Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone and welcome to the September 9th, 2026 East Lansing Planning Commission meeting. Mr. Bartley, could you please take roll? I will. Commissioner Chapin? Present.

Commissioner Denault?

Here.

Commissioner Greening?

Present.

Commissioner Lupien Ray?

Here.

Commissioner Overby? Here. Commissioner Putz?

Here.

Commissioner Ramirez-Roberts? Here. Vice Chair Wagner? Here. Chair Sullivan? Here.

We have quorum. Thank you much. Is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda?

So moved.

Moved by Commissioner Dinnall. Is there a second down here? Seconded by Commissioner Putz. Seeing no discussion, all those in favor, vote aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion carries. Agenda approved. Is there a motion to approve the minutes from the August 12, 2026 Planning Commission meeting?

So moved.

Second.

Moved by Commissioner Overby, seconded by Commissioner Ramirez-Roberts. Seeing no discussion, all those in favor, vote aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion carries. Minutes approved. Takes us on to item number two and three, committee reports and staff reports.

Thank you. Um, very briefly for committees, uh, the data centers work group, which is an internal work group, but does have a commissioner of screening and puts on it, uh, has not met recently. Uh, we're still working on ordinances. I'm, I, um, I believe we may have a reason to meet again, uh, probably, maybe in the month of September, and I'll be reaching out to the work group about that. We've just gotten some feedback from some experts that we reached out to at MSU. I don't see too many changes, but I wanted to kind of Check in with the work group about that. Also, I'm tentatively planning on a community meeting about the data center's ordinance. Hopefully we can have language in time, and I think we can, but I'm tentatively planning on a meeting in October, probably October 22nd. There are some other data science and data center and AI-related events going on that week, so we thought that might be a good time for it. So the data center's work group may be meeting again at some point in the future. Age Friendly Communities Committee is meeting very near future, in fact, tomorrow morning for a quarterly meeting just to check in. And that's the active committees that we have going on right now. As far as our staff reports go, just a brief update I think from last night's council meeting, a couple items that you might be interested in. The council did approve the request by the graduate to add parking spaces where the plaza is right now on 133 Evergreen, that's the graduate hotel. The council also adopted ordinance 1559, which is a diverse housing ordinance. This body has seen several times over the last couple years. They adopted a version that essentially reduced the requirement for diverse housing from 25% to 10%. also added or expanded the transfer mechanism to transfer from diverse housing outside of the downtown into to essentially any property south of Saginaw Highway. And also added a fee-in-lieu option that ended up being 5% of residential construction cost. They also built in a 1% reduction in that fee in lieu if the applicant provides public parking to a certain level. I think it was 10% of bedrooms that are proposed. So we'll see how that goes. At the same time, the council approved Ordinance 1576, which was sort of a three-part cleanup ordinance. Two parts that weren't of any major concern, I should say, to most folks were some changes to the wording about alcohol sales, especially for retail sales of alcohol, just to align us with state laws, and then also to add some clarifying information about the building incentive One of the incentives that we have is for LEED certified buildings that can get additional height or minimum lot area reduction for your number of units for LEED buildings or mass timber or net zero or affordable. And there was some clarifying language added to that about how does that incentive work and what happens if you don't get LEED certified. And then finally, the question was about changing the regulations for upper story residential uses. in all business districts. As you might recall, the ordinance as introduced, we ended up with three versions of the ordinance. The ordinance as introduced and sent to Planning Commission had originally proposed that all upper story residential change to special use in every business district and the EV zone district. The Planning Commission's recommendation which was version two of the ordinance that City Council saw last night, was to support that, but to recommend that in the B3 zone district, excuse me, the Planning Commission's recommendation was that no upper story residential uses would change to a special use except in the B3 district of downtown. And everywhere else, in all the other B business districts, B1 through 5, not including B3, and the EV, Ever else for a new construction site plan review would be required and for conversion a simple building permit would be required. So that was what the Planning Commission had sent and then finally what the City Council adopted was the third version of that ordinance that essentially made no change. All upper story residential uses in all business districts now including the B3 require site plan approval for a new construction and a permit for conversion. The nuance there is that because the diverse housing requirement that was contemplated in ordinance 1559 is tied to special uses, essentially there is no diverse housing requirement right now because it only applies to special uses and the ordinance once adopted means that upper story residential does not include, does not require special use approval, including in downtown. So my understanding is that there will be a future ordinance that will be introduced and sent back for your review and recommendation that will focus specifically on the, on upper story residential downtown and whether or not that should change. I think that's my update from city council last night. Any questions about anything I've said? Thank you, Mr. Bartley.

Any questions? Great, seeing none, that takes us on to item number four, commissioner announcements. This is also your time to disclose any conflicts of interest on items on tonight's agenda. Is there any announcements? Vice Chair?

I have two very small announcements. Number one, I have to leave at 7.30 tonight. Sorry, I have a family commitment. And number two, I want to compliment Dave on the color of his shirt. Look at this.

All right, right back at you. It's excellent. You can get away with those summer colors for about another month or so. Go green.

Go white. All right. Appreciate those announcements. Thank you. Seeing no further announcements, it takes us on to item number five, communications from citizens. I didn't see any written communications in the agenda packet. And then verbal from the audience, this is your time to come forward. And address the Planning Commission on any items on or off tonight's agenda. We have no public hearings. Please identify yourself on a card. All right. Well, seeing no one, step forward. Is there anyone online in the queue?

There are no callers in the queue.

All right. Keeping it easy. All right. Since we have no public hearings, it takes us on to our unfinished business portion of tonight's agenda, item 7.1, continued discussion of current and future land use map categories and potential changes. Mr. Bartley.

Thank you. I'm just gonna pull up a presentation briefly. Okay. So at the last Planning Commission meeting that we had in August, there had been some discussion, we had continued discussion about land use categories and I was requested to sort of come back to this body with a little more of a recommendation and sort of my feelings on a vision, a future vision for the community. and how that might translate to future land use categories. So I want to present briefly tonight to talk about sort of what that vision is, how I arrived at it, and what I think our initial recommendation could be for future land use categories. I've also handed out I guess I was thinking about the data center's work group when I did this, and I asked AI, hey, would you tell me some jokes about the East Lansing Comprehensive Plan, and it did so. And so I've cut those out and asked planning commissioners and staff to maybe share one of those jokes as we go through this, just to keep the mood fun, like future land use categories are. So I'm wondering if anyone would like to volunteer first to read a joke. Otherwise, I'll just call on somebody randomly. I hear someone back here. I hear staff, senior planner Alicia Wrighton, who's going to read. I think you need to come up to the podium. Yeah, we're going to need a speaker card, please.

I asked AI to tell me a joke about the East Lansing Comprehensive Plan update. The plan wants more bike lanes. MSU students want more bike lanes. But MSU students also want to ride their bikes on the sidewalk at 22 miles an hour while holding a Starbucks and a backpack that weighs more than their GPA.

Thank you. Yeah, AI was remarkably, there were some deep cuts. Do we have any other volunteers before I move on? Oh, I hear one here.

Commissioner Lupien Ray. Grad students say they want, quote, affordable housing, but they also want it to be new construction, fully furnished, pet friendly, within three minutes of campus, with in-unit laundry and rent under $800. The comprehensive plan doesn't have a section for, quote, fantasy.

Very nice. Thank you. A few more volunteers. Okay, let's hear it. Commissioner Overby, please.

I asked AI to tell me a joke about the East Lansing comprehensive plan update. The plan says East Lansing will grow responsibly, which is funny because the only thing growing responsibly right now is the number of meetings required to approve a bike rack.

And I should mention that these are several different AIs, so we can't just blame one. And I made sure to add which one it was to each joke. So with that, thank you for accommodating me. We will come back to this. I presented to staff last week and have redone the presentation several times since then. So I wanted to sort of get back to the basics briefly and sort of why are we doing this, right? And so a government generally is tasked with providing the basics for their citizens. Their basic needs being air, water, food, shelter. But also if you want your residents to really thrive and really to do well, there are extended needs as well which specifically include a sense of identity, a sense of belonging, a sense of agency. And so in the community context, this can be translated to something like, do you have a status, like a workplace status, or status in the community, do you have a routine? Do you have stability in your housing? Do you have regular social interactions with your neighbors, with your coworkers, who else? And do you have access to and use of public spaces? And so we can argue about those points, but that's kind of how I approach things in planning is that we sort of want to be able to provide things. In the best possible worlds, we would be doing whatever we can to facilitate our residents having these basic or extended needs met. And where planning and zoning comes in, especially, the power that we have is essentially some regulation over private property. And that's special, right? We can tell you what to do in your home. And no other governmental body does that. No other governmental rule does that. Well, very few. So we have this very powerful tool in zoning that says, here is how you can use your private property. And because of that, I think we have a pretty strong responsibility to make sure that we're considering very carefully what are our residents' needs. and what are we providing for them, and how is what we're doing with these categories, how we're changing the overall future land use map, how does it affect them, and does it affect them in the best way it can? So what I want to focus in zoning, we kind of look at use and form, and I want to focus more on use for the purpose of this conversation tonight. We'll get to more form, but you should sort of be thinking about the form too. So when I say use, what is the land being used for? Is it being used residentially or commercial or is it mixed? Is it being used industrially or as a natural system? Whereas when I talk about form, I'm talking much more about the appearance of the buildings that are on the property or the site. So we have two story buildings that only cover 40% of the property or we have a 10 story building that covers the whole thing. The form is gonna differ in different districts depending on Well, and that's going to be, I guess, that's going to be a topic that we need to decide on. You know, is how do these districts look? And the nice thing about a comprehensive plan and a future land use map is it's kind of aspirational, right? So we don't have to be setting rules. That's what the zoning ordinance is for. The comprehensive plan and its maps and all its illustrations are meant to be guidance. And so this is a guidance document that we're eventually going to come to. It's having a future land use map saying, Yes, down the road, over the next 10, 15, 20 years, this is where we want to see our city going. And then we change zoning rules after that to try to implement that vision. So with that, I came up with a statement that I figured was a good vision statement that makes sense to me, again, through sort of my lens as a professional planner and based on my reading of the 2018 plan and the 2025 update, which I'll talk about in the next slide. But my sort of basic vision statement is saying, look, our neighborhoods are stable, they're future ready, and they have housing options for people at all stages of their lives. So just kind of think about that for a sec. And I'm interested if the Planning Commission agrees with that. It's pretty basic and it also kind of focuses in on neighborhoods. But that's kind of who I feel like are probably our main constituents here as we're talking about people who are living in the city. There are a lot of people who use the city that don't necessarily live here, right? And so we want to look out for those. But when we're talking about neighborhoods, and that came up a lot in our retreat. It came up a lot in the account plan update process. Hey, man, we want to protect these neighborhoods that we like so much. And how do we make sure we do that? What protection means and from what is a topic of constant debate, I think. But the idea was that people kept saying how high of a priority neighborhoods are and neighborhood stability and neighborhood character and trying to preserve that. So with that, I have a lot of text up here. I tried, I was looking through the 2018 plan, which is on the left, and the 2025 update on the right. And I tried just to kind of distill it down to kind of how I view these documents. In the bigger picture, in the 2018, it was really kind of laying out, here's what we value. We want to have community identity that's sort of rooted in, there was a lot in the 2018 plan that I felt kind of reflected on East Lansing's sort of more tradition and how has East Lansing been historically Growth and development, what I saw was that I felt like the 2018 plan was aspirational, was kind of not as specific, and was saying this is kind of what we'd like, but it didn't really get down to details. And that's kind of one thing that I wanted to push in the update process, was let's get a little closer to implementation, let's really make sure that we're taking the 2018 work and digging down more, and kind of focusing it more, which is why we called it the bigger picture in focus. We're trying to get a deeper look on several several of the items that had come up in the 2018 plan. So growth and development was somewhat, I would say somewhat vague, saying, hey, we envision these mixed-use environments, good corridors, strong commercial corridors, and redevelopment opportunities. And I say, okay, what does that mean? So in the 2025 plan, as far as growth and development, sure, growth and development are desirable and can happen, but we need to watch out for these these items as we grow? Is this affordable growth? Is this sustainable? And are we having the placemaking outcomes that we want? And when I say placemaking, essentially, it's that idea of the sense of place that helps with the belonging and identity that I talked about in the last slide. You feel like you're somewhere. And so that's what placemaking can do. In housing, they talked about advocating for housing variety and choice. In the 2025 plan, it dug down a little deeper and said affordability is important, accessibility, diverse types, and neighborhood stability. So coming back to neighborhood stability again. But there was some interest in diverse unit types, especially about missing middle housing, which I'll talk about a little bit in a couple slides. Transportation mobility was talked about more in the 2018 plan. Talked about multimodal transportation. Didn't really make specific implementation recommendations on how to get there. And transportation, I would say, was kind of a – it kind of came second in the 2025 plan. There wasn't as much focus on it. I found myself saying a couple times, look, the transportation is going to be a function of the land uses that we come up with. And to some extent, that carries. Also, you have things like transit-oriented development where you can say, yes, we're going to have high-capacity, high-frequency transit that if people – If we provide that service, we can actually change the land use form. And so we can have, say, a more dense business district. Maybe we don't need as much parking. We can have more active uses. So the actual form of typically a business district will change when it's transit-oriented. So that's not necessarily what was an outcome here. I read this, and again, this is all sort of through my lens, as we want innovation in our transportation options. Micromobility, talking more about biking and pedestrians, but also things like road share, where you're not using transit, but you're not using your own vehicle. Safety and also reducing the carbon impact overall. And that translated also in the environmental sustainability section. We had a big focus about that in the 2025 plan, climate resilience, trying to consider that, consider what our green infrastructure systems are like. How can we increase energy efficiency? How can we adapt to changing realities?

Community services, there was some discussion in the 2018 plan about parks, public spaces, civic amenities.

I would say it was also a little bit sort of peripheral. There was discussion about public spaces as far as social equity goes, about equitable access to those public spaces, making sure they're safe, making sure there's universal access, and also how those public spaces can be resilient as the climate changes. How can we maintain these public spaces and not have them be destroyed or changed and then finally equity inclusion I felt like it was it was in there I think they talked about in the 2018 plan about human dignity but it wasn't really strongly articulated and in the 2025 plan it was much more of a sort of the lens through which we should look for the whole plan and so it really kind of talked about diverse voices how do we have good access to the different opportunities and how do we make our intentional like intention how to make our inclusion intentional, right? And so that was kind of what I was looking through as I was going back and forth, trying to figure out sort of what are these values, right? What are we really looking for? And so I came out to, okay, what does this look like? Foundational social equity, right? This is sort of the basis which we're building our city, our city of the future. Housing affordability kept coming up. Mixed-use business districts. So again, these are what I see as the outcomes of the values that I saw expressed in our 2018 and 2025 plans. Strong commercial corridors, diverse unit types, diverse stability kept coming up, mobility options, climate resilience. And so these are sort of me trying to distill everything down to a few points. And this will come up. I think we'll come back to this when we talk about form. But again, we're going to talk more about uses tonight. So what I wanted to do was look at housing and the way I started with housing. And so housing affordability kept coming up. Neighborhood stability kept coming up. And so I wanted to touch on housing because neighborhood stability means you have people who live there and continue to live there and can continue to live there. And so it's tied very strongly with affordability. There's also a lot of narrative about renters versus homeowners. That's not even a question right now because I should say it's lovely to talk about, but for the purposes of land use, it's still just residential, right? So the renter versus homeowner question isn't going to really need to come up in the discussion about residential or mixed use or all the form, what use is. I think that will come later as we talk about ordinances. So I looked at general housing, I guess, before I was coming in on housing costs, I wanted to understand, who are some employee groups that we have in the city? Or who are some employee groups that we think we should have in the city? And these sort of groups kept coming up in the comprehensive plan process about, I would hear people talking about, well, I want the graduate students to be able to live here. I want the young families to be able to live here. And the person who just got the job at East Lansing Public Schools, I want them to be able to live in East Lansing. It's very difficult to come up with a mean average annual income for all these employee groups because there's very wide variability across all of them. But this was the best I can come up with, essentially very rough estimates based on publicly accessible data, knowing that there is a significant variability across these numbers. Not all tenured academic staff at MSU make $137,500. And not all undergrad students, employees, make $10,000. Some of them make just a couple of dollars an hour. depending on what you're doing. So I wanted to kind of give a range of the best available data. And then there's sort of this generally accepted idea that, hey, your maximum housing budget is 30% of your monthly income, which I personally find to be a little high. I think that's not quite realistic. You're probably going to want to spend less on that if you can, because you want to be building in your other costs that are associated with living. 30% seems to be a little bit high. And also when you're not making much money, let's say that undergraduate student employee that's making $10,000 a year, 30% of their monthly income per month is $250, which you can't live on anything, right? And so with that, the next question I think is I want to pull up Zillow and say what do we have right now in town as far as listings so we can compare what's our current housing stock like compared to what people in East Lansing might be making. Okay, so we have a live view of Zillow right now, almost. Okay, so we have a, just looking at a sample, we're here at Hanna Community Center. We got a 280,000 right behind us, 425, 260. Let's find that 280 and see what the, what the estimated monthly is, $2,365. And that's partially due to mortgage rates. Let's see what our 409K costs us. Okay, so estimated $3,500. Hey, this is a nice neighborhood too, so let's look around at other places where we might have cheaper. Do we have any cheaper in Bailey? I don't see too much. Okay, there's a 190, let's check that out. Two bed, one bath for 190, estimated 16.31 a month. I heard that's so cute. Okay, so the idea is, I'm just giving a little sample, right, to say, hey, what's out there right now? And is this really affordable for the people that we sort of say we want the city to be affordable for? I'm not sure. As I switch back to the next slide, I'm wondering, does anyone know how many jokes they want to tell? I hear one from Commissioner Putz.

So ask the joke. Don't even get me started on multimodal connectivity. If you say that phrase out loud in a meeting, someone will immediately ask if that means they lose their driveway.

Very nice. That was a dad joke. Commissioner Denault, I think, did you have a joke you wanted to tell?

We were just looking at the Glencairn neighborhood housing prices. So I asked AI to tell me a joke. Glencairn says it values walkability, but if you suggest a sidewalk on any street, half the neighborhood will file a petition titled Save Our Grass. Thanks, Claude.

Comprehensive plan update says it will streamline development

which is funny because the last time the city tried to streamline anything, they created three new committees, a 47-step flowchart, and a public comment period that's still going on right now.

Very nice.

Anyone else? All right.

We've got one from Felicia.

told me to tell a joke you are you ever read the East Lansing comprehensive plan it's adorable it's like we want affordable housing sustainable infrastructure safer streets better transit thriving neighborhoods meanwhile half the city is like cool but can we get a left turn out of the Albert parking garage first okay so with that let's go back to the slides real quick

So we're talking about, we're talking about costs, right? And looking at what's out there right now. And so with that, the way we can get to addressing affordability concerns is in several ways. On the top I'm showing sort of the spectrum of what can people pay for. On the left side with homeless or unhoused, nothing. That's why they're homeless or unhoused. Then you have emergency shelters and transitional housing. This is short-term non-market. Being that it's non-market housing, it's being subsidized in some way. Someone is just not paying cash for it. On the other end, you have market home ownership and rental housing. Long-term, someone's paying for it at market rates. And in the middle, you have sort of a mix. It's long-term, but it's not market. It's subsidized in some way. Subsidized housing, affordable rental housing, affordable home ownership. And so sometimes those are tax credits or something else. but basically on top you have your spectrum of affordability. And so we want to make sure we're covering everyone because we have people in the city who are all places in that spectrum. And it's hard to remember that sometimes. On the bottom, we have a whole list of different housing forms. And so on one end, I have detached single family houses, which is grayed out because we have lunch. The other hand, we have mid-rise, which we also have in our districts. But in the middle is really what's called missing middle, where you have duplex, cottage, court, fourplex, townhouse, triplex stacked, multiplex medium, courtyard buildings, live works. And so these are essentially like They're called missing middle because we don't tend to see too many of these, right? They sort of are missing from modern American cities, largely because we've changed our zoning ordinances over the last hundred years to make it difficult to build those. So we see a lot more mid-rise, we see a lot more apartments, a lot more mixed-use and business districts, and we see a lot of detached single-family housing. In most cities, that's a dominant land use. So that's why we have these forms of middle called missing middle. And so we do have, we certainly have examples of these across the city, but most of them tend to be old and not built recently. because in many ways it's difficult for us to build those kind of forms with our current zoning ordinance. So we may be, we may change ordinances down the road, and I don't want to consider that, but I want to consider these are the forms that we might see in residential districts, especially as I get to my recommendations later on. I just sort of want you to be aware of the different kind of forms that we're talking about, housing forms, including those that are considered missing metal.

Any questions before I move on?

OK, so what I have right now is existing land uses as of December 2015, which was the last time we did a land use map, existing land use map. It doesn't matter to me that it's over 10 years old, because it gives you a good idea of what the land uses are right now. They haven't changed that much in 10 years. Generally, we can see where the neighborhoods are. We can see where the parks are, the natural systems. We have some areas that are office parks. We have some areas that are open space and vacant. Basically, this gives you a good idea of what you already know, right? Which is what the land uses are around the city. And the reason this matters is that as we go into these categories, you should sort of be thinking, where do these categories fit? And do these categories cover the range of possible land uses that we need to cover in the city? So this is why I'm sort of reminding you, this is what we have in our existing land uses right now. But this doesn't matter too much, right? It's still 11 years old. Things change. They always change. Some things are the same. It's just to give an idea, again, of sort of what we have out there right now or similar to and how should we look at it as we approach new future land use categories. Okay. So with that, somebody asked last time, hey, could you show us some other college towns, some other Big Ten college towns and what categories do they have? Ann Arbor just adopted theirs and they have a very simple set of categories. They have six. Actually, I think they might have seven because one is called residential plus transition or something like that, residential or transition. But essentially, they're just saying this is what we have. It's much more about the form Oh, thank you. Like here's residential in general. Here's our transitional zone between residential and a different district, like a hub. Hub specifically is generally commercial or mixed use. So they have sort of this, this is a good example of fewer categories covering all the possible land uses, right? So they're just covering everything. Whereas you can go down to the state college at the bottom, they have 18 different categories. I advised before, hey, let's not look at so many categories that can get overwhelming, and I kind of think this is. But what I do like about this is that it at least sort of tells you more about what it is. It says very clearly, hey, rural residential. Okay, I can kind of picture that. Low density residential. Medium density residential. Neighborhood mixed use corridor. Industrial. Public institutional. At least it's telling you generally what's in those. And that's a big move that I want to make from our existing categories is that let's just at least be descriptive. So this is intended to give you an idea of what other cities are doing. I don't really like to bring these too much because I don't want you to get stuck and be looking at these going, well, you know, Iowa City has these density categories. That makes some sense. It may make sense. I mean, that's what our current residential has. So it may continue to make sense in East Lansing. But also I just wanted to give you the sort of range of all these different uses or different sort of categories that other cities have which I think will help inform our decisions. So with that, these are my initial recommendations and I shared this with you in the packet last week so you'd have a little time to look at it. I just kind of wanted to talk through them real quick and then a couple others which we talked about priority. You saw this slide as well, some overlays and then kind of talk about where I think these could make sense. So I'm just gonna go through these real quick. Anyone have any questions before I start? Okay, city center to me makes sense. It's our city center, downtown. Mixed use center, I was trying to create sort of more of a center or a node where it's less of a corridor, I guess of a strip versus, You don't have a line, which is a corridor, you have a node, which is your sort of more compact mixed-use center, and that's why I called it mixed-use center. I think it can be more dense. I see east villages evolving into that kind of thing. I also see the west end of downtown, which I would quantify as probably just west of Abbott. And then I think that there's some possibilities at Harrison and Michigan too. I also wrote Gateway Commercial trying to think more about a more traditional sort of, I should say American traditional like corridor style, a little more auto-oriented. I'm not sure that all of these fit. And I'm not sure exactly the differences in my mind between Mixed Use Center and Gateway Commercial too, so I kind of I was thinking about that. How do these differ? How should they differ? Thinking about all our different business districts, what would Abena and Saginaw fit into? How about Saginaw and Grand River? And Coolidge and Lake Lansing? What would happen in Lake Lansing? And maybe those are good for mixed use, maybe not. They tend to be, excuse me, they tend to be more auto-oriented. Mixed use tends to not support auto-orientation as much as like pedestrian orientation transit use. Neighborhood center, and I'll come back to the mixed use center and gateway in a little bit. I want to discuss this, but neighborhood center, I don't really think we have too many examples of this in town. But this is when you have essentially a very small business district in the middle of a neighborhood. This was a sort of a 100, 150 years ago kind of tradition where you would actually have a neighborhood that was around a little business district at the center. That was sort of the center of the neighborhood. You had much more sort of distinct neighborhoods because of that. We don't have that as much anymore. But I had people asking me about this, for example, account plan update, saying, you know, what if you were to turn the pump house in Bailey into an ice cream shop or something like that, right? And so I don't know if that's the right move for the pump house in Bailey in specific, but that came up. And so I'm like, hey, at least we'd have something that would kind of cover that idea if that's desired. And so I wanted to at least bring that up and introduce that to this framework. As far as residential goes, I don't know how much differentiation we need. And that's kind of, I'm interested in the Planning Commission's thoughts on that. I see mixed density and neighborhood scale and that's it. Neighborhood would be essentially your one and two family dominant neighborhood areas that we have. Many of our neighborhoods really have a lot of that right now. It might make sense. I think you'd want to make sure to allow for some different types in there, but that that could again comes in in the zoning ordinance, so This is aspirational. This is sort of what we think this could be like in the future, right? So I see neighborhood residential as being most of our neighborhood areas, but where you have larger apartment complexes Or as sort of a transitional area to mixed-use centers where you have more density it makes more sense to have a little higher residential density maybe and And I see that possibility in saying, yeah, let's have a district that says, yep, or a category. This is where you can have a little bit higher density residential uses.

That make sense?

With RTO, Research Technology Office, I'm not sure about our need for heavy industrial, but I think if there was heavy industrial, this is where it could go. I think that we do have interest still in office parks. I think there's need for some very light industrial uses. And as far as university research, there is a need. And many times, a university has facilities for commercialization of their research, but sometimes they don't. Sometimes someone leaves the university and says, I want to go out on my own and do this. And they're going off to anywhere. And I'm saying, well, you could stay right here if we have the kind of facilities and the kind of area that's conducive to whatever work you're doing. But this is a little bit of a catch-all, and I've been thinking about this more and trying to figure out, should this be split up? Institutional special, same kind of thing. I started making a bit of a catch-all, and I'm not sure that it should be. It might need to be broken up a little bit. But I thought, where do we put our public facilities, our civic facilities? Where do we put the university? Where do we put our educational institutions that aren't parks? I think that parks and open space and natural systems deserve their own categories. They're different to me. They're kind of still green space and green infrastructure, but natural systems are ones that humans probably aren't using like they do parks. These are more like the function of that natural system, making sure that sort of community and the nature in the community is running as it should. Whereas parks, oh, and I remember there was a recommendation to change the initials from POS, so we can work on that. But essentially these are my initial recommendations with my comments about, especially about RTO and IS. I'm interested in exploring whether or not those should be broken up. Interested in your opinions on these categories. So before we move on to the overlays that I want to discuss, I wonder if anyone has any comments or discussion about these categories.

For me, with the mixed use center versus, you know, a mixed use corridor kind of thing. I don't know if that would necessarily need to be defined at the land use level. I feel like that could get down more to the zoning specific where that differentiation because I'm personally a big fan of the mixed use corridors. And then also my opinion is if there's a mixed density residential with like larger apartment complexes like Chandler kind of deal. Sure. in my mind that's something that well why isn't it just mixed use then if we're building at that scale okay and it's something where the mixed use doesn't necessarily have to be required but is allowable but allow it yeah okay okay commissioner um you know i know you said you were thinking of a number of these whether they needed to be split out or not but like from a presentation perspective it's really nice to be able to see everything on one screen

You know, whether that meets the end need of you do need to split some of these off or not, you know, I think that's a separate conversation. But I do like being able to see everything in one go and be able to kind of internalize it because I think that also makes it easier for people who are looking like how does this, how do we want this to work in the future? You know, what is this system? How am I, how can I step into it? I think that's really kind of cool. I do share a lot of what Josh was saying in that I think especially for the mixed use cases, I love the idea of just being able to say if you're going to build four story apartments you can have a commercial space on the bottom because those commercial spaces have built in clientele. Not everybody is going to use specific commercial entities, but it's just kind of a great built-in space for people. I do agree what you were saying about the research technology and office section is that I think it's possible that we might get a little tangled up in that if we don't consider splitting it out. What that split looks like, I'm not really sure off the top of my head. But I do think there is probably, in my mind, I would almost think like, because right now we kind of have a separation between office commercial and more of the light to medium industrial, if I remember correctly. You know, I don't know from a zoning perspective if that is a relevant split or if it was just visually appealing. But to me in my head, it does kind of make sense that we might want to play with it.

Appreciate that. Any comments down here in the side? Commissioner Chapin.

I want to support what Ryan said about reduction here. And really, this is a good first draft. And it's consistent with what you proposed in essence and we sort of supported in essence. And so to come back with this is a great start, it seems to me. I think reducing it is a healthy thing. I think we'll sort of work on this over time and even after we adopt something, probably make some adaptations after we adopt it. As you were talking, I did think a little bit about, you know, we looked at some of the other Big Ten University towns and I know a little bit about some of them. I don't know much about most of them, but I do know, I do sense that the square mileage is much larger in Ann Arbor, for example, in Champaign, for example. And I, as you were talking, I think we need to, there was one, I think, graph in particular that made me think I think we have to be careful about trying to be all things to all people because we are kind of a small square mileage and in the midst of this conversation, maybe it lends itself to some regional conversation about these issues and how we're treating that public school employee, that state government employee, that tenured faculty member, which is our clientele in the greater region. Can we lead that conversation through this, perhaps? I think we just have to be a little careful about trying to be all things to all people. Because I don't know that we have the square mileage. I don't know that we have the ability to do that. But I am confident that our greater region could resolve more issues, more problems, provide more support. And we shouldn't shy away from that conversation.

I think those are a lot of good insightful comments. A couple thoughts I have looking at this. I think the top of it makes a lot of sense. The bottom makes a lot of sense. I think in the middle, a lot of those categories are maybe muddled a little bit in my mind. I'd like a better understanding of sort of what each of those represent. Maybe they can be consolidated a little bit. just to streamline things on the uh industrial i think we had two recent items come through i think the the race car engine and that that's considered industrial i think on the northern tier up in that area and i think there was like a plumbing manufacturing place that came before us as well so i think up in that area there's certainly some use for that sort of thing and you know does that category need to be broadened or is it just simply you're creating looser standards for the structure and shape and use of the building. And then kind of the larger overall thought I have looking at all this is it's heavily focused on use and I'm, you know, a form-based code convert and maybe we focus a little bit more on structure and a little bit less on use of the building and that gets us to where we want to go a little bit easier with a focus on mixed use. So. Vice Chair?

Thanks for saying that because I remember we had several years ago we spent

months talking about form-based code and going through the whole plan looking at form-based code. I just sort of wonder where that conversation went. I understand the use of looking at it that way, but I'd like to sort of see what's the benefit of doing this versus a form-based? Is one more projecting and proactive, or is this more realistic, what we're actually using the land for now? versus what we want it to be in the future. I mean, is it the same thing? I don't know. It's weird because we were just sort of indoctrinated in this form-based code for, it was years. We talked about it for a long time. And then it went away. And then, you know, I don't know what happened. But it would be nice to sort of think about it.

Love to bring back pros and cons.

I don't I don't want to back the whole discussion, you know But but we did to go through every single aspect of you know dorm all the other a lot of architecture journeys I think it right.

I think it's incredibly relevant I think it's inherently connected to all this especially with Landon's comments in here regarding gateway commercial and whether or not you know mixed use should be a lot I mean If you're regulating more on the style and shape and parameters of the building as opposed to the use, then I think you could consolidate that with maybe, I don't know, mixed use center, some of the neighborhood center, and it kind of gets a little bit easier and more streamlined. Essentially, that's what Ann Arbor did, right? They had six categories. You know, to Commissioner Chapin's point, do we want to overcomplicate this? And in a way, when you overcomplicate and create all these categories, you're sort of restricting the use and limiting the creativity of some of these spaces as opposed to just regulating all the other criteria aside from the use. So those are just initial thoughts I have. I'd love to hear your thoughts on those.

Briefly, I don't know if Commissioner Ramirez-Rupp has had a comment, but I guess as far as the form versus use, Yes, that's very important. And I think that we can bring in more about the form next time. Because I'm definitely getting that sense. As far as the code goes, I mean, the form-based code is going to be the zoning ordinance. And it's going to be saying, you have a lot more. The form of this building is much more important than the use. But the form will sort of make the use be conducive to certain uses more than others. So it won't make sense if you have a traditional storefront building for someone to put an industrial facility in there. And so you're kind of trusting the form more than, I guess, the use regulations saying this will work out. And it can be very successful. I think it's worth bringing back at least a look at the form-based code that you guys spent years on to at least consider what are the What were the forms that were sort of proposed by this code? And why were they proposed then? And are they still what we kind of want to see now? Why was it turned down? I'm not sure why that happened. I'm interested to find out more. But I think that we should be having that conversation in this conversation. I just wanted to sort of start with the uses. to sort of cover the wide range of possible uses. I do agree, like, yeah, we're not going to be everything to everyone. We're a fairly small city, and with a fairly small land area, a fairly small population. But we want to make sure that we can cover, sort of, account for many, many different uses that might need to show up in East Lansing. I'd definitely like to bring in more about form, though, at the next meeting, if that works.

Mr. Terry, you had a question? Sorry.

Yeah, no, thank you. With the more form-based, I guess, approach, I did miss the, I imposed form-based code during my time here. But for me, I feel like form-based code, purely as like a land use category, works better when you already have a larger, more established mix-use city. Right now, we're completely usage-based, essentially. And there has to be some kind of transition into building up transit corridors, those sorts of things, before we can get fully into just purely form-based. I think that's a great point.

That essentially was where we landed during the process. It was limited in scope to essentially like Grand River and Michigan Avenue and that sort of area. And then we had thoughts about expanding it. And then ultimately I think we ended on having a pilot area, which was essentially kind of like the Spartan Avenue, Grand River sort of block right there. Yeah, you know, the... undeveloped sort of hellscape that is over there so But we had thoughts this was sort of Spurs and development and make it easier because that's sort of the trade-off for those that don't know is you're creating a set of standards for how something can be built in exchange for streamlining the process for it to be built and allowing more uses for what's being in the building ultimately. So that's kind of the plus and minus that makes it easier for city staff, right? Because then you guys have clear parameters that are very clearly thought out that are more specific than what we have now. And then the developer has clear expectations on the back end. Maybe not entirely relevant, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it. I appreciate the backup over there.

Our code is quite use-based. We have relatively few form regulations. Surprisingly so to me, in fact. I'm like, whoa.

We don't even talk about how many windows you should have.

I would expect that. I think we can certainly move in that direction if not go fully form-based. That question I think will come after the comprehensive plan or the future land use map is even done as far as what do we want for our zoning ordinance? And that'll be a big conversation. That's when it's gonna really get controversial too. Got a question at the end?

Oh, Mr. Potts.

Because I think too, form-based is how you can drive a lot more of that sense of identity, sense of place by building it in because like you go to, Some of the examples that come to mind are like, if anyone's ever been to Helen, Georgia, it's a town in the mountains that is, the entire place looks like a German city, like very classic German architecture, but that's their whole form-based guide is, you have to look this way and the building has to act this way and feel this way when you walk into it. For better or for worse, it really does establish that firm sense of place and identity for the area. Now, I'm not saying that that's what East Lansing specifically needs to do because I don't think, number one, There'd be a lot of upset people if we came out with that. But I do think for targeted areas, especially for development corridors and for even looking at like, is it Evergreen Village? Did I get the name right? No. East Village. East Village, thank you. Sorry, names are hard. Areas like that, as they develop, you can really build in a strong sense of identity and place with that addition.

Yeah, I think it's almost like with the form-based code, you're saying what you don't want by saying specifically what you do want. I think at the time, there was a lot of those buildings being built with sheet metal and gray colors, and that was what led to a lot of the interest in doing some more standardizing with brick and incentives and other things like that.

Just one last thing. Actually, two short things. I want to talk about this eventually when we talk about mixed use. Because the theory of mixed use sounds great, but when you walk down Grand River and you see an empty building and then the student apartments above it it's you know like it's like in in reality I think it's it leaves a lot to be desired um in some places in the city so like could we I don't know if it's just affordability or what the issue is, but for a walkability issue, like when you see a lot of first floors, I was supposed to do businesses, are empty. It's not super welcoming to our city. And the second thing, talking about all this comprehensive plan stuff reminds me of a joke that I heard. I'm about to leave, so I'm going to go on a high note. So the plan talks about infrastructure resilience, but the pothole on Burcham has now achieved sentience and is considered a historically underrepresented community.

And have a good evening. Thank you.

Does anyone else have any more before we move on to the next slide?

I'll chime in one more time. Ed was just talking about it.

Oh, it just slipped out of my head. Shoot, it'll come back at some point, I'm sure. Okay.

All right. Briefly want to talk about some special categories because these come up in discussion last time where people were saying, hey, could we have some sort of a like an economic development priority zone. And so trying to respond to that, I thought, okay, I think we could and propose potentially two special categories that would be somewhat different. I see priority redevelopment overlay as essentially saying direct economic development resources to this site with a purpose, with a goal of redeveloping those buildings. So like this is a underutilized parcel or underutilized building or, boy, we just, I mean, I think somebody mentioned, oh, I really want to see something happen with the East Grand River. And I could see this as being something like that. But I don't want to have its own category of saying this is a redevelopment area because that's not really specific about land uses. So I see sort of special categories like this as being overlays where you can say, yep, we're circling this area as this is going to be a priority corridor in some way. And that's kind of how we need to define what does that corridor mean. So the redevelopment overlay that I propose here is just saying more development resources to go to redevelopment of these sites. Innovation corridor will be more directing resources to specific kinds of businesses. And that's how we kind of see the differences between these two special categories. Again, kind of ideas, thinking about them, how could we sort of meet those goals on a future land use map? Any thoughts or questions about these? Or jokes?

I remembered what I was going to say. It actually is kind of applicable for this. So talking about, like, redevelopment or mixed use and Ed's comment about seeing mixed use with empty bottom floors. Some of that I'm finding is like we had this issue, not a direct copy, but we had this issue with the Meyer gas station where we asked can you make changes to the exterior? And in some cases they were like sure and in other cases they were like that doesn't align with our brand standards and so we won't do that. And so part of the problem with the bottom floor mixed uses is that if you're trying to get an anchor business in there, something that'll hold down the rest of it, it has to be a business that has branding that is either flexible enough to fit into that space or they're okay with modifying it on a one-off, which some brands are okay with that and some are not. me thinking like if we had a bigger commercial space I don't know what like an Aldi or something would fit into but if you get on a smaller market like that onto Grand River you know I think you'd have students there overnight and I think you'd have local folks there overnight because like That's something that's way easier to get to than driving over to Lake Lanzane or down over to Okemos for stuff. Sorry. Bit of a tangent.

No, that's good. Mixed uses. Spaces can be vacant for all kinds of reasons. That was one thing I should have mentioned to Commissioner Wagner before he left. Sometimes you can say The price is just too high. They're asking too much per square foot and I can't make it work.

Some of those commercial rentals downtown are, I don't know how a small business or even a medium business stays afloat with a rent like that.

Like $30,000 a year.

Yeah, that's a crazy amount of money for not a lot of square footage.

On the other hand, some uses can have the same impact as a vacant space. I mean, sometimes I'll push back on residential, ground floor residential uses specifically for that reason. They're going to draw their curtains and you're not going to have retail traffic. Is that the kind of storefront that we want, you know, where you don't have traffic? Is it any better than a vacant space? I'm not sure. So like, we definitely want to design those right and sort of have the right regulations. I would say that that's something we can address probably more specifically in the code writing section. Sure, we'll get to that.

Yeah.

Commissioner Reyes-Roberts?

Yeah, mine, quick thing, very quick on the vacant mixed-use spaces. A lot of that is just because it's more beneficial to the landlords to keep their rents high and have the space vacant because that allows, it keeps the value of their building high enough so that they can borrow and get other buildings rather than actually lower it to the market price. And that's where actually building more commercial space to have theoretically more competition might actually help because the rates would fall downwards. Right now you have like two spots. You can really rent in East Lansing. And with the overlays and innovation corridors, I don't know. I'm, I guess, generally more skeptical of, like, redevelopment areas. Because I feel like that, as an overlay district, requires a lot of coordination with places like the MEDC. And what does that look like? I feel like that falls more beyond. And this is a matter of opinion thing more into, like... Council, I don't know if it falls within the planning aspect of, you know, the tax breaks that would be there, any kind of financial incentives. So I wouldn't be in favor of doing that just because I feel like we'd have so little control over, you know.

I might respond and say this is the only way you have control. You know, if you otherwise, you're not saying here's where we think your resources should go. And you're just saying wherever it needs to. I think that as far as coordination, and the tools are one thing, and I would say don't worry so much about the tools at this point. Just worry about the end outcome. Because the tools we can create or steal people's tools or use whatever, there are a lot of tools out there to get to these outcomes. We just need to figure out what the outcome is that we want. And then we can design the tool to get there, if that makes sense.

That was a great point you made about the commercial space. I'd never really heard it put that way, but that's pretty insightful. So thanks for sharing that.

It's the same reason why rents are so high and apartments will do one month free deals. It's because it's worth it to lose the first month rent to keep their property value up. Okay.

I don't have much more on this. I wanted to sort of explain how I got to these categories, this initial recommendation. I think we have several discussions left. personally. I mean at any point the Planning Commission could say I move to adopt X categories. I would just say not quite yet because I still want to talk in some great detail about form. I think that needs to come back. I'd like to bring these back with maybe some more thought and saying okay, I took your comments and I will propose these changes at the next meeting and then have them for your reactions. How does that sound?

That sounds, you know, Okay. Commissioner Chapin. So some of this conversation, especially at the tail end, in my mind, kicks back to that vision statement that you put, I think it was a vision statement, not a mission statement, a vision statement that I'm going to, is that, I don't think I saw the vision statement in the packet. Did you introduce that tonight? No, I just included the two slides. Yeah. So I'd like to, if I could tinker with that between now and the next planning commission, along with others, certainly, that might help focus some of this conversation in my mind, speaking just for myself here. Because I think that vision statement fixated on neighborhoods, and I think the conversation's broader than that. And I got hung up on the word, not hung up, I just, the word neighborhoods just popped at me, and I thought the vision should be a little broader than that. And so I might take a look at that and kind of take it with that and that would maybe, in my mind, help frame much of this additional conversation. And I agree with you, I think this is sort of the beginning of several chapters here as we get to some significant improvements on how we look at this language and our vision for what what we can do. And I think aspirational is a key word here too, Landon. So great start, you know, last meeting and again tonight. So I'll put a period on it. Just simply say that is that my mind works down the road. Fair enough? Thank you. All right. All right. Commissioner Greening.

Pardon me. Is it premature to translate your categories to a map?

No. In fact, that was one more I didn't want to get into too much. But I had started to do this and then went, this is going to look a lot like the land use map that we already have and a lot like the future land use map that we already have. except that it's more, it's less focused, right? It's more wide, broad brush, using a crayon versus a pen.

Well, the thing about it is seeing how they all fit together, looking at the forest, in other words, stepping back, and It would be good if we can get how each of these would relate to what we have currently to work with is what I'm saying.

That makes sense. Would it be helpful to have more of a comparison between the existing categories? I have some questions here that if we didn't have discussion, we had great discussion. But would it help to have more of a comparison of our existing categories to the proposed? Or just more detail on the proposed and putting them on a map in more detail?

You can't ask me something like that.

Well, and that also, I mean, that feedback has come back. Man, I just want to draw on a map. Please, I think at this point, go for it. I want the commission to be thinking about where would these make sense. And as you do this exercise, as some staff were saying, man, I'm a visual learner. Let me draw on a map. OK. That can help also, I think, focus your thoughts. And if you're drawing and go, wait, that doesn't make sense. Wait, this district doesn't make sense. I want to redo this altogether. That's great feedback. That can really be helpful. So, yes, I think I would encourage any planning commissioners to start drawing the map, and we can bring more back about that next time, too.

Comment on that real quick, and then Commissioner Dinnall. I think that goes back to my comment about how some of those middle categories, to me, are a little bit muddled, and I'd like a better understanding of those. If we could cross-reference those with the zoning categories, I think that would be really helpful for me. I don't know if it needs to be a, you know, bi-personal map, but maybe a few examples of, like, an area of the city or something that could really illuminate it for us would be really helpful. So, Commissioner Dinnall.

No, that's exactly what I was going to say. I think I am getting caught up between the, I think, really subtle differences between mixed use center, gateway commercial, neighborhood center, and mixed density residential. I think there's a lot of overlap in those categories, and I think I agree that it might be easier for me to sort of understand where the differences are when they're on a map, right? Like I think Landon, you were talking about neighborhood center and that we don't have a lot of those, but in my mind, right, I could think of just a handful in my neighborhood. So I think just reinforcing that I think it's, once we have things on a map, it might make more sense to all of us. And maybe to that end, I would hate to give us all homework to say maybe we should all come back with our maps. to the next meeting. I will not be here at the next meeting, so here I am.

Easy for you to say.

But I think that would just help me, I think, as you're saying, as a visual learner to be able to understand where the differences are between these categories that in some way feel a little bit muddled.

And I think the discussion of form will help differentiate these more, too.

Commissioner Ramirez-Roberts.

Yeah, I was just wondering, since we're going to be talking about the bath master plan, we're also talking about the mapping aspect now. For the next packet, could we get just like the zoning map or land use map of Lansing included, just so we can look at those areas? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we'll do that.

Makes a lot of sense. Thank you. My final comment is, the more I look at this, I think 10 looks like a lot, maybe eight-ish sounds about right to me, given what you've laid out, but that's just one person talking. All right, any final comments on this? More directions for city staff? All right, seeing none. Mr. Bartley, any closing comments you have?

No, this has been very helpful. I appreciate your feedback on this. I'll have more next time.

Will this be on the next Planning Commission agenda?

Yes, that's my intent. I'll just keep bringing this back.

Great. Okay, that takes us on to new business tonight. Up first is designation of a Planning Commission representative to the City's 2025-2026 CD Advisory Committee. Should that say 26-27?

Yes, it should. Thank you. That's definitely meant to start in 26 and wrap up in 27. This has been, in the past several years, Vice Chair Wagner had participated on that work group, and then last year Commissioner Putz did. It's essentially a four-meeting commitment, potentially five if they need the extra. I think that's what it is, three or four meetings. But it's a limited term to be finished by February, possibly March of next year, and is essentially to help the community development funds be directed to the right parties. And Commissioner Putz, I don't know if you wanted to add any more about that.

If I remember correctly, this last year it was only three meetings because we had a very short, like the last meeting was just everybody kind of agreed on what we had said. So it can be as few as three meetings, as many as five. I really found it an enjoyable process. I am happy to do it again if no one else is interested, but it is kind of a fun little, if you like math puzzles, It's definitely enjoyable on that as well.

I was just going to say, if you're willing to do it, I think there's an advantage to having your experience from the past year. You don't have to convince me. I'm happy to do it. I think he's trying to convince me. I'm nominating you. So I think that's great that you're willing to do that again.

Well, if that's a motion, I'll second it.

OK. Motion for?

We don't have to vote on this, do we? It's nice if you would. Okay. So we have that.

Well, I'll let you see Landon. Thank you for the suggestion. All right. So.

I move we nominate Ryan Putz for this committee, which is called the. CD Advisory Committee. CD Advisory Committee.

Okay. Move by Commissioner Chapin. Is there a second?

It was me.

Oh. Second by Commissioner Dinnall. Official. Seeing no further discussion or hands up or objections or. Arguments? All those in favor, vote aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion carries. Congratulations on your second term. All right. Takes us on to item 8.2, designation of two planning commission representatives to an advisory group for the west downtown area plan. Mr. Bartley.

Thank you. So the DDA has begun this process to take a look at the west end of downtown. They're calling it West Downtown Area Plan. I always think of it as west end, but essentially it's right around the Valley Court Park. There have been questions about what is the market like here? What sort of businesses or land uses could be supported around Valley Court Park? What kind of parking is needed? Do we need to consider additional parking facilities? And then just making sure that The Valley Court Park had a parks master plan that was done a couple years ago and just getting implemented and moving forward with that. That's what the intent of this advisor group. And so we expected this advisor group would meet at least four times between September and March. I'm not sure. And with the first meeting tentatively planned for the last week of this month. So... Beyond that, it's a new process. It's being run by the DDA. They requested two representatives, and that's what I know.

First time we've ever had anything like this for that area. That's correct. And then it was the DDA's creation. What's the composition of it? Just curious.

Yeah. Just in general. staff, consultants, and board and commission members. I'm going to pull up the... That's good enough for me.

Okay. I was just curious if it was like the comprehensive master plan where it's a lot of outside stakeholders and community groups or if it was more just commissions and the like.

It looks like there's a member from the Parks and Rec Advisory Commission, at least one, it looks like two from DDA, two from Planning Commission, Parking Task Force, Student Affairs Representative, potentially Transportation Commission, potentially Neighborhood Association.

Any interested people? Mayor Roberts and then Lapine. Are you raising your hands because you're interested or because you have comments or questions? No, I'm interested in this.

I'm also interested.

I was going to move to nominate Commissioner Denault.

Okay.

All right. Let's discuss it since it seems to be there's three names. I was going to volunteer, but I'll take my name out of it.

I'll take mine out too. There you go. Thank you, Chuck.

You're the best, Chuck.

I'm going to have to get Chuck ice cream.

There's no bribes allowed for planning commission members. All right. So I see one motion for Commissioner Denault. Is there a second for that motion? I second. Seconded by Commissioner Chapin. All those in favor, vote aye. Aye. Motion carries. So we have one appointed to the advisory group for the West Downtown Area Plan. I'll make a motion for Commissioner Ramirez-Roberts. Is there a second? Seconded. A motion by Chair Sullivan for Commissioner Ramirez-Roberts, seconded by Commissioner Potts. Seeing no discussion, all those in favor, vote aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Motion carries. So we have our second appointed planning commission member to the advisory group for the west downtown area plan. So congratulations to you both. I look forward to those updates. All right, that takes us on to Item 8.3, Planning Commission Review and Comment on Proposed Bath Township Master Plan. Mr. Bartley.

Thank you. Bath Township has a... They've drafted a comprehensive plan for this year, and it's currently in its public comment period that will end on October 21st. They sent us a letter requesting feedback from the Planning Commission. Unfortunately, I had a lot of trouble finding the document today. Thank you very much, Commissioner Ramirez-Roberts found that for me and sent it over. I reduced it and sent it out to the commission but it was a little late. So what I'd ask is take some time over the next few weeks and read through that plan at however you'd like to or however, in whatever depth you'd like to. They are requesting comments and I'd love to provide them some and we can come back to it at a future meeting because they don't need comments until October 21st.

Sounds good. Any questions about those instructions or initial comments about their plan? All right. Seeing none, it takes us on to item number nine, commissioner concerns. Any concerns from commissioners? Commissioner Graney?

I did, well, I wanted to thank David for his concerns last time about 530 Elbert. I was, if I'd been here, I would have added to it because I did, after I found out that 530 had failed or been rejected by the council, I did start doing some spade work because you learn from where things didn't work out like you wanted it to. and we gave the commission, our commission gave a recommendation which was rejected and I wanted to know what did we do that or what could we have done differently because my concern is that our ongoing recommendations are discounted, disregarded. In other words, we've lost credibility. So I started digging. First of all, I'd like to recommend to everybody that they take a look at the materials that went to the council concerning the geothermal aspect. That particular document, We had two pages. It had expanded to about eight with a lot of really useful background information. Now, you will find that document perhaps a little disturbing because it points out that we were given a couple of erroneous pieces of information. Number one, that the public, the county health department regulates geothermal. They do not. If it's not in the sanitation code, they just, their permitting process is collecting information, which is plugged into A very useful tool, and I'll get to that point here shortly. The second thing was the statement was made that the State of Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, I think it's referred to as EGLE, is, regulates geothermal. They don't do permitting. They have best practices that they have recommended for closed loop and open loop systems. It turns out that the jury is still out on the hybrid, which was the planned for 530. The hybrid system, when it's installed, has some side effects that impact the quality of the water in a, could potentially impact the quality of the water in the aquifer. That hybrid system raises the temperature to 90 degrees and changes the pH, that creates a good growing environment for various types of bacteria, some which do not impact human health, other bacteria that could be potentially deadly okay so we need to be careful on that now my exploration did indicate that perhaps now you have to remember I'm a layman I'm not an attorney this is my first go-round on the Planning Commission But I went back and studied the process outlined in chapter 50-36 of the municipal code. That describes the process we're supposed to go through in evaluating applications for site plans. It appears that perhaps we had a failure point with item F 3 which deals with should the environmental commission have been consulted by the planning commission. I think it should have been and that when we didn't have the evidence that it had been, that it should have been returned to the environmental commission. So I think we maybe need to clarify for all the participants in the planning process, commission, staff, all the departments involved, exactly what the process is. But reading, going through chapter 5036 was not a treat and I had to go through it multiple times to really get what it was telling me. Now I should say As part of looking at the going back to say the environmental commission that we should draw on the environmental manager. As part of my exploration of issues I spent time corresponding with him by email and rather interesting telephone call where he provided a lot more information. Among the other things, he provided a link to a tool for planning that's been put together showing the location of various types of water wells, like the one that would have been impacted by 530. It also shows various sources of pollutants, say like this plume from this leaking underground storage tank. And it was really designed for us to use so that we could identify areas where, well, maybe we need a little bit additional help. He also provided a copy of the water plan for the area that covers the City of East Lansing and Meridian Township. They actually have a formal written plan and central to that plan The planning commissions in the various areas are critical to their processes. So I think we all ought to perhaps review that. And I can send the link to that if people are interested.

I think that's a good idea. Anything you're curious about or want more information from city staff, I think it's a good opportunity to talk to Landon and Alicia and let them know what you're looking for specifically. I think the whole process for that was illuminating and we learned a lot and learned more importantly what we didn't know about geothermal. So thank you for your comments, appreciate it.

Yeah, read that memo that the city council had. It's very, very informative.

I thought so as well. Thank you. Any other commissioner concerns? Any other motions to potentially adjourn?

Motion to adjourn. Second.

Moved by Commissioner Lapine, seconded by Commissioner Denault. Seeing no discussion, all those in favor vote aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. All right. We are adjourned at 8 p.m. on the dot.