City Council - Regular Meeting

been running the last I'm sure you ever seen a hearse with a bunch of money in it and you ever seen throwing money in the casket when you're being can't take it with you. All right. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the October 6 workshop with the Green City Council. Mayor PJ Collins presided over the workshop. First, I'd like to call on our city clerk for a roll call. Mayor Connelly here. Mayor Pro Daniels present. Council member Foreman here. Council member Blackburn present. Council member Scully here. And council Robinson has let us not be joining us this evening. Willis.

Willis. My bad. I got ahead. I'm like, okay. Okay. Council member Robinson is here. Wait a second. Hard to miss. Sorry for the delay. That's all right. Council member Willis has let us know that she may have a All right. Thank you very much. I'll move on to approval of the agenda. Mr. Attorney. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon, mayor and council members. ask that a close session motion be added uh to the workshop to be read right before adjournment. Motion to add that to the uh to the All right. Motion made by

Motion made by the president, Mr. Robinson, second by the present, Mr. Scully. All those in favor say I. Those oppos say nay. Motion passes by. All right, let's roll it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Item number one, a new business update for discussion of potential changes to the standards for the bar 2022 and Michael Ruy uses and I call for our chief planner Shante Goo for the presentation. Um I have some um handouts. Uh we have uh some slides hopefully that's enough to go around. Um we did talk about bar 2022 at your October meeting and we'll pick that up at the end. So now we're just going to go through the micro brewery piece.

Thank you. I think I already got I already got my So thank you, sir.

The background for the micro breweries are there currently two micro breweries here in town. Um they're specifically in the downtown. It's Uptown Brewing and Pit Street Brewing. Um both of these entities have expressed an interest in serving mixed beverages. So, under state law, they can serve mixed beverages, but under Greenville's regulations, we only allow them to serve here in um and so the the main point of of this discussion is if council would like to allow micro breweries to serve mixed beverages. Um, we do not have any size limits for micro breweries, but we do have a standard. And that is the standard is for their equipment size. And that means they must have brewing equipment on site. They must make beer. It has to be at least a minimum of 30% of their floor area, no more than 5%. And essentially, that just goes back to when micro breweries were first introduced. It was looked at as a way to put these uses in the large buildings that were downtown. So, the idea was is that the brewing equipment should have a minimum. We went with 30%. Um, so that it is uh I guess I would say a true use. And then we also added a limit of 5,000 square feet because some of these buildings are really large and we didn't want want to turn it into an actual uh beer manufacturer. So, that's why we had those limiters. Um, again, micro breweries are very large because they do have to have equipment on site. Uh, Uptown Brewing is about 5600 square ft. Pit Street Brewing is about 7,800. And so, this just shows you the math.

So, if you look at Uptown Brewing, um, they have uh 5600 square ft. And so that gives you roughly 3,500 square feet for their equipment and about 2100 for their patron space. And that's essentially where people sit. It also includes their bathrooms and the storage area. For Pit Street Brewing, um they're about 7,800 square feet. So their brewing equipment is about 5,000 square feet and that leaves about 2,800 um square feet again for patron space. So, I'm going to run through these maps. Um, and what we've done is right now micro breweries do not have the residential separation. So, we've added that. So, that would be your your 500 ft rule. Um, we have again taken out on these maps, we've excluded vacant parcels. Um, we have excluded structures that could be subdivided to meet the 500. We're just trying to give you a a rough idea of the number of I'm I'm just going to call it opportunities. Um, but we did delete um city, county, state, and ECU properties off of these maps. This is just a quick summary. So, for right now, map one um is showing you that currently under city regulations, there's about almost 1,600 parcels. that would that could be a micro brewery, but that's under today's standards. If we wanted to add size limitations, then maps uh 2, three, four, and five do that. It shows you the size that it goes to. So, map two goes up to 5,000. Map three goes up to 6,000. We've shown you what those parcels at. This is the same format we gave you before with the bars. So that in that upper right hand corner

you have the table that shows you how many properties you're adding. And so uh right now you're looking at about 1,600. Uh up to and I'm sorry I can't see up to 5,000 you're at 262. If you move it up to 6,000 you're adding an additional 29. If you move up to 7,000, you're adding an additional 16. And if you go to 8,000, you're adding an additional 19 for basically a total of 326. Um, we have stopped at 8,000 because if you do want to change the standards, that's not going to negative negatively impact the two existing micro brewery uses that you have. Um, so the questions um that council needs to consider. Would you like to allow micro breweries to um be able to have a mixed beverage permit? Would you like to add a maximum size because there is not a maximum size? Um I think this might be an easier one to answer, which is do you want to add the separation distances from residential properties? And then another thing that we um were going to roll into this is to include the same um safety and nuisance violations that the bar 2022 has and add that to the micro brewery use. Um this is staff recommendation. That's all it is. It is a recommendation. Again, we said 8,000 square feet to not negatively impact the existing ones. Um, this again would allow essentially around the same scale as what you currently have in the existing ones. Um, uh, here's the other thing just to take

it a step further. If you do add the mixed beverage permit option, the existing micro breweries would have to get a new special use permit because they are in fact different um, than the permit that they currently live under. and then I can stop here if you want questions. This just leads into the bar 2022. So I I'll be happy to answer any questions on the micro breweries. Should we have these as two different discussions? Yeah, let's let's talk about this right now

because then I'll just jump in. Um, you know, looking at this and we've had some conversations about this. What is preventing us from saying our our micro brew breweries downtown can serve mixed drinks and just leave it there? That way we don't have to look at all throughout our t our city. We've already kind of discussed that micro breweries are unlikely to locate outside of our downtown area. And because uptown and pit street are the ones that that are seeking to do this. So, can we just say that micro brewer breweries downtown can serve mixed drinks in the discussion? Seems like that would be a kind of a real simple way to address this issue.

How do you answer that? I would say I would say as as Mr. McGurt likes to tell us in the bosom of the council. However, it could be it could be as easy as that, right? And it could be just allowing the ability to have mixed beverage. Um the only real um things I would say about that is most technically someone could come forward with a 12,000 square foot micro brewery.

If you do the math, that would leave 7,000 square feet of patron Now that is bigger than most of the bars we even have. So that would be the only real um scale right um to re to consider if if the only thing you were thinking of is the mixed beverage permit piece. Do we have a limit of a maximum already for micro brew?

We have no size limit. And so, but if we still if we limited this to downtown, so then somebody might find a warehouse of 10,000 square feet and say, "I want to do a micro brewery here." I I thought there was a limit to keep it from being a manufacturing. Well, that's the brewing equipment measure. That's the throttle for the the scale is that the brewing equipment can't be more than 5,000 square feet. Also, micro breweries are already allowed in other districts other than downtown. So we would we would have to split that if the thought was mixed beverage permits for only those downtowns.

Well, and nobody we don't have a crystal ball, but it seems unlikely. I was reading just today what you all have already talked about, which is that micro breweries are um becoming less popular. Maybe the novelty has worn off. They're still great. We love them in our community. Um but maybe they there is not a taste for opening a micro brewery, you know. road for instance and because I think what's happening here is that these two breweries are the ones that that we are interested in and that are are germanine to our conversation. So, you know, I'm inclined to say let's just let's just use a razor and take a kind of the most kind of simple solution to to that issue for them. I don't know. What do you all think?

Anybody else? They're allowed citywide right now, right? That's right. Five districts. I would say the easiest thing to do is allow them all to have the right to to ask for a permit, which would need another um trip to the

board of adjustments, um which is great. It also comes along with all the safety guard rails that the bar 2022 guidelines include. Um, and including the 500 foot separation, I think is a very good idea. Um, I think these businesses are great. They occupy space that would not otherwise be used, which is wonderful, and puts those properties back on the tax roles. Um, I think that's really great use of those spaces. Um, they are looking for ways to increase their revenue and to diversify the revenue streams. So, I think it's good for us to allow for a way for them to do that. Um, you know, there's a lot of varying opinion about liquor uh because it can be dangerous if people over consume, but it is a way that restaurants and breweries and other types of businesses increase their revenue so they can make ends meet. Um, So, and we're also, I believe, beginning to be creative and are thinking about moving out of downtown. I love downtown. I want to keep focusing on it myself, but we also need to start providing other types of entertainment throughout the city. Um, that's going to serve people as we continue to grow because I don't see us stopping anytime soon. Um, so I think it's it's a good opportunity for us to provide other types of entertainment throughout the city. So, I understand what you're saying. This, as I understand it, we're just talking about micro breweries, and you want to see us have micro breweries able to serve mixed beverages throughout the city.

Correct. As a as a bar 2022, is that what you're with the bar22 requirements? With the birth of 22 requirements. Yes. Size restrictions, which is what the staff is recommending. That's what And I don't see a huge difference between the types of beers that are sold these days versus a mixed beverage. It's not just a 2% 4% beer nowadays. It's it can be 10 12% and and more. Um so and I've also said to council and various I think we need to be careful that we're just not trying to make an amendment to an ordinance just to benefit two two businesses. Agreed. Right. That is craziness

that we would be just to appease two businesses. If you're going to do this, you need to do this on a blanket perspective. Well, before we look at micro breweries citywide, we need to look then go back and discuss if we're going to extend bar 2022 citywide. Yes, we will. Um, but they're already allowed citywide. We're just sort of firming up some of the uh rules around them and allowing them to provide mixed beverage at their locations with the special use permit. So, you're saying that you support taking that citywide for micro breweries. And of course, the next conversation we're going to have is do we want to take bar 2022 citywide

because we haven't really had that conversation yet or finalize that conversation. Right. And just to be clear, breweries are already allowed citywide. They are, but not breweries serving mixed drinks. Great. Yes, ma'am. That's correct. I just want to make sure we're talking at the same time. Yes, me too. Thank you. So, the staff just has a couple more slides on the bar 2022. It won't take us long to go through that if you want to complete that conversation. Yes, I would agree with staff and recommend that we say yes to mixed beverage uh cap 8,000 ft 500 foot separations and yes to the last recommendation. So you like my slide. Is that what I'm hearing?

That's what I heard. Big fan of your slide. could have written it. All right, we're good.

All right. And then, um, the last thing, this has to do with bar 2022, and I I know we've ran over that quite a lot. Really, I boiled it down to two questions, which is, do you want to increase the maximum size? Currently, it's 2,000 square feet. And then the other piece is, do you want to allow it outside downtown? Because it is only allowed right here in the downtown area. Um, I'm not going to run I I I'll just say very simply, um, I'm going to go ahead and tell you what staff is going to recommend. It's just a recommendation. Um, we are recommending to go up to 3500 square feet. So, if you look at line two, that tells you that at 3500 square feet, that would be 69 locations downtown, 68 citywide. um for 137 um and if you add in what's currently that brings you up to 234. Okay, so that would be 234 opportunities and so again uh increasing to three to 3500 um and then also allowing it downtown. Again, this is something we currently don't allow. So this would allow this to be downtown. um it may reduce um the concentration downtown and it just gives other people a way to have the same use in other places as the city

and that's questions comments direction question. So chief if we do this throughout the city do you foresee a um need for increased police protection the cars. Um, and what effect will that have on the police department? I always say yes, we need more police officers. We I believe we can have this. Okay, that that was my question. You done?

I have a comment and it's not going to surprise anybody. I I I think that we've seen um some success, some early success with bar 2022. We've got a dive which is opened up. It looks really nice. Elevated cocktail experience. We've got two more that are coming. We have put, you know, a set of guidelines that have a lot of promise for our community. I say, why do we want to change a lot about them at one time? I suggest that we indeed do allow it outside the downtown area, but that we keep that maximum size in place because first of all, for these three new businesses that are opening up, they haven't even had a chance to open up and we're already changing the ordinance. And you know, I I feel like we should see how this works citywide at the same maximum size. And then after we extend it citywide, then we can go back and say, you know what, we feel like it need we need to have larger we need to allow larger establishments and make that decision on its own rather than trying to just say we're going to change a whole lot of things about it. Let's just try changing one thing at a time because again, this is coming after many years of the 500 foot separation. So it is a big change for our community. So, I I suggest caution and taking it slowly and being deliberate and intentional about how we uh initiate bar 2022 citywide,

but they wouldn't they wouldn't be required to start at the maximum size. They just have the ability to do it if they want to.

It just opens up more potential properties and it opens up um more likelihood that these will be larger establishments. We have, again, I haven't been in there yet, but I've seen the pictures, their website. Agave looks just like a really nice establishment. And I think we have set up some guidelines that are going to cultivate nice establishments where people can have that cocktail. I think they said they're going to be open during the day. If you want to come, you got a business meeting you want to happen there. In other words, it seems like this policy is is doing what we want it to do, which is to to encourage um uh uh uh drinking establishments that are community- based and that are again to use Agave's terms elevated. And it concerns me if we you know immediately start making more properties available without giving a chance for this 200 square foot limit to be in place citywide. Let's see what that does. Let's see what the interest is. And then we say, "Hey, you know what? We need to open up more properties." I think we have the opportunity to have a lot of properties and a lot of good businesses with that 200 square foot, 2,000 square foot count.

Michael, can you tell me the maximum number of people that Agave is supposed to have in their bar at any one point in time? I think it's like 25. Um, I appreciate everything you're saying. Um, and I still believe that 2,000 square feet is small and I believe that they are opening all day because they're worried about their revenue. Um, because you said you're like

I my building is 2,800 square feet and it's pretty small um, for what we're doing. So I I can't imagine running a business any smaller business. my business in particular with any smaller building that I have now. Um, so I and I'm I stand corrected. We do have one open now. Um, I haven't had a chance to get by there, but it is very beautiful. Um, and they are going to to take a crack at it and they've been very successful in other ways. So, I'm hopeful. Um, but I'm still not 100% sure that it's going to be big enough for them to make money. Um, they have other sources of income and businesses surround it, so I'm not too worried about them. But generally speaking, I still believe 200 is small.

Do you think do you think 3500 is enough?

Yes. No, I I think I think 3500 is a good um place to start because it keeps it manageable um and smallish um and again just allows other types of establishments to open up around the city too. We're not just talking about CD bars. I mean I'm thinking about neighborhood bars where you could go and have a you know drink with a friend, play some pool. I'm talking about like a Dave and Busters type situation where you play arcade games and they'd be allowed to sell liquor to um their revenue stream and business like that or like the the golf um arcade that we're going to have going on Dickinson.

Um and that is is a bar, right? Um so it's it's larger than 2,000 square feet. So what is Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Finish. Thank you. At one point we were talking Starlight. That's a large. How big is Starlight? Do we know? It's probably 5,000. So that's 5,000. Anybody know? We took both parcels. It's at least 5,000. What about um Fifth Street Hardware? Does anybody have an idea how big that is? It's huge. Place.

So when we're looking at 3500 square feet, what is Do we have an idea of what that looks like? add thousand to Matt's place. Yeah, I bet you Nash is somewhere in that range. That's big. Um, and my place is almost 3,000 square feet. Um, that's big if we get in the size of Nash. And I think that's the goal here is to have is to not have large, you know, these large bars that just, you know, it creates a different kind of atmosphere at a certain at a larger size. So that's that's almost a preference though, right? I mean, in all honesty,

but it creates a different atmosphere when you have a larger size. And I think that was part of that was part of the goals of bar 22, bar 2022, keeping it smaller so you'd have a different kind of atmosphere.

I don't know if you can necessarily say atmosphere. I mean, you can make a space however you want it to be. You can pack it in as tight as you want to or you can just make it aesthetic. Look at coastal fog. Look how big of a building that is. you're not packing people into that building. It's very well spread out. So, I think it's up to the operator. I think the one thing that hasn't been mentioned too is when you open it up, you let the free market work. There's going to be put a lot more pressure on some of the bars that are currently there to make sure that they upgrade what they're offering and providing a better atmosphere um in their bars because there'll be more competition throughout the city. People have other options. Right now, they don't have options. they have whatever bars are existing right now to go to and those are the only ones that they can patronize because they're the only ones that are allowed. So I think that has to be thought about too is that with additional opportunities comes more competition which also offers us um an opportunity to get some of the bars that may not be as nice or as clean to clean up to be able to be competitive in the market.

Just my opinion. So at 3500 square feet, is there a potential or an idea of what the occupancy could be? I know when I had my place, I didn't offer alcohol, but it was 2500 square ft and our occupancy was 144. The reason I'm asking that we had a stage, you know, based upon your service area, they might get an answer right here. I don't we don't have that slide, but if you remember back to when I presented, I gave you the square footage per person. We were doing calculations. Five square foot for open space, seven with chairs, 15 for tables and chairs.

Um, it's always going it's it's the infamous it depends depends on how the structure is set up, how much tables, chairs, and it could be 100 people if you squee if you try to squeeze every little thing. I mean, you you could have 200 or more. I it depends. So, to sit there and give you a straight answer that can't do it without just approximately what the range might be, but that's correct. But I can tell you again the the occupant loads are based on the North Carolina State building codes and then the building is constructed to handle that occupancy for all the other measures. Thank you.

All right. Any questions, discussions or anybody? Any direction for staff? Yes. So we have two recommendations on the table for guidance. And I'm definitely in favor of going citywide. I I would say take one thing at a time to to move attention and just expand it citywide. And again, because I think the intent I think bar 2022 has the potential to be really a good set of guidelines for our community. But I think it's important to see how they work, how they work at the at the size that they were initially uh approved at and then expand it citywide and see what happens. And if we find we need more bars, we can

start these conversations. We can raise we can raise the size We're just gonna go back and forth. I just don't feel like that that does much. Mayor, would it would it be easy enough just to with what we've got sitting on the table and you do a thumbs up? Yes. I'm just I was just going to recommend if we could do a thumbs up on who's in favor with going citywide with the staff's recommendation of 3500 square feet, that would be helpful. I mean, can we vote on them separately? He's doing it separately. He's doing We're just doing We're doing this one right now. 3500 2022 first. Okay. The size. Yeah.

First. Yeah. Just bar 2022 citywide and downtown 3500. So, we're voting only voting on the size right now. Down 3500 and city. So, same everywhere. Are we voting on the citywide first? Not technically. We're not technically voting. Yeah. We're just giving a thumbs up. We're in agreement. Yeah. So, can you do the staff's recommendation? So, that's the first one. So, it's everybody gets 3500 whether you're downtown or citywide. Everybody good with that? Thumbs up. Y except for council member Blackburn.

I mean, it's not necessarily that I'm against it. I just want us to proceed with caution. I'd like to see, you know, I'd just like to see what this does citywide. We've got three opening up. Why don't we give it a chance to see what what can happen? I also want to say that I have heard Matt loudly and clearly when when you say there is an issue of revenue. I would like and Michael, don't pull your hair out, but I would like more information about about how it works at 2,000 square feet and what the kind of the calculations have to be because I want these businesses to succeed and if 2,000 square feet is going to make it difficult for them to have the revenue that they need, I would absolutely see their finances increasing the maximum size.

So, we got four votes for or four thumbs ups and one thumbs down. I did not give a thumbs down. Okay. What are you doing, sweetheart?

Can can I just get validation that we don't have sufficient information to make a determination if that's needed for for for a business to thrive? I mean, they can do that, but just not to discount your vote, but there's enough people up here to say, "Let's move forward and then we'll take this another step where it has to go before goes to and then back." Correct. Right. I'm going to reluctantly go along with this because in general, I believe that the bar 2022 guidelines are good and strong and I'm going to take a leap of faith with my colleagues. Although I am concerned about going up to that maximum size.

We just hit a home run. We just hit a home run. There we go. Now we got micro. All right. Anybody? Thumbs up, thumbs down. Micro breweries. Y. We good for micro breweries. What's the maximum size of a micro brewery? 8,000. 8,000 square feet is what the recommendation is. Citywide, which is just over the size of So, just for fun, I don't know. What about what about the possibility that somebody buys their vats on Amazon isn't really a micro brewery and just wants to have a big old bar. We we as staff,

we would do an inspection as part of it being built. I mean, the building inspectors would be looking for uh brewing equipment. We as staff would be looking for brewing equipment. Can they do it on the small side? Certainly they could do it on the small side, but they actually do have to be a micro functioning micro brewery. I need to see beer. They still have to meet the percentages, right? I think it's fair to say that the the maximum percentage of 8 maximum of 8,000 is actually the minimum. I need to go back to that what we've talked about, but it's actually the minimum that would allow those two existings to qualify.

Right. All right. So, thumbs up, thumbs down. There was no thumbs down. So, we're good. All right. We're set. I'm gonna slides. I'm going to get her to her slides. Okay. Thank you, Miss Gooby, as always. You are welcome. Here you go. All right. Thank you, mayor. Item number two, update on the unified development ordinance UDO process. I now call forward our director of development for the introduction.

All right. Uh many times we've talked about this three letter uh entity UDO unified development ordinance and uh I'm going to go ahead and introduce Miss Sarah uh Sinatra to you. She's no stranger and we've come a long way and now we are to the point we've uh shared draft um language and we are at the stage where we're close to providing the final. So without further ado, Sarah. Hi, uh Sarah Snatcher with Inspire Placemakings. Thanks for having me and thanks for bearing with us through all of these um versions that we've been working with your task force on and with the planning board. So, we're really excited to be able to showcase this to you today. Um how we've split this up because we do have a lot to go over is explaining the purpose um goals and objectives of the projects and milestones um talking about the uh public engagement um and then the major changes and next steps. So we've um worked with the community, we worked with staff to craft the city's actual first unified development ordinance. Um I'll quickly go through some of the public engagement because that was really critical um as part of this process and the purpose um was to update and modernize ordinances. When we talk about unified development ordinance um it means that we're basically taking a number of different ordinances. In this case it's subdivision um zoning and conditional zoning. I'll talk about that in a moment too because that's a new component. um lighting, signs, development review, vegetation and buffer. Um we've combined chapters uh four and five which are the zoning and subdivision into that single comprehensive ordinance and part of it was for alignment with the horizon's comprehensive plan. We did a full matrix where we identified what was in the comprehensive plan that needed to be

codified into an ordinance. Um the overall intention is to be easier for the reader um for staff to interpret and to have um a lot more interpretation type questions and gray areas. We set up goals which were really having authentic public involvement. Um we talked about it many times that we had seven open houses and many other types of opportunities for engagement and it was to make sure that the public felt that there was accessible means of engagement. Um we worked on making sure this was an a transparent process. Um all the data and information that was provided we up online with the website and to really have a predictable ordinance to make sure that it's user friendly that it has graphics where appropriate such as in like the definition section so people can understand what we're talking about when we're saying you know this is a setback or this is how you measure your lot. So those type of things we just tried to make as as graphically enhanced as possible. I'm sorry this is a little hard to see um but because we just had so many events and we tried to kind of memorialize that um in in one place. Um we kicked this project off in April of 2024. We had our first um task force meeting um in this room on uh May 29th. Um and then there were a number of city events. So when the city already has um a set event um such as Junth and there was a number of other events um I think uh one was um the back to school kickoff things like that um it's a great opportunity because people are already there and they're not there to go sit in a room like this and hear about a development ordinance which I know I get really excited about but generally people don't and so you're able to capture an audience that you typically wouldn't. So we really love doing those and so it was really fantastic that the staff was able to go out and give people surveys, paper copies of the surveys rather than always just the online

version. So it gave a lot of platforms um for people to engage. We had seven open houses um in in um in the month of August and a few in early September. Um we wanted to have them kind of crammed all together so people were getting the same information. Um they were at different throughout the city so people could go to where they felt most comfortable or you know what made sense for them geographically um engaged a lot of feedback that way we exposed them to the website we answered questions um we also had another task force meeting in July um and then there was another one on November 6th we had a follow-up task meeting in uh February and in these meetings we went through with the u with the task force about changes we were making we floated ideas by them and so forth. Um we had a another meeting in the April 16th and then a final meeting August 7th where we gave them the code and asked them to give us feedback. Um any final uh comments were due September 10th. Um again just to to give summary it was the task force open houses website and all of those city sponsored events that we mentioned which I believe were five additional city sponsored events and seven open houses. Um just to give you a quick overview of the task force. Uh they're a group of professionals and citizens um working with staff um really to go over the ordinance, its processes, its shortcomings, um give us in um a perspective on Greenville's future, on the community, um and to act as ambassadors for the project. We consistently said, "We know that you all have your own groups or Facebook or whoever your networks are. Let people know about the project. Let them know how to interact with us." So, we're getting real authentic feedback. You know, when we have people that are engaged in the project, that's typically how we get um the best traction and get the word out. So, that was it's really helpful that it was a large group like

that. Um uh we've had this is just a listing of all the local stakeholders, community um advisory board representatives, um and then um city staff. So, it was a a healthy group of people that gave us really great feedback. So, we were really grateful for that. I went over um these meetings in our timeline as well. I think you're all probably familiar um with the website we had. We also made sure that it was um an option in both English and Spanish. A very easy swap um on the website so that it could be ac accessed in different languages as well. Had um survey questions and different activities. Um and we had visioning activities as well. All of this information, I know I'm brushing through this fast um because there's a lot of it, but all that information is memorialized on the website. We're able to pull it all down and give you those actual analytics so it becomes part of the overall document and everything we need to do is needs to be public facing. So, we make sure you have that all the comments, all the information. Um I think you all aware of the the open houses that we held um and the activities that we did as well as the um the that we provided. Um we had uh for the attendees we had um 102 attendees at the open houses that we had we had um over 500 surveys that were collected. This was a mix between online and paper that just showed us that the paper versions were really critical um and not just relying on the website but having that uh available. Um so we do have a summary of public engagement that we put together but just to go over some of the overall um common themes. Uh residents emphasize the importance of pedestrian cyclists and transit users throughout Greenville. Um affordable housing throughout Greenville, not only for existing residents but for young families and professionals that want to remain in the

area. Um we talked about accessory dwelling units and we're going to talk about that in a moment. um and um lack of essential services north of the Tar River. Um attendees also showed concern about environmental impacts um and uh forest density trees. So we'll talk about what we've proposed and some of the changes that came out of this. Um I mentioned the project milestones in the um on the slide that had the graphic. Um this just kind of lays them out which are a little easier to read than than the graphic that we had the timeline. Um and so What I'll do briefly is to go through each one of the chapters or the articles that describes the major changes. Um, like I was mentioning, we've added graphics into the definition section so that folks can understand when we're talking about buildable area or what a street setback is. Um, that they can quickly go to a graphic and be able to find a key to understand that. Um, development review, we re uh reorganized and consolidated policies. Um, updated procedures um just made it um easier to to be able to flow that and understand it. The major changes in zoning um we made some uh we collapsed some districts that were not used um we also allowed accessory dwelling units, cottage courts and tiny homes and tiny homes communities. So I'll I want to just dive into those a little bit more because those are more significant changes as long along with conditional zoning. I know you Yes, ma'am.

And before you move on, what's the dimensional dimensional standards? What does that mean? Um it's we actually took the table dimensional standards are are basically the setbacks. So, the numbers um we actually just a lot of times when you read a zoning um code, they're written all out and to not have things in tables makes it a little clunky and hard to understand. So, it's not that we actually physically made a lot of those changes. We just made them more usable and readable. Okay. Thank you.

Sure. Um I know y'all have heard a lot about conditional zoning. Um, and so it is a reszoning process that specifies individual development conditions. Land owners must agree to the conditions and then it's appro approved by city council. It's a way for the land owners to utilize their property while incorporating neighbor neighbor feedback. Um, and it's not that conditions are added during the public hearing process. Basically, what this means is that if someone chooses to do a conditional reszoning to their property, they'll be able to say, "I'd like to be in ex zoning district, um, and I'm only going to be, even though that district may have a host of uses, they want to be they want to have an option for maybe three or four of those uses, they meet with the neighbors, they meet with the community, and they basically determine, well, like a larger buffer, and then we'll, you know, this will this will be palatable if it's only those uses." So, it gives a lot more definitive um response to both the community um and for the council when you're making a decision um what that property will ultimately be rather than just going in blind and saying, you know, it's a resoning. We don't know until we finally get it reszoned and then someone could say they're doing a project. Um but this really ties it in. So, it ties into the um the approval. So, we flow did a flowchart of the process because this is new. So, we wanted everybody to kind of be aware that you go through a pre-application meeting with staff and then there's a structured neighborhood meeting to discuss the project. That's really important. That's a new feature. There's um signatures from land owners in the district on the conditions and then the council approves through the legislative decision. Um and then there would be a um a zoning map amendment. So there's a lot of predictability. That's really been our tone through the ordinance. And this is a new feature of a resoning opportunity. This doesn't mean that all resonings in the future

would be conditional. It's another tool in your toolkit that someone can offer to say that they'd like to come in for a conditional because there's going to be they they know specifically what they'd like to potentially do with that property. Um a little more on the conditional zoning. Um it um again for the uses it'll be limited. Um uh you'll have you can include um conditions about your setbacks, your height, your density. These are all things that are opportunities to have conditions on site features. Um there might be an opportunity to say they'd like a large like the residents after they meet they have their their neighborhood meeting. They'd like an opportunity for a larger um uh buffer which may be something that would be discussed and agreed upon. Maybe it's hours of operation. Um those are things that could be agreed upon um but the city cannot uh include requirements um that they cannot include requirements the city otherwise doesn't have authority to regulate. So next major change are tiny home standards. There are two different components. You have the tiny home community and tiny home standards. Um we'll talk about tiny home community in a moment. Tiny home standards are really for substandard lots. When we started to go through this process, we found that there were a number of existing platted lots. These are for existing properties that happen to be substandard, meaning that they don't meet the size required today to put in a home. So that means that they basically do not develop unless they come in with multiple multiple variances and are still hard to develop um or they'd have to aggregate with a with a a neighboring property. In this case, we've said, you know, we recognize that there are some of these existing lots um that could potentially

house a tiny home. Um but we have to craft appropriate standards. And the intention is, you know, this is this is potentially an affordable housing option because this means that somebody does not have to go through a a lengthy variance process to to to demonstrate hardship even though we understand that these are existing laws. So, here's an option that we're looking at that could be an easy fix to develop some of those parcels. So, we've reduced and these standards um to make sure that someone could based on the the those property the property sizes um be able to develop. Now, this is you cannot subdivide you cannot create new lots within an existing neighborhood to develop this. If you want to do that, there's another option that we've prepared which is um tiny home communities. So in the tiny home community, you must have a minimum of 10 lots. Um they the intent is is again to provide affordable housing. Um the goal is um that the units need to have like shared amenities. Um you'd come in for a subdivision plan. So, it' be a subdivision plan with the tiny homes um with up to, you know, a minimum of 10 of these units could be developed. And again, the goal is that this would be um an affordable option. Um we would looking at um minimum open space. So, the idea is that these would be shared. So, we're not talking about each one of these units having to have those carrying costs that you typically have um when you're talking about uh single lot development. So, there's an opportunity to pro provide this um and having that shared courtyard. Cottage court is another option, another um uh product that we're including and adding to the code. Um what this is is

that you can have a minimum number of three of these units. This these images are kind of a good picture of what that looks like where there's a shared um green space. So the intent is to have um not have these are these are typically smaller units but it's on the smaller lots so that they share their green space. They have shared amenities. Um, and it would be developed um with the goal of having, you know, a lot of times these are used for potentially for senior living or just different variety of of housing styles um that don't require this big yard and so forth. So, it's just giving another option for potential um uh affordable option. Um accessory dwelling unit is another feature that we've included. Um there was a lot of discussion at the task force level about the um accessory dwelling units and where this would be appropriate to be um included and we've included it as a um special use in the RA20, R15S, um R9S, R9 and MRS districts. um they are not um included in the the smallest lot districts simply because of the requirements um that are needed in order to to make one of these um properties work. Um we have certain setback requirements. It has to meet the setbacks of the underlying district. Um you need to provide uh an off- streetet parking space. Um um and it only can be on conforming single lot single family lots. So there are some additional restrictions um But at least it gives an option for people to be able to place an um an ADU now on properties. Some other um changes we made uh include distance separation for tobacco and hemp retail. Um there'd be a 500 foot distance separation um for multiple uses and then a se distance

separation from each other. So this is new. Um we've also included um requirements about no rope lighting. Um we're we're mentioning this in this context, but it's really for all businesses. It's not the rope lighting that you have around the windows that flashes or moves or illuminates um in general um to really attract uh and really function like a sign. So, um we've included uh prohibition with a one-year amortization. So, if someone has that lighting now, um once the code is adopted, they have one year to to remove that. Um we introduced buffer yard materials for buffer yard B that had been uh not included in the code previously. So we included that also um additional opacity standards so you'd have a thicker buffer um functions more like a wall in a way but it's green. Um we've included increasing native specy requirement to 50%. um street trees. This was increased from two to three for every hund linear feet and added requirements on single family and two family lots. So um a couple other features, this was all due to the task force's um work and and feedback to us. Um the ability to substitute trees for shrubs has been removed. um incorporating uh the protection standards for trees from public works um has also been included um where some of the appropriate standards um that relate to to planning. Um we've developed graphics for the buffer yards so that people can follow along and understand what that means. Um and increased incentives for the preservation of trees. I know this is challenging to see um it's on this um on this scale um but we've included uh the buffers kind of in in a in a table and then we've also demonstrated a graphic

um with key like a legend that tells small tree large tree and kind of what that'll eventually look like. Um we've also created uh credits for preserving existing trees. So if you've had large trees previous Previously, um you would get um a credit for one. Now we're offering two. There's you could see there's an equivalency. Um the intent is to really encourage people to preserve what's there. You know, it takes a lot longer for a tree to grow. So, we'd rather have um the existing trees and get more credits for as an option. Um also single family and two family. Um we now have a requirement that up to It's one one large tree or two small. You can see the uh the breakdown here. Um these are all um new uh requirements that were previously not provided. Um in in parking, we basically just modernized some of the requirements. Um you'll see that throughout the ordinance. It was just a modernization. Um in uh article 7 subdivision and site design, um we added a fee and loop provision for sidewalks. also um for recreation areas that allows a developer to pay into the fund of a future uh park rather than having um maybe a potentially small park um in a pocket of an area of their of their neighborhood. Instead, um there there's going to be um a potential fund um for recreation um and then simple things like um adding submitt requirements to be digital um on signage. The major change is to um make sure that we are uh federally um and state um compliant. So we made sure that that is all compliant um and uh and had lighting standards. Um also we just

created some simple graphics so people understood um what uh what the signs were and how to calculate them because that also becomes challenging. Um we've um developed standards for non-performing um reductions. I just want to point out in the uh current state law and everybody knows about um nonconformity that's been a big topic. Um we've added some initial language in the beginning of our uh general provision section that addresses that as well. So um final draft um would be to planning and zoning on um April I'm sorry on um October 21st and then um you would all potentially hear this um on November 13th. I know I had a lot of info so try to go through that.

No questions. Okay. I just have one quick question if um with the idea of the the conditional zoning all other rules apply future land use plan and everything else is in place. It just provides an opportunity for additional conversation.

The only thing I want to say is I thank you. I know this has been a long process. I mean, looking at the timeline of how long this has gone on, but I think it's I think it's great because, you know, I mean, things have changed over the years. I mean, talking about tiny homes, you know, I don't think anybody probably 15 years ago thought that would be a necessity, but like as prices of housing and prices uh continue to rise, it becomes less and less affordable and we want people in our to live in our community and different opportunities for them to live, I think is great. So, appreciate the hard work that you've done. appreciate uh our staff, all the citizens and the people from the private sector that have devoted a bunch of time to developing this. Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll also note that this has been a process involved a lot, but remember this is just the first step, the UDO's first step. As soon as we get through with this, we move right into the update of the 10y year long range plan. So that's what we'll be working on all of next year. Be able to prepare bringing that back. So a lot of community engagement just that we just completed, but a lot of more community engage that we'll be undertaking. Uh I just want to elevate that um um when we talk about tiny homes and affordable housing that uh tiny homes are affordable housing for one or two people. But when we look at where affordable housing is and where homelessness is and the fact that the face of homelessness in our community has shifted to include workingclass families with children. um that that is not an affordable option for families. Keeping that in perspective, that the face of homelessness has changed and while we do need that, we need to be uh mindful of the fact that that is for a minimum number of people.

But I would say too though, I think the good thing about that is it offers another housing option. So somebody that might be in a threebedroom apartment that might be more conducive for a family if they find a tiny home that they can go into. It would open up that three bedroom for a family to potentially go in there. So and I agree. I just need Yeah, I totally understand what you're saying. I think I think it's a good thing just having different options given different uh places for people to be able to locate and call on. May we?

All right. We got a close session. Mr. Mr. Mayor, mayor and council members, I recommend the council adopt the following motion holding a close session pursuant to North Carolina General Statute Section 143-318.1183 to consult with an attorney employed or retained by the public body in order to preserve the attorney client privilege between the attorney and the public body, including consultation relating to the following lawsuit entitled City of Greenville Pliff versus Camping World Property LLC, formerly known as Camping World Property Incorporated Defendant And the second ground for close session is pursuant to general statute 143-318.11 to instruct the public body staff for negotiating agents concerning the position to be taken by or on behalf of the public body and negotiating the price of a contract or proposed contract for the acquisition of real property or properties by purchase option exchange or lease.

So move second. All right. Motion been made by council member Scully. Second by council member Blackburn. All those in favor say I. Oppos say nay. officially in