Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Mr. Chairman, we're ready.

Good afternoon. My name is Jason Grubbs. I'm the chair of the City-County Planning Board. Welcome to the September 10th meeting of the Planning Board. At this time, would you please stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Today's meeting is being broadcast live by Winston-Salem TV Digital Media and will be rebroadcast at 10 a.m. Friday and again at 4 o'clock Sunday afternoon. Additionally, an on-demand recording will be available on the City of Winston-Salem's YouTube channel. Our first order of business today will be the consent agenda containing items for which the petitioner is requesting withdrawal or continuance or items for which the planning staff has recommended approval and no one has signed up to speak in opposition. For our public hearings today, each side will have a total of 12 minutes. There is no rebuttal period. Once the public hearing is closed and the board goes into work session, no one is permitted to speak unless the planning board asks them a question. Items under Section B of our agenda will require final action by the elected body, either the Winston-Salem City Council or the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners. As such, votes taken today are recommendations which are considered by the elected body during their review of the requests. For general use zoning requests, the Planning Board must consider the full range of uses allowed in the zoning district being requested. The petitioner may not refer to a specific intended use of the property. For special use zoning requests, the petitioner must identify the intended use or uses of the site and give specific details on how the site will be developed. If you're addressing the planning board today, before you begin your remarks, please give us your name, address, and zip code for the record. Additionally, and this reminder applies to both staff and board members, as well as speakers from the floor, to ensure that our digital media systems properly capture your remarks, please make sure you are speaking directly into the microphone. The first item on the consent agenda is approval of the minutes of the August 13, 2026 meeting. Is there a motion?

Motion to approve.

Motion to second. Any discussion? All in favor, signify. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimous. Before we get into the planning items to be considered today, we'd like to recognize Mr. Steve Smotherman, who recently retired from the City-County Planning Department. We wanna recognize him for his many years of service to our community. And at this time, I'd like to recognize Vice Chair, Salvador Patino, who will present a special resolution from our board. So Steve, if you wanna come on up to the podium for us.

A resolution honoring Steven Smotherman upon occasion of his retirement. whereas Steven Smotherman has served the city of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, North Carolina from June 19th, 2006 to August 31st, 2026. And whereas Mr. Smotherman holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from North Carolina State University and a master's degree in regional planning from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. And whereas he distinguished himself with membership in the American Institute of Certified Planners. And whereas Mr. Smotherman served as staff to the city county planning board and comprehensive planning and committee character team in the department of planning and development services. And whereas he assisted with the comprehensive planning efforts and led area plans including the South Suburban Area Plan Update, the West Suburban Area Plan Update, the Southeast Forsyth County Area Plan Update, the Smith Reynolds Airport Whitaker Park Strategic Area Plan, and whereas he assisted with the zoning cases and completed multiple text amendments to the unified development ordinances. And whereas Mr. Smotherman was a tireless champion for economic development projects and led department efforts on the development trends report, quarterly and annual development dashboard reports and compiled information on industrial land uses to develop the industrial opportunity areas report with a city and county. And whereas he established long lasting relationship with and provided excellent customer service to the development community and citizens of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. Now, therefore, it be resolved that the City-County Planning Board of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, North Carolina, pauses to recognize and thank Steven Smotherman for his 20 years of outstanding service to the citizens of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County and wishes him health and happiness in the future. be it further resolved that this resolution be made a part of the public record and a copy of this resolution be furnished to Stephen Smotherman.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

No problem. Don't sit down yet. Customarily, I think we always give all the members of the board a moment to be recognized to make any comments. Steve, I just want to say thank you on behalf of this board and this department for all of your hard work. I will never be able to look at a development dashboard without kind of seeing your face over to the side narrating. You know, you're... The nickname, I think, is Captain of Industry because you were such a big proponent of industrial development and a good steward of what little area we have for that. So thank you very much.

I appreciate your protection of purple on all of our maps, all of our industrial places, and your tireless efforts to make things as helpful to the development environment as possible. But we really missed the quizzes. The development quizzes are something that's really going to be difficult to not have around. But thank you for your service, Steve. Thank you.

And I would jump back into what the chairman just said. And even though I don't think it's appropriate to make a motion, I would certainly suggest we rename those reports Steve Says.

Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, if, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

I just want to say, I'll kind of tag onto what he said about Steve Says, and the way in which he always presented information, being accurate and confident and very pleasant and enjoyable to listen to, always made us look forward to hearing from you, in addition to just the information. And I didn't know the NC State to UNC connection, but that kind of explains it.

That might explain some things, yeah.

Well, thank you for your years of service. When I was on planning staff, you were always very helpful to me and showing me things and telling me about the planning way. And you've definitely been very helpful to us here on the planning board. You will be missed. I'm sure you won't miss any Carolina Panthers games. I already see the hair is ready for game time. So enjoy retirement. Thank you. You're here.

Mr. Chairman, if I could just, Steve, I've already said some remarks for you, but I really appreciate all your years of service. And for those that don't know, I'll expand it a little bit more, but the triad has lost between 75 and 80 years of experience in the planning profession with both you and your wife retiring within the last six months. So again, it's going to be a big void to fill, but we really appreciate all of your efforts and yours too.

Thank you very, very much. I'll make one comment. When I started in High Point, I actually had a rotary phone with multiple lines that the button would light up when you got a phone call, and I thought I was hot stuff then. So things have come a long way since then. But thank you very, very much. I've enjoyed my time in Winston. And as has been noted, you know, I've got my hair partially Panther blue. I'm going to get it recolored again for my 50th high school reunion. So everyone knows where my allegiance lies.

Certainly better than state red. Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Before a full-on fracas breaks out, I'm going to call on Mr. Mark Allred to take us through the consent agenda.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. All right, so we do have a couple of automatic continuances to October 8th. It's item B4, it's case W3703, and item C2, PBR 20-26-16 are getting automatic continuances to October 8th. We also have a automatic continuous in November the 12th for item B6. This is case F1675, and it's just located just east of Clemmons. So this one is no longer on consent. We do have opposition. So our first case on consent is item B2. This is case W3701, which is the First Baptist Church of Stanleyville. It's rezoning from RS9 to institutional and public, which is 2.1 acres between Virginia Lake Road and University Parkway on the north side of Ziegler Road. Let me get my laser pointer. All right, you can see from the property, it's generally flat and clear with existing recreation uses along the property and a single family house that's up here on the northeast portion of the property. The site is bordered by three streets, including a boulevard and University Parkway and a thoroughfare and Ziegler Road. Well, this is the North Suburban Area Plan does recommend office use. You can see here in the light pink. Low intensity institutional uses with land use impacts similar to office development and is consistent with 42045's emphasis on neighborhood serving uses. For those reasons, staff does recommend approval.

Any questions for staff? No one has signed up to speak in opposition to this matter. Is there anyone here opposed to this recommendation? Seeing no one, I'll declare the public hearing closed. What's the pleasure of the board?

I move that the planning board find that the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan.

Second. Motion by Mr. Farabee, second by Mr. Patino. Any discussion? All in favor, sign of aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? That's unanimous.

I move that the planning board recommend approval of W3701. Second.

Motion by Mr. Farabee, second by Mr. Patino. Any discussion? All in favor, sign of aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? That's unanimous as well.

All right, so B3 is also off consent. And so is B5. So our next case on consent is item C1. This is PBR 202615, Creekside Phase 2. This is 160 unit multifamily and GB zoning. It's 8.1 acres at the northwest intersection of West 32nd Street and Whitaker Park Drive. Very popularly known as The Grounds as part of that project. The site plan does propose 160-unit multifamily development with a density approximately of 19.75 units per acre. The development includes two four-story buildings, one century-located clubhouse. The site has strong pedestrian and urban design components, including the extension of West 32nd Street, sidewalks, internal pedestrian connections, and a common rec area. There we go. The building elevations are a particular strength of the proposal. The buildings incorporate varied rooftop, I'm sorry, roof lines and changes in building height, massing and material, giving a more visual interest in creating a character that resembles a downtown or urban mixed use development. So you can kind of see how it looks like this could be a different developer that builds this. And then like if a downtown, how it attached to sides. So yeah. I'm sorry. So besides that, the elevations, the site plan does meet all UD requirements and staff does recommend approval.

Any questions for staff?

I just have one question. Yeah. This is in addition to what's currently being built, right?

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Correct. This is an expansion of the apartment. Oh.

Yes. Thank you, Kirk. We do have one change in condition. It's not... The condition didn't change, its location changed. It's a change in condition timing. So if you see down here where it says developer must improve West 32nd Street and your packet, that's underneath prior to issuance of building permits. The reason is the right-of-way will be actively used for construction vehicles and this is pretty heavy construction equipment. So they don't wanna build the street, the curb and gutter and then ruin it while they're building the building. So we needed to move that down to below prior to issuance of occupancy permits. So when I get a, if y'all decide to motion for approval, then I would need a amendment changing that condition.

Okay. I move that planning board approve PBR 202615 with the change in condition.

Second. Motion by Mr. Farabee, second by Mr. Patino. Any discussion? All in favor, sign of aye.

Aye. Any opposed?

That's unanimous.

All right.

Next is item C3. This is PBR 202617. This is a North Point Academy. This is a private school and limited business zoning. This is in 6.59 acres of the southeast of the Indiana Avenue and Home Road intersection. You see, this plan adds a private elementary school to the existing daycare center that's on the site. The school is proposed for 76 students while the existing daycare serves 125 children. Site plan meets all UDA requirements and staff recommends approval.

Any questions for staff? Is there a motion?

I move that the planning board approve PBR 2026-17. Second.

Motion by Mr. Farabee, second by Mr. Patino. Any discussion? All in favor signify.

Aye.

Any opposed? That's unanimous.

Mr. Chairman, we'll now go back to case B1 and hear from Michelle O'Brien on staff.

Good evening. This is case W3695. The petitioner is State Employees Credit Union and this is the Meadowlark Self Storage Facility. The site is approximately 3.14 acres located on the west side of Meadowlark Drive, south of Rosewind Lane and east of Beechamp Road. The petitioners are requesting a special use district rezoning from MUS mixed use special use district to GBS general business special use district. The site is located in growth management area three suburban neighborhood. From the location map, you can see that the properties to the north and to the east are zoned MUS, and the properties to the west are zoned PBS, RS9, and NOS, and then properties to the south along Country Club Road are zoned Highway Business and Highway Business Special Use. From the aerial, you can tell that from the north, MUS zone district is the reserve at Brookberry Farm, it's an apartment complex. And then to the east is currently undeveloped land, both are part of the MUS zoning. To the west, the properties are zoned PBS, RS9, NOS. The NOS district is vacant and has been vacant since the rezoning in 2000. The PBS district is currently a flooring company, and then the house next to it, I believe, is part of that ownership, but it is a larger RS9 track. It does front on four public streets. You have Meadowlark, Rosewin, Redtail Lane, and Buchamp Road. The West Suburban Area Plan Update recommends this parcel for office use. You can see here, however, it is surrounded to the east and the south by commercial property, or recommended commercial property. This is looking north on Meadowlark Drive. The subject property is to the left. Looking south on Meadowlark Drive, property is to the right. East on Meadowlark Drive, subject property is to the rear and that's the undeveloped land that was zoned MUS. This is looking west on Meadowlark Drive into the subject property. This is south on Rosewin Lane, the subject property is to the right. You can see kind of towards the rear of this photo is where Meadowlark Drive is. And then west on Rosewin Lane, subject property. This is looking east along Rosewin Lane at the reserve of Brookray Farms apartment complex and the property is just to the rear of this. This is west on Redtail Lane, subject properties to the left. Looking south on Beauchamp Road, subject properties to the left. Looking north on Beauchamp Road, subject properties to the right. And then this is the existing single family home that I was talking about in the earlier slide. This is just across from the subject property on Butchamp Road. The proposed site plan shows a two-story building totaling over 97,000 square feet. It is centrally located on the site with direct access from Rosewin Lane just across from the access to the apartment complex. It does include sidewalks along Meadowlark and Rosewind. There's one stormwater control device proposed to the southwest portion of the site to manage runoff generated by the development. There is public water and sewer available to the site as well. The elevations depict a building incorporating stone veneer, fiber cement panel, siding and trim, cedar shake siding, standing seam metal roofing, and window and facade treatments that provide architectural articulation. And then this is another image of the elevations showing the southwest and western elevations. In summary, the proposed self-storage facility is expected to generate substantially fewer vehicle trips than the bank that was previously approved for the site. The bank that was approved was estimated to have roughly 1,200 trips per day, whereas this is estimated to have 244 trips per day, so substantially less traffic. And I will say that the bank that was proposed did have access off Meadowlark and Rosewind. And this is just gonna be off Rosewind. The West Suburban Area Plan update supports locating goods and services near where people live and work. The proposed commercial use would provide that additional service near established residential development. And Ford 2045 encourages infill development in areas that are served by existing infrastructure. Staff does recommend approval of this rezoning and the site plan does meet all of UDO requirements. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

Questions for staff. All right. As we open the public hearing, just as a reminder, each side has 12 minutes, and prior to beginning your remarks, please state your name, address, and zip code for the record. Signed up to speak in support on this matter, we've got Wes Benfer, Steve Causey, and Daniel Dinsbeer. So I'll let you all divide your time up however you'd like.

We've swapped the order up just a little bit. Steve Causey, good afternoon, Chairman, members. Steve Causey, Allied Design, 4720 Kestrel Mill Road, Winston-Salem, 27103. Also here on behalf of the petitioner are Wes Benfer and Daniel Dinsbeard. Really not a lot, I can add to what Michelle said, maybe just emphasize a few points, but with the guidance of staff, we prepared the plan before you, it's much different than our first version, I think dramatically improved, thanks to some input they had. She mentioned the reduction in traffic, just wanna emphasize that, substantially less traffic, as you're aware. We've got stormwater control measure proposed for the southern corner. We suspect it'll be something like a sand filter or a bioretention cell, probably not a permanent wet detention pond, shouldn't have a permanent pool. We've got sidewalks along Rosewind and Meadowlark, but again, I can't really add much to what she said, but I'd be certainly glad to answer any questions. Questions for Mr. Causey? All right, thank you. Thanks.

Good afternoon, planning board members. My name is Wes Benfer, address 1540 Silas Creek Parkway, Winston-Salem 27127. I'm here on behalf of Brookberry Farm LLC to request rezoning of this approximately three acre parcel from mixed use, special use to general business to allow for the development of a class A indoor climate controlled self storage facility. I want to start with a brief history of this property because I think it's important to understand that we're not taking a residential property and trying to introduce a commercial development into this residential area. Brookberry Farm LLC purchased this property along with the larger Brookberry Farm development in 2003. And at that time, the property was rezoned from RS-9 to mixed use special use and divided into several land bays. This particular parcel is in Land Bay 5. Land Bay 5 specified conditions for a mix of uses which included a commercial component in this portion of the development, which makes sense given this location. It has roughly 600 feet of frontage along Meadowlark Drive with access to surrounding road network and is immediately adjacent to other commercial zoning. Sheets and Walmart are directly across the intersection along with other highway business uses. There are also two parcels directly adjacent to the subject property that are zoned neighborhood office and pedestrian business. The commercial component of this land bay has simply never been developed. In 2016, the property was sold to state employees credit union for the development of a bank branch. A bank was a use allowed under the existing MUS zoning. The bank ultimately determined that the project was not viable and the property has remained vacant. There's a friendly buyer who has this property under contract and has approached us about developing a self-storage facility. By friendly, I'm referring to the buyer's willingness to work with Brookberry Farm LLC to give us virtually 100% control over the exterior design of the building. We support this use because after looking at the realistic alternatives for this property, we believe this is one of the most compatible commercial uses for this particular location. I understand that there are concerns that have been raised. They primarily involve three things, traffic, aesthetics, and that some folks would prefer to see another type of commercial use here. I'll address those. First, regarding traffic, we can all agree that Meadowlark Drive is a very congested corridor, especially during the morning and afternoon peak times, particularly during school drop off and pick up. And that is something that we've taken into serious consideration. One of the reasons we support the self storage use is because it's a very low trip generating use compared to many of the other commercial or residential uses that could potentially occupy this property. Based on the rough estimates, this facility is expected to generate between 50 to 250, 50 to 250 trips per day. with most activity occurring outside of the traditional peak congestion periods, with typical heavier activity in the evenings and on weekends. For comparison, the bank use previously proposed for this property was estimated at roughly 1,250 trips per day. A daycare, restaurant, retail establishment, or additional residential development would also generate substantially different traffic patterns including activity during the very peak periods when Meadowlark Drive is already experiencing the congestion. So while no commercial use generates zero traffic, we believe this is a particularly passive use for this location. Regarding the aesthetics, I understand when people hear self-storage, they may picture rows of metal buildings with orange roll-up doors and large blank walls. That is not what is proposed here, as you can see by some of the elevations. Can I go back? Yes. This will be a class A completely indoor climate controlled facility. There will be no outdoor storage and no exterior storage units visible from the surrounding roads. The building will utilize brick and stone along with hardy siding, cedar shake elements, and standing seam awnings, which have been designed to emulate similar building materials in Brookberry Farm. There will be significant transparency on the building's frontages while the glass is designed so that storage units will not be visible from outside. The building is also being designed around the existing topography. As you can see in the pictures, there's kind of a, there's a grade up from Meadowlark Road. See if we can find a good picture of that. Yeah, maybe not. Right, so it will be an over-under building configuration with the first floor built into the hillside. From Meadowlark Drive, the building will be visible as two stories, but from other approaches, including portions of Rosewind Drive and Beechamp Road, the building will present much more like a single-story structure. Let's see if we can go back to the example of that. how it's built into the hill here. So in some portions, it'll look like a single story building. The property is also surrounded on three sides by road frontages, so the development will have a streetscape along those frontages rather than backing directly up to surrounding residences. Additionally, there will be landscape screening similar to what has been used along Rosewind Drive and Brookberry Farm. And importantly, after hearing concerns from a nearby resident and the city of Winston-Salem's direction, we changed the proposed access from Beechamp Road to Rosewind Drive. We believe that is a better access point for the project and it keeps traffic, particularly larger vehicles, off the narrower Beechamp Road. Why not another use? Finally, there's been the question, or been a question of why doesn't somebody simply develop a restaurant, retail store, a daycare, or some other residential use? The answer is that we feel this use is not only commercially viable and generates less traffic, but is also appropriate for the neighborhood and sustainable over the long term. There's already significant retail vacancy in the surrounding area. We do not believe adding another speculative retail or restaurant building only to potentially have it sit vacant or cycle through tenants is necessarily a better outcome for this property or the surrounding community. We believe a high quality self storage facility provides supply for recurring demand while functioning as a relatively passive commercial use. It supports the continued residential development in the area without introducing the traffic intensities associated with many other potential uses. We made a genuine effort to listen to the neighborhood. We sent notices to the surrounding property owners as required by the city, sent a second round of notices to an expanded radius, held a neighborhood meeting on August 20th and had approximately 30 to 40 people attend. We heard the concerns and some of those conversations actually resulted in changes to the project, including the relocation of the access to Rosewind. We believe some of the residents would prefer that a different use be developed here and we respect that. But the question before the board is not whether everyone would choose the same use for the property. The question is whether this rezoning is appropriate for the parcel and whether the proposed use is compatible with the surroundings. This property has been planned for a commercial component since Brookberry Farm rezoning in 2003. The city's west suburban area plan also identifies this parcel for office type use rather than residential development. And we believe the proposed rezoning is consistent with that long-term vision while providing a use that is low impact, architecturally thoughtful, and substantially less traffic intensive than many of the alternatives. For those reasons, we respectfully ask that the planning board to recommend approval of the rezoning from mixed use, special use, to general business. Thank you for your time. Any questions for me?

Just one, please. Sure. We don't have it on our screen here. Oh, okay. But could you speak to, well, buffer yards on the frontage across the street from the apartments?

Yes, so do you have access to the site plan?

I do now.

Okay, perfect. Yeah, so there's a typical streetscape there. I believe that that streetscape is, and I'll ask Steve. Steve, is that like 15 feet? 10 foot, okay. And that's a loading area down there and a parking as well. We have thought about more about if we could do a... more intensive landscaping at that point to just hide that a little bit better and do better screening. It's not shown on the plan in this detail quite yet.

Thank you.

Did you consider a pedestrian business zoning as part of this effort to support some of those commercial office uses as originally intended?

I believe we were guided in the direction by staff to do general business for this use.

To allow for more.

Ms. Schwab, we felt that since what they were proposing wasn't really a use where folks would reasonably walk to, since usually you're taking your car or moving vehicles to a storage services use, we wanted to go for more of a truth in advertising perspective with zoning matching what they were asking for.

That's why I don't understand the sidewalks.

Well, if I could, I just want to address one thing just to kind of provide a little bit of context for the recommendation in the area plan. Obviously, this property in and of itself was rezoned over 23 years ago for MUS. And as you heard, the MUS in this land bay set aside a number of uses of the commercial nature that could go here. Then in 2016, state employees credit union made the decision that they wanted to basically bring in a site plan amendment, because again, it was a conceptual plan. They were coming in with a definitive design for a bank. And so that went through the approval process in 2016, over 10 years ago for the bank. If you look, if you look in your packet, the West suburban area plan update was done in 2018. What, A lot of times from a land use perspective, when we're looking at what the recommended land use for a piece of property is, we look at how it's been zoned and the process that it has gone through for the approval. So if you'll notice on that map, even though the entirety of Brookbury is a MUS project, we recognize the single family homes, we recognize the multifamily area that is out there. Well, for this particular piece of property owned by the credit union, it was approved as a bank and banks are allowed in office zoning. So we typically think of a bank as being an office use, which is hence the recommendation and the plan was for an office because that's what had just gotten approved two years ahead of time. If you look at the grand scheme of things, the MUS zoning in and of itself allows a very wide mixture of uses, but the one use that they didn't ask for when they went through the process was storage services retail. So in analyzing that, we did advise them, as Kirk alluded to, that pedestrian business is probably not the best recommendation for this because, again, it's not pedestrian in nature. So they brought it through as a GBS. To the discussion related to the sidewalks, while sidewalks probably, there aren't a lot of people that are gonna walk here, there are a lot of people that are gonna walk by here. If you look at the overall nature of Brookberry and again, connections down to the commercial node at Meadowlark and Country Club Road. So again, I just wanted to provide a little bit of context on how the recommendation in the plan ended up as an office recommendation, even though there's a very wide array of commercial uses that are allowed on there as we sit here today.

So just to confirm, under the current zoning, because we have an approved site plan, the only thing that could be permitted to go there right now is a bank or office.

Or something that would fit into the bank that they had designed on the site plan. Theoretically, you could do something else, but it would have to be... But it would have to fit that site plan. Yes. Okay. All right.

And you walked us through the varying uses that I guess were under consideration. I'm just wondering, considering the area was MUS, was there any consideration to vertically mixing uses for this space? You know, we talk about the walkability and the sidewalks. That might have been something that could have been ideal in this location.

I would say that... What I'm thinking is that you would have like a retail component on a first floor or something.

Apartment, condo, above, something like that.

We haven't really given a whole lot of thought to that. We're trying to not drive it that much traffic into this site and onto this intersection. That's why we kind of picked this use and this use solely was to do that. As far as folks walking by and like, No, I just, we really haven't entertained that too terribly much, to be honest, to answer your question.

Just asking.

And just for my own clarification, the Brookberry LLC? Yes. Is that the same as the Homeowners Association or?

No, it's the developers of Brookberry Farm, correct.

All right, any other questions for Mr. Benford? Thank you very much.

Do we have any time left to speak? I was going to ask how much time left. Three minutes, 15 seconds.

So we've also got Mr. Daniel Dinsbeer signed up. If you'd like to come on up, give us your name, address, and zip code for the record, please.

Daniel Densbier, 1540 Silas Creek Parkway, Winston 27127. Steve and Wes have covered it all, but just, I'm the developer of Brickberry Farm for Brickberry Farm LLC. And, you know, we have thought really hard about this site. And once we found that the market, it was coming back on the market, we decided, we became proactive because this was extremely important to us. We have over $100 million invested in Berry Farm, and we, like the residents, want to protect that investment. So we really have thought this was a very passive use, and the traffic was such a huge issue for us because we hear about that, as y'all have over the last few years. So we did want to be very cognitive of that. And then the other thing is, having a friendly buyer that we could control the architectural, that was massively important to us. And if that, if this, if somebody else was buying this, we would have no impact on that. And so that's why we really leaned in to get involved in this so we could make sure this residential, the building's gonna look like a residential component built, you know, with stone that we've used in Brickberry. the hardy board we've used in a brief cedar sakes review, all similar items to what we have in our development now on our homes. So that's all I really wanted to just let y'all know, happy to answer any questions about that, so.

Do you have an architectural overlay or something that would stay in perpetuity for future development of the site? In terms of that architectural or exterior?

An exterior schematic?

Yeah, that you're able to input around today.

Design guidelines.

Yeah, design guidelines, I guess, if you will, around.

Ms. Schwab, if I could answer that for you. One of the conditions of this request would be that the construction be substantially conforming to the elevation submitted as part of the project. Any significant deviation from that would require either rezoning or a site plan amendment to essentially basically go through the entire process again, since it's a site specific plan of development. So there is some certainty in place that it would have to be substantially like this.

We insist on that certainty. That's why we're involved.

And I would commend your team on the design excellence of this. It's not your normal. So thank you.

No, we appreciate the planning staff and the interdepartmental meetings that we've had have been incredibly valuable for us to guide us. And so we really appreciate the partnership with the city that Burkbury has enjoyed for the last 20 years. So we appreciate y'all guys.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dinspier. Is there anyone else signed up or would like to speak in support of this recommendation? All right. If not, we're going to shift to the opponents. We've got Yvonne Rickabaugh. If you'd come up and give us your name, address, and zip code for the record.

Hi. Yvonne Rickabaugh, 5435 Fernbank Circle, right down the road from Rosewind, where there's a subdivision, as you know, with hundreds of homes. I am an independent licensed real estate broker, and I've had my license for about 30 years, so I'm very familiar with real estate and development and things like that.

I'm also a retired military officer and a retired business person, used to be in the business of trying to make money.

I'm on the other hand, I am here on behalf of the homeowners who are busy at work, couldn't come to the meeting, the mothers that are with their children, things like that. The people that will be driving past this large facility several times a day. 30 to 40 of those may have been at that meeting in the evening after work, but they couldn't come during the day. I've seen a lot of comments on Facebook, the Brookbury Facebook page, things like that. I've also lived here over 33 years and I've watched the commercial zoning on parts of Stratford Road extend to other parts of town. This area on Meadowlark Road used to be unlike any other in Winston-Salem. Open space where the city put in a dog park. The city put in a park that wasn't on those pictures that were shown right across the road, dog park, picnic tables, two beautiful schools, very open area, family friendly. This is a special area. It's not jammed with the same stores, buildings and parking lots that are everywhere in town and storage units where trees have been clear cut. Why would you allow the taking of a small three acre lot? And I think that three acres is a small lot to put a large storage facility. No variation, maybe it has some variation by looking at the photos, they've done a great job with the design. But basically it's a big box. We're gonna put this right next to a neighborhood road where children may be walking with their parents down to Walmart to get a gallon of milk. It may destroy the comfortable character in this corner of town. I think it would be a good idea to find somewhere else for a big box. The homeowners is evidenced by them needing a special meeting. 30 to 40 people made the effort to go to this meeting because they were up in arms about the storage facility that they'd be driving past every day. Also, the photos that were shown don't show that right up the road there are hundreds of homes and there's a school and a park and things like that. In my opinion and in the opinion of other people in the neighborhood, everywhere doesn't have to be overbuilt. A few people may win big with this storage unit in town, but many people will lose something that's hard to explain. Painful to experience and you can't go back once this building is in its place. It may have a beautiful design, but it's gonna be like a gigantic billboard that everybody drives past every day. I implore you to say no to rezoning that will put an eyesore in this unique part of town where everybody looks forward to living. Please have the courage this time to recommend no. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Rickleball. No one else has signed up to speak in opposition to this matter. Is there anyone here that would like to speak in opposition? All right. Seeing no one, I'll declare the public hearing closed. Is there any discussion? I'll just say that from my perspective, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, certainly. Mr. Stillman's right. I think they've done an excellent job on the design of this. The elevations compared to the old school orange roll-up door, I think it was called. This is nothing like that. As I said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I've seen some ugly banks get built around here lately. I don't know what the deal with... bank architects is, but they've come up with some ugly ones lately, and this is not that. Yeah, I would much rather have something that looks like the elevations we saw than a... I mean, it'd certainly fix the character of Brookbury. And it's a significant down zone.

And I don't think that the park... I don't think there's any use in our tables that has a lower trip generation than maybe cemeteries. There's not... I don't think there's anything lower as far as trip generation than cell storage. So it's... Anyway.

Any other discussion?

Well, I'll just say, I do think it is a good looking for a storage building. My concern is just that when the area was developed, we had this mixed use notion and it was developed, intended to be developed in that way. And having a storage use, storage building here in this highly desirable area just seems like maybe not the highest use. I do feel like, yes, it could fit, you know, given comprehensive plan and then the area plan for the area. I'm just not really into the idea. I think commercial or something that is fitting with the area, something that could potentially be walkable would be better in the space.

And I mean, just as a counter to that, I think the market would have made that happen by now if that was what the market demanded.

True, I agree to that. I do think that good design could have made the market more attractive if the right design for the site came along.

Good point. All right, any further discussion? Is there a motion?

Mr. Chairman, I move the planning board find that the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan.

Motion by Mr. Lamb. The chair will second that if there's not a second.

Second.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Pitt. Any discussion? All in favor, sound of aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimous. Oh, you want opposed?

Yeah, just because of the use. I kind of mimic... the idea that I would like to see other uses. No, it is consistent, sorry. Let's re-vote on that.

As to consistency, all in favor, sign of aye. Aye. Any opposed on consistency? All right, so it's unanimous on consistency.

Okay, Mr. Chairman, I further move the planning board recommend approval of W3695.

Motion by Mr. Lamb. Second by Mr. Pitt. Any discussion?

All right, so I agree with the whole idea of this would not be my preferred use. Yeah. All right.

All in favor, sign of aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. That's two, six to two. Six to two. Five, three. Five, three. I couldn't see over there, sorry. Sorry. So five, three. All right. So that goes on to West Salem City Council at one of their future meetings.

That's okay. Okay.

Mr. Chairman, board will now move to item B3, which is 3702, and we'll hear from Ellie.

All righty, good afternoon. So this is case W3702. The petitioner is 2608 Rinaldo Road, LLC. The site is approximately 1.71 acres, located north of the intersection of Rinaldo Road and Sunny Knoll Drive. The request is a special use district rezoning from RS9 to RM18 special use. The site is located in GMA3 suburban neighborhoods. The location map shows that to the west of the site are townhomes and RMAS zoning, a nursing care institution, and an apartment format to the east in GOS zoning, and a single family neighborhood to the northwest. The site is relatively level throughout with a gradual increase in elevation from west to east along the eastern property boundary. The northern portion of the site is predominantly wooded with mature trees dispersed throughout the remainder of the property. Lastly, there is a transit stop approximately 200 feet north of the subject property at the Rinalda Road and Ferncliff Drive intersection. The request is inconsistent with the North Suburban Area Plan, which recommends office uses for this property. However, the proposed small-scale multifamily buildings would provide a similar transition between the Reynolda Road corridor and the single-family neighborhood to the northwest. So this is looking west along Reynolda Road. The subject property is to the right. This is looking south along Rinalda Road. The subject property is to the left. This is looking north into the subject property from Sunny Knoll Drive. And this is looking west from the subject property at the adjacent single family home property. And this is looking east from Sunny Knoll Drive at the adjacent property. This is the nursing care institution I mentioned earlier. So the site plan illustrates the development of two proposed apartment buildings, each containing 12 units for a total of 24 units. The overall density is 14.03, well below the 18 unit allowance for RM18. So sidewalks are planned along the frontage. They're already existing along Rinaldo Road, and the developer is proposing sidewalks along Sunny Knoll Drive, and each of the buildings will have an internal pedestrian connection from the main entrance to Sunny Knoll Drive. The state plan indicates two proposed underground stormwater control devices located in the northwestern and southwestern parking areas adjacent to the structures. Water captured by these devices will drain into the open space adjacent to the parking lot and the buffer yard along the western property line. The site plan illustrates the required 20-foot type 2 buffer yard along the western property line in addition to a 10-foot street yard along both the Reynolda Road and Sunny Knoll Drive frontages. In addition, all required parking and MVSA plantings are shown on the site plan. Overall, the site plan meets UDO requirements in all use-specific conditions. So in summary, while the request is inconsistent with the North Suburban Area Plan updates recommendation for office development at this location, the proposed use would provide a similar transition between the Reynoldo Road corridor and the single family neighborhood to the northwest. The request furthers Forward 2045's goal of prioritizing higher density housing close to services, schools, workplaces, and transit. Lastly, the site has excellent access to multimodal transportation and sidewalks as the existing transit stop is 200 feet from the subject property and there is a network of existing sidewalks up and down Reynolda. For these reasons, staff does recommend approval and the site plan meets all UDO requirements. Does the board have any questions?

All right. So signed up in support, we've got Garrett Neal and Nick Blackwood.

Mr. Chairman and members of the board, my name is Nick Blackwood, 804 Green Valley Road in Greensboro, 27408. Garrett Neal is our civil engineer record, and he's here as well to help address any technical questions that the board may have. I do have some hard copy presentation materials I'd like to pass out if that's all right. Sure.

Thank you.

So as those are being circulated, and Chris, appreciate you passing those out, just to highlight some of Ellie's presentation points, this is a relatively low-density multifamily request at the corner of Sunny Knoll and Rinalda. I wanted to highlight a couple of the existing multifamily zoning districts in proximity. If you'll flip to page two in the packet that was just passed around, in orange, you'll see a variety of varying multifamily densities. The subject property highlighted in red, outlined in red, and you'll see all along Polo to the south and up and down Rinaldo running north-south in proximity to the property, we have an existing mix of multifamily zoning all up and down this corridor. So this is a tried and true development pattern for the area. As Ellie noted, there's a significant amount of existing office use that borders us to the northeast and southeast. That's noted in blue. So what we're proposing with this project, we submit to the board as a good transition use between that existing higher intensity office to the single family residential along our western property line, consistent with a lot of the existing multifamily already in place in the area. With respect to the forward comprehensive plan and some of the points that staff noted in their report, did wanted to highlight some of the existing retail commercial nodes and professional services in the immediate area, along with some of the existing transportation networks the staff referenced. You can see that the subject property on this image denoted with the yellow star towards the bottom of the page. We're sandwiched in between Silas Creek Parkway and Rinalda Road, both classified as major thoroughfares with a high existing traffic volume. So we've got good access to existing transportation networks. And then you'll see just north along Rinalda, you've got access to the Harris Teeter Anchored Retail Center, the Lidl Retail or Grocery Facility to the east across the street from the Sheets and Culver's. And then another commercial shopping center with the Planet Fitness and some other QSRs and varying retail uses on the western side of Rinalda, north of the site. So what we're doing with this infill development is really taking advantage of the existing infrastructure in the area, a lot of the other commercial uses that have built up along Rinalda, and we're locating this use where these folks will not have to get in the car and drive for 10 or 15 minutes to get to their gym or their grocery store. Just a tried and true planning concept with respect to infill development. On the next slide, it's the same site plan that staff included in their report, but I did want to note, we added a condition after our community meeting requiring installation of a six foot opaque fence along our western property line. We had two neighbors who attended our community meeting, we sent out letters, and that's included on the last page of your slide. And this was not a direct request from any neighbor, but it's something that we were or pondering anyways, and just out of effort of being a good neighbor, wanted to go ahead and add that as a zoning condition to provide some assurance to those single family neighbors on our Western property line, that there'd be an additional buffer in addition to that required planting yard that you see there, that type two buffer yard.

Where is the opaque fence again? I'm sorry, I can't figure that out.

Where is it? Okay, got it, thank you. Yeah, so just to orient you, if you, the plan's kind of, if you run it north-south this way, it's on our western property line there, so the elderly care facility across the street opposite the fence. So as I mentioned, we did send out a notice letter to all property owners within 500 feet of the subject property, held a community meeting. We received two emails in response to that letter. Both of those individuals attended the meeting. Some generalized concerns from one neighbor across Renalda in the St. John's townhome community. Some concerns about an encroachment into her privacy with her backyard patio. With Renauda being a four lane median divided thoroughfare, I don't think that we're gonna have a tremendous impact on her use and enjoyment of her property across that street. And we had some generalized questions from one of our single family neighbors along our western property line. Nothing really necessarily driven directly at land use, more so general questions about the developer and other projects that he has developed in the past. But as I mentioned, wanted to go ahead and add that perimeter fence condition just in an effort to be a good neighbor. So again, Garrett Neal, our civil engineer, is here to help address any questions with respect to the site plan, and I'm happy to try to address any questions you may have for me.

Questions for Mr. Blackwood? Thank you, Mr. Blackwood. Thanks. Is anyone else here that would like to speak in support of this application?

All right.

Seeing no one, we'll shift to the opponents. I've got Jerry Ray. Mr. Ray, if you'd come on up, give us your name, address, and zip code, please.

Yes, my name is Jerry Ray. I live at 2615 Rinalda Road, Western Salem, NC, 27106, for 53 years. This is our home. It's the only home we ever had. I know who the developer is, Laura Properties. Now, I don't know what they do everywhere else, but in Greensboro, they do student housing. That's not to say there's anything wrong with student housing. Students gotta have a place to live too, but student housing has its place and this is not its place. Mr. Blackwood painted a pretty picture right here, but Mr. Blackwood doesn't live where I live. He paints pictures of sheets and colors and all things down the road. And he paints pictures of student housing mingling with single-family housing down Polo Road. If you drive down Polo Road, you won't see a three-story building beside a residential house. It's not there. This is not good. This property that you see up here with about three more houses, this whole community is single-family residential. It doesn't have any three-story buildings anywhere on it. And that doesn't fit right here. They don't show our house on the plan. If you look at the plan and the plan in front of you, Our house is not there. I don't know why. I don't know if that was omitted by on purpose. If it was, it's sort of sneaky business. But I think our house should be there because it's impacted. We are the people, my wife, my daughter and I, we're the people that are impacted by this. Everybody else, this is sort of down the road a little bit. So I tried to scale this off, and I'm sure I'm not very accurate, but the way they have this planned, their dumpster is 70 foot from our bedroom window, which is just a little bit more than this room right here. The back of their building, the back corner of their building, is about 80 foot from our side porch where we go in and out of our house. That's too close for a three-story. This is not the place for a three-story apartment building. This property has been zoned RS-9, I guess, forever. Probably 10 years ago. Mr. Reynolds knocked on our door one day, introduced himself, and he said that he had bought the property that he and his wife wanted to build a house on it. And I said, yeah, good. And they were going to build a house down, I think down on the other end toward Wells Fargo. I don't know what happened to that plan. I have a pretty good idea. uh, he could not prevail in that plan. She changed his plan. And so the house, the property has been vacant for probably 10 years. I guess the last two or three years he's been trying to sell it. And, uh, I don't want to do anything to take away from Mr. Reynolds. He has a piece of property there that he is paying taxes on that's not giving him any return at all. Probably, for me, it would have been a bad investment. And it's probably a bad investment for him. But I think there are other things that can be done with this property that fit better than this. One is... First option, leave it like it is and encourage Mr. Reynolds to try to sell it for single family dwellings. The second would be neighborhood offices would fit better or limited offices. You have the nursing home across the street. None of you live out there, so you don't know what goes on out there, but These old people, they get out and walk on Sunny Knoll. And there's more traffic on Sunny Knoll Drive than you think. But when you add probably, I don't know how many parking spaces we've got, I can't remember. But when you add all this extra traffic in there, Sunny Knoll Drive is not a wide street, it's 20 foot wide. you're going to have some on-street parking probably. It's going to get congested. This is not the place for this. Not the place for it. Not a three-story building 70 foot off your front door. It's not in keeping with the neighborhood. Anybody have any questions?

Any questions for Mr. Ray?

All right, thank you, Mr. Ray. How much time's left? Six minutes and 20 seconds.

All right, we've got some time left. Is anyone here, the last person signed up, is anyone else here that would like to speak in opposition to this recommendation? All right, seeing no one, I'll declare the public hearing closed. Any discussion?

Can we get something that shows the house on it next to the property line here? Yeah.

Does anybody have an aerial view or something?

Yeah, I know. I've looked at that, but I can't.

It's hard to see. Okay.

So he's here. All right there.

I think that's the driveway. I think the house is actually... Can we zoom that in?

There you go.

The house is on the front. I believe Mr. Ray owns all three of those parcels from Rinalda along Ferncliff. His house faces Rinalda. There's a driveway that comes in off of Rinalda, and it acts as a, he has a parking court probably behind his house, and I believe it's, I don't want to say a circular driveway because it's not a circle, but then it does go back out to Ferncliff on that second lot, and he owns the lot in between the driveway and the next house to the northeast on Ferncliff.

And is the elevation of the subject property higher or lower or almost equal to Mr. Ray's property?

To answer your question, it's relatively flat. He can go back to the photo that I took into from the edge of the subject property looking into their property.

I have to say it's probably a couple feet, maybe higher.

One more. There's their property.

I find this to be a pretty nice use for this site, to be honest with you. It's been on the market for a long time, and I think, as alluded, there's a nice transition in terms of scale, particularly with the surrounding areas. Maybe a comment could be to look at the sidewalk along Sunny Knoll, if there's an opportunity to push that back. allow for street trees or something like that. But I think as a use, I actually was pleased to see the site plan.

We do need more infill development, and it's good to see particularly lots on busy trafficked area corridors to be considered for infill, and it is a transitional use. Unfortunately, for us, we can only take the use into consideration and not the end user. So if it is student housing, that's not really... in our purview, but I can understand maybe not wanting college students next to you.

Staff, what's the height on RS9? Isn't that 40? It is. 40 feet, so it's...

It's the same as the proposed.

The 40 feet is the same as residential. Okay.

Mr. Chairman, I did just want to point out, I know that Mr. Blackwood did allude to the opaque fence along that western property line. Just for your information, it is already included as a condition of approval in the staff report and in the documents that would go forward. Regardless of the recommendation, they have already proffered that condition, so it is already included in the staff report.

And that fence is in front of or behind, however you want to look at it, a 20-foot type 2 buffer yard as well. So you got multiple things there trying to provide some screening. Any other discussion?

I just think with the height, the 40-foot height limit, if it were a higher density multifamily that allowed more height, then I don't think that would fit. But that 40-foot height to me is sort of key that it's going to fit.

And it's the same height for the residential.

Right.

Can I ask a question?

Sure. Can somebody ask Mr. Ray what Mr. Ray's question is? That's a great question, and I feel like one of our staff folks can tell you.

So in general, it's a type two buffer yard that would consist of a mixture of evergreen trees that retain their leaves throughout the year, larger deciduous trees that provide additional height and again, kind of a, an aesthetic appeal and then some ground level shrubs. I don't have memorized what a 20 foot has in terms of the specific ratio, but a type two is our second most intense buffer in the UDO. So it would provide a fairly substantial amount of new trees.

So it's going to be 20 feet wide and it's going to have fairly thick, if you want to think of it that way, plantings that are designed to take up lots of visual space. And then behind that, you would have the fence.

Per every 100 linear feet, you have two deciduous trees, 12 primary evergreen plants. Think of those as like green giants or Nellie Stevens hollies, those kind of shrubs. And then you have 10 supplemental evergreen shrubs that are more ground cover.

It looked like there were some arborvitae or something in one of those pictures near his house. Something similar to that.

Are the trees on the site plan there for just illustration? Or they're not part of the... Outside of the... type two buffer yard to the, I guess, east, closer to the parking lot. Are those trees that are depicted on there?

I'm not sure, Ellie may be able to tell you, having visited the site, if those trees exist, but they would not be required to be retained. Now, there would be a requirement to either retain or plant trees in that 10-foot street yard that wraps along both frontages. And again, if there is arborvitae, as the chairman suggested, or other evergreen plants that already exist and are of substantial health and height, those could be used to satisfy the type two buffer yard.

Following up after what Kirk said, I think Jerry would request, he mentioned if they could maintain, if it meets the requirements, the existing vegetation along his property boundary. But that's one thing he just mentioned.

So if it's in the buffer yard and it meets the buffer yard requirements, I would imagine they're going to try to keep it from an economic standpoint.

Yeah, that's certainly something that developers avail themselves to when practicable. Again, it's something that saves them some costs, but in the interest of full disclosure, there is no condition in the case currently that would 100% guarantee that. All right. But that could become a part of a motion. Technically. I mean, again, just full disclosure. I'm not sure... the grading plan versus the location of the trees here that may cause some challenges if for example the root system for those trees extends into the area they're grading and then some of the trees die there's there's lots of challenges in basing a condition on that but technically such a condition could exist yeah as far as i'm aware none of us are landscape architects so i don't know that we want to venture into

But you're also going to be installing a fence, which would have some disruption as well. I mean, it may be, I mean, again, I don't, I certainly don't want to pretend to put anything into the planning board's motion and or what might eventually happen at city council. But two things, the petitioner would have to agree to any condition that was added before it moved on to city council under the written consent of conditions. And then secondly, again, because of the fact that we don't really know what the grading plan entails and what the vegetation is and the installation defense, I think there are just so many unknown variables, it might be better to leave it to the developer to make that determination if approved once in the field.

And I think they've indicated an effort to try to be good neighbors, and I would expect that to continue. So let's hope that's the case. But before we jump to that, we've got to figure out what we're doing with this. So is there a motion?

I move that the planning board find that the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan.

Second. Motion by Mr. Fairby, second by Mr. Patino. Any discussion? All in favor, signify.

Aye.

Any opposed? That's unanimous.

I move that the Planning Board recommend approval of W3702. Second.

Motion by Mr. Farabee, second by Mr. Patino. Any discussion? All in favor, signify. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimous as well. So that will move on to the City Council at one of their future meetings.

Mr. Chairman, aboard the last item that we'll hear from or have a public hearing on is item B5, which is F1674, and we'll hear from Ellie again.

Alrighty, last case. So this is F1672. The petitioner is Pine State Development LLC. The site is approximately 167 acres located on the east side of Idles Road across from its intersection with Mallard Lake Trail. The site abuts the southern terminus of Topsider Drive to the east. The request is a general use district rezoning from GI and RS-40 to RS-15. The site is located in GMA3 suburban neighborhoods. The location map shows that the site is partially surrounded by residential zoning, and to the northeast is an existing industrial park, and to the north is Tanglewood Park Golf Course. The aerial image shows that the site slopes gradually from north to south and is heavily wooded throughout. Various tributaries of the Yadkin River traverse the site and a small portion of the southern area is located within a flood zone. In addition, the site is located within the balance area of the Yadkin River water supply watershed, which may affect the density and overall layout of the future development. The property is within the study area of the Clements Community Compass 2040 Comprehensive Plan. However, this plan was not adopted by the Forsyth County Commissioners. As such, parcel-specific recommendations do not exist for this site. So this is looking north along Idles Road. The subject property is to the right. This is looking east from the terminus of Mallard Lake Trail into the subject property. This is looking south from the terminus of Topsider Drive into the subject property. This is looking into the subject property. This was about as far as I could get. Most of it was gated off, but it's all very heavily wooded. This is looking west toward Idles Road from the subject property. This is the existing railroad crossing into the subject property. And this is looking west along Topsider Drive. The subject property is in the background on the left. And on the right, I believe it is a Little League baseball field. So in summary, the request is consistent with the goal of Forward 2045 to accommodate new housing units in the serviceable land area. The request would encourage a variety of housing types for different income levels, family sizes, and personal preferences. Lastly, the proposal would lead to a significant reduction of the intensity and the zoning of the property, As mentioned earlier, the property is currently zoned GI for General Industrial, and part of it is RS-40, so rezoning it to RS-15 would be a significant reduction. For these reasons, staff does recommend approval. Does the board have any questions?

All right. Signed up to speak in support, we've got Amanda Hood-Earn.

Excuse me. There you go.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. Nice to see you again. My name is Amanda Hodier, and my offices are at 804 Green Valley Road, Suite 200 in Greensboro. So I'm going to go through a couple items on this request. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much. And I've got some other speakers that I'll introduce as we go, members of our team. I'm here on behalf of the applicant, which is Pine State Development. I have Nathan Barker here with me, who will introduce himself here in a moment to tell you a little bit about that entity. So I'll start by saying they're the contract purchaser for the property. It's currently owned by Forsyth County. As you heard from staff, it was previously slated for continuation of that industrial park that exists to the east. That was the county's original intended use or previous intended use. That has changed. We'll talk about changed circumstances. And so that property is under contract for purchase by Pine State, who is a residential developers. So you'll hear from Mr. Barker about that. Also have with me Bill Sequoia from McAdams. They are the civil design and engineer who's been retained to work on this. This is a general use request, we'll talk about that. But of course, we do, Pine State is smart enough to know to do some feasibility planning and look at what can happen. So we'll talk about that some today and Bill's here to talk to you about that. And of course, what would happen next should the rezoning be received favorably. So just to orient us to the subject property, this is located down in the southwest corner of Forsyth County. You can see the subject property here in the middle of your screen. Of course, you've got Tinglewood to the west. You've got the town of Clemens, or village of Clemens, excuse me, to the east and northeast. That's Clemens West is that neighborhood to the north. You've got the industrial park and it's actually a whole ballpark complex where there's travel tournaments. A lot of area schools use some of those fields for their practicing games. And then going south, you, of course, get into Davidson County. And, of course, the Yadkin River snakes along to the south and the west here as a pretty significant attribute of the area. A summary of the request, it totals 167 acres, currently zoned general industrial. It's in two parcels. That's the northern parcel and RS 40 on the southern parcel. So as was mentioned by staff, I want to lift up and emphasize that this is a down zoning request, significantly reducing not just the intensity, but the whole typology of this land use and how it would function and how it can fit in to this patchwork and framework that we're going to look at. We've requested RS 15 as our request, and of course this is straight from your ordinance. That district is intended to accommodate low to moderate density single family residential detached dwellings in a suburban and urban areas intended for application in growth management areas two and three. And this of course is three as we'll talk about. So that's the whole basis of our request. That's why we're here. Pine State Development is a residential developer and their intended use here is a single family residential subdivision. So this is a general use zoning. You've seen this afternoon, everything you've looked at has been site plan specific. This is a general use zoning. So we are pursuing this as a threshold entitlement step. That doesn't mean that all those very important technical details of site planning won't happen. You of course know, I'm sure you see every month agenda items for preliminary subdivision approvals that would have to come back before you once the zoning is established. So we're doing it in that sort of two-step, if you will, sequencing because we want to, we have some contractual obligations with the county as the seller that sort of dictates this type of timing. But also we wanna get back to the current situation of having a zoning district Sort of setting that tablecloth, if you will, that we can then come back and submit a site plan design for that would meet the attributes and would be for your consideration having gone through TRC and applying all the technical standards and requirements that come with that once we know that we're pursuing a permissible use. So I always like to say zoning is permission to try. We want to establish that zoning so that we can go get started trying. Okay. So preliminary subdivision of course would come next, and that's with your technical review committee process, involvement with NCDOT, all the other agencies, and of course back before you to look at that. So this is the zoning map. I wanted to look at this quickly just to speak briefly to the intentionality about RS 15. You can see Clemens West is that major subdivision to the north, that's RS 15. We've got RS 15 to the southeast, we've got RS 15 to the west. So that really was a good candidate that we thought and staff worked with us on that to come up with a district that would fit nicely in here and be harmonious with the residential development and subdivisions that we're already seeing. It's also a nice transitional use between the industrial park that is immediately to the east and some of the other uses that we've talked about as we transition into the subdivisions and the more sporadic rural residential uses as you go south and west. So we talked about this being a down zoning. The GI zoning, general industrial, current allowed uses, you can see here, but everything from an asphalt and concrete plant, storage facilities, including outdoor storage, warehousing, wholesalers, recycling facilities and plants, solid waste transfer stations, storage and salvage yards, bus terminals. So you get the idea. General industrial is a very intense use and it's just very different than what we have seen the surrounding development and the comprehensive planning for the county contemplate for this area. That is a significant basis for the request. Of course, this is the RS-15 permitted use list. You see right there in the middle, residential building, single family, and that is the reason for our request. That's what we want to pursue. That's why RS-15 is our request today. So let me pause there and invite Nathan to come up and talk about that. I've mentioned that Pine State is a residential developer. You may know them by some other names and projects they've done in the area, so I just want to give him a couple minutes to lift that up.

Mr. Chairman, just about six minutes, just making sure folks are under, like where we are as far as the time.

I'll make this fairly quick. Good evening, guys. I'm Nathan Barker. I'm with PMA1 Holdings doing business as Pine State Development. We've been part of the Arden Group for years and years now. We sort of decided to branch off and rebrand ourselves as Pine State Development. You guys probably know some of our developments here in Forsyth County. It's as far as Chatham Lakes, Haven Brook, Bartlett Bluff, Stone Valley, all those. So when... This piece of property came to market. We were very excited to jump on it. We feel like we can add some value to the area and contribute to Winston-Salem's growth plan for 2045. If you guys have any questions for us, that's sort of our background story, where we came from. I know you probably haven't heard the Pine State name for a while, but you might understand us as Arden Group, Arden Homes. We're sort of all the same company. Thank you.

So I've alluded to the forward 25 comprehensive planning. Of course, that's part of your analysis when you look at a rezoning. This has been in your staff report, but just looking at a couple of aspects of this and how we meet the plan and are consistent. The area is established as growth management area three, which of course is suburban neighborhood designation. And that designation focuses on providing infill development where sewer is already available and can service it. So adding housing, housing is much needed, of course, in areas that are serviceable and we don't have to leapfrog and recreate the infrastructure to have these opportunities. In balance with that, we wanna protect the Yadkin River as a significant natural resource through responsible land management practices. I'm gonna save some time for Bill to talk about how this site is a great candidate to do that naturally because of the physical characteristics that it presents. It also looks to prioritize moderate density residential as a transitional land use between land use intensities. I talked about that. We saw that on those larger maps where we could see those disparate land uses and how this puzzle piece can provide a nice transitional infill to step us down from the general industrial, the loud, very active baseball complex use and step down over it as we get into our residential neighborhoods, our rural residential and our significant Yadkin River corridor and some of those green areas that you see on the map here. So really looking to provide that transitional objective. We've also got changed circumstances here. This is a big part of your reasonableness consideration. What has changed here that led to the adoption of that plan by the Forsyth County Commissioners in just August of 2025? Well, the construction of the Idles Road lift station in 2018, of course, made this meet that definition of GMA3, right? Now this is a serviceable area where you can get a return on that investment in that infrastructure. Also, the Riverwalk development approval in 2022, that brings that significant residential development across to the west over on the other side of this property, really establishing another side of the framework, creating even a more compelling reason to need that transition in the middle and to create a really compelling reason to not put more general industrial right there, looking at Tanglewood, looking at Clemens West, looking at the future Riverwalk development. So I would submit that that probably had a lot to do with why the 2045, Forward 2045 plan came out the way that it did, establishing this as suburban residential rather than maintaining it as industrial. I heard your comments to Steve earlier about understanding how important it is to maintain industrial where it makes sense, and clearly this was not one of those areas. So with that, I want to invite Bill to come up and just talk about, this is general use, so this is just illustrative, but we have done our homework and we do know a little bit about how this will end up coming back to you, hopefully.

Good evening, Bill Sikora, Project Engineer with McAdams. As Amanda outlined... Could you give us your address and zip code, please? Yes, sorry. 2010 Bay Street, Charlotte, 28205. Thank you. As Amanda outlined, the applicant's objective is a single-family residential subdivision under the RS-15 zoning condition. RS-15 allows for three dwelling units per acre. However, the... anticipated density for the site is to be around two dwelling units breaker, which is lower than what is allowed. And then as Elliot mentioned, the existing site has a few features with it, with the existing topography, some flood zones and existing streams and watershed classifications. As a result, about half the site is proposed to be preserved as open space and or buffer yards. I wanted to mention that stormwater control measures will be incorporated to manage stormwater runoff. And it's also very important to note that a traffic engineer has been engaged and traffic study is currently underway. This study will include not only idles, but also Middlebrook 158 and Middlebrook-Clemens Road intersections. And the review and approvals by DOT and county staff will be required prior to site plan approval.

So just a little bit to kind of inform and provide predictability into how we expect this would go, should we be allowed to proceed. Your neighborhood communication report, I imagine, is in your packet, so we'll skip that. And just to summarize, looking at our 160D analysis, we've talked about planned consistency. We meet both the typology of GMA3, RS 15 is a prescribed district for that area. We meet several goals and directives as you saw in your staff report and your reasonableness analysis. This is a compatible and harmonious land use designation for the existing land use pattern. Provides desirable needed housing in a moderate density format. Efficient use of this property with all of its physical features that provide that balance that's so important as we get close to the Yadkin River corridor. Builds on the changed circumstances that have happened in the area. advances directives of your comprehensive planning, and we still have to meet all the checks and balances and rigorous technical review that would come with preliminary subdivision planning. We're just trying to get to that stage so that we can do that and proceed through that analysis. We're here for questions. Right on time.

Wow. That was amazing. Any questions for the petitioners?

How many homes do you anticipate building?

Well, again.

I know you have 167 times.

Yeah, it's probably, if all that worked out perfectly based on the feasibility planning, it's probably in the 360 range if everything magically worked out.

Thank you. Any other questions? All right, proponents are out of time. So we'll shift now to those in opposition. We've got Paul Mullen, Alan Daniel, and Nancy Miller. If you please all give us your name, address, and zip code.

Good afternoon, Nancy Miller, 7529 Maidwood Court in Clemmons, and I am in Clemmons West. I'm going to read what I want to say because three minutes. I timed myself. I live within the 500 feet of the proposed site being discussed today. This decision affects all of Clemens, which has a population of 21,163 as of 2020. Unfortunately, only a handful were notified of the virtual meeting with Pine State. I received my letter on the day of the meeting. The photos that are up here looks pretty, but just across the street from the pretty section are 700 and plus homes. I understand the proposal today is to change the 167 acres from industrial to residential. Currently this beautiful woodland with homes behind it, a railroad track in front of it, and 700 plus homes on the north side along a two lane road. Idles Road intersects with Middlebrook Drive, which turns into Louisville-Clemens Road, which is the only main road that leads to continuous businesses, hundreds of homes, and I-40. It is also a two-lane road. Even without further traffic, whether industrial or residential, the area is already in a gridlock during peak hours. Middlebrook is a parking lot and turning lanes will not remedy stacking as the problem is a massive number of vehicles. Think of this, 500 plus homes at Riverwalk, which is on the north side of Idles, 300 homes, on the south side in this current property with pine state most having two cars going out even once a day and then back home you're talking 1 000 more trips to a jammed up crowded two-lane road bottlenecks occur already emergency vehicles cannot get through festival of lights at tanglewood which you all must be familiar with in 2022 had 55,000 vehicles going through and the exit is on Idles Road. So this property that Pine State is talking about is on the south side of Idles Road and Tangle Brook and Tanglewood is on the north side. we are opposed to any residential development on this south end property off of Idles Road. Clemens needs representatives on the planning board and the county commissioners that actually are familiar with Clemens and live in Clemens. If you read Facebook, social feed, Clemens Courier, or any neighborhood group, the traffic already presented is called a nightmare. The queuing up and down Middlebrook and Idles is the same source of frustration and exasperation toward developers and decision makers, adding density to an already dense traffic pattern. I read that the consideration may be for senior citizens who don't go out in their cars too much. I'm one of those, and I'm here in front of you. I'm on the road constantly. I just have to put up with the delayed travel with the traffic that we already have. This project isn't the only one that can ruin the pleasantness of Clemens. There are hundreds of added apartments already, cluster homes, farmland, and developed into more townhouses, more apartments, and more cluster homes. All of these thousands of people have to use the same Lewisville-Clemens Road. The 16-wheelers, flatbed trucks have come through my neighborhood avoiding Idles Road and Middlebrook, heading to the RS Parker development, which is on the north side. I'm aware that at Standstill, I know that is at Standstill right now, but it's going to be developed. So we already have 500 plus homes over there and we're talking about 300 more. And if everyone has at least one car, and most of us have two, and we're going in and out, it's a two-lane road. There's a railroad track on one side and there are homes on the other. And that, I just wanted to present from the homeowner's standpoint how more cars, more traffic, more development, it looks pretty, up on the screen, but it's not pretty to the people who actually live in Clemens, which is already overcrowded and there are way too many vehicles already. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ms. Miller. How much time is left? Seven minutes. Next up, we've got either Paul Mullen or Alan Daniel.

That's Paul Mullen. I live at 3685 Tanglebrook Trail. in Clemens 27012. My wife and I have lived on Tangle Brook for 33 years, about two tenths of a mile from the proposed development. I respectfully ask that you deny the request for the reasons Nancy mentioned and a couple others I would like to bring up briefly. One of the problems that I'd like to share is the safety concern. Because of the traffic congestion that you can kind of understand, many people from Salem Glen and other neighborhoods across Idles Road use our Clemmons West-Tanglebrook Trail as basically a dragway because it's a cut-through. People don't want to get in the bottleneck of the traffic. And so they cut through our area. My wife and I see cars routinely exceeding the 25 mile per hour speed limit routinely. It's quite concerning to us because of that. With the 850 potential new homes, I think that's what, about 6,600 daily commutes. So hundreds of additional cars are going to be cutting through our neighborhood. It's disturbing because of the safety. Two points briefly. The speed is quite concerning to us. This isn't one of my neighbors put a sign out that said this is a neighborhood and not a speedway. He has a couple of young children live there. My wife and I see it routinely. The streets aren't equipped for overflow traffic. There aren't any speed bumps. I understand because of emergency vehicles, they're not allowed. There are no sidewalks. And so when my wife and I walk every day, middle-aged residents who are neighbors stroll with their dogs, parents with their young children, people on bikes, we feel the risk every day. It's one other brief safety concern. At the top of Tangle Brook, there are two posted limited site warnings. It's a major blind spot. So with hundreds of cars whizzing by, hundreds of additional cars whizzing by, I'm a retired preacher, not a prophet, but you can easily foresee accidents waiting to happen. It's a real concern to us. And so for that reason, we ask that you respectfully consider not approving the rezoning. Thank you.

Thank you very much. How much time's left? Four and a half minutes.

All right. Allen Daniel, 100 Fernworth Court, Clemmons 27012, also in Clemmons West. It was mentioned the topography in the flood zone. I'd like to give you a little bit of data. I'm a numbers guy. So the water running off of 176 acres of impervious surface for every one inch of rain is is 4.779 million gallons of water. In other words, that's enough to fill six Olympic-sized swimming pools for every inch of rain. And I understand they've said they're gonna put in stormwater. And I'm sure you all are familiar with the fact that I learned when this industrial development was planned, that those stormwater retention devices only mitigate the first inch of rain. After the first inch of rain in a 24 hour period, all bets are off. In the month of July, on July 7th, we had an inch of rain in an hour. On July 13th, we had 1.5 inches of rain in an hour. On 720, we had 4.48 inches of rain in just over an hour. And between 721 and 722, we had 2.2 inches. So let me tell you what that adds up to. 6 and 9 is 15, and 27 is 42 and 13. is 60 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of water running off that property. And that property drops from 780 feet to 670 feet into a creek that already floods Doc Davis Road every time we get a substantial rain. That creek floods Salem Glen to its south. Currently, the Yadkin River runs backwards into our neighborhood every time there's a substantial rain upstream. So... This will exacerbate that problem. If you are going to approve this zoning, I respectfully request that the entire property be RS-40 and not RS-15. Thank you.

How much time's left? Two and a half minutes.

My name's Andrew Wild, 3721 Squirewood Drive, and I'm in Clemmons, North Carolina, and I wanna speak against approving this request at this time. And I think it would be prudent first to have an independent traffic study before making any major decisions. And some of the reasons have already been laid out, but if someone from staff would be so kind as to pull up the aerial imagery again, I think that might be a helpful visual aid. We can see that just across the street, we're looking at the Riverwalk area that was approved, and we're talking 500 homes there. So the 500 homes plus the 360 that were just mentioned is 860. And that's a significant number. And all those are gonna go through one corridor, a tiny corridor called Middlebrook Road. And there's already congestion on this road, especially at that intersection with Louisville Clemens Road. And so I think of it this way. If at your places of work you were to go in one day and say we're going to double the number of employees and I'm going to bring 1,000 people in here and they're all going to get on the Internet and try to access it, I think your IT manager would say hold on a second, let's talk about some things first. Do we have the bandwidth to support this? Do our Wi-Fi routers, do they have the capacity to do that? And I think it would be prudent to do the same thing here. I know that the village of Clemens has offered to play for this. And so I think you guys have a planning board on a position where you have absolutely nothing to lose. because it's gonna cost nothing and you have everything to gain because the constituents of this community are gonna look at you guys and say, thank you so much for taking your time to do the due diligence, to gather information and then make an informed decision. That would cause me as a resident of the community to think that you guys are serious about your job and I appreciate you taking the time to hear us.

Thank you very much. Any time left? One minute. Anyone else who'd like to speak and... Mr. Daniel, is it something, are you coming up to speak?

Yeah, it'll be real quick. As far as, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. As far as the traffic, I did the numbers. Again, I'm a numbers guy. The traffic that would go, there's five entrances to our neighborhood, all of which are Idles Road and Middlebrook Drive. When this traffic happens from the hours of six to nine in the morning and three to six in the afternoon, there will be one car going by our neighborhood every five to seven seconds. Think about that. You aren't getting out for three hours. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, I'm assuming that's all the time that we have left.

20 seconds.

All right. We're going to declare the public hearing closed. I'm sure there's probably some discussion.

I want to say there's a pattern here that we're going to continue to see. we need more housing that I guess ideal way would be to know everything that can possibly happen when you put it in and build your infrastructure build your roads build more schools do all of that before you ever approved it and that's not the way the laws are written or planning works It seems like it would be an ideal world, but that's not what we have the ability to do in our decision with that. We have to look at what the zoning rules are and what the requirements are for that and judge it based on that.

Do we, where's the Clemens, I guess, village limits?

It's like across the street.

It is directly to the north.

Okay.

The end of Topsider Drive, I think.

Well, yeah, Topsider to the east. Okay. And then, I mean, basically the heaviest line that you see on that image is the village of Clemens.

I got you. Okay. No, you go ahead. I'm sorry. Do we know, and this is a question for staff, has the village of Clemens ever done a road bond?

Mr. Chairman, I was gonna mention, I certainly sympathize with the folks that live on Middlebrook and I'm not going to pretend that there's not a traffic issue out there, but the Village of Clemens in and of themselves have done, they have their own transportation plan and in their transportation plan, it identifies the Middlebrook 158 intersection as being at level of service D or E in 2017. And as far as I'm aware, nothing has ever been done to rectify that. And, you know, again, we heard the same issues about traffic surrounding the potential to do an industrial park under the existing GI zoning and, you know, perhaps rezoning the balance of the 65 to 70 acres from RS-40 to GI as part of that project. as part of that request. That was determined that wasn't viable. The county purchased that back in 2000. And, again, nothing has ever come to fruition on that piece of property. So, you know, they have put it on the market, and someone has, you know, basically at this point won the upset bid process, and that is who is before you today. I know there was a reference to the Village of Clemens buying the property, but the mechanism for finance that they were going to use wasn't permissible because they were going to use some of their city-county utility reserve funds for the... Excess charges that folks that live in the village of Clemens pay for future water and sewer projects They wanted to use that money as my understanding and that's why that bid was not accepted But to answer the the question that was asked I can't I don't think that there have been any bond initiatives that have been put forward I'm not sure of any Potential road improvements that have been looked at along Middlebrook for widening. I'm sure that would be astronomical because it would probably result in some takings by the time you widened it to a four to five lane cross section, had the necessary turn lanes, etc. But again, this isn't a problem that, you know, just miraculously occurred. Last week and or is going to occur as a result of this project. I mean we're sitting here and we're ten years I'm sitting here looking at the plan right here and it basically it's I'll just read what it says is looking at level of service capacity roadways are usually considered congested when they reach a volume capacity of 0.8, meaning the roadway is approaching capacity. Using this standard, the worst congestion in the study area is along Hampton Road, US 158, and Middlebrook Drive. A significant portion of Hampton Road, just south of Idles Road, was already showing as overcapacity in 2017 modeling. This was likely due to the segment acting as one of the only connections to areas to the south of the property. But when you look at the image, it shows the 0.8 being both along Middlebrook, and the segment of 158 heading west towards Tanglewood. And again, that's referencing 2017 numbers. And then that goes on to look at the number of roadway segments that are gonna be over capacity in the 2045 modeling. And again, that area is still showing to be over capacity, obviously, at that point, because it's under the no-build scenario. Okay.

Amazingly, it must be like Talladega, because that's a whole lot of cars, but it sounds like, from what we've heard, they go really fast. I'm not sure how both those things happen, but, you know... There are obviously traffic issues here. This board does not build roads. We don't make decisions about building roads. I understand the concern. I think it's a valid concern. I think you need to make your voice heard to your village council and NCDOT about this. roads and traffic because they're the folks that can do something about roads and traffic. We do land use, so.

If I could offer one other thing, again, and the important thing to remember is the rational nexus. I mean, again, there's already an issue there as demonstrated by what is in the report. If, and again, you've heard the developer say that, you know, again, I don't know what the scoping of the TIA is going to be, if it does include that intersection. I mean, again, the developer in and of themselves would only be responsible under the rational nexus test for any adverse impact they have to that intersection. If we're sitting here and it's already at a level of service, D or E, they're not going to be the ones that are going to fix the problem that's out there. They would only be addressing the issues that they would be causing.

Sure. So the site has been contentious for many years. It was early on, it was industrial, and there was never a use or user that really fit what was ideal or preferred by Clemens in that area. And so the... What was always told was that we would prefer residential. And now we're at residential. And what we have presented to us is an appropriate use of the land. Now, I know Middlebrook can be crazy at times. This is probably just expanding traffic further westward. But as you mentioned, this site is not going to... be that last straw in there. But these are concerns that need to be brought up to transportation.

I was going to say, just for clarification, I was going to ask, is Middlebrook Road, 158, and Idles Road within this board's jurisdiction or not?

Well, whenever you say within our jurisdiction, I mean, obviously, I mean, we don't, well, again, you know, the planning board is not a transportation board. The planning board does not make recommendations related to planning road projects and those kind of things. To answer the question, Middlebrook and 158 are within the village of Clemens. I believe Middlebrook. I believe is a Village of Clemens maintained street. I'm not going to swear to that. It could be DOT. Obviously, I know 158 is maintained by NCDOT. So, again, that's within the Village of Clemens. Now, Idles Road, as it passes the subject property, is not within the Village of Clemens. It's NCDOT, you know, again, it's an NCDOT maintained street. So, part of these streets are within unincorporated Forsyth County, but even with that, the Planning Board is not the Board of Transportation, and that's not where our expertise lies. We're looking at a land use, and again, we're looking at a general use request. We're looking at a down zoning of two-thirds of the property from GI to RS-15. potentially an upzoning from the remainder from RS 40 to the RS 15. But again, it's the transportation aspect of that would be looked at at the time that an actual development proposal came through.

Anything they bring to us, the next step would be a planning board approval item, correct?

Correct, and again, based on, you know, more than likely the peak traffic... Or would that go to the Clemons Planning Board?

No, it's not in Clemons. It's not in Clemons.

It's at the county. That's why it's before you today, too, because it's the rezoning. So if there is a future approval, it will come through us. Again, you know, based on the peak traffic generation and the AM and PM peak, and, you know, we have in our ordinance what triggers a TIA. Based on the number of homes, there's going to be a TIA. Now, we don't scope what that TIA is. That's done by Winston-Salem DAT as part of the MPO. And NCDOT, they look at it collectively and decide what they want to see as part of the scoping for that TIA. You've heard the developer representative say that basically we've already engaged a transportation engineer to do a traffic study. Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe I heard that 158 in Middlebrook is going to be part of that scoping. So again, whatever comes in for future approval will have that intersection studied as part of the request.

Like Parkland, how are we going to replace this GI they were getting rid of?

It's a valid question. I will say, again, the county bought it in the year 2000, but I looked before I came up here. It was I-3 on the original zoning map from 1967. So ever since there's been zoning in the county, it's been zoned for industrial use, and it still hasn't been developed.

Any other discussions?

I move that the planning board find that the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan. Second.

Motion by Mr. Farabee, second by Mr. Patino. Any discussion? All in favor signify.

Aye.

Any opposed? That's unanimous.

I move that the planning board recommend approval of F1674. Second.

Motion by Mr. Farabee, second by Mr. Patino. Any discussion? All in favor signify.

Aye.

Any opposed? That's unanimous as well. So this will go on to the county commissioners at a future meeting.

Mr. Chairman and board, the last item that I have today is under staff report. First, I will turn to Kurt Erickson, who'll give you a preview of your September work session.

All right, again, good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the planning board. We have two items, both text amendments slated for discussion at the September work session, which will be in two weeks from today. Both of those items are scheduled to be heard at your October public hearing meeting. The first is a text amendment, which would implement standards for a new use hypodermic needle exchange programs. You all may have seen a recent article in the Winston-Salem Journal about such a facility that's run in the West Salem neighborhood, while certainly being a worthwhile program and service to folks. As Mr. Murphy mentioned in the article, this is an issue that's evolved over the years that this use has been in place in the community. And we've received some direction to work on some potential standards for such a use and take it through the process. So we'll talk about that in a little more detail in the coming weeks. The second is something that we've discussed briefly and I believe a few months ago, the legislature in Raleigh has basically done away with the ability of municipalities to have parking requirements in terms of minimum parking for uses. So what that means is some lucky person on planning staff who happened to be Amy Crum, got to go through the UDO and find all the instances of parking requirements and draft a, what, 38-page text amendment that will deal with correcting all of those and either taking away some things such as parking incentives, which... You don't need an incentive to meet a parking requirement of zero and other things where we had required parking ratios, changing those to recommended parking ratios to give folks some guidance. So we'll talk about both of those and that's what we've got for the work session at this point.

Thank you, Kirk. I'll now turn to Brian who'll give you your zoning case preview for your meeting a month from roughly today.

So, yeah, we've got 10 total items. It's kind of a smattering of different items there. We've got your site plan amendment continuance from this month, W3703, three new resigning cases, a final development plan as part of the union cross development there. They're going to bring in one of the, I think it's not the last, but second to last out parcel for that one. Those two text amendments that you'll be seeing at your work session, the continued planning board review for a PRD, and then two new planning board reviews. So just a different grab bag of development for you.

All right, thank you. And the last two items that I had for work session are both on the screen. Just wanted to let you know of the 250th anniversary marker unveiling the American Revolution in Forsyth County. It's going to be out adjacent to the Louisville Volunteer Fire Department. That will be on Sunday, October 11th at 3. And then the final thing is I want to bring your attention to you at your last meeting. Recommended approval of the Northeast suburban area plan that is going to a city council committee next week It will go on to the full council and then on to the county commissioners later this fall But we're not waiting for the paint to dry We're gonna go ahead and start on the next one because we have a lot of these to do so you'll see on your screen we do have the rural rural hall area plan the first meeting of that which will be uh in uh two weeks from yesterday and it'd be wednesday september 23rd from 5 30 to 7 30 at the rural hall town hall at 423 bethenia rural hall road and i would like to say that all i had to do was uh introduce that to you but as i mentioned to the chair this morning since we did not have a meeting in august a work session meeting we did not discuss that and get a planning board member to be the liaison for that plan if you recall um mr lamb served as the liaison to the northeast suburban area plan so we do need someone who's willing to attend some of these meetings and kind of keep uh other planning board members abreast of what's going on all area plan so do we have any volunteers i would volunteer for a little while

You want to do another one? Yeah, but unless someone else wants to do it, though. It might be persona non grata after our vote. Oh, it will be. It'll be nasty. I want it to be educational.

I mean, you know, again, that's a board decision. Put yourself up for that.

I don't want to say okay, but it's up to the board. The general population is... In favor. I mean, if you go do a survey to 100 people, you're going to get 70. You're going, bring it on.

Okay, well, Mr. Chairman, if Clarence wants to serve as a liaison to this one, I will certainly not stand in his way. So with that, I stand ready if there are any other questions or anything else for discussion, but that's all I had under Stafford.

Where are we with the General Assembly with respect to ADUs right now? What's the status of that?

Well, funny you mention that. I'm not disparaging the General Assembly. They did pass a bill related to ADUs, and we have three professional planners and a deputy city attorney that sat in an office and discussed it on Wednesday, and none of us... are 100% sure of what it says. We preliminarily do not think that we have to make any changes to our ordinance. We think it is already in compliance with the direction that was put into the bill, Senate Bill 445. There's just, you know, a lot of times the General Assembly says, you know, you've got to do this, but they don't put a lot of specificity in there, and there were some things in there that were put in there dealing with maximums of between 800 and 1,000, and we already have a maximum of 1,000, so we think we're fine, but, you know, again, it's based on a calculation. There's some things in there that says you may have a setback of either 10 feet or the distance District minimum we don't have either we allow a five foot. So we're you know, it's it's already More permissive than that ten foot regulation. So we think we're fine but anyway, the deputy city attorney is in the process of Talking to his colleagues, but we think we're fine as far as that goes That's what happens when you have attorneys making laws

All right, any further business?

I have a motion to adjourn. All right. Before you say something else. Thank you, thank you.

They did, absolutely. I do too.