Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right.

I opened the Planning Commission regular meeting on Wednesday, May 20th, 2026 of the City Hall Community Room roll call.

Thetmer?

Present.

Freed?

Here.

Cronberg?

Present. Moss? Here.

Newman.

Here. Paul. Here. Robson. Present. I'd like to request an amendment for the nomination of the zoning ordinance committee alternate position. Amend the agenda for that. And I guess we can do it after old business. Or wait a minute. We'll do it after zoning ordinance update. So it'll be five and a half. So can I get a motion to Amanda.

Okay.

And a second? A second. Okay. So Albert made the motion. Carolyn made the second. All in favor of the amendment? Aye. Aye. Everyone agrees. So that'll be after zoning work. Okay. Approval of minutes. April 15, planning commission meeting.

Motion to approve. I make a motion to approve the April 15th minutes. A second?

I'll second.

Okay. Ted made the motion. Carolyn, I seconded. All in favor of approving the minutes? Aye. Next, we have a public comment. This is an opportunity To comment on things not in the agenda tonight, please address the chair when speaking. State your name before you begin. Public comments are limited to three minutes per individual. Commissioner will listen, but will not engage in discussion. Very public comments. Okay, public comment. Hello, sir.

Hi, my name is Jackie Gray. I just live up in town here on State Street. And I wanted to bring up the zoning issue of side yard parking. I know that we can't park recreational vehicles, boats, or anything in the front of our yards. But from what I understand, that line for the side yard starts at the front of the house. So the driveways that go down the side of the driveways allow recreational vehicle parking and include large recreational vehicle parking. And I would like to I am proposing that this that you take a look at this ordinance and possibly make it so that there's a time limit. On the side driveway parking of these large recreational vehicles, this is the House next door to me, and this is what I look at and maybe pass it around real quick and it's a very large. RV that is very visible from my house. And so I know that we work hard to keep the historic district somewhat quaint and aesthetically beautiful. And I don't think that adds to it at all. So I'm hoping you'll take into consideration possibly putting a time limit on these recreational vehicles so they can't be parked there all winter. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other public comment?

Oh, things not on the agenda. Not on the agenda. So we can't talk about Article 3?

Not yet.

But when Article 3 comes up, you'll be able to have it. Thank you. Okay.

Yeah. If I could, I just had a question.

Is this, the issue brought up is, do you feel like it's more of a storage, like it's obviously not being frequently used,

It can't be. I mean, I understand if somebody were to get in there, then that would be against the zoning, but it's storage. I'm speaking about storing your large recreational vehicle, small recreational vehicle on the side yards, which, you know, on these tight lots, it's right there in your face.

Thank you.

Okay.

Moving on to old business, Article 3, regulated uses and dimensions.

John? You have a draft of Article 3, regulated uses and dimensions that was drafted by the Zoning Ordinance Review Committee over, I don't know, probably four or five meetings. The The way that the article is constructed is different than what is in the current zoning code. The current zoning code has each of the districts separately and has their permitted uses defined under each district along with the special land uses. And then the dimensional requirements are found in a different part of the zoning code. The way that the proposed draft is set up is that We have a regulated use table, which outlines in tabular form, the land uses, which would appear in the left column by land use types and residential, commercial, public, quasi public, et cetera. And then there's a series of columns that has the designation for the zoning districts, which start out with RS, the residential, and you have the business, the OS, the I, for industrial, the public quasi public hospital and college. Under each of those columns, you have a P adjacent to any land use that would be approved, that would be permitted by right in the district. And S indicates a special use permit, which then requires the applicant to go through a public hearing. Then if there's an asterisk next to the letter that requires then their special supplemental standards, and Article 7 that have to be addressed regardless if it's a permitted or a special use. So we have the regulated use table, which takes up about four pages, but under the old code, it probably would be taking up close to 40. So this is a consolidation, more of a tabular explanation of land use is easy for somebody to use. They can look up the land use type, or if they are in a district and they want to find out what they can do in the district, they can just scroll down the table and they can see what uses are permitted or by special use. The second part of the article starts at section 3.3, which is the schedule of dimensional requirements. Again, this was found in another section of the old code here. It's consolidated. in this article so you have not only what land uses are allowed in the district permitted by right or by special approval, but then somebody can also go to the dimensional requirements and see how the dimensional requirements are laid out. What I wanted to point out to the Planning Commission is something that's a little bit rather unique that the committee worked on. And that is that unlike the old district where you had R1, R2, R3, and you had lot sizes of 70, 60, 50 feet or whatever they were, plus all the various side yard setbacks that were different than the height requirements. These requirements for the residential districts are based on what is currently the average in the neighborhood. The reason why the committee wanted to do that is because they wanted to make sure that they preserve the historical context of the neighborhood, and they wanted to prevent in some of the neighborhoods that have small lots, somebody from buying two houses, tearing them down, and building a McMansion, which would be out of scale. So the front yard setbacks are based on the range of existing setbacks on the block, And they shall not be less than 10 feet or greater than 25 to give people a kind of a latitude. So we noticed the committee noticed that going out and taking a look at existing neighborhoods, not all the houses are at the same front yard setback. Depending on when they were built, there's some variation in latitude. The side setbacks are based on 12% of the lot width or six feet or whichever is greater. So as the larger, the wider the lot, the wider the setback. So this is all mathematical. The rear setback is set at 25. It's currently 35 in the ordinance. And then the corner lot side yard setback is basically the same as the front. The maximum height for The residential suburban, residential neighborhood, residential flex zone is 30 feet. The RM district is 35. Maximum stories in the single family districts are two and a half. In the multiple family, it's three. And the minimum floor area has been reduced to 560 square feet. We do have specific requirements for accessory buildings. They are either can be detached from the principal building and located in the back of the lot or they can be attached. And we have specific requirements for what they should be. The maximum height shall not exceed 22 feet or the height of the principal building. So the accessory buildings would be smaller in scale than the principal or parent building on the site. So the residential districts are set up primarily to mirror existing conditions, regardless of what neighborhood we're in. So on the side of town, the east side of town, whatever the direction is, east, northeast section of town, or you have Lake Street, Mitchell Street, Michigan State, where the lots tend to be bigger, then if somebody wanted to build on a lot, then they would build the average of the lots on that block. Whereas over on Madison and Jefferson and on the other side of town, the west side of town, on the other side of the Bear River, the lots there are smaller. They average between 45 to 50 and 60 feet. So depending on what the size is in the respective block, the lots would mirror what those averages are, as well as the setbacks and the frontages. The reason why I'm saying this is unique, I've been doing this for quite a while. This is the first time that a planning commission has come up with a dimensional requirements that are based on existing planted conditions. And it's, once we got it all figured out, it's actually pretty simple to use. So I have to compliment the folks on the on the zoning committee for spending the time and going through this and discussing it in detail. We did increase the maximum lot size in the residential district. It goes from 30 to 40% to give people an opportunity if they want to build a little bit bigger or they want a new addition under their house. They don't have to go before the zoning board of appeals. The lot coverage in an RM district is always larger, primarily because it's building and parking lot, and that's at 50. The second section, 3.42, is business districts. We have four. We have the business neighborhood districts, which would be like Emmett Street. We have the BD, which is business downtown. We have BC, which is business corridor. And we have OS, which is office service. Business districts don't necessarily have minimum lot width area coverage. because their development is based on how much building and parking that they need, but they do have some setbacks. The setbacks in the BN district, the business neighborhood, are 20 feet. Side setback is 10. The rear is 20. Maximum height is 30 or two stories. The business downtown district has no setbacks. Everything's built to the lot line. The maximum height as it currently is is 45 feet. or three stories. The business corridor district, which is primarily the Mitchell Street corridor, and then out Charlevoix Avenue and up Spring Street. The setback there is 20 feet. The height is 37 and three story. And the OS, which is the office service district, which primarily is a transition between the business and residential, the maximum height is 30 feet or two stories. Those are the business districts. The industrial district is roughly the same that it currently is today. Front setback is 30, the sides 20, the rear is 40, and the maximum length is 30 feet or three stories. We have public and quasi-public, which are all public lands, either owned by the city, the state of Michigan, federal government. We have some basic setbacks. The front yard setback shall be the range of the existing setbacks on the block. We have public buildings that are located in CBD, which are right up to the street. We have public buildings like this building that are located in a different zoning district. So we wanted to make sure that if there is a public building or a utility building, because that's part of the quasi district, that they have to mirror the setbacks within the district that they're located. Site setback is $20,000. Rear setback is 20, the maximum height 35 feet. The hospital and the college districts are relatively new. Planning Commission worked on these probably about four years ago. We didn't make any changes to them. They stayed the same. The hospital district and the college district have some of their own additional requirements that are outside of the site development standards that are in the article. that were part of the ordinance when it was adopted. And instead of having those in a different section, they are located in the section like, for example, 3.4.5 hospital districts has their setbacks, but then has all their additional requirements, including that they have to file a master site and facilities plan. Then they have special site plan requirements that are over and above what's required by the code in any other district. Like I said, these were developed by the planning commission a few years ago and the committee decided they did not want to make any changes to these based on the fact that the time that they had considerable community engagement and then went through the public hearing process. Same thing is true with the college district. That's its own zoning district and it has its own additional requirements, primarily because of outdoor storage, performance and amphitheater area. heating and electrical generation plant and they have master sign requirements that they have to follow. So as I had mentioned under the new code, Article 3 basically is all of the regulated uses in the dimensional requirements. It's been consolidated. A lot of it has to do with it's in tabular form. One of the things that I wanted to provide the Planning Commission was This is a graphic of the dimensional components of a residential lot because we use . So this graphically shows what the minimum lot area is, which is A. B is the minimum lot width, which is the average of the lots on the same side of the block. C in the front is the front yard setback with the varying range between 10 and 20. Side yard setback is 12% of a lot or six feet, whichever is greater. The detached accessory building setback to a principal building, if the accessory building is detached, it must be located 10 feet away from the principal building, which is a reflection of the fire code in terms of distances between buildings that are not fire rated. Rear yard setback is 25 feet. And if there is a detached accessory building on the lot, not a garage, but an accessory dwelling unit, if it's one story, it can be five feet away from the setback line. If it's two story, it's got to be 10 feet. In this graphic, the billable area is the green shaded area. That's the area that's left over after you subtract out all of the setbacks. And that's the area of the lot where the building can be placed anywhere within that green space, depending on how it's designed and what its architectural detailing is. This will probably go into Article 3 in order to explain, before we get into the setbacks, to have a graphic representation of what these different terms are and how they apply on the lot. So with that, Madam Chair, that's kind of a summary of Article 3 provisions. What would you like from us tonight? Just your comments. This is probably, we saved this article until last primarily because it's the one that is going to dictate the type of land uses that get built in the zoning districts and what the dimensional requirements are. The other stuff in the ordinance is statutory provisions that we all went through, non-conforming uses, site plan, checklist, all that other good stuff. But Article 3 is really the guts of the zoning code because this is fundamentally how the city would lay out in the future. And I would say with the assistance of the committee, the committee basically, in terms of policy, The committee wants the future layout of the city to reflect the past layout of the city. So that's how this is designed. So.

So I bring it to the planning commission. You want to go through, discuss regulated uses, go part by part. You want random comments, Albert?

Two things. I did. I know it's hard to see this breakthrough, but for me to see the differences, I went ahead and made the decision that adds the differences based on the old 1600. But before I start that, I've been at almost all the committee meetings. The big concept that John started with was character. And what we're doing, what the committee's been doing, I really agree with it, especially in residential neighborhoods, providing that character. There are a couple of things, once I pass this out, I want to talk about. And then there's a couple of business things I want to talk about. So I'd like to do one, if it's okay with the chair, each one at a time, 3.4, residential, then the business, then the industrial. Because that's the other thing. As we do this, this informs the map, and the map informs this. So if we could, I'd kind of like to go back and forth because there's a couple of places. For example, I think you just mentioned business neighborhood. is around Emmett Street, but at least the map I have, it's February 16th. I don't know if that's the most recent one I think we have. It shows like where Tom and Dick's is and what we used to call when I was a kid, the Four Corners of Washington and Emmett. It shows those as business corridor. And I think they would be better at business neighborhood. So if something's where it's at, it's going to affect this too. So I don't know if we should go back and forth. You may pass these out. Is that okay?

Yeah, I printed mine out.

You can pass these out. If any members of the public, after the planning commission gets... I will say that I had six people at my house from Thursday concluded. So I did this a little bit Sunday night when they all left for a while yesterday. So I will not say that's 100% accurate, but it gives, I think, a feeling. for the accuracy of . Make sure to plan .

So if you hadn't seen this, the original settings are in black and you kind of crossed them out. I crossed out the ones that That's what exists. And then his red stuff is what's on the new table. So you can compare, for instance, our one single family.

Red is new. So in general, again, in residential, I'm pretty happy with the whole concept of averaging. I still, I really brought this up as a citizen to the to the zoning committee. I really would like to see height handled the same way. And I know it's difficult, but you know, I know that one of the concerns you've got is people on your lot. So if I want to build something taller, I got to get all my neighbors on my block to say, or wider at this point, can I get into this setback? So, but I would really like to have, The height be very similar to what we have in the front setback column that says would be something like the height of residential structure shall be within a range of the existing residential structures on a block. The height shall not exceed 30 feet. Our name is all 15 foot, 20 foot houses. Should not exceed 30 feet. The houses that do exceed 30 feet, like I'm thinking of Dr. Wilson's house on Lake Street or Dr. Connie's house, which is on the corner, of Kalamazoo and Mitchell. These are the, when I was a kid, that's all everybody here knows. You know, those are big houses that look good. They are historical. I would say something like houses that exceed that the 30 feet at type of enactment of this regulation shall be allowed to rebuild at the historical height of the structure. Or maybe that's always in other parts of the zoning code. But I know that I've gotten concerned about from the committee that, you know, how will we measure this? Well, with a measuring tape, I don't want to be, I don't want to be facetious, but people have to hire builders. They have to hire, they have to do zoning permits. And this will keep the character. Something can still come into our neighborhood and put a two and a half story house, but it would be within the, and we have a couple of two and a half story houses. It will, in every part of the town where we have little, little small houses inside of, big neighborhoods, that's fine too. I mean, some character change is fine, but I like the idea of what you've been doing in all areas. I'd like to see that same thing in the rear setback. It's historically been 35 feet, but if we did the same thing, if you did the average setback on a block and Most of them are going to be 35 feet because they've been 35 feet. But if we did, so I like to see the rear setback be the same thing. The rear setback and the RF, RS, RN lots shall be within the range of the existing setback, but not less than 25 feet, which is where we set the new minimum. And again, the same thing for maximum lot coverage. We've upped it to 40%, which will, you know, and I will tell the people, the public, that I was one of the people that brought this up. My mom has a lot that's 48 feet by 50 feet, and she wanted to put a garage in back of the house. She couldn't do it. You know, since she didn't do it, she ended up in a nursing home because she couldn't get out to her garage, and she stayed in a household. So, you know, I like the idea of being able to use more of a lot. So, but again, if we do it, if we did it all the way we did everything else, that'd be very consistent and allows the neighborhood to stay the same as much as they want, but you can work within those little ranges. And my other concern is unintended consequences. John sent us a couple articles, you know, according to the recent Saskia Newsreel Bridge, we are part of 13 luxury housing markets in the United States. We're at 11th with 53% of our listings exceeding the $1 million mark, $1 million mark, on the median of 1.11 million. Now, I think that's probably 49770. It includes Bay Harbor. But we could, by increasing these, percentages and we're going to 40%, we're going to have people come in. I mean, there was a house on Grove Street torn down just recently. I don't know how big a house they're putting in there, but if they could use 40% a lot and they go up 30 feet, we could get a mini McMansion on Grove Street. So those are, you know, I like the concept. I just like the concept all the way through is my point on that. that district.

Okay. Why don't you stop there because you gave us a lot to think about.

Rick? Just a question to Albert. Relative to height, is your concern that a neighborhood like yours that has largely one-story houses could change character a lot by people adding second floors?

Is that part of your concern? That's part of the concern. And just to keep

The one concern I have about the average relative to height, you know, I don't know what the implications, what that would do to the potential of certain properties to have a half story added, let's say, you know, to turn an attic into a third floor, let's say with dormers and such, you know, if you had to average the height of the neighborhood, as opposed to just having the ability to do two and a half stories at a maximum, a certain maximum height, it might limit what you could do. You know what I'm saying? If you had to average the block or whatever. How different would that be than allowing the height and the number of stories? I guess this is my question. We don't really know. Max?

You can still manipulate the volume to a way if we're still calculating the roof pitch to be at the midpoint to where it's not necessarily going to alleviate your concerns. to appear like a larger structure than what's surrounding. But I hear your concerns and I understand them.

Well, I think partly, too, it has to do with the architectural treatment of a house. I've done a couple of projects over the years where we've taken a single story ranch house and torn the roof off and added a second story. I think that's designed in the spirit of the neighborhood and the house that you're working

We built, in the last few years that I've been here, two new houses on Grove Street that must have been at the 25 feet. Two new houses on Grove Street that must be at the 25 feet. Yeah, top of the hill. And one house at the bottom of Park Street. The houses that are next to them, they're right at the same level. I mean, I've got pictures if you want. So those you know, their height is, it does match. And so they must have been built at 25 feet, I would think. So to go up to 30, we're going up, you know, we're going to 20% increase than what's been allowed for, I couldn't find out when it started. I did some research at the library and I can't trust the online research because it took us back to the 1988 code, which lowered B3A, but it was not the same. But I'd spend 25 feet for a large number, a large, large time. And people have built houses and added on houses and done things in Bedosky at the 25 foot level. So we're going up to 30. And I don't know why we're going to 30. That's part of my reasoning. And part of what I think was the older neighborhoods, they should be able to stay the way they were. That's what I'm trying to do with this is accommodate both of them.

Well, I think the reason we're doing it is to to be able to provide just slightly more density. You know, there might be borderline situations where, you know, under the 25 feet, you couldn't do it. But if it was five feet more, well, then you could. Okay. Ty? I had a couple of comments.

I think the concept that the current city was built on

So it in no way reflects the current. It was just slapped on, purchased. So that, you know, part of the discussion I know at times was historic neighborhoods did have two stories, two and a half story homes that were above the 25 already existing. So you couldn't match the existing. I do, when we talk about these housing things, there in that and with the discussion and points Albert brought up I do totally agree we're not getting people someone who's going to tear down a house in town and build a bigger one if we allow bigger things whatever there's not going to be more people here there's going to be people who don't live in Petoskey who build big houses who come up for two weeks in the summer it's just not regular people a bigger house that's not at all what's happening demographically so so i don't i think we do have to we talked about that we have to be careful um and i think that and i'm not saying it's perfect what we have but we were trying to that's the concept preserve preserve the character of the neighborhood and maybe you know we can continue to talk about that but carolyn um

I don't have any comments at this time. I appreciate, you know, Albert's concerns. I just don't know how, I guess, I guess I do have a comment. I don't know how we'd address doing an average height. I think that'd be really difficult. I think maxing it is the best way. I think, you know, running at the 30 was based on the density and the fact that all of these houses we have here are predate the zoning code. So yeah.

Yeah, and there's nothing offensive about houses having different levels. That looks okay. It's not visually offensive.

I think Curtis Park is pretty unique. There is a large area where they're all the same. Really, they are.

If you put a two-story house in there, it's not out of place. There are two-story houses, aren't there? There is.

Yeah, it depends on what side of the park you're on, I guess. But I don't think any of them are as much as 30 feet. I can't verify that.

Well, you can because I happen to know that when that was planted and laid out, there were restrictions on or the same guy built them. So they weren't built all the same. The ones that came in were either later builds or newer. Yeah. But they don't look out of place. That's my point.

We have a lot of variation in the town and neighborhoods more than I, you know, conceptually, I don't have an issue with what Albert's suggesting in terms of averaging the height and not to exceed 30 feet. It's just going to take, we have to understand that in order for somebody to determine that and they're probably going to have to retain a surveyor to go down the street, take a shot and an angle and figure out exactly what those heights are. There's really, I don't think there's any instrument that, I know assessors have instruments to measure room volume, but I talked to a couple of them and they don't have anything that they would even consider valid in terms of an instrument that they would point and get with the height. So you got to do it geometrically.

There's got to be a drone that could do that.

Well, you know, if the county, when they do aerial photography, if they paid to have LIDAR, then we could have the data. I mean, that LIDAR would be, we'd have the elevation for everything. But they don't do that. But the only way to do it would be to have a surveyor go out and spend an hour out there you know, running some calculations. But conceptually, it's, you know, the average height of the neighborhood not to exceed 30 feet. It's the average. Okay, so it could give you a little bit of what you're talking about in terms of some change. Flexibility.

One last comment. Well, let's see if anybody else has anything.

No, I was just, I appreciate the work done by the committee. Thank you for your analysis of old and new. And I agree. I think most of Petoskey was built before any standards were in place. I am concerned with the apparent ease that much larger homes are being slotted into open lots. Grove Street is a perfect example. that when i drive by it twice a day um i'm not i'm seeing it where they must be hitting that six foot to the property line right to the t because the house that the new footings are probably twice the size of the old house that they tore down but um i do really think we needed to set a maximum height and and enforce it um because it's just And I think we're going to find ourselves with a town that's a mishmash of whatever dollars can buy.

How many per average new houses in the city? One or two a year? Probably, yeah. So I guess it wouldn't be too difficult for somebody that wanted to build a new house. They're going to have to usually contract with a surveyor anyway to do their their boundary dimensions and their elevations. Probably wouldn't be all that much more to shoot the angles with the houses in the neighborhood, or a few houses, and get what the average is. So yeah, that would make it consistent with the methodology that we've used throughout the tables.

Yeah, and you're talking about setbacks not matching existing, which would be easy to do, easy to measure.

I guess it makes you get something. I just want to clarify that we're still measuring the roof from the midpoint and then the same exception still apply. And then the technology that you're talking about, I have that on my work. It's a significant cost to the city to volumetrically measure all of the surroundings.

I'm not sure what it's called.

what we're proposing, I think, that I'm championing. Do you line art? No. Because of the cost. The max height. The one concern that I did have about the setbacks was the six increase from the five. Was that because of fire? The ratings of the firewall? From the side yard setback? Because it was previously five and ten.

Average between the two.

five on one, 10, total of 15.

We did them equally. Okay, so six and six. Six or seven, whenever they increase. You know, the one thing that I was thinking about with the elevation is that I think Bing Maps and some version of Google now are getting so sophisticated that they actually, you can generate 3D models Because they're actually paying to have the elevations taken. So I'm thinking probably another five years down the road. It'll be there. It'll be there. And it'll be, you know, it's open source. So somebody can get on and basically run the analysis. But I think mathematically it could work. Like I said, we're only doing a couple of houses a year.

So it's not like. And a lot of these, I want to touch on this briefly. have reached their life cycle where the foundations are not like to code my house on Michigan six, eight inches towards the bay. It's on a rock wall foundation, and I know most of my neighbors are on the same. So we're reaching that point where most of these homes kind of need to be knocked down. And I don't want to see my entire neighborhood be demolished and go into a dumpster. But they don't meet current energy code. And at some point, that's going to happen.

Well, you can come in like, you know, well, I'll lift up the house. It was a foundation.

That's what I'm doing. Right. But at the same point, I've gutted it to the studs. It's no longer historic. It never, you know, it had been gutted in the 80s and 60s. And it's been added on to so many times to where it's no longer, never a historic character with it. One next to that has flat roof additions all over it. I mean, most of these homes weren't built in 1910. They were built in the 60s and then added on to so many times that they've been bastardized to the original character.

Yeah, but to your point, all of the houses, most houses, So that creates the current character.

To some degree of care. And what level was that? And I mean, I think it's very specific to the neighborhood.

We're going to address those issues. Okay, Ted?

I guess the things proposed, one of the things that I've had the most trouble with is the side yard setbacks. Because I do like the idea of averaging. I feel like from what I've seen in my neighborhood and some surrounds, when people are tearing down and rebuilding, these people have a real lot of money because it's really, really, really, really expensive. And they often don't live here. And the concept that if someone's built, if we change the code and allow much, it starts to repeat on the neighbor's space of what they're used to in the neighborhood, the feel of the neighborhood. taxable value going up gets much out of it for neighborhood character. There's people who don't live here most of the year and they just got this massive house and your squeeze feel like it changes the character. So that's the thing I wonder about averaging side yards in a neighborhood. I think if there's bigger side yards, I mean, if we truly were increasing density, if there was Workforce people building the house with five kids, that's just not what's happening.

It's not. But it could be that 20 years from now.

We don't know. That's not the, you know, so I did go to a demographic workshop with the state demographer, and it was pretty eye-opening. I mean, these people have short and long-term projections, and I'm not saying they're always right, but the data is pretty compelling what's happening but the side yards aren't based on average they're based on lot width yeah right so and the six is actually more than what the current code is because the current code goes down to five so it just provides a little bit more space so so that's the problem with the current code though we know the current code is this city was not built with no code correct that's that's the problem where the 10 feet always came in

the old neighborhoods because a lot of the houses just didn't have a 10-foot.

I told people I have a tall two-story house and I just looked at I'm six feet and I do my own painting at times on my house. I go way up on top and you cannot put a ladder to the top to get to my house. It's more than six feet away. It's at least eight feet away the base of it and you need 10 feet to get on the ladder to go around it. So if my neighbor had a You know, if the property was within six feet and there was a fence, I guess you can get lifts and do other kinds of things for sure that are more expensive, but it is. Now, I know there's old neighborhoods and historic, we talked about Grand Rapids, it'll be incredibly tight like some of those.

But the six is, the proposed ordinance is a foot wider than we have today. And it's all based on, so if you have a wider lot, you're going to have greater setbacks. So like, you know, some of the historical lots on Lake Street and Mitchell Street that are very wide, if a house was to be rebuilt, then their setbacks are going to be a lot wider because of the dimensions. But, I mean, where's planning commission drifting on the hype? Are you okay with Albert's suggestion of every type same side of the block not to exceed.

Can I make one more comment? Yeah. Okay. Given Max's point, we do have a lot of end-of-life housing. What's that? We do have a lot of end-of-life housing. Thank you. I just got to put on my teacher's voice and I'll be fine. We have a lot of end-of-life housing in Petoskey. And there is. And so I want the planning commission and the zoning committee. I don't want to do a lot of committee work here. I think it should go back to us one way or another. But if houses start getting turned down, do we want the current, whether it's been historical or not, do we want the 25 foot? And then maybe we do it the other way, make an exception that you can go larger if the average on your block is above 25 feet.

So- You're talking to where you're at, Ted?

Right. I'm talking, no, I'm talking to height. I wanted to go back to height because John was asking about height, I think, where we were. Yeah. So if Michigan Street, which would be a good example, and there's some houses on State Street, I think they could get torn down. Would the city, would you want them to be 30 feet, a new house, and with what people, what Ted had said, People are coming into town. Those three houses that I've just mentioned, three new houses, one sold for over a million, one sold for just under a million, one I couldn't find the price on, but two of them are not occupied year-round. Of those three houses that were built. So if we have people coming into town with lots of money, do we want to build a 30-foot house? We wanted to build a 25-foot house. Where do you want the exception to be? Should it be the standard now? And then the exception would be, if you want to go over 25 feet, you have to take the average. With that, it would make it easy for everybody. Unless you wanted to do something exceptional, then you have to prove that you're under 30. So I think that would be another way to go. But then I'll let John take the straw. Well, my reaction is,

Front yard setbacks, limiting those makes sense because you do want to have a sense of a face to the side. The backyard setbacks aren't seen except for the homeowners. So that sense of they're here, they're there, however, I don't think that's an issue if it's 25 feet and everybody else is 35 feet. I don't know, I may be... Not thinking the steering wheel.

It's talking about height, not rare areas. Oh, okay.

We can just talk about height. Yeah.

I mean, I understand your argument for saying we stick where we were with the 25 feet, but if you are on a block where the average is greater than 25, you can match that average. Like that seems comparable to me.

Yeah. That would keep it. Because I don't want to put burdens on it. If somebody wants to come in and build a 25-foot house, which is their thing, and now they have to take the average. So I like it, as I thought about with your discussion, if we went the other way, the current is 45 feet, even 25 feet. But if somebody's building in a historic district or in a district that has a lot of tall houses, that they can go higher.

I just think for fairness and practicality for architects and builders, that if for the height, it's just, it's standard. You can go 30 feet. You can go somewhere in between. It's up to you. but the maximum is 30 feet. I don't think 30 feet in the neighborhoods is going to be shocking with smaller houses around it.

So it just seems like it's making it more complicated to be- You didn't do the math, but of course we are talking about the midpoint of the slope drill. So when you go up by five feet, you've gone up by more than five feet.

But proportionally with the 25 feet, then you're- And if it's 30 feet, it's not that much.

It really depends on the roof pitch.

Right. I think that you want to go back to kind of the original concept would be the average height of the buildings on the same side of the block not to exceed. And if you want to use 25 feet because we're going to the midpoint, that's fine. But that then would allow or that then would accommodate neighborhoods where the houses are only one or one and a half story. That would be the average. Because I think if you do it the other way, saying it's 25 feet or the height of the same side of the block, whichever is greater, then you're going to... In a neighborhood that's got one story, somebody could build 25 foot and that would be out of character. So... I think you got to go back to averaging the height on the same side of the block and then set a maximum not to exceed number. And if we are, you know, we use the midpoint, which is in the ordinance. So, you know, you set it at 25, you still end up with a two and a half story home.

Right. Which was most houses, you know, I walked up to take those pictures. I walked up Grove Street and look at that. Any house taller than these, missing the one down on Michigan Street, My aunt lived right next to that for years. I've been in and out of that house. It was a two-and-a-half-story house, and they probably shouldn't have been, but they had eight kids. They used to have it for living space.

The only thing I'm trying to think down the road here, because we do have some really nice historic neighborhoods, is that we need to have an exception. So if it's the average height of the blocks, the average height of the houses on the same side of the block, not to exceed 25 feet. We need to have an exception in there if the houses on that same side of the block are higher, because why would we want to deprive a property owner of not at least matching the character of the neighborhood that they're in? So we have to have a trigger in there that... Well, right, if your house price is down. Well, yeah, but you know what I'm getting at. In some neighborhoods... 25 feet at, you know, their houses may be, you know, higher than that. So we, I don't want to, you don't want to get into a position where you have to fort. If we left it the way that we were currently looking at it, average on the same side, not to exceed 25 feet. I don't want to put somebody in a position where they have to go to the zoning board of appeals as for variance for height, because the zoning board of appeals is going to say that that's not a hardship. You're, you're creating the hardship. by going- We're creating hardship. Yeah, but you know what I'm getting at? It's like the applicant's creating the hardship and all the applicant's trying to do is mirror what the existing conditions are in the neighborhood. So if we go with that, I'll have to think of some language that, it's like a safety valve, that if the height is larger than 25 feet based on the character of the neighborhood, they can go to that height. So if all of the neighborhood,

your block is all single story, which I don't know if that exists in town. But if it were, then you could only build a single story because that's the average.

Up to 25 feet is still.

No. He's saying no. The average of the height. Or 25 feet. But you cannot exceed. So the average is going to dictate what the height is.

Yeah, I don't think you want to do that. I had said within the range, like Ted did with the prop site. Within one second.

So you're saying the average, but not to exceed 25. So that's the range.

You got to stay within the range.

I hit that. What I'm saying is we need an exception.

Right.

If it's in. I agree with that 100%. So we've got to put that exception. I've got to draft that off.

Is that what his quick thing said?

It goes right back to your character. I need to create another problem. The minute that somebody builds a new home, it re-equates the formulas. the next bigger house gets built. No, you're talking the average.

No, we have a bike.

I just want to restate, because I redid A House Next Door recently, the concept that someone's going to buy an old house, rip it down, and rebuild anything close to it for not way over a million dollars, it's fantasy land. I mean, this is a mess. So there's old stock, there's problems, but... And they're going to build to whatever height they can.

Existence works. Okay, one at a time.

What, Max?

It's more expensive to abate asbestos, jack the house up, and then set it back down and completely add on to it than it is to build a house at 425 a square foot. I mean, you're going to end up getting less character, I think, by redoing the old house than building new. I don't know. Right down here on Lake Street.

Blocked out. a contractor bought a house about, I want to say maybe eight years ago, maybe 10 years ago. And he, he jacked up the house, tore down the limestone or the rock foundation of it, dug a little bit deeper basement or a new wall and set the house back on top and then completely remodeled the house. It's the same house, just it's remodeled. It's a little bit higher. I think they, I think they're a couple of feet higher than what they originally were because the, They wanted an actual usable basement. So the foundation was up a little bit, but it seemed to work.

My point comes to the essence of saving the sticks of a structure when you could rebuild the exact same thing for cheaper and better quality. Because a lot of people think that these have, oh, they're old. They were built from old lumber. Well, they were balloon framed, and they have no headers.

The trim is beautiful. That's not a $400 square foot trim.

I'm not sure that's true. I mean, you can rebuild cheaper.

It just depends on the level of details.

Yeah, and the extent of gutting and remodeling is... I've determined it as well. Okay.

So let's circle back though. I want to get back to my idea.

You just say one thing on the committee, I believe we talked about actual construction. Like if your house is one foot off the ground, that's one foot. The first story ceiling is nine feet. So that's 10 feet. You most likely need a foot and a half or two feet for a floor structure. So we're up to 11. If you want a second story, that's nine feet. We're up to, 20. 20. And then if we need a minimum of a one foot energy heel on a truss, and then your slopes are 25 is really hard to build to now. So that's where we got to the 30 in our meetings.

I still stand by. I think I'll do it at 30. That's construction standards. It's not a mystery for any, you don't have to do math or pay a consultant. And it's not, 30 is not so extreme that it's going to stand out.

Right. And not everyone's going to build to that mark. Like, I don't know. I've done a lot of projects. I don't know how many where I'm actually just like right at that mark. You're usually under by a foot or something, under by two feet. It's totally dependent on the project. So help me here. Well, hold on.

I'd like to just make a comment from the administrative side of things. I can tell you how difficult it is to get a setback from the ground. The height is going to be a whole nother obstacle for property owners. These aren't necessarily new builds. We have people coming in that want to put a new dormer on their house or they put on an addition, you know, on a section that's going to make it a little bit taller. And then they have to go and, you know, as it is, they have to get their neighbors setbacks to get a front yard setback. to have to then add a house. From having to deal with the general public and what the day-to-day amendments are or changes are, I think that's going to be a huge ask and a very costly one. That's just my opinion from the administrative side, that I think it's going to create a huge difficulty for property owners, unless it's a new build where they already have those services, contractors coming in and doing those types of things to design it.

So having heard all that, Has anyone changed their mind about doing averages versus just allowing 30 feet maximum?

I'd like to see a combination of the two. 30 foot or average on the same side of road.

But then it's just a choice and it might as well just be 30 feet max.

You don't say whichever is greater, you say whichever is less. Right. So in this case, you would reverse it. You would say the average of the height on the same side of the block or 30 feet, whichever is less.

But then I still have to average.

They still have to average.

And I had proposed within the range, not the average. Just like it is for...

I just think we need to stay away from the average. Like Lisa said, it would be really hard to determine.

I might clear up how we're going to determine these heights without getting on their property.

You're going to have to have a surveyor on the public right-of-way I need some shots. Right.

One of the goals of redoing the ordinance is to make things easier for a builder, developer. Saying 30 feet, that's doable.

And you don't have to jump through hoops to figure it out. My concern with a 30 foot setting at a 30 foot is because it is midpoint. The roof could actually be 40, could be I don't think it would be 40 or 35 foot. So all of a sudden you've gone from 30 foot, which for most people's perspective, it's the height of 30 foot. It's not to the midpoint. So if we're going to say 30 foot to midpoint, then you could literally add five plus.

Then you change the word. We don't measure to the midpoint. The 30 feet would be the top of the roof.

That would be a real hardship.

Yeah, I know. I'm just saying. That would probably be more restrictive then.

Yeah.

But that's the point Bob's making, that these 30-foot houses are, you know, they're... It's the appearance. They're much, the peak of the house is much higher.

This zone down here is our end. The White House has been built down there. We allow 33 feet. And I tell you, that White House stands out. It's taller than all the other houses. on Lake Street, between here and Blotchard. So, I mean, I still, and I've said all my piece, you know where I stand, I would at 25. Like some kind of, I don't care.

You keep it at 25 at the midpoint, it's no more, no less than what we're currently dealing with.

But I do think that we need to look forward and we need to look forward like, 50 years, I actually think we should stick with that 30 feet because there's room to grow if there's other requirements. So I don't think that the midpoint, there's so many houses that are taller than the 25 feet throughout town that allowing this is not going to be a shock. I think it will still fit in.

Like Carolyn says, you know, the energy requirements, somebody wants to build an addition on their house. They can't do it the same way the old house was built because there's not enough rafter space where it hits the outside wall to get the insulation that the building inspector is going to require you to have.

You know what strikes me, Cynthia? I live in a big older house, and I don't actually know. I did once, but I've forgotten the number now, what the actual numbers are. So we're kind of talking in the abstract here as if we know, but we don't really know. don't know what my eve is at what the midpoint of my roof is at so you know how many of these so i i realize i don't know and because i look at things dimensionally and um so for me to say third 25 feet or 30 feet would match houses like mine i actually don't know for sure but it's kind of important because that's what was our goal right so

But we still, again, have to think forward. And thinking forward with construction, 25 feet, you're not going to have enough space. You're going to have eight-foot ceilings maybe at some point. So if we allow that flexibility to 30 feet, then we're enabling new things that we can't imagine. It'll take its course. I don't think 30 feet means a McMansion. that we're allowing houses so huge they don't fit in the character of Petoskey, I think it would fit just fine.

And just for the simplicity of it. I think it would be interesting to have a few examples of

It's built up from the grade because we measure it from the street, the sidewalk grade.

Average grade.

Average grade. At the building. At the building. At the foundation. At the foundation wall.

Oh, okay. You go up so many steps into your house, so that's added into your height.

Well, that's from the sidewalk. The house is.

Well, no, but your floor is four or five steps above the grade already. You get to your first floor. Four feet.

thinking of the future and thinking of real currents

It's not so increasingly different. I've heard this, but I'm not seeing, sometimes you've presented some dimensional things of, you've done a height thing once with some examples for us.

Well, now, like I do a lot of additions in Bayview. Yeah. You know, those things were framed with like two by fours for rapidity sometimes. Right. And, you know, you want to, with an addition, you want to carry the eave line back and you want to carry the ridge line back and make the addition kind of look like it was all of the old cottages. Well, you know, you really can't do it without changing something because now the building inspector, even though they've never been insulated for all these years, they're required to put insulation in now. Maybe not exactly. You know, he'll give us a little leeway and maybe not require the absolute amount as long as you can insulate it some.

Well, what's your general impression, Rick?

And so then I have to design something to get the e-blinds to match up. Well, then I've got deeper rafters, and so the ridges at the top are maybe a foot or 18 inches taller than the rest of the house, just to get the E-lines to match up. Because you've got to have thicker, deeper rafters.

There's nothing more than that little nubbin that returns down. Oh, yeah.

So, Rick, what's your impression of building a new but historically looking two and a half story home like some of these, would it be, do you think it would be an excessive 25 like a house like mine or?

Well, 30 would certainly make it possible to do it. Yeah. Because these days I'm not sure you could do it in 25 and get it, you know, enough above grade because a lot of the old houses were multiple steps above grade just to the front porch. You know, you might have to come down and just have one step up or something to your porch and And then that doesn't look right in the neighborhood. Exactly. I think there's always an initiative.

Well, having seen a half a dozen building lifts, none of them have come in lower than what the original was. All of them come in three to four foot taller than the old, which adds that much more to the height of the house. And compared to what it was, yeah, it just, it looks bigger, but did they change roof lines? Did they change anything else? No, they simply raised it, resettled it on a higher foundation, but they kept everything the same. So yeah, I can see where that extra five or five foot would allow that. So I'm good with 30 feet.

Okay, so do we have consensus? Stick with, keep it simple for the zoning administrator, for the builders, developers, and looking to the future.

And we're still at the, we still have to take some public input at some point in this whole thing. And so we're not right.

But I just want to make sure that we're, um, I don't want to repeat the debate zoning committee. We have consensus for now. Okay. Um, well, Well, I guess we'll stay on dimensional requirements. So as I was saying about the setbacks, on the front, on this street-facing area, there's actual visual impact by having them close to each other. It's real unsettling. On Mitchell Street, it's like this. There's one house that's set way back. I bet you all know what I'm talking about. It's disorienting to have that happen. It looks very wrong. So doing the averages makes perfect sense for the street facing. But in terms of the setbacks, again, for builders, just to make things standardized, I think six feet is reasonable. That means that between two buildings, you've got 12 feet. That's pretty good distance. It's, you know, fire code safety. You don't have to do all the extra stuff. In terms of setbacks in the backyard, again, there's no alignment there like there is street facing. So there doesn't have the visual impact that street facing does. So I think allowing it to be 25 feet, changing it 10 feet isn't going to change much. And it's a whole lot less hassle for everybody. If you have to do it for all the sides and the back plus street facing, it's just... a lot to do, and I don't think it really gives much advantage. But street facing, absolutely. Visually, it's important. How does everybody else feel about it?

Yeah.

All right. In dimensions, do we have anything else we need to talk about in dimensions?

I'll detail the feedback that you want. from us tonight, or are we going to meet again in committee level to go through? We're meeting tomorrow. Yeah, I know. We'll be doing a review of this again tomorrow. But we'll probably be finishing. We're still on definitions.

We'll probably finish definitions tomorrow.

But yes, we can revisit this. I've got a number of comments. Exactly. I don't want to talk it down here.

All right. I want to go back to uses. And if you want to have some kind of a business. Okay, well, let's go back to use this so we can cross that off. So if you want to open a discussion for us, you see anything that shouldn't be included.

I guess it's page two, which is residential regulated uses single family growing. So why do we got enough that it would be comfortable? Why do we not allow Any single family buildings in a business neighborhood or office service? I guess I get. We do have it in office service. Oh, business corridor and business neighborhood. We didn't put it in there because those are primarily business area.

I do know that in the current B3A, there's a lot of, in the current B3A, there's two lots on, one lot on Hillcrest but it's in B3A that's being used as residential. And there's several houses, maybe the first five, six houses on Lawrence are a mixture of, it's in B3, it's a business neighborhood, but where people are living there and maybe have a business inside their home. But I think you want to be careful about, especially Lawrence as well as neighborhoods that does have some nice rental houses, small rental houses that's being in Lawrence that, may be in. So we used to allow, and this was one of our problems, we used to say, in this zone, you can do anything that was in the previous zone, et cetera. And we don't want to do that. We may want to look at.

I mean, it's planning commission's call. You want to add single family into the business neighborhood district element.

Yeah.

Maybe. So do we want to consider that, or are we Karen Hollweg, Two people agree and single family to business neighborhood. Karen Hollweg, Or do we need more discussion and sort of the zoning ordinance committee level.

Karen Hollweg, Right, I feel i'm sorry carolyn go ahead yeah go ahead, I feel like it's such a small area that we said i'm going to be dedicated to business or. What else are we going to identify as? We don't want. In business. Yeah, we don't want age.

So what if there's some in there, though? What is their question?

They can say as long as they want.

So they plan on changeover? Exactly. And it reverts to standard. Okay. Okay. Anything else?

Special permit with a

We have asses and we have this is what the asterisks that's got an asterisk there's some supplemental okay requirements that they have to meet and check or so okay, but I know there was really well.

In the in the final printing of this regulated uses people I think it would be helpful if across the dark bar there at the top where we have the initials for each of his own districts that you're running very quickly. away from that dark bar that those RS and RN would be related. Residential neighborhood, residential flex. I mean, spell them out. Spell them out, going vertically. Just so that people... I agree. People that aren't familiar with the ordinance or what the condition is, I think that would be helpful for them to be able to go find that in other parts of the

Or include a key or definitions. Right. No, I think that's a good idea.

Okay. I noted that. We can discuss that at the committee level. Yeah, okay. All right. Anything else about uses?

It looks like it's a free loan for us. They're in a residential. What's that, Max? Why? number two down. No, ADUs. Why do we need them to come to us for approval when we give them a performance aid spec?

That's currently in the current code is that they're a special land use. That was the city council. I can't remember. We suggested it, but It may be city council.

Because we already say, if you need A, B, and C, you can do this. Why are we then turning it on?

I kind of remember where you're going, but I will tell you, I probably do, I probably review four, maybe on average, a year in Harbor Spring. Because they have, they call them guest houses, but they have well over 100 of them. they do it with special land use. And I will say that almost every case, there are circumstances with the lot that the planning commission has to work with the property owner on siting because of stuff like utilities and easements in the back and driveway access. Because if it's permitted by right, then it's just, I'm not saying this in a negative way, it just goes to zoning administrator to review it. But with some of the ones I've seen, like I said, there's always circumstances that the planning commission needs to work with the property owner on, like where the utility hookups are, the driveway access, sidewalks, you know, then they find easements going over like utility, so there's all this other stuff. And that's why over there they do special land use and I can see why. because it gives the planning commission more of an opportunity to kind of work with the property owner on conditions.

Because if it's permitted by right, you don't have that latitude. We don't want to see the same thing in Petoskey, the community uproar, if we permit it by right. No, it's not that.

I think it's what I've seen, especially detached, not attached, detached ADUs, like in the back of the lot, usually require a little bit more kind of sensitivity to design and placement. And that may require the planning commission's more, their level of experience. The other part with the special land use, the neighborhood's notified within 300 feet. So the neighbors know that there's going to be an ADU in the backyard. You know, there may be discussion on placement or screening, you know, adding some additional landscaping to screen it.

Right. The special use doesn't vote, although if they meet the standards, but there's still, there's latitude on them. There's latitude on them.

So that's why I haven't done a special land use. It's not to deter it by any means. It's just what I've seen practically is that almost all of them require a little bit of a design eye in order to make them work.

I think in the code, or the ordinance, not the code, but the ordinance, they were only allowing 10 a year. Right. We haven't ever hit that. But you would have to have some kind of permitting process to make sure you stayed within that.

Okay. Any more discussion on uses? Okay. So we dealt with the residential districts. on the dimensional requirements. So let's move on to business districts.

I think the issue on the, uh, the business districts probably my estimation is going to be the height in the neighborhood. We had 30 feet. It kind of, because it compliments around the business, around the business neighbor. We don't have that many of them. We have like one or two small They are kind of plucked in the middle of the neighborhood. So 30 feet would be the same average of the house. We kept 30 feet for the OS because that's a transition area between residential and commercial. So that's at 30 feet. I think where we increased it was under the business corridor. We went from, I think one of the, I don't know, B2. Was that 33? Yeah, 33. We went up to 37. And then the downtown has always been 45. So I think the area that we made the change was in the business corridor. And I know that in the resort commercial, I think it's 25 feet. Now, the one thing I will tell the planning commission is I don't personally have a problem with 37 feet, but it may be modified because remember, we're doing the view shed analysis overlay and the overlay may push it down. Okay? In areas that where the overlay doesn't come into consideration, you shouldn't have a problem at 37. But if it's in the viewshed area, then it's going to dry probably pretty significantly. Because we've got the model wrong when I reviewed it. You've got the model wrong? The model, we ran a spatial model for the viewshed analysis. Okay. At the next planning commission meeting, I'm going to I'm going to zoom in my GIS planner that's done the modeling, and I want him to go through it with you because it's pretty specific in terms of location. You know, we looked at the primary viewpoint at the intersection of Anderson and 131. That's right at Crestview Condos. Right there. And you get right there. That's where you see the viewshed of the bay. And we took the corresponding point, which would be St. Francis Church Steeple. And those were the two points that we looked at. And then you have to factor in the elevations of all the structures, which he found some interesting. DEM model that had some elevation points. And then running that analysis comes up with a color-coded map that shows you where viewsheds would be impacted so the height would go down and where viewsheds would not be impacted where the height could be per code. So I just wanted to point out that until we really get that viewshed analysis done, this 37 feet may be a moot issue depending on where we're at.

Okay, but the the 37 anything that's not part of the view shed, then, would you have the privilege of building to 37 feet go through so which you know you said you're you did your point from the steeple to the point of the hill, but when, as you go down. There's also a place where you get the whole sweeping bay with Harbor Springs. And that, I think that should be part of that side of it should be.

Well, then you, you identify that point on a map and I'll, we can run it. We can run that analysis as well.

What is the significance of the steeple? I don't understand what you're.

Well, when you, when you go, well, yeah, but see what, when you get to that point on Anderson, and 131, the predominant view into town, not the bay. What the view is when you look into town is the steeple at St. Francis. You want to maintain that view.

It's part of the cityscape view that we want to preserve.

You want to preserve the ability to see that.

That and the bay. So this is a He was explaining it to me via email, and I said, Dan, we're going to Zoom you in, and you can explain it to me and the planning commission at the same time. Because reading through a three-page email of how he did his methodology, way beyond me. Well, Chad will probably want to read it.

So maybe, Cynthia, another point might, you might be able to identify what point you're talking to.

kind of know what you're talking about yeah there's the sweeping 360 degrees 180 degrees further down the hill um it's right you know the the mall on the left-hand side that has dunham's in it yeah it's at that point that you that you see it that you see over and you see the whole it's pretty sweeping i'd like to preserve that whole thing because it takes your breath away and i i'm telling you that

based on how that viewshed model comes out, that 37 feet may be a non-issue. So at this point, I wouldn't, we don't have to, I just don't want to labor the discussion on it because based on what I'm seeing preliminarily, it's going to drop.

I really like, I'm really glad you threw that. But as I don't see that in the notes that it will be reduced and, you know, The other part, though, that I didn't see, because I was paying attention to the height, and I had the blinders on. The rear setback, where BC, so we have no RL between where BC hits the business corridor, hits Curtis Park, and some other neighborhoods are the same way. Our rear setback went from, well, it went from 40 foot to 20 foot. Now, we have a precedent for something like this. What I'd like to do is under the industrial, in the old 1600s, there's a note for N. And N says, in the industrial areas, this land commission may increase the rear yard requirements up to twice as minimum where the commission finds it necessary to protect the less intensive use We're planning on rearing the property. I'd like to see something like that.

Well, I actually added it in next to B under BC. We've got 20 feet, parens B. I put parens E, and E would be A. Let's say an industrial would come over to E. Right. So it would have that requirement.

Because, I mean, there's three people in the audience who would back up, too. Yeah, no, I get it.

And that would give the plan commission the opportunity to... And I'd like to see that almost being a shell.

I mean... Well, yeah. I mean, you know, I like a shell in there because there's no buffer, you know. And where it comes against RF and RN, those... RF and... I mean... Residential flexible. I'm getting that B and... Where the business neighborhood comes up against the RF, that's not a problem. It's always going on there. Where the business corridor comes up against residential, there's a lot of that, and I think we should stay.

Right. Part of that business corridor is Spring Street, and when they developed there, they made the decision to protect the viewshed, the street viewshed, and the buildings are set significantly back. Yeah. So will that be part of the view shed? How will that change? Well, let's look at the business corridor. Because business corridor on Mitchell Street is very different than business corridor coming down the hill. And I really wouldn't want those buildings. I like those setbacks, so we do have that view. So it's different than those setbacks on Spring. are different than the setbacks for the rest of the business corridor.

They're 40 feet now. If they went to 20, it would be a problem. So now they are 40 feet. And the new one is going to 20. And this may be committee business, but it's just something I like the committee.

Let's talk about that in committee, Cynthia, so I can modify the table. Because you're going to end up with two different front yard setbacks in the B.C. district, depending on what actual highway you're on. So I've got to modify it.

Well, I have a question about front setback in business neighborhoods, because we're standing 20 feet, but we have several conditions now where we have business neighborhoods character, you know, like the four corners. It's a zero. Yeah, we went from zero.

Some of these went from zero to 20.

We went from 40 to 20 is the right way to say it. Maybe there's some way to allow much less front yard setback in a business neighborhood. Let me take a look at a footnote F.

I think our other discussion on the committee was, do we keep business neighborhood?

Keep it. We could. We only have two small areas.

Yeah.

The four corners right now are in business corridor. Map from 416. Well, that was.

It says residential flex on mine. It's on the express.

Right. That is the fourth. Well, that's a whole other. So. We have to get into the map. Yeah. So we had, we had discussed that there, which the chicken and the egg, which one to do first. So we decided to do the dimensions and the uses, but then that will be going back to the whole big map and saying, now that we changed some of these. Yeah.

Okay. Do we want to talk about the map tonight?

Let's have closure on this. Let me get through this part. We've done well. Okay. Industrial? It's really much the same.

Right. Industrial basically means perspective, I think.

Okay, any comments about the classroom? Let's move on to follow crossing public. Any comments? Okay. Hospital District and Palace District, as John said, are pretty recent and thought through. So unless there's something glaring, I'm pretty comfortable with the advances. In that case, do you have any thing that we missed? Yeah, let's staple the math. Yes. So I now open it up for public comment on the article three, regulated uses and dimensions. And then, um, please, uh, This is an opportunity to comment on the Article 3. Please address the chair when speaking. State your name before you begin. Public comments are limited to three minutes per individual. And we'll listen, but at this point, we're not going to engage in discussion during public comments. So who would like to go first? Okay, I'll go.

us. I live at 1105 Preby Avenue here in Petoskey, and most of the points I had concerns about you've addressed, so thank you. I also had a busy weekend, as many of you probably did, but we had a momentous occasion of my firstborn grandson graduating high school. So I'm very excited. My thoughts are everywhere, but I wanted to be here tonight. I'm one of the many in the community that really respects the seven generations that came before me to set forth here for comfortable living for me. And I also reflect, especially as the grandson and other grandchildren, about the seven generations to come. So I really appreciate what you're doing here. I know it's been a momentous amount of work and grief, I'm sure, at times. And I'm sure you're anxious to get it on the road and voted on. These were my concerns before when I walked in the door so that I can just kind of let you know that I was giving a thought. And that was... I was concerned about the new map. We have the pale yellow, which is RS, and we're nestled up against that red BC on Spring Street. It's our neighborhood is backed up right here. And with that 40 foot setback now going to 20, that would really greatly impact. So I'm really appreciative that you're looking at that. We get the car horns and the lights from the apple tree and we get the garbage truck traffic and all of that. And I know you've heard that because we've been here before. to represent the sanctity of our neighborhood. And that's a big concern. We get the families that come in giggling and laughing, which is wonderful. We also get the drunken friends that come in later at night. And so we are really impacted by any buildings that are nestled up against us. With Planned Parenthood selling this week at what, 395,000? Now we know that we don't know what's gonna go in there. And with that 37 foot height, I was really concerned. And then again, pushing back that setback is going to push it onto the Lawrence neighbors there. And the bank at the end of Hillcrest has changed hands three times since I've lived there in six years. And if something would happen with that credit union and they would go more aware, that could also give an opportunity. It's the same size lot, I believe, as the apple tree. And so once again, that could impact us. So thank you so much for looking at that. I am concerned about the viewshed. I have to say every time I go out and come back over that hill, I'm home when I see that. And there's a comfort there. And I would like to see that kept. I was concerned about the height of the buildings, being raised to homes from 25 feet to 30, because to me, I was just seeing numbers and thinking about the five feet and being 20% more. But hearing what is really needed for an energy efficient home and for flow and all of that. I can understand now where that's coming from. So thank you. I just want to thank you again. I think in this time with national politics and all distrust with people and feeling that we're not heard, voters aren't heard. I really appreciate you giving us this forum and I really respect that you have a moral compass and you'll lead us in the right direction. Thank you for thinking those seven generations ahead. Thank you.

Congratulations.

Who would like to go next? I don't want to go after Rochelle because she's such a good public speaker.

I usually just wind up crying. I'm just, you know, but anyway, I kind of wrote down. Oh, I'm sorry. I live behind the B3 district, business district, and I've been dealing with this since the 80s when I bought my house. The person moved out because that hotel was going in there. which they didn't tell me. But back then, the planning commission in the early 90s, they purposely reduced the height restriction along the highway. It was four stories. They reduced it to two stories after the apple tree inn was constructed. The community and the commission had the foresight to see how a three-story building diminished the view, which you can all see if you come down that hill, that apple tree did take the view away. They heard us. when the neighborhood complained about our privacy, the noise, the light, and the trash issues. I really want to see this a priority now for you to think about that. You know, you're talking about protecting the view shed. Yes, that's very important. I think to the whole community. I mean, when you do your surveys, people say they want green space. They want views protected, you know, and When I'm seeing what's being built in some areas, although it's not Petoskey, but like the new built-in that's going in, you know, it's like right next to Cormac's there and it's just a huge, no setbacks. It's, I think it personally, it's ugly. You know, that's my personal opinion because there's no green space. You know, you need room. And I don't want a 23-story building 20 feet from my house. And, you know, it's just, so I'm just, you know, it sounds like you're kind of coming to that conclusion that it wouldn't be good in our area. And thank you all for what you're doing because just me writing this little thing took time. And I haven't even looked at everything about residential. And I wish more people would get involved because when this happens, they're going to, you know, they're going to complain. And, you know, I just wish more people would come and get involved. And I guess when it affects you, you're more likely to. But I don't think a lot of people know how this is going to affect them. So, thank you. Thank you.

Anybody else? My name is Dan Berkerke. I live at 1104 Preview Avenue. If you could speak up, I think your voice is a little bit of a challenge for the speaker. I believe it. First off, when I was coming to this meeting, I was expecting to be upset because of the past over and over and over again. We spoke so many times because we are behind the apple tree and I was quite upset. Like we have to go through this again. You know, we just, it's so upsetting, but I am, um, I feel good about how you seem to be taking our consideration, our viewpoint into consideration. I felt like before we had to scream and shout and, and just about be in tears to be heard, but I feel like it's starting to be heard. Um, close believe me um i also am really pleased that you guys are worried about the views the view shed i am too um that one down um down the highway there by the apple tree and is vital you know and and year after year it seems like we're fighting we're getting so many people to write in letters and yet it keeps coming up you know but i'm glad you're listening to now. If anybody wants to, I invite anybody here to come into our backyard so we can show you what a three-story building looks like at 40 feet. It's huge. It's so impactful. Unless you are there, come at night when it's nighttime and you see it just dominates the whole area. I think the residents have to be taken in consideration. these buildings can go to go 20 feet. It's just, it doesn't make any sense at all. It's cool. Um, you mentioned on Lawrence street, all the houses, you know, that's going to impact those houses on Hillcrest that could be turned into a building that is right next to a house. You know, they can go three stories and goes, well, possibly 20 feet. Um, and I, I believe that's very important. That needs to be looked at. Um, And also when they're that close to the houses, not only the privacy, but it seems like it's got to be somewhat of a fire hazard a little bit, you know, the 20 feet three-story building to houses nestled next to it. I think all that needs to be looked at too. But basically that's what I want to say. And I am pleased that I feel like our concerns are being looked at, and I do appreciate it, and I do appreciate every one of you. It's a lot of time and a lot of effort for this job, and you guys probably get way more negative than positive.

That's probably not fair. The pay more of it makes it work. Thank you.

All right, next. You want to go since the PB4 is here?

Dave McIntosh. I live on Morgan Street, which is right up in the same Curtis Park area. I border right along the Days Inn, the casino office building. So my property busts right up against that commercial bust. Same thing as people have been saying here, the issues with noise, everything. I don't want to reiterate it. You've heard it several times before. My big concern was, and I know this was a draft question, article, but there was some notation, I think, in the tables that probably be a little bit more specific, like the viewshed height restrictions because of the viewshed.

It's like footnote C, but that footnote C doesn't appear in that table anywhere.

It's just sitting there at the bottom. Same with footnote D, I think. It's just sitting there at the bottom of the table. But also the 40-foot sidebar. If you look at the BC restrictions, there's nothing that says... Well, it might be changing it back to 20 feet, but I think if you tie that restriction to properties that border residential areas, that would probably allow you to still get that setback on the business portion, except for those properties that go right along residential. That might be a way to look at it. We're trying to preserve the neighborhood and

Anything you can do to preserve our neighborhood, keep some of that stuff out.

I get people in my backyard, in addition to the deer. I get a lot of people in my backyard. I'm not doing things. I added somebody in there with a metal detector one day to my backyard. So anything we can do to preserve the neighborhood is really appreciative. And we do appreciate everything you guys are going through. And it is a tough job. So we thank you.

Thank you. Would you like to speak?

Yeah, go ahead.

You don't have to stand back.

My name is Carl Redder. I'm at 1108 Preview Avenue. Rochelle, I just wanted to thank you for the way you spoke for the group here. I thought you said it really nicely. And the rest of us are just. But I was thinking I was listening to that, not being familiar with meetings. Well, I am familiar with meetings, but listening to you talk in this meeting, And you listen to a grand plan, and then all of a sudden you start listening to different members talk about, well, this exception and that one and this one. And then it gets a little more difficult. And that's the way our corridor is. We're just one more exception. So as I'm listening to this, like you folks, I don't live behind the apple tree, but I know these people will. I do hear the car horns, and I'm thinking about now with the new development, you know, what goes in up the street there, if something else gets built up there. I think I can only say that when it comes to setbacks, I guess if something's going to give there, I'd rather have it built closer to the road than closer to my house. And That helps me. I don't know that it helps the city of Petoskey. Anyway, thanks for the work you're doing. Rochelle, you said it best. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Okay. Moving on.

I just made. Yeah. Yeah. So I've always, I've heard some of these discussions and people talk about business corridors and highways and, and we kind of have this highway coming into town, but you know, I'm from Grand Rapids. There's lots of highways and business corridors like 28th street that don't have homes right behind them. Right. So I think some people get messed up while it's a highway where you should allow this or that. And it's like, there's people who live right behind there. It's different. We're a small town. So that's the difference. I think quite different perspectives on the phone.

Any other comments? Okay. So we're going to table the four proposed zoning ordinance districts and map. Do we need to vote on that? And then a zoning ordinance update?

Well, committee's meeting tomorrow to go over definitions. Hopefully we can get through the definition section. Like I always tell everybody, if you need to serve time in purgatory, join the committee. Do your time now. But anyway, just to give you an update, the city council did approve the outdoor lighting ordinance. Yep. Planning commissioners were complimentary of the planning commission and the work that you did, so I wanted to pass that along. And they also, at Monday's meeting, they approved the rezoning for the church and the modification to the parking exempt district. So those were all favorable actions taken by the city council on the planning commission initiatives. I have sent to Dark Sky the signed copy of the ordinance from the mayor and the clerk. Of course, they've already reviewed it as an accredited ordinance. They're going to get back with me relative to marketing and what their press release is going to be. Because I still think that we are the first community in the country to have an accredited dark sky ordinance. So hats off to the planning commission on that one.

We talked at one point during a city council meeting about using them for the sign ordinance language for the lighting of signs, and you were going to look into that.

I have to open my phone and help them look through. Lisa mentioned it to me this afternoon. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to get that so we can be standardized.

Yep.

Okay. The lighting ordinance? What's that? Is that complaint driven? Yes. Okay. So with these people's issue with the lighting of the apple tree, once it's in place, they could call Shane or somebody and say, we have a Tony. Tony. Okay. The law, the code enforcement officer.

So maybe wait, but if you have issues with light, the light, the lighting ordinance is a city code, not a zoning code. So they call Tony.

It goes into effect tomorrow.

Okay, so it goes into factor retroactive.

Now you can bring your current concerns up to review.

Well, it's for about trespass of lighting.

Right. So if there's grandfathering in that clause, but if there's nuisance issues, they can be dealt with. So someone might have had a really bright light for a long time. That doesn't mean they get to keep it. If there's a significant light trespass. If it's a nuisance, then it can be handled.

It can be handled right away.

You don't have to wait. The only other thing I'll tell you is you've probably seen it, is the construction is still underway with Jimmy John's. They have put in the new curb and the new curb cut per the site plan where the curb cut is angled right out only. They closed off the the curb cut that's adjacent to the urgent care. So that's been closed off on one hand.

Oh.

Can I make a comment or a question? Are we making them treat the fence on their property against the Sheridan playground in any specific way? Same as urgent care. Same as urgent care.

Yeah, I don't even remember. We specified it in the defense. Same as, yeah. And they will meet. They also are meeting the dark sky regards.

So, all right. So at five and a half, so if it said, I would like to nominate Albert Moss to be the alternate or the zoning ordinance committee position. So when somebody is absent that he sits at the table. And I chose him because he comes to all our meetings. So he is absolutely able to just step up to the table and pitch a letter.

I only have one question with that, Mr. Chair, is I come as a citizen, so we don't have a quorum issue. If I'm an alternate and you have no quorum, will I be able to stay as a citizen or are we going to have an issue with the public meetings?

No, you're you're an alternate. You only get to sit at the table if one of the members is right.

So I can sit back there like I do? Yeah. I just wanted to make sure.

It's like the ZBA where they have an alternate.

Yeah, and one of the alternates has to attend.

I just came in and I need to be seconded.

Yeah, let's go through the process. So I nominated and I need a second. Second.

Okay.

I made the nomination. Bob makes the second. All in favor of appointing Albert Moss to this Org Committee for being the ultimate. Raise your hand. Oh, come on.

You got to vote. You got to vote.

All right. Everyone voted. All right. Commissioner comments.

I've got something.

Last year when I was in Ann Arbor on some trip, I happened to pick up a university record and they were talking about There was an article about six new Sea Grant research projects that were going to be undertaken. One of them was titled, Economic Trends in Coastal Communities, Assessing Blue Gentrification in Michigan's Coastal Communities. And then in the small print, blue gentrification poses a significant challenge for coastal communities. This emerging issue involves the displacement of long-term residents near water bodies due to physical and cultural changes. This project's aim of the Sea Granite Research Project is to assess the extent of blue gentrification between 2006 and 2020. Well, it's had a lot to happen since then. identify its driving forces and develop policies and strategies to address it. And so I've been talking to the principal investigator who is a professor in environment and sustainability at U of M. But unfortunately, when I talked to him the last time, he said that NOAA has cut the grant because it had a reference to, quote, environmental justice in the work. But then shortly after that, I got an email from a professor of geography at Central Michigan University, and I haven't found out yet how he's involved in this, but I'm going to actually be meeting with him tomorrow. I'm missing what the issue is.

Development of lakeside property. We met with Dr. with Matt. Oh, did you today? Oh, my God. Lisa Knight. Oh, all right. He he's working with. He's at CMU. He's working as part of the team.

That's that's about all I know about.

And in the what their study is. They're trying to figure out gentrification and postal communities primarily. by seasonal people that come up and are buying properties and displacing local population and what those policies are and what communities are doing to try to mitigate that concern. He indicates, he told Lisa and I that they hope to have the paper within maybe the next year after it goes through all their peer reviews. He said they got cut by Doge because they had environmental justice, so they cut half of the grant But that's to allow CMU to do something. I got the feeling from Matt that they were kind of committed to doing it, so they're kind of doing it on their own in a way.

So, John, the issue we're talking about is the displacement of year-round residents by seasonal, which is exactly what's going on.

That's what's going on. He wanted to know, like from us, Lisa and I, he wanted to know things like, what areas in the city we think that that could occur based on property values. You know, we pointed out some neighborhoods that we thought had the potential, but I think he was also, we talked to him in terms of, it's just that the seasonal people are part of the equation, but they're not all of the equation because what's happening is to the, To the benefit of the city, the city's done some really strategic investments in recreational facilities and open space, which really makes it an attractive community. And because it's an attractive community, people that want to live here that are not residents are willing to pay the extra dollars to come in and buy real estate in order to have their seasonal house here. So it's just not the proximity to the Bay. We try to explain to them it's a combination of a number of factors. You know, having a community that's invested in recreation infrastructure, a community that still has a very viable downtown, Uh, the proximity that basically it's walkable.

So it, it, it, it, well, it's been on there too. I mean, the hospitals, the hospitals here.

Yeah. But it's a series, it's a series of factors that make it attractive. It's just not because it, you know, it's close to the, but the other part that we talked about, he, he already had data. Is the fact that the gentrification is causing people that work here to live further out of town, which then has its own issues relative to different income groups are spending more on fuel and on transportation costs than they are on housing. And the fact that Emmett County doesn't have a public transit system compounds the problem. So, yeah, we talked for a good hour on a lot of these different interrelating factors. So, yeah, Rick, you're going to talk to him tomorrow. It was just a good conversation. But he's using... Petoskey, and he indicated Marquette, and I think Houghton, they're not using Bay Harbor. And they're using a couple of the Harbor Springs. Harbor Springs, I bet.

Well, Harbor Springs, it's already happened there. Yeah, there it's like, I mean, 45 years ago, I moved here, Harbor Springs actually had people that lived there.

Yeah, I know. And they're using a couple of communities further down the coast. But he said they have a, but Petoskey is one of the one of the case studies.

And he's here gathering data from the communities meeting with us, from the meeting with you as well, so that they can compare it to what they have plotted.

Yeah, they want to compare it to their model. Yeah, right.

So they're just verifying. He was very surprised to hear about co-living space being allowed in the lower level. John had mentioned that to him and He's like, I wouldn't have thought of that sort of thing being here.

Well, you know, and the other part, when you really take a look, you take a look at what's going on. The city council has, I think, done a pretty good job in terms of public policy to try to make sure that all income groups are represented here in the community, not just a certain demographic. So he said, well, how, you know, we explained to him the locks at lumber square. is AMI adjusted, that we use the Michigan brownfield on the Maple Block. And that's got some of those are reserved for AMI adjusted. You know, we got a couple other projects that were, then we talked about co-living, which he wasn't familiar with. But I said, you know, the city has really done, the council's done a pretty good job of making sure that all segments of the population are well represented here because a diversity community with income is a richer community, conceptually. So, yeah, I'm glad to hear that. So, I mean, you know, there were some things that we talked about in terms of just overall broad strategies. But, yeah, it's pretty interesting what they're doing. Okay. Any other commissioners or comments?

I just want to thank the public for coming. I mean, they're my neighbors. They contacted me. Believe it or not, I didn't contact them. But when I look at these maps, this is a flat two-dimensional map. Then you get more information if you look at a grid map that shows elevation. And then you get more if you look at a map that satellite and shows houses and stuff. There's a fourth part of these maps that we always need to be aware of. And that's the citizens that live in those houses. That's how I go with everything I do on this committee. And sometimes you hear me sing the same song over and over. And it's certainly my opinion. And in my opinion, your opinion, certainly a lot of yours, I'm certain about mine. But that's what, you know, and we need people to come. I just hate it when we, you know, we had nobody at the church. We changed the church. And we had only the people that, we had one or two people, but no neighbors, nobody that lived in that area. And so I wish we had ways to get people to do it. I don't know why. I don't know the solution. It's a challenge. It's a challenge. But that's what I really appreciate.

John, any updates? Okay. This meeting is adjourned at 8 o'clock.