Mechanical Board - Regular Meeting

I'll call the Code and Regulations Committee meeting for July 27, 2026 to order. Clerk, please call the roll.

Here.

Thank you. OK, we'll go to committee reports. Palo Verde Drive, Calderwood Drive, the Traffic Commission recommends approval. establishing a restriction requiring that the traffic on Calderwood Drive be required to stop prior to entering the intersection with Palo Verde Drive, thus appealing the existing traffic control for Calderwood Drive yielding for Palo Verde Drive. Is there a motion to approve? And a second? Second? Okay. All right, is there any discussion? All those in favor aye opposed The matter is approved Item number two no action item traffic Commission recommends that no action be taken on the following item request for additional street lights on 1640 Albany Lane Is there a motion to approve Okay, thank you. Second, it's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? All right, hearing none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Okay, this matter is approved. Item number three. 134 North Main Street. Zoning Board appeal recommends approval for a special use permit for six residential units on the ground floor in a C4 urban mixed use zoning district at 134 North Main Street. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second?

Second.

Second, okay. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Opposed? Same sign? Okay. Aye. Motion carries. Or that matter is approved, rather. I'm sorry. Let's see. Item number four, 325 South Main Street. Zoning Board of Appeal recommends approval for a special use permit for residential units on the ground floor in a C4 urban mixed use zoning district at 325 South Madison Street. South Madison Street. Is there a motion to approve? Second?

Second.

All right. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? That matter is approved. 1232 Soper Avenue, Zoning Board of Appeal recommends denial for a variation to reduce the side yard setback for a covered patio from six feet to zero feet in an R1 single-family residential zoning district at 1232 Soper Avenue. Is there a motion to approve the denial?

So moved.

Second? Second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? Madam Chair. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't even look up. Thank you.

Yes.

All right, I don't know if these are on, but just really quick, this property is in my ward. Mr. Capovilla, can you just give us some background on this, please?

This gentleman built this covered porch over his back patio without a permit, and it's literally at zero dot line. So his only way to rectify this was to apply for the variation, and the Zoning Board of Appeals unanimously denied it.

Thank you.

OK, any other discussion? All right. My apologies, Alderman Bell. All those in favor of the denial, say aye. Aye. Opposed? OK, that is approved. 210 North Longwood Street. Zoning Board of Appeal recommends approval for the special use permit for body art services in a C2 limited commercial zoning district at 210 North Longwood Street. Is there a motion to approve? Second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That matter is approved. 219 South 2nd Street, number 7, 219 South 2nd Street. Zoning Board of Appeal recommends approval for a special use permit for a planned mixed use development consisting of 10 apartments, a restaurant, banquet hall, and an R2 two-family residential zoning district at 219 South 2nd Street. Is there a motion to approve?

So I move to second.

Is there any discussion? You're not all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. That matter is approved. Number 8, 1010 East State Street. Zoning Board of Appeal recommends approval for a special use permit for body art services in a C2 limited commercial district at 1010 East State Street. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second. Is there a second?

Second.

Is there any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Same sign? All right. That matter is approved. Item number 9, 3218 11th Street. Zoning Board of Appeals recommends approval for a zoning map amendment from R1 single family residential zoning district to C3 general commercial zoning district and a variation to increase the maximum allowed business identification wall signs from two to three in a C3 general commercial zoning district at 3218 11th Street. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second? Second. Is there any discussion?

I have a question for Mr. Capovilla about the increase from two to three signs. Can you give a little explanation, please?

So by ordinance, we only allow two wall signs for business identification. This applicant, because they're basically taking up three-sided frontage, wanted to have a third wall sign. And they agreed that as a part of that, they would only install one freestanding sign as well. obviously staff usually will Recommend denial on a variation like this, but the zoning board on a five to one vote approved the increase in the number of signs because they they felt that the the size of the signs were a lot smaller than they could be and they were strategically placed and wouldn't look like there was too many signs because The fact that there's a three-sided lot with frontage on Johnson, 11th Street, and Myron.

Thank you. Alderman Bonnie. Sorry.

That's OK. Mr. Capovilla, I know this has come up before. The one that I recall is, wasn't it Mercy Health wanted a third sign for the cancer center? And can you refresh my memory on what was the staff ZVA recommendations on that and what did we approve?

I don't recall, but normally staff would not support a third sign. The only time I believe we supported additional signage for a business was the BMO Center because it takes up an entire block, and they wanted signage on all four streets, which totally made sense because of the mass of the building.

Alderman Tunberg.

on your committee. I believe that this would still meet the four sign maximum, right? They're just essentially taking what could be a sign from somewhere else under that four sign maximum and just putting it over on another spot. Would that be somewhat accurate?

Not entirely. I mean, because they're on a corner lot, they would be allowed two freestanding signs. But we only allow two wall signs. So in this case, they said, we're only going to put up one freestanding sign, but we'd like to have a third wall sign. And that was their criteria that they used to the zoning board in explaining that and the layout of their site as to why they wanted a third wall sign.

So it sounded like, due to where the building is and these streets, that now they would have some visual of the name of their business from each street that runs along there.

That would be correct, yes.

And so it still would not be over the four-sign maximum at all? No. Thank you.

Any other discussion? Okay, hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye.

Madam Chair, I believe all the women to read.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Are we able to split the voting on this so we can vote for the zoning change but not the variation?

Second.

Yes.

We are able to do that. Okay. All right.

Can we do that, please?

Yep. Any other discussion? All right. So we're going to split this up. The first one, let's vote on A. All those in favor for A, say aye. Aye. Opposed?

Okay.

Item 9A is approved. Now, let's go to item 9B. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Oh, let's do a roll call.

Chairman Young? No. Romney?

Aye.

Bill? Aye.

I'm sorry.

Aye. Aye. No. OK. Okay, that item, that matter is failed. All right, moving on to number 10, 1603 North Alpine Road. Liquor and Tobacco Advisory Board recommends approval for modification of an existing liquor license to add packaged liquor sales in conjunction with the restaurant in a C3 General Commercial Zoning District at 1603 North Alpine Road. Is there a motion to approve? So moved.

Second.

Second. Is there any discussion? All right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. OK. That matter is approved. Item number 11. Zoning Board of Appeal recommends approval of the following text amendments. You want me to go through all of them? OK. Is there a motion to approve as listed?

So moved.

Second? Is there a second? I'll second. Is there any discussion? Yes, Alderman Bell.

Thank you, Chairwoman. There's a bit of a silence and pause there, so maybe I'll turn it to Mr. Capovilla to give us an explanation on this item.

Well, there's a series of text amendments. And many of these have to do with housing. And so when you look through these, I think one of the biggest things is infill development, overlay district. by allowing new two-family construction within R1 districts. We'd have to designate the actual overlay district somewhere in the city. But it would only be for new construction. It would not be for conversion of existing single-family homes into two families. One of the reasons we want to do this is to help boost construction and help with bank financing, because a lot of people are not able to get Loans for just a single-family home but a lot of times the bank will look more favorably on a two-family Because they'll be able to make someone could live in you know One of the units and they could rent the lower level or top level whichever they prefer out on a duplex and this would provide for some extra income and it would be hopefully Sorry and hopefully it would be good from a financing standpoint but also help with the boosting our tax base etc so the other thing is in our our two districts allowing three family and four family units There's a couple of larger areas. One's on the southwest side of R2. There's a very large one on the southeast side as well. But any vacant lots that were available there, then we would allow the three and four family units to be constructed on those as well. But once again, you couldn't convert an existing building. It'd have to be new construction only. So those are two of the biggest changes in housing from that aspect. There's other changes in here in reference to mandatory PUDs as well as boosting or increasing the threshold before someone would have to come forward on that. There's discussion about parking for fast food restaurants, reducing those from 13.3 spaces to 10. and just reducing overall parking requirements. One of the things I should point out is with new construction in this overlay district we're looking at, we would not require the new construction to have a garage. We would just require a number of spaces that would be provided. So it would just be two spaces. They could just build a pad off of an alley and provide construction as part of the construction, and then three spaces if it was a two-family building. This would reduce the expense and make it more affordable for someone so they wouldn't have to build that Attached garage or that detached garage to provide those enclosed spaces that are required by the ordinance right now But it wouldn't change any of the existing ordinances for you know other areas And I think there was one other thing I based on the, we're just codifying the engineering design standards with driveways. There's a lot of confusion when people ask for driveway permits as to how many curb cuts they can get and things of that nature. And it's pretty specific in the engineering design criteria, but it's not listed in the zoning ordinance. And since we're kind of the front line of defense when it comes to the public calling, we thought it was best to just take that section from the engineering design standards and put it into the ordinance, the zoning ordinance as well. so that we can just tell people, here it is in the zoning ordinance. So they don't have to go searching from the zoning ordinance to the engineering design standards. Because a lot of people don't even know what the engineering design standard criterias are. So a lot of that stuff's pretty technical. And those are the big major changes inside of this. And so that would be my brief summary.

Thank you.

Any other discussion? We'll go with, and then we'll come to you, Alderman. So I've got Alderman Bonney.

Thank you. Just a follow-up with Mr. Capovilla, without going back to look myself. The two-family, three- and four-family changes that you mentioned, are those all contained in Article 35? Yes.

No, those would be under the use classification table, in table 20-1.

And none of them are under Article 35?

No, Article 35 is the infill overlay district.

And we can approve, not if you were to oppose use classification table it wouldn't affect any of the follow of the other items would it no so like the other issue earlier I'd like to vote separately on each one no just table 20 is it I don't know we need a motion to do that. I'm just going to vote no on table 20 and yes on everything else.

Could we hear from legal please?

Thank you. This one is a little bit more complicated because this recommendation is for the text amendments. Alderman Bonney, it's your wish to vote no on one of the listed items, but support the remaining items? Is that correct? OK. So can we just indicate when the vote is called, anyone who wishes to vote no to specify which portion they're voting no on?

All right. Alderman Salgado.

Thank you, Chairwoman, for allowing me to speak in your committee. Scott, real quick, the Article 20, the rear setbacks, can you explain what the change was there? Did we decrease it or increase it just from general purposes for the infill?

Good question, Alderman Salgado. So in looking back at a lot of older lots in the city, especially, people wanted to put additions onto their house, and we want to encourage people to continue to improve their property. And a lot of times they would run into the issue of not having a 30-foot setback in their rear yard. It'd be 25, 22, whatever. So in order to avoid coming to the zoning board every time with those, we decided to reduce the rear yard setback to 20 feet. And that would apply to all residential districts.

But just real quick, so it was 30? What's the standard? 30 feet. 30 feet. Thank you.

Armin Thunberg. Thanks, Chairwoman. I'd like to say I actually appreciate that very much. And you're leaving the city for Chicago's . That makes a lot of sense. On the parking pad issue regarding making it less expensive for housing without having to build a garage, if at a later time they wanted to build a garage, there there's ample room to do that so is that correct because I would hate to see where we guess we have a parking pad we have parking pads there but if they do want to build a garage all of a sudden the city says well there's not enough setback and etc but so we're planning

So in the infill overlay district where we would basically be waiving the enclosed garage requirement, yeah, there still should be plenty of room on some of these lots to build a detached garage in the future. That's our belief anyway. So it's for those smaller lots that are the ones where we're having trouble with the 20-foot setback. But a lot of the vacant lots that are out there for infill that we're looking at, they're anywhere from 120 feet deep to 150, 160 feet deep in some cases. So it would be fairly easy to have new construction on that lot. Many of these lots have alleys as well, so you'd have your parking right off the alley. And you could easily put a detached garage there in the future. Should not be a problem whatsoever.

Since we're talking about parking pads, do you foresee any issues as it relates to street parking and the impact that having multiple units, what that might have, the impact that might have on street parking as well as traffic?

So obviously, there's a lot of people that, even though they have garages, they still park in the street. And they use their garages for storage, et cetera. And we see this a lot in older areas of Rockford. I know that during snow season, it's troubling with the uneven parking. I think we've all talked about that ad nauseum many times. But I don't see it as a problem. And as our traffic engineer would tell you, if there's a few extra cars on the street, sometimes that just kind of helps slow traffic down, which would create an overall a little bit more safety for the neighborhoods as well.

Thank you. Is there any other discussion? I'm going to do this kind of special. So when you Share your vote. If there is an item that you are voting no on, or a section, a segment of this that you are voting no on, please indicate. OK? So all those in favor? Well, let's do a roll call.

Carina?

Aye.

Ponty? Aye.

Bill?

Aye.

Bonnie?

No on table 20-1. Aye on the rest.

I'm sorry, 20-1 is your note? 20-1? It's not, okay. This is three I's on 20-1, use of the classification table, and four I's on all the rest.

Okay, this matter is approved. Thank you. All right, number 12. There is a request for a moratorium on data centers and directing the city administrator and designees to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of best practices for evaluating the development, expansion, and operation of data centers within the city of Rockford. Is there a motion to approve? I'll make the motion. Is there a second? Hearing none, that matter is dismissed.

If there's no motion and second, then.

OK. So, all right. So that matter did not receive a second. It is denied. OK. Next, we move on to resolutions. a request from the Traffic Commission for the City of Rockford to approve the installation of a street light near 2415 Quincy Circle. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Is there a second? I'll second. Is there a discussion? All right. Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That matter is approved. Number two, 815 Day Block Party. This event is scheduled for Saturday, August 15th. The location of the event is 100 Block of North 1st Street. And the event time is from 8 AM to 4 PM. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second? I'll second. Is there any discussion? All right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Same sign? All right, that matter is approved. Number three, the Polish Fast. This event is scheduled for Sunday, August 16th. The event will be held on the grounds of the St. Stanislaus... I don't want to butcher it, so it's a church located at 201 Buckby Street. Costco 201 Buckley Street and the event is 10 from 10 a.m. To 9 p.m. Is there a motion to approve?

Second second.

Okay move the second. Is there any discussion? Could you please say the name for me correctly? For the name of the church so I know Stanislaw Yeah, I believe it's Costco Okay. All right. All right. Thank you very much. All right. Is there any other discussion? All right. Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. All right. This matter is approved. Number four, PCI Employee Picnic. This event is scheduled for Tuesday, September 15. The location of the event is 4545 Assembly Drive and will take place during open business hours. Assembly Drive will be closed from Research Parkway to Airport Drive during the picnic. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second. Second. Is there a discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Aye. OK, that matter is approved.

Before we adjourn.

Oh, yes. Yes, Alderman Bell.

Thank you, Chair, for allowing me to speak. We had an item, item 12, an item for discussion about data centers, and we've been talking about it for months now. I just want to say thank you to Director Hammer. I proposed a resolution. I believe it was April 11th. and receive the revised draft back.

Alderman Bell, I'm sorry. We are, our next item, I apologize, our next item is to adjourn. Are you asking to go back to item 12?

No, I am not. I'm making comment before we adjourn. is that appropriate okay thank you thank you just wanted so I received the revised draft on I believe July 2nd July 1st July 2nd after working with legal I just wanted to go on record to ask legal to have that be read in and petitions and communications at our next City Council meeting so that this committee can discuss the revised resolution from legal thank you

Thank you. All right. Yes. Yes. Before we do that, excuse me, Alderman Tarina. Yes, Alderman Bonnie.

I've been mistaken for Alderman McNeely in the past. I guess it's appropriate. Is it possible, I'm going to ask the legal director, is it possible for me to second the chairman's motion on item 12 after all? I'll make a motion to adjourn.

All right. It's been moved and moved again and second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. This meeting is adjourned.