Planning Board - Regular Meeting

It's

been a couple days. Anyways,

you guys ready? All right. Michelle, you ready? Luckily, she's

All right. At this time, we'll call the August 18th, 2025 planning board meeting to order. We have quorum. So, if everybody please stand for the pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. All right, we will move right into agenda item number two, which is approval of the minutes from the July 21st, 2025 planning board meeting. Um, anybody everybody read those? Any questions, concerns, corrections, or motions? Move that be approved as presented. Second.

All right, we got a motion by Jay, a second by Nolan. Any other further discussion? All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. All right, we will move into item 4A, the town code amendment. Um, we're going to go to the public hearings. So, uh, for public hearings, um, understand that that if you do wish to speak at a public hearing, please come up to the podium, state your name and address, uh, for the record and make sure you have signed in with Eva as well. Um, we'll go into public hearing item 4A, CTA 2025-04. Further information provided by staff.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good evening, board. I am submitting the agenda abstract and supporting documents into the official record of the town. The first public uh public hearing item before you tonight is CTA 202504. It is a text amendment to the land development ordinance requested by town staff. Um per usual give you kind of the highlights, but if you have any more specific questions, please let me know. The term environmentally sensitive areas has been established to describe a number of different types of non-developable areas. The convenience store use has been added to the retail sales and service category and the gas station use has been established in its place with improved development standards. A new type of sign projecting sign has been created which encompasses both the blade sign and suspended sign as well as allows for flexibility for multi-tenant and multifloor buildings. An alternative layout for the type seat buffer has been created that would allow for a brick or stone wall to replace a portion of the required planting and the minimum lot width for town houses has been standardized throughout the zoning districts where town houses are permitted. Staff's recommendation is as follows. Staff recommends approval of the proposed town code amendment. It is reasonable and in the public's best interest as it improves upon the land development or ordinances intent to modernize, provide sustainability, and allow for ease of ease of use and enforcement concerning the town current standards. I am happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Anybody have any questions for staff before we open the public hearing? Given that there's none, we'll open the public hearing. Eva, do we have anybody signed up to speak for this agenda item? We do not. All right. So, if there's anybody in the audience that does want to speak and did not speak, now is your opportunity. Seeing none, we will close the public hearing and bring it back to the board for discussion. Uh, does anybody have any questions for staff? Um,

I have one question. Um, so looking at the banquet hall um item and I'm just wondering, so I was trying to think through like what does that look like if if I'm a business owner and wanting to open a banquet hall, which I'm not. Like it doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Um, but you know, are we li you know, everything in there looked like it was mainly putting it with more denser zoning items like our mixed use and all of that. And I just want want to ask like is there a reason why we're only limiting to office and industrial in the commercial is like what what would that look like if we were finding in the commercial zoning like a place to put a banquet hall? So I think you know in in our more denser stuff I think like right down here we have citadel elevates in in the DC1 you know it's great it's you know great for a 50 person under we like that we want to bring people in our downtowns and you know go and spend money and all that but if you're thinking like a 200 person event space are we creating enough opportunity for somebody if they wanted to do a larger type of banquet hall and I'm sure you all have thought this through and flushed it out and just kind of wanted to put it out there into the public sphere and and also just for my own edification.

Right. So we are not changing anything about banquet hall the larger version that you're talking about. So that is currently in O andi and we're leaving it in O and I because we do feel it's an assembly use right you're talking to a lot of people and it fits that assembly use genre. What the only thing this amendment is doing is allowing that smaller version. North Carolina building code has a threshold of 50 people. That's the magic number. So even if it is an event space and you would people are assembling technically, right?

It's your building code doesn't see it as an assembly use until you go over 50. And the Citadel was a perfect example. Um Lucy Blues also has an event space now over the brick. Um, and so that's what we're really facilitating is these kind of little flex spaces that are more urban that we're going to find in our downtown and our formbbased districts. Um, really it's to make an allowance for this smaller version that you could have yoga classes and wine and paint classes and a little wine tasting or you could have a business gathering. Those kind of things. We really we kind of you could reinterpret them kind of piece by piece. Um, but we didn't kind of have a accumulation of what that looked like. So, this is that allowance that that aligns with the North Carolina building code in the downtown where you're not looking, you know, at an event space that's going to need significant amount of parking and and potentially those banquet halls may only be used on weekends, which might not be a vibrant downtown use, but these little smaller event spaces could do things midweek and evenings and daytime and things like that. So, we thought that was a more vibrant use of the downtown. Is there a reason like it's only limit like in the commercial it's only limited oni? Like I guess that's more of what the what you're trying to put into an oni versus like a commercial corridor or something like that. I'm just trying to

and again that's that's what it is today. So we're not changing anything there that we're not expanding it anywhere else in there just because that's the place where it fits the best and not the other. Exactly. Okay.

I kind of tag on to Nolan's piece there. So when we we go through these use tables and they we change uses around and take things out, put them in different places, how are we on the planning board supposed to look at it from a land use plan perspective. Um when we do things like that, um what I mean by that is is when we have things that are land use planned, and I'm going to use the gas station as the example is we got rid of convenience store and took it out and now it's gas station. And convenience stores were allowed in neighborhood commercial, but now gas stations are not. But then we have properties that are zoned or land use planned for neighborhood commercial that make sense for those kind of things. Do we amend the land use plan on the staff side or do we just as the staff and planning board look at land use plan amendments that come through to us as well this is just us having to change the land use plan? The reason I ask is like we did the new land use plan thinking that we weren't trying to minimize the amount of land use plan amendments we do. It's kind of hard to do that when uses change or flop and move and then also when things get moved around like I think funeral home is another one that got moved to you can pretty much only do it in O and I so like is there enough land use plan designation for those things that if somebody wanted to do one there's enough opportunities for them to do them I guess my question is how do we link the use table when we change it to the land use plan and how does that how are we supposed to look at it

on a board because I think we were trying to minim minimize the number of amendments. I don't know if we have or not. I think we have, but um I mean I think we have. I mean, especially on the residential side, but and maybe this is just the growing pains of the non-residential side, but I think it'd be good for us to know how we should view that and and see those things, right? And the the land use plan is never going to be perfect on a parcel by parcel basis. But in general, what we found is most of our peers do not have we, you know, we said convenience store with or without gas pumps. That's how we define gas stations. That's kind of a weird way to do it.