Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Don't they, that's just where they said she was West Campus.

Yeah. It was weird. Gas and the insurance. Yeah.

Yeah, everybody's story classes day. Yeah. You see how it's online as well.

I did not because I was looking for that. Nevermind.

Do you want training coming to Norwalk Central?

We do. It's open this week.

Do we have an injury recovery center coming in next week?

We must.

We do. Yeah, we do.

The first injury training.

So everybody on the Quad Cities, I do much more boring stuff. My Quad Cities attorneys do this. I'll give her a call. If it's good enough, she can travel. It is 546. and call the meeting to order. Ask for a roll call of all the members present.

Spiker? Here. Thompson? Here. Eaton?

Here.

Samuelson? Here. Forrest?

Here.

Garrison? Here. Henders?

Here. All right. We have a draft agenda in front of you, if everyone would take a look at that. Um, see if, uh, that looks good. If it, if everything looks good there, I'd entertain a motion to approve. So your motion counts in seconds, a motion in second, a discussion, you know, such discussion and call for a roll call vote to approve the agenda.

Stiger Thompson. I eaten. I Samuelson forced. All right. Garrison hinders. All right.

All right. Well, I guess I'll welcome any guests that may be in an ethereal realm or otherwise invisible in here. But if they have any questions, I will remind them of the rules. So moving on, we have the minutes in front of us. If you just do a quick review of your minutes and let me know if there are any changes. Otherwise I'd entertain a motion second to approve.

Forrest, a motion? Second.

All right, motion and second. Any discussion? Hearing no such discussion, I call for a roll call vote to approve the minutes.

Steiger? Aye. Thompson? Aye. Eaton?

Aye.

Emelson? Aye. Forrest? Aye. Garrison? Aye. Hinders?

Aye. All right, moving on. We have the first issue there, the zoning amendment. Public hearing consideration zoning ordinance amendment regarding showroom retail uses. Luke, you got this one for us? I do. Fantastic.

Can you open the public hearing, please?

Oh, this is a public hearing. See, you get me all messed up. Okay, we're having a hearing on this one. So motion to open the public hearing on consideration of the zoning ordinance amendment regarding showroom retail uses.

Okay, well. This proposal is kind of a staff-generated update to our C2 zoning amendment and really stems from some of the enforcement that we've been doing at 1711 Sunset Drive, which is a fairway grocery store area. Just the brief history on that, there was some unpermitted palletized storage being used in the majority of that space, which led to a stop work order and some subsequent Board of Adjustment Appeals, Construction Board of Appeals, and those things happening. Following those proceedings and as we've kind of let that property owner know throughout the process that we want to work with them to try to find a solution on what they were wanting to achieve with that space. So they came back to us with a revised business plan on how they intend to use the space. Our review of that still was running into some issues with our storage requirement within the C2 zoning district. We talked through the idea that they would occupy the building as a Group M mercantile occupancy, which is... From a building standpoint, would treat the whole building like it was available and open to the public. But that still didn't address our C2 zoning cap on storage, which is 25% of the commercial floor area. So what was being proposed was roughly 30% of the building being retail space and the remaining 70% being storage of goods that they would sell through there and through their online storefront. So what we've had with this revision is the idea that they would have that storefront and have the storage area be a space where they maybe kept high valuable product or bulk product that they could take people back in there to inspect and purchase. So that's their intent. Yeah. When we're reviewing our code, trying to figure out what this falls into. A lot of times when we review specific business plans, we're looking at other similar uses if something's not definitively spelled out in the zoning ordinance. So as we were doing that, we kind of landed on four that were identified in our, or five of them that were identified in our C2 businesses that we felt like the potential to have issues with the 25% storage area as well. And those would be furniture stores, flooring stores, appliance stores, paint stores, and oddly we call out hot tub sales as a very specific category. sales type in our C2. So those are the types of things where we would expect there to be a showroom of the product that you're buying, but you're not like buying it at that space or time, right? You might be putting in an order. Some of those showrooms could just fit our traditional retail if they were just the showroom. But if they had the showroom plus the warehousing storage component where you're either picking up the material or the arrangement for delivery, that would run afoul of our 25%. So finding those that we felt were kind of that larger inventory footprint issues, we decided let's take a look at a potential zoning solution that addresses those issues and then also gives a path forward for this use at 1711 Sunset. So I want to make sure to clarify that we're doing this because of the code issue, but that's not the reason, right? We enforce our codes until we find a reason that there needs to be a change. And the reason is there's a lot of different things that we feel like we might want in the city that might run afoul of that 25%. So working with Elliot, myself, and Jim Daugherty, our city attorney, we came up with this idea of a showroom retail classification within the C2 district. In the ordinance, you can kind of read through there. It's not real robust, but I think it hits on all the things that we want. The idea being that this would be allowed in the C2 district. And so then that would allow it in the C2 and C3 districts. There has to be a public showroom area, which we define as a specific definition within our definitions chapter. That's 30% of the floor area of the building. Inventory stored on site needs to be offered for sale, so you can't have inventory that's being reserved or sold wholesale to suppliers or something. There's got to be active product displays in a customer reception area and customer shop access areas. to all display and storage areas to inspect merchandise, high value product or bulk orders. That customer access was a key portion to what we felt as a staff level would kind of differentiate it from just a retail storefront that was just kind of there, but really what we were doing was warehousing, right? So being able to take customers back into that area was critical. Uh, we have a current use that's kind of similar to that in town in that the NutraSport smoothie, uh, spot has kind of the smoothie retail restaurant use, but then they have a bigger warehouse storage space that you can go in and the products on the shelves, it's listed for sale. You can buy what you want to buy. Um, you can walk back in there at any time as a customer. Um, so, uh, we felt like this was going to help us get down that area. Um, no portion of the public, uh, showroom area or the authorized public access area. That's another definition we came up with of the area that's, you know, the storage space or, or the, um, the area that's not the, the, the public facing showroom, um, We don't want any of that area to be restricted from customer entry. Again, trying to put in some controls that will prevent a straight warehouse from deciding to operate in one of these showroom retail locations. The fourth one there. allowing that storage area to then go up to 70% of the gross floor area. But again, requiring them that they maintain a group M occupancy under the building code for the entire thing. That way we can ensure that a storage area again we want public to be back there it's going to be built to a standard where you would expect public to go standards of safety and access and life safety elements of the codes. are important in that scenario. Business must maintain regular posted full time hours of 40 hours a week, a minimum of five week and have active onsite sales employees during those hours. Again, trying to put in some rules to control the idea that the storeroom retail could end up being a backdoor to a warehouse facility. And then lastly, no outdoor open air display or storage inventory permitted, except as otherwise by our special use permit process. We went one step farther. We identified this idea of an e-commerce fulfillment online sale warehouse. Traditionally, we would have just considered that warehouse, but we wanted to go a little bit farther and specifically design that idea that It's a retail sales happening, but it's being stored in a warehouse and then shipped out via sales on a website or eBay or what have you. So then we're going one step farther and adding that as an allowed use within our industrial commerce district, which is the first time we have warehousing show up in the district. So just taking one step further to say warehousing stuff happens in... the industrial district retail stuff, even if we're going to let you store more stuff on your site, you've got to be doing retail activity in the commercial districts. Um, so that's, that's the gist of it. Um, so again, we believe this will give us a, uh, opportunity to attract legitimate inventory, heavy retail concepts to, uh, Norwalk on a compliant, uh, zoning path. Um, And, you know, it'll also provide this business model that we've been working with, 1711 Sunset, on a compliant path forward to proceed as well. So really kind of two birds with one stone there. With that, we, from a staff level, recommend approval, but I am happy to answer any questions you might have.

Luke, are there any parallels to this project? sort of storeroom in a C2 that exists in the metro area?

Yeah, I mean, they would tend to be larger examples than the 1711 Sunset, but like Flooring America up in Clive is a flooring store that operates like that.

Homemakers. It's also in like a C2. Yeah.

The Homemakers up in Uh, Urbandale, you know, big, huge go-room space, but even bigger warehouse fulfillment spaces. I think Nebraska Furniture Mart down in 5 is about the same with appliances. But the flip side is it's not unheard of to see a Slumberland in West Des Moines, which is just a straight... I mean, they don't have inventory on site that you buy. What you buy there has to be fulfilled from a warehouse somewhere else.

Yeah.

It was traditional showrooms would have already been allowed. It's just trying to find a path forward for something that wants to have their inventory on site as well as having the retail component happen there.

We end up with like this Sherman Williams example where they might have showroom inventory and maybe back in the inventory they're also doing

Correct. We have. We had in here something about no portion. Oh, it's in the definition of public access area. So public access area is any portion of the facility where customer access is generally restricted for safety or operational reasons, but where customers may be escorted or granted access by employees to view stocks. So we would say in that situation, the... sherwin-williams where they would have the mixing of their paint and all of that stuff would be not considered an authorized public access area because you know for safety of not having customers walking around where they've got equipment that's shaking up paint cans um we could classify that as a different type of uh portion of the building it wouldn't be storage it wouldn't be retail space either it would be um some kind of workspace. I don't know how the building code classifies that.

How would this differ, I guess, like a rollout, right? They've got a showroom out there now. How does that and those types of uses compare to this? I'm thinking like those industrial suites we've got, right? Like a lot of those are kind of intended for a use that's very similar to this, right? But those are in industrial zoning, is that right?

Yes.

Okay. This would allow users that might end up in those locations to be in a more commercial setting. A lot of it depends on the type of user. We can't specify that from zoning, right? But like your furniture store wants to be on a retail corridor and have the visibility to get people to be there versus somebody that's doing maybe HVAC work or something. And they do have that stuff. Or Rowan's probably a good example of, They've got their product, and you can go there and look at it, but it's also storing it there to deliver to install. I think the main thing is that use Rowett could end up now in either one, industrial or in commercial, and I think the differentiation is the business deciding what do they need from a visibility standpoint, right?

I guess that's my only concern is that are we going to end up with something in an R2 district that we're not necessarily going to want in an R2 district down the road? Sorry, C2.

Right. I mean, this does open the door for there to be uses that would have... primarily storage as the building footprint to be located in the commercial district. You know, I think our hope would be that the Market conditions would drive the people that want to be on the highway to spend the money to be on the highway, and the folks that are just going to run their shop with their office in the front or run their, you know, I don't know, throw at wood. Like, they seem to operate fine up there, so they might think, well, I'd rather just have the more industrial feel, the lower rent prices. Yeah. Assuming lower rent prices and industrial than in our, our highway frontage.

They wouldn't have to have any issue. They wouldn't have any issues of storing things outside like they do right now.

So part of it, right. If you're not storing stuff outside, what is it? Right. Really? We

A lot of the other cities would address it via... You could do a process to do a conditional use permit. You could do a process to... land unit development for a specific site. Right. Um, we decided to do just a straight zoning because I felt like those other uses were enough of a thing that we might see someone want to come in and put in North shore or the gray gun stuff, or, you know, if you still got that empty spot by, uh, Elizabeth Holland park, that something like that might, might want to go into, um, So we felt like it was for us the best to address it just across the city rather than kind of kicking the can and putting maybe our board of adjustment in a weird spot to evaluate and approve something or, you know, the city having to negotiate individual PEDs for individual projects. I mean, we try not to do that. We do when we have redevelopment projects because that is a different animal than a new build, so... Yeah. But to that point, it's going to allow 70% of the building to be storage. What I was going to mention with some of the other communities, and just the general idea, like why would you have the 25% restriction, right? We're drawing a line in the sand between active retail on your commercial corridors in your commercial district where you want people to come in, you want to generate sales tax, you want to generate synergy between the businesses and everything, and a less active space like a warehouse where things are just getting trucked in and out and all that, right? And so we've got this situation where there's maybe some uses that don't fit neatly in either one of those boxes. And so, you know, there may be some higher foot traffic retail uses that need that extra space.

Like you said, I think market forces are going to dictate because you're not going to pay rent for 70% of your space. It's going to be used as just storing stuff, right?

But I do think, like we've talked about, I kind of jumped in here too, my personal opinion is I don't think we ever want Walmart, but I also want a vehicle to do we allow for and where is the market taking it like I've got all of us getting an Amazon package at least once a week if not more often right and so to be able to support those internet sales companies I think was something we want to be able to push and support is my opinion I feel uncomfortable because we don't like we're this person who has come before what board of adjustments in the city how many times and we've said no because it doesn't fit I don't

I don't love the idea that we are now changing our zoning because of this specific situation. And then we don't know what it's going to Pandora's box open to because we're not restricting in any way. Because a lot of our other zoning we have, it can be this, this, this, but not ABCD. We don't have anything like that on here.

I clarify that our issues in the past with the building were the... When the owner came to the city, it was, I want to run an online sales front store out of here, and I want to keep my stuff in here and sell it online, right? And council said, no, we're not interested in changing the zoning of that building or doing a new zoning amendment to identify online sales as something... Pure online sales, right? The owner came back and said, okay, well, I'm going to build this little retail space in the corner of that. And then as they were working on that and continuing to use the rest of the space as storage, we continued conversations with them about, hey, you're going to have to limit your storage to just 25% of that retail space. They ended up disagreeing with that as we put on their stop work order. They used their administrative appeal rights to appeal our Board of Adjustment, which the board did not overturn the city's decision on enforcing the fact that we determined it to be a warehouse. And so kind of at the end of that process, they've come back and said, we want to bring you a new business plan, which I'm trying to look at brand new without being influenced by previous reactors, just like any other person that would come to the city and say, this is the thing I want to do. I would look at that thing in its brand new context and try to apply it to our code and see how it fits. And my initial interpretation was it didn't fit, right? I did find other uses that I felt were similar to it that we do allow in our C2 district that I also would think we might run afoul of if we got into the details of how much storage they were doing. Thus, my proposal before you today to address that situation.

Really, I mean, the comparable that I can see here is like NutriSport. What's the difference between what they do and what we're talking about here? Is that a zoning difference or is it just the difference?

The Nutrisport is under our current zoning. didn't fall into one of those because they have their whole area completely open. I would not consider that to be a storage area, even though when you walk in there, it looks like it. When you walk into Costco, Costco looks kind of warehousy because they store pallets above everything and all that, but it's a retail space. We have viewed NutriSport as a retail building. It's retail use.

Yeah. Is any of your concern, Luke, the fact that you're turning, let's say, public auto traffic to semi-traffic? Is that part of your concern with this, by having a warehouse in a C2 district where now you're potentially increasing your large truck traffic?

I mean, I think that's something to be aware of. Yeah. I want to clarify, we've tried really hard to write this in such a manner that you can't do a warehousing. If you follow our rules, you can't do straight warehousing where you're going to be shipping stuff in and out, right? You're going to be selling stuff primarily in your retail storefront. You're going to have the option, like everybody does. I mean, Target sells stuff online and you go there and you pick it up or they ship it to you from the store. That's going to be an option for them. So what I'd say from going from 25% to 70% storage, I would expect there to be a increase in traffic going in there just because you've got more product that you can store there. There's probably going to be a little bit more traffic. I don't know that it ends up being to the level of something you need to expect in a distribution center, because I don't know that we would expect there to be shipments in and out daily. Like if you were doing a straight up like Amazon fulfillment center, right? I mean, this isn't saying we're going to be operating to that intensity.

Fairway before had trucks showing up once, twice a week. I'm assuming Culver's has trucks showing up delivering food once, twice a week.

Are they 70% storage?

No, but I don't know that just because it's I don't see inventory, at least in this use, rotating that much.

Do we just have overall intensity of use sort of regulations on either that area or C2 and in general?

I don't know. I'd have to do a little research on most of our loading, parking and loading stuff is about the design of the space and accommodating it, not necessarily the intensity or volume of it, right?

And at least the building that we're talking about that kind of drove this was Fairway, who had multiple deliveries every day with lots of traffic, right?

And whether it be a commercial space or an industrial space. I mean, the main things that you're worried about that from an impact standpoint are impact on the public realm, which is what's the impact to that on Highway 28 and to city streets and to the motoring public and all that stuff. And You know, from Norwalk's perspective, we have one road, one main road. And so the impacts of stuff happening down on Delaware are going to impact Highway 28 just as much as they would if they happened on North Shore. Well, maybe not North Shore because you'd be leaving right out on the fine. But, you know, anything as you go farther south into town, that thing will have impact on Highway 28 because that's the way out of town.

Luke, how does this affect existing businesses? I'm thinking of, you know, not that they're anyone under the bus, but I'm thinking of K&R Wholesale.

Mm-hmm.

They're, in their name, they are wholesale. Mm-hmm. They don't sell retail. They have a showroom and they're mostly shipping in and out for wholesale purpose.

Sure.

I don't know what their zone based on that county website looks like if they're in commercial. Everything around them is industrial. Yeah, they, K&R down there is in industrial.

They're, they're the same as, as, uh, Progress Innovations and, and Capital City. Um, They would probably end up falling into a bit of a gray area as to which they would be allowed into. We could, to further hone in a little bit and maybe to control some of the... Maybe there needs to be something added here, just like with the hours of operation to say... you know, the frequency of shipments, right? I mean, we could try to say that to help differentiate when you go to industrial versus when you're allowed in commercial. And maybe that's the line in the sand now is if you have more than Four trucks a week. I don't know what the number is.

Who's going to realistically police that?

What's that? Who's realistically going to police that? It's going to be a citizen complaint. Right. A lot of our regulations aren't like a thing that the city goes out and like checks every day, right? It's... Hey, too much stuff is happening here, or there's a negative impact that we hear about through somebody. Usually someone making a discussion with one of our council members and then comes back down to us. And then we go and look at it and we say, hey, okay, you're operating out of compliance with the zoning ordinance. proper enforcement action.

When Fairway was located there, did semi-trucks enter and exit on high? Yes. Okay, so I do foresee if you're having a lot more semi-trucks come in there, I mean, there's no light. You're sitting, if you're going to make a left off of high, you're already sitting there for all those folks who live back in the legacy area. I mean, that's... I foresee a lot of complaints in that direction if you're having more semi trucks.

I don't think this is semi traffic for this particular use of this business. This is UPS truck dropping off five packages a day and picking up five packages a day. I worry more about the other uses where we've got other things. But again, I can find a way to make this work. I don't know how you police delivery times and things. I don't know if you want to get into that.

Anything you put in, for the most part, is something that sits in the ordinance until a problem is noticed, and then we use the rule we have to try to investigate the problem and make corrections.

That bike world on 50th and West and 1 in the old dolls, that would fall into this, because that entire back 50% of that building is just bike storage. You never know it's there when you're in the retail space, but it's 50% storage. And they open it up occasionally for when they have sales and things, like warehouse sale. But... They don't have trucks coming and going frequently. And I guess I don't like tile stores, right? We're talking carpet stores, tile stores, those types of businesses. I guess I don't necessarily frequent those enough, but most of those are going to be in locations where I don't think it's going to be an issue. The only one that this one is, the property that kind of led this all off is one that's, it's closer to residential and it's closer to kind of side streets than it is than most commercial property we have in the city. Yes. So.

Hey Luke, have we gotten any feedback from the other local businesses in the area?

We've not gotten any comments on this specific proposal from any of our businesses. When we were going through the board of adjustment appeal process, we did have some of the businesses that are within the kind of fairway complex, right? The strip center and stuff. A, ask us what's happening with that building and we let them know and we let them know why there was an appeal and all of that. And just the general like, yeah, there should be something happening in that building rather than no retail activity as it had been. Yeah. So. I think with Taco John's leaving there, I've not talked to the Taco John's people, but it's easy to speculate that the loss of traffic through there maybe impacted them.

That's where I was going with it because a lot of those businesses rely on each other for foot traffic. I know some leases are tied to That being apparent, especially if there's one owner for all of the rental spaces over there. The second question that I have, and I maybe should know this, before the owner bought the building, knowing what they were planning on doing with the space once they acquired it, did they come before the city to share what they were going to be doing to understand the restrictions with the current code prior to going through all the changes?

one of the tricky things we've had with that specific scenario is, you know, people go into things with good intentions with one plan and then plans change. And so the original intentions that we were presented for that space was to split it into, I believe, six multi-tenant retail spaces. And then, you know, that plan evolved. I don't know if that was, they just won't find it in, Tenants that wanted to do there and the owner came up with another business plan. I don't know what caused their shift in what they intended to do, but they did. And now their intention again. In addition to this retail space that we're looking at doing that would have this storage bulk component to it, they have a building permit submitted for two additional tenant spaces, basically filling up the whole east side of the building that they would offer up for lease for office or retail use as well. Yeah. Sounds like from what they've proposed to us in that specific scenario, they're trying to build a little bit of a synergy between other kind of hobbyist type uses that they're kind of trying to target for the other spaces.

Yeah.

So, you know, from a... Standpoint of, you know, I'm not a business analyst to tell you if something's going to be successful or not, but I can see the benefit to there being additional foot traffic in there for the other businesses if this thing went through. and was it successful as they propose it will be, that's going to bring some more people back to that area compared to it just sitting empty right now.

I don't think, I mean, if you have some of these businesses like the railways and other companies that kind of scale up to these burial footprints, we're going to have buildings like that that we need to have folks be willing to kind of move into and repurpose, right? So I think in this particular instance, I don't have a lot of issues with it. So I think you guys have done a good job with having to kind of navigate through the situation, have been able to expand your thought process to include some of these other things like e-commerce, fulfillment, and these kinds of things. So yeah, I feel good about it.

Anybody else have any questions for Luke? If we're good there, I'll close the hearing and open deliberation. Members, any thoughts, feelings?

I mean, I already said, I just feel it's too big in what it allows and what it does not restrict. Because if it happens where they decide they don't want to do this business anymore, it's now zoned a certain way and what what's going to come in. That just makes me nervous.

Well, it's still under restrictions. Are there restrictions that you would say that would ease your mind?

I don't know, I guess about What would want something 25%? Like it's not a bike shop. It's not a stone shop. I guess I don't know. It's just such a weird location to have it as something like that.

I don't know.

And I feel I just like this, this person knew what they were signing up for. Are they trying to usurp the rules? And now we're bending over backwards and getting a whole new zoning just for them. Like, this is what I'm not understanding why we're doing this all of a sudden.

I'm more comfortable with it when Lou's telling me that this is not uncommon in C2 districts throughout the metro. Either we were going to do it for them or potentially do it in another context. I agree with you that there's makes me a little bit leery that we're doing this at this point. for a specific entity, but also it feels like there's rails in place to make sure that it's enforced and that they're not going to abuse what's going on here. And I do think that at some point, whether it was this entity or another entity coming in, we were probably gonna make this zoning change. I mean, it's a business as Luke's listed off. I mean, those I don't think, contrary to anything that we're looking around here for economic development.

I think it's probably part of a new business model too. Relying and operating solely as a brick and mortar store these days has got to be damn near impossible for a lot of these places. And so I can see that there's a need for more things like this that rely on a mix of e-commerce and brick and mortar types of things. And I guess this provides that avenue more so, I think, than what we have in the past.

And my biggest concern is that if somebody comes in C2 with this hybrid structure on a brand new construction, Now they only have 30% of their building and now they only have parking slots for 15 cars. Then they move out and somebody wants to bring in retail and now they need to up their parking slots to 90 slots like fairway had to cover that.

And now there's not room now parking calculation based on gross square foot or to be based on, it would be, we would, um, we look at it two different ways.

Traditionally, when you have a restaurant, you don't do parking for the 100% of it. You just do for the patrons, basically. I would imagine we would probably look at it the same way and say, we're going to do parking for the retail space. And then the rest of the space would still have a parking calculation, but be less intense. Everything always has a calculator. But that's a good thing to consider because on one side, Andy mentioned earlier, I think, you know, one of the things I liked about this was it does give some adaptive reuse of large structures, a little bit more wiggle room of things, right? If Goodwill goes away or Dollar General goes, And then you're building, it flips out, you know, who goes in that space. So it gives us some options for that reuse. But the flip side of it is if a new build goes in and then wants to be reused, it's going to have a difficult time doing that, you know, because we're going to have to give some kind of parking waiver or say, figure out how to get us 60 more parking stalls.

Like, does that mean that... a C2 now, if it's going to come in new construction with 30% of their space being retail, they have X amount of green space available that if they ever decide to sell in the future, you're not going to go that route, are you?

No. We have our rules and then we have our pre-app meetings where we throw stuff at the wall. That would likely be We always try to make sure that people can add value to their properties when they can because we do have large open space requirements that, you know, frankly leave parts of commercial properties undeveloped when they could be developed.

We did that on south of town in the industrial space where there's green space available that they can extend parking if they need to. Right. But right now it's grass.

Is that parking waiver? Is that what we did down there? Yeah.

So I guess we already have a way we do it. Yeah.

You just end up in a trip. It's no different than if any of our multi-tenant retail structures have an assumed parking requirement. And every single one of them could end up being all restaurants and not have enough parking. And there's nothing at all. at some point the market ends up taking care of it because the guy that's going to be the last restaurant and it's going, I'm not going to rent that space because my people won't have anywhere to park. Right. Like some of it ends up being self-policed.

So to the point of storage, um, like maybe that needs a little more definition. If you park a bunch of semi-trailers there, that could be your storage.

We would end up considering parking of things like that to be outdoor storage.

So really, they have a building that potentially they have a huge section of parking lot that they'll never use because they can't use it for outdoor storage. They don't have people parking there. So they just are going to own and maintain a large empty parking lot. Correct. Okay. Good for the neighboring tenants who might have overflow.

But I think in that instance, like if that space we're talking about, I think there was a firework stand there, right? So they probably are still generating some revenue or can do other. I'm sure. You know, you can get special that conference from the city to do stuff.

Okay. A savvy business person will find a way to make money on that space. I am confident in American capitalism.

Hey, Luke, I haven't seen any retail signage go up on that building.

Yeah, everything's been on hold as we've been going through. So we put a stop work order on the building in February. Okay. So there's just, yeah, there's no movement on it as we've been going through appeals and all that stuff, so.

So if this is approved and this goes forward, then we'll start to see some of those things matriculate.

We've got permits. We'll reactivate. We'll get them going full steam when we can.

Well, it sounds like I appreciate you taking the time to talk through all these different ideas that we've had.

We've had a lot of them, too.

I think we have... already addressed similar situations. So now this could just kind of put some rules around it and also gives Holly and whoever else is on her team some flexibility as they're looking to grow our economic development.

All right. Any other discussion or deliberation? Entertain a motion on the subject and the

Change in the motions.

Eat motion.

Save us a little second.

And that's motion to approve. Yes, yeah. Any further discussion? OK, hearing no further discussion and ask for a roll call vote.

Sager. Thompson no. Eden I. Samuelson. Forced.

All right.

Garrison?

Aye. Henders? Aye.

All right. Moving on to the next issue. All right. Another public hearing. We're so lucky. Public hearing and recommendation on the zoning amendment to change 3.5 acres north of 1601 Chatham Avenue from unclassified PUD to those allowed uses as permitted in R3 district. We'd open the hearing on that matter and turn to Luke for your report.

Sure thing. I'm going to pull a beacon here real quick. Um, we did not have the finalized legal description of the parcel with formal ordinance. Um, but essentially what we're doing here is the area North of NutraSport, uh, smoothie on Chatham, um, that developer that owns all of that ground, um, is wanting to proceed with a townhome project north of NutriSport Smoothie. The PUD, the way that it's written, calls out several different residential types that could be in there. It says industrial could be in there. It says commercial could be in there. We didn't really know what was going to happen with this northern piece of Chatham at the time of everything developing. Really, even before we knew that the Greg Young's Forest Campus and all that stuff was going to happen. So we kind of preserved a lot of high intensity uses, higher density residential in this far end area. just in case we needed something to go in there to justify putting in a road or something. That's not been the case. So I don't really see industrial over going in there. So we've got the one commercial space in Nutri Smoothie. And then what they're looking at doing, I'll just draw it here real quick, is this area to the north in a parcel that'll be shaped about like this. They'd like to do a townhome project. That's one of the things we contemplated in the different residential types of the PUD. The PUD simply says before a project happens, we should do an amendment for that area and specifically say what's happening there. That way you don't end up with a townhome project that would have the ability to turn into an industrial use at some point, right? So that's what this amendment does is it sets this area north of NutriSport Smoothie into the R3 district within parcel E of the Hughes Century Crossing planned unit development. Everything, any questions?

First of all, I love that we're bringing residential to that side of Sunset. That way it eases up the traffic, foot traffic across Sunset. That's good. So hopefully we'll increase the amount of patrons that are going to those local businesses. Is there any plan to take 18th Street further north or because you've got Capital City?

North of here we have, topography wise, you go down a lot into kind of a valley here. And then this is kind of a, On the map, the parcels that end in 625 and 013 are city-owned that collectively form one big detention basin for Capital City. Some of Lafredo drains that way. Some of K&R drains that way. And then, basically, gosh, soon to die. A lot of Norwalk Central drains up through that corridor as well. So yeah, no real intention for East 18th to go any farther north than that. There will be a future public road that kind of runs east-west there going back to the east. Similarly, we don't expect that going back to the west because there's a pretty pretty gnarly drainage channel there that would happen, get crossed. And with Chatham being such a major corridor, not really identified a need for that to connect.

It's probably been at least, what, a couple sessions we've had city council already talked about, like, the idea of, like, do we have enough place for apartments or types of things, walkability, knowing the school's going to be on your picture farther to the right or farther to the east eventually, right? Like, I think a lot of the city council was like, wow, it'd be great to have some I think that was pretty well received.

We do need the high density to feed the businesses.

20 parcel just north of Gordon. That's R3 or R4, isn't it? This one, yeah.

It's an R3. We had a project proposed there that's kind of through driveway. Yeah, we did some unique stuff with the zoning.

That never came through.

I mean, I think they still want to do it. I just think It's not been a priority-driven company at this time.

From a city investment standpoint, if that's approved and they do put townhomes in there, what's the city's requirement to put in sidewalks, those kinds of things?

We will have them install sidewalks on their frontage. As far as the city's obligation to do sidewalks anywhere else, it's really a property owner at time of development thing that we handle. you know, at some point, I'm assuming what you're getting at is how do you get down to the sparse complex or over to Cooper's? Yeah, I mean, we're talking about walkability. Where are they going to walk on the road? Right. You know, at some point, as... We get farther away from the initial development of this area. You know, we may want to go back and have discussions with those property owners about putting in a sidewalk ahead of development. The city sidewalk ordinance gives us the ability to do that. So, you know, usually we wait for a business or home to build to put their sidewalk in. But at some point, if the pressure gets there enough, the city can certainly have a discussion with property owners and decide if the city's going to upfront some dollars to do it, if we're going to ask them to do it. But certainly something to keep an eye on as people start living there.

So the answer is no requirement?

No firm requirement, for sure.

And the city's not going to invest in putting sidewalks in with taxpayer dollars to make it walkable?

won't say that because i'm not the city council but um you know that certainly as as more people get out there i think that would be a discussion that council would want to have and that's kind of a two-sided two-edged sword whatever you want to call it because sometimes when we do that we make sidewalks or trails go in in advance of developments a lot of wasted money happens later because When a development does come in, they have to rip it out, put it back in. So it's just kind of a, it seems like our developments generally will come together in a pretty timely fashion, especially around Norwalk Central. That's moved pretty quickly. So I think that as each development goes in next door, they'll just continue that.

So there's not such a waste of- Maybe there's a happy medium we could work through to put in a more temporary surface that-

We don't feel like it's going to be wasted by doing... Because Holly's right.

One of the concerns would be this main Norwalk Central piece. It's there, but it's not been graded, right? So we don't know. And they're not going to do that until they have the user there. And that user is going to have their idea of how they want their site to interface with Chatham. And that'll set where the sidewalk gets built and all of that. So... It's tricky to put it in ahead of time. You risk it getting ripped out. Maybe that's fine because maybe it's there for 10 years before it gets ripped out. Maybe it's there for six months. Kind of a roll of the dice at some point.

Yeah. From a budgetary standpoint, I guess, and I don't know how that works, but there's probably some more knowledge to gain. I'd rather see the city invest in the parks that we can't build than to spend money on trails. So if we can somehow make sure that the business owners are funding that cost.

Yeah.

Somehow in there, or if it comes out something separate, I don't know how you can speak to that.

Again, it's not a zoning or a subdivision thing specifically, but our sidewalk regulations say that every piece of property in town that fronts a public street will have a sidewalk. Right. And then it gives us the ability to assess that onto that property owner. Now, just because the code says we can do that doesn't mean that we do. I mean, I can't think of a situation we've ever done that in a development scenario, but it's something that the city has as a tool. So certainly something we can talk about rather than the city spending dollars on.

Luke, Holly made a comment. She needs high density. Is townhomes high enough density?

It's a move in the right direction. You know, the reality is we probably don't have enough land in that area to get enough high density to really, really make it work. Whether or not this is town homes or not, you know, three acres of town homes isn't a real big, it's not a real big impact, but it's also not a real big loss as far as density there. You know, you really want to get density in there. We need a. Use building on the South side to get built with. You know, 3 or 4 apartments above. Like, that's the density you really need for this stuff, but. Kind of off of Chatham and stuff. It'll be fine.

And is this all. The grand plan of this area going to tie together because you've got. the Nutri Smoothie and then Town Homes and I know I think Annie mentioned the school and I think we've all heard rumors of that. I don't know. Is this all going to just mesh or is it just going to be plop, plop, plop, plop, plop and not really go well?

No, I think, you know, especially the chat and frontage, we When we did the zoning for Nutrismoothie, we also set the water tower site, which is the end. But we didn't just zone the Nutrismoothie spot. We zoned this whole piece to kind of town center retail, the same as what Cooper's and everything on the south side of Chatham is. So, you know, your potential commercial uses you'll see there will be, you know, buildings fronted towards Chatham, So that'll help with that aesthetic. The south side of Chatham you will. The main hiccup right now with the aesthetic of the Chatham corridor is the ground north of Chatham where the hotel is at and everything. It has different rules. And so... We can't force them to put it up to the street like we can on the south side because of the zoning. And then in addition to that, physically, you can't because the sewer that serves everything is on the north side of Chatham and an easement that takes up the front 30 feet of all of those privates. So even if everybody agreed to do that style on the north side, because of that sewer... So there'll be a little bit of inconsistency in that first part of it. And then as we go into un-annexed area, it's just on the city, on us as staff, you guys as commission members of council to decide to value that consistent look along Chatham as it goes out to 80th and do the zoning appropriately to that. We could also abandon it and put a school right off of Chatham like we did with Orchard Hills off of North, and that could be a decision we could make too.

The owners that have the Nutrismoothie and the surrounding land that you're talking about now for the townhomes, they're good partners because they really want to see, they like the whole idea of Norwalk Central and everything being cohesive, so I think they've been really good to work with on that whole chunk there.

They have, and you know, we've They're looking at this piece now. We've talked with them about lots of different concepts. I think they do want to try and get a higher density piece in there. But, you know, everything's a different market, right? So you can find the right people to do all that. They've made some good partners in the townhome realm, and that seems where they want to go next.

Is there a requirement from the city as to density of townhomes?

It's a maximum, so 12 units per acre is the maximum you could have. So 12 would be 36 there, right? I want to say what they proposed was 28. So they're not maxing it out, but you'll never see a project meet the max of what we allow because of open space and streets and all that stuff, so.

Any more questions for Luke? All right. Hearing no more questions, close the hearing open deliberation conversation or discussion regarding this change in the PED.

If you're looking at a higher density, apartments are the only other higher density, is that right? Correct. I personally like the townhomes because people own them versus apartments where they're rented. And I think the tax value is probably higher with townhomes versus apartments.

Yeah, I mean, that whole math is changing. It used to be apartments were not great because they were taxed at the residential rate. The state did that for like the last 12 years. And then this latest session, they said, hey, that didn't do what we thought it would. So they put it back. And so now apartments will be taxed. I think they created a new class. I don't think it's as high as commercial, but it won't get the full residential rollback. So property tax situation with apartments gets better. You know, there's other impacts to apartments, right? There's You know, our school district has a lot of opinion on apartments due to the potential for a large influx of students to happen from one project getting done in a short period of time that they want to be able to plan their growth easier than that. But yeah, apartments are probably the next level thing you want to do density-wise to really get people in that area.

Well, and from Holly's perspective, it's a whole lot easier to put in a nice commercial in front of townhomes versus apartments, probably. I feel like the townhomes commercial go more hand-in-hand than...

I mean, it really depends. Like a mixture is really best. Right. It depends on the quality of it and what it looks like, right? I mean... And in some regards, maybe the aesthetic looks a certain way. But, you know, the flip side of it is if you said, look, we've got 300 apartments up here instead of 28 homes. That's 600 people that could come to your Nutri Smoothie Cafe instead of 50. Yeah.

And Norwalk's more on that market rate edge of things. So. at least what we see for people coming to us there, it would be nicer apartments. It would be, you know, with young professionals and probably just the right type of people to traverse Norwalk central and walk around. They like that type of new living environment where they don't want to take care of yards and have a bigger house to take care of. So that the scenery is shifting a little bit on that, which is helpful because all of our businesses in that area have been telling us that they would love to see more of that type of mixture out there. So.

Any more deliberations?

Okay.

I'll entertain a motion. Sager motion. Motion to approve. Pearson to approve. Motion to approve. Pearson second. Pearson second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, I make a call for a roll call vote.

Sager?

Aye.

Thompson? Aye. Eaton?

Aye.

Samuelson? Aye. Forrest? Aye. Garrison? Aye.

Hi, we're on to number 8 request from signature development of Iowa for approval of the site plan amendments within shadow Creek accountants. Or. You hope you rested your voice today. Talk a lot.

I like talking so. One time for you guys. This one's pretty easy. Shadow Creek Estates, townhomes off of Beardsley. They're onto their last kind of stretch of units there on the south side of it. And they just got a product change that they'd like to do. Our zoning... townhomes are the first thing that we do site plan approval at council and that includes approving elevations. So even a minor change in an elevation needs to come back through a site plan amendment. That's what this is. You can see the renderings there. Still fully compliant with our architectural standards. Yeah. Answer any questions.

Where are these at on that site?

They are, let me go to Beacon. These will be this last stretch of them on the south side of that crater place.

Beyond that is Seagull Family. Correct.

Just move the back patio to the other side.

I don't recall the what the previous one looked like to be honest with you other other than this one is compliant just moved to the east side as opposed to the west you know there might be some other minor facade changes i don't know if they changed how the roof line works or something

Any more questions for poop? You're 10 emotion on this one.

Thompson motion to approve.

So you're forced to second. Thompson staggered motion second. Any discussion? Hearing no discussion, call for a roll call vote.

Stagger Thompson. Hi, Eden. Samuelson?

Aye.

Forrest?

Aye.

Garrison? Aye. Henderson? Aye.

Almost there. Councilperson Borgen, what do you got for us? No update, sir. No update. Holly, anything from you?

I'll give his updates for him. Yeah, I just want to thank you guys and Luke Paris for, you know, trying to be creative and providing a little bit of flex to the businesses and developers in our community. We're having to really take a hard look at how to be more competitive across the metro, especially with this new legislation that's kind of hindering our ability to be competitive and grow in the way that we want to as a community. So, We're all kind of having to take a new look at what's that mean for economic development and our priorities for types of businesses we want. What do we need to do to make that a little less restrictive or expensive or time consuming for some of these people that want to open a business here? So I appreciate everything you guys are doing with that. A couple of updates. So Maple Heights mixed use development, which you all know is up there kind of northwest of North Shore. So 120 acres. finally kind of up and running again, moving forward. They had a little bit of a delay, but we've all been able to renegotiate their development agreements for public infrastructure pieces of that project. That'll help their construction commence this spring, hopefully, if all goes well. So those development agreement drafts will go in front of council in September. But this project's really important to the area because it just opens up that entire area between Highway 28 and 50th Avenue. So everything north of Beardsley basically now will have connectivity, and access to infrastructure. So it's really a game changer for us on that side of town. The Southwest Development Corridor is also progressing really well. The Project West track development out there, everything's moving forward with the infrastructure plans in conjunction with the city's projects. Everything's on schedule right now. Snyder Engineering is submitting a RISE grant application to the DOT in September on behalf of the city. If we're awarded that, it'll pay, it could pay up to half of the entire cost for the Delaware Street Extension project, which is pretty expensive. And then the developer would pay the other half of that. So fingers crossed that we get awarded that. And then over the last month, the True by Hilton Hotel held their official grand opening. They've been open for a few months, but they wanted to kind of get through that first six months and just successfully hit that mark. So it was a nice opening. And then DMOS Orthopedic Center just held their grand opening, which is very nice. I feel like we're really blessed to have that type of a business medical center in Norwalk. So new businesses, Crave Gym, they'll be opening in the retail center where Cooper's is located in Norwalk Central. hoping for a late fall, early winter, pending city approvals and all of that. D1 Training also opening in the Sportsplex Norwalk building, and then CrossFit is partnering with them for some expanded services. That's pretty cool. We have all of these recreation, sports, fitness types of amenities in Norwalk, in addition to lots of restaurants. So we just kind of balance that out. B-Real Archery Pro Shop just opened in the Dunn Industrial Area, south of Windsor and Michael Foods. Sunset Commercial Development, north of Greg Young, that 14 acres that they've got all the infrastructure in now on the streets. They have lots available for sale or build to suit. So if you guys have any questions about that project, just let me know. The Des Moines Home Show Expo is coming up soon in Saddle Ridge. So I think this is our third or fourth time we've had a home show. So it's a pretty big deal for Norwalk to get that that many times. We have great neighborhoods. So thousands of people will be coming to the community the last three weekends in September. So it's good for our businesses. Just keep that in mind. And then in addition to the recruitment efforts that we're always after, which is the shipping store, sporting goods, supply store, Texas Roadhouse, those things, we're also working with some prospects for a potential distillery in a tap room, a bookstore, and a wine bar. I'm kind of excited about that one. And then early stages with Councilman Bourgeon, his idea of an indoor year-round market, which is pretty cool. And then I put our last monthly report at your places there that those just go to council for all the departments each month. So if you're bored, take a look at that later. Let us know if you have any questions. There is a really cool page at the very end. That's kind of a map and a guide to Norwalk's. We have so many great ones now. So that's a great way to kind of know what you have, get to the menus easily. And other than that, just as usual,