Planning and Zoning Commission - workshop

To establish a quorum, please, Gail.

Morning, everyone.

Morning. Good evening. Good evening.

Mr. Kane. Mr. Robertson.

Here.

Mr. Huff. Ms. Kirkner.

Here.

Mr. Sweetson.

Here.

Mr. Lester. Mr. Smith.

Here.

Mr. Gordon. Here. Secretary Daley. Here. Vice Chairman, please let the record reflect. We have four members who are present and we don't have more.

Okay. I'll stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands,

You've had a chance to look at the agenda, so I'd like to ask for approval of the agenda.

I move that we approve the agenda for September 2, 2026. I'll second. All in favor? Aye.

Okay. Stephanie, first on the list is the capital projects decision on that.

Yeah, so I'm going to ask Scott to come up. Before he dives into his presentation, I do just want to bring something to your attention, since it's a little timely. We received a notice from our communications folks that there's been a... an alert I guess that there are some people who have been receiving fake emails purporting to be Carroll County government or or looking like it was coming from Carroll County government and it's it seems like folks that have been targeted include you know citizens, zoning applicants, general folks who have been interacting with the government in some way. So they sometimes will have like a weird extension at the end of the email address that appears to be coming from us but has extra letters or something in it. So just wanted to let you all know that we've been alerted to that. And if you ever encounter anybody who says they got a weird looking email from Carroll County government asking them to send money or whatever, we will never do that via email. And they should always verify by directly calling or emailing somebody here at the county to confirm that that email is indeed a real email.

And just to follow up that real quick, that was also put out via social media from the county government, and there was also an email blast that was sent out to anybody that receives county emails to make them aware of that matter, as well as I believe the sheriff's department said something as well. You know, we've all been as judicious as we could be to get that out for the public's awareness.

Thank you.

Okay.

Scott? Good evening. Good evening. Back before you again to kind of recap the presentation from your regularly scheduled meeting a couple of weeks ago regarding CIP budget requests for the upcoming FY28 budget cycle. Touchy mouse.

I know it is. Okay.

And so here's a list of the staff recommended projects. I'll go through these in a little bit more detail. We have some visuals to go through as well. But I'll just go down the list. Ridenour Way, east of Old Liberty. Ridenour Way connection, Homeland Drive to Bonnie Bray Road. Georgetown Boulevard extended, Londontown Boulevard to Progress Way, Arrington and Raincliff Road connection and realignment, Prothera Road extension and reconfiguration of the intersection with Ridge Road, Maryland 32 from 2nd Street to Main Street intersection improvements, the Maryland 26 corridor as a whole, and then this was added, the last project from the last presentation, That was not part of what I brought you two weeks ago, but we've added the Hemrington Road spur trail bridge, which would end up being part of the Patapsco Regional Greenway. So riding our way east of Old Liberty basically would pick up right there at Nell's Acres. This is just east of St. Stephen's Reformed Episcopal Church and would carry the roadway West, and it would actually connect in with a segment of Old Liberty Road that currently exists. That's actually a portion of this segment. And as everybody knows, the Ridenour Way and the Dickinson Road are the service roads designed to relieve traffic congestion along 26. And then the second piece of Ridenour Way would be Homeland to Bonnie Bray, making that connection The county just recently purchased a property just to the east of this segment to sort of bring this to fruition hopefully in the near future. And this would be Georgetown Boulevard extended, the blue line that extends north from the London town and Georgetown convergence there up to Progress Way along the western bound of the Beatty property. Both of these projects hopefully will be in conjunction with upcoming developments. Protheroe Road extended would pick up where the road currently terminates southeast of Brangles Road and carry it forward to where it would meet up with Marriottsville Road and Ridge Road, and there would also be an intersection sort of realignment there on the eastern portion of this project. then errington raincliff road what we're proposing in the cip is just for the basically the very first portion of this roadway there at slacks road and again it would be in conjunction with the development that would occur but the reason for that project would be to to straighten out those those sharp s curves there in that area the maryland 32 project this would be matching funds that we were proposing for the state project and it would be intersection improvements from a second Street to Main Street and this would also include like dedicated right and left hand turn lanes along this portion as well. Continue support from Maryland 26 we don't have a specific project in relation to this but it would be whatever opportunities might come up for the county to assist the state in moving this project forward. And then this would be the new project, part of the Patapsco Regional Greenway, which would connect Carroll County all the way down to Baltimore City. There are multiple players in this particular project, two including Howard County, Baltimore County, Baltimore City, even Anne Arundel County has a portion of this. But the mock-up or the picture there is a depiction of what this could look like over the years. waterway there and the rail line there at the very southern end of the county. And it would connect in with that trail system to the top of the screen there in the map. This would cover the portion of the blue line there. And with that, we'll open it up to any questions you might have or any further explanation.

So I just want to really quickly point out that the first several projects that Scott covered were projects that some of them many of them we've already we've requested in prior budget years and they've not been advanced to the final approved budget in some cases in other cases they have been and then funds have kind of been redirected right now we're down at the Nell's Acres area, Errington, Protheroe, and Georgetown are all projects that are, number one, planned major streets, part of the adopted Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan, and they are also, there's a bit of an more immediacy to their need because they're associated with development projects that are actively in the review process. So that's one of the reasons why these particular roads have been kind of consistently put forward for consideration. There are a couple of others that are affected by studies that we have underway or, as Scott mentioned, The Tabsco Regional Greenway project is something that is kind of a long-term, ongoing project, regional project, that we have the opportunity to help advance with that proposal as well.

So does the county foot the bill on all these projects you're talking about, or are there developers involved in some of these? Put the slide up from Nell's Acres.

Keep going back.

Right there. Okay, the one on the left, Riding Our Way, that's been on the books for quite a while. Yes. So is there land available to do that, or at what stage are we in that process? Because as far as I'm concerned, that should be a top priority. Mm-hmm. And what we've heard over the last two, three, four months about the 55 and over communities and some of the access problems, I don't think anybody here has not been down there. And when you get down there, you just wonder why in the world that has never finished. So what I'm wondering is, who pays for what here? Is this all in the county?

Well, in this particular project, there would still be some land acquisition, minimal land acquisition, I believe.

Across the church property?

I would have to check which parcel. I'm just wondering.

So because you've got it here, is this a priority project right now? Yes.

Okay. I should just mention that the... designed for at least part of the roadway. I'm not sure the extent to which that design covered the entire segment here or not, but that was part of the traffic mitigation agreement for Nell's Acres. So there is already some developer contribution that's been made towards the construction of this particular road.

And that goes all the way back to the apartments that are there before the 55 and over community was put in, is that right?

They're 55 too.

Are there 55 and over also?

Yes, that whole section. Okay.

Well, there certainly aren't, that's certainly needed there. There's no question about it.

Let me get this straight. Once we get the rest of the land, we we pay to build it or do we get any state funds that would be county funded all county funds it's a local it's a local roadway it's not it's not a state roadway

So as we mentioned the last time, what we're hoping to do is engage you all in conversations about capital projects, recommended capital projects early in the process. We'd like to, for the next fiscal year cycle, start that in the spring so that we can have a robust discussion that covers all kinds of potential capital needs to help implement our plans. In this case, because the budgeting process has already begun in terms of trying to solicit capital project requests and that sort of thing, what we've shared with you has been the projects that at the staff level we've kind of already identified and carried over perhaps from previous budget requests but we did want to bring these to you get some of your feedback And then you can see the recommended motion here would be including not just your concurrence on these recommended projects, but also a letter that we could draft to that effect and share with the Board of County Commissioners so they have some of your feedback early on.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just going to make this comment. Um, it's, it's very hard to move forward with more and more projects in that area if we don't see any progress as far as traffic and trying to control the way the traffic is working down there. So if this letter is supposed to go to the commissioners, uh, which it is, um, I think the commissioners need to take a hard look at what has been done and what hasn't been done down there because from this level here to allow projects to move forward and we don't see any improvements in roads or connections or or dead-end streets and all the things that have happened down there over the couple years, we're just adding more misery to misery. And so we need to start taking some of these capital projects that we've been talking about seriously. So if we do draft a letter, and we will to the commissioners, I don't think we can be emphatic enough in that letter to just say if these projects aren't started or if there's no date for completion of some of these projects, it's gonna be very, very hard in the future to approve anything. Because we don't see any improvement in the traffic flow and that seems to be what the people are so worried about and they need to be down there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't two of the projects, St. John is going to cooperate with building Georgetown or extending that along with the county. And Wrangell's Road isn't Lenar invested in doing some road improvements there too?

So any of the planned major streets that are directly affected by development proposals, we look to the developers to construct those. So these capital requests would be for roadway improvements that are outside of the outside of the direct effect of proposed development. But that's where the timing question comes in, right? So if you're going to make a roadway improvement that's going to help with circulation and safety, in the vicinity of a proposed development, then you would want that to happen roughly around the same time so that it can perform the function that it needs to help with that, whatever the impact of that development would be.

So that was kind of, yes.

Sorry.

I think that's what that meant. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm sorry. Maybe I misunderstood your question. So we would look to the developers to construct what is on their property. Correct. But because there are – we can't ask them to construct all kinds of additional parts of the road unless there is a direct – relationship to their proposal that we can kind of tie that requirement to.

I know we're beating up on Nell's Acres a lot here, but it's a lot to beat up on there. As far as I'm concerned, that road that you're talking about there, Scott, what other area is that affected but Nell's Acres? Why wasn't that factored in the end. That should have been finished before Nell's Acres was finished. I mean that's, when you get down there you just see it. It just kind of, it kind of makes you cringe a little bit about the traffic that's down there. Chris? Maybe I'm beating a dead horse here.

No, it's an excellent question and it's one that that has been talked about quite a bit. So let me back up. With any development project, a developer is responsible for mitigating traffic impacts that go to levels of service that fail, but they're responsible for their portion of that impact. So if there's an existing intersection that already fails and they add a little bit to it, they're not responsible for making that intersection completely functional and a non-failing level of service. They're responsible for that slight increase. So a level of service of failure is if there's an 80 second or more delay in service there. So if an existing intersection has is that 80 seconds and they add two more seconds, we're going to be looking for them to do mitigation, but they don't have to bring that 80 second delay all the way back to 35 seconds. They're responsible for those two seconds. And so that's where it becomes tricky is, and you have to have that nexus between their impact and their mitigation. So the case of Nell's Acres, Fallon Drive there was a failing level of service. They added additional traffic to it, so we then said, okay, you need to do something about Fallon Drive. But the question is, what can be done and how much are they responsible for? So there were discussions with state highway administration looking at traffic signal warrants and it does not meet warrants either under existing or future conditions. So a traffic signal is not gonna be put there because state highway will not allow it. So the question then became what kind of mitigation could be done for that intersection? And it was determined is that the proper amount of mitigation was the developer designed Ridenour from Fallon to Panorama. They also contributed a fee towards the construction of it, but they were not responsible for the entire, the nexus, the amount of their impact did not indicate full construction. And the county commissioners put money towards a capital project to construct that. So the path forward for constructing Ridenour was developer design it and then the county would build it with some funds contributed from the developer. In the meantime, though, it was felt that we weren't going to hold up their project for that couple year process that it was going to take to design and construct Ridenour. In fact, the Ridenour plans have been completed from a roadway perspective. They have been held up for almost a year now in looking at utility conflicts related to BG&E gas lines. So we're waiting for BG&E to finish that design and at that point it'll be ready for construction. But it needs to be put in the county CIP. It was taken out of the county CIP last year. So what we're requesting is to put it back into the CIP When BG&E finishes their work, it'll be ready to be built, and then the county can go ahead and proceed to construct it with the developer contributions assisting with that construction. So what's important to understand is that how much mitigation is a developer responsible for? They're not responsible for fixing everything. They're responsible for addressing their level of impact to those intersections.

Okay.

Does that clear everything up?

Yeah, that helps a lot. Excellent. Good. Thank you.

Yeah.

appreciate that sir okay any more discussion about this do we have anybody who wants to speak about it I have to make this little announcement before we do if we have any of public comment. Speakers must sign in to make public comment. Speakers must state their name, address and talk into a microphone to facilitate audio and video recordings. Comments will be strictly limited to three minutes per speaker. Citizen testimony is not a question and answer session. Questions may be directed to staff after the meeting. And if any individual fails to comply with these rules, the Planning and Zoning Commission chair may call the person out of order and may require him to leave the meeting. Do we have any public comment? If not, do I have a recommendation to move this forward with a letter to the commissioners with some conveying comments from the commission.

Go ahead. I'll make a motion that we concur with the staff's recommendation about capital projects for the fiscal 28 to 33 capital improvement plan and direct the staff to send a letter to the Board of County Commissioners conveying their support for the projects.

Do I have a second? Second. Gail?

Mr. Huff? Ms. Kirkner?

Yes.

Mr. Lester? Mr. Robertson?

Yes. No, he doesn't.

No, Mr. Robertson actually does need to. Sorry, Gail. Mr. Robertson does need to vote tonight because we are missing three other members. So we have a majority.

Okay. Mr. Smith?

Yes.

Mr. Soyson?

Yes.

Mr. Gordon?

Abstain.

Okay, Mr. Vice Chairman, please let the record reflect. We have four yays and one abstain.

Okay, this will be it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Scott.

Thank you.

Okay, we'll move on to number six, deferral code changes, self-service storage facilities. We're going to have a discussion about this.

All right. First of all, just a few things that I wanted to call to your attention. Last meeting, there had been a question asked about where self-service storage facilities are and how many they are, that sort of thing. You should have received a document with those things listed in them. So, with that I will get organized here. Okay, so last meeting you received an overview of the recommended, the findings and the recommended areas for revisions to the Self-Service Storage Facility Code. Today we're gonna dive into that code and start reviewing the specifics that are being recommended. And of course, these recommendations come from Michael Baker International, the consultant that we have helping with the deferral code amendments. So I have on the screen here just a summary table that describes the amendments that have been put together. So the amendments are all focused on our zoning code, Chapter 158. a few different sections of that. So we're talking about creating some new definitions for two different kinds of self-service storage facilities. Then we're also looking at making some modifications to the use tables and where these types of facilities might be allowed, either as principal permitted or as conditional uses. And then the bulk of the recommendations fall in Section 158.158. which is the specific use descriptions related to self-service storage facilities. So this is where you'll see the inclusion of design standards, site design and access recommendations, and then some specific recommendations to address size and scale. So if you all are in agreement, I figured we would just start at the very top and start rolling through these unless there are any particular questions that you have that you want answered up front or particular sections that you want to zero in on before any others. We'll start with the definitions and as you see here, the recommendation is to make a distinction between different types of self-service storage facilities. Up until this date, We've grouped them all as one type of thing. Prior to the code changes in 2019, this was called mini storage. It was changed to self-service storage facilities, but for all intents and purposes, it was addressing the same thing and it didn't matter if it was the single story roll-up door style of mini storage that's been around for years or the more what you see more currently which is the multi-story fully enclosed storage facilities. So the recommendation here is to divide those out because there is a recognition that those types of uses look and act very differently. So you see here the first definition relates to a drive up facility, which would be typically the long single story buildings with the roll up doors. They're often arranged in rows and occupy a fairly large footprint. And then the second one is for an internal self-service storage facility, which is a fully enclosed multi-story building. Now, we have gotten a comment that the specific language about a multi-story building may or may not always apply for an internal self-service storage facility. So if you remember from the presentation that you got from from the consultant, he showed an example of a, I think it was an old Kmart that had been repurposed for a storage facility. That's not a multi-story building. So if we have that language in here, then it would sort of preclude something like that based on this definition. So we've had a sort of an internal recommendation to maybe strike that word multi-story in case there were something like that that wanted to happen. So I'll pause there if you all have any suggested language changes for these two definitions.

I noticed in the white paper that was put out here that economic development has always opposed self-storage on industrial ground. So if there would be a facility that would be vacant, say out in a business park, Is there any means that this group or a developer could come in and want to put a self-storage in that area that that could be overridden? Because when I read the white paper, I thought about how some of these industries come and go. Why wouldn't it be feasible? They talk about jobs and everything like that, but If a building is sitting out there vacant and it can be used for something like self-storage, it would make sense. Why would it be prohibited then, an industrial zone? From what I understand here, and I'll leave it at that, but we always talk about how many jobs can something create. But in this day and age, we're talking about a lot more than just jobs. We're talking about areas to utilize, So I'm starting to wonder why we wouldn't allow it under certain circumstances in the iZone.

That's a good question. I do think, as you said, that the traditional thinking has been that these facilities occupy a fair amount of land. and we don't have a lot of industrial zoned land in the county. So I think their position has been that this is not the best use of of industrial zoned land. But certainly when we get the next section that we'll touch on is the use table where the proposals are for where it should be allowed, either principle or conditional use. And if you have either recommendations for that, or if you want me to come back to you with some more insight from economic development on what their position is on that, we can certainly try to get that for you for the next discussion.

Well, I mean, in some of the examples that the gentleman brought up in the repurposing, of some buildings. We saw maybe where the Kmart, well, Kmart probably employed a heck of a lot of people, and now there's a nice self-storage building there that brings in tax revenue and it's needed and it's probably in an area where people can get in and out of pretty easily. It just seems to me like we might want to consider some sort of language that would possibly allow for that. But economic development always has the opportunity to come in here and say, well, this doesn't make sense.

But the Kmart that you're talking about, that's not industrial zoned.

I know that. But I'm saying they talk about jobs. Yeah. So Kmart had a lot of jobs there. They're going now. It's an old storage building that's creating tax revenue.

I don't have any problem with what you're saying because it's not industrial. My problem is we don't have much industrial, and even though we don't have anybody that wants to fill out certain areas yet, I don't think it would be a good idea to reduce the industrial.

We allow solar on industrial.

Exactly. And that creates no jobs, except for the guy who puts it up for rent. I didn't like that either. Well, but that's a good point. That's an excellent point.

So why do we want to do it again?

I will note that the solar is not a county-wide, like the county wants solar and industrial. That is, the state has told us we must allow it in that area. I will make that distinction.

Yeah, and I'm glad you did because we won't get into that.

But it's still there.

Yeah, I think we should.

Again, we should, but we can't, and that's the problem. We only have so much industrial, and I think we'd be very foolish to start putting in other things to fill it because right now we can't find anybody.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and to be fair, every jurisdiction looks at self-storage a little bit differently. There are some districts or some jurisdictions where they try to encourage it in their industrial zoning districts because they equate it more with, say, a warehousing function. But that's jurisdiction by jurisdiction, how they want to approach the set of uses that they allow in their different zoning districts based on their unique situations. So you certainly could make that recommendation that it be allowed in one of our industrial zoning districts or allowed as a conditional use.

that's been the traditional way of looking at it in our industrial zoning districts i'm not going to speak for economic development but i understand your thought process of utilizing the space but you know mr soyson's point we do have an exceptionally limited amount of industrial but i think that being the first and most important piece of that but the second being typical self-storage isn't going to create that many jobs you'd maybe have a handful at best I mean, we all know there's no jobs physically when it comes to the solar, but, of course, that's something we have no control over at this point. So, I mean, I think the challenge would be how many, you know, working citizens does it put there? But I understand your thought process.

That's why we're supposed to have this discussion. I like to see stuff utilized, but I'd also like to see some of these things moved away from the controversy of putting something like that right alongside a viable community where the people just don't want it. You know, if we welcome self-storage and storage units somewhere, maybe we could find it. And it's not like there's going to be an influx of self-storage units coming to Carroll County that people from all over the country come and store stuff here. We just have to discuss about why people have too much stuff that they need self-storage. So that's another discussion altogether. I just wanted to bring it up. There's so much movement coming in and going out all the time of industrial, commercial, all that. Nothing is static. Nothing's there forever. Ask Black & Decker. So maybe under certain circumstances, instead of just shutting the door completely, that you open it a little bit and if there's an opportunity, then you take it instead of having a vacant building or a vacant lot for how many years? So that's why I wanted to bring it up.

I think that is a good discussion to have just kind of globally speaking. Where is this use most appropriate? And I think the approach that the consultant has taken here is that in a lot of cases, it's not the use itself that's the that's the problem it's how it looks its size its scale how it fits in with the neighborhood that sort of thing so it's not inherently incompatible with certain neighborhoods or business districts or whatever it's how it gets constructed and how it fits in with the neighborhood so i hope we can continue to have some of these things in our mind as we're going through some of the recommendations that they've put together with an eye towards trying to mitigate those types of adverse impacts and still trying to decide where is this use the most appropriate?

I'm sorry. I've got to change my chair.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Me too.

So are you guys okay with the definitions as they're written? And I would request also to take out that reference to multi-story in the internal self-service storage facility definition?

Yes. Yes.

Okay. OK, so the next section is the use table. You can see here that what's been proposed is to strike out the existing definitions in their entirety because we've got these two distinctions of different types of facilities. So you've got the distinction between the drive up and the internal. THE PROPOSAL IS TO TREAT THEM THE SAME IN TERMS OF THEIR PERMITTED USE STATUS. SO IN THE C1 ZONING DISTRICT, WHICH SHOWS OUR LOW INTENSITY COMMERCIAL, THAT WOULD BE BOTH OF THOSE TYPES OF FACILITIES WOULD BE PROHIBITED. In C2, which is the medium intensity, they would both be conditional. And in C3, our high intensity commercial district, they would both be principal permitted uses. not allowed in the two industrial zoning districts or the employment campus zoning district unless it is a self-service storage facility in a sustainable community. And the only sustainable community in the county that is unincorporated is in Finksburg. So this would allow for that use as a conditional use in the I-1 zoning district there. And I believe this is carrying over from the, well you can see up in the strikeout text, it's carrying over from our existing zoning district, I think in recognition of a facility that's in Finksburg that is in that I-1 zoning district. So here we have it. The question is where are these types of facilities most appropriate and where are they appropriate as principle permitted uses and where are they appropriate as conditional uses where you might have an opportunity for the Board of Zoning Appeals to look at them in terms of their unique impact on a specific site as opposed to generally across the board at all sites in that zoning district.

Now where, in relationship to these, I know there was talk when the consultant was in, what about being near residential? Because there was talk about them being adjacent or in some general vicinity to residential.

There are a few things in the proposed code that would address adjacency to residential areas. I think it's mostly in some of the setbacks, if I'm not mistaken. Let me see if I can find that. So we have some language related to hours of access potentially being limited by the Board of Zoning Appeals if they're adjacent to residentially zoned land. Let me see where else we might have that.

um that's okay i'll just i'm sorry i don't know it's fine i just want to bring some up i know not everybody's here tonight from planning and zoning and i know we had talked about this the last meeting with the uh consultant and if memory serves he kept pointing to i think it was carlisle his big area of uh example um and you know i don't have an opinion completely either way in this but just want to bring this to everybody's attention carroll county has roughly 14 to 19 self-storage units and the reason i say roughly is you do have some entities that are private property that have self storage i know several in the westminster area which back up specifically to residential If you look at Frederick, Baltimore County, or even Hanover, Pennsylvania, all of which I consider our neighbors, not Carlisle, Pennsylvania, all of them do not restrict access at any time hourly. So I question, are we doing a disservice not only to the community, but also these business entities that choose to invest and have their tax dollars in Carroll County if we go that route? Granted, that's up for planning and zoning to discuss. But then the other interesting point I want to bring up in reference to residential in any of these three areas, they do have varying setbacks. They may also ask for additional barriers or things to shield the residential communities, which I think all makes perfect sense. But I think we have to ask the question, if we're not careful, are we harming 15 to 20 businesses that already exist in Carroll County? And depending on where you live in Carroll County, Frederick, Baltimore, or Hanover, Pennsylvania, wouldn't be that far of an area to take your items that you can't fit in your house to another business. So then are we harming an entire industry in our community, depending upon whether we want to follow the Carlisle model or look at our surrounding neighbors? Just a thought. Yeah.

Yeah. I thought similar, um, Carlisle and the stuff out West, while they're all beautiful, they're not comparable to Carroll County. Um, I think we should have some design standards, but looking at the facade here, I think there should be windows somewhere, but I think if you require 20% of windows on the first floor, which Number three, it kind of talks about that. Or another type of facade there. But if they are windows, you're encouraging breaking when you have them down so low. So I think we need to be realistic, but also look at what will keep it from looking ugly in a neighborhood.

The other question to you bringing up the windows that I would be curious about, you have some small self-storage in the county as a whole right now that people over the years repurposed a portion of a property. It could be multiple garage units. It could have been a large outdoor shed-type building. Clearly those wouldn't fall under the...

potential changes of windows and such so would we then grant them some usage because of the old style building or would we make them have to amend that property to the current code they would become a legal that would become a legal non-conforming use so we would grandfather prior existing properties in now if they ever did something that would avail themselves of our code we may require some kinds of updates but we're not going to do that automatically appreciate it

so on that subject if they required the update would they just have to update the new part that they're doing or the entire thing it would be whatever portions potentially that they're working on and that may be a board of zoning appeals decision as well depending on whether they need to seek their approvals for those specific changes Steve, you look like you're thinking.

Yeah, I am. I say, but it's just always talk of grandfathering. So if we do that, then how much of a slippery slope does it create on everything else? Because we've had a lot of issues over the last... Issues, maybe not the right word, but topics over the last couple of months where there has been a lot of grandfathering requested. So again, does it become, well, if you're doing it for here, why can't you do it for... From here, it's just everything's a slippery slope these days.

Your big difference there is, again, we're looking at any projects that do not have final approval. So if you do not have final approval, you will be subject to whatever the code is, whether that's this code is in place at that time or retirement village home, for example. But if they if a project has already received its final approval, We say grandfather loosely because it already exists. It's received its final approval. When we're talking about grandfathering in terms of, say, some of the other things that have come up recently, they're asking to be included before they've received their final approval in prior codes.

Okay. Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense.

And just very quickly to your question, Commissioner Gordon, about how the code addresses residential uses. There are also some references in 158.158.D related to massing and composition that talk about the context of the surrounding area, making sure that it fits in.

I appreciate that.

Okay, so thoughts on the use table? Are there any recommended changes that you guys want to see to this or any additional information that you want me to collect before you make some recommendations on it?

I, N-E. I, light industrial, I don't see an issue with the self-service storage facility internal or drive-up as a conditional use in that particular.

In I-1? Yeah, yeah. Anyone else have thoughts on that?

I agree with that.

Well, we can mark, you want for both types of facilities are you talking about or is there any distinction?

Most of the I-1 are typically in an industrial development. I think either could fit there if they had the acreage to do it. It would have to be conditional, not automatic.

OK, well, for your next review, we can add a C in there for both types of facilities under I-1. And you can give it some further thought between now and then, and then decide if that's something that you want to keep as a recommendation. Alright. Okay, so now we'll get into sort of the specifics on the actual site design. This is section 158, 158, which is our section of our zoning code where we break out some specific uses and attach some particular requirements to them. First thing I want to note is that there is some language in this section, the preamble, that needs to be corrected. So this says drive up and internal self-service storage facilities may be permitted in the C2 and C3 districts. and authorized, et cetera, et cetera. That's not consistent with the table that's above. So the recommendation that we have would just be, because the permitted and conditional use status is described in the use table, it's not necessary to repeat it here. So really all we need to say is that drive up an internal self-service storage facilities are subject to the following requirements. So our recommendation would be to kind of simplify that. Then you don't have the problem of is it permitted, is it conditional, what happens when that changes, that sort of thing. And we start with some of those requirements. So we have unit size first up. and the proposal is to have a maximum area of each individual storage unit of 500 square feet i think that's kind of i've seen that in a few different places and really what this is talking about is The individual storage unit can't be more than 500 square feet. When you start to get larger than that, you're almost, well, you're not into warehousing territory, but you wanna set a maximum on the size of each unit so that it doesn't become kind of a pseudo warehouse. So that's what the unit size is addressing. Then we have the minimum lot size requirements. And so for a drive up self service storage facility, the proposal is a minimum lot size of two acres. And for the internal self-service storage facility, the minimum lot size is recommended as one acre, which can be reduced if you are adaptively reusing an existing building and can still meet all of the other site requirements. So I'll pause there if you want to discuss minimum lot size or maximum storage unit size. I will say on the information that I shared about the existing storage sites in the county, the smallest one is on one acre. That's actually also in our I-1 zoning district. Everything else is larger than that. The next smallest is one and a half acres in our C2 zoning district. So those two facilities may not meet, I think they're both drive up facilities, wouldn't meet that. two-acre minimum lot size. But as Liz was describing, that would make them then legally non-conforming uses. So they could continue to operate and function as they are now. The only difference would be if they wanted to do some kind of expansion or modifications to that site, then we would have to look at them in terms of their ability to expand within our non-conforming use parameters.

That's not inclusive of the cities because they have their own.

That's right, yeah. These are only in the unincorporated part of the county. Any discussion on A or B?

Anything?

All right. We'll move on then to section C, which is setbacks, front facade design, and orientation. Let's see. I think how I can kind of summarize these. These generally are looking at how the facility sits on a site and how it responds to the surrounding area. So you have some provisions here that would require that if you have, particularly if you have a drive up storage facility that the individual storage unit doors have to face the interior lot of the lot rather than be sort of parallel to the front of the lot. You also have a requirement that LOADING AREAS AND STORAGE AISLES WOULD HAVE TO BE LOCATED, THEY COULDN'T BE LOCATED AT THE VERY FRONT OF THE FACILITY FACING THE PRIMARY PUBLIC STREET THERE. THIS IS WHERE YOU HAVE THE RECOMMENDATION TO INCLUDE TRANSPARENT WINDOWS OR ARCHITECTURAL DETAILING THAT COVER AT LEAST 20% OF THE GROUND FLOOR FACADE LENGTH TO AVOID BLANK WALLS. JANICE, I THINK THIS IS WHERE SOME OF YOUR CONCERNS ABOUT THE security of the facility with transparent windows might come into play. Buildings exceeding 25 feet in height would have to incorporate facade articulation, and that means you wouldn't have just a single plane. It would have to be broken up with projections, recesses, other kinds of changes in material or depth or what have you so that at least every 50 feet there's a change in that plane, the facade plane. The next one, number five, talks about limiting the wall segment length. That could be blank, so that would be limited to 40 feet in length. And that building walls exceeding 200 feet in length would have to incorporate offsets. to make sure that you have that kind of play and articulation along the facade. Building parapets are included in this section with some parameters about how they could be designed so that they're not just like a little false wall that sticks up like in the old west. And then blank wall treatments. Again, here we have the transparent windows or doors as recommended design treatments to eliminate blank walls, but also other methods that could be things like murals or special building material treatments, et cetera. I think I'll stop there before we get into building materials and colors. So any comments, suggestions on this section?

Forty feet in length, an acre, take an acre length. acre is roughly 200 by 200. I think, am I right? Yeah, close.

And lots aren't

nice and square, usually they're here elongated. So it could be 75 by whatever the other maximum number has to be in depth. Or it could be, you know, 100 feet. So if you limit it to 40, you know, it may be that it's not as functional to say it's got to be 40. That leaves, what, 30 on each side. So I don't know what the number is, but I And I realize that's for along the public street, but I think that might be a challenge for some lots. Especially, you know, none of them are uniform. And I worry about self-storage is typically designed for the people that don't have means to store it at their house or apartment or whatever. So the restrictions we put on the buildings that they have to make design standards can lead to more cost associated with the ultimate price that's charged. Just some things to think of. And there's certainly designs that can be done that aren't astronomical, but I think we have to be careful how we say we have to have this.

Yeah, I think there are a few things in this section that don't necessarily account for uniquely shaped properties or what have you. For instance, the first one, oops, let's go back up here. The first one about individual storage doors facing the interior of the lot. This I think is primarily oriented to the drive up facilities. But we have, least one example that I can think of in the county where because of the shape of the lot they had to orient the the the buildings to be parallel with the road but it's completely screened you don't even know that the storage facility is there so I So this requirement kind of, well, number one, if that requirement had been in place, that facility would not have been possible because of the shape of the lot. But, you know, I guess what I'm trying to say is some of the requirements Make some assumptions. I think about how a lot might be What the what the configuration of a lot might be yeah the perfect plot yeah, so There may be some language that that we can add in here that would accommodate a that would achieve some of the same goals. So you don't want to have rows and rows of roll-up doors facing your primary street, but then how would you be able to mitigate that if that's the way that your site was laid out? It could be that you have somewhere in here as well requirements for screening and landscaping and that sort of thing.

So we're looking at these as requirements. But in reality, they're recommendations that when it comes before the design group and then the planning and zoning commission, they would be recommendations that we would look at and say, this is what we envision that this should be, take it back and bring it back to us with that, not deny it, because we don't want to do that.

Well, so that's not how these are written, because the word shall is in there. If you want to make them more guidelines or aspirations in terms of the design of a facility, then we need to change that word shall to something that should or something like that.

I don't want to see a bunch of blank walls coming across and building something. Every time we go somewhere now, especially down to the beach, there's a ton of self-storage units. I'm like, oh, look at that. And my husband's like, I could care less right now. But it does make you look at some of them. And some of them have some great, they're not pricey standards, but they look nice that they're using. I just think it has to be a balance.

So do we want to go through the sections that I've covered so far one by one and just see if you all have any recommended changes or any questions about them. The first one is individual storage unit doors shall face the interior of the lot. Any suggestions, changes, questions?

I think that's great if it's feasible, but in a situation where the lot's configured and meets the overall standard for the acreage, it may not be. So how do we allow that? Does that make sense or am I just rambling?

I mean you can always add language that says we're feasible or something like that unless this is something that you want to draw a hard line in the sand on.

I guess a lot of it depends on how it's laid out. Yeah.

And the lot, the configuration.

And sometimes you might not, if the lot, and the configuration, you're right, if they're configured certain ways, maybe all of them wouldn't be facing the right, maybe some of them may have to face, I guess it's how you design it and how it looks, but

we put in like a minimum percentage have to face interior?

Well, you could look at it that way maybe. I guess maybe what we're trying to do is say, you know, if the sign wouldn't be there, would we know it's a self-storage building? I guess maybe that's what they're trying to achieve here, but...

I don't know. Commissioner, you seem to see quite a few buildings in your rounds. What are your thoughts?

Well, it's an interesting question because on one end, you are correct, there is no perfect lot. I think to me it just comes down to screening. I mean, as anybody that's living near it, obviously we've got to take them into serious consideration. Right. i don't think i'd want to see it but i think the question becomes what's the level of screening i mean we not to compare apples and bananas but it's like looking at solar some of it has some pretty significant screening and you really would not be as easily aware of that so to me that's that's the bigger question is it properly screened um you know what is the setbacks to you know how far is it from residential i mean that's a big i think a big factor as well but i think if it's if you know if it was a percentage of it maybe that it would only be within x guidelines because obviously you don't want to have the majority of it facing the general direction of residential or whatever yeah i agree with that

think it's kind of a lot specific yeah that's because if you know somewhere there are areas in this county that it probably doesn't matter that's a fair point and if you do proper screening i i just it just limits the layout that maybe you could do a better layout if you had that leeway of putting some in the front and some in the side some in the interior um i don't want to get we're getting into the weeds here with this and that's it bothers me a little bit like you said well to me it's a balancing act and i think whether it's planning and zoning or anything else we do in this county it's all a balancing act how do we

look out for everybody to the best of our ability while also not terribly impeding on potential businesses and employers because if you know my example earlier looking at frederick baltimore county and then hanover pennsylvania if we're too stringent i'm not suggesting everybody's going to go to those areas but they are close enough they can have some impact in some fashion yeah

like housing does. Yes, very much so.

Okay.

So would you like to add some additional language here that says where feasible or unless the lot configuration precludes it?

If we say where feasible, then do we also have to define what... we determine feasible is because again, that could be open to anybody's interpretation. Feasible to a developer could be, well, it's going to cost us an extra $10,000 and that's not feasible when in the grand scheme of things, it's really, you know, so yeah, I mean, if we don't have to define what it is, but it just, it's very, very broad.

Well, for every cause, there's an action. But I think, and I'm not good at wording at all, but I think if we do say we're feasible, and then incorporate maybe screening would need to be substantial to keep it from...

looking ugly. When we say we're feasible, that then gives us an opportunity to discuss what feasible is or what you can do to make it feasible.

Yeah, it makes sense. Like I said, it's just... It's a good thing. Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, we always have the opportunity here. I mean, since this is on the radar screen, we always have the opportunity to, when it comes in front of us, say, you know, this is really ugly. We don't like it.

Yeah.

change it now how much we can force them to change is the question here and I still say so much of this is site-specific screening is a big as a big thing Tom and I think I think we have to be cognizant of that as much as anything but And again, it's trying to make sure that we don't put some of these things where they shouldn't be put. That hurts the neighborhoods. That's one of the problems. We're going through all this because in some people's minds and a lot of people's minds, there was a big mistake made. And so now we're trying to rectify that big mistake because of the site, of where it is, and not because of what it is. That's where I'm having, I'm struggling here with this. The mistake was made of the site itself, not the business, and not the building, and not everything else, but where it was put.

I think at the end of the day, a developer, I mean, they're gonna do what they, They're going to build a building, so I mean, they have to build it within parameters. So like you said, it's not their fault. They were allowed to build it. Yeah.

I think we need to give some leeway on this one.

Yeah.

Put where feasible or, you know, if the site provides for and certain things like that. And I'd like to open a little bit of a door here on this one.

I think when it comes to landscaping, we should have some better suggestions rather than, you know, the little six-foot tree or something. I think they need, you know, I ride down 32 and there's a storage yard. And I swear, like last week, it wasn't last week, but it was maybe within last year, they were little, Leland, Cypress, or whatever they are. Now they're huge, and you can't, I know it's there, but you can't even see into there, and it's a contractor yard. But I think, you know, using bigger... It's always nice to say, well, we want to do the standard pines and evergreens, but I think something that grows quickly to intermingle with that kind of covers a broader look.

So in section H and I, we address screening and landscaping. And the screening section, notes that, um, all structures have to be screened from, uh, view off site. And it references, uh, chapter one 57, which is our landscaping code, um, which is also referenced in the section below. So I'll make a note to maybe, um, When we get to that section, talk about maybe some sort of enhanced landscaping or landscaping that addresses the specific potential problems that we're talking about here. All right. Number two, outdoor access drives, loading areas, and storage aisles shall not be located between the primary building facade and the public street. I think this as well is another area where it it may depend on the site in terms of how it's best laid out. Um, access drives, To me, are the trickiest section here because between the primary building facade and the public street, I don't know what you would have then between the building and the street if it's that. I mean, you'd have to have just a setback of probably grass or something like that. between the street and the facade of that building. Certainly if you've got some kind of an office or something like that where people would want to pull up and park and business, then that would limit that ability to do something in a place that makes the most sense and could potentially have the effect of pushing it to an area that's more adjacent to residential properties or neighboring businesses that you might not actually want.

Would that apply to a corner lot? And you'd only have two sides that you couldn't do anything with that too. So here we go again.

Yeah.

Can we just eliminate that?

Sure. That's what she'd like. Okay.

Can you do that?

Yeah, except I agree that loading area should not be out there in the front unless it, well, I guess it's got to be if it happens to fall on a lot where you couldn't configure the doors. Yeah.

Okay. So do you want me to, we can certainly leave that in and mark it for further discussion, or we can take it out.

If you want to do further discussion, that's fine when everybody else is here, but I'd like to put a big X there beside that one. Yeah.

to take it out, you mean?

Yeah, there's a possibility to take it out, yes.

Okay, well, I'll flag that for some further discussion. Okay. Okay, number three, street-facing facade.

Daphne, I guess what I'm trying to get my head wrapped around is how much traffic really is around these self-storage buildings? 30 cars a day, maybe not. 10 cars a day, maybe not. You know, I think there's a bit of convenience here that we need to take a look at for the user and some common sense on top of it.

I guess I would ask the question, when you say around, do you mean in the actual property itself?

Yeah, the actual property itself.

How often do they go to the unit?

during the day and all that.

I think that would be partially subjective to the location because if you think about it, let's just take 140 in Westminster, you have the one down towards the police barracks, and then you have there's one further down going right below Finksburg heading towards Baltimore County. Now that one I can't picture. Where is that? It's across from Kibler.

Yeah, but you can access it.

You can access it off of, yeah, it's not off of 140. You have to access it off of a side road, yes. But then, you know, and this one I'm 99% sure is in Westminster city limits, and obviously we're talking county, but you have the one near Walmart in Westminster. So, you know, there's a lot of influx of traffic going by any of those locations, but, you know, depending upon... location that's gonna be a factor and then I would think that you know if you have I don't know how many units if you have several hundred units you know you're gonna have more than ten customers a day I would think on average depending on the day coming in weekends would probably be more prevalent I guess what I'm saying is if the thing has a good architectural look to it at all why does it matter where they back up and load and unload Now, it's a fair point, and especially if you've got proper screening that the typical public, be it near commercial or residential, wouldn't see. I guess that's what I'm getting at. Yeah, no, I think you're correct on that, at least from my perspective.

We can get you trip generation numbers just for your employees.

No, I'm not asking. That's just one more step of something that I don't think we need. I think we just kind of have to look at this as a common sense way of looking at these things.

You would think, too, that around the holidays, that if a lot of people have a lot of people are saying, keeping holiday decorations there. So around beginning and end of Christmas, there'd probably be a lot of traffic. People are putting their stuff back, taking it out, so on and so forth. I mean, I wouldn't imagine that people would be going there every weekend to get laundry or something.

I guess what I'm saying is, if it's a fairly good architectural look, why do we care how many people back up to the front door? Or load from the front. Or have an access area in the front. You know, look at all the traffic around Walmart. Do we care what that looks like? We really don't. Just go buy it. So I'm... We're getting in the weeds here too much on this. I'm ready to X that out.

anybody here that's not here wants to put it back in and we'll talk about it I mean I mean I certainly you know understand what what you're saying I mean and for what it's worth to depending on where it is you know if it is a neighborhood you know the people in the neighborhood behind might prefer if the loading is on the front so they're not having to deal with that. So it gets into the lot and everything like that. So it's kind of six in one hand, half a dozen in the other. And I mean, it is just one more restriction that a developer could potentially look and say, well, I could put this land, but if I have to do it like this, it's just it doesn't make the project viable anymore.

Yeah.

I mean I I would go with Ralph I mean I'd be fine if that was taken out of me that doesn't really matter to me.

Just take it out. Okay, now we're on to incorporating for street facing facades, incorporating architectural detailing, transparent windows or display areas covering at least 20% of the ground floor facade length or equivalent architectural treatment to avoid blank walls. So what this is saying is when you have a facade that faces a public street, 20% of that ground floor has to have some sort of detailing or something to it so it's not just a blank wall.

Yeah, I think it gets a little tricky here. Looking at a commercial or a property that backs to residential, you want that to be something that is cohesive with the residential area so it doesn't stand out like a sore thumb. But then in other areas where it's more of a business sector, It may not be as important about how it's done, so. Yeah, I think the 20% On the ground floor, I don't have trouble with, because they're not going to really be real windows. They're going to be some kind of faux window there probably. But I think they would be, if it's a multi-building, I think higher. for the windows across there would make more sense because you know somebody would have to really scale a wall to get up there to try to break in yeah i mean that and that's what i normally see like we have one right down by my office it's the same way the ground floor

is set like that has like the look like stickers but once you get to the second floor and up you actually see you can see windows and you can see through into the hallway but you know in well here it might not be as bad i mean my office is down in elkridge so the crime rates are a little different down there but still yeah well no some mayor is have their fair share Oh, yeah.

I'm OK with keeping this here. We're good.

On the ground floor?

Yes.

One thing that I think I'd like to give a little bit of thought to is some of the the wording in here may not apply to both types of facilities. So, for instance, number one is really more oriented to the drive-up facilities, but it doesn't say so. Number three is really more oriented to the internal facilities, but it doesn't say so. So if this, I think we need to clarify the places, the types of facilities that these individual requirements apply to, because if you don't, then for a drive up facility, you would be requiring the street facing facade to incorporate these different treatments and I don't know what that actually would look like for a drive up facility. So I'm gonna make a note to try to clarify that and bring some suggested language back to you next time.

So on number three, where it says at least 20% of the ground floor facade length or equivalent architectural treatment to avoid blank walls, if we eliminated the windows and they had some type of... you know, often you see like an inset that's like maybe brick mortar around it and it's just recessed but there's no window there. Would that be the architectural treatment?

I would say that's probably an equivalent architectural treatment, yeah.

I just think, you know, depending on the lot, the 20% of the ground floor facade with windows could look worse than some type of architectural something there. As you get higher up, it's not as noticeable.

Actually, the windows really aren't required here. It just says at least 20% or equivalent. So like you say, something else can be done there. If it doesn't make sense to have the windows there, you don't do it. You do something else. I think we're okay there.

You may also have part of that covered by something like an entryway or an office or something like that that might have some glass that marks that as the entrance to the facility. So there is some transparency there, maybe, contributing to that 20%. All right. Let's see if we can at least get through number four here. I know it's going on quarter to eight. We still have master plan discussion that was intended for our agenda. So let's talk about buildings exceeding 25 feet in height, incorporating facade articulation including projections, recesses, or material changes at intervals not greater than 50 feet along any public street frontage.

I think that goes back to lot configuration. I mean, I can't imagine one being longer than that. But if it's a long, wide lot and not as much depth to it in the back, then you may want to be 60 or 75 feet. It just depends.

Well, I know this is stretching a point, so I'm going to do it anyway. You know, I keep thinking, I look at this and I keep thinking about all the blank walls that we see, like on Walmart or Boscov's or anywhere else. I mean, look at the huge blank walls that we see. So if Boscov's would come in and say they want to build another great big building, would we say, well, you can't have any big blank walls like you do in the one you have now? So are we then gonna start asking those big buildings to have all this different facade? I mean, if you go out here to this, what's left of the mall, and look at all the blank facades. Just one huge building after another. whether we're talking about the neighborhood that it's going into or just because it's that building there and we're trying to make them look prettier than they are than in the past. Is that our goal here? But we have an awful lot of ugly buildings in Carroll County, if you really stop and think about it. And I don't know, screening can cover an awful lot of things here. So I don't know. We're sure asking a lot out of a...

But it's coming up with the... And it really is a fine line, right? It's like you don't want something to look industrial or borderline institutional. Not in a neighborhood. You know what I mean?

And here we go back to the rub again, site-specific, you know. should it ever been allowed where it is allowed if we don't, we're trying to put all this lipstick on a pig here.

what is the main thing we're trying to do here i mean yeah i mean now if you're like so if you which we're not really you know doing that if you're going to build it in the middle of an industrial park okay where you're with a bunch of warehouses that's why none of this matters but people aren't building them there so it's yeah i mean see why i want to put them there

Look at all the like Home Depot and Kohl's and they're all blank walls down there. Martin's. Everybody's got blank walls and you have the entrance. It's not 20% windows. Yeah and they're not there and like Food Lion that down there they back to a community. So I think... If they have windows, they're loaded with displays.

Just put it in there. Just use it up a little bit, you know what I mean?

I think what we're struggling with here is... If we, if we're, each one of us has a picture of what we're thinking about looking at here in our minds, you know, like a picture's worth a thousand words. So, you know, the person who is here, the consultant, you know, showed us all these pretty pictures and all. Right. And so if we went by all the pretty pictures, we would want all this stuff. But what we're trying to do is to make the neighborhood look better, make the county look better, but at what cost? And again, it goes back to where the site is.

Yeah. I mean, it does, but again, to, you know, I also look at it like I was fortunate enough to go to, you know, college out in Montana, and, you know, all the stuff out there, it... you know, that from the Albertsons to whatever, like it has a specific theme to it, right? It's like a Western, you know, type theme to it. And while obviously Carroll County is not Western, it's, you know, also not, let's say DC where everything has that concrete industrial, you know, type feel to it. So it's, you know putting in there saying okay developers you're coming in and doing this yes it is cheapest for you to design a building that is four four corners or you know four square walls and stuff like that but we want we just want you to do a little bit more and it is and it isn't you know with developers you know being in the construction industry yeah if you make it terrible and super expensive but if a developer is going to build a building they're going to build a building even if they have to do know maybe just a little bit a little bit more and you know and i understand with the with the walmarts and and stuff like that but again with these buildings moving forward it's you know how do you articulate saying just do a little bit more than the bare minimum that you have to do to build a building and i think a little bit more to a developer is palpable but if you start dictating

a lot more than it does because building costs keep escalating. Do the multi-level buildings, do they have to be sprinklered?

Yeah.

Okay.

And depending on how much they try to, because we do a lot of this type of work, so the difference, what it is too, is depending on the height, depending, you have to have 18 inches of clear height from your sprinkler head to the top of your unit, assuming you have burglar bars. And then you can just do, you know, a central, what's called a grid system. But where these developers now are building these, they're squeezing everything in, so you have to put at least one sprinkler head in each individual unit And again, that, you know, can drive up the cost. And one thing that would drive up costs from a sprinkler perspective is if you do start having to put alcoves, right, because a head can only throw so many. So you might have every other unit where, oh, it's one head, but then every other unit because it's a foot or two longer. And that's what I'm saying. If you just do a little bit more, then it's... And the thing is, too, is because you do have to sprinkler them, you're not going to see things like this, these big buildings, in more or less your rural areas, right? Because you start talking a pump and tank system with the hazard class, you're looking 40,000 to 50,000 gallon sprinkler tank, much less the pump and all that. So you're looking at, with the infrastructure and other... 700 to a million dollars just to sprinkle it.

So the drive-ups have to have that too?

The drive-ups, they don't have that. And that's just... Due to how they build them, because each individual building, for example, because they're separate buildings, is under a particular square footage. But when you have the internal ones like that, you know, where you're stacking that many floors and all that, yes, you do have to sprinkler them.

Okay.

Steven, you brought up a point years ago. I went to a seminar. And the person who was talking was talking about zoning. And here was the point they were trying to make. And you talked about out west, the theme. And they said, if somebody dropped you out on an airplane onto 140, would you know you were in Westminster? Or could you be in Pinesville, Racertown, you know, any strip mall area? Would you know? And that starts way back. So what we're trying to do is to piecemeal a look, a better look for Carroll County. And it's very hard to do when you have what you have down in the Finksburg corridor or the 140 corridor where anything went. It didn't matter what it looked like as long as it was put up and that's what we're trying to remedy here with one industry or one business and that's this self-storage business. There's where we're having problems here.

But what we're requiring will be required countywide. Yes. Ultimately. Yes. So we have to be cognizant of that too.

Yeah, I mean. So does it mean this could spread to the next whatever that comes down the line? You know, can we make a better looking Popeye's or can we make a better looking next to McDonald's or, you know, Cactus Willie's or whatever? Oh, that's a throwback. That's a throwback. Oh, it could come back. Oh, it's going to come back. They're selling franchises now again. Ralph is starting it.

Bring it back, Cactus, Willys, and Westman.

Retro businesses, huh? But you see what I mean? We're using this as an example of maybe what we want to look at in the future. So I guess we're just starting on the self-storage part of it and saying, can we achieve this look now moving forward? Okay. All right. That's enough of that.

Can we get back to it for Daphne?

Sure. So this would be just saying that, you know, if you've got a building greater than 25 feet, which is going to be your internal self-storage, that every 50 feet you've got to do something on the public street frontage that's going to vary that plane. Okay.

Yeah, I mean, I like it because it gives you, you could change a different material. You can put, you know, strip a brick up. It's not saying that you have to add square footage or, you know, make. It's just giving you the option.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. All right. I would try to like to try to get through the sections that let's keep going, started out with, and that gets us through at least number seven here. So, or notes, uh, sorry, through number eight. Um, so let's see how far we can get. So we've got now a blank wall segments that are longer than 40 feet are, um, along public streets are prohibited. Oh, thank you. Um, SO THAT SEEMS TO BE CONSISTENT WITH WHAT THE INTENT OF THE PRIOR RECOMMENDATIONS HAVE BEEN IN TERMS OF PERCENTAGE OF GROUND FLOOR THAT HAS TO BE DETAILED OR HAVE WINDOWS OR This, now whether it's 40 feet or something else is up to you guys, but the intent is consistent with what we've just been talking about here.

So are we done with five? So.

That is number five. Yeah, I know. Is there any question, discussion about that? No. No. Okay. All right, so number six. Yeah. A lot of numbers here. Let me try to break this down. So if you have a building wall that is longer than 200 feet in length, every five feet, you have to incorporate, oh, nope, sorry.

Every 20 feet.

Every 100 feet, you have to incorporate a five foot depth and 20 foot width variation.

So you're just talking about staggering the buildings.

Yeah.

Right? Mostly. Or staggering the wall.

Yeah.

But...

So that's if you have an exceptionally long building, or a building that's at least 200 feet long, then at least halfway through it, you have to have some sort of substantial. So this is different from number three, where you're just incorporating some sort of, or three and four, some sort of architectural detailing or something like this. This is a little bit more substantial because you actually have to make a significant change in the plane of that.

So in 100 feet, you would have a wall 20 feet and then move it up and then 20 feet and then you would move it back and then 20 feet?

Yeah. No, just for those 100-foot intervals. So if you had a 200-foot building, then... halfway through that, you'd have to maybe bump it out five feet or recess it five feet. And that would have to be over a span of at least 20 feet in width.

So if you're looking at it, like if this was the wall, you would either have to jut it out for 20 feet or jut it in for 20 feet every 100 feet. Right. Yeah. Just it breaks up the visual plane.

Yeah. I'm not sure about that. So they would have to do both this and the windows potentially and out of curiosity?

Um... Meaning they would still have to make sure that they're providing that facade articulation at intervals not greater than 50 feet, et cetera, et cetera, but that bump out or recess could be part of that articulation, how they're meeting that part of the...

I'm curious. I know these all came from... What's his name? Mr. Baker.

Michael Baker is the name of the company.

Oh, okay. Not him. Okay.

I know, it's very confusing.

All right. But did we have... anybody permits or architecture kind of look at some of these suggestions to say, yeah, that's feasible or it's not. I mean, we're using, we're sitting here talking layman stuff, but are these things that are realistic in the building?

Right.

We did have internal staff, um, look at this and I've been trying to incorporate their comments as we've been discussing this. Yeah.

Okay. So they have, they have been looking at it.

You only have to do them every 100 feet on at least the 200 feet long wall. I mean, In my mind, that's not going to be enough to deter somebody that if they want to build a building to say that they're not. Now, if you had to do them for five feet every 20 feet, want a 200-foot wall, okay, well, yeah. But, again, I mean, it definitely will offer a much more pleasing aesthetic.

Maybe.

You know.

Should. Just a break in the wall. And I don't envision a 200, I mean, we're not in a warehouse area. So I don't especially envision a 200-foot wall.

So leave this one in. Oh, go ahead. We're okay with this, I think.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, number seven.

Let's do one more, and then we're going to take a break.

Sounds good.

After public comment.

Number seven is talking about building parapets and these are supposed to be designed to avoid a false front so that if you incorporate a parapet into the building, it would have to be integrated into sort of the overall massing of the building and how it gets designed. So it's not just little things sticking up. And the backsides of that parapet would not be, should not be visible from the public realm.

So if I build a building and I wanted to put like a fake A up on it, that's not anything that's just to kind of break up the look of it. That's something that wouldn't be allowed. I'm confused.

What do you mean by a fake A?

You know, you take a building across and you decide, I don't want it to be flat across there. I just want to put like a A in there. And they kind of structure it back into the roof. But it doesn't, it's fake. It's not like a dormer. Yeah, it's not structural. But it's, yeah. So... It keeps the building from looking like it's just got a straight line. They do it often in construction for homes.

You put it like in the center of the building?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think what this is saying is that if you wanted to do something like that, it would have to be integrated into the overall design of the building, not just sort of stuck there. And if it had a backside to it, that that backside would have to be finished somehow or yeah, integrated into the rest of the building massing so that it's not just almost like a two-dimensional kind of thing just stuck on top of the building.

Yeah, I know where he's driving the bus on this because if you do a parapet right, it looks like a completed building. If you don't, then, I mean, it does look pretty. cheesy one there.

You don't want to see the two befores and the

Right, yeah.

From the back, the two floors and the structural propping and everything that's going to hold this thing up.

Again, if we're talking about them backing up the neighborhood, so with everybody, if you're one driving down 32, you're going to see the nice pretty front, but if you live in the neighborhood, you're going to see, and then we go right back to where we've been 14 times tonight. Right.

We're back to telling them how to make it look. I don't have a strong feeling one way or the other.

This doesn't bother me. I'd be fine leaving. You just have a little pair of bits.

I'm okay with that. All right. Okay, Daphne, because of time, I think we need to stop right here. And I am going to ask for any public comment on what we've covered so far. So is there any public comment? Yes, ma'am. I recognize the lady here. Oh, okay. She's been very... You go first. Sorry, I...

Good evening. Can you hear me OK, yes, OK, my name is Audrey know back like I've said many times before for 36 years I've lived at 65 to 5 Carol Highlands Rd. I want to just give a few bullet points in in light of time. So much of what we've just discussed for 2 hours could be shortened eliminated whatever 2 ways delineate self storage Huge storage. Okay, from over four years ago, our community asked for that. The second way we can do this is adjacent to residential, not adjacent to residential Boscoff's is not adjacent to residential doesn't matter doesn't matter when you are 15 feet away from a huge building it matters so we you know we go along with everything As long as it takes into consideration was next to residential no vehicle storage adjacent to residential ends up looking like a junkyard. Increased setbacks adjacent to residential. The storage projects again we spoke about this do nothing to improve the county's goal of economic development. It's it's as simple as that and a big point is the community is asking that whatever we agree on not be allowed unless a project has been invested the people that have continued to plan and go ahead with their planning since the deferral was put in place is an insult to you and an insult to the county commissioners who put that deferral in place because they're hoping that this will go away and we can do what we've planned for what we've been discussing for over 4 years and all of the things that we have asked for the consultant has put that forward so we're asking that and Mister Robertson I applaud you because how many times in these meetings have you said we don't want it. How did you say it. We don't want to ruin a neighborhood because of a mistake and our neighborhoods are important. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Yes sir, go ahead.

Thank you. foots a little bit of a sleep good evening uh... jay brooks leahy delaney leahy and curtis appearing on behalf of barefoot land company i did submit a letter with some comments in advance and also with plans and elevations uh... their their self storage facilities located at route thirty two and it's in the c three zone uh... our first concern was a language in one fifty eight one fifty eight c two about loading areas And our concern was that our plan has a loading area under the covered bay in the front of the building. It doesn't have sliding doors or anything like that. So we suggested there should either be definitions of what a loading area is, or perhaps the ordinance could say something like, In the alternative, appropriate screening of loading areas from the public street will be required, something as simple as that. We also discussed the requirement for transparent windows. We have faux windows if you looked at our elevations along the rear and the side and so forth. I think we have real windows in the front, but we just suggested faux windows. I don't know if people really want to look at the inside of storage units. I think that's a very pretty site. We questioned the maximum sign of 50 square feet. The ordinance allows 200 throughout the commercial. Our design did have a 200. We also questioned whether it was intended in some of those sections C6, C7, C8, and C9 that did those design elements apply to all sides of the building or only those that face the public street? And finally, I want to say I appreciate that many board members have focused on providing some discretion with regard to all these various requirements. I think saying things like whenever feasible is very helpful. I say things like include subject to screening. So in other words, some of the qualifiers that you all have talked about I think would be helpful to add to some of those elements. So thank you very much. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Ms. Miller.

Thank you. Good evening. Kelly Schaefer Miller, 73 East Main Street, Westminster, Maryland, 21157.

I'm too tall for this microphone.

I am here tonight on behalf of Scott Cooper, who is the contract purchaser and developer of the proposed self-service storage on Liberty Road, known as County File Number S240018. i did submit i'm going to truncate my comments because i emailed you all a letter and i brought copies with me too that you can take and review but i i'm going to briefly hit on the points that i address in the letter first of all we are requesting you to consider grandfathering of plans in process i understand miss novak's comment here tonight but the board of county commissioners legislatively allowed plans to continue in process so Doing so has been at Mr. Cooper's risk, but has not been contrary to anything that was not allowed. I would urge you to consider, and I think I heard some questions asked, if not tonight, during the August session that you held about the impact of this amendment on existing sites. I think that that's worthy of your attention, and that does not impact my client on his site, but there are several existing self-service storage sites that this code amendment would impact and I think you should take a hard look at that and decide whether that's something you want to do or not. I question why this use is being proposed as a conditional use in the C2 zoning district. If you look at the purpose clause of the C2 zoning district and if you look at the other uses allowed by right in the C2 zoning district, you see significantly more intense uses that are allowed without any sort of restriction on hours, or specific design, or the way that the site faces a public road. So I don't understand why this is being, I do understand, but I don't think it's right that this is being singled out, this type of use when it is so low in impact. I agree with Mr. Leahy that I really appreciated the conversation tonight on the design elements. And that was one of my comments as well. I think if you look at some surrounding jurisdictions in our county, other municipalities, you will see that they do have discretion in their design review. And I I would assert to you that you have that discretion today. You don't need to add anything to have that discretion. You have it. But if you want to add something, it should be done at discretion because every site is different. And so the size of the site is different, the shape of the site is different, and that will change what you think is or is not appropriate. Screening, fencing, all of that will change what you think may or may not be desirable. One thing I just want to point out, which I don't know, maybe I'm misunderstanding this draft, But when you talk about, and it was really the consultant who talked about it last time, this concept of a mixed-use type development or a reuse of a site for this, I'll finish very briefly. Section 158.158J seems to be contradictory to that. So I'm not sure if that was intentional or if I'm misreading it, but I just wanted to point that out. So I'm going to pass these copies up for you to take your time in reading, and thank you tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Mr. Robertson, if I could. We're going to take a 10-minute break. If I could ask a real quick question.

I know we've only got four members tonight, which is obviously a quorum, but we're very much just at the quorum. given in light that, you know, the master plan, we're looking at preliminary record recommendation discussions. Would it not be reasonable and appropriate to wait until we have more than four of the seven? I think we might want to consider having Mr. Kane and Mr. Lester and some of the other members included in that conversation. How do you feel about that?

Um,

I think, Mr. Well, we're not going to make any decision on this. No.

Yeah. You're going to take it and bring it back to us at another.

Well, you're talking about the next segment here of the master plan. Correct. Talking about the master plan. Yes.

I'm just wondering, do we really want to repeat this twice or would we rather do it once?

We're going to have a discussion about this master plan in the next segment.

That's a good point.

So we could do one or two things here and maybe we pulled out our last segment. Could we, could we go back to talking about what we just did instead of working on the master plan?

So the master plan right now is after your adjournments, you would already have ended the meeting. We would not necessarily need to revise the agenda to no long. If you choose to no longer discuss the master plan. If you wanted to keep discussing item number six, it would not be changing your agenda at all. You would have just had public comment partway through your discussion.

And then we could have public comment again.

If something came up, you could, if you wanted to do two sections of public comment for item six, or you still have a general public comment left to go before you adjourn anyways.

Okay. So what, what's the, what's the consensus here?

Well, I don't think we should start. We can either continue with this.

I think it would behoove us to continue our discussion here. So let's take a 10-minute break.

Do you want to put that to a vote? That can just be a voice vote. It doesn't have to be a roll call vote. You may want to put that to a vote.

I personally think no matter which way we go, whether we continue with what we've been doing, or we go to the work session, we're still going to have it all come back to us. So it's not like it's one and done. Am I correct?

Yeah, you are correct. But I just think we would make more headway if we would just stay on the theme that we're on right now. And then wait for the more membership to talk about the master plan. That's the way I look at it. But...

I'm okay with continuing on the discussion... That we're on now.

You okay with that? I don't care. Because we're not going to continue until late into the night.

Mike won't be here next meeting either.

Okay. Well, we'll try to get on, make sure some of the others are here. How do you feel, Steve? I mean, yeah, we can go on this a little bit longer. Okay. So we'll take a 10-minute break, and then we'll continue to work on this. Okay? All right.

We are going to pick back up with number eight, blank wall treatments. Get myself organized here. Okay. So we've talked a little bit about blank walls already. This section is sort of expanding on that in terms of how those blank walls would be treated. So if it is visible from a public street, Common open space plazas, courtyards, sidewalks, trails, or interior pathways, blank walls are prohibited. Design treatments to eliminate blank walls shall include transparent windows or doors, windows that open into the interior of the building, or other methods such as murals or special building material treatments. So this seems somewhat contradictory to what we've already been talking about. So we've made a lot of provisions for how to treat blank walls. And then we say that if they're visible from a public street or all those other things, that they're prohibited. I guess the question that I would have is whether you feel like in the preceding sections that we've already discussed. How to deal with blank walls has been adequately addressed and this section is not needed. Number eight is not needed.

But this incorporate, I mean, the blank wall in the other section was the public street facing. Now this has jumped to much more than just that area, because this talks about sidewalks, trails, or interior pathways. So almost anywhere inside of that area, the building thing, depending on how it's sitting there, could have to have some type of architecture or artwork. It can't be a blank wall, which is not what the other said. So now this is becoming more restrictive.

Yeah.

What if we eliminated the other one and just left this one in so that would... That square, you couldn't have blank walls. I see what you're saying, yeah.

Yeah, so it's... I mean, this is pretty restrictive, I think.

So one thing that I think Mr. Leahy pointed out or had a question about was, which sides of the building do these sections of code address? So right now, we're in Section C, which at least is titled Front Facade Design and Orientation. just the front facade, whatever side of the building that is. And so all of the things that have been talked about so far with respect to blank walls and all of that sort of stuff, the way this code is structured, I would interpret to be only applicable to the front facade. Number eight here seems to expand that out. And so the question would be to what extent you all want to ensure that other sides of the building other than the front facade are also addressed and if and if we're talking about all sides of the building then I don't know if we maybe need to move this to a different section or retitle this section so that it's not only referring to the front facade yeah I I think this the blank wall in the front I get and even if it backs to

a neighborhood like down off of Liberty by Carol Highlands, I would say something like that, it shouldn't just be a blank wall. Maybe there should be some architectural things, but to bring all that other into it is almost anywhere you would look at the building, if there's a trail or a side wall or a pathway, anything, it would have to have some kind of architecture. And I think that's… That's a lot.

I think it's a good point, but then also kind of piggybacking on that one. So eight C we note other methods such as murals or special building material treatments. Um, I'm just going to ask for clarification. When we say murals, are we talking actual murals or what are we, what are we putting in code here? Possibly. So maybe my type of artwork, I guess my question would be, you know, we're talking about this being both in commercial and potentially residential areas. Do we really want someone to have a mural, a.k.a. artwork, on the side of a building? Because maybe that doesn't fit with the surrounding neighborhood or whatever else may be there commercially. And is that, one, distracting, but, two, do they also find issue with whatever the mural or artwork is? I think we're – if we want to keep it simple, I think we leave it as just –

you know whatever type of architecture we want to include but i think murals i would i would think that probably should be considered for being stricken out of out of the language i agree 100 yeah absolutely and the other thing is so many how long do they even last and then they become faded and everything else is a mess so no i yeah i'd rather have a blank wall yeah

Especially, too, because art is so subjective. So just like the commissioner was saying, you know, somebody might like an impressionist painting and other people might be like, sounds like somebody threw paint on the wall, you know?

Yeah. Yeah, but I have trouble with a period. I just think it's too broad. But I do think there should be some protection for... a residence that backs to of all, so however that can be put in.

Other than tree plantings or something like that, that's about the only way you can shield that from a neighborhood If the neighborhood doesn't want that building there, it doesn't matter what it looks like. It's going to be that they don't want it there. And the next best thing then is to shield it so they don't even see it. So the only way you can do that is to grow some trees there or something that'll shield that entire thing from sight. I don't like any of this, number eight.

Yeah, me neither.

None of it.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but in a situation like the one down off of Liberty Road, that's a pretty elevated site. So, in looking at the site, they're going to be looking up at it, so I don't care if you put a hundred foot tree there, it's probably not going to shield it. At what point, I know it's all elevated there, but the contour of surrounding is lower, at what point Is it feasible to say, should you build there? Should it go through? Is it reasonable to say, you need to bring your level down to a blank where everybody else is?

Yeah, I mean, I think then, again, we're getting into the site-specific conditions that you can't really create a code that's going to address all of the conditions. So, for example, that particular site slopes kind of northeasterly. So there are parts of the site that adjoin residential where I think the building is only, I don't know, 25 feet tall or something like that. And then it's kind of built into the hillside. And so then on the 26th side, the building THAT'S PROPOSED WOULD APPEAR IS TALLER BECAUSE IT'S BUILT INTO THE HILLSIDE. SO SAYING THAT YOU HAVE TO MASS GRADE THE SITE AND DO CERTAIN GRADE CHANGES MIGHT NOT HAVE THE DESIRED EFFECT THAT YOU WOULD WANT. I don't know, and that's gonna change from one site to another. So I don't know how we could put code language around what you're talking about without opening a can of worms about specific site conditions that might or might not meet that. Certainly, if you have something you want to suggest, we can put that in here and talk about it, but I'm having a hard time thinking kind of on the fly about how that would be worded.

I'm not sure. I know in doing residential, you can't have a grade higher for the driveway, so you've got to be able to kind of level the ground some so it's not on top of a mountain. Which we've moved lots of earth in the day but of course probably all voluntary to make it more

So you're suggesting that we would say something about grading the site. So maybe I'm not understanding what you're suggesting. Yeah. Do you want us to grade, require that the site be graded to the same level as the surrounding neighborhood? Maybe.

Maybe not. Liz has given me one.

Well, this one we're referring to is a tough one. And number one, there's going to be a lot of dirt moved there to make that feasible. And you're right, the back end of that thing should be. And didn't we lower the height of that building? We already did that to try to mitigate it from the back anyway. And so again, I go back to saying that the best way to shield this from residential in a case like that one would be to shield it with trees and shrubs and fencing things that just hide it. But the rest of this, I don't understand. This is too nitpicky. I'd like to strike this whole thing. All of it.

I think you can cure a lot of that with some heavy screening.

I agree.

No murals.

A blank wall would be better. You never know.

Might have a progressive planning commission that wants something crazy.

That's what worries me.

We are writing this stuff for, or suggesting this stuff for future.

Is it okay if we just strike that? Yeah, I'm fine with that. Richard? Yep. Okay. Let's move on.

All right. So the last section here, thank you, is building materials and color. There are a number of different recommendations here, A through I. All of them looks like are intended to support the first statement here, which is building materials and colors shall unify the overall architecture and facade detailing of the building. So, the first item talks about high quality, durable building materials that add visual interest, detail, and are easily maintained, shall be used. Yeah, let me run through a couple of these because they're all kind of related. So first one, high quality, durable building materials that add visual interest. Second one, if you use metal siding, it has to have visible corner moldings and trim and incorporate masonry or other impact and stain resistant material at the base of the building. height to be proportional to overall building height. Third item, concrete block. It has to be a split or rock-faced variety and must be limited to 20% of the facade area. The Planning and Zoning Commission can allow a higher percentage if they're using specialized textures or colors to meet the intent of this particular section. Stucco as another finish is required to be trimmed in wood or masonry and sheltered from extreme weather by roof overhangs or other methods. Weather exposed horizontal surfaces must be avoided. And masonry is required at the base of the building proportional to overall building height. And there are a few types of building materials that would be prohibited. That includes mirrored glass covering more than 10% of the exterior, textured or scored plywood, stucco board, and window film. All right, so that's materials. I'll stop there. The next four are addressing color. But let's talk about building materials.

So do, and maybe that's coming, but on a commercial building, do we tell them how to build it, what materials to use, and what... just detailed just like this, is that, it's a no?

Not in our regular zoning code.

Okay.

We do have, in the Finksburg area, they have some design guidelines that. Guidelines. Get into some of those things, yeah.

But not, I mean, suggestions, here's what you should use. Right, right. We want you to aspire to. Yeah. similar to Freedom, the book. But this is, I think, a builder, most builders, developers, don't want to put a product up that's going to fall apart. So they want it to look good because the better it looks, the more people are interested. But the more restrictions you put on what they have to do to the exterior. I'm looking at some of these things and from a building standpoint, they're pretty costly. The more it's there in cost, the more it gets passed along and Commissioner Gordon isn't going to care if it's got all the pretty little facades up there and ornamental things around the windows. What he wants is to put his stuff in there and have it secure. I think we're getting too much in the weeds to tell somebody how they have to build it and how they have to use it.

Ralph. Well, first of all, we have building codes in Carroll County, so they just can't put up a two by four in the corner and a two by six over the top and think it's all going to work. So when it says we want them to use high-quality products, well, that's part of the building code itself. You know, the... I keep going back to this concept that I think there are a lot of people that know what ugly is and what desirable is. And we're kind of dictating what we think ugly and desirable is here. So when a concept plan comes in, and I'm not going to just quickly show a picture. If we look at that picture and we say, you know, this is not compatible with the neighborhood, this does not look right, I think we have enough leeway to make those determinations without getting into all this. And I'm really against this part at all. I mean, if a builder came in and said, OK, we're going to build a storage facility right in the middle of a neighborhood, and we're going to make it chartreuse, you think we're going to accept that? I don't think so. But if they come in with a decent concept plan with all the trimmings instead of a black and white photo or something like that, I think we have the ability and legally we have the right up here to say this does not fit this neighborhood. So I don't think we need all this. This is noise to me. I'm so tired of noise.

In my mind, if we were going to keep anything, I would say we keep 9 itself, then just A and E, and that kind of just simplifies simplifies things.

I agree. A is the high quality durable materials. E is the following materials are prohibited. Mirror glass coverings and textured or scored plywood. I mean, if you like that.

I think some of that T111 has come a long way.

You can get it now. It's almost like a composite. Right.

So.

and stucco boards i think they're some of the ones that cause the moisture to get behind there so yeah that's i mean i mean i'm fine if you want to get rid of the whole thing but if we were going to do any i would say we keep nine in a and e or maybe even combined a and e together or whatever it might be the other thing is like like b if metal siding is used it must have visible corner

I've never seen anybody put a building up that didn't put corner moldings on it. If you put siding up, even all our sheds on my farm have that.

I guess my question would be to your point is, do we mention this kind of language that we know in 9A and any other codes? i mean yeah because i believe i believe the intent and and uh concept of any type of construction to your point earlier is we have the expectation that any type of building be it commercial industrial residential storage whatever would be built using high quality durable materials et cetera et cetera so then i have to question why even to your point have that it seems like we're adding a line just add a line in language

That's why I asked if it was part of the commercial, just regular buildings.

The only thing I can say to number A is, again, being in construction, seeing it very, very often where somebody thinks they're doing something or somebody thinks that they're paying for something, and then they pull a switcheroo and they absolutely do not use high-quality, durable materials materials things along those lines and my thing with this is that would be make it easier for the county to possibly in force that because they'll charge a certain amount of money oh yeah this is what you're getting and then again they wind up putting in something that's absolutely not what that is. So I can certainly see a reason for having this. And again, especially too with, because a lot of these self storage things, they're big corporate conglomerates and you're getting right out of town GCs where you might get somebody that they just, all they do is they build for easy storage, right? But they're out of Iowa. So they're going to come maximize profit. Boom, they're done. What are you going to do? You're left with a building that, you know what I mean?

So Steven, on nine, just nine, the heading, and A would be sufficient. If we have the heading, building materials and color shall unify the overall architecture and facade, and then A, high quality, if you want to put that in there, the rest of it is noise. that we have, so I'd still say we put the rest of it onto the Planning Commission And the community. When the project comes in. And the community to come in and say, this thing is ugly, it will look horrible in our community, even though all the code said it can be put here, but we don't like these colors and all that.

I mean, that makes sense. If we keep 9 and 9A, I think that gives us then the autonomy to say, okay, based on this... Yeah, this is not going to work based on these two things right here.

So when we have whatever we have as the planning commission to look at these things, does the same criteria go to the design committee?

I was just trying to look up. I'm pretty sure that they review everything before it even gets to you. Right.

But they would be reviewing it with that. So it wouldn't be. They'd be looking at apples and we're looking at oranges in the end, right? They're looking at the same thing we will be.

Yeah. You mean code-wise?

Yes.

Yeah, if a self-storage facility came in, that would be shared with them.

Okay.

Okay, so do you want to eliminate it or keep the recommendation from Stephen?

9 and 9A.

9 and 9A and keep that in there and let it go at that.

yep we even need that okay okay I'm good all right Daphne nine and nine a yeah okay the rest of it you can all right so then picking up with the last four of building colors and materials and then we'll be through letter C So here we're talking about colors. Bright building or trim colors are discouraged except if it's of a decorative nature. Desirable colors include natural earth tones, muted and dark saturated colors. Color palettes have to be submitted to the county for approval when it comes to lighting neon tubing and or linear building lighting along the facade or roof lines is not permitted and you can't design the building or paint it to resemble some sort of business logo or sign And if you, your signage is regulated by a different part of our code.

So the big sign on the side of Boscov's would not be allowed?

Right. Well, we would have to, I'd have to get an interpretation on that from the zoning administrator, but I think that's sort of what letter I is getting at.

Is that? I never even kind of looked at it. Is that integral to the building, or is it like a sign on the building?

Oh, no, it never offended me.

Me neither. I think it's like mounted to the side of the building. Mounted to the side. Not like in the building, yeah.

So that, I mean, what this is saying is that, I mean, you are allowed to have building-mounted signage. So, and that's regulated under a separate section of our zoning code. I think what this is saying is you can't, I don't know, Boscovs couldn't design their building to look like a giant cursive B, I guess.

So the building would say Boscovs and it would be all like a B and an O and a G. Yeah.

Or have a giant one of those painted across the whole facade of the... Like if you had, I don't know, CubeSmart... built a building that was a couple stories tall, they couldn't paint their logo across the whole facade. Got it.

So it has to adhere to zoning.

Yeah, I mean that's, it's, yeah.

So do we even need that because signage has to be approved? Yeah.

It doesn't hurt to have it though.

Okay. I'm having trouble imagining what the on the ground application of this would be, but because it's in there, I have to imagine someone has tried it somewhere.

What?

again too with with a lot of these things be more of a nationwide corporate type thing right if somebody has a lot of them you know if you go to here or wherever they all have maybe a specific design and right their design could be we build a great building and then we put a giant logo in the middle of it you know via via paint because that's our corporate design so i think if you do leave that in there while it's not not ever going to come up i think that that right off it's Yeah, I mean, because again, a lot of these are just corporate national conglomerates that are ultimately building these that have their own or their preferred design standard. And like you said, it's in here because obviously it's kind of like warning labels on something. It's there because somebody's tried it somewhere, you know what I mean?

I'm not a fan of F and G. I mean, I think it should... In the instance of residential being near that, it should blend with that, but I don't think we should get into telling them what colors to paint.

I'm okay with leaving it in. Sorry.

So one comment that we got on G is that this is already part of your site plan review process.

I guess for what it's worth, if it is in there, it kind of sets the precedents beforehand that, you know.

Right, and then we can fine-tune it.

Yeah, looking for a specific, not necessarily specific, but this is the color palette that we prefer in the county.

And I'm okay with all four of those.

I wonder how many lawsuits we'll get eventually.

There's only one way to find out.

I mean you do have the language in in F that talks about bright building our trim colors being discouraged so there's nothing that says you absolutely can't use them so but but then that's kind of balanced with the other language in here that talks about needing to have your color palette approved and making sure that some of the more sort of garish lighting treatments and that sort of thing are not allowed. So we're keeping these as they are.

That's my vote.

All right.

Okay, let's move on.

So it is 9.08 and I know you had mentioned trying to wrap up by nine o'clock. We're certainly not getting through the whole rest of the code tonight. um we can keep going if you'd like to or we can push pause and and come back to this at our next meeting pause pause yeah i think the consensus has it

We'll be here picking colors all night.

Even longer because I'm colorblind, so we're really up the creek.

Isn't this great?

It's green. No, it's not. Okay. Is there any more public comment?

Next one.

If not.

I make a motion to be adjourned. Stop. You're not done. I have a second.

I second. Adjourned.