Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

I got up on skis on Saturday, so I'm happy at all that happened.

Yes.

But my dad said he could still do that said. I did as a kid so it was easy for me. Twice right away.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to call to order the June 8th meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission. And, Gina, would you roll call, please?

Michael Gonzalez.

Here.

Mark Pionczak.

Here.

Mayor Hagedorn.

John Boardman.

Here. Jim Scheer.

Here.

Chuck Watson. Here. Chad Briggs. Here.

Matt Coleman. Here. Mike Wood. Here. Aaron Beckman.

Here. Jeff Packer.

Here. Please rise and join me in the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Well, the first order of business tonight is I would like to welcome Matt Coleman, our newest member of the commission. He was out of town, out of the country, I've stayed for the last two meetings, but welcome, Matt. Glad to have you on board.

When the mayor asked me to do it, he said the biggest thing was, do you have time to be at the meetings? I'm like, yeah, I'll be at all the meetings. And then I missed the first one. I promise you guys will see more of me than you want to.

That's good.

Thanks, Matt.

Yes, thank you. Everyone should have had a chance to read the minutes from the May 22nd special meeting. That was probably the longest meeting I've ever conducted. So long. I would entertain a motion.

Motion to approve.

Second. Motion made and seconded. Did we approve the minutes from the May 22, 2026 special meeting? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Ayes have it. File number 26 0 5 0 2 code changes downtown parking regulations discussion recommendations City of Washington Yes, good evening Commission.

This is something we discussed and subsequently tabled the last Planning Commission meeting For those of you all who were not here. I've got a presentation and for those of you who were here I'll you know kind of try to go over the parts I covered last time quickly and I have some more information about Additionally, I've put some documents on your desk. John Borderman asked me some very good questions earlier this week, and I've hopefully answered his questions, and we can get into that as needed. Starting off here, we are proposing some regulations for our C3 Central Commercial Zoning District, which is the light blue area that you see on screen, and parking regulations in this area. C3, mostly contiguous with downtown Washington. Much of downtown Washington was developed before the invention of cars, so parking was not a consideration. Businesses in downtown don't need to provide a large amount of surface parking to get business. Most customers park wherever there is availability and walk to their destination. If every business were to provide the same amount of parking as other parts of Washington, downtown would be full of surface parking. This does not mean by any stretch of the meaning that parking is not needed in this area. The city has facilitated this need by providing free street and off-street parking across downtown. This gives visitors and residents a place to store their vehicle while they walk around or live downtown. Providing shared parking also prevents the demolition of historic structures for surface parking. These historic buildings are what make downtown Washington unique and keep visitors coming back, you know, i.e. downtown is a pleasant place to be as a pedestrian due to the street design, wide sidewalks, and each business not having their own surface parking lot. You know, there's a lot of places, you know, across the country that look like, you know, Highway 47 and 100. There are not a lot of places that look like downtown Washington, and that's because of that historic character that we have. So talking about the the actual rules that were are to be discussed tonight Specifically this is in our our off-street parking and loading requirements. So there are Exceptions to the minimum off-street parking and loading requirements. So there is an exception for the c3 district that we just mentioned and that exception is specifically that any reoccupancy of an existing building or structure is exempt from our off street parking regulations. But when you're building a new structure, you're required to meet the same off street parking as is required in the rest of Washington, Missouri. This was not always the case though. Previous to our most current major code overhaul from the 1990s to 2016, there was no off-street parking required downtown. In fact, up until about five months ago or so, staff was under the belief that we did not have off-street parking requirements downtown. And so the language changed there, but we did not actively enforce it. And this is where it gets kind of interesting here is because all of the infill that we've had in the past nine or so years since that code, even though the city has not Enforce this code the development community has met the need for or that's maybe the wrong way to put it the development community has in an Inadvertently followed our own rules even though we have not enforced them. They've just said oh, you know We think that one East Main for example will sell better if it has off street parking and they chose to do that and they happen to meet our off street parking requirements Same for all of the residential, infill, downtown, all with off-street garage spaces meets our parking requirements there. Getting into some of the new material that we're going to be talking about, what was something that was asked of me was to research some peer communities and see what they do to regulate parking in their downtowns. So taking a look at Kirkwood, this is what they consider downtown, kind of that central node there by the Amtrak stop and Kirkwood Road there. Specifically, they have similar off-street parking requirements for most uses downtown, but specifically new buildings constructed with ADEP. This is the only building type where they have completely eliminated parking requirements. building that is you know kind of shields a parking lot or a parking garage here they are not required to meet they call them liner linear buildings they are not required to meet off street parking requirements Additionally, they also have a similar provision that the change of use shall not be required, shall be exempt from additional parking requirements. So if you're moving from a low intensity use from, you know, office to, I don't know that this would ever happen, but, you know, a restaurant or something like that that would require, you know, more off street parking, you don't have to provide that additional off street parking if you're reusing a structure in downtown Kirkwood. Another peer community, Union, Missouri. They just completely, all new development in their downtown zoning district is exempt from on-street parking. And New Haven is also this way, so two other Franklin County communities that have similar parking requirements to Washington, but less strict, I guess. The city of Alton, Illinois, they also are another historic river town, and their off-street parking downtown reads, off-street parking spaces shall be required for all uses in zoning districts except the downtown commercial district, marina recreation district, where off-street parking shall not be required. off-street loading facilities shall be provided, blah, blah, blah. And that's this area in their downtown. They don't have as much, or they have not had as much residential or commercial infill within the same period that Washington has, but the built environment, you know, they seem to have a lot of historic buildings, and those historic buildings seem to be getting rehabbed fairly regularly. So it seems to be Doing them fine. Another strategy for off street parking in a downtown district would be what Edwardsville, Illinois does. They state that commercial uses in the central business district shall be exempt from the parking space requirements if they are located within 300 feet of a public parking lot. This is a fairly common strategy when it comes to parking requirements downtown. This is Edwardsville, Illinois downtown. And as you can see, there's a fair amount of, you know, surface parking in their downtown. So when you go out 300 feet from each of those parking lots, you've got a fair amount of their downtown that is exempt from off-street parking requirements. But you do have this section in the middle here where, you know, you've got some office buildings and parking Yeah, Matt, do you have a question?

The public parking, is there a size? Or does it just say any public parking?

It says any public parking.

So two spots.

It could be, yes. Yes. And that's actually where we're going to get into my next slide. I did the same exercise with downtown Washington. And so like, for example, you know, the spots at Lafayette Square here, there's like 15 spots are there, you know, but it's 300 feet out from that is, you know, pretty significant. But anyhow, this is the result if you were to, you know, expand upon 300 feet. Another peer community, Jefferson City. They also do have a reduced parking for uses near municipal parking lots. They expand that 500 feet out of their downtown zoning district. But they also do something which is another common tool that's used in downtown parking regulation. This Be Here reduced parking for uses with adjacent on-street parking. Where on-street parking exists on a street adjacent to a new or expanded use located within the old town district, the required number of off-street parking spaces for a new or expanded use may be reduced by one space for each 25 feet of frontage on the street with a maximum reduction. And then it goes into that. But apply this to Washington. These next couple of slides are just kind of taking a look at what if we were to adopt reduced off-street parking requirements. So we kind of go into some common uses downtown, and this is an example parcel at the corner of 3rd and Oak here. No one is planning on redeveloping this, but this is just an example of a development site. So if you were to build a retail outfit here, would be required 45 spaces, an office use 70, amusement center 313, event space 156, and two restaurants, because that's an awful big space for just one restaurant, 209 spaces. So a 10% reduction, you can see here, not super significant, you know, you get off a few spaces, but it would still kind of, the overall, you know, auto-oriented, you know, space calculation. In my professional opinion, a 10% reduction, you're essentially sticking with the original intention of the off-street parking requirements. When you get into a 50% reduction, that starts to make some more sense to me. Retail, 22 spaces, office 35, amusement center 156. So you still are requiring a significant amount of off-street parking. But it starts to make some sense when you consider that there are a lot of shared use parking facilities in the surrounding area. Getting into, this is, we're not gonna go over all these, but these are a list of Missouri cities with no downtown parking requirements. And I've got a statistic later that goes into the, I believe it's 22% of all Missouri communities, over 1,000 people have or don't require parking in their downtown. And some notable examples here, Kansas City, St. Louis are some big ones here. And you got a lot of midsize, You've got a good diversity of communities here, rural communities, suburban communities. So communities all over have adopted this approach. And getting into some survey results, the planning department partnered with downtown Washington to survey business owners. about parking downtown to better understand the conditions on the ground. And Becky was great to work with, and she really did a good job at getting a lot of variety of responses for business owners. So we got 24 responses from operating retail, restaurants, professional services, entertainment, service-based businesses, really kind of the whole gambit of what downtown is. So, you know just kind of getting into it here half of the businesses surveyed stated customer parking availability was was favorable either rating a four of a five four or five out of five during typical business hours and Residents thought that festivals and Saturdays are when parking is limited the most which you know makes makes sense That's when most people are coming to downtown, Washington Most residents agreed either limited parking availability and foot traffic both had a significant impact on their business. Over 65% of respondents thought additional foot traffic downtown would improve their business. Half of the respondents thought additional public parking would improve their business. Over 70% of respondents thought additional residential development downtown would improve their business. Over half thought that additional commercial development would improve their business. So kind of just to summarize here, an overwhelming majority of business owners agree additional development downtown will benefit their bottom line and in turn the local economy. Getting into some staff thoughts about my overarching recommendations. My recommendation to you tonight is still to remove off-street parking requirements in the downtown district for new development. However, I would like to have a discussion about that and see where the commission's head is at, given this information. And I'm recommending that for the following reasons. Requiring infill development downtown to provide the same amount of parking as development around some of the more suburban areas of Washington is irresponsible zoning practice that ignores the existing walkable environment of downtown. It may also limit infill development to bring more visitors to the area, increasing the vibrancy and success that downtown has had. On the financial side parking lots do not pay sales tax have low property values and a result barely pay any property taxes Not funding, you know some of the services that we rely on restricting development without off-street parking in an area where shared use parking facilities are present is redundant uh before 2016 we did not have this uh requirement uh developers are not going to invest millions of dollars into uh downtown if they do not believe their patrons cannot get to their business and as i said earlier 22 of all cities do not require parking in their downtown um yeah so planning department open to a conversation regarding parking minimums this has been the position of the city for the past 36 years the only reason that it is not the case is a consultant put their standard language into the code the past two city planners and city administrator were under the belief new development in downtown washington was not required to provide off-street parking The lack of parking requirements keeps our downtown competitive and is not another layer of bureaucracy business owners and developers must complete when looking to be in Washington. And just some questions to kind of close out and to think about as we're having this discussion. Why do businesses choose to be downtown? What makes downtown successful? Why do businesses choose to leave downtown? Why do businesses choose to move downtown? What street design businesses and building types create an enjoyable downtown and with that? I'll take some questions and comments and we'll have a discussion I Would say you definitely did a lot of analysis Aaron.

It's a good work. It's interesting understanding We have about 2,500 parking spots downtown. I mean, I think it's hard for me to understand like the ratio like how much would we expect there to be and maybe given our certain, like how many businesses, that kind of thing. But in my mind, I don't see the value added of requiring minimum off-street parking. I don't see it, especially given, I mean, talking to people coming from out of town on the Amtrak, they won't need parking, whether that's that all the way to, we do have a decent amount of public parking, just aesthetically, like me looking at it. I think we have a decent amount, but What I'd be really interested in is understanding more of like a ratio. Not so much of we have this many parking spots, but what would you say is most common in towns like the St. Charles, the Union, the other ones? So like per capita or something like that. Because it's one thing to know we have this many spots, but I just don't know if that's good for our size, if it's less than normal. That kind of thing.

Like, like ratio for like daytime downtown population or what, what exactly are you?

Exactly.

Okay. Something like that. Yeah.

I can figure out that statistic. Yeah. I THINK IT WOULD GIVE MORE CONTEXT TO IT. I DON'T KNOW IF WE COULD UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT IS COMPARATIVELY TO OTHER COMMUNITIES, BUT THAT'S KIND OF WHAT WE'RE GETTING AT. WE'RE NOT WORRIED ABOUT THE FESTIVALS, I DON'T THINK. LIKE, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A MILLION PEOPLE. YEAH. BUT IT'S UNDERSTANDING. EVERY DAY, YEAH.

YEAH, LIKE THE DAY TO DAY. SO WAS ST. CHARLES ON YOUR LIST OF, THAT HAS NO

I believe they do have some parking requirements downtown. I looked at their required off street parking. I don't recall what it was offhand, but I know that they're like us and they don't, I believe they don't require, I would have to, you know, just judging how their main street looks, I would venture to guess, you know, when you have a reoccupancy of a business, they don't require, you know, additional off street parking spaces. for that zoning district, but you know, the city by and large does.

I think St. Charles, and I may not be correct in this, but in my experience, they have private parking lots. So the business comes in and they've got six or eight or 10 spots that are marked private and they don't allow any public parking in those spots in St. Charles. Right, but do we enforce it? I don't know if we enforce it in the same capacity, I don't know.

I just bring that up because I see Kansas City and St. Charles, those other jurisdictions I don't spend a lot of time in. And I know Kansas City and St. Louis isn't really a good match. That's why I asked about St. Charles, because I know parking in St. Louis is a disaster. And I'm just curious. I don't think St. Charles is that great either.

But you do the walkability I mean the times I've been over there you parked on the riverfront and you walk festival then complain about like you said the festival is going to be bad no matter when when you know.

I've been there for I've been to Saint Charles for festivals and you just have to walk a few blocks. But you know that going to is going to crowded.

My only comment is but for the former planning consultant Inadvertently making this change to your zoning regulations. We wouldn't even be having this conversation, right? In fact until just recently I Thought we had no parking requirements. No off street parking downtown. That was always the understanding and

Yeah, and when we did that that time, I don't remember that we talked about parking specifically. I don't recall it either. I think it just was, you know, we thought we were gonna keep it the same, and evidently we didn't, and it's come to light. So I guess my comment would be from 1990 to 2016, if it wasn't broke, why do we need to fix it?

i'd say if anything now we want to remove as even more probably bureaucratic type of barriers to investing in downtown so the fact that we added more to it in the last decade i would agree with aaron's suggestion recommendation of removing it from downtown yeah i i think i commented on this at our in may's may's meeting

I would like to see the downtown parking requirement gone. I think it's putting a burden on some of our some of our lots the the best example. I've been able to come up with over the last month is probably the lot next to drogues that I believe the Dickinson owns. That's where the building John Clay camp head that collapsed 20 years ago. I Think all of us would love to see a building back on back on Main Street there And right now there's probably I don't know how many parking spaces in there.

I'm guessing around 15 I think I think I counted it's it's it's in this.

Let's see. It's in the spreadsheet and I don't know what I labeled it, but he's not going to be able to get that, you know, you wouldn't be able to get that number without finding spaces somewhere else.

Yeah, I said about 18. Okay.

So I guess, you know, when I look at that building, you know, obviously there was a building there 20 years ago and before that for probably 100 years. Yeah. And we made it work, right? My only concern with getting rid of this all together is that the scale of development downtown has been changing. A lot of our lots are little bitty lots. They're not big lots. So if you do a building on that lot of Dale Dickinson's, you're talking about replacing somewhere around 15, 18, 20 cars. Some of the developments we've been talking about recently, we're talking about hundreds of cars. And what I kind of would like to know is, can we have a system, is there a way to put a safeguard in that when we get to a certain number of spaces that would be required, I don't know what that number is, that that kicks in some kind of protection that the conditional or special use or something would be required that that there would be something more to it than just automatic approval. So that so that when we get the development, you know, I want to see those developments, but I want to see those developments done in a way that Doesn't place a burden on our existing businesses or potentially put our existing businesses in a bad spot Where we've got people fighting over parking downtown That's my that's my only real concern I have I think it I think it also depends on what they're what you're talking about putting in there exactly I

And you look at I mean it goes bakery and them and stuff too exactly I mean he's only got what about three spots in front of his small building and stuff and and the building Andy developed The old Yeah, Western Otto.

Yeah, the the folks that are living upstairs there now for example on the dress shop below That building has no no parking of its own, right? And it's been there a real long time. So if we develop and we fill that parking, if those people that live there, when they come home from work at night, if they don't have a place to park, how long is somebody gonna be living there, right? And that's, you know, we've made a lot of progress downtown. I feel like we've got a lot of motivation and we've got a lot of great things happening downtown in the last 10 years.

uh... fifteen years probably but i just i'd like to see that keep going i just don't want to create a situation where inadvertently throwing the brakes on it same thing i think you take the lot where the building collapsed could you do something where it was retail below and residential above put parking back behind it i don't know but you might have enough parking spots for those residential units that were back there you may not have it for the retail space To do it. And I think that's the type of development that we've seen take off on downtown is that mixed use development. And I think that's what we want. I think that's what we want to encourage is to make it that way. There's some big lots down there that you could put an awful big building on and attract an awful lot of people down there. And like Ken said, it's going to affect other people's businesses that are down there.

Well, I think to both of your points, that building in that spot is exactly what you're seeing. Retail downstairs, residential upstairs, and it requires six, eight, ten spots, whatever it may be.

And I think that we're all okay with that. If you're going to build it, you want to do it that way to make it marketable for the people that are going to live there. Correct.

And that's what the other houses have been doing, Main and Market and et cetera. My concern is, is Main and Jefferson, we've discussed the bowling alley. and i know it came about in council they were looking for a zero lot line um we didn't discuss parking at that time but the question was asked um and i know aaron's answer was 400 and some spots if i'm not mistaken there's 426 spots so in that aspect right so that's not happening i'm sorry that's obviously not happening obviously not happening that's right so then it it's a decision to make do you cut it down by 10 you cut it down by 50 but in this proposal it's down to zero And now we make no requirement for off-street parking for a spot that would require 426 parking spots downtown. To Ken's point, depending on what the development is, it makes a difference.

And I'm not so sure we need a bowling alley in downtown Washington. I'm not saying that either. But it's not my property. That's right. But I think that's what they want to do. That's great. But I think we've also got to be here to protect those neighboring, not only businesses, but residents that are down there as well.

If they build that there and have a spot for two, three, 400 people and have zero parking spots allocated, the people who live in your Western Auto Building will not have a place to park when they come home. That's just, I'm not saying you have to have 400 spots, but there's no way we can have it.

And I'll change the subject a little bit. I'm not gonna pick on Jefferson and Main Street. I'll use Aaron's hypothetical lot. Aaron, would you mind pulling that one up on the screen once? I believe your numbers, even at 50% reduction, If we had restaurants that we were still like in the was 100 to restaurants is one on us. Yeah, some like that. Yeah, you know what we're still talking that under hundreds even even at that right. Yeah, that's that's what I want to look at some of those things if we do those larger scales we're talking we're not talking picking up. 20 cars we can absorb 1520 cars. We start talking hundreds of cars. That's why I think downtown is going to struggle to be able to absorb.

And that's when you start losing the historic vibe and everything else and stuff too.

Didn't we allow the lumber yard where they tore down that building down there, didn't we allow them into the overlay district so they could have zero lot lines?

Correct.

They have a parking requirement then when they build a new building?

They will. Under our current rules, yeah. Wow.

Which building are you speaking of, Mike?

Where he tore down where the lumber yard tore down the building back there.

off of yeah so this this this this building the building's still here it used to be zoned uh residential and it was really residential for many years and uh last summer yeah I think they came before this board and requested rezoning and that they wanted that went through do they owned a lot across the Jefferson uh yes who yes

The vacant one there is this. Oh, this? Oh, there it is.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, but Aaron, that's not included in the shaded downtown district. What?

We let them in. That's what they get as far as to be put into the downtown district.

At the Washington Lumber Lot at Market?

Yep.

I didn't think downtown Washington ever crossed this street.

No, no, no. It goes all the way down to 6th Street because all the churches are involved in it. Yep. Emanuel Luther and St. Peter's, all of them, we went down to 6th Street.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Wimpy's is in the downtown zoning district and Wagner's office. Coffee shop. This law, or I don't know what this is. Thank you. Accounting office.

So dumb dumb question. So you had that list of I mean, could you exclude? Is it possible to exclude amusement and event spaces from this? So they would still have to meet certain parking requirements, but you could exclude it for the other small type stuff because isn't that what we're concerned about the small ones?

You don't want any requirement, but we're worried a big one's going to come in and that's the bureaucracy of the whole situation who you get to pick and choose who you're going to require parking for and not.

is it a square footage deal you build x number of square footage you know our linear frontage along the street you're exempt but if you go above a certain amount and does it depend on what business goes in there i mean i think that just seems to speak for aaron but i think he wants to know that in advance yeah that you can tell someone that rather than come to a special use permit every time we need something i get the problem

But it seems like you've got to have some separation, because these are totally different businesses.

Well, yeah. Because if the entertainment bowling thing would have come in before we did our comp plan, they could have come in and put that whole thing in there.

mean not well they well they they here's here's and here's where it gets tricky they probably would have been allowed to come in but because you know we mark mark didn't know about it no one knew about it but you know would they have been would it have been actually permitted no like before our comp after after 2017 they would they would have not been allowed but they probably would if that makes sense because the comp plan wasn't aligned to the comprehensive plan huh because it wasn't aligned to the comprehensive plan or why well i guess i'm sorry chuck i don't really understand your your point well our comp plan started 2023. sure okay before that what was

Was there no parking requirements then? No off-street parking requirement then? The parking requirement became after 2016.

After 2016, yeah. The comp plan doesn't necessarily. I mean, our comp plan, you know.

Our comp plan is the one where I threw up the flag all of a sudden because of the ambiguous language and stuff like that.

No, the comp plan didn't talk about the parking. That was under the code revision that we did in 2017. Okay.

It does. I will say, though, that our comp plan, you know, does support some sort of parking reform. You know, it encourages infill downtown, things that, you know, developments that are not possible, as we've talked about, you know, the example on Main Street's a great example of that, you know, that would not be.

The comp plan isn't codified.

Correct. The city code. Correct. Yep. That's the difference. Mm-hmm.

So I guess we're just looking at what has been happening just like what the markets driven apparently is that they're gonna put in the parking that makes sense for the Business that they have I'm just looking at the new developments we have as far that you mentioned like one East Main Street the other ones downtown, I mean it's also could be mean be optimistic that Whatever we would have down there they're not going to basically. And if it. Yeah, I'm coming to their business like why would they do that.

Did the bowling alley. Did they ask for a variance on the parking.

They did so that's what we got that's where this discussion. And the board of adjustment turned it down. Yeah, because it kicked it back to planning and zoning to change.

But I mean, I would just remind this board that even though the bowling alley development did spur this conversation, it's good to think about other examples and places that this would apply because this is all of downtown.

Well, true. I mean, if it was, again, a hardware store, a different type of hardware store, or, I mean, even if you're looking at auto and company as a furniture store, you know, if you look again at the furniture stores, the amount of space required for furniture stores and stuff, too, if another one come in there, it's like it's going to need a big parking lot and stuff, too. It's according to what their space says that they need also, you know. Mm-hmm.

And that's one of the things, after I looked at this this weekend and studied it more, is I sent Aaron an email this morning and asked him four questions, basically. And that's what this handout is from tonight. And I've asked him to send that to everybody, what he sent me this morning, because you can read it a whole lot easier in the email spreadsheet.

Yeah, when you try to print out an Excel document, I've

But then. For questions. How many parking spaces are currently available in downtown see 3 zoning area, including off street and on street. Of all the spaces available how many spaces are available in city owned lots. And then of all the spaces available how many spaces are available in shared agreement lots because we have some of those too. And then fourthly which we don't have an answer for you. Are there private lot spaces we should pursue shared agreements for parking? So maybe there are some areas that we could, the city could look into legal aspects of and come up with more spaces that could be utilized for something. So, and I know that's one of the reasons that when the bowling alley was being proposed, he said he owned the bank lot behind there and had a couple hundred spaces back there, I believe. So... I think that's all part of this. I was shocked when I started looking at the, and I was first shocked when he got it back to me so quick today. First of all, and then to be able to see where all those spaces are, I think is a good look at this too.

So you say there was 22% of the cities that have no parking requirements in downtown?

22% of the Missouri cities with over a thousand people.

So 78% do have some type of parking. Correct.

But a lot of those, well, I actually haven't done this math yet, but there are a good number more. Here, I'll just pull up this map. This was the tool that I sourced my information from. The parking reform network, they have a lot of, let's see.

What a job that would be. Let's see.

They got a map here. Okay. Reduce.

Let's see. Hold on.

I thought there was a, hold on here.

I guess while you're doing that, just so I'm clear, hypothetically, if they really wanted that bowling alley downtown, like legally could they put it there? They could not because of our current parking requirements, right? We said right now we wanted to get rid of them, then they legally could put a bowling alley downtown.

sure yeah the parking requirements are the only thing are the only planning thing that's only code violation correct would need a variance to any of that stuff for these for your comparisons here that the cities that have no parking to really for that to really be meaningful you have to look at what uses are allowed in those downtowns Maybe they don't allow bowling alleys and event spaces and auditoriums. Maybe they're all small retail where they don't allow residential or off-street parking or require off-street parking. So just the number of 22% really isn't meaningful unless you know what they allow and don't allow in those districts. And it also strikes me that We're trying to, and I think Rocco was kind of hitting around the edges of this, what we're trying to get to is restricting certain types of uses downtown by determining whether or not you have to have off-street parking or not. When maybe the real solution is look at what the permitted uses are in the C-3 and revise those instead of allowing a bowling alley of whatever size or an event center of whatever size. Maybe that's the solution, that you don't have these large.

Just go upstream, basically, like the code itself.

point.

It seems like we're, you know, the tails wagging the dog here. Instead of looking at what's the real issue, the issue is the uses and their requirements for parking rather than trying to restrict the uses by mandating off-street parking or not.

So Aaron, could you pull up the C-3 allowable

Sure. We'll do that.

I don't remember what those all are.

Yeah, I don't offhand remember what they are. OK. OK, so in the, let's see, so permitted uses, Auto parts stores and these are you know these so these are permitted uses if they're located within 50 50 feet of a residential district they shall the only They shall only be permitted by special use permit so repair of automobiles farm implements construction machinery small engine related services body shops public garages car washes New and used vehicle sales. Some of these I would like to take a look at in the future as permitted in downtown Washington. Drive-in, drive-through establishments. And then special uses. proposed zero lot line had one of those recently food stands agricultural uses nursery truck gardening that was you remember Andy's that's that's what they have a special use permit for any use similar and then above ground storage tanks okay and then on to the permitted and special uses Let's see, harvesting services, special use permit, multifamily dwelling, single family detached, two family dwelling, mobile home parks, nursing home.

These are things that are not allowed.

These are things that are allowed.

Are allowed.

I was going to say down in like commercial is probably where we want to go.

OK. Is this commercial? Let's see. Commercial. Title services.

Agriculture, fertilizer, retail.

I guess the key for us, what we're describing also, is if it requires a special use permit, then That would help us because in a way, I mean, obviously, if you were to add in 400 more potential people a day to a site, that's going to affect lighting, noise, going to affect a lot of things through the specialist permit process. So we would have some safeguards there if we did remove the parking minimum requirement still.

With a special use permit, you have to start with the presumption that it's a permitted use. It's allowed. And it's only if there is no set of conditions or restrictions that you could place on it to alleviate any possible problems that you can turn it down. Otherwise it's basically a permitted use. Got it.

It's a little different than the other way where, you know, as long as you put a buffer up, it's okay. Or as long as you do this, it's okay. It's okay unless they don't meet. Okay.

Yeah, most, so on that, most commercial uses are permitted.

Good idea, Mark, but good God, look at the list. I know. That's what I was just looking for. There's a few options there.

Yeah, and this is something just not super related to this conversation, but I want to take a serious look at our permitted use table at some point in time because there's some funny stuff on here.

the other thing i have with use is it may be i keep bringing the term scale up i think size has got to play into it at a point because when we talk about like uh event centers or something like that you know we've got other spaces in town that downtown that we could consider event spaces you know it's a pretty vague term that are small scale and aren't taking you know, don't need large parking requirements to operate. So, you know, at some point I don't have, I need to try to find a way that we can establish a, I don't know if it's a number of parking spaces that if your development would require so many spaces, X kicks in or, you know, how that materializes, what that threshold becomes. But you know we also don't want to say we don't want restaurants downtown we we we like restaurants. I like to eat. You're here, yeah. We don't want to do that sort of thing right.

Trying to look in the future, I mean this hotel goes through up to there's going to be there. General vicinity is of its own by the same people, I understand, but that area down there is gonna become more congested and what people build and are allowed to build in there to feed off the hotel. One is a smart business sense, but two,

And that is a separate conversation that this commission can have at a later date, if you so wish.

But I think it goes to the general question of what are we permitting and what are we not permitting.

Sure. I think from staff's perspective, Ken, I like your suggestions. If we are to regulate off-street parking in a way that makes sense for downtown development to further That the success that downtown is seen square footage requirements or you know once you're over a certain parking threshold That's a good way to you know not or You know, so, you know, we talk about, that's kind of what the discussion has been around is, you know, these large uses, you know, that have this exorbitant parking calculation. I think that that's a good way to say, hey, you know, small scale infill development, this makes sense in this location. We can absorb this amount of parking. But for large users, hey, maybe we should look at this. And that's something I can research. I haven't really seen many places do that approach. But I think if we are to regulate off-street parking downtown, that's kind of the direction I would feel most comfortable with. So it's something I can look into for sure.

you do it on a square footage aspect or you could do it as the way our code states now if you would require 25 parking spaces then you'd have to take a look at it if it's under that then you'd and it would be exempt i'm just throwing a number out there for example yeah we could we could do something like that you know what i'm saying rather than square footage couldn't you do it by the number of people that are allowed in the building

Well, it's that that gets into building code. And I don't think we have. Yeah, I don't.

That's I. Well, and I think we have to make it. We have to think about staff review on this, too. And what's going to be the easy We don't want to force the citizens to have to come here for a special use permit and go through all those processes all the time. We've been trying to streamline that. And I think we need to keep that in mind, too, so we don't make it a cumbersome process. That's right.

Yeah, I think the more layers we put, the harder it's going to be to develop, the more time we're going to spend doing, like, here's these 25 variances we have to talk about now, or, you know.

And I like Darren's email that he sent, and I think everybody had a chance to look at that. I mean, he hit the nail on the head, really. That's who we are, you know, talking about it, and that's one of the reasons why I wanted some numbers, just to see where we were. So I don't know that we can make a decision tonight. I hate to table it again, but I think we've got some more research to do here yet, some more discussions.

Can I ask one more question? Yeah. Just about the survey results. So what did the locals down there want? I mean, are they going to freak out over a zero parking requirements?

I don't know. Some will, some won't.

Yeah, I think that's a great answer. It depends on the individual business owner. Because as you can see, I point out, most respondents agreed either limited parking availability and foot traffic impacted their business. But that means there's 25% that they don't think that impacts their business at all downtown. So yeah, there's always going to be a subsect of owners who feel one way or the other. Yeah, I guess I don't really have a super great answer for that.

Well, it's not a cut and dried thing. Yeah, absolutely. That's the challenge. It depends on what kind of business you have down there. Correct. That's actually right.

And one would argue, in general, with the downtown, you want more foot traffic. I mean, in general, if we're wanting a more lively downtown, retail, all these kind of things, shops and restaurants, more foot traffic is good. Yep. Yep.

And I think you have to look at the residential down there, too, because that's a huge park. Very beneficial. Very beneficial.

The walkability is wonderful. Yeah.

And keeping the downtown viable.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, over 70% of business owners thought additional residential development would improve their business in some meaningful way. And this was interesting to me. On the commercial development, no business owners disagreed with the fact, I mean, two were unsure, but believed that additional commercial development would, or they disagreed with that statement. But any whom, to the discussion at large, I will research specifically, if that's the direction this board feels comfortable with, specifically square footage requirements. If there are other cities that have like a cap, And if they say, hey, this these uses are not permitted or if they make them special use permits, you know, so I'll just I'll look into that and we'll focus next month's discussion kind of around.

that topic if that's okay with this commission. I think that would be a good way to continue this. I would like to see also if you could send out the survey results.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, a lot of, I won't send out the full survey because Becky asked about a variety of other things that aren't necessarily super relevant, so I'll send out the

Relevant stuff that may be the information that you printed out today.

Absolutely My email also because it's much easier to view as a spreadsheet than it is Yeah, yeah, I think a place like st. Charles would be a good I know they're bigger than us But I think it'd be somewhere to start with a death of the vibrant downtown in a city similar to our size and we can find those sure I know there's not probably a lot of them, but I

Maybe Cape Girardeau.

Cape Girardeau.

Jeff said he's trying to get more vibrant down on the riverfront. But I mean, that's such a whole different ball of wax for the Capitol and state office buildings up there that I don't know.

Does anyone else have any others they want me to look into?

I think we was compared to sedalia yeah, yeah, Cape Girardeau and there was what's in Rivertown Hannibal yeah, look at your board. What about Hannibal yeah, yeah, yeah, Hannibal be good ones. The main street has been compared to them in the past. Yeah.

I see if news around here. No.

Okay. See, on the Cape, you've got no, it said on there that they have no parking requirements, but.

Yeah, they might have like reduced parking or something like that, so that's something.

Well, yeah, but they might have other stipulations based on, again, their zoning or. Sure, yeah.

To start with. Okay, so is everybody pretty much in agreement? We'll table this again till next month for more discussion and more information.

Do you need a motion for that or no? No. Okay.

Okay, very good. Next item, file number 260503, Code Changes Retail Parking Regulations Discussion. City of Washington.

all right good evening yeah so this was tabled um last month as well and there were several um items that the commission requested um that i i take a look at um for those of you that weren't here i i've got a i'll just go over what what we got what we got briefly here so How this came about, just for some background information, is Lowe's requested a variance to reduce the number of off-street parking spaces they required specifically to store additional material on their site. It was denied for not being a hardship, but as a result, the Board of Adjustment recommended this board examine parking standards for hardware stores to see if they were too excessive. And what that means is we have a definition for retail stores, but we also have this definition for furniture or appliance stores, hardware stores, wholesale equipment, machinery or equipment sales, clothing stores, shoe repair stores, they have a more intense parking requirement than general retail. So that's what we're kind of, that's the main code change that we're looking at. And the comprehensive plan recommends that we take a look at our off-street parking requirements and see what changes need to be done here. So specifically, we are proposing streamlining off-street parking requirements. So this board recommended and subsequently changes were approved in 2024 that were intended to cover most retail uses in our shopping centers. But they did not apply to several uses which have more stringent parking requirements, which could be considered retail if they did not have their own use. So we have this separate definition for hardware stores. They require two parking spaces plus one additional parking space for each 300 square feet of floor area over 1,000 square feet. We also have... Separate definition for convenience stores, which requires one space for each 250 square feet So the goal of this code change would be to streamline our off street parking requirements and just make one unified retail definition So just taking a look at what that would look like in practice, I gathered some numbers here about what's the average size of a convenience store and of all the uses that we've discussed for furniture, appliance store, hardware store, so on and so forth. I took the average of all of the uses that we have currently operating in town and got about 50,000-ish square feet. And so when you take a convenience store use that's at the national average, currently we require 10 parking spaces, but under our proposed parking regulations, which is the current retail parking definition, that would be seven spaces. And then for all the uses I just listed, 174 to 150. Something that was discussed last month taking a look at was moving from just floor area to the actual sales floor. And so we have floor area defined as, except otherwise, floor area shall include the sum of all area, surfaces of all floors of a building measured from the exterior faces of exterior walls, less than the floor area devoted to elevators, so on and so forth. And so taking a look, this was one of the only retail developments I could find building plans for in our system. But so you take that parking calculation for all these. Now, granted, all these was developed or the parking lot for all these was built before the building itself was built. But if it were to be a greenfield development, using the total building square footage, which is around 20,000 square feet, we would require 57 parking spaces. And oh, I say that on screen here. 102 parking spaces, parking lot built prior to construction. They're only required to provide 80 parking spaces, one space for each 200 square feet. But with the new, or excuse me, I'm sorry, I got that wrong. if Albee were to be built as a greenfield site today under the regulations, they would be required to provide 57 off-street parking spaces. The proposal to move from just square footage of the building to this definition here, one parking space for each 350 square feet of interior floor area dedicated to the sale of goods, you would get somewhere around 37 parking spaces required for all these. So that would be the... the change and that's just an example for, you know, if we were to make that change on a real building that exists for interior floor area that's actually being used versus total building square footage. So I guess I'll stop there and we can discuss this item.

I think that makes more sense to use the actual used square footage of the building as opposed to assessing them parking for storage areas. And I think we've talked about that before. It's been several years ago that we did. I'm trying to think which.

It was that, well, where our tire went in. that was gonna be that. Oh, Purcell. Yeah, Purcell.

Well, Hobby Lobby was gonna go. Hobby Lobby. Yeah, that's the one.

But at the same time, it's like, you know, you can sit there and still, I mean, If you don't want to sit there and make the calculations overly complex, just so that somebody's got to sit there and figure out exactly how much square footage is actually covered by shelves. And next time they set up shelves, they're going to be six foot aisles instead of eight foot aisles and whatever else. I mean, couldn't you just adjust the number required for them based on, again, the overall square footage again and stuff too? Just on what you're going to see is going to be whether it's a warehouse or a grocery store or whatever and stuff, I mean, you're still gonna have you know, furniture store, you're still gonna have a certain amount of floor space, it's gonna be warehouse, and a certain amount of floor space is gonna be display and stuff. You're not gonna have a bazillion people in there all the time.

So, Aaron, what would be the easier calculation to do? Would it be easier for you guys to review and go by square footage of the total building and reduce the, or increase the number of square feet of retail, of well size, or what's...

Admittedly, it would be easier to calculate the total square footage and just reduce the parking calculation outright. But I think that it's not that much more difficult for staff because we have to get building plans whenever anyone renovates a space. Is that something that planning in the past has been... good at Admittedly admittedly not but you know, it's something that I'm trying to work towards and you know Make sure that we catch more reoccupancy to kind of enforce those those parking calculations but you know, this is our information that that the that the Well the building department that we all get we all look at this at site plan, you know, so This is this is not It's not much more of an ask to ask for the actual usable space of a building. And I think that that, as John said, that's a more accurate parking calculation as to what's the space that's actually going to get used. Right.

And how many spaces are you actually going to need for the number of people that would probably be.

So it is more difficult, but only slightly. And I think that it's a good change to make.

So what you're saying, Chuck, in this example, if we went to 450 square feet for all of these at 20,000 square feet, it would be 44.4 or 45 parking spaces, which would get pretty close to your 37 of retail.

But again, it's like, you know, that's information that the architect can supply you without you guys, since pretty much everything's going to be computer generated to start with. They can easily calculate the square footage for those things at the same time also.

But I also think it's advantageous because you're going to find some spot that has a larger storage room, smaller retail space, and therefore require smaller, less parking spots because of that. You know, I just look at... I mean, you know, you don't need parking spots for the lumber yard that's undercover, right? You know, you need it for the showroom part and those how many spots that are. I left that meeting saying, I've never seen Lowe's parking lot plumb full of vehicles. But yet we want to tell them they've got to stop storing stuff out there. Now, sight distance is a different object. If they want to store it out there, sight distance isn't an issue. But I think, to Aaron's point, yes, a little bit more difficult, but definitely achievable. the square foot of interior floor area space. That makes sense. A furniture store, the back room does not need to be included in your parking lot.

If you go to most major retail stores in Washington, the parking lots are almost never half full. Maybe a few times around Christmas time, but we are making these retailers put in these huge parking lots and they're not being utilized. And we're wasting you know, ground, you know, our groundwater issue runoff is is being affected by that because we have these huge parking lots with with online retail sales. Now, a lot of people aren't even going to the stores except to pick it up and they're not staying there very long. Like all these has I don't know exactly, you know, six or seven different places where you can just pull up and they bring your food to you. It's sort of that what I'm saying is they're not staying there for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, like what used to happen 15 or 20 years ago. A lot of people are just pulling up and getting their stuff and leaving and, you know, less than five minutes.

sure. Well again, like you say, I mean the the calculations for the store in the water underneath the the runoff and all the oil that's generated from this on top of that and trying to maintain, you know, our whatever code compliance with the state and stuff like that or yes for and stuff like that, you know, it's it's like it just keeps snowballing adding to it.

yeah absolutely so that's that's one part of this this this code change um the the other thing that we we kind of got into was um there are there are multiple and this was these these are uh not directly related to the to the whole lows thing but they were um changes that i i had noticed and thought you know hey you know this is going to require a public hearing anyway these are things that i want to i want to address and i think are pertinent to talk about while we're on the subject of parking. And so there are uses in the off-street parking regulations with multiple definitions. This makes parking calculation variable for staff when determining the amount of parking use is required. And so these are banquet centers, bingo halls, lodges, reception halls. And then we also have a definition for entertainment, assembly, or exhibition places all without fixed seats. They have different parking calculations. And then restaurant, nightclub, or cafe. drive-in restaurant or establishment serving meals to lunches patrons either in their cars or in the building and those have different parking calculations. And so the proposal last time was remove you know both are these these top two definitions here and just stick to one on a definition on a per square footage basis. The discussion last time, though, was around the commission requested to review best practices for a club slash nightclub slash bar and the parking that they're required. Moving from a space per seat to a space per square foot calculation is easier for staff to enforce. You're not required to review building renovations and seating availability is subject to change. So I'm proposing a new all-encompassing definition for drinking establishments as follows. An establishment that is devoted to the serving of alcoholic beverages, where food is only incidental to the consumption of these beverages. And that's defined as a tavern in our use table. So it's permitted in all of our commercial, industrial, and planned commercial and industrial and mixed-use zoning districts. So here are some regional bar parking space regulations. In St. Charles, it's equivalent to around one space per each 175 square feet. Jefferson City, a bar tavern, 100, or excuse me, yeah, one parking space per each 100 square feet. And then in Blue Springs, Missouri, one space for each 75 square feet. So you kind of got the gambit of space requirements here. What makes this tricky is in Washington, Missouri, all of our bars do not have off-street parking. So one space per 75 square feet below our businesses that would fall under the drinking establishment definition, and the average square footage is 1,485 square feet. So just taking a look at the, let's see, 1861 social house here. I'm comparing it to the, you know, when you take a look at all these requirements. One space per 75 square feet, that would require 20 spaces. 100 square feet, 15 spaces, a building of this size, and one space per 175 square feet, eight spaces. I'm recommending that we adopt the one space per 175 square feet parking calculation, primarily because we don't want to encourage, you know, drunk driving and you know bars, you know are best to have a lower lower parking calculation for that for that reason and just to kind of give you an idea about establishments that have similar a similar parking calculation and Might might experience similar traffic volumes Animal hospitals banks and other financial institutions obviously at very different times of day than you know a drinking establishment But you know definitely a similar amount of amount of people so with that I'll take any questions on on that specific piece I've seen it done either way.

I've seen I

You know, the parking calculation, you know, is included. Yeah. Include the deck. And I've seen it say, you know, only only in interior space. So that's up for this commission. I'm OK either way.

You know, so it's whatever this commission decides that would be part of the seating arrangement. So I think you would have to include it.

I mean even though you wouldn't be a year-round thing sure I think you would still have to include it just for the summer days when if you pull up the the image of the social house on Fifth Street you know you've got almost as much seating in that building outside as you do sure pretty small structure you've got almost as much seating outside as you do inside that building

The other thing to, you know, consider is this conversation is kind of hand in hand with, you know, our last conversation about, well, I mean, it's sort of related to, you know, our conversation about downtown parking requirements because, frankly, that's where a lot of these, I mean, a lot of these businesses are on Fifth Street or downtown, but, you know, there aren't, there isn't really a market for, you know, people building new drinking only establishments. You know, you often kind of have a food component with it. And maybe, you know, I'll, you know, in two years where someone will, you know, build a bar only, you know, but just kind of nationally that's not really a trend that we've seen, so.

So all you're asking is to create a single standard for all street parking requirements?

Yep.

Got it. Which would right now just be a reduction, like kind of halving it-ish?

Just about, yeah.

All right.

WOULDN'T PERTAIN TO THOSE EXISTING UNITS.

THEY HAVE TO BUILD IT DOWN TO WHERE THERE'S NO PARKING REQUIREMENT.

IT'S ONLY FOR ANYTHING NEW.

YEAH, I GUESS THAT'S THE OTHER THING TO KIND OF NOTE. WHAT I WAS KIND OF GETTING AT WITH MY POINT EARLIER IS, YOU This use is not very common. Just being frank with you all. But it is important that we have, as Ken brought up a good point last time, that a restaurant and a bar exclusively have very different uses and needs.

Will this make your job easier? Yes.

Yes, absolutely. Then you're also looking for something on the retail end, right, also?

Yeah, I mean, these are one sort of, the redlined copy that's in your packet is just one single recommended. I mean, these are two separate issues, but they are, I'm kind of packaging them together because they're both in the realm of off-street parking and they're, you know, small. I mean, so is the downtown parking discussion, but that's kind of a much broader, that has broader implications than either of these changes, so.

And you included the codes, the changes to the code in the actual document itself, right? You redlined it. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Yep.

Any comments or questions from commissioners?

I think we're ready to move forward on those next week.

Whoa.

Right. That was my point.

Knock it off. I would agree with that. I mean, of all of them, this was the one that, to me, was the easiest to comprehend, the easiest to make the change to without having any major complications.

I guess to clarify, would you want to, because in my recommendation I didn't include the thing about the patio space, was that a change this board would like to see that included in the parking calculations or is that?

Okay, don't to leave to leave off part of the total seating I guess my only question is and I think the social house added that after fact Sure, you know what? What do we it's been there for a long time before the social house, but it wasn't used as a Patio, I don't think it was it was okay.

It's been used at least three or four different businesses before have used it and

I think it ought to be, the patio space ought to be included in part two. Okay. That's my opinion. I don't know what the commission is.

I will. It'd be appropriate. I think it would be. Clear and dry. It's all seating.

I will add that to the recommendation before it goes to council. So, if this board chooses to recommend it, so.

So I would entertain a motion.

So motion to recommend the streamlining of the off-street parking requirements, right? And then we also want to do the retail or that's later. We're not doing that yet this. Yeah, it's it's it's all it's all one of the things race all the other both retail the off street parking beautiful. Similar motion also.

Motion made in seconded that we proceed with the changes to the retail parking regulations as proposed by staff all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed. I said it. Okay, we got that done. You have another item that says other business.

One last thing for our new commission member, any time we get notified by Franklin County, any time there's a subdivision, I don't remember if it's a mile. Mile and a half. Thank you. Mile and a half from our borders. So I bring that to this board in case they have any comments. um but this is uh just off highway a here um this is uh alexandra state's plat 7 re-subdividing three existing lots into five lots um it's these lots are r1a compliant the applicant said that they want to build uh duplexes there's some existing duplexes on this cul-de-sac here um so i didn't have any comments it looked you know the streets already the streets the streets already there so I didn't have any comments on this one.

Just for my information, so they send this to us as a courtesy? Correct.

In case we have any comments. Yeah, but they can they don't have to listen to us.

Yeah, never listen to them. Yeah, right.

Yeah, they have yet to like, thanks.

But no, thanks.

Yeah, exactly. They have yet to listen to me.

I think more so than anything, Matt, it's a prerequisite to what's going to happen. Correct. Yeah. What's next? Like, can I get to know that? Hey, well, this is the change that was made. Usually it's not five, three lots to five. Usually it's here's 142 lots coming in right outside the city limits.

That's the difference with our comprehensive.

Sure. We'd like to know that as well.

But there's nothing we can really do about it. No.

Legally now. we get to a certain size i believe if you're you have 50 000 people in missouri you can have some sort of i don't know mark is it you get some sort of extra extra territorial no okay never mind i'm i don't know what i'm talking about so there for a while we just just ignore me we would send them every time they would send us something on a subdivision it was just the standard paperwork back is the same thing always applied but they never listened to it so

Okay.

Anywho, that's all I have.

That's all you have. Anything from the commissioners? And if not, I would entertain one last motion.

Motion to adjourn. Second.

Motion made and seconded. We adjourn at 8.17. Motion to adjourn.

Thank you, Bob. What's that?

There's so much to get into.

Oh, yeah. And I just don't even know what I don't know. So, yeah.