Planning Board - Regular Meeting

All right, welcome everyone to the Planning Board meeting. If everyone would stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, let's start with roll call real quick. Joseph Corbison.

Daniel Guerra. Daniel Alvarez.

Jay Miller. Anybody on Zoom or online here of the committee? I don't see anyone. All right, we have a quorum, though, correct, Marcus?

That is correct. We have four members, but it satisfies the quorum.

Sounds good. Okay, Mr. Martos, you want administrative matters, which I assume includes swearing in?

Yes, and also a statement because the first item on our agenda tonight is a quasi-judicial item. Florida law and the city's quasi-judicial procedures require that this board consider the evidence presented to it and base the decision on applicable law and primarily on the evidence presented, whether that be by the applicant, by staff, or by members of the public. In this case, the applicable law includes section 20-8 and other provisions identified in the staff report. That's 20-8 of the city's zoning code. The evidence considered must be substantial competent evidence. This means that testimony or evidence based on personal observation or relevant expert testimony that a reasonable mind would accept as adequate to support a conclusion. It is not a popularity contest. It cannot be based solely on non-expert opinions, no matter how fervent those opinions might be. Everyone who speaks on the first item tonight will be given an opportunity. If you intend to provide testimony as to any of the items on tonight's agenda to be considered tonight, you will be sworn in before your testimony is taken. If you are joining us via Zoom, we'll ask that you first turn on your camera to be sworn in at the time that you are called. If you refuse either to be cross-examined or to be sworn, your testimony will be considered in that context and given its due weight. The general public will not be permitted to cross-examine witnesses, but the public may request the board to direct questions on their behalf to either staff or to the applicant. At this time, anyone in chambers who wishes to speak tonight on the first item on the agenda or any item on the agenda, we ask that you please stand up to be sworn in. And I ask that staff also be sworn in. If you intend to speak to any item on the agenda tonight, please be sworn in. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Your response?

I do.

Thank you very much. Everyone, I believe the rules, the general rules that we apply at this board, and the chair may modify this if he wishes, but the general rule is that every person from the general public will be provided three minutes to speak tonight. Finally, to the board, has anyone on the board had any communications with any persons, be it the applicant or other members of the public, prior to tonight's hearing with respect to the first item on the agenda? And if so, please let us know the nature of that communication and whether it would influence your ability to speak impartially tonight or to decide impartially tonight.

No.

Anyone? No.

No. No.

Okay, Chairman. It's all yours.

Okay. With that, the first item, we're just going to go in order tonight, Marcus. Yes, sir. So take it away.

So the first item is PB-2025-016. The applicant is Avalon Bay Communities Incorporated. It is a resolution of the Mayor and City Commission of the City of South Miami, Florida, approving or denying a special exception application pursuant to Section 20-8.7 of the City of South Miami Land Development Code. a large-scale development project for the multi-family residential project known as avalon south miami ii on the 1.34 acre development site located at approximately 7230 southwest 59th avenue consisting of the property approximately bound by south dixie highway or us-1 sunset drive or southwest 72nd street doran avenue southwest 59th avenue and southwest 73rd street Providing for conditions, enforcement of conditions, corrections, severability, and an effective date. Thank you. This item will be presented by Mr. Mark Alvarez of the Corradino Group. Thank you.

Good evening, Board. My name is Mark Alvarez. I'm with the Corradino Group, address at 4055 Northwest 97th Avenue, Suite 200. I'm here representing the City of South Miami planning staff. I have reviewed this application, and I'm going to make a short presentation about its compliance with the zoning code. If we could bring up the presentation. Thank you. Um so this is this is the large scale special exception site plan review along with it there will be a um uh bonuses application which is not before this board for a decision along with that there is also a waiver request which is not for this before before this board for a decision but we do want your recommendations. The location is the block to the west of Dorn Avenue. It's a triangular block between US 1 Dorn Avenue and 73rd Street. It is not the entire block that is the site. There are two areas that are shown there. The site plan area is the 1.13 acres. That is the lower part of that block. We're showing the upper part because the application, as is presented, in order to preserve the historic buildings on the north side, They are using the entitlements of those buildings in terms of height and floor area and density that those would have. So it is using the entitlements for the entire block of 1.34 acres, but the actual site plan is 1.13 acres. So it is in effect preserving those buildings because they will no longer have the air rights that they now do have. The designation on the future land use map is TSD. The zoning designation is TSDD, which is Transit Supportive Development District. And the subzone is the TSDA, which is the Transit Supportive Development Area. There are three subdistricts, and it's in the TSDA. The existing uses is a variety of one- to three-story commercial uses. And I already told you where it is. So the context of this block is it is basically surrounded by mixed use and commercial. Across Doran Avenue, there are one- and two-story, actually one-story commercial uses right across the street. To the north, it's the very, the north is actually the north apex of the block, so it wouldn't be right to say it's Sunset Avenue, Sunset Boulevard. But it is the uses that will remain there that are historic buildings. To the south is zoned TSDA as well, zoned the same thing. That's south across the street, across 73rd is zoned for 14 stories, just as this project is as well. I'm sorry, this 14 stories with bonuses, this one is zoned for 16. So it would transition down across the street, across 73rd, two stories. And then, of course, on US-1, its western border or northwestern border, if you wish, is US-1. It's a major state highway, basically, and the design addresses that as well. And across the street from that are the hospitals. As far as compatibility, and I went through the zoning districts that are across the street on all of its borders, as well as explaining what the zoning allows on those areas as well. So it is compatible based on the zoning. In other words, what could happen there in the future. To its west, again, those one-story commercial developments could redevelop. They would be in the same categories. actually in the 14-story category, they would have a buffer on the sunset side. The entire sunset when we did the zoning has a buffer area. It can only go to four stories. This doesn't include that. That's part of the historic area. Across us one it's it's a very we treat us one a little bit differently because it is a State Road and it is it is essentially a highway but across the street from that is of course the hospitals Metrorail We're compatible with them, but it's kind of like we're compatible 200 feet away So it is very intense on the west side the same development could occur to the east of this and to the south, the same development, only two stories lower. As far as the purpose of this and the other, the aspect of compatibility also goes to what we intended to do when we passed the zoning for the TSTD. And the intent was to create a more dense downtown, to bring people into the area, to support the businesses, to create a walkable community, and to support the Metrorail station so that we can start building a community that has residents that live in it that can use Metrorail to go downtown, to go to Coral Gables, to go to all those places. We create that density. We don't start to actually change the way we travel and the way we travel to downtown and Coral Gables and even Dadeland. So this is all intended to be a very walkable community. It's intended to be mixed use so that the workspaces, so that the retail, the restaurants, and the density are all in place to support each other with a very active and mixed use walking community. So this is at 16 stories and the densities that it is at, it is completely consistent with what we intended to do for the downtown. Again, I'm going to go through the code. There's a few aspects that I want to speak about and consistency with the code. I mentioned about density. Again, this property, it could go to, as a right, 150 units per acre. With bonuses, it could go to 200 units an acre. And considering, again, that they are preserving the northern apex of that block by taking those air rights, they have 1.34 acres. They could have 268 units with the bonuses and the proposal is at 254. So it's a little below what the property could have, assuming that the bonuses are accepted by the commission. We've reviewed it for parking and loading, and this project does meet all the parking and loading requirements. It has sufficient parking within the building. It's entirely internal into this area. It does meet all of the bicycle. We have different bicycle requirements. It meets all those requirements. It meets the requirements for the loading spaces internal to the building. It meets the requirements for the trash pickup internal to the building. And it does meet the requirements for car sharing spaces for Ubers and for Uber Eats and so forth. Sorry to use a brand name, but those spaces are provided and that's something that's in the code that these buildings must provide. On the ground floor, it has four retail spaces, so it is a mixed use, and the rest of it is entirely residential above that with amenities. Part of the zoning code is to have a street hierarchy, so we wanted to determine where the fronts of buildings would front. And this one actually fronts on two streets that it could have as a frontage. The application shows Dorn Avenue as its frontage, which is really what we wanted. We want to activate Dorn Avenue more than we want to activate 73rd. But 73rd is also not treated as a back of house. So we have accomplished both. um the open space is provided all along doran avenue is linear open space and it does meet the requirements for open space and i think we just have a few extra diagrams i know they have their landscape architect here they'll go through the details of the open space it is mostly an urban space and is designed to support as we have now delhi lane is there and delhi lane will move to the feed building but it will support a good amount of it will support the four spaces on the bottom some of which we expect will be wet spaces or spaces for restaurants and it will have all of this area not only just for landscaping but also for people to use to gather to to sit at tables and enjoy the the amenities I'm going to go through the landscape very quickly, but again, they have met all the requirements as far as the number of trees, the density of trees, where they're spaced. All of that has been met. This has gone through DRB. The DRB review has also looked at the landscape. They've made some comments, particularly having to do with some of the trees, some of the species that may require more root space. I think they'll work that out. They have received those comments from DRB. There are the, as of right, for the TSDA is eight stories and this will achieve 16 stories entirely with bonuses. There are four categories of bonuses and they must be approved by commission. The first category is open space. So for providing additional open space, there is a bonus amount that's allowed. Again, that will be by commission. That will satisfy partially the up to two floors is allowed through extra open space. That will satisfy that partially. The rest will be a payment in lieu, which is part of the code that they can pay into the cities. excuse me, the city's bonus trust fund for the additional bonus floor. There are three other bonuses possible. Two are for affordable housing units and workforce housing units. Those will be based on what we have before us, based on the site plan and the letter of intent. Those would be by payment in lieu to the city's trust fund. And finally, excuse me, There is sustainability standards. The building is proposed to be LEED silver, but to achieve the bonus, they would need to be gold or platinum, and that will be by payment in lieu as well. As far as the building height goes, this project is consistent with the permitted building height. Again, assuming that the bonuses are approved by the Commission, they are under both the height for the roof and the height for the appurtenances on the top of the roof. The thing that they'll, this will request a waiver. A waiver is where the proposal cannot meet the dimensional and design standards and the architectural standards. This building, because of it being on a very unusual and constrained block, it's a triangular block, it's not very large. And in those cases, generally the parking is what causes the problem because parking likes to have big rectangles. So they have requested a waiver for the floor plates. The floor plates are all roughly around 27,000 square feet above the fourth floor. That requires a waiver from the design standards. Maximum is 20,000 square feet that will go before the commission. We would welcome your input on that to determine if it's compatible and if it looks right and if it's the best they can do. But we have gone through the waiver standards and staff has determined that the waiver meets all the criteria and it does not cause any adverse effects to the properties around it by being a little bigger. Again, it is a triangular block and that's why we have, in fact, When we were writing the TSDD code, consideration for waivers really came out of the idea that there were blocks in the downtown that were triangular, that were small, and we knew they would not be able to meet all the requirements. And so this was a process where a commission could look at each project on its own merits and determine if the waiver is appropriate. It is consistent with all of the architectural standards of the TSDD, fenestration wall variations, ground floor coverage, material variations, non-reflective glass, the amount of glass for each elevation on each floor. The one exception is along US 1 where the applicant has decided to use less fenestration. We have agreed to that. That actually makes sense because It is a state road, and we cannot get all of the things on the sidewalk that we would like for pedestrians. We're very constrained. So we know it's not going to be a pedestrian sidewalk. The sidewalk is still adequate. It still has landscape to protect pedestrians. It still has the amount of sidewalk that it needs. But we know it's not the active site of this. So we are recommending to allow that that first floor have a little bit less glass because nothing can be there successfully. The store, the retail space at the corner of 73rd and US 1 does wrap around, but pretty much that's it. Lastly, as far as the process goes, this has gone before the DRB. The DRB did approve it and recommend it to go forward. Again, they did have some comments about the landscape. The applicant was here. They've heard it. We will be writing this in the notes before it goes to commission. Tonight's meeting is we just had a DRC, which is a design review committee. We still have a few more departments in the city to get together, public works and so forth. These are sort of the nitty gritty details of of the design. And, you know, is the trash pickup sufficient or there's a loading sufficient? we have the turning analysis and so forth that will be determined by public works. We will also look at the parking split spaces displaced. Um, we have done some of that already. We've talked to code compliance. We've had half of that meeting today and we'll have the other half within the next week. Um, again, planning board, this is your decision tonight. So it was to be determined and then it will go to city commission. If it's approved to go forward tonight, it would go to the February 3rd meeting of city commission.

Thank you.

Any questions? Thank you.

For the applicant?

It's Mr. Chair, members of the board. It's wonderful to see you. Jeffrey Bass is my name. 1515 Sunset Drive is my address, and it's my great privilege to be representing Avalon Bay, the applicant before you this evening. I have a large professional team with me that's been working very hard. I'd like to just introduce them briefly so you know the subject matter expertise that's in the room. We do not have a very long application, but we do have people here to answer questions if you have them. So I'm joined by Micah Cohn and Mark Schreiber and Josefani Alvarado from the principal Avalon Bay, Albert Cordovas and Sergio Rodriguez from Architects Corwell are here, Andres Asilo from Natural Official, excuse me, our landscape architect is here. Ken Garcia from Dover Coal we expect to be here. Our civil engineer Alberto Mora and our traffic engineer Corey Dorman are here. So let me just do some framing upfront that I think is very important for the conversation that we're going to have, for the realities we face, and for the decision recommendation that you're going to make. And before I do that, I just do want to pause for a moment to talk about the applicant here. The applicant here is Avalon Bay. that executed the Avalon Bay One development that is standing across the street from Casa Cuba, where we're just about two weeks away from Fresh Market opening. And it is the developer that got that extraordinarily difficult project over the line. I worked on that project for over a decade through very different city administrations with very different priorities. And I think most importantly, under a very different set of zoning regulations. And I'll come back to that. But not every developer will stick with a project that's that difficult and see it through and then execute it at such an extraordinary high level of excellence for multifamily residential development. Avalon Bay is the first developer in the city to actually deliver multi-family residential district in the lands that we used to call the hometown. It has the new name now. I always refer to it as the hometown. It's my hometown. It's where I spend all my time, as some of you all know. And it's happening, right? The vision is happening. You go to Casa Cuba to pick up dinner. The lights are on. There are people on the street walking their dogs and pushing strollers that weren't there when it was the Winn-Dixie. The neighborhood is changing importantly in the direction that the city commission ordained when it looked at and conducted its very thorough review of the zoning code that brings us here today. This project that brings us here today, is a very complicated site. It's triangular. Its geometry is very difficult. It sits on US-1, which is very difficult. It has historic resources on it, which increase the degree of difficulty. And it has the beloved institution, Delhi Lane, within it. It has another institution or two that are not so beloved that will be moving on in the event that we're able, beloved by some perhaps, but maybe not beloved by all. But what we propose is to continue the upward trajectory and the redevelopment of the hometown in a way that is walkable, where people live, and that will drive commerce to our residents, will drive commerce to our businesses, will drive commerce to our restaurant operators, and will create life on our streets. Now, with Deli Lane, the degree of difficulty cannot be overstated, and I think as a testament to this development team, they came up with the unbelievably creative solution to take these historic buildings on the corner in a very difficult location, honor them, and dedicate them to an adaptive reuse by relocating Delhi Lane into a new and improved facility, these historic buildings, and then to ensure that these buildings remain, strip from them their development rights so we don't have to worry about them being demolished by neglect or being scraped or being redeveloped in a way that would dilute the significance that they hold as some of the earliest earliest shops within at the corner of Maine and Maine in the history of this city. So when you look at the project that's before you, I want you to understand that this is a developer with a proven track record and a deep commitment and a deep investment in this community. And based on Avalon, one being here is super invested in delivering another extraordinary project to be its own neighbor. I know we have people here today, and I love that fact, because government should be participatory. But I want to take a moment to just highlight what Mr. Alvarez mentioned, because The status quo in downtown is not what it was for the last 15 years. The elected officials of the city of South Miami, led by Mr. Alvarez, commenced an extraordinarily detailed, thorough examination of the existing zoning patterns in and around this part of town. looked at what was working, looked at what wasn't working, looked at the infrastructure investment in the Metro Rail, looked at where we needed to redefine our vision for what this part of town should look like. And when they did that, they adopted comprehensive changes to the zoning code. The project that we bring you this evening resonates in perfect pitch with the revisions to the zoning code that were adopted by the commission. this year so this was designed to the regulations that the city commission adopted and i really just want to highlight one of them before i before i turn it over to albert to walk you through the drawings why not one and a half of them um We knew that there would be difficult geometries created in the area subject to the zoning code rewrite based on the angle of US 1 and how it intersects with our otherwise parallel streets. we knew that there would be triangularly shaped parcels that would be the proverbial round peg in the square hole of the floor plate regulation that came up. And recognizing that on the front side, the city commission said, yeah, What we're concerned about is something with amassing that is uniform and monotonous, and we want to be sure that we avoid that as a general rule, but we understand there will be difficulties in specific locations, so we want to create enough runway in those specific locations where if you have an irregularly shaped lot, we will welcome the opportunity to work with you on a waiver of the otherwise uniform maximum floor plate And this is the poster child for that. And what I'd like to say is we have a recommendation of approval from your staff because we comply with each and every aspect of your zoning code. Let me just say that. And as it relates to the waiver, we have a recommendation of support because your staff showed you its analysis that the waiver that we're requesting creates no adverse impact on anybody. And that is competent substantial evidence as your city attorney told you about because it comes from your staff report. Your staff report is that quantum of evidence. But I think most importantly, when you look at what Albert and the architects did, you will see that there is volumetric variation in the building, that shape you saw the outline of, how it bends around the triangle, so that it is actually very interesting to look at, and that fear of monotony that drove the imposition of the floor plate restriction in the first place is not at all applicable here based on the design solution, which is why we have the recommendation of support from you all. We have a staff report that concludes we comply with every requirement of your zoning code. We have a recommendation favorable from your DRB. We have our team here and we would request your recommendation of approval of our application in its entirety, including the request for a waiver. for the reasons stated by your staff and for the reasons that I just stated. And with that said, I'd like Albert to briefly walk you through a selection of the plans just so you can see a fuller flavor of the design than that shown to you by staff. And I want to thank Marcus and Mark for how hard that they've worked both on the zoning code rewrite that brought us here and on reviewing this project. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff. Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board, Albert Cordovitz with Coral World Architects at 4210 Laguna Street, Coral Gables. Extremely happy to be here this evening. This is a project that we have been working on for quite some time with city staff, our client, and we're really proud. We were fortunate and honored to be the architects of the first Alamo Bay project right across the corner. And I can tell you that from our experiences, the developer is second to none. They really go to the nth degree to make sure that the project is developed as approved, as a unified effort as I've ever seen in terms of all the parties together, contractor, developer, and what have you. So in terms of this project, we looked at it for the first time, obviously a very challenging site. And I'll go through the renderings. I'll come back to these right now. But I think the main challenge was essentially the site geometry, right? And I think we used it to our advantage. One of the things that we wanted to do is obviously we had a city block, a very important city block in the city of South Miami with an incredible location. So main design goal was to really take the pedestrian realm, the possibility of the pedestrian realm, especially in Dorne and 73rd to the next level. We have some great businesses that have been there for some time. But in terms of urban quality of design with a parking lot in the corner on gray parking, a non conforming uses on the other side, you know, we had a, we have a tremendous opportunity here and I think we did exactly that in terms of what we are proposing for this project. Starting with the ground floor plan, we have essentially almost essentially more than 95% of the perimeter at both main frontages covered with active use spaces. To begin with, our main lobby entrance is at 59th and Dorn Avenue, which we'll talk more about in a little bit. And then we have just under 18,000 square feet of usable retail spaces with great details and frontage details at pedestrian level fronting those streets. We have multiple cores, and I'll get into the core design a little bit, but one of the main aspects of getting, in our opinion, good design and good urban design and great pedestrian quality is to make sure that the service components of the project are away from this pedestrian quality realm. Uh and for that reason we had and we made great efforts to totally internalize as you can see the service component and the loading components of not only the retail but the um residential aspect of the project that's totally internalized. Luckily we had the opportunity to do a one way out on Dixie Highway uh which certainly will be uh reviewed and approved by D. O. T. but had created ample room on the inside for excellent maneuvering of the larger trucks and access from that internalized area to not only the retail core, the retail establishment, but also the residential cores as well. Again, ramping up to the parking, minimizing the curb cuts is basically only one extended curb cut that either houses up to the parking levels or the actual service component of the project. This is our typical parking, again, challenging because of the site, but we were able to get a very beautiful circulation working in there around the core elements. We have three different cores. As you can see, one core is essentially centered to the northeast portion of the project. That's the main core of the project. We have another core to the southwest of the project, which essentially it's a dual core, but it acts also as a service core because it's directly connected to the ground floor elements of service and loading. And then we have a minor core down to the south, again, adjacent to 73rd, which we're using for the use of visitors to the retail components that they can have their own elevator and access to the immediate ground floor realm around the area. This parking system essentially works the same way up to the fifth level. And one of the things that we wanted to do when establishing the parking is start breaking this massing elements as Jeff alluded to in the right way. We decided to step back, not only for purposes of obviously requirements for the goal, but step it further back than required when we got to the tower level. So the parking ends at the fifth level, step back and then at the sixth level, is our next floor up is what you see here. We not only stepped started stepping back the tower but actually broke up the massing of the tower creating a beautiful double height space as you will see in the rendings on that south east corner which creates multiple views view corridors from and within. It has prevailing winds getting into the courtyard the the actual amenity courtyard of the project. And in addition to that, articulating the massing component overall in the smallest pedestrian realm, which is actually Dorne. We wanted to actually have the, if you notice, the smallest portion of the elevations are actually essentially done in design against Dorne, which is the smallest thoroughfare. As you can see here, this is a double height space, essentially cutting out that corner and creating that double height view corridor into the courtyard. And then above that is your typical tower element. Essentially the same up to the 15th level. The differences are basically the perimeter differences in articulating properly the overall design and exterior design of the project itself. We get to the 16 level, we further articulate this in terms of, as you can see from the south point there, we break up the massing and then we had a great opportunity to further break it up and provide a great residential amenity by creating a sky lounge and exterior terrace on the northeast corner with absolutely great views of downtown Miami City. Again, the overall mass articulates itself with a 16th level mezzanine. A little bit further in terms of, goes a little bit further in height than the overall building. It breaks up the overall continuity of this strange U-shaped massing. In terms of exterior design, let me just quickly go back to our to our renderings, because we're really proud of this. The building we just finished, very beautiful, but it's very rectilinear in design, as we intended to do. So we wanted to bring forth here something different. The Corvillainer aspect, the organic nature, of the design on the exterior is something that it's very unique, makes it very soft on the massing, on the curvatures of those balconies, almost continuous balconies. We designed the parking garage with an incredible screen element and designed different planes This is a perforated metal screen, laser perforated, and that screen is in addition to the crash walls that are inside of that screen that prevent the car lights from hitting out. So this is essentially for aesthetic purposes and unifying the whole podium level right above the pedestrian rail. And above that, here's a view from the main corner of the building. You can see that we've also brought some of the building elements to that parking podium so that it wasn't all a screen design element. We wanted to just harmonize that with the building above and with the tower above and below that. This is what Jeff alluded to. One of the most challenging corners of the site. I think we did something that starts providing that flat iron effect on the project. Very beautiful, very iconic, I believe. We truly believe in this. It's going to be just an incredible site and visual focal point for the project as you approach US 1. You can see it here with a continuous curve balconies. The amount of glass was also based on code requirements, which is pretty extensive. And I think it actually helps the building tremendously. Here's a visual from us one this so it's very important because the remaining buildings also were considered in as you can see we're actually stepping back from the podium in the tower from the smaller three to four story buildings that we intend to leave the historical building so they were addressed as well in the composition of the design. Again, we're extremely happy to be here, happy to answer any questions, any comments you might have. We hopefully look for your favorable approval. We're extremely happy. I think this could be a phenomenal project, a really iconic project for the city and the residents. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, we'll reserve the balance of our time for a brief rebuttal if you would allow us so that the members of the public who are here can speak.

Okay. So unless there are any clarifying questions from the planning board, I'm gonna open it up for public comment. And so if you wish to speak publicly, if you're in the audience, please step up. If you were sworn in, you certainly can speak. If you haven't been sworn in, just let us know so we can swear you in now. Same thing for anybody online. Marcus, can you put me back on the, Screen where I can see people in the audience or people online.

Sorry If you would stand at the podium miss if you'd like to speak And then we'd ask that you state your name and address for the record and if you haven't been sworn in we can swear you win now

I haven't been sworn in. My name is June Sherman. I live at 7506 Southwest 58th Avenue, South Miami, 33143. Great.

If you would raise your right hand, please. Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth? Yes. Thank you.

Okay. I lived in South Miami for 25 years. I moved here because it was a nice, quiet village and I loved it. I think Avalon 1 is a monstrosity. I didn't like it when it was being built. I am totally against Avalon 2. The infrastructure that we have isn't sufficient to maintain another 254 apartments. Let me just say, 254 apartments, 414 parking spaces, that's not even enough for two cars for an apartment. let alone visitors or children, and you've got obviously different levels of apartments going to three, four bedrooms. Affordable housing, a studio in Avalon 1 is $2,630. The occupancy there is only 40%. You've got retail space in Avalon 1 that's still empty. You're going to redevelop the shops at sunset with masses of retail space, and you've got retail space in Avalon 2. all competing within essentially two blocks of each other. The zoning code seems to be gotten around by all these exceptions and I don't really understand that. If you have ever tried to walk crossing US 1 at 5.30 on any day of the week, it's a nightmare now. With the traffic, with all of this more people in the town, more cars in the town, it's going to be impossible. I'm a pedestrian. I know what it's like to walk these streets, and it's hell now. It's going to be a lot worse. I don't think we need more housing, especially not at the prices that Avalon One are charging, and I don't think we need the development. Why? We don't need the retail space. We don't need more restaurants. South Miami's got enough of that, and we just really don't need it. I think you're spoiling my city. I've lived here a long time. I'm paying my taxes. I'm paying for the infrastructure. I'm paying for a lot of things that these developers are just greedy and getting more money from, and I totally disagree with it. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Excuse me, Chair, can you make sure that the young lady signs in? Oh, ma'am. Ma'am? You need to sign in. You need to sign the sign-in sheet. Yeah.

No, no. Both. You spoke. You need to sign in. Sorry, yeah.

And each person coming up, please, when you come up to speak, please sign in on the sign-in sheet so we have a record of you speaking. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff.

Hello. Lee Emerson Smith, 5864 Southwest 76th Street.

Have you been sworn in, miss?

I'm about to be. Okay. I mean the swearing in part. Yeah. Go ahead.

Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you.

Hey Marcus, don't start the clock till this morning and everything.

What's that?

You have a three minute and it already started so I want to make sure you had your fair time. Okay, go ahead please.

First of all, the residents who, small town, 11,000 people were not given ample time to evaluate this project. It's almost unanimous that the people that live south of this project are outraged and really sad because this is going to affect us immensely. The traffic is unbearable here. It's unbearable. I ride a bicycle everywhere because it's so unbearable. This little village town of approximately 11,000 people is being forced to succumb to the intense pressure from the city, the county, the state, and developers blinded by dollar signs and lacking good sense, and we're being forced to accept yet another oversized building, this time 16 stories. We, the wise and dedicated residents of this formerly sweet little town, are devastated at the plans that will continue the destruction of what was South Miami. Traffic congestion is the talk of the nation, and it's a fact in this city, in this county. Most two-lane roads here are designed narrow. They're reaching the breaking point of tolerance for the staggering amount of vehicles generated by a majority of people who live elsewhere. The schools in the area have rendered Red Road a parking lot every weekday morning and afternoon. 73rd Street is the only exit southbound out of South Miami. The congestion is almost unbearable and it's resulting in desperation moves by throngs of cars making their way through narrow streets that can hardly accommodate what we have. And many of the streets are not quite wide enough for two cars. And I'm referring to just this segment from here south that goes to Dante Fussell Park. It's a hazard to us, the residents, trying to leave our driveways, walk our dogs, stroll with our children and families. Here we create this beautiful town, generous properties, modest homes, an envious tree canopy, quality schools, quiet nights, and then Here comes this roaring tsunami of development and the Avalon one and now this and then across here and it's just more housing to the point where most of us have all the beauty but much of the time it's no longer quality because we're miserable with the density, the noise, the stadium lights. We bought our home in 1992. Our children went to public schools, and now we have a grandson, and we're not going anywhere. We're going to die in our house. And that's why we care and we speak up, because we're trying to preserve what we had. But sadly, we're being paralyzed.

Pam, you need to wrap up.

By noise, okay. By noise, excessive lighting, traffic, and no more stars at night. all for one, for the dreaded growth and money. Thank you.

Chairman, if I may just put a statement in for the record. Notice was provided by mailing, by newspaper, and by posting at the property per the code. And I also want to make clear for everyone that this is not the final hearing. So the last speaker mentioned that there need opportunities to speak. There will be an additional hearing after this, at least one additional hearing before the city commission. Thank you.

Yeah. And I should just point out, I mean, the advertising that goes into the paper, I find it in the neighbor section of the Miami Herald. That's how I see it and how I actually know what my agenda is going to be two weeks later. And so you can go back and look and it's there. So anyway, thank you very much. Anybody else that wishes to speak from the public? Anybody online from the public that wishes to speak? Marcus, how do they?

We have one person, Mia Shaughnessy, who has her hand raised. Do you want to continue with the people in the chair first, in the chambers first?

Is there somebody else in the, yeah, somebody else wants to speak? Yes, please, come on up.

So let's handle everybody in the room first, and then we'll go over to Ms. Shaughnessy on Zoom once we finish in the chambers. So ma'am, you may come forward. Please remember to sign in and state your name and address for the record.

My name is Joanne Bramson. I live at 7528 Southwest 58th Avenue since 1998. I moved here.

Joanne, may we swear you in? Oh, sure. Okay. If you would, raise your right hand, please.

No, sorry.

That's all right. You swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.

I do.

Perfect. Thank you.

Okay. Should I repeat? Go back?

Go ahead. Yeah. No, we heard you. Go ahead. Thank you.

Okay. I've lived in this small, wonderful town since 1998. That is 27 years. I moved here from Kendall, from Colusa, from traffic and congestion. I could no longer drive, and I was looking for a walkable town, which we were, which we are not anymore. And I believe, along with the other people who have spoken, that all this density is going to eliminate it being a walkable town. It's not a walkable town now. I agree with what everyone has said. When Avalon One was proposed, I received mail about it. I received nothing about this project. I just heard about it today. I am appalled. Right now, a townhouse in my community rents for $5,000 a month. When you finish putting all this density, you're going to be renting for very little. If we think that we're going to have this great, wonderful city where restaurants have been closing and retail is closing and I don't know what reality these developers are in or you're in, but this is not my reality. I'm president of my little townhouse community and no one has been notified about this. Not everybody reads the Miami Herald. I think that it is intentional that this information is not being put out there. And the idea that if you approve this tonight and in less than three weeks, you're gonna bring it to the city commission for a vote with one public hearing, I think is deplorable. I appreciate everybody's hard work, but none of you live right downtown. We live right downtown and you're destroying it.

Thank you for your comments. And I don't know, Mr. Martos, do you want to address who gets mailings and who doesn't from a notification standpoint? It's a proximity deal, correct? It's a proximity, correct.

Based on proximity, and so someone in closer proximity to Avalon 1 may not receive the list for someone in proximity to Avalon 2.

Correct. Okay. Any other members from the audience here that would like to come up and speak? Please do.

I haven't been sworn in.

If you'd raise your right hand, please. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

Thank you.

My name is Marcella Garcia Bonini. My address is 7820 Southwest 54th Avenue. I'm a High Pines resident, but I'm truly affected by South Miami downtown. I lived here for 16 years now. And honestly, I can't understand what these developers are trying to do with our city. Asking for five or four exemptions to go from eight stories to 16, that means that it doesn't make much sense to go so high. Someone mentioned the traffic. I mean, I guess if you drive around here, it takes, I don't know, at At midnight, it may take you two minutes, where during the day, it might take you 20 minutes to go through the same streets. I live on 54th Avenue. To go from 54th to 80th, which is part South Miami, can take you 15 minutes in the afternoon. I'm a volunteer at Animal Services, and the other day, when the two traffic accidents, they closed a whole US one. Nobody could drive around so that will be like a projection of more cars because you mentioned Yeah, that railway and all that will everybody use a railway. I don't think so. I don't think we need more expensive Residencies Avalon is pretty pricey. This is gonna be pretty pricey Is there any traffic impact studies being done for this? I haven't seen any I tried I looked up and I haven't seen any real traffic impact study being done about this. It all looks pretty, the rendering and all that, like the renderings we saw online, but it doesn't fit the city. It doesn't fit the, I don't know, the services around here. Oral streets are narrow. It's one lane on each side. So how can we accommodate more, sorry, more cars? I honestly don't see it. And I really hope you reconsider the height Because it's going to be like a visual blockage on like Avalon right now. And it's totally out of, why don't you just build retail? Just that. If they want more walking, I mean people, more restaurants, okay. Just go ahead and renew the retail space. No more residences. We don't need them. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments. Anyone else in the audience here? Yes.

You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and above the truth?

I do. Thank you. My name is Laura Wood. I live at 7731 Southwest 60th Avenue. We've been living there for four years, I think, so not as long as everyone else here. I just want to speak about the issue related to traffic and whether or not there's been a traffic study and whether or not there is any recommendation in the previous zoning changes to require developers to mitigate traffic, anticipated traffic issues and or provide additional opportunities for what was proposed in terms of using Metro because it is true that while we moved here four years ago with the idea that it's accessible to the Metro and therefore we could maybe not rely on our car as much, trying to get to the metro station is basically a suicide mission. So I know that farther down US-1 there was a requirement for, I think the university or something required a pedestrian bridge to be built by somebody, I'm not sure who. So that kind of thing, traffic circles, pedestrian bridges, et cetera, to make good on the promise of a walkable, usable city. I would say with the time that I have, I do walk, and that was one of the reasons why we moved here, to be able to walk to all kinds of things. It's gotten so scary that I have invested in these lights from the running store so that I don't feel like I'm taking my life in my hands just to walk down the streets that don't have sidewalks. So again, asking for developers to include sidewalks even on the outer streets where pedestrians live beyond just the immediate area. Those are the kinds of things that I'm wondering if they're included in the sort of regulation zoning changes that were passed recently to encourage, apparently encourage development.

Thank you very much and please make sure you sign in. Other questions from the audience here before we go to the online? You need to come up to the front, please.

Just a moment, miss. We're going to bring you a microphone. Yeah. I understand, but we need it recorded for the record. So we'll bring you a microphone in just a moment.

Do I have to give my name? Okay. My name is Mary Anderson, and I live in Pinecrest, but our family's had property in South Miami probably since the 40s. Ms. Anderson, would you? I just have a question. Is this the only planning meeting? That's all I want to know.

At the moment, this is the only planned meeting for the Planning Board. An additional meeting, at least one additional meeting, must be held by the City Commission. And it's at the City Commission that this project will either be approved, denied, or approved with conditions.

All right, but the Planning Board decides tonight whether they want to...

The Planning Board makes a recommendation. What's required under the code is that a public hearing be held before the Planning Board so that your thoughts can be heard. The Planning Board can provide its thoughts. All of that information is taken up to the City Commission, and then you'll have an additional opportunity to make further comments before the City Commission.

But if you vote on it...

The vote today would be a recommendation. Oh, okay. And not a approval or denial or approval of conditions.

Our recommendation is not binding. It's a recommendation to the commission. They can choose to accept it or ignore it.

And we'll be notified, right?

Of the commission meeting? Yes.

We're only 200 feet away from this property.

Thank you very much. Okay, anyone else in the audience? Yes, ma'am.

You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Yes. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Katherine Koch, or Katherine Koch Espinosa. I've lived in High Pines since 1993, I believe. Raised my son there. Jeff's son went to school with my son. And I'm a member of the community. I'm pretty involved. This little village was incorporated in 1927. And obviously, change is inevitable. So I'm pretty sure this is a done deal, so I'm not going to argue against it. I just would like to know that some notification is sent out. I live on 55th. I didn't get notification for this, Avalon One, or I might mention the Shops of Sunset changes. I walk around all the time. I walk three to five miles a day, in addition, unfortunately, to driving in the community. I'm an attorney. I mediate lawsuits. I drive around. Driving here is horrendous. Tonight alone, coming from 55th to here, took me 15 minutes. That's a two-minute drive. I didn't walk because I was afraid of crossing US 1. So I'm hoping we do do some traffic studies. I think that's a necessity. I'm assuming you've had to do it. If not, I'm hoping it's done. I'm hoping we have walkovers, crossovers, because it is dangerous. I think that unfortunately it's a done deal to get 16 floors or stories. I don't really know why except the money. The more stories you have, the more apartments you have, the more money you make. That's a given. Nobody's doing development for fun or for free. So I understand that, but I just don't exactly understand why the waivers are given so freely. It seems like you can just sort of pay your way to a waiver. And I do think we need more affordable housing. I'm fairly sure they don't want to put that in that building. It costs them money and it doesn't look good. One thing that would be great is more pedestrian walking, as everyone's discussed. If you look at the Avalon in front of it, it doesn't look good. There's no shade. There's very little place for walking. It's anti-walking. The rest of South Miami is a lovely place to walk. It's not. I'm assuming this isn't gonna be a lot better. I didn't really see anything that indicated it was. So if you're gonna build it, and I imagine you are, could we have more trees? Could we have more of a pedestrian area? Could we have perhaps less floors or more money going back into the community for affordable housing? Whatever you do, try to make it as good as you can for the community, because the people that are building it are not members of our community. Maybe the representative is, but we live here and have lived here, as you can see, for many years. So it would be nice if we could do that. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you very much. Okay, any others from the audience here? All right. Marcus?

Hi, Madam Chair. Can you make Mia Shaughnessy reactivate her mic and camera so she can speak?

Hello?

Yes. Can you show your camera?

Yes. Hi. My name is Mia Carlson. I'm a resident of South Miami. I live at 7640 Southwest 58th Avenue, and my daughter Penelope would like to speak.

Excellent. Penelope, would you raise your right hand, please? Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I swear to tell my truth.

Excellent. Thank you.

My name is Penelope Carlson. I am eight years old. I live in South Miami, 7640 Southwest. 50th Avenue. I go to Sunset Elementary School. I ride my bike to school every day. Please do not build this building. I'm very scared to walk and ride my bike in my neighborhood. There's a lot of traffic. The building will make more cars and more traffic. You do not want to be responsible for a little girl or boy's life if something happens to them. People do not pay attention when they drive. Our streets are very narrow. Thank you for listening.

Thank you very much. All right. Other comments online? Mark is seeing any other hands up. I do not.

I have one other person. Her name is Jennifer Golden. If you can, Madam Clerk, can you allow Jennifer Golden to share her, to turn on her microphone and her camera?

Hello?

Yes.

Can you see me?

Yes, we can. Thank you.

Thank you. My name is Jennifer Golden. I also live in South Miami. I see a lot of my neighbors here are there in person. It's great.

Jennifer, you can hold on. We need to swear you in.

Oh, sure.

If you would. Mr. Martos.

Ms. Golden, if you'd raise your right hand. Thank you. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

Thank you.

And I live, for the record, I live on 5990 Southwest 78th Street. um you know i've heard the neighbors speak i uh i'm in agreement with them i'm not against development i actually like the windixi project i think it came out nice i'm really happy about the fresh market opening up but i do think that our city does have an issue with the traffic and this is just gonna increase the traffic that's coming into my street i live on 78th street between 59th and 62nd we have an issue with that light on 62nd which we've seen two accidents occur within the past couple months which has caused 78th street specifically to be jammed packed it took me 20 minutes to get from sunset place to my house i was in a parking lot this just goes to show you what happened that day which was i think last week the people are cutting through our streets to get from wherever they are to cross us one and this project is just adding more cars. None of these people are going to be taking the metro. So you're adding 240 some more cars plus the people that haven't even moved into Avalon one and we need to do something about it. I'm not against them building something. I just think it needs to be less departments and we need to do something as a city to rectify the problem that we're in right now because I moved into the city in 2011 and it is nothing like it is today. There's a huge problem. I'm scared to walk. I'm scared to let my son, who is in eighth grade, ride his bike. And it's a serious issue. And I would like to see the city do something with my street in particular that's going to address this traffic. And the people, the additional people that are going to be moving into our residence. I thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Thanks for your patience too. Okay. I don't see any additional people online. I'm going to turn it back to Mr. Bass. if he wants to rebut or speak to any of these issues.

Thank you. I'll be super brief. The hour's late. I want to thank everybody that came out, even those who spoke against the project, because I think we're all in agreement that we want what's best for the city. And I think we should always be thankful. We still live in a place where you can come and express different points of view in a very civilized way. And so I want to thank everybody here and online for coming out this evening. So let me just get to a few facts. We submitted a traffic study. We hired professional traffic engineers at the extraordinarily well-known Kimley Horn firm that had a civil engineer sign and seal a traffic study and deliver it to your city, but it doesn't stop there. The city hired an independent expert to review the traffic impact study that was prepared by Kim Lee Horn. So you have two independent experts, engineers reviewing the traffic studies, and both found that the traffic patterns and the traffic impacts of this were well within the limits established by the law. but if anybody is looking at the staff report, the staff report quite clearly recites the dates of the traffic studies and the dates of the review. I hear the snickers about the traffic, so let me just take a moment, if I may, and speak about it, because I don't want to take a lot of time, but traffic was a consistent theme that I heard from the opponents, and I would just like to address it first at the macro urbanistic level. within a very important historical lens, and then at a much more particularized level. In the 1970s, this community came together, this broad community, and passed the largest bond issue in the history of America. It was called the Decade of Progress Bonds. And the Decade of Progress Bonds issued as the great community investment in the public infrastructure that we call Metro Rail. We all came together and we passed this bond with the understanding that if we were going to build Metro Rail along this spine, the only way that that would succeed would be if we increased residential density within a short walk to the rail. Because if you have to get in your car to drive to the rail, you defeat the purpose of building the rail. What you see today in this application and the others that are coming up and down US 1 is finally the palpable fruition of the urban planning that we committed to as a community in the 70s and the 80s. And I was here, we joked we called it Metro fail, right? Nobody wrote it in the 80s. Nobody wrote it in the 90s. Nobody wrote it in the early 2000s. But you know what now? People are riding it. Why are they riding it? Because traffic is very, very challenging and very, very frustrating, and the 50-minute drive to downtown from here is probably 12 minutes on the metro rail. It's happening. It's different, but it's happening. So that's the historical backdrop for the zoning that we have. The zoning that we have is not coincidentally named. We are within the transit supportive development district. That's our zoning district. Why? Because if you live there, you're within the sweet spot of the urbanistic idea of living within a walkable distance to the metro rail. Now people talk about trains and people talk about buses, but you know what the greatest mass transit invention of all time is? The elevator. Elevators move more people more efficiently than trains or buses or anything of the like. And so to be able to use land in a hyper-efficient way by using elevators at height, because I heard the talk about the height. Well, the height goes hand in glove with the density and it goes hand in glove with the urbanistic idea of taking people out of sprawling cul-de-sac communities building west and bringing them with an internal interior core. That's what this project does. And before I wrap up, I just want to say we live in the middle of a lot of things. The people coming and driving and cutting through on your streets, I dare to say they don't live in Avalon 2 and they don't live where I live and they probably don't live where you live. They live in Pinecrest and Palmetto Bay and Cutler Bay and in Kendall and their ways and their GPS is telling them how to get there. We are building for today and we are building for tomorrow. The traffic is a legacy of the past where people live very far away from where they're going and then they frantically try to get there in a hurry. And we're not used to, I live here, we're not used to there being pedestrians. But over time, we will be. And when we acclimate to this being a pedestrian place where people are walking, our drivers will do what other drivers in civilized cities do, is they yield to the pedestrians and they keep an eye out for them. But we're just not used to that now. But we certainly will be with time. We are a great city with an incredible geographic endowment and I think some of the opposition you heard today is heartfelt and honest growing pains. But we are where we are and the people are coming and the question is how do we house them most graciously and capture their industry for the benefit of the city, not the people who just drive through on their way going somewhere else, but give people a reason to stay here, to live here, to spend money here, to walk on our streets, to revitalize our restaurants, and that's what this project is. We have your staff report, and I'd like to say with the utmost of respect, you have heard no competent, substantial evidence to the contrary of your staff report and recommendation. All of the competent and substantial evidence is in support of this. What you heard are very valuable opinions, but from an evidentiary value, they are not that sufficient quantum of evidence that you could rely on for a no vote. We ask for a yes vote and we thank you for your time.

Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna open up to the planning board for conversation. We don't have any of our folks online, so it falls to us right up here. Thoughts, comments, concerns, questions?

I have a question. In developing the plans for this project, were there any contingencies or alternates that took into account a design without the benefit of the bonus floors and area? Do we know what that would look like?

We did not design it without consideration of the bonuses. We watched the bonus process unfold and we designed to that.

Sure. One of the things that we did try to lower the height. You saw an open building articulated. In closing that entire loop, it became truly huge in terms of massing. Yeah. It wasn't the right property for the benefit of reducing two or three levels. It was just destroyed the entire block. So we actually opened it up. like the views from in, from within, and it just became a much better massing option for the entire project.

Thank you.

Thank you. Are you done? You want me to? No, go ahead. Oh, so a few different, more comments, anything else? This has been approved, and this is actually towards Marcus or Mr. Martos. This has been approved by the Design Review Board already?

That is correct.

It's been reviewed. I'd like to say it's not necessarily an approval per se. It's a review and comments.

Okay. Yeah, the design review board is a recommendation just like this board is.

And they recommended it, correct?

Yes, they recommended approval.

All right. The bonus floors per code that we have right now, they qualify for the bonus floors they've requested.

Yes, but I would defer to Mr. Alvarez for further insight on that since he was the reviewer on the project.

Just simple yes, no. Yes. Thank you. The floor plate variance, if requested based on the design, I assume this is because of the sort of odd triangular feature here, and it doesn't present any either, as you said, doesn't impact the community one side or the other, and it doesn't create any kind of additional risk from an architectural engineering standpoint, correct?

That's correct.

I would point out to the audience here, look, I get the traffic issue. I live in South Miami. I live right near a bunch of you. I've lived here actually longer than all of you, which is hard to believe that we've all been here this long, and I've watched it grow. Some of what we see today is because we didn't grow at all for so long, and that wasn't a recipe for success. Companies that are failing now, restaurants, et cetera, are not failing because of what we're doing now. They're failing because of what we didn't do before, just FYI. And I agree with Mr. Bass's comment. We are largely been the victims of traffic, not the perpetrators of it. And these folks, it seems to me, and I did not know that until I looked at the plans yesterday, that ingress to this is strictly off of 73rd Street, if I look at this correctly. And egress is entirely on the Dixie Highway, correct? And so not into our neighborhoods, so not emptying back towards 59th Avenue, not emptying back towards 58th Avenue, not emptying back towards just about everywhere we've all been talking about, which I think is a pretty significant deal because... That was something that bothered me as well. So, any other questions, Mr. Bass?

The loading is on to US-1. The loading goes out to US-1. The residence will go out on the 73rd, which then goes right to US. Obviously, you can go make the return right there.

Correct, yeah.

Okay, thank you. And then, just because it's a thing, it's not a variance we're seeking, it's a waiver. There's a big difference between the two.

Yeah, correct. So any other questions or comments? I mean, look, the other thing is I would say I like Avalon Bay. I was not a fan of the Winn-Dixie building, as almost everybody in the town knows. And so I think it looks great. I think it's very new for people to draw a conclusion about whether it's impacting the community positively or negatively. As it leases up, they'll put people on the streets who will be doing what someone said earlier, going to Casa Cuba, going to the different stores there. So...

you have to believe in in the plan if you would here so other questions or comments from the planning board i would just add i think it's evident that you took a lot of effort and time to work with a very inefficient site uh to create a great architectural design that has a lot of undulation movement uh and i think adds value i actually think that uh This is a great improvement on the first Avalon project. I think this architecture really stands out. I also would add that I think with our wanting to build on transit corridors and what the county is doing and what the state's doing with live local and other things, I don't think you've even gone as far as you could go by other routes that you could go. So I think that's an interesting point that you mentioned. You kept the open spaces. You didn't go after other approvals through the county or state process that would give you more height and more density. So I commend you on that. You know, the traffic's a real thing across all of our county. It's not just our city. And what a lot of developments have been doing is creating live, work, play, learn environments where you reduce traffic because you create 15-minute cities, areas where people can walk and do more. And years ago, we were told that Miami would never be a pedestrian area. Brickell would never have anybody walking on it because people just don't walk in Miami. They use cars. And now you have an immense amount of people walking in the intersections where it seems like you're in some of the largest cities in the world, and we're nowhere near the population of some other places. So our population is continuing to grow. We're going to continue to see traffic evolve. Maybe some of it will start flying as opposed to driving. We'll see how that goes. But I think this does add value. It creates a density that the commercial spaces do need. And I do appreciate what you did. I did notice that we don't have a landscape plan here. And I was looking for it because I I know that we had some comments about that with the mahogany trees and some other things. And so I would ask you to make sure to take into account those comments from other boards and consider making sure that we're not building something that, we want trees for sure, we want more green spaces, but we wanna make sure that it blends in with the area and the streets. So I don't have any other comments. Well, let me rephrase that. I do have one more comment. I love what you did with taking the back of the house interior and really working on the facades and trying to improve the visual aesthetic of the neighborhood. I'm a little bit concerned with the Uber delivery packages, the Uber Eats, the move-ins, move-outs, the trash pickup, and trying to compact it all in with the architectural consideration you made, but is there something more we could do to add circulation there and something that you could do to add a couple of more staging areas for Uber and other deliveries? So I make that more as a comment, I'm not gonna ask you to redesign the plan today. But definitely, you know, have that in mind, because that I think that staging will probably be what will be more frustrating than necessarily additional traffic from additional units. Thank you.

Any other comments? If not, do I have a motion? I can make the motion, correct? Yes. We decided that? Yes. Yes. I make a motion for approval.

And I'll second.

Any other questions or comments? If not, all those in favor? Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Okay, thank you very much. All right, Marcus, the second item.

Sure, do you want me to wait for them? Yeah, we can give them, yeah.

I mean, that's the flip end for sure. Well, I mean, it's not our role to defend one or the other.

Chair, are you ready? Yes, sir. All right. The second item is PB-2025-015, an ordinance of the Mayor and City Commission of the City of South Miami, Florida, amending sections 20-2.3 definitions, 20-3.5 dimensional requirements. 20-3.6 supplemental regulations, and 20-4.5.1 tree protection to revise regulations relating to single family development, providing for corrections, severability, conflicts, implementation, and an effective date. And this item will be presented by Mr. Alvarez.

And just to be clear, this is what we talked about the last meeting. We asked for additional clarifications on some things, correct? Yes. Okay.

I do have a little PowerPoint to help follow along. This is an item that we heard at the last meeting and it was continued. We had some agreement on parts of it and some need for more clarification on some of it. Thank you. So I'm going to go over some of the things that we talked about that I think were easier, and I'll go through them a little faster, and I'll stop on the items that were more complicated. So these are a package of amendments for the single family residential area, mostly for the dimensional requirements. There's four... Essentially four pieces to this one was to increase the height of single-family homes to is to modify the calculation of floor area and building covered coverage excuse me three to provide for privacy walls which is a new idea and Finally to provide administrative adjustments to modify setbacks where one is in connection with tree preservations So the first one is about building height. This will be to raise the height that's permitted from 25 feet to 30 feet above grade. It's done for two reasons. One is that we have a necessary trend that we're seeing more freeboard in the single family homes that we see coming in for development. The city of South Miami, unlike a lot of cities, doesn't measure from BFE or base floor elevation. We measure from grade. So this is to allow for greater freeboard. We're seeing more freeboard come in. A lot of houses will start their finished floor elevations, their first floor finished floor elevations at 18 inches, two feet above grade. So instead of changing the way that we measure, the commission has asked us to just allow a little more height. This will also do one other thing that's not anticipated. I've been helping the city with a lot of the reviews that now go to DRB, and I've seen about 10 of them go through. Almost universally, the architects measure from finished floor elevation. And in quite a few of them, they are actually over their height by one or two feet because of that, particularly on flat roofs. So... And we have... gone back to those people to say, look, we have a process. You'll have to comply with the code when you are going through permitting because we knew from the last meeting that this is probably going to follow through. If not, they have to do it at 25 feet. So anyway, that will create an allowance that we don't have to deny some of these buildings. Also for the market, we know that ceiling heights are becoming more and more important. So the commission had instructed us to go forward and provide 30 feet of height instead of 25 feet.

The second one is... Maybe we can take these one by one just because it might be easier to track our thoughts. But if I remember correctly, one of the concerns was that they just didn't use 30 feet from grade and use all of it, no buildup at all, and come up with a rationale for being able to do a 30-foot tall... single-family home with no elevation increase. How do we keep that from happening?

We would still deny those right now because this is in process. In the DRB, we're giving the instructions, the recommendation that they have to comply.

when they come in for actual permitting when they after this they still have to be at 30 feet or less from grade yeah my point my point is is that i don't i don't think the intent was that we give them a 30-foot home without doing the base building to justify the need for it you follow what i'm saying yeah and so uh i mean maybe i i'm the only one that feels that way but you you've talked about a few exceptions that are one or two feet off, and we're gonna give five. And I think the idea was let's hold them to, we're giving five feet, need to be five feet of elevation, whether it's pilings or whatever the heck they do down there, whatever the term was you called it, not just, hey, go out and build now 30-foot homes across town.

So you brought up a good point and this is a little frustrating as we come in because we don't like to have to send drawings back all the time and delay and cause delay. In the actual code we've put that the datum point is in fact great. It seems that everybody misses that because it's in the definition so that's actually been added to the table. As far as being able to take the five feet, that will be possible. We do see, again, we have more and more contemporary homes that don't have pitched roofs. So I've seen some that come in flat roofs, and they're flat roofs right to the top. It's not the best look. Parapets actually do help. Could they, so this will include everything. Parapets, everything has to be below 30. That will, in a flat roofed home, that will probably mean that the actual roof is two feet under that, give or take. Again, it's, we're following, I think the commission was concerned that we have something that's fairly simple. We don't want to get into things like 28 and 29 feet. We're giving them five more feet.

Couldn't there be some kind of qualifying language, something to the effect of 30 feet from grade, not to exceed 25 foot from base floor elevation?

Yes, but that's probably it gets one of the things that especially as I go through this we're trying to simplify our code too because again I I was You know we've temporarily I'm handling some of the DRB and I'm starting to see the mistakes to come in this this is one and We see a lot of things that come in that are just misreading the code So we're trying to simplify um that's pretty straightforward yeah if we just if we get base blood elevation in there and then um the firm can change we can change base blood elevation this this state can change what it requires so we wanted to keep it just at one sort of building envelope above grade as we've done it

But that's probably what it is. It's just now you can build to 30 feet instead of 25. It has nothing to do with the building pad. It has nothing to do with the build up. It's just now you can build to 30 feet.

Yeah, but it also does keep the variation down. So we have, actually, no, I guess I, there's a map in there. We have a lot of the city is at X. We have some A, what is it, H, I believe. We do have variation. We're not coastal, so we have that good fortune that we don't find ourselves in an area where you have to go five feet up just to start. But we know that those numbers change, and we want to keep it fairly consistent. If we do include the base blood elevation, we have to look at each property differently. It's doable. I mean, on a staff level, we can do all this. We have spreadsheets. We do this all the time, but we're trying to make it simpler for the applicants to come in with the right numbers.

Out of curiosity, how many single-family home apps do we get in a year?

New construction. Marcus can tell you better, but I can tell you we've had quite a few come through. I think I've seen about 10 in the last three months. I think we used to have it a little slower before.

I do not have an exact number, but I can tell you it is a large number that goes to our design review board every year.

Well, let's move to the next one we can see.

No, it's like 30, but 30 to 40. Yeah.

Yeah, we had about 10 come through just in the last two or two and a half months, it seems to be.

One of them was three at the same time.

That's true. And we'll have another of those three at the same time, too.

But that project you're mentioning is three separate homes, though. Yeah. It's a unique situation. Yeah, where a property was split up. Yeah.

The point is, look, if it's 40, it's three and change a month, I mean, if you were to average it out. It's not, I don't think, extreme for us to ask that those get looked at from base elevation and floor elevation. Anyway, let's move on to the next one. We can talk about it and see what you can get done.

The next one was building coverage. So we had a request that came to change the way that we measure building gross floor area and the changes that were requested were for a range. So we have two places in the code. One is for one-story single-family homes and one is for two-story single-family homes. Again, it's quite complicated. The one for two-story for every thousand feet of lot area, it changes its numbers. One of the things we wanted to do was to try to simplify that. And I'll get to that in a minute. What was presented from the commission was actually to change the building coverage for a certain range. That range turns out to be RS1, RS2, and RS3, even though the two-story home table doesn't go by zoning codes. So the thought was, this is pretty obvious. We should really do this by zoning designation. And it more or less matches those lot areas. Um, so one of the things was to try to take those tables and combine them together. So we have a table for two story that we would bring into the table for one story and just make it again a staff. We can go through this, we know it, but we get a lot of mistakes coming in. We want to make it simpler for applicants.

It becomes just about the footprint. Right. Whether it's one or two, who cares?

Correct. And so one of the things that we have to appreciate is that most of that, if you're familiar with that table, and it changes every thousand square feet, the numbers for building coverage, the numbers for FAR, which I'll get to in a minute, and the numbers for impervious area actually don't change very much except in the R2 range. So this was, I believe, something that was added to the code several years back. It was a guard against, to use the colloquial term, McMansions in the R2 area, which is 15,000 square feet to 40,000 square feet. So we tried to preserve some of that and just break it down into four ranges, looked at the number of lots that we're talking about. First of all, R2 is about 10% of all the lots in the city, and most of that 10% is within under 25,000 square feet. So first of all, we were able to preserve within your code recommendations or your amendments is to preserve exactly, we exactly preserve the impervious area because that's sort of sacred in the city. So it's exactly as it is, and it divides on the R2 at 30,000 square feet. That's been kept. The building floor area was broken down into four ranges for R2, and then it was broken into only by zoning code for all the other districts. So in other words, we don't look to see if the property is 5,500 square feet. We just know it's RS3 or RS2 or whatever it may be, and we determine the number, the building coverage from that. Much simpler, much simpler for people to understand is what they're used to instead of going between two different tables. The way that the code regulates two-story buildings and essentially regulates the second-story coverage right now is through FAR. That creates a conflict and it's in the code but actually FAR as we define it is for non-residential space only. The city attorney and I, we looked at changing the FAR definition, but realized that could be problematic for our mixed uses in the city. So it was far better to change the two story table for single family into a different nomenclature. So basically we've added second story building coverage, works just like the building coverage on the first floor, but for the second floor. And in doing that preserved There is actually, when you look at the table, there's a ratio that actually works through it. We did have a horrible monster spreadsheet, looked at every single case of that. And mostly we're regulating our second floors at about 25% of the first floor. That doesn't mean we're making birthday cakes because the first floor is generous. So most... Most buildings are coming in with some... We do require setbacks on the side, on the second floor. And most buildings are coming in with the first floor, having some variation from the second floor. We're not getting birthday cakes for houses. So what we did is change that table to read as... building coverage on the second floor. This way we don't use the term FAR at all, which becomes very problematic if we change that definition. Right now we've been using it and just ignoring the fact that the definition actually says non-residential only. So that has all been changed and put into this table for single family, all one table. Let's see. Combined tables. So I will also say that the R1, R2, R3, the original request that came from the commission had a couple of things in it. It had to change the building coverage for a range from 5,000 square feet to 15,000 square foot lots. That's RS1, RS2, RS3. In respecting what the commission was looking for, that adds about... two to four hundred square feet on each house as we went through the lots. There was another request to measure gross floor area from the interior of the exterior walls instead of the exterior of the exterior walls as we now do. and most places do. We found that measuring from the interior of the exterior walls would be extremely problematic and we would probably have to send a lot of plans back to get that calculation. It would also be a problem where we have projections through intersections of interior walls. It just seemed like it would be a big problem. So we again took the interpretation of that, which again adds about 200 plus square feet or basically seven to 9% per house. And again, it's just like a perimeter versus area calculation. We put that into those numbers for building coverage. So in other words, The idea was to honor what was requested of us to do, and allow a little more room on RS1, RS2, RS3, but without doing the change in the methodologies. And that's all been done through the building coverage numbers, which are a little different from what was first requested. And all this was done to also make sure that in no case, because we have two story that goes by lot area. So we went made sure that in no case state bill 180 we didn't want to reduce anybody's square footage from what it is. So some of the lower ends on any zoning district have a little bit more, but the top end has exactly what it had. So it's a lot of complicated spreadsheet work, we very much wanted to simplify this, and again, we're happy to go through all the calculations internally, but we know a lot of applications come in with the wrong things done, and we don't want to have to keep sending them back. So I'll stop on that one, and there's probably questions. Next up. Yeah. You want me to go on?

Yeah.

Okay, the last one I think, the third one was about privacy walls. I think we discussed this pretty well last time, but this is basically a wall that was requested. So on a property, there are people who have showers or little places outside their pool if they wanna have some privacy. It would be a wall that extends out from the primary structure. The rules on that is it can be no longer than, no higher than six feet. It can only be on the side and rear of the house. It can encroach into the side or rear yard areas, setback areas, but it cannot go any further than five feet to the property line, and it cannot be longer than 50% of the wall that it extends from.

I remember this from the last discussion. I think you made the adjustments we were concerned about.

Yeah. And just to be clear, this still has to be connected to the main house? Correct. They cannot be detached?

Yes. And then lastly was a tree protection. This was to provide an administrative way to change setbacks only where we are trying to protect a specimen tree. It would be by the development director, but the development director would have to carry that recommendation to the DRC. for the DRB to recommend on that recommendation before it would go forward. I think there were some questions about the longevity of the tree that we would be doing this for. There is a requirement for a covenant that would go run with the land, so the successors to the person who asked for it would also have to go abide by it, that the tree would have to be maintained, and if by some circumstance other than a declared emergency by the city that the tree fell, burned, whatever, came down, that it would be mitigated by, I believe, two times the, what's that term? The caliper of the tree at breast height. And that's that. I think that was the thing that we included to make sure that that would happen. So that's it. Those are the four parts. And if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer. I'll even bring out the spreadsheet, but I don't think you want it.

Questions or discussion? No, please don't do that. Any questions or comments? I think you would just say, the first one, the 30 feet, look, I understand the need for doing it. I get it. It's just, I also, I think I know how developers function, and we're going to have a 30-foot, I don't know if that's the end of the world, but we're going to have a 30-foot height limit on there, unless we adopt what JR put in there, which I do not see is a significant burden, which is to have the two measurements. They comply 30 feet from grade, but they also no more than 25 feet from the base floor, whatever we're calling it, base floor. And so I think my proposal would be to modify it to include both those things.

So just to clarify, earlier we said, I think JR's suggestion was 25 feet from finished floor.

Is it finished floor? I thought the term you used was base floor elevation. Is that correct? There's two things.

Most of the proposals that come in measure from finished floor elevation, which in this city is more or less up to the architect. we're not in a coastal area that's flood prone where we'd have it at base flood elevation plus one or plus two. So we could use base floor elevation.

Oh, whatever the term is, you're the expert, not me. Underneath the floor, you're using a crawl space, right? I mean, now we're talking about, all we're trying to do is create some gleniation between Yeah. The ground base, if you will, and what they claim they have to build it up to to make it safer.

What we could do, I think, that would be fairly simple, is just the freeboard. In other words, the space between the finish floor elevation and the grade, we could just put a limit on that. Or we could say 30 feet total from grade, but no more than 25 from finish floor elevation, something like that.

Yeah, I think that's the best.

Mark and that is that that's from from crown of road, right? So it's from the crown of the road.

Um, we're actually gonna define that a little better. So the code is a bit silent. We've been trying to use the highest elevation.

Yeah.

I think in the past we've also had average used. That's actually something that I was looking at it before going to this meeting saying we need to like put that definition in there too. Because right now the code is silent as to what that elevation is. But the best one would be actually the highest elevation of the crown of the road.

Yeah, that would only make sense.

Does anybody want to make a motion?

I would, but I don't know what the right terminology is. Mark, help us out here.

So we can do it as 30 feet total and no more than 25 feet above the highest elevation of the adjacent crown of the road, if that works.

That sounds all right to me. Sounds good. I'll make a motion. Do you want to tackle them as a group?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I was thinking that was for everything. Do we have any other motions? The other three I'm okay with.

Yeah, so that's the only modification to it.

Okay, so then as presented by staff with the one recommendation by JR.

I'm sorry, if we're talking about the rest of the items, then I still have the same question before, sorry to be annoying. But this whole issue with the tree really bothers me that somebody can get this setback and then the tree dies and they don't have, they have to put two trees or twice the tree that they lost, but they don't have to put it where it was which caused the issue and gave them the cause to encroach in the setback. I don't think that's fair, me personally.

And I do want to mention one thing that I didn't say. It's no more than 50% of the setback can be excused on that administrative decision.

Yeah, I saw that. I just don't see any measure that protects against what I'm talking about, which is that you can just game the system. because you want.

There isn't. I mean, they kill mangroves in the grove. Famously in some cases, right? To improve view and all that kind of stuff. So I'm not sure how you truly protect it.

I don't know either. I don't know either.

It's just a concern. I mean, it's hard to govern all, right?

Yeah, sure. And how many people are really going to do that? I don't know. It's just something that continues to stand out to me. It just seems like we're inviting people to... you know, get one over that other people don't have the luxury of doing if they don't happen to have this tree planted.

There's the penalties that we already have in place that we don't necessarily enforce anyhow. So it's the concern. I don't know there's a way to mitigate it. You know, I mean, if I had the situation, the tree died and I want to plant a bigger and nicer tree, but there's a more efficient place to put it. I mean, we kind of hard to be handcuffed in that way.

Well, sure, sure. And if you're operating ethically and honestly in the spirit of what we're talking about, sure. But if you just say, oh, man, I wish my house was five more feet this way, oh, here's how I can do it. I just gotta promise to protect the street.

We're worried about the bad actors, but then we're gonna hurt the good people. So that's my challenge.

I mean, it has to be a specimen tree, and I think the idea that started this going forward was that You can achieve the same through a variance, of course. And the idea was that a variance is expensive and difficult to do. And on the other hand, as a city, we take preserving trees very seriously. So it should be offensive to do. So it's that balance. Right.

That was the other thing we talked about. It was like you could do this through a variance. So why are we...

If that's the only issue, I would take that piece out and prove the other three with... with JR's comments and I would not approve this and leave it as a variance.

The only reason I would say that, obviously we've been here a long time, I think the mission was to try to find ways to work to protect our canopy, and we've had this conversation for many years, and we're trying to find a way to create it by a carrot, not a stick, in protecting the canopy. And so I'd like to see if we can get a way to get something that works, and maybe what we do is we try to approve it, and then we police it, and we watch it, and we see if, is it really being misused, or is it working? But the idea is to protect the canopy, and how do we do that with a carrot and not a stick?

So my pushback would be that there's very few that I can think of, at least, vacant South Miami lots that don't come about from knocking down a house, which means you had a house with a footprint there before, right, that was a functional house in theory, at least in South Miami. It's been around for a while. And so you can sort of presume that any of these specimen trees, if they work for that house, why do they not work for the next one? Unless there's really a move to take one of these oversized lots and say, wow, it's a great oversized lot, except for this spectacular tree in the middle. And I don't know. I agree, yeah. So to me, that is a variance request. and it's the only way you're gonna stop it. I get the carrot piece. I just don't know that you can rely on it. That's not my feeling.

I think that with the land values today, you can't build the same 1,800 square foot house that's there.

No, correct. But they're all just gonna add a story and make it 30 feet. 30 feet tall. They're gonna add a sneaky third floor.

I mean, we can find a way to get comfort on it. I do like the idea of not going through the variance. The variance is very costly. It's very challenging. And what's happening is people are getting rid of the variance and just cutting down the tree. The tree disappears.

I mean, these are all related to a degree, but we can pull this one off. Defer the tree piece for more definition on how we can do carrot, whatever it might be, because I don't see us solving this right now. And the other three approve with, JR's exception is verbiage change.

If we defer this item or this part of it, does it come back to us or just goes to the commission? Because we already deferred this once, right?

the administration could decide to keep it going, but my recommendation rather than deferral is to make your recommendations and let the commission move with it. I mean, what are you thinking? Defer it for, I mean, to what end would the deferral be to mull it over more? I'm hearing four of you don't want the, or at least three of you don't want the tree item.

So let's go one by one. So then do I have to amend the motion then? No, I mean. Or we're going to vote on these individually.

I don't think you ever completed your motion because you sort of.

He can amend his motion to deal with items, whatever they are.

Of course. One, two, and four. Absolutely.

With this thing. And then we'll put another motion forward separately for our third item. You tell us what number we're doing here.

My recommendation is that you make one motion on all four items and see how the votes come out.

Then my motion would be to proceed with one, two, and three. The, the. Building height, the language change, and the privacy wall is approved with a note about the building height that we have that exception, not to exceed 25 feet from the, whatever the term was. Highest elevation on the road. Okay, and that to not approve the component that has to do with the trees.

Okay. I think that's unfair to tie them, so I would disagree with you on that. because I think they're separate topics, and so I would stand with his original comment. Where he was going was approve one, two, and three, let's vote on it, and let's take item four separately, and we'll go that one, a separate vote. It can be bifurcated. Oh, fine, that's my plan. Let's do that. So there you go. It's up to the maker of the motion.

So you have the floor, JR. Oh, yes, I agree with Jay. Let's do that. Okay, so then, and you second that, Jay?

Yeah.

A vote?

So really quick before you vote. So this vote right now is to bifurcate the items. We break off one, two, and three by itself. And then we'll do the three issues separately as a separate vote?

Bifurcate, approve one with the condition that JR described with Mark's help. Approve two and three.

As presented.

As presented by staff. And then we're going to have a discussion on four. Okay. Four being the tree item.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

In that case, yes.

Second. All right. All those in favor? Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

All right. Item four.

Do I put item four back up so we can read it?

Yeah.

So, Jerry, what I would ask is, is the only one item you're worried about the bad actors? Is there anything else with this that the board doesn't like?

No, I mean, I think it's great to protect the tree and to allow somebody that option with a specific intent to protect the tree, I would be in favor of that. I just see an opportunity for gamesmanship there that I think could be solved with some kind of language.

I guess my question is, if there's any kind of language we could recommend today, I'd love to hear it, but I think the bad actors are already there. The trees are disappearing, the properties are being purchased, and things are happening to do what needs to be done. because the variance is costly, timely, and difficult. I think that this is giving an opportunity for somebody to accomplish what they wanna accomplish without doing the bad deed that's already happening.

But there's still hoops to jump through, so if that's your argument, I think those same bad actors are not gonna jump through these hoops either.

I think this actually removes the hoops.

Well, you still have to commit to the covenant. You still have to do more than you would if you just didn't.

But I think this is what we've been talking about, that they'd be willing to do. They'd be willing to commit to these things. And if not, if I have to spend a lot of money and a lot of time to go to a variance, well, you know what? I don't know how that tree disappeared, but that's really unfortunate. And that's what we're seeing today. This has been a very, the reason I'm passionate about it is because this has been a long discussion on all the boards I've served on. And we've been looking and looking and looking for ourselves. So when this was proposed at our last meeting, I was very, very excited to see that you guys took the time to create something that gives it a chance, right? And this is giving it an opportunity to be successful. Because today, the trees are disappearing.

So let me see if there's, as we talk this through, so we're talking about finding there's an existing specimen tree preserved, blah, blah, blah, development services director may administratively reduce setback up to 50%. So it still requires development services director who is So prior's a pretty senior person to approve it. Design review board prior approval, we know that's not easily got, right, in order for them to move forward. And then the whole part about property owner committing to covenant, once you've approved it at this point, you call it out. So we've identified a specimen tree, which chances are fair they came to us to tell us that, because the chances of us driving by and spotting it are zero. So make this, maintain the tree for, I don't even think you have to do 20 years, maintain the tree. I wouldn't be specific. I'd say maintain this tree, and I wouldn't, the dyes or removal, I don't know. We need to tighten that up some, because you have somebody to do it for 20 years. To me, you're gonna lose that cord all day long. no one can control conditions for 20 years. I mean, it's just not gonna happen. Let's call it is. Do it the right way the first time. We'll give you this thing here. We know you asked for it. Your file's gonna reflect we did it, right? And so you come back like five years later and asked to put a new wing on your house or a week later, we're gonna say like where the tree used to be and make sure we're documenting that properly. And we just say that that's not gonna happen. No development will, maybe that's the way to do it. No additional development to the property. can be done, changing the footprint or however you want to term it, can be done for five years after this thing, period. Whether the tree dies of natural causes, lightning, whatever comes its way.

Or I would just add no additional development, if that's your choice, no additional development on the setback that has been modified. Correct. 50%.

Correct.

Unless there's a tree there.

Unless you go around it.

Well, unless that tree is there, right? The tree that they're supposed to protect and keep.

I mean, the preservation aspect of this, too, is that we... No additional development on that, where the setback was, if the tree is MIA. Because that'll be in our records. We'll know exactly where it was. So tree is gone, no additional development. Five years. Five years. There's a survey. Yep. Tree survey required.

Again, I just feel like, to your point, the person who's coming to do this wants the tree anyway. They're not going to cut it down anyway. That's why they're going through this.

Yeah. I would generally agree.

I don't see how it really protects the tree. Nothing really protects it.

I think the way it protects the tree is that if you're trying to make a site functional, this gives you an option to not remove the tree. They may not care about the tree as much as we want them to care about it, but we're giving them an option to keep the tree.

All right, do we have a motion?

From me? Anyone?

Anyone can make the motion. I would make a motion to approve number four here, whatever, without the maintained tree for 20 years, without if the tree dies, et cetera, there, and that no further development in the setback that was eased, I don't know what the right terminology is there, can occur for five years. and I don't know if we currently would ask for a tree survey as part of this discussion, but if we didn't, I would vote that we do something that we can capture and maintain in the file so that you have it. So four years from now or two years from now, they walk in and say hey.

Your concern is for that, that the survey show that one tree, that setback?

Yeah. So we have, in any application, we have a tree disposition plan. Right. That's fine. We'll show all those existing trees. I don't want to make it hard.

I just want the simplest thing that says there was a tree there.

What I would recommend is that that tree disposition plan be recorded together with the covenant. Yeah. The covenant identifies the tree and says it's the tree in this corner, tree number five, as identified on the disposition plan, which is recorded with the covenant. So five years later, 10 years later, you'll know what tree we're talking about. Yeah.

photographing or printed. I would just offer a friendly amendment to the motion that if you, instead of saying no development, I would say no substantial development and I would also want to make sure that that doesn't go in conflict with other parts of the code where if you have a substantial loss that you can still replace or repair. Right.

Right. Yeah. for sure, for sure.

Some sort of out for casualty, right?

Knowing that that's your intention, I just don't want somebody to read that and then say, hey.

No, no, absolutely.

We had to fix that a year and a half ago, I think, right?

Armstrong, so. Okay, so with those modifications, motion? I'll second. All those in favor? No. Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Okay, thank you. Any other business? We have the meeting minutes from last meeting. Anybody taking a look at that? And we just need a motion to approve those. Where are those? I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second it. Give Danny a chance to take a quick look.

I'm sure you guys are right.

I'll vote yes. All those in favor? Aye. Yes. Yes. Yes. And the next meeting is February 10th. Tuesday, February 10th. That should be good. That's before President's Day weekend, so that should be good. Okay. With that, any other comments? If not, meeting adjourned. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody.