Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

¦ Thank you. Thank you.

good evening and welcome to the regular meeting of the planning commission of the city of westminster it' s april 16, 2025 it' s currently 6.01 p.m. clerk if you would like to go ahead and take a roll.

commissioner bui?

yes.

commissioner hamadi?

yes.

commissioner tran?

yes.

vice chair anderson?

yes.

chair wolbert?

i' m here. Ready, begin.

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.

Thank you. You may be seated. all right before we move down through the agenda we have to make one change I'd like to make a motion here we need to have item number three which is election of commission chair and vice chair we need to actually set that commissioners to after public hearings since it's an actionable item so we want we don't want to violating the Brown Act so I'd like to make a motion that we move it to after item number nine which is regular business.

I'll second.

We have a motion to move item number three to after item number nine by Chair Wolbert, seconded by Vice Chair Anderson. Commissioner Bowie?

Yes.

Commissioner Hamadi?

Yes.

Commissioner Tran?

Yes.

Vice Chair Anderson?

Yes.

Chair Wolbert?

Yes. All right, we will move that item down. The motion carries 5-0. Thank you. we will go ahead and go on to item number four which is reports from planning secretary any late communication items?

no we do not have any.

are we sure about that I think we have two.

those are written communications.

got it. I think we need late communication items correct we have two.

late communication is not written notification to be given notice of that if we received it late before or during the hearing. Late communication will be changes to the agenda that we're letting you and the audience know about.

Okay, got it. So these items are only... I don't think that's correct. These are public hearing items, but it's still late communications that we have to know.

We've clarified that with Ashton, the city clerk, over the last week that... The definitions haven't been used consistently between council and planning commission. Okay. Per city clerk, late communication would be anything that affects the agenda. A written communication we receive late would be provided in writing to you and you would be notified of that during the hearing. Okay.

City attorney, we're concurrent on that?

Yes, and I think what staff would probably do is indicate to you in their presentation that there were two we have a list of items that came after the agenda was published and they will let you know so you will already have had it and they are also available in the agenda packet that people can look at online.

thank you for the clarification we will go ahead and move on to item number five ex parte communications this section is intended to allow all officials the opportunity to reveal any disclosures regarding site visits or ex parte communications about the public hearing or

yes yes chair I did visit the site.

I did visit the site.

I did as well. I have not.

I did actually visit the site and I also attended a community All right, moving on. Item number six, special presentations. I don't think we have any tonight unless there was something late. Item number seven, oral communication. Oral communication, planning commission clerk, could you please read the procedure into record?

This is the time of the meeting that members of the public may address the Planning Commission on matters of public interest which pertain to the City and are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the Planning Commission. Members of the public wishing to address public hearing items shall do so at that time of the public hearing. Unless extended by a majority vote of the Planning Commission, comments shall be limited to three minutes per speaker. to address the planning commission please complete a blue request to speak form that is provided at the entrance to the council chambers and submit the form to the planning commission clerk when your name is called please step to the podium at that time and state your name and city of residence for the record. Terry Raines.

Hi, Terry Raines, Westminster. Why no minutes on this agenda for approval? Item three, I'm aware of the collusion between certain commissioners and council members to appoint Hamadi as chair and Bui as vice chair. Commissioner Tran, if you receive that direction in conjunction with your appointment, ignore it. You should also know you were appointed against the community's wishes, replacing distinguished commissioner Laura Rose. Hamadi and Bui have demonstrated poor attendance and less than stellar performance on this commission. With important projects coming before you soon, the city can't afford to have chronically absent or incompetent commissioners presiding over public hearings, especially those who lack the necessary professionalism and efficiency to do so. Casey should remain chair and Don should remain vice chair. Ken's update on Lavender on Beach Boulevard at the last meeting fell flat. The business is still allowing minors to enter and remain, is likely still allowing hard liquor consumption on site, and using third party promoters in violation of the current type 42 liquor license and CEP. I oppose your denial at the last meeting, which won't be official until your May 7th meeting, of a PCN and CEP for Jackson Foods, a Shell Station convenience store at Magnolia and Bolsa, to upgrade their liquor license to a Type 21 from a Type 20, primarily to sell low-alcohol, ready-to-drink products. The PD didn't object, the business is in a low-crime police district, and the census tract off-sale saturation would not change. I spoke to an ABC agent, the applicant, and Vice Mayor Manzo at length. An off-sale upgrade is in an oversaturated census tract, low-crime district, with no alcohol-related calls for service. It's generally approved, even without the city's PCN finding, but they do need an approved CEP. Government Code 23958-4 states if the local governing body does not make a determination within the 90-day period, then the department may issue a license if the applicant shows the department that public convenience or necessity would be served by the issuance. The ABC shall not attribute any weight to the failure of the local governing body to make a PCN determination. Staff census tract saturation limit calculation also does not add up, confirmed by the ABC. I agree with this applicant's desire to continue selling singles as they have for years with no issues. Why force a customer to buy a massive 22-ounce or multi-pack when all they want is a 12-ounce beer? Makes no sense. This applicant was subjected to Commissioner Bowie's wildly inappropriate off-topic interrogation about the site's restrooms and fuel pumps, which had absolutely nothing to do with what was before you. This happens far too often, and the chair, staff, and the city attorney's refusal to quickly intervene and keep public hearings on topic is highly legally problematic. You attended training, and you should know, understand law and procedure. It's painfully obvious that some of you don't read or comprehend the staff reports and plans presented to you. You should not have denied the CPPCN, and you need to vote no to deny the consent calendar resolution of denial on May 7. I will fully support a council appeal on their behalf. Let's just hope this city attorney actually engages and advises the commissioners in real time, unlike the previous ones. And yes, public comments before actionable items, always.

Next we have Michael Varenga.

Thank you. My comments are just pretty much general comments. Talking about this project here, it's not so much that I am for it or against it. What concerns me, the state that we live in already has a shortage of power for the residents that already live here. They're pushing electric vehicles. They're not going to build any more power generating plants. I used to work down at San Onofre. Each one of those nuclear reactors put out 1,100 megawatts. They shut it down because of the push by the environmentalists. They were going to shut down Diablo Canyon. Somebody obviously grew a brain in that time and realized, gee, we can't do that. Water, that's another problem with the more residences, power, water. We voted in water storage bonds to build water storage facilities. Nothing's really been done, and I doubt seriously whether they'll even do it. They'll probably drag their feet, pay the money off to their buddies, and it'll be like the train to nowhere. Same thing, nothing will get done. I also feel bad for the people that live on the west side of Edwards and the south side of Bolsa once that mall is set up. Because the general consensus in this city, that's gonna be little Saigon 2.0 over there. The traffic's gonna be horrendous, and the people that live there are gonna hate having to drive in and out of their own neighborhood. And as far as you, Mr. Tran, I'd still like to know how you wound up on here. The person that was in that position should actually be back in that position. There was no reason to bring anybody in new. I don't know whether you have some magic skills or something that you can wave over the rest of your people here, but it was an insult to a professional individual that served this city. And it's unfortunate you're in that seat. I don't have anything personal against you, but I'd still like to know why it was done and why it was necessary to appoint you. The first guy, the first guy was a nobody. Nobody knew him. Nobody knew what skills he has. I read his background information. This guy didn't know his right hand from his left hand for doing this job. Now, I don't know whether you have those skills. I understand you're supposed to be an architect. That's fine and Danny, but I still don't understand why it was necessary to eliminate somebody that had faithfully served this city and replace her with somebody that nobody knows. Thank you.

That's it.

All right, if that is the last speaker, I'd like to go ahead and close item number seven, oral communication. We'll move on to item number eight, which is the public hearing tonight. Clerk, if you could read the procedure to record, that would be great one more time.

Anyone wishing to speak on an open public hearing should complete a blue request to speak form that is provided at the entrance of the council chambers and submit the form to the planning commission clerk. When your name is called, please step to the podium and state your name and city of residence for the record. Each attendee will have three minutes to comment on each public hearing item. the applicant or their designee will have 12 minutes to speak and will also be provided a three-minute rebuttal with exception of the applicant or designee all attendees may only speak once the Planning Commission may use its discretion to allow a speaker to exceed the allotted time or may ask a speaker to return to answer additional questions.

Thank you. We'll move on to 8.1, case number 2023-0670, a vesting tentative track map development review and affordable housing density bonus project. I'll turn it over to staff.

Good evening, Chair Wolbert and members of the Planning Commission. My name is Stephanie Tomaino, contract planner on behalf of the Community Development Department. Just give it a moment for the PowerPoint to come up. There you go. The yellow line outlines the boundaries of the Westminster Mall specific plan area. The specific plan covers about 100 acres and it includes multiple parcels under different ownership. The specific plan was adopted by the city in 2022 after a multi-year planning and community engagement process. The project site is highlighted in blue and it totals about 3.6 acres. It's located at the corner of Edward Street and Royal Oak Drive and it's currently developed with an older commercial building. The Westminster Mall Specific Plan serves as a long-term vision to guide the coordinated redevelopment of the mall area. It allows up to 3,000 residential units across the site, while also requiring at least 600,000 square feet of retail to be maintained or newly constructed. Rather than assigning fixed zoning to individual parcels, the plan uses broad land use concepts to guide development over time. This type of approach is typical for large areas such as this, especially when multiple owners are involved and development is expected to occur in phases. The project site falls within the red area of the map, which was envisioned to serve as a residential buffer between the mixed-use district within the interior of the mall that's highlighted in the bluish-green area, and the existing residential neighborhoods across the street. This slide gives you a closer look at the project site, which is outlined in yellow. There you go. It's currently developed with a commercial building, which was originally used by Babies R Us and now occupied by Dave's Appliance Warehouse. The site is located at the corner of Edwards Street and Royal Oak Drive, but it does not have direct access from Edwards. Instead, all vehicle access is provided from Westminster Mall Drive, which is a private road. The property is surrounded by other parts of Westminster Mall, including Best Buy to the north and parking lots and future residential areas to the south and east. Across the street are single-family homes, which are in the city of Huntington Beach. Tonight's request includes three key applications from the applicant, TTLC Westminster Silen, LLC. This has also been referred to as the True Life Project. First, the applicant is requesting a development review to demolish the existing commercial building and to construct 89 for sale condominium units configured as three story attached townhomes. Second, they've submitted a vesting tentative track map for a subdivision of the property. And third, the applicant is requesting an affordable housing density bonus in exchange for providing nine deed-restricted units for low-income households. Now, here's a site plan of the proposed project. As mentioned, the applicant is proposing 89 townhome units, which are arranged in 12 three-story buildings. The homes come in a mixture of two- and three-bedroom floor plans, with an average unit size of about 1,500 square feet. Each unit also includes an attached two-car garage. The project achieves a residential density of just under 25 units per acre, which fits within the development patterns envisioned by the specific plan. And you'll see from the site plan that the buildings are organized around a central paseo with multiple common open space areas. The project proposes vehicular access from two driveways along Westminster Boulevard Drive, which are both located at the Red Arrow. It's a private internal road that loops through the mall. No new access points are proposed along Edward Street, which helps to minimize impacts on the adjacent residential neighborhood. In addition to the attached two car garages proposed at each unit, there are 14 additional guest parking spaces distributed throughout the site, which are shown here. In total, the project provides 192 on-site parking spaces, which equals about 2.2 spaces per unit. Under density bonus law, because the project includes affordable housing and is located near a major transit stop, it qualifies for a reduced parking requirement of just 1.5 spaces per unit. Otherwise, the minimum parking requirements would be 134 spaces, and the project exceeds this parking requirement. As part of the request, the applicant is providing nine units as affordable to low-income households. Based on the site's base density study of 74, or base density of 74 units, this qualifies the project for a 20% density bonus under state law, allowing 15 additional units, which brings the project to a total of 89 units. Density bonus law entitles qualifying projects to one concession and an unlimited number of waivers of development standards if they are necessary to accommodate the proposed density. The city is required to grant these benefits if the project meets all legal criteria, and cities cannot deny them based on local discretion. To make the proposed density feasible, the applicant is requesting one incentive and several waivers of development standards. The incentive would reduce the required ground floor ceiling height from 12 feet to 9 feet. The requested waivers, there's a variety of them which are summarized on the slide, but it includes reductions to building setbacks along Edwards streets and interior streets, adjustments to pedestrian zone standards such as narrower walkways and eliminating some parkways, and modest reductions in both common and private open space. These requests are allowed under state law when necessary to physically accommodate the project at the density granted through the bonus. This slide shows the overall look and feel of the townhome buildings. The architecture reflects a modern clean style with a mix of colors and materials to break up the building mass and add visual interest. Each unit features a distinct front entry with the building elevations using varied materials, colors, and roof lines to emphasize articulation. This project includes several common open space areas for residents, as previously noted. It does include a central landscaped paseo that provides a walkable, pedestrian-friendly connection through the site. There is also a private park with seating, barbecues and shade structures, and a corner plaza at the street intersection that would include public art to help activate the street frontage. In addition to shared amenities, each townhome unit includes private open space in the form of a second floor balcony and a ground floor front porch, which is shown here. These spaces are integrated into the unit designs and provide residents with opportunities for personal outdoor use. Following the initial Planning Commission hearing in March, the applicant voluntarily updated their design to improve the appearance of all street-facing sides. So specifically, you'll see along those elevations, those were enhanced. These enhanced elevations include added articulation, materials, and detailing to ensure a high-quality look from all public views, especially along Edward Street and Westminster Mall Drive. A traffic analysis was completed for the proposed 89 townhomes, and the results show that the project will generate fewer trips than originally anticipated in the specific plan in EIR. No new driveways are proposed along Edwards Street, and all vehicle access will occur from internal private roads. The project would not require any changes to public streets, nor would it contribute to significant traffic impacts in the surrounding area. Overall, the traffic study confirms that the project remains well within the city's plan thresholds. Conditions of approval are recommended to require the applicant to either construct or pay their share of the intersection improvements that were considered during the specific plan. As mentioned earlier, the Westminster Mall specific plan identifies this part of the site for residential use and encourages new housing types to help meet the city's long-term housing goals. The proposed townhomes align with that vision by providing a for-sale housing product that's well-suited for a range of households, including first-time homebuyers and families. The project is consistent with the land use and density originally contemplated in the specific plan for this area along Edward Street. While the applicant is requesting several waivers under state density bonus law such as reductions to setbacks and parkway areas, the project still preserves several key elements of the pedestrian focused vision outlined in the specific plan. So specifically along Edward Street, the townhomes are oriented towards the street with direct entries and landscape frontages. And at the northwest corner of the site, the project also includes a small open plaza with integrated public art, which is shown on the image on the left, helping to define the gateway into the Westminster Mall and provide a welcoming pedestrian experience. The project qualifies for a CEQA exemption under section 15183 because it's consistent with the type and density of development analyzed in the certified EIR for the Westminster Mall specific plan. The project falls within the scope of what was studied in that EIR and no new or unusual environmental effects have been identified beyond those previously analyzed. And all applicable mitigation measures from the certified EIR will still apply. As a result, no further environmental review is required. in accordance with the westminster municipal code public hearing notices were mailed to property owners and occupants within a 500 foot radius of the project site boundaries notices were also published in the newspaper posted at the project site and on public bulletin boards the applicant also voluntarily elected to send public hearing notice notices to owners twice in March and another time in April. The applicant also voluntarily held an open house style community meeting on March 12th earlier this year. So one correction to the slide two written comments were submitted one was posted on the website and the second one was received at 4.58 p.m. So there are copies were provided to the commissioners at the dais as well as is available in the council chambers lobby. So to summarize, the proposed project is consistent with the vision and development standards of the Westminster Mall specific plan. It supports the city's affordable housing goals by providing nine deed restricted units for low income households while offering a high quality townhome product. The project exceeds state required parking minimums and the traffic study confirms there are no significant impacts to surrounding streets. Lastly, the recommended conditions of approval include coordination measures to ensure future integration with shared infrastructure as the broader mall site redevelops over time. this evening the planning commission is being asked to review the projects affordable housing density bonus development review and tentative track map applications. Planning commission is here to make a formal recommendation to the city council. As outlined in the municipal code the council is the final decision making body and your recommendation will be forwarded to them for their consideration. staff recommends that the commission recommend approval of the project as detailed in attachment one planning commission resolution number 25-009. However the commission also has the option to recommend approval with specific modifications and they also have the commission has the discretion to recommend denial. a denial is considered it must be supported by specific findings outlined in the municipal code and a draft resolution for denial is included which would need to be supplemented by any findings made by the commission. This concludes staff' s presentation and I' d be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

thank you very much. Quick question any commissioners do you need any time to read the late communication from 458 or do we need to take a five minute break so you can read through that or are we good? Okay, okay, great.

We'll just go go ahead and move on so now's the time we can ask questions of staff Tony anything from you for staff Okay Question have you had a chance to inform on resident within the pilot feet is usual and what is the result and

That is correct. Public hearing notices were mailed to all residents, property owners, as well as occupants within 500 feet of the project site boundaries. So mailers were sent out once in March. and then again more recently in April. As a result of that, the staff has not received any written comments from the residents. Any residents were invited to come and speak and share their comments in person here tonight. But as a result of the overall public hearing notification requirements, staff did receive two written comments which were furnished to the planning commissioners.

Thank you. thank you. thank you. anything for staff? I have a question. Can you tell me what

So the EROP stands for, it's an acronym, it stands for Equitable Reimbursement Obligation Program. And that is something that was laid out in the specific plan as a mechanism to make sure everybody pays their fair share for certain things such as retail, open space, right of way. At this time, there is not an approved EROP by the city council. It was always the plan that we would wait until there was some application submitted, there was a better general understanding of the site. Before we move forward with that because there's certain assumptions you have to make before You know making a formula to figure out exactly what though the fair share is and some of those calculations So we are in coordination with the property owners on that Financing mechanism, but at this time we do not have an EROP to share Any other questions for staff

In this late communication letter, the owner of Macy's and Sears is complaining that the owner is not being in contact with them at all or explaining what's going on here. Have you guys been involved with this to find out if he's sharing all what he's doing with them?

So that is certainly something that city staff has encouraged the applicant to do. I wouldn't be able to provide details on that. I would encourage you to relay that question to the applicant, but that is something that we have continuously encouraged the applicant to do, very well knowing that there are these other obligations that they would need to meet. So there are obligations between the private property owners and amendments that would need to be made to those private agreements. But that's being said, since they are private agreements, typically the city is not involved, nor are we privy to those private agreements and those private transactions. So it typically is not a basis to provide corrections to an applicant and to deem an application incomplete. It's something that we encourage them to do and to go through following their own timeline. But it's not typically something that's within the purview of these land use applications.

Thank you.

In regards to the two written communications received, staff has had an opportunity to read them?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay, and do you have any concerns that you wish to share with the Planning Commission at this time?

There are no concerns from staff's standpoint at this point.

Are there any statements in here that are inaccurate or incorrect that we should be advised of?

Yes. There's nothing factually inaccurate within the letters. There were questions that were raised. Vice Chair Anderson, if there's a specific question that you would like me to answer, but I would say that from staff's standpoint, there isn't anything specific that raises a concern as a result of receiving these written comments.

Okay. There's nothing here that would invalidate the application at this time?

That's correct. There's nothing that would invalidate the application.

So if I may, Commissioner Anderson, there are private dealings that will have to go on with this application, but they do not impact the city's approval of a land use permit. Those will be separate from this application, and they would be between the owners of the properties. The city would not be involved in those, and they would not reflect upon this application.

But will the city get involved later on if something... went on between neighbors, like in business?

No. It's a private matter at that point. It would be a contract matter between, I'm assuming, lawyers from both sides. It is not anything the city would be involved with. It would be akin to you having a complaint with your neighbor. So whatever happened, the city is not liable? No. Those are private discussions. The city is outside of those. Okay. Thank you.

And just one other, you pointed out that the units would be low income. So what is the maximum income somebody could have in order to qualify as low income?

Give me just one moment. I know that the numbers are determined, as you can imagine, the household income. It increases every single year, and those are determined by data that's provided by the county, and I'm just trying to find that information. If anybody can find it before me, feel free to jump in.

Well, per the staff report, page 5 of 12 of the staff report, low-income household in Orange County is defined as earning no more than 80% of the area median income, which ranges from $88,400 for a one-person household to $126,250 for a four-person household. And those are the 2024 HCD income limits.

Okay, and that would apply to this project as affordable?

That's correct, yes.

Okay, thank you.

A question to you about the population increase in that area. So what is the closest fire department to that area? Closest distance of the fire department?

We'll check and make sure. She can get you an exact distance, but this project has been run by the Orange County Fire Department, and they have no issues with servicing the property.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Not affordable, and how many first-time buyers?

There are no first-time buyer provisions with this? There's none. No, that would be, those are normally programs that are run by the city or the county or the state. Those are not normally programs that an individual developer would run. And the city of Westminster currently does not have a first-time buyer program. Yes.

And if I may add, the specific selection of the reviewing applications for income eligibility and ensuring that the project is sold to individuals that are within that income level, those are all aspects that are handled through the developer or the builder at the time of occupancy. So typically, the city, in terms of that,

not directly involved in the selection and review of Eligibility requirements of specific tenants or in this case it would be potential buyers If I may add on to that though there actually will also be an affordable housing agreement that the developer has to enter into with the city to ensure that those nine units will remain as low income and there's provisions regarding equity sharing if they're sold etc etc and So there may be an initial where the city will double check to make sure they're eligible buyers at the first go. So city will still kind of monitor those nine units to make sure and ensure that they are affordable. Plus there will be a restriction on them as to the affordability.

I have one question myself. Regarding an SB 330 application and a site-specific plan under the general plan provision, quick question. I' ve combed case law and I' ve looked at the cases that have come out. We' ve had many meetings here. Is there any reason why a specific plan needs to entertain an SB 330 application?

So, yes, an SB 330 application applies to general plan, specific plan zoning, and any development review application that's involving a housing project. And also density bonus applies to specific plans too. So if they ask for incentives and waiver, that also can include specific plan conditions. So SB 330 does still apply to specific plans. They're not... the city is not going to be able to do that because they' re being ignored because they' re encompassed in the whole part of general plans.

even though the city spent $400,000 developing a specific plan a builder can come in and ask for unlimited waivers on a project?

under density bonus law yes.

Regarding the access to the premise, do they have a gated access in the future, a provision for future in case the people want to have a gated access to that?

Yes, so the proposed project, there are gates proposed along certain boundaries of the project site itself, but in terms of restricting access, so typically what you'll see in gated communities where even vehicular access is limited into the site, that is not proposed. So vehicles can still come freely into and out of the proposed development, but there are Parts of the overall site if you refer to the landscape plans that do include some gates just to you know Enclose it from certain from certain segments of the project site boundaries and I did have an answer to you with regard to your other question about the closest fire station and So there's actually two fire stations and they're both roughly about 1.5 miles away. There's one over on Westminster Boulevard that's at 7351 Westminster Boulevard. And then there's another one at 6061 Heffley Street. So that would be the closest one to the project site. So 1.5 miles away.

So did they measure the time consumed to drive to the site in case of a fire?

Yeah, I mean, certainly with all development applications, it gets routed to our Orange County Fire Authority. Typically at this stage, when we're really looking at it conceptually, they're looking for deal breakers. They're looking at whether or not there is an increase in the number of occupants that would be using the site and if that would increase. necessitate like building another fire station or increasing their service levels. And none of those questions or concerns were raised from the fire authority at that time. So there were no concerns raised by OCFA with regard to providing fire service, nor were there any questions or concerns raised related to like water availability so that in the event of an emergency in the future, they wouldn't be able to service and get adequate water to the site.

So does this project meet the requirement for kids to go to the school of our area within certain distance?

I mean school for people. Does that have, I mean, I don't know if that's part of our jurisdiction.

We do not route to the school district. The school district is mandated to take any student in Westminster into a school. So we have no concerns with school availability.

All right, and another last question about street bump. Does they have a street bump inside the premise to reduce the speed of people when they use that as an access to make it faster to go outside?

I don't believe that design element is proposed within the project.

take that into account because it will be important for the people in that area with the high density of population.

We'll take that under advisement.

Okay. Let's go ahead and call up the applicant, please.

Gordon Jones and David Stern.

Mr. Chairman and the rest of the commissioners, At long last, we're here before you tonight and grateful for the opportunity. My name is Gordon Jones. I'm with the True Life Companies. I'm the regional vice president of Southern California. Our group is a team of veteran home building and development professionals that... is very excited to bring this project before you. Our group has 10 communities right now that we're working on in different jurisdictions throughout the Southland. It's been a long road. It's been well over four years, going on five actually. since we first started working on this project, working with Connie Sillon, the owner of the current building, in terms of explaining and getting through all the process of the specific plan itself. It was, as you all know, and most of you have been around during the several year process it took, just to get to this point has been quite something. And Connie has been incredibly patient. I have to go on record and say that. She's been just absolutely terrific trying to understand, you know, the dynamics of this very complicated specific plan and then the dynamics of several property owners within. It'd be much simpler if it was, you know, one owner on the entire site, but it's not. As Stephanie said, the specific plan set up to enable those owners to get together and work through joint development and cooperation and all of those kinds of things that are private in nature. Believe me, I know that was asked about early in the recent letter that came over. We understand all of that and we'll be... right in the middle of uh... working with washington prime group with the folks that shop off kaiser as far as uh... those issues so we're Not only that, but it's a condition of our approval that we have to do that so we understand before we could go to a final set of plans and a final map that those things will be accomplished and accomplished to the satisfaction of staff. We're absolutely thrilled to be here. As I said, we're very grateful for the staff involvement and help and guidance over the last four going on five years. particularly Adolfo, and it just seemed like he was integral early on in helping us understand how things would work, should work, kind of what the vision is for the specific plan. And then even the city attorney at the time with Ross was very clear on things, was able to clear a lot of questions for us. And then recently, Stephanie has just been... I'll just say this, she's super, just her communication skills are fantastic. I want to mention that too. Just easy to get a hold of and we're dealing with a lot of different cities and that's really important to be able to communicate and communicate easily. It's really been good and I just have to point that out as well. We're grateful for that. Thank you, Stephanie. We think our community is the perfect transition um the you know we're on that western boundary as as you saw on the on the uh schematic that was shown earlier uh we're against the detached single family in huntington beach on the west side of everest street and we just you know we feel like this project is really does a great job of transitioning from that single family living to What we offer which is for sale three-story townhomes all with two car attached garages as a transition then and then into Some other more intense uses as you get into the specific plan which you know the vision calls for higher multifamily density some more townhomes like ours a combination of retail uses that create a a real placemaking sense of arrival, all those things. And so we just think our project is super, it just really fits in the particular location it is for the overall specific plant. We're, I know we have, I don't know if the 12 applies to both of us, so I don't want to take up too much more. Dave Stern, who I'm going to introduce right now, has been handling the day-to-day on this project and working hand-in-hand with Stephanie as we've gone through this application. He's got a few slides he wants to share, if that's okay, and present a little more finer detail about our about our community, and so I'm gonna turn it over to Dave Stern and let him do that.

Thanks, Gordon. Chair Wolbert, planning commissioners, pleasure to be here tonight. Thank you to staff for a very thorough and detailed staff report. As Gordon said, they've been great to work with. Let's see, as far as, oh, there we go. So I'm gonna blow through a couple of the first slides because the staff did a really good job. We don't need to dwell on it. There we go, okay. That's a good arrow. I think we can go to probably the third slide. That's the zoning and the general plan. Everyone knows that. I'd like to dwell on this one for a little bit because, as was mentioned, there's a lot of flexibility in the mall-specific plan about what can go where. But in that red area was really seen as a residentially focused area to act as a buffer, as everyone has said. And there are 3,000 units allowed in the specific plan. We all know that. But the city has arena numbers also. And there are arena allocations for the mall site as well. And in this case, it's about 2,550 units. So that's kind of where we need to get to. And we have nearly 90, 89 townhomes. So it's a great first step towards getting there. Go to the next one. So I just like to go over a few of the sort of legislative things. We are SB 330, that's Housing Accountability Act and the Project Streamlining Act. And this is a conforming by right project under that because we comply with zoning and the general plan. It provides much needed new homes and home ownership opportunities in a severely constrained housing market. It is CEQA exempt because we are consistent with a specific plan and it's EIR. And as mentioned, we are under state density bonus law because we are doing 10% low-income housing. And that will be de-restricted. And what does that mean? It's 80% AMI. And if you were to translate that to a sales price today, it would be about around $260,000. So that adjusts every year, and it does vary by household size, but that's sort of the current average. Also, we have agreed to participate and pay our fair share in the city's future public financing district, or CFD. to take part in the retail preservation fee, I think I've also, We heard it called EROP as well. And I would point out that under SB 330 we're not legally required to do that because under SB 330 you can't require a project to go and pay a fee or an assessment that has not been adopted yet and does not have a specific amount. However, we recognize the importance of you know being a participant in the larger solution and so we have agreed to the conditions subject to the cap and the details that are in our conditions of approval and we fully support that. Also we're going to utilize existing infrastructure as being the first out of the gate We utilize existing water lines, existing sewer lines, existing access points. They are private roads. They are covered under the Mall REA. So we do have access rights to those.

Go to the next slide.

So as we mentioned, 89 residential town homes, 80 market rate, nine deed restricted. Those nine affordable units will be scattered throughout the property. They're not in one area, and they are exactly the same as the market rate units. You will not be able to tell which one is a low income unit and what is a market rate unit. Our density average is about 24 units per acre. which we think is kind of the perfect transition between that more dense, intense, mixed use urban core, which will be in the center of the mall site and towards the freeway, and to the single family uses of our neighbors to the west. Thank you. We have nearly 14,000 square feet of common area open space that does meet the overall area requirement of 10% of the site area. We also have 8,200 square feet of private open space. We have a community gathering area and pocket park, which will be located adjacent to our secondary entrance, which is right off the mall ring road. And we have a central Paseo in the center of the site. As mentioned, we also carry through along Westminster Mall Drive and also along Edwards the expanded residential paseo that is envisioned to take people ultimately into the center of the site. So we are following the mall-specific plan in terms of those residential enhanced walkways or parkways. And further, right at the intersection of Westminster Mall Drive and Edwards, we are doing some traffic calming features. One of the concerns that was expressed to us and our traffic engineer from the residents across the street was the concern about mall traffic going directly across Edwards and into their neighborhood. So with the traffic calming features we're doing, mall traffic will have to turn left or right on Edwards. They can't cut straight across. and we'll be doing some median work as well in Westminster Mall Drive. These are a couple of our elevations. We have a blend of coastal contemporary and California craftsman style architecture, two different elevations and three color schemes, and we use different materials and pop-outs to break up the massing. Am I allowed to continue? I'm almost done.

We can ask the commission if they'd like to grant you another couple of minutes. Anybody opposed?

No.

Okay. How about another four minutes enough? Perfect. Thank you.

Yeah, I wanted to point out the changes that we made to our original package and I know that staff included them as sort of slip sheets. And we received some comments from commissioners through staff and we thought they were actually very good and very constructive and so we made some changes. This is the building on the corner of Westminster Mall Drive and Edward Street. And as you can see, we broke up the massing of the building and we included some modern elements with sort of a false flat roof. So we have more ins and outs in the buildings now. We have more differentiation in materials. And then we also added a new color scheme, a third color scheme with some cooler blues and grays to give more of a modern coastal look.

Okay.

And then as mentioned by staff, we added some enhancements for the side elevations wherever they are visible from the external streets. That includes the pop out there on the first and second story and additional siding material on that and above. So just to summarize, The mall specific plan provides a comprehensive vision that we believe we are following. The proposed true life project and stolen property provides an important first step in realizing that vision. I don't think I can undersell momentum. This is the start of something great on the site. We provide transition between the single family uses and the internal mixed use core. We offer the nine Deed-restricted low-income housing units will be spread throughout the site. We are consistent with the zoning, the city's overall vision for the area, and the specific plan. We are by right under SB 330 and state density bonus law. And lastly, we will pay our fair share for the future mall redevelopment needs for infrastructure and services under the city's future CFD. The last thing I just wanted to mention relative to the late communication that you received, we are in continued communication with both Shopoff and with Washington Prime. We have talked to them as recently as today. One of the key people we have been speaking with has recently left Shopoff, so that might have been the reason for the late letter. And most of it is factually true, but some things are not. We don't technically need their permission. They don't have the necessary retail space to require that. However, we intend to work with them just as with Washington Prime, and we do have a condition of approval prior to final map to have any changes that need to be made to that mall operating agreement in the CC&Rs to allow for residential development in this project. must be done before the map is recorded. So there's nothing in there between those private matters that would impact your decision tonight to grant the entitlements for this project. Therefore, we are asking for your recommendation of approval and we thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the housing of Westminster. Thank you.

What I'd like to do, unless somebody has an objection to it, I would actually like to open up the rest of the public hearing, have the rest of the public be able to speak on it, then we can invite the applicant back up for any rebuttal, and we can ask questions at that time. Does that sound good? Yeah, that's a good idea. Fantastic. So let's go ahead and open the public hearing and take the rest of the speakers. Thank you.

First, we have Carrie Link.

First, I'd like to thank Commissioner Bowie. You had some really good points, points now that I don't have to make.

Thank you. I own my home. Bring the microphone down a little, please. Thank you.

I own my home, and I live across the street from the mall on the west side that you're talking so much about. So here's the deal. The letter from Shopoff actually addressed a lot of my questions. And some of the things were kind of important. There hasn't been as much talk about the big overall look of this anymore, the big plan. And I understand Connie Stiller really wanting to get a jump on this. Because at the time when we actually had the last meeting, Connie was regulated to having a park on her land. And there was no way for her to make money. And we all recognize that. So this seems like a fairly decent plan. But Shopoff's letter made some pretty clear things about fire and water and sewage. And those are all really valid statements, okay? And the big one is, if you don't live in my neighborhood, you don't know, but the traffic there is heinous already because of a school. There is traffic really badly, congested everywhere, when they drop off kids at 7.30 and when they pick them up at three o'clock. And I know you've done your studies, but it depends on the time that you've done the study. That's very critical. If you're only doing the study at like 11 a.m. when all the kids are in school and there's no crazy people picking up kids, you have no idea how bad it can get. And these are important measures. So when he said, will we have the time to be able to get a fire out? That is real. That is absolutely real. And you need to be aware of all of these things. And what is your overall picture of this now? Shopoff actually gave you really valid things. What do you want retail to look like now that retail is going away? What about maybe a convention center, a small one? Or a park-like setting where food trucks come in and you have an open setting with food trucks and smaller retail establishments to make money. And to have things like of that nature or more of a large community center where people pay to be able to host events. But these are other ideas that have never come up even in planning. We're just thinking more like traditional retail spaces where nobody's shopping anymore and things of that nature. Maybe even Amazon needs to have storefronts now. And Amazon is right down the street from us already. So there are other systems, there are other things that maybe Washington and Shop Off and Connie's group can come together and make it to where it's better for everybody in the community and not just a few. But I think before you move forward with this, you really, really need to think about how the density is going to be supported. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next we have Terry Raines.

Hello, the city is lucky that the applicant continued this hearing to tonight given staff's resolution fiasco last time. Now staff has materially changed the staff report and your role in this project without providing you a red line version explaining these substantial changes. A condition of approval was removed and others were substantially modified. It's great to finally see plans for the first mall site project. I hope you all study the 186 pages of the agenda report as I did and are prepared to ask thoughtful and informed questions and make comments. The devil is in the details. At first glance, the project provides more parking than state law exceptions mandate, but 38% of the two-car garages, all 34, plan two, three-bedroom, three-bath garages are just One-car deep wide garages forcing the owners that are deep, forcing the owners to tandem park in their own garages. Yet 20 smaller two-bedroom, two-bath units have regular two-car garages. It's deceptive. The word tandem is never mentioned. It's only illustrated in the floor plans at the end of Attachment 6. Occupants of these four cell units will likely work. Buyers avoid despised tandem parking garages like the plague. They're not practical for working families with busy varying schedules and lower resale values. Cars will end up parked in front of their garages with no driveways, even worse than at Westminster Village. Trash cans will have to be put out in front of the garages, adding to parking garage and circulation issues. The two guest parking locations with just one handicapped space will be ripe for abuse. All nine affordable units have the tandem parking garages and are for the highest lower income buyers at 80% AMI. Pricing will likely start just below that. Page 18 of the specific plan states, provide a diversity of housing types and a range of affordability conditions. Form number five was rightfully struck. Submit amendments to the approved development review investing tentative track map applications in future redevelopment results and changes To the private road access points or circulation, that was illegal. Key remaining conditions, number seven, the mall operating agreement and CC&Rs must be amended to allow residential use and development. Number eight, recorded covenant to participate in the future city infrastructure financing district amended to add an arbitrary cap of 1.6% total property tax rate. Number nine, submit governing CC&Rs. Number 10, a long-term maintenance agreement for the private roads, alleys, and courts with the funding source in the CC&Rs or as a separate recorded agreement. 16, pay the WNSP reimbursement fee. 26, Pay all city impact fees, 35, grossly amended language, but pay pro rata share of the city-initiated funding district, now with that same 1.6% cap. 38, pay the fair shape to the EROP for the retail preservation, now capped, though, at $650,000. And number 43, comply with all the mitigation matters. Page 45 states residential uses can be integrated into the project area, but should not be... the majority use of the expense of green and by Brent and come on anyway bottom line you have no legal recourse or no legal reason to deny this recommendation to the city council none.

Thank you. That's not a fire alarm right. Thank you perfect. Any more public speakers. that' s it for public speakers. I would like to bring the applicant back up for any rebuttal time against the public speakers and at that time I would like to open up for questions for the applicant.

relative to fire water and sewer on fire we did get a letter from the OCFA early on in our process they also require that you redo all the tests all the water pressure tests no more than six months before you start construction so we'll be doing that whole process again before any sticks go up in the air on water and sewer we are having ongoing discussions about exactly how you know whether it be public or privately maintained and how that will work with both City Water Department and Midway Sanitation District and the requirement the condition is that that all be worked out prior to approval of our final engineering plans or improvement plans and recordation of our final map for any traffic concerns we have our traffic engineer Jason pack available to answer those questions he's far more expert than I

No, I just I just wanted to make sure that the explanation around the affordable Housing and pricing and all that was adequately explained Okay

Hi, my name is Jessica Hadari. I'm the project manager on behalf of the True Life Companies, TTLC, Westminster, Sillon. I just wanted to acknowledge just a couple more things in regard to the school drop-off with traffic, and Jason Peck can address a little further, but the traffic study is conducted during peak hours, so that would be the busiest times, a.m. and p.m. And then with regard to the trash cans, We studied the trash can circulation and submitted that to the waste, the local waste. Sorry, I forget which.

Midway City, sanitary. Thank you.

And there are conditions of approval that we have to abide by in regard to long-term management, long-term maintenance agreement, excuse me, and providing our, like Dave said, we're gonna provide towards the CFD, which is not actually required for our project, but we do provide diversity and range overall with the specific plan. There's gonna be different types of residential uses throughout the site, so this is a great first step for that missing middle home ownership opportunity between the affordable housing and the for sale townhome pricing I think this is a great first step. Thank you.

thank you. Questions for the applicant? Any questions?

I noticed on your attachment seven you show the width it appears to me the width of the sidewalk for westminster mall drive would be five feet And then on another page within, I believe it's C6, it shows the Edwards sidewalk would be four feet.

He's our civil engineer partner. I am a civil engineer on the project. There's four feet at an easement and four feet that's going to be on the public right-of-way. So we have to dedicate public sidewalk easement that's only four feet wide and there's a portion of another on the public side. So to combine with...

So there will be five feet of pavement of concrete on the Edwards sidewalk?

Correct. Part of it in a sidewalk easement and part of it in the public right-of-way and then the parkway going out to the curb.

Okay. Then also regarding Edwards Street, the units are, what's the distance between somebody's front door and Edwards approximately, the sidewalk? Okay.

Well, it does vary because the units kind of go in and out, but generally it looks like on average it's about six feet from the edge of the front porch to the edge of the sidewalk.

Okay, so in my mind, since we do have within our city, we have a lot of pedestrian traffic, north and south and east and west. To me, that would be a concern that do the people have, they have their front door, but do they have any, is there any fencing to separate those folks transition?

Well, they have kind of a courtyard, if you will.

with a with a low wall that extends out in front of the front door so when i say six feet it's actually from the edge of that courtyard to the sidewalk but as far as accessibility to that person's front door is there something between their front door that would maybe just discourage people from wandering into the little alcove and camping out or

Yeah, there's usually a low gate, and it's not a high wall, so it's visible. So, for instance, if someone was camping out, the police would be able to see them as well as the residents.

Now, you say usually, will you have gates?

I think our intent is to have kind of a low gate.

And a wall. Yes.

There'll be walls. It's not a high wall.

I understand, but there will be a wall and a gate along those Edwards units? That's our intent. Okay. That's your intent, but that'll happen. Yes.

We intend for that to happen.

Yes Okay, and And maybe this was covered is this will there this be a gated community or will it be open for vehicle traffic? It is not a gated community not a gated.

Okay, there will be a couple of Pedestrian gates there's a pedestrian entrance further towards the corner But there is not a gated entrance for the vehicles.

Okay, and then water sewer electricity I think you had mentioned something to the effect that you're working with Midway City Sanitary and the city water will taxpayer will the taxpayers be Paying anything to make improvements if necessary to the water or sewer No, any improvements that are required we will be doing and as far as future maintenance if they become public they can be covered by the services in the future financing district and

So we know where all the connections are. We know where the alignment of the water and sewer is, and it's really a matter of do they end up being public or private. That's what the discussions are primarily about right now.

But again, so then would private development pay for, if necessary, the sewer and the water lines if they needed to be increased?

Well, yes. Anything that needs to be built to serve our site will be paid for by us, by the developers. Okay.

That's good. And then again, so when your project is finished, ultimately, there will be, along Edwards, there will be the low walls, as you said, and gates.

Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. Commissioner Anderson, his project is very similar to the one on It's called the Cobblestone Lane. It's on Hoover and Trask. It was built by the Olsen in 1996. Same townhome style. But that one is gated also to have the fence and the small wall.

The little gates. Same. Okay, thank you.

Any questions? A question is, is Mr. Stefan Logan here? Is he here? Stefan Logan?

No, we spoke to him this afternoon. He... said he was not going to come, but he, you know, he understands that we're going to be getting together here in the next week, hopefully. We asked him to walk through all of his concerns. We feel like we've got great solutions for all the things that he brought up, but you know, we'll definitely sit down with Steven.

Okay. I foresee this project will increase the population in that area. Henceforth, I think that in the future, the Edward Street will be expanded and improving not only in the width of the street, And also the sewer, underground sewer has to be upgraded. So do you or the city has any plan to ask the tenant to participate in put a fair share to the improvement of that area? Because that will affect the city a lot in terms of funds to improve the area.

That is my question. So there are no plans to enlarge Edwards at this point? The mall-specific plan calls for Edwards as is, and that is why the applicant is showing their build-out to the edge of curb. If we were looking to improve the street, they wouldn't be able to do that build structure. As far as improvements, any improvements that need to be made to infrastructure to serve the project will be paid by the applicant. The city will not pay for hookups. We won't pay. If they need to go from a 12-inch pipe to a 15-inch pipe, that would all be on the applicant.

Okay. Yes, and there is an existing sewer that runs through the site, okay, that... we need to do a little bypass of. Ultimately, when the larger mall development moves forward and we find out what is to the south of us, there may be, and we're having discussions with Midway about this, there may be a sewer relocation. We don't know yet, but ultimately the CFD that would go on to the project, not just our project, but the mall as a whole, could finance that. But just for 90 units, we're going to utilize the existing sewer that is on site.

And I might mention that that sewer handles a lot of the property south of our, we're not just sewering and building a line just for our project. We're upsized to handle everything that drains through us.

I'm looking at your design and then did you have provision for future solar power installed on the roof of each unit to comply to the Energy Act?

Yeah, the answer is yes. It's California building code now. You have to do that, so yes.

And those units still have gas applied to each unit, or it will be abandoned? No more gas using?

No gas appliances.

OK. Everything's going that way.

It's all electric.

Any other questions?

just one other. Regarding the lady who spoke she had the concern about the traffic in the area and said in the morning and in the afternoon that' s when it' s heavy. What were the hours of the traffic study?

I' m going to invite jason pack to come up here and address your question.

Good evening commissioners. My name is Jason pack. I'm a principal at fair and peers Recognize some of you from my time working on the general plan as well as the mall specific plan So I did all the traffic work and then was brought in on this project to ensure consistency with all that analysis and ensure that the project was within everything that was evaluated for the mall environmental document So to answer your question directly, we look at the morning peak, which is typically 7 to 9 in the morning, as well as the evening peak, 4 to 6 in the evening. So those were the hours evaluated in the mall-specific plan EIR. We did a comparison to basically ensure that this project is within the envelope of development that's allowed by the mall-specific plan EIR. This project, when you take out the appliance store, put in these town homes, we're talking about an extra 13 peak hour trips plus or minus in the morning and those evening peak periods. So again, it is an increase, but it's very minimal increase relative to the thousand plus peak hour trips that the mall specific plan EIR environmentally cleared through that process during those peak periods.

Did you take into consideration the school hours?

So the morning drop-off is absolutely accounted for in that. The afternoon pickup called the 2 to 3 or 4 period, we might capture some of it when we started our accounts at 4. And then we do capture the peak period between that 4 to 6. But if there's a mid-afternoon pickup period, we wouldn't have captured that in our accounts. But I will say there's not a ton of traffic that's anticipated from this specific site to go into that neighborhood when we did the public outreach as part of the mall specific plan. What we heard from the community loud and clear was the concern of traffic, potential traffic from the mall going into the community, which is why the specific plan includes a variety of improvements to try and minimize that cut through traffic. So there was a slide that Stephanie had shown earlier that we look at traffic diverters, the mall specific plan even calls for relocation of Mar Vista within the mall. So there's a variety of measures that the mall specific plan ultimately in the future will develop to try and minimize that potential for people entering that neighborhood and kind of protect the neighborhood as well as the schools from additional traffic. But this project will be responsible for the improvements at Royal Oak specifically since that's where it's adding most of the traffic. Thank you. Yep. Thank you.

thank you Mr. Chair. any questions for the applicant? I have a couple questions myself. I assume you have approval of the majority voting shares of the mall operating

Yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, we're working through some of the nuances of it. The condition of approval that included the cap on what we call the RPP, the retail preservation, and then the CFD all-in tax rate, those are things that were just kind of happening at the very... uh... you know uh... last minute as far as the back and forth between where we were on that condition we had to get a lot of analysis done you know to to make sure it was it was good make sure the cfd rate was within the market in orange county which it's actually higher than market but we agreed to it and so those things are still to be discussed and formally documented with the other property owners. We've made them all aware of those numbers and those are kind of critical things that we're working through. There's some other things that we'll also work through as far as just some joint development agreements, some temporary construction easement agreements, things like that. But as far as the amendment to the operating agreement, as it's called, which is the REA, and the CC&Rs, yes, I mean those conversations continue and we know we'll have those wrapped up before we bring in our final

and final plans applications so Question is from a legal perspective, and this is just between you and the other owners of the mall site Do you have voting authority or voting shares in what happens in the mall agreement or no it calls for?

I mean we have three and a half percent of the total land area right so the really Washington prime is the entity that has the Voting shares is really up to them If they don't like your project, this thing is dead in the water. If they don't like it, it doesn't go forward.

That's the bottom line. To me, it just seems a little bit cart and horse here. You're asking the city for approval when you haven't got the majority voting owner of the mall project for approval. Not that it matters from the city's perspective. We can choose to approve or not approve. To me, as a commissioner, it just seems a little bit of cart and horse. I would think you would want to bring us a project or perhaps maybe even enter into a development agreement with the city how come you chose not to enter into development agreement with the city and instead wanted to apply under an sb 330 application.

Well we just we simply made our application based on what was available to us.

You could have picked a normal development application why sb 330.

Well quite frankly we're doing so many things with all of our conditions I don't know what the development agreement would have included that we're not including in our conditions.

We may never know because it doesn't sound like you know, they're interested in getting into a development agreement with the city So we've got we've got a couple of things here. I have a couple specific questions about your site number one It looked like in the pictures and the drawings in the layout part of your units and warrior ingress into your I think it's the south ingress is actually overlapping on the current road in the mall. Is that correct? it looked like from the drawings that I saw you' re actually moving over into your like half of the road?

the ring road actually touches the corner of our property so we' re not moving the ring road we had early discussions many of them with city manager' s office with adolfo because we' re the first out of the gate the instructions were let' s go ahead and tie to existing infrastructure. This is going to be built first. We're not moving the ring road and we're not touching anything or taking access off of our property.

So it actually... What if the ring road moves?

And it can move. It can move south of us. So we have one fixed point, okay? And granted... to the north where westminster mall and the ring road touch can only move so much move a little bit and south of there can move a lot.

there' s no in and out of the project on an existing street called edwards that we know for sure is not going to move every other street is subject to move based upon the site plan that is eventually approved by Well Possibly I mean we don't the ring road may not be a ring road Correct I mean they that could not be part of the site plan We don't have a site plan to know if that road is effectively staying there or not. I

believe the vision was not to take access from Edwards and I mean staff can verify whether or not there or perhaps Jason can answer that if there are even a butters rights available

Yeah, so when we worked on the mall specific plan, there are a few components of the specific plan that are set in stone, if you will, as it relates to access. So we did talk about, or the mall specific plan talks about primary access as well as secondary access. And the mall access road, basically opposite Royal Oaks, that was identified pretty much to stay in its place as part of the specific plan. A specific plan also does talk about internal circulation and some sort of preservation of a, I don't want to call it a ring road, but a circular circulation system because what we heard of the community outreach was the desire for traffic not to go out onto Edwards or Bolsa to go around to other parts of the site, but to be accommodated completely within the site. So although the specific plans allows flexibility for that loop road to potentially move in the future, some connectivity of a loop type road or some sort of road connectivity within the specific plan is clearly called out in the specific plan. I would say the only modification for the access points from that internal roadway network to either BOLSA or Edwards within the specific plan is the relocation of Bar Vista. And that one is, I'll call it an optional one that was evaluated in the specific plan, mostly because we didn't know exactly what was going to happen with Macy's at the time. Macy's really wanted it to stay the community really wanted it to move north or move away and not opposite of Mar Vista So that's what the specific plan for built in so chair point Yes, the loop road could potentially shift the access point to the north. That's pretty fixed as well as the cross-section of it and and so the access for this site specifically being off the loop road where it connects in at their property boundary and then that connection to the north are going to be two fixed components as far as we can tell right now. So hopefully that provides clarity.

A little bit about as clear as mud I think because in other words it could move the other developers and the other owners of the property could move those roads.

Potentially they can move it around you would get correct.

the only way to foolproof your development is to make sure there' s an inlet on edwards and you' re not reliant on other landowners to provide you with access to your site correct?

I will say that through the rea we have access rights over the road so if they move the road essentially we should still have access rights over that' s part of the operating agreement.

and we talked a little bit about that as far as the EROP and things like that and I know that' s up to the city and it' s in the city' s hands. Ada wasn' t brought up yet the ada units are they all one specific model? Do you have ada compliance I know we have steps going down to edwards but do we have ingress for ada wheelchair accessibility on these units?

our architects can answer your question.

we have one unit type and those are typically on the ends of the buildings that are going to be the adaptable units. I' m not sure if that answers your question.

it' s one specific floor plan?

yes.

does that one specific floor plan have wheelchair accessibility to the front door?

as far as path of travel that

and then just to address one of the other public comments actually two more number one there was a contention brought up about tandem garages why was that chosen to be put into your project site that seems highly inconvenient to have tandem garages.

it's it just gets back to the targeted density that we had to achieve to make the project economically feasible and you know there's kind of the rule of thumb in different markets we built a lot of homes and a lot of different cities in california and different markets have we' ve had a couple of times where we' ve had some rules around tandem you don' t want to exceed and here in orange county those tandem garages But 35%, 40% is typically you don't want to have more than that number of tandems in a project to still be able to achieve sales to the consumer. And so we're right at that, but that's what tandem garages are about, to help achieve a higher density than you would normally.

And one final question for me, and then we'll see if we have any more. You heard one local resident also talk about the fact that we don't have a master site plan. And that's, I think, a concern, a major concern of the residents in the area and the city and everybody else that's concerned about this project. We don't have a master site plan yet to even understand what this project's going to look like. How do you feel about that? I mean, are you guys comfortable with trying to get your project off the ground, even though we don't know what the other 100 or 97 acres is? You're 3% of the project, and you're trying to push this through, but the residents are going, well, we don't even know what this thing's going to look like yet. It just seems like maybe there's a little PR. Would you like to have any comments to address that?

Well, it's, as I said in my opening comments... we wouldn' t have brought an application to the city that we didn' t think was the best transition use for the piece of property when you consider when you look at the red residential we' ve talked about the need to have residential in this area where we are and you look at the need to have what I would call a medium density above single a two-story townhouse. This fits perfectly into that. Secondly the three-story townhome is a very livable product. It' s a terrific much better than a two-story townhome because of the big main floor open family kitchen living that you get with that three-story concept. You have a garage and a room down below and maybe a powder kitchen and family that really looks great in a townhome configuration and then you know the bedrooms above typically so it's just a it's a home architectural floor plan and style that's been super successful throughout California and particularly in coastal California. where higher density is needed and so we're super comfortable with this being the first project to come along in the specific plan finally just to a get a lot of these questions that we've all had about how is this all going to work answered bring people to the table to create answers and we think that this particular project fits beautifully because of what's existing You have to deal with that first and foremost. If you look at what could be, we're looking at the specific plan. We're talking to the other owners about what they're thinking. We've seen various other sketches of what could be. But we just feel like what we're proposing and what we want to build is going to fit, whether it's a park open space, whether it's a lifestyle retail next to us, whether it is a single family detached. If that would come through, all of it is very compatible. Any other questions? Go ahead.

When you add a little bit of density, it does help to keep the price point down somewhat. And under the mall-specific plan, this site could be much more dense than it is proposed. It could be stacked flats. It could be common garages. It could be all sorts of things. So we thought this was the best compromise between what's going to be much more dense to the east, what exists to the west, and something that makes the project better. economically viable And it's much-needed housing for the region.

Any other questions for the applicant? The tandem parking, is it because you run out of space and you want to lose that space you squeeze the unit and made it like that?

So you want... Yeah, the tandem is a...

I saw the photos. Yeah, it provides for a narrower... Yeah, it's a very skinny, long unit.

Yes, and those are the, you know, it offers different price segments within the project, so those will be our most affordable... homes.

So those are the ones that will be affordable homes, the small, tiny ones?

Well, not just the affordable, you know, the truly, you know, deed restricted, but those will be the lower price point homes within the community. What's the percentage of the lower home as affordable? Well, like I said, I think it's at 34% are those tandems, which are the lowest price of the...

But they wouldn't be specifically is the small one, tiny one that's squeezed in like that, right? Could be any unit.

The nine units that are slotted for affordable?

I've seen a lot of them squeezed in.

Right. They're not all that, though. I think that's what they're saying.

I'm just asking a question. Clarify that. Yes.

Okay.

A question? Go ahead. Do you have the common area for kids to play in this area? Of course. Did you reserve a certain place for the kids?

A lot of times, what we have are the private common areas, which are decks and the little courtyards that Dave described. In these kinds of developments, there's the 10% open space that we provided, but we're also part of a specific plan that's planned to have that was a nine acres of parks and open space as far as nine and a half acres of parks walkable so you know to to this community so our plan is you know there are existing parks. around the community, both in Huntington and in Westminster, but primarily it's looking to the future, the vision of the specific plan, as to have the real parks and sizable park areas that the kids will be able to go and play. These homes, they're targeted toward people that are just getting married, just getting started with their life. there' s the kids we' ve got some three bedroom plans for those with kids but we don' t think there' s going to be a lot of kids like you' d find in a normal single family

In our little common area, you know, we have a turf play activity area, barbecue, picnic, bike racks, et cetera. And there could be like a small play structure placed in that turf activity area if that's important. But we do have an area for folks to go.

Good question. Within the neighborhood. How many trash dumpsters are you going to provide to the units?

a nice thing about this because we have a loop system we don't have these long alleys is we don't need dumpsters so we actually have bins inside the garages there is room in the garages for the three bins and the trash company can come and put them out in front on trash day and they will get picked up.

HOA will manage the cans that need to be put back up. That's something they'll be managing.

One question about the safety for the tenants. Do you have the sprinkler head in each room or in the confined area for each tenant?

Yes, the units will be sprinkled per California building code. Okay.

So yes. Good. And what's the height of the ceiling space?

The height of the ceilings are generally nine feet.

Okay. I saw you asking for a reduction from 12 to nine.

Correct. So under the existing rules at 12 feet is a commercial height. We're obviously not building commercial. So we decided to use our one concession under the density bonus law to move that down to nine feet, which is more appropriate for residential.

Okay. And where did you hide all of the condensing units outside of the building? I didn't see it yet.

That's always an issue, believe me.

So there's a couple different conditions along Edwards, along the sides of the building. I don't know if we have a site plan that we can bring up for reference. Yeah, you'll just put back on the presentation, please So along building three there and two Yeah, there's along the sides of the buildings and then internally they're in the fronts of the buildings.

Yes Very good, which which is really an improvement over a lot of these these three-story townhome Communities that I've seen there in the front and And so I think that this is a really good change that we were able to implement to have them on the side.

Thank you. Don?

Go ahead. Okay. Any other questions for the applicant?

Again, you've mentioned this before, but I think it's worth mentioning again, and that is what is your, I guess, entry-level price point for the project for the non, I guess, not the 10, but the rest of the units?

The market rate homes? Yes. They're going to be in the 800s up into the 900s.

Okay. Thank you.

For a townhome? Yes. Wow.

Yes. Hold on one second. We don't have any more. Unless we ask you to come back up, we just don't have any more public comment for that. I'm willing to let you speak for another two minutes. Anybody else have an objection? Come on up. We'll let you speak for two minutes.

I really appreciate this, but I just wanted you to be aware. Come forward to the mic. I just read this article on the Orange County Business Journal. The Washington Prime Group has announced plans to offload its properties. It was revealed yesterday. The portfolio purging, which includes Westminster Mall...

Speak into the microphone, please. Bring it down to you. That's okay.

The portfolio purging, which includes Westminster Mall, follows the company's 2021 Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Okay, so Washington... prime group is unloading their partial in all of this, all right? So I know we got the specific group, this big specific plan going with this group, but they're going to be selling all of this and we don't know how many more parcels or any of that is going to happen with all of this. and how much more density and how many more of these little people are going to be coming in to do development.

when did you say this article was from?

it' s from yesterday actually the announcement was made yesterday and this article came out today the 16th from the orange county business journal.

I think Ms. Raines, you may have a couple more comments. Does anybody object on the dais to have Terry back up for another three minutes?

No.

Okay. Terry, would you please...

Sorry, but I ran out of time in my original comments. But there is movement amongst the major owners. And I think it's going to be for the good. I think it's going to be more consolidated approach. That's my hope. I'm surprised there was an article today, though, because I didn't anticipate that. But anyway... The bottom line is this. Yes, I had concerns about the tandem parking. But they do have conditions of approval that mandate, and the HOA will mandate, that all parking must be inside your garage. And we know how well that doesn't work. However, it's very clear when you're doing it for purchase, you get a copy of the CC&Rs before you purchase it, and you pretty much have to agree to that. Because I was concerned that the guest parking then would be abused by the owner's who weren't using their garages for parking but were using their garages for storage. But they've got it very well spelled out. And I'm sure in the HOA, the CC&Rs, it will be also very well spelled out. But bottom line is they're within their rights to get this project through. The law supports approval of this project as it stands right now. And even... they will have to get agreement amongst the others. They're saying, well, we don't really need their approval, but you kind of need your coordination. And we as the city, as the residents, we don't care about multiple owners. All we care about is it's a big site and we want to see what's happening. And I agree with that. But we have to move. We have to start somehow. These guys put their application in pre-plan 2023, if I remember right. And I honestly, other than the tandem parking, and the parking concerns. I absolutely see no legal basis that you can deny the recommendation to the city council. If you do, I'm sure that the city council will then be advised by council about whatever findings you put in your denial, but I would just strongly advise against that. We don't need to start this mall development with litigation or with problems. We want to show everybody that, hey, we've got it, we're moving, it's going. So anyway, thank you.

A question for you, if you don't mind. Will you be applying for affordable housing in this project?

No, I can't afford to buy. I'll be applying maybe to rent affordable if there's truly affordable, though. I don't call 80% AMI affordable because that's basically right at moderate. It's right, but no, I won't be able to afford even to purchase. Okay. Thank you. Not that I should disclose that publicly, really, Alan. Thank you.

I just want to explain how we how we do manage that go ahead the HOA we have it one of the management practices of our HOAs is they require date stamped photographs once a year of every garage with two cars parked in the garage so that we kind of manage that process of people can't just put a bunch of stuff in there and then that way they don't have a place to park their car. It's something that's super important in a project like this to make sure that those two bays are preserved at all times. So I just wanted you to know that is managed by the HOA.

And the HOA is an independent third party who oversees the operation?

It's a professional management company that's hired to manage the project.

Will you have signs, tow away signs if they park three days in a row in the same spot?

The parking, you're talking about the guest parking? Yes. The guest parking, if it starts to become a problem, then they start issuing citations. They can issue private citations within the community. So will the tenant have a permit to park?

Most of that. I don't know if that concerns you. Not for the guests.

You don't have to have a permit to park. But each home offers two bays.

I'm talking about the tenants itself. They don't have a permit to park to know that that's their cars, their units?

No.

I mean, theoretically, they're in the garage.

I'm talking about the parking outside. They're in the garages, right? I understand. Let's say one of the tenants...

I think he's talking about the mall site now as it is.

No, no, no. I'm talking about the tenants itself. If it's HOA and the parking for the HOA itself, the guest parking, if the tenants itself decide to park outside their cars for three, four days, don't they have a permit to park so to know they live there so their car will not be towed?

I've sat on many, many HOA boards, and you hit on something that is often an issue. And the best way to handle it is, yes, you have guest permits, and each resident has a certain number of them. Their guest comes, they park, they go in, they get the permit, it's there. Now, that guy's there two days, three days, four days. we can have them towed, but you have to adopt a policy that says exactly what it is. And so then the best way to do that is to put it in the CC&R so it can't just be changed willy-nilly. So that's how you set it up. Just one other clarification I wanted to make is, yes, we do need Washington Prime. I mean, they are the owner. They've been in escrow before. They're still the owner. We do need their approval on not every mall owner, but the majority mall owner. Again, that is contemplated to be obtained prior to final map. That is the condition. In regards to that, we're going to work with all our fellow owners, with Shop Off, with Kaiser, et cetera. That is our intent.

So if you get the approval tonight, you will meet with them and show them that it got approved for them to discuss it with you for approval, right?

Yes, it's a process, but that has to be done before we can record our final map and physically subdivide this. Got it.

Okay, thanks. Thanks for the info.

And Chair, if I may just clarify with regard to parking, one thing I do need to clarify is that there are limitations in terms of where we have discretion in terms of what we can review with regard to parking. So under state density bonus law, legally the city has to allow for projects to be built with 1.5 parking spaces per unit. And this project, it's provided 192 parking spaces, whereas under state density bonus law, They are only required to provide 134 so they are providing an excess of 58 parking spaces and there are not 58 tandem parking spaces within the project site, so I do need to Address that point of clarification since that is outside of the city's discretion.

They're all internal parking spaces internal inside

So the majority of them is, let's see, 178 assigned parking spaces, so garage parking spaces, 178, and 14 guest spaces.

Thank you for the clarification. All right, if there are no other questions for the applicant, I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing.

May I, Tony? Yes. Go ahead. By looking at the waiver and reduction of development standards. I saw that you asked for the waiver from 72 feet setback from center line to average 50 feet. So that may be quite a bit because in the future, I foresee that Edward Street will be expanded. So are there any problems with your property, with your design, if instead of 50 feet, we approve for about average 60 feet for future expansion of the street?

Commissioner, per Public Works, there is no plan at this point to expand Edwards. So we can't plan for something that isn't on the books and Public Works doesn't have any interest in doing it this time.

But this is a good time for planning ahead up because the area will be expanding in the future and it will increase the flow of traffic in that area. Right now, you drive on Edwards Street up north, When you go up to Kaiapa Hill, you saw a lot of traffic, a gridlock right there.

commission movie if I can so if currently Public Works has no plans to expand Edwards Street if in the future they ever decide they want to expand it after this project has already been built and entitled they would have to do eminent domain and condemn it which I highly doubt they're going to do that because that would be very expensive so right now there's no plans Edwards is going to be built out to what has already been planned and they would have to do go through a lot of hoops to expand it even further. So the setback, so you don't have that issue is what I'm trying to tell you.

I see. And another one, we asked for the lower, the standard is open space requirement. Instead of 8,900 square feet open space, you reduce it to 8,199 square feet.

and remember so I' m going to give you a little quick thing on density bonus law they' re entitled to concessions and waivers to allow for them to develop the project at the density based on their agreement to build a certain percentage of affordable housing so density bonus law gives the applicants a lot of can say yes or no. We have to be able to use leverage lead way to be able to develop the property at the density that they require which is why when they ask for these concessions as a commission we cannot you cannot decide against the project because of a waiver that would be that would be contrary to state density bonus law and you and you also can't say if they want to they've asked for the waiver from 16 feet to 9 feet you cannot change it and say no you have to do 12 feet as far as the height the ceiling height so that's what I'm so that you have you have very very like no discretion on that

Yes, whatever I look at the future for the growth of the city and we have to do it right at the first time rather than say spend a lot of time to remedy these problems in the future. That is my concern. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other last questions? If not, I'd like to close the public hearing so that we can talk as a commission and share thoughts and see how we think and feel and whatever you want to call it about this particular public hearing item.

My comment is a good project. The city needs it. It's good for the city. And I'm about business.

it's important to remember too and i've lived in the city since nineteen seventy three been a lot of changes and with every change every addition it is a different place to live and sometimes we see something disappear that we enjoyed And something new comes in, and we've had in the past projects where people have said, and I can recall one in particular where somebody said, well, they want to put this facility in where I get my gas, and it wouldn't be as convenient for me. But that's progress. You have to adapt. Recently, my credit union moved from Garden Grove to Orange. I didn't like that, but that's a change, and you adapt. So when a project's coming in like this, and I believe it's a good project, it'll provide housing. The developer has I think gone beyond what state law requires clearly and what we have in a way of asking to, I think, meet the city's concerns and needs. And I think it's a good transition as well, as pointed out. And the fact that we don't have, I'm guessing, maybe I don't know how many notices went out, but we don't have a couple of hundred people. And sometimes we will get a project where you will have 100 or 150 people coming out because they're concerned about a project and they feel it will be detrimental, but we don't have that here. We have some people who took the time to come, and that's great, make their comments, and there will be some changes and maybe some adaptability will be required, but I think in the end it will be beneficial.

thank you. my only big concern is just california law. We have an sb I don't know from all the attending in cal cities and everything else that we've learned we know that this specific plan is one mechanism that a city still holds that the city can use to actually get developed to what it once developed in the city and so we've invested four hundred thousand dollars into a specific plan. and we don't know what that plan looks like yet because the owners haven't come to an agreement. There is a mall operating agreement that has to be in consideration when it comes to any of these projects and to me it just feels like this applicant on this particular parcel is kind of put in the cart before the horse. It feels like the city is being used to do some of the work that probably should have been done earlier when negotiating with the other owners so we have a letter from shop off that came in last minute today that raises a bunch of questions in my mind you know are they is their retail conversion in lieu of the referenced 600,000 square foot retail that's in the plan the open spaces portion of the plan. it says shop off point number 3 on the letter from shop off has the approval right for the applicant to build residential on their site and we have not approved any plans to build housing. So shop off states in their letter that they have an approved housing we heard tonight from a lovely resident that pointed out that Washington prime group. seems like it's insolvent according to the oc business insider washington prime and shop off are not in this room we can't even hear their opinions my biggest concern too is sewer we don't have a master sewer plan for the 100 acres yet now that doesn't mean we can limit this project but there's some questions that i would actually like to ask of we haven' t talked about the street level up we haven' t talked about underground at to say well maybe we need another 60 days of a continuance to get more information and bring people into this room to get some of those things answered that have in my opinion not been answered tonight those are my only concerns obviously if this is an sb330 project sb330 is going to overrule I mean we' re here as a formality at this point but I' m still not convinced and I' ve looked at case law in this last we have been trying to find a case law since we knew this was coming up on the docket a month ago trying to find a case law that says yes specific plans do not have authority over sb 330 applications. I have heard opinions but I haven' t found any directed case law because there hasn' t been anything to my knowledge that specific plans have been challenged under sb 330. There has been development projects on a couple of acres but there hasn' t development project in its history after 1974 when the mall was first built I don't necessarily want to rush into it myself I think there's a lot of questions that maybe you heard the answers that you need to hear but for me personally I think I need it left me with more questions that need to be answered than were answered tonight but that's me sharing my thoughts with you guys and you know it's going to be up to us to decide.

From my side, I'm going to say that I heard everyone what they spoke about. It's a good project. We have to help it, give it the boost to keep going and to proceed. So from my seat right here, I'm going to make a motion to move approval. So that will make it... We'll make something in their hands to go and discuss it with the rest of the owners over there. Hopefully they get the approval. And they stated already they're going to follow all the rules. They're going to work with staff. They're going to make things happen. And if anything goes wrong, always come back here. And the city council also hasn't approved it yet.

I'll second the motion.

We have a motion by Commissioner Hamade, seconded by Vice Chair Anderson, to adopt PC Resolution 25-009, entitled A Resolution of the Planning Commission of the City of Westminster, California, recommending that the Mayor and City Council approve case number for the construction of a new residential condominium unit number 2023-0670 including a vesting tentative track map development review and affordable housing density bonus agreement with associated concessions waivers and reductions of the plan. The plan will include a total of 9 units deed restricted for low income households on an approximately 3.62 acre site located at 530 westminster mall westminster california 92683 APN 195-373-15

commissioner but before you i want to need to just clarify something so i want to to caution that make sure when you're voting if you're voting no because you do not like the project and there's a majority that says no you're going to have to make findings if you're voting no because you want a continuance that's a different issue to make specific findings on the project. Let' s make sure because any denial of the project will need to make specific findings because this is a housing accountability act and you will have to make very specific findings as to public adverse impacts of public Standards that already in existence, so I just I'm not trying to tell you how to vote I just want to warn you in case You're thinking that you know denying it because of just denial if you want to die because of it you want to continue It's different story Thank you Commissioner Billy Can I put you after on that those people I'm sorry

Tony's asking to vote last. Okay. I'm still thinking.

You're still thinking.

Commissioner Hamade?

Yes.

Commissioner Tran?

Yes.

Vice Chair Anderson?

Yes.

Commissioner Bowie?

Yes.

Chair Wolbert?

I'm going to vote yes.

Motion carries 5-0.

Congratulations, so because this is a recommendation this will go to council council will make final decision on the matter All right, we are not done yet.

We've got a few more items We move on to item 9 regular business. Do we have any other regular business to discuss I? there is no further regular business on the agenda thank you so much we're going to jump back to item number three before we do that I just want to make a couple of public comments real quick first for those of you don't know planning commissions are we serve at the leisure and the luxury and the privilege of serving from the City Council so we're appointed by the City Council everybody up here has an equal say in any development project that comes across this desk, and it's important to know that I mean we're volunteers for the most part there's not financial incentives to be on the Planning Commission that are anywhere near to speak of but it takes a lot of work and a lot of personal time to be up on the planning commission so I want to first and foremost thank everybody for their hard work you know those that have served over the last term really appreciate that and me personally as the chair over the last year I just want to say thank you to everyone for allowing me the opportunity to chair these meetings we've done some great work I think we put a lot of hard work and a lot of effort the purpose of the chair and vice chair is to run the meeting that's it to make the meeting as smooth as possible and make sure we can hold everybody to task to get these jobs done. I want to thank you again for the opportunity to do that and at this time I would like to open it up for any nominations.

I nominate myself for chair. I would like to nominate Casey.

We have a nomination we will take first from Alan for chair do we have a second to that?

I do second.

We have a nomination by Commissioner Hamade, seconded by Commissioner Bowie, to be selected to serve as chair of the Planning Commission. Commissioner Bowie?

Yes.

Commissioner Hamade?

Yes.

Commissioner Tran?

Yes.

Vice Chair Anderson?

No.

Chair Wolbert?

no.

motion carries 3-0 3-2. excellent now we would like to nominate for vice chair. I will nominate tony for vice chair. I will nominate tony for vice chair. do we have any seconds to that?

You can second yourself.

Yes, for myself. Okay.

Okay, we have a motion to select, we have a motion by Commissioner Hamade, seconded by Commissioner Buoy, to select Commissioner Buoy as Vice Chair of the Planning Commission. Commissioner Buoy?

Yes.

Commissioner Hamade?

Yes.

Commissioner Tran?

yes.

vice chair anderson?

yes.

chair wolbert?

no. motion carries 4-1. congratulations to the newly elected officials I will close out this meeting we look forward to all the great work you will do starting in two weeks. any reports don' t think so items number 11 matters from staff any matters from staff at this time all right item number 12 matters from the planning commission including ab 1234 reports when required. Anything from the planning commissioners?

I have a question for ken do we have anything scheduled at this point for our next meeting?

Currently, yes. We'll be bringing back at least one code text amendment that's currently scheduled, and we'll be bringing back a resolution of denial for the two Type 41 to Type 42 liquor licenses for consent calendar, just so we make sure we get the findings right.

Okay. Thank you.

I have one question I was thinking about the zoning code amendment text that we went over last meeting and I' m wondering if staff could bring back the I was thinking if we did a wording change and brought it back to the commission it might go over for approval and the wording change would be when our ordinances are out of compliance with state ordinances and the city attorney gives approval that then zoning code amendments could be brought up by staff or the planning director slash the community or the city manager is there a way to be able to make some of those modifications and bring that back?

I don't believe we can bring it back. I'll have to confer with attorney and city clerk. What you could do is make a recommendation and we can still take that forward to council. It would go forward with planning commission recommend denial of current of current iteration and then you would be able to support in writing what you would be okay with and we could take that to council without coming back to commission but i don't think we can go straight back to commission um just because of the way it was denied but i will have to get i'll have to check with the attorneys on that

So I'll weigh in. So are you asking that you want to give instruction to, even though it's already been considered, you want to reconsider the issue and give new instructions to staff to prepare a zoning code amendment based on what you have brought up? that's what i'm recommending so i think you can put that on the agenda unless it's already going to counsel for consideration you can put it they can you can do the wording give it to them for recommendation to counsel i'll have to we'll need to check with scott board yeah i think scott had made that recommendation to the to casey about it so that's why it's coming this way

Okay. Yeah, it's something we could look at doing. But like I said, it wasn't from conversations I had with Scott the other day. We would have to go through council before we could come back to commission. So that's why I want to confer with him and just make sure we're not getting wires crossed somewhere.

Okay. Yeah, just making sure that council isn't already directing staff to do that. So if council is directing staff, you're still going to get it anyway?

Sure.

Because it goes through commission for changes. It's just going to be directed by council instead of planning commission.

Any other issues under item number 12? Nothing? Okay, great. Again, thank you all very much. It's been a pleasure serving as chairman for the last year. And with that, we are adjourned. Have a great night. It is 7... Is it 7? Yeah, 7.07. Oh, it's 8. I can't see that clock from here. It's 8.07. Have a good night, everybody.

Good night.

.