Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We good? Yeah, I think we're ready. All right. I call the September 9th planning commission meeting to order. Uh, could we get a roll call, please? Ingresol, here. Shonak Beam here. Seagull here. Casper here. McDougall Krabenhoff. Um, are there any agenda amendments or is there a motion to approve the September agenda? So moved. Second. All in favor? I

I opposed. None. Okay. Um, is there a motion to amend or approve the minutes for the July 15th meeting? I motion to approve the August No, July meeting minutes. July 15th. Yeah, July meeting minutes. All in favor? I I

Okay, none opposed. Um, are there any citizens to be heard on items not on the agenda? does not look so move to public hearings. Um, so the first is a request of the city of Morhead for tax amendments related to the Morehead City Code. Title 10, chapter 15 for mixeduse districts. Chapter 18, use regulations. Chapter 20, Off Street Parking and Related Zoning Map Amendments. Is there a motion to open the public hearing? I move to open the public hearing. Second. All in favor? I I

Okay. City Planner Houston, could you please provide the commission with an overview of the item?

Thank you, Chair Beam and commissioners. Um, as you noticed the this is just another um step in our implementation process for the 2022 comprehensive um plan update. and we're bringing another round of reszones and also some chapter um zoning chapter amendments. And my approach to this is when I advertise for the public hearings, I have a grand idea of doing a bunch of amendments and then I start working in them and by the time I need to do the packet, I usually don't have all the items that I advertise. So, if you ever notice the legal notices for these, I think I advertised like three other chapters and I just didn't have time. So, this round we're just doing the one one minor change in the mixeduse district chapter. Um there's a quite a few changes in the use regulations and then a minor change in the off- streetet parking chapter. um just addressing housing parking because we have some pending projects hopefully um people are going to work on this fall and we've been talking about reducing parking minimums for a while. So, I just wanted to get that amendment done so that those folks can start moving moving ahead on their projects and it it essentially reduces minimum parking by about 50%. Um, but we think it'll work and it it puts the onus on the developers to determine like how much they think they'll need parking and they can market those units. Like for example, a studio no longer has a parking requirement. So that um property owner can say this is a studio. It does not come with parking. You know, you would have to you would have to park on the street and then you know rotate your vehicle for garbage days and snow removal. Um, and then in addition to those changes, uh, there are a few more, um, mixeduse

reszones that were supposed to be done earlier this year when I did that big big bunch of reszones. And for some reason, these 31 parcels were missing on my list. I still haven't figured out why because I had I found some of them on the data poll that we got from the GIS, but then some of them just didn't pull. So there's probably some weird um uh naming convention or something that um so basically this is just a just um something that we did earlier this year and just to address the um these parcels that are close to downtown. So it's essentially you know these little pink parcels. It's Hornbachers on Maine and then First Avenue. There's um there's a car lot here and then there's some mixed uses here and then this is the old um elementary school right here. So right now they're all zoned mixeduse three which is uh just a general commercial mixeduse which allows commercial and housing uses. We'll be changing it to mixeduse one which is um is they're within the new downtown um delineation which goes to the new underpass. So most of the uses are the same. There are some different requirements but the existing uses will remain until you know till their use is up and somebody redevelops you know half a block or three parcels. Um and then we also in addition to the reducing the the parking for housing um I made some corrections when I created the mixeduse 4 district that used to be the old regional commercial district and it did not uh permit housing but the mixeduse 4 does. So I had to add that for multifamily dwellings and home occupations. And then we just added um some cleanup to the to the use table and

then just some text cleanup and clarification within the use regulations for provisional and conditional uses. And if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them for you. I have a question just about the parking. Is the current parking requirements is that hindering builders?

Um, I will say some people say it is and I don't think it's really the the parking requirements that we have are not difficult to meet, but obviously it requires a larger lot if you're going to have to provide a parking or you're going to you're going to need to do underground parking, which is expensive. Um, so I know this is a very um modern thing to take a look at parking regulations because I would say statewide um like through I don't know if it's the builders association or developers complain that cities typically require too much parking for housing and they should it should be up to them and I know the state legislature for the last two years tried to require cities to get rid of min like minimum parking for housing alto together and whereas you know we can take a look at it individually and that's what we're doing here. We're reducing it by quite a bit. Um and we're also going to be taking a look at the commercial um parking requirements because our code is more than 20 years old and we haven't made any adjustments and we just don't need those large swaths of pavement parking lots anymore. you don't, you know, you don't need, we don't have the big box um commercial uses any longer. So, we're going to take a look at that. Obviously, we we don't want to make it difficult for um customers. We don't want to make it difficult for businesses because you still need to make um recommendations for you have to have some employee parking. You have to have some in-n-out customer parking. So, it's kind of going to be based on again still the type of business like a retail quick in-n-out. it's not going to require a lot of parking. If it's a grocery store, that's probably going to have, you know, a bigger parking requirement. But we we would like to see how this works by reducing the minimum parking the way we're proposing and see if that does help us get um more housing to meet our

housing goals that we have um for the next decade that says, you know, we need thousands of housing units to keep up with demand. So, we're hoping that this reduction will help attract developers to Morehead um by making it work. I'm going to add before you I I think I'm curious what Fargo is and I think to me this would hinder like if I was going to a rental property and there wasn't as many parking spots. I feel like now if there's a two-bedroom that's for sure two parking spots. So, I feel like this is

Yeah, it it's again the developer is going to know who they're marketing the property to. For example, if it's student housing, some students have cars, some don't. So, do you really need two parking spaces for a one-bedroom apartment? Maybe not. But then there might be two cars for a one-bedroom apartment. There's still going to be parking. You you can park on the street. Like downtown, we don't have any parking requirements for housing or commercial. People just have to do the parking shuffle and park on either the public parking lots or park on the street. And it it is harder because we are a winter state and we have snow issues and moving your car in the winter is not fun, but it's doable. So, we think again our codes are not set in stone. If we feel like this is going to cause problems for developments or it's going to cause problems in neighborhoods, we can always take a look at it again. But we're hoping, you know, hoping to get a project um like I said, we've been talking to some folks, maybe we'll get something in the works this fall and then see how it works and then we can always make adjustments later. But this is typically the trend for parking, not just in Minnesota, but um countrywide because again, we don't need these giant parking lots anymore. And um you'll see like in the older parts of Morehead where we have some of the older apartment buildings, those had different parking requirements and those definitely are underparked because they may have again parked. It depends on the bedroom units. Um, so if a ho say like housing that's dedicated to students, that's going to have a different parking need than say you have an apartment building, but it's affordable and it's really marketed towards families. Well, if it's young families, they might only have one car, but they have a four-bedroom apartment.

And if in the old code, you would have to have um I think it was two and a half spaces for three bedrooms. So, if you had a fourbedroom, you would we would probably have to tack on two more parking spaces. Five and a half parking spaces for a fourbedroom. Well, do you really need that if it's a young family that has one or two one or two vehicles? Yeah, it's not it's not a perfect approach. We're not going to like be able to address every every type of scenario, but we think we'll leave it up to developers and hey, if they're building student housing, maybe they can push um bike, you know, have bike parking instead of having parking for every unit. So, we're we're kind of excited because we feel like, you know, this is this is the the trend. So, we're kind of excited to see if it does help us attract more developers for housing.

Thank you. Have we received any comments pro or con regarding minimizing the the parking requirements? We have not. Okay. Just from developers who are excited about it. Damn. That not the public though. Are there any other questions or comments? Um, and no public comments. No public hear. Um, is there a motion to close the public hearing? So moved. All in favor? I

I um is there any more discussion or a motion for the item? I'll make a motion to u make the uh changes uh for the text amendments related to the mored re um I'll start over uh recommend approval of the city council the amendments to title 10 chapter 15 mixed use districts chapter 18 use regulations and chapter 20 off streetet parking and the MU3 and two MU1 reszones Second. All in favor?

I I Okay. Um, other business. Um, let's see. We have the appointment to the Morehead Wellhead Protection Team. City Planner Houston, please provide the commission an overview of this item.

Thanks again. Uh the Morehead Public Service Commission is amending the Morehead wellhead protection plan for wells located in the Morehead and Buffalo aquifers. Um the purpose of the plan is to prevent human cause contaminants from entering our water supply wells and to safeguard public health. Um the commission is re requesting a representative from the planning commission to serve on the team. Meetings are expected to begin in November and will be held approximately once a month for about six months. So, we just need a volunteer or anybody wants to nominate someone and then the the planning commission would make a motion to appoint that person to that team. I will also be serving on the team. Just as an FYI, if that gets anyone excited about volunteering. Well, um I guess maybe before we move to appoint a representative that there are any volunteers line forms here. Uh

once a month you got one. Okay. All right. Okay. Now, is there a motion to appoint a representative? Go ahead. on point. Bob, can we get a second on that? All right. All in favor? I

I All right. Um All right. So, we're moving on to reports and information. Uh the January to August 2025 comprehensive plan imp uh implementation update. Uh city planner Houston, please provide the commission an overview of this item. Thank you again. Um, so this last item is just anformational item, and we do this generally twice a year, but I didn't get to it till this month, so sorry about that. Um, so this is January to August 2025, and it's just basically to show the planning commission some of the product projects that you do not see before before this board and other projects that are going on related to the um the comprehensive plan goals. And um I don't know, you did see some of some of the items under land use because obviously all the ordinances related to the reszoning and the text amendments have to come here. But um the the report's pretty detailed and it's very long. So if you have any questions, just let me know. And we also use that information when we do our development report. We do an annual development report. All of that um a lot of that information gets um passed on um to the development report as well.

There any questions? I guess I had one question about just residential permits. I don't know if that's part of this, but how is it looking this year compared to last year, years past in general? Yeah, it's not in there because we don't put the reg residential permits in there. We just um addressed the commercial. Okay.

I think we are Oh, I just talked to the building official about this yesterday. I want to say I think we're close neck andneck with Fargo right now, but we have a um low vacancy for lots. So, we have to work on um getting more lots subdivided. Now, you were aware we just did a sub a 77 lot subdivision in south of 40th. Um that'll come on those lots will come online um next year, but we're we're low low on lots like Hampton Place um which is west of 8 in the southwest part of Morehead. They have some lots out there, but they also have um areas to plat. Um I'm not sure what the exact um permit number is, but we can certainly um you can certainly look that up online. Um but yeah, we're we're we're we're developing more single family homes this year than we did last year. I know that for a fact, but yeah, we um we have to work on the lot inventory because all the um a lot of the lots that we have been platting over the last few years have been sold um and then there's only a few that have been built on. So, we're we're needing those. We do need that 77 lot subdivision. And then that same developer has quite a few more acres around that. So, he's planning additional phases um in the coming years. So, that will probably be a big development. And then we have some other big parcels that are for sale. Uh there's one over by 34 Street south of the railroad. Um we've been talking to a few people about that, but don't have any definitive plans. But yeah, we are we are aware and like I said, I just talked to the building official about that, but if I don't write down the actual numbers, I can't remember.

That's fine. But yeah, we are we are good. We are kind of neck andneck with Fargo, but we're doing definitely better than we did last year for single family development. Excellent. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Okay. Um seeing that there is no other business, is there a motion to adjurnn? So moved. We need a second. Second. All right, we're done. Ajourned. Have a nice