Planning Commission - workshop

Call this meeting to order. This is the August 27th, 2026 joint conceptual workshop between the Alderman and Franklin Planning Commission. And we'll begin with roll call. Commissioner Harrison. Absent. Commissioner Allen. Absent. Commissioner Franks. Absent. Commissioner Lindsey. All right. Commissioner Orr is here. Commissioner Mann. Here. Commissioner McLemore. Commissioner Williamson. Present. absent. Alderman Peterson?

Alderman Potts? Absent. Alderman Burger? Present. Alderman Caesar?

Alderman Barnhill? Absent. Alderman Brown? Absent. Alderman Beck? All right. Let's begin with item number one. This is a discussion of development plan revision proposing 40 multifamily units where an office use was previously approved with one modification of standard parking on 19.11 acres located near the intersection of Franklin Road and Davenport Boulevard at 574 Franklin Road, Branch Creek Crossing, Hood. And as a reminder, this discussion is between Alderman, staff, and Planning Commission members. No public comment during this time, but you're welcome to stay and listen. Thanks.

All right, thank you. Any comments, questions? I know staff had concerns about or interested in any comments on architecture in this area. Anyone? Pardon my record?

I'd have to agree with them. It sounds like we want to take some of the edge off, some of the modernization out. Okay. And if you could provide us a rendering from the Franklin Road looking back just to get a feel for what it's actually going to look like being behind the other two buildings, that would probably help as well.

Item number two, discussion of an Envision Franklin plan amendment to allow a hotel use at 151 Franklin Road. This is Riverview Mayberry Historic House. Staff?

All right. Thank you. Comments on all this information we just took in? Anyone? Yeah. Alderman Baggett.

Yeah, I have a little bit of a different take, I think, than Greg, and maybe a little bit more aligned with Bev. We have the BGA lower school across the street, so we already have a civic institutional commercial type of a use. I think the question is – I like the use, but I think is the scale going – are we going to allow the scale to be large enough to make a pro forma work? I like this site plan much better than what you brought the first time. My recommendations at the time was to make it more of a campus feel, and you've done that. I still think, just looking at it, it's a lot. It's a lot

I really like the cottage look of it. I think the ends are really big. At least they look like they are there. And then I'd like to understand where the access points are going to be. I know you had a condition that you will make the access points operational for the service entries, but it's unclear to me where those would be on the plans. I don't know if you have those that you can show or if that's something you're developing.

And then the restaurant, the barn becoming a restaurant instead of an event center, I think that's significantly better. But that's still a really big barn, maybe a really big restaurant. What's the occupancy you would expect to be in there at any one time? And when we say it was open to the public, could I just go there for lunch? And that means anybody could just go for lunch and add all that lunchtime traffic or dinnertime traffic that aren't staying at the hotel?

Yeah, I mean, I think 100-seat occupancy for a restaurant is relatively close to the neighborhood. I think it's quite a bit. So I guess I'll just wrap up my comments with this. I think the use, in my mind, I like it. I think it's a way to preserve the house. I think it just has to be scaled perfectly, as they said. And I think that's obviously the trick, but I certainly welcome your ideas on making that happen.

So my question would be a little less wordy. I'll keep this to a minimum. I do agree and I do see that you're struggling here with trying to maintain the historic character of this site. I do think, though, that it's a bit much for this site. I know that you have to make a profit, but I'm struggling now with a historic site in my community, okay? As Alderman Burger was saying, though, if you want to preserve historic structures, though, they do have to be used. You've got to open doors, close doors, run water and all that. It will fall into disrepair. So for the owners, I would say, yes, you d

All right. In closing, I'd say I appreciate the changes that you've made from the previous plan, cutting back on density-sized buildings, removing the loop road that could have put headlights in some of the residents to the north, moving the pool further south to get what could be a noisemaker a little further away from residential homes. I'd also remind everyone that when Splendor Ridge came before us, we had folks from Lancaster and to the north complaining. They didn't want it put there. So remember, let's remember about sacrifices we may have to make on what feels correct to save a house t

All right, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Item number three, zoning ordinance update. Potential amendments for the First Avenue District, commercial recreational buildings, gas station routes, data centers, self-storage facilities, shipping containers as permanent storage, parking pads in front yards, building height for residential buildings in Central Franklin, and rezonings. Staff.

I have a question on the first five, just a quick question.

On the prior slide, it says limit netting related to commercial recreation. What are you referring to there?

Any other comments before we proceed? Well, we're paused. No, go. Thank you.

So, yes. It all reads pretty straightforward, you know, especially kind of the way you worded the screening. It's like you can do any of these in any mixture as long as it's achieving the end result. So... I think it makes a lot of sense, and I really appreciate the point about not vertically stacking them.

A few examples I can think of where the containers have been there for a very long time, like Jim Warren Park. There's a container that's very necessary to the baseball operations. I guess applying where that's at here, I think it would kind of figure out how to make that compliant. I don't know if there's any at the soccer fields. I don't know if we carve out civic institutional uses or how we think about some of those, because I think that some of the parks use those. And I think doing this would make it really difficult when it's never really been an issue. So just something to think about

Sure. I think on the height maximums, I think that does make sense. I think the one question I would have on that is when you're looking at height maximums and we look at some of those neighborhoods in there, some of them are older houses. For example, let's take Let's even just take a two-story house. And maybe the older ones that were designed in certain eras were designed for their ceiling heights because that's what size the plywood came in. That's what size the chipboard came in. And so often in those houses, you can reach up and you can touch that seven-foot ceiling. And so... I think, t

And I would ask, do you have examples of where the half-story increase is way out of proportion? Because I kind of like the idea of allowing somebody to add or build a half-story larger than beside them. But that proportion can get out of control, as you just mentioned.

I would love for... I support further defining that half-story. As a matter of fact, I'd love to get rid of it, but, you know, if I had my druthers, as my grandmother would say, I'd love to get rid of that half-story extra. You're getting the average. If you want it more, go to the country and build your seven-story house. Because that's what happens. You get a creep. Well, I want my half-story more than yours. And after a while, that becomes the average. Then you add a half-story, and in ten years, you have five-story houses. So, you know, but... to be more amenable and compromising. Further

Yeah, I'd say just on the average, I think that could be a little dangerous. Okay, some blocks, if everything goes up a little bit, it's okay. But then at a certain point, it becomes kind of the more newer generic. So I say we have to be careful with saying an average for exactly what Marsha was saying too. And then defining the half, the half story. I think for me to really comment on that further, it would be understanding the good examples and the bad examples because we've written something right now we've all agreed that okay maybe we need to look at this a little bit more so we know what

Just out of curiosity, I'm just interested. I wonder if there has been a transition over time, certainly before I got here, where downtown Franklin went from residential to a lot of those houses becoming businesses, and I wonder if a lot of those installed after 2007 were done to support the business because they needed more parking. I don't know that it matters, but I just find that interesting. I'm of the opinion that if they shouldn't have it, they shouldn't have it. They need to apply for a variance. If it's denied, they shouldn't have installed it. I mean, otherwise... It feels like a ver

We are way over a lot of time for the meetings. We need to get rolling and keep additional comments brief.

I'll just keep it super simple. question if we need to maybe look at parking in front of houses and everything. If it's an issue, if it's an upcoming issue, I don't know that it is, but if it's like, you know, one-fourth of the elevation could be overlapped with some of these parking pads because it seems like there's a need for it. We have very small lots with not a lot of space now.

I've got to address this. As I sit here and listen to this, I have a serious issue with these 38 people who did not follow the law. I could care less if it was 30 years ago or 30 minutes ago. We had someone who came in, followed the law, asked for permission for this parking pad, and was denied. We have 38 people who did not come in, who did not ask, and just because their neighbors were gracious enough or happened to like the design, it was pretty, and did not, they're allowed to not, to have no consequences, okay? That's not right. Building neighborhood services, my long guy on one of our pr

Anyone else have thoughts? Just to clarify, I'm not against parking pads. The point was what Marcia aligned with is that I feel like there ought to be some sort of consequence for the 38. And I'm starting to hear a little bit that there might not actually be violations in all those 38s. There's some nuances. But I think if there's a clear violation, a knowing violation, there's got to be a consequence.