Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I blame the kids.

Call the meeting to order. Welcome to the City of Monroe Planning Commission meeting, Tuesday, May 19th, 2026. Roll call will show that all members are present. I need approval of the agenda. Motion for approval of the agenda. Motion to approve. Second.

Second.

In favor, aye.

Aye.

Minutes of the previous meeting, have you had an opportunity to review those minutes from the previous meeting? Yes. And we have a motion to approve.

Before you do that, I do have a concern. In each of the items that we voted on, the request for approval or denial seems to be instructed when you call for a vote. And I'd like for the minutes to say that a motion was made. to approve or deny, not that we were being directed by the chair to approve or deny.

OK. We can do that. All right. All right, we've approved the minutes from the previous meeting and report from code officer. You have a report?

I didn't hear the minutes at all for a motion and a second. I can make the edits, but are we going to still approve the rest of the minutes? Motion to approve. Thank you.

I'm sorry about that. We have a motion to approve and a second.

Yeah, a second.

All those in favor? Aye. Very good. Now a report from the code officer.

Good evening, everyone. My name's Steven. I'm filling in for Brad tonight, and it's a good night because we have a short agenda. I do not personally have a report except to say that all the business, the considerable agenda we had last time has moved on to the mayor and commission, and there will be some updates as we work on some of the cases that came out of that.

Very well, okay. Certificate of Appropriateness 4452, which is the quick trip, and we don't have any business to do with that.

Technically, you do have to vote to table it. So here's how this will be the first explainer of what happened, Mayor and Council. So this case, you had three cases here. You have the conditional use, you have the special exception variance, and you have the certificate of appropriateness. The COA, which is before you tonight, is dependent on that conditional use and the variance being approved. The Quick Trip asked a table at the Mayor and Council, what was that, a week ago approximately, at their last meeting, and so they're gonna go back and reconsider based on the feedback they've gotten from you all, from Mayor and Council, And so there is no action to be taken tonight. So we can't take action on the COA. Therefore, we are required to table it. So we will need a vote from y'all to table it. And you will see it when they come back with whatever revisions they wish to make.

Very well. Then do we have a motion to table?

Motion to table.

Second. Second. Those in favor, say aye, please. Aye. Aye. No. No nays. Very well. All right, next item of business is certificate of appropriateness 4552, 1025 and 1035 East Spring Street, develop additional parking and construct a life activity center.

All right, we'll start with the staff presentation here. So this is one of six cases out on this property and you heard all of them last month. This was, again, another case where the COA needed to be tabled until all those other cases were decided at the mayor and council. They were approved, all of them, at the mayor and council at their last meeting, so we are now free, unlike the Quick Trip case, to take action on the certificate of appropriateness. So briefly, I'll just go over a review of the site. We've got the existing church building here in yellow, A proposal to tear down, to add a life activity center, replace some of the parking, and then also to add a new parking lot here. It is at 1025 and 1035 East Spring Street, 9.3 acres approximately, zoned B2. So church expansion will have 44,000 square feet of existing space in their main building, plus 14,000 square feet of additional life or activity center space. The existing parking out there is 240, but once they add parking and then remove some of the existing parking for the building, they will come out to 393. That was an issue that we noted in the staff report. We went back and counted those numbers again and realized that they had the right numbers. So 393 is in fact how many they are proposing out there. This design would not meet the corridor design overlay if it was built from scratch, but because it's not being built from scratch, we are just trying to make a little bit better and meet the spirit of the design overlay for an existing building. So essentially just make it a little bit better and they are doing that. So we think in staff's opinion that it meets the spirit of the corridor design overlay. We are recommending, however, some additional trees and landscaping. Those are conditions that are in the staff report. We have revised those conditions. This is what the building's gonna look like. I'll get into the conditions in just a second, unchanged from the last time you saw it. And then we are recommending approval, but we have modified a couple of the conditions in response to feedback from the last meeting. So we removed the first condition that talked about putting a sidewalk on Hammond Drive. We just looked at the site itself. There's a steep slope and a guardrail there, and it just is kind of impractical to add a sidewalk, or it'd be very expensive, and there's nothing to connect to. So we removed that condition. then we also have modified the condition about there was a condition that talked about planting 31 trees in this kind of cleared area here and we removed that and just said they need to submit a landscape plan to the director let's see if that's in Yes, so condition number two. Originally that included needing 31 trees and had some other sentences in there about different plantings. And after further conversation, realizing that that's typically going to be like kind of an open space recreation area for the church. We decided that we could remove the trees there and let it serve as kind of an open green space. As long as we get these other conditions that are going to buffer it from other properties, buffer it from the highway and along Spring Street. So we'll get some trees and we'll get some landscaping. They're gonna have to do a landscape plan and submit it to the director, to Brad, to make sure that it complies with the spirit of everything, but we've removed that specification about the trees. Otherwise, that's it.

We have any discussion from the applicant here? Your name, please. Thank you. That being said.

A motion to approve with conditions.

Motion to approve.

Second.

All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. There are no nays. Motion passes. There's no new business, I understand.

That's right.

Agenda.

This isn't the only business we have.

Then I need a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Thank you. Took a long time, didn't it?

Compared to the last meeting. Okay.

Good to see you.