Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

We're going to ask you to come to the meeting. I need to apply to the meeting. I'm just going to guess. I'm not going to guess. I'm just going to guess. I'm just going to guess. I'm just going to guess. I'm just going to guess.

Only this thing shows me.

Put five minutes. Just need it to be. Usually it just auto. Put a play button up there for some reason. Yeah. It's me, please. Not heavy enough.

Windows.

Right here.

Yeah.

Yeah, we got to go online today. All right. Sure, I don't play games or do anything crazy. Well, because usually I have the other door open. That's what I feel like I have the wrong door open. All right, it is 545. I'm going to call, order the Normal Planning and Zoning Commission.

It's June 8, 2026.

As for a roll call of all members present. Steiger? Here. Thompson?

Here. Eaton? Here. Samuelson? Forrest?

Here.

Harrison?

Here.

Henders? Here. Folks, we have an agenda that's been posted, given to all members. We'll take a minute to look at the agenda, see if there are any changes you want to it. If not, it'd entertain a motion to accept it and approve the agenda. Eden motion. Steiger second. Ask for a vote on the approval of the agenda.

Steiger? Aye. Thompson? Aye. Eden? Aye. Forrest? Aye. Garrison?

Aye. Henders? Aye. We have minutes from our April 27, 2026 meeting. given copies of those. Take a quick look at that. See if there are any changes you'd like for those minutes for anyone that was in attendance either personally or on Zoom. Stiger motion. Motion to approve. Motion to approve. Motion to approve.

Second.

Forrest. Second Forrest.

Stiger. Aye. Thompson. Aye. Hi. Eden. Hi. Forrest. Hi.

Garrison. Hi. Henderson. Hi. Folks, welcome tonight to the Norwalk Planning Zoning Commission. If you'd like to make any comments, we'd ask that you come to the front here, make your comments. You have a three-minute minimum. I'm happy to hear with, or no, maximum. Thank you, sir. No, we're going to keep you up there. This is like a... I was like, stand up. You have a three limit maximum. I just ask that you speak to the board, address the board with any issues and no crosstalk or talk to the members present. Anyone want to make any comments here? Just remember, state your name and your address. All right. Seeing no public comment tonight, we're going to move on for our first hearing. It's a request from Main Street School Incorporated for approval of the site plan amendment for Main Street School. So we're going to, I'd like a vote to open that hearing. There's no public hearing. Oh, there's no hearing on this one? I can just brief you. Oh, this is just briefing. Okay, sorry.

Yep, so this is a site plan amendment for the Main Street School just up the street from where we are now. This one's relatively minor. When we do a non-residential use in a residential district that adds any of the items on the site plan list that we have to consider for a new construction proposal, we have to take it through the amendment process, which is what we're doing here. All they're really doing is, for context, the Main Street School occupies, what's in this image, the southern of the two properties. They are looking to expand this house to the north a little bit and doing some, doing some review of life safety and building plan details for that house. We found they needed to incorporate some egress elements. And so from the top down, they're adding some hardtop pedestrian paths for egress and then side to side They've also done some land kicking as well. This final sheet shows what they're doing for egress steps from the upper story and also out the front of the building. So those are triggering the site plan amendment tonight. That's all there really is to it. Happy to answer any questions that we have. We do have the project engineer on the Zoom. Are there any questions we have today?

the architect here yeah isn't it doug doug is offline with us the structure is existing there's adding ingress yep there's nothing else that will be needed as far as like restroom handicap accessibility anything like that

Some of that stuff gets reviewed internally by the code officials. Nothing to appease.

Right. There's a lot of building plan review that we'll do to make a house into a school. But yeah, from a site plan exterior dimension perspective, it's just that egress.

Is there no driveway structure?

Not to this property, no. The one to the south, you can kind of see this horseshoe. line work around the house that is a driveway gets used for theoretically pick up and drop off. Sometimes I seem to see most people drop off at the curb and walk students up. But not for the house to the north. The one that's to the south isn't being touched with this set plan.

So as they expand, obviously that's going to enable more pickups and drop-offs. That is P&Z because now we're impacting the street and what we're doing there. Has that been considered at all?

We've determined they haven't needed to do anything to change what's going on there. We just said that fell into the purview of this review.

This might be it. You know, question for Doug, just looking at the staffer recommendations that they're that any significant modifications to site plan would have to come back to us and city council. I mean, Doug, do you anticipate anything other than what's proposed here with the egress and the walkways?

No, I don't. Don't anticipate any changes after this. The clients reviewed it several times, didn't have anything there. There is the ramp out front, so that does help the ADA gain access into the building. But other than that, it's just the steps from every elevation and the ramp and the sidewalks.

How much questions?

All you need is to vote on the amendment. Is that what the state or is just?

If you wish to entertain a motion to approve the site plan amendment.

Eight motions to approve. Second. Motion to second. Vote for a roll call vote.

Was that Garrison second?

Yes. Thank you.

Steger I Thompson. I eat. Forced. Garrison.

So we move on to the request for D from DMM investments LLC for approval, but site plan amendment just down the street from that at 729 Main Street. What do you have for us? Yep.

So this one is relatively straightforward. The folks who operate Fairway Franks just up the corner want to put up some shade structures for their patio. Preaching patio season, we're already at it, frankly. It's about to be very hot and sunny patio season. So understandably, the folks there want to install something similar to what's in this image here just for clarity's sake i asked them to submit a above or a satellite view with a polygon around patio so it's a pretty small area they're looking to install that because this is a structure on a commercial site similar to the last item falls under the need for a site plan amendment at pnz and council That's what this agenda item is. So happy to take any questions. We do have Chris in the audience tonight who is working on this with the owners.

Chris, any comment on this?

No, it's just pretty straightforward structure. I mean, it's just a canvas material, right? You know, it'll sense that he did any bar or restaurant off the patron that they're just make the patio more enjoyable.

Folks, any questions for either Elliot or Chris? Is this something that will stay up year-round?

Yeah.

What color is it?

I believe it's a Spanish gray.

New footings are attached to existing concrete.

We're waiting on the manufacturer of the canvas to provide the structural. How many posts As you said, we're up on the season, so we're trying to get this to happen.

Any further discussion on the amendment?

Motion to approve. Yes, you can.

Motion to approve. Harrison, there we go.

Second. Was I even second? No.

I will. Sorry, it wasn't during forest time. You had me in that gray coat. Once you had a color response.

That was great, yeah.

Yep.

So we got a motion and a second on the request to approve the site plan amendment by DMM Investments LLC for 729 Main Street. We'll call vote. Steiger?

Aye.

Thompson?

Aye.

Eaton?

Aye. Forrest? Aye. Garrison? Aye.

Henders? Aye. So we're on item eight of our agenda, requests from Hackney Hills Owners Association Incorporated for approval of a grading permit and architectural amendment within Hackney Hills, flat one. Elliot, what do we have today?

Yep, so there's two things going on with this request. You guys might be aware, out on the south side of Beardsley Street, between 50th and Clearwater, the Acty Hills Flat 1 area was approved for filing in 2024. During construction, one of the elements that they had to put in was a pretty significant retaining wall. very visible from the street, and it's dealt with some stability issues. So the applicants have come back with an alternative plan that would change the grating in there, just get rid of the retaining wall entirely to deal with some of the drainage instability in there. That is ultimately going to lower the lower the elevation of the ground, which is gonna change the product type they can put in that area, hence the architectural amendment. So initially, those dwelling units that were gonna be Facing north would have kind of a two-story appearance to them. I put those original renderings in the staff report. It was in the agenda. The new version, which is going to look like these, is going to be blocked out instead. So that's the request before us tonight. We've got representatives from the engineer and developer with us in the room. Happy to answer any questions. So we'll pass it on to them.

Question for Elliot. Because the soil is not good enough to keep a retaining wall, so you're going to drop the grade. Is that ? Bring them up.

State your name and your. Sorry.

Paul and Civil Engineering Consultants, 2486 6th Street, Unit 12. Yeah, so originally, just due to the elevations of the sanitary sewer, these were originally designed as slab don grades. And there was 20 foot of fill placed on the existing grade. Since then, we've had the slope failure, and that was all due to that slip face. Underneath the 20 foot of fill, about another 10 feet, is a shale face. So where that existing soil over the shale interface, it starts to slide. We looked at a lot of alternatives to keep the wall, keep the same architectural designs. But in the end, there was no way to keep that 20 foot of fill over that shale and still have it be stable. So we came back with a walkout unit that gets rid of 10 feet or more of that fill. And according to the geotechnical engineer, the slope will be stable at that point. So that's the long path of how we got here. affect the retention bond in Toronto? It does not. All the grading happens south of there. If anything, we could flatten out those slopes. Right now they're a three to one. We could open those up and just alleviate the bill even more and gain some more detention volume. But that's not the plan right now.

Our city engineer is fine with all this.

Yes. Tony Boise has a reviewed plan.

Do you have questions for the City?

Entertain a motion to approve the grading permit and architectural revision.

Thompson, motion.

Hill, Thompson. Got a second? Second. Second. Garrison? Have a roll call vote.

Steiger?

Aye.

Thompson? Aye. Eaton?

Aye.

Forrest? Aye. Gerson?

Aye.

Anders? Aye. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Next up, request from Marco Properties, LLC, for approval of the preliminary plat of Rosewood Estates. Elliot, do you have one?

I'll pass this one to Luke, actually.

Thank you. So this item is for the Rosewood States subdivision. It is a subdivision that is within two miles of city limits, but outside of city limits. So the state gives us review authority for areas in that planning jurisdiction. you all considered and um council ultimately approved a land use plan amendment um i believe on page six of your report um there was that original land use plan so we have changed that area that uh elliot's highlighted on the map from the commercial industrial flex and medium density residential to low density residential to allow for a subdivision to occur in this area so this is a preliminary plant related to that We don't have a whole lot of issue with the current layout of things, 42 lots, most of them are two acres or larger in size, several cul-de-sacs, two connections out to R-63. That lines up with what the county prefers for access to county highways, so we're good on that stuff. The primary thing that we've been working with the developer on is a couple different options. Because this is a rural development outside of town, but within the two miles, we can require the development meet all of our city standards. And so we've got a couple unique scenarios here in that we typically require dry sewer be installed in these types of developments so that if we ever annex and want to serve it with sanitary sewer, we're not having to tear up yards and front yards and driveways and all that stuff to install the sewer. We asked the developer to go analyze the feasibility of serving that area. Currently, there is a trunks who are on the north side of the North River. Yeah, there you go. Perfect. He's got it in there. So you can see that the WRA trunk sewer is a pretty significant portion away from the developable area of this property. There's a lot of floodplain between there, and it would have to cross under the North River. The elevations of things makes that macro physical impossibility. It can't cross via gravity. There are options to provide either a lift station could pump underneath that and then up to that sewer or apparently I'll let Brad jump in at some point if I mention this wrong, Brad Cooper, the engineer. You can run a siphon such that you dip down under the river, come back up on the other side, and the pressure, similar to a toilet, from the one side will force that. sewer up and around. You need a lot of flow for that to work and the analysis that they've conducted would indicate that the 42 homes won't produce enough flow to make that siphon function. So we've got some questions on what is our ability to serve that area in the future. Cities typically tend to just defer to what our code tells us to though in these situations because know annexation of that area is a long ways away so we can understand where they're coming from um and we've got two options that we're working through that we wanted to present to you all um for ways to potentially uh proceed um primarily being from the developer standpoint A dry sewer in the ground is not a real big benefit to those property owners if it's never used. That money could be put into something else that maybe would be more beneficial to those property owners. So the two options that we have before you, none of which are really reflected in the preliminary plan that we have because we're trying to figure out where we're going to go next. as we get to council would be to install the dry sewer as code requires. And then there's a rural cross section option for SUDOS that we can allow that to go from a rural as a rural development with that rural cross section road. That meets the intent of our code as regards to that two mile area. We'd have a dry sewer there in case we ever needed it. We'd not require anything more of property owners if we did serve that area. And the future decision to annex might be a little bit easier for Sydney to make because we know that we could connect to the sewer. That wouldn't be like a thing that we were thinking about if we were annexing that area in the future. The cons to that, though, of course, is it seems that Gravity sewer is not really a feasible option to serve these homes. And there's not a lot of additional development ground south of there that would connect into it that would get us those flows either. So really all that we'll end up with is the possibility of doing a lift station in the future. We traditionally try to avoid lift stations, especially as a permanent solution to serving an area. They require ongoing maintenance. an ongoing dedication to keep them working, whereas gravity, you rely on gravity, and it just works. And if it doesn't ever work, then we're all in a lot of trouble. So that's kind of the option one for dry sewer. The secondary option would be to not require the dry sewer, which we can provide. The code gives us the option to give a variance for that. identify sewer easements, and then include in the abstract assessment information, basically letting people know that, hey, if we ever do put sewer on here, you're on the hook for it. Though our experience tells us folks don't tend to read a lot of that stuff in their abstracts. But it'd be there. And then kind of as an alternative to not incurring that dry sewer cost, the developer would come in and put in an urban cross-section uh road with full curb and dutter and uh storm sewer so we'd kind of flex those that cost into something that would create a more traditional neighborhood street which would be of a benefit to the city if we were to ever to annex it um we and to want our city stuff to be curb and gutter. So there's that. The cons to that, obviously, is we'd have an assessment process if we ever did do sewer. Again, people don't pay attention to their abstracts as much as they should. If you're listening to this meeting, anybody, read the stuff when you're signing it, please. It would save us a lot of headache at times. And then we have the right to install that sewer. That's a cost the city would incur. The difficulty of it, we will preserve those easements, but the reality is, especially with it being in the county and there being no permitting process, people will put things in those easements. They'll put sheds there. They'll put trees. They'll put things that they'll be mad that we will move. So that's a thing to deal with. And then there's an opportunity that the property owners criticize the city for not requiring it in the first place. There's always the hindsight is 20-20 argument. And I'm positive that if we ever went to install sewer in that thing, we'd have very mad people saying, why didn't you require it at this point in time? As you can see, there's benefits and negative sides of it. That's why we presented you guys an option. I don't know that there's a definitive opinion from Citi staff as to how we would go on this. The easy thing would be to require it, but the developer makes a lot of good points about really the need and its purpose to sit there for so long would never be used. Either way, we need to make a recommendation to council with one of those two so that they can make amendments to their preliminary flat prior to it going to council.

So. LA, or excuse me, Luke, sorry. Yeah, identical. We didn't confuse. I'm a seer. Yeah. Yeah. Luke, just one clarification, one question. Sure. So in either option, would you require curb and gutter or is that only in option two where there's no?

Only in option two. Okay. Yep. Yep. We do, we do have standard, we just, from a city standpoint, like we We have one area that has a rural cross section out, Silverado, but the majority, overwhelming majority of the time, we have in town things be required with curb and gutter. But that doesn't preclude us from allowing that out in this area.

So we'd only have curb and gutter if we don't do the dry sewer.

If you want to be really nice to them, you can say no dry sewer and no curb and gutter.

They've not proposed that. We've got enough developments around. Right. The other question, I mean, I know you don't have a crystal ball, but where are we thinking if this were to annex? I mean, are we talking a decade, two decades, less? I mean, I know it's hard to tell.

Probably longer. I mean... There's sewer nearby. We do have the... Mackinac family, if you're aware, they owned property there. That's where they live. That was a residence. And we've been contacted in the past about potential annexation of that area and future development of it, which can occur because of that sewer line, trunk line that we talked about. It can go straight up to that area. So then that annexes and it's really close. But with it being a residential development that is in the county, because we made that land use change, I don't see us really aggressively trying to annex that until we would be required to. It's very similar to Twin Lakes off of 80th. That's an area that the city doesn't need to annex. We don't. likely have a desire to until we've surrounded it with city and then it becomes part of it. So with the development trends of things south of North River, I mean, you're talking probably a long time before the city would kind of snake down and around this. and then come back up around such that we annexed it. And it may never get annexed. I mean, similar to some of the stuff south of North River on Highway 28. We'd really have to dodge around to find a corridor to get to where we felt like we had to annex those folks. So for the most part, we'll focus our efforts on large greenfield sites that we can develop and not have to pull people in.

Luke, you mentioned a lift station. What does that cost?

Not as much as I'm going to say because the last one we did was going to serve a lot more than this, but I believe we spent $1.5 million on a lift station on 80th. If you drive up 80th, you can see it sitting there. That serves about half of Holland Point will flow down to that, and then all of – Ellie, if you can zoom into that area. All of that area that's outside of the city – right now, along 80th, can go into that, and then half of Holland Point comes into that. So that's a pretty large list station for the amount of housing units we plan to have happen in there. This is 42. Maybe Mr. Cooper could give us a number, but I...

Then one more question. I'm assuming that's a fairly substantial budget item that would have to be brought into the city budget. It's not just something that we would just do on a whim. Right, right. We would have to plan for that budget for it and then build it. And I think that my second question is, I'm not a dry sewer expert. All I do know is that when you build things like that, you want to start having fluid flowing. Right, right. And if it's sitting there dry for decades, that's when things go wrong. And then my brain goes to how much is it going to cost to reopen a dry sewer that's been sitting there for decades?

There's no guarantee that it would be. I mean, it's not going to be sit there and be perfect. and yeah i i couldn't yeah you practically and and this this whole project has been very unique practically what we tend to find is when we say you have to put in dry sewer a rural development that's looking at at progressing that kind of prices them out of doing something so it while it's a requirement of us it's usually the tool that stops rural development happening from within our planning area, because in general, we want things to happen in the city and be annexed in and develop our land use plan. And this one for a variety of reasons is very unique and creates a lot of uniqueness.

So then my last question is, so if we had a dry sewer, they would still have to have their own individual septic. Right. Correct. So we'd be doing a dry sewer that would sit there for, unknown number of years or decades along with septic fields.

That's correct.

Which would also add to their land use because I grew up on a farm and where the septic field is, you can't do anything on that land.

Sure.

So, okay. All right. Yep. Thanks for that clarification.

Thank you, Rob. Brad Cooper, Cooper Coffin Associates. Also, 2125 Serenity Circle, Norwalk. Luke did a good job of kind of explaining the main details of the project. It has been a difficult project. We're working with the county as well as the city of Norwalk. This land could be annexed someday. We've looked at that. The Mackinac property does touch this. So if Mackinac got annexed, we can officially annex this into the city. But the majority of the acres on the Mackinac property, as well as the rest of Dan's property, he had to purchase 270 acres to make this 88 acres actually function. all of that is basically in floodplain. So I don't know what the value would be to the city to annex that area. And I certainly don't understand anybody that would be willing to or able to put in a sewer that would come to our 42 lots in the future. The lift station alone would be, I think I had $350,000 in my budget for a 42-lot subdivision. And they function. I mean, they're all over the place. Waukee is built on lift stations. but they are highly maintenance problems and they need replaced every 10 to 15 years. We just don't see that happening. I mean, we committed to putting in dry sewer in rural streets when we got our land use plan, and that was in our pro forma. So, you know, we've known that was the situation, but after talking with city staff and really thinking about, what are we doing here? We felt that there was better ways to spend our money. And I did, we did go out and do a lot of surveying on the river section and on the existing sewer. Luke mentioned an inverted siphon. That's a siphon that, you know, it's a sewer that's gravity, but it goes underneath the river. They're not, they're not good. They're not something I want to be involved in even, but you have to have three feet per second of velocity to make that work at the herd minimum. With 42 lots, you don't even get a fifth of, So you'd have to have an area five times the size of our development to even make that work. So that does put you into the lift station category where that has to be the only way that we could serve this problem. So, you know, we felt like after brainstorming with the city that going with an urban section, crib and gutter, putting in storm sewer, swapping those costs out for the dry sewer costs. you know, made everybody a better situation. The lot owners, the city in the future, if they do actually own it, and the dry sewer, we just didn't feel anybody had a value in that except for the contractor installing it. One thing Luke didn't mention, we've also thrown out the idea, we feel like we're saving an additional $125,000 And Dan would write a check to the city parks department for an additional $125,000 to go any way the city would like to spend it within the parks department. But Dan developed Timberview, Plat 1, 2, 3, and 4. And we put a really nice five-acre park in there in 2016, and it's still sitting there as vacant ground. So I know the city really needs as much money as possible in their parks department to try to improve some of these. So that's another stipulation of our park.

Yeah, we'll apply that in.

of our agreement that if we are allowed not to put the dry sewer in, go with curb and gutter section and storm sewer, and then we'd also write a check to the city for $125,000.

And mainly that's just because I want you guys to understand that I'm not just give your name. I just want you guys to understand that we're not trying to get away from the dry sewer just to save money and make more money on the project. We're looking at what the dry sewer cost is, what the urban street cost is, there's surplus of money there. I want it to be a value of Norwalk as well as a value to the clients that are buying these lots. So if we can wash that and give you guys $125,000 for parks that we don't have, we feel like that's a value for everybody involved. It's putting the dry sewer in. I mean, east of me is the city of Des Moines. North of me is floodplain. And south of me is a bunch of estate houses. So if you look at my piece of ground, future development growth is blocked on every side of us. So like, you put dry sewer in to extend growth and keep keep a city growing, but if there's nowhere to grow, putting dry sewer in for 42 lots and having the city spend millions of dollars to drag sewer up to me and annex our little piece, it doesn't really make sense, and we can look at it and know that that's probably never going to happen. If we got to the ground that's even further south of those lots, you would have to yet put another lift station in to pump it to me, to pump it down to the river and through the river. So we're talking, you know, even if you look at further growth, a mile south of that, it just, it doesn't make sense. So we're looking at things that, like if this doesn't make sense, then let's talk about things that do. And urban streets for us with curb and gutter and then offering that money to the park ground. I mean, I obviously don't have to offer that, but I feel like if we're saving this money, I'd rather give it to the city and have them build parks. Like Brad said, we've got, Everybody in Timberview always asks me when the park's going in. I'm like, I gave the ground, but, you know, we got to pay for the park. And I mean, this goes along the lines with what I've been talking to some of the park people about is like they're requiring us developers to give ground all the time. And we always have to give ground for parks that we don't have. So rather than give ground, let's pitch in and start giving money so that we may rather than have 12 different pieces of ground and zero parks, we can have three pieces of ground with three parks on it. And so I kind of want to start that today by saying, hey, let me let me get that ball going and do something that I'm not being asked to because the city can't. force me to give money to the park, but that's just an offer that I'm making as an alternative to forcing dry sewer that I don't think is worth it.

What questions, Luke? Okay.

steiger motion that we not require dry sewer and we do require a curb and gutter and storm sewer for the plot i'm not going to put in the motion about your gift i think you can do that out of the goodness of your heart i don't think that has to be a part of it but um yeah knowing that knowing where the city is and and where it's going as as luke said um it just makes sense that We appreciate you looking to make it that curb and gutter, which is going to make it so much nicer. I think it's going to help your land values now and in the future. And so, yeah. Eaton, second.

Okay, motion and second for approval of the preliminary plat of Rosewood Estates not requiring dry sewer. but requiring the storm sewer, the curb and gutter is on the floor. Any further discussion?

One question. So with this piece not being annexed by Norwalk, when the curb and gutter go in, who's responsible for the maintenance of that?

It's private streets.

So HOA?

Yes.

HOA would be responsible for their own streets? Yeah. Until they would be annexed by the city? Yeah, the tension order.

Yeah, we wouldn't be obligated to take on the streets when we annex them. I mean, that's a negotiation we have in the past. Other times we haven't. So, yeah.

So, motion pending. Any other discussion? Okay. Call for a roll call vote.

Steiger?

Aye.

Thompson? Aye. Eaton? Aye. Forrest? It's still on.

Hi.

Garrison.

Hi.

Henders. Hi. We're on to number 10, consideration of a parking waiver for property at 1060 Madison Street. Good night.

Thanks, folks.

All right.

One building.

Me again.

Also.

Two times, get me back into old planning fashion here. So some of you were around, but we have had some changeover. But in December of last year, we approved a parking waiver for the Dunn Industrial Condominiums. It's at 1060 Madison. It's our newest industrial park in town. There is a shell building that was constructed at 1060 Madison. and associated parking and loading zones. The site plan calls for a second similar building to the south of it, as you can see on the site plan there. At that time in December, the Property owner was approached by the Norwalk Athletic Club about utilizing the facility for basketball, volleyball, sports training activities. It's a large open span building and met their needs. One of the challenges of that was the parking. When a use like that gets proposed through our building department and the occupancy classification, you end up with a large span building that can have a lot of occupants in it. And similarly, our zoning codes parking calculation kind of figures that in. So you've got this large span building that could have 400 people in it, and then we say we need parking appropriately. I believe, I think I've got it in here, 101 stalls is what would normally have been required. Ultimately, we took a waiver through that basically had the user self-limit their occupancy down to 120 persons. And then utilizing some ratios, we came up with 32 parking stalls that would be required for that. There were 27 on site. So at that point in time, we're like, this makes sense. It's going to be used for practice facilities. We're not going to have tournaments. We're not going to have a large number of folks at the place. We can go ahead and give that a parking waiver. Since that point in time, there's been a couple things that have happened. We don't have the full idea of what's going on, but... I think we were notified in February or that starting in February, there was activity and practices and things being held in the facility prior to a building permit being issued. So some things went in, court things were installed, and the facility was used. We were then notified, I believe in April, We weren't able to confirm this at the time, but we were notified by a resident that there was a lot of parking going on that had spilled out on Madison Street one weekend. The speculation was that there might have been a tournament there. I don't know if that's the case or not, so I wouldn't say that with any certainty. so our our council was made aware of that um wanted to discuss it on may 7th um with those two issues the building being occupied and used without uh permit and occupancy um and the uh the information regarding the parking seemingly not being enough, the city decided to pull back on that parking waiver and remand it back to you all for further discussion and review. So we're kind of in the same spot as we were back in December at this point in time. The request is still 120 folks, which would be 32 parking stalls per hour code. There is 27 spaces on site. The waiver was just for those 27 spaces. We did not require them to add five more at that point in time. So those are the facts to it as it stands now. happy to have a discussion on it. There's not necessarily a decision to ask we made today, but you certainly can recommend the waiver back to council. You can ask for more information. We've got the property owner here I'm sure has some information they would be willing to provide as far as how everything has been working with the site. We do have a building permit that we're currently actively reviewing. I think we, our code official just got staff comments or claim review comments back today, and I don't know if he's forwarded them on yet, but he was reviewing them. Okay, so he forwarded them on. So we're in the process of getting that building permit wrapped up so we can have the building permitted and get the proper bathroom facilities and everything built.

Is there an option, Luke, for us to provide alternative parking for special things like camps, clinics, those kinds of things. So the capacity is 120, right? But I can see organizations like a cheerleading place having a special camp one weekend. Right. I think that's what happened because my daughter was there and we participated. Okay. That's good to know. I was not sure.

I'm just operating on secondhand numbers.

Those aren't things that happen on a regular basis, but periodically they may train for eight weeks and then have an event.

Right. And that's, I think the tricky thing at dealing with parking in this scenario is the code doesn't really provide that flexibility. Right. Really, the flexibility would have to be give a waiver for a lesser amount and then be okay with it going over. We would, in that scenario, probably not want to... One of the things with this is that we're going to self-limit it to 120 occupants, which would mean there'll be a sign on the building that says 120 maximum. And if, you know, fire did a response to there and there were 300 people there, then somebody's getting in trouble, right? If... At the building permit side, the other thing that occupancy deals a lot with is the number of restroom facilities you need. So if at a self-limited 120 occupant load, then there's X number of bathrooms needed. If it's 400, then that obviously goes up proportionally. A building could be built with occupancy of 400 and enough restrooms for that. But then the parking self-limited, I mean, there might be a way to do what you're talking about, Howard, where the building is built so that it can accommodate those bigger events. And then we just get okay with the parking overflowing onto Madison Street. From, I think, our planning position, you know, Madison Street, I don't have a lot of heartburn over parking occasionally. Going out on that, I mean, it's a public street. You can do public parking. I don't know if that volume is enough to not then have – we've all been to these things where there's not enough parking and people just decide that this is parking now. So, you know, right now there's fields to the west where folks can do that, and that's not – they shouldn't be doing that, but – It can accommodate that, right? But then what happens when that develops further on? Because we want this to be an industrial area, right? We plan on there to be other stuff on the west side of the street. And then if they start parking in those people's parking lot, then somebody gates it off. At some point, like, it just doesn't work anymore. So... I don't have a good answer to that, but there's likely something the city could do to be okay with one level and then allow it to go past it. But I don't know at what level that becomes too much to handle on Madison Street.

The building is zoned as industrial? Correct.

It's M1.

And Luke, are we talking about the north building, south building, or both?

Right now, we're talking about the north building, and that's the only one that's currently constructed. So if Elliot zooms in there, the image is kind of blown out, but that's all white. It's not all building. You've got parking at the top, and then you can kind of see, and maybe it's just this TV, but... where the building is at is a long strip, and then there's a loading dock behind it with, they've got overhead doors on the south side of that building. So they basically paved half, maybe more than half of that loading dock area to accommodate, you know, if it would have been a warehousing situation, say, you know, they gotta have trucks be able to back up to that and all that, so they gotta make those turning movements, so.

The only reason I ask is because I was here at that meeting and we talked about that. And the plan was that if there was going to be, if it was not going to be used for loading dock, then there was going to be parking stalls in between and possibly in front of those.

That still would be an option. We do have all of that pavement. The council waiver that they ultimately approved was let's just let them use the parking that's out there knowing that, you know, there is options to do some other stuff at some point if needed.

So how many parking stalls are available if you do utilize that space where the loading to house?

Can you measure that? We can just do a quick estimate. Okay. I was going to say it's going to be 10, however long it is by 1040.

Okay. Jared Huseman, 1060 Madison Street. I did rough measurements. We have about 30 spaces. The reason we only have 27 in the front is because I'm on handicap. We can get 30 more. And then because we actually paved so much more to the south, this would be tight. We could, in theory, add another 30 right where his line is. We could actually do technically 90 spaces there. It would just be a very tight access for only one flow because we built it in two phases. In theory, it's supposed to tie back and be essentially like an M kind of shape. The side of it is an E shape. Backward Z. But we could add 30 spaces to the to the south very easily in fact i can say fairly confidently if i would have been addressed as an owner in the proper fashion we'll leave that how i'll say it i would have been happy to just come and just paint some more stripes add some parking in the back totally fair um because of how the issue was addressed i feel less prone to do that, but still happy to do it should city council and zoning require it. I mean, it makes sense to have use back there anyway for parking. So I hope that answers your question, but yes. Somebody even shoveled out this driveway before, I know a couple of times. They know there's concrete there.

So is the question parking or is the question bathroom versus use?

You guys don't need to concern yourself with the bathroom side of it. That'll be handled through our... through our building plan stuff. I think the only way that it ends up overlapping is if a waiver is contingent upon a self-limited occupancy, right? Like this waiver was contingent on that they're not going to have more than 120 people in that building at a time. So our expectation would be the building plan submitted to us would also say we're self-limiting this to 120. And then we would expect the entrances to the building and signage inside setting the occupancy to 120 and we'd expect the users to to abide by that right um if that doesn't work for them which again we all approved this back in december so it sounded like it would work um then we would want to make sure the building met whatever the intended occupancy was whatever we decide on the parking waiver could we have a waiter that says go ahead stripe the south side of the building

And that waiver is valid until the building to the south is built? Can we do that? Or does that cause us more pain when the south building is built?

I mean, it probably depends on how much parking you mean. Just striping the parking, the loading areas for this building directly south you're never gonna have to use the loading docks for this use. So turning that into 30 more parking stalls,

should be a fine thing to allow i can say pretty confidently um if you if ellie pulls up the more the site plan itself and the thing you can kind of see the shaded area there in the south of the first building there you kind of zoom in on it um that's where we have it again set for like loading that's the overhead door that's parking there and that's the same with dimensions of a car so The way I even structured the site plan when we developed it was in theory, be tight, a semi could actually pull through. And so I think even if we striped the 30 to the south, which again, I'm more than happy to discuss, paint's not that expensive. then we still have 60 spaces right there. We have doors on both sides. It's easy access, easy out. And it shouldn't affect even the south building whenever that should come. Right now, for any reason I heard, the market's a little slow for development with interest rates and just, you know, it's happening. So,

So I feel like that solution could become a permanent solution of, we'll call it 60 parking stalls, the ones to the north and then ones directly south of the building, abutting the building. As Jared mentioned, there's potential for another 30 in the pavement that he has out there right now.

That would cause issues for phase two.

Yeah, that would then, yeah. You can look at that as permanent because if they build building number two and that does become an industrial, like it needs that loading space, right? Unless they came and they drastically amended this and they were different.

Yeah, we can for sure do 60. That's no problem. To do 90 would definitely hinder phase two.

Right. So 30 additional wouldn't interface to?

No, not at all. It would just go right where that shaded area is at. Okay. Loading dock pads. Loading dock pads essentially up right there. We just literally would just paint lines, give or take 28 of them, and just ride along.

So we look to then change the capacity requirement from 120 since there's additional parking? That would be...

Right, we use the self-limited occupancy as a way to come up with a parking number. Because I knew the occupancy of the full building, I knew the parking of the full building, so if we pull down the occupancy, then I can rationalize the parking being less. So we could do that. I guess I would want to, I got an email from our code official.

While you're pulling that up, Luke, can I ask Jared a question?

Yeah, go right ahead.

Jared, does this hamstring you in that now, say your relationship is great with the current occupant, but then they decide they want to go somewhere else. And now we've occupancy limited you to this space.

Not in terms of, because this was built for industrial use anyway, kind of medium use. So, I mean, it wasn't really built for this use. It's just that happens to be what's popular right now and what the tenant was. And so we talked about it in New York saying popular sports. So that doesn't really hinder me in terms of adding 60 space or sorry, 30 spaces to the south and painting that doesn't really hinder me as well. It's just paint. You know, we can get rid of that. That's no problem. Adding bathrooms could potentially be that we're already OK. Adding bathrooms, we're already working through that process anyway. So that's not really a huge issue per se. We only had to build. Again, this is getting into the weeds a little bit here, but we were planning on building out technically like 10 bathrooms and 10 walls in here. And now we're built one wall and one big bathroom. I'm okay with that. It's a little less cost for me. But at the end of the day, it's big shell building. It's metal, it's concrete. We can do pretty much anything with it. Like I said, the 60 wouldn't be a problem. The 90 for the future would cause problems. just being very open and candid. I don't know what the complaint was. I have not seen a complaint. It's all hearsay or my candor, but it was not done that this first even I heard someone even was there. So I appreciate knowing people are actually using it even they weren't supposed to be. But from an honest standpoint, we wanna provide the parking and do our job for the city, but do I fully expect people to pull into the north spot, go all around the side of the building and then park in the very last spot on the, I'd call it the southwest portion of the building, as opposed to just say, oh, I'm gonna park in the street and walk down 20 steps. There's a real-life use scenario here. I think someone's probably going to park on the street and just walk down. I can't stop that, though. It's a public street. At that point, if there's people parking on a public street and the city has an issue with it, you can put up signs. We need to have a tow there or something. All I can do is provide it and meet my job for the city requirements, if that answers your question. But it won't really hinder Phase 2. It's more the market is what's hindering Phase 2.

So at 60 stalls, it would be 225 occupants. The building itself right now, just using building code in its size with a A3 occupancy type is 390. And then if you use that ratio, 390 equals out to 101 parking stalls. So, yeah.

Can you answer me this, Luke, just as an owner standpoint? If we add the 30 to the south and we have 60 spaces, we can now have 225 people. Does that change bathroom requirements we currently have? Because right now, I know last we talked, per comments, whereas four stalls for women, four stalls for men.

Right. I think the current review was assuming our building reviewer didn't know anything about the parking thing, so they just reviewed it as a 390 occupant building. And then the bathrooms that he's commented on are based on that size. So if you self-limit it to 225, you'll be fine with the bathrooms he called out or... You know, he can reevaluate that and tell us how many...

So essentially, if I'm hearing this correctly, as a building owner, I'm a tenant, but building owner, if we add 30 to the south, we can now self-limit to 225. The bathroom situation is already specced. That's the last plant I saw from city council. Yeah, I've not reviewed the plans. It was four men stalls, four women stalls.

Yeah. Our comment says a minimum of two men's and three women's. So if you're past that, then you're past that.

But anyway... But it sounds like we're already okay there. But any questions you guys have, still happy to answer. Or I can sit down and shut up.

I guess I'm confused what the recommendation is.

I think we have lots of options. Right.

I don't know that there's a full-on staff recommendation at this point.

Could you just tell us again what are our options?

You could send it back to council. You could say, we don't think there should be a parking waiver here. You could send it to council with the kind of initial recommendation that was $32,000. You could send it back to council with what council approved, which was 27. Or you could send it back to council with the addition of the extra ones that Jared mentioned, which would be, I guess, technically 57. We've been saying 60 just as a round number, but it'd be another 30 on the south, so 57. So then that number probably becomes more like two, maybe 195 instead of 225. Yeah.

safety about why they wouldn't allow additional parking or was this just not brought up as an option prior?

Fire EMS I don't think has as much concern about the parking number as they do the drive aisle width and their ability to access the building. I don't think that they have a concern as much about that. They're going to look at sprinkler system in the building, the building permits important to them, access hydrants and those types of things, but from a parking standpoint, I think they're good as long as they can get their truck around.

Options of 27, 32, or 57, right? Yeah. Okay.

Or you can make up another number if you want, and then they've got to figure it out.

Yeah, that sounds great. It seems to be common.

The little parking garage, yeah. Underground, please. Yes. I tried that. That didn't work. So if I'm hearing you correctly, Jared, your preference, you know, in this symbiotic relationship we're trying to work with you is the 57, right? And so you would prefer us make a motion for a parking waiver of 57 stalls?

I have one clarifying question here. What's the difference between a parking waiver and a parking variance?

I don't know where you've heard the term parking variance, I guess. The difference is that it's not a thing. So you can get variance. You can go to Board of Adjustment and get a variance from the code for certain things. The amount of parking stalls that you have would not be something that the Board of Adjustment would have authority to change.

As a prior Board of Adjustment member, variance is Board of Adjustment waivers, zoning. Okay, so just more of this is my thumb and it's my finger.

Right, just different powers for different commissions. Okay, gotcha.

entrance and exit doors on the south, or is it just the overhead?

Just overhead doors now. I think part of our, if we do add 30 to the south to make it 57, we'd want to make sure we add at least a door, if not two, to the entry points, which is fine. It's metal. We'll cut it in. It probably cost me two grand. Honestly, for me, I'd rather have it be more usable. The whole purpose of building when I built it was to be usable. And that's why we didn't maximize our site plan. We could have built 45,000 square feet on this thing instead of 40,000, but then it would have been unusable. It just happens to be, again, being used for youth sports. That wasn't the initial plan, but it is what it is. But again, yeah, I'm happy to talk to the code and put in the doors to the south.

The building sits right now. Do you add parking to the south? People have to walk from the south around to the north side.

Unless they were to open them on the garage doors, yeah, and you just walk to the garage door, which those are on rails. You could just lift them and walk straight in. And then you've got a big open door. We'll call it a handicapped door. But yeah, we could easily add some doors.

We'll give you the inclination 27, 32, 57. We propose 57 for some better use of the building and Motion to send back to council 57, a waiver of 57, 57 parking. Okay. Steiger second. Motion second. Any discussion? Hearing no such discussion, I'd ask for a roll call vote.

Steiger. Aye. Thompson.

She hopped off. Eaton.

Aye.

Forrest? Is he there? He said aye.

Garrison?

Aye. Henders? Aye.

Thanks, folks. City Council update. Nobody here. He's watching the game.

Community Development. Luke? On the, I guess, somewhat council-related, the last meeting you all had, we had a car wash rezoning request that did go to council, and they ultimately did not approve that. So that will stay as just C2 commercial for now.

They're listening to us every week, so.

Yep. They had a good discussion about it. It was a two to two vote. One member was absent. They needed a four to one vote to approve it. So that did not proceed. If you've also paid attention to. The old fairway building and some of the things going on with that, we were finally able to have a zoning appealing hearing at Board of Adjustment. We had made a determination that they needed to stop work on the building and vacate it because it wasn't being used properly for zoning code. That did go to BOA and BOA upheld the city's determination. So we'll see what next steps that takes. We'll also have a construction board of appeals meeting at some point related to that project as well for some building uh inspection items that were appealed so working through that um and then spent last week in or part of last week in dc with our economic development director and our uh chamber president and kelsey porter from city council just advocating for the city's growth and our interchange and all that stuff so we had some good productive meetings out there with our representatives

Any specific issues that you're bringing up with them on the DMDC trip?

Really just supporting industrial growth in Iowa. Just continuing to talk about the interchange in our corridor. And I just, we want it to be second nature to those folks by the time it comes for somebody to say yes to it. And they'll just be like, oh yeah, that's the thing we've talked about for 10 years. So we've been talking about it for five already. So yeah. Yeah.

Did you talk to him about the tunnel underneath sunset for pedestrians?

We did not talk about that, no. I don't know that we need a lot of federal assistance if we want to do that. All right.

Next meeting, June 22, 2026. That one's looking active, right, Elliot? I don't know. Okay. Fantastic. You'll find out within a week. All right. I'll take a motion for adjournment. Steiger motion to adjourn. All in favor say aye. Aye. They're adjourned at 6.52. Good job, guys. Thanks, guys. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Thanks, Dan.