Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, we'll call this meeting to order. The plan commission September 9, 2025. The first order of business is the approval of our minutes of August 12th, 2025. Make a motion to approve the minutes as presented. I have a motion. I'll second. And I have a second. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say I.

Those opposed, no. Motion passes. There is no old business. So the new business is a resolution amending the zoning code in the code in the professional residential or PR to allow for single family dwellings and two family dwellings as permitted uses and retail stores as uses requiring a special exception permit. U you want to talk to us about that sir. First of all, thanks for short notice being able to drive that extra two blocks to get over here. We didn't know that was going to happen today. Um so like I stated we have various zoning areas in town and PR being one of those the professional residential your package you'll see there professional residential is intended primarily as a buffer zone uh which is because of its proximity to business uses public uses and residential uses. It's designed to serve as a transition function and the character which shall prevail in the districts shall be the professional business services and I think back in ' 84 when they developed the zoning map that probably was accurate but I don't know it's so accurate today in a lot of those areas. Um, and if we flip back through, you'll see the professional residential and it shows you what's allowed as permitted uses in condominiums and multif family dwellings, boarding houses, professional offices, schools, funeral homes, clinics, nursing homes, hospital, churches. Those are the primary ones. uh special exceptions are financial institutions, lodge or private club, museums or galleries, government buildings and trade and technical schools.

This is as it stands as it stands right now. Okay.

So [Applause] further back in your packet, you'll have various areas that I've highlighted that are on the map as currently those PR zones. The first one's going to be where the library is over here in a house and you have kitchen and gro realy and then well no the Methodist church is not. So you have that twob block area between 13th street down to 14th street down well down to 15th street which is covers part of L between L and K. There's government housing. There's a library, but there's some single family homes in there. And you're going to And then you have a business, which is Keychin Grove, and a parking lot. I think belongs to the church. That was pretty well set. And I don't imagine you're going to have anything that ever changes in that one. If you look at the large map that's on the table there, that's the largest PR zone that we have. And that's the area which was around Dun Hospital. So I suspect that it's also in your packet. But I sus my thought is that when Dun Hospital was down there probably whoever created the zoning was hoping that a lot of those homes would eventually become doctor's offices and whatever else it was. But um some of that did occur, but obviously now that's not going to happen. And so you have a lot of single family homes that are already in a PR zone. And if you recall, I noted that single family is not one of the things that's allowed in a PR zone anymore. Then you recall last meeting we discussed u the which was multif family on that B1 lot there at 2050Q that got sent to the zoning board. Um, originally the plan I had several phone calls from people that wanted to put duplexes there

and when I told them we'd have to reszone it, they're like, "Well, I don't want to do that. I want to have to wait 3 months because two family dwellings is not what's allowed in those PR zones." So, there are some areas in this section around what is now the Indiana Recovery Center that are vacant lots. one of which is behind one of those PR zones that was discussed the other day for multif family and I thought she was going to be here today but she's not. She owns a vacant lot there and she owns the house next door to that and she's actually wanting to sell it. She actually has a buyer and I talked to the buyer and she wants to put a single family house there and I said, "Well, we'll have to reszone it if we don't make some changes to the current zoning code." There's also another lot and I know you can't see it on the map. Years ago, there was a house, but on 24th Street, just up from just west of Q Street, the third lot there is vacant. So, in order to build a house there, do we need to reszone it? They wanted to put a duplex there, you have to reszone it. Um, that house was torn down probably 20 years ago. And

currently, but currently they could put up condominiums. They could put a condominium there. They could put They could put a family Yeah, they could put a three unit family housing thing. Make it fit in that lot. I thought I was reading this correctly.

That's correct. So, I know that somebody's probably going to want to do something with that because that lot and the house next to it are currently bankowned. It's a repossessed house. So, somebody's going to buy it. Somebody's going to want to do something with it. And it may be somebody that just decides, hey, I just want to have it bought and you know that so be it. At some point if they decide I want to build a house, we'll have to resone. Um [Applause] what I'm asking for in the resolution also addresses a couple of other things that have to do with on the next one of the other things we have here is the block that's 15th and L down to 15 and M over to 14th and L and 14th and M. uh at 15th and M and you have it's not Stokes and Housel now. I'm not sure what that's called, but it's a CPA. You have a couple houses that are behind it. Uh between you come back east and you have three houses. I think one of which probably fits. I think one time was at the Greyhound depot sitting next to I think it was a taxi business for several years years decades ago. Obviously, there at the corner of 15th and L, you'll find that we have what was a gas station for several years. The gas station's no longer there, but it's a convenience store. And we didn't realize that that wasn't business when they wanted to put that convenience store in there. So, he's technically not where he's supposed to be. But what am I supposed to do? I can't penalize him, right? I mean, so, and he does he's he's considered adding on to that, making it some other stuff. I don't know if he's going to ever put pumps in it, but if he ever wants to do a gas station, he'll have to resone it to something else anyway to be able to put the gas station in there.

That's the new the one that just opened recently. Yes. Yeah.

Um, so you come back north and you have two parcels there that are also in the PR zone, but nobody I mean I don't suspect anybody's around tear those down. Even if they did tear them down and let them put houses back, that's what's there. I mean, if something happened to that house burn either one of those houses, you'd let them go back and put single family housing in if you I mean, that's just fair. Um, but I don't want to write's a little bit of a wrong gas station should ever I don't know how it was ever zoned the way it was. PR is obviously a gas station is not one of the things that's allowed in the current PR zone. So, I don't know. Maybe they just left it that way and just never noticed it. I'm not sure. Um, I was going to use the example right next door, but now we have to go down a few blocks. 14th down here or east of H Street. Now, if you know where Clarence Brown lives, but there's just on the other side of the city street department. Uh, there are four parcels there, three of which are vacant that are in a PR zone. I have no idea why that was ever that way. Um, so if somebody wanted to build a house, we'd have to reszone it. Um, that just seems unneeded. We need to resone it. You have at 15th Street between S and where it turns back to T. There are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight parcels there. Um, I think three of them, four of them currently have houses on them. They're usable

houses. The other ones are like little shotgun houses that nobody's going to live in. But they need to be torn down and at some point I'm sure that'll happen. But once again, to be able to build a house back after you tear it down, we'd have to reszone it to be able to put your house in. And a few months ago, um, as you know, we presented Victoria Baker here with the old girls club and converted that over to the PR zone and I know that she wants to do her antique mall in the upper section of that. So, what I was looking at when initially I thought, well, let's just have retail spaces being one of those permitted uses. And then I thought that's probably not a really good idea. So, if somebody wanted to come in on one of those vacant lots between a bunch of houses down there next to Indiana or recovery center and just build a building and run a business out of it, that probably wasn't something that would be a good idea. So, let's do that as a permitted use with a special exception. And I think that seemed fair that way. I know in the past there have been some issues, not necessarily with this board, but some other areas where the council didn't approve a res of a property because of what might go in there at some point. And I know re recently we've had comments about, well, you could build the bar there. I mean, I think that was the last meeting we it was discussed that that current property right there at 25th and Q was zone B. He could put a tab in there. Nothing prevented it if he wanted to. So, I think under this way, you have the PR. It's a permitted use,

but this board has the discretion as to whether or not they want to allow a certain type of business to be in those in those areas. Um, if you go and look at the different ones, you'll notice in that, like I said in previous PR zones, there's really not a lot of businesses in those areas, most of it is single family housing predominantly, particularly over there around the Indiana Recovery Center, the old hospital. It's either empty parking lots or single family housing. So, that's that's my little spiel and I'd be open to any questions anybody has. Can you think of any area in the city where this would be a problem if we changed it? Uh I do really I I put six months worth of thought into this and uh no I can't not under the way I think that this board has traditionally been more apt to reszone places that are currently in business to back to residential versus the other direction. So, I think that kind of gives these, like I said, I think some of this PR zone is kind of obsolete in many ways because it never developed into what I what I think their intent was, particularly down in that area where the hospital was. Um, the only thing, like I said, would be whether or not you allow ret and retail only. I'm not looking I'm not asking for it to be service shops. I don't want to see somebody put up a pole barn and start repairing cars right there in the middle of residential. I mean, that's not right. So, the retail only would as a special exception would allow this board to say, "Yeah, you're not." And I, you know, I

value this board's opinion. I mean, I've been involved a little over three years and I know every one of you takes takes this job seriously and um I think you make the right decisions if somebody come to you and said, "Hey, um I want to put in a vape store down on that vacant lot on 24th Street at Q." I think this board would say absolutely not. We have enough of those and we're about to have two more. in legalized zones already. So, anyone else have any questions,

comment? Seems interesting to me that you could put multif family on there, but you can't put a single family home. It does. That just doesn't make sense.

Yeah, I want to add to it. I I know that Keith can agree with this. There's been many times that I would go to the council and present some of these reszones that there'll be questions about We need to do something about the whole city and re and reclaim some of these and change these back to what they really should be as opposed to like I and you've probably heard me say you go if you look on the zoning map right now. You go to 16th and the Circle K gas station. It's residential and it was that way since I think it was 84 is when they established these these maps and it's been that way since ' 84 where the doughnut shop was it's residential. But I would love to be able to go back and redo the zoning thing. The cost at this point is a little prohibitive to have the GSI GIS guys come in and redo all the layers on the mapping and the hours they would spend. It's it's quite quite the task. So part of it's been done. I mean, Brandon W is able to do a lot of it, but I mean, we still there's still work to go and I'm not really that great with the GIS part. So, I I try, but uh I'm getting there, but um eventually we may have to address that. And I and I know the council has said something a few times over the last six months about.

So you're asking us to pass resolution number 1225 which is the second page from the end. Is that correct? That's correct. And that and like what it says is it will as permitted uses would be single family housing in these areas and two family housing and then retail stores as a permitted use with a special exception. Read that aloud. I'm not sure we need

I can read it if you wish. Uh, since it's in front of us, we I think we're all able to read it for the for them. I don't think so. Do you think we need to read it for the I'm not really sure, but I can read it out loud if we need to. That's my problem. Read it for us.

Okay. So uh the planning commission's resolution number 1-2025 whereas the city ordinance 28-184 having established permitted uses within the city of Bford's zoning districts and having been duly codified in 155.017 017 permitted uses of the veteran city code. And whereas said ordinance does not allow for single family dwellings, two family dwellings and retail stores in the PR or professional residential districts within the city of Burn. And whereas several single family dwellings, two family dwellings and retail stores already exist in the PR p professional residential district within the city of veteran. And whereas the plan commission pursuant to veteran city code 155.093 093 has authority to recommend to the city council an amendment to the zoning code to allow single family dwellings, two family dwellings and retail stores in the PR professional residential district. And whereas there is a need to revise state code section regarding permitted uses to allow the single family dwellings, two family dwellings and retail stores into professional residential districts. And whereas city of Betford planning commission having considered the one existing and proposed uses of land in the general area of the zoning districts being amended and the impact of the proposed amendment on the character of the uses in said zoning districts. Two, the trend of the development and and said zoning districts, including the density, traffic conditions, conservation of property values, and the ability of public services. And three, the effect of proposed amendment on the implementing policies of the comprehensive plan. And four, the highest and best use of properties located within said zone districts. And whereas the city of effort planning commission finds that amending 155.017 017 as set forth below is in conformance

with the goals of the city of Betford's comprehensive plan. Now therefore, be it resolved that the city of Betford Planning Commission hereby recommends to the city of council that this that Betford city code 155.017 permitted uses and 155.018 uses requiring a special exception permit be amended as follows. One, single family dwellings and two family dwellings be permitted uses in PR professional residential districts. Two, retail stores shall be uses requiring a special exception permit in PR or professional residential districts. Three, any single family, two family dwelling or retail stores within the PR residential districts that were previously approved by the city of Bedford planning commissioner or other agents of the city of Bedford shall be grandfathered be considered in compliance with this ordinance.

Gentlemen, what would you like to do? There's no questions. I'll make a motion to approve the resolution number one- 2025 to send that to the city council. Yes, I'll second that. And we have a second. I know this is not a public hearing, but we have some people who have come and do you have anything you want to tell us or say? Actually, it is a public hearing. I saw

it is a public hearing. It was it was advertised. Um, it was put on the local media. It was put in on the city's um website and Facebook page. Uh, the location obviously changed, but she updated that while ago and I think we made every opportunity to tell people from over here because physics. So, we'd like to hear from you. I think we know your name, but for the record, you have your name. Yes. Okay. Victoria Baker. Hello.

Hello. So, we've been on this journey for a few months now. Um, my husband and I originally bought this building. We looked at almost every retail space in Bedford and the majority of them are not in the best of repair and we are not rich people. So, um, this building came available and we looked at it and we fell in love with it. We want to keep it as much intact as possible. So, we don't want to put residential in that building. We want to keep the gymnasium the way it is. We want to um do as little renovation in that building as possible to keep it intact. The building itself is an antique. So, we thought we both love antiques and we thought what better to put in an antique building than an antique mall because we love antiques and we want to take care of them. So, we want to restore this building, bring it back and revitalize it because unfortunately it's in disrepair also and it's sitting there rotting. So, we want to bring something to the community that they will enjoy and being able to go in this building and see it because a lot of people love that building. They they played ball games there. They had a lot of fun memories that they put on the Facebook post about this building and we want to help them be able to still see this building. So, I know we had talked about the tattoo parlor being in the building. That's just a very small part. That's just a place for me to do my work. I I am a tattoo artist. I do it because the community I've made a pretty good name for myself here for clean work and a safe place to uh p the majority of my

clients are women who aren't comfortable going in some of the other places. It's just a place for me to work. People probably won't even know it's there. It's in the back of the building in the basement and I'm by appointment only. So, I'm very low-key. I'm not flashy. I don't want to be, hey, look at this tattoo shop. So, the the primary thing we want this building for is the antique mall. So, but we also want to respect our neighbors. We don't want them to have down the road a potential tavern going in there or something that they don't want. So to be respectful, we have chosen to try to go this route instead of just going for a flat commercial because we know the neighborhood does not want that and we want to be good to our neighbors also. So do you gentlemen have any questions for me or

Thank you very much. Thank you. Uh Kevin. Yes. Uh we acted on her request before and I don't remember did it go to the city council. Uh have is there anything has changed on that since we that that was approved by the city council to be a PR zone. So her two parcels are now PR zones. Okay. So so what we would do here would not contradict or anything. It is not the only thing that she would if this is adopted by the council, she would then have to come back and do that special exception that to do the

to go before the zoning board then at that point or that uh yeah well it would come it would come to this board first to get its informal approval to go to the public hearing at this. Okay. I just didn't want to get crosshair on it. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor of the motion say I. Those opposed, no. The motion passes. It goes to city council to uh change this. Okay. Um you have anything to tell us, Kevin, about anything else going on? Uh the roundabout is supposed to be open on Friday. Pardon me?

The roundabout supposed to be open on Friday. Oh, it is. Okay. someone assuming that the contractor gets in there and paints the stripes so everybody knows I don't know and puts up signs. It's looking good. It's a little little more complicated than the other. It is a little more complicated. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what happens whether or not a eastbound semi will be able to make that curve to go down 8th Street to get back to public service. Not very wide. It's not a gravel curve like you're used to up here. I went by there Wednesday night. I get stuck because a lot of people go neighbors.

I know. I went by there Wednesday night and I thought, well, when they get the sod down, it'll be looking good. I went by there Friday morning, the sod was down. I guess they did that on Thursday. I think that's the holdup is the contractor to do the strapping, the signs, and I'm not sure about the lighting. They may have they're working on a lot, but not sure. But it certainly looks nice and been a long time coming, but needed. So, anything else to tell us?

They uh Yeah, I mean I presumably Travis got with me, Travis Norman got with me last week and he thought he was going to be able to do it this, but we need a public hearing first. So, uh out there on Williams Park Drive where Geoflow is, some of that property is sold and they're going to want to divide that up. What the plan is, I don't know. But if you've been out Chamboy, you'll notice that they're clearing off a 5.5 acre area there. Okay. And I think it's looking to be divided into five or six spots with a with a road. So, like I said, I don't know what the plan is. I didn't ask.

They're putting all the crazy dumpsters in. They are. Well, you can't burn them. That's about all I got. Anyone else have anything? Motion to adjurnn. I have a motion. Second. Second. Any discussion? Hearing? None. All in favor say I. Georgia.