Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Meeting 5:15. I'd like to call May 22nd, 2025 Planning Commission meeting to order. Please stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stand. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Call taken. Looking for a motion to adopt the agenda. I'll make a motion. I'll second. Motion's been made by Jay, seconded by Donna. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All opposed. Motion carried. Looking for a motion for to approval of the minutes from April 24th, 2025 minutes. I'll make that motion. I'll second. Motion made by Mark, seconded by Donna. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All opposed. Motion's carried. Any public comment? Any public comment? Seeing none, move on to item number five, the front yard fence request proposal for 221 Elm Street. I'll take that. We had a elderly couple that lives in this home that watches their grandkids during the day. There's a lot of other stuff going on there too with I understand there's some custody stuff, but they kind of felt they needed the fence out there to

kind of corral the kids because they're getting up in years. So, um I'm recommending approval of this fence um to allow the green kids on the property especially being on a corner traffic. So this is on the corner shaft and El Street. I'll make a motion to that we approve the fence. I know these people pretty good. um to let him put up a fence at 221 Elm Street. I'll second that. Any further discussion on this? I'm guessing it's a chain link fence. Yeah. Yeah. What kind of fence is that? Yep. It's chain link. And also I I had to move the uh fence on the inside of the because there's been some talk in the past about limited access to the sidewalk in the front house. So they moved it over and put a gate there. so that police, fire, whoever can get to the front door without having to access it through the fence. What's the height? Well, chain links normally comes in four. And like I said, I think we're going to address that in our new code to allow a little bit more flexibility. Okay. Is there any more discussion? I did. I I um my concern with the fence there, whether it's chain link or not, is to

make sure that the fence is not obstructing any of the view on that corner in any way, shape, or form. A lot of times people will get chain link fences and then they will put those plastic dividers in them to make them solid fences. So, is there any way to make sure that this fence stays see-through? The ordinance requires that. So, I wouldn't Okay. So, it'll be 90% open. Okay. Okay. Any more discussion? Okay. We had a motion was made and seconded. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All opposed. Motion's carried. Okay. Item number six is Vandy Wall Associates will continue discussing the discussion of zoning ordinance rewrite. We have Ben from Van Wall here and um going for our next section of policy review. Right. Ben, do you want to start with your information provided in the memo or you want to go to the PowerPoint right away? Yeah, the PowerPoint summarized everything. Okay, it's all yours. Okay. Well, hello all. Good to see you again. I'm glad we had opportunity to get together in person. Uh today we wanted to uh continue the discussion. In particular, we've broken up the code into part one and part two. uh as we've talked about before, we've gone through many of the aspects of part one. Uh part two has uh defined uh different elements to it and two of those things today we wanted to talk about specifically and that's landscaping and then exterior building

design. So uh as we've oriented the code and this is just for reference uh part one is those top five articles and then part two is what we call those bottom five articles and then specifically today uh exterior building design and landscaping. So we're going to start with landscaping and I I wanted to show you some visual examples. You had uh some in your packet as well. Uh the existing approach is that there are standards within the code that define different landscaping requirements for different areas of the site. Uh however, there's some flexibility built into the existing code in relationship to the enforcement of when we're looking for those to be met in relationship to when plans come before you. Uh so you've probably seen some landscaping plans over the past and sometimes you haven't. And so that's sort of how the existing code works today. Now, uh what an alternative approach could look like that we wanted to discuss with you this evening is that a landscaping code could apply to uh all land uses. Um in most communities, we exempt uh single family and two family in addition to downtown because that development format doesn't allow for uh landscaping to take place. And then we've uh typically built into codes where it applies to new construction or any uh new building or addition that exists on the property. So we wouldn't be applying these uh ordinances sort of retroactively to properties that are on the ground. It's when a change would take place on that property in which the standards uh would have to come into play. What we've created uh over time and used in a variety of communities is what we call a point system. And so what that means is that different plants are assigned a different point total and then there is

a defined point total for the property. Uh that gives flexibility for the property owner or the developer, the landscape architect, whoever they have to fill in the number of points, but it provides a standard for the community to say this is what we'd like to see. And then the flexibility is built in for how that's accommodated on any given site. So based off of the existing standards, what we have today, you see a variety of different uh landscaping approaches being taken. I I took this uh area of the city on the south side. Hospital is across the street from Quicktrip. Uh you can see the hospital parking lot, very lush uh green space integrated into that. Quickrip has basically landscaping on three different sides. And then the industrial business to the uh west or to the east there has uh landscaping along the building and in the frontage area. Then you go to those other two properties further to the south and it's just grass uh the entire property. There is no landscaping per se uh defined within that property. And so uh the alternative approach would be that uh as these different properties would transition or change or or um different redevelopment may take place then each of them would have landscaping standards applied to them over time. And so that would be a little bit different than how it is today. Additionally uh this isn't going to change overnight if you chose to adopt landscaping standards. it would come into play uh when changes would take place on those properties. So those properties identified in red wouldn't have to meet these standards tomorrow or anything like that. It would be if they were going to uh change in terms of a new development or something to that effect on the property. So what I meant by the point system is that we classify uh different

types of plants and assign them a point total. Uh so trees are assigned a higher value total in terms of points and then as you move into smaller plants uh those are assigned smaller point totals. Uh meaning that we're incentivizing the use of trees as landscaping. Uh but we understand uh that that might not be possible in every different situation. Uh so different uh flexibility is built in. You could accommodate 50 points by having five shrubs or by having one tree, for example. Now, I wanted to use a property on the ground to explain this, and I know that there's a lot here, so walk through it. Uh, this is a dermatology. It's on the north side on Shano Street, the north side of the city. Uh, I picked this example because I thought it reflected the most closely to what the standards would yield in terms of the landscaping points. uh as they're they're drafted currently anyway. And so what we mean by that is there's four defined areas uh that would have an assigned point total and then when you'd look at the individual site that would identify how many points you would be needed. Uh so this does sound complicated. I understand that. Um trust me I you know over time you get very accustomed to this and and you get used to it and so do the people on the other side in terms of applicants and the plan commission. But generally speaking, what you'd be looking for is those point totals to be met in in a variety of areas. So you can see the yellow is around the building foundation. They've got a variety of landscaping there. The green would be in the parking lot. They have a variety of landscaping there along the street frontage in blue. Uh the code uh would probably require a little bit more landscaping than what they have, but you can see that there's trees there. And then finally, yards, meaning that anywhere on the site

accommodating um different landscaping. And that's what you can see in the orange there. And so what this essentially comes to be is that there's based off the building foundation 380 ft all the way around that uh foundation. That yields 150 points needed. that could be accommodated via three trees for based off of the math uh in relationship to the point system. And so, uh this is one way to ensure that we get landscaping built into uh new properties as they develop and uh in particular uh in core areas where we'd like to see those aesthetic uh components be built into them. Uh on the flip side, uh what it does require is a little bit more uh in terms of what is expected on the application side and the administrative side. So I I just sort of summarize this slide for you, but basically the alternative approach provides that consistency in terms of we know what we're going to get uh both from the city side and the application side. It does have some flexibility built into it where the standards can be met via those points in a customized configuration to the lot. Additionally, what we do often is give credit for existing plants that are retained on the site. So, if there's an opportunity to retain different trees, those count towards your point total. And in fact, usually we double the point total if you're able to retain those. Um the downsides uh like you're probably aware uh this could yield higher costs for applicants in relationship to the plantings required and preparing a landscaping plan. And you know it's going to take some administrative time in relationship to checking it but also getting accustomed to it over time and learning this new system. But as identified in the comprehensive plan in

particular the commercial corridors we wanted to see a enhanced aesthetics quality look feel function uh there's also different components in there related to green space and shade and reduce pollution that's what landscaping provides uh but I wanted to pose the question we wanted to pose the question to you this evening uh does this point system is that something you are interested in us putting together for New London is that the route we would like to pursue. Uh is it a different version? And if we are potentially pursuing that point system, maybe it doesn't have to apply to everywhere in the community. Maybe it's specifically targeted and oriented to certain areas that we would like to see uh this take place in relationship to the the higher, you know, aesthetics and the landscaping components. So in particular, you know, the commercial corridors kind of stand out as those two areas on the north and south side where we might want to see landscaping standards. We don't have to necessarily apply them uniformly across the community. Uh so I'll stop there and open it up for not only questions but discussion. Uh what we'd like to do uh with this discussion is give us some direction, myself and city staff as to uh what uh we would build into the draft plan before we brought it to you. Um because if you guys come today and say we don't want landscaping standards, we don't want to spend a ton of time trying to figure out what those are um before we would come back to you all. So I'll stop there and and open up the floor. My feeling on is I don't think the city should have to force people to plant trees on the property because I don't know if I build a new house I don't expect it the city to tell me I got to plant a certain amount of trees to come up to this point system.

Yeah because it's my property, right? Uh we would not be proposing this for single family or two family. It would apply to multifamily uh commercial and industrial. Well, even if I had a multi put up a multif family because I got you'll have enough money invested in putting up that building. I mean, I know it's going to be figured in the in the cost of it, but I don't think the city should have the right to tell you that you have to plant bushes, okay, or trees. That's just my opinion. I feel like it's a great system. I think that it's needed for the commercial buildings just for the aesthetic value to the city and I like the options that they have. You know, they can plant trees. I don't think it's overly um intrusive to them having a requirement for three trees for 150 points. I think that's reasonable and I don't think I mean SCI has pretty common for other places to do it. We're just keeping up with Jones. So you take the grocery store over here. Would that be built into their parking lot? I mean, as far as like right now, it's parking lot desert. So would you under this system, would they be required to plant those trees within the the parking lot? Yes, but we wouldn't be retroactively applying it to them. Right. So if they were developing the parking lot today, yes, there would be significantly more uh trees integrated into that parking lot than there are right now. But if you look already um I mean there is, you know, there is landscaping already. Yeah. Along the grocery store and you some in the parking lot, but to your point, you know, maybe a couple more islands in the middle for the parking lot. I and and I was just using that as general census. I mean if a place would go up like that grocery store that's what you would be

looking for. Yes. Yeah. And the same would go for Aldi which I think Aldi did include some landscaping along the street frontage. There would be a little bit more requirements with this system. Um, but I didn't specifically look at at what they propose other than the fact that you have people uh volunteering to provide landscaping today. Uh there aren't as hard and fast standards as this uh program would provide. Uh but on the flip side, then you're guaranteed to see it if you do have the standards. So there's pros and cons to that approach. I like the idea of of some of the landscaping just for the simple reason that the rain water and stuff. I mean, more concrete put you put down, more runoff you got on all your streets and stuff. So, that's kind of why I like to see a little bit more green space in area because it takes care of the the water runoff outside of the beautifification. What's your opinion, Dave? You're the one that has to this shoulders. It's your work. Good or bad? Since I've been here, we haven't put a big emphasis on landscaping. I I think we kind of missed the boat a little bit. Think of a couple projects that we've done that we probably should have spent a little more time and energies on. But even like they were talking about the parking lot for water, they'll build those into there and it's landscaping and it also works to divert some of the water away from the storms. Yeah, especially in our quarters where we got people coming in here that haven't been living before. You want them to have a nice experience when they're driving down the street. So there there should be something aesthetics there as they drive through. I mean, I understand what Bernie's saying, and I don't necessarily disagree with what he's saying, but at the same

time, we do require somebody who's putting up a new build to adhere to um some standards as far as what their building is going to look like itself. So, I think having some standards for the property as well as the actual structure, I I guess I'm okay with that. Ben, as far as some of your other projects that you've done, have have other communities adopted the same. Yeah, actually, um, every community that I've I've done this zoning code has adopted some version of the point system, uh, it's and because of the fact that the existing codes that are out there, especially older codes like New Londons, uh, there there's counterintuitive language in there. It's not as clear. it's not as um you straightforward as it should be in relationship to what the expectations are and that usually breeds the situation that you guys are in where you're you're sometimes imposing them, you're sometimes not and and it's usually a volunteer-based scenario. Um but I wouldn't you know I think there again yeah pros and cons it is going to require these new construction to to integrate more than they are today. Uh so the cost is associated with that but you get a higher quality product that hopefully enhances the community in that area and I I do think most businesses like in all these they already know this going up front and they have people sign I do think we need to have something in place that you know where their person gives us a design standard and basically we just review it does it meet the point system that we're looking for and then some people go way above and beyond too where they're, you know, really taking some care and they're making because they want their buildings to look nice too, most of them. I don't

think the cost necessarily is going to make or break someone's project. You know, some of these companies have come in, you know, they got that figured into their expenses when they when they and this point system is a a minimum, correct? Yes. Going above and beyond this, right? And then there's built-in and what we would do is build in flexibility like I talked about so they could accommodate for a different site configuration where they might not be able to meet one specific area but they could meet it gra you know on the site or if the site was so constrained where there wasn't physically possible to put plantings then you have that option as well. So, it does build in a little bit of flexibility, but at least there's a standard in place to base your decision on that off of. One of the concerns I had was just the manpower to I mean, is Dave gonna have to point and you know, yeah, up points for everything, but Ben shows some examples of some things that he's reviewed and basically the landscaping architect will go through on their map and they'll they'll identify everything in the point system based on our point system. So it's a matter of just reviewing it and not having to recreate and start adding up everything. So um you know like what most people have said it's it's probably a good thing to you know beautify our commu uh community but you know looking at just a minimum standards. We don't want to all this stuff but just something minimal to you know kind of green up the community. It's not a bad thing by by any means. Have you seen any worksheets or forms that they have maybe online where they're kind of that way I can just take and go Yep. get all the points here. Yeah, I um I can give it to you for internal use, but I created a a spreadsheet that you could basically fill in what they give you and it'll spit out the results in terms of if they're meeting the code. But uh I don't know Chad if you wanted to bring up that uh Dollar Tree example that I had in the packet.

Um, but this was in a different community, Port Atinson. It's in uh souththeast Wisconsin. Uh, they adopted, no, not uh the facade, the uh plan itself. Uh they adopted the standards and uh the last one, I guess. Uh and so this is what they produced for us was the identification of the plans. And then this is what Chad's talking about in relationship to them doing the math and saying this is what we're proposing to plant. These are the quantities. And then they do the math in terms of the points there. And then from my perspective as the reviewer, I'm double-checking the math. But beyond that, I'm not counting every single individual plant that's on that sheet. And so from your reviewing perspective at the planning commission level, it would be staff saying yes, the points are met versus no, they're not. And that's about as simple as it could get outside of maybe a flexibility me situation potentially arising. Uh they've also integrated a storm water pond in this particular development that's in the bottom left corner there. And they integrated plants within that storm water pond that counted towards their point total. Uh so it was the sort of the dual purpose like you were mentioning in relationship to not only providing the aesthetics but also um increasing the storm water management on the property. So we just went through a a reasonzoning of project and that was a big concern of everybody was trees. Are they going to plant trees? They said they were going to plant trees and stuff. So sounds like our community wants that as well. True. Yeah. And in that particular project that was residential like R1R2. So we wouldn't have the standards for that. But to your point, you know, people want to see green.

I guess my only concern is by requiring so much foliage in front of the business, our business is going to be deterred from building here. You know, they want to have their sign be visible. They don't want trees blocking the view. So, I guess that's the only concern I would have is that businesses be like, "Well, I'd like to come to New London, but they're not going to see my business because they require so much for folage in front of my business." So, you opposing to make the standards less then? I mean, you can there's a happy medium there as well. Well, they're not we're not saying the size. We're just saying quantity. We're not saying they have to put four big elms in front of them. They can do just shrubs if they don't want options for that. I think for designing standard commercial projects like this, it's very standard to have a landscape architect go through do the design of landscaping and pump out the points and just make sure it fits with, you know, um signage and and everything else. So, I don't think this is like going way above and beyond what is almost getting to be fairly normal for for construction. But again, I I I don't think we want to be like on the high end, but you know, to have some standards is is probably a good thing for us to have, you know, and if you if you have a development and it doesn't have some green space, it's not attractive, you know, people just whiz right by it. there's nothing to, you know, just a big old building. And so we need to make New London look like the

cute community it is. We have to sell it. And if we don't do the green spaces and things, you know, it's like we don't sell the river, which should be highlighting that river also. Yeah, I'm sorry. We're done. Apologize. Um, I think this system is a little less cumbersome and from a standpoint a little easier to get the landscape standards that we're looking for and still not spend hours and hours going through landscape plans to see if it meets our like you mentioned our other quotases. It's you can't hardly make sense of it. You know, even people that deal with it every day were calling and asking questions. Yeah. So, we got to fix it somehow. I think we definitely need a landscape standard and this one's probably the least impact. And the other thing with that is this isn't forever. If all of a sudden we get input like for Tim's comments, well, we don't want to go there because of this. Hey, we can come back and lessen them, remove them, you know, we can we can, you know, adjust based on, you know, feedback or things. So, it's not a forever thing, but you know, creating these standards, I think, is pretty pretty normal for many communities. Could we go back to the um planting schedule or the point system, please? Go back to that slide. So, planting schedule, one of the earlier ones, Chad, yeah, the first slide there. Yeah, this one for the trees though. How many points for trees, shrubs, grasses, stuff like that? This one. Right there. Yeah. So, the ornamental grasses and flowers, you said one point for that. Is that one point per square foot or how do you

Yeah. Is that how it works? One point. So, if somebody had a large green space and they wanted to put in a bunch of native grasses or something like that, that could be done also, huh? Yes. And that's what I was that's what I was referring to as part of that Dollar Tree example with the storm water pond. and they put the ornamental grasses in the stormwater pond and so the square footage of the stormwater pond actually counted towards their point total by integrating it into that. I just wondered how that worked with that. It's sort of like Walmart's pond that now got all the cattails whether they put them in there or mother nature, you know, it makes it nicer. So, we've had some conversation both ways. So, we're looking for some directions. No, this is just for just commercial and businesses. Correct. It's not residential. Correct. Well, well, multi multif family. That's what I mean. Which is technically commercial one family or two two family. It's not and we could take any route we want. So if we didn't think that an industrial building needed landscaping standards, u we could certainly exempt them from it. Same with multifamily. I think based off of what I've looked at in the comprehensive plan is that the commercial corridors were the focus areas. And so minimally I would recommend that those standards that landscaping standards be applied to those two corridors. Whether it goes beyond that, I think is the direction we're also seeking from you this evening. Will these standards apply to our business and industrial areas or is this just such as business park north of town or the industrial out by Kerwood that or do they have their own covenants out

there that would apply? Uh the zoning code does not impact the covenants. So the covenants are property specific requirements that they might have to meet. Those could go beyond what we have in the zoning code. Uh so the zoning code would apply to all properties within the community in the zoning districts we chose to apply the standards within whether they have covenants or not. um those those covenants that are property specific like in an industrial park. I don't know exactly what those look like for that north industrial park whether there's landscaping requirements or not, but my guess is there might be and they might actually just be accomplishing both the covenants and these standards by integrating it into them. But I I could be wrong. I hadn't looked at them specifically. For me, listening to the constituents in the past uh issues that have been brought forth, I like the idea. I can support it. And again, you're not voting on the official tonight. If this would be you're giving us direction to to work on it and to bring back the proposal for for future review of the code. I mean, like Ben was saying, if if if everyone's was against it, then yeah, we're not going to waste our time in to do that. But if there's enough interest, we put that together for your for your review in the future. Anybody dead set against it? Not as long as it's not for residential. Okay. Yeah. I think we'll start with orientation on the commercial corridors

in relationship to landscaping standards and and build those into the draft and and see what you guys think. At that point, like Chad said, I think definitely it has to be in the commercial corridors, but I guess I would like to see it in all of the planning. Personally, I'm pretty sure I might change my mind after you come back with stuff, but I think right now I like the idea of I was just thinking back to a conversation that we had about um new builds, new new businesses going up and our concerns over what materials they're using, you know, siding and those kinds of things. And I realized that one of the new builds that I thought I was going to like I don't necessarily I find it stark and I realized it's because there is no green there. So yeah, to Belinda's point, we do regulate what kind of sightings you can put on buildings downtown and stuff. So that's kind of the same thing, only it's not green space, but it's trying to make it look better. So yeah, I think that's a good point. I think they just gave you a good segue into your next section. Yeah, absolutely. Exterior design, the building materials. Yep. Uh so today we have standards in the city for downtown and then also uh largecale development. Uh an alternative approach very similar to the landscaping is which it could be more uniformally applied to different areas. uh in in a lot of communities uh you know those residential are exempt. Uh we could discuss that further as well. Uh they would apply again non retroactively to an existing development. It would only be for new

construction or additions um on an on a developed property. And basically what we've created is a way to again allow for some flexibility, creativity in the building design, but at least have some metrics that we can look at and say, does this meet the standards we're looking for? And so, uh, I wanted to point out a couple of examples to start with. Uh, based off of what we have today in the city, uh, we get a variety of different types of development, uh, in in relationship to exterior building design. So at the bottom is the new multif family against the river and Aldi. Both of those do things I think generally speaking people view as as integrating high quality materials. Whereas the example on the top um some people might not have as favorable view of that development design. And so with today's standards we sort of get all across the board in relationship to to that uh different component. Whereas if we applied uh standards more uniformly across the board, we would avoid a situation uh potentially like uh the top one if uh that is something you you you're not as in favor of. So I know that there's a lot on the screen, but really what I'm I'm aiming to illustrate here is that we've come up with a system that basically just says a class of materials uh or a grouping of materials is associated with a class. meaning that class one is your highest quality materials and then class 4 being your lowest um in terms of non-decorative kind of materials. So brick and stone and glass are class one whereas non-decorative block and metal would be class 4. And then for different land use types we could apply different metrics like I just talked about where we could say a certain class is required. So for example commercial we would require 50% of the front facade to have brick, stone

and glass integrated in it. The other 50% could be uh decorative block could be decorative siding, metal, wood, some combination thereof. So it allows for the flexibility on the side of the property owner, the developer or the architect, whoever's coming before you to say, I want to integrate these different ideas into this building. uh but it at least gives you as the city uh the the perspective of this is what we're our expectations are for that type of development uh that's integrated into uh meeting the the standards there. So a couple of examples I I again use the the dermatology building uh the Aldi and the um uh multifamily project as uh you know I didn't look at every single detail but I would from a general look of the outside I would say that these would meet the standards we just talked about in relationship to the exterior design. So this is the kind of product that you would be getting if you integrated uh standards into the code at a more defined level than you have today. On the flip side, we would avoid situations potentially like uh the images on the screen. Now again, we would not be retroactively going back and saying that these properties need to change their facade. All we would be doing moving forward is if another Dollar General general, for example, came into the community, we'd be looking for enhanced uh higher quality use of of material than what they proposed. Uh we would avoid an all- metal building situation and we could further customize these to best fit what you guys think. Uh but it's the general again perspective of do we want to have standards in place uh in particular in the commercial areas. I think generally what I've heard from staff is downtown we absolutely do want to have design standards and we do have those today. So

I didn't focus as much energy in this this discussion on that in particular. I'm more talking about do we want to expand that to other areas of the community. Do we want industrial building design standards or commercial design standards? And you know generally it's very reflective of the same conversation uh that we had with the landscaping where there's built-in flexibility within this new system where um you know you have to defined percentage but there's creativity in which you can meet that in a variety of ways. It applies a consistent approach from not only the city side of things but the applicants side of things. But again there's there's a cost component to this in relationship to bringing you a plan to approve and um integrating those materials. Uh you know overall though in total is if we're trying to enhance you know higher quality look and feel this is a mechanism for doing just that. Um so again pros and cons like the landscaping discussion I we'd be open to hearing you know do you want as a starting point to define some exterior building design standards and then beyond that do we want those to apply in certain particular areas and we need to uh get direction from you all as we build those as to what you know those areas would be uh or where those uh standards would be applied in the community. that T-Mobile building back up. Yes, I think that's something we want to move away from that building to I personally not real attractive and I think that's especially if it's in our corridor you know that thing sticks out I think so just a few design standards there even with some different color materials would have helped but maybe some brick halfway up or something would have made a big a big difference there Right.

Ben, can you just attach articulation just so everybody's kind of on the same page with what you mean by the articulation standards? Yeah. So, it could be vertical articulation, so a variation in like a column or something to that effect. Could be horizontal articulation like uh Dave just mentioned where there the base of the structure has um maybe a brick or a stone and then it transitions into something else. Um it can be variation also in recessing the building versus projecting the building forward. Uh so how that facade looks versus a completely flat facade. Uh so what we've done is we we simply say articulation is required but there's a variety of mechanisms again for you to be able to accomplish that uh through the the standards themselves. And so, um, that could be material change, that could be the, like I said, the the orientation of the facade itself. Um, but basically what it would mean is that a flat unordained metal building would not be permitted. Don't a lot of your uh buildings like say Dollar General and stuff have their own designs because usually when you move into an area, their stores all look alike. No. Is that something that that we want to stop? No, I think they do have a corporate design and I think a lot of uh community or a lot of companies like you see Quick Trip has a corporate design. Um you know, grocery stores like Festival, they all have these corporate designs. Um but I've worked in many communities where we've worked through them integrating their corporate design into what kind of standards we want. So Chad, I think if you could bring up the Dollar Tree picture that was in the H packet. Uh basically at the at the very top it was or Yeah. So they came in with their corporate design. Uh but we had

standards that said we needed to see 50% of the facade be those high quality materials, meaning glass, brick, stone. They could still use the metal like they liked and they could still use different things, but uh they were cooperative I guess in the discussion that I had with them in relationship to meeting those standards. And to Bob's point, just doing a quick search on Donald Dollar Dollar General, I mean, yep, they've got kind of probably what you've seen here is their basic design, but I mean, I'm just looking online and you see other designs of their their stores that are out there. So, you know, if we didn't have a design standard, well, we're probably going to get this. Yeah. And that's what you have. If we did have a little bit different, we might get something like this, you know, hypothetically. So, right. So, they're going to take the cheapest alternative possible more than likely. Sure. I like having the standard. I I want to see a very beautiful, but again like the landscaping, I just fear that having those is going to deter people from coming to New. I think businesses are, you know, the cost of building materials are a lot higher than they have been in the past. And I just my biggest fear is that we would have businesses that would want to come to town, but say, well, you know, I got to have certain landscaping. I got to have a certain look to my building that's going to cost double what I wanted to spend. And you know, everybody in this town wants this town to grow. Uh I just wouldn't want to hinder it. I think that every community has standards. You know, I don't think you can go into any community and just build what you want to build. they have

standards to you know so businesses expect that they they know that's part of their development so I don't think we have to be afraid of it unless we would you know get real elaborate with 100% brick or whatever right you know and just looking at you know the commercial corridor down there I mean you you do See, you know, most of the buildings, um, let's just kind of look at McDonald's. I mean, we'll start here. I mean, there's there's different articulation, different materials, different look. Um, we'll get over by I think where Jeff is over here. I mean, there's there's different materials, there's different articulation, there's different look. You know, Dollar Tree over here. Same thing. Um, so I think it's I don't think I don't think we're asking like for high-end like super crazy, you know, type things, but you know, when we have a lot of these nicel lookinging things and then all of a sudden there's just, you know, the developer put it up because he could. it was the most cost-effective way for him to do it and he did it because we allowed it. So the question is do we want to continue those type of developments or you know as more development comes in have some standards or you know just stepping away from these basic looking things that makes our community look better and more attractive. So when when someone comes in and visits our community and they see a lot of this going on compared to, you know, a lot of these other standards, what do you think people are going to think? Well, and when you have something like that, you end up with all

these selfbuilt signs plunked out on the corridor. It it just doesn't even look business like it looks like I don't know rumage sale just the signage gets you know gets bad and to my point before I mean if if I'm talking to developers and I'm talking to business people and they're if I'm hearing a theme I just can't afford because you know you got all these standards well I'm gonna be coming back to you guys say this is what I'm hearing you Maybe we got to adjust. But um if if many communities our size and larger are requiring these type of standards, you know, I don't think we're way off the mark for being the norm almost. I feel like our trend, we're in a very positive trend of moving forward and beautifying New London. I mean, the downtown is a a is a great example of that. The grants that we're giving away to help with the businesses down there to um you know, redo their facades, the fact that um we're looking at all the things that we're doing in New London to move New London forward. I would not want New London to be thought of as the community where you can go and cheap out. So, I guess that makes me that much more want more of the um west side of that road than the east side of the road happening. And and I see this because in the future we have an opportunity for development on the

south side of town on Mil Street. Just as you come in where the old benchmark building was. They tore that down. That's all open. We've got the city where the city sign is. There's an opportunity that we can move that and sell that for property. That's going to be the entrance and what the first thing people are going to see in their community. you know, I I wouldn't want people to see just a standard whole barn looking building compared to, you know, having something with a little bit more articulation, different materials, just kind of it's it sets the look for the community, especially on those corridors and the entrances. So, um well, and I and I do want to share that when I first moved to Wisconsin and into the valley area here, um I remember the first time I went to Apple, excuse me, and I went to the um the older section of Appleton down Northland and I was not impressed with Appleton at all because I didn't see the what I saw was just warehouse looking stores basically and I was like I don't really care for this town but that was the portion of town that I saw the first time I went to Apple and um and I I'll just I just can't forget that first impression. you know, Appleton is not that stark and and um you know, just just blank looking. It it's really not. It's quite a beautiful city. But that was not my first impression. So, like you said, coming into town, I don't want that to be the first impression of New London that we just got a bunch of pull sheds for businesses, you know, and something like Shelby's building. I mean, a lot of that's metal, but it doesn't look like a whole barn building because they they put a bunch of these different accenting

pieces. They got it articulated and they do stuff some brick on the bottom, but if you go look at this, I think all this is just metal, but it doesn't give that feel of a It's not a pole shed look. Yeah, that's that's the difference. It does cost more. Absolutely. But you get what you pay for then. I think Chad, you and I had a conversation a year or two ago about the north side of New London coming in. I get around 50 7500 miles of here. Go down towards Winnie Rip and Omrell and stuff like that and you go into their towns from where their city limits start. The ditches are mowed. Everything is mowed. Whoever owns it has to clean it up. You don't see trees dying along the road. You talk about going out here in different businesses. I mean, you look at pumps. Yeah. Their their building has got different roof lines on it. It's got an old semi-trail sitting on the end of it. It's got more behind. You go past the AMO station, he can't help it. He is a truck stop, but yet the pallet company across the street stores their old semi-trailers in the back. They sit there all the time. Some of those, I mean, you can't really help it. I mean, really, is that what you want? When you come into town, it's not the building's fault. And then you get down to the T-Mobile building down there. talk about that. Well, is it really the building? But yet, you got two big signs right out in front. I mean, one, they're both advertising for their business, but do those really belong there? Does that that doesn't look so hot either. These ditches and stuff should really, if they could be and if they redo the streets out there, I think there's what Shauno Street is supposed to be redone 207 209. If we can do something to get rid of Donna, you like cattails? I don't know. I think it takes away from everything. I think lawn look better out there. I mean, look at all the brush along there. I'm not I think I've talked to public works about who's responsible for that. When you come out of my office driveway

there, if somebody's coming by in a bike, I've had more than one person almost run into me because I can't see them pedaling a bike path there. I don't that brush should be trimmed back, but I don't know whose responsibility it is. And some of these might be mini retention ponds that we'd have to look into to see if they were designed that way. But to your point, I mean that old field south of Ascension or where the Ascension property is up there south of Aldi's there, that should be that'd be nice that'll be cleaned up and mowed once. That's just all growing up in brush. All that stuff takes away from the aesthetics of anything else that we're trying to do. It just doesn't it's not a good look coming in there in my opinion. Plus, we're cleaning up the downtown. You can't even get to the downtown unless you go through a corridor. Right. Right. Might as well make I think the entrance to your city says a lot about the rest like um Belinda said going down Northland Avenue. I know exactly what you talk about. You know, probably wasn't the best first impression, but you know, things are changing. I had no I had no I had no desire to go back to Appleton ever again after seeing that. It just wasn't. Yeah, it's a little it's a little different out there. I mean, you can't help things were developed way back in the day and continued on that way. But Jeeoff, I like the cattails in the pond. I don't like the vegetable. I just think there's and I've been I mean, I understand that it's wet and you can't always mow stuff, but I think there could be a better effort. I don't know. I just think somehow we need to south side of town, too. They're coming in. Is there something about disturbing uh wetlands though little which if they say if you got cattails yeah that's something we can you know get into the walls later on but I think more so to bring that back to conversation about you know the the design standards of the

buildings and things. Um I think it sounds like everybody's on board that we want to see some type of a standard. You know, I think what was presented there gives enough alternatives to people. I don't think it's too restrictive what you put forth there as far as your different classes of one through four and stuff. I think that's just fine the way it is, right? It makes sense and people are getting creative with materials today. Yep. Even if you would have a manufacturing masonry or something like that, the rest of it was a steel building. I mean, if there'd be a front portion of that at least. And then I was thinking with the business parks as you drive by them, do we just ask businesses to landscape? Like if someone would build here and that's the main corridor by worry about putting that landscaping in along there, not necessarily if you get in the industrial park or something and you got different businesses in there. We're not so worried about that is what we are. what it looks like when you drive by in a corridor. Maybe landscaping more towards the outside of the buildings or something that way instead of in front just to make your whole park look better instead of one building. And we we talked about that as your um because we had an internal discussion with Ben about the landscaping in the in industrial areas whether we wanted to look at that or not and I think Ben brought up some good points just those transitional areas in between different uses. point, you know, kind of creating those green buffers in between industrial when it steps down into different land uses, you know, that's a really good good thing to have. Okay. So Chad, the only other thing you wanted to specifically discuss was um if there

should be a single family and two family design standard because of an example that had arisen recently. Yeah. And I think just to talk about it, you know, I once you start getting to a single and two family residential, I know gets very, you know, touchy about things. Um and rightly so. Um, we have the situation right now where over on Ashkosh Street, um, a more modern basic looking house is going up. We don't have any design standards for this. Uh, to Bernie's point, do we want to touch that? You know, it's up to you guys. But then you've got all the other neighbors in a neighborhood which have a different view and then you've got a very basic looking uh, modern building. Again, I I understand this is a very touchy point whether we want to touch this or not, but I think this is opportunity to talk about that whether you want design standards for um any type of one and two family residential properties. And wasn't this specifically related to them putting metal all the way around? Dave, is this a metal? Their plan is for metal on this one. I think it was. I think this was planned for all metal construction siding. So, it's the metal siding versus like a vinyl sighting that you more traditionally see in a single family neighborhood. and whether that is something we're okay with letting property owners in the market dictate if that is what they want to do or do we want to you know say we would like to see the more traditional vinyl sighting and and that's something that you know to Jad's point I've had this discussion in all the other zoning codes and and the majority of them majority of communities do not want single family and two family design standards and and that's fine um but it just does open up the door for um you know a potential all metal building kind of scenario to to happen. So that's just the pros and cons. Yeah, I don't think I'd want to be real restrictive, but uh if you look at the houses all around this home, it it

really doesn't fit into the neighborhood there. So it that kind of sticks out too in my mind. So this is up on Ashkosh Becker side. Well, with the new building standards and the new materials, I think people are starting to go towards the steel. I think that's the the new norm is what people are building. Even though it may be more expensive, it's more durable and lasts forever. So, they don't want to reset their house and put vinyl on twice. You could do a couple minor things though where you break up maybe it's got to be two tone. I mean, if you drive out to SNM, my parents had a lsided house, it is now completely steel. So, he just tore just because of maintenance with the logiding. A lot of people don't even notice the difference, but it is two-tone steel looks fantastic. As I say, even something as simple as two-tone steel or maybe a minimum roof pitch or something like that to kind of give it a little just something to kind of dial the product up a little bit. So, you're saying that uh this would only apply to new construction. If you were to reside your house or something like that, it wouldn't pertain to it. It just be new construction the standard. We could make it to that standard. Yes, we could we could orient it in that direction if that's what you would like to see. Yes, I don't think we should restrict the single family and two family homes. I think we should just leave it alone. This is an anomaly. You're not going to see this all over just because other people are feel like this is hopefully we just got one or two albatrosses here.

city starts telling residents what they could do to their house, we're going to have trouble. You're going to hear it from both sides. You're going to hear it from the the builder and the owner who's of a property like this, you know, don't tell me what to do. But then if you allow all that, you're going to have the neighbors coming up. Why did you allow this? So, you're in a rock and a hard place either way. Yeah, you probably This is This is right across the street from the new R2. It is directly across the street from it. So, but as long as we're talking about exterior standards, I think it was an opportunity at least. Let's have a discussion and see where you guys want to go with that. But from what I'm hearing right now, and everybody's nodding their head, let's just stay away from R1, R2, or single and two family housing standards at this point. There's some $800,000 houses that the design doesn't exactly appeal to people. I mean, the way their angles are built on them. So, I mean, you can't say, "I want your house to look just like this." You're really stepping on some Yeah. slippery slope, I think, if you start telling people build their own house. I'm actually kind of excited to see what this house looks like when it's all said and done because it's in a very interesting area and what they've done to build a house in that area. I think h yeah that lot is an interesting lot and I kind of feel like the design of that house fits that lot. It doesn't mesh with the neighborhood but it fits the lot. I had that lot I sold that lot twice before the third person finally bought it and put the house on. It's an interesting lot and they had to put a lot of fill and stuff in too to to make it work. If you would have tried anything conventional, he would have dealt with runoff issues and yeah, roachman's on neighbors yards and he he still is a little bit, but uh yeah, we're kind of working through that right

now. Yeah, I just Yeah, it's just the way the whole topography of that neighborhood is. It's a good thing he's only got a half a roof line on there. Otherwise, he'd be collecting the rest of the water and you'd have to I mean Yeah. Right. Probably. That build actually feels like it fits that lot and you wouldn't Yeah. It's interesting, right? So we're not gonna put any effort into one or two families then where else we have that's what we had today. So I appreciate everybody I appreciate the discussion. This is very helpful for us uh giving us direction as to where we want to go. Uh we'll continue working through uh part two and uh we're still trying to uh get towards uh adoption here this summer. Um, we've got some other big items like the sign ordinance to tackle yet and so I would anticipate a meeting on that and then probably the remaining parts of part two. Um, and so um, we're we're on track. We're moving forward, but I appreciate everybody's time. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Okay, item number seven, review upcoming agenda items. Anything for the agenda other than continue zoning rewrite. So, okay. Number eight is review next meeting date. Oh, yeah. Is tenatively June 26, 2025 at 5:15. All good for everybody. Last item on the agenda is to adjourn the meeting. Make a motion. I'll second. Motion made by Mark, seconded by Donna. to adjourn the meeting. All in favor signify by saying