Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Hi, good evening um everyone. This is our January monthly meeting for the planning board. Um I request a call to order for starting the meeting. We have the quorum. Um our first um item of business is approval of agenda. Is everybody looked at the agenda and okay with it? Motion to approve agenda as presented. I second it. All right. All in favor? I I I [clears throat]

All right. The next uh item on the list is just to make sure that it is our duty as a planning board member to avoid conflicts of interest and appearances of the conflicts. And in this uh accordance with this, I would ask everyone to review this agenda and if any member has any conflict or appearance of the conflict with any matters coming before the board today that need to identify the conflict and refrain from any undue participation in the matter involved. Any of those? No conflict of interest. Great. Thank you. Moving forward. Item E, approval of uh minutes from the previous meeting. We did not have the meeting in December. We had a meeting in November which was November 18th and we all have the meeting minutes. If there are no issues, I request uh for the motion to approve the planning board meeting minutes from November 18th. [clears throat]

I'll make a motion to um to approve the minutes from the 18th meeting. [clears throat] Uh second. All in agreement? I I [clears throat]

All right. That brings us to item number F that is old business. Okay, that is old business and it is about request to reopen discussion and resend prior motion of enhancing the planning board deliberations and recommendations. Under the planning board's rules of procedures and generally accepted parliamentary practice, a motion may be resent by the member who made the original motion or by the board in order to reopen discussion on a matter previously acted upon. Reconsideration of an item listed as old business is procedurally appropriate when the board determines that additional discussion is warranted to ensure full participation or clarity of the intent and a complete deliberative record. There is a recommended action and this is in reference to the motion that was made on the in the November 18th meeting by uh Rick Krauss. Motion to resend the motion adopted by planning board on November 18th, 2025 which authorized Mr. Krauss to engage directly with members of the board commissioners, selected town staff and planning board members to expeditiously develop for further review by the planning board a problem statement describing opportunities to enhance the planning board's deliberative process and recommendation. This this motion to resend is an is a request uh and I would give some clarity and then open it for discussion is because November 18th we had given this motion in an understanding that this would be Rick Krauss would probably first share his proposed approach or a structure or an agenda with the planning board and or also to the TAN staff via email and have the next steps and have

it structured. I have received um a couple of concerns and a couple of emails from the leadership of the town that they would not mind participating and uh engaging in these conversations but they would like to see an agenda a proper structure ahead of it and thus there's request uh this request to resend this motion. I'm opening it the floor for discussion. I'm actually happy to make the motion to resend if that would expedite things and then we can continue the discussion. So, if that's okay, I'll I'll move as uh described uh to resend the motion adopted on November 18th that authorized me to uh engage with the board of commissioners, etc.

Second. Thank you. All in favor? I I Thank you, Rick. [clears throat] Uh that brings us to the new business consideration of uh reasonzoning petition CD 00009 2025. Excuse me chair. You need to u discuss it. You've asked him to rescend it. So the item is still uh up for discussion.

Correct. Sorry, my bad. We'll go back to the item number F. So after now the motion is being rescended. Uh we would like to bring this back for discussion in the next meeting with with proper uh uh information or agenda and a structure for future uh for further approval. Um that that makes sense to me. I don't think that's specified in the draft motion, but I'm just reading it quickly here. Um, if the draft motion is satisfactory, I'm happy to read that motion into the record and we can vote on it or you can modify it to include that.

Excuse me, chair. Can I explain the procedure for you? Okay, you've opened up the floor. He's rescended that motion. So, the floor is open for you all to discuss further. This is a time you can ask your questions and then provide clarity to uh Mr. prow on whether the board wants to see those the questions or what direction you have for him. Um this can be done with the further motion, but this is just a recommended motion. You can add to whatever, but um it's up for discussion now. So you're you're welcome to ask your questions and get clarity based on what his intentions are for this item.

Okay. Thank you. Uh I'm opening this for further discussions for any questions if anybody would like to uh chat about this. I would if Go ahead Ted Trey anyone. Um I would like to ask a question Chris that and sorry from the meeting of November 18th I was not fully present here by the time I reached here it was already eyed. So uh what is the what is the main intention of these interviews and for I mean I I have read your the mess of the meeting and the previous so it's talking about deliberations and adding more clarity for the planning board process but my question to you is it's been it's been a year that we are all doing this together. Is there anything that is still not clear or can this be done in a different way that you bring up a list of questions and we can have a session or you can uh watch the videos of the previous uh recommendation sessions and or the meeting that we had the training session session that we had if that might help us. Um yeah, I think the uh the intent and actually the revised motion uh as drafted, which I just lost track of, all made sense to me. It was all in service of um simply checking, first of all, checking in with the board of commissioners to see whether and how we might make our recommendations more valuable to them in informing the decisions that they make. We only make recommendations. They make the decisions. Um and to explore whether there are ways that um we can improve the value both to the board of commissioners of the work that we do and the work product that we create uh andor

um improve the value to the uh community through the process through through the deliberative process. So, this is really um I I framed it and I intend it as um really just a continuous improvement um especially given that we've had a substantial change in the makeup of the board of commissioners. Um I think it's a and I don't believe that we really had at least not within my limited one year plus uh experience. We've never really had a discussion about um what needs to go into or what could go into uh both how we make our decisions and how we present those decisions to the board of commissioners and to the public in a way that's most helpful. Um I will say um I uh created some confusion I think um in some of the language or the expectations um as to what I was doing here. Uh a slide was shared at the last meeting that was uh one version out of date from what I had intended. Uh and it made reference the slide that was presented made reference to a visual um uh device that might um accompany uh decisions or might inform um recommendations that we make. Um that had already been discussed with town staff and some planning board members as not really being a good idea. Um so I had already removed that but it was left on the slide. Uh really the intent is to look at process to look at uh our work products potentially add additional context to the recommendations that we make to the board of commissioners. Uh those that context being more easily consumable than going back and reviewing an hour and a half meeting. Uh it could be potentially part of the package that's referred to the board of commissioners. Um but the under the underlying issue is I don't know whether that's necessary or not, right? Um maybe the board of

commissioners is 100% satisfied with what they're getting and how they're getting it from the planning board. Um and maybe they're not. Um so this is really an intent uh to explore with some um questions that would be um uh points of departure for dialogue. Um and uh as you know, I've shared those questions with the chair and the vice chair. Um, I have uh I had coordinated the outreach to the commissioners for these interviews with the town staff and I did let the chair and vice chair know that that was happening. Um, but I'm totally comfortable with additional um pre uh or co- um elaboration uh in terms of how we engage with them. if uh the [snorts] board of commissioners is some for some reason uncomfortable uh with where those conversations might go or where the questions might be or what I might do with the information. Uh but the intent really is to explore uh how and whether we might improve the value of the work that we do.

Um understood. First of all, I think I would like to say that us as planning board, we only give recommendations. So there is no decisions going from our side. It's purely recommendations and then the board of commissioners and the town staff with the exception of the quasi judicial but that's very minor.

So my personal suggestion would be again that if we can if there was something that and I I totally appreciate your intention of uh continuous improvement and that is that is true in any any settings and any initiative. Um but to do that I think it should be a collaborative process. So my my suggestion would be if you look at the previous recordings of what we have what we have approved and how that has been uh that h how that has been gotten to f futition whether it is approved not approved recommended uh in favor of or not in favor of and how the decisions have made have been made that's like a case study for myself and I'm pretty sure everybody who has been on the board here has has done that

and I have done that as well right so I think we should we need to put put a put a structure to that to this process for the continual improvement as opposed to directly uh getting to the step of uh interviewing the board of commissioners or meeting with them.

Any suggestions? Well, I guess my thoughts were to me when we initially talked with this, what I thought was we were trying to get some feedback from the standpoint that you might just instead of trying to have an interview and actually sit down with them that you would actually maybe just send an email with a questionnaire like 10 15 questions, you know, how how do they perceive we're giving them that there is enough information? What's missing? Um because it sounds like to me what's happening is the commissioner is having a face to face interview without any kind of agenda. they're kind of what's going on. And that's what I thought. We just kind of get the feedback and you could collate what the what the issues were, you know, that that that that you could be more specific in these areas or these are the things that are missing or whatever might be because I I was curious myself, you know, do they feel like the feedback they're getting when they make their decisions um is it complete? That's kind of what I was just curious about. And for me, this seems like that can be done without a face to face interview. just ask them, you know, just a questionnaire, say, "Hey, you know, these are these things. What What do you see that's missing? What do you think's working well?" And then we can possibly follow up with interviews down the road once we figure out there's anything really missing and get more detail. But I'm kind of curious myself at this high level, are they perceiving they're getting enough information? Is it complete enough? And that that could be done uh without having to take the time needed to set up a face toface where if you to send an email out they can do it on their um their time respond back and we get the feedback. So that's what I was thinking we kind of do as a two-phase pro process find out if there's a really an issue you know if there's an issue then maybe at that point follow up with some sort of a face-toface discussion if there looks like there is a glaring hole somewhere.

[clears throat]

I actually have uh six questions that could be uh put into a survey if you're more comfortable if the planning board is more comfortable with the engagement starting as a survey to the board of commissioners. Uh and then a sharing back of the results uh and then a decision as to whether we want to engage in a more intimate way and whether that's one-on-one or group interviews. Uh those can all be decided as we go along. There's nothing magical about the the idea of one-on-one interviews. So, um I guess the question is do you want to um uh do you want to make that motion that we that we um I can put out a draft uh survey? Uh and we can coordinate through email. Uh we have to be careful about um everybody piling on. It becomes an open meeting issue. Um, so I'm not exactly sure if you want to just work with the chair and the vice chair uh or if you want to do this in some other way or we can do it as a work session uh and schedule that work session. I think you already gave gave the whole process which is pretty uh acceptable to me that we send out an email or a survey in the survey form and definitely the chair and vice chair to be involved or uh looked in in the process and then depending on what the response comes back to the survey we can then schedule a common work session with the planning board members all of us and the uh board of commissioners if required. Mhm. Uh, and in terms of approving the content of that survey, is that something that all the planning board members would like to see before it goes out or are the planning board members comfortable with me just coordinating with the chair and vice chair uh before it goes out to the commissioners?

Just to respect everybody the the the planning board team who has been now in the second second tenure of the planning board, I would suggest it should go through all all members just for the Okay. So, I would just ask for some guidance as to how to pull that off without violating or creating a open meeting issue. Um, is there a can town staff maybe if I uh draft a document, can I have town staff uh I think it would be better if you uh coordinate it with me, the town clerk. Yes. And I will disseminate to the board of commissioners as well as sharing it with the planning staff.

Um, okay. Okay. And just to get the order right, I think we want someone uh before it goes to the commissioners, we want to make sure that the planning board is comfortable with what's going to the board of commissioners. Right. What I'm hearing is that the planning board would like to see the survey and the survey questions prior to dissemination. Okay. And uh so I can work with you um on coordinating that. Correct. And the planning board can direct you to do such. Thanks. That's fine with me. Um, so, uh, we should, well, I'm sorry. Perhaps there's more discussion. Any any further questions or discussions to try? No.

So, for the moment, I think I'll I'll make I'll attempt to do on the-fly motion. Not my not my strong suit, but um I I'll try to move this simply. Um, I move that um the board uh I don't know. Does anything need to be off? Do we need to move anything? I can move to um that I will draft um a survey for just

chair. I would ask the board of another s since Mr. Krauss is the one that is um asking to to do this, I would suggest that another board member make the motion um to um authorize Mr. Krauss to uh develop a survey, disseminate to the town clerk and planning staff and planning board for review and then um upon upon um decision that you are satisfied with the questions and the questionnaire, the survey that uh you give permission for um for that item to be disseminated to the board of commissioners. Okay.

Well, I'll make I'll make that motion. Um, I'm I um make a motion to have Mr. Krauss um put together a list of questions uh to be posed on the quality of the um product that we're sending to the um commissioners and uh with those questions to work to the town clerk to distribute it to the board members to review before being distributed to the town council. And once uh the the board is um is comfortable to then um distribute that questionnaire to the town council which then we would uh uh review the results with Mr. Cross as he u u you know pulls together the information from that uh survey.

Second second I don't think we need to second. We can Okay. All in favor? I I thank you. Thank you. Moving along to the new business, consideration of resoning petition CD 0009 2025 8003 Pino Road and presenter is Blair.

Hello everyone. This is uh first time I'm addressing this board and appreciate the opportunity. It's good to see old faces and new faces. So um yes, tonight we have uh a conditional resoning petition. It's for the address of 803 Pine Oak Road. So, let's dive into it. Um, this is petition CD, petition CD09205. It's a request by Derek Richardson. Derek is here with his wife Heather. Um, and it's for a conditional reszoning, which is also a map amendment of parcel number 06165038. And that would be from its current R3 zoning, that's single family residential, to a NCCZ, which is a neighborhood center conditional zoning. The property, uh, you can see an aerial here. You might recognize it. Um, it's a a very particular part of the town. Uh, it's easy to recognize. The property is at the corner lot of, uh, and it has it's approximately 2.11 acres. U located at the address that I mentioned. It's at the bend in the road in Pine Oak Road. Uh it's across from the new development of Artisan Prescott. Artisan Prescott is actually um the residential component of the larger Prescott U development which the latest addition there is the Lowe's Foods and uh a number of other um commercial establishments. That's kind of just across the street. You'll get a better view of that in a second. Um, in this slide you can see that the overall neighborhood uh 8003 Pineoke Road is with the little gold star. Um, and what you see in green is Pine Oak Road. Uh, I call it an east west connector because what it connects are Waxaw's two of Waxaw's major north south roads. Um,

NC16 on the east side and Waxaw Marvin Road on the west side. So it um it's to the north of it, you can see Kensington Drive, but together those two are um form important connections between those two roads. So, they do get a lot of traffic. Uh that traffic seems to always be increasing as development occurs, but um anyway, what I want to point out is some of the uh improvements that have been made with recent development. So you'll see um there's on on Providence Road uh there's the new road to the to the north of Lowe's food that has a signalized intersection and through you go through two roundabouts and then it becomes Pineoke Road. It merges with Pineoke Road. Pineoke Road in the green just south of there on the south side of Lowe's food also still connects to 16 but now it is a right in right out intersection. So, um, from a transportation engineers point of view, that is the gold, you know, to be able to get the traffic to move that way, but still have that light just above it. So, it really enhances that that um that connection because now there are two intersections where before there was just really the one. So, you can see the traffic circle, the the western traffic circle that's right by the the property, very close. We'll get a closer view of that in a minute. And then as you head south on Pineak Road, uh it merges uh right now at a very um acute angle and somewhat dangerous angle. There have been a number of accidents there. Um with Waxaw Marvin Road and that's why that has a red circle as well because that is due uh there is a uh uh intersection improvement that's underway. you can already see uh the flags and the property that's um going

to be part of the realignment of that road. So, it will also be a signalized intersection and realign so that it's a lot safer. You're entering it, you know, you're you're entering at 90 degrees pretty much to get onto it's it's a more rectal linear intersection. So, that's going to be an improvement as well, which I think everybody will be happy to see. Um, so for the property, getting back to that neighborhood, you can see the the current zoning, uh, our color code there is is shown in yellow is just our R3 residential. And then you can see a lot of brown in this area. That's neighborhood center. Um and uh the red uh there's a particularly a lot of red along 16 because that's our corridor commercial um uh zoning which you know sometimes we call it big box zoning. That's where you can have the big box stores, you can have the big parking lots. It's very v autocentric, very uh oriented towards uh vehicular traffic. Um you'll also see a little bit of EC. That's where we are now. That's town hall. Um that's employment center. Um and there is a little bit of R4CZ and I can't see it at the moment but it doesn't really um enter closely to Oh yeah, you can see a little bit of it there just north of the intersection. You'll see the the little bit of brown there at Pine Oak where it joins Waxaw Marvin. If you go north a little bit, there's um there's that um conditional zoning there for an R4. So that's the overall zoning. You can see that the the property in question is right there in R3. However, you can also see that the neighborhood center zoning is just across the street, just across Pine Oak Road. And that is really what precipitates um some of tonight's um action uh for this reasonzoning. And I'll show you what I mean. But first, I do want to point out the future land use

plan. And of course, that's a visionary document. That's what we're here to um that's that's what guides the planning staff and also provides a framework for the planning board and the board of commissioners to say okay this is the adopted vision for the plan for the for the town. Of course the Waxaw 20 240 comprehensive plan. It's more than just a map. This is just the future land use map that you're seeing here. Um but it indicates this is this is the direction that the plan which is really less than well I think it's about two years old now. Um it is [clears throat] a plan that went through a a vigorous amount of of oversight and work that was staff and board driven planning board driven and most importantly public input driven. So, this plan received a lot of public input and this is this is the vision that they saw for this area. Um, but I want to point out what mixed use is about because you'll see this page over to the right side of the slide. That's also from the comprehensive plan and it just describes what that brown area means. Um, I don't want to don't get confused between the neighborhood center, which is brown, and mixed use, which is brown. But the fact is is that yes, neighborhood center is the zoning expression of mixed use. um uh vision. So anyway, they are kind of interchangeable. So sometimes we say it that way, but really the way the comprehensive plan puts it is that it's it's a mixeduse area and it's of the type that it's more about, as you can see, principal uses, more about smaller scale types of of um commercial office. Um it's neighborhood oriented. It is retail. It's services. Ideally, it's things that people can walk to and and and have certain services done without having to get downtown or without having to go into the big box stores. So, it's more about the smaller scale

neighborhood type of of development. And you can see that neighborhood center is a mixeduse. So, that means that residential is also allowed in neighborhood center un under certain conditions. The purpose again is to provide an alternative to the autooriented commercial centers and to express also the architectural identity of the town. So we hope that and and through um work that we're continuing to do with the with the land development code make it so that neighborhood center um design reflects a little bit of the downtown to to um show that it is part of Waxaw that it reexpresses that identity of Waxaw. um conditions um just strategically located neighborhood scale nodes composed of mix and retail like I said uh and um higher density residential housing when appropriate um and it's designed to fit harmoniously with the surrounding residential neighborhoods and I think that's really the key phrase tonight does this fit harmoniously or the idea that's being presented. So, um, just verbally, uh, consistency with the Waxaw 2040 comp plan, just some of the things that it is consistent with is that, um, the comprehensive plan calls for expanding the commercial tax base of the town. As you know, and as is often quoted from from this board or from the board of commissioners mostly, um, that we have we have a tax base that's not really very balanced. It is mostly residential. I don't know the exact number, but right now it could be as high as maybe 91% residential. So, the town needs to mix that in order to get more tax money coming in from from property taxes. Um, and that's that can help pay for the services that the town provides. Um, another point is that it supports local employment with locallyowned low inensity small

business. That's what's um that's the idea tonight um from from our um applicant. Also, preserving neighborhood character. So, again, there's that, you know, it needs to fit in uh and then minimizing environmental traffic and infrastructure impacts. That's always a concern. Anytime we look at development, we think what's the traffic, what is what kind of traffic is it going to induce and how is it going to infect the environment? Affect the environment, I should say. um both a natural environment, the built environment, cultural um and then you know the is it is it appropriate for the infrastructure that's there. So let's take a look again at the zoning of what's being proposed. Again, right now it's R4. What they're what we're talking about is NCCZ, neighborhood center conditional. I want to remind you what conditional zoning uh requires. Um there's a process. Um, and so where we are in the process is that it started with the neighborhood meeting. We'll give you more information about that neighborhood meeting. I think it's in the next slide. And then a site plan with sight specific conditions, which is put together as part of the vision of the applicant, but also in response to what they learned from the neighborhood meeting. What are the concerns of the neighborhood? What are the what are what's the vision of the neighborhood? What would they like to see there? And then how does that blend with the idea that this particular uh applicant is bringing and can they find a meeting place? So um those sight specific conditions and the site plan itself are very specific here. What what's being considered tonight? Again, this is not a general resoning where it's just okay, we'll let it be neighborhood center, but how many different things can be in neighborhood center? That's not the decision tonight. That would be a general resoning. Conditional resoning means you're getting that plan with those conditions. So it's very it's it's

an agreement that's very precise. So [clears throat] the next step of course is planning board review which is where we are tonight. But after this uh once a recommendation has been made by the planning board it would go before the board of commissioners for approval of the site plan and the written agreement of conditions. Um now as part of uh norm the normal process does include at least um looking at the project and saying is a traffic impact analysis required in this particular case because of the square footage of the use and the intensity of that use. It's a formula that's that's gone through and it's it was determined that no this does not kick in a a TIA a traffic impact analysis. Um, I just again want to reiterate any major design changes to this plan. I said it's a very specific plan or if there's somebody that comes along in the future um that wants to do something different. In other words, say that a scenario happens where the plan is approved, this conditional zoning is approved. Well, then the owner uh maybe does it for a while and then says, "No, we're going to we're going to sell the property. We're going to do something else." Or we weren't able to carry out our initial plan. We wanted to but things didn't work out. Anything can happen. You know that in the case where that happens, anyone new coming along can't just say, "Oh, it's neighborhood center zoning now." No, because it's not. It's neighborhood center conditional. So, they would have to this new owner, the the the zoning goes with the land, not with the owner. So, they would have to take that parcel and take the pro the take the zoning with it and say and they would either have to develop what's being uh considered tonight and and what's ultimately agreed to or they would have to come with a whole new submitt and they would go through the whole process over again. They'd have to start from scratch. So, I just want you

to, you know, be be aware of that. Okay. So for this particular project since uh there's there's I throw buffer requirements in there because you know that's one of the main concerns is well how is it going to affect the neighbors in the situation where you have NC zoning um the the normal buffer between that and an and an R3 would be class A which is 10 foot of width of screening uh or you can you can add a fence you can you can do different things but you can see basically it's it's a there um that means that there's three trees per 100 square feet, so many shrubs, things like that. It's a low intensity screen. Um that is for normal zoning. In the case of conditional zoning, again, maybe that gets beefed up. Maybe that's one of the conditions is that well, we want to see twice as much screening or we want to see some other thing going on that that helps mitigate the connection. So, that's part of what's being considered tonight. Um, I just want to before I move on to the next slide, there's a lot of fine print over to your right, but that's a page out of the land development code. But I just want to point out that under non-residential buildings under notes there, you can see they're the dimensional standards and all that. They have to they have to meet those things as part of this. But, uh, for non-residential buildings, the the footprint of a normal NC does not exceed 10,000 square feet. Um again this is conditional zoning so things can vary but that just gives you an idea that NC NC zoning is about smaller scale development. So as I mentioned the the process um the neighborhood meeting is like one of the first things that has to happen and it has happened for this particular project. Um it occurred uh November 22nd of last year, 11:00 a.m. Um invitations were sent out to all property owners according to state law uh within the 600

ft of the site. So they all received the a [clears throat] letter for that. Um we have the the proof of that and all. Um there was also a a signage requirement. Um there there there was some talk about boy this is a large sign you know but actually the code was changed because people complained before that well the sign was too small we couldn't see it. So if the sign appeared a little big there's a there's a reason for that. It was to meet the code and make sure everybody can see it. But in this case they went above and beyond that because you know Pine Oak maybe everybody in town's not going to go down Pine Oak but they still you know at least deserve to know about it. So, one of the things that we did to to help mitigate that is put additional signage, basically the same sign, a little smaller, um, at each end of Pine Oak Road, so it was very visible. So, meeting results, there were 32 people who came to the meeting. Um, the there was a report provided to the town about the meeting that again is part of the instructions that that staff gives uh, the applicants for these meetings. Uh it was um let's see in in that was included the letter, the proof of mailing, the list of attendees, and most importantly perhaps uh the meeting summary which we'll we'll go over right here. So here's the feedback. The majority of those attending expressed opposition to resoning uh citing certain concerns. Well, that is no surprise. That's usually the people who show up to these meetings. People who are fine with it tend to say, "Oh, okay, whatever. That's great." They don't go to meetings usually. Um, which is unfortunate, but that's okay. That what this does is it allows people who who do have an issue with it or want to know more about it at least, they can come to this meeting, they can ask questions and they can state their concerns and those concerns are recorded. Um, and so that's what's being considered tonight. I'm not going through a line by line recording of

everything, but I was able to look through the the notes um and see a way to sum those up very quickly. So, there's five points up there. These were the points that were that were mentioned again and again, uh or at least mentioned once at the meeting. The long-term impacts on the residential character that a business on Pine Oak would would cause. And so the term that that got used I think was a domino effect of future resonings. So there was the thought that if they re if one resoning occurs on Pine Oak that it's just going to trickle down, you know, and that there'll be all these resonings that all these property owners will want to either sell their property to somebody who wants to develop that way or they'll want to develop it themselves. That was a concern mentioned. I'm just going to go through the concerns. Another concern mentioned was increase in traffic and particularly at this this point on Pine Oak where it's the sharp curve. Um and everybody anybody who's driven along Pine Oak can see that yeah there's it is a sharp curve and there is a little bit of a there is a hill there. So visibility does have some limitations. Also, um what was thought could be an issue was um noise um from delivery trucks. Um and also an increase in lighting uh that would be foreseen for this for this project. Um another was on-site storage. Maybe there's going to be herbicides. Maybe there's going to be pesticides. So people brought forth those concerns um because they would be living right next door. So naturally it's a concern. Um, and then finally, that this was going to be a non-residential development, meaning that there wasn't going to be anybody living there. It wasn't going to be a business that's maybe run from someone's home. It was an actual business. Now, it may look like a house. Um, and any addition may may fit in like part of a house perhaps, but there wasn't actually going to be

somebody living there. So, that was that was um a concern that was brought up. So, I think that that kind of summarizes things. There's more elaboration that could be done on it, of course. So, what I want to do now is just kind of walk you through what some of the planned transportation improvements are. And this will this addresses the the traffic concern. I'm not saying it solves everything, but at least it it's on that subject. and then some of those other concerns I'll cover um through uh later slides. But this gives you a chance to see what's going on in that area because a lot has happened obviously. [clears throat] First of all, there's the realignment of Pine Oak Road and that connects um with Prescott Glenn Parkway, which is the road I referred to earlier. It's got the two traffic circles you can see. It's got Lowe's food to the south of it and then it ultimately connects just off the screen uh with 16 at a at a traffic signal. Pine Oak continues [clears throat] and it still connects with 16 as I mentioned, but that's a right in right out intersection. So those are the sort of the the road improvements or the road changes. And you can see here in this slide, if you go northwest from that lower traffic circle, you can see that there's planned residential units also to the northeast. So that is part of that artisan Prescott development. So the area is going to see change. There is no question about it. Um the part of that change though is getting new new roads and improvements to roads and intersections that helps mitigate that change and create a better flow throughout Waxaw in general. Also want to point out though that in addition to the roads, there are also planned pedestrian amenities. Now these planned pedestrian amenities are taken directly from the adopted pedestrian plan of the town. Um, and there are two paths or linear linear trails or whatever you

want to call them that are part of that that that come into this project. One of them is the Pine Oak sidewalk which is um path 11. And you'll see that some sidewalk has been built already. That's in the orange off in the main map. You can see again the gold star. That's approximately where 83 Pine Oak Road is. It's it's like right there at the bend. And then you'll also see um well let's see I'm sorry the path 11 you can see that solid piece there but then in the inset map um you'll see Pine Oak Road sidewalk that's path 11 that goes all the way to 16 that's dashed because that's not built yet. Um just to I want to point out that blue area is just 100red-year flood plane. So we're not you know the place isn't getting inundated but just every hundred years it might see it anyway just for orientation. And then also there is another path. The reason that I put that flood plane in there is because in the flood plane there is a a plan uh for path 14 which is also known as sunny way um uh named after one of our former employees here and it is part of the Carolina Thread Trail or CTT. Now that is a planned path. Who knows when it could happen but it is on our approved plans. So that is if you look at that inset, you'll see that that that pine oak dashed orange line and the brown um sunny way intersect right there at the property at the at the north corner of the property. So let me go into some of the conditions here. And again, this is this is a draft. This is, you know, just something that that the developer or the applicant put together as a response to both the neighborhood meeting and saying, "Okay, I I hear what your concerns are. Thank you." Because that helps inform what how

this project can be better. Um, but a lot some of these things are his own ideas that were already in place. But anyway, it's sort of a combination, I think, and he and and um Derek can kind of tell that story a little bit better. But let me just go through these real quickly. I don't want to take up too much time. You can see that there is a a um a drawing, a rendering of the current house, excuse [clears throat] me, that's there. And then you can see the addition over to the right of it that he's that he's planning for the site. And uh we'll see that in plan view in a minute. Um so this is kind of looking from Pineoke Road. Um so building and site plan, construct the modest building addition attached to the existing structure. Okay, modest is a subjective word. Some might think it's modest, some might think it's not. That's to be discussed and that's to be to evaluated tonight. Um the addition though will according to land development code, it has to match the scale, the height and style of the home and maintain a residential appearance. So these are things that again our code would require anyway. Um, and it's to be used for inventory storage, order preparation, you know, kind of a workroom, uh, small workspace. And there's no manufacturing or industrial activity inside inside the, um, the addition. All right. So, plants, an inventory, a small curated selection of plants. Uh, these would include shrub, trees, seasonal plants, specialty items. It's a limited inventory. This is a small area to work in. Um, it's not the full nursery. uh he can tell you about more about his other um uh site that can have more of his stock but uh these plants are stored and displayed and contained orderly manner. Um he'll give you more description about the business itself. But I can add uh as one of the the next summary the next condition of customer access uh it's going to be by appointment only. It's not the type of retail that anybody just

drives in and has a look around. It is by appointment only. Um and and um those hours are scheduled. There's space to avoid congestion and to limit the number of visitors and the traffic traffic and the parking impact. Um visits are limited to browsing a small selection of pre-arranged order pickup. Um parking accommodation is on site. You can see that in that in that yellow area there. We'll give you a little more in um orientation to the site. And I know the graphic's not real pretty, but that's kind of like from an aerial and drawn on and such, but you can see the house there, and you can see where the parking would be. Signage would consist of just one small non-illuminated business sign. It's for identification only. It's not advertisement. Um, it's just so you can find the place and go in. Uh, the exterior lighting that was brought up as a concern in the neighborhood meeting. what what uh the developer I'm sorry the applicant is is proposing is minimum what's minimum is necessary for safety and operations is placed on timers motion sensors directed away from the other properties to prevent light spillover or disturbance to neighbors. Um and then also screening that's an important part of this as well uh both from a lighting point of view and just general activity and such. Uh there'll be plantings along the fence line to help reduce visibility from neighboring properties. A lot of those uh trees have already been planted. Um I think there's more to come. Uh as the as the applicant says, uh just to quote, "We're open to additional plantings where feasible to soften the visual impacts and maintain appropriate transitions to neighboring properties while ensuring driveway access and sight lines to provide safe and functional site access." The conditions go well. That's it. That's all the conditions. So let me just um it's those and those but again this is a work in progress. So you know that's up

for discussion. So tonight what you are asked to do really um at the end is to think in terms of reasonable and consistency for this conditional zoning and staff has brought forward a suggested um uh reasonable and consistency statement. This is by no means meant to bind you to anything in particular. You could go a totally different direction. But what we considered is that the request in a specific way, it is inconsistent with the Waxaw 24 20 240 future land use map in terms of its designated land use um of that specific parcel. If you go back and look at those two maps I showed you, there was the zoning map, there was the future land use map. The future land use map did not show it as a neighborhood center. It showed it as R3 because that was the expectation when the when the plan was put together. So there is that it's inconsistent with that map. Now as far as the reasonleness that's going to bring in other aspects of the of the comprehensive the 2040 plan. So follow along with me here. The request is reasonable and in the public interest as the parcel is located adjacent to existing neighborhood center property along the the primary road corridor, Pine Oak Road, that connects the two main north south roads above um Highway 75 and below Kensington. And because the conditional site plan allows a low impact commercial use in accordance with the goals of the Waxaw 2040 comp plan and the neighborhood center zoning district as we went over and contributes to a more balanced tax base. So that's what staff brings forward just as con for consideration. So, the requested action, uh, a motion to recommend the conditional resoning, a motion to recommend it with, um, with

modifications, and a motion, or it could be a motion to deny recommendation. So, that is what's asked tonight. So, at this point, I'm going to stop talking and give you all a chance to ask questions. You can you can ask it of me. Like I said, Derek and Heather are here tonight. They can tell you more of the story. They brought along a few pictures. They can show you a little bit more. So, just how would you have us proceed? Sure. Thank you, Blair. Okay. Do you want to see what they want to tell us? Okay. We would like for to hear what you have. U [snorts] Thank you.

All right. So, you can move forward by just hitting the right button.

Um like Blair said, my name is Derek. Uh my wife Heather and I are the owners. Uh we're simple people. I mean, our faith and family are most important things to us. We got two small kids, got a two-year-old and a eight-month-old, and they're they're probably the main reason why we even started this business in the first place. I was working a job that I was gone all day. And when we had kids, I realized that I wanted to be around more, do things with my kids. some of my best memories growing up that I can remember just getting out in the yard and gardening and learning about plants and things with my mom. And we have a space that we're in now. It's all the way over in Fort Mill. And I'm I'm a lifelong resident of Waxaw. I've lived here my whole life. I we live in Millbridge right now. Um but the place we're in, it's just a small suite space. It's all concrete. It's not. We're online sales is what we do now, plants and things like that. But I've always kind of had my eyes open for a spot in Waxaw where I could do, you know, even though small, have some plants and things outside and make some of those same kind of memories with my kids that I remember from when I was little. And so I wanted the reason this place is important to me is because of the house. like I want a place that can bring my kids to work with me during the day and and they might be inside or they can go out and help me do things like that. It it checked a lot of boxes for us. Um but again, you know, I just wanted to stress that it's we're easy people. We're we're open to any and all conditions. I mean, ultimately, we just want a place to to work and kind of do what we're doing now, but maybe do some different things and and make some other fun memories as well. I think we've got some cool ideas and things we can do with the space. Uh, but ultimately

just want to try to find something that works for everybody. That's really I did bring a couple pictures just if it helps you at all. These are just, you know, it could change. So, where Blair mentioned we might have some plants and things out on the property. These are just some local nurseries around here that I've taken little snippets of what it may could look like if it helps you at all. So just small areas of things on the ground or may you know who knows exactly what it may look like but you know just that's an idea. Inside over on the right in the middle you see kind of what the living room looks like now. So that's kind of right when you walk in. And we've had the eye of doing little like classes like that, like potting classes, bonsai classes, just fun little things that people might, you know, would come to and learn about plants and get something to take home with them. So little things like that. Um, again, just ideas if it helps you visualize potential because that's for, you know, that's just kind of the point that we're at. And then we have done a few a couple things thus far. You see, we've just made some small changes to the entrance. We cleared out some brush and a few trees. We put up a safety fence around because again, we have kids running around and we just wanted to be safe, you know, from being able to get out to the road. We also widened the driveway a little bit to make it easier to get in and out of and try to improve sight lines coming in and out of the property as well. Uh that's pretty much all we've done thus far, but a couple things there to look at as well. And again, this just kind of shows you again, I think the area outlined in green there, some of the plants and things that you saw pictures of, that's kind of the area where we sort of envision that may be um on the property.

I think that's it. But thank you. That's all I had. I'm opening this for uh questions, discussions. I do. Go ahead, Rick.

Thank you. Um [clears throat] I know uh first of all, I wanted to thank you for um being um um so good about um reaching out to neighbors to make sure that they were aware. Uh I know you did that in conjunction with the town. Uh and you got good turnout, it seems like. Um, I appreciate the um report that you generated. Uh, seemed like a very honest um um summary of uh the feedback and your responses and so forth. And I really do appreciate it. Looks like you're making a very strong effort to understand what opposition might be and what you could do about it. However, um, one question I had was um I know you encouraged people to contact you after the meeting if they had additional concerns or feedback um that isn't included in your report. Did you receive any additional feedback uh positive or negative um after the the neighborhood meeting?

I didn't personally. I mean, we had we encouraged people to write down on some note cards there was they were just general like comments. There wasn't anything that we felt like required a followup. Okay. Nothing that covered new ground. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um and then I uh in looking at the conditions there was nothing explicit about um uh is I guess this is a nursery not a landscaping business is it both? Um it's not a landscape. So our right now our our business is strictly online retail sales. So if you go to our website people buy plants on our website and we ship them.

But you know looking at our website people assume that we are like you go there and buy plants as well. And so people occasionally will show up and and I just explain it to them. But, you know, it's it's always been kind of on my radar. Yeah. I would like to have something. I don't want to be like a small it's it's just me. So, we're not I don't I don't want some big conglomerate, but I'm like, you know, it would be nice to find something because I'm from here. I've lived here my whole life. It would be nice to find something in Waxaw that even on a very small scale like that, maybe I could have a few things and and be something really nice. Okay. Um I have a few more questions, but let me yield. I just want to check We have anybody sign up for public comments?

Do we have anybody from for public comments? So we have three uh uh signes for the public comments. Uh thank you Derek and I would like to invite um one by one and I think uh we have to be aware that we have three minutes to speak. I would like to invite Lisa Patterson. Thank you all for this opportunity. Um, I live on Pine Oak Road and one of the things and I don't have it written here, but one of the things that occurs to me as I'm sitting here is this is planning. This is future. We would love to be considered as the existing to be a part of this. Pine Oak Road has turned into a freeway. Um any additional traffic is not going to be helpful. That's my number one concern. I've lived there since 1991. We built our home there. That road and again Charlotte native. I came to Cane Creek as a as a child. So, I've seen I've seen lots of changes and change is of course to be expected. But the memories that Derek and Heather are talking about creating, I love, but from my perspective, Pine Oak was the road that I took my baby down in a stroller and I could do that because the traffic

was non-existent. Fast forward to the two um roundabouts which are an answer to the development and the traffic that's come with that. But for the existing people, we can't get out of our driveways. So, that's one of my concerns. Um, we did not go to the November 22nd meeting. I had intended that we would go, but I got the time wrong. So, I have been all over your website looking at all the things. So, a lot of the stuff that was brought up, I had gone through. Um, one of the points that I would like to bring up is what was addressed here with the 2040 plan. If you have a vision that it's going to be residential, why are we trying to change it? If you're not going to stick with your vision, why have it residential now, residential then? The property, with all due respect, was purchased as residential. If you want commercial, as been stated several times this evening, excuse me, neighborhood center, not commercial, neighborhood center. Um, it's available across the way. I'm concerned about pesticides, herbicides. If you go online and look at the Fort Mill location, they sell lawnmowers. Um, do people come in and look at those? Is there gas? Is there diesel? Will it be leeching into the soil? Will it be going into the creek? Finally, would you put this in your neighborhood? Old Hickory subdivision. This house is part of a subdivision even though it's on Pine Oak. And my research shows that that does not preclude you from being reszoned to the neighborhood. Um, would you put it in the other neighborhoods? Would you put it in Quellin? Would you put it in Forest? Are you going to put it on Pine Oak because we've been there for a while and development is across the street? Development that we did not ask for. I do appreciate your time. I appreciate that you guys are here and giving us the

opportunity to listen. But again, I would ask for you to keep the existing homeowners in mind while you are planning for this future. Thank you. Thank you, Lisa. I would like to invite Chuck. Good evening. Uh my name is Chuck McDougall. I live at uh 7906 Rush Court. Uh, can you bring up the the slide that said questions? Um, now the one that said questions

right there. Um, well, I pointed out if you see the driveway going out to Pine Oak, if you go 30 feet beyond that across Pine Oak, that's my bedroom. So, my bedroom is approximately 60 feet from Pine Oak on the other side, their the beginning of their driveway. Um, I'm probably the one that's most impacted by this uh coming about. Um, like I said, my bedroom is like 80 feet from the driveway. Um your job as the planning uh committee is to give recommendations. Um but you have to balance a lot of things between u the immediate thing but you also need to be looking to the future. And just like was pointed out uh our biggest concern is not that development but that it becomes a domino effect. Now uh there was a picture at the beginning of the land use across Pine Oak that's brown but none of those have the capability of having a driveway onto Pine Oak. Everyone residential down Pine Oak is has a driveway coming out of it and like was pointed out, traffic is terrible. That is a dead that that's a blind spot. If any of you have driven on that and and I have nothing against uh Derek and Heather, you know, trying to do this. Uh we actually said we'd love to have them as neighbors, but once you reszone it,

it's going to happen where your other people are. It makes it easier and other people are going to be doing it. And I just really respectfully ask you uh number one to consider it, but I'm also asking not to vote on it tonight. Think on it. and you're certainly invited to come over at 5:00 on an evening and just listen to the traffic. Uh I'll I'll happily give you my phone number now. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to invite Charles.

Uh good evening and thank you for hearing our comments. Uh my name is Charles McDougall. I live at 8103 Pine Oak Road. Uh I've been there for 22 years and I've raised my family there and I'm still raising my family there. Um we're just a few doors down from uh the proposed uh resoning. Um the curve has already been discussed. I won't belver that. I I will mention though that uh on average accident there about every six months including fatalities over the years. I don't see that changing with the new configuration. perhaps getting worse, maybe nuanced a little, pretty similar. Um, one of the most important things I think uh that you need to consider here is whether this is perhaps not specifically, perhaps not technically, but de facto spot zoning. Um, which would be to zone one parcel differently from the surrounding parcels to the detriment of those surrounding parcels. Uh, the proposed use is is dissimilar to all surrounding neighbors. um everything around it, even the the new development apparently uh that portion is going to be residential as well, right? So even though it's NC, it it there's nothing about it that's similar to the uses surrounding it even in the future. Apparently, um all residents of Old Hickory subdivision have a reasonable expectation of living adjacent to residential dwellings, not commercial operations. Uh it is a platted subdivision. It is a neighborhood. It has some outward- facing components. We are neighbors. This is a neighborhood. It is a subdivision. Um, this change must be viewed by the neighborhood, me and my neighbors and the planning board in terms of the maximum effects that are allowed by the zoning downstream. Um, we know what plans are. Of course, there could be some uh, you know, list of requirements. At the end of the day, um, at the end of the day, this there there is no amount of requirements you could put on this that would fully

mitigate the change, uh, nor mitigate for that domino effect that, um, I I think here in Waxaw, we're pretty clear on how that works. Um, the adjacency uh, referred to uh, earlier is really an adjacency in name only. Um if you look at it from the biseected by creek and by road, it's caddyy corner. It only barely touches. Um it is uh not a meaningful adjacency in the sense too that what we look at on Pine Oak across the street is a man-made cliff. All right? It's just a big retaining wall. It has no focus on Pine Oak. Um, this would spike the real estate value of a particular parcel at the expense of the safety, residential value, and enjoyment of the adjacent and nearby parcels. This proposal is not really a neighborhood center as it is essentially zero local purpose. It will serve few if any local customers in the neighborhood. It is an online basically a warehousing and delivery business plopped into the middle of a neighborhood. Um I say that without impuging the ideas certainly understand but um that's de facto what this would be. Um this is an opportunistic proposal to more chiefly acquire a commercial property by buying a house in the middle of a subdivision neighborhood and convert it to commercial uh at at a at essentially less cost than it otherwise would be. Um, Old Hickory and Pine Oak um, suffered enough. Please do not burden us further

with this spot zoning. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, opening for questions. Rick, you have more questions? I did.

Um, Blair, if you uh, if we can put up the future land use um, slide again. Had a question on that. It relates to the last public comment. Um that's good. Um so the brown area as it extends towards the star towards the um subject property. I know um you know near the uh the first circle uh the the um the eastern circle one that already that existed on the map already that area is residential or is planned for residential. Now, uh to the commenter's point, um even though it is neighborhood center, its actual use is going to be for residential units as I understood it. Is that

Yeah, I could show you the plan. It was on one of the other slides and you can see that in more detail, right? Okay. So, I guess my question was um what we see here is that at the new circle, there's a lot of area there that has nothing on it currently. Is it going to remain nothing on it or um is it unknown how that space around the circle that currently doesn't show any um those are that's going to be mostly I think retention pond. It's not it's not buildable per se. Okay. And as you go further left on that towards the star, same thing. There's not you're not expecting anything.

Yeah. There's the creek there. You can see that squiggly line. So, the nearest um retail or commercial stuff that is ending up being built in that neighborhood center uh the pre-existing neighborhood center um is is all residential. There's there's no commercial. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, the closest actual commercial would be Lowe's Food.

Okay, understood. Um, and then one real quick question um uh for for the um for the property owner. Um one of the photographs you showed as a concept looked like a greenhouse you with um clear roof and greenhouse stuff, but that is very different from what it looked like in the rendition. And so I'm just wondering whether there's any condition that's restraining. I mean, could it be that a greenhouse looking thing, a bubble? Um or is it going to look like a garage which it showed in the ren in the um

Yeah. So the the garage is more well there's no garage even there now. So even if you wanted to like pull a car in, you can't. Um so that's that's that. But um now the pictures I sent again, they're just um because it's conditional and we're open to anything. It's just just like I said, pictures of local, you know, nurseries that I've taken pictures of. It doesn't have to be that. It's just to kind of help you picture, you know, in the area what plants, you know, sitting around may look like, but it's it's nothing's. Thank you. Appreciate it. That's all I had. Thank you, Rick. Any other questions? [snorts]

I guess question I have is how much traffic do you think like I mean, how does your operation work? Do you have one truck comes in every day to pick up all your deliveries or do you have trucks coming in all day to pick up your deliveries? I mean, how much traffic does go through your uh operation?

Yeah, we're small. So, I mean, right now we have um we ship usually like Mondays and Tuesdays of every week just so wherever we're shipping gets to wherever it's going the end of the week. So, UPS may come by once a day, Monday and Tuesday. Um, occasionally like a a box truck if it's something larger like a lawn mower or something that may be, you know, once or twice a week as well, but outside of that, I mean, it's hardly anything. I mean, as far as your plants being delivered to you, do you are you going to grow the plants there or you having them delivered into

No, I I a lot of the plants I pick up myself. So we we source them from wholesale nurseries in in the area and so I'll go pick the plants up. We have a sprinter van. So I'll pick them up and bring them back, box them up, ship them out, that sort of thing. So that's kind of what the, you know, the garage. It's like a workspace to go box up plants and things like that. But we don't grow anything on site. So, you know, the idea of having things on site is just to have, you know, the option to just not be just an online retailer. Someone wants to make an appointment to come by, maybe we could show them a few things as well because, you know, it's plants. People like to see them in person um as well.

We have one more question. Hi. Um, how far we're talking about exterior lighting in this one bullet point here. How far does that extend your exterior lighting? Does it go? Can the gentleman who lives, you know, his bedroom is 80 feet. Can Can will that is that a problem for him in the evening? Yeah. No. Well, there was uh we we weren't aware at the time. I guess there was a motion light on the porch. And so when we

widened out the driveway a little bit, um we weren't aware, but I guess it it was more visible. So, for now, we just took it down. And in the future, if we get like security cameras or something, you know, we'll have just things um you know, right around the close proximity to the house and and so it's not a we don't want to be a disturbance to anybody.

Yep. No, I understand. Um and then in one of your renderings, it looked like you had tables set up so customers could come in and maybe do some potting activities, maybe with their children, that sort of thing. Um because in this one section it says customer access is only by appointment only. But if you plan to do something like that, how much will that then increase the traffic in the area and the you know coming in and out because you know I I've lived here for over 20 years and I've drive down that road all the time and I I just I I mean that's just a a curve that you don't want to deal with.

Yeah. I mean it's uh certainly small as well. It's just, you know, in the the living room space. So, again, it would be, you know, eight eight to 10 people there at the most. And and this would be something that we do once a month. I mean, it's just a an idea of something fun. You know, we just we view this as a opportunity to try to do some some different things like that. And so, that was just an idea that we had of, you know, maybe doing something fun like that. Understood. Thank you. Yeah. I think I had a similar question that is there any accountability towards the loading unloading and the large trucks if they come with the plants and is that considered because pineoke as it is barely when I drive with my van yes I

I feel like the car coming from other side is literally closed in my lane so there's no lane per se so

yeah well so yeah we tried to that was one of the reasons early on from making the the driveway wider I I checked with the truck driver that comes to deliver to us now and and kind of asked what what they would need to be able to just pull in head first because we certainly wouldn't want anyone to try to to back in there. And so we try to make it in a way that they come by like in the afternoon like a couple times a week. And so we wanted to make it where they could pull in head first kind of just threepoint turn it there and pull right back out. But you know it's just normal business hours they usually come. Well, UPS or whoever it's it's in the afternoon between two and four usually two and five and that's school timing as well. So

it is but it's [laughter] very infrequent. It's you know someone was living there getting a daily Amazon. It's no different. And then there is the child care and the yoga or the karate which is also the afterare for many my kid used to go there so I know that that pino gets really crazy around that time. I also had one more question for Blair. Uh you had mentioned that NC resoning non-residential allows for 10,000 uh square feet, right? That's the it it's [clears throat] actually the footprint um the building cannot have a bigger than 10,000 square footprint.

So but that's a regular NC [clears throat] resoning not the conditional. So what would it what how much would this if in a scenario this gets approved how much it would be out of the the 2 I think it's 2.1 acres a lot. So

right, we I do not have we do not have a site plan that has those numbers on it yet. So I mean I would have I've presented as as as much as we have yet right now. But the limit would of course well no the limit could be whatever is set. Um so if the board decides well you know the house is so many square foot now that's the that's the footprint um for the addition to meet the requirements there you know in terms of matching the scale and such that shouldn't be more than this square footage and so we could do the math and say okay that's the cap that's going to be the cap on what it can be and then that will set but I mean those things usually they would need to come it'd be best if they came after there were some architectural plans put together. I think I think the applicant was was wanting to see, you know, sort of testing the waters because doing that kind of plan can can cost a lot. Hopefully, we'll have something he'll have something ready um that can be considered um for this board and certainly for the board of commissioners um that would give real numbers to that. But yeah, I would think that that would be part of that would be one of the conditions was the the footprint of the building or the building in addition.

Okay. Yeah, I think that that was one of my questions and and um which also leads me remind me Blair and and the board. How are we docu How would we document the conditions?

Well, I mean I've put together just sort of a condition summary. Um, it doesn't have to look much different than that, but just try to make it as precise as possible so that it's clear because it really is legal language. It's contractual language. Um, so you know, we want to be sure that it is something that satisfies everyone and it's very clear in its meaning. So, but what I have here are more categorical. Uh, these would be the categories of conditions. Certainly, we can add to them, subtract from if we want. Um, but then the they'd probably be more in a bullet point form or something. And I' I'd probably want to talk to our esteemed attorney to see if that can be, you know, if it's if what we end up with is precise enough. Um, it's something we've done before with other projects and it just needs to be agreed to and signed off on.

Yeah. because of my perspective on your your one your sled before this one, you talked about residential appearance and so forth that needs to be worked in here somehow because I think that's really the key and I think that's part of the issue of like his renderings of various nurseries.

I think the concept is we've got to make sure that that residential appearance under the addition is done not but the whole property that really the concept is is a property in this residential area. It needs to look like residential. If they want to have, you know, stuff inside where he's putting stuff together, that's great. But I think that what I've heard from this meeting, it really needs to fit in to the community and look kind of like the rest of the structures as much as possible. So, I think that's really critical in this uh conditional um approval is that that you convince that really this person driving down, you know, um the street will look at it and say it's just another, you know, property.

Yeah. So, having an a measured elevation of the addition, uh I could see would would help to fit that. also having like I mentioned the a site plan that shows the actual outlines of the buildings. Um and in that way by having an elevation an architectural elevation you see exact measurements you see the finishes and whether they're consistent with the building whether they match the building and you see you know just overall you get a feeling of the massing the scale. Um, so yeah, that would be right now. This is all we have is that rendering and then the rough draft of the site plan that was shown, but that could certainly be taken further. It's just that does require an investment from the owner. And so again, they're trying to see, you know, test the waters. Is that investment something that could have that could have is it an investment worth making or are we dead in the water right now and it's not worth making the investment? You understand?

Okay. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah. Also, I know you mentioned about the traffic analysis TIA not required given the scale of the project, but given the critical location and the critical use, I would say would that warrant a traffic analysis? Um, well, I don't want to say no, but technically, yeah, it doesn't trigger a TIA. Um, I do want to mention that Pine Oak is is a state road. Um, I if James were here tonight, I'd call him to the to the front.

We check with James. It does not trigger. It doesn't, but I would want to, right, but I would want to maybe get a little more information about what is expected by D NC DOT for this curb in the in the future because the numbers are changing in terms of you know that now there's it's not a just a straight given the development on

yeah the roundabouts and the new commercial. So is there going to be mitigation on the part of NC DOT just for the road in general? That would be great information to have. I don't have it. I know James doesn't exactly have it, but he might be able to make a more educated guess or or not just guess. I mean, he usually is pretty good at at estimating what NC dot is going to do. Um, so that is additional information that could be helpful. Yes. But I just don't have it tonight. Understood. Yeah, I think that would be helpful. My I think one of my concerns for this is um given that that curve is so almost a 90° angle,

it's a blind blind curve. It's a just a complete blind spot. So, what happens when you have people then saying, "Oh, I missed the driveway. Let me turn around in the middle of the road. Let me let me pull onto the side of the road." Um, now you're talking about you have kids in the yard, but I know you said you have a fence up. I think there's just so much more that needs to be taken into consideration. Um, I love the idea, but I mean that that that corner is not to be messed with. If you remember a few years ago that on the other side of that street where those young people were coming across that on Waxaw Marvin and they hit that tree. Um you know that that Yeah. That's down at the southern end of Pine. Exactly. But I mean you know same same sort of same sort of issue. Exactly.

I I don't know how the the neighborhood feels about the new development and the roundabout that's there. I know that that's got to be affecting some of the traffic from coming from Providence. Like in other words, it's not just a straight shot to fly around that T curve, but they have to negotiate the roundabout and come through that. I know that is designed to kind of slow down traffic. I don't have the numbers to say what has, you know, what the result is, but I I hope that that's an improvement. Sorry. If you're coming from the other direction, yeah, if you're coming from Providence Road, if you're coming from 16, you have to go through the roundabout, right? From the bottom. Yeah. Observationally, it's about the same.

Sorry to interrupt, but

I I have one question for you, Blair. Um, to be honest, I think for me the the biggest concern is the um is the domino effect concern and and I'm not sure what the political dynamics are that that [snorts] drive that or or um constrain that, but I I would like if you have any historical um perspective to share um why uh in the 2040 comprehensive plan we didn't make um that uh that leg of pine oak um mixed use to begin with. Um and uh if you're able, you know, if you were there at the creation or whatever, I'd love any historical since since the staff is recommending that this is reasonable. Um whatever you could share there would be helpful.

Yeah, I understand and I was there and it wasn't too long ago. Okay.

Um and sometimes I look at the at the and again I want to emphasize that there there really are kind of two elements to the 2040 plan. One is all the written pages. Uh it's not a huge plan. It's an easy read, but there's a lot there's a there's a lot of goals and and strategies and description of that's in the plan that that you can see that goes into our recommendations or or you know whether for or against. And so there's that and then there's also the future land use map. And the future land use map is I wish I could say that it's taking all the written material and exactly tra translating it into the map. The reason it's not is because we're working with real property, real property owners, real economics. Um there are a lot of things to consider so that it is the the map is meant to try to bring about the vision within economic and physical constraints and such. Um but what I'll mention about this particular area is that it I think that it was a little shortsighted of us to not recognize the situation that's come to be

and the reason is this. Pine Oak Road is not your ideal connector between two major north south roads. Ideally, it would be Well, Kensington Road is not ideal either, but it's a little straighter. It's a little more, you know, but there's not quite the same opportunity, but it it it doesn't jump out at you and say, "Okay, this is a connector between those two." So, it of course is going to have this kind of development. Again, the the vision plan was it's not predictive. It's just it's aspirational. It's like this is what we'd like to see. The thing about neighborhood center zoning is that it wasn't meant to be a strip. It wasn't meant like corridor commercial is a strip. We didn't see this as corridor commercial by any means. Neighborhood center though the idea behind it is that it's nodal. It it takes place in mostly in intersections in and you'll so you'll see you know the neighborhood center zoning in the inter at the intersection of Pine Oak and um let's see where are we yeah there you can see it there you can see it in the zoning but the plan also does that where there's that brown area at the at the intersection of Pine Oak and Waxaw Marvin because it's an intersection when you have two main roads intersecting that is an ideal place for businesses. So you'll see a node there. You'll see nodes throughout. If I had the whole map, you would see nodes in different strategic parts of the town, not in a strip. And so yeah, we we didn't see this as a as a node, but I think we also didn't predict that Prescott would do well. I mean, yeah, you can see that there is neighborhood center planned for that, but I don't know. We missed it. I think I mean applying you know looking at it from from this perspective

I say that we might have missed it because it it wasn't we weren't trying to predict the future. If I do predict the future I look at roads like that and I say I look at other towns where you have a main road that used to be residential completely and it was slow. There was low traffic, but as the population increased, as development pressures increased, there are certain roads that lend themselves just because of the connectiveness of them to converting from residential to commercial. I live in Charlotte. I live right off of Monroe Road. And where I am, there's a number of houses that used to be homes, but now they're businesses because Monroe Road has become more of a main road. I don't look at Pine Oak that way. I don't think that it's geared that way, but it does connect to main roads. So, it does see that through traffic which attracts businesses.

Thank you. Appreciate that. [snorts]

Sorry again. Someone had to grab a flight. Um, I know for me personally, Blair, I appreciate as we always consider conditional. It the little bit of the devils in the details. Uh, I think it would be I know I personally would like to see a little bit more um granularess. That's there's some grammar in there that I'm missing, but a little fine-tuning of the bullet points of kind of the conditions and how we kind of agree to those. Um I I think and I understand we're trying to the applicant um I think the board has shown we're open to that but I think at the same open to considering

so to that point but at the same time if we're going to sign off on something or even consider something I think we we need to understand the details of it. Um, and so I would like to uh kind of put it on the floor of uh giving the applicant and and and staff time to do that uh and considering uh reconsidering this at the next uh month's meeting.

Just to respond to that, I would I like the idea um but I'm also um don't want to um give false hope. Um, and at least for me, and I'm just speaking for me, I can't imagine any set of conditions that would get me to uh recommend um because of the in my view um how um you know, the current comp plan lays out the future land use. In my view, um I'd like to see, you know, if if it makes sense to the town and town governance, I'd like to see that reszoned in a in a revised um in a revised comp plan or revised future use plan to to change that segment of Pine Oak to uh neighborhood center as opposed to um even with a set of great conditions. um opening that door with this Keystone property that you know opens up that new leg of Pine Oak to uh eventually being commercial. So that's just my view. If if if you know a majority of us are are the same as me, then maybe it doesn't make sense to ask for more detail. Sorry, I'll stop there.

Is there a response? Yeah, I was just going to follow up on that. Um I I think actually and I was looking through our our recommended um uh the recommendations that you could make to the board and I think technically one of the recommendations if there's an inconsistency with the future land use map um whether it's conditional zoning or not I think you need to be recommending um defining it inconsistent but recommending that the future land use map be changed as part of that. That's really the correct way to do it. Then you could also add conditions on as part of the conditional zoning as well. Not telling you that at all, but that is the pro that's the proper process that that should we should go through with that.

Yeah. And to clarify my point, I wasn't speak I was speaking bigger than the current property under consideration. So, in my view, I wouldn't want to approve the current request unless um town governance um decided to reszone that whole segment of Pine Oak, not just the not just the one at the curve because that because I'm I find that argument compelling that this is um kind of a keystone domino that's going to unlock a lot of other residents, you know, asking for the same thing and it would be hard to refuse them if they're just as reasonable as as these folks in terms of making accommodations and limiting, you know, it all makes sense, but it's very different from what's laid out in the vision currently. That's

and I do I do appreciate that. Um there there's something to be said for that. Um at the same time, the um you you adopt a future land use plan, you know, make changes to it every 5 to 10 years. The reason for the reasoning is for specifically this. Maybe there's something we didn't get right in there. Maybe there's something there's some underlying reasons for why that needs to change. And that's really why the process is available uh to do that rather than going through and and completely updating it for each land use map at one time to to make those those wholesale changes at that time. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that.

You know, because I'm kind of torn because I think what happened is just, you know, Blair said, I think it was somewhat of a shortsidedness not to look at the fact that, you know, you think about it, Wax has only got like three or four east west connectors. That's it. So all these connectors where you're talking um you know Great Byum, Kensington um you know Pine Oak or 75 that's it you know. So pretty much Pine Oak's going to get bad um I mean traffic wise I mean it's it's wax so gross. So the question is I think we have to look at is how do we cushion the the transition I think so that's really I think the the conditional thing is so important to make sure that we can try to make it so that is uh as painless as possible but I think the ne inevitable inevitability is coming just because you know you want to lay it when was laid out it really wasn't designed to be a city as big as it is with no having no east west connectors are very limited and we don't have that many north south connectors either pretty much you know box of Marvin and 16. So it's uh it's a situation where I think wax and marvin the exact same way. Um, so again, I'm not sure where to really what I'm really kind of recommending, but it's just the idea that I'm I think we to understand what we can do to really try to make sure um the pro the project blends in and is is uh as um uh not as I say disruptive as possible. I think is really critical. But the question is going to be is I think we need to look at what's the plans the town's plan uh with this concept of as the uh um plan gets heavy and heavy traveled what's the plan because I think it's going to it's it's going to the traffic is going to be an issue and I think it's really too bad that we're not really taking issue look

at the traffic now because with this curve it's you I think that's really the problem and it's just going to get worse. Well, let me follow back up, Rick. I think I'm recommending kind of more information. Um, I think clarity, we've hit on two big ones. One is kind of the size of the addition and what that looks like, like having numbers around that as opposed to modest and, you know, um,

modest to Yeah, Easttover is different than, you know, other areas. And so modest to one person is not modest to another. Uh two, we did talk a little bit about traffic kind of getting some more understanding. I know it didn't trigger the TIA, but as Blair mentioned, I think understanding what is future for Pine Oak um is important for the overall not necessarily and I think that would help with the clarification. So that was my point, not necessarily giving false hope, but to the point we need more I feel like we need more information and some more clarity and some more definition. Um because essentially if we approve we're essentially approving and these are the conditions that we're recommending. So

can I say that you're affecting however you vote you're affecting the community of Pino but you're also affecting the community of Nebraska. It's a whole big group of people that you're affecting.

So, I feel like there's a motion to be made or is it a motion, Barbie, or we just um make a You have uh three recommended motions that planning has brought forth to you. It's either to um to recommend approval as presented to recommend approval um with conditions or deny the recommendation alto together. Yeah. But I think I think we're we're asking for four which is saying we need more information. Yeah. So

yes. So you can you you can at this point defer this item until and direct planning staff to bring you some more information based on the parameters that you direct them to to provide information and then you'll need to make a motion to add this to your next uh planning board meeting. Isn't there a 30-day clock or something? If we don't make a recommendation in 30 days after it's presented, then it goes to the uh commissioners. Um anyway,

the applicant can agree to can agree to that as well. Can agree to giving more time to the hearing as well if if if they if they wish to,

but just keep in mind you're only recommending uh the the board of commissioners will make will um make their decision when it's time. True. But but I really believe our job is to educate them as much as possible. So right now I think my our recommendation is we don't think that there there's enough information to let them actually make a decision. I I think know we believe that there's there's pros and cons on both sides and we so our pres issue would be is it's kind of like we just need to know more about what's going on and what we can do to try to um minimize the impact of the area if they decide to move forward.

And I totally appreciate that. And if if a motion is gonna be made to defer, which is in your purview to do, um if you would be appreciate if you would help uh Blair and I as staff to uh help the applicant to get you that additional information you need. If you could list out spec some specifics as to what you're looking for be in the record, it'll help us go through and put all that together for you.

Kevin, I do think we need to hear from the applicant if they are open to that deferral. Just just to make sure you understand, I think it's clear, but the the the question is so that more information can be provided, are you open to this being given additional time and coming back to the planning board prior to a recommendation either way going to the board of commissioners for consideration? Yes, of course.

Okay. Thank you. So to Jeff's point, thank you. Um we I mentioned two clarifications that we've asked about which is the potential traffic changes to Pine Oak as well as the we'll say the structural square footage details. Um we'll figure out that um anything I'd like to open it up for any to to just point. Let's give him a list. I'd like to add um some spec specificity on the number of um of uh consumer um visits. They said a small number, but a small number like you said for moderate [snorts] is uh subjective. So if we're talking five visits a week or you know, so something more specific about uh how many um consumer visits there might be in a

Okay. And and again again we're talking about this addition but again from the the applicants um pictures he gave there's also potential outbuildings and the question I think we need to under an understanding of what the plans are for any potential outbuildings you know that actually are going to not be be seen you know it's not just part of part of the the two main structures the house and the addition just so that we can understand as far as um what any uplinks might be or not be so we can put that into the the plan.

Yeah. The way if if I may, the way I interpreted that is just a generalized site plan and um I go to this picture because it it has the rudiments of that uh where it shows the existing building. Um there's a very dark line that's above it, sort of an odd shaped triangular type of edge there. that's representing the addition, but the site plan would show more precisely what the footprint of that addition would be. Um, and also in addition to and then the site plan would also maybe have that more outlined where the um where the fence is. That's just a matter of recording where it is where it's been put in already. But if there are additional screenings to show that u that planted area, maybe a little more information about that. And um then in addition to the site plan um there would be uh an elevation at least one elevation of the of the addition showing it next to the existing building so you can get a sense of you know the style scale and all that. That's what I'm hearing so far. Um and that's typical that you would have that in such a decision. And to be explicit, I mean like uh to me it would make a big difference if it's a greenhouse with a you know glass dome versus

Absolutely. a thing that looks like a house, right? Yes. That's that kind of detail would show up in the in the elevation. Yeah. I would also I would just like to see a little bit more of the the parking configuration of of how you know if if there's if just let's say it's that Saturday and there's you know deliveries there's people there's this there's that I mean how does that how does that work without impacting Pineoke Road itself? Yeah. So, in other words, a circulation plan. In one of the other um images, there was sort of a rough outline of the parking, but a site plan would show more precisely the outline of that parking, the driveways that connect it.

Um and any other existing structures or or or areas that can be identified uh for certain uses or whatever on the plan, that's all part of a site plan. Yes. Now again this would be a draft you know kind of a usually conditional zoning site plans you know they're a little bit rough um a little bit conceptual and the thought is or the the rule is is that the actual built um finished product cannot deviate from that plan more than say 10% which is a little bit subjective but it it gives them a little bit of leeway just to meet reality. Um but it but the site plan for the conditional zoning it gives you a very good basis for a decision.

I'd also like this information about the proposed area for potential plant display just to make sure that's not too commercial. you know, the idea that again this is we want to make this kind of a pseudo residential property and how can you make it so that it's not doesn't look like a you know a road roadside you know you know mark market because that's that's a pretty good sized area that's in that green area and just make sure it blends in with the community

trying to organize the thoughts for the motion So, thank you for your patience.

I might also um consider a condition relating to limitations on the type of vehicles that like uh no 18-wheelers um you know, some kind of uh specification as to what kind of um vehicles are allowed in the driveway or allowed to make deliveries. Again, I'm just trying to be re responsive to the the feedback that we that we received from the um from the neighborhood meeting. Okay, I'm going to take a shot at this. [laughter] It's a motion to defer.

So, before you do, I want to make sure that I wrote down what what I understood. that members are seeking direction. I'm gonna put that in there. I'll try to do that for you. I was

penciling and organizing as I I go. So that's going to be my my goal here with this motion to So I make a motion to defer the decision to allow staff and the applicant to provide additional information on delivery limits, traffic changes to Pine Oak, consumer customer visit information, as well as a updated detailed or updated site plan to include information about the addition including the square footage, other structures screening, elevation, and any other uses on the site.

I'm noticing one other thing that all sounded really good to me. Um, could we add one more bullet, which is a prohibition um from storing uh fertilizer and chemicals um on site. Okay. which is something that the um property owner said they were willing to do as well as information on chemical storage on site. Yeah, that sounds good. Perfect. Is there a second? I'll second that. All in favor? I I I [clears throat] Thank you.

Thank you all. Having no other business uh on the agenda, do I hear a motion for adjournment? I make a motion to adjurnn. All in favor? I. [clears throat] Thank you everyone.