Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Lee Summit has lots of local destinations, but where do you start? Green Street, a vibrant community space in the heart of downtown, is where Lee Summit comes together. Its three dynamic areas have something for everyone. Green Street Market is a modern event venue and home to the downtown Lee's Summit Farmers Market. Green Street Lawn is a covered performance space hosting live music, family activities, and more. Green Street Grove is a mixture of gathering spaces, an immersive playground, and bold architectural features. And all three areas host community events year round. So the next time you set out to enjoy the city you love, remember, meet at Green Street.

Hello, Lee Summit. I'm Jordan. Here's your flash briefing for the week of July 6th. City Council will meet for a regular session Tuesday night at 6 in Council Chambers and City Hall. Meetings are open to the public or watch live on the City's YouTube channel. If you can't watch, catch the recorded meeting on demand on the YouTube channel or by subscribing to the Council Debrief Newsletter, which breaks down three to four key agenda items. Subscribe at citybells.net. Join us for the last Football Friday celebration this Friday, July 10th, from 6 to 10 p.m. at Green Street. This Football Friday celebrates 100 years of Route 66, honoring a century of road trips, retro vibes, and classic Americana as part of the highway's centennial year. For more details, visit lsgoal26.org slash football dash Fridays. Looking for a sweet way to explore Lee's Summit this summer? Families are invited to take part in the Summit Scoops Ice Cream Crawl. Kids can visit all six participating local ice cream spots, collect a stamp at each stop, and turn in their completed passport to win a prize. You can find the ice cream locations and download your passport at ExploreLS.com. Thanks for listening, and have a great week.

Keeping our city beautiful is a collaborative effort for all citizens. The City of Lee Summit supports these efforts with a set of guidelines or ordinances, and the City's Neighborhood Services team helps put those guidelines into practice. These guidelines ensure grass stays trimmed, fences are maintained, home exteriors are kept up, and much more. We can all help out by first making sure our property meets these guidelines. If you notice potential violation on a neighbor's property, first check the guidelines on the City's website. If it is a violation, the next step is to communicate with your neighbor directly. If that is not possible, or if the problem persists, it can be reported through LS Connect. LS Connect is an online platform for submitting issues to the City. You can access it on the City website or by downloading the app through your mobile device's app store. Once you submit an issue, it is reviewed by the neighborhood services team. A neighborhood services officer will then visit the site. For any violations found, the neighborhood services officer will leave a notice and speak with the property owner if possible. The officer's goal is to help the property owner solve or abate the problem as quickly as possible. After a 10-day period, the officer will inspect the site to see if the issue has been abated. Normally, by this point, the issue has been resolved. If not, depending on the type of issue, an extension could be granted, or the city might fix the problem at the owner's expense. In rare cases, if all other measures have been applied, the issue will be resolved in the municipal court. Neighborhood services officers work hard to resolve problems quickly and positively. They are here to support the community as we work together to keep our city beautiful.

Welcome to the Leaf Summit sign department. We are going to walk you through our process from start to finish. We make signs as needed here. It's not like we just go out into the field and place the speed limit sign here, no parking here. Our traffic engineers, they go through and they'll do field studies. They'll send us down an engineering work order for us to go out, place new signs or remove signs as needed. Coming from the material, our blanks come in and they're just aluminum blanks. We can put our white, our red, our fluorescent yellow green, whatever. And basically what it looks like is just that there. Throw it up into the roller. And once we got it covered, take it to our work table here and Tim will cut the corners, cut all the access off to where it's lined up right. As far as the plotter and the software that we use, there's a street name sign there and he's gonna go ahead and print that out on the plotter so you can see the plotter and how it operates and runs. their standards for the height even just on letters on the signboard. Basically what we have on the computer there is it's pretty much set up to those and it goes through it's got a very small but sharp needle that goes through and cuts everything out letter by letter. Once that's done cutting our next stage would be bringing it over here currently picking out the sign letters right now. We call it weeding or picking or however you want to call it. Next, putting it on the transfer tape. Then after it's taped, we bring it over to the roller. That's where we apply it to the actual sign blank. And we'll roll it through one time just to get the air bubbles out. And the last stage is basically just taking the transfer tape off the front of it. And there's the finished product of street name sign. We'll take you out to the field and show you our process that we go through. We're going to go out and follow our sign guys, get something installed for you. This is where we check our underground utilities. Tim, you got AT&T?

AT&T is back here. Ever-G, Google.

We should be good to go. We normally put all of our stuff together out in the field. Then once the base is installed, we'll go ahead and put the post in there. It's come up to perfect. And that's how we do it. Simple. Quick.

Traditionally, we think as police officers, those responding to law enforcement needs within the community. But honestly, we are there to serve our citizens, and our citizens do go into crisis. They do have mental health crises, and we're being called to those scenes on a regular basis. In order to help serve those citizens better, we did initiate the Crisis Intervention Team Program. These are officers that are specially trained to de-escalate crisis situations. Recently, we've brought co-responders onto the scene, licensed, qualified mental health professionals housed within our police department. and they respond with those officers directly to those scenes where a crisis is occurring so they can interact with that citizen and get them the help they need right there on that scene.

The co-responders are either a bachelor or master level in a behavioral health related field. They wear plain clothes. They don't carry weapons or anything like that.

I have a police radio that I listen to all day. Listen for, you know, those key words. Mental health, behavioral health, crisis.

There's a lot of officers that just call for me. I have my own radio number.

I also have the ability to self-dispatch to them and say, 982's en route. Officers en route. 914.

So typically I arrive after they've made it safe. I'll make contact and get kind of the rundown. And then I just kind of jump right in.

Like, hey, you know, my name's Allison. I'm a mental health professional. I'm here to help you. I'm not here to take you to jail or arrest you. Sometimes

All a person needs is a voice, someone neutral, someone outside that can listen. I do a lot of safety planning, including family, their support network. Who's close to you? If they're home alone, who can come over and hang out with you today? Can we lock away your sharps? Can we put up your meds? Do you need meds? Can we get you over to the urgent care to get you assessed for your medications? Some of them also are like, oh, I'm so glad you came. This made me feel so much better.

Our main goal as co-responders is to, one, get people connected to the services that they need and also divert from emergency rooms and jails.

And they almost get a different view of the police responding. That lets me know you care and the officers care. Please call the police.

How can we help you?

In 2020, we had 722 mental health related calls for service. 2022, by that time, 1,479. These mental health related calls for service are increasing. How we're responding to that is increasing the number of crisis intervention team officers we have available, as well as the number of co-responders we have available to respond on these calls.

So what I think is important for the community to know about the co-responder program is that we're here, we exist. All you have to do when you call 9-1-1 is ask for us. You know, say, hey, I want a co-responder to respond to this crisis and we'll go. I was really struggling about eight years ago on my personal journey with mental health, and I met some amazing social workers and amazing programs that have helped me get to where I am today. I really couldn't see myself doing anything else. We want to help, and that's what we love to do.

So I had a client we got a call she had some suicidal ideations and she really felt that she had nobody and you know and getting to know her story and getting to know who comes around and sees you well then we found a support person and they responded immediately and we made a plan. I called back and checked on her in an hour and then I checked on her in two hours. We were able to get her into the additional services to where she talks to someone every week or more. I just took a person that really just thought they had nobody and nobody would show up for them and show them you do. And you'll be amazed who is in your corner if you just simply say, I need a little help.

The summit has lots of local destinations, but where do you start? Green Street, a vibrant community space in the heart of downtown, is where Lee Summit comes together. Its three dynamic areas have something for everyone. Green Street Market is a modern event venue and home to the downtown Lee's Summit Farmers Market. Green Street Lawn is a covered performance space hosting live music, family activities, and more. Green Street Grove is a mixture of gathering spaces, an immersive playground, and bold architectural features. And all three areas host community events year round. So the next time you set out to enjoy the city you love, remember, meet at Green Street.

Thank you. you You can also use the same method to create a new layer. You can also use the same method to create a new layer. Thank you.

The Planning Commission Planning Commission meeting July 9th 2026. Can I get a roll call?

Edward Earrington. Peyton Hatcher.

Here.

Molly Pesch. Present. Dana Arth. Present. Terry Trafton.

Present.

Chip Tuszynski.

Present.

Jessica Gourneau. Present. Tanya Jonaford.

Present.

Lee Moore.

Present. Okay. Can I get an approval of the agenda?

I move to approve the agenda. Second.

Screens kind of going out here all in favor of I don't need to vote on that do I all in favor of the agenda. We have to do a roll call. Stumbling just a little. And yes.

Molly cash, yes, Dana are yes, Terry trapped in.

Yes.

Chip Tuszynski?

Yes.

Jessica Grinnell?

Yes.

Tanya Johniford?

Yes.

Lee Moore?

Yes. Thank you. Do we have any public comments related or unrelated to anything that's on the agenda tonight that anybody wants to say in general? Not seeing anybody. Okay. We'll move forward. Thank you. We have an item on the consent agenda. Can I get an approval for the consent agenda?

Mr. Chairman, yes, I'd like to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Second.

Can I get a roll call?

Peyton Hatcher? Yes. Molly Pesch?

Yes.

Dana Arth?

Yes.

Terry Trafton?

Yes.

Chip Tozenski?

Yes.

Jessica Grinnell? Yes. Tanya Jonaford? Yes. Lee Moore?

Yes. Great, thank you. All right, we're going to move to public hearings. So I'll now close the regular meeting and open the public hearing on the matter of application PL2026-078, preliminary development plan, Blackwell Convenience Store 2661 Southeast Blue Parkway, KDP Hospitality LLC applicant. Staff... Anybody that wants to testify, can we swear people in the wish to speak on this matter? Anybody in the public that wants to speak?

I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so I hope you got it.

Thank you. Does the applicant have a presentation? Yeah.

Yes. Okay, good evening. My name is Matt Smith. I am the civil engineer representing the applicant for this development. Thank you for taking the time to review our application. I'm going to briefly review the site from an engineering perspective and review grading and drainage, utilities, site access, and then I will hand it off to our architect to review buildings and landscape. Did he not give his address? As you can see here, we're in the southeast portion of Lee's Summit, more locally in the intersection of Highway 50 and Blackwell Road on the northwest corner within the roundabouts there on the west side. This overall is a site plan for future development included. Currently we are only developing the east portion of the site, but I wanted you guys to see full build out. Currently we are only going to be designing and developing the middle road and the east portion of the site. So let me block these out. Currently, we are planning for future commercial and medical. Obviously, those could change and those would come back through Planning Commission and City Council, but that is just what we use to design for this portion. There's also a building on the northern end of the East Parcel 3 that we are currently developing that is future as well. And as you can see, there is a convenience store slash gas station and a restaurant. as well as pumps on the south end. This is the existing conditions of the site. It is mostly wooded area, very dense trees. And if you actually walk into the site, there's quite a bit of existing trash. And it looks like possibly some nefarious activities have been going on in there. So developing this site, I think, would benefit the city and the area. It just creates an area that is hidden inside of there. And then on the east side of the site, there's an existing detention basin that could possibly have a bit of wetland, and we will have U.S. Fish and Wildlife review that when we go through the final process. From a grading and drainage perspective and stormwater, we use the TR55 hydrologic methodology. This methodology utilizes existing conditions and proposed conditions. and reviews rainwater site use to develop or to design detention basins as to not increase the flows exiting the site in a post-development situation. The blue arrows, as you can see, So in general, the site is high on the southwest corner and drains to the northeast. There's actually an existing pipe where you can see those blue arrows in the northeast. The existing pipe actually takes the off-site or flows from this site and takes them north. So everything from our site that will leave will go through that pipe. In the temporary condition, we are going to propose putting temporary swales across the east side of both of these parcels as to not let the flows from the wooded area that we will not be developing now flow into the future development. As I said, this is the wetland area that is possible wetland that we have actually designed around and we will not be touching at all. In regards to utilities, Again, these are future. So in regards to utilities, starting with sewer, we will be taking sewer from the northeast corner of the site and running it south across Shenandoah. It will then come west and then run south down our main meandering road, and it will end just north of that southwest future parcel. And then each parcel will tie in off of that. In regards to water, we will be pulling from the northeast, and then we will also be pulling future lines for the other two parcels that will come from different locations. So for this site specifically, in that northeast corner, you can see the water crossing the road, and then it comes south to the commercial building that is actually future. And then there's also a water line, a main water line that will run along the west side of Blackwell that will loop water from the north end in an existing line and there's also an existing line on the south end of the site and it will loop water throughout the development. in regards to fire safety there are multiple fire hydrants which you can see the two blue dots in the center of the site those will serve the site from a fire and safety perspective and then we also have some turning radius on the north and the south showing that fire trucks can can access and we've taken that into account oh um and thank you for taking a taking the time to review the site with us and i'm going to let vincent come up here and talk about architecture

Hello, Planning Commission. My name is Vincent Foster. I work for Architectural Engineering Consortium. We have an office out of Independence. My office is out of Jeff City, 713 Caitlin Drive. In designing this building, we looked to the surrounding area for some context, including the materials used and where the materials are used. the stone veneer wainscot around the buildings, nearby churches, and also, sorry, the large storefronts of glass that exist at the library that's very near this location also. As well as the flat roof indicated here that presents us a very thin profile. You can see that we tried to mimic that kind of closely here. The owner wanted to go for a very modern look, so there's a lot of straight lines and flat roof. The mechanical equipment will be located on top of the building, so it has to be concealed from view from below and the street. The building will consist of 6,000 square feet of the actual gas station or convenience store utilization, and then the other 2,000 square foot will be rentable by by another business that is to be determined of course. Likely a restaurant and the parking that Matt laid out on the site is conducive to having a restaurant there. So I think that's the maximum capacity that we would have in that location. Let's see. This is just showing the different elements that we drew from the surrounding area again to draw into the design here. Option two, it was discussed at some point that the sloperoos might not be as most attractive or fit in as closely with the context in the area. So we looked at a more flat roof type of scenario and this is just a rendition of that that we have run by the owner that we could also do that is an option as well. Landscaping, I think it's pretty straightforward. Around the perimeter we have the standard shrubbery for... I'm sorry, I'm stumbling a little bit. Landscaping's not my forte. Our landscape engineer can be here. For... What's the word I'm looking for, Matt? The shrubbery around the edge of the site for... Screening, that's the word, screening. Oh no, why couldn't I come up with that word? Yeah, to meet the local standards that you guys have in place for screening. Our landscape engineer worked to develop this with the appropriate shade trees and deciduous type trees that are, again, meet the local building zoning standards. continuing up here. The site, the perimeter has large trees and then the islands are spotted with shrubberies as well to help facilitate the feel of as much green as we can get on the site with what we're doing building wise. Site lighting, I think, is also pretty straightforward. It's pretty even across the site. There is going to be some building lighting that will come from the buildings that are there. You'll note that Matt mentioned that there's a commercial building up in the top of this property, but it has not yet been designed. And that's for future development as well, right? Yes, that's correct, yeah. So let me see if that's anything else here. I think that's the end of my presentation. Thank you all for listening.

All right. Mr. Soto, I think, is coming up to give the staff presentation.

Good evening, Hector Seto, Jr., senior planner. I'd like to enter into the record exhibit A list of exhibits one through 19.

Exhibit A list of exhibits one through 19 are entered into the record.

So the application that is before us today is for a approximately 8,000 square foot convenience store, combination convenience store and drive-thru restaurant, as the applicant had stated. The general location of the site is the northwest quadrant of US 50 and Blackwell Road interchange. So the images on the left show zoning for the immediate area and then kind of to give a little more context to what the corridor looks like, particularly between the area bounded by Blackwell Road on the east and Todd George on the right. I've got kind of a little bit more of an eagle eye view of what the zoning characteristics are of that portion of the corridor. So as you can see here on the upper image here highlighted in cobalt, the cardinal indicates commercial zoning. That is what is currently anchoring the northwest and the northeast corners of the Blackwell US 50 highway interchange. As you move north beyond Shenandoah, you start getting to more of a actually predominantly all single-family residential, particularly on the west side of Blackwell Road. Off the screen to the east, in process of construction is a mixed-housing type residential development, apartments. Well, extending from more of a villa style up to apartments with some commercials there along the north side of Blue Parkway on the east side of Blackwell Road. As you move yourself to the west off the screen, you start transitioning into a number of non-residential uses at front US 50 Highway. Most closely here, you see a couple, there are some church development that eventually transitions to some public and semi-public uses in the form of a library, hospital, some medical offices eventually. And as you make your way toward Todd George Parkway, you start getting a little bit more commercial uses there on that far end. So the images on the right just show the cleaned up version, so you can see what the existing development looks like in that vicinity. So the project itself, just to provide a little bit of clarity, the overall parent property is about between 10 and 11 acres. The focus of the application before us, and this is for everyone's edification, just to make sure exactly what the ask is. So right now the intent of the applicant is to receive entitlement to develop the C-store slash restaurant, the pumps, everything else that's shown on the plan is conceptual only. So no action that you take tonight will, in whatever your recommendation may be to city council, None of that is to go forward with any recommendation for approval of these several 5,000 square foot buildings that constitute about 35,000 square feet in total. So while this 5,000 square foot building is located on the same lot as the C-Store, gas station entitlement is not being sought for that one right now. So we're only, the applicant is only looking forward to move forward with the development of the C-Store gas station drive-through restaurant component. Approval of anything beyond that in the future will require going through a public hearing process, somewhere exactly like this one, Legal notices will be published in the newspaper. Letters will be sent out to all property owners within 300 feet of the site. Signs will be posted. Again, that's for future development of this. At this point, the applicant is not doing anything with this other than showing it for graphical representation of how the property could develop and that the manner in which they're looking to develop this piece is not going to negatively impact the ability to actually develop the remaining portions of the property. So attached to this application, you can see here there's mention that there is one modification request that is being sought on the architectural side of the application, which I'll speak to a little bit later. So here a little bit more of the detail regarding the development itself. I bolded the areas that are actually the focus or the subject of what the entitlement or public hearing portion of this is tonight. So Lot 3, which is on the far right, east side of the lot, so essentially the eastern half of the property is what houses that approximately 8,000-square-foot building. The Pump Island canopy shows 10 pumps, double-sided, so in total you're looking at 20 stations as depicted here on the plan. So associated with this development to provide access into it, Construction will include this, what we'll call a J Road, that'll extend the eastern leg of the Shenandoah Southeast Blue Parkway roundabout here on the northwest corner of the site. It'll extend that J Road through, circling east and then north and providing a second connection to Blackwell Road between the two roundabouts, the Blackwell and that Shenandoah roundabout. The access point down here, of course, will be full access. The access point on the north side of the development will be right in, right out. There is an existing median that extends from roundabout to roundabout. So there is just a single lane of traffic that travels on either side of that roundabout. So this here just kind of, again, just... touches again on the road improvements associated with this development, construction of the J Road and the right end right out of the north end of the site. So just to take a little bit of an inventory on this development and how it ties into the existing street network and sidewalk connectivity network that's already existing in the area. The area here, the lines that are in Aqua, They end here at the screen, but they extend along Shenandoah. That area here that's in the aqua color extending along Shenandoah, which technically the portion between the two roundabouts is Blue Parkway again. So Shenandoah technically ends here. Blue Parkway picks back up as it extends from the west through the roundabouts. So everything here in aqua indicates that there is, as part of As part of the city's existing bicycle plan, that is a designated bike route, not to be confused with a bike lane, which is a painted, striped pavement marking. So by being a bike route, what it indicates that there's essentially through this area, extra wide, curved lane to provide ample room for vehicles and bicyclists to coexist on that portion of the road. That bike route extends from Shenandoah east from Todd George all the way to this point and extends through Blackwell and north. The areas here that are in magenta highlight the existing sidewalk network through the area. As you can see, it's completely built out, really. around the roundabouts, both sides of the road, through Blackwell, providing connectivity to the south side of 50 Highway and then extending north along Blackwell Road. The portion here that is in kind of the apple green is is indicative of a private sidewalk that will be developed or constructed as part of the J Road to provide connectivity from internal to the site out to the existing public street network and the sidewalk out there. Just some other features here. Here on this west side of the building, the orange lines just indicate the queue line for the drive-thru facility, and the blue dashed lines here indicate just where the accessible parking spaces are and the routes that'll get you into the individual building entrances, of which there'll be two on the north side of the building and one on the south side of the building. The clouded areas just indicate where you do have that interface between pedestrian connections and vehicular traffic in and out of the area. So as the applicant and the architect mentioned, there are two options from a design perspective that are provided for consideration. The preferred option is the one that was presented first by the applicant, which has the flat shed roof kind of mirrored on both sides of the building. The materials, the material palette for this building is going to be composed of kind of a or similar fiber cement panel. It'll have a stone wainscot, metal roof, So you'll also have the flat roof element here with this parapet that'll provide the necessary screening for all rooftop units. But again, so this building is going to be double-faced, we'll say. So what you see here on this slide or this rendering is going to be identical to what you see on the opposite side. So the north and south sides will be will present as a face and will be identical. The only difference, at least on the preliminary drawings provided so far, is that whereas one side will have, the north side will have two entrances into the building, the south side will have just the lone entrance. Again, the image here on the south or on the bottom portion of the slide here, again, mirrored, so similar. The only difference is that the west facade will have a drive-through window. But again, substantial use of stone wainscot, you have the slope, roof, edge, variable, Variable planes that will be visible from all directions on the building to provide some architectural interest and break up some of the wall heights. The images here are representative of existing area development. I mean, the six images on top are of existing non-residential architecture that you see in the area. Hospital, a bank that, this bank is at the northeast corner of Todd George and Shenandoah. Well, it's between Shenandoah and Blue Parkway. Northeast corner of Blue Parkway and Shenandoah. Blackwell, so that particular building does pull a lot of the residential influences with the use of the dormers, the sloped roof, the gabled canopy and some columns. As you make your way east from that point, you've got a lot of what you would say more traditional commercial development, a lot of flat roof development. some modern development or some modern architecture, particularly, as the applicant stated, with the newest building, one of the newer buildings out there being the library, which uses a substantial amount of glass facing 50 Highway. The top left corner here is also, this would be the newest building. This is a medical office building that sits on the same property as the hospital but separated by the creek or natural drainage way. Again, substantial use of glass on some of the front and kind of a multi-planar flat roof element that you see used on the building. This is a portion of the hospital, a lot of the office building, office use on the far west wing. This image on the top right is the church developed closest to this subject property. We've got a lot of varying roof lines, shed roof, or rather pitched gabled roof ends. The image at the far south is representative of the view of what, basically the typical view from the subject property north toward the residential development on the north side of Shenandoah. So right now what you see along Shenandoah is kind of a bit of a berm or sloped green area, substantial amount of landscaping. Most if not all of the properties that back up to Shenandoah have fence to my recollection. There may be a couple properties that don't, but my recollection was that just about every property there that backed up to Shenandoah had a fence. So you already have varying levels of landscaping maturity. You've got some newer street trees. coupled with significant larger shade, mature shade and evergreen trees that are also located some on the common area green space that is maintained by the Ashton Charleston Park HOA and a lot of trees along the rear backyards or in that green space there for the residential property. The alternate option that's presented, you know, again, this one as an option, you know, has more of a stepped, much more of a flat roof as opposed to the tilted or pitched flat or shed roof. This one just has various levels of flat roof elements used throughout. But again, mirrored, you'll see that on the front, one end has a, you know, kind of a stair-stepped roof line on the two bookends of the building. The material palette would be the same for either option. The applicant had indicated, though, that the preferred option would be the sloped shed roof type of bookend elements rather than this one, but that they are amenable to either option. So there is one modification that has been requested by the applicant, and that is related to the minimum 50% clear glass fenestration requirement on all street facing building facades. So with this building being, essentially it's a corner lot really. If you look at the parent property, it's actually surrounded by right of way on all four sides, but here for this building that we're looking in particular, it very much sits on the corner of the overall site. So the site that's being asked for modification is this east elevation which faces out toward Blackwell Road. The separation between Blackwell Road and the building is about 140 feet between that right-of-way and the building sits the area that will serve some stormwater purposes, but it's also an area that's being investigated as a wetland as well. There will be a substantial amount of vegetation that will be planted to meet the UDL requirements for minimum street landscaping on the east side of the building in addition to the existing vegetation that exists through this kind of lowland area. It should be noted that through this area, the Blackwell Road sits about 13 feet or so, It varies a little bit, but it's about 12 feet on average, I would say. It sits below grade of the finished elevation of this building site. So staff is supportive of that modification on that east side. So when staff is evaluating the application, of course, one of the things that we look to for guidance is the comprehensive plan and how the proposed development sits relates to that comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan shows the bulk of the property, the bulk of the highway frontage from Todd George on the west to Blackwell Road as being commercial of some sort. There is some office that's being shown for the portion that houses a hospital and some future medical. The middle portion does show residential three land use, which was put into place to reflect the existing senior living facilities that are located along that portion of the property. It does also cover the library property. But in general, the areas in and around the Blackwell interchange is identified in the comprehensive plan as commercial in nature, or the recommended future land use as being commercial in nature. So comparing the comp plan versus existing zoning, the zoning is shown on the bottom of the screen. So you can see that there are very much parallels, if not almost identical, that the comprehensive plan reflects what the zoning and vice versa. On the south side of the highway where you do see a lot of existing agricultural development, One thing to consider through there is that under the UDO, agricultural zoning is also used as a holding zone until such time as development can occur on it. The ability to develop the property in this area that's currently shown agriculture was limited by just a lack of, well, really, sewer, a lack of sewer into the area. So the development for that is very much on the horizon. So, with that, the north side of the highway, again, the zoning of commercial extends pretty much from Todd George all the way to Blackwell. with one area, with just one church property that's zoned as residential mixed use. But again, the comp plan and the zoning are very much in tune with one another in terms of showing that the future highest and best use of the property through this highway corridor is commercial and the existing development, the existing zoning through the area is reflective of that. All applications require that the applicants meet with, hold a neighborhood meeting, and one was held back in April. Some of the topics of discussion from the neighbors of concern that they expressed were just concerned with just the C-Store land use as a whole, and then some associated, perhaps what some might term more nuisance concerns related to noise, traffic, and just impact on overall property taxes and home values. To date, the city has received one protest petition on this site. With the protest petition, this is, again, for everyone's edification, for some of our newer members and for members of the public, when the protest petition is submitted to the city, What is hoped by the petitioner is to be able to reach a threshold by which approval of an application requires a minimum of six votes in the affirmative at the city council level. So protest petitions don't have any bearing or affect any of the processes or procedures at tonight's meeting. Any triggering of a protest petition would have an impact, though, on what the minimum vote count is required at the city council level, which on this current schedule would be held about three or four weeks from now. So right now the area in red highlights the protest petitioner to date, which was submitted, and that's representative of the HOA. So right now the HOA only owns, closest to this site, owns the property here. It's a common area band, a portion of which lies within 185 feet of the site. The other properties, there were five other Emails that were received by the city, not protest petitions, but just written correspondence via email to date from five area residents, and those are highlighted here in yellow throughout. So staff's recommendation currently contains five or four conditions of approval, first one being the modification request, second being compliance with development plan. Number four relates to, which is not uncommon, which be that development be subject to the recommended road improvements included in staff's transportation impact analysis, which just as a summary, the recommended road improvements are those that staff previously went for. went over, which are just the construction of the J Road and the ride in, ride out. Beyond that, no additional improvements to the existing road, area road infrastructure are being recommended based on the traffic impact study. So with that, I will yield to any questions that you have. Actually, one thing I will point out. So right now, condition number two, as it relates to the architecture, is that it's currently written depicting the shed roof design. So should this body choose that they prefer the alternate option which has more of the flat roof design, keep in mind that that would be a condition that would have to be modified should you choose to do so. So with that, I will yield to any questions you may have.

Are there questions for staff or the applicant from commissioners?

Commissioner Jana Ford Thank you Mr. Soto I I'm hoping this question helps direct the Planning Commission and how we ascertain information about this application The precedence of having two options to comment on how do we proceed? Is it best to have the ownership as traditional decide on which one they want to go forth and then that's what we focus on I I would I feel hesitant creating rabbit hole conditions of some having particularness to one side and another and not being able to really look at it holistically.

I'll let the applicant speak for themselves. What they've expressed to this point is that their preference is for condition or option one, the shed roof one. So what I would suggest is that would be the option that you focus on. And then, for lack of a better term, the flat roof option is kind of more the back pocket so that if this body finds that that is just not an option in your eyes as being perhaps best representative of good architecture for that particular area, then they have the fallback option. But the preference is the first shed option.

So for the record, we should just ask questions for option one.

I would focus on that one. To your point, instead of diluting or perhaps confusing some of the the conversation that focus on on On this option before you Thank you Chair, are you do you want to do public hearings or do you want the Commission to remain asking questions?

No, we can to continue to ask questions.

Okay May I continue? Yeah, okay Let's see. So I would love to talk to the architect, please, to get a better understanding for option one, which we're seeing on the screen. I believe that's the east side where it's the red with the roof slanting towards the entrance. What does that overhang look like? I'm thinking rain pouring down, people want to go into the building. Are they going to get a rainfall of water? How is the drainage looking right there?

So the overhangs extend a minimum five feet past the wall faces. So they should be clear of most of the weather, at least in the direct vicinity of the entrances, and then also to the sides of the entrances if there's lines backed up.

Okay. And that's the same for what would be the restaurant or food? Yeah. Correct.

It's mirrored. Yep.

Okay. Now the next question, what is the finish of that roof? It says a metal roof. Is it metal seam? What's the finish color? All that.

Yeah. I imagine metal panel and the, um, the color, uh, it's shown as black. Just as contrast for the other colors we have here, black never shows up like it's showing up on the rendering. It always turns like a grayer, lighter color. So it's actually going to end up being like a lighter color to match more of the color of the rest of the building itself.

OK. And then is that an intermediate roof in between the two angled areas, or is that a mechanical curb?

There will be mechanical curbs around the roof, around the mechanical equipment on the roof, on the flat roof area. Okay.

And what is that material? Nichiha?

The colored areas are Nichiha, and then the stucco would be like the gray color that's there.

Is there opportunity to... Revisit the color palette to align better with the surrounding area. Yeah, the owner is amenable to that for sure Are there suggestions has been already discussed?

We haven't discussed any Okay, I think looking at the precedent photos a more I Maybe a less extreme color palette would be useful or fit into the context better. I'm thinking like grays, browns, beige, things like that. The owner is looking to push the modern look a little bit just to stand out from other buildings of this type. But to respect the context of the area is more important than that. So if we have to have some concession on the color, I think that would be, that would be, that would be amenable.

Okay. So it's safe to say that this is not the final color palette. It's purely diagrammatic to get an idea of the different finishes being applied.

Sure. Yeah.

Okay. So I'm going to talk about the convenience store roof that's angling down towards the entry again. So the restaurant, has a placeholder for signage. Where is the signage going to go for the convenience store?

Yeah, it's mirrored just like this one, except it's just not shown because we're only showing one side and what's in front of you there. But the convenience store would have signage as well above it.

So it would be standing on top of the metal roof instead of on the facade?

No, it would be on the facade. Just as you see here for the restaurant, the The south-facing facade of the C-Store will have a signage there as well.

Okay, so the north side won't have a signage for the convenience store?

No. Okay. The intent is for most of the traffic for the convenience store to come from the pumps themselves. There's parking on the south side of the building for that. But there is some parking that was dedicated and what's required for the minimum parking standards on the north side. In case people want to use the convenience store just as a convenience store, not for just a gas station.

Do you mind flipping to the site plan or just the plan layout? Yeah, this one's perfect. Okay. So if I understand, all the parking on the north side is not necessary for the anticipated entry point of the convenience store? You're saying that they're going to be coming from the south?

Yes, mostly. I would assume, yeah.

So now let's talk about the restaurant. Is the anticipation, what's the percentage of drive-thru versus dine-in? What's the capacity of that? What I'm getting to is getting an understanding for what seemed to be over parking.

Yeah. Yeah, it does seem like there's a lot of parking, and that's because we designed it for the maximum capacity that may go into the restaurant space, which is a restaurant. At 2,000 square feet, that's 14 parking spaces per person. I forget the exact number, but it's a lot of parking. If it turns out that they have something there that's not a restaurant, then that parking would be more than is required, but we can't really design that because we don't know what's going into that place yet.

Okay, that helps me understand. Yeah. In terms of the drive-through, is there any pedestrian protection, bollards, canopies, anything like that as cars are driving through the main thoroughfare?

Yeah, so at the corners of the, let me kind of go here, oops. The corners of the buildings, there are some columns I'm showing stretching from the top to at the corners of the building to help secure that as well. That's a good point you bring up. We hadn't really thought through that exactly, but this will help direct people away from that some and provide some protection there as a visual reference for people driving by.

Okay.

Yep.

Now let's go back to the site plan. Sure. Please. So circulation wise we kind of addressed Probably a need for bollards or some kind of protection not only for the building but just for the the drive-through teller So as cars, let's say go east in front of the canopy south of the convenience store What's anticipated need for that alleyway on the east side?

Yeah, we looked at We looked at drive-throughs on both sides, and we ended up not going that direction, but having that extra lane over there for, for instance, truck unloading or things like that, and to help facilitate movement around the site whenever the lane is backed up, having that extra alley provides a lot of circulation for when things like that happen.

Okay. Yep. So if the east is no longer being used for a drive-through, one of the modifications was to reduce the minimum required of glazing from 50 to zero. If that's no longer a drive-through, is there consideration to co, like, what's the word I'm looking for, comply with the minimum requirement?

Yeah, I would say no. And the reason being there's just no wall space in the building that way. And we have large refrigerator units that have to go somewhere. And, you know, by the time you have bathrooms and storage and things along the face between the restaurant and the C-Store itself, there's no... you'll be putting refrigerators in front of glass walls, and that doesn't make sense. So...

I understand. So keeping on that topic, can we... Sorry, we're going to go back and forth here. That's okay. I don't want to give anyone whiplash. So let's go to the elevation page. I want to focus on the east. So... As you, you've got stone block kind of creating a ground plane and then you've got Nijihau panels above. Refrigerators aren't very tall, they're door height at minimum, right? So is there a potential to introduce glazing within the Nijihau panel?

Sure, yeah.

Okay, the reason I'm asking, if this development were to go forward, there's going to be further development on the other side of Blackwell. You know, I imagine driving through and just having solid faces of buildings as you drive through, it's not very opening or enjoyable. So trying to maintain the level of architecture on all sides as every vehicular circulation goes by.

I see. I definitely agree with you on that. Um, but would you consider like a more undulations and the facade or something like that to give it more interest also?

Am I allowed to answer my personal thoughts?

I mean, yes, they're your thoughts as a commissioner, so if that option is something that appeals to you as a commissioner, absolutely.

I would say as a personal commissioner, yes. That would create a little bit more of a dynamic experience, especially since It's all paved on the east side, having something that's more enjoyable for those driving by even. And my last point, then you'll be done with me for a bit. The trash enclosure. Go back to the site plan, please. I see it's on the south side of the convenience canopy fuel thing. What's the elevation drop from that south property line down to the road?

Yeah, you're going to talk to Matt on that one. There we go. Thank you. Can you repeat that question?

Oh, I just wonder what the elevation drop or what that slope looks like. I'm just concerned what that looks like as you're driving on 50, turning into Blackwell, and then immediately you left, you can see the back of a trash enclosure.

Oh, okay, so you're saying from... Okay, so I would say if you're on Blackwell or the 50, you're... I mean, you've got to be at least... Maybe 8 to 10 feet higher at the gas station, I would say.

Commissioner, the elevation of 50 is about 1024. At that point in the property line on the site, it's about 1014. So there's about a 10 foot drop from 50 or 10 foot elevation difference, 50 to the site. The ramp or the exit area there is about even.

And so that's existing grade? When we actually grade the site, it will still follow that same slope, but that portion of the site will level out a bit and cut on the west and raise on the east. It'll be about even in the middle, a little higher in the east, a little lower on the west. It's, in general, somewhere between 8 and 12 feet on that portion.

From what you're saying and what's existing, as you're driving on 50 onto Blackwell, you are going to be on level with the trash enclosure?

No, you're going to be 10 feet lower on 50.

10 feet lower?

Yeah. Okay. So if you looked over, you would need another four to six feet to be even with the bottom of the trash enclosure. Because if you were driving down it right now, all you see is really the sloped hillside with a bunch of grass right now. And then the trees on top. You really can't see the flat top of the parcel. You see a slope.

Okay. That helps. That is all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Commissioner Moore, I don't want to leave you out down there. All right. Commissioner Grinnell.

Where's Soto? Where did he go? Did he walk out?

I was like, did he walk out?

He's like, she is going to talk and I am running away. So it's my understanding that that this particular area that we're talking about is a part of a gateway corridor. To help provide some context and understanding with the vision, not necessarily the hard and fast rules, but guidelines and vision of the comprehensive plan for areas like this, can you walk us through some of the mobility and connectivity design principles and the strip mall design principles that are included in the comp plan?

So some of those principles include connection to the existing sidewalks, the existing sidewalk network. So here again, the J Road provides that internal connection from Blue Parkway on the far west in that roundabout, that existing built-out network on the west side and extending all the way through the site into and back onto Blackwell Road. So it does provide connectivity from the neighborhoods. I mean primarily the development to the west is going to be on south side of Shenandoah is Church and then as you get further south for the West it's been on non residential development This road across through from the median provides a access to the single-family residential. Again, you've got internal sidewalk network that allows individuals to be able to come to the roundabout, cross, and provide access in and out of the sidewalk, in and out of the area along the existing and future sidewalk. So a lot of it has to do with more just connectivity to the existing road network, which as you show here, there is It's fully built out on the east side of Blackwell Parkway, Blackwell Road. There's already a 10-foot wide shared use path that accommodates bicyclists as well as, I mean, there are different levels of bicyclists. Of course, you've got, like I mentioned, the Aqua Road, which would accommodate cyclists that feel very comfortable traveling in traffic. But then you also have the shared use path that's wide enough to accommodate walkers, runners, and also those cyclists that don't feel comfortable riding along with traffic. So it does provide connectivity to that existing network on both fronts. I'm trying to think. I mean, through here, I mean, some of the strip mall Design principles there as you pointed out from the from the comprehensive plan some of those are you know context dependent some of those also prefer to Locate the the parking lots on the backside of properties as well which help facilitate a little bit more of a comfort level by minimizing the separation between Commercial development and pedestrians that kind of better define some of that streetscape and that street line so through here Just as it relates to this particular building that they're looking to develop now, Yes, I mean, pedestrians and cyclists into the site will be traveling along and adjacent to those parking areas, but that private parking, that sidewalk will provide that area of refuge and travel that is separated from the J Road traffic and the internal parking lot traffic. So you do have that protection for pedestrians as they enter in and out of the site. Now, looking at the site holistically, alignment of the buildings as such along the perimeter of the building where you are once fully built out, The intent is to shield the visibility of the parking by putting it inside, basically in the core of the site, and kind of, again, kind of better establishing some of that streetscape or that street wall with the development of commercial buildings that are to align and make it a little bit more of a comfortable environment that's a little bit more human or pedestrian scale. I mean, those will probably be the biggest ones as it relates to connectivity in terms of principles that are called out in the comprehensive plan. But if I'm forgetting anything, please remind me of those.

Can you talk a little bit about gateway corridors and master planning? And if that's a requirement within those, or not a, sorry, requirement is not the right word. A vision suggestion when it comes to this type of development.

So there, we would rely on two things. So the comp plan, again, shows recommended land use, future recommended land uses, kind of at the larger scale, which would be, let me get to that image, which would be here, where it talks about just what the recommended land uses are, kind of as, we'll look at it as like a bubble drawing scale, where it's painting It's painting with a broad brush the uses that are determined to be based on information at that time when the comprehensive plans are put together. based on existing and anticipated future development patterns, what the highest and best use of those properties would be, which would also be tied to what the existing infrastructure network is to there. Being located at a highway interchange, is an area where, if I were to pull back even larger, you would see that highway interchanges just naturally orient themselves to being auto-centric, service-oriented, kind of convenient in and out, with more of the interior spaces between those interchanges being more of your office or grocery store type of uses. So just from a land use perspective, those are the things that we're looking at. From a design perspective, some of the, when you mentioned master planning, That is part of the reason why, if not the biggest reason as to why we require these conceptual drawings to be shown beyond what they're looking for in the immediate, in the short term. So we are looking to see how that property, the remaining portion of the 11 acres, can lay out. Some of the things that do constrict, when we compare this to other areas along the highway, which an extreme example would be the former Odessa property where Oldham Village is. There's a contrast between the conditions here where, particularly along the older parts of US 50 Highway, you have more linear, shallower parcels that do somewhat limit the ability to provide the same type of development that They had to the larger areas such as like the olden village portion Can lend toward having more of a mixed-use? town center types of development that a little bit that you might often see more as like at least in any summit you would see is being kind of a satellite of or reflective of what downtown is, because we're trying to provide some connectivity between the downtown area and some of that development there on south. sidewalk shared use pass to provide some connectivity which hopefully that will be able to draw folks in a comfortable manner from the downtown across the highway to that newer development on the south side. But here just again to speak to what you mentioned regarding master planning, the concept plan we believe as shown here does reflect good planning that's reflective of what types of uses would be suitable at this location given the the proximity to a highway interchange and the significant amount of right of way that surrounds it. I don't know if I fully answered your question.

You gave us a lot of information. That was great. So when we look at an activity center or a corridor like this, at a macro level, a very large level, would we look at the entire corridor potentially? as we are reviewing applications? I know that this is for this parcel in this particular area, but at a macro level for an area that's been identified as a gateway corridor, as an activity center, would we look at it at a bigger level and look at that entire area as a whole?

I mean, you're certainly doing both things, right? We have to look at the sites at a micro level for just individual compliance with code requirements. But at the macro level, yes, because these properties don't exist in a vacuum. So the idea is for us to create complementary neighborhoods, developments that do supplement each other through the provision of services to provide those for adjacent residents as well as travelers. So, yeah, you're doing both because ultimately this is why we are looking at just 10 acres, 11 acres here. You know, it doesn't exist on its own. It is part of this larger area. So so, yeah, you would be doing both. You are doing both.

And just for context, because we don't have anything clearly defined for this particular area in the comp plan.

Right.

Where would that starting and end point be for the gateway corridor? Would that, like where would be the northernmost region, the southernmost region, the easternmost region, and the westernmost region?

So this area, fortunately, you do have Shenandoah Road that functions as kind of a reverse frontage road. So you've got Blue Parkway right along the highway, and then you've got Shenandoah that, just for this mile stretch, we'll say, between Todd George and Blackwell, provides a physical barrier that provides a... a clearly demarcated transition between residential to the north and everything to the south. I mean, if you were to look a little bit, it doesn't give you, paint the, most descriptive picture here. But if you were to contrast what you see more west of Todd George, you've got a commercial development that directly abuts residential. So you have, in some cases, no more than 20 feet of separation with maybe some trees from the Price Chopper shopping center to someone's backyard. I mean, here you've got 11 acres that are bound on four sides by right of way. You've got an arterial street that bounds it on the east, a collector street that provides a clear demarcation between what would be essentially first tier highway commercial property and the residential uses that you go as you get further away from the property.

So, as it pertains to this application, it would be fair for us to take a look at all of that area that we've just described, the Shenandoah area that's going over and from, what would that be, west to east, as well as, you know, north of the Circle Drives and then south. Is that fair?

Yeah, yeah, I would say that would be fair. I would say that would be fair.

Great. And then, are there any other similar developments to this in the area?

In what respect? Specific to?

To fuel, to sea stores and the fuel stations.

Yes, let's see. Let me pull up my other map. Closest some of the areas in the immediate area the closest ones to this particular property that I would point to would be About two miles away that Langsford and Todd George Just in the immediate area you would have a

You know what? I goofed up. I met with highway gateway areas within the city.

Oh, with highway gateway areas?

So sorry.

Certainly along the highway corridor. And just to make sure we're on the same page, by gateways are we talking about just like the front door from the four cardinal directions on highways?

Yeah, and that have some interaction with the residents. So a very similar type development that we're talking about today. Does something similar exist somewhere else in the city?

At the very highway entrances, which I would say would be like the defined gateways into the city corporate limits, no. there would not be. I mean, at the northernmost extreme, the first gas station or sea store that you come to would be off of Boland Road, which is adjacent to commercial development. Now, I suppose you could say that's a little bit of, I mean, Monticello, the access through here, but in terms of just being in that close of proximity, this would be the only example. Yeah.

Okay. I think that's all of my questions.

Woods Chapel has R1 right behind the gas station.

It has RP3. Sorry if I was mistaken. If you were looking at the very hard corners where you enter the city limits, this would be the first one. Certainly Woods Chapel Road has the quick trip that sits directly behind townhome development through here. We went through a public hearing process when this particular location was redeveloped. were no specific there were no special conditions of approval as it relates to noise abatement or or lighting or additional landscaping that they'll need everything there was done in compliance with the ordinance um you know the newest quick trip at mulberry would be perhaps another one you would say is that not a gateway into the city but a gateway into residential coming off the highway It backs up to a school. Here, there were no additional screening requirements. There was some landscaping here along the west side of the road. These lots here, I mean, Quick Trip still owns them, but I don't know that they'll ever develop anything individually on them. So this is all commercial here, which is why you don't see any landscaping. Seven Highway would be outside of our city limits. Yeah, yeah. Certainly, you have Hy-Vee, the Hy-Vee gas stations directly above, you know, again, but not... Not in the gateway. If you're talking about the gateway entrances into the corporate limits, this would be the only one right at the front door, we'll say.

Perfect. I think that's all my questions for you. Thank you so much. I do have a question for the applicant. Hi. Hi. So I know that we are here to look at, um, would you pull up the, um, the site plan or, uh, your future land use map? I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I started with Mr. Perfect. Oh, yep. Nope. The other one. I like the other one. It's a little bit perfect. Thank you so much.

Can you say your name for the record, please?

Preeti Bhatta. Okay. So I know that we're here to look at the 11 acre parcel for the application. And I'm going to articulate my question very carefully. So for clarification, do you own the property that's immediately on the other side of Blackwell?

No.

That's not owned by you? No. Or you don't have any affiliation with it?

No. Okay. The Hayes Foundation from Hayes, Kansas, the one who owns both the lot, we took only one west side of that. The other half is not sold by them. Okay. Yeah, I think that's what, they still owns that, but we are not, but just those are on the other side of the Blackwell.

So the parcel that is right up against Blackwell on the west side, you don't have anything, no ownership, it's no commonality entity ownership there?

The west of Blackwell, yes. I'm sorry, what was your question? West of Blackwell, right?

Yes, the west of Blackwell.

Yeah, that's the one.

But not the east side.

Not the east side.

Okay, perfect. That was my question there. Thank you so much. Yeah. So much. Okay, real quick for the architect. Will you, Mr. DeSoto, will you pull up the pedestrian beautiful colors of aqua, magenta, apple green, orange that you entered? He did. I literally wrote down his name so that I could use the same names that he mentioned. Perfect. Thank you. Can you walk us through maybe some thoughts around how you vision how pedestrians would travel from location to location, from building to building, from within the parcel?

Oh, gosh, yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, they're not designed yet.

Okay, so no thoughts around that, no, okay.

The main road that we put, we looked at many different layouts on the site in order to have both connectivity to the roads around the site and within the site itself. And this was the most efficient and still allowed access to all the sites, you know, sort of the satellite sites that are here, giving them as much flexibility within them for future development as well.

Okay. But no thought currently around how you could potentially go from the C-Store to the future commercial building that would be north or how the commercial building over to the west or back down to the south?

Yeah, that hasn't really been hashed out.

Okay.

Yep.

And then for quick clarification, with the drive-through, which is going to be in orange, lined orange, so vehicles would come in or it's been designed or the thought process is that they would come in through the north entrance right there and then they would make their right to go into the drive-through and they would order there? Or is that pickup? What I'm trying to understand is I think that we removed the pickup window on the other side, on the east side, right? Is that what I understand?

Yes, correct.

Okay. How do we envision the vehicles exiting? Is there not a drive-through window at all, no pickup at all?

On the west side?

Yes.

On the west side, there is. Sorry. On the east side, there's no pickup window. anymore. We removed it from the design. So the vehicles that are accessing the building on the west side will just continue around and then exit at the bottom of the J or the corner of the J that we have there.

Okay. So they would go essentially down and then to the west versus down and to the right or to the east?

To the west, yeah.

Or to the

And I just wanted to point out also that there is a speaker box you had mentioned at the window. So there is a speaker box, four spaces up, that they actually order at. Then they pull up to the window and take whatever they ordered.

Got it. And it's all done right there in that lane. OK. And we think that the majority of the traffic is going to go from the pumps into the convenience store from this side, correct? OK. Do we have any concerns about the vehicles that are parking there or what type of pedestrian crosswalks or traffic or what are we doing for those? You've got a lot going on there when it comes to a vehicle that's coming up to a window. We've got parked vehicles. We've got people entering in and out. Have we thought through any of that pedestrian safety or travel?

You want to talk to that?

Yeah.

Well, I would say when people pull into the gas station, If they do come into the convenience store, they would obviously go north-south across there. I would say the parking on the southwest side, I would think of that more as maybe employee parking or something of that nature. So I can't imagine someone would park over there for really many reasons other than that if they were going to park there for a long time. Most people would, you know, pull in, get their gas, maybe walk in for a drink or snack or something and leave. And on the north side, and just to also clarify, This parking has been calculated for the future commercial as well on the north side. So it looks like a lot, but some of that parking actually goes to the north commercial. But we want to design it and build it now. That way when the building goes in, it's in and all the requirements are met. So in regards to the restaurant, if someone's coming to eat at that restaurant, they would either, one, pull through the drive-thru and exit out, At the J road there or they would park on the north side of the building and walk in and they would not cross that The drive-through So the only traffic that could really cross would be if someone were to pull in and pull left for some reason Which is more unlikely than all the other scenarios Just to make sure I understood correctly.

We are anticipating and we're designing for the future building of On within this particular application, but we haven't really thought about how travel would go Between the two buildings that offer pedestrians is that correct?

Well in regards to pedestrians they would just be walking out to their vehicles I can't imagine they would be Really going from the commercial and walking all the way over there So no we haven't taken into account for people to walk from the commercial to the convenience store. I mean, they could walk across the parking lot just like everyone else does to get to their car.

You don't have, like, a designated area? Yeah, there's no designated sidewalk. There's no lanes, there's no sidewalk, sidewalk. Yeah. Okay.

Because I think that would, it would be a minimal amount of traffic and a more, a large extent of development to put that in. I mean, it's a possibility, but no, we haven't taken that into account.

I'm sure I'll have some questions later, but I'll wrap up there. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Thank you, Chair. I've got a quick question for the civil engineer and also Hector, if you've got a second. The first question, and I appreciate all the questions from Commissioner Grinnell, she's awesome, and she's very thorough, which I love. Has there been any consideration of mirroring this part of the site where you have the drive-through on the outside edge and then you're keeping all the traffic on the western side.

We did. We actually had that version for quite a while. But the problem that arises is when you go up to a drive-thru, you want to be on the left side. You want your driver's side to be there. So if you wanted to go to that restaurant and you flipped it, you would have to pull through the gas station. And then there's no room to queue. Whereas if you have it on the north, you have to tell your passenger to grab your Diet Coke. Oh, great. Silly question. Yeah, so we did look at that.

My second question is... And I understand your concerns about that being a wetland in that area over there. My concern about that is what kind of maintenance will you be allowed to do outside of the wetlands so that it doesn't just become a jumbled mess of weeds and other things? I mean, a lot of times I think the wetland areas are the reeds, and I know Commissioner Pasch will know this well. She does a lot of the stormwater. But a lot of the wetlands area is truly just the reeds and the stuff in the middle of it. Will they be able to keep the outsides trimmed up and looking nice? Because like Commissioner Granoa said, this is a gateway into our city. It's also a gateway into a lot of really nice residential on just a little bit to the north there. What kind of maintenance will you be able to do if this is determined to be a wetland?

Yeah. Well, I would say the wetland portion is really just the bottom, if it is. I can't say it is or not because we don't have an official determination from US Fish and Wildlife, but it's really a small portion in that bottom. And I don't know if it ever was a wetland or planned to be. I think it's just kind of happened because the water that comes from the roundabout to the south actually drains into there. And there's some that comes from the north as well. But I think it just kind of appeared over time. And yes, you can maintain both sides of it, all around it. It's really just the absolute bottom portion that would be probably considered. But all the slopes on the west, against the roadway, everything north-south, all of that is very accessible. And it's going to be turfed.

Right.

Yes.

Likely.

Yeah. I can't imagine it's anything other than turf. Yeah.

Um, I appreciate the J hook, the J turn or the J hooked, you know, through street. Um, and I do appreciate you coming up with the word nefarious. I don't know if I've heard that before on this commission.

Well, I actually walked in there and it seemed like that.

Yeah. Um, so when, when they developed a site, obviously all the trees along with we're talking about now, obviously all the trees along where the new road's going to go. Are you or the owner, are they going to go back into those other areas and clear it out, like clear a bunch of the trees out? Because ultimately it's going to be, it's going to be developed, but at least is there a way to go in there and clean a lot of that out so that it is less nefarious or has less issues? I mean, I don't know if the city and if, if we've had a lot of reports of that or if the police have been over there, a fire or anyone. Um, but if there is the issues over there, it would be nice to have the property owner take care of that so that we don't continue to have that.

Yeah. So we haven't, I wouldn't say we've came up with a perfect solution with the city, but some of the talks so far have been we would likely leave some of the trees along the northwest portion just to help keep somewhat of a buffer for the neighbors because i know that's an issue that they brought up and i understand that so possibly leave some of the trees in that northwest but the idea would be anything that is somewhat close to the j road we would likely one have to remove it because we need to put in temporary swales but take out a portion of it that is very close to the j road there um because so when you so when you come in here which i don't know if I think there's only maybe a few of us have actually walked in there, but when you walk in there, there's a bunch of piles of dump trash and this, then it looks like maybe homeless people have lived there or people have done things in there that you don't want to know about. But the idea would be to clear all that out. And then honestly, all the trees that are there, none of them are mature, like awesome trees to keep on your site. Cause we first looked at what if we keep some of this site completely natural and we work around it. But after going in there, it's all just like short, you know, maybe five to 10 year old trees that none of them are really worth, I would say saving or keeping around. So it's more so just, they've come in so tight with each other that it's, it's not.

And I think part of what my concerns are in commissioner Grinnell has brought up a lot of the connectivity to pedestrians. The last thing you want to do is have in areas where you know there's been concerns in the past, and then you have these sidewalks where children and other people, teens or whatever, are walking to the C-Store, because a lot of kids like to do that, and then they have to go through something like that. So I'd really like to see the property owner really kind of clean some of that up. I like the idea of keeping some of the boundary, because that'll be nice for when the development and screening comes in, but then also clean it up and make it safe.

I completely agree. I think if you asked her, she wants to clear most of it. But then after hearing from the neighbors, maybe we'd come to some type of agreement to where we leave some screening on the north. That way we appease them. Everyone is kind of happy. We get rid of all the negative activities. We make it a pretty site and accessible for pedestrians to walk through. All right.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Arth.

I will start with staff. I guess Hector, is there any way you can pull up the comp, I'd like to see the land use map, the comp plan suggested land use map, but I'd like to see it further south. I'd like to see the whole, if you could get both sides of, further down past. I'd like to see what's below that ag section there on the south side of 50.

So Blackwell would be through here. So mostly beyond, once you, again, it kind of mirrors, again, once you get beyond about a similar sized area on the south side of 50 Highway, you start getting to residential too. So once you get beyond the highway frontage, it starts becoming residential in nature primarily, recommended, with some mixed use at the far east of there.

And that's all undeveloped, isn't it? It's still undeveloped. Okay. Everything on this side is okay. Okay. That's what I wanted to see with that. And then since you've talked about this before, I'll just put you on the spot with another question. As far as what are the rules with, um, as far as whether liquor stores and, and shops that sell marijuana, how far do they have to be from a church? As the crow flies, as you say.

I couldn't remember if it was 1,000 feet or 100 or... Yeah, so the setback for a marijuana dispensary would be 1,000 feet from a church or other protected site, school, or daycare.

Okay. And just to clarify, just to add a little bit more, on that one, it's... The ordinance requirement is not as a crow flies, but it's as the closest, shortest legal walking path.

Okay. Which one is as a crow flies?

Oh, you're asking what does it mean?

Which rule is as a crow flies? Because I know you've said that before. Maybe you've said it's not as a crow flies.

Point to point, just straight line.

Okay. All right. So that's when you were talking about it, I guess you referred to. The difference between the two. Okay, so then what about a liquor store? Is there a rule when it comes to liquor sales in proximity to a church or school as well?

There is not under the UDO. I'd have to look in the code of ordinance to see if there is one.

Okay, so how many feet? Are we from Summit Woods here?

Go from the boundary. If you were to go from there to there, it would be about 600 feet or so.

OK. All right. And is that the only, what about residential? Is there a requirement on dispensaries to be a certain number of feet from residential, or is it just on the churches and schools?

No, there's no setback from residential.

Okay, okay. So then I guess I'm going to pause at that and I'd like to speak to the applicant and I don't know if it's, I only wrote down Matt. I didn't write your last name or maybe Mr. Foster. I'm not sure. It's a question about the tenant that might be in the C-Store, the restaurant part of that. Do you happen to have an LOI or any tenant in mind, or have you been talking to a particular tenant?

We do not have any.

Okay. So I guess what I'm getting at is it's restaurant, but it could also be a drive-thru. I don't know if we have drive-through dispensaries. Are those legal or drive-through liquor? That's just a question I have, if that's something that you would be considering for that. Well, I guess because of the distance, it's not possible to do that there. Is that true? It's 600 and... What I'm trying to do, we've got residential around there, and I'm just trying to see how close we are... for that use.

I don't think the applicant is considering having a user that sells alcohol or marijuana. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah.

I just, I figure residents may be concerned, so I really wanted to ask that one. Okay.

We're looking at food drive-through. I will add, if a marijuana business were to approach us about going in there and seek a business license, we would require a stamp survey to delineate that walking distance to ensure that they are compliant with all state laws and city ordinance.

Okay, all right.

If it is too short, we wouldn't allow that in there.

Okay, so then let me see here. So I guess this is for the applicant again. You are planning to do this in phases and there are a lot of trees here and you said you'd like to keep a border of trees if possible and my question was if you're doing the convenience store first and then a commercial property to the north of that, would you be clearing out all of those trees at the same time as the commercial or would those trees north of that on that particular parcel of land? Or would you be keeping some of that during, because the commercial building does provide a little screening off of Shenandoah between the convenience store and the view for people that live in those houses. So I just wondered if you were gonna clear it all off up front.

Oh, no, I guess. So for parcel three that is being asked up today to develop, all of the trees would be removed from it.

Okay. Yes.

The trees in question that we would leave would be on the west side of the J Road along that northwest portion.

Okay.

The west.

Because that's where the houses are kind of closest to Blue Parkway. Okay. On the north, we would need to clear that area for grading purposes to build that pad.

Okay. Thank you. I can't read my writing, but this is a question for, I guess I'll ask you, Hector. So we've been talking a lot. We've had a lot of applications come our way and we've talked about fenestration and the glass in particular. So can you tell me again what the requirement is for the glass?

That am let me pull up and elevation to make it a little bit easier to explain. So this won't be a good one So the way the ordinance reads is that a street facing facade It doesn't have to be the primary facade. It just says just generally just plain verb. It's just street facing facade and that in the area that is, there's an eight foot wide area that's called the pedestrian view zone. It's eight foot tall. That eight feet starts from two feet above grade and extends to 10 feet above grade. So let's just say for argument's sake that the wainscot here goes up only two feet. Okay. So starting at that two foot mark, we'll go up eight and let's say that the eight feet that these windows, all this is eight is exactly eight feet. So at the top of the windows is 10 feet. What our ordinance says is that in this pedestrian view zone, so between 2 and 8 feet above, 10 feet above grade, there must be a minimum 50% clear glass through there. Now here they're accomplishing that on the north side and the south side of the building because it's a two-faced building. But again, but with this being a piece of property that has frontages on multiple sides of property, One of them just happens to be Blackwell, which on a normal lot, if you're not dealing with the corner lot, that ordinance wouldn't apply. It's a side, it's one of the building sides, not a primary face. Just the plain language of the ordinance requires that that, now if we're looking at this kind of angled rendering, the clear verbiage of the language says that that should, turn the corner and extend to that facade because it happens to face Blackwell road, even though it's not a primary facade or anything like that.

Okay. So define pedestrian, um, as far as in, because when you look at the South side, really that That's not going to be pedestrian. The south side doesn't seem to be. It's going to be pedestrian. It's going to be right there up against the 50, I mean, not up against 50 Highway, but facing 50 Highway. You're not having, that's not going to be an area people are going to walk a lot in. So I just wondered what that means by pedestrian. Just if somebody was walking by, they could see it. Is that what you're meaning or?

Well, just the area happens to be called the pedestrian view zone. I mean, typically, yeah, I mean, that would be the area where you would have the most interface, the most interaction between someone. In this case, accessing the building would be on the front. That's where you would interface with that building.

Okay. So, and the reason I ask is we've had some modifications with this, and maybe it is something we need to talk about in roundtable, whether we need to look at that ordinance.

So one thing I know that Commissioner Jennifer Ford mentioned was about the possibility of maybe punching through, maybe providing, if I understood correctly, maybe providing some glass in the areas kind of on the side of the building above the wainscot. So, just as an example, if again, we're using the, this is, you know, two and eight, hypothetically, if everything here that's in this robin's egg color, I changed the color, I think, sorry. So, I'm gonna call it robin's egg, because I like it. So, hypothetically, if the applicant agreed to all of this here being robin's egg, if it sits above 10 feet above grade and technically not part of the pedestrian view zone, they don't get credit for that. So it would definitely provide improved visual interest, but just the strict definition of what that view zone is, if it's above 10 feet above grade or below two, you get no credit for it. It would still technically need a modification.

Okay. Okay. Thank you, Hector. I am done for now, Chair. Thank you. Thank you.

Commissioner Pesch.

Thank you, Chair. So here's the problem of going second to last. There's a lot of good questions that came before me. But I did have one for staff. So, Hector, if you don't mind keeping standing. Could you, from my knowledge and just everyone else, go through the different levels of complaints? You mentioned a protest petition and... individual homeowner complaints. I just would like to understand kind of the process for resolving and anything else that you do on the staff side.

So I mentioned two things. We have received email correspondence. I believe one of them came through our website, through our portal, and others have just been directly directed to council members or some of our administration. So just to provide a little bit of differentiation between how I made a distinction between the two. So a protest petition is a letter, there's a form letter. So in writing, we receive something from a property owner indicating that they are kind of formally submitting opposition to a project, and that form is notarized, signed, sealed by a notary, so that we have assurance that this person, well, to the best that a notary can certify and that we can confirm that this person who owns property is in fact such and such person, and they formally submitted opposition to this project. So we've received so far one of those, and that was from the HOA, signed by the HOA president. The other five that we've received so far have just been emails or letters, not formal protests, they weren't notarized. So those we kind of take in and they've been included as part of your attachment. Those don't count toward the protest petition. So if any of those property owners, if they happen to be here, submitted anything by writing and if it was not on a form that was notarized, signed and notarized by the public, We'll certainly forwarded them onto the Planning Commission City Council for everyone's awareness that there is opposition, but it cannot Unless it's signed and sealed by a property owner within 180 feet 85 feet of the site. It cannot go toward that threshold The determination if a threshold has been broached to require City Council to to have minimum six votes to approve a project versus a simple majority So in other words if they cross a 30% threshold of all property owners within 185 feet of the site That submit a notarized Opposition that would then trigger a supermajority requirement to approve a project at the City Council level So does that answer your question so what the difference was between the two yes, it does. Thank you. That's helpful Commissioner Astor

Thank you. And just to confirm, there would be additional questions after the public comment section, correct? Thank you. For the applicant, please, I was also curious about the drive-through restaurant or brand, but again, there's nothing identified yet, correct? Okay. And then on the actual C-Store itself, is there an existing brand or Is it a franchise, anything as far as?

So I'll step in on that one. Just remember that the Planning Commission reviews land use decisions. So the operator of that particular C-store, whether it's Quick Trip, Quickie Mart or not, is kind of irrelevant to the land use decision on that.

So this was specific to some of the design choices as well as the lack of design provided for the canopy. of the fuel stations.

So we can kind of maybe rephrase that into the architectural questions with the compatibility as opposed to the operator. Okay.

Sorry, just rethinking how to phrase that then because we just last meeting had discussion regarding the

Canopy for a fuel station that we took cues from other locations Designed into that compatibility design standard of that But if you're gonna go down the route of I'd rather see a quick trip design standard versus a quickie mark design standards That's not something that we can really review during the land use decision.

Okay, so Do we have any idea of what the fuel station canopy is going to look like at this time?

Yeah, we don't. The owner has, I guess, not signed off the particular brand that's going to be of gas station that will be there. They will do the design build for that, the canopy itself.

Okay. Yeah. Because that is... obviously very relevant to all discussions of this type, but particularly this specific location and talking about gateway corridor entrance to the city and that being on the furthest southeast piece of it, I think that's a pretty large missing piece of the puzzle right now of what that would look like. I guess just my two senses, I would hope it reflects a slightly different design or color palette from the main building there, particularly as that relates to being the entrance to the city with that fuel canopy. All right, thank you. I think that was it for the applicant. I did have a traffic question.

I do.

So the traffic impact analysis had three recommendations. One, constructing the east leg of the roundabout of Shenandoah and Blue Parkway, which seemed like, candidly, kind of a no-brainer. You just had to do that for this. The second is a stop-controlled right-in, right-out for the northbound approach. So, I'm sorry, just stating the obvious, but that is right-in, right-out only from the north...

Correct.

A corridor there.

Yep.

So if someone were coming from the highway to get fuel, they would exit 50, first roundabout, second roundabout, third roundabout, and then either take the J leg. Okay.

Sorry. It's all right. Go ahead and get me to the site plan. Yes.

Yeah, any of those. That'll work.

Yep. Yep. Yep. So you exit the highway down here. Yep. You're coming around this roundabout. You come all the way down and around this roundabout and in here. Most likely this right in, right out is going to be used for exiting only. Because if you look at all possible ways to get to the site, no one's really coming here and making a right into the site. Everyone's coming in through this roundabout. People from Blue Parkway are coming up and coming in this way. People from Shenandoah are kind of going around and through. So hardly any traffic is making that right in. It's mostly for exiting traffic. I don't know what your question was, though.

No, that seems difficult to get to the fuel pumps from the highway.

We... When this development first came to us, they tried to get access onto Blackwell. That is MoDOT's road right there. MoDOT will not allow access on Blackwell between the two roundabouts. And so then they tried to get full access where the right in, right out is. And we were not amenable to that because it's too close to the roundabouts. And when this was all built, it was set up to access this parcel from this potential fourth leg of the roundabout. So yes, the applicant did come to us with several different designs, none of which we were in favor of. So yes, it is difficult to get in there to get to the gas pumps, but they were made aware of that from the beginning.

Okay. All right, I think that's it. I may have more later.

Okay, thank you. Commissioner Janiford?

Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Hatcher, for reminding me about canopies. So may the architect stand up real quick, please? So there isn't an elevation for the fuel canopy, but I was reminded it's a drive-through. You have a speaker box. Do you have a design or elevation of the speaker box or the canopy shielding people ordering as they come in?

No, we don't yet have that.

Okay. And then I assume, well, I'm not going to assume. Do you have a canopy for the drive-through window?

So the drive-through, yeah, the building itself will not provide protection for that, so that's not yet integrated into the design yet.

Okay.

Also, the drive-through window, it may never be used as well. For instance, if a business that goes in there that doesn't do drive-through, it's just set up so that it can be a drive-through.

Yeah, okay, I I think I'll save that for comments. Thank you. Yep. Thank you.

Yep Mr. Hart So in regard to this is the applicant I This is in regard to getting in to the way you have to get in off of 50 Highway. I just have a question about this. Well, and maybe this is for staff too, how are people going to know to go that route? Is there going to be signage? And this may be both city and applicant I Might not I mean if I was getting off and I was not familiar with the area I might find It a little daunting to try to figure it out. So I'm just curious Especially when that area parcel one is still there might be a fair amount of trees there that people can't see too far ahead as far as getting into the site and

It's a good question. I think it would mimic any other gas station along the highway. I'm not sure what the requirements are with MoDOT, if they would be able to advertise previous and advance on the highway. But in regards to it being there, I think it's kind of just like every other location. You kind of see it along the highway and you would go to it. So I can't say that there would be a giant sign.

So I will say MoDOT has a program to get those logo signs on the highway. They do come at a cost. And so if the applicant chooses to do it, they could purchase those. And then at the bottom of the ramp, they have what are called trail finding signs. And so it would try to get you there. It's still not easy when you're talking about a roundabout. But if you can picture going to food or gas stations, there are little trail finding signs along the way. So that's an option for the applicant, but it's nothing that we would require as a city.

Okay. I was actually, maybe it is more for the applicant because I would be nervous about people being able to get to me. I understand that there can be signage off the highway and let people know at that exit there's that service, but I just think it could be a little difficult.

Okay.

All right. On parking. Hector. So I can't remember. We have a 5,000. No, it's, what is that? Is it safe? What is that? I can't read that. Is it 5,050 by 100? Okay. So how many parking spots for that required?

For the commercial it'd be 5,000 75 25 25 parking spots.

Okay, and so how many are here again?

You probably went over it already, but this one they are showing a total of a hundred and ten they are If you take into account the 5,000 square foot building and what's needed for the the C store There are 79 that are required for it. So they are about 31 parking spaces over

almost 50% over because 31, well a little under 50% over. Okay. Um, I guess my, my, my concern or question for the applicant is do we have to do all that? It's the impervious question, impervious coverage question. Do we have to do all that parking before the commercial building is actually built? Because What sometimes happens is a tenant doesn't come along that needs that large of a building or that much parking, and then we've ended up carving up a bunch of ground and having to deal with the water and things like that. So that's my question, if that could be done in increments.

Well, in regards to stormwater and detention, all of the stormwater infrastructure... will take care of any of the concerns that you mentioned, erosion, dirt, and stuff like that. So there's really no concerns there. But there is the access on the north side that people would enter the drive-through or just need to come through the north to get to the parking for the convenience store or restaurant. I think that southwest portion near the Pumps could be removed. So if we want to reduce the amount of spaces and then we could maybe use that as a landscape buffer between the two parcels, which there would be in some anyways. But in regards to the northern portion of the parking, I would say most, if not all, needs to be completed in order to have that northern entrance and to be able to loop around to the east. I think it creates good traffic flow instead of having people come in and then have to go back out kind of where they came from. I think it creates good flow throughout the parking lot to have both sides open.

Okay, thank you. That's all I have, Chair. Thank you. Commissioner Pesch.

Chair, I move for a brief recess, let's say five minutes.

All right, we okay with a five-minute break? All right, sorry, citizens. I know you've been patient with us. We'll be back in five minutes.

Ever wondered how the City budget works? The total 2026 budget is over $380 million, which includes funding for daily operations, capital improvements, debt service, internal service, and enterprise operations. For example, the General Fund is the foundation for the City's day-to-day services and investments like road maintenance, public safety, and fire protection. The General Fund is supported by property taxes, sales taxes generated by local businesses, franchise taxes, and other sources like licenses, permits, and fees. For every dollar citizens pay in property tax, the City receives 18 cents. This means the City receives $845 a year in property taxes for a median single-family house. These taxes provide public safety, park maintenance, infrastructure, and the best services to keep Lee's Summit going and improving. One of the community's top priorities is infrastructure investment, which is reflected in the capital improvement plan. $113 million of the 2026 budget is invested into the capital improvement plan. The 2026 capital improvement budget includes investments like the 291 and 50 highway interchange, 3rd Street, Ward and Purcells intersection, and Prior Road. The budget process includes guidance from the City Council, citizen input, and critical success factors from the City's IGNITE strategic plan. To learn more about the city's budget, visit cityofls.net backslash budget.

When the person called on the phone, she said that there was a dinosaur walking down her road. Of course, we had to go out and check that out. We get out there and it was a big African tortoise. probably 60 pounds, walking down the road. When they walk, they really stand up tall. So I could see why she thought it was a dinosaur. I'm Rodney Wagner. I'm the manager of Lee's Summit Animal Control. So as you can see, we get all sorts of animals here. You got some guinea pigs off to the side. All the windows up here are animals that are adoptable right now. Every one of these dogs is ready to go and ready for adoption. and the same thing with our cats over here. A lot of cool cats in here now, so. So this is our three acre lot we have out back and this is where we do all the walking of dogs, exercise. We also have a side yard off to the side over there so we can let them run loose. They can run together and then we have what's called play groups. Kind of like having a bunch of kids. Here's our vent room. We have a vet that comes out twice a week. This is our sally port where we bring the animals into. This is one of our animal control trucks. And we can hold up to six animals. We have a lift on the other side to put big animals in. We actually have temperature gauges in here and in the truck to tell us how hot it is. Once it gets to a certain temperature, we bring all the animals back here immediately. So this actually has traps in it. We do a lot of wildlife trapping. I mean, a lot. Bats, pot-bellied pigs, horses, cows, emus, a lot of reptiles. We had a citizen one time that had over 200 reptiles in his basement. Caimans and alligators in here that are four or five feet long, you can't keep those. And people do, and they're surprised when they can't keep them. I'm like, really? You're surprised you can't have an alligator in your house? Our main goal here is public safety and also the safety of the animals. And we have very dedicated people back there, and they definitely stay here for the love of the animals, which also includes getting them adopted out. We'll have about 4,000 impounded animals a year. Probably about close to 2,000 are dogs and cats. The cats and dogs, when they get impounded here, they go on a five-day hold. And then after the five days, if the owner doesn't show up, then we can put them up for adoption. To adopt an animal here is actually really simple. You just come in, look for whatever animal you're looking for, find the right pig. You have to go to the adoption room up there and see if you get along with them. You spend as much time as you want to in there. From that point on, it's just a matter of making sure they're spayed or neutered and all their vaccinations up to par and they're good to go. We have a very high adoption rate because we try everything in our power to get animals adopted out. We have Heart of America, a humane society that we do a lot of adoptions through. And then we also have other groups. We have some people that literally will just look all over the country for somewhere for a dog to go. And we sent dogs up into South Dakota, North Dakota, Washington State. So it's actually, it's a huge united effort to get all these animals home.

Tarzan's got lots of energy. Hazel's got a weird meow. She wants nothing to do with the other cats. She'll kind of get her grumpy face going.

And the good thing about the people here is that they get all their friends to get animals too. All of us have probably the limit of all the animals that we can have at home. You know, they are huge animal lovers. If it was up to the people here, we'd have 15 cats running around in here. We had a citizen one time out there, and he was bathing his two nine-foot-long boa constrictors in the front yard. Apparently, I was garnering some attention, and so we went out there and had to talk to him about that. Do I do this job? Oh, dude, I love this job. I grew up on a farm, and taking care of that many animals, you can't help but like animals. This is just like fancy farming. You know, you're just bringing animals in here, taking care of them, and finding them homes, and yeah, absolutely animal lover.

This is the best place to work.

I love working here. I feel very blessed. I love it here. I look forward to coming to work every day, being a part of this team. Like a family away from home. Where everyone feels like everybody knows their name. The city that supports you, we see that with our benefits. A pension, vacation days, job security.

Being able to be heard. We feel valued, we feel respected.

Lee's Summit is a very progressive city. It's growing, it's thriving. We have this drive towards not just doing a job, but doing it with a spirit of excellence. I had the opportunity to continue to grow. regardless of 30 plus years doing this kind of work. It's more than just dollars and cents. We're here really to give back. Providing a service to better a community. To go out and serve people. To be a part of something bigger than yourself. If I would have known what I know now years ago, I would have been here much sooner.

Traditionally, we think as police officers, those responding to law enforcement needs within the community. But honestly, we are there to serve our citizens, and our citizens do go into crisis. They do have mental health crises, and we're being called to those scenes on a regular basis. In order to help serve those citizens better, we did initiate the crisis intervention team program. These are officers that are specially trained to de-escalate.

That will be okay. Stormwater issues, I hope so. I trust our staff. I think they're great. And so I know they will make sure that those issues aren't going to be your issues because our code allows that stuff to maintain on site and to not impact others. Lighting, like I said, we checked ourselves. The engineers, they do lighting plans for the entire site. They tell us where the light will be and what foot candles at the boundaries. And from what I saw on their preliminary plan, zero all across on all on the development side. So that's not even further past the road. So your fire pits at night should still be maintained. And I appreciate your engagement too. I'm not as concerned about, and I understand I'm building a house at Colburn and Blackwell, so I will be using this interchange a lot. And so I understand that property owners have rights as well. And if they bring a development that fits the categories of the code, it's their right to build that. So right or wrong, I think we'll have that as a different time. But for me, I just don't think we have enough information yet to make a decision today And so I would be very supportive of a continuance just so that staff, which I know staff will do a great job to get this property owner to where they need to be so we can have a better understanding of what really is going to be there for a long term.

So that's all I have, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Hatcher, I see you down there.

Thank you. Um, thank you to the applicant for submitting this and wanting to build something and develop in the city. And thank you to the neighbors as well for your involvement. Um, and I've, I've had some questions as far as that notification procedure and everything as well. So we will, um, we'll, we'll definitely look into that further as, as far as what had happened with notices and signage and everything. But I appreciate you sticking with this and making yourselves known. Um, The specifics of this use at this site, I think from a more macro perspective, looking at that corridor, I actually, I do like the use generally. I will say more micro on this site with the specifics of the traffic and Candidly personal bias. I'm not the biggest fan of roundabouts but specific to all of the roundabouts right there I don't know that a gas station which would be primarily for highway Travelers with the large loop that you have to do to get there Necessarily makes the most sense at this time and then combined with the fact of you know, the the canopy elevation and some design considerations with that gateway corridor aspect of it. I'm personally not inclined to support this at this time. So leave that up as far as how the procedures work. Personally, I would be inclined to recommend denial at this time. I don't know if that prevents them from later coming back with something along these lines at a later date. But that would be my personal thoughts on this.

And just to clarify, a denial would not prohibit them from coming back at a future date?

So procedurally, if the commission decides to make a recommendation and a denial, the application as it would move to city council, and then we have public hearing at city council here in a few weeks as well. Thanks for that reminder. And there would be no real changes made. And then if it were denied at City Council, there is a shot clock before they could resubmit on that so I'm sorry could you clarify in contrast to a continuance that it would not move on at this time so if you were to if the Commission decides to continue as if we continue to a date certain that would give the applicant opportunity to go back and make some changes to the plan and then bring it back before you for those changes and then you can reevaluate the additional information at that time and make a more informed decision thank you thank you for that clarification I would

just say i would still personally be inclined to move for denial at this time as i don't feel like this c store and or a gas station in that specific location of this site is appropriate regardless of if we got the canopy design back or not however if down the road they are not prevented from possibly moving forward with that if they cleaned up some of these other things or We had some other considerations. I think that would be fine to reassess it at that point. But that's just my personal feeling on it.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Commissioner Pesch.

I just wanted to thank city staff again. There's a lot to review with any one of these applications. And we got a lot of good answers on roadway design and stormwater, et cetera. So appreciate staff, appreciate the applicant. going through this process and having interest in providing another business in Lee Summit and that's all I got.

Thank you. Commissioner Arth.

I just want to say thank you to all of you for showing up. It's almost three hours and that takes a lot of patience. As far as my thoughts on this, I'm impressed with the applicants. Just your willingness to cooperate as far as the colors, the way you view cleaning up the area, that it would make that area less prone to any activities that might be dangerous or just not preferred on that land. On the other side of that, I don't feel we have a lot of information as far as the canopy, the elevation of the main building as well. There's a lot of questions as the public hearing has gone on. We've gotten a lot of answers, but we also have a lot more questions. I really like Commissioner Gronow's idea of maybe making this a master, putting a master plan in this area because it is our eastern gateway and That corridor, 50 Highway corridor, there's a lot of opportunity as things come along for us to improve that area because a lot of it we have businesses with special use permits. We clean up things and so it's just a part of all of that, I feel. I feel that regardless if we continued, I don't really feel this meets with the character of that neighborhood. That neighborhood is very, I have lived in that area myself and there's just a lot of walking there. It's very residential, I guess I would say. And the other uses on Shenandoah fit in with that. Here is a use that's going to be more transient in nature. It's just not, I don't feel it's a great fit for that area. Field traffic will be an issue. I know that when we buy our homes, if we're near undeveloped land, we have to assume it's going to get developed. I mean, we all know that. But I think that a better fit would be on the south side of 50 for this because there are no homes there. So it would already be there, and then people would know what they're getting into. I'm not saying that, I mean, we all understand that we can't always choose what comes near us. I mean, I think I see you guys nodding, but just that this is already an existing, well-established neighborhood. And so regardless of a continuance or not, I don't think I can change my mind on the fit of the neighborhood.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. I agree with a lot of the comments that have been said here tonight, especially Commissioner Janiford, where you commented around it conceptually. I just don't think we have enough information to make a good decision on this to move it forward to council. My fear, you know, I've heard continuation, I've heard denial. My fear with denial is it'll go to council and then something will happen. I have problems with, you know, I love articulation, but there's way too much of it. And so I feel like giving the applicant some direction around coming back with a firm concept of what they want to do there. I personally feel like it's owned by the lady and it's zoned commercial so therefore we don't have a right necessarily to say you can or can't put this there because we know it's zoned commercial and this is an appropriate use for that zoning. And so, unless we were gonna rezone it, I also like the idea of a master concept plan as overlay. I mean, those are great ideas. I think we should be doing that for the whole city, honestly, but I know we've had divergent opinions around that, and I get it. Like, we don't want uniform design. We want different areas to have different characters, and I love that about it. So, yeah. With that, I feel like we've given some good direction to the staff and the applicant. You know, I'm supportive of a continuance. I'm a little hesitant about it, but I will be open to whatever the commission desires, so I'll look for a motion.

Chair, not a motion, but just one more comment, if that's okay. Thank you, yeah.

Sorry. Any other comments before we go to motion, but yeah.

This is just, regardless of how the outcome comes, it's just a comment for the application. When these applications come in, it's always good to have the intent that what you're showing is what will be occupied. So in particular, the comment about the drive-through, the uncertainty, you're going to design for a drive-through, but it may not be. Just a lot of infrastructure that goes in with designing for a drive-through just to not have it be housed as one. So that just kind of ties into everything else on this application. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Yeah, does somebody want to make a motion?

Go ahead. Mr. Chairman, real quick for staff. What would be A reasonable continuation date, one month, two weeks?

I would like to maybe speak with the applicant to see what their turnaround is. I don't think realistically their next meeting is July 23rd, so I don't believe that we could turn around any significant changes in that time. And then we're looking at August 13th or 27th. or potentially September 10th or 24th as well.

Would we need to include the date or can we say a continuation with the staff to work with?

If we go to a continuation to a date uncertain without specifying the date specifically, we will have to re-advertise and re-notice. If we do it to a date certain, the application could continue to move forward without the re-advertising, re-posting, and re-notes.

Do you want to have a recess to confer with the applicant?

I would like that, yes.

Okay, I'll take a recess. Thank you.

Ever wondered how the city budget works? The total 2026 budget is over $380 million, which includes funding for daily operations, capital improvements, debt service, internal service, and enterprise operations. For example, the General Fund is the foundation for the City's day-to-day services and investments like road maintenance, public safety, and fire protection. The General Fund is supported by property taxes, sales taxes generated by local businesses, franchise taxes, and other sources like licenses, permits, and fees. For every dollar citizens pay in property tax, the City receives 18 cents. This means the City receives $845 a year in property taxes for a median single-family house. These taxes provide public safety, park maintenance, infrastructure, and the best services to keep Lee's Summit going and improving. One of the community's top priorities is infrastructure investment, which is reflected in the Capital Improvement Plan. $113 million of the 2026 budget is invested into the capital improvement plan. The 2026 capital improvement budget includes investments like the 291 and 50 highway interchange, Third Street, Ward and Purcells intersection, and Prior Road. The budget process includes guidance from the city council, citizen input, and critical success factors from the city's IGNITE strategic plan. To learn more about the city's budget, visit cityofls.net backslash budget.

When the person called on the phone, she said that there was a dinosaur walking down her road. Of course, we had to go out and check that out. We get out there, and it was a big African tortoise, probably 60 pounds, walking down the road. When they walk, they really stand up tall, so I could see why she thought it was a dinosaur. I'm Rodney Wagner, I'm the manager of Lee's Summit Animal Control. So as you can see, we've got all sorts of animals here. We've got some guinea pigs off to the side. All the windows up here are animals that are adoptable right now. Every one of these dogs is ready to go and ready for adoption. And the same thing with our cats over here. A lot of cool cats in here now, so. This is our three-acre lot we have out back. This is where we do all the walking of dogs, exercise. We also have a side yard off to the side over there so we can let them run loose. They can run together and we have what's called play groups. Kind of like having a bunch of kids. Here's our vet room. We have a vet that comes out twice a week. This is our sally port where we bring the animals into. This is one of our animal control trucks. And we can hold up to six animals. We have a lift on the other side to put big animals in. We actually have temperature gauges in here and in the truck to tell us how hot it is. Once it gets to a certain temperature, we bring all the animals back here immediately. So this actually has traps in it, but... We do a lot of wildlife trapping. I mean, a lot, so... Bats, pot-bellied pigs, horses, cows, emus, a lot of reptiles. We had a system one time that had over 200 reptiles in his basement. Caimans and alligators in here that are four or five feet long, you can't keep those. And people do, and they're surprised when they can't keep them. I'm like, really? You're surprised you can't have an alligator in your house? Our main goal here is public safety and also the safety of the animals. And we have very dedicated people back there, and they definitely stay here for the love of the animals, which also includes getting them adopted out. We'll have about 4,000 impounded animals a year. Probably about close to 2,000 are dogs and cats. The cats and dogs, when they get impounded here, they go on a five-day hold. And then after the five days, if the owner doesn't show up, then we can put them up for adoption. Adopt an animal here is actually really simple. You just come in, look for whatever animal you're looking for, find the right pig. You have to go to the adoption room up there and see if you get along with them. You spend as much time as you want to in there. From that point on, it's just a matter of making sure they're spayed or neutered and all their vaccinations up to par and they're good to go. because we try everything in our power to get animals adopted out. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion for application

number PL2026078 preliminary development plan, Blackwell Convenience Store 2661 Southeast Blue Parkway, KDP Hospitality LLC applicant to continue to a date of August 27th.

Do I have a second for the motion?

Second.

Can I get a vote on the motion? Are there any further discussion on the motion, I guess? Yeah, go ahead.

So I know that based upon just some conversations we've had, being very specific about why we're continuing or what we're after through the continuance, is that something that we need to include within the motion?

Yeah, so you could continue to give that guidance right now during the comment portion of that motion to give them specific information, so the motion should clearly identify the information revisions that you're looking for on that continuance, definitely, so you can do that now. Okay, great.

Oh, so I feel that it's incomplete. I think that we are looking for, and please, everyone jump in, but I feel that we need to understand the pedestrian connectivity. That's a big component of it. I think we need to have, maybe not two building elevation options, but let's pick one, let's present one, let us work off of one. I also feel that the design principles, specifically for strip mall design principles, should be reviewed from the comp plan and incorporated into this as we are taking a look at this gateway area. Again, not from exact following, but just as a vision, as a reference point. Those are some of the things that I'm really after, and the fuel canopy. The fuel canopy is a big deal. We need to understand it. And then if we've already made some concessions tonight, like around the color schemes and maybe some materials, yeah, those specific things, incorporating those as well, so that we can really look at it and feel good about making our recommendation to city council. That would be just my take on that, but please, everyone else chime in.

I concur. I would like to see specifics. This kind of stone with potentially a color, this type of material, a lot of times developments will bring in a board that shows what they're what they're talking about, just to give us an idea. And that needs to, and whatever you choose for your building elevations on your building, carry that into the canopy. If that means the stone siding on the columns, color schemes that are muted, not bright pinks and blues, whatever. You know, carry it through so it all looks like a cohesive real nice, um, a real nice development. And if you need, and if you need examples of what we're talking about, um, please ask city staff. They've got examples of things like what we talked about, the Dillons within the Olathe project that they had other things. There's, there's examples out there that you can get.

Is there anything new that we need to add?

I have one chair, um, efficient parking. So that was kind of a little bit of a contention here with just over parking with anticipation of proposed, maybe not future building. And then the elevations should also extend out to the trash enclosure the canopies for the fuel But also just the drive-through concept Thank you.

Thank you anything additional Chair yes, I just wanted a clarification for the continuance. How will that work with public comment and that procedure and just stability for us to hear that?

Yeah so when they come back on the August 27th we'll be able to reopen the public hearing and accept additional public comment at that time.

Thank you. Just like to note because I think I will be voting first I will be voting no on the continuance as I still would move to deny recommend denial personally so just for clarity it sounds like I'm in the minority on that which is great that's why we do this I'm just I go first, so I wanted to be clear on that.

Thank you, sir. Okay, any other comments before we go to vote? All right, can I call the vote?

Peyton Hatcher?

No.

Molly Pesch? Yes. Dana Arth? No. Terry Trafton?

Yes.

Chip Tuszynski?

Yes.

Jessica Grunow?

Yes.

Tanya Johniford?

No.

More yes The motion passes So it'll go to a continuance of date certain in August 27th. Thank you All right, we look forward to the renewed, revised. Thank you. All right. Thank you for a really long meeting. Let's move to roundtable. Anybody have something they want to bring up? Yeah.

I don't know exactly our procedures for bringing things up or how that gets anything done, but I do think, broadly speaking, looking at some of the neighborhood meeting procedures as a whole. I think we've had a couple here in a row in my very limited time that there's been confusion, lack of notification, various issues of some variety. in some way looking at that. Again, I don't know how we do that. I'd be happy to help with that if that's a possibility at all, but I think some variety of looking at how we do all of those things, in particular the timelines and ways of communication as well as the radius of notification all seem to have been issues in a couple different spots recently.

Yeah, staff can take a look at that and present something to you of kind of what our practices are and what neighboring surrounding practices are. I will say just for kind of some of the newer members, the radius notification used to be 185 feet because that was state law. So we've increased that to 300 feet. Our signs used to be one foot by two feet. Now they're two feet by three feet, as well as we publish that in the newspaper as well. So we have increased in the recent years to do a better job of notifying that public.

Thank you. As you guys are looking at that, I think there's specific maybe geographical error or traffic configurations in adjacent to the developments that when we're trying to post public notices that maybe just an alternate approach to it needs to be had. Because for me personally, it was very hard to see those signs and there was nowhere for me to go to pull off to look at them. So I don't know if the font or the communication on it needs to be larger so you can visually see it easier. or if the sign needs to be bigger, or if it needs to be placed differently?

Yeah. I will say that I'm not a traffic sign expert. But if you look at the size of vehicular signs along the highway or streets, those are very, very large, right? So to get one that's super legible would be a very, very large sign. I'm talking 8. feet, 16 feet wide. Maybe not practical here, but we can definitely look into some alternative methods. Staff is always available to take phone calls or questions from the public. We do have resources online. If you see a yellow sign and can't stop or don't have the ability to stop and view that a little bit closer, give us a call. We're more than happy to walk you through that.

And maybe it's a height thing.

because it was so low to the ground maybe it's a height issue especially for that particular area just just a thought um that maybe not every um uh parcel warrants that type of um approach but maybe some do right okay yeah i think that's a good point you make actually i think those signs are well like two by three or something yeah those are two feet i mean i think there are other size signs that are like four by five that you could notice it better and not have to Yeah, you could read it and not have to pull over to see what it says, because I've actually driven by signs and been like, I wonder what that notice, I mean, I know it's a notice, but I wonder what it's for. So anyway, good comment. All right, other, thank you. Other roundtable comments? Hello.

Hi. Okay, so I listened to city council meeting yesterday. First, staff, I appreciate the thoroughness for the Dylans because it's very rare that I've come across in the last six years of a not in support of something. and I just want to express a little bit of disappointment that after having what I thought was a really good conversation, really supporting and basically enforcing our UDO and what we're wanting to bring to the city, it was not really respected. So a little bit of disappointment, but also kudos to staff for kind of holding your guns and doing what I felt was right. So that's all.

I feel that done.

other Shannon did you have something yeah I just want to remind the Commission Joint Council with the City Council and Planning Commission is scheduled for August 11 so I did send out a counter hold for you guys on that more information will become available once it becomes available I'll send that out to you as well and then also I want to congratulate chair Trafton on his first meeting Made it through it? That's all I have, so.

Oh, okay. All right, I was gonna bring up the, you know, I love bylaws, and I had noticed that our bylaws hadn't been reviewed since 2020, and I was actually on the counts on the commission then, and it was Dana who signed them as, what position were you in at that point? I think vice. You were vice chair?

Yeah, the chair was Donnie Funk.

So in conversation, I've had a couple of conversations just around, there are some commissioners that know we had bylaws. And so I thought maybe it was good that we review those. And one thought was that we would form a committee to review the bylaws and then bring the committee could recommend any updates or changes to the bylaws. So are there people that I'm looking to form a committee? Are there people interested in serving on that committee?

I will happily serve on the committee, Chair.

Oh, good. Would you happily chair the committee?

I will happily also chair the committee.

Awesome. Who wants to join Commissioner Jana Ford, now chair of the Bylaws Committee?

I would love to join her if she will have me.

Awesome. Okay, we've got another one. Do I have any other takers?

I would join. Maybe not love to join, but I would join. We're going to make you love it.

No, it'll be great. Commissioner Hatcher, yes. I would like to join. All right. We'll leave it there. We've got three. Anybody else? Down here, I'll leave. I'll join as well. Awesome. I love it. Okay, yeah. Okay. Thank you. Don't want to leave anybody out. I know Dana's, or excuse me, Commissioner Arth is on the Charter Commission, so...

Oh, you're on the charter commission too?

Oh, lovely, I was on that. Okay, well it sounds like we have a good committee of four, and so I guess we'll expect you to convene at some point. How would you like to handle that, Shannon? I see you eager to assist.

I'll get with our legal representation here and formulate what the requirements are gonna be for that, because we're at four. Five is a quorum, so four is a good number. but I do believe there may be some requirements in there of how that procedurally we move forward with that by-law review, so. Okay.

Like if we have to notice the meeting or something, yeah, because it is, okay, all right. We'll look forward to that guidance and you can just, I guess, communicate that to Commissioner Janaford and I and keep us up to date on what's happening.

I will do that and I will communicate with the entire commission.

Communicate to all of us. Okay, yes.

So we've talked a lot about activity centers, gateway corridors, and those character areas. How do those get developed, especially for this Blackwell area?

So if you were talking about a master plan, an area plan over that entire corridor, that is something that we would look at. That's a long-term process. It would be more of an overlay district, similar to the M150 corridor overlay. We can kind of talk about that process. That is probably a six- to 12-month-long process to get something like that. So there's a lot of work, a lot of outreach, a lot of public comment periods with that. So we can definitely start looking into that.

I think more specifically, I think it would be great to have that type of understanding and guidance, but more specifically, it would be great to have a character area like the other ones that we have already developed. Within the comp plan? You don't make me pull out my computer and talk about it.

Like character area.

The activity centers. Sorry. The activity centers. They're called characters.

Yeah. So this is not an activity. This is high activity center. Those areas were really kind of designated during the comp plan process. So we can look at potentially. I don't know that that small area right there would kind of fall in that activity center, but more of that kind of overlay district. Yeah.

I think we're going to have, there's a lot of undeveloped land. I think this is going to come up maybe potentially again. It'd just be great to have some guidance with it.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right. Thank you for that lively conversation. Any other comments and round table that we need to have? All right. With that, thank you for sticking with us citizens of the Lee summit. And with that, we're adjourned at eight 15, eight 13.

Thank you. you