Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

In R2 we don't for example in R1 we don't permit two family but in R2 we do. Um so there are some differences in terms of both land use and the dimensional requirements for the properties themselves. And so we're looking at the table here for SR which has a minimum lot area of 23,000 square ft. That's about a half an acre. The maximum lot coverage in that district is 35% which means that if somebody had the smallest lot possible legally possible in that district of 23,000 ft² they could fit about 8,000 ft of accessory building on that property which obviously is quite good. Um and the R1 zone that minimum lot area drops down to 9,750 ft. And again, if you have a lot that is exactly that size built out to the absolute maximum lot coverage of 35%, that means that you can have 3,412 ft of that lot covered by the community. Now, if it's a two-story building, that doesn't really count in that way cuz we're not taking the we're just looking at the footprint. So, it's all stacked up vertically, it's going to be a smaller number. Um, and then R2 and R3, the minimum lot area is 8,200 square ft². Um, that number is there because almost all of your historical plats, like most small towns around here, are the typical 66x132 um plats from the, you know, 18 and early 1900s. That is, that gives you a lot area of 8712, I believe. So this number I'm pretty sure was picked to allow all of those old plats plus, you know, give some flexibility in there because there are some mistakes and it's not always the math is isn't always 100% perfect. So in in both of both R2 and R3, the maximum lot coverage is 30%. which means that if you have an 8200 foot lot, which

would be a little bit smaller than a 66 ft lot, you could allow uh you could have 2460 square ft of your property occupied by building. What's interesting is that with a lot of these, we typically see this these percentages reversed. And what I mean by that is that typically um the smaller percentage is reserved for the larger properties because if you you know 20 like this shows 35% of 23,000 square ft is 8,000 ft of building. If somebody had an acre that they could under the SR district they could have 16,000 square ft of footprint on their property which is enormous obviously. So, um, in in a city especially, sometimes it's more common that we see those percentages flipped where the larger properties have a smaller maximum lot coverage and the smaller properties have a larger maximum lock coverage. So, you can So, the people with smaller lots have a little bit more flexibility. The people with the bigger lots don't really need the flexibility because they've already got it just by virtue of the fact that their property is big. Um, I haven't seen any proposals or requests for someone to establish an 8,000 foot accessory building or something like that here in the city, right? Um, so it's not that's not really a major limiting factor. What we're really looking at are the lots that are, you know, 66 by 132 or smaller in some cases where that 30% is really limiting some people in what they can do with their property. So that's kind of the the starting point here. Um we did uh look at a bunch of your neighbors. Um these so full disclosure, a bunch of these um

all of them actually are or have been our clients at some point in time. So we're pretty familiar with these ordinances. Um, we didn't necessarily come up with the standards, but I knew where to look and frankly they're all your neighbors anyway. So, I thought it was a good comparison to see what they're doing in building and Greenville and Ionia and all that. So, if you go down the list here, you'll kind of see that the district. So, we just pulled out the ones that are most comparable to the city's R2 and R3 zones, which like in Belgium it's R2 and R3. Greenville, it's R2. In Cedar Springs, it's R1. in Ionia they have a they have a low density residential district called LDR it's a little bit different's got a couple so their R1 zone is 9600 ft and R2 is 7200 uh Grand Haven has an LDR district that's got a minimum wage of 8700 South Haven has an R1B that's 8400 so you can see that all and I think a lot of these are written especially in Cedar Springs it like didn't get the 66 132. Exactly. That is exactly why that is written there. And I'm willing to bet that the the 8450, the 8700 and all of that, a lot of those are written to accommodate the 8712 dimension because that was a like like I said, that was a very very common platin dimension historically. And if you look around any parcel map of any of these cities, they are filled with 66T lots. So this gives us a nice kind of apples to apples comparison to what some of your neighbors are are doing. And so you'll see that you're not you're within a reason, right? So a few of them are at 40%, a few of them are at 30%. Um Rockford is at 35%. Here in Low, you're at 30. So you're on the more restrictive side of that, but you're not, you know, completely out in the left field while everyone else is doing something that's a much higher or much smaller percentage than Global is

doing. So this is here pretty much just for context. This obviously does not, you know, require you to make a change. Um, a couple other things to note is that um the other I think considerations that would be we're thinking about would be if we increase a maximum lot coverage, I would suggest a fairly small increase for now. Um there are other concerns, right? So, if we're going to allow more buildings and um additional building, additional additions, then those there are impacts with neighboring properties that might not want the additional bulk or the additional area of building on the property. Now, we might also want to consider storm water runoff factors that may come into play here because we're only focusing on building area and not on total impervious area. this isn't necessarily going to solve any of that, but I think it is something that's worth considering. Um, I'm not, you know, not super familiar of any like major, you know, drainage and and those kinds of problems with the city's neighborhoods currently, but I do think we need to be careful, it was pointed out during the ADU discussion, to not, you know, kind of overload property with more buildings than they're maybe needing to accommodate. So, um, all of this is is food for thought at this point. You don't have to do anything. Um, you can, if you were to increase it, my suggestion would be to start at like a 35 or a 40 at most and kind of see where it goes. Um, we can kind of think about this a bit more as well in our office and um, do some additional research and

see. I don't know if it'll be easy of easy for us to figure out sort of where how many people are in Mr. Lazy's situation where you've got you're like 99.9% maxed out and you can't really do anything else and how how limiting that is for how many people I'm not sure. Um we can certainly, you know, take some guesses. is probably not that many, but again, it's it's not not totally unheard of um for Sue and I to be looking at an addition and we go, "Sorry, you're you can't you can't build this this new garage. You can't or if you take down, you know, if your garage falls down, you can't rebuild it because you're already over and, you know, you can't put it back the way that it was without making it smaller." So, it does happen occasionally. Um, and it's something that I think like again we're interested in ways for people to sort of reasonably increase or kind of maximize if that's their word the amount of usable area for their property. Want to give them flexibility to use their property how they see fit. Make those improvements, make those additions. Those things in my view are generally good for the city to have people investing in their neighborhoods and their houses. Um and so it's just here for your consideration that um you don't have to take any specific action tonight other than uh give me directions hopefully so that we can bring something back to you for the next meeting that is responsive to that.

Um thank you Andy. Uh a couple of uh visual mental visual obviously uh ideas that came to mind is let's say a 5% increase which will give you 35%. And uh it's roughly a 20x 20 building to give you just a concrete square or a 10x40 edition. Um, I understand about the setbacks, which is good that the ordinances have setbacks. So, you still couldn't, you know, step over those bounds. Correct. I also averaged our neighbors and it came out to roughly 34 and 38 per minute. Uh, that's the math I mean. So, it's I would also agree that nothing drastic should be done, but 35% seems to be a starting point to look at and discuss. Um, that's my output.

I'd be my microphone randomly. Um, I'd be interested if we could maybe see how many applications over the last year or something might be like teetering on that line if that's something you and Sue could maybe pull like how many you've maybe had to make adjustments on or something to see how many might be or over the last few years if you have an estimate on how many people this could be impacting that you've maybe had to have them

make adjustments or something. the ones that we directly scrutinized this. So, we'd be less than 10 over the last couple years. And then we're not getting like, you know, 20 permit applications or anything. Um, but we count 2% or are we counting 20%, you know, just by next month if we could have some sort of information on that, I think would be helpful. Yeah, I can I can go back and see what we can figure out. It's not going to be a lot. I know that. Yeah. to and when they do come in and do a permit, it's a case by case thing, right?

Um well, yes and no. So, they will come in for a permit. So, the challenge with the lot coverage is that once they get over that amount, there's really not any flexibility. So, if they don't get a setback, we can just say, well, this doesn't work here, but maybe put it on the back. Maybe instead of building the addition on the west side, do it on the east side or something like that. When you get up above that block coverage number, it doesn't really matter what you do or where you put it. Once you're over, you're over. And it doesn't matter where it goes on the site or how it's arranged. It's always just over build smaller.

Yeah. So, yeah. So, the answer is just no. This is how much you can do in like in this situation. It's it's he he's the most unique case cuz we have Neil hit that really carefully and it was like it was really really close but you know you got to draw the line somewhere unfortunately and um you know for him he was just just barely on on on the wrong side of of what that is. Um are you asking for the 38 of% it kind of it's not it doesn't take much.

Yeah, it doesn't. Um, and for the really really super oddball situations. So, if somebody has a parcel that's I don't know 3500, you know, 3500 square ft, 2500 ft, something that's really, really, really small. There is still the relief valve of a variance where they could in an extreme case where it's like this parcel is super weird. It's odd dimension. Nothing makes sense. You can't do anything with it. you know those really really odd cases we do have a secondary option which is to go to city council which is the zoning board of appeals and ask for a variance. But to the extent that we can solve those here at this with this body through an amendment is and just get the standards right here instead of asking for a bunch of exceptions. We got to work it out here with you guys,

listening to um the past uh public and our audience to investigate this a little bit more. and think about it. Uh but I I like to see that we are on the bottom end of our neighbors. But uh I also want to make sure we define uh the coverage is anything with a roof essentially. Is that how you defined it?

Yes. Are not anything covered by buildings. So, a building is specifically defined as something that has a roof, generally speaking. So, a patio would not be included. Your driveway would not be included. Your parking lot would not be included. But if you put a gazebo on your patio, then it's included. Yes. Okay. The feedback we received about density with the master plan, too. I just want to make sure we're treading lightly on this, too. So, I want to make sure we get it right. So, I think some more information would be helpful.

How many people could be impacted by this change positively? Um, yeah, that's that's the question. So, we will um Well, I mean, yeah, we can I don't want to spend an enormous amount of time on this. Um, we want to be really conscientious of your resources, but we can certainly maybe pick on some of the most dense looking neighborhoods that we can find, do some math, and kind of see how close this is limiting them and kind of go from there. Yeah.

I also like to make sure to state that our setback ordinances do protect those property lines from people building too close already. This wouldn't necessarily amend that or push that. Those ordinance, those setbacks do stand. Yeah, we wouldn't propose to change any of the setbacks at this point. Andy, can you remind me of which uh districts the ADUs can go into? Is it SR and SR and R1 as a special?

Okay. So, I'm also a numbers person. So, I'm sitting here thinking, okay, so if they max out their ADU, that would in the SR area, it would put them at 38% coverage if they I think 800 was the maximum ADU size, 800 square feet. Yes, I think that's correct. So, that would put them at 38% coverage or 43% in the R1. So, it sounds No, the ADU had to stick within the 35% block coverage. It did. Okay. They still couldn't go above their block coverage. kind of. But if we change the lot coverage to that percentage, so would they still be Yeah, they would still have their lot coverage. Yes.

Percentage. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm saying that if we max if they max out 800 square ft. And yes, if they could, it would push it to 38% and 43% in those two districts. Okay. If they're already maxed out and they added. So just something to think about there. That's a lot. Is that the bare minimum? 800. That was the max. That was the max. So between 400 to 800 is say where we're at. I mean 10 there to keep them pretty small obviously, but yeah, somebody wanted to build the biggest thing they could possibly build and they were already building the biggest things they could possibly build.

Okay, very good. Good information. Uh are we all kind of in agreement to talk about this next month? Thank you.

Back to the front again. Okay, I would like to uh open the mic up to citizen comments for items not on the agenda. Uh may I remind everybody that 5 minutes and please state their name and their uh address. Seeing no public comments on items not on the agenda, I will move on to number eight, staff report. And Sue, any updates?

I have nothing. anything anything new coming down? Um, not at this time. There's been some preliminary conversations, but we don't have any other applications at this time that I can think of. So, um, we're just kind of been holding pat on a couple things and it's about it. So, this is a good time to work on some of these some of these sort of working session amendments that we've been talking about. So, nothing else besides that. Very good. And has there been uh applicants for mics?

Yes, we have received several applicants um and they've all gone to city council and they're reviewing them carefully. Wonderful. Very good. Uh the commissioner marks. I'm good. You're good. Very good. Earl Pearl, I would like to welcome you. Thank you. I forgot to do at the beginning of the meeting. It's all right. Um, yeah, thank you for welcoming me in and I look forward to being part of planning commission. So, thank you. Do you have any comments uh about tonight or any future comments concerning things? Not that I think of at the moment. I look forward to seeing what what comes down the pike as

Nicole.

I do I actually want to draw attention to an award our Mr. Chairman received. If anybody wasn't aware, um, box 17 gave, uh, Mr. Tony Ellis a Pay It Forward Spotlight Award. Um, I'm just going to read a few words out of this that I wanted to draw attention to. I like putting him on the spot. Look at that face. This is the highlight of my night. Um, Tony Ellis, a four-year veteran of the LOL Fire Department. If you didn't know, he is our chairperson and a high school teacher and a member of the L Fire Department was selected for the honor after being nominated for his tireless commitment to making his community stronger and safer. In addition to being a paid on call firefighter, Ellis has been a teacher for 27 years, instructing shop class, welding, woodworking, and even producing a television show every other day. He also serves on the LOL City Planning Commission. LOL Fire Chief Corey Belzin calls Ellis a Swiss Army knife for his versatility and willingness to help. He demonstrates that in his daily life, everything he does through the school system, helping out in the city and anything down here. He said Tony is the guy that usually raises his hands, says, "Yeah, pick me." Might be how he ended up chair. Um, I'll be there. I'll help you out. No problem. So, congratulations, Tony. I have been holding on to that for like three and a half weeks. I think that published like the day after our last meeting.

I I was I was hoping to end this meeting quickly so you were hoping nobody saw that to could call it out. Yes. I I've gone to two different retail outlets in Grand Rapids, mind you. Not necessarily a little. Aren't you that Swiss Army knife guy? Like I set myself a calendar reminder for tonight so I wouldn't forget with a link to it. You're welcome. I have nothing else. I I'm very humbled and I won't care for that. I hope that whole quote makes it in the minutes for next month.

Thank you, John. I have nothing to add either. Uh would you like for me to motion us to adjourn? I would entertain a motion to adjourn this meeting. I'll make that motion. Support. All in favor? Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. I. All oppose the same. This meeting is adjourned.