Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

And just for everyone's knowledge, we are alive.

Thank you. Hello and welcome to the September 2nd, 2026 of the Asheville Planning and Zoning Commission. I am your chair, Jeffrey Barton. Before we get started, just a couple of housekeeping items. Please speak directly into the mic while you're talking and try to introduce yourself for the benefit of people listening online. Also, I've been made aware we have a captioning system that works best with no crosstalk, so if we can kind of Speak, pause, and then wait for the next person to speak. That will help the captioning. We receive public comment for items on our agenda in advance in writing to pzcommissioners at ashevillenc.gov. We also accept public comment in person at the meeting. It does not look like we will have a ton today. So those are the opportunities to provide public comment on public hearing items. And with that, I will kick it over to Mr. Starbaum for roll call.

Yes, thank you, Chair Barton. No. Chair Barton, are you here? Here. Okay. Vice Chair Seigel? Here. Commissioner Anzalito? Here. Commissioner Bell?

Present.

Commissioner Burrell?

Present.

Commissioner Zuebski?

Present.

And then I can call Faircloth, or we can note he is absent, however you want to do that.

Commissioner Faircloth is absent. Thank you. Yes. So noted. Next on the agenda, we have the Pono and Zona Commission land acknowledgement. As we are gathering today as the Planning and Zoning Commission, the body tasked with reviewing and advising on appropriate land use in the City of Asheville, it is fitting to acknowledge the storied history of this land. We occupy the land of the Cherokee people, who have stewarded and been in relationship with these mountainous and waterways from time immemorial. This land is occupied through violence, oppression, coercion, broken trainings, and forced relocation. Please join me in expressing respect and gratitude for the present day Eastern Band of Cherokee, the Cherokee Nation, the United Gadoura Band of Cherokee, and all of our indigenous neighbors, as well as the past and present marginalized community members, as we seek to join in the healing of the indelible trauma that is embedded in this land. Thank you. Next up, we have the approval of the minutes. Minutes from August 5th, 2026 were included in the meeting packet. I do actually have two very minor notations under the city council update. It says at the very end, PZC staff recommended approval for this item. I think it means PZC and staff, because there's no PZC staff. If someone is true, yeah, that happens twice just in that same for the Sweeten Creek and South Tunnel Road. So with those modifications, I'd accept a motion to approve. Second.

Oh, I move to approve.

Do we have a motion, do we have a second? Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Motion passes unanimously.

Next up on our agenda are updates and reports. We have update from current liaisons and workgroups. I'm not aware of any, but multimodal, do we have anything?

There are no updates.

Thank you. Any other liaison or workgroup updates? And I'll kick it over to staff for legislative administrative actions.

Yes. Speaking of that 8526 meeting, there were a number of things you heard. There were 3 zoning text amendments, 1 relating to 80 years, 1 relating to parking and coming into alignment with state statutes. And then, of course. One concerning town homes. All of those went to the late August council meeting. They were adopted unanimously there at council on 825. All three of them were unanimous. And then, of course, there was one case that the planner Clay Mitchell brought before you. It was a split-zoned parcel over on 23 Heritage Drive, and it was just changing it from RM16 to HB. That was also adopted unanimously at 825. City Council. What I will say here, which is also relevant and germane, is that there will be a meeting tomorrow at 11 that will discuss our contract with the company who will be doing our targeted comprehensive plan and UDO rewrite. So that is, if you want to see who the contractor will be for that, you can stay tuned to that. It will be streamed live on YouTube. and those are all the legislative updates.

One other thing that I'd like to kind of lift up is there was a really good discussion at the city council general briefing on August 20th in preparation for the zoning text amendments. Had some really good and interesting feedback from council members specifically around our recommendation to continue looking at lot sizes and widths So I just wanted to mention that in that conversation, they charted out a couple of additional council committee meetings. So September 15th, Housing and Community Development will be looking into RS2. Uh, those agenda materials have not been published yet, but I think we should stay tuned to that. I think the motion from a council member was, um, is very low density and maybe right for some interim reforms. They also added a September 29th Planning and Economic Development and Environment Committee that may look into lot size minimums, lot width, and any other interim updates to the UDO. So just wanted to kind of mention that. And we have had some conversations around lot sizes, and I think it's ripe for kind of further analysis and discussion, given that these other meetings are happening in September, it would be great if we could kind of participate in that conversation.

If I can jump in there. I would, yeah, I watched that meeting as well and given, I thought since the council came in as a majority of interest looking into lost house reform, we've mentioned in a couple different meetings that I've gotten in and I've also sort of shown to and presented a number of different advocacy groups and I think I've gotten a lot of really good feedback and I would kind of like to get this commission's feedback. So I'd actually like to formally motion if we could add a discussion item to today's agenda since we have some extra time.

We do have a pretty light meeting agenda. thoughts from other commissioners on discussion only like we don't have a proposal in front of us but is that what you're proposing what would the topic be do you have anything to present do you have a slideshow or yeah staff is aware of these conversations and this is something we were going to bring to you at that

to point out that this is something that hasn't been agendized and publicly noticed because there is a lot of information where this wants to happen. And a lot of people want to provide input here as well. And so that is, staff does have some concern about the noticing and conformance with state statutes in that regard to having a discussion at the end for this. But rest assured, staff does hear you. I know that this is... This is something you have wanted to discuss for a while now, and that is we have to move slowly because we have to involve a lot more parties. So we are aware, and we will have more information for you on the 7th.

Understood, and I appreciate that kind of context. I think one thing that I'm thinking of is there are going to be these interim council committee meetings, and I really appreciate in the agenda briefing, council, first of all, tuning in to Planning and Zoning Commission. Thank you, council, for paying attention to how we are analyzing and going about it, and an eagerness to sort of include our feedback.

I hear you.

I wonder, you know, item that is just discussion only. You know, there's not an action proposed today.

And I would add that the slides that I'm presenting aren't giving any sort of emotion. It's all just analysis of the existing conditions. I'm looking over at legal counsel.

I think it would be fine to have an informal discussion. It would require a motion and second to amend the agenda. Just make sure that keep it informal information sharing and perhaps staff can incorporate that into a formal presentation that's fully noticed to the public in case they want to engage in a future meeting. Does that sound okay to staff?

yeah generally generally a little bit um concerned i mean um so i think i've um had a chance to talk with commissioner anzalito and seen some of the presentation we haven't fully like vetted the information i would just be concerned about um not say Anything in there is wrong. I don't I don't know but just to have multiple different narratives out there and getting ahead of discussion We're gonna have potentially a PED a chance to respond to that and have staff put together some information for look at Translators data make sure you know, we're all talking the same language. I still want to so confusion about differing either information sources or discussions So it just feels a little premature. We haven't really had any time to really think about it or consider it. And I just don't want to muddy the waters because there is going to be a lot happening over the next couple of months related to comp plan, eventually UDO. And just that gives me some pause to have that conversation tonight without a lot of consideration or preparation prior to it.

Sorry, I think I missed that there was a formal presentation. That feels a little bit more formal than informal discussion. So I'm taking that into account. I would prefer that if there's a full presentation that staff have an opportunity to provide input and then notice it.

Could we get some thoughts from the other commissioners? I'm just curious what people are interested in hearing today. I hear the concerns and I appreciate the feedback, but I'm curious where my fellow commissioners are at.

This is Commissioner Bell. I think an informal discussion, I would feel really positive about that. I think because we do have on the agenda talking about our annual report and kind of studying some thoughts for this next year. So I think kind of blanketed within that or if we need to vote and add it as an informal discussion, I would really like to have that discussion and hear other's thoughts, especially given council's briefing and the overwhelming support and really call for moving this forward potentially.

I would also support that. And it could be, you know, we could discuss even what kind of data we want to try to pull together and, you know, what we can discuss the data that Jonathan has already pulled and determine, you know, whether there's additional pieces of information or how we can further vet that as well.

I appreciate that strong caveat that this is unvetted information that you know is just a conversation starter and an informal discussion. Only have one item before us today.

yeah i think staff would be generally okay with an informal discussion but we would caution against a presentation that staff has not had a chance to evaluate fully or or help produce or respond to yeah that's that's that gives me a lot of concern

So what is the concern? I guess we look at a ton of different information in the lead up to contemplating zoning text amendments from various sources.

So I guess I'm just kind of curious to go a little further on what's the... Just I'd be concerned if something was presented today and then we present something at PED that's different for some reason or... or if there's something presented today that leads policymakers down a certain course of action that maybe is based on a different assumption or without a fuller picture, it's just a lot of variables that are kind of, we haven't had a chance to really consider.

Isn't that our role to advise council?

That is your role, but we also have a role and a responsibility in representing the regulations. I love the example you used about seeing all these different reports, all these different proposals. Staff has responses to all of those, and it is documented for very clear legal reasons. you know that we would not have the opportunity to respond to this presentation and say what the city position is what the city regulations say about this and have a city position especially as we're going to craft this is especially as we're trying to keep our message contained moving forward and keep it unified

I have a question on the last point, if it's okay. I'm curious about the opportunity to respond with the proper protocol that would look like, because I showed this in July to members of staff, and then how would you like to respond?

Yeah, I guess. I guess if we knew it might be presented tonight, we would have, like, been able to either vet the information or kind of do a parallel analysis or just, um, I'm not, don't say I don't trust your data. I'm just, we haven't had a chance to, we've looked at it, we've digested it, we've talked about it a little bit, but we haven't had a lot of time to, um,

to to either fact check anything or it just um i'll go one further and say that when you presented that in july you were not presenting that to a board you were presenting that as a private citizen to the planning and urban design department we also I grew up in a podunk town. In some ways, Asheville is so much smaller than that town, and we thrive on relationships. If our government is to survive on trust, we have to maintain relationships, and there are a whole bunch of people who are not in this room that should be for that discussion, and it's disrespectful to them and the relationships the city has to maintain as we're going through this huge process of trust to further the comp plan and revise the UDO.

With all due respect, Mr. Stone, this feels like an overreaction to having a conversation starter. We're talking about discussing an item that council has shown an appetite for. There's been a lot of public engagement for it. There's not an action proposed tonight. There's merely a start of a longer conversation. If we're that worried about the consistency of the messaging, I worry about us assuming there's such fragility in our processes to vet. And I certainly trust the thought of this highly engaged and intelligent group of people to not take today as gospel, but just a conversation starter.

We have a conversation about the kind of data versus the data itself. Does that make sense? Yeah. that information as far as what kind of data have you been looking at without sharing the results of your research?

Yeah, I mean I can tell you right now all of the data is largely from the assessor's office at the county. And then I've used GRS to do a lot of data analysis based on parcel level data.

Yeah, I mean I think if we can kind of hear the The background information, so the public can also hear that and then know what's coming that would be helpful and then it sounds like that might not get to the weeds of sharing information that hasn't been vetted.

facilitate a robust but speedy public engagement process when it comes to actually considering zoning text amendments. But that sounds reasonable to me. I hear a lot of concern from staff, and I'm trying to kind of parse out how we can satisfy and not erode trust while still having a forum for sharing of information.

I mean, I think we okay with like an informal discussion of the, you know, potential ideas and what kind of data we should be looking at and different ideas of how to approach this work. I just, so John's presentation is very robust, it's just very technical and there's a lot of data in there, so that's why I just hesitant to have that presentation tonight without a chance for us to really Just be able to kind of review it more. And so if that's what you're thinking about, I think we'd have less concern with that. It's just I think his presentation is very it's it's very robust and it's great. It just there's a lot of data in there that we haven't had a chance to like And just fact checking ground truth and I just that's my concern is there's whether there's different information or different data sources or different ways of analyzing it. And then we go to PD in a month and we say something different. And they say, well, PNC this was talked about when they're saying something different, you know, who's who we believe here. I just, that's just kind of a concern is

We also should have an opportunity to fact check and verify information presented to council. In particular, when the question was raised around lot size minimums at the agenda briefing, one response was the potential for nonconformities. I know that was an on the fly response, but if we were proposing something to reduce the what is a legal lot by nature non-conformities would not be created so You know, you all, as staff, have the opportunity to present information to council. And we rely on your expertise heavily. And you do an amazing job providing analysis. And that would certainly be part of any formal presentation of a further interim zoning text amendment. It does seem like in fulfillment of our duties enshrined in the UDO and 160D, having a forum for presentation of information is wholly appropriate with the purview of the Planning and Zoning Commission.

So this is Jason, Commissioner Cycle. I'd like to add what I'm hearing is there's a concern about There's a concern about confusion over staff position based on what staff's going to present. And I guess from my understanding, you know, I understand that the potential for confusion is there, but this isn't, this presentation or this conversation wouldn't be representative of a staff position at all. This is just data coming from a commissioner doing their own research and bringing it forward. So, you know, in my mind, it's more of us doing our own due diligence, I guess, on the side and not... Does it have to be represented as as city staff position?

I mean, not necessarily, just maybe to the casual view out there, they don't always know the difference between P&Z commissioners and staff. So they might come away saying, oh, you know, P&Z is looking to change lot sizes all of a sudden. What's going on? It's just, it could just breed that kind of confusion. And it's, so it might not be, I know we're very clear on our rules and that sort of thing, but the public perception is a little more maybe muddied. There's potential for confusion. So that's so the goal.

So what I'm hearing is the goal is to be in lockstep.

Correct. That's yeah. And yeah, ideally working together on these things. We're sharing information openly. You have time to review that strategize. It's with an overall kind of work plan that's set at the at the top of the city leadership and kind of filters through so I just kind of caught off guard tonight we weren't. You know we're looking ahead at hcb in a couple weeks for the rs two and rs for discussion haven't had any time to really think about the lot size consideration we're not expecting to talk about it tonight. So I know I know our interim director probably has a lot of thoughts about it too. It's just kind of kind of caught us off guard, to be honest.

And if I may, it would be such a disservice. You know, we're going to announce who our contractor is tomorrow. They should absolutely be here for this. What I would suggest is because, you know, on wood the 10-7 meeting is I can only think of one agenda item that will be on there is there how would you feel if we were able to formalize a discussion on the 10-7 agenda because I know we've been talking about this for a while that is a concrete action that I think that we can find some middle ground on that way we can notice that we can get all the parties there and we can prepare that information and make sure that Chris Collins, the interim director, as well as maybe some representatives or subcontractors can be there to get this information because that guarantees the community is involved in this project that impacts the community.

um this chair barton with respect to the first point about the udo contractor you know what i heard on the august 20th agenda briefing is a desire by council for further interim changes so i think this would not actually entail their engagement with the city which is the the wholesale rewrite um with regards to kind of delaying or deferring to october 7th i also feel that may be too late to have some productive feedback from this body to help inform those. For example, the RS2 conversation that's going to be a part of HCD has come about largely through the leadership of a council member, which is great, but it is not something that has come through Planning and Zoning Commission for review input feedback massaging. feels fine to tell me to add it to the agenda today, understanding it will provide strong caveats that it's not vetted information or representative of a city position. And I think I heard a motion. Yeah, I think the motion stands. Do I have a second to add an informal discussion based on a presentation by Commissioner Anzalito? Second.

We have a second. Any further discussion?

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes unanimously. We don't specify where on the agenda I would propose after the conditional rezoning. That's the zoning map amendment on our agenda. Perfect. Thank you.

Can I jump in with a question about the comprehensive plan? Yeah. Can you speak to, can you remind us of the timeline of the comprehensive plan update portion of it and specifically when will community engagement start and when will that portion be wrapped up?

Sure. So I don't have this information right in front of me. Some of this will be discussed at tomorrow's council pre-meeting. So we're going to have an opportunity to announce the firm that we've been in negotiations with and their team, and also some overall project scope information, including overall timelines. The comprehensive plan portion starts as the first item on the overall scope. I believe it wraps up within about a year. There's a lot of overlapping scope items. So the engagement for that would start relatively soon. I believe either October or November before the holidays. um so yeah that's that's um good questions i think i'll be able to kind of expand a little bit on the presentation tomorrow and keep that in mind so um you can share that with folks because i know i know folks are anxious to get involved and hit the ground running so um yeah that's that's generally the scope that'll be the first item on the agenda on the overall um scope thank you

No, the contract authorization will be before City Council at their September 8th meeting.

Thank you.

I have a request to conditionally rezone the property located at 9999 Tride Street and 990 West Chapel Road from residential single family high density district RS8 and conditional zoning RS8CZ to single family high density district conditional zoning RS8CZ. Property's pins are identified on the agenda. Property owner is Asheville Habitat for Humanity. The applicant's contact is Mr. Gerald DeRutter of WGLA Engineering. Planner coordinating review is Sam Starbaum. Before I kick it to you, Mr. Starbaum, I just, for the public record, wanted to disclose that the prior owner of this property was Mountain Housing Opportunities, which is my employer. We sold this property to Asheville Habitat, I believe, three years ago. We have no further contact. involvement or have any vested financial stake in the outcome of this decision and i believe i can render an impartial and unbiased recommendation on this for us but just sharing that for public disclosure but mr starbaum

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the Commission. Again, for the record, my name is Sam Starbaum. I am a Planner 3 with Will Palmquist's entitlements team. And before us today, we do have a conditional zoning of a number of parcels, generally which I will call Tride Street. It is in the heart of Shiloh. What is being proposed is 23 total lots. It will be 18 townhomes and five single-family detached homes. As you can see in the quick facts, it was previously approved in 2017 as a conditional zoning, and that is exactly why this is before you today. Should the applicant propose this today on just RS eight, this would go through as a level one. But because of the existing underlying conditional zoning for most of those parcels, we have to go through this process. This is still the cleanest way forward, and that's what brings us before the Planning and Zoning Commission this evening. So here you can see the existing zoning, you can see in most of the parcels, it is zoned RS eight CZ. This is not residential expansion because it falls well below those thresholds. So everything is RS eight CZ with the exception of 990 West Chapel Road, which you can see if you can see the mouse, that is what that little parcel is right there. There is an existing structure there, which is no longer occupied. And what is being proposed is this goes to RS8CZ and this stays RS8CZ under a new conditional zoning, which is a new ordinance, new site plan and elevations, as well as that new project E conditions document. All of the drafts are, of course, attached to your memo. And this is what is being proposed. This changes what was previously proposed in 2017 was 20 single family lots. What you can see here are your 18 attached single family residences or townhomes and your five single-family residences. The single-family residences are on lots 1, 2, 3, 18, and 23. You can see that the applicant has worked with the significant topography and site features. There's the stream, of course, so all of that is where the tree canopy preservation and the open space will be to the south. All of the homes are staying to the north where that is accessed from West Chapel Road. Can't believe I was the one that made this presentation. Should have included the one that showed the sidewalk. There will be sidewalks along West Chapel Road. There are no sidewalks. Well, yes, there are sidewalks on this one as well that you can see running to the south. It is not on both sides of the street. And then this one is well below the threshold for a traffic impact analysis. So no TIA was conducted for this property, as well as the stormwater there just to the immediate south of the plan view south. That's actually sort of Northeast on the actual elevation. But in plain view south, that is where the stormwater detention is there just before the path to the open space again. Here's your landscape plan. You're going to see street trees which are required, and then, as well as preserving all your existing vegetation along the stream buffer for this. And these are the elevations as proposed. You can see the front elevation for the single family residences is one story. You have two stories for your attach. This is largely what you see for a modern mountain aesthetic. You're going to see a lot of vinyl siding, a lot of shingles, some horizontal siding as well. So this is very much in line with the aesthetic character that is there in the Shiloh neighborhood as well as Asheville writ large. And then there are still technical modifications on this one, because of the RS eight CZ so because this is an RS eight CZ we are going to have these as technical modifications and we'll put. In that project conditions document that there are zero interior side setbacks for townhouse lots. In R. S. A. C. Z. And then again the reduction of minimum lot size to 3,742 square feet minimum. That is the smallest lot that is on that site plan in R. S. A. Your your minimum lot size is 4,000. This is still a little bit below that, so that does need the technical modification. And then in R. S. A. Your lot width with road frontage is 40 feet this is going down to 32 feet for all those lots so we are adjusting this to to match what is there for the cz which is needed and then this gets us to compliance this is of course exactly in alignment with what you would find for shiloh which is this sort of c of rs8 with pockets of rm16 sort of surrounding it townhomes as of august 25th are now allowed in rs8 so this is not going above and beyond what is envisioned for single family and again rsa does single family high density zone district and then there are also single family residences which are what you would find predominantly throughout shiloh which you can see in that sea of yellow And then this is also compatible with our future land use plan, which you'd find in the Asheville Living Comprehensive Plan. It's a traditional neighborhood. It is predominantly traditional neighborhood through most of Shiloh. Again, you can see the Linwood Crump Community Center there immediately to the south where there's parks and open space. And there are just parts of a residential neighborhood. But for most of Shiloh, it is traditional neighborhood, which does in fact envision And I quote a mix of housing types, such as single family with accessory dwelling units duplexes and townhomes usually located seamlessly together, which is precisely what the applicant is proposing. check check and check when it comes to infrastructure, these are things. We always make sure they are in place before they bring this to you, you will never find a plan without a water commitment letter or anything like that so again. We talked about transportation. No TIA is required because it is well below the threshold of 100 peak hour trips. There is the commitment letter for water. Again, it doesn't pass go. It doesn't get through initial TRC without that. Same with wastewater allocation from sewer. and then a detailed storm water review was positive through initial trc nancy watford who is the trc representative had a number of conditions but no issues with this moving forward and anything will of course be rectified at the final trc review to make sure it meets city and state standards so all the infrastructure is compatible And then it's also compatible with the living actual comprehensive plan staff finds that it encourages responsible growth and facilitates real estate development that maximizes public benefit with all of these houses. One hundred percent of these twenty three units will be affordable. And I also want to stop here because there is something that I will probably do different in other presentations. We hammer home that this is how this aligns with the City of Asheville comprehensive plan, with the Living Asheville Comprehensive Plan. But there are other plans that our city adopted that come into play here that need consideration. Of course, none more prominent in this neighborhood Then the Shiloh community plan. There are two goals. They are land use goal number two, providing assistance for affordable housing and home improvement. That is exactly what Habitat for Humanity is proposing to do here today. And then, of course, the second goal is to protect, enhance, and complement the existing character of Shiloh. And because predominantly what you've... find through shiloh is exactly what is proposed today staff does find that this substantially aligns with city plans and staff does recommend approval of this In terms of required reviews, it did have the initial TRC on July 20th. PZC is, of course, today. We are still working to find out when we will agendize a city council. Entitlements review staff is out for the rest of September on a number of different vacations and trips and things like that. Even Jared can't be here today Jared is out so we're represented by will be instead same engineering firm WG la but we're working to find a time that works for all parties, we just don't have that yet. But that is where we are in the review process and again staff recommends approval and I would be happy to stand for any questions you may have. Thank you, Mr. Starboni.

We had a good discussion about this and why this conditional zoning is necessary, especially given that the technical modifications required were made legal by city council and RSA just a week ago. So just to kind of reiterate what we discussed, the existence of a prior conditional zoning is what necessitates a fresh conditional zoning with the addition of the new parcel. Am I kind of summarizing that?

That is absolutely correct. I would state it that conditional zoning is run with the land and then the planning director after a certain time has to initiate the same legislative process to remove the CZ if it doesn't go through as was the case in 2017. and because that still requires the PZC and City Council appearance anyways, it is just as expeditious for the applicant to do it this way.

Thank you for that explanation. Any questions for staff?

This is a commissioner cycle, I just want to say kudos to staff for including the compatibility with the shadow community plan and the staff report. I found that very helpful and. A nice addition to the staff report, thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair cycle and yeah just echo the city council adopted anti displacement resolution, there was one of that to include an analysis of. plan or take plans into consideration with your updates, this is, you know, a conditional zoning but no less appreciated to include that in the compatibility analysis.

Thank you.

Questions, comments for staff? Seeing none, thank you, Mr. Starbaum. We'll invite the applicant to add any additional information if you wish to. Please introduce yourself into the mic.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the commission. I'm Will Bowie with WGLA Engineering. I'm substituting for Jared tonight, so thank you for allowing me to be here. Reggie Jones with Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity is with me as well. Appreciate the opportunity to speak to you about this. Really have very little to add to Sam's presentation, but I did want to make just one or two quick points and there was one additional modification or variance that we did want to talk about. the word townhome was listed and um that was something that was hammered home to me that the shallow committee community was concerned about we see these as duplexes so it's two single family units that are attached it it's semantics but um we are very respectful of the shallow community i think you probably received today a letter of support from the shallow community association for this project so they're excited about it we want to make sure that we're fulfilling their wishes i think the concern was a long row of attached units and that's certainly not what we have here today the other thing i would share with you related to the modifications or variance request we are adjacent to the existing stream may i scan back to the okay and i'll just point to that we are adjacent to the existing stream and the aquatic buffer that you can see that is hatched there and there's a dark line, we are requesting a variance to be able to do some limited grading and disturbance inside that aquatic buffer. And specifically, get to my notes so that I tell you the correct numbers here. The land disturbance within the buffer is about 5600 square feet and the grading within the buffer is about 1600 square feet. The land disturbance within the buffer is actually removing existing impervious structures. So there is existing built upon area that's already within that aquatic buffer. We would be removing 2,551 square feet of impervious surfaces that would be inside that aquatic buffer. We will have to add about 490 square feet, so there's a net reduction The addition of the impervious area built upon in the aquatic buffer is the sidewalk. That was a sidewalk. It's not required, but it was encouraged by staff, encouraged at TRC, and we agree. We think that that's a good addition for the community. And so we would like to, if you will allow us to add that to the list of the requests for the modifications, is basically to be able to encroach within that aquatic buffer and to complete those items that we had shared. And I'll stop there. And if you all have questions of me or of Reggie, we'll do our very best to try to answer those for you.

Yeah, no, so I have a question for staff. So encroachment in the aquatic buffer has to go through stormwater.

Yes, thank you for the chance to respond to this. There are a couple of things here. I'm not saying this. for you necessarily, but I think there are some things that are important to share for the sports fans at home. This is not a variance. Variance is only a board of adjustment. What is being requested is a technical modification. There are instances in which those do have to go through the board of adjustment for some sort of aquatic buffer variance in terms of land disturbing activity uh stormwater is covered under 712. i did not see any notes and i'm looking now about this specifically i do not believe there is an issue with adding the technical modification just to sort of cover us as we move through this process And I also want to be clear that is the open space is the case for the path that has to be a path that does not have to be a sidewalk. So it doesn't have to be concrete either.

Yeah, I guess I was just verifying this commissioner cycle that it's that I guess I was under the assumption that the technical modification wouldn't necessarily be required, but it's being asked as like a redundancy. Yeah, more or less.

the way that we have seen it in the past uh with conditional zoning is is when there has been an encroachment into the aquatic buffer for various reasons that it is wrapped into the overall approval or consideration at council level and obviously with you all at pnz and that's the way we've seen it uh move forward with the process in the past if we need to follow a little different path that's perfectly fine We just want to be completely transparent.

And this technical modification, this has gone through TRC. Nancy has seen this already? Correct. Okay.

Just to clarify, the sidewalk encouragement required before, we're just talking about the sidewalk, the portion of sidewalk along Triad Street where it comes out to West Chapel.

Oops, I've gone too far. Putting me in charge of technical is dangerous. Yes, it's this portion of sidewalk right here. There's a very small portion and a very small portion of sidewalk on West Chapel right there. So that is the new built upon area, but ultimately there will be a

This is Commissioner Bell. Thank you so much, Mr. Booth. I'm really excited about this project. Will there be fill placed that you build the sidewalk on? Yes. Okay. And at lot 23 where you have a retaining wall, is there any encroachment right there?

There is no encroachment there. That is the reason for the retaining wall.

Sure. I didn't see in the technical report that there's some fill that might be placed in the floodway.

There's no fill to be placed in the floodway. Okay.

Maybe that was an old thing. I think those are my questions. Thank you.

This commissioner cycle, was there a consideration to putting the sidewalk on the other side of the road to avoid the fill into the buffer?

Because I'm substituting for Jared, I apologize. I'm a little bit of a disadvantage. I think likely the reason they proposed the sidewalk on that side is to avoid the numerous driveways that are on the planned north side that you see. Having that sidewalk on the planned south side allows a less interaction between pedestrians and folks pulling out of their driveway. I'm only guessing that that is the case, but that is something we can certainly look into, and if it is feasible, we can certainly look at that as something to take forward to City Council.

Thank you. Yeah, I realize it was a decision that was made to put the utilities on one side and the sidewalk on the other. If you could look into it, if it's possible to flip it. I think having this, I mean, driveway is one thing. If the sidewalk is flush, well, I guess you have curbs.

Correct.

So you're going up and down, up and down. Correct. Yeah, okay. So I understand. I guess it's a give and a take. I do have one additional comment and I realize I'm sorry, you being a substitute for Jared, you might not have an answer to this. I was wondering if there was a consideration to having surface treatment of stormwater in lieu of the storm tech system, considering the storm tech system where you're treating the stormwater is kind of a bowl like area, putting surface treatment there would seem rather easy to me. And you're including for the storm tech about 10 feet of fill over an area of about 30 by 30 by 10. I'd imagine, this is just my speculation, haven't not looked at the numbers, but there could be a possibility maybe if explored. First of all, did you look into it?

I can't say, and Reggie, do you recall if there was an alternative to that?

And besides just my own personal leanings towards having surface stormwater treatment for a myriad benefits other than just treating stormwater, one additional benefit might be to habitat as far as construction cost savings.

We can certainly look at that. I clearly the intent is to meet the city's stormwater ordinance, and I think whether it's the storm tech or surface stormwater measures like a bioretention cell or something along those lines, I think either would include meet the city's ordinance. Absolutely. So I think we can certainly look at that. Jared may have had a very specific reason for why the storm tech was considered.

Absolutely.

But I think if Reggie's in agreement with that, it's something we can look at and talk about. Ultimately, it has to go back through the technical review, final TRC, and if you all and council move this project forward, we can certainly commit to making sure we're going to meet that ordinance.

yeah absolutely and there may be a very good reason for the choice of the storm tech absolutely i'm just just as a designer myself looking at it seeing the existing conditions that would be something that i would look into um and so that's why i was wondering if there was a reason behind using that system and especially for the client looking to have affordable homes if there's potential cost savings there by switching systems that might be something i would look into so i would appreciate it if you looked into that thank you for the feedback yeah

Other questions or comments of the applicant?

I have heard from Beck that you all have been working with the neighborhood for a long time and have made a number of adjustments. I'm not familiar with what the adjustments have been and where this started, so I'm curious to hear a little bit more about that journey.

I better defer to Reggie in that case. Do you have any thoughts about what may have changed with the community?

When I came and I introduced myself and went through the process of explaining it, they were already in support of it. I'm not sure what happened prior to me coming to the area. I'm assuming you're talking about what changed between their concerns about this particular project and where we are now. I can't really say. It's just the presentation that we gave when we updated and explained in continuous conversations and to get them comfortable with it. Of course, I know they were awful. about communication. So I think that's one of the things that we kind of looked at and just made it clear of our intentions coming in. So the leadership felt that this was a good plan to move forward with and we kind of embraced it as well as they embraced it.

Yeah, I'm assuming they may have been no or less single family homes in the beginning. I know that is a point of conversation in the Shiloh community quite often, so I appreciate the single family homes on the. outside side of the parcel to keep in line with the community. I guess I'm also curious how big the duplexes are, each of the duplexes.

Right. I think the biggest one is about .

Excuse me, sir. Could you speak more into the microphone just for the recording?

Yeah, I think there are about 1,500 square feet. I think in splitting between the units, there could be eight, nine per unit. And it depends on if we're doing one or two floors. I think one of the things that is our smaller units are the age in place. That's another thing that I think attracted shadow as well as we were including addition, I think up to six right now of age in place units along with the town homes or multifamily. So I think that was more of an interest to them as well. And given that sense of community, especially with the age is 55 plus. In addition, so I think that's some things that also Yeah, absolutely.

I appreciate that Are those ADA accessible?

Well, they are not ADA, but the next thing right underneath it. We do have recommended increasing our width of doors, entry, wheelchair turnability. So it's not ADA compliant, but it's the thing that's underneath. I'm trying to think the name of it. But it is accessible. All our units are.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions, comments for the applicant?

I do have a question. This is Commissioner Bell. You might not know the answer or maybe to staff. So there's a stormwater system that seems to be an existing system that's getting relocated and it's kind of a pass through and it's discharging so it's not treated. I'm just wondering if we have any information on how much flow is running through there. I guess it's like a pretty minor system or is it carrying like a whole street? That would help me.

I really can't speak to that. Unfortunately, I do have the stormwater plans that I can take a peek at. My recollection is that it's primarily related to the existing impervious structures that are on the site. So I don't think it's a huge system. Now, the stream obviously has a large drainage area. So if we're talking about the stream that goes under West Chapel, much larger drainage area. I think the rest of it is primarily for those existing structures.

Okay. I can see it's originating from some lot, Jeffrey Tracy lot, and we don't know kind of what else it's picking up, but I assume that the stormwater department is reviewing all of that. I just wanted to make a note.

Mm-hmm.

It is kind of a unique factor, but I'm happy to see that we are able to work around it and work with the city on establishing a new easement.

Yes, I do see that on the stormwater plan that you're talking about. It doesn't look like it's a huge drainage area. It looks like it's several lots that are just to the west of the property that are draining there. But that will have to be properly designed to be part of the full design plans that will ultimately go through city staff review.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So, Mr. Starbon with regards to the requested additional technical notification that I have. Any proposed language, or should we, if we add it, keep it vague for staff and the applicant to work out before council review?

Yeah. Redundancy is never a bad thing, but it's really not necessary. And I wouldn't want to speak for Nancy Watford either. I think what I think we can include is a technical modification that There can be land disturbing activity as a technical modification from section 712 and that the applicant work with the stormwater administrator and TRC representative to ensure compliance. So 712 and the technical modification would be land disturbing activity in the aquatic buffer.

Thank you. All right. We will open for public comment at 6.02. I will acknowledge we did receive some written public comment today from the Shiloh Neighborhood Association as referenced earlier, fully supporting this project. But for anyone wishing to speak in person, we'll open for public comment at 6.02. And seeing none, we will close public comment at 6.02.

Any further discussion?

If not, I would take a motion. If anybody is so inclined.

Can we get the motion up on the screen? Oh. I'll make the motion.

And with the additional technical modification?

Yes.

Or I can add it afterwards.

Okay, yeah. This is Commissioner Bell. I move to recommend approval of the conditional zoning request for the property located at 9999 Tride Street and 990 West Chapel Road from residential single family high density RS8 to residential single family high density conditional zone RS8CZ to residential single family high density conditional zone RS8CZ. CZ and find that the request is reasonable is in the public interest is consistent with the city's comprehensive plan and meets the development needs of the community in that the request one prioritizes greater densities of development overall in that request throughout the city as appropriate and two increases the supply of housing including affordable housing in proximity to schools transit and parks with the addition of the technical modification

to section 712 to land disturbing activity with an aquatic buffer to be coordinated between the applicant and staff?

Seconded.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you and best of luck. Up on our agenda is the item that we have added to the agenda, an informal discussion with the strong caveat that this does not reflect city of Asheville position or review slash analysis by Commissioner Anzalito.

Do we have HDMI or? Yeah, it's on the computer. Yeah, you can plug in on HDMI there.

Thank you, everyone. So this, we'll just start right here. This is basically an analysis I've done looking at county data that is just an analysis of existing single family lots. And so it started whenever I was just doing my own personal research into the previous meeting's zoning text amendments surrounding the ADUs and duplexes. And I just wanted to understand where likely the lots that would most be affected or where duplexes or ADUs would most likely to occur. And doing that, I thought I found some interesting information about starter homes, essentially, and how our single family homes look in Asheville today. Starting with what is a starter home? This is the working definition that I am using. And essentially, it's kind of an agglomeration of data that Hart has on their website and that I found on a couple of other groups. But essentially, my working definition is a smaller home designed for a first-time home buyer to build wealth. It's typically between 800 and 1,400 square feet and costs less than $300,000. This is a scatter plot of every building in Asheville. On the x-axis, that's the square footage of the building itself. And then on the y-axis, that's the market value. These are starter homes. That's 11% of the single family homes in Asheville. Really great at building one type of house in Asheville. The median house size here is about 2,700 square feet. The average price, according to Zillow, is about $450,000. And then the median lot size is about 10,500 square feet. This type of house is not unfamiliar to people. It's a pretty standard two-car garage, single-family home. The trend here is pretty obvious. The larger the house, the more expensive it gets. Those are the first takeaways. Smaller buildings are inherently affordable. As home sizes get bigger, housing gets more expensive, affordable home ownership cannot be attained on building larger buildings. Here's my point I want to drive home. Over the last 10 years or so, this is what Asheville and Buncombe County's population growth has looked like. So this is just raw number of people that were added to either Asheville or Buncombe County. Over the last five years asheville's population is stagnated well our region generally grew in fact actually according to census data asheville's population today is less than it was in 2020 right you can see buncombe county's population is still growing so the takeaway here is that we're not building enough housing to accommodate the people who are already moving here. Over the last 10 years during that same time period, only 129 starter homes were built in the last decade. And for comparison, during the 19th, we have somewhere around 600 starter homes that were built in the 20s, a little bit, 360 from the 50s, and then even in the early 2000s, there's a little bit more than 300. But the last 10 years, it's only 129. Certain single family zoning shields neighborhoods from ever building starter homes. So RS8 is producing the predominant amount of starter homes. RS4 is producing some, but not a lot. And then RS2 is producing none. And then just for reference, this is a map of where those zoning districts are. Let's talk about total number of houses and then the total number of acreage for each one of these zoning districts. This is a bar chart that is just showing the total acreage for each one. Obviously RS4 is the largest amount of land, followed by RS8 and RS2. This is the number of single family houses that are built in each one of those districts. You can see RS8 is the clear winner. But even if you stack the two of them together, RS8 still produces more than RST and RS4 combined. But it's on 40% of the land. 22,423 lots could add a starter, a separate starter home without demolishing the existing house. And so this is just a map of where homes that have more than 5,000 square feet of yard exist. So if you just want to add, like another unit, a deep box, an ADU. This is where the, those are the lots that have that capacity currently, just based on the size of the lot.

Could you speak into the mic, please?

Did you, was this based on just taking the square footage of the parcel and subtracting the square footage of the footprint of the house?

Correct. So when I say 5,000 square feet of yard, that is not completely inclusive of like setbacks. But if the analysis I looked at largely, the magic number is like 2,000 square feet would be like kind of like the high end over setbacks would be. So if you have 5,000 square feet of yard, that means you've got an additional 3,000 square feet to play with to put potentially just one more unit.

Yeah, and it doesn't consider typography or other potential limiting factors, but it's not buildable area, it's just raw square footage outside the footprint of the property.

Which I think would be, I've gotten that point a lot on this slide, and questions from a lot of different groups have raised that point exactly. I think there would be a second analysis I would really actually like to do, but this is by where is actual legitimate suitability based on... terrain typography, things like that, or infrastructure needs.

Geometry of the lot.

Exactly, exactly. But right now, these are just the lots that have an additional 5,000 square feet to play with at minimum.

Did you subtract sheds and outbuildings, things like that?

Did you subtract outbuildings?

I did, yes. So there's two layers that I'm playing with here. One is the parcel layer from the county and the other is a buildings layer. You just clip it and then the parcel layer that's left has a negative space that gives you the raw number of square feet.

Okay. And the scale, the least suitable to most suitable, can you explain just what that means in this context?

Sure, it is off the top of my head. I can't remember exactly where the breaks are, but it's essentially. I mean, I think it's essentially, it starts like if you have the lightest shade of blue, that means you're the closest to 5,000 square feet. And then if you're the darkest shade of blue, I think some of them were quite high. It was like an additional like acre or more. Thanks.

RS2, RS4, and RS8?

This would be any, currently it would be like any residential zoning district. So RM, RS. Okay.

Right, yeah, let's see the map. I could figure that out.

Okay, so takeaway number two is, are those two nodes for using too much land for too few houses? Now I wanna talk about the way that we are balancing density, and there's two main weights that are used. Housing units, so this is the raw number of allowable units, and then the size of the land that is being used to measure density. But only increasing the allowed number of units is inequitable. I'm going to explain why. Basically, in the same way that certain zoning districts don't allow for starter homes, these same zoning districts don't really allow for a second unit or anything more than one unit. So here are some conceptual slides I just want to show. So this isn't a typical house in RS2. On the right, and then on the left, this is a typical building footprint of a duplex. One of them is an actual house that's in Nashville, and then one is conceptual. This is much more of the likely situation, that you would get a duplex that's on an RS-8 lot, not necessarily on an RS-2 large lot. Calibrating density requires using both metrics to ensure the equitable distribution of housing supply. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about this. So why does land size impact affordable home ownership? So these are two houses in Asheville. And when you start a home, you can see it's a smaller house. One of them is a larger house. But conceptually, let's just say the land value is the same. The land cost for the project is the same. But the private you can derive from the house is quite different. The obvious thing you would do, given the constraints on our market, is you would build a bigger house. Not the smaller house, but let's say that the land cost was lower. Then the economics completely change. You're still able to make a profit on a smaller house, but you can't have a more expensive plot of land to build a smaller house. Smaller starter homes are really flourishing on smaller lots. okay so again to bring this back this is a typical home that actually exists in nashville and on the left is the starter home this is an actual house and that's the actual size in comparison to the actual size of an rs2 lot two scale okay so how do we regulate land size i know my audience here's someone to breeze through this um Okay, so we have a minimum lot size. In RSA, it's 4,000 square feet. The median lot size for RSA is actually 8,600 square feet. Then you get the minimum lot width. Both of these will regulate and determine the size of the lot. Then you get this other thing, buildable area, and that is determined by setbacks. And so that, setbacks determine not the size of the lot, but the size of the buildable area. Okay, so one thing I want to drive home here is that this is a pretty typical house in a typical lot for RS-8. So this is an actual house and it is about 2,000 square feet, but it's about the same size as the buildable area for what would be the minimum required amount for RS-8. And so the financial incentive is to build a bigger house on a bigger lot instead of a starter home. This is an actual starter home. It's three bed, one bath. It's 1,200 square feet, and it's two stories. But one thing that gets brought up a lot whenever I've shown this to other groups, they've mentioned that utility lines can cause problems where you're putting the buildable area. But if you have five foot setbacks, the store at home can still be built. It's just about giving more creative, more flexibility to where you can build. Something that could be true on the existing median lot size, this would allow you to kind of utilize the backyard lot policies that we've got. The one more thing I'll bring home here is that if you wanted to add a unit or add an ADU, these are the lots, or some of the lots, is about, yeah. These are the lots that would make it most feasible to add a second unit. But if you had five-foot setbacks, you'd add about 1,700 parcels that could be added to where this is more feasible. It's not a crazy amount, but the thing I want to bring home here is that smaller setbacks allow for more creative use of existing lots without needing more land. I want to make a comparison to another mountain city that I think is analogous to Asheville. This is Pittsburgh. This is the Highland Park neighborhood in Pittsburgh. I'm going to compare it to West Asheville. Both of these neighborhoods are trained car suburbs. You can see by the, this is a two-scale Google image of both neighborhoods. They're both single-family neighborhoods. One's a little bit more dense than the other, but you can see that there's a lot of similarities between the two. And then these are two houses I'm just gonna compare. You put them side by side, the Pittsburgh house is 3,000 square feet, and then the West Asheville house is on a 8,600 square foot lot. And then for size comparison, this is the minimum lot size for RS-8. One thing I wanna highlight is that the 1923 zoning ordinance that was guiding the development of this house The minimum lot size was actually 1,500 square feet, even though the lot's 3,000 square feet. And I think that's important to bring up because the actual lot size is twice the minimum. The trend is the exact same in Asheville today. And in fact, across all of our residential districts, it tends to be the trend, is that the median is about twice the minimum. So is 1,500 square feet crazy? I'm just going to go through a couple examples of cities that are reducing their lot sizes. Austin did this. Their lot size used to be a little bit less than 6,000 square feet, and then they reduced it to 1,800. And then an important note that I just skip past is the Board of Realtors recently did an analysis of the new changes, and they noticed that homes were sold at half the price in the new requirements as they were in the old requirements. And this is what 1,800 square feet looks like in Austin. Durham's doing the same thing. This is their RD residential neighborhood compact, basically a starter home zoning designation. Their minimum lot size is 1,250 square feet, and their setbacks are five feet, which is where I got that number from earlier. And a quick roll up here. These are all of the minimum lot sizes to scale for our RS districts. And this is what the median lot size is for each one of those. RS2 I think is pretty close to an acre. I think it's like a little bit more. Takeaway number three are minimum losses that are too large. They're inflating land costs. Affordable starter homes can't be built on unaffordable land. All right, so what if we allowed smaller lots? So these are starter homes that are on smaller lots all across the country in a bunch of different cities. And all of these single-family homes were built on less than 3,000 square feet. So I just wanna show you again, these are pretty Norman Rockwell-looking single-family houses. Okay, so what about RM? RM6 has a 60-foot minimum lot width, and I wanna talk about lot widths for a minute. And then the RM6 only allows at the minimum, or given the minimum lot size requirement, you can only get two units. But that's about the same size as that 2,000 square foot home that we were looking at earlier. So the largest financial bang for your buck is just to build a larger house. But don't take my word for it. About 11% of Asheville single family homes are located in RM6. And then, not for nothing, that's about the same size as two Pittsburgh houses, and every house in this image is about 2,000 square feet. You're just on a smaller lot, and they're building vertically onto two stories. Over the last decade, arm zoning produced predominantly single-family homes. want to go through this really quick again, so this is the 11% of Asheville single family homes were built in the RM six. In RM eight that number was 21% of single family homes were are currently located in RM excuse me in RM eight. RM 16 that number is 4%. So take away number four is our districts are not calibrated to produce the housing that you're designed to make or intended to make. It had a quick roll up residential lot size comparison, so this is all the residential. Black again is the minimum size required, and then the dotted line in Gray is the typical size. And then for reference, this is the Pittsburgh house that I brought up earlier. The RM-6, again, is a 60-foot minimum lot width. It did these three Asheville zoning designations here at the end of the curve, or excuse me, just the RM-8 and RS-8 are 40-foot minimum lot width. One thing to bring up again about the Pittsburgh is that it didn't have any minimum lot width. What's interesting is neither did Asheville in the 1920s. This is the actual city plan, and they specifically call out that they want the residential district to provide single and two-family houses, which we just legalized again. They wanted the planners to keep a non-complicated zoning ordinance. And under this plan, up until about 1925, there were no minimum lot widths, there were no minimum lot sizes, there were no minimum setbacks. Durham's doing the same thing. They don't have a minimum lot width in their Rd code. That's the final takeaway. Minimum lot widths are contributing to inflated lot sizes and complicating the ability for anything other than a large single-family home to be built.

There we go.

That concludes my presentation. Thank you all very much.

To discuss it's an interesting jumping off point in perspective. I think one thing that struck me is, you know, as we heard with the in the lead up to eliminating minimum parking requirements. there's the requirement and then there's what will be built. And through excellent staff analysis, we saw that even without minimum parking requirements, parking will be built. And I think the corollary in your presentation is, There's minimum lot size and then medium. And so our minimum lots, which in some districts do seem oversized, are actually facilitating true lot sizes that are oftentimes significantly larger than that. That's, I think, an interesting takeaway for me. We focus a lot on the number in the Udo. But the actual reality of lot sizes is a different story, and and what development pattern that and you know, facilitate. So just kind of underscores for me that lot size and with their areas that, you know, zoning text amendment. could correct for, you know, not that we're putting anything out there today, but curious what others think or would like to see more of as this kind of evolves.

I think jumping off from that, Commissioner Bell, I have one question. Did you see, do you know what the ratio was in the slide where you're showing the lot size versus the median built? Was there a consistent ratio across the districts?

It was pretty consistently close to twice, like double the size. It's not uniform. There's some like variability, but it's broadly like that area.

I think that's just an interesting observation.

And when you say twice, is this twice in Asheville or are you seeing that twice everywhere? I'm just wondering if some of it has to do with Topography. Topography, the nature of the land.

I think that would require, I would have to do analysis beyond astral, but yeah, the scope of what I did was just astral, so that's the only part I can speak to.

Did you look at any comparison cities that were mountain towns?

I mean, I could. I think that'd be the next step. That's why I brought in the Pittsburgh example. It is mountainous. I don't have a direct data point for how all their zoning districts are lining up in comparison to ours. But in the 1920s, it was at least somewhat similar in trend.

Yeah, one thing that isn't very kind of problematic in an analytical approach to what you get when you design the rules a certain way. I think it is worth naming, and we'll have next on our agenda a discussion about our annual report and the 2024 annual report that we did. One of our goals was looking at eliminating exclusionary zoning measures. So it's pretty clear the correlation between minimum lot sizes being embedded in zoning ordinances and an effort. at exclusion this was an intentional exclusion it's not just we've resulted in fewer starter homes but across the country we've seen particularly troubling trend in the middle of the century at excluding people based on race through minimum loss right size this is a an extension of explicitly racial restrictive covenants that are of course no longer legal There's another dimension that I hadn't been aware of until more recently that many cities enacted large minimum lot sizes to prevent starter homes with the idea that young families with children are through minimum lot sizes, small minimum lot sizes, not paying the property taxes to sort of pay for the services required and they would be sort of a public dependency. So there's a lot of kind of troubling history. I'm not saying that that is the intent of preserving minimum lot sizes here. We've come a long way from those historical reasons for their existence, but I think as part of our correction in the long-term UDO rewrite, having that lens and framework is important. It seems like there's some room for improvement on lot size and width to facilitate just more buildable lots. You've analyzed.

I would agree. Well, and then one point, let me see if I can pull it up really quick. But one caveat I actually did want to point out on the, I think, the slide. Um, this is actually, I think this, uh, the reality is probably much more bleak, I think, than like the data suggests here, because these are all surviving homes that were currently existing that were built during these decades. But, um, I don't have a data set of the total housing stock that was built during the 1920s. Uh, but I would assume because of given how many are currently existing that are classified as start homes, that the number is much, much higher. Yeah, to your point about the regulations have been that the trend line here is pretty obviously downward. So just food for thought.

Can you go to the next slide? I think, did you? Yeah, so this is in the last 10 years where, oh no, this is the full universe of starter homes.

Correct, yeah, full.

Do you have the recent data on what districts those smaller square footage homes have been built in?

It wouldn't be hard to pull, but I don't have it off the top of my head.

Okay. I was curious because I know that this city, maybe staff can correct me, was it 2017 that minimum lot sizes were reduced in some districts?

I can't recall.

I'm pretty sure it was like RM6 at least. Right. There have been reductions made in the past, and I think it would be interesting if we could pull data I mean, on a couple of different fronts, you mentioned data around the cost of new homes built, sold after, built upon new lots created under reduced lot sizes, for example. But even just looking at the number of subdivisions or new parcels created under reductions, you know, I think could be interesting, even if that's not necessarily a proxy for a new home, even considering like how many new parcels were created after that change in legislation would be interesting to see.

Yeah, and I did go to the Planning and Zoning Commission on October 4th, 2017. I would suspect it went to council shortly thereafter.

Yeah, do you remember, does it say what districts that was affecting?

Yes, so RS2 went from 20,000 to 16,000. RS4 went from 10,000 to 8,000. RS8 went from 5,000 to 4,000. RM6 went from 7,000 to 6,000. RM8 went from 5,000 to 4,000. And RM16 stayed at 2,500.

yeah there could be some interesting data pulled sort of after that. For parcels and homes sold and are the size of homes built on. Those reduced lot sizes.

And then, Commissioner cycles point it'd be kind of interesting to understand. I put it out some cities that have reduced last license, but it would be also curious like what exactly the numbers of. Startups that were built in these other places that are like me on this initiative already. yeah I think would be yeah that would be like a next step other things i'm interested in.

Another question I had was looking, you just had an interesting comparison, I think, between sort of the profit margin that you extrapolated relative to the value of the land versus the value of the sale of the house. Can you speak a little bit more to the data that you pulled behind that? Yeah, so when you had the two bar charts of sort of like the value of the land versus the value of the sale of the home, the property overall, I guess,

Yeah.

You sort of drew the comparison saying you thought the profit margin could be preserved if you made the lot size smaller and built a smaller house on it.

Sure.

Can you just speak to how you did that analysis?

Yeah, and again, it's completely conceptual. It's just, but this was the... Well, I'll start by saying one place that has reduced lot sizes for new builds would be the state of Texas has done this. As across the state, I think that if you're building a new home in Texas, the minimum lot size is 2,500 square feet. You're not allowed to go more than that. But that was their running logic, was that basically you just give yourself more flexibility. It's not saying that profit margins are always going to be large, or you're going to make a lot of money building a house. But it just gives more flexibility to where the cost margins are. Because if you're always going to have to buy land that's like 5,000 square feet, and they put a house on it, The incentive, yeah, is always going to be to build a bigger house, unless the costs are just overall or less. We can't make cheaper land, but we can regulate to have less land necessary.

And then the kind of end result of that is taking property that is currently just taxed at land value and it becomes additional tax revenue through creation of new built upon area you know it's not just excess land but all of a sudden because a new home that's a new property taxpayer that can support all the other public needs of property tax so i think that you know this is helpful analysis behind the value and importance of lot sizes to me. I think the question that we'll have to wrestle with staff and feedback from council is what seems attainable in the near term and what seems kind of appropriate in the near term while there is a more holistic rewrite going on. There's also been efforts at the state level to introduce state legislation that hasn't passed that would eliminate minimum lot sizes but have cities replace them with a, you know, go back to sort of the density calculation. So our districts, RS2 was two units an acre at one point, and the state's draft legislation in both the House and the Senate, which has not been adopted, would require cities to go back to that in lieu of a minimum lot size. So it'll be kind of interesting to see what the state does in the upcoming session.

Actually, yeah. And on that point, I would be curious, that seems like it echoes what Durham is doing with their density calculation here is that it's a for every, you know, 1250 square feet, you get one unit. I don't know if that's an incorrect interpretation of what the proposed state law would be. But it's interesting that those are the kind of the method or the approach that they're taking.

yeah i think my understanding is just to transition to a units per acre in every residential district instead of lot size as i understand not dictating you could have one unit an acre you know but i think they uh there's just become a you know it makes it more clear for people how do you measure that though like Right, you know I guess the state would be requiring that in the zoning ordinance for every municipality not so far as to can have. A minimum lot size of 16,000 instead would say two units an acre.

But I guess like. If an acre covers multiple parcels, how do you measure. You know what I mean?

Six-tenths of an acre.

And you take half of one, and there's three houses on that side of the acre versus not on the – I mean, it's sort of impossible to measure that, no?

We'll see. It could be very challenging.

I think it's more confusing than less is my point. Yeah. Why the state is working on it.

That's why the state is working on it.

Right, right.

As always, I want to add that for me, it's really important to see data on the affordability. So in your Austin example, I don't know the numbers specifically, but I think half of sales price of a home in Austin is still expensive and unaffordable to most folks. And I don't know that we've seen data from Durham to show that these kinds of changes have resulted in affordability when we're talking about residents at 80% of area median income or below or even 60%. So I just feel like I always have to say that when we have these conversations. For now that's really important and a guiding principle in how we approach these changes because supply is not the only answer and we can't talk about affordability and only talk about supply. It's really important to talk about other solutions.

I think that's a really important point. I appreciate you bringing up Commissioner Zujewski. In my mind, what it could allow for is lowering the subsidy gap. And so right now in the city of Asheville, in order to accommodate an affordable sale, there's a massive subsidy required. And so by kind of reducing the amount that needs to be subsidized, in an environment where there's fewer and fewer resources to subsidize that house. But there's strong interplay that needs to be looked at between.

Right, and I absolutely agree. That is the work that I do day to day. And we are putting in 200,000, 250,000 per single family home of that quote unquote subsidy. So there will still need to be support outside of the market to ensure affordability. And I want to make sure that that doesn't get lost. And then the other thing that we see, again, we're selling a home right now, a single family home down the street in the East End neighborhood. The value of that land If it were slightly reduced, the reduction in value of that land doesn't make enough of a dent to make it affordable because there's already such a high gap. So just to me, very important points to analyze as we go forward.

to that last thing you said i do want to just reiterate and thank you all for this discussion because this is completely the intention was just a starting point all of you are very intelligent and have a lot of insight on a lot of points that i have blind spots on so i just really appreciate this discussion and started the conversation thank you any other things that we should kind of keep in mind as we move forward

yeah comment um from myself commissioner bell so i think what's on my mind and what's on many of our minds is this being a really critical moment um because we're about to start the udo real right we're about to launch into this multiple year process and i think there's the fear or at least the desire to really talk about is it possible that we could make one of some of these changes before so it's not trapped in the three-year process or or so um be possible I really I want to be realistic about staff's time and the amount of Work to go into this type of evaluation. Like I don't take that lightly But I really would like to see that we could Do some analysis and possibly make some of these changes before we're really stuck in such a big process And I think that's why Commissioner Ancelotti was bringing this up today and you know why it was just discussed at council. We're like, oh there's this little way we could make Make some progress here

Totally agree, Commissioner Bell, and I think that while there's certainly a need for some public engagement, some deeper analysis of perspective impacts, the beauty of this seems to be a really clean-sounding text amendment instead of a I mean, you know, thresholds was a bear, right? Getting the complexity of that. The staff did a really amazing job synthesizing. But this one, you know, feels to me at least on the text very simple. But no less important to have a lot of thought, intention, analysis, engagement to make sure we get it. I'm not going to say right, but better than status quo. Your words. I would love to capture some of the momentum to do something on minimum lot sizes so that it operationalizes the text amendments that were approved last week, in my mind. Thank you Commissioner Anzalito and more to come once we have properly vetted information through staff.

Would the next step be for staff to evaluate or bring to us the level of effort it would take? What would be the next step to even evaluate if this was possible?

so um the next step uh concrete step is the hcd meeting on september 15th where the rs2 and rs4 topic will be considered probably some discussion of lot sizes in there as well um i think we'll need some direction from from council about their priorities in the short term. And, you know, department and city leadership are going to have to evaluate the feasibility and, you know, the balancing of any amendments vis-a-vis the comp plan UDO projects and where that's tracking. So, yeah, there's more discussion and strategy on that to come probably at higher levels. And then we'll get some directives from there.

Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. With regards to us to that conversation and hearing some subset of council direction on that. I think the fundamental question for me is, is there a utility of 16,000 minimum square foot lots? in in the city of asheville with 35 foot front setbacks 10 foot side setbacks 25 rear setbacks like is that true to a development pattern that you know is uh reflective of our comp plan even um It's interesting. The other thing that I'm sure will be part of that HCD meeting is where RS2 exists. And the city is quite a bit. It's sort of on the periphery of residential areas and predominantly North Asheville. There's also some interesting pockets around the intersection of Patton Avenue and New Leicester Highway right behind highway business is RS2.

What?

You know, we can't solve all of the problems, but at least highlighting where we are frozen into these excessively, you know, size 30 acre lots that are prohibiting more housing from being built is I look forward to that conversation. Any last thoughts before we move on to our last item.

Just thank you for doing that work and analysis, it's a lot, so I appreciate it.

And thank you to staff, too, for allowing us kind of space in this. I know it was maybe uncomfortable, but, you know, it's, I think, an important friction to kind of balance, so really appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion. Last up, we have a discussion concerning the Planning and Design Commission's annual report. As I mentioned earlier and I circulated, our 2024 annual report was the last one that we submitted in January 2025. It's waived as a requirement of this body, but given that significant time has passed and we're in this kind of important moment prepping for UDO rewrite, it seemed like a good opportunity to establish some renewed goals and recommendations at a high level as well as kind of summarize the accomplishments that this body has done as part of the use regulatory process for the city just uh you know putting it here for an open-ended discussion of like things that we would like to incorporate when i look back at our 2024 annual report kind of the one Stark thing that is, you know, has not yet happened in a meaningful way is updating the flood protection ordinance. I know we had kind of a small update post to lean just to clarify the two feet above free board. But you know, so that's one thing I'm just kind of throwing out there when I look back at what the intentions of what next where that feels like an unfulfilled speech to scratch, but anything else?

Thank you for raising that. You know, it's just as it's a little little bit of heartache on my part, and I'm sure other people's parts to sit and watch all the communities around us update their flood development ordinances. Well, while we stood static. So for me, that would be a priority moving forward is to to continue to march down that path and not forget what happened and keep in mind that the potential for something like that to happen again is pretty high likelihood within the timeframe of the average mortgage.

Our informal work group, we haven't met much in the last year really because I think we identified, Commissioner Cyclone and myself identified lots of analyses and comparisons of other communities, lots of work to be done to help set us on a course or develop some recommendations. And we realized that's all going to be done during the UDO update. And as much as I want to jump into that right now, we are doing this big update in a holistic way, and we really should wait. That's how I feel. And I have hopes that when we get into there, we're going to really take a hard look at all the ways that we can make our community more safe. And this is something I think about every single day is how our policies set up. certain groups to be at a much higher risk, and how most people just don't have a good understanding of their exposure, and generally it's hard to wrap our hands around risk, and so the city and our leaders need to lead on that front and make sure the right information is in people's hands. So I certainly wanna see big revisions and efforts around evacuation and not just the building requirements, but other programmatic elements that are essential to moving towards a more resilient Asheville.

And it may not just be limited to flood risk.

Yeah, landslides and many others. And this is something that Sky is really taking a lead on. I'll just go ahead and plug. We've been developing a WNC Know Your Risk mapper that is really for the public to look at your parcel and look at publicly available data sets to see where landslides, flooding, fire overlap. And that is a first of its kind, which is kind of mind-boggling. But I hope that that will be a first tool. in the toolbox to tackle this really big issue that is only gonna get worse for all of our communities. I mean, we're seeing it every day in other places.

Thank you for that. So yeah, I can kind of summarize some notes. And what my goal for this is that I'll work with staff on summarizing what we have done in the intervening time and then sketch out some of the things that we discussed and bring it back perhaps next meeting for final review before we submit it on to council. The other thing I think it's important to recognize are the wins. So when this was written, we hadn't yet gotten level one, two, and three thresholds heard by council. So great job, everyone, and staff, and council, on getting something done there. eliminating residential parking requirements it's now all parking requirements thank you state of north carolina for that assist and then there were some updates to flag lots cottages um

So yeah, there's, there's been a lot.

And then, you know, the duplex ADU standards, you know, weren't even on the radar yet, but part of them to some middle report. So there has been a lot of great work as well as some important projects that have come through and several, you know, large impactful projects that are on deck to come before us. So That'll get all summarized and we can take a look. But any other, so resilience certainly still a priority. Other thoughts on recommendations or policy framework? We're not really using this document to give specific, like we wanna see this exact zoning change, but any other frameworks that you would like to talk through, present to council?

I remember there was a lot of discussion around better communication with the public, knowing things that we still echo today, but I think there has been a lot of improvement in terms of understanding when the meetings are being held and what the sentiments were. I think there could be more improvement there. There's always room for more improvement with meaningful public engagement and making sure all the voices are heard. So I think somewhere that should be in there that that's still a major goal.

yeah certainly and i think the um updates we have at the top of the meeting summarizing kind of council action um that's been really helpful just as sort of a feedback loop um and so i really appreciate staff's work on that commissioner faircloth had always been beating the drum on was um permitting data that's one that maybe we you know i know that the city was transitioning to a new platform and so we kind of like Paused on that for the time being, but making good data-informed recommendations is always, I think, a priority of this body.

Is this a good opportunity to mention other ideas that I wasn't potentially involved in in 2024? Two things that I've been thinking quite a bit about. One is just how we integrate with economic development overall. You know, I think this has come up in a couple of different projects that have been presented to us or potentially presented to us about just, I think how we are, I don't have a clear sense of how the city provides economic development services to potential development projects, whether that's a commercial or industrial project in particular is what I'm thinking of. But the kinds of services that I'm thinking of are, Those could historically be something like, you know, a tax incentive or something to help a business relocate here, but they can also provide services like helping to navigate the permitting process or helping to facilitate conversations between all of the various departments like, you know, DOT or, you know, City transportation county transfer, you know, like projects that are on the border or, you know, these kinds of things and I think given the complexity of the ordinance, especially as it stands right now. and the many stakeholders that can be involved and that you have to try to wrangle to get a project to work, I think that can be a really invaluable service. And I know there is, to some extent, something like that happening, but I don't have a great sense of what that looks like or if we can get more visibility into that process or how we can just try to ensure that we're you know, providing support to, you know, businesses and industries that want to come here and help to grow our economy. And the other thought that I had, so that's one for me personally, I think it's just like how we can try to, And then alternatively, there's sort of a conversation there too around just ensuring that our land use policies ensure, you know, that we can have a strong workforce and, you know, have the appropriate, you know, do we have enough industrial land, you know, these kinds of considerations like in terms of our, as we write the UDL, I think having economic development at the forefront of how we're thinking The second thing is just like how we're collecting and providing data and feedback between land use and transportation planning. I know that happens to some extent. Again, I think this is not something that I'm always privy to, but I think the example that came forth with like You know the caribou commons project, which ended up not being approved, but was that you know it had been clear that the community had been asking for like a sidewalk along this bus route in this community for something like 25 years. It had never been. uh funded it was not currently allocated in any capital improvement plan so it really wouldn't be funded for the next call it decade it sounded like um and just like the way in which we can you know that isn't an example that was approved so it might not necessarily be the best one to point to but if we have projects where we're seeing the real need for transportation improvements or even if we take a look collectively over the course of say a year, how many units we're approving, housing units or businesses or whatever it might be in certain areas, is there a way that can be, that data can be collected and flagged for various transportation agencies that are allocating funding. That might not just be the city, but can we share that with the MPO? Can we share that with the DOT for their planning purposes? And conversely, getting more... I think I missed a transportation presentation recently, too, at the meeting I missed. But, you know... Conversely, I think that's great and doing more of that where we're hearing from them like this is where we're investing dollars in the future so that we can think about how to incorporate that into our land use planning efforts as well.

I totally agree. I think that's critical and it will be useful as we go through the comp plan update process. I know that's maybe not a huge scope within the prospective consultant's purview, but looking at those preferred growth scenarios that are outlined in the comp plan and kind of updating them in alignment with transportation need could be really useful. So yeah, I think that's a good upcoming goal that we should be plugged into.

I'm excited about the new conversations we've had about anti-displacement and land use and so just want to celebrate us for that and encourage us to continue talking about the link between land use and anti-displacement.

Absolutely.

No, i'd like to talk with you about accomplishments as we sort of form this and and go in the same style right now. I think it's just really important that we take notes and hear all of this and really flesh that out. But I mean that seems to be the bulk of it.

or support and involvement with the upcoming comp plan video project that'd be a great goal for the coming year for sure that yeah i really appreciate kind of like the lead-up communication and i think fleshing out the role of planning and zoning commission as a body will be really helpful um not just to disseminate information about you know public events but also like to know where we are in the process. So I really appreciate that being an evergreen agenda item. And yeah, look forward to more on that. I'll turn it in next August, so that's for you all.

I do want to add an item. This is Commissioner Bell. So let me see if I can articulate this. I think it really is connecting to what you're saying, Commissioner Broll, with transportation, needing transportation folks to be involved in the conversation in many cases. I pose this larger need for looking at our infrastructure and the barriers in our infrastructure to getting to our missing middle housing goals. This was a question I posed to a staff member when they were presenting. the findings from that study, and I asked, is there anything in the study talking about how we meet the gap of our infrastructure capacity and other things, and the answer was no, there's not. Maybe there's some other conversations I'm not aware of, but I do think that there is a huge need to think about how do we build out roads in our unopened right of ways. We have a lot of unopened right of ways and in my cases it's cost prohibitive for a small developer to build that road to be able to access that lot or do that subdivision. This is the case in my neighborhood. If we want these small incremental housing infill properties with local developers, that is a huge burden. And I think as a citywide, we're going to have to take a look at the investment needed to open up these parcels for development. And that may mean taking out a bond. It might mean some sort of tax increment financing. It could probably, it will take a really creative solution, but I don't think it's just going to I don't think in this case we can just say, well, the developer's going to have to pay for that. That works in some cases. I think it's shown that it's preventing people from developing these parcels. I've seen that with my own eyes, that people are just like, nope, that's too much of a headache for me. And part of that's our typography. It makes building more expensive in some places. So in my case, I'm talking specifically about these, about investments for roads. I think the same goes, in some cases for extensions of water lines, extensions of other utilities where we just don't really have a path forward. And the other layer is in places where we have infrastructure, but it needs to be at a higher capacity. Stormwater probably is the biggest one, but also traffic and roads. It just doesn't seem like we have a path to really look at this holistically, evaluate is there truly a capacity issue here or there. And the flip side of that analysis is identifying areas that do have the capacity and are really perfect for development right now. And I think there's a lot to be done there and that will help open more doors for affordable housing.

Commissioner Cycle, I agree with that 100%. Passing on the infrastructure improvements to the developers, it's just not always feasible, and I think we're losing a lot of development that way, and it's not like the city right now can foot it either, right? Right, I know, but like finding out where those gaps are and having a comprehensive plan moving forward to try to solve that problem instead of everybody kind of being like, I can't afford it and I can't afford it. I'm working on one right now that I'm trying to get pencil out. According to transportation, the road has to be realigned and it's not just to get access to the parcels and it's not the developer's fault that the road is aligned at the intersection the way it is. You know, but, you know, so I agree with that. And to Commissioner Burrell's point about greasing the skids on development, I did want to, I think as we talk about all these things, I think we need to keep shouting out the things that are working, right? Because it's important to keep that positive energy. And I just wanted to give a shout out to Granier Miser with the City of Asheville. who on that same project where I'm trying to get this thing penciled is helping me navigate and putting me in touch with all the right people. And so I don't know, that's the first time I've ever had that assistance from the city of Asheville. So I was actually pleasantly surprised. I wanted to shout her out on that one. That's awesome. Yeah. But yeah, so I wanted to give a shout out, but I wanted to echo the infrastructure concern.

Great discussion. Always a privilege to sit amongst you smart people. I appreciate staff's work to facilitate a meaningful amount of reform and new projects in the last year and a half. So I look forward to presenting that in a report. So I'll put this stuff together, work with staff. We'll come back with a draft that people can review and finalize. Next month. All right. That's it. Our next meeting is scheduled for October 7th at 5 o'clock right here in the first floor North Conference Room at City Hall. Before we adjourn, one thing that will be on October, I believe, is our annual officer elections, according to our rules of procedure. So just putting it out there, be thinking about whether you yourself would like to be the privileged holder of the gavel. And with that, we are adjourned.