Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

for this meeting of the Planning Commission Citizens Advisory Committee tonight.

Will you all please stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you. Sue, can you do a roll call for me?

Commissioner Canwalder? Here. Commissioner Clark? Here. Commissioner Holst? Here. Commissioner Barkas? Here. Commissioner Barnett? Here. And Chair Ellis?

I am here. Collin Plank is not with us. I will entertain a motion to excuse his absence. Motion to excuse him. Support? I'll second. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, the same. Motion carries. Approval of tonight's agenda. I will entertain a motion for this. I'll make that motion. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed the same. Very good. When do we open it up for anybody having questions?

Chair Ellis, we just need approval of the minutes yet.

Oh, yeah. Yep, sorry. Number three. Number three. I will entertain a motion for the approval of the minutes of the previous meeting on March 9th. Seems like a long time ago. I'll make that motion. Any support? I'll make a support. Any discussion? Okay, all in favor of approving, say aye. Aye. All opposed, the same. Motion carries. There it is. Number four. It was tough. We're a little rough tonight. I know it's in there somewhere. I miss it every time, too. Okay, this time I'd like to open the floor up to any citizens that have comments on tonight's agenda. Please state your name and your address, and you have about five minutes or less to.

That's good, thank you. Tyler Kent, 280 Jane Avenue. I'm a little familiar with myself in this one. I just wanted to make a comment on the maximum lock coverage agenda item today. It's kind of not really clear what residential district my property is in. It's currently in R2 from what I can tell, but the master plan kind of has a family traditional residential code to it, which says it's R1, R2, and R3. It's compatible zoning. In that case, the maximum lock coverage requirements can vary. So in this case, if I'm an R2, I could have 35% if this passes. However, if I'm re-designated as an R3, then I have 30% lock coverage. So I would hope that we you know consider that as a grandfather clause or as something to look at and we're going through this i'm going to base it on the current zoning that the city of lowell has so i'm an r2 but i look through the master plan it does kind of have a range of I just want folks to be aware of that. I do, in the end, support increasing the availability of lot coverage up to a certain level, but I think it's heading in the right direction. Thank you.

Thank you, Tyler. Anyone else have any comments on tonight's agenda items? If not, I will close this and move on to number five, whole business. And we all got a memo, correct? Andy, would you also like to?

Yes. So if you recall, back when we were still wearing winter coats to the meetings, we started talking about this topic where we look at the maximum lock coverage limitation for your various residential zoning districts. So this was one of the four items that the city identified last year in which we can work to you know increase housing supply to find ways to allow residents to make greater use of their residential properties within the city and so this is kind of the fourth one of those to to address that topic and so what we're really looking at is within the zoning ordinance in every district there is a maximum percentage of the lot that can be covered by a building so we're talking about lot coverage we're only talking about buildings so the house a detached garage, put the Z-bow that's got a roof on it, a little barn, that would all be included in lot coverage. A driveway or a patio or a sidewalk or whatever, that would not be included. So it's not about impervious services, just buildings. So in the zoning ordinance, each district has a maximum percentage of your lot that can be covered by buildings. And so with a table down here on the first page, you look at the minimum lot area for each of the districts, the maximum lot coverage, for each of the districts and how that translates into square footage based on the minimum lot size. So in SR and R1, you have a maximum lot coverage of 35%, so anyone that has a lot in that district can cover up to 35% of that lot with a building. In R2 and R3, it drops down to 30%. So really, this is something that comes up every once in a while. So when a property owner files with the city a zoning compliance permit application, it goes to Sue. Sue sends it to me and we take a look at it. So if they want to do an addition or something like that, People will review the application, we'll look at the setbacks for that district and make sure that everything is met. But one of the other calculations that we'll do is try to figure out whether or not that building is at or near the maximum lot coverage and if it would exceed that lot coverage calculation if we granted the request. And if it would, then we can't grant it, right? So if someone wants to build something that would, if it would be in addition to their house and if after the addition the house would be at 38 we'll say sorry we can't allow this because you're exceeding the maximum so there have been a handful of times where we have told people no sorry we can't approve this application because you're going to receive the maximum lock-on resummitation for each district. And so as part of this and sort of working towards a place where people can use more of their property and they can build those additions and they can make those improvements, we're looking at increasing that maximum by a little bit to help kind of alleviate some of those kind of pressure points. So at the last meeting, we talked about this a little bit. You asked for a little bit of additional research, which we did. So on the second page, we have this table. And so we didn't go through every single parcel in the city, but we did kind of do a sample of some of the, some density figures. And we just went through and just selected a bunch of parcels in each zoning district just to kind of see how the calculations worked out. So you'll see that as we sort of expected in the R1 district and as R district for that matter, we really didn't run into any problems. There weren't any one, there weren't any properties where we saw a lot of homes that are bumping up against that limitation. But you'll see when we get to R2, there's a bunch. And so when we're looking at the table, we have anything that's in bold, which is basically everything in R2, that's above that thick line, all of those properties exceed the maximum lot size limitation. You'll also see that because they're red, those are also non-conforming parcels because they're too small. They wouldn't be able to be created today if somebody came in and tried to create a lot of that size. But they're there and we have to deal with them as they are. And when someone has a lot that's not conforming, we can't tell them that they can't build on it. But they do still have to meet setbacks. They are still subject to those maximum lot coverage limitations. So that's one of the things that we're thinking about is how much do we want to allow lots that are already not conforming to bump up against that lot coverage limitation. So you'll see in R2, that is kind of the area where we're seeing the most issues. And just kind of in our experience looking at applications, that's almost always the district that comes up to be a problem when we're looking at this. And so there were quite a few of the properties that we looked at, as you can see, of the 30-some-odd properties that we saw, about a third of them were not conforming in terms of that 30% maximum limitation. You'll see the worst offender, if you want to call it that, was at almost 50%. I honestly don't think that we should go to 50% just to accommodate those one or two properties, but you can kind of see the range of the issue here. And if we were to do a parcel by parcel basis across the entire city, which would take a while, we'd probably find a bunch more that were in that 30 to 35 to 40% range. So I think really what this boils down to is is do we want to take our current maximum lot coverage limitation at R2, which is 30%, and do we want to bump that up to 35 or 40? If you recall, the last meeting, we had a table or something where we looked at several of your neighboring communities, so Greenville and Ionia and Cedar Springs, or to other places to see kind of where they were at. And almost all of them were between 30 and 40. So right now you're kind of in a range of where everybody else is in terms of your neighbors. You're probably on the lower end of that a little bit. There's a bunch that go up to 40%. And after looking at all of this and after thinking about it, I think I would be comfortable at least going to 35, if not to 40. A couple of things that will come into play here, how this is going to affect people are going to be, one, with adding a little extra lot coverage, you know, there is some potential for a slight increase in how much stormwater comes off of these structures. um because we are adding impervious surface to properties and the other thing of course is there's just more building there's more bulk right so if we have a If we increase the lot coverage, that's more building that can be fit on a property. The buildings, as you know, if it's a house, it can be up to two or two and a half stories tall. So we think about how much of an impact the additional vault might have on the neighborhood and how that can affect views and things like that. Those are really the primary concerns that I have with what we're looking at making this kind of change. But to me, I think the trade-off of allowing these properties that currently can't make the improvements that they want to make to give them a little bit of additional flexibility is probably worth it. I have a question.

Yeah. The ones in red, they are not conforming, but their grandfather is, so to speak, correct? I mean, nothing is going to happen to those properties.

Because they're already existing. They already exist. The properties exist, and they're not conforming already anyways. So the ones that are two that are both red and bold, they're not conforming in terms of lot area, and they're not conforming in terms of lot coverage. And there's nothing we can do about that. They're going to stay there in that state basically forever with the caveat that if it burns down or something like that, then they might be limited in how they can, they might have to build back in conformance depending on how it's damaged or The bigger hang-up is that if you want to expand, sometimes that can also be limiting. Now our non-conforming language is pretty lenient, but there are still some limitations there to being non-conforming. It can hinder, just because you have to check that box on the form when you're buying or selling a property, if there's a non-conforming situation, it can hamstring a little bit your ability to sell your property, so there are some limitations that go along with that. you're correct in that we're not interested in, even if we wanted to, which we don't, even if we did, we can't go after them and make them comply. They're just going to be allowed to continue to exist in perpetuity in that current state, even at 48.9%. But the individual who's at 48.9%, they're not going to be able to built in addition, they're not going to be able to make any of those kinds of modifications that would increase that footprint unless they ask for a variance. That's really the biggest thing for all of them. everybody that's above 30 percent and even the ones that are 29.9 realistically what are they going to build i mean almost anything they do is going to get over 30 right so if they build anything more than an outhouse they're probably going to end up over yeah being over we'll say sorry so um the actual number of people who are affected by the 30 would include some of those that are in that you know 29 28 percent range too because for all intents and purposes they can't build an initiative either they want to go to you know go to lowes and buy a you know 100 square foot storage that they might not even be able to do that because of that same limitation so those are the ones where we're really right on the edge so even a five percent increase there is going to benefit some of the ones and the ones that are currently conforming, because that allows that that little bit of breathing room they would need to. Build any closer plot lines, right? This would not, right, this would not change the setback at all. So all those numbers are gonna stay the same. percentage of their lot can be occupied by a building.

So again, social policy ordinances, all the rules, it's just, hey, we give you a little extra room if we increase from 30%.

Yeah, my thought would be because SR and R1 are both at 35%, my thought would be to go at least to 35%. Typically what we see, and one way that your ordinance is unique, is typically the districts that have the larger minimum lot area, so the ones that are less dense, those typically have the lower lot coverage percentage. If you have an acre, 40% lot coverage on an acre is like 20-some-odd thousand square, that's way too much. typically the lower intensity districts like SR and R1 are at 25 or 30% and then the more dense districts, which in your case are R2 and R3, have the more generous allotment there. Yours is actually the opposite of that. which is my thought, at least at a minimum, we should bring them all back up to be the same percentage. But again, this is completely up to you. You are not required to do anything. You can leave it as is, so doing nothing is an option here. Could we go up to 40, or is that just out there? No, you can go up to 40. There are a bunch of small cities like yours where 40 is what their percentage is currently at.

Questions or thoughts? You like 40?

I actually like 40 as well.

Any rationale? Yeah, I want to build a small house behind my house.

Christine?

Welcome, Christine.

Hi. Welcome.

Nice to meet you all.

I personally think it'll allow for more accessibility for housing arrangements and more space in regards to that for occupancy.

I just have a quick clarification real quick. When we did the ADU ordinance, we only passed that for SR and R1, right? Yes. So this would not have any bearing on the ADU districts, right?

That's correct.

Okay.

Yeah, ADUs are not permitted in R2 or R3. Okay. So that would, unless you change what that number is in R1 or SR. Right. It should not have any effect on how ADUs are processed. Okay. So, sorry David, you can't have a small house in the backyard.

I think our houses are.

no i'm so processing go ahead yeah i'm processing too um i'm just like glancing at the map my thought was 35 is is a good stopping point um but then when i see the numbers obviously there's a lot that only affects a few of the ones that are already over however when we talked about aupd use i believe it was at this meeting and also city council We did have residents from Riverside Drive area in those historic homes that we're very concerned about adding in that area. And I don't know if those are, where are the ones that are non-conforming? Can you give me an idea of?

Yeah, they are kind of everywhere. So your R2 district, the minimum square footage was like 87 square feet. 8,700 or something like that. 8,200. 8,200. So what I'm speculating a little bit here, but I'm guessing that both R2 and R3, the minimum square footage is 8,200 square feet and the minimum width is 66. And I'm pretty sure that that 8,200 square feet was written intentionally to accommodate the standard city log, which was 66.132, which is 8,712 square feet. and be willing to bet that that's the 8200 was picked to accommodate the odd narrow or shallow lot that's not going to be 8712 so there's a little bit of generosity built in there um so yeah the the non-conforming ones are going to be here and there a lot of them are going to be in that historic district i would guess um and we can identify those maybe you can bring a map with us at the next meeting that just lights up everything that's less than you know that doesn't meet that minimum 82 square foot standard there are probably some 50 foot lots sprinkled about here and there they were just planted in you know 1926 and there are lots that are non-conforming though based on their what's on them and what they were zoned for as well yeah if we start chasing non-conformities yeah i mean if we can i'm i want to reduce the amount of non-conformities we have but not at the expense of everything else right we can't accommodate the biggest and bulkiest and

Right, and I guess the non-conforming was not my main concern. It was just the, I'm just hearing those voices in my head that were very concerned about the historic home districts and getting too densely covered in there. So that's just a thought that we should keep in mind because I do see that they are in the R2 district as well, so.

Oh, sorry, Christine.

I think there's also a benefit, though, for, say, a garage that increases property value as regards to

And if they're in the historical district, they have to follow the historical guidelines and ordinances.

I'm thinking of the historical, because they technically would not be in the historic district, because that's Main Street only, pretty much.

I was just going to say, a lot of the concerns from those neighbors, in particular, were the setbacks and stuff, too. And this would impact that. But yes, I was thinking the same thing. The larger we go, we're going to have more of that dense feeling that I know people have concerns about. I was also leaning towards 35% just across the board. But I'm open to 40. About 37.

So both of you would rather keep it around 35%? if you had your choice. That's where I was leaning.

Yeah, 35 seemed reasonable to me. It's trying to find that balance between the people that don't want their neighbors building stuff that's unsightly and then the people that want to build stuff to maximize the value and usage of their lot. So that's what we're always juggling. Right now the only recourse is to go to the Zoning Board of Appeals if you want to build something beyond So it varies. Right. So, yeah, you get request experience. Yeah. I mean, there's a little bit more options. I do like that it brings every, because a percentage is a percentage. It's exactly that. Why aren't they all the same? I don't know how one ended up at 30 and the other one's at 35. Yeah.

Yeah, and I'm interested in you saying huge lots, I mean, 35% of TWIG lots. Right. That's a big house. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah. Keeping it uniform is easier to remember, easier to understand and process.

When you have a two acre lot, a building of that size is not going to have the impact that it has if you're not small. Looking at some of the lots, all of those nonconformities are in and just the old planted on both sides of the river i mean there's lots all over the place that are as small as like 5 000 square feet or less so those are you know probably always going to be not not important they're always going to have i mean they're probably a 60 or 70 percent lot covers just looking at the map because yeah they were planted a long time ago and the house was built and it's still there oh yeah

I think what I'm falling back to was our original intent for this was to identify ways to make housing more accessible, affordable, because we're so landlocked. And while this is a way to combat that, since these are districts that at this point, because of the way the ADU conversation ordinance ended up landing, isn't really helping. With that, yes, somebody could add on to their house to maybe fit in a multi-generational house or something where it's not technically an ADU. We're not really adding in an additional way of housing. Making your house bigger is not going to make it more affordable. You know, that type of thing. So I don't know that going extremely larger is really going to fit our need for bringing up this conversation where I don't think we really need to go extreme in increasing that limit. I mean obviously we have a bunch of people that are non-conforming but also I don't know that it's a huge issue that we've been sitting at 30 so I feel like yes getting less non-conforming lots is great but I mean if we go to 35% then there's less non-conforming but we're not really solving a huge problem either way.

I mean it might, it could add for a few maybe conversions that are possible now. So R2 also permits two family dwellings. So someone with a little bit more room, it's possible that somebody could maybe go from a one family to a two family and do that conversion. So, and again we're not talking about like a dozen, you know, hundreds of lots or something like that. It's a handful, right? It's not, you're right, it's not solving anything by itself. But I think you're right, the thought is to let's do some of those small things that we can do to move the needle in the right direction. unless you go to a very large number, you're probably not going to make this huge impact. Because I think this isn't something that, it's not like Sue and I are getting an email once every two hours when somebody wants to build something. But it's one of the more common things that comes up when people are told, no, one of the most common reasons is this. So fortunately, we don't have to tell that many people know when they want to do something, but we do sometimes. And again, I don't mind doing it, but for us, when we find something where it's repeatedly the same thing, then that's an issue that we like to bring up for conversation.

So to summarize here, we're talking about changing or making an amendment How do you draft an amendment to increase R2 and R3 to 35%? Is 35% the, I mean, you guys want higher? Wow, yeah. I was going for 37.5. 36.5. But that's the general... I think 35 is plenty.

That's the general idea to increase those to...

Okay, and so the other thing I would point out today, if we go to 35 and then in two years we're back here saying, well, we're still telling everybody no, and we can still go up a little bit and we're not going to really cause an issue. It's harder to, it's easier to loosen it in three straight minutes than it is to, you know, try to get that toothpaste back in the tube, right? That's a lot harder to do. So I think if you're going to take these incremental steps, it'd be better to go from 30 to 35, see how that works. If it doesn't, then okay, we'll talk about it a little bit further next time.

we could always go to 80 and make these ones conforming.

You could, yes. But then if you ever want to dial back to 60, you're not going to solve any problems. And those, I don't even know what those are off the top of my head, but those are obviously not a common case here.

That's probably Dave's house.

So are we all in agreement to have and draft an amendment for this to raise the R2 and R3 to 35%? Yes, yes, yes. Do we need to, Sue? Yes, that would be good. Do we need to make a motion to do that? Okay. I will entertain a motion to have Andy and Liam Swartz draft an amendment to increase R2 and R3 up to 35%. I'll make a motion for that.

any support i'll support any more discussion okay i'll fiber say aye what was the same very good passes may i ask one follow-up question yes do you want to do you want me to draft an amendment for you to review in july and then at that point set a public hearing for august or do you want to just have us schedule a public hearing for the july meeting right now I can just bring the amendment to you at the public hearing. Yeah, we're not going to do anything else other than make these changes. It's pretty simple.

I would say you'll see it a little bit later.

It's not going to be long. So if you're good with that, we can get the public hearing scheduled for the July meeting. Assuming the dates work, it should be no problem. Sounds good.

okay thank you thank you andy um moving on to new business it doesn't look like there's any new business and now i'm reading the citizen comments for items not on the agenda if you please come up and seek your name and address and tell us what you're thinking he's observing I just appreciate having moved to 35%. I need 15 square feet. So that's why I agree to see her. Yes? Okay, there are no other citizen comments. I will move on to staff report. Susie?

I have nothing further.

And Kenny?

Yeah, we don't have anything either, so we're The apartment development on Rose Road will be getting a final approval probably pretty soon. There's lots of random questions and little things here and there, but I don't think there's anything big on the horizon that I'm aware of. So lots of questions for people wanting to do small projects and little additions and things like that. Otherwise, there's not much else.

I have a question for you. Any movement or any more discussion on a Unity building and or the Rollaway building?

There's, so I don't have anything, I don't know what's going on with the building up here. There's been some interest there. I've heard nothing on the Rollaway property at all. So I don't know if that's just been dropped for now or what but i'm not i haven't heard anything on that i'm not expecting any applications in your future on that property okay thank you and i'd like the one on is it chad is that removing at all uh the church no general the one behind um

Have we not used that one, did we?

Did we approve that one?

Yeah, I just wondered if there's any movement on it or not. There's been no construction.

Oh, the basement. No, I've not heard anything recently. Yeah, that was the one that we approved for that seven-unit multicam. Yeah, no, I haven't heard anything on that. So... He's going to have a year after approval to apply for a billing permit, and then he can make a contention. So he's got some time, but yeah, I'm not going to run that either. There has been a million questions about this company, but the church on North, yeah, that's more than anything, we've had lots of questions on that. So we're trying to figure out... Almost every day I get a call out of... Yeah, so it's actually a zoned public facility is how it is, yeah. So we're working on ways to do something with that, deal with that with people. But there's some, yeah, there's a lot of weird zoning limitations on that one that we're trying to work through. So we might have some suggestions to, if that, if we can't, well, if people can't make anything work there because of the zoning ordinance, then we might look to make some changes. We're just not sure which direction to go with that yet, so.

thank you uh commissioner remarks christine once again thank you and welcome to the commission i'm excited to be on this board and to serve and to represent residents of the city i got a question about where does that arrive can they get any way to vacate that road is there a way to vacate that

um i mean so it's a it's a public street so i mean yeah you could well yes but you know so it couldn't be if it's vacated i mean they still have there are properties with access is there only access uh that i i don't know how the vacation process works to just check it to speak intelligently about that we can start a petition

37.56%. All right, go for it. Thank you. Beryl? I just want to welcome Christine.

She was appointed to the commission a long time ago, so we're happy to have you here.

Thank you. Nicole? I just wanted to say welcome, Christine. Welcome, Beryl. You've been here six months. Welcome to your second meeting. I think I'm okay here. Oh, are you? Oh, perfect. Awesome. And I know that the Planning Commission doesn't really have anything to do with it, but I think that the festival on this past Saturday was amazing, too. So I'm thankful for the city that supports the endeavors of the Pride Festival. So, thank you. That's it.

John. And I'm just... I'm able to see all your shining faces again. I have no other comments, and I will entertain the motion to adjourn this meeting. I'll make that motion. Motion to order. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. I'll oppose the same. Motion to adjourn.