Remarks by Jonathan Mitchell
189 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 5 of 8
- Play at 25:08
“Do you see the people thing? Yeah, I do now. Yeah, yeah.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 27:48
“OK, Chief or Jason, feel free to respond to that now. We could also save it up, but why don't you respond now? If you'd like.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 31:16
“Yeah, put out a request for bids. Okay, gotcha. OK, I'm going to put out on up on the screen this matrix and let's just take through it. You see it now.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 31:37
“OK. Number one land use efficiency, so it's 50 to 105 units in that range on. I think the footprint of the multifamily is less than two acres. Just eyeballing it. That's not counting the fire station or the stormwater control measure. So that's at least 25 units an acre, which is fairly high. That's like around oral level, actually. I think it's like a five story building we're talking about, so it could be, you know, pretty dense. Does that make sense just factually? So I didn't think we would have any sort of recommendations here unless we do. Any comments on this from the commissioners?…”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 33:15
“Catherine can clarify for us. Yeah. Does the 25% at 60, is that overridden essentially by the 100% at 80%?”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 34:28
“Well, let's go to Maggie and then we can clarify from there. We'll go to Jeff after. Maggie, please go ahead.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 36:25
“Yeah, because those are generally 60 or below. Jeff? You're muted, Jeff.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 39:12
“If I just added that to recommendations, maybe make sense. OK, so let's go to the next. Row not see any hands with walkability, bike ability to daily needs such as housing, jobs, schools, recreation. I mean, Yes, yes, is my answer here. Close to two major strip malls. You got Timberline and Chapel North just up the street. BRT is going to bring a multi-use path on the east side of MLK up and down this corridor. Continuous sidewalk on the west side of MLK corridor. Homestead Park is not far away. So folks will be able to take the Greenway or also I think there's a planned route or existing…”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 41:10
“The timing is... SAF is hoping to get $190 million at the end of the month is the answer. We'll see whether it happens.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 41:26
“Good luck with that. Good luck with that. That's been negotiated for 10 years.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 41:36
“So for parking, oftentimes we'll ask, so as I understand it, The town and actually the entire state of North Carolina does not have parking minimus anymore, which is great. The town does have parking maximums. They're not very restrictive. When we brought this up a couple years ago with respect to J Street affordable housing, I recall the response we got was, look, this is a LIHTC project. In order to get the funding, the tax credits, we're going to have to satisfy North Carolina Housing Agency and are there program requirements regarding parking? So it's not like the developer has free reign…”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 43:18
“Right, of course. But the exact amount is probably TBD at this point. I don't, because the site plan isn't fully evolved yet, right? It's a little premature for that.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 43:40
“I see. We don't even have the final unit count yet. So question to the Planning Commission, what if we just put a recommendation that the eventual parking ratio consider the transit-oriented sort of location of it and just sort of leave it at that?”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 44:29
“Something like that. Okay, so let's go on to row six, quality design, placemaking, prioritization of the pedestrian realm. So we heard that the parking is going to be behind the multifamily building and not right on the road, which is good for the pedestrian realm. I also saw in the materials that there will be street trees Seems relevant here, but I don't think there's a requirement to have a detailed site plan. We don't even know whether it's 55 or 105 units at this point, so I think we're not really in a position to evaluate the quality of the design. I also know that the town's urban…”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 46:43
“Well, I think the trees tend to be like standardized distances from each other.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 46:49
“It's been my observation. Okay, other comments on number six? All right, let's go to seven. Respect for surrounding neighborhoods. So this is something that comes up when a big building is proposed to go next to existing single family neighborhood and their issues are on transitions. I didn't notice any issues of that sort here, just looking at what's around it. It's well insulated from existing There's an existing single family neighborhood to the south, sort of below where the fire station, proposed fire station will be, but it's not close. I mean, there's a lot of woods between the two…”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 48:36
“I didn't see the access. Should I describe it here? You mean like a walking, like a pedestrian?”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 48:50
“Vehicular access? That's access point number three on the plan. Oh, okay. I didn't see that.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 49:09
“Well, it helps them too if they want to go south on Weaver Extension or if they have a fire.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 49:38
“OKAY. SOUNDS LIKE NO. JUST TWO LEFT HERE. NUMBER EIGHT IS MAINTAIN NATURAL LANDSCAPES, TREE CANOPY, GREEN SPACE, including protected natural areas. I saw in the materials that there's a request for a variance here, reduction of required tree canopy to 6%. I don't know what the starting requirement is. Is it 20%?”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 50:19
“Catherine, what are we getting this right? There is a variance related to tree canopy.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 51:01
“So I'm, oh Libby, you're on mute. Go ahead. You're still on mute, Libby.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 51:41
“Let's see how it's disingenuous. It's all part of the same plot. They're keeping the trees over there.”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 52:46
“yeah i think it's just confusing and so um catherine i'm wondering if you could um help us understand and maybe i'm not asking the right party maybe i should ask the developer help us understand the rationale for this variance i mean i can use common sense here that uh the trees don't fit if you're going to do this scale of affordable housing next to a fire station which inherently involves a lot of impervious you have to literally turn around fire trucks all day long it just doesn't and then there's the storm water you can't leave mature trees above a storm water facility of any sort um”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026
- Play at 58:22
“desired uses for the site. Right. And this sort of leads us into number nine, the last row. As I understand it, the project is required to comply and is complying with the 100-year storm standard. Is that about the level of that detention-retention facility, or are you suggesting you're going sort of beyond that?”
Planning Commission · Sep 15, 2026