Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, folks. My name is Eric Gatton. You can tell me who I am.

I am the land use coordinator here in town, which takes a lot of roles in this particular case on the zoning officer for tonight. This is the third community workshop on the zoning rewrite. We are still in the data gathering phase of the rewrite, and no proposed zoning changes have been developed yet. Tonight's focus is is on commercial, industrial, and waterfront zones, and we are looking to get your thoughts on what these should look like in Old Lark. It is certainly my understanding that many of you come here specifically to discuss Halls Road, and that's fine, but it is within the context of the larger workshop here. Again, I want to stress there's no proposal for all of the tables in that room, and we only discuss one area, that's all we get, talk about, then you'll miss an opportunity. So a lot of you are here, and we would love to hear what you have to say about all of our commercial and industrial zone. It's important to discuss what you want, not just what you don't want. We can thrice down ideas for better commercial, industrial, and waterfront districts that I will consider the evening a success. Thank you for coming. We appreciate your time. I would like to say a lot of people have worked really, really hard to make tonight happen. I would like to specifically call out Eric Olson, who is our sort of building manager, Tom Meyer, our IT guy, Craig Bonanni, who is the man who's worked for Zony. They have put in many, many hours to make this possible, and I am truly appreciative of their efforts. The last thing I need to say is this. We have committed that we will close the gates out there at 9 o'clock. So once we finish here, which is supposed to end at 8.30, I would encourage you, please don't just mill around here and talk to each other. I know that there's great temptation to do that. But I've got to clear everybody out of here so I can lock the gates at 9 o'clock. And then we have to come in here early tomorrow and get the place ready for the senior center to be open for all the activities that start at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning. So again, folks. I appreciate your efforts. I am thrilled that you're all here tonight, and we're hopefully going to get a lot of good work done. I'm going to turn the presentation over now to our planning consultant, Francisco Gomes, who's going to take it up from here.

Thank you. Thank you, Eric. This is a tremendous turnout, so thank you to everyone for coming out on a beautiful September evening. in town not here tonight? Do you want to give that person a ring, see if they can make it out? It is a fantastic turnout. I've been doing this for a while. This is probably the biggest single group I've been in front of for a single workshop. I hope we can make it very productive for you. As Eric has noted, our challenges this evening will be, because of our numbers, will be to make sure that we can all hear each other and make this productive for you. But I trust that we can do that. So very quickly, I'd like to introduce myself and my team. I have a very brief presentation for you to just tell you a little bit more about this project that Eric just described. So I'm, again, Francisco Gomes with IMEG. IMEG's a planning firm. Our office is in Hartford. We've been doing planning work in Connecticut for about 40 years. I've been doing planning work in Connecticut for about 25 of those years. And we've worked in a number of communities across Connecticut. Similar to Old Lyme, town's bigger than Old Lyme, town's smaller than Old Lyme. And with respect to zoning work, we're working with several communities at the moment. Old Lyme's one of those. We're also starting work with the town of Wilton. the town of Manchester, the town of Glastonbury. We just finished work for the city of Bristol, the town of Stonington. All very similar to the scope of work that we're doing right now for Old Line. And I'll walk you through what that is a little bit more. First, let me let you know I have a team of people here this evening to help facilitate things. Raul Irizarry is at the front of the room, Rory Jacobson. And Tony Pignatelli is circling the room somewhere. She's been helping you folks sign in. So they're going to help facilitate this evening's workshop. We are starting just a few minutes late, but we're going to try to land this thing by about 8.30 so that we can close things up, as Eric just mentioned. So to help you understand the scope of this project, I do have a very brief presentation. But most of our time this evening, we want to spend it listening to you in a conversation with you. So I'm going to try to get through this quickly, and then once I get through the presentation, I'll give you some direction as to the logistics of this and how we're going to organize this. So first, as I mentioned, we'll spend about 20 minutes or so on this presentation, and then we'll move to a series of breakout sessions, and I'll describe those in a little more detail in a moment. But we're going to have four stations, and we're going to conduct four different sessions, which will give you all an opportunity to move from one station to another. Each of the stations is organized by zone and geographic area. So if you are here, your primary interest is to talk about the C30S, what you might know as the Halls Road Zone. I will be leading that discussion in this part of the room. And once I'm finished with the presentation, we're going to bring some of these partitions down to help control the noise. We're going to run four sessions, which means I'm going to have the same conversation over here regarding Hall's Road four times, back to back to back. That way, we've got a small enough group that we can have one conversation. We can all fit in there. And if you don't have a chance to fit in there on the first time, you can come back for the second, third, or fourth session In this part of the room, we're going to talk about the C10 and C30 zones, right here in this front part of the room. In the back part of the room, we're going to talk about the waterfront zones and the Soundview Village District. And then there's a smaller meeting room off the hallway in the back corner, and we're going to talk about the industrial zone. Rahul will be leading that discussion. I'm going to ask everyone just to do their best when we go to the breakout sessions to organize yourselves into about the right number of people to fit each room. And by example, if everyone here is here mainly to talk about Halls Road, then stay right there. You'll be the first session. But if you're over here and you want to talk about Halls Road, just wait for the second, third, or fourth session until there's room, and then come over here. So because we have four stations and four sessions, you'll have an opportunity to participate in discussions about all of your commercial waterfront mixed use and industrial zoning districts, okay? And we're gonna try to do all that within two hours time. So I introduced our team already. I think the most important part of that introduction is that we've been working here in the town now for about a year and a half. Our zoning work started a year and a half ago working with the zoning commission and with Eric and Paul, your zoning commission chair. And we have, to date, have successfully gone through phase one of the work, which has involved cleaning up the zoning regulations and just making them more modern and functional and compliant with statute. So the purpose of the zoning update, it really is centered around the fact that zoning regulations were originally drafted in 1941, and Over the course of the very close to 80 or so years, more than 80 or so years that have followed that, they've been piecemeal, rewritten, updated, amended, changed, modified by different authors, by staff, by attorneys submitting recommended language by bodies and commissioners and committees. And because of that, they become... We've got some feedback over there. Okay. Because of that, they've become really quite unwieldy and full of issues, redundancies, errors, omissions. Additionally, statute has been moving very quick and faster than the zoning regulations have been able to keep up with. So we now have a set of zoning regulations that are compliant with the many statutory changes over the past several years, and they're far more user-friendly which means they're more effective to administer. They'll do a better job of regulating land use and of supporting the type of development that hopefully is what you want to see because they're your current zoning regulations. So that was our phase one work, and that phase one work was successfully adopted in April this past year. So you've been living with a new set of zoning regulations for a few months, and you probably haven't noticed that Because in our phase one work, we were very intentional not to make changes that we didn't have to make. We, for the most part, kept things the same. The document is very different. It's organized differently. We had to make changes to comply with statute and other requirements that have changed. But for the most part, we're allowing the same things that your previous set of zoning regulations allowed. But now we're in the phase two process where we are very intentionally having discussions about how the zoning regulations could or should change. No changes have been proposed yet because we want to engage with you first. So this is the third workshop to which we've had discussions about what should stay the same, what should change, what could change, how things could be. And that started with a discussion surrounding environmental and sustainability and resilience issues. Our last workshop for which we had, I thought at the time we had great attendance. We had about 80 people and it turns out it was about a third of what we have this evening. But our last workshop we talked about residential zones and housing. And of course here we are now to talk about commercial zones. This is the final workshop my team will be leading. But as Eric noted, the town, the zoning commission, And the committee that's helping steer this process is considering doing some other engagement activities because of the interest this has generated. So we're in the middle of this process with respect to outreach and listening. We do have an online survey. And when I get to the end of the presentation, we've got a QR code for that. And if you have not yet taken the survey, please go to the town's website. There's a link to it on there. We've had over 800 people participate. It would be great to get to 1,000. The survey is asking a lot of questions that are directly relevant to zoning, issues of housing, commercial development, and a lot of the topics that we'll talk about this evening. So where we are in this process, we're roughly halfway through. As I mentioned, phase one, we updated the regulations and the documents. And now we're in the beginning of phase two. And this process is anticipated to last another year, year and a half. We're hoping to wind it down by the end of 2027. So we have a long way to go. And we still haven't drafted any changes other than some basic changes we made, as I described in phase one, and more recently some changes to comply with Public Act 25.1 that I'll briefly talk about in a moment. So your zoning, just a very quick overview on your zoning. Your zoning is a set of standards that regulates development and all types of development. Building code is a little different from zoning. Building code regulates how things are constructed. But zoning is really about how land is used, what can be built, how big it can be, how intense it can be, how much land needs to be preserved or kept as open space. Zoning does all of that. And that set of standards is conveyed through your regulations, which is a document. And in phase one, we updated that document. Now standards, zoning regulations are enforced differently depending where you are in the town and what zone you're in. So your residential zones, the regulations look very different from your commercial zones. And even when we compare your commercial zones, they each are a little bit different from one another. So depending where you are in town, there's a very different set of regulations that could apply. The town zoning authority is granted to it by the state of Connecticut. The state of Connecticut defines and limits that authority. And really, it gives towns the authority to regulate land use. And the ultimate purpose of that is grounded in the protection of public health, safety, and welfare. That's the purpose of zoning regulations. That's their origin. And fundamentally, we have to ask ourselves when we're amending or adopting zoning regulations, is this for the benefit of the public? Is this really in protection of public health, safety, and welfare? So that's always a very important consideration. So let's talk about your commercial industrial zoning districts. You have a handful of them. And geographically, they're relatively small. you are mostly a residential community. So your zoning regulations include your commercial zones, the C10, the C30, and the C30F. So the C part stands for commercial. 10 stands for 10,000, which is the minimum lot size is 10,000 square feet. So that's the C10. The C30 is a 30,000 square foot minimum lot size zone, which is less than an acre. And then the C30S, which is a variant of the C30, and that's your Halls Road zone, is the C30S. So when we refer to it, it's the technical term, but we're talking about Halls Road. You have a one light industrial district, and that's out in the eastern part of town off of 95. You have a waterfront district that allows mostly for marinas and other waterfront uses, and those are very small. And there are about four or five of them scattered along both the Connecticut Riverfront and the Long Island Sound. And then you have the Soundview Village District, which is really a hybrid, so residential slash commercial district. So we call that a mixed-use district. And it is a tiny little district on Hartford Avenue approaching the shore in the Soundview area. So each of our sessions is intended to have discussions about these various districts. So I'm very quickly gonna go through these districts. There's a lot of text on these slides. I'm not gonna read it all. We are making this presentation available. We will make it available online. So if you wanna get into these specifics, check back on the town's website tomorrow or the day after, and you'll be able to download it. But your C-10 district is a very permissive commercial district, and when I say that, It allows for a lot of different types of commercial uses. And it's actually very similar to your other commercial districts, C30 and C30S. They both allow for a very wide range of commercial uses, like retail, service, office, and if I go down the list here, government service, financial institutions, clubs, cemeteries, theaters, veterinary clinics, package stores, motor vehicle service. So they're typically what you associate with the commercial districts. And the C-10 is really very similar to C-30 in terms of the uses it allows. The C-10 just happens to be a very tiny district. There's one place in town, it's out just north of Soundview area, and it's a very small area, so it differs from the C-30 in that way, and there's a view of the district right there. Your C-30 zone allows for a few uses that the C-10 district doesn't allow. an autism specialty outpatient clinic that was recently added to the regulations, a stable and riding academy, and a dog training facility. So those aren't allowed in the C-10, but they are allowed in the C-30. The C-30S, Halls Road, allows exactly the same uses as the C-30, so they're almost indistinguishable with respect to the types of uses they allow. It's really just a different part of town, and the C-30S, the Halls Road area, was carved away from the C30 to enable regulations that are specific to that area. But there are actually very few in the zoning regulations, so it really doesn't differ much from the other C30 districts. And that little red dot on the map, that's it. It's just the Halls Road area, and that's the only C30S geographically in town. You have one light industry district, and it's only in one geographic area at the eastern end of town. And that allows for professional office, manufacturing, warehousing, and other things you might associate with industrial development. And then the Waterfront Village District, as I mentioned, it allows for marinas, it does allow for office, some retail, restaurants, but it's really intended primarily for waterfront uses and waterfront supportive uses. And the Soundview Village District, it allows for small shops, restaurants, mixed-use development. It's somewhat residential in nature. It's very small scale as well. So as I mentioned, we have an active online survey. It's had over 800 participants, and we're still getting feedback. So we'll have a full survey report available online very soon. It's going to be open until the end of September. We're closing it after September 30th, and then we'll make all of the results available. But just to give you a little sense as to the feedback that we're receiving, the town's management and regulation of growth was rated at a 2.67 out of five. So clearly people think there's some improvement that is necessary or possible in terms of regulating land use development and growth. 22% of participants think that the town's commercial waterfront and light industrial zones should be bigger and cover more area. However, 9% think the opposite, think those zones should not cover as much land. 36% identify the commercial industrial zones, identified uses they think should be prohibited that are currently allowed. So one third of the town thinks you're allowing uses in the commercial industrial zones that should not be allowed. All right, so that suggests that we need to not allow things. And then there are also concerns that data centers would be allowed. So data centers, warehousing, and gravel pits were most commonly referenced as things that people don't want to see in town or don't want to see more of in town. 55% thinks that the town needs more food service establishments. 42% thinks it needs more retail. 35% thinks it needs more mixed-use development, which is commercial and residential together. 60% think that the commercial signage is okay, the regulations surrounding signage are okay. And 71% think that there's enough parking in commercial zones. So that's just to give you a sense as to the type of feedback that we're receiving from the survey. So that being said, we're now gonna go to the breakout sessions. So again, we're going to have a few minutes where we're going to break down the room, set things up, drop dividers. So it's going to be about five minutes before we get started. But then we're going to go for over an hour straight, back to back to back, an hour and 20 minutes or so. And at the end of the evening, each of the facilitators, myself and the rest of my team, are going to very briefly report back what we heard at our stations. So please do stick around for that. And I understand if you have some commitments or obligations or you need to get home, you only want to participate in one or two sessions, that's okay. But we are really encouraging everyone to stay for it all and attend all of the stations if you can. So we're going to break up now. Again, over here will be the Halls Road discussion. I will be leading that. Over here we will talk about the C-10 and C-30 zones. but not the C30S, which is Hall Road over there. At the back of the room, we will talk about the waterfront zones and the Soundview Village District. However, those are very different types of zones, and we want to have one conversation at a time. So the first two sessions at the back of the room, we will start talking about the waterfront zones. The last two sessions, we will focus on the Soundview Village District. So if you want to talk about the Soundview Village District, plan on hitting the back of the room for the third or fourth session. If you want to talk about the waterfront zones, go there now for the first or second session. And then again, out in the hallway, there's a smaller room, can fit about 20 people in the corner. We'll talk about the industrial zone in there. If you see that an area is bursting at the seams, just come back to the next session, all right? The ground rule here is that we're here to listen to you. We're not going to tell you how things should be, but in order for us to effectively listen to you, we just need one conversation at a time, so please don't have side conversations. We'll facilitate, we'll invite you to raise your hand to provide comment. The general format is we're going to start talking about the issues, your concerns and issues, right? What the needs are, what the problems are, what your concerns are. And that'll be the first 10 minutes or so. And then we'll try to flip it and talk about your ideas and the opportunities and what we need to do, how we need to respond to those concerns and those issues. So we'll start, we'll just put it all on the table and we'll try to end with a positive note, some positive direction from you. So that's your instruction. We'll now break things up, and give us about five minutes. If you want to take a break now, get some water, go to the restroom. It'll be about five minutes before we get going, but we're going to get started now, okay? Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. How are you guys? Yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Please do not pause while support is coming down. Oh, wait a minute. Hey, right over there. You've got to go around to the other wall.

Okay. Okay. All right, so we're going to talk about commercial zones over here. So if that's where you want to be, so if you want to talk about, you're in the right spot. I'm just going to shut that back area. All right. All right. All right.

Thank you. Thank you. I am All right. All right.

Welcome, everyone. I'm Toni Capicelli. I'm facilitating this group. We're going to be talking about the commercial districts in town. We have a map here that unfortunately we can't show on the screen because it's a much smaller group. But we appreciate you all coming out tonight. We like to talk zoning. We're glad you all are here to talk zoning. So Francisco gave me the rundown on the uses permitted in these two districts, their difference mentally in terms of the size. And what I wanted to hear first from this group, and I think the best way that we can go about that, I'm gonna try and call on people where I see hands and note if someone's talking for a long time and make a thank you and try and just maybe make sure that everyone has the opportunity to chime in. So again, welcome, happy you're here. We're gonna start the conversation with what you see as the issues in the C-10 and the C-30 commercial districts. Or maybe it might be, you know, services that aren't there. It could be some dimensional issues. I'm guessing you all are somewhat familiar with these districts. Are you here to talk about some of that? Yes. Absolutely, so the C-10 and C-30 are similar in their uses. The difference is C-10, which is sort of down here in the southern part of town.

Can you describe where that is?

Yes, so it's down here by sort of more of that like coastal industrial, or a coastal sort of recreational area. The C-10 district down here has some pizza services, some sort of limited services. that are limited commercial activities that sort of serve this district down here. C30, in the same area, has an antique store. Yes? How's that?

Is that better? Okay, good, good, good.

All right.

Thank you. So the waterfront zones are here.

They're very small. You have marinas.

So there's two here along the Connecticut River, and there's also the one... All right.

You all hear me? Okay. No, this is great.

Thank you.

That's Rory. She's not talking about commercial districts. Yes.

C-10 is Shore Road. Yes. The police station is pretty close to where Raynard and all of this.

C-10 is C-10.

Very small section. Across the street from where Hartford Avenue comes out. So, okay, you come out of Hartford Avenue and that area across the street there, that's the only C-10 zone we've got.

It's on the north side of Shore Road. South side of Shore Road is Hartford.

Yes, like that entire district is residential. So it's a small commercial district. Part of it is C-10. And C-10 differs from C-30, which is the only other commercial district zoning that you have in town. C-30 is larger, you can see them. Zoning districts allow for boarding stables.

They allow for dog training facilities.

This area down here, the C-10 area, really serves this R-10 area, the residential area that you just mentioned by the shore. And that area is just dense. It doesn't permit for those uses. So those are the major differences between the C-10 and the C-30.

Is Cherry Stones and the golf course in C-10 or C-30? I don't know the answer to C-10. So it's C-10. C-30. I would say it's C-30. OK.

Um, so up here, so we're sort of located in the northern part of the second town, the largest sort of C-30 district that you have in terms of land area is, um, well, maybe that's not the largest. Yeah, it is probably the largest. It's sort of over where, um, the coffee market is, so it's right down the street. Um, and then, let's see, we have another C-30 district that's over here at the south of the government. I don't know if this is helpful in terms of...

So the C-30 is the Laysville area? Yeah. Coffee? Yeah. Fresh store?

Yes. That's the one to the north. So I think for those maybe who aren't familiar with the different C-30 districts, I think just think about where you have commercial activities in town and what's working about some of those locations and what's not. Yes.

Yeah, regrettably, I do not. Would it be helpful if perhaps, there's a lot of people here, I was going to say that I could circulate this, if you could take a photograph of your phone, is that helpful?

You can pull the zoning map up on your phone if you go to the website. So first question for you. There's a very small limit of C10 that's very, almost, well,

villages yes would there be any possibilities of some people being reviewed with maybe that c10 and make it more viable. There's so many vacant lots and abandoned buildings in those areas. Having an open area like that, we could have some senior housing in there.

We could have a lot of different things that can happen.

So are you suggesting merging the C-30 in the C-10 or expanding the commercial district?

No, expanding the Soundview Village District into those areas. That's just the Because then you can get different uses. So the intent with that would be expanded uses.

Right, so basically what's happening is you're expanding your next use.

And now, are there buildings that are vacant? Yes, okay. So that's And vacant land.

Vacant land. Okay.

So both.

All right. Now, I'm here to capture this discussion, so if there's anyone else that wants to chime in based on that, I'm happy to capture that. Or if there's a new topic, I think I saw this hand, and I'll come over here.

No, just stand up.

The Assembly of the Village District has a pretty broad range of uses, a lot of mixed use types of areas. It also has some certain setback limitations and also some flexibility setbacks. It all has to do with what's appropriate for the area with approval. So by expanding the Assembly of the Village District and given us also some control over what can and can't go there. President of the C-10 has got a lot of uses that we might not want to see so close to the residential districts and so close to the waterfront, the area, the annotated area of his house. So I think it's a great idea, taking the C-10, making it a zombie village district, expanding SCBD into the C-10.

Thank you.

And just behind me, and then I'll jump to you.

Yeah, just a building on Dublin and Frankston.

Can you stand up, please, just for the benefit of the audience here?

The C-10 right now has a lot of uses that work, but aren't performing. It isn't just Duke's district, as it is. We have apartments upstairs from restaurants like Teddy's and Rudy's Package Store. the new pizza place that's coming in, they all have apartments upstairs, and that's been non-conforming. So it doesn't really make a lot of sense to make what's existing non-conforming. Expanding Soundview Village District up there would allow for mixed use. See, it would basically preserve what's there. And my personal opinion is we shouldn't have motor vehicle services. A couple things that didn't make sense, because it's essentially residential. It's primarily residential. But it does allow for mixed use. There's auto rental, marine facilities, I mean, those kinds of uses are more appropriate to a larger commercial area or to an industrial area than there are to a small neighborhood.

So is it fair to say that rather than expanding C2 with the defined set of uses here, that maybe it's re-devisioning what the uses should be permitted in that area?

It's really... part of the San Diego Village District, because San Diego Village District was seen then. And then, you know, you change the regulations then, it would be easier to develop, and that's worked. To a degree.

And that could convince the same sort of area on the north side.

For... areas, okay.

Yes?

It would be nice to see in the C10 and C30 district to have a mixed-use component to it so that you could allow more residences and more mixed-use commercial residential. So maybe there could be a way to develop, you know, those properties no more viable. I'm wondering if you also,

If so, do we not have enough? Do we need to build our commercial tax base? What's the total point?

And are there going to be restrictions, as Dylan here said, on the types of buildings that we want to see and don't want to see?

Well, that was the whole objective, Marcy. That was the whole objective of the Soundview Village District in that it was really specified for an excuse so you could put a small commercial and some residences in the area if you need to.

It seems to go beyond that. I'm not sure. I'll wait until we get all the details. We'll see what shakes out of this.

Yes. Could we please have a little big enough ball for us to fit in with cherry stones? I think we kind of could call it, and it would be a super place to just rock down, pull in, and have everybody come in, maybe twice as big. All right. No doubt.

Thank you. Well, this is a beautiful building. And don't give it up for anything else.

Hang on to that.

I want to have a big building that we can all meet in, that's at Cherry Stores, and takes up a big space, and it's easy to pull up and go to, and it would just be for meetings, and all by the time, you know, and it would be pretty.

I'm a business owner on Paul's Road and online. A couple of things that we are talking about, my husband and I, are things like traffic lights that could or may come up in the future if things change on Paul's Road. For example, people that cut across from Andy's Deli going straight across over to the post office. It's kind of dangerous there. And if you're getting more traffic, all of a sudden you put a traffic light there or there. Sometimes when there's back up to 95, right, we see traffic coming all the way from Coffees down to the O'Line Inn, making a right onto Halls Road. I think, you know, that's an issue potentially. The traffic in front of Coffees and Sepori, you know, large delivery trucks going in there. I almost ran into somebody because they decided the last second to pull into Halls Road and I almost rear-ended them. And they didn't even go to Halls Road, they were just making a U-turn. Things like that, and then also in terms of signage, there was some metric about how people are okay with signage as it is right now. I noticed there's a new gas illuminated sign at Blaisdell. Where is that in terms of the spectrum of allowed signage? Is it maxing out, or is it somewhere in the middle? I'd like to see examples of maybe we're okay with it right now, but that's only using two-thirds of the maximum allowable signage currently allowed. Does that make sense? Right?

If you were okay, but maybe somebody could come along and do an even bigger sign that's even brighter, you know?

A huge light that's outside of Sephora. The people that live across the street from them, it's like, you know, bright in and out of anywhere. They can't do anything about it. They live there, you know? There's a lot of people buying a flipping house on 1 June.

Regulations don't actually allow for internally lit signs, but there have been some mistakes in permits getting issued for them. So the regulations say no to that, but they're still out.

And as far as, you know, the traffic circulation, safety, all that needs to be taken into account if there are changes made to zoning.

Well, the kids coming across it are kind of growing, you know, like an old saying, they just put in the flashing lights for people to cross it, pedestrian cross it. I think that's great, you know, because those kids crossing and People should stop, and maybe they always stop, and maybe they sometimes stop. But to protect our kids, you know, and with those detours that happen when 95 is shut down, it could be really dangerous. These kids are on bicycles, riding, you know, that rock out probably as you come into town. You know, that it's very, it's dangerous. Maybe a little kid is on their bicycle. You know, I just think that, you know, when you think about pulling the work, traffic into town, that things like that are my concern.

Thank you. In the C-10, I think it's really important to keep in mind that we're only talking about the north side of the road, and on the south side, throughout the C-10, is residential. It's the R10 neighborhood, so what you have is people who have houses, and then they're faced with, I mean, right now the sewer project is there, so there's a huge lot that's going to eventually be storage units, and right now it's a major construction site, and these trucks are going up and down in the residential neighborhood. So I think it's really important to think about what we really want there, because it is a mixed-use neighborhood, and you don't want these heavier commercial uses, like gas stations, boat livery, things like that that are currently permitted in the regulations. I think it's important to regulate those and be sensitive to the fact that you have an entire neighborhood of homes that's directly across the street. And the other thing I just want to mention is it's great to have regulations, but we really need to emphasize enforcement. That, you know, we talked about the signs, I mean, the gas station. at Soundview, that sign was not what was approved on their site plan, and the day it went in, the Soundview Commission made a complaint about it, and we were told that there's nothing that could be done because it's on the state road, et cetera, et cetera. And that is not what was approved, and it's an illuminated internal sign, and it's gigantic, but we can't do anything about it, so. I think enforcement is really important. If you see something like that, it should be able to be curtailed according to regulations. Thank you.

Yes. And I came here early this evening to quote somebody from 1967, and the only regulations that are in effect in this town are the old ones. I know they said that they updated things and everything, but I don't know if that's all that evolved and changed. But basically what I wanted to say is the nice thing is that years ago, the only reason for zoning in the town of Omaha, Nevada, was to preserve the charm of our community. And that's important because tourism is our major industry.

Okay, okay. We're going to be mixing it up soon. I am wanting to hear two comments over here.

So there's a comment about, it seems like it's interesting to explore and consider, and to be evaluated sometimes, which relates to bias and authority, so like, use it to use it.

I'll catch that. We're both just saying yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing here. Businesses. Consider. Hey! You know, like, how do you, like, bring it back to life? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, she's up there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Thank you. There was some discussion about it in the context of talking about it. There it goes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry.

Alright, you ready to go? We're going to talk about commercial districts. We're talking about the C-10 and C-30. Francisco introduced you to these two districts. They are different in terms of their dimension and their size. So C-10 is down here by Shore Road and it's the only C-10 district you have in town. In terms of the uses, that are permitted, they are the same as the other commercial districts, the C30 districts that you have throughout the community. With the exception of the larger C30 districts, not C10, permit commercial livery, boarding stables, and riding academies and dog training. So that is the difference between those two districts. Again, we only have one C10 district, it's down here by Shore Road. The other commercial districts within the town are C30 districts, they're spread throughout. We're not talking about C30S, which is Halls Road, which is being discussed over there. So I'm going to thank you all for coming out tonight. I wanted to kick it off, I'm sure there's a lot who have to stay. We wanted to talk about what's working and what's not working about these districts. And also, you know, if you have a vision for how they could be different or what you like about them that you want to preserve. Is there anyone who wants to kick us off?

Specify again what the area is.

So I'm going to show you this map. You can also pull up the zoning map on your phone through this kind of website if that's not helpful to any of these discussions that we're going to present. Yeah, I'll walk it around here. So this is, we're sort of located up here. So this is where Coffees is. Down here, there's been a lot of talk down here about the C-10 district, the C-30 district, the C-10 district. Down by Short Road, there's a pizza shop. Next door to the C-30, there's another pizza shop, which is sort of this area. I'm trying to think. Where else? Yeah. Maybe I should be. Yeah.

Can you hear me? I thought I was loud.

at the top of Parker Avenue in Soundview. It's the only place where we have it. In the other places, you see little stores in town. Those are probably C-30 zones. So at Point of Woods, there's a few little stores there. There are some other things like Cherry Stone and that area along there. And where the lay down area is for the sewer project at C-30. You also have another one where Hesselins used to be, which is now the only thing left is Hallmark. That's another little C30 zone. And you have one up in Layville where coffees and all of those things are. That's down here. So those are your C30 zones. C10 is something that you can do with 10,000 square feet. C30 is something you can do with 30,000 square feet. So the uses are rather similar. There are a few that are not allowed in the C-10, but it's a tiny little zone. There was a suggestion in an earlier session that C-10 be merged with the sounding village district and make it all just one, because they are so similar. So we're interested to hear whether you're happy or sad or have any suggestions about these sort of spot C-30 commercial zones that we haven't had other than House Road. So, go for it. Much appreciated.

So, C10 is per business 10,000 feet? Yeah, it's the only one.

Right at the top of Parkland Avenue. Yeah.

C30 is 30,000 feet? Yeah, 30,000 feet. For individuals. Yeah.

Well, so, well, you know, we lost two business sites by homeless.

Which is probably, it's nice that he likes it.

It's beautiful. But we lost two. hospital, business sites. There's none of the business in all of them. I think that C30 or C10 should be expanded.

In different areas.

So any sense of that expansion is to support more businesses? Is there an end? I'm just trying to understand the vision.

Well, growing up in Illinois, which I did, There's more businesses around than there are now.

Many more.

The whole area down by Well Suite, remember that? And the Georgia State House used to be, that's residential, so we lost that. And you know, the town kind of needs that. You can't just have bedrooms. Like Brown's Lane, the whole area is residential. People go this way and that way, and leave back roads, having a sidewalk if they need them, but the sidewalk's a sidewalk. There's no real sense of community, because there's no place to park at all. You just want to go out and have a mom-and-pop grocery store. It's a small thing where you don't have to go four miles. I understand in Maine, allow people to have like a coffee shop in your house. Which can be popular in the immediate future. You know, around us, I think.

So expansion of commercial metrics.

More characters, so instead of just being a bedroom community. More characters.

We need a grocery store in that part. That'd be great.

Can you tell me specifically the part of town that you're referring to? Someone shouted that out.

Yeah, okay. Yes, we do. Okay.

and talk about businesses.

There's some down by where Tom Hall is in the library.

What district is that? Here. Is that C-10?

Because there is some businesses there at that part of C-10. You're asking about Lined Tree?

Lined Tree is not a residential district. It's not a business district.

It's not a business district.

Lime Street is completely residential.

All the businesses on Lime Street are non-conforming. Okay, so they're non-conforming. Right now, yeah.

If you're saying that you want to add more commercial on Lime Street,

Lime Street did originally, was commercial. And in 1960, when they relocated the commercial area out to Halls Road, they rezoned everything on Lime Street as residential. So the businesses that remain are now pre-existing, non-conforming, and they've been fallen by the wayside one by one. So Angie's right that there were a lot less commercial activity in town. But if you want new activity, she's wanting to know, where do you want it?

Yeah, so that could be realized, but you need to revisit that residential zone and establish the commercial defined uses there that would be permitted. And they could be similar or different than the commercial uses that are permitted in C-10

I disagree that grocery stores need to be down there off of Shaw Road, but I do think we're missing an ample opportunity given the summer traffic and the summer residency we have in that area. There is a lack of food service establishments along that corridor, C10 and C30, that needs to be prioritized for the community to take advantage of that traffic that goes along that road all the time.

And I'm just going to ask people if they could just, you know, show of hands if you want to speak, and I'm going to try and move around the room.

Yes? We can take Paul's room and put that aside. For all these other ones, I think that mixed use is great. We've read the apartments on top. We've read the library on top. where the lease values are down for commercial on the lower, not raising as much, and will give the business a year-round revenue. Seasonal revenue, remember, works. If you look at the program at Cape Cod, Cape Cod looks fairly drab, especially during winter, because it doesn't have a year-round track. Like the Caribbean, it's the same thing. businesses to operate around four and a half years of the region. Also, I think in prior discussions, folks have talked about requiring low market rents for a big piece of the apartment units if they ever do get built. I read a whole bunch of newspapers in Boston that increase their quote at 20% lower market rents. I'm going to go here and then to the end and then to you.

Mine is just kind of a comment. Cherry Stone has been empty for 20 years, and now we have a black hole in Rio, and it's empty for about two years.

No one wants to put in a business there. I don't know why I'm not a business person.

I mean, there are opportunities. I think what this gentleman said, part of it is, you're not a... Thank you. And that came up in another group. So we've worked on I'm just thinking that right now you can build in that area, and you're not necessarily unavailable.

You could build retail there, right? Well, yeah.

So, you know, people aren't, I mean, retail's pretty much dead right now, so I think it's kind of difficult to say, well, okay, we have this vacant space, we're building this thing. Right now, what I'm seeing everywhere is all along you're getting all of those lawyer's offices, they're being filled up with those kind of services. So just because you have a big role doesn't mean it's going to attract what you desire.

So consideration of how to diversify commercial activity within the community, but it sounds like there's a desire for food establishments. I think I have that. Yes. All right.

Thank you. Yes. So, as a character change, cherry stomachs, double cherry stomachs, is a deceit-carrying condition. So, I'm thinking that there was consideration for mixed use. mixed-use requires retail as defined in preventive. It requires retail on the first floor. So the first floor has to be retailed. And then you can put residential above the first floor, the second, and up to the third floor. Unfortunately, it would be probably very difficult, I think, for a developer to consider that zone for that type of use, because it would require them to put a commercial application on the first floor. So if we're trying to increase housing because it's not an efficient scheme, was the consideration for voting

So just recently the state changed our requirements for housing. The town has revisited their housing, has decided that there's an option for multi-family housing.

I think so. by providing for mixed use in some areas of the town as opposed to multi-family.

You need us to help make sure people leave the way when you drop them.

Multi-family? Okay. Right, right.

Yes, and so, but your son did not say more.

They said only mixed use. That's what, mixed use is what we approved.

We said only boxcures. Yes, but you could. You know what I'm saying? It was suggested by the state to be mixed cubes and open cans. So we... So you're saying, don't think about only the misused form, consider also

to generate development. We're going to send out notes summarizing everything, and we're also going to end this break-up session, and we're going to report back to the group. We're going to move around the room. If you want to get to me, I'm going to try and send out notes at the door. If you want to get out, at this point, we are rotating.

At this point, here's your name. Thank you. So in theory, even though the town says it could be .

I think I would just make a note of that, because I don't think anybody would realize that, that it does. So it could be apartments. It doesn't have to be multi-use. It could be all of us. Thank you. I came from Richfield, I came from everywhere. I'm from Fairfield County, but they're overriding all the money in Richfield that they put out.

Well, let me try to go through you.

Thank you so much.

There was an agency that was, I mean, you can report it with subjects.

Because it was, see what they put in the subject system. How do we, yeah, how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we,

Thank you.

I mean, now they have it.

I mean, that's...

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

How's life for you, Ashley? Pretty bad.

... ... ... ... ... Oh, okay.

Thank you. Welcome, everyone.

But we appreciate you all coming out tonight. We like to talk zoning. I'm glad you all are here to talk zoning. Francisco gave you the rundown on the uses permitted in these two districts. They're different nationally in terms of the size. And I guess what I wanted to hear first from this group, and I think the best way that you can go about that, I'm going to try and call on people where I see hands and know if someone's talking for a long time, I may say thank you and try and make sure that everyone has an opportunity to chime in. So again, welcome, happy you're here. We're going to start the conversation with what you see as the issues in the C-10 and the C-30 commercial districts.

Or maybe it might be, you know, services that aren't there.

It could be some dimensional issues. I'm guessing You all are somewhat familiar with these districts. Are you here to talk about something else? Yes, absolutely. So the C-10 and C-30 are similar in their uses. The difference is C-10, which is sort of down here in the southern part of town.

Can you describe where that is?

Yeah, so down here, if I heard more of that, like, coastal industrial or a coastal sort of recreational area, the C-10 district down here has some pizza services, some sort of limited services that are limited commercial activity for this district down here. C-30 in the same area has a, again, tea store. Yep. How's that?

Is that better? Okay, good, good, good. All right. Thank you. So the waterfront zones are here. They're very small. Young marinas. So there's two here along the Connecticut River and there's also the one. No, this is great.

Thank you.

That's Maureen.

She's not talking about commercial business. Yes.

Seat 10 is short road, right where the free station is, pretty close to where Randall Automotive is. So it's that new section.

Teddy's Pizza is in there. Very small section.

Across the street from where Hartford Avenue comes out. And that Hartford Avenue, that area across the street there, that's the only seat 10 zone we've got.

on the north side of shore road south side of shore road yeah like that entire district is art the small commercial strip part of it is c10 um and c10 differs from c30 which is the only other commercial district um zoning that you have in the in the in town um c30 these larger you can see them um zoning districts allow for boarding stables They allow for dog training facilities. This area down here, the C-10 area really serves this R-10 area, the residential area that you just mentioned by the shore. And that area is just dense. It doesn't permit for those uses. So that shows the major differences between the C-10 and the C-30.

Yeah. Is Cherry Stones and the golf course in C-10 or C-30? I don't know the answer. C-30. Thank you. C-30. C-30. I would think it's either.

OK. So up here, so we're sort of located in the northern part of town, the largest sort of C30 district that you have in terms of land area is up, well, maybe that's not the largest. Yeah, it is probably the largest. It's sort of over where the coffee market is, so that's right down the street. And then, let's see, we have another C30 district that's over here in the south industrial area.

I don't know if this is helpful in terms of. So the C-30 is the lights mill area? Yeah. Coffee. Yeah.

Yes.

That's the one to the north.

So I think for those maybe who aren't familiar with the different C-30 districts, I think just think about where you have commercial activity within town and sort of what's working about some of those locations and what's not.

Yes. Do you have an advantage that you can project on the map? Because I'm sure it's very hard for me to see what you're talking about here.

Yeah, regrettably, I do not. Would it be helpful if perhaps, there's a lot of people here. I was going to say that I could circulate this. And so you can take a photograph with your phone. Is that helpful?

You can pull the zoning map up on your phone if you go to the website.

So it'll show where.

R times 3 times C 30 is and you can just put it into Google and it should be the top thing in the app. And if that can keep, if the app's brain goes to the internet, you can probably do the same thing.

Walk around and go to your computer.

Yeah. First question for you.

Yeah.

There's a very small limited of C 10. Yep. That's very, almost directly next to the Soundview Village District. Would there be any possibilities of the Soundview Village that is being reviewed with maybe that C-10, seeing it's such a small area and it busts that, would they be able to merge those two together and make it more viable? Because there's so many vacant lots and abandoned buildings in those areas. Having a open area like that, have some senior housing in there, We could have a lot of different things that could happen.

So are you suggesting merging the C-30 and the C-10 or expanding the commercial district?

No, expanding the Soundview Village District into those areas. That's just a thought because then you can get different uses at the Soundview Village District and different uses available to those.

So the intent with that would be expanded uses.

Right, so basically what's happening is you're expanding your mixed use.

And now are there buildings that are vacant or, yes, okay.

So that's.

And vacant land.

Vacant land, okay. So both, so. All right.

Now, I'm here to capture the discussion, so if there's anyone else that wants to chime in based on that, I'm happy to capture that. If there's a new topic, I saw this hand, and I'll come over here. Sure, yeah, please. Great suggestion.

The zombie village has a pretty broad range of uses, a lot of mixed-use types of areas. It also has some certain setbacks. limitations and also some flexibility setbacks. It all has to do with what's appropriate for the area with approval. So by expanding the Soundview Village District in the C-10 area, it really expanded opportunities in C-10 and given us also some control over what can and can't go there. Present in C-10, it's got a lot of uses that we might not want to see so close to residential districts and so close to the waterfront, the area of the entertainment area of the town. So I think a great idea taking the C-10, making it a zombie village district, expanding SUVB and the C-10 model.

Thank you. And behind you, and then I'll jump to you.

Yeah, it's William, Doug, and Frank's point.

And I'll see you for the benefit of the audience here.

The C-10 right now has a lot of uses that work but aren't conforming. It is a mixed-use district, as it is. We have apartments upstairs from restaurants like Teddy's and Rudy's Package Store, the new pizza place that's coming in. They all have apartments upstairs, and that's been non-performing. So it doesn't really make a lot of sense to make these existing non-performing. Expanding San Diego Village District up there would allow for mixed-use. See, it'll basically preserve what's there. And my personal opinion is we shouldn't have at motor vehicle services. You know, I had a couple of things that didn't make sense because it's essentially a residential neighborhood. It's primarily residential, but it does allow for mixed use. So there's auto rental, marine facilities. I mean, those kinds of uses are more appropriate to the larger commercial area or to the festival area.

They're already a small neighborhood commercial.

So is it fair to say that rather than expanding C2 with a defined set of uses here and that maybe it's re-envisioning what the uses should be permitted in that area?

It's really a part of the Soundview Village District because Soundview Village District was C10. Okay. And that, you know, changed the regulations down there to make it easier to develop. And that's worked.

Yeah.

To a degree. Okay. And that could convince the same sort of area on the north side.

Yeah.

Part of that. Yes.

To have a mixed use component to it so that you could allow more residences and more mixed use commercial residential.

So maybe there could be a way to develop, you know,

THE 156 AREA TO HAVE SOME SHOPPING AND RESTAURANTS WITH RESIDENTIAL COMPONENT ABOVE IT SO THAT YOU SHOULD MAKE THOSE PROPERTIES MORE VIABLE.

OKAY. FORGIVE ME, PLEASE, STAND UP, STAND UP.

I'm wondering if the ultimate outcome or agenda for these proposals is to bring more businesses into town. If so, do we not have enough? Do we need to build our commercial tax base? What's the total point? And are there going to be restrictions, as gentlemen here said, on the types of business that we want to see or don't want to see?

Well, that was the whole objective, Marcy. That was the whole objective of the Soundview Village District, in that IT WAS SPECIFIED FOR THE EXCUSE SO YOU COULD PUT A SMALL COMMERCIAL AND SOME RESIDENCES IN THE AREA IF YOU NEED TO.

IT SEEMS TO GO BEYOND THAT THOUGH. I'M NOT SURE. WE'LL WAIT UNTIL WE GET ALL THE DETAILS AND WE'LL SEE WHAT SHAKES OUT OF THIS.

YES. CAN YOU PLEASE HAVE A BUILDING BIG ENOUGH FOR ALL OF US TO FIT IN AT CHERRYSTONES? I THINK WE KIND OF control it, and it would be a super place to just drive down, pull in, and have everybody come in, make it twice as big. All right, noted. Well, this is a beautiful building. We And don't give it up for anything else. Hang on. What did she say? Can you repeat what she said? I want to have a big building that we can all meet in, that cherry stones and takes up a big space and is easy to pull off the road and go to. And it would just be for meetings and owned by the town, you know, and it would be great. Yes.

We have big tax bills already, too.

I'm a business owner on Paul's Road in Old Lyon. A couple of things that we are talking about, my husband and I, are things like traffic lights that could or may come up in the future if things change on Paul's Road. For example, people that cut across from Andy's Deli going straight across over to the post office, it's kind of dangerous there. And if you're getting more traffic, do all of a sudden you put a traffic light there? And then sometimes when there's backups on 95, right, we've seen Traffic coming all the way from Coffees down to the old line in making a right onto Halls Road. I think you know that's an issue. Potentially the traffic in front of Coffees and Sappori. You know, large delivery trucks going in there. I almost ran into somebody because they decided the last second to pull into All Pro and I almost rear-ended them and they didn't even go to All Pro. They were just making a U-turn. things like that. And then also in terms of signage, there was some metric about like how people are okay with signage as it is right now. I noticed that there's like a new gas illuminated sign at Laysville. Where is that in terms of the spectrum of allowed signage? Like is it on the, is it maxing out or is it somewhere in the middle? Like I'd like to see like examples of like maybe we're okay with it right now, but that's only using two thirds of the maximum allowable signage that's currently allowed. Does that make sense, right? But maybe somebody could come along and do an even bigger sign that's even brighter, you know, that huge light that's outside of Sapporo. The people that live across the street from them, it's like, you know, right in their living room and they can't do anything about it. Imagine if you lived there, you know, and there's a lot of people buying and flipping houses on 150, no, not 150, on Route 1. What's, you know, what's going on with that? Yeah.

And then, yeah, as far as, you know, the traffic circulation, safety, and I think all of that needs to be taken into account if there are changes made to zoning in any of the commercial areas.

Well, the kids coming across that are kayaking or rowing at the lake, You know, like in Old Saybrook, they just put in the flashing lights for people that are crossing at the pedestrian crossway. I think that's great, you know, because those kids crossing and people should stop and maybe they always stop or maybe they sometimes stop. But to protect our kids, you know, and with those detours that happen when 95 is shut down, it could be really dangerous. And these kids are on bicycles, riding, you know, that rock out cropping as you come into town, you know, that it's very, it's, it's dangerous and a little kid is on their bicycle. And, you know, I just think that, you know, when you're thinking about pulling more traffic into town, that things like that are my concern.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah. In C-10, I think it's really important. Oh, sorry. In C-10, I think it's really important to keep in mind that we're only talking about the north side of Shore Road. And on the south side, throughout the C-10, is residential it's the r10 neighborhood so you what you have is people who have houses and then they're faced with i mean right now the sewer project is there so there's that huge lot that's going to eventually be storage units and right now it's a major construction site and it's these trucks are going up and down in the residential neighborhood so i think it's really important to um to think about what we really want there because it is a very fused neighborhood and you don't want these heavier commercial uses like gas stations, like boat livery, things like that that are currently permitted in the regulations. I think it's important to regulate those and be sensitive to the fact that you have an entire neighborhood of homes that's directly across the street. And the other thing I just want to mention is it's great to have regulations, but we really need to emphasize enforcement. That, you know, we talked about signs. I mean, the gas station at Soundview, That sign was not what was approved on their site plan. And the day it went in, Soundview Commission made a complaint about it. And we were told that there's nothing that could be done because it's on State Road, et cetera, et cetera. And that is not what was approved. And it's an illuminated internal sign, and it's gigantic. But we can't do anything about it, so to speak. So I think enforcement is really important. When you see something like that, it should be able to be you know, curtailed according to the regulations.

Thank you. Yes. And I came here really this evening to quote somebody from 1957, and the only regulations that are in effect in this town are the old ones. I know they said that they updated things and everything, but I don't know that that's all been approved and changed. But basically what I wanted to say is a nice lady said years ago to me, The only reason for zoning in the town of Oakland, Connecticut is to preserve the charm of our community. And that's important because tourism is our major industry.

Okay, we're going to be mixing it up soon.

I want to hear two comments over here.

So there was a comment about therapy. I'll pass that one. I just have one more thing. Well,

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Today is day 30, tomorrow is day 30, next day is whatever. Thank you. Try to keep it down. I appreciate it. Awesome. Okay.

So C10 is down here by Shore Road. It is the only C10 district you have in town. In terms of the uses that are permitted, they are the same as the other commercial districts, the C30 districts that you have throughout the community. So this, with the exception of the larger C30 districts, not C10, permit commercial livery, boarding stables and riding academies and dog training facilities. So that is the difference between those two districts. Again, you only have one C10 district, it's down here by Shore Road. The other commercial districts within the town are C30 districts, they're spread throughout. We're not talking about C30N, which is Paul's Road, which is being discussed over there. So I'm Toni, thank you all for coming out tonight. I wanted to kick it off. I'm sure there's a lot we'll have to say. I wanted to talk about what's working and what's not working about these districts. And also, you know, if you have a vision for how they could be different or what you'd like about them that you want to preserve. Is there anyone who wants to kick us off?

Specify again what the area is that you're talking about.

So I'm going to show you this map. You could also pull up the zoning map on your phone to the town website, if that's helpful to any of these discussions as we're going through this.

I'm gonna walk it around here.

So this is, we're sort of located up here. So this is where coffee is. Down here, there's been a lot of talk down here about the C-10 district, the C-30 district, the C-10 district, down by Shore Road, the pizza shops, the next door to the C-30, the pizza shop, and we get to this area. Where else? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It used to be 12. In the other places, we see little stores in town.

Both are probably D30 zones.

So at Point of Woods, there's a few little stores there.

There are some other things like cherry stone and that area along there. And where the lay down area is for the sewer project, that's E30. You also have another one where Eflin used to be, which is now the only thing left is Hallmark. That's another E30 zone. And you have one up in Laysville where coffees and all of those things are. That's down here. So those are your E30 zones. C10 is something that you can do with 10,000 square feet. C30 is something you can do with 30,000 square feet. So the uses are rather similar. There's a few that are not allowed in the C10, but it's a tiny little zone. There was a suggestion in the earlier session that C10 be merged with the Soundview Village District and make it all just one because they are so similar. So we're interested to hear whether you're happy or sad or have any suggestions about these sort of spot C-30 commercial zones that we have in the center, other than . Much appreciated. Right? Yeah, it's the only one, right?

Yeah. So, well, even though we lost This is this is science. That's probably nice. And he likes to be lost to possible business sites. It's not just, you know, like that. So and the intent of that expansion is

to support more businesses, is there an aspect for, I'm just trying to get a vision.

Well, growing up in Holon, in the 60s and 70s, there was more business rather than there are now. The whole area down by the bottle suite and the Georgia State House used to be a residential So we lost that. And, you know, the town kind of needs that. You can't just have bedrooms. Like Browns Lane, that whole area is residential. And people go this way and that way. It'll be back roads. Not the sidewalk, but they need them. The sidewalk. It's a real sense of community because there's no place to park, you know, They just want to go out and pick up a lot of hot grocery store, get some small things for a while.

Yeah.

I mean, I understand that many, they allow people to have a coffee shop in their house, which can be popular for the native people around them.

So expansion of commercial can you tell me typically since hardest time that you're referring to someone showed that out.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I don't think so. Yes, we do. Okay. All right. Yeah.

What does it just clarify? You talked about this is summed down by what town hall is and the library is.

What district is that? Here.

It has to be done because there is some businesses there in that part of the city. You're asking about Lime Street? Yeah. Lime Street is on Lime Street or not? So if you wanted to expand there, to get to if you wanted to put more businesses on that, but the non-conforming use, it would have to get... Right now, yeah.

If you're saying that you want to add more commercial on Lines Creek, Lines Creek originally was commercial. And in 1960, when they relocated and personal area of the Hall Road. They've re-zoned everything on Lime Street as residential. Okay. So the businesses that remain are now pre-existing non-performing and they've been falling by the wayside one by one. But if you want a new activity, she's wanting to know where do you want it. Yeah, so that could be

Stapp, Be realized that you need to revisit that presidential zone and establish this commercial define uses there that would be permitted and they could be similar or different than your exists, your, your commercial uses that are committed and see 1030 so I definitely see.

Stapp, Three that grocery stores down there off the shore road, but I do.

I think we're missing an ample opportunity given the summer traffic and the beach resident, the summer residency that we have in that area, there's a lack of food service establishments along that corridor, both C10 to C30, that needs to be maybe prioritized for the community to take advantage of that traffic that goes along that road all the time. And I was,

I'm just going to ask people if they could just, you know, show of hands if you want to speak, and I'm going to try and move around the room.

Yes. We can take Paul's room and put that aside, but for all those other ones, I think that excuse is great to rent the apartment on top of the library view where the lease values on the ground floor commercial can be lower, not rent prison as much. and we'll give the business the year-round revenue. The seasonal revenue, you may not know it works. If you look right around Cape Cod, Cape Cod looks fairly brown, especially during the winter, just because it doesn't have the year-round threat to both our beans. It's the same thing. We need the year-round residents, the core residents, businesses to upgrade the ground floor and keep things reasonable. Also, I'll throw in, in prior discussions, folks that have talked about requiring low-market rents for a big piece of the resident property units if they ever do get built. I just need a whole bunch of this paper. So I know in Boston, they increased their quota to 20% low-market rents for all units. And that's killed development in Boston in the middle of the apartment crisis. Whereas outside, my first time here, they have zero requirements.

Thanks. I'm going to go here and then the end is to you. My point is just kind of a comment. Cherry stones is an empty floor bath, 20 years. And now we have the black hole drilled. And people don't want to buy it. No one wants to put in a business there. I don't know why I'm not a business person, but there are opportunities. I think what this gentleman said, part of it is we're not a year-round account. Of course we're a year-round account, but I mean, it doesn't apply. Like Blackhall Grill has gone through 18 different invitations. That was a gin mill forever, and Sherry Stone did it for years. Thank you. And that came up in another group. So we're going to add that area over here.

I was just thinking that right now you can build in that area. I mean, not if there's a land available, you could build retail there, correct?

Well, yeah.

So, you know, people aren't, I mean, retail is pretty much dead right now. So I think it's kind of difficult to say, well, okay, you have this vacant space, you're building this thing and Right now, what I'm seeing everywhere is what goes into these spaces. All along, you're getting, like, all of those lawyers' offices, all, you know, they're being filled up with, like, those kind of services. Yeah. So just because you have a big hole doesn't mean it's going to attract what you do, Todd.

Yeah.

So consideration of how to diversify commercial activity within the community, but it sounds like there's a desire for food establishments.

Question? I think I have that. Yes. All right. Thank you.

Yes. As a clarification, cherry stones, the old cherry stones, is in the C3rd edition. So under the amendment that was made to Zoda, there was consideration for mixed use in that area. Mixed use requires retail as defined in the amendment. It requires retail on the first floor. The first floor has to be weekend. And then you can put residential above the first floor, the second and up to the third floor. Unfortunately, it would be probably very difficult, I think, a developer to consider that zone for that type of use, because it would require them to put a commercial application on the first floor. So if we're trying to increase housing . Was there consideration for helping families housing T30 zones?

So just to repeat, recently the state changed the requirement for housing.

The town has revisited their housing and has decided that there's an option for multi-family housing, but mixed use. Providing for mixed use in some areas of town as opposed to multiple family. Yes.

Both the family or next month. Okay. There's also. Right. Right. Yeah. And so. So that's a big. Your time did not get more.

They said, oh, it's.

Okay.

That's called mixed use as well. Yeah.

But we said only mixed use. Yeah, but we would. So I'm saying it was suggested to the state to be mixed use and home for family. So you moved ahead with just mixed use, requiring the retail on the first floor. And in C-30, it didn't work in other places. It definitely wouldn't have been as well as it should have been. and may be desirable for how large you are. You don't have so much commercial space.

So you're saying, don't think about one of the mixed use forms. Is there also multifamily as a possible way to generate knowledge? We're going to send out notes, summarizing everything.

We're also going to get the answers from

Thank you.

I think I .

As you can see. There.

Thank you. Okay.

commercial districts um so oriented um to commercial districts at the the beginning of the session i'm going to talk through it and Maybe we're going to talk through it together. So let's see. So you have multiple C30 districts throughout town. You have one C10 district. In terms of their uses, they're almost identical uses. So you have one C10 district. It's down here on Shore Road. And then you have a C30 district directly adjacent to it. You have a C30 district up here. It's the location where Coffees is. It's near to where we're located. Then you have a few other C30s throughout town. We're not talking about C30 Halls Road. That's a different group. And I think what I would say is, you know, if you're not familiar with where the districts are, I think if you can imagine where there's commercial activity in town and consider Coffees, what you like about it and what you would like to see more of. And we can use even road names. I think that's helpful for the discussion. And so I think with that, oh, and I will say that the difference between the C-30 and the C-10 is really, the C-10 does not permit commercial livery, boarding stables, riding academies, or dog training facilities. And part of that is, it's the nature of where it's located. It's really, yeah, serving this residential area. It's fairly dense. So I think with that, if I could open it up to what you like or what you like, your vision for some of these commercial visitors.

Yeah. I was just in the last one. I hear, I heard a decent amount of people talking about a need, I guess, or a desire for like personal businesses with apartments on top. And as someone who grew up and was born and raised in Newmont, I still live here in Michigan as a stater because of the small town. I disagree with having any kind of departments, especially larger scale, especially with the current socioeconomic things going on in the culture wars or seeing things vary. You know, they just, the city council just, you know, certified illegal aliens being as big police officers. So you value the... To see it turn into, as we're seeing in Michigan,

So you value the small town feel and to clarify, so that brings no apartments and no business on the first floor with residential on the second floor.

So single family homes.

So desire for single family homes only.

I mean, multi-family is fine, but what do we need? One, there's not the infrastructure for it. There's not the parking for it. There's no reunion life.

So I would say the topic of, I guess, all right, so cash flow.

How do small towns feel, which means single family and multi-family, no apartments. And the trouble with that is that you actually can't regulate the ownership type. You can't regulate, you know, the size of this building, floor area ratio, all of that uses, whether it's single, double, but Patrick.

Sorry, that's my timer.

The apartment rentals above a retail location helps support retail to stay there. If you have some other way to engage some income from that venue. So that's one of the reasons there's a need for that. But if we want to have commercial areas in the town that are thriving or at least attempting to thrive, if there's any new building being done. What do you find?

And I mean, this is a topic that's highly polarizing, not only through our internet again, but

elsewhere and you know we're really going to talk about commercial uses and I think what you're saying is that that is one way that commercial activity in a town if that is so valued can be fostered supported in terms of yeah the commercial uses that are here or is there a desire for different types of commercial uses in certain areas of town?

Yes.

Well, there's a lot of people that we've been talking about, and it's being out down our throat that there needs to be some residential with commercial mixed-use kind of thing. And am I in the right room where it's C3 and C10, right? Yeah. I don't know if the owner of Sherry Stones is here, but that's a property that people have talked about where maybe you could put in either townhomes or like a a residential area that maybe has something within it that has a commercial use to it, or you do the affordable housing kind of thing, but it's not at Paul's Road where it's so congested, it is not down by Soundview or on any of the marinas, the waterfront, but it still is a viable space where there's, you can still get from A to Z and you're still within the parameters of .

Yeah, so I think what I'm also hearing in that is that any consideration of, I don't even say changes, but like any commercial activity needs to be consciously cognizant of some of the traffic impacts, traffic, water, traffic flow.

You're bringing more people in, and I'm not sure about, I'm not down in that area, but I know it's got to decrease the traffic down there during the summer, but even Even during the winter up at halls road there's whenever something happens on 95 that's where it first filled up. And then i'm sure 156 fills up as well, more so in the summer than all year long, but there are major issues when you want to bring more people to either live here or. As we heard possibilities of like a hotel we just don't want that kind of stuff to the small town feel. still stays small town. But if we have to, I think a lot of people don't want to be too busy, but if they're kind of too close to promise, really need to investigate the best way to do it where it doesn't affect where we all need to be, where we live, where we do our business, that when we don't use our supermarkets, we don't use very lost and things already like Walgreens and everything else because rents went up, forcing it to empty out. So now they could possibly develop

Like that cherry stalks area hasn't been used for years, so.

Are they still being brought to the restaurant? I think so.

You don't want to put 180 acres?

What? Oh, I thought you were talking. No. I was trying to read your hand. Over here.

Oh, yeah, yeah, please.

Yeah, I think.

What I'm curious about, we've been talking about everything in between Agua, and I'm just so curious for the conversation to be around what will we support in the commercial area? Because right now there are a lot of small businesses in appealing and ugly areas of the road or other areas that are serving quite a number of people. And I don't see a lot of residents in town actually even know about them or serving them. And these are small businesses. And so I guess the question is, this might not be the right forum. Maybe it is a different community meeting than we held around what is it that we want to support. As a small business owner myself, it's hard to keep in mind. Events have become really challenging. And also there's always that question of like, I feel like I have to go out and say, will you actually support this type of business? What do you want to support? And I don't hear a lot of that. And I know we have this in different areas that doesn't seem to be talked about. And it is a level of detail, but yeah, it's the same excuse, having this stuff on the bottom and people will support those businesses. Well, there's many places too where that is not happening. You know, businesses are empty and then apartments are full. Apartments are empty and businesses are struggling. So I just, here it is. If we have a brief moment, what are the businesses that we do want to support? What are the types of commercial that we will support?

Do you have a response to that?

Yeah, I just wanted to add something to that. I think retail business needs a certain critical mass. Marush, if you have the last working store in, what was it, five to four or five, you're in trouble. You know, because if there are four, five, six stores, six places that are interesting, a restaurant, a museum, something or other, you know, and a couple of three, four stores, then they all serve each other, all help each other, to draw people to them, to remind people that the other places exist, and all that stuff. A lot of the problem with the C30 and C10 districts down here is that they're like little strips along the road, and they were really made for, you know, gas stations and convenience stores that serve beach people in the summertime. And there's no critical mass there. So it doesn't ever develop into anything. You know, so a place like Cherrystone's opens and struggles for a couple, three years, and then it's gone. There's no traffic passing by. There's no, you know, everybody forgets that it's there once they the novelties.

And so I think in some ways you're saying this something similar and it's something that we've heard from other groups too is it's less about uses and more about what the community wants to see there. There's currently a good amount that's limited in terms of uses in some of these areas, but maybe there's an opportunity to do some more defined visioning for each of these commercial districts. And it's something that we've heard come off in other sessions, too.

What worries me for the store owners and the commercial staff is the seasonality.

It's very robust in the summertime, but how can we make it effective for them all year round? This is a big thing.

And, you know, you go to Chester, people there all the time. So we need to do things that create interest all year.

When I started, everybody said, no, you can't have two restaurants in the school. You need to just have one, because otherwise there'll be competition. Five restaurants means there's somebody there all.

Well, the town formed a gateway commission for some youth, and they were trying to liven it up. It's kind of a cat and dog thing there, because you have such as Cherry Stone, some properties on the north side. It's all residential on the south side. So it really is not a homogenous thing in the way of business. And so I think because it didn't get very far, and now there's going to be perhaps a large warehouse thing for trailers and boats and all, and that probably isn't the best thing that would attract people. So it's sort of, there's no plans to say, let's try to do this to attract that type of business. It's just whatever comes along and can fit in there. So I don't know if it sounds even, that gateway is still working, but it's not going to change that area, I don't think, because you have such a mixture of residential and commercial. Very shallow.

Are you saying there are too many uses permitted and that we should restrict the uses so they get to be more in synergy with each other?

Probably, probably. But I think probably people on the south side of the street would be reluctant to have somebody build something.

They don't want anything, I can tell you.

But how is that going to succeed? They want to see more residents. You'd like to spread magic dust on it, say, let's have a bunch of restaurants and a fun place like this one had, but it's very stuck in the mud.

The other thing that's really weird is the biggest population in Old Lawn is one in the Long Creek area of Old Lawn. It's crippled in size in the 60s and 70s. There were no residents there at all. Now all of a sudden, well not all of a sudden, over 50 years, it's got the largest population of the town right there. But everybody goes to Hall's Road. For some reason, there's no hypnotist to create a C-30 zone near them that has a little restaurant or a gift shop or restaurants, things that would be catering to the mild grief community and close to just people I see sound view, but all those folks drive all the way into town to do any shopping before they go to Niagara Falls.

And this came up with the question about Lime Street.

Somebody did suggest that Carystone should be a grocery store.

All of this here. Yeah. This was all built in the 60s.

Yeah. And it's true. Nobody knows down Cross Lane. We used to go. Yeah. We used to when we had the boat there. You go and you get all the way to our house. They're very spotty. Yes. Yep. And it's true, solar unit doesn't attract people to go there every day. It's kind of unfortunate that we now have three separate projects. So they're in development, they're in development, and they've got their field plan, of course. But it's possible that if you put those NDAs in these sources only certain uses and eliminate the other uses, the ones that are just sort of spreading everything out.

Same thing happened in ethics on Main Street. You have too many realtors. All of a sudden, you don't have anybody home.

So you have to have this food service. Establishments kind of are one of the things that get .

Well, I think that goes back to what you were saying, where it's what is the vision for these areas. They're H-U-V. They don't necessarily need to serve every use. and nor should they. So then what is it that people want to see? And I don't know that we're going to solve that tonight.

That's a whole other discussion, but it can also be like part of actually talking about the gateway stuff for some of you, but maybe there's a way to And we were talking about Chester and Essex. Essex has a parade for every darn holiday known to man. And I used to teach Zumba on Saturday. There was always a parade for something. Chester now has parades and runs, you know, fire up the lights with, fire up the nightly lights at Christmas time or whatever. Maybe there's some way to be like, certain areas of certain towns have a certain thing that they've got to be anxious to do that. Yeah, they are. And there are a variety of merchants who say, this is what everybody's been saying here. We don't do it to prevent a die. So they make the parade. Especially in the off-season, that's going to get people to be like, oh, no, I can't do it.

The other thing that's really amazing to me is there is no commercial zone on Longstreet. It was the core of the town. And, you know, there was a town center that you and I both remember going to this town. All this, I wish you had more.

Yeah, that was a good plan. When they moved up on the road, they rezoned all of Linespeed as residential. So all those reasons are in line with the plan.

What is your idea? Would you like to change that? I don't know. I mean, I would ask that kind of rezoning question.

I have some advice. With all of the funds, every time anybody on Linespeed wants to do something different than what they were, There's a tremendous outpouring of unhappiness by the residents.

They like it.

And the historic is a homeowner's association.

Yes.

That's interesting. But I also believe if you change a retail store to a residential or any of the purchase, whatever, do residential, we can no longer turn back to what we saw. I think that's another thing that I would ask the zoning So right now, if you change what was once a commercial type of building on Lime Street to a residential, which would have been many of those homes, church, etc. You can't change it back to a commercial area.

That's because non-conforming uses grandfathered it. And it goes away. But nothing's grandfathered. But I'm not saying good zoning changed that.

No, we haven't changed it, but court cases have been changed. And these are all the ice cream shops that are no longer there. Does it now turn into housing or can it be another shop?

If it stays a shop, it can stay a shop. Or if it changes to a house, it can turn back into a shop.

But a lot of times you'll see like gas stations on the corner. They might not be in operation, but they're going to stay there forever. Zoning has changed and they're going to make their ability to keep it in service for their use of the gas station. I'm just making that up again, but that's a comment. Yeah. I'm not saying that's a problem. And you have your hand up and then this is your hand up.

Oh, we're just standing back earlier. Don't look behind me. One thing that came to my head, my mind is that, you know, we have a pretty robust, you know, sporting force in the United States. There's really no sporting resource around town. There's nowhere for kids, aside from, you know, here to play soccer, for us to really, there's no batting cages or anything for the kids. There's no, There's nowhere for the young kids to go do really anything aside from go to the beach or go out in the woods somewhere. There's really nothing. I mean, people are thinking in terms of like infrastructure, but I don't really apply it on the business. I mean, I'm sorry, it's all ice skates. I'm the only one in here abroad.

Sometimes it's the business. Sometimes being in town support, it starts to be a little hard. I don't know personally what it is. All of it on me again, and I didn't hear a lot.

Be viable. Again, to buy the house. Right now.

All right, thank you all. I appreciate your contribution. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's it.

Other than.

I just want to also note that this was productive, I think, and people think it's funny that the town gets that delivery in the back of the room. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. As far as my thoughts, because they're crying the blues while you can't pay the taxes. People in Greenwich haven't got a lot of time to pay the taxes because they're making money.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm sure you want to know. Please do. I know. These things are okay. Yeah. So is he going to ask? All right.

Thank you, sir. Okay, so thanks for meeting us. We're here in the fourth session.

You made it to the commercial districts conversation, not Halls Road. We're looking at

C-10 and C-30. I know Francisco oriented the larger group to these two districts earlier in the day. I'm gonna tell you, again, you have one C-10 district within town. It's down here along Shore Road. You have one C-10 district. You have multiple C-30 districts, so commercial districts scattered throughout town. If you can imagine where you have commercial activity, the exception of Ivy Street, there's likely a commercial district. Our exercise today is going to be introducing or talking about what people like to see in these commercial districts, maybe what's working there, what's not. And I'll tell you the difference in the uses. They are very similar, almost nearly identical. There's a wide range of uses permitted in all of your commercial districts. The difference between C10 is that it does not permit commercial livery, boarding stables, and riding academies or dog training facilities. Those uses that I just mentioned are permitted in the other districts along with things like adult entertainment, autism specialty outpatient clinics, financial institutions. I mean, almost any commercial use that you could envision is permitted within your commercial districts. So they're fairly uniform. And so I think with that, if there are any questions, I'm happy to do my best to answer them, direct them over here, but I'm eager to hear from you all. Yes.

All right, so you get the C-10 down there, which is obviously Teddy's and O'Neal's, which is the two-package store and the pizza place.

Yes.

And how far does that go? To what road? To what road? Do you know? Do you know what C-10 is? Who's from Cross Lane?

It's pretty hard.

So it goes right there. No, that's C-30. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. From Cross Lane. Oh, there's a Cross Lane over to like, yeah, so. Yeah. Could that be rezoned to C-30? Probably adult entertainment. Do we really need that? I want to open up a strip club.

So C30 in that area, they're almost the exact same uses permitted.

The adult entertainment doesn't go with the C30, does it?

Well, it goes, yeah. How do you?

Yeah, and C-30. And it also goes in C-10. The only difference between C-10 and C-30 is that C-30 is larger and it permits the animal associated uses. So the boarding stables, riding academies, but for the most part, the commercial uses in your town are committed almost uniformly across every commercial district and community.

How does the new zoning law that was brought by the state to allow commercial use to have residential uses, like how does that, how is that going to play into the new zoning laws and what will you be able to do? Like it says you can put up to nine units on a residential, I'm sorry, on a commercial block. Can you explain that a little bit and how that's going to play in?

Yeah, well, and your town had a specific decision on how to handle that.

So every time we decided that we wouldn't eliminate commercial use, so they weren't going to be just pure residential So if somebody wanted to build the nine units or up to nine units, they had to either preserve any parts of the unit or create a part of the unit.

So we don't have that one.

So then, for example, I own the property on the corner of Cross Lane 156. When I went in for my application, you guys did not want to allow the commercial use in that. So you guys were like explicitly almost trying to get rid of that. So now you're saying you want to bring that back. You want to.

No, no, no.

But I'm just saying like, you know what I mean? So now if I want to develop my piece of property, I could put nine units there, up to nine units as long as I keep some sort of commercial aspect. At least 50%. 50%. 50%. 50%. 50% commercial, 50% residential. That's what the current regulation does. So that allows you to build nine residential units and keep nine commercial units? Or how does that work? I'm just saying if you have a...

If you've got a residential on top, nine units, you get something.

No, no, no.

I'm not saying that.

That's what I'm trying to show them. No, just asking the question of how it works.

That is what 25A, sorry, the 25-1 report requires, okay? Up to nine units residentially, every floor of the film is needed so that you have to have mixed use. It just means residential. That's the only appropriate commercial use for the residential unit.

And I want to add also, so special Act 25-1, It was the statute state state acts and is requiring changes at the local level to so name that are intended to encourage. How's a production and housing portability and housing accessibility, so that is something separate and that the top like every community in the state has already gone through adopting those stages.

You have to do it as a July 1 question and he didn't leave by July 1. So that's what we did. We rushed it through. It actually ended up being July 3rd, which would be late, but the statute gave us no shorts. We ended up something about the state.

Does that mean, okay, to this point, he has a commercial property. Let's say going forward, he buys that property, and it can't be totally commercial.

You can use the economic regulation. The economic regulation has not changed. Okay. The only thing that's changed is if you want to do residential in a commercial zone, multifamily, you can now up to nine units, but with a commercial component. If you want to use it commercially, only the sections.

And does that allow you to keep the zoning setbacks in that particular zone? So the setbacks would remain in place irregardless of

Is this an 832 set of X? That's what I'm trying to, I'm trying to ask, like, how it's going to. All it does is say, you can incorporate residential use, with the push to use, all your density requirements, your homework requirements, your shutdown requirements, all of those remain in place. Gotcha.

So how does that translate into what I had with 156 where the cherry stones is, and then I put 150 unit apartments. So how does that, how does that,

They would need to come in for an exchange to change the regulations to allow that to occur. And they have not closed. We're not here to discuss.

No, no, I'm just asking how that fits into what.

It doesn't fit into at all. It's entirely a separate issue. And they would need to come in with a red chain. And so far, we've never seen that red chain. And if they didn't do the red chain, you guys would get call notice and you'd be able to come out and say, have you thought about it? I'm sure I can predict what people would say about it. I can't. But that's it. That's got over here for tonight.

No, I was just wondering how it fits in, because I'm trying to understand what you're saying, and it just seems like it's not following a straight line.

They ran fast. There was some talk earlier about polite statutes.

I know in some areas of the commercial district, there's some of that. buildings that are old and unoccupied commercial buildings. And there seems to be no penalty to keeping it that way. Could there be a penalty for whoever owns an unoccupied commercial building, which is really, you know, basically becoming an eyesore?

I mean, in my opinion, I think that the town should be reaching out to business owners and the zoning commission should be reaching out to these business owners and trying to bend over backwards to get them to redevelop that. I mean, look at 156. you know, our anti-development is almost gone too far to the point where people don't want to do anything and then these properties sit vacant and they look like crap and make our town look like crap. Where if you had some sort of zoning or, you know, town, you know, want to work with business owners and want to work with commercial properties to try to get them to develop into something good, like That's what I would like to see.

But then I think

That whole, that's a whole nother rabbit hole that we don't need to go down. But then they wanted to put that sewer pump station over there. And I think that's scared them away. That's a whole nother rabbit hole.

They did it with a food truck. They did install it. They wanted to have food trucks there. Parked around the kind of civilian. So, but the plant, there is a plant that they are going to start planting. I think it's funny because

To anyone else have anything to sort of do with you? I know we talked a little bit about 50 housing, but I guess I'm curious just in terms of the uses that are committed within the community.

Are there any types of businesses that are present?

Are there types of businesses that you'd like to see more of? Where would you like to see them? And then we can, yeah, talk about what the zoning is.

We've all been talking about business, you know what I mean? Bringing business in. I hate to say it, but we're a business from the state. So it's hard to bring new businesses in, you know, unless, you know, we just talked about, you know, with all the 5,000 to 4,000, 5,000 people going into the mall to work or work at boats, you know, what type of businesses would these, and I know some of these people that are coming out of, you know, school that I know their parents and they're coming out of, you know, Engineering school going to electrical they're working there, but a lot more engineers and stuff like that, so the younger demographic and they're going to be looking for. That type of you know things that drive you to the shoreline businesses stuff I hate to say, but capacity that we have now that we're getting so much down there that can change a lot that area considerably on. As long as it ends there, does it go any further? That should be okay.

So with any of the things, the urgency of time down there?

Yeah. There are opportunities for those buildings down there. I need some housing and everything else. I just don't know. Can you wait one second? I think you're going to be looking at, as a business owner, you're probably going to be looking at how many people you expect there to go, what the traffic is, you know, I mean, and then overall, like, you know, when you look at areas of residential impact that you want people to come to, you know, based on whatever it may be, you know, unless you're a very small business and you're a niche business, you know what I mean, but for retail, what you're thinking, I think, well, I'm just thinking that now that you have a residential component in the C-30 zone, which for the last,

years we haven't. And I really think that that can facilitate some development on 156 or before, you know, all you had to be able to put it in was a storage unit or something that that's really the only thing that people could be viable. So that's the only reason that they went for it. You know, so I think that if that changes, then, you know, then it allows for more, you know, it makes the number make more sense. It's really, it comes down to the numbers make sense or do they not, you know?

Yeah. And I, and I also think, I mean, I've said, you know, in terms of, you know, maybe the state isn't business friendly. I don't know. I can't say that one way or the other, but sometimes I think it is numbers. And then I think sometimes it's confidence that they're going to be able to move through a process without losing significant time or energy. And so maybe opportunities to better define what the community wants to be in certain areas to give people confidence. But if restaurants, if you want to season, if they can make the numbers work, maybe they could come to the community.

The sort of traffic, I don't think the numbers would be an issue. I'd go for the seasonal part of it, yes. But our seasonal window usually starts, they say it starts May, you know, Memorial Day to Labor Day, but technically it's really Fourth of July. So the window is just too small for somebody to go in there and invest that much to try to make a profit in that small window. And like I said, it's a seasonal area down there, and that's a majority of the traffic. You know, a local restaurant would do probably well, I guess, than something else.

I think it's important. I just think it's important that we keep a full-size grocery store. Okay.

We've heard that. And then here.

Okay, so I think if you, you know, you get off 95 and you're on 156, and you travel all the way to 95, you're on 156, and you're stuck All of these communities don't have a good spot for kids to get some food stores or moms to get a book. I think most of the agenda is for something of that nature other than gas stations and package stores for moms. All right, Tony, I need to wrap this up. We're going to have a quick debrief and then we're going to send everyone home.

All right, so it seems like this conversation is coming to an end.

I'm going to report out on the meeting. Thank you.

It's very good. Good to see you guys.

Thank you. Okay. First of all, everyone in the back, everyone in the back, your attention, please.

Your attention, please. I am trying to get you home. First, thank you for your patience this evening. It's going to be very challenging to run an effective meeting for this many people. And you all were fantastic. really helpful to us to help us better understand the issues. You were patient with us. You were very thoughtful in your comments, and I appreciate that. So thank you to all of you. I would like to now just do a very brief recap of my session. I'll take a minute or two. I'll ask Tony, Rory, and Roland to do the same. I ran the Hollis Road session. And there are some very clear themes that emerged over all four sessions, right? There is a concern about planning being done for the Halls Road area behind closed doors. The concern is that the community isn't engaged in making decisions about this area, all right? And our purposes here this evening are to engage you and through the course of the process in any changes that we make to make those changes in response to your concerns and to the realities of the area. And the realities are that there are concerns about the protection of the environment in that area, the wetlands, about infrastructure constraints, capacity limits, whether it's sewer, water, or roadway infrastructure and traffic, about development that's out of scale with the area. There is a desire to improve the area, to retain small businesses, to fill vacancies, to make it more walkable, to beautify it, but not at the expense of losing the charm of the area and of building something that doesn't, you feel, doesn't belong in Albany. So that was really the crux of it. And we talked a lot about issues related to that, but that was really the heart of it. So with that being said, I'll hand it over to Tony to talk about the C-10 and C-30 zones in just a minute or two, Tony.

Thanks, Francisco. I'd say uniformly across the four groups, there was interest in diversifying the commercial activity that takes place within the community. There's noticeable, in some instances, decline within some certain areas. There are some vacancies, and there's interest in finding ways to support commercial activity that fits the character of the town. I think defining what that activity is, is there's opportunity to do that. At the moment, there are some like from you all, the idea is that there's opportunity to better define what the desired uses are. Certainly gathering spaces, there's a lot of sadness that Cherrystone's closed. Can there be another restaurant that serves the community? And there's thinking that now potentially with the allowance of some housing, mixed use housing, commercial districts, that perhaps there is an opportunity to support growing commercial activity if it can be thoughtful and targeted. Thank you, Tommy.

We're always going to talk about the industrial zone. The industrial zone. In my session, there were a few things that kept popping up. There was, it was loud and clear on taking advantage of the opportunity with Electric Boat, signing the 20-year contract, and really capturing the 4,000 to 5,000 folks who will be coming through, you know, Crystal Mall and Electric Boat themselves, and possibly capturing them in that industrial zone, if possible, through things like introducing commercial opportunities, if that's a possibility. We had lots of conversations on mixed use housing in that industrial zone and possibilities there. Folks were concerned around some environmental issues when it comes to runoff in the area with the different uses that are in the zone already. We also talked about traffic in the area and Hatchet Hill Road being used as a kind of cut through for I-95, but also saw I-95 in that area as an opportunity in that industrial zone and it being easily accessible in a place that folks can get to. Ultimately, I think there was a big push for incorporating mixed-use housing if possible, but the overall arching thing was the fact that they wanted it to remain place of industry and a place of revenue and creating that revenue.

Thanks, Raul. And to be clear, on mixed use, we talked about this as an issue quite a bit in our group. And you may or may not talk about in your sessions, Public Act 25-1, which was signed into law last year, requires that on any commercial lot that zoning regulations allow for middle housing development, whether it's multifamily, like an apartment building, or mixed-use development with residential units and commercial in the same building. Now, that's just true of your commercial zones, C10, C30S, waterfront zone, and Soundview Village District. It is not true of the industrial zones. The state doesn't require that that be allowed in industrial. But as I understand it, there was some interest in your group about exploring that as an option. So that's not currently allowed in the industrial zone. But that's something we'll take a look at. And residential and industrial generally aren't compatible. But it really comes down to a property by property basis, that sort of decision. So finally, we'll hear from Rory. And we're already covered both the Waterfront Zoning District and the Soundview Village District.

Yeah, great. Thanks. So I'll start with the Waterfront because that was the first one we talked about. So a lot of sentiment of, you know, there's three small zones in this area of Waterfront 20. You know, a lot of people said keep it as it is. You know, it's working, it's functioning. You know, keep it as it is. Heard a lot of concerns about the environment, concerns about parking and traffic. But also, you know, heard that, you know, need to support those small businesses, support those water-dependent uses, and make sure that we're not, you know, through zoning, having unintended consequences that make it difficult for those water-dependent uses to function. And, you know, just understanding that marinas and things like that, they need to do maintenance. They need to do dredging. There's things that have to happen. So just make sure that we're keeping that, you know, maintenance and function of these uses running. And then I'll switch over to the Soundview Village District. There was, you know, in that one talk, you know, about the stigma of the area, you know, noting that, you know, it has really changed in the past 50 years. It's gotten more family friendly. You know, the longstanding residents that have lived here many years, it's really become very family friendly. So continue that uptrend, you know, continue to try and make it a walkable place. There was no, the sidewalks that have gone in, some of the streetscape beautifications that have been done down there. So a desire to, you know, continue that and make it a really great place. you know, for the community as an asset. Also talked to the, I think, I believe it was the C-10 district that's right north of it, talking about maybe incorporating the Soundview Village District zoning, pull it through up to the C-10, because they really do function together. And then it was also noted that there were design guidelines for the Soundview Village District that I think maybe were lost in the first round of some of the zoning changes, so maybe consider of bringing those back in because they seem to function well. So I think that's it.

Thank you, Roy. Well, that concludes our workshop. Once again, I'd like to give a plug for the online survey. We're going to keep it open. It's been open all summer, and we're going to keep it open for two more weeks. We're going to open it at the end of September. There's the QR code. There's also a link on the talent webpage. You can get to it from there. We will post this presentation on the town's website. So we, you know, we raced through it earlier so we could get to the breakout sessions. You'll be able to explore it in a little more detail. Give us a couple of days. We're going to prepare a summary report of everything we heard. We're going to write this all up. We will make that available online. The summary reports from the first two workshops are currently available online if you want to read about what was discussed at those workshops as well. And as I mentioned, we've got more than a year to go in this process. So the zoning commissioner of the town will be communicating about other opportunities to provide feedback. And before anything gets close to being considered for adoption, it's going to be made available to you. We're going to really push messaging out to make sure you understand what's being proposed, you have a chance to review it, and you have an opportunity to provide comment on it as well. So thank you, everyone, for coming out this evening. It was a tremendous show. It was really productive for our purposes. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening. Have a safe trip home.

Thank you.

Thank you for doing that.

I did that, but I was kind of wishing that we could have had a little bit of conversation about good things. It's about what are you worried about, but there's a lot of good stuff that nobody seems to understand. Like you can't build There's a certain amount of stuff. You can't build higher than 30 barcades. Even if you changed everything in zoning, it still can't do that.

If my neighbors are down the road, they're on purple tiles. That is wrong. What's the character role in Highline Halsbury?

It's a strip center, the character of old one.

I mean, come on.

When you're all done with what you're doing, you said it's been a year and a half or whatever. When you're all done with it, what happens from your end? You turn everything over to the town. I know you said the survey and the results, but then as far as all of this, it's just turned over to the town and then... They either start to make decisions or the town might get people back involved or at least notify or how about?

It's a very good question and we're We're going to, to some degree, we're going to kind of refine our approach as we go. What we've been hired to do is now take a look at the regulations in response to everything we've heard and start to recommend changes to the regulations. We'll work with the zoning commission, walk them through those changes. If they agree to changes, we will draft new language for the zoning regulations. And we'll likely do that in pieces.

And so you started this for the outdated or incorrect.

Yeah, we are. And that's been adopted. We completely did it and it's been adopted. But now we're going to start almost from the beginning and work our way through the regulations. Say, hey, we've heard this. People are concerned about this. we think you could amend the regulations in this way. And we will, if the commission agrees, we will redraft that section and we'll likely do it in pieces. So not just one big set, there it is, it's done. These are the recommendations for this section. These are the recommendations for parking. These are the recommendations for outdoor lighting. These are the recommendations for signage. And it'll be up to the Commission to decide whether or not they want to take action on those one at a time, spread out over months, or if they want to take action on a lot of that at once in one application.

Or at that time, they could go back to the Wetlands Commission or whatever and review if things are feasible.

They could consult with other boards and commissions. So the actual adoption... will likely take longer than our work for those reasons. And your work is expected to be done by the end of 2027.

So they're both regulated in the C-1.

One quick thing, I'm afraid of rapist stones on the water. You can't make any zoning changes in that Hall Road area. So the town hires civil engineers and they corrobore the entire area and come up with a program for water.

Unless the zoning changes involve tightening things up.

So with the general theme, they were just pushing it.

You can't put a wealthy family in a smaller area using water and it's like 40 apartments on one acre. Yeah, no, I understand.

You can't do that on your own.

I was glad to hear that.

I don't expect that. That area's shut. Anyway, on the other side, it's running into the small. I don't expect that's the direction we're in. And they were talking about apartments and stores and, like, 40 apartments an acre. I don't understand. And has the town interest not their own interest at heart? It's funny.

Yeah, because I think that that yeah, because they stated there and they brought it up every session because that's what they want because they're not attracting what industrial business and they need to focus on something like that. Because I think that's a, I think, I think that excuse it because they stayed in there. So it seems like it was a recurring theme, and I think most people are against it. And I saw that, you know, from the group. I'm there. Yes, yes. But I noticed when I turned around, like, it's still there. So I just wanted to push that, and I think... Thank you. Thank you.