Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We're live and and rolling. So, all right. We'll call to order the planning commission regular session. We do a roll call. Liberty Aila here. Uh Matthew Gity here. Max Cultive here. Gary Lillard here. David Fely's absent. Excused. Right. Um any additions or changes to the agenda? Uh, we do not, but I'll I'll have some comments at the end to add that are not listed. Can we consider approving the minutes of February 11th? Move that we approve the minutes from February 11th meeting. Time to look at them or I'm good. I'll second. All in favor? All right. No, no one here public comments. Um, no new business. So, we can do the public hearing and we will swap the order to do the consideration of the proposed goal 14. Okay. And I guess just for the record since we're recording, it's the applicant for the first item is is running late. So, we're swapping these to give him an opportunity to still be here for his agenda item. Okay. Thank you. We'll switch to our second part of the binder here. Okay. I'm see if I can jump to that section without getting too far. Okay, we're really close here. We will open the public hearing for comprehensive plan amendment 14 file number

01-CPA 25. Um we get the rules of order. The planning commission will conduct one legislative public hearing tonight. These rules of order are applicable to this hearing. This is a public hearing to consider an application for amendments to the comprehensive plan goal 14 urban growth boundary expansion. The applicant is the city of Lrand. State law designates this as a legislative hearing. Therefore, commissioner exparte or prehering contact does not apply. The hearing will proceed as follows. Planning staff will present the staff report which includes applicable criteria and standards for the matter under consideration in the application. The chairperson will then ask for public testimony from hearing participants if present relating to the application. The chairperson may state a time limit for testimony. If no time limit is announced, testimony will be limited to three minutes. All testimony must be directed toward the applicable criteria. Oregon land use law requires that all issues raised by a participant during the hearing must be sufficiently clear and specific to allow the hearing body and other parties an opportunity to respond to those issues. Failure to raise the issues during the hearing may invalidate a future appeal. Chairperson will then ask for any written public testimony to be read into the record. Any person that wanted to submit written comments in advance of the meeting had until 5:00 p.m. on the date of the scheduled meeting for such comments to be accepted and read into the record. Any person that was interested in providing virtual public comments had until 5:00 p.m. the day prior to the meeting to make arrangements with city staff to participate in the hearing or in the meeting. Uh public comments, whether written or virtual, were to be emailed to Mike Embocquiz at city of lrand.org. The meeting is available for viewing on YouTube live at the following link www.youtube.com city of L Grandand Oregon. The applicant will be invited to speak first followed by proponents then opponents and then by any parties neutral to the application. An

opportunity will be provided to parties to clarify any issues raised or to rebut testimony. Proponents then opponents will be provided an opportunity to clarify any issues or to rebut testimony. If additional documents or new evidence is introduced during the hearing at any any participant may request a continuation of the hearing, any participant may request that the hearing record be kept open for 7 days to submit additional written evidence or testimony for the purpose of responding to new evidence. Unless waved, the applicant has seven days to to submit a written response. The proceedings are being electronically recorded to be converted to written minutes. When testifying, please step to the podium and state your name and address. Members of the planning commission may ask questions of the staff or hearing participants at any time. The chairperson will then close the hearing or continue the hearing at a specified time and place. Planning the planning commission may deliver a recommendation to the city council and direct staff to prepare findings and conclusions which support the recommendation. All recommendations must be based on findings of fact from the staff report or evidence and testimony received which relate to the criteria of the land use decision. Findings of fact must be stated. I got to do this again. That one's not as long. All right. Nice report. Yeah. So, this project uh uh started uh probably back around 2022ish. Anyway, uh we started proactively doing a gold nine economic opportunities analysis to address uh um our dwindling supply of available commercial land and industrial land just as a result of property sales and new development. And uh uh so we completed that analysis uh in 2023. We adopted it in early

2024 and that uh analysis identifies that Lrand has a shortage or a need for about 63 acres of commercial land and 121 acres of industrial land. And so out of that 180ish acre need um that was identified, the next step after you adopt that analysis, state law requires you make an effort to go and satisfy that need. And so that's what we're here to uh consider adopting tonight is is that effort which is essentially a goal 14 urban growth boundary expansion report. It'll be an amendment to the city's comprehensive plan and incorporated as an addendum. There's no actual text amendment within the plan itself. We're just adopting the report. Um, and so, uh, uh, part of that process, for those of you that were able to be present for the consultant presentation, uh, a month or two ago, um, kind of in a nutshell, um, this map shows bits and pieces of of, you know, the whole piece, but the the kind of bubble or the circle around this outlying edge kind of gives you an idea of how far out the city is required. ired to look we're required to go a mile outside of our current city boundary and look at every single property that is within that mile radius and determine is it eligible or is it not eligible to consider expanding Lrand into uh and so urban growth boundary city limits uh urban growth boundary yeah so anyway uh um so we we did that so We we looked outside of that and then we actually scaled back a little bit as you kind of head towards Lad Marsh. Um but uh we've essentially narrowed properties

down. Part of it is was Island City is within that one mile and we're obviously not going to expand into Island City. So that gets weeded out. Um there's properties that are way outside of our service uh service ability. So some of those got weeded out. There's stuff up on the top of the hill up by Morgan Lake that we just can't get to. So those get kind of ruled out. And then there's a number of other criteria that you look at. Um and the two that are kind of like the most important I think on my list is is the first one is is you know do we actually have city services? Can we reach that property with city services and then the second piece as you start prioritizing properties it's kind of done in reverse of what we would normally identify as priority lands. uh uh because you you base it on soil types and the higher priority the higher valued soil types become our first criteria of what you eliminate. So our priority is the worst soil. The county's priority of preservation is the best soil. So we kind of flip that. But after we've ruled out all of the high quality soil areas and you just look at what is left, then uh we've essentially narrowed this down to five areas that uh uh are kind of illustrated on this map in the project. So we have A throughF. So, we have a uh an area of land that was up around the Union County Fairgrounds that potentially could provide some commercial opportunities because there is some business activity in the county at that area. We have stuff off of May Lane, which is area B. Um and then we have uh C, D, and E are are kind of uh grouped together, but these are areas around RDMAC um gravel pit and around the city's business park. And then when you get out to F, that's land out by the airport. And uh and what we've um after kind of

going through this and going through some public process with property owners and we looked at feasibility of services and transportation is how do we serve these areas um this is I don't know a thousand I forget how many acres but we only need you know roughly that 180. And so this is a huge area for us to consider. So, we clearly aren't going to be taking all of this as an opportunity. We had to narrow this down to as close to 200 acres as possible. And so, what we've done is we've um just based on priorities is we narrowed this down to areas essentially C and E. Um uh area D, which is this little area in the center. We just can't get to it. It's it's trapped between the railroad and and 84. And Gekckler Lane crossing is the only access to it. Plus, we don't have any services there. and uh or area C um has Island City sewer running by it. It's it would be fairly easy for us to uh um uh address the sewer needs. We can extend water to that location. That area is kind of a gimme for consideration because we already have services uh at you know in this vicinity and and these are also the closest proximity to our current city boundaries. uh all of our transportation requirements are already satisfied with the existing road network that's there. Um and so this is the area that we kind of resulted on as our first uh priority for where would we expand um if we can. These are the easiest pieces that meet all that check all the boxes. The negative side of this is that we don't have any willing property owners that want to be brought into the urban growth boundary at this time. Um so that is why the conclusion of this report is to not expand the boundaries but just to adopt the report so that as a business opportunity comes they can be steered

towards these properties and if there's a willing seller and and an opportunity arises we've done at least the lion share of the process uh which is you know really it's a two to threeyear process to get to this point and the next piece to expand the boundaries is probably maybe a six month to maybe a year at the most anyway to actually expand the boundaries. And so it's a it's a very lengthy process from start to finish. And so we're fortunate to at least be twothirds of the way through this with just a small hurdle to uh to go through next when an opportunity arises. So we're uh um so we're done. So, your your uh recommendation tonight is going to be to forward this on to the city council, you know, as a recommendation to uh hopefully approve this. Uh one comment that did come in through the review process was the uh fair housing council, the Oregon Fair Housing Council, and they had an inquiry of why did we not address our goal 10 housing um stuff with this report? And so my response back to them was was this is a commercial and industrial land need analysis. This is not a residential project. And so we did our residential land need analysis. We did a housing production strategy and all the things that the state requires related to the goal 10 housing. We did that in 2020. Our next cycle of doing that is around 2028 is when our number comes up on the state's list to have us update that again. And so so that was the response I gave back to the fair housing council folks and they were happy with that. Um they did uh let me jump up and um they did ask that I put that explanation in the uh decision order. So I added you'll

if you look to your packet on this page which is page seven anyway you will not see goal 10 and so I added this to the uh decision order for forwarding this on to the council so the council will have this in their packet um and essentially it just says this goal doesn't apply for these reasons and uh and so um after you have your discussion tonight and make a a decision and your motion would would be either as amended or to you know approve this you know you know with the amendment included. So um I don't have anything else to add. If you have any questions uh I'm ready. So we approve it. How long will analysis on this? Yes. It will essentially be there until the council or there's some other uh I guess factor that would cause us to go back and redo this. The last time we did we did this was around 2016 for uh or maybe it was 12 for industrial land only and we ended up bringing in about 300 acres out by the airport. But we didn't have a need identified at that time uh that was as great as this because we still had a lot of vacant properties. And so our need was really focused on large acreage uh parcels based on the inquiries the county and the city were getting on the economic development side. And so the industrial lands we brought in around 2012 had a overlay zone attached to them where they had um uh there's a property immediately west of the business park that has a 20 acre overlay on it. So that can be partitioned into two lots.

Uh it's a 48 acre parcel. So that's a 20 acre overlay. And then uh out at the airport um it's roughly about 300 acres. I think it's three different ownerships. Um, but out in that area, we have a need for a 100 acre parcel and a 50 acre parcel uh for for a large industry. And so, because of the way the makeup is, no one parcel will achieve the 100 acre piece. And so um so with that we have some flexibility as you know somebody comes in and wants a 15 or 20 acre piece out in the airport we can accommodate that as long as we preserve a 100 acre piece and a 50 acre piece for a large industry or we go through some exercise to change that overlay and say that that's doesn't apply today and then we just remove it. But uh anyway, yeah, but to answer your question is there's no generally this is a 20-year forecast, but we try to do some type of update about every 10 years because times change. But uh um yeah, so I guess we'll see where we're at 10 years from now if there's motivation and and a need to revisit this or do we ride it out closer to the 20-year? So if one of the owners for the two segments that chose to focus on changed their mind or sold to someone who was inclined to come into the urban growth boundary, they would notify your office and your estimate is it would take about six months. Yeah. From there to Yeah. to have that be? Yeah. At least that's my hope anyway. So part of it's a process. Yeah. So, we I'm just using kind of a reszone as a scenario. Um, a reszone takes five to six months. It might take a couple extra months because once we get through our fivemonth process, then we go up to the we have to go to the county for co-adoption on this and they

have a planning commission meeting and then they'll have two city council first and second reading of ordinances. Uh, so that you're looking at three months at the county um to complete it. So, it's anywhere from probably 6 to 9 months is is kind of what my best guess is. That's assuming everybody is is prepared and we have a pretty good application. So, u but yeah, what happens to the to the ones that were considered that aren't the two that were prioritized? Like if a part parcel came up in one of those where the owner was inclined to enter the urban boundary would would that be permitted with this report or would that take some other set of actions? It would require a little extra analysis because part of the scenario let me go find let me get to that map because it's probably a better one. So as we look at this, part of the analysis that um was conducted is it was a traffic study done with traffic engineers to look at capacities of streets and intersections. And none of these other areas had uh besides kind of getting ruled out, but none of these other ones had immediate capacity. and we decided we were not going to spend the money to do a traffic study on an area that uh um or at least to go into more detail other than kind of some very early conceptual assumptions, but we weren't going to spend the money to do a detailed traffic analysis in an area that was not really eligible and and folks at least in area B especially. I mean, they just came right out and said, "We do not want you to even include us." and they were actually not happy that we were even considering them in the first place. And so they're they don't even want to be identified on the map as being considered even though we ruled them out. But uh um but of the area that we

have this area C and a little bit of this D that uh is kind of below that. I guess it's really area C. It's but this is commercial. This is industrial of area C. Um, but that is one area that we'll have to do some additional traffic analysis if we do have a buyer in there because there's some assumptions of you base it on your current zoning and your list of uses and what's a likely scenario in those zones of who would be a user to locate there. And if somebody comes in and they end up being a really high user, you know, we may not have adequately addressed the traffic impacts that a heavy user is going to have. And one of the things for sure is this Gekckler Lane and Mallister intersection is going to be over capacity with a probably even a medium-sized user and it may require stop signs or some kind of traffic control there. But if it's a really big user, then we'll be looking at our uh you know, are the streets wide enough? Do we need turn lanes at certain locations and those kind of things? And and right now the assumption is we don't need anything. But we will know that more once we have an actual user proposed that it'd be worth going through the analysis rather than you know just doing a hypothetical today and and generally those hypotheticals are worst case scenarios and that's not reality. And then F is undesirable because of its distance from our current boundaries. Yeah. Yeah. And it was a property owner that was that didn't express any interest. And um you know and and this is our current 300ish acre piece is kind of down in this area. Um this mostly this is the city but you know it's really this triangle. And so area F well exceeded the aotment we needed anyway for the industrial land. that's not a property owner that's interested and we don't it' probably be appropriate for heavy industrial land and I think our need was more for kind

of midsize lots in the light industrial and so we kind of ruled it out plus it had I think it had decent soils but we ruled it out mostly because it just didn't check all the boxes easily and I think if we would have had a willing property owner there that was interested we may have changed our priorities a little bit but we that wasn't the that that can change. They may not own it. Right. Oh, yeah. So, to get back to your question, uh I'm sorry about that. So, to get back to your question, if somebody in one of these areas that was not in the C or E category comes in and says, "Hey, I want to be included." They certainly could because we have the justification that says areas, you know, A through F are all eligible areas to bring in. The piece that's just missing for all of those is we will have to go through and do a much more detailed traffic analysis to bring it in. So, it's probably not going to be your simple six to ninemonth process. They're they're going to have to somebody's going to have to spend a fair amount of money to do a traffic study and determine what those impacts are. And then based on the results of that study, um it like area F for example, we know the crossing in the intersection at at highway 30 is is already, you know, pushed to its limit. And same thing with the airport road and Pierce Road um intersection, those are already at their limits. So, uh, if area F was to come in, we would certainly be looking at some relatively expensive improvement on both the state highway and Pierce Road to accommodate a large development. So, that would be probably a harder one, but all of the other ones, you know, depending on what the user is and what comes in, some level of analysis may be able to support bringing them in instead of the ones that we pick. I have one more question. So I'll ask you. So D, do you know what D is being used

for? And so you said it's between the interstate and the railway. Is it currently in use? Yeah, it's it's it's probably I'm going to say 95 or more% is farmland. So right now it is it's all hay pasture. And there's a I don't know maybe four houses that are off of Gekckler Lane. Three or four houses off of Gekckler Lane. And then the rest of it is, you know, their farm fields, their access from it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at some point it may be because what what we're looking at right now, not to not to go on a tangent too far, but this property that is up, this is off of the end of L Avenue and and the corner of 25th Street. So, this this property has been um kind of under discussion for I don't know my whole career here, but uh but pretty much the last probably five years is it's come up regularly as uh a possible property for a subdivision. And uh around 2002 or 3ish or so, that property owner actually came in and and did a whole subdivision process and then walked away from it because the economy kind of changed and and they said, "Well, this is not the time to do this." And so they left it and it expired and it's gone away. But over the last 5 years, their subdivision plat has come up a number of times by different developers and say, "Hey, what would it take to do this?" And the biggest challenge is we don't have water and sewer capacities to serve that property. And so they took pretty much all the dirt off of this land and maybe some others in the area to build the overpass at at Island Avenue. And so it's it the grade is really low and so the sewer doesn't flow to the west and and kind of southwest as desired, you know, so they have to put

in a lift station and pump it back up to where we currently have sewer, which you know is very costly. So you're putting in two main lines, one for gravity flow down and one for the pump back up. And it's just cost prohibitive. And so, so what we've been looking at for about the last four or five years is is we have an engineer um analysis and estimate that's now 5 years oldish to tie in down here at Mallister and run u I think we're going to add water if we do it, but to run a sewer up the highway right away or along that vicinity to get to the bottom of this. So then that would provide sewer gravity flow to all of these properties. Plus then it opens the door for all of this area D which to get back off the tangent is that opens the door up for area D to be able to potentially serve that with city services. We still have transportation issues but at least we would have water and sewer and so so that's actually on the table today and discussing. We have the city council has a work session I think in about 3ish weeks or so. Uh maybe a little farther out but anyway there's a work session to talk about that because public works has uh the resources to uh you know put in most of that and I don't know how they would finance the different but it's 5 years ago it was a $2 million project so it's probably more than that now and that was probably just for sewer. I don't know what water is added onto it. Public works has uh you know a pretty good pot of money in reserves for doing a project like that, but the decision is has been we're not going to build it unless somebody connects to it. And so we've been sitting here waiting and so but we have an active project that is under consideration for this lot. And there's a agency that I think the guy's

based out of John Dayish, but I I could be wrong where he's based, but I think that's where he's from. But he's he's done a lot of creative financing stuff with state grant money to help private developers build streets and infrastructure and all kinds of things. And but they can only give so much money to the developer itself and the rest of it would be passed through the city. And so we're going to be having a conversation to figure out what is that financial resource? How would it offset some of our costs? But then for the pass through piece that they can't give to the developer, but it would benefit it. We're thinking that the city may end up building some of the roads or some of the other utility infrastructure within the subdivision using our money that they essentially give us to reimburse us. So somehow we're going to create a partnership to kind of help facilitate a development that may otherwise be cost prohibitive. But those are all things that I know nothing about. And you know, once we get into the weeds and into those minute details, it may be that yeah, this is not for us. I or maybe it's this is like a dream come true and we're going to be jumping all over it. So anyway, we we have some learning to do as we move forward, but in about three weeks or more, we're going to be at least having a a council and staff conversation about that water sewer project and uh see if that's something that we want to take some steps to move forward with getting uh updated numbers designed and that kind of stuff. Mike, was that property the one we were looking at that one with council pandemic when we had the pandemic coming? Yep. We decided not to. Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Then we just pushed everything over to the streets because that just made sense. And uh so yeah, so now this is coming back because I mean the I mean at the time you'll recall that we had a developer that kind of

walked away from it. So because we had nobody sitting there, it was like, well, I'm not going to build it and hope they come. But now we have, you know, some very active interest in that. And so it it is becoming a little more of a priority to figure out how do we how do we do this so that this person doesn't walk away. And so anyway, so that's coming. But that's uh I guess that's the long answer to your question about D. It just seems like a very central location and also less desirable for residential because it's between the interstate and the railroad track. So more desirable. Yeah. The the interesting thing with area D is I think it it makes a very high priority based on its location for being contiguous to the city and a logical expansion location. But as far as the characteristics, if it wasn't a locationational thing, it's got some of the best soils in Union County. Don't you said that? I was like, "Oh yeah, that's that really green section." Yeah. And it it's got some of the best soils and it's irrigated. And so out of from a priority standpoint, if it wasn't for the locationational aspect of it, it would have gotten weeded out right from the get-go, but it made the cut because of its location and we essentially boxed it in. And so, um, that kind of, you know, prioritizes, you know, that land and and, uh, you know, minimizes the soil value in this evaluation process. But anyway, yeah, so C and E are kind of our two uh target areas right now just because we don't really have to do any infrastructure improvements uh other than trying to figure out the water and sewer. But from a a highway capacity, it would be a fairly easy one to um bring into the city, see it develop without it costing a fortune. So that's So anyway, yeah. So fingers crossed that

uh those property owners have an interest at some point in the near future to entertain uh opportunities. Any other questions before we move forward to a recommendation stage? Who wants to make the motion is on the front page. We are not approving but we are um I have amending because of the goal 10. Yeah. And we are forwarding it to the city for approval. Want me to go ahead? In fact, I move that the finding of fact and conclusions set forth in the draft decision order be amended and that the proposed comprehensive plan amendment be forwarded to the city council for approval. Second that motion. All in favor? I Okay. Thank you. Yeah. This our applicant made it for the first one. So hopefully hopefully I will hopefully I'll do okay representing him or answering questions. So it's been a fair amount of time working with him. So fairly clear. Yeah. All right. Let's open the public hearing for condition number 01-35. We get the rules ready. The planning commission will conduct one quasi judicial public hearing tonight to consider a conditional use permit file number 01-cup. Applicant Shaun Burton. The hearing will proceed as follows. The chairperson will request the staff

report which includes applicable criteria and standards for the issue under consideration and the application. As part of the staff report, the applicant may have the opportunity to address the commission prior to public testimony. The chairperson will then ask for public testimony relating to the application. The chairperson may state a time limit for testimony. If no time limit is announced, testimony will be limited to three minutes. All testimony must be directed towards the applicable criteria. Oregon land use law requires that all issues raised by a participant during the hearing must be sufficiently clear and specific to allow the hearing body and other parties an opportunity to respond to those issues. Failure to raise the issues during the hearing may invalidate a future appeal. The order of testimony this evening will begin with that of proponents, those in favor, followed by opponents, those opposed, and ending with those neutral. An opportunity will be provided to parties, proponents first, then opponents to clarify any issues raised or to rebut testimony. If additional documents or new evidence is introduced during the hearing, any participant may request a continuation of the hearing. Any participant may request that the hearing record be kept open for seven days to submit additional written evidence or testimony for the purpose of responding to new evidence. Unless waved, the applicant has seven days to submit a written response. The proceedings are being electronically recorded to be converted to written minutes. When testifying, please step to the podium and state your name. Members of the planning commission may ask questions of the staff or hearing participants if present at any time. The chairperson will then close the hearing or continue the hearing at a specified time and place. All decisions must be based on findings effect from the staff report or evidence and testimony received which relate to the criteria of the land use decision. The commissioner must declare any expporte or preherent contact including the person's name and the nature of the discussion as well as any site visitations to the area in question. Commissioner should declare any personal or financial interest in this matter and may disqualify themselves from participation in this

hearing. Does any commissioner wish to make a declaration? Let the record show there are none. Does anyone in the audience wish to challenge the right of the commissioner to hear this matter? All right. Staff report. Yeah. So, this this is a property that uh is essentially located uh uh at, you know, right at the Bart entrance uh um off of uh Highway 30 or Adams Avenue. And uh the applicant is uh is looking to kind of fill a recent void in our kind of landscaping market. Anyway, uh he has a landscaping business and uh and recognizes a need for uh folks in our community to be able to buy bark and decorative rock and uh pavers and all the things that Grandcapes used to offer that uh is no longer locally available in bulk. And so uh so he's been looking for a site. This is one that just happened to uh come available that is a little smaller than what he ultimately was looking for or what he ideally wanted, but uh will suit his needs. Um uh he spent a fair amount of time uh uh kind of navigating the BMart uh u kind of stipulations. This property used to be owned by Bart and it has a deed restriction associated with it like a no compete clause. And so there was a fair amount of discussion with him and the CEO of Bymartart over, you know, what type of bark are you selling and is your bark going to compete with our bagged bark? Um, are you going to sell um, you know, I don't know if BMART has, you know, much for paper blocks, but it was mostly a bark conversation, but the

outcome was is you will not be selling plant material, but you but I'm okay with all the bulk stuff. And so so anyway, uh um and he doesn't really have space for plant material on this site anyway. So um you know, so it wasn't really a big deal for him. So So his site plan kind of gives you an idea of the variety of different uh bulk things that uh um that he's going to offer on the site. Um, all of his storm water is going into kind of a landscape bio swell that is going to be located between two driveways coming off of like that interior driveway going into Bart. And as a landscaper, he's hoping that this is going to be a showpiece kind of representative of his business. And so, he's got some grand plans for uh for plantings. We do have a tree requirement uh associated with our landscape requirements and our urban forestry. Um he's going to be mostly doing evergreens, which is not exactly what we always hope for cuz we like to have, you know, big shade trees, but the evergreens kind of fit his business model and and uh and stuff. So anyway, u so we're kind of looking forward to seeing this this lot get dressed up and looking really nice. Um as far as the use goes, it requires a conditional use permit because it's all outdoor sales. Uh generally if it was like a Miller's um where it's predominantly indoor stuff and then you just have your yard that somebody's going to go through and grab some stuff then uh it would have been a permitted use outright. But when you get into kind of a nursery and all outdoor storage and sales, it's a conditional use permit because of those sometimes those visual impacts that you may have. And we sometimes might care about the location and and want to mitigate uh visual things like screening from residences and those kind of things, but um I don't think we have any of those characteristics here where we would have

those impacts. We need to mitigate. Seems to be a great location with neighbors that are compatible. Um and so uh yes, so I don't have any conditions of approval recommended. There is one comment that came in after the staff report went out. So, you'll see a uh um a recommendation in in uh uh the motion that I'll kind of bring back up for you to do the same thing we just did with the last one is as is um if you're inclined to approve it is as as amended so that we can incorporate the ODOT comments, but ODOT just uh wanted to identify that the Bimar driveway is the only permitted driveway coming off of the highway at that location and that they wanted to make it very clear that no other driveway per minutes will be issued if for some reason he chose to want to, you know, have another entrance. Uh so ODOT made it very clear that the BMART entrance is the only driveway permit. Um but they also said they have no concerns related to the business and they actually like this layout. And I um I called as kind of a followup because um I don't know if uh I'll pull it up because I just I had kind of an interesting question as I saw their uh as I saw theirs because when they refer to uh um Highway 30, let's see. Is it on this one? It's got highway 066 US30. And I was like, what is 066, but apparently that's every highway in the states got some numerical assignment that is not necessarily the highway number anyway. And so this is number 66 on the list, I guess. But but anyway, I thought that was really interesting is is how that was. So but anyway, when I was on the phone with them to kind of ask them, you

know, what is this 66? Anyway, they just kind of clarified that uh you know they're you know fairly happy and satisfied with this and are looking forward to you know the business locating here. But uh but anyway that's uh kind of the application in a nutshell other than the the ODOT comments coming in. There's really no surprises that have come up. We didn't have any comments from anybody else. I think he the applicant did a great job visiting with the neighbors and talking about uh uh you know issues or concerns that they may have and just making sure that he uh you know satisfied them and I he wants to kind of be friends with all of his neighbors and get along and cuz they're going to be kind of sharing space to some extent. I would imagine folks are going to naturally want to park at Mart um and walking. Oh, the one thing that I did want to come in uh have you look at Um, and I highlighted it in the uh staff report uh is um the city code has a parking requirement that deals with uh um the uh it's based on 1,000 square ft of gross retail sales area. And when you're dealing with outdoor sales like a nursery or these kind of things, I think if you if in the case of like a Grandcapes nursery where essentially your entire property is is a spot where people park and they walk all around and shop, you know, I think our parking formula may be okay. But in this scenario, his customers are generally not going to be parking and walking around and shopping. his customers are showing up with a big trailer connected onto the back and and there's going to be maybe one or two at a time showing up and he's going to be loading them up with barking and away they go. um they're not going to be parking and then walking through shopping and and uh buying miscellaneous things and and so he didn't ask for this change, but I

just wanted you to have some discussion uh because I think it would be nice at least of us to kind of consider giving him a uh a custom parking requirement which the code allows when you have a use that doesn't you know clearly fit the scenario and uh and given the nature of his business is really, you know, just a handful of folks coming in at a time with their trailer loading up and then leaving. Um that uh uh anyway, I just want you to have the discussion if you think the nine spaces that you know, I think he's required to have eight, but uh based on the formula, but if you think that's reasonable and want to leave it, that's fine. But, um, I think maybe dropping that number to like five parking spaces because he still has all of the, you know, vehicle drive-thru spaces as, um, you know, as being, uh, technically parking also, even though, uh, it's not designated that on his plan. That's they're just naturally going to pull in and you're going to have, you know, a couple trucks and trailers lined up in here as they're waiting their turn. They're they're not going to be parking in these spaces probably unless you happen to be the one person who's going to come in and just pull in and just say, you know, what do you got? How much is it? Then then they leave and then they come back with their trailer. And so, um, so anyway, I just want you to think about that. So, you know, if you wanted to reduce this, he's actually got 10. He didn't count the handicap space in his quantity. But um but I'm just thinking if you required him to only have maybe five spaces plus the handicap as if if that sounds reasonable to you, then that would allow him to, you know, have a pallet of something or expand his landscaping and and create some other little decorative something. But uh anyway, I'm just throwing it out there. He didn't ask for it. So if you're not inclined to do it, that's okay, too. changing the subject a bit. The the

bark bulk sounds like it's going to be a lot of bulk. How is that going to be stored or managed or just out a big open pile or what does it do? Yeah. So, what he has and it's not real clear in this layout. So, I'm interested to see if it really fits this quantity. But he is uh getting those jersey barriers, you know, this big concrete block um just like you see on the highway. Anyway, he's getting those from. I think Eastern Oregon Rental or he's got somebody making them for him. But I think Eastern Oregon Rental is where he's getting those and essentially he's going to make little, you know, cubby things that, you know, a dump truck and I think he's going to haul it in because he's got a dump truck. So he's probably going to haul it in and restock himself from he's his stuff comes from all over, you know, Eastern Oregon. And so it it's custom. So he'll be driving probably to John Day to get something or Ontario to get something because they have a special rock there or he's got three different size barks and lots of different types of rock and but they're going to be in these little concrete cubicles that he'll he'll dump in there and part of that is because he'll have a little bobcat that'll go in and scoop it up and you know when you get to the back you need something hard to push against to get it in the bucket. I was thinking in terms of wind. I know we get very little. I don't know how he's going to deal with that. So, that's going to be an interesting uh scenario, but he is aware that it's pretty windy out there. And so, um so I guess it'll be interesting to see what he does. I think if he's got the jersey barriers, depending on how they're oriented, it may be fine, but he may uh he may have to decide where he moves stuff or he may have to put some other little barrier in front of it on windy days. Keep it in its cubicle. I don't know if I I don't really think so because I know it was really windy out at the Grandscapes location when

they were out there because they're also in the wind tunnel. And so, um I think if you're closer out towards the truck stop, you're more in line with the wind. And so, um I don't know if it's an issue. I mean, Bimar doesn't seem to have a whole lot of issue with their outdoor plants and the, you know, that that they have sitting out in front of their doors with, you know, they don't doesn't seem that those little potted plants fall off of their trays very often because of the wind. So, I'm I'm thinking this stuff should probably hold itself pretty good. But, yeah, I I don't know. I Are there any concerns that we should be thinking about in terms of materials delivery? I heard you say he's got a dump truck now. He'll bring some in himself. But well, when I hear that, I hear tractor trailer. What would the access to this site be? And I mean, it looks big enough that, you know, if he was getting stuff delivered on tractor trailer, it would be off the street. Yeah, it is. And that was one of the things, you know. Yeah, cuz they're coming in off and they're in the BART driveway and they're just going to loop through back in and dump it. So I I don't I don't see it as a traffic issue. affected me. Yeah, I don't see it I don't see it as an issue and you know and if he's hauling most of his stuff with just a a regular landscaper's dump truck, um you know, then uh I think it's going to be fine. Some of his stuff I think when you get into like the bark, it might be he might have a a larger dump truck come in and deliver that. I just I just know what it looked like out of Grandcapes when they had it. And that's probably a fullsize dump truck, not really a landscaper size dump truck coming in for that. But, um, you know, maybe he's got one of those, too. I don't know. But I I don't really see an issue with the circulation. He's got plenty of of space to to get a big dump truck to come through and navigate that.

I I mean I think this looks good and I don't have an issue with reducing the parking. I think anything gives them a little bit of flexibility and I agree with you parking there and well I know they're not using the primary parking lot. People are walking over seems okay to me too. How would he be mitigating dust and that kind of Um, so on this plan, this area he's got labeled, this is all asphalt. So he's got a little office which is potentially down the road anyway. I'm not sure how soon he's going to put this in, but he's got this is all uh asphalt where the parking and the primary vehicle circulation is. Um, and then this is gravel where essentially is Bobcat's going to maneuver back and forth, but it's compacted gravel. And so I aside from getting back to your question about the wind and the bark and that kind of stuff and is I don't you know maybe the top soil I don't know if I see you know at least dust being a big deal other than with you know maybe his top soil pile depending how he has that he may have to cover that or do something with it if he finds that's going to be an issue. But um the way he's got the site designed and what we typically look at for dust abatement and dust control, I don't think he I think he's got that covered and I think we're looking good. He's aware of the potential for that. He's mentioned two different places. Yeah. And I and I'm sure that for what it costs him to get material and stuff, he's going to re be really disappointed if if Oregon State Forestry gets all his top soil, you know, and and his bark ends up in there because I mean, it's Oregon State Forestry's landscaping is next to them. So, all of his bark's going to

blow into their landscaping. So, he might be a little disappointed to lose, you know, some materials. I'm sure he'll solve it. If we reduce the number of parking spots, what I think five plus the makes sense. Now there's one employ. Yeah, that makes sense to me. I mean, that leaves him three available spots, the ADA spot, and then all of the truck and trailer drive-thru. If you think that's reasonable for kind of the the scale of, you know, and scope of his [Music] business, it was 5 + 8. Well, I might be ready for a motion if everybody thinks this is all right. So, this was this now amended in any any way. I thought I heard that. Yeah, it's amended to add the ODOT comments in and then it would be also amended to, you know, accommodate the uh the parking consideration. Uh but then I'll I would I don't know if I would add it as a condition of approval, but I would I would probably modify the uh but I I'll modify the decision order in that section where I highlighted it to identify that he was granted a a custom parking requirement of thus and so and then I I'll include that in the letter to them if whatever magic number you arrive on if you're willing to do that.

Want me to read this one too? Sure. Go for it. I move that the finding of facts and conclusion set forth in the draft decision order be adopted and I guess amended. Yeah. As the and that the condition be approved. And then do you want to would you amend that and say subject to whatever the parking is that you would like to assign subject to the parking proposal? Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess it's whatever you want to with five. Five space. Five plus the handicap. Five plus handicap. Sounds good. Second. All right. We don't have any old business today. Yeah. So, the only thing that I have coming up is our uh the next month meeting is uh um that second week of May, second week of May. Anyway, our our schedule date is that happens to overlap with uh the city budget hearings and so um usually during that entire week uh all commission meetings are cancelled because because all staff are essentially in budget hearings but uh u more so for us is I think there's really only two commissions that meet during the actual days budget typically takes. It's usually the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and we're Tuesday. And so, so that meeting date is going to be cancelled, but I do have True Construction is getting ready to submit

an amended uh preliminary subdivision plat. Um um so when was it last last summer, whenever it was that you guys approved their subdivision? And they had five phases. And their last phase, which is the the end, they had a single lot that they didn't know what they were going to do with cuz they were negotiating with neighboring property owners to potentially purchase that. So then they would come back with, you know, a different subdivision proposal that would incorporate those properties. U anyway, one of those property owners did not want to sell and I think the other one just doesn't work out for the layout. and uh um we're act for fire access and stick with what they have. But this lot they have generically labeled as a triplex in order to hit our density requirements for the for the R3 highdensity residential zone. And they would like rather than putting a triplex on that one large lot, they would like to do the same size parcels that they have throughout the rest of their subdivision and actually platted out as five lots. and uh which I think easily fits with uh you know the way their subdivision is designed. Uh but going from one lot to five lots is not something I can administratively bless as a as a minor change as they move forward to city council for final plat. And so they are going to come to you and ask you for um I guess a revised decision to change their preliminary plat 12 lots I think. I forget how many. I think it's 12 to make it. What? 17 lots or 16 lots. So, would that be in June or we schedule? So, Kendra's going to be sending out a little doodle poll or something to try to set up a uh uh possibly a special meeting that's on a that deviates on a different date. So, she's going to send it out and uh and

then we'll just kind of see what your availability is to get together for probably a 30 minute meeting. I'm hoping it's pretty short. Um, and I guess we'll see. Otherwise, worst case scenario, he'll be coming in June to whoever's available to to run that. And so, um, Liberty mentioned that she's not going to be available in June. So, if we have a June meeting, uh, our vice chair, uh, is going to be, uh, uh, in charge. But, um, so anyway, so that that's coming. Um, and then just to kind of give you a little bit of information on his subdivision, I was kind of skeptical with with, you know, how hot these lots would be for for sale cuz this is like a first for us. These are little tiny lots with small homes and they're just packed in there like sardines and but they I mean he can't build them fast enough. It's like they're people want them faster than he can build them. And so his first one was sold before he was done and he's got, you know, folks committed to the other ones it sounds like. And and so once he got the first one done, rather than doing five phases, which was his proposal and what got approved, he came in with phases one through four and did it all at one shot. And uh and he's planning to do now his his next phase with the five lots as as one big shot, too. So, he just wants to get it done because they're building houses as fast as they can to get these done. And and I think they are the ones that are potentially looking at that property at the end of L Avenue and 25th to try to do something there. I don't think they want to do this business model there with these this small of lots, but they may do a combination of different things, but they want to do a bunch of single family houses on normal lots. I think they're going to probably use that subdivision layout that was originally done. I think they have probably 8,000 square footish lots on

average. Um, and that's it's a typical subdivision like Eagle Cap Estates size. Uh, but they're uh I think this is going so well. And there's what's the house what's a house just roughly like what square footage of a house? Theirs are about 1,200 but I think the 1,200 probably includes the covered parking you know. So I don't the ones that they did on that we approved already are 1 or 1 or 1,200 or the eagle cap estates no these ones the eagle cap estates ones are pretty big they're probably you know a couple thousand square feet 2500 I don't know what is with the garage added but uh but they're pretty good so they're probably like 8 to 9,000 square foot lots with 2,000 to 2500T homes but but the ones that they're doing right now off of 16th Street I mean these are 3,000 square foot lots with 1,200 footpint That includes the carport, the little threebedroom houses, and they're it's tight quickly. There's kind of an overlook where I live, you know, behind the wildflower lodge up there. Yeah. Take the dog down there. He's been really interested, too. Yeah. Facing clear down there. Yeah. So, so it'll be interesting. This is one of our I guess one of our first under the newer standard, you know, that is kind of a state law mandate, but we had to reduce our parking requirements to one parking space per dwelling unit. And so it'll be interesting. I'm just want to see what households of this size, how many cars do they really have? And is that one space per dwelling unit reasonable? And uh I mean we don't have a choice but it's it will be interesting to see what what it looks like for the lot sizes that Nevada change was made to through the state. I was surprised when I saw how close they Yeah. No, we did that for taking uh you know for accommodating the cottage homes because when we started uh incorporating the cottage

home you know option kind of like what Gus Chach just did on stuff. If somebody wants to build a cottage home, which is kind of a a new model that folks are interested in, is a 6,000 five or 6 thousand square foot lots a pretty big size lot for a, you know, little 800 square foot house. And so it was kind of like, well, if you're going to do a, you know, a house that's a third the size, then, you know, maybe a lot that's a third the size is is reasonable. So, uh, but that's a minimum, you know, and most people aren't going the minimum. So, um, other than this this project was,00t on a 6600 square foot lot. Yeah. Lot of yard and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So, I Yeah. So, I mean, it just it just depends, I think, on on what folks are looking for, but generally the smaller houses need less less footprint of of lots. So, so anyway, uh yeah, so that's our standard. But, uh anyway, so that's coming. So, so watch your uh emails for for Kendra's little poll. And if we just if we can't get a quorum together for for doing that, then we'll just have to let uh True Construction know, you know, when the next available meeting is and and plan for it. Final question comments.