by 18 feet wide and 12 feet tall and clear panels are proposed above. There will also be fencing that will delineate the outdoor seating area. So as you can see, there's a three foot tall fence proposed along the Michigan Street sidewalk and then a six foot tall fence proposed here along the northern parking lot area just to define that area. There is signage proposed and that will need to comply with the zoning ordinance requirements for signage. Additionally, there is an existing six foot tall fence along the west property line abutting that residential use to the west and the applicant is proposing a five foot wide landscape buffer along that property line as well. In terms of neighborhood input, staff has received several letters of support that have been included in your packets. And with that, some key considerations for you are satisfied, particularly regarding to potential noise and odor impacts and whether any additional neighborhood concerns are raised during the public hearing today. With that, do you have any questions for me before I turn over to the applicant? Thank you, Avery. Any questions for Avery?

Nope. All right. Thank you. I have the applicant come up.

How you doing? My name is Angel Gonzalez. I'm the owner of Taco Borracho and the building. Thank you for hearing the application. So yeah, I guess where can I start? This kind of arose from a couple things. First thing is, the building was a car wash. And we took a building, we converted it into what it is, and we have these two spaces on each end. And particularly on this end, we're kind of left with this gap there. In the original approval for Taco Borracho, We did get this patio approved and the patio was actually approved to extend up to within five feet of the property line. But when we were designing the patio to put the pergola, it just didn't make any sense because we didn't need that additional space. It was just going to be like overkill. So like, well, let's just leave it open. But that's kind of created this void there. You have this gap there where people kind of just use it as a pass-through. So it's kind of a weird, it's just a weird space. You know, you're fronting on Michigan Street and I felt that we could do something better. We could do something more. We can create some more activation on Michigan Street. Part of it was driven from conversations with the Michigan Street Corridor. I've been really active with them in trying to do things to make the corridor better and improve the corridor. And one of the things we were discussing was how can we create more outdoor space? How can we really work to enhance the social zone for the corridor where people can get a drink somewhere and walk down the block. So all of this kind of came from that. And then also, just as a business owner, obviously people understand that the restaurant industry is a tough industry right now. I would have did this if it was great or not. I would have tried to do something different here because I think it's a unique opportunity. But it provides some additional retail space that's really inexpensive. And I think it's a great opportunity. And in fact, I think this is something that would be nice to see in other places in the city of Grand Rapids to provide more affordable opportunities for potential restaurateurs or other people who want to do retail space or some small coffee shops. I had a couple things here that I wanted to mention. Make sure I don't forget. So, yeah, as far as the restaurant and the use, so it's a shipping container that's going to be converted into an outdoor kitchen. It's a very small menu. We have like seven or eight items. That's it. Everything is essentially pre-cooked. It is Chicago style, so you would have, you know, Chicago style hot dogs, polishes, Italian beefs, meatball subs. So there's nothing... We're not cooking anything on the grill, per se, other than, you know, we would throw some grilled onions on there. That's really it. So with the menu that we have... Again, the only thing that would go on that road would be that. Everything else is steam, they're in steamers. Again, we wanted to create another opportunity. One of the things that came from the conversation was having an access point from Michigan Street to be able to access it. Obviously you can access it from inside, you can access it from the rear, but being able to have a little entrance on Michigan Street I think would be phenomenal. I think it'd be great for the community, it's great for us. And everybody that we've had conversations with have been supportive so far. Obviously, I'm aware that there's a neighbor, it's a residential use, and he's been there for a long time. So taking that into consideration and doing what we can to make sure that we're being responsible with that is important to me. We did attempt, or we are, we want to put this landscape buffer there with these arborvitae, which I think would be nice. We did have a different version of this. This is the version we ended up with, which kind of shifted where the container was going to be from where we originally had proposed to where it is now. I think, you know, as long as we, that backside of that container, as long as we have that buffer and, you know, obviously we keep it clean, it's not going to be, I don't think, any more impactful than what it is now. Obviously the hope is that we do drive more people there. That's, you know, you operate a business, that's what you want. We use that patio a lot during, you know, this time of year especially. You know, we have private parties and private events and that's typically when it's used. You know, outside of that, we're not, you know, we have enough seating inside and with the other patio to accommodate, you know, Taco Borracho. But yeah, that's it. So if you have any other questions, I think that covers most of it. The roof is obviously so we can use it when it's, you know, it's rain or shine, which is nice. It's a clear covered roof, which instead of just doing kind of a, you know, a gray, dark, bland roof, I want to put clear panels on the roof so that you can still get the daylight, which I think would be pretty nice. So yeah, I... For me, the most important thing, as you can see with this place and other things I've done in the city, it's always aesthetics. How can we make this thing look really, really nice, really, really cool, where it feels like this is a place that people want to go and they want to go in and enjoy it. And that's what I try to create with what we have here, was find a new use for this space that, again, is kind of weird given what it was prior versus now.

Great, thank you. Any questions for the applicant? Go ahead.

Angel, I have a couple of questions for you. The arborvitae I think is a nice addition. In my experience planting arborvitaes along my backyard, those are maybe a 10 to 15 year timeline to get that tall. So I'm just wondering at time of planting, is there an opportunity for you to look for maybe more mature than what I chose? understanding that you're using it as a mitigation measure to screen a relatively intense use next to a residential, but that image that you saw, which I think is attractive, is going to be many years before it looks like that.

Absolutely so. The arborvitae game. I've encountered the same issues. I've planted many arborvitaes in my life. So my goal is to find a mature tree because I understand they do take a long time. So I just planted two new trees in the east patio. We had put some trees there and they just weren't growing. This was when we first opened the restaurant. I want a canopy within my lifetime. So we took those trees out and we bought trees that were 17 feet in height already and they're great. So I'm absolutely committed to doing that. If we can set a number, it's kind of hard to find. I just bought some from my yard because I had some that died and they were already grown. Anything over 15 feet might be tough, but between 10 to 15 feet, I'm sure I could find and commit to that and say that I'll make sure that I have arborvitae that are at least a minimum of 10 feet when we plant them, yeah.

Okay, so that might be something for the Planning Commission to consider, but just struck me again based on my experience planting. I'm okay with it, yeah. My other question is, when the original hours of operation were put on by the Planning Commission with your original approval, that outdoor patio space was kind of viewed as like an amenity to a private dining space. So in my impression of that would be it would be less frequently used than perhaps the dining room. I'm not sure that that is how it's been operating. I'm not trying to pick that apart as much as I'm just wondering whether have you given consideration given the hope and anticipated frequency of using it, whether 11 p.m. is still a reasonable time frame? Is that something that you're open to?

Yeah, actually, I have thought of that, because I anticipated that that might be a question, especially from you, so because... Unpredictable. No, I know, you ask good questions. So I think that The space has been utilized, right? So we do use it for private events, but there's weekends where we're super busy and that space comes in handy and we use it. So my intention when we, obviously when we got approval, I did say that we were gonna use it for private parties and stuff like that. It's nice to have that space, but my intent was and the hope was that we can use it all the time, right? We can use it because we're that busy and we need that space to be able to take care of our patrons. I think that, you know, the restaurant right now, we've kind of shifted our hours to, you know, it's always a work in progress. So we've pulled back on some of our hours, actually, with Taco Borracha because it's just, you know, just the way it works better for us. Those are just the way the numbers work. So from Sunday until Thursday, we're now open until 9 p.m. 30, three of those days and 10 p.m. on Sunday, I'm sorry, 10 p.m. on Sunday and then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday until 9.30 p.m. We do like, we might push it back to 10 because of the summer now and more people are there so people like coming out a little bit later. So the time is till 10. Our, also Friday and Saturday we kind of pulled the hours back a little bit more. You know, we were staying open till 1.30 a.m. It just, you know, it doesn't really benefit us to the way that we need it to benefit us and You know, you gotta be careful, because at that time, you know, people out there are acting silly, and they probably drank too much, and I don't want to be a part of that, right? So, and that's just me, not to anybody else. So we did pull them back. So on Friday, we're open until 12.30 a.m., and then Saturday, 1 a.m. now. But we start shutting down about a half hour before both of those times. I think on that end, I think it's perfectly fine. I mean, when you think about it realistically, if we could set the same hours till 10 p.m. every day, I'm perfectly okay with that. And I would say that if there's, Yeah, I was going to say if there's any exception, it would be that the intent is probably still to be able to use it for kind of a private party. But even with the private parties, by 11 o'clock, I want everybody out of there. I'm not shutting it down at 11. I try to make sure that there's nobody in there at 11. Our staff comes in, they clean it, and we're done, and we pull the garage door down. So that's the way we've used that space. And we've done a really good job about that. But if that's where we have to land, I think that's okay. I think that's reasonable. I think with the operation, I mean, that's kind of what it's going to be. It's going to be a lunch till, you know, maybe 9 o'clock, 9.30, and that's when you get the rush, and then you're done, and you clean up, and you're out by 10.

I think that's... And we're just... I'm just talking about the patio space. No, I understand. No, I understand.

No, I'm talking about just the patio space. Yes, yes. I just don't want it to be... No, I understand. I get what you said.

I don't want to unnecessarily restrict you by my confusion.

No, no, I understood what you meant. Yeah, I got it. Yeah.

Any other questions? Okay, then we'll have you have a seat. All right, we'll open up the public hearing. If you're here and would like to provide feedback on this case, please make your way to the mic and give us your thoughts.

My name is Kenneth Roberts. I'm at the house next door at 741 Michigan Street. And for the last four years, I've put up with hell living next door to this place with him not complying with any of his times. The garage doors don't come down. There's partying, smoking, alcohol leaving the premises. My daughter's bedroom window is outside of that door. And I've got videos should anybody want. You know, you drop your USB drive later. and show you the hell I've gone through with all his accommodations in the neighborhood. I am so opposed to this that I'll go to whatever it takes to have this not happen. Because it won't do what he said and it'll be loud and it'll be one in the morning and it'll be hell again. And it's finally kind of been okay, but even just last Saturday. Two Saturdays ago, 10.30 at night. I want to read this. What is it?

What do you hear?

Four years of this shit.

From outside?

The music? Is it annoying you?

I hear it. I can hear it.

They can hear it. That's a minor clip. I've got hours if you need it. So I'm just here to tell you that I don't want any part of this going on next door to me anymore. I've lived in that house for 25 years. I've been on Michigan Street for 30. I've watched the full transition of this city. And I've lived next door to everybody. And this guy's the only one that's been a pain in my ass in that 30 years. And he's a liar. And he doesn't do anything he says he's going to do. And that's all I got. Short of that, I'm done. And I ain't going anywhere. I'm not moving. If that thing expands to my house, we're going to have problems. I'm just done. I'm tired of it. He's bullshitted you all with this whole thing since the beginning. He doesn't stay within his licensing whatsoever.

Thank you.

Can I respond to that?

When I close the public hearing, you'll have an opportunity. Anybody else would like to speak to this case? Okay, I will close the public hearing. Yeah, you now may respond.

So this is nothing new. So I've been there for five years and I anticipated this as well. We've done a phenomenal job. That corner is absolutely beautiful. You guys allowed us to take this building and turn it into this use. We have windows everywhere that we open. And that's part of what this place is. I went and I actually filed, he lives next to Mom's, he lives across the street from Friesian, from Dukes, from Glass House. I went and filed a Freedom of Information request about a year ago to look up police reports. And I'm not throwing those guys under the bus. They do what they do. Those places have had probably upwards of 80 phone calls in a 12-month period for the things that he's claiming we are. We haven't had any of those phone calls. There was a period early on where we were approved to do... We have a live music license. So we were approved to do live music. And there was a period early on where we were extending beyond those hours with the DJ. And I didn't know. I wasn't aware that a DJ met live entertainment. That was my fault. We accepted responsibility. We had communications with the planning department. And we fixed that. And we've dialed that all the way back. But there is music playing. We're not blasting it like that, like the way he sang. He says his life has been miserable. He lives next to Bob's, Duke's, and Glass House. You're not getting what those places are doing from us at all. That's never been the case. I am going to defend myself because I find that to be very wrong that he's up here saying that. You don't have anybody else up here saying that. You just have him up here saying that. I tried to accommodate him. I tried to reach out to him if he needs anything, if he has an issue with something. I'll do what I can to fix it. But that characterization is completely false. It's not true at all. And it's completely wrong. And I've dealt with that for so many years here. And I'm not going to stand for it this time. It's not right. It doesn't bear that out. And if that was the case, then he should call the cops on me every time there's a problem. He should do that, and they should come out and they should say, hey, you know, we have a problem, but that's not what's happening. The issues with the police when they came out was because we did have some live music that was going a little bit beyond those hours, and that's why I dialed it back, because I said, you know what, it's not worth the headache for me, it's not worth the risk, and I don't want to upset anybody beyond that. We do enjoy being able to have live music. We're the only minority-owned business on that whole corridor that both I own the business and I own the building. It's something that I take with a lot of pride to be able to have Latinites there where we have Salsanites and we have people from all different backgrounds coming and enjoying our space. That's a beautiful thing. But we're not doing what some of these other places are doing. That is not factual whatsoever. So thank you. That's all I have to say about that.

Thank you. Any additional questions for staff or the applicant? Go ahead, yeah.

I'm sorry, Angel, I have thought of another question. So can you please clarify for me, is there live entertainment specific to this west patio? Is there live entertainment being proposed as part of this request?

No, no, no.

So the live entertainment takes place inside?

Yes, the live entertainment, whenever we've had live entertainment, the live entertainment is kind of in the, well, here, I don't have a pointer, but it's kind of over here by the middle, where the bar is, kind of the middle, here, I'll show you.

Whenever we do live entertainment, we do live entertainment here.

Remember, all of our windows open up. You can go down Bridge Street at any time at 12 a.m. and you have the bars down there playing music and you hear it out on the road. To an extent that we don't exceed that. Now, it can get loud down there. And again, there was moments like that early on a couple years in. But we're four years in now. That's not what's happening there.

When you have live entertainment, which you had approval for that, I agree. That garage door that you mentioned, does that garage door come down when you have live entertainment?

So live entertainment, we can only have live entertainment until 11 p.m. That's it. So when that's done, we... Obviously, everybody's out of there. There's times where we don't have it down right away because we've got to go back there and we have to clean it. But I've informed my staff. If my staff was here, they would say, hey, listen, we've got to make sure that we get that door down when we can. As far as noise and people outside and stuff like that, I can't control what people do outside of that.

I'm talking about how you operate.

Your question is, there's no live entertainment in that patio whatsoever.

And when you have live entertainment, your operating plan would show that you're pulling the garage door down.

Absolutely.

The garage door would generally come down.

By that time, yes.

Part of this request appears to have some... ancillary background music on the patio, is that correct? Did I make that up?

Yeah, there's nothing in there related to that. So that back room there, obviously we have speakers in there, so you hear some music. I think it's within reason that you wanna sit down and you wanna hear some casual music. I mean, I think that should be perfectly fine and okay, but it doesn't go beyond that, no, no.

Okay, so the thought is to have some, you may have music with speakers, but not to amplify beyond the limits. No, no, no. It's below conversation.

I think there's enough music from that back, well you can't see it, this is not a good drawing, but in the restaurant, inside that garage door, when we open up that garage door, you can see it here, We have some speakers in there, and there's some music playing, but that's always pretty mellow there.

Sure, but there's no speakers on the patio?

No, no, no, no. There's no speakers on the patio right now at all, no.

Okay.

There never has been.

So the garage door might be open when there is speaker music in that dining space inside. Sure, sure.

Now he's laughing, but there have been times when we've had private events where somebody has brought a speaker, but we were well within the designated time that we were given by the planning commission.

Sorry, I just want to make... Yeah. You know, yes, we have had many conversations about hours of operation, compliance, et cetera, so that's why I just want to be making sure for you and I both, as we move forward if the Planning Commission's inclined to approve, that we're very clear about what can and can't happen, and some of that will obviously come from what are you asking to do, so that's why I'm being particular.

Absolutely. No, I get it. Yeah, that's fair.

Go ahead, yeah.

I just wanted to be clear, too, about when there's live music inside. you will have the garage doors closed.

No. So that garage door closes at 11 p.m. That's the time that we were allowed to use that patio. So what we try to do is obviously honor that. So we can have live music inside on Friday and Saturday until 11 p.m., and then after that, there's no more live entertainment. And that patio, we shut that patio down. So at 11, no matter whether there's live music or not, that patio door has always been shut down at that time on those two days, Friday and Saturday. Prior to that, obviously it has to be shut down earlier because of the time that we were given. So we have done that. And one more point that I'd like to make about the music, that we took it a step further, is that When we were having that discussion back and forth and there was a little bit of conflict about, hey, what can I do and what's okay and what's not okay, I wanted to understand, what does it say to the letter? Not that I want to exceed that or toe the line of that, But when we had a conversation with the city attorney, he said, you know, these are the decibels that you have to have. And we went out there and we've measured that. We've figured that out. And we tried to make sure that we stay way underneath that. But, of course, if the windows are open, you're going to hear music. If you're walking down the sidewalk and we have the windows open, even if it's at a modest rate, you're going to hear music because that's the nature of what we have. It's an open door venue restaurant that we have here. It's not uncommon throughout the rest of the country, it may be here because obviously we have a colder climate and you don't see many places like that with those kind of windows that open and doors that open up. But again, we were taking a space And we had a unique opportunity, and I think we did a great job on trying to capitalize on that by creating these open spaces with the garage doors and the windows. And it's unique, and people love it, and people come all the time. Hey, where did you get those? We would love to do that in our business. So that's all I was trying to do.

Thank you for the added context. Thank you. Okay, any other questions? All right, it's time for discussion then. Not everyone all at once.

No, I'm just trying to figure out ways that we can mitigate any disturbances in the neighborhood. And there are a lot of bars around here. But I also, yeah, I don't know if we can put some limitations on live music and having the... the doors closed at that point or not, but I don't know, I'm just trying to come up with ideas that we could come up with to help mitigate that. I think having a more substantial landscape buffer like Kristen was suggesting with the larger arborvitaes will help somewhat, but I'm also just like trying to think what else we could do.

But the use itself, you Others?

One point we might be missing. If the hours are going to be limited on Friday and Saturday until 10 p.m., then that garage will be closed by 10 p.m. So that kind of helps with what you're saying there. So, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I think the question that maybe we're considering is maybe, well, I guess from my point of view, maybe it's not that every window has to be closed when live music is happening, but maybe that garage door should be closed or could be closed just to minimize the impact going straight west. So that might be something that. we're considering, and I guess I would like your thoughts on that.

So yeah, the only issue with that is that obviously if, so Mike, we have the seating on the inside, right? So obviously if you're using this space, and my thought is if you're out here, you're using that space, but you want to sit inside as well, you can, right? So you can go from in to out. So the only way to kind of help mitigate that is, hey, listen, by 10 o'clock, we have to be done. Like, that space is done, we're done outside. My staff, we can lower that garage door at that point and there may be a little bit of cleaning, but since we have access at the back, we can clean and they can go out and when they're done, they're done. So that kind of gets to the crux of it is that because of the live music, but it's nice to be able to, I don't wanna put that garage door down.

Because that's the only way that people flow in and out of that side.

And they're gonna go into the bathroom that way as well. Gotcha, okay. But if the line is say 10, than that and typically live entertainment that's another thing we're not really doing it till 11 o'clock anymore either you know if we have a DJ you know that goes up until then and then we kind of just switch over and people can you know curate their music through you know the iTunes or something like that sure thank you yeah alright and this is part of a social zone is that correct yeah okay a social zone yep

So part of our consideration here is approval to establish mobile food vending out of the shipping container. Do we have floor plan drawings of the layout of equipment and cooking things that will be in the shipping container? I'm not seeing it in our packet.

I did submit

so a couple things in the application you state that cooking and food preparation would be limited to reheating steaming Pre-cooked products sourced from approved vendors. Prep will be limited to warming and steaming of these items. But then the on-site cooking will include commercial deep fryer for french fries and similar side items. Ancillary heating equipment. And then it says no full-scale cooking operations. But I guess my concern is you put a fryer in there, you've got a hood, you've got extra noise from that. And what impact does that have on the adjacent neighbor as well? Especially without having a floor plan with the equipment layout. There's no hood shown here. Even with a food truck that has a fryer you have to have a hood. But there's no hood shown here. I don't have enough information here to be comfortable approving the mobile food vending without having more to go on, right? I just think this is incomplete.

We're not seeing it with the submission, so I don't know.

I added it when we did the initial, the qualified review. I submitted it there. So it's basically, you have a deep fryer and you have a 24-inch griddle. And I kind of have a picture, I can't really see it, but And obviously there is a hood, because you have to have a hood. So you have deep fryer, 24-inch griddle, and it's a steamer, refrigerators, and things of that nature, and that's it. So it is very minimal. And obviously we're working with a kind of a minimal space as well, right? It's shipping containers, a smaller space. So you're trying to fit enough in there. And again, that's why we're like, hey, we're not going to do this. It's not... This big menu, it's a very small menu. And again, everything is pre-cooked with the exception of the fries because you have to deep fry your fries. But yeah, I did submit it. It just doesn't look like maybe we missed it. Also, another point that I failed to make is that, again, with the corridor, part of the motivation, again, is that the corridor approved the grant for us. Without the grant, we wouldn't be doing it. So they're going to be financing a portion of the construction, which I think is great. It helps us to do what we want to do here.

That is something, so I can't find it quick enough as part of the planning commission packet, so if it was submitted as part of another related review and or you have it in your email, the best I can, if that's something that the Planning Commission feels is necessary for a decision, we could table for now, give probably Avery a moment to be able to run copies and then later in the meeting put it back on the table with a hand copy of the layout of the food truck. Otherwise, I'm not finding it quick enough to be helpful to you.

Yeah, I'd like to see that. I'd like to see where it vents and stuff like that.

Okay.

You have deep thoughts?

I guess I am open to if folks want to see that information before we make a decision. I don't think I need to see it to make a decision, but obviously everyone... If other folks need that, then we should do that.

So you're suggesting you're in favor of approving it as submitted?

Yeah, I appreciate the applicant committing to having a minimum 10 foot tree height to begin with there. I think that is a mitigation measure. We're in a social zone. This is a corridor that the city wants to be active. We have time constraints on operations. It's not adding seating outside, so it's the same level that was approved in the past in terms of seating capacity. But again...

If he says there's a hood... What would sway the decision? Would it be the direction the hood is placing or the BTU or volume of the fan?

I guess it's to better understand the intensity of the cooking use, it would be helpful to understand the equipment layout. How many fryers? How big is the hood? How big is the exhaust with that? I mean, to be clear, I'm supportive of what you're doing here, and I think it's good. But even looking back at the 2021 minutes, the biggest concern was how we treated the two different patio areas. The one at the intersection, I think we all viewed one way. This is at a busy intersection. This is... important space to add vibrancy to the neighborhood it's kind of a it's it's beautiful I think you've done a great job with that but I think we were discussing the Western patio a little differently we had greater concerns about the hours of operation and what type of music if any speakers none from the discussion that we had then TVs none from that discussion So I'm still in this camp of I don't want to think about the patio at the intersection the same as the patio on the west side of the building. My concern with cooking that requires a hood is hoods are just loud all the time when you're open. They don't get quiet. I am concerned about that. The fact that it's not shown is a little concerning. Again, I'm all about adding the vibrancy, utilizing that space more. I want to support that. I just want to make sure that it's not at the detriment of the immediately adjacent resident. I'm torn.

I want to see it work. But I want to see it work for everybody. The hood is a five-foot hood, so it's a smaller hood. It's not a gigantic hood. But, yeah, I mean, I guess I understand what you're getting at.

Do you have cut sheets on that? Could you get those for us? I'm curious if it talks about decibels and things of operating levels.

Well, we haven't. No, I don't have that right now. That would be, you know, obviously you get approval, then you. You know I'd submit it for a obviously a building permit so the building department has some of those things You know so there's still steps that you have to take after approval with with that, but you know You know time is time is always the issue. You know so Okay, thanks Others

Kyle, would it be helpful to see the drawings if we can get them? I don't have a problem tabling this until the end of the meeting if that gives us the information that we need to make a more informed decision.

I think since one of our Three considerations here is for the mobile food vending operation. I think it's important to understand what that is besides just a box structure where that operation is taking place. So I do think that that's important. I don't know necessarily how that'll impact our decision, but I think it's important for us to have that.

Can you expand on what the requirements are for decibels for a vent hood on a mobile truck in that section, 5.9.15? Is that something that we could say needs to stay within

The mobile food vending section does not have decibel levels specific to those operators. The noise ordinance would be the control controlling ordinance relative to decibel levels and it would be at the property line. I don't have those decibel maximums in front of me, but we do have them and I could reference them given a few moments.

I think for me, being able to see where the hood vent comes out of the shipping unit is going to be the most important thing to me. understanding if it's coming out the side directly facing that house or if it's coming out the back towards the parking lot or if it's coming out the roof. And that would be what I would want to understand because if it's coming out the side facing that house, it's going to be loud. And there's not a whole lot you can do to control decibels of a hood vent.

It comes out the roof. There's no other way to do it. It's just the roof.

Yeah, what I was going to say is if that is the crux, then is that simply a condition related to site layout that it can't be directly facing that property? Sure, right.

But again, without knowing where, I mean, thank you for clarifying that, but still seeing where it comes out on the roof...

Okay.

Could potentially have an impact.

Is it going to be under your pergo roof?

No, so the shipping container is, but you can't, there's a site plan.

The actual drawing, it doesn't look like you have the actual drawing that we submitted. So there's a carve-out on that back roof over the shipping container where the hood comes out. So this rendering here, we revised that because, again, this is the second version of what we did. But there is a Here, this section here is open and it comes out the top. So there's only two places you can put it. You can put it on the left side of the shipping container or the right side is where the hood can go.

But it does vent out the roof, the top of it, yeah.

And it is smaller than your average, you know, what you would find in a commercial kitchen.

You'll have one fryer, is that correct?

There's one fryer in there, yeah. One fryer, okay. There's not enough room for anything more, so.

So procedurally, what? So I've heard from at least two of you, but we would need, if the rest of the commission is inclined to want to see those plans, best case would be to table the item. Kendall, sorry, I'm staring you down, because it would be tabling the item. pending the additional information and then perhaps Avery and Angel can step aside and we can get copies, printed copies of that and at the end of the rest of the meeting bring this item off the table which both require motions to put it on the table and then pull it off the table.

Agree. I would just recommend we don't necessarily, it's not contingent on receipt of the information. Maybe we just indicate that we're postponing it until later on in our proceedings. I don't know if we want to do it at the very end of all the hearings today, for example. I think it'd be better if we just set a time, a time today that we're going to hear it if that's the intent at some point in this meeting.

Is that still then a table and, or is it just a motion to postpone until after such and such case?

Correct, a motion to postpone until blank, whatever you prefer. Okay.

Thank you. So if we look at our public hearings, we have this and then two more before the site plan review. So maybe postponing until after the Sparks case would be appropriate?

If that's what...

I guess is everybody on board with... We haven't heard from a few of you in terms of whether you need this to make your decision.

I don't feel like I need it, but I'm... Would rather have a consensus and more information for the sake of the applicant and just for consensus. Would you like to make a motion? Thank you.

I will make a motion to postpone until after the Sparks case. Sure.

Yes.

Second.

All right. We have a motion to support. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. We'll see you back up here in a little bit.

Thank you. Avery, you could probably go knock on Economic Development's door and ask them for some assistance with printing.

Or our office.

Or the sixth floor. Okay. All right. Let's move forward then to 2213 to 2311 Griggs Avenue. And Laura will walk us through this.

This next case is a request to amend a previously approved site plan for the Bretton Hamlet development. This development is on a 7.3-acre property located at the terminus of Griggs Street. In the MCN LDR zone district, the city of East Grand Rapids borders this property to the north. Low density residential surrounds the subject property on the west and south sides. To the east is neighborhood office services with offices, office uses on the east and residential surrounding the property on all other sides. The 2024 Community Master Plan identifies this area as compact neighborhood, which is intended to create, maintain, and promote a variety of housing opportunities while enhancing the physical characteristics of the existing neighborhoods. This plan came before the Planning Commission in August of 2020. The Planning Commission granted site plan review and special land use approval for a 48 dwelling development in four different building types. And in June of 2022, this came back to the Planning Commission to amend the site plan to remove a community building in the middle, kind of the north side of the property, and replace the community building with a pickleball court and a pergola. The site plan on the screen is the site plan that was approved in 2022 by the Planning Commission. As I mentioned, this development has a variety of both attached single family and detached single family homes. There are the attached single family homes were approved to be one and a half stories high and they are the carriage homes on the west side of the property, the cottage courts and muse courts. The homes in blue on the north side were approved as detached single family homes that could vary between one and two stories tall. So this is what the development looks like as of April of this year. It is partially constructed. There are four single family manor homes constructed on the north side of the property. There are seven, this group of cottage court buildings, seven units have been constructed. Three carriage homes, those are also attached single family, have been constructed. And you can see the pickleball court and pergola. This is a lot going on in the site plan. This is the approved site plan and it also identifies the proposed changes that are for your consideration today. The first change, shaded in yellow, is to reduce the side yard setback from 25 feet to 20 feet. I'll go over these changes, provide an overview, and then I'll talk about each one in more detail. The next request is in this blue cloud area. On the original plan, it was a three unit attached single family carriage home building, and it's proposed to be replaced with two single family detached homes. All of the dwellings that are not yet constructed, they are all circled in the red dotted line. They are all proposed to be Increased in floor area. And those structures that are shaded in orange, the building height is proposed to be increased. And finally, in the areas of the cottage courts that are shaded pink and purple, the courtyard area is proposed to be reduced in width. So a condition of the original Planning Commission approval for this project was that the attached single family buildings be no greater than one and a half stories tall. In considering these changes, because the proposed changes alter the basic design and the condition that I just mentioned specified in the original approval, and the increase of floor area is greater than 10%, planning commission review is required, which is why this case is before you today. I will first talk about the increased floor area and all of the units not yet constructed are proposed to be increased in size. The units were approved to range from 900 square feet to 2,400 square feet. The range of floor area of the units proposed will be 2,000 to 4,000 square feet. And this desired increase in floor area is the driving factor behind all of the other changes that we're going to talk about. The next change is the area on the northwest side of the property, shaded yellow, that was approved to be a 25-foot setback of that building. It is now proposed to be 20 feet, so reduced by 5 feet. This is an image of the area of the property where that carriage house building would be constructed. And this neighboring property is the property that would be closest to that building. And for reference, this is that building that would be set back 20 feet from that west property line. And you can see this group of three buildings in the image on your screen. Those are the same type of building, those carriage home buildings that have already been constructed. The next change we'll talk about is the increase of building height. All of the buildings shaded orange will be increased to two stories. The Muse Court building, Here's a rendering and floor plan of that building type. Those are the buildings you can see in the northeast corner of the property. They will be increased from 24 feet to 32 feet. The manor homes that were approved to range between, those are the detached single-family homes on the north side of the property. They were approved to range from one to two stories. If constructed to two stories, it would be... it would be 32 feet to the midpoint of the pitched roof. And I do want to mention here on your screen are the manor homes that are already constructed. And if we go back to the site plan, there will be a two-story detached, one of the manor homes, in the place where a one and a half story attached single family home was previously approved. And this is the area of the site that would, these two detached single family homes would be constructed. And finally, the cottage court buildings, they were approved to be 24 feet measured to the midpoint of the roof. They would be increased to 26 feet And I do also want to mention that the, here's an example of what the Cottage Court buildings look like as constructed, one and a half stories. And the rendering showing on the left side is what was approved. It's the south elevation. And the right side of this page shows what is proposed. And you can see the increased building height more to the interior of the site. Which brings me to the point, back to the site plan, and you can see those buildings shaded orange. All of the buildings along the periphery of the development are proposed to stay at that one and a half story height. And finally, the courtyard area of the courtyard buildings is proposed to be reduced in width and area. They were approved on the right side of the screen. You can see 27 feet wide. They are proposed to be 23 feet wide. I do want to mention that there were several letters received from the community. Many of them received this morning. Those have all been uploaded and are in the packets that are available to you. And most of the letters expressed some concern about the scale of the proposed changes and whether they match the character that was approved on the original site plan. In sum, we are asking the Planning Commission to consider the increased scale and massing of the buildings, the increased floor area, and the reduction of the courtyard area, and whether those changes are consistent with the character of the originally approved plan. the proposed 20-yard setback given the increased size and height of the dwellings relative to the adjacent residential property, and the impacts of the reduced courtyard area relative to the increased building height and floor area. Are there any questions for me?

I have one question. So the buildings that are constructed now, do they conform with the conditions of approval from the original? Yes, as far as I know they do. Okay, thank you. Other questions for Laura?

I think it's important to note that there is some administrative discretion that is used anytime we go from planning commission to building permit review. So plans you see are conceptual. Plans we see are construction plans. So admittedly, there are probably some modifications or changes that are between the site plan from Planning Commission and the building permit. So they are not an exact like for like, but it is evaluated based on the site plan review criteria of what is within our authority versus what becomes Planning Commission authority. So Laura gave a very firm yes, and I just wanted to say that there are some nuances there.

And then just to clarify, the Muse Court, even those on the periphery of the site for the Muse Court, those are also proposed to be increased to two stories, right?

Yes, thank you. They are on the periphery. They are on the east side is the office uses. There is some residential on the north side. So thank you for that clarification.

Awesome, thank you. Anything else? All right, we will have the applicant come up.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I am here just to add a little bit more context beyond the comprehensive report that Laura gave so the request before you for bullet points increasing the height by three to eight feet for portions of select buildings increasing the floor area for select units reducing the side yard setback for one unit by five feet and reducing the courtyard dimension for select buildings by four feet so I like that you had the Google Street View I didn't think to check to see if it would be updated with what's constructed now, but these are just a selection of photos showing what's been constructed thus far. As Laura mentioned, first approval in 2020, another one in 2022, and so it's been going on for a while and we're hopeful that with these changes we can kind of go through and get the rest of the project constructed. So the first request, increased height. So in the 2020 submittal, the homes range from one to two stories. So here, the Cottage Court, the Mews Court, and the Manor Homes. And you can see there were estimated midpoint heights of 24 feet for the Cottage Court. Same with Mews Court and then the Manor Homes, the single family detached homes. were proposed between one to two stories with a maximum building height of 32 feet to the midpoint. We had submitted this and Laura annotated it even more, so I think you perhaps understand what we're showing here, but this focuses on the units that are proposed to increase in height. So again, the units along the southern property line will remain at one and a half stories, and the units shaded in orange will be proposed at two stories. And here, again, is that comparison of elevations. You see the midpoint of the cottage court units that have already been constructed are at 23 feet. And then what's being proposed is roughly 26 feet. And this here is just another summary table sort of showing the height of all the types of homes that are proposed on the site and how many units are proposed to change. So again, 12 cottage court units and I guess 11 muse court units would be proposed to increase in height. So we felt it was important to note that this is consistent with the surrounding zoning district. So it's mid-century neighborhood, low density residential. The maximum building height for a permitted use such as a single family home is two and a half stories or 35 feet and three stories or 45 feet for a special land use. And so what's being proposed is no greater in height than what would be permitted were these units not developed as part of one single development. And so we wanted to point that out. Next, increased floor area. The unit sizes were estimated during the 2020 submission, listed here, roughly between 1,100 and 2,000 square feet. The city typically does not impose a maximum floor area for single family dwelling units. And so these increases, they aren't Laura said, increasing the floor area more than 10% requires Planning Commission discretion, but in terms of each individual unit there is no maximum floor area standard that we're seeking to exceed. And Brad will be able to maybe explain a bit more why we're requesting these changes, but basically they've been increased to meet market demand. He's been finding it difficult to sell the units at the specifications that were originally proposed and so these changes hopefully will allow the rest of the development to be sold and constructed. So again here, these are the ranges that we're proposing. We wanted to note that the increased floor area is a combination of upper and lower floors, so it should not be construed to think that it's all gonna be a 3,000 square foot footprint, for example. It is across two floors in most cases. The next point is the reduced side yard setback. So in the 2020 special land use approval, the setback from surrounding property lines was 25 feet to the north, south, and west, where the uses were residential, and then 20 feet to the east, which was non-residential or zoned office. The five foot reduction in the east side yard setback is requested for Unit 1 because there an easement that prevents them from being shifted and also due to the slightly increased size there's just a reduction in the proposed setback. So a 20-foot side yard setback is still 13 feet in excess of the minimum side yard setback for a lot in the MCN LDR zone district where these homes just you know developed on single lots and so I It's a 20-foot side yard setback instead of that 7-foot minimum, well above the requirement. Lastly, the reduced courtyard dimension. The courtyard for two of the cottage court buildings is proposed to decrease by 4 feet. Again, this is related to the changes in floor area, and the change in building placement by less than 10 feet is considered a minor site plan amendment.

So this sort of summarizes all of the requests.

Decreasing the number of units would not need additional approval. Changing from three attached single family units into two detached, those uses were permitted and approved in the original proposal, but obviously it's a reconfiguration here that we're requesting. The floor area changes, height, side yard setback, and then courtyard dimensions. I just wanted to point out that this development and in its provision of missing middle housing is supported by the master plan, calls for a compact neighborhood at this location, which is a mix of small lot single family accessory dwelling units, town homes, or duplexes. And additionally, in your current update to the zoning ordinance, you know, increasing housing types and simplifying the development processes for small infill are supported. So we're hopeful that these changes constitute amendments that you would feel comfortable approving. And this was just the approved site plan that I have here at the end. So Brad, do you want to come up and, well, I guess any questions for me? Is this still age restricted? I'll let Brad come up. Okay.

Brad Rotschafer with Mosaic. Any ready for questions?

Is it still an age-restricted community?

It is. Which means 80% of the people have to be 55 or older. That's what that means.

Do you have any additional information you want to provide us about reasoning for this?

Yeah, the... Some of the square footages are just slightly off. You start with a concept and then you get into reality of going to market with your plans. Some of the living rooms are just tight. That's what has been a major problem for us. We're through the first building. It was a little bit of a struggle. We have the carriage house, the three-unit building right in the front there. It's pretty compact. And the road was built, it's kind of odd, the road was built in the 70s and then the woods grew up around it. So the road was in. We didn't really have a lot of flexibility or any flexibility in where the road alignment would be. So it was really difficult to kind of design these floor plans to what was there. So now we're just finding how do we shift things around a little bit. And we're not talking major tweaks. I know that square footage just seemed like we're jumping way high. We really are adding roughly two to three feet to that living room main floor space. So that's really what's driven it. You know, we had 14, 15-foot living rooms, which is just tight. And so the dining room and living room, and I know this probably sounds ridiculous to be back here for this, but these are the things that kind of prevent you from moving forward in a good way. And there's plenty of interest. It's just this is something we want to work through to complete the project.

Yeah, so I understand in terms of what you're saying and it does seem like what was approved last time provided that kind of greater variety of housing types and sizes and now when three out of the four types of homes before had minimums that were like the 900, 1200, 1200, in terms of range, now everything, the minimum would be a 2,000 square foot home, regardless of the location on the site. Is that correct?

Yeah, they're still pretty compact. I mean, and you know, some of the homes got bigger than what we anticipated. But the footprints don't really change. They're building over the garage and there's some of that stuff going on to get those square footages up. We aren't really increasing a lot of the footprint. If you look at the footprint on the cottage courts, I think we're increasing those two feet. and two feet on the carriage house, roughly, two to three feet. So we're not talking like massive changes on the footprint. We can't, number one, because we've got to maintain our open space. So it's really internally what we're doing. Some of it's upstairs that's gaining that square footage. Very minimal extra square footage is occurring on the main floor. I don't even know what the 900 square foot was for. It might have been for some flexibility of building a small cottage if we wanted to do that at some point. But we never had a plan that actually was 900 square feet.

Can you talk about neighborhood input regarding this change, or neighborhood engagement regarding this change? Did you do any?

No. Most of these changes could have happened in a minor amendment, so we didn't feel like we can address any concerns they have here.

One of the, unless other people want to jump in, one of the letters that we received included some pictures related to if it's stormwater runoff or things like that that were impacting, creating flooding in yards. Can you talk about how that's being managed and mitigated?

Yeah, we get a stormwater report I think monthly and I think we stay up pretty much with that. I don't think there's any flooding occurring. I think initially during the construction of the site, before the vegetation was on, and we had some massive storms, there was some flooding that we repaired. But I don't think we're having any off flooding at all at this point. I mean the storm water, I mean even with those massive rains, that storm water detention pond didn't even get like a foot of water and it has like eight more feet to go. So I think our storm water is sufficient.

When you said they were repaired, was that on the neighbor's property? Yeah.

There was some washout and we repaired it by the detention pond where the slopes were. Some mud had run off into a yard, but this was three years ago.

Okay.

Two, three years ago, yeah.

Go ahead, Kristen.

So the site is pretty stabilized at this point. And again, when we had all those rains, the stormwater pond hardly could tell, you know, there was any, it hardly got filled, so.

We can have our stormwater engineer come up and speak to our process for monitoring soil erosion stormwater controls during construction. It might be helpful to hold on that until we're done questions about the site changes, but just know that that's something that I think is important and we do have a system in place. And so hearing from Nate Williams, the city stormwater engineer, might be helpful. All right, yeah, we'll do that.

Maybe after we're done asking about site changes. Sure. Thanks, Nate. On that note, does anyone have any other questions for the applicant? Go ahead.

So no community outreach at this point over the last year or two? For this request? Yeah. No. No. Just kind of curious the immense response to this being not in favor of allowing this at this point and why you might think that would be happening now.

Well, I wasn't aware there was that. I wasn't aware there was an outpouring, number one. Number two, I don't think we're required to do it. We did two neighborhood outreaches on the onset of this. But again, we could go through these changes. I don't think they're significant. And so I thought we could, you know, it's quite a process to have a whole neighborhood event over these kind of changes, I think. And I think that's partially, we were thinking that this is part of the process. If there's an open forum today to respond. I guess how would, is it a requirement of the submission to have a neighborhood?

It is not a requirement of the ordinance to have neighborhood engagement. The public hearing process serves that. Sure. As you alluded to early in the process especially certainly community engagement has become or neighborhood engagement has become um, expected by the planning commission, uh, before most special land uses, especially around multifamily development. Um, so although not a requirement, it has become clearly a city expectation, which we talked about previously.

Well, we're like, I think you can see from the development. We're very, uh, we're, we're, our company is very, um, picky on our aesthetics and our landscaping. And also, I mean, we really were looking at this more as mostly interior changes other than the side yard exception. I mean, along that south corridor or the south line there, we aren't proposing any change. That still will be a story and a half. So it'd be very difficult to see from outside of this property any change that we're making right now. you know, we have a three foot roof height change basically which is from, isn't adjacent, directly adjacent to the property. So if we went back to that image on the east side or south side, yeah you can see where we're raising that up three feet, but that's not adjacent to their property directly. And I think it'd be very difficult to see that even from their property. So kind of feel like these are mostly interior to the development changes so. We're trying to be sensitive to that to them, and that's why the single family house too, even though we don't have a design, we're committed to keeping at one or one and a half stories so that doesn't overpower the people to the South. Because we do set up higher than they do by the natural grade too.

Great other questions.

Did you read the comments from the neighbors that are in the packet?

A couple of them. I didn't see a lot of them. I saw a couple letters.

When I last checked, there were still only two letters, but maybe those were added this morning.

Yeah, I think in fairness, we received a number late yesterday and early this morning, so they are in the packet.

I saw two days ago, but they didn't, they seemed to talk more in things I wouldn't comment on anyway. Not specific concerns, it felt like. They were general statements on height. I personally don't feel we're raising these heights very much. If you really look at the roof height, we're raising it three feet. The side yard setback, we're moving it five feet, which is as far. Our landscape plan here is intense, actually. If you look at our original landscaping plan, Some of that stuff, in my opinion, is going to have to be cut away at some point. We had to put so much landscaping in. I think our buffer areas are more than sufficient. We're committed to it. We're putting everything in according to the plan. We landscape our projects well anyway. You can see on all these corridors, they're pretty thick. You know, within 10, 15, I mean, even right away there's buffer area, but within five years, I don't even know if you'll see our side from the south or from around this property.

Okay, great. Thank you. All right, we'll have Nate come up. And, yeah, I think the letter that we received was actually on the south property line. So, yeah, just, and not near the detention basin. I think it was further, yeah.

Yeah, so as has been alluded, the planning team got a number of concerns kind of late yesterday into today, some of which were forwarded to me, of which I've been able to read, but that's about it. So I myself haven't had time to really dig in and see where exactly the issue is and what's contributing to it. But as you mentioned, overall, broadly, with this project and projects like this, there is a general site plan permit for the entire development. that is still open it's been open since groundbreaking and i don't know 2022 whenever this this first started it has carried open and will continue to be open until every last thing is in place um so the landscaping plan that was just referenced typically that's the last thing to go in once my finished grades are established units are in um in our ins so i'll back up again a second so you you often see me for stormwater management questions things like Will this cause issues with the environment? Are they managing stormwater? Our team also looks at things like soil erosion and some of the protections to the city infrastructure network like that. So we have inspectors on staff. that check sites during construction throughout to check for things like are they keeping things tidy. And then they also, at the back end of the project, check for things like is it built in accordance with the landscaping plan, some of the other nuances of approved drawings. So we do have inspectors visiting the site monthly to check up on things. If there's problems, they'll go out more than that. So when we do get drainage concerns, issues that come up, oftentimes we'll send the inspector out and say, hey, did you know about this? Can you check on this? Does it match the plans? What's the recourse? And I anticipate we'll do that in this case, too, after kind of being made aware of some of those concerns. We'll take a look, walk around. It's been a wet spring, so we're seeing issues associated with that. and issues associated with things halfway through construction. It's oftentimes difficult to imagine a full robust landscape buffer when it's a ways off yet. So I can't comment a whole lot more than that other than our team will look into it. We still have eyes on the project through our construction and we're a ways away from kind of closing out the permit as it stands.

With the monthly inspections that have happened so far, have there been any issues that have come up with those?

There have been, but... It would maybe be inappropriate to say that they're related to like a site plan layout like this. The issues that we encountered mostly early on in construction were related to soil erosion and soil erosion management. So stuff like some of the subcontractors tracking dirt into the roadways, Less than adequate basin protections. I mean, those have all been remedied since then. But that was the kind of issue that we were mostly dealing with from between our team and the developers team of, hey, let's keep a tidy site out here. It wasn't things like, oh, that building shouldn't be there. You know, nothing like on that scale. Gotcha.

And those stormwater or soil erosion control concerns that were noted are not unique to this development.

Correct.

Those are uncommon.

That's why we have a team of inspectors because it's quite common and we expect things and questions and issues and for us to be able to follow up on that.

Does anyone have other questions for Nate while we have him? No? All right. Thank you so much. Thanks.

I'll still be here if you need something. Okay.

All right, let's open up the public hearing. If you are here and would like to speak to this case, come on up to the microphone. If there are multiple of you, feel free to queue down there. And then just to make good use of your time, if someone has said something that you agree with, you can just say what they said and then add any additional information if you want. All of it's going to be part of our consideration. So go ahead.

Good afternoon. Hi, I'm William Host. My wife and I live in the entrance in that red brick at 2159 Griggs. I appreciate the intention to act in the best interest of our neighborhood. The quality of your development is clear, and I know this project matters to you personally because friends and family live here. I share these goals and have invested heavily in my own property for the same reasons. However, I am concerned that the current approach may not achieve them. And I would like to ask you, I have like five questions. Would you like me to just ask the five all at once?

Yeah, go ahead and ask them and then we can address after the end of the public hearing.

Okay, very good. Thank you. Okay, so the first is, after three and a half years, why are there still so few residents and completed buildings compared to the project's overall scope? Then, existing residents have already experienced reduced quiet enjoyment, poor air quality, increased dust, visual intrusion, headlights shining into bedroom windows at night, Shouldn't these issues be addressed before additional variances are approved? When will mitigation occur? And why does the development lack adequate visitor parking? Guests may be forced to park blocks away. And the retention pond, why is the retention pond not built yet or filled? Why is that not? Requests for taller and closer buildings worsen existing concerns Especially the lack of buffers between nearby ranch homes and two to three story buildings Creating additional privacy issues have board members evaluated these impacts in person Has the development considered compensation for adjacent homeowners affected by reduced property values and loss of privacy At what point does the cumulative burden on existing homeowners outweigh the continuing granting of variances and exceptions to the developer? Do you want me to conclude or do you want to?

You have 14 seconds left. What you want to do with it is up to you.

Can I conclude? I would like to suggest a model of this proposal be built to share with the neighborhood. This would be a good gesture on their part. Might the pickleboard court be at the entrance of the hamlet? A better choice? I would be willing to help at the entrance of the hamlet in any way to help the existing neighborhood blend more positively with the development. Thank you so much. Okay.

All right. Thank you. Go ahead and sit. At the end of the public hearing, there'll be an opportunity to address your questions. They're all written down. Anybody else want to speak?

I'm just grabbing my stuff. Okay.

Thank you.

My name is Teresa Zapata. I actually live on the East Grand Rapids side. My home is at the dead end of Oxford Drive. So I don't really have questions, honestly. My profession is actually a multifamily real estate, so I have a really good understanding of new developments and whatnot. But more so statements. Number one, I called the developer before I purchased my home four years ago. I have two small minor children. Understanding a level of safety concerns just with the extending sidewalk that's going through encouraging walking traffic, which I've noticed a very large increase of. A lot more people walking through the neighborhoods with my kids playing outside. But then also I've noticed some new cracks in my home, and I'm a little concerned with these two new buildings going up, which I know have already been approved, but I'm concerned with more cracks, so I'm just curious to know if there's going to be any sort of ramifications or anything from the developer to support that because my home's a 1967 build. I know I'm well beyond the settling issues of that. And then also from a privacy standpoint, I was told when I called the developer before I bought the home that there would be adequate landscaping to create a privacy barrier of sorts between, if you look at Oxford Drive to the west, my home, and then the new development. And what's been placed so far, while I understand the development isn't completely done yet, I'm just curious to know what the larger landscape plan is to create that privacy, because right now you can pretty much just see right through that area from Oxford Drive into the new development. And that's all.

Thank you.

Hey everybody, good afternoon. My name is Sean Duffy and I'm a new resident to Griggs Street. So I'm here representing some of the concerns that both my neighbors and myself have noticed. One of the big things is the drainage issue. So I'm technically I think kind of upstream from where the project is and again I'm new to the community so I just wanted to speak to the experience that I've had which is challenges with drainage. I hope that the drainage expert will be able to address some of those. I'll kind of skip through some of those concerns in light of time. But I do want to acknowledge the fact that this is, you know, another amendment request coming from the developer. And it seems clear that there hasn't been a lot done to address some of the concerns. Obviously the opposition to the project and the scope of it is on record from the outset. You know, I think There's a few things in here that we would love to see more from the developers on, including the justification. I think for this proposal, there's not really any demonstrated change other than market conditions, which is a financial consideration and not something that should happen without the consideration of the community writ large. And per the statements of the developer, there hasn't been a lot of discussion with the neighbors. Not only those who live there currently in the development, but the surrounding community. We'd love to see more of that feedback. Obviously today is a great opportunity for us to express our concerns, and the neighborhood does have a lot of concerns about the way that the project has been developed. The landscape buffers in particular, those have not been implemented yet, and we're being promised that they will eventually be implemented. which understandably that happens at the conclusion of many of these projects, but we have to live there in the meantime and see all these things happening without having that buffer. The other consideration I would like for the Planning Commission to take into account is that these are amendments that need to be evaluated as a package, not as each individual incremental change, because together they represent a much larger burden on the community And that's materially different from what was originally proposed and approved by this council. So from my perspective, I would love for the drainage issue to be resolved and to have a more thorough understanding of how these changes to the footprint are going to impact that. I come from Texas where you really can't think about impervious cover without having approval from the council. And so I would love for that to be included in this. And my request is really just to you guys as a body to not just take a yes or no vote on this, but to take a step back and think about how it's going to impact all of us. And I and in particular the the stormwater and drainage impact I would love to see that on the record and an amended site plan that really accounts for The totality of the the opposition to it from the neighbors. So thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

Thank you others Going once Okay, I will close the public hearing. Y'all can come up and address the questions that were asked and any other comments you'd like to address, please do.

Okay. Okay. Well, the homes, why haven't they all been constructed? I mean, it is based on market absorption. So I think these changes will help that absorption. So it's not just a financial thing. It's an absorption that will help us. complete the project. Um, but it's basically just been, we, you know, once we sell them, we build them or we feel like the market can. Now we have been trying to permit the next eight unit building for four months and then got caught up in, in this. So that's partly why we don't have another building going right now. Um, so, um,

I'm sorry, because you were trying to get a permit for the new, the larger building footprint.

Correct, and then they got caught up in the two-story question. flagged issues in that building permit review process that we felt needed planning commission we do have a plan ready to go for eight of the units and if we get approval for the dupe that two unit we will start that also we have to get the plans put together but we plan on starting those and then the houses just kind of sell as we sell the lots so dust we do have it vacuumed on every Friday the road and try to stay on top of that obviously It's a construction site. There's mud. It's hard to maintain, but we are doing the best we can to stay on top of that. The mitigation, I think that's with the landscaping. We did try to of course we're required at the end to have our landscaping in, but at the beginning we did try to mitigate this line here as you come in. We put trees in, but we don't have sprinkling, so they all died. We did make an attempt early on to try to mitigate the neighbors, but whatever was there died. As we build, we'll complete those buffer areas. Right now, I think we just...

Either you'll have to come back up to the mic and repeat what you're saying so we can get it on the... That area...

Has just been landscaped so the north just where that building is complete where it's shaded there Three four and five that area behind there has been landscaped according to the plan Okay, now where the two unit is where we're proposing that hasn't been mitigated yet. So as far as the landscaping and Will be done after we built that building Okay, thank you Yeah, so this area So this area has just been done maybe six weeks ago. And this area we won't complete until this building is complete along with the buffer area here. Because that's when we'll put in all the irrigation that will support the landscaping from dying.

And for the record, you're referencing this area as being buildings?

One and two. Thank you. One and two, yep, sorry.

No, that's okay. Just helps for our meeting minutes.

The area to the south of obviously 43 and 42, all of those, all that landscaping is in. We did have some erosion on one of the units. We just fixed that like two weeks ago on 42. So I don't know if somebody was referencing that, but that has been repaired. Okay. Lack of visitor parking. The main road is actually, as you can see from the site plan, you can't see it because we didn't mark, but there's on-street parking along the whole private road. And so I don't foresee anybody parking anywhere else. There should be enough parking along our drive there. Retention pond. Not filled? You don't want a retention pond filled. The whole idea is when you have a rain event, it fills up, and then it slowly lowers again after the rain event.

But it has been implemented, the retention pond's been... Oh, yeah, it's fabulous.

Like I said, even during that heavy... We haven't had... The highest that retention pond has gone... like a foot or two even during the heavy rain and I think it's eight feet deep it's very it's pretty deep so it's working well compensation for reducing property values I don't know how to respond to that you don't it's not it's not under our be part of the planning commission's authority to consider as part of your special and use consideration yeah I mean what we're building there yeah I don't think is it's beautiful and I don't but lack of privacy obviously that will take when as we build our landscaping out and over time that will is sufficient okay cracks and home I don't know how to respond to that I mean we're not digging basements there's really a limited amount of excavation

Yeah, I think I would defer to staff to talk about what... That would be a civil matter. That wouldn't, again, be an issue for the Planning Commission. Nuances there, of course, being building code expectations, but in general, that would be a civil matter.

Yeah. Endgame for the landscaping plan is to build according to what we approved after we have implemented the vertical construction. So as we go along, we'll complete those.

Okay.

Um... Drainage issues, I don't know of any, honestly, but if there are some, we address them. I think that's it.

Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. I'll turn to my colleagues here.

I just want to comment. I heard, I think, at least two individuals that spoke today that talked about variances, continued variances being granted. And I just wanted to, for the record and for just communication to the public, that these are not considered variances, that it's part of your review as part of the special land use. And any property owner that goes through a special land use process for multifamily development whether it's by right or under Planning Commission review has the ability to make modifications those modifications do need review whether that's by city staff or in this case Planning Commission but they're not specifically requesting departures or variances that are different than what the ordinance allows. And I thought Julie did a good job of identifying that the ordinance, for example, allows a seven foot setback. However, as part of your Planning Commission special land use consideration, a 25 foot was what was allowed. It's not a variance in that it's a request that's not allowed by the ordinance, it's a request that needs consideration by the Planning Commission. So I just wanted to differentiate between a variance which is contrary to a specific requirement of the ordinance and a deviation from the plan that requires a review and approval by the Planning Commission before it could be constructed. So I guess I'm looking at the Planning Commission, but I wanted to speak to the comments that were made by the public.

Could I ask a clarifying question? I was interpreting this, and it was noticed as an amendment to a site plan, not as an amendment to the special land use. So that is a different set of standards I want to make sure.

Thank you. Yes, it was a special land use with a site plan review, and you are amending the site plan. And we did notice a public hearing as part of that. Thanks. Thank you. That's important because it was standard.

Different level of standards, yeah.

Sorry, the public hearing is done. There is an opportunity at the end of the meeting to do general public comment. Otherwise, planning staff can talk with you after and address your questions.

Oh, yeah, so I think I approved this one last time I was on the Commission when it originally came and I really don't have problems with the amendments that they're asking for, especially because the building heights are what would be permitted in the surrounding neighborhoods, and like Kristen had said, the setback is still greater than what would be generally allowed in this type of a zone. I really don't have problems too much with it. I know that it's been very sensitive in this neighborhood in Griggs and I wish there had been some more public engagement with this plan just to explain what the changes were and to help explain why the landscaping isn't all complete yet and that it is coming and all those types of things just to, I think it would have been beneficial to the developer to just sort of have those discussions ahead of time and to help ease some of those concerns just from being a good neighbor. But in general, yeah, I would support these changes.

I would agree with most of that. I mean, the presentation clearly shows that the changes are not exceeding anything that would be objectionable from a, you know, rule standpoint. I guess the biggest thing is that it's taking so long and that seems to be a primary frustration, which, you know, things don't always go according to plan and sometimes not as quick as you might expect and I guess this is the frustrating part for me. So to echo the lack of awareness to such a strong outpouring of or lack of support for any more changes, it really seems to be born out of a frustration of how long this has been taking and that they're having to live through it. I don't have any problems with the actual request at this point other than that.

I'm supportive of 60% of this. And I'm familiar with the history on it and the discussions from the neighborhood side of things and the developer side. I understand market conditions. What I guess is one of the main frustrations that we're hearing is about the landscaping, the buffers, the screening, stormwater, things like that. I feel like I have been... I had no idea that this was common. Maybe this isn't common for the cases that we see, but the fact that projects like this, big projects that require site plan review and our approvals, could just then take forever. Like, that seems like more of a... no offense to other communities, but a Walker or a Hudsonville or something else where they're like developing these neighborhoods over time and they sell lots and they're building to suit and that kind of stuff. It doesn't feel like something that happens as often here. Maybe, maybe it is. And we just, they're, they're built by right. And cause they fit all the standards, but this is a big project all at once right in the middle of an existing neighborhood. Um, So the fact that they don't have to provide all of the landscaping and the screening in any set time does seem really concerning. And can we condition that they complete it even if the lots aren't sold and built on?

So I would say yes, phasing plans are within the Planning Commission's authority. So you would have the ability to determine, and we've done this for other projects. I can't think of examples off the top of my head, but I know that we've done it for other projects where at the conclusion of phase one, all landscaping within phase one, for example, had to be complete. So we have dissected that from an implementation perspective and you could do that here. The only caution might be is whether or not the landscaping could survive if it were installed prior to the completion of a specific phase. To me, I would want to speak with the landscape architect and the stormwater engineer, unless Brad might have some thoughts off the top of his head, but to condition that now without any analysis about whether what landscaping can reasonably put in sooner than later would just give me pause for a minute. But conceptually, you have that authority to require the installation of the landscaping prior to the completion of all phases. There are timelines within the ordinance, and like I mentioned during our lunch meeting, typically projects don't experience significant delays and neither the city nor the developer would want that because of the carrying cost and holding cost of a project that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for him to willingly or wanting to delay implementation of his project. That's typically counterintuitive. But going back to the landscaping, yes, you have that authority.

As one neighbor pointed out, I'm confident they care about the visual appeal and around the buildings that have been completed, particularly the landscaping facing to the interior of the development, it looks great. But even on completed buildings, some of the landscape screening on the backside isn't I don't think up to our standards and so is the expectation that as they complete certain blocks here that the landscaping is up to the finished standard behind that project for example where there's these roads driveways alleys whatever you want to call them that you know come and run into somebody's backyard do they have an unlimited amount of time to complete the landscaping where the project, where a lot is developed? Or is it just at the end of all of these lots being developed?

The way it's currently structured is there is one LUDS permit for the entire project and that LUDS permit would not be closed until all of the landscaping were installed. We have not structured it to require landscaping based on phasing or section by section, and therefore I'm willing to bet that our inspectors are not out there confirming that what has been installed on the perimeter is compliant, so I couldn't attest to that.

Could we... I just noted in at least one of the letters, one of the concerns was about headlights from cars. On those alleyways, I think. I think that was the one along the South. Could we require some sort of temporary screening like a fence at the end of that alleyway? At this point.

I don't see why not. Kendall, can you think of a reason?

Temporary measures? No, if we feel like that's an appropriate condition to place on this use, I don't think that's... For screening during construction. Right. I don't think that's an inappropriate condition.

I read through the resolutions from the... Prior to hearings, we don't have the minutes or the breakdown on the discussion. I don't recall, but maybe someone else does. Was there discussion about privacy fences around the development with adjacent property owners? Or would that have to be a case-by-case basis based on the neighbor's opinions?

Yeah. seems that a privacy fence at the end of those alleys in addition to landscape buffer would be appropriate yeah there was not much discussion about fencing it was more about landscape buffers and the Planning Commission ultimately landed on that 50% above in terms of plant materials what is required but the conversation about the need for fencing was not a point of discussion that was in Laura we we actually looked at that for that as well

I'm wondering about the condition to phase landscaping, if we could just do it to the extent practicable, assuming all these, the meetings that you suggested happen and that there is a path forward to sustaining whatever landscaping is put in.

Could I throw in there too, landscaping and irrigation for each phase?

Yeah, I'm wondering if it also makes sense similar to what we discussed in the last case in terms of requiring maybe some more mature landscaping at installation to make sure that it doesn't take 25 years for the buffer to actually grow.

would support that definitely I'm just empathetic that living next to a construction site for four years plus is fatiguing and so I understand why neighbors are frustrated I also don't want to slow anything down I think everybody wants to see this development come to fruition as it is the time that really is seems to be the biggest impact today so however we can make that better for the neighbors and also encourage the development to move as fast as possible I think is where I want to get ultimately.

Can I respond just a second? Do you want to wait?

You can come up.

So, Kyle, I hear what you're saying. There is some areas that we could probably, now that we have sprinkling put in, for example, at the entrance. Let me use this. So right here at the entrance, there's a little community mailbox. We just got irrigation there. We've connected this sidewalk. We've now landscaped that area. But again, we did attempt to do some buffer here, but knowing during construction, to build our buffers, which if we review the site plan, that those trees come pretty close to the buildings, there would be no way to construct that building without tearing out everything we put in. As far as the alleys go, there's a pretty good buffer there. I could look at it. A fence, though, becomes a snow removal problem because we do need a place to push the snow at the end of that alley. So we've had these kind of discussions as we're building the development.

I would say that the fence wouldn't go at the end of the alley, but it would go at the property line.

I don't think that would help us because it's a five foot drop there or six. So if you put a six foot fence, the headlights would go right over it. And I don't think it's a fair request at this point to ask us to do a fence. Some of these are fenced already by the neighbors. So I don't think a privacy fence actually helps in this case because of the grade change. You know, you've got a at least a five foot or a six foot drop and a fence is a six foot drop so whatever headlights are at that alley are gonna go over there. Probably we could look at putting some tall grasses in that can take some snow hits to try to... I don't know where the... They weren't specific where these headlights are coming in. I don't know. I'm assuming it could be here. I don't see any other place it could be honestly because there's It's just coming out of the development at that point. I guess that would be my one thing. This area, as far as I know, was implemented according to the plan. It can be checked. We are putting in pretty mature trees. I don't have pictures of the stuff right now, but we're willing to talk to somebody but I don't want to hold up this process to get through what we'd have to do to kind of mitigate. I'm not clear as to exactly what the mitigation issues are as far as headlights and that kind of thing but we could try to identify those and try to address them. Certainly like I said before though these aren't teeny trees. These aren't saplings. These are I think five, six foot trees that we're putting in along there. They grow a foot to 18 inches a year. So within a matter of five or six, seven years, it's amazing how all of a sudden you do have a good buffer strip. And with the amount of trees that are in there, I don't think you're going to see much of our project. All right, thanks. Any other questions?

Sure. You said that you had some building permits in. Is that for the buildings on the west side of the site, or could you point out?

It's this one right here. It's an eight unit. Our hope was to get that in. We have enough interest in it right now where we were hoping to get this one in at the end of the... year and so that would all of a sudden you're pretty far down the road um this house is in all all there's four houses out of the six in so it's not like we're not making progress we have two more houses there uh this unit we would start this year too so then this part of the road is not complete so then we'd complete that next year and then be into that so the project really There's actually a good demand. It's just we got hung up getting this building going. Some of it was our own delay on getting the architecture work done. But then we got delayed here. So we would have liked to have been gone seven months ago. And we're finding there's some good demand for single family houses there. So that's why we're reducing our... and doing two houses there. So... I think if I were to anticipate our timeline left, I would hope this year we would get a lot of this first part done and get into this in next year, the back portion here. I can look into... This buffer area here would be hard to do until this building gets built. But this is a park, so now that the irrigation is, we can look at... getting that buffer strip put in on the west side and along the south corridor. I think because now our sprinkling's in over there, we could certainly look at completing that. Okay?

Okay, thank you. All right, commissioners.

Yeah, I think just looking at the site, He's correct. There is kind of a natural grade change where this site sits a little bit higher than the other houses, and once all of the trees that existed on the site came down, it would be different than what the neighbors were accustomed to. then the length of time I can understand the frustration. And the reason that I particularly asked about what development was happening is it appears that they only have a few things left on the west side. And most of our complaints are coming from the west side or the northwest side. So it would be nice if we could require that landscaping and irrigation be completed with the phasing and completion of units one And two, and I forget, I don't know the numbers for the southwest units. 46 and 47. Scale, the increase in scale, I think, to Julie's point, is consistent with the rest of the neighborhood. I don't have a problem with that at all. I think that would be the only thing that I would be concerned with for some kind of mitigating factors for the neighbors.

What we were working on behind the scenes here is hearing the Planning Commission's concerns about the installation of landscaping language condition to the effect of that each completed building shall install landscaping and irrigation prior to occupancy. So as the building permits are issued around the site for the for the structure, I want to call it phasing but it's not identified as that, the landscaping surrounding those building areas would also have to be completed prior to the occupancy of the building itself. So that would install the landscaping as the informal phasing or the site is developed out versus waiting until kind of the last thing that gets installed, which is typical but not necessarily fully happening for the site, it sounds like, but that we could add a condition to that effect.

Okay, where is everybody landing here? I do think that in terms of delays some of that does feel kind of self-imposed because if plans have been submitted that were consistent with what is currently built and what was proposed to be built then we wouldn't have to, there wouldn't have been these delays right like the reason that we're here is because they tried to submit plans that were inconsistent with what they had originally proposed so yeah but I do yeah I understand that obviously the length of time that this project has been under construction is definitely having a negative impact on the neighbors and the faster we can get the screening, the appropriate screening for them I think would benefit the whole neighborhood. Does anyone?

I'll just say the 40% that I don't please agree with I don't think that we should reduce the setback I understand that they might be allowed to do that in us in this zone district in general but I think just the scale of the development altogether I don't I don't think it's necessarily justified I don't care about the increase in the floor area and I also wouldn't support the building height increase in the northeast corner along 12 through 17.

Okay, that's helpful.

And I'll just say, I think we... He might say it's not fair for us to condition things now, but we also may have made a mistake in not digging in close enough with that grade change. I think it's really unfortunate.

Sure. Yeah, and I do... also want to lament the fact that it seems like we're not going to have the same variety of housing types and sizes as a result of this request just because initially there were especially in those cottages they were planned to be smaller and especially if we're thinking about this community being an age restricted community and folks aging in place like having bigger places with more property to take care of or more floor area to take care of it doesn't really it's not really consistent with that kind of philosophy either.

I don't know if you noted his narrative but it was kind of I don't know who wrote the narrative but it was like what people really mean by downsizing is having less yard and less stairs but not necessarily less floor area and that doesn't completely surprise me but there was an explanation in the application for the market need for that.

Okay, so Kyle indicated stuff that he would not be in favor of. How do other folks feel about those specific things related to the setback and ensuring that the northern buildings in Mews Court

remain at one and a half is that what they're currently approved for yeah I actually had the same thought about the setback but was swayed a bit by what was allowable and didn't want well now that another Commissioner feels the same way I'll say I'm in the same spot as wanting just a bit more space between existing neighbor and new development so I'm in the same place on item one the others I don't feel as strongly about and would be willing to to approve as is.

I agree with that. I'm not a big fan of the reduced setback.

Kendall, if that were largely supported by the rest of the commission, would you prefer that as a whereas, do you think, versus a condition? It seems like Embedding a whereas the reduced setback adjacent building one is not approved as part of this planning if they're inclined to approve it. You know what I mean? Versus creating a condition.

Yes. So in the now therefore part it does say And to reduce the side yard setback for the northwesterly dwelling unit, could they just strike that part and not read that?

I'm sorry, I was looking up in the whereases. Thank you. So yeah, you would want to strike that piece of it. I think... having it in the whereas is still helpful because oftentimes we would approve it per plans and the plans are not going to reflect that. So I think striking it is yes and being clear that that aspect of the site plan has not been approved will be important because usually we look at the site plan for what is being communicated as the approval. Does that make sense?

Alright, I'd like to hear down here related to setback and building height on the North Muse Court.

I can get behind supporting the original setback.

The 25 feet.

I don't care so much about the height.

Okay. I can get behind the setback. Alright, well then I guess it'll be up to whoever makes the motion, so...

Are you ready?

I'll give it a go, but I'm gonna need some help probably. And I'm not sure what to do about the whereas piece. Don't worry about that. I will craft a condition instead. Wonderful. Thank you. That'll be easier. All right. Now, therefore, it be resolved that the Planning Commission approves the site plan review request of Oxford Hamlet LLC for approval to amend the previously approved Bretton Hamlet site plan to increase the size and height of various units within the development to reduce the width of the courtyards within and to reduce the width of the courtyards within the cottage court units for the following reasons. One, the proposed development will meet the purpose and intent of the master plan and zoning ordinance because the changes support recommendation 1B of the 2024 community master plan to provide a greater variety of dwelling units at all price points. And the changes are consistent with the desired character for this development and the MCN LDR zone district. 2A, the site is designed to comply with all provisions of the zoning ordinance because the revisions are generally consistent with the character of the previously approved plan. 2B, the proposed site will be developed so as to not impede the normal and orderly development or improvement of surrounding property for uses permitted by this chapter because the increased building height and floor area will not change the orientation, site location, or architectural design of the buildings as previously approved. 2E, all elements of the site design are harmoniously and efficiently organized in relation to topography, the size and type of lot, character of the neighborhood and adjoining property, and the type, size, and proportions of buildings. because the buildings at the periphery of the development closest to abutting residential properties will not increase in height and a 20-foot building setback from the west property line. Yep, strike that one. Thank you. 3B, natural features and site topography are incorporated into the proposed site design to the maximum extent practical because the proposed changes will respect the required wetland setback as previously approved. 3D landscape buffers or green belts are provided that ensure that proposed uses adequately buffered from one another and from surrounding public and private property because at 23 feet wide, the courtyards will provide adequate buffering and livable green space for the residents of cottage courts. And 3E stormwater management measures will be employed to satisfy Chapter 32 and other city ordinances related to water quality because revised plans consistent with all approved site changes will be submitted for Ludd's permit review. Also, standard condition set A approvals. Striking items five and seven. Two. Oh, I'm so sorry. Non-bold. Okay, there we go. Yep. Thank you, everybody. Back to number one. Standard condition set A approvals. One, that the application and plan submitted by the applicant and signed, dated, and stamped by the planning director shall constitute the approved plans, except if plan elements do not meet ordinance requirements and or as amended in this resolution. Two, that the use shall operate according to the application and per testimony. Three, that this approval does not include any proposed signs and any future signs shall be subject to the requirements of Article 15 of the ordinance and permits received prior to installation. Four, that a land use development services LUDS permit, building permit, and all other required permits be obtained from the City of Grand Rapids prior to construction, demolition, or operation. And six, that the proposed use will comply with all other applicable city ordinances and policies and all state laws. Condition 2, that the conditions of approval for PC SLU 2020-0043 and PC SPR 2022-0038 shall remain in effect except as modified by this resolution. Three, that the previously issued LUDS permit shall be updated with plans consistent with all approved site changes. Four, that construction activity shall be limited to between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. And five, that this approval shall take effect after the date of the Planning Commission's decision.

That landscaping and irrigation shall be installed adjacent or surrounding and surrounding each building upon its completion. And that the... Pardon me? It said prior to occupancy. Oh, upon its completion and prior to occupancy. And then that the request to reduce the side yard setback for the northwesterly dwelling unit, Unit 1, from 25 feet to 20 feet is not approved.

Kristen? I'm sorry. Can I just say there is a seasonal problem sometimes with the occupancy permit for the landscaping.

Agreed. So I do agree with that. That the landscaping and irrigation shall be installed adjacent or surrounding each building upon its completion and prior to occupancy. Or I was going to say or upon the or within the immediate planting season following the issuance of occupancy. staring intently at my team.

I know, I'm working on it. It's really hard to just give occupancy. Or as soon as possible. As soon as possible upon its completion.

Yeah.

Conditions or something like that.

Yeah, that's why I was saying like in the immediate planting season following. Or within the following planting season. Within the following planting season. Yeah, or within the fallout. So I will restate that again because I think that that is a valid point and it's still an enforceable item for us. That landscaping and irrigation shall be installed adjacent and surrounding each building upon its completion and prior to occupancy or within the following planting season as necessary. Great.

So moved. Okay, we have a motion. Do we have support? Support. All right, we have motion to support. Any additional discussion?

What remedy, if any, at this point do we have for additional more effective screening at the end of alleys and behind garages?

That would be up to the Planning Commission. I didn't craft a condition because I didn't hear from enough of you that that was a desired condition. If there is consensus on that by the Planning Commission, I can work on that too.

Is that something that could work with staff to find a feasible... Like if a fence isn't going to work at the end of the alley... It doesn't make sense. But, I mean, if there was a feasible way to do that with tall grasses, like, I would, I don't know, I would be okay deferring that to staff if that's possible.

Deferring a temporary measure for screening? Is that...

I don't really want temporary. I want a permanent solution. But that's just me.

Did you all say there was something in the original... approval, a condition related to that.

Kristen, do you have the original conditions there? I don't think I do.

Laura, can you speak to it? So an original condition of approval that the required landscape buffers and specifically the plant material required within the buffer is increased to 50% greater than what is required by section 5.11.12.D.1 with an emphasis on placing the plant material to screen parking areas, areas activities and along the north side of the MUSE building to help mitigate the wall length.

which we can assume is reflected in the site plans. So if we want something more than that, we probably should amend the motion now.

Yep, so the LUDS permit does have a landscape plan that we determined was compliant with that condition. So I don't know if we're speaking about the fact that it hasn't been installed. Kyle, or if you think that the landscape plan you're seeing is inadequate?

I don't know for sure which it is. Like, what we see, it looks, appears inadequate. Okay. I don't know, and we don't know because they haven't gone through the final review if what's installed is consistent with the landscape plan. So,

So then if there's consensus, would the Planning Commission like, to your point, a condition that speaks to that the applicant shall work with planning staff to evaluate the landscaping at the end of the alleys to ensure adequate screening of headlights and vehicles from the adjacent properties?

I'm good with that.

Okay, so I heard from both that they are. Okay, we'll amend the motion then to reflect that. Any additional discussion?

Yeah, do we need a motion and a second for an amendment to a motion?

The folks that, oh, I guess you support it. Sorry, I thought down there to support it. Okay, go ahead, you made the motion.

All right, so I will amend the motion for the additional condition.

And I will support the amendment.

Fantastic, I'm so sorry about that. I was looking down here thinking that that's where all the action happened. Okay. All right. Any additional discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. Let's take a five-minute break. we'll go ahead and get we'll resume here folks commissioners we're gonna start you guys down there we're starting thank you all right our next case is 2850 Sparks Drive Southeast Laura go ahead

Our next case is 3850 and 3900 Sparks Drive Southeast. This is a request to expand the surface parking to support shift changes for a new office use. Anytime parking exceeds the zoning ordinance by more than 20% of the maximum parking allowed requires planning commission consideration as a special land use. The subject properties are located on the south side of Sparks Drive between Lake Eastbrook and East Paris Avenues in the Neighborhood Office Services Zone District. Surrounding property is also NOS to the north, east, and west. And there's commercial property and a planned redevelopment district for light industrial directly to the south. Adjacent uses include office, and like I said, Voss Glass, the light industrial use, and hotels are to the south of the subject property. The 2024 Community Master Plan identifies the subject properties as community activity center, and this is intended to provide places for people to live, work, and shop around key intersections. The rapid bus route has transit stops on East Paris and 28th Street. East Paris is directly to the east, 28th Street is just at the bottom of the screen to the south. within a half mile of the subject property. There are also transit stops on Lake Eastbrook Boulevard that are just outside that half mile mark. Sparks Drive also has bicycle lanes on both sides of the street and there is no street parking in the vicinity. The subject property 3850 Sparks to the west here is .8 acres in area and it is currently unimproved. 3900 Sparks is 3.2 acres and is improved with a two-story, 18,000 square foot office building and surface parking. As you can see in this image, there is no physical separation between the parking lot area with the neighboring property to the east, 3950 Sparks Drive and 3900 Sparks Drive. Both properties are under common ownership and the parking is shared between the users of both buildings. There are currently 333 shared parking spaces between 3900 and 3950 Sparks Drive. The new parking area will add 71 parking spaces and will be internally connected to 3900 Sparks. The existing vehicle access drives will be utilized to access all of the parking including the area with the 71 new parking spaces. This will bring a grand total of 404 parking spaces which will exceed the maximum allowed by 90 spaces and that is the maximum allowed for the combined uses on both properties. The parking demand study, whenever a special land use exceeding the parking maximum is requested, the zoning ordinance requires a parking demand study to be submitted. This study explored the combined demand of all the existing office uses on the properties. 3950 Sparks Drive, at the time that the parking study was completed, the new office use was not yet in full operation. The parking study concluded that the existing parking of 3950 Sparks utilized an average of 33% of the available parking, of the available 333 parking spaces. Then the projected need for this new office use that has 225 employees in three shifts, three eight hour shifts, and no break in between shifts, pushed the projected parking need into 131% of the future parking supply. That's 131% of 404 parking spaces, including the 71 new parking spaces. The parking study estimated that approximately 96% of the employees would utilize a single occupancy vehicle to travel to work, and that estimated to be about 216 vehicles per shift. The parking study concluded that additional mitigation measures would be necessary such as breaks between shifts in addition to the construction of the 71 parking spaces in order to provide and to meet the parking need that's estimated for all the uses on both properties. So in sum, we are asking the Planning Commission to consider whether the need for the additional parking has been demonstrated based on the land use and development character, relative intensity of the uses, and the availability of transit, and the extent for the need of parking, and if this need could be feasibly addressed through other means such as ride sharing or transportation management plan. Are there any questions?

Thank you, Laura. I have one question. So I understand that the parking study was done before this was an operation. Is it in operation now?

I asked that question. They have begun onboarding employees, but they are not fully operational at this time. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions for Laura? Okay. Thanks, Laura. All right. We'll have the applicant come up.

Jack with Niederwald. I don't really have a ton to add. We did contract with Fleece and Vandenbrink traffic consultants, and they're the ones that put the report together. We didn't just wing it. They provided their professional opinion. The onboarding of the employees to get to 225 and three shifts is going to take several months. So we're hoping to get approval and then build this parking lot actually next year so we don't think we're gonna need it this year but once they get to 225 and three shifts there definitely is going to be a need for that parking.

So one of the other recommendations was that additional mitigation measures like a 45 minute break between shifts are recommended are they going to do that?

Yeah they're gonna have to because they're just even with this extra 71 there's not going to be enough space so They're going to look at having, they're not going to discharge 225 and then the next 225 come in. They're going to have to have a 75% of the staff leaves, allows other people to come in, and then the changeover in the staff.

So with that additional mitigation measure, might these 71 spaces not be necessary at all?

No, because the study accounted for that mitigation saying that this mitigation is going to have to happen in order for there even to be close to enough parking spaces with the additional 71.

Have they explored shared parking agreements with folks across the street?

Our client owns everything. Our client owns, if you go to GIS, they own a lot of the properties. And we did explore Peckham across the street, had a special land use, I think it was in 2020 that you approved for a standalone parking lot off of Peninsula Drive. So That's kind of a call center type use. So they have a huge part, there's just a lot of users in this area that have really high parking demand. So we didn't feel that putting parking north side of the street was gonna be a solution to the problem we have here. But we did analyze that, yeah.

When the study was done, it was only the parking associated with this current project. that was analyzed, right? Like the parking across the street was not part of that. So we don't know how full that parking lot is.

The report only addresses 3950 and 3900 uses. But we did have conversations with Fleece about what's in city staff. We had a couple meetings with city staff leading up to this of what about because you look at an aerial at given times and it looks like there's parking spaces on the north side of the road. but there are times when you go out there during business hours and there's not all those parking spaces available. So we didn't feel that relying on stuff north of Sparks Drive was going to be a solution.

Okay. Other questions? Thank you. All right. Thank you. We'll have you sit down. But since we have some of our city staff expertise in the room, maybe we should talk about the potential stormwater impacts of this or if there are traffic impacts that we should consider as well.

Thank you.

Anything in particular or would you like me just to speak generally about stormwater considerations? Yeah, so anytime you change from a site to a more, rather a less impervious site, so adding blacktop, adding roof coverage, there is stormwater management considerations that need to be taken into account because you're generating runoff from a site. So that net difference usually needs to be managed in some capacity. This proposed project would be no exception. It'd be you know, changing that lot from kind of scrubby, woody lawn space to parking. So the applicant owner would need to manage that extra runoff associated with that. We work with Jack Barr quite often. Jack and Naderveld are familiar with our standards. that should be no surprise to their firm of what that would take to look like. I've not seen or reviewed any specific calculations on that, but that would be required to get to that final construction level permit approval, the LUDS permit, is we would look for calculations from their office to say, hey, here's what's generated from the changes, here's how we're managing on site or meeting the city criteria in whatever other ways is doing that.

Thank you very much. Arianna, has the city looked at, yeah, thank you.

So one of the things that was kind of of interest to us was the, this is, you know, an office building, but not necessarily being used in a traditional office sense of not kind of like people arrive in the morning and then they leave, you know, at eight to five, being a more 24 hours operation with the potential of 225 people. times two employees in and out of the lot. So it's something that we would start with a trip generation letter. And given that they have a better idea of their operations with the mitigation, we would look at that in the peak hour and then determine if we would need a full study from there. There are some specific comments from my colleague, John Bartlett, about 50% increase kind of over the existing office use. Because the existing office use would be based on square footage. So it's not necessarily the best indicator of what that usage is. It's a little bit different than Say, you know, an accounting firm where everybody shows up by 9 has a little bit more, a little bit different kind of density and operations.

Great.

Thanks. Okay. Well, seeing nobody else has questions, let's open the public hearing. Oh, wait. Kristen, do you have something? Yeah.

I'm sorry if I missed. I just wondered whether any TDM strategies were attempted as part of the business operation, transit demand management, whether you've worked with employees to develop incentive programs to try to encourage individuals not to utilize a single occupancy vehicle.

It's a new business to the area, so as they ramp up, I think that'll be a strategy because in Fleece's report, they considered, I think it was 96%. single occupancies it's going to help them with their transition time their mitigation measure if they can increase that but it's just the way people work there's just not a lot of job ride-sharing that happens it doesn't seem like but that's something that's on their mind to help with the mitigation but that's the extent of the thought process so far

I don't know. Are there other similarly situated business operations in the state or country that you looked at for modeling?

Great question. I don't know.

Okay.

Yeah. Our client is the property owner. Their client is the operator. So I haven't had direct conversations with the actual operator. It's through our client.

Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Thanks for that question. I appreciate it. All right. Let's open up the public hearing. If you would like to give us your thoughts on this case, please make your way to the microphone. Seeing none, I will close the public hearing. Commissioners.

I don't love adding parking, but I also want the business to be a success. I appreciate that the way it's situated, there's still quite a bit of that green space and sort of buffering, I guess, at the front of the lot. Yeah, so I don't love it, but I would probably support it.

Yeah, I agree. Adding surface parking is never our favorite thing, but I do appreciate that it'll be used 24-7. So I'm inclined to support as well.

The other thing I would say is I'm not sure what the bus routes are right near here, but I would encourage the business to look at... Incentivizing public transit, incentivizing biking, including biking facilities if possible at the, you know, like bike racks and pumps and that type of thing at the workplace. And I would, yeah, encourage them to try to find ways to incentivize that thing, that type of alternate transportation, carpooling too.

I have a question for Jack again. I'm sorry. Is there enough space in that green area between Sparks and the parking for a liner building? A liner building?

Oh, wow. We never thought of that, perhaps. When we met with staff, our directive was you draw a line from the front of that building to the front of the neighbor's building. Don't have any parking in front of that. That's what we did. We never... Never thought of, we just thought of that as being grass and vegetation. But if we did that, then we'd need more parking. So then we're like, ugh, stuck.

Is the rear yard, is that at a minimum setback?

No, we just tacked it on to the pavement that's existing there so it was in the same alignment.

There are some slopes. Oh, at the back. I see them now. Thank you. Okay. I was just curious if there was an opportunity there where that space could be utilized for something more equally productive as the green space.

I'm struggling with this one. I think it might be... premature request especially since they're not fully in operation and don't necessarily know how what reality might look like it also feels like they have not explored enough other options so looking at the different incentives they can provide employees to use other modes or working with the neighboring properties to utilize excess parking there. There is just so much parking in this area already. It's hard for me to believe that there isn't enough to accommodate the various uses, especially if not all of these businesses are running 24-7. So I appreciate the fact that it's a 24-hour operation. I get that. And I think there could be more exploration of alternatives instead of just adding more blacktop. That might actually be less expensive for your client, to be honest.

I don't know how to reconcile those your thoughts like because I agree like I would like to know that as well but also if this study is accurate and they do need that parking spot those parking spaces and they don't have the ability to get their employees on site like I don't know what to do with that so I think in the past we have done like a

It's not a conditional, but don't build unless you have to.

Temporary parking.

Yeah, or deferred action or whatever.

Yeah, I'd be open to something like that too if there's a temporary solution to figure out what the actual need is. But I don't know if that adds additional expense for the business and I don't want to I don't want to create undue hardship in that way either. Yeah, I'd love to hear what others are thinking.

Doesn't the traffic analysis study that they'll have to do by mobile GRR kind of satisfy that? They'll have an evaluation of the need. It's already a condition, right?

I'll let Arianna correct me if I'm wrong, but the trip generation, I might not have used the right words, the traffic analysis that's required is really speaking to any impacts to the adjacent public street network system. So it would not likely come back and say, no, they can't expand their parking, it would be, you expand the parking these are the improvements or modifications that are needed to the public system like signal light signalization or light timing the timing of the lights I don't know how to word that and perhaps even turning lanes might need to be added so it wouldn't be a a determining factor whether they can or cannot build. It's what happens to the public system if they build. And thumbs up? Thumbs up on that. Okay.

I feel the same way about adding parking. If you look at 28th Street and then East Beltline to the east and East Paris to the I'm sorry, East Beltline to the west, East Paris to the east. That entire area is impervious surface. The entire area. And this is like the only spot left that could be parking. It's hard to believe that there's not a better solution than, again, we were looking at a very site-specific area. I have a hard time with this one. Again, though, I'm only one vote, and that leaves two. There's also options where we could table this and give the applicant opportunity to explore some of the other options, similar to what we did with the coffee shop a couple weeks ago, and that was a very minimal impact compared to what we're talking about now. Again, if there's appetite for that, we can also have a motion and move forward with that paying attention to that, but I have a hard time with the amount of parking that is in this area and the need for more parking.

I would be open to that. I feel like it's kind of like with the amphitheater going downtown, like with the whole suggestion that there's not enough parking, but there really is enough parking if you want to walk. So if the neighbors across the street are willing to do a joint parking agreement or if there are some nearby that are able to do that, I know it's not as convenient, but it also might provide a less expensive alternative. And if that hasn't been explored yet, I would prefer to have that explored before approving it.

So what I think I've heard from at least three of you is that perhaps some additional justification or documentation of the efforts that have been made relative to shared parking agreements, efforts by the ownership to implement transportation demand management strategies to show that those efforts have been made, before and if that documentation were provided that perhaps that could lead to a Different it would be part of a different analysis of its need versus just the the demand study truck parking demand study So I'm seeing a couple of nodding heads there. So with that, Planning Commission could either deny the application as it sits based on the information you have. Then there is a limitation on when those requests can be redone. So typically it is a one year mark that the same ask cannot be submitted within one year unless there's significant differences in the application. So that could include some of those items that we've I've just mentioned, like verification about shared parking agreements or efforts made to acquire, efforts made to employ TDM strategies. Alternatively, the Planning Commission could simply postpone a decision pending the submission of that information, which presumably would be tabled open or postponed open, you know, and wouldn't be put back on the Planning Commission's agenda until that information were provided.

I think I would prefer to postpone versus deny at this point because if Jack's right and they need it in the next year, then they're going to get the studies done and explore the other options. You know, we're not delaying them for full 12 calendar months. So that would be my preference.

Was that a motion? Is there any way, could I ask the applicant, do you guys have a preference if a postponement is what may be occurring here, would there be a preference to have that postponement on a specific date or are you fine with it being open and then being contingent on submission of that material?

We prefer the latter. That way it gives us time to get with our consultant and get with the neighbors to gain input on parking agreements or whatnot.

Thank you.

So I move that we postpone to give the applicant time to investigate other alternatives.

Support.

You can have it. Matt can have it.

All right, support down there. Any additional discussion? Did we articulate in detail enough what we're expecting. Okay, great. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Okay, let's come back to Michigan Street, please.

All right, so what Sarah just handed out is a site plan of, well, layout of the storage container and the site plan that was originally proposed that is different than what is up on the screen right now.

Yeah, do you want to provide some explanation?

Yeah, I do.

So with the shipping container, right now you see the drawing. It looks like the hood is outside of the container, but that's not accurate. We just did that for, you know, so it doesn't get muddy to picture. That hood and the shelf are inside the container, right? So within the border of the container. So directly over the fire? Yeah, directly over.

Directly over the fire, got it. And then can you tell us about this original site plan that we're seeing?

Yeah, the original site plan, that was the original, you know, like when I first kind of started, we started having these conversations with the city and a few other folks about, I don't know, seven, eight months last year actually sometime. That was the initial site plan that we had come up with and The reason why we went to this was because I wanted to cover the roof, but this was going to extend five feet beyond the facade of the building, and you can't have a covered patio, according to the zoning, that extends beyond the facade of the building. So that's why we kind of, as a compromise, well, let me go back to the drawing board and come up with a different solution, and where we landed on what you have now because the current site plan that you see, even though it extends, the patio extends beyond the facade of the building, that portion is not covered by a roof. The only portion covered in the existing plan that we submitted is the portion that is within the facade of the building and then obviously going out to the west. So that's why we ended up with the plan that you see now. So.

I see, okay, so just to make sure I'm clear. So initially, so there's only roof, it's the southern part of that that we're talking about, right? Like the southern...

Yes.

Close to Michigan Street is where there was a conflict related to the roof.

Yes. Yes. So the five feet of that patio that would extend beyond the facade of the building facing Michigan Street is where the conflict came into play, where we couldn't cover that portion. So with that... Being that way, I started to lack depth, right? So I could have just went with the site plan we'd had and kept the container in the original plan, but then we don't have the depth really that we would need for covered seating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's where that came into conflict with what we originally had did, and that's now why we went to this here.

I see. Okay, thank you for that. Okay. I would love to hear from commissioners now that we have this new information.

Just looking at this different plan, it's also interesting. I just wonder, is it possible to have the shipping container? I don't want to redesign this, but the shipping container still be parallel to Michigan like it is here, but push back a little bit further into that parking lot? So that it's off the deck, essentially? So then the vent and the hood and the activity is further away from the house?

The problem with that was that we run into the parking, so we don't have enough space. So you have to maintain a seven-foot pathway from the front of the parking to that patio pergola that we have there now. And... we wouldn't be able to do that because we would then we run into that that you know restriction there that we would end up having so that's the reason why we couldn't do that otherwise that would have been nice but then the parking is no longer viable it doesn't it doesn't work it doesn't fit the dimensions that are required also I think that you know the other way again was I think was a happy medium for us In some way, also the container being there with the trees, I think it creates somewhat more of a buffer than what is there now, which would probably help mitigate some of the issues that he has.

Folks?

Just for context, Kyle pointed out to me, if you look at the packet on page 40, Angel was speaking about how they had to remove a portion of the canopy for this hood vent, and you can actually see it on that picture. And I think it's helpful for context.

I still have concerns with how close that hood vent's going to be to the house next door.

And it is directly next to the property line.

Yeah. And that top, right? I mean, the original design, and I understand the challenges with the roof and the seating. I would support this if he was asking for the original site plan. But the way it's arranged right now, I'm still just too concerned that that vent's too close to the house next door.

So the vent right now would end up being roughly to the center of that. I would say, so the setback is 10 feet and then the container's another foot, maybe foot and a half within that. So you're 12 feet to the center, probably 13, 14 feet. The center of that hood. There also is these hoods. I talked to my mechanical guy who would put it in while we were out there. They're low humming. So, you know, you increase the size of the fan. So they're not as loud as probably what you would have like we have on our main restaurant. And even that one, I mean, it's not I never hear it. So I think that, I don't think it's, I understand the concern, but I don't think it's as great as you probably think it would be, considering where it's going to be placed.

Are there other, I don't know anything about ventilation hoods. Are there other kinds of mitigation, like sound mitigation things that go with those in any way? I'm really asking.

Commissioners so I apologize for the interruption. Did we have a motion to take this off? No, bring it back Maybe we can could we do that?

Just for purposes of procedure make a motion to take case number take the Michigan Street case off of To put it back on the table. Yeah.

Okay. I'm so sorry. I I just told them to come up, so that was my fault. I support that motion. All right. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you so much. I apologize. Okay.

So I am not a mechanical contractor or inspector. However, I know that there had been quite a bit of discussion around exhaust fans specific to the cannabis facilities. And there was mitigation measures that were put in place for a property that had a noisy exhaust fan. I don't know that those are like for like comparisons. I bring that up because our mechanical department would be in a far better position to talk about mitigation measures that would be available to a system like this versus the planning department. We're not equipped.

Would that discussion be something you're open to with city staff in terms of if there needs to be sound mitigation and how that can... Yeah, I'm not opposed to that at all.

Yeah, I mean, obviously we're going to have people sitting out there, so if I thought that it was going to dampen the experience, that's a concern of mine as well. I don't think that's going to be the case, but if that's the conversation that we need to have, I don't have any problem with that. I mean, if there's anything I can do, I'm a builder by trade, so I do have some expertise in this stuff for 25 years. Per the conversation that I had with my mechanical guy, there are ways to mitigate that. And plus, in this case here, because we're not using that grill like that, there's a control mechanism. They kick on when they need to. But honestly, the only thing that we're using that grill for is grilled onions, because that's like a staple with the Polish that we're going to be serving. And then you have the deep fryer, so there's obviously some from that. But deliberately, it's not an intense use.

Thanks. Okay, folks, it's time to make a decision.

What was the suggestion then? Is it a condition that we would put in the acceptance for working with city staff to mitigate?

I mean, I think if that would make folks, address folks' concerns to at least have the consultation of staff. Sure, I think.

Did somebody have, yeah, go.

I'm just saying, I'm a little bit uncomfortable. I don't wanna unnecessarily delay. I know we've had a lengthy process with this particular request. I don't know what the Planning Commission would deem acceptable from the mechanical inspector. I feel very ill-equipped to say what can be done. And if something can be done, is it going to meet the Planning Commission's expectations? far too ambiguous of a condition for me. Okay.

I hear you. I, you know, we talked about the landscape buffer with mature trees. I've been feeling good about that. I wish I had context to understand what the volume of this mechanical unit is. I really don't. I'm thinking about air conditioning units that pop on and off in neighborhoods and thinking like that's kind of a normal way that we live today. So I'm inclined to support and move this forward. But if others feel strongly, then, you know, speak up, please.

I think I need more information. I need to understand how loud it is. I know I own two buildings that have vent hoods and I understand how loud those are and they're louder than air conditioning units. I respect what you're saying that this is a lower volume one but I need some more information.

Can I ask a question of Angel? If does your business plan generally work without an exhaust? I'm just, I'm asking because I'm, maybe you're shaking your head, no. I'm curious whether to kind of bifurcate an approval that I'm not hearing objection to the pergola, the use of the space, maybe some conversation about landscaping and hours of operation, but it seems like we're stuck on the van hood, excuse me, exhaust fan. Would it help to consider these separate of the application without the exhaust system, frying system in place, and then coming back for that? Or would you prefer just to? If that were helpful.

Well, if you would have given me a variance to just cover the roof the first way, I would be happy with that. So again, we're back here. It doesn't work with that, no. Because you have to have that measure in place. You have to have something there that allows you to do that. And I also, I did seek... approval from the health department. So I sent them the specs for the container and then they did approve it. So they did approve that contingent obviously upon what you guys are doing here. But yeah, you have to have it and I don't know. So like if that's the hiccup, I don't know how we really get past it. I know that there's places You know, there's food trucks on Bridge Street now that you've seen pop up, and I don't think that I've gotten next to a food truck and never thought that this is, you know, an issue as far as sound goes. I know this is a more permanent solution here that we're talking about, so I do understand that. But I do know that, again, the efforts have kind of mitigated some of that sound, I think, I think there's ways to do that. But there's still gonna be something. It's just like we're on Michigan Street too, right? So the argument is he doesn't want anything to happen, but you're in a commercial corridor. That's what this is for. This is what this is built for. And we're simply trying to do something that's gonna help enhance the corridor and make it better than what it is now. And this is another opportunity to do that.

Andrea, you had a question? If this were a one-story building, Do we regulate the location of mechanical equipment to this level? If he just decided, I just want to expand my building to the west, wouldn't he by right, and maybe I guess I'm not trying to lead the question, I'm really asking the question, by right, couldn't he expand his building to the west and then put mechanical equipment on that building in that location that would do exactly the same thing?

Planning would allow a building at that location. The placement of the mechanical equipment I don't think is as straightforward. I'm looking at the three of you, I'm sorry, but I think that there would be a pause to talk about where is the mechanical system, where is it blowing. It would be a conversation with the building department and the mechanical department as well to answer the question about where the systems could be placed.

Okay, so it would still be a condition in that situation. It would still be... I'm just having a hard time with...

I'm just saying that planning would not operate independently. I know planning does not have a specific condition relative to the placement of exhaust fans, but that's not an independent... We don't make that decision independently without understanding building code and mechanical code implications. Would this same go through that same type of review with through like LUDS and things like that? It's not a permanent building, so I can't say that it would be the same evaluation.

Also, a quick, you know, to kind of your point, Matt, that you made about if it was placed in a different location, the first location would be okay with that. I did the math, and you're really, I don't know that that would necessarily make the difference that you think, maybe a little bit, but the difference between there and where it is, I mean, you're talking about maybe eight or nine feet from that hood to that hood. And again, I was kind of a little off on my math. You got 11 feet plus, it's a foot away on the inside, so that's 12 feet to the center. So you're about 14 feet from the property to the center of that hood. And then from there to the other one that you said you would be okay with, again, it's about eight feet, nine feet in distance. So I don't know that that would actually be that big of a difference either.

I don't need more information to support this personally. I think it'll add to the vibrancy of the corridor. It's a social zone. I mean, I said all this before the postponement. And I do agree that potentially it could block some of the sound from any music that's coming from inside. And yeah, so that's my position.

We've already kind of edited the one condition about closing the door by 10 if there's live music, right, instead of leaving it open. We kind of discussed that in the first portion. We're still continuing that, right?

I think we determined that it wasn't feasible for pedestrian travel because they closed that overhead door. There's no man door between the patio area and the interior of the building.

But he said the patio is going to close at 10.

It will, yeah.

So if there's live music, instead of leaving it open until 11, you could close it at 10.

That's correct.

It would be an earlier end for that. I mean, I've sat outside dozens of food trucks, and I can't imagine if it was obnoxious that I would sit there and eat and enjoy some food, and I've been to Taco Bracho many times you know and I got to think that if that patio is going to get used it's not going to be obnoxious you know so he'll pick the lowest decibel fan possible there or have to do some remediation or people aren't going to stay there right at least that's

Yeah, I guess my only concern would be beyond the sound is also if it's used to be grilling onions and frying food, it's the constant smell for the neighbors.

Go to Bob's. I mean, that's kind of the condition everywhere, right?

Yeah, but I mean, this is different than a permanent structure. In a permanent structure, all those things would be taken into account with regard to the placement of the vent hood. In this case, because we're treating this as a mobile structure, the vent hood goes where the vent hood goes based on what it's designed. And I understand your comments about food trucks. I've eaten around a lot of food trucks too, but typically on a food truck, the vent hood's on the opposite side of the truck from where you're sitting eating and from where you're buying the food. So it's designed that way to mitigate that sound. In this case, The vent hood is right next to a residence. I just don't, I can't support it as it's presented right now.

Now, therefore, it be resolved that the Planning Commission approves the special land use and site plan review request of Taco Bracho to establish mobile food vending in an expanded outdoor seating area associated with an existing restaurant with alcohol service at 755 Michigan Street NE for the following reasons. One, the proposed use will be consistent with the purpose and intent of the master plan and zoning ordinance, including the zone district, because the proposed use will support the vitality of the local economy by encouraging investment, diversifying the economic base, and expanding employment opportunities. And the mobile food vending use will provide a broad range of food choices to the public. Two, the proposed use will meet the site plan review standards of 5.12.8.E because Safe, convenient, and well-defined vehicular and pedestrian circulation within and to and from the site will be provided. 3a, the proposed use will be compatible, harmonious, and appropriate with the character and uses of the neighborhood, adjacent properties, and the natural environment because the proposed use will support the desired mixed-use character of the neighborhood, and the proposal will provide a unique amenity for residents and customers of the neighborhood and business district. 3B, potentially adverse effects arising from the proposed use will be minimized because the mobile food vending operation will be limited in scale and hours of operation and will contribute to the vitality and experience of the business district. 3C, the proposed use will not be detrimental, hazardous, or disturbing to existing or future uses or to the public welfare by reason of excessive traffic, noise, smoke, odors, glare, or visual clutter because the hours of operation are consistent with similar uses in the vicinity Excessive noise, glare, or visual clutter is not anticipated and the mobile food vending operation will be appropriately located to mitigate impacts on residential properties. 3D, the proposed use, will not adversely affect the walkability of the neighborhood, impair pedestrian circulation patterns, disrupt the continuity of the urban street wall, or otherwise hinder the creation of a pedestrian-oriented environment because the site's relationship to the street will not change, and establishment of mobile food vending near the sidewalk will enhance the street wall and provide a pedestrian orientation to the site. 5a, adequate public or private infrastructure and services does already exist or would be provided at no additional cost. because reliance on additional public services is not anticipated and any required power source will be provided by the operator. 5B, the proposed use will not be detrimental to the financial stability or economic welfare of the city because the use is not anticipated to result in nuisances that require code enforcement actions. Be it further resolved that the following conditions of approval shall apply to this project. Standard condition set A approvals. One, that the application and plan submitted by the applicant and signed, dated, Oh, thank you. I don't know why I'm not getting this right all the time. Oh, okay, so number five.

Wait, five and seven from here.

Okay, thanks for the grace. That any expansion of the approved special land use requires an additional special land use review and approval by the Planning Commission. And seven, that this approval shall take effect 16 calendar days after the date of the Planning Commission's decision. Condition two, that no outdoor cooking shall be performed outside of the shipping container. Three, that the hours of operation of the west outdoor seating area shall be no later than 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. Friday through Saturday. Four, that any music or amplified sound in the outdoor seating area shall not be heard above the ambient sound of the surrounding area. Five, outdoor activities shall be limited to the service and consumption of food and beverages and shall not include use as a dance club, nightclub, or venue for live entertainment. Six, that the seating capacity of the west outdoor seating area shall be limited to 20 patrons as previously approved, and we need one about a landscape buffer with mature trees.

Is there anything about the door being closed by 10 o'clock? Did you want to just limit it to 10 p.m. all days?

Okay. I'm hearing that condition three, I'm suggesting we amend that to the hours of operation on the west outdoor seating area shall be no later than 10 p.m. all days of the week.

And that garage doors facing the west shall be closed at that time?

Perfect. Thank you.

Regarding the landscaping, that the landscaping along the western lot line shall be planted with evergreen of at least 10 feet tall at time of planting.

So moved. Thank you.

We have a motion. Do we have support?

I thought we were only closing the door if there was live music. So that they were able to keep it open until 11 if it was not going to be live music on Fridays and Saturdays.

It would close at 10. This is now a different use. So 10 o'clock, those are the hours it would close.

All right. Great.

I would draw that.

Thank you. Is that support? Support. Great. We have a motion in support. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed?

Aye.

Aye. Okay, motion carries, thank you. Okay, we are moving on to our first street case, excuse me.

Good afternoon, Planning Commission. Give me a moment here while I navigate to our last case, which is going to relate to 614 First Street Northwest. This is a plan signed program amendment for a portion of the greater Bridge Street market. Hendrick Apartments and current WMCAT building. There's an open tenant space within that building located at 614 First Street which brings us to where we are today requesting signage for that tenant. This property is located in the heart of a TN TCC zone district. This property, as well as the others I just mentioned, were rezoned into a planned redevelopment district back in 2018. I'm sorry, back in 2014. 14 or 16, thank you, where a planned sign program was established in 2018 to provide some flexibility in the signage they were proposing at the time. For this amendment today, we're considering adding an upper level wall sign to the planned sign program, as well as an additional canopy sign to the established planned sign program. And the reason for that, again, is for that new tenant, but also because the previously approved planned sign program did not have these signs available to the property owner. to install the signage. And so part of your role is to consider the appropriateness of the new signage, how it coordinates with the existing planned sign program, as well as the appropriateness of the ask itself. And so relative to the TCC zone district requirements. The signage does deviate slightly for that canopy sign where our letters are about, our logo rather is about an inch too tall, whereas for that upper level sign we have some deviation relative to the number of upper level signs permitted on a building in this zone district. The existing plan sign program at the time of its inception was compared to the TBA sign requirements and that is because at the time some of the surrounding zone districts were TBA those also were rezoned to TCC following the establishment of the plan sign program. So all of these properties surrounding this PRD are now TCC and so all of the signage for those properties moving forward would align with essentially what's being requested today. With that here's an image of the upper level wall sign and again here it is on the north elevation of the building. So this would be facing First Street with Seward Avenue adjacent and then the canopy sign we have one that's being proposed today as the amendment and the other that was already approved through the existing plan sign program. But here's a look at that if you're interested as well. Beyond that, that's all I have for you today, and I'll toss it back to the chair.

Thank you. I do have one question. For the upper level building sign, is that consistent with the sign on the Seward side? Relative to size? Relative to size.

Yeah, yeah, for the most part. It fits within the zone district requirement for the sign area. Okay. It's sort of comparing apples to oranges because it's a different tenant, right? But, yeah, they both are pretty much aligning with that same TCC zone district. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions for Sarah? Okay, thank you. All right, we'll have the applicant come and add additional information.

Good afternoon, everybody. Mike Mraz, I'm the managing partner of Bridge and Stocking LLC, the ownership entity of the building, as well as chief investment officer for Rockford, the original developer of the project. This project has really succeeded what we've envisioned from the beginning, when we started this Westside investment starting back in 2013, but for the office space. We achieved bringing affordable grocery, working with ICCF to bring affordable housing, WMCAT as a nonprofit, market rate housing. The delivery of the office space that is part of this project hit right in line with COVID. And so we've experienced that vacancy of 35,000 square feet since inception. And so working through that and working through all of our other portfolio, and really as we came out of COVID, additional space in the downtown market came available. Some was furnished and complete. Raw space like this, it was very, very competitive. We have our brokerage firm, Bradley Company, who was working with Wintrust, who acquired Makatawa Bank earlier this year, and went through the entire process. We've been working with them for probably nine months or so, almost a year. And they're really excited to come to this property. Being a company like theirs, signage is very important. especially on a B2C type of business. You'll notice on that sign that Wintrust is on the upper level. And because Wintrust acquired Makatawa Bank, that brand, Makatawa, is very strong, being a community bank. So that's why you're seeing Makatawa Bank here with Wintrust on the upper. Their program is really to maintain the local feel of the local banks that they've acquired and that's the reason for the change in signage there. Their program will include both this first floor space on the corner of 1st and Seward as well as nearly everything on the second floor facing Seward. Their program will include their office operations, their wealth management group, as well as the first floor will have a large community space, similar like we have at Rockford across the street, our office commons, with the goal to host, they've told us, up to 75 events per year, and so they want to be able to have that visibility. attract communities, nonprofits, all free of charge. And then with this being a liner building, parking is situated within the entire complex. We do have available parking for this tenant as well as transient parking going forward as well. As you know, we're building the soccer stadium, so we're excited for that to open. We hope that we can utilize some of the existing parking that we were required to build previously to allow for that. And then, as it relates to these two signs, the Makatawa signs, and I have Allie here from Valley City who's going to be able to explain this, is it really goes in line with what we've learned with signage over the course of 30 years developing downtown. Really, if you remember, Jeff Speck was a consultant that was brought on many years ago about the importance of blade signs and seeing signage as a pedestrian and as vehicular traffic versus just facing the street. As it relates to those awning signage, we thought it would be really nice to be able to have both pedestrian and vehicular traffic see that type of signage. Then, of course, for the upper level signage, as we've developed other properties in town, That's really one of the main goals for tenants is that type of visibility to set their mark in the downtown area. At completion, I think they'll have at least 50 new employees that will be relocating and working here. They've told us they'll keep their existing branch downtown, so this is an addition to the community. And with us at Rockford being across the street, we're really excited to have them as a tenant. The importance of this, too, is the lease is contingent on an approved signage, so this is why we're requesting this change. The WMCAT signage is facing east. They're very pleased with that. They're very welcoming to the new tenant. And then we'll be back in a couple of weeks because we are then planning to convert the the western portion of the building to residential. And so we'll need approval. So two-fold, this was all working coincidentally together. The other piece, which we'll talk in a couple weeks, is that we've received the MISTA grant to convert the remaining office space to residential to add more housing to the stock. For the marketplace itself, this will help reduce some of the vacant office space that's in downtown. So I'll leave it at that as far as the ownership. If you want to

Can I ask a question before you? Yes, of course. So is it two different operations then? Both a bank branch and Wintrust kind of headquarter? I'm confused about the different.

Sure. So the first floor, they'll have what's called a mini branch. And so they'll have kind of an office setting type teller. And so that will be really as you come in as the main entry point there. They have a planned ATM within the vestibule, and then they'll have a couple of offices for wealth management and then the community room. And then the second floor will be additional office space. So same company. They're just occupying two floors of the building.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah, so that is part of the reason why they're looking at signage on both the main level and upper level because there will be an upper level tenant as well.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Hi there. Again, my name is Allie from Valley City Sign. Just a little bit of the technical aspects of the signs, just so you're aware. These lower signs are going to be non-illuminated, facing both, again, north and south. So those are just plate letters. This sign up here will be illuminated. It is in line with the WMCAT sign that is... Currently facing Seward so we wanted to kind of keep that same feel of the type of sign To kind of match the aesthetics of the building as well as just that overall block So we feel like we're not totally going off of what the plan sign programs Intentions were so that's kind of all I wanted to add to that great.

Thank you any questions for the applicants Okay, I'll let you have a seat All right, we'll open the public hearing. If you're here and want to speak to this case. There's no public hearing, is there? Oh, there's no public hearing. Great. Then let's not open a public hearing, because we don't need one, and chat. Thoughts on this?

I don't have strong feelings either way. I mean, I think they're attractive-looking signs. You know, the one that's an inch out of spec from what we allow, that feels to me like, come on, it's an inch. But I'm not going to make a stink about it.

Same. I'm in support.

Yeah, I am supportive too just in general of like as long as it's consistent with what is there for the WMCAT sign and it sounds like that's true. I am a little confused, I was a little confused about why there are two different signs for like the same tenant but I guess if one, if there's a bank operating down there and the larger operation up then I can understand calling that out to the public.

Sorry. And so basically the way that Wintrust works is that they utilize the local name and then it's powered by Wintrust. So it's rolled up. And they recognize too that there's a lot of lettering with Mecatawa and Wintrust. But

But they didn't want to put the Makatawa up top?

No, because they love the concept of the local community banks, but the strength of a $10 billion market cap financial institution. So they're able to provide more, I don't want to bore you with that, get into more features, but still have that community feel.

Okay, thank you for that. I'm supportive. I can make a motion.

Sounds good.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Planning Commission approves the request of Bridge and Stocking LLC, Elise Bossie, for an amendment to the plan signed program for 614 1st Street NW for the following reasons. One, the applicant has demonstrated that the proposed plan signed program amendment would result in a more attractive aesthetic setting, improve safety, provide more convenient identification for planned users, or other similar purposes because the development is a large integrated complex, and the proposed amendment will provide more convenient identification for users of the subject office component of the development. Number two, that the location and or physical characteristics of the applicant's property or the needs for the identification are unique when compared to other similarly situated parcels in the same zone district in the same vicinity because the overall scale of the development requires further wayfinding support relative to the location of entrances. Number three, that the applicant has demonstrated that the proposed plan substantially furthers the purposes and intent of Section 5.15.01 because the proposed amendment would protect the need to provide directional awareness for users of the development and balance the need and right to communicate with needs to provide promote orderly communication, promote community aesthetics, and prevent a proliferation of signs. Number four, the applicant has demonstrated that the approval of the planned sign program amendment would not create any adverse impacts on one or more properties in the vicinity of the proposed amendment because it reinforces and supports the character of the surrounding development by considering building scale and massing in nearby travel speeds and pedestrian visibility. Be it further resolved that the following conditions of approval shall apply to this project. The standard set condition A approvals, striking number five and number seven. And number two, that a temporary occupancy permit be obtained prior to installation of the signs should street or sidewalk occupancy for installation be needed. And three, that approval shall have immediate effect.

Second.

All right, we have a motion in support by Andrea. Any additional discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you very much. Next we have planning commission discussion. Kristen, do you have anything for that? I don't. I would say, so we did have a presentation on the directions report last meeting. staff sent us a link to that and I don't know if others were in my position, but I did not have a chance to review that and In-depth and so if folks haven't done that I would encourage you all to do that to provide comments To the department as soon as possible if we can Anybody else have anything for discussion Okay, then we have I said worth having a discussion.

I just I think the weirdness for me with the Michigan Street case was also the fact that this is being treated as a mobile unit, but it's really permanent. And I think it gets to what you were saying during lunch about how to handle... Because I feel like if this were permanent, it probably would have gone through a different process as far as the ventilation is concerned and things like that. And so.

Yeah, if it were a building addition, it would have gone through a building permit review process. And like I mentioned during the lunch review, the, oh gosh, what do you call it? The shipping container structures generally whether they're permanent or temporary, our ordinance does not speak well to those, admittedly, which is why we bring them before a planning commission because of materials. Typically how they're used is kind of in the ancillary, at least thus far. is more so ancillary to support the primary use. And so there's a little bit of nuance in how those fit well or don't fit well and how we treat those. So I agree, if this were a permanent building addition, it would be handled differently because it's a building addition, whereas a shipping container is not a building addition.

Generally, I love adding the vibrancy to the neighborhood. And so I felt really conflicted about the whole thing.

Something definitely to make sure that we're addressing in the new zoning update for sure.

I think we've identified that for our consultant about I think she mentioned accessory uses generally and structures are all throughout the ordinance and having a dedicated chapter that speaks to that and we have brought up the the shipping container concept seems to be A more frequent request to support a variety of uses, whether it's primary or mostly ancillary, and trying to get better standards in place to guide planning commission or staff decisions.

Awesome.

Okay.

Anything else? All right. We will open up public comment. If you'd like to provide your comments, come on up. I'm sorry, is the mic on?

Okay, I'm not feeling very good today, so my apologies. But I forgot to fail to mention earlier that I lost a tenant last year because of his noise, violating all his licensing, original licensing, food, music secondary. That door stayed open till 2 o'clock in the morning at times in the past. Later, sometimes 2.30 with the staff outside hanging out partying in the patio, you know? He's not there. He doesn't see this. He knows what's going on, I'm sure, you know? But I'm a little disappointed and the mobile thing, the food truck. What is the rules out of parking a mobile truck next to someone's house full of fuel and hoods and gas and grease and boom boom and now my daughter's blown up, you know, five feet outside of his mobile truck. You know, what are the rules with that? Nobody? Nothing? What else? Let's see. And I'm all for growth, believe me. I've watched this city grow. 30 years I've been here. Watch it go from boarded up to what it is. And I'm all for growth and move. I'm a mechanical contractor of 30 years for my own. I understand all the hood stuff. So if you guys want to get into that, let's get into that. Because right now he's not within code of being next to my property line with that hood distance. So until there's a more real plan here of what's going on structurally, I will be down there with the mechanical contractor guys, Matt Van Heulen and the rest of the boys, and we're going to figure this out before we get too much further ahead. Or whatever I've got to do to make this work for me too, because this guy does not play within his rules ever. Let's see. Yeah, I resided my house because of him torturing me, which I'd already had in the plans anyway, because I have a rental upstairs, right? Now, I lost $15,000 last year because of him, but I resided. But he was always sending his little cronies out, the code compliance officers, to pick on my house and send me letters and torture me constantly. This isn't about the neighborhood with me. I don't know. That's about all I got. I'm not feeling very good today again. Is there anything I could submit to this organization later? I don't know how all this works. Or moving forward to make sure that we're all in line because when that garage door at 1001 is not shut, I'm calling the cops every 1001, 1001, 1001, just like your entire staff told me to do for the last four years. And for four years I've been calling the cops and the same old shit and nothing changes, nothing. And then now we get a free patent.

Okay, can you let the planning director respond?

Excuse me. There are, the next step in the process is for the concept or the project to go before permitting review. And so the building department, electrical, mechanical, planning will review the plans and ensure compliance with the applicable codes that are in place. It is not atypical for the Planning Commission to approve the concept. We do not require constructible plans, so it is entirely feasible that there could be permitting issues that would need to be resolved. And if they can't be resolved within the configuration of what the Planning Commission approved, then the applicant or the owner would be required to come back to the Planning Commission to amend the plan. And that was similar to the permit that was submitted for 2200 Griggs. We could not approve it because it didn't comply with your plans and the adjustment had to come back So that that is still a next step in the process is compliance with the applicable Building code mechanical as well. So yes, I don't know which inspector but Matt is one of the inspectors Mark Griffey would be our lead inspector under the permitting review and I'm sure would ensure compliance. Regarding enforcement activity, if that door is not shut at 10 p.m., absolutely, our response is to contact GRPD, file a complaint through Code Compliance, and that would be investigated and responded to by the pertinent enforcement division, and enforcement does proceed. Many businesses have gone through the enforcement, including...

I just wanted to play in the rule book. That's it.

Okay, thank you, sir.

Your time... 10 o'clock is the noise ordinance. Your time is up. Thank you very much. I bought that house for 20 years to be loud. I know the rules, you know? That's it.

Would anyone else like to make public comment? Okay, I'll close public comment, and we are adjourned. Thank you.