Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

2025, it's now 630. I'm going to call it to order. We do have a quorum. Can I get you, Roger, to do the invocation for us, please?

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we just thank you for this opportunity. We can come together, Lord, as community members and friends, and we just pray, Lord, for your discernment as we deal with issues of our community and as we try to protect the integrity and the quality of the way we live and how we live. We also, Lord, just lift up our first responders, and we just ask for safety as they take care of our community, and we just lift up our military all over the world, and we pray for safety for them and their families. We make this prayer in your name. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Roger. Our last meeting was on June the 16th, last month. Can I get an approval of the minutes for that meeting?

Motion to approve.

Can I get a second? Second. Roger. Any more discussion on that? If not, all those in favor, aye. Aye.

Any opposed?

The minutes pass. John, addition, deletions, anything? Yes, sir. About reports. Yes, the, if I'm pronouncing it right, Discon, Charlotte, the place of worship on the Havel Road, that would be permitted. Okay. I don't think there's any old business, although the new business may be old business. We'll have a discussion and recommendation on ZC24-95 by Will Simmons III for conditional rezoning to allow improvements to the former Hickory Grove Baptist Church baseball complex to allow for tournaments for property located at 5715 Will Grove, Menhill Road, tax parcel number 137-041-47. All right, how do you want to do this, John?

If it's okay, I'm going to ask the applicant to come in, and she'll go through the site plan and discuss some of the changes that have occurred since you heard this case last.

Okay.

Good evening, members of the board. My name is Abby Stegall, and I represent Eagle Engineering. located at 2013 Van Buren Avenue in Indian Trail, North Carolina. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you tonight. I'd like to begin tonight's presentations by showing you the current status of the field layout. John, do you mind going to the next slide? Thank you. On the exhibit in front of you, the existing conditions are shown. In red, you can see the areas we've highlighted to indicate the proposed changes. Specifically, we're proposing to remove fields four and five. Field three would be expanded and field five would be repurposed for additional parking in a proposed building. In terms of traffic improvements, we're proposing the addition of a right turn lane and an extension of the left turn stacking lane to improve access and circulation. Currently the site has one entrance lane and two exit lanes We're proposing to reverse this To have two entrance lanes and one exit lane with the goal of moving vehicles off the main road and into the site more efficiently The property owner will be responsible for maintaining all landscape buffers and fencing in good condition John if you okay your um See here The fence along the southern border will be extended and repaired as part of these improvements. The proposed building will include six bays. The first four bays will be dedicated to SBA. The remaining two bays will be exclusively for functions that directly relate to sports programs, such as administrative space for facility operations, a health, wellness and rehabilitation facility for players, coaches and staff. a food and merchandise area for tournament participants, classrooms or study space for players and staff. Regarding tournament operations, we're limited to no more than 35 weekends per year. Additionally, no tournaments will be held on the following holidays, New Year's, Martin Luther King, Presidents, Veterans, Thanksgiving, or Christmas Day. All field lights will be turned off by 9 PM every night, and field six will not have any lights installed. To manage traffic and parking, we'll limit the tournaments to no more than one game per 75 parking stalls. For example, if two games are played simultaneously, 150 parking stalls must be available. Additionally, we'll hire a patrol officer during tournament events to assist with traffic and safety. We are proposing approximately 300 parking spots. Our park rules and tournament schedules will be posted on our website in advance for public awareness and transparency. This concludes the summary of our proposed changes. Thank you again for your time and consideration. Thank you for clicking through that.

Anything else? Kenny, anything? No, sir. All right, Roger?

Yeah, I got a couple things. Now, is there a set of proposed policies or standards about which the park will be run or anything like that that's in place?

Yes, sir. We actually have park rules posted on the park. I am the field manager, and we have everything on our park website.

Okay. I noticed the holiday schedule was – that's not even when you're going to be using it. That's not during baseball season.

Yes.

Or about – Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day.

Yes, sir.

Easter.

Yes, sir. completely understand the concern around balancing community with tournament activity. When we selected the holiday weekends, we focused on times when families are more likely to gather out of town guests or have family gatherings. Summer holidays already tend to come with increased noise and celebrations like fireworks, neighborhood events. So tournament play wouldn't significantly add noise or activity level. That said, our goal is to be respectful neighbors while still supporting strong youth program.

Okay, I hear what you're saying there, but now tell me just something that I need to understand. What's the benefit to the community to Mint Hill for this project?

I think there's several benefits. The encouragement of a youth program in Mint Hill brings so much to this environment and to this community that will help the growth of our youth in sports academics. You see a lot of people moving to Mint Hill, and this is another amenity of Mint Hill. Hey, we have a local sports park program.

Well, we have that. in Menhill Athletic Association, so I've had that for quite a while.

It would be nice to have another one.

It would, it would, but the things that I'm looking at and what you said in your proposal, your proposal's good, but my concern is this. My son was a baseball player, played on those fields. I was a coach, coached on those fields. But it was a different purpose at that time. Being a church ball, it was never used on Wednesdays, never used on Sundays, and not even all the way through the summer. And that's the way it was for a long time and then, of course, not used. I have real concerns about putting a profit business – right in the middle of a community.

Yes, sir.

Right in the middle of residential because I don't see, I'm struggling with how that plays together because we have to take it in accordance for everybody that's here.

Yes, sir.

Do you see most of the youth that are using this facility, do you see those as local people or as tribal ball people?

Majority of them are local people. And I know that you said your overall goal and how you see this benefiting is, you know, these kids, they're excited to play ball, just like the kids at Hickory Grove were.

Their parents are excited, too. Yes, their parents are. You ever been to one?

Yes, yes. It's awesome, and it's a great experience.

It can be.

Yes.

It has some downsides to it, too.

Yes, sir.

You have been to one, right?

Yes.

Okay, well, all right.

Yes, yes. So I think the main purpose of the ballpark is to establish a good environment for these kids to continue to do what they love, which is playing ball. And that's our main goal here, too, is to encourage a strong youth sports program in the Mint Hill community. This is something we want to bring to Mint Hill, a strong youth sports program.

Now, you say you're the manager? Yes, sir. Are you going to be on site during tournaments?

Yes, sir, I can be.

that you are or you may be?

I am happy to be. If that is something that you guys are requesting of me, I can be. I have 24-7 access to the site. I have an app on my phone that shows me cameras and reports directly to me. We have a website as well.

And on the parking, I have one other question on the parking at this time. From the previous proposal, I'm confused. What is the actual count? Are we up or down on the parking from the previous proposal?

We are up.

Up by?

We're proposing approximately 300 parking spaces.

And the previous?

I believe the previous was about. We're up about 60 parking spots, so we've added about 60. Yeah. We're removing another field to accommodate parking.

Okay. That's all my questions this time. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, I saw where you said you were going to repair the fence on the southern property. And just in general, what's the fence height around the perimeter of the property?

I believe it's seven feet.

replaced okay so it's could you come up to the to the mic so we get this on record you name an address

Hello, I'm Matthew Kershner with Eagle Engineering, 2013 Van Buren Avenue, Indochina, North Carolina. The fence that's on that side right now is existing now, but it's beat up and down. As part of this agreement, we're replacing that fence with another fence, and I think the town of Menhills, Oregon, is six foot as high as that we can go back with.

And is it solid? Is it chain link? No, no, no, it's a wooden fence. It'll be a solid wooden fence, yes, sir. I think that's all I have right now. Thank you. All right.

George, anything?

I kind of want to tag on to something that Roger was asking about. Can you tell us a little bit more about, like, how does this operate? What's a schedule like?

So Monday through Friday is your normal practices. There might be two teams per field, one that starts at 5.30, one that starts at 7. We do have a middle school and high school that are using it from like 3.30 to 5.30 schedule, but they're only out there I think like maybe two days a week, Hickory Grove being one of them, another charter school. Bradford Prep. Bradford Prep being another one. And then on the weekends, Saturdays will be a little bit longer days. They usually start around 9 and they'll go until probably 6 p.m. On Sundays, a little bit later, they'll usually start about 10 and they'll usually wrap up about 4 p.m.

So your hours of operation would be Monday through Friday, 12 to 7?

Monday through Friday is probably going to be closer to like 3.30 to 9 p.m. But we do have maintenance crews that are there in the morning that start and maintain the fields. So the active use that you'll see, like a lot of cars and stuff out there, will be from 3.30 to 9 p.m. Okay.

So as far as like tournaments, those are Friday, Saturday, Sunday?

Usually just Saturday and Sunday.

Okay. What happens if there's a rain day?

If there's a rain day, then there will be a one-day tournament.

Okay. One day tournament or there if they don't have enough to space to come back for that one day This won't have a tournament that weekend at all Okay Let me ask about the landscaping buffer detail What's the intent of that?

It was brought to our attention from staff and I think my sheriff council made the comment or who did that some of the buffers that Existing buffers there don't meet the current standards. So this will be a minimum that we have on there So we can work with the existing trees out there, but there are some spots that might need some more vegetation on there So we're gonna make sure we add that back into it as we're upgrading the park so it's not to be intended as a sound barrier or any kind of engineering behind it to be a dissipate any type of sound? No, sir. I think towards the front of the site there was only like single trees up there. So it's a lot more minimal than this is showing. So we're gonna add more landscaping to kind of get that buffer at least on the hill that's there. There's already kind of a berm up there. It's more just single trees. So we'll add a lot of the bushes and like that into it. On the other two sides is solid woods. on two of the sides. So we'll work with the town on exactly what they want planted on that side. Because obviously, you know, there's a big tree buffer on a quarter of it and the rest of it is all existing trees too. So we'll plant probably inside of that existing tree so that we don't want to remove any of the nice aged trees that are on that side.

But nothing that's going to be like graded to elevation? Like you're not going to build a berm? and try to create any type of like...

There's already a berm along that far side. So we'll leave that one. And then there's already existing hedge on one piece of that wraps around the fence. So we're just gonna add to those pieces. Anything that's fully grown now that's been there since the park's been there and it's growing up. I mean, this is... The hedge, I think, is taller than me. It's fully grown out on that side. So we wouldn't want to take that out to put something that will take years to grow back up on that side. And we are adding a set of solid fence we have in the red where a lot of the homeowners are on that side.

Okay. Yeah, I just want to ask, just seeing that that helps with any of the noise. I've seen that on other projects where a sound barrier can be installed with vegetation. So just reasoning for my question. Yes, sir. That's all I have right now. All right, Josh. Rana?

What are the benefits of your field versus the fields at Brief Road? How are you marketing and who are you marketing to?

So this is a youth park that allows you to come and play at a higher level. So like where Mint Hill, you have to be part of that association. That's pretty much a private organization just for Mint Hill Rec. If I was... where you guys rent your soccer fields out to, that's not like Mint Hill Rec. Those are teams that are coming to rent that facility that are playing at a higher level. They could go play at the Mint Hill, but again, they rent the soccer fields from the town because they're usually travel teams that are semi-local. When we say local, Charlotte and surrounding is where most of these teams are from. I personally have teams that are players on my team that live in Mint Hill that we do practice and will play at Mint Hill as well. But it's that higher level competition-wise. is what you'll end up having at this field. Versus at a rec, it's still bonding and things like that. There's multiple. I have half my kids that play rec and half my kids, like me personally, I have three boys. I have some that play rec, some that play travel. It just depends on the individual and what they're looking to accomplish.

Would your fields be more expensive to rent or lease than the Mecklenburg County fields?

Mecklenburg County fields. Which ones?

Or the brief road?

I don't think they rent fields at brief road.

They don't have any, okay.

The Menhill Association, I don't think rents any of their fields. That's for them only. They don't allow any outside people on them. So I would say yes, because they don't allow you to rent those fields at all.

Okay. Would you be willing to have a police officer there whenever you're having events? Not just for parking. I know you said you have in and out for... No, we have them at the main entrance, so they'll be directing traffic. For traffic?

Yes.

Will they stay there?

They'll be there for the entire event.

Okay. Yep. Okay. That's all I have.

All right. Just a couple questions. Under the conditions that you all, I think, have agreed to, you basically say a facility owner representative, and I'm assuming that's Abby you're talking about, will be there all the time.

Any of the owners. I know Abby said she's going to be there. But somebody. Somebody that's an owner representative.

Will be there that knows the rules and knows everything, right?

That also knows the rules of the park as well as the ordinance and stuff for the town so that if there's any issues, they'll go there. as well as a terminal director as well. So if we bring it out to like perfect game, there'll be a perfect game director as well as owner representative there as well.

All right.

As well as the cop up front in case it gets crazy.

Yes. So what is the normal baseball season? Is it kind of March through October?

There's two seasons. No, really there's three. So it's whatever it is. You'll start spring, starting when it warms up, so maybe February, not really February. You might start practicing in February. And so you go from spring, and then you'll actually go to summer, which is more the older kids, like 14-ish high school kids. A lot of younger ones will come out. There might be some one-off tournaments that we have in there, like some season champion type tournaments, and then you go right into fall season. So spring is your biggest season. You'll have your most active piece in there. Summer is a little bit older kids in there, so like your AU and stuff will probably not play as many summer tournaments. The reason is that high school kids play at their school During the spring season, once that spring high school season is up, they go to summer, which again is more competitive. They'll rotate around. You won't be able to play with your school, so they play with other kids. Fall season is a little bit less because you've got football right now and other activities that kids will go in and play. You'll probably say if spring is 100%, summer will probably be 50%. Fall is probably 75% active as it goes through it. Then from November on, from November to January, you won't see much active out there. Might as well just doing maintenance and repairs more in the practice schedule.

So basically eight months a year, I mean, November, December, January, and February, there's not much going on, right?

No, this is a good day. I mean, people will be working out in indoor facilities. Obviously, if you've got a pretty day, you might have some kids out there practicing, but it'll be very minimal on site.

The point I'm getting to, Matt, is the fact that in 35 weekends, you've got every weekend in those eight months. You've got the possibility of having a term every weekend in those eight months.

Yes, sir.

Correct?

Yes, sir.

All right. So that's some disruption to everybody, the people traveling the road, the people living in the neighborhoods. I mean, so that's some disruption every weekend. And then... You've got some holidays that you took out, but they're not really things that are important to you. The ones that are important are Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day. Those are the ones that the family time during the summer when people want to have picnics and stuff. So those, in my opinion, are the holidays that need to come out, not the ones. I mean, we'll trade you Veterans Day for those.

And the bigger ones on those ones are which ones, like, Again, Thanksgiving is a quieter time. You're eating around the table. You're outside. The porch is light. You've got fireworks going off all night. Memorial Day, fireworks going off all night. So we're trying to say what – possibly bad things that we have in the community where everybody usually brings up noise. So the holidays you're saying are the noisiest holidays out there. I don't think there's as much of an advantage of us not being there on Fourth of July where it's already going to be a noisy weekend versus Thanksgiving or Christmas where it's a quieter weekend and now we're not interrupting anybody's dinners.

Yeah, I would say the summer, all right? Fourth of July, y'all are going to shut down. The other night, y'all said 9 o'clock. Is it 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock when the lights go off?

It's 9 p.m. 9 p.m.

So fireworks don't go off before 9 p.m. anyway. So, you know, that's kind of a discount. I just think these holidays are not the right holidays if you're going to try to preserve some peace around that ball field. The 35 is, I think, way too many. Every weekend for eight months, that just seems to me a lot. I mean, to me, if you did every other weekend or something like that, so there's at least some rest, it would make a lot more sense.

To be completely honest, if we do every other weekend, the park would go bankrupt the first year.

That's the other piece, all right? So what is, this is a business. This is not a public facility. This is a business. And so I'm having a hard time with this from that standpoint. The fact that it's not a publicly used facility, it's not part of the town. I'm not sure what we gain from this other than a lot of headaches. And that's the part that's kind of got me baffled right now is what do we get out of it? What does a town, we're here to look out for the town. We're not here to look out for your business. We're here to look out for the town. Now, if this business was good for the town, yeah. Maybe it makes sense. So try to convince us why we should be doing this.

So obviously the biggest thing for the rest of the local businesses in your town, this will provide more sales for them. People will be going to games and going to eat afterwards. Same thing for lunches and everything else. Your local shops and everything, if they're in the area, you're bringing tons more customers to your town that will then go to your retail shops and stores, as well as provide hundreds of kids a safe spot to be able to play. Not just limited to, hey, I couldn't go out to the Mint Hill correct place. Right now, if I want to bring my kid out there, they always say that, hey, you have to be part of the association. They're saying that that is not for profit.

But there are public parks you can go to and play. We have baseball diamonds at the parks.

Those baseball diamonds are rented out probably every day of the week for travel teams. So you guys are actually renting out to travel teams. Like the park right before you get to ours, the town rents out to travel teams. The same things that we're doing, you guys are doing as a town.

Right, and we benefit from that, right?

Well, the taxpayers are paying for that park that you guys rent out for.

Yeah, but we're renting it out for some kind of money, I would guess, right?

It's probably $35. Probably not even enough to cover the maintenance and lights on it. Realistically, the taxpayers provide the park, says you have it, you rent it out, because again, that's the park. If you don't have an association that's using the park, your next best thing is to rent it out to a travel team. Here, no taxpayer dollars. We're only bringing into the town at the same time as providing that safe spot for youth to be able to do at a competitive level and go out and play.

I wish we had the infrastructure that I felt comfortable would support this. I wish we had the roads, and that's not your issue. It's our issue. I mean, it's the North Carolina DOT issue, I guess. But I just worry about that road every weekend being clogged up with cars because it's not just a certain time of the day. It's all day long. You've got games. What's your game? Last an hour, hour and a half, two hours?

So there's constantly... Let's say an hour and a half. So there's constant people coming in, but it's not like you're going to have... Everybody there at once. They're going to come in stackers. And it's going to be one game per field. You can only play one game per field at a time.

The coach says be there a half an hour before the game. When's everybody going to get there?

Hopefully the coach is saying be there an hour before the game. Whatever he says. And that's why we did 75 spots per field versus like 22, which would be both teams. You have 11 kids per team. So instead of doing 22 cars, we did 75 cars per field just as that backup to cover.

What's the age group that's here, Matthew? What are the age groups? Are there any 16-year-old leagues here?

Oh, yeah. So we'll go all the way to high school. So you'll have from 7U up to 18U, which is high school.

So that would be more parking because they're not going to ride with the parents.

Well, the parents probably wouldn't come to a lot of those games on that aspect.

I hope they would. Yeah. Well, I don't know how to address that. I still have some concerns about the holidays. The ones that you gave up here don't really affect anything. I mean, it looks nice on paper, but I'm not sure it affects anything. The number of days, I think that's too many days. I just think that something every weekend is just too much. So, you know, I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I mean, I... I mean, this is, you aren't willing to waiver on any of this stuff, right? I mean, this is kind of what you've worked out with, I guess, the commissioners, these numbers that are on this piece of paper?

That is what was worked out and provided to us to include as part of this rezoning, yes.

All right.

And not saying that you can't be part of your recommendation, I think you guys can add details to it that says, I recommend it with the addition of these holidays on it, and we can go down that path.

All right, so let's open it up to the table here, and let's just talk a little bit about this whole thing about, I mean... Let's start with the days. Is that too many days to allow for the disruption in that ballpark? 35 days, and it's going to be over an eight-month period of time. 35 weekends. 35 weekends over an eight-month period of time, basically, is every weekend there's a possibility of a tournament. And as a business, they would definitely promote it to try to get every weekend. Is that too much? I think it is. Anybody else? I would agree. Rhonda, thoughts?

It's hard for me to say right now.

Scott? I just wonder if you're going to get 35 dates.

35 weekends? I don't know. It's assuming perfect weather every weekend.

And you're assuming that you're going to fill that place up every weekend. It'll go. I've been out of the travel game for about six years.

It's big right now. It's big. But they wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't big.

Well, and I think it's big for the smaller kids. I mean, when you start getting to showcase baseball, the parents are going to be limited. There's not going to be anybody there watching them.

Even though they'll tell them there's college scouts there, there won't be.

So I don't think there's that much at the higher age level as much as there is when you're at the 8, you 10, you know, 12 age. Those are the ones that are going to bring the volume of people to the field.

Do you agree? I would say you get more parents from an AU game than a high school game any day. Yeah. You can look at the memes where people show you with all the tents, an AU parent versus high school parent where you're there just for the game. You sit in the bleachers, you don't bring your chair anymore, you're there just for the game and gone. The younger ages is definitely where you're going to see more of the impact.

So do you think Scott's right about you're not going to fill up all those weekends?

I don't know if we're not going to fill up all the weekends. I'm not sure we're going to fill up the complete time. The what? The full time. So we might not have four fields going all day long. You might just have one field going for a couple games on that aspect of it. So I think we can probably fill 35 weeks, depending on the weather. Right now it's raining every week. Again, if it rains every weekend, then maybe, maybe not. Could I get at least one team? On every field, every weekend, maybe. I don't know if I'm going to fill the whole place out. We might just use the first three fields and not even use field six. Most of the time, it's more of a softball field if they want to do this girl softball league that wants to be able to play on it. Because there's no light, so that one will be, especially as you get closer to dark, by 5 o'clock it's probably getting too unsafe.

So where did the number 35 come from? Was that your number or was that the town's number?

I think it was a mutual number which was left. Did we start that or were we finished? I'll be honest, we've been doing this for almost a year now, so it's hard to know where that number's come from. I think that's the number you started with. Okay. And, again, it's hard to say if we post it on our website and say we're having a tournament and then it gets rained out, is that going to count against us or for us on our week count? Let's say you do 30 weeks versus 35.

Well, if it does get rained out, are you all going to reschedule during the week?

No. People work and school. It's going to be weekends. Typically not. And you're thinking probably 20% of them are probably going to get rained out through that season year. And I can go to Lake Perfect Game and see exactly how many they have on average per year. But I can tell you on my 11-game season, I'm usually seeing about 20% of our games getting rained out.

Just a quick question. You said one thing. Didn't see how it could be profitable, viable business without 35 weeks.

Well, he was saying every other week. So every other week in 35 weeks, you're going from 20 to 35. That's the big difference.

That part's not my question. My question is, this is a for-profit business. So with that stated, y'all are going to do whatever it takes to make it profitable, right?

We're... I would question the for-profit as we're not going to lose money in the park. I don't think there's going to be a ton of money to gain on this one. Again, I think every person that's a part of this park has a kid that plays baseball that's going to benefit just from a nice, safe place to be at.

Just curious, how many owners are there?

There's four. And every one of them has kids that play baseball. Three of them are also owners of SBA that play baseball for that.

Well, what do you think about the noise pollution side of it? How bad do you think it's going to get for the neighborhoods around there?

I think this baseball field's been here longer than maybe I've been alive. And if you built a house or moved in next to an existing baseball field.

Well, wait a minute. That's true, but now it wasn't this type of ball. It was ball that wasn't used on Sundays. Are you saying you're willing to not use Sundays?

We're going to use Sundays. You're saying noise pollution as a general, not just any day of the week.

No, noise pollution is bringing in tournament ball up to 35 weekends a year. That's the noise pollution I'm talking about. I've got five grandsons. Like I said, I was a coach up at that field when it was a church league. But what you're talking about is a totally different thing. You're not talking about the standard rec league. You said yourself this is for a high-end athlete or a higher-skilled athlete.

Yep.

Okay, and I know you said you had to pay a fee to be in Menhill Athletic, but do you not have to pay a fee to use your fields?

Yeah, the place itself you rent out to it.

Yeah.

Let's say we rent $55.

Yeah, but I'm just saying you have to pay a fee to be involved in both. It's not like yours is free.

No.

Okay, so I think y'all have a good idea. I just think this is the wrong spot. I really do. I think you're changing something that's a dynamic that has been set for a long time. And if you're going back in there and doing rec ball and that type of thing, it'd be one thing. But you're needing the exceptions to go do what you want to do. That's the only reason you're before us. Okay. And like I said, I think it's a good idea. I, along with the chairman, I don't see where it benefits Mint Hill. And I think it's a good idea, but I just think it's in the wrong place. Anyplace else that we do fields or we do anything else, it's connected to a larger park, an open area, without houses real close or, you know, real nearby. And I just struggle with that because, like I said, also, too, I remember windscreens. What did Eagle Engineering decide on windscreens?

All the fields will have windscreens on them.

You know, we're talking about replacing them at one time, or upgrading them at one time.

Yeah, so the whole park's gonna end up being upgraded. We upgraded a lot of the buildings already, but like the fences and the turf fields will go in, and on the fences we'll have windscreens, and that's more obviously for, people seeing in that you know gives you a little more privacy but it helps the on fiddle play if you have you need a background to be able to see balls easier so that one screen being a blue color or something like that will help you track the ball better and and the lighting that was going to be upgraded but it was going to be a softer light yeah they're leds these are the old lights um that have been adjusted probably since the park's been there so that they might shade over across of it but our plan is to upgrade them to all led lights and tell me about this building and what you're going to do there So, and again, it's an associated building to the park. It's for mostly SBA kids are going to go in there and work out. So if it's raining outdoors, this is a drive place to have during winter months. They'll come in here and work. A lot of the teams will have like one outdoor. and then one indoor day. But it's batting cages, a workout area, a place for them to study. So if, like, they're a high school team and their practice is later, they'll come here right after school so they get off at 3.30. They'll come do their study, and then they'll go out and practice when their coaches get there.

Come do their studying?

Yeah, like schoolwork.

Okay. All right. Let me see if I can, yeah, and I'll commend you for what you, I went by the place, it looks a lot better already. I mean, y'all have done some work out there, apparently. It looks like you've cleaned it up some. What if we stuck with the, you know, I'll give you an extra weekend, 36 weekends, but you can only have three a month. And you got to give up, Memorial Day Labor Day and the fourth of July you can have some of these other ones back because they don't mean anything I don't think I think we would consider any of the recommendations that you you do what I think we would consider any of the recommendations that you make sign What about that No more than three a month They got to give up the holidays of Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day, which key holidays in the summertime when people have picnics and stuff. I think that was the main things that were bothering me. Thoughts?

Mr. Chairman, if I could, I'm at risk of you scolding me again.

I don't scold you.

Because last meeting we had, the church had a 200-car parking lot, and I asked about a TIA, and it's like, what are you trying to say? You don't want them to grow and have church? And I guess from this perspective, we've got a 300-car parking lot. Y'all want to... excel and make it a blowout where people are booked for two years. I mean, the more people you can get in here, the better off you are. And once we approve it, then we're approving based on that. And I guess my question to John is, at what point would a TIA be required?

If it helps out, we've already reached out to DOT, and there's no recommended improvements for the site. But as working with the town, they requested the right turn lane as well as extending the left turn lane. So we are doing off-site improvements, even though DOT and the TIA would not have recommended it.

But that's not your question. A TIA would be...

Yeah, I mean, I'm just, but you know what I'm saying. I mean, I don't have to tell you. We go through this all the time. You get a 120-lot subdivision. Oh, my gosh, you've got to have a TA. You've got to do this improvement at this intersection. And I'm like, really, for 100? But this is 300-car parking lot that's going to be in and out all day long. And I'm just thinking, is the surrounding, to Mr. Chairman's point earlier about the infrastructure, do we have adjacent intersections? Because I know the last time I did a – a little medical office building out here, we had to do improvements five miles away for intersections because of the scoping of it. And I was like, has anybody looked at the scoping to see how many surrounding intersections this is going to affect?

The biggest difference from what you're talking about there versus here is that you're probably, nothing was built on that property? Here we have six fields that we're reducing the amount of fields that we have on it. So everything that's per the DOT code book, we're actually reducing the amount of traffic that's on the roads that what the parking currently have now.

By adding more parking?

Well, we're adding more parking in as a request from the town as a caution. We might not ever use all those parking spots. That's why the one next to the lower field five was, it's an auxiliary parking lot. We'll fill out all the rest of the parking, and if that fills up, then we'll spill over to field five. So we keep everything more towards the middle of the site. But again, as a precaution, we wanted to make sure that we could provide that parking if needed.

But in the end, it's going to be a whole lot more traffic than what is currently there if you're successful. If there's not more traffic than what there is now, you're going to go bankrupt.

We are currently using the fields Monday through Friday at full capacity on it. It's just it would be the weekend time would be the difference. And again, weekend time, you usually have people not as working as much. So the people on the roads should be less in different times than normal. Your big travel times are going to work and then coming back from work. So your increased traffic that you might see is on the weekends. And it's going to be at different times. It's going to be out throughout the day. It's not going to be everybody coming in at 8 and everybody leaving at 6. It's going to be a little bit of traffic all day long.

I mean, as long as I've lived here and driven that road, rarely do I see any traffic go in and out of that place. So that's what I'm saying. What you're proposing is going to magnify that tremendously.

So John and I talked about this today, and I guess there's no way to do it. Let them do a tournament. Let them do a tournament so we can see what the heck goes on. They've got so many unknowns and we've got so many unknowns. We really don't. If we put a bunch of restrictions on here like we really want to do, they don't have a business anymore. Maybe that's just the way it is, but I guess there's no way legally to do that, right?

Well, I mean, what you, and we did discuss it. Yeah. And that has to roll up, that very idea that you're talking about, which is kind of like just run a trial. Yeah. So basically allow them to have a term mix. And then have them have a few. And then go back and reassess and say, all right, what problems did we see? Is there something that was wrong? I'd like to make a motion. So we have talked about that. I'd like to make a motion. Maybe what you could do, Mr. Gatz, is you could toss that in your motion just as a recommendation for the board to think about. Consider. Okay. Can I ask one more question? Sure, George.

Is this the first type of model that SBA has ever done?

Is there a reference?

I guess, is there another reference complex that someone can Google or do an online search of reviews on?

There are tons of parks.

But for SBA specifically?

SBA is just the building itself. That's all, they're just renting the space out. They have a facility right now in Matthews, so we'll relocate their facility in Matthews to here.

Okay.

So they do currently lease the facility in Matthews, and instead they're going to lease this building here at the park. But not the fields at all. There's no organization I know of that has their own fields. They always rent their fields.

There's nothing that you can think of where it's a complex surrounded by residential? Again, I don't have kids that, you know, play ball or anything.

I can give you hundreds, probably, of fields that are surrounded. Again, most parks are around residential. The residentials were kids playing and go into it. If there wasn't any residential around, unless you do a complex, like indoor complexes, you have like basketball, volleyball, because then you can have shops and indoor. Every outdoor place usually is by residential surrounding there.

Okay.

Yeah, Caroline Quartz is a mix between them, but I'm not sure, other than the one right next to the bypass that you guys have here, and again, residential is right across the street from it, so you still have residential all around that park, too. I don't know of any facility ever that I've seen that doesn't have residential all around it.

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, I would like to make a motion. and due to the fact that for me and I believe others on this board there are still quite a bit of unknown information that we still don't know how it would affect, how it would play, I would make a motion to present an unfavorable recommendation to the Board of Commissioners on ZZ24-9 appears to be inconsistent with the adopted land use plan which designates subject property as open space recreation activity. At this time.

All right. Can I get a second?

I second it.

George seconds it. All right. Any more discussion? All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. How many we got? Three. All those opposed?

Aye.

I'm on the fence because I really like the way that they narrowed down everything. They went from six fields to three, and they're really trying to accommodate the neighborhood. And he is correct that most fields do have homes around the neighborhood, and even the ones on Brief Road, right next to a neighborhood. I like the plan. I like it. I just like you said the road is the problem So yes, I'd like to what you said about them trying it That's not what the motion is. I know but I that just I'm putting that out there I like the idea of what you said let them try it and We can come back and say whether or not it's good for us in Mint Hill.

And your vote is?

Repeat the question?

Aye. I make a motion of an unfavorable recommendation this time presented to the commissioners on ZZ24-9. It appears to be at this time inconsistent with the adopted use plan which designates subject property as open space recreation activity. To me, that would be commissioner's item.

So do you agree with his motion or do you oppose his motion? I oppose it. You oppose. So we got three for and two against, right? Right. If I vote, it's just going to be a split. I would be opposed to it, I think, just because of the unknowns. That'd be four. Yeah. So it'd be a four against it.

No, four in favor of the motion.

Four in favor of the motion. Right. Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. So the motion passes with an unfavorable motion. Recommendation. Yeah, it's just a recommendation. Yep. All right. Anything else, John? All right. So we've passed that ball back to the commissioners. Let's see what they do with it. No further things to talk about. I'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved.

Second.

Let's move. Let's go. It is carried.