Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay.

Okay. I call the Planning Commission meeting Wednesday, June 17, 2026 in the City Hall Community Room to order. Roll call. Detmer.

Present. Free. Here. Cromberg. Here. Meridian. Here. Newman. Here. Paul. Here. Robson. Present.

Smith.

Here.

Okay. Approval of minutes.

I have a question on page four at the bottom. Chairperson Roblin stated that he asked if dark sky had lighting regulations as well. Did you mean sign lighting? Yeah, I've got that.

So it's that sign lighting regulations.

Yeah.

Thanks. Otherwise they make a motion to approve the minutes with that card.

Okay. That makes the motion. Do I have a second? Second. Rich makes the second. all in favor of approving the minutes? Aye. Everybody raised their hand. The minutes have been 10. All right. I would like to amend the agenda for item number seven, zoning ordinance update. The viewshed analysis, I'd like to move that to right after number four because we have somebody that's going to be joining us on Zoom to explain everything and That's more convenient for him. So I'd like to make an amendment. I need a motion to add for a second. Did you make a motion?

Seconded.

Rob made the motion. Reg seconded. All in favor of moving the agenda item? All hands are raised. That's viewed. All right. Approval of minutes. We already did that. Public comment. This is an opportunity for the public comment on items not on the meeting agenda. This is not .

This is something that just came up on 11th and Lake Preview Avenue. The new construction or the new apartment complex on the corner of Fulton and Hammond. I'm just asking for help. Maybe we could get sooner than later parking lines on that street, what's happening is they're parking all the way up to the stop sign. So when you come to that intersection, it's become a dangerous intersection and you can't see the oncoming traffic. So when you're coming from Fulton, entering onto Emmett, that's where you're going to find them parked, right to the stop sign. Okay. We'll make a note of that. Thank you.

All right. Anybody on, oh, any comments on mine?

No.

All right. I see Dan Powers already here. So new business, case number PD1-26-725, Harvard Drive, Watch Drive, manager PUD amendment.

John? Last year, 2024, Harvard View Condominium Association submitted plans to put in four additional units in the same building. which was approved by the Planning Commission. However, the time to implement the project expired and based on the current zoning ordinance, the case needs to come back before reconsideration to the Planning Commission. In the proposed plans, this time they've scaled back from four to three units, numbers 30, 31, and 32. 30 and 31 are located on the east side of the building. There's a drawing in the packet with my memo. It shows their location. Unit number 32 is located on the south side of the building adjacent to the lounge. The three units will require five additional parking spaces, which they have enough on site. The current 43 plus the five is 49. They have enough on site, not including the garage parking that they also have on the property. It's a pretty straight review. I've got two motions, one to approve, one to approve with convictions. So that's kind of the summary. They've decreased the number of units before three. They made all the parking requirements. It's the conversion inside of the existing building on the first floor. So there's no increase in the footprint of the building as well.

So Rick, I just have a site design question. It looks like in the northwest corner of the building. They're redoing the sidewalk or adding a new sidewalk that comes from that upper garage level down to the floor of the building in question. Is that what it leads to? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that upper floor parking. Oh, I see. Because that parking is counted as part of what is needed. Yes. Okay. Okay, that's great. It wasn't there before. Is that right here? Yeah. Okay. I was a little confused with that because it's dated 2015.

The site plan?

It hasn't changed. They just added the site. Oh, I guess I never realized that from the last time. Yeah, they haven't changed anything on site at all. Okay.

So that existed, but they just didn't put it in?

Yeah.

All right. John, I have a question. So this unit number 32, No. That's the one in the center block, right? Correct. So that has two beds and a bathroom, and that's all it has. It's a studio. It must be just using the lounge area?

Yeah.

Okay. That's okay?

Yeah, that's fine.

So it didn't look like these units have a door into the interior of the building. Looks like they just have exterior. Well, the number 32 does. But I couldn't find one for. Oh, but that's outdoors. It's not to the interior of the building. Do you see access to the interior of the building? No. Yeah. There will be one. Oh, wait, here's a door down. Okay. There's a door here. They had one, but anyway. Okay. That's good.

I thought it was included. So, John, there's a common lounge on that floor, and then there's an efficiency apartment stuck on the end of the lounge at 32, is that? Yeah, that's it.

Well, it's a separate space. Right. Yeah. I mean, the way it's depicted here, it looks kind of like a motel room, but if it's a living space, I would assume there wouldn't be two queen beds.

Just a question was, if it's a common lounge, the person in 32 is using it for part of their living space.

Not necessarily.

I mean, well, they don't have, all they have is a bathroom and two beds.

Two chairs. That's what I'm saying. Efficiency, yeah, it likely wouldn't have two queen beds in it, even though that's how it's called a street. Right. And there would normally be some kitchen or kitchenette in there. There's a kitchen.

Or is it sinkage?

There's a kitchenette. Okay. It's very tiny, so it's hard to see. Okay. Nice. Great. All right. Any more discussion?

Can that be used as a, yeah, Airbnb. Do they have a permit for that? No. Yeah. Okay.

Rick.

Hi. And we're looking to approve the addition of the three times it is many units numbers 33132. The Harvard watch bill is kind of names based on plan 81.4. Dated 526. Yes, so I did 112.

Second, I recommend the motion Carolyn seconded local vote.

Newman.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

All right. Yes. Yes.

Hey, Dan, can you hear us?

Yes. Can you hear me?

All right. I want to introduce, this is Dan Power. He's a associate in the firm out of Ann Arbor. He's a landscape architect, a planner, and a GIS specialist. Dan's been working on the view shed analysis, which has been provided to the zoning committee for review. But I wanted Dan to share with you and the audience some his viewshed analysis to date and then ask questions because we're not quite finished with it yet. And he has some questions and you may have some questions of him, but I thought maybe this would be an opportunity to interact together. So Dan, why don't you go ahead, kind of give everybody a 15 minute, 10, 15 minute snapshot of the work that you've done and then we can get into some discussion.

Yeah, absolutely. That sounds great. Good evening, Petoskey Planning Commissioners. Thank you for allowing me to attend tonight virtually. It's good to be with you remotely here. And I guess I would like to be able to jump right into the presentation and give you a little bit of background. My aim for this presentation is just to walk you through the thought process and kind of the evolution of the data that we've been studying for an analysis of impacts on different maximum height allowances in different zoning districts in the city of Petoskey. Most recently focusing, of course, on the US 131 corridor or Spring Street and looking at the impact of views of both Little Traverse Bay as well as the view to and from the spire of the church that has been in focus. So the first thing I'd like to just give you a background on, I'm going to kind of walk you through The analysis I've done. It's going to be kind of a scrolling presentation and I'll try to go over some summary items as best I can. But I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the concept of view sheds or really GIS in depth. at all, but I'll try to kind of break down these concepts. This is kind of a work in progress and something that you can use many tools in GIS to analyze different things and kind of build your analysis in different ways. But basically what we're looking at here is that we created a study area for the area around the city of Petoskey. Looking at data from the US Geological Service regarding the existing elevations on the ground, which importantly do not include tree cover or tree canopy, but they do give a good representation of the ground elevations. The USGS makes publicly available what are called digital elevation models with the resolution interpolating points about every 10 meters on the ground. And that's not the most finite data you can get. If you've got a survey, you could get a lot more detail. But this is good representative data for the overall topography of Petoskey. We also have building data. footprint data from Bing Maps. They've created a global building footprint layer as of 2020. So there may be some new buildings that we're missing between 2020 and today. But generally what we can do with those building footprints is to kind of average out the elevations of the individual buildings, kind of drop them on top of the USGS's data and then create what's called a digital surface model we can use to kind of play with and look at different scenarios. So just to kind of go through this this step by step to show you how this was built. We first wanted to kind of isolate our analysis to the city of Petoskey, kind of a shape that encompasses a frame extending from the east to the west boundary of the city and then out into the sizable portion of Little Traverse Bay, basically what you can see to Harbor Springs and then a little bit to, I believe it's West Traverse Township to the west. And That's kind of the canvas upon which we're able to look at some elevation data. When we first were reviewing this topic, And actually, I apologize. I realize you may not be looking. Are you looking at the screen that says vantage point number one right now? It's a little hard for me to tell. Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. So the first vantage point, and this is kind of a gateway into Petoskey, as you're probably well aware, where Anderson Road meets US 131. It's kind of a high point. You have the vista over the commercial area to the east, and you can see a lot of the bay from that point. So that was one of the first things we looked at is analyzing impacts on different building heights from that point. And then a little bit further down at the intersection with Morgan Street. We also wanted to see, in addition to seeing what you could see from those points, and in some regards, what can see those points from out in the bay or out in different portions of the city, we also wanted to do the same kind of analysis with respect to the church spire of the church here. So this is a 170-foot-tall spire at St. Anthony's Church. I'm sorry, St. Francis Church. Excuse me. And that's an important kind of focal point for the city. So we wanted to see what the impact would be of changing building heights related to that.

Yes. Can you go to the middle map that has the green and the reds?

Yes.

Can you explain what the colors are to the audience?

Yes, certainly. This is a gradient of one of the common types of elevation symbologies or color schemes that you use to depict elevation. You might be familiar with this type of color scheme if you look at really dramatic images. terrain maps of the Himalayas or the Rockies. But just to illustrate the point of the different topography here in Petoskey, I used kind of the full scale of those different colors. So I know it's not really snow-capped peaks, especially this time of year, but these white areas are going to be your high points. The green and the blue going down into Bear River are somewhat logically the low points. So you kind of go from the green to the orange to the red to the white. That's going from low to high on this map. So the church player sits in a relative low position, a little bit east of downtown. And we want to see what the impacts are of changing building heights downtown and what those do to be able to see the spire from higher up in the community, if that makes sense. So the specific elevation here where that church foundation hits the ground is about 676. Then the top of the spire is about 846 above sea level. I think I went through some of this information, but to drill down a little bit more, We took that building data that I mentioned earlier. Bing Maps has really global data for building footprints as of 2020. And within the city of Petoskey, there were 2,724 footprints of other buildings or structures that I was able to obtain. And then using a basic level of assessing data, we can determine which ones of those are CLASSIFIED AS RESIDENTIAL AND WHICH ARE CLASSIFIED AS COMMERCIAL. AND JUST FOR PURPOSES OF KIND OF SETTING A BASELINE AND LOOKING AT CURRENT CONDITIONS WHEN WE'RE EVALUATING DIFFERENT VIEW SHED RELATIONSHIPS, THE RESIDENTIAL PARCELS ARE GOING TO BE THE ONES THAT THEY'RE ASSIGNED A UNIFORM HEIGHT OF 20 FEET WITH NON-RESIDENTIAL PARCELS ACCORDING TO ASSESSING DATA BEING 25. And so that kind of sets the baseline. As I mentioned, we don't have any trees in the baseline. That would be a lot more of a complicated analysis at this point. But you can kind of imagine that in some regards, the tree canopy cover is less of an important factor in the wintertime. And we can kind of look at this as a blank canvas without the trees being considered. in that regard. So just recapping the vantage points we first looked at up here near the southern border of Petoskey at Anderson Road and then here near Morgan Street and then St. Francis Church Spire.

Hey, Dan, we have a question.

Ted, you got a question?

Yes.

All right, quick question. You said residential was assigned 25 feet. What was commercial?

Residential as a baseline was 20 and then commercial was 25. Commercial was 25.

Yeah.

Thank you. Yep, you're welcome. So here's where we get into kind of the fun part of analyzing build-out scenario. One thing we wanted to do is first look at all of the parcels in the city of Petoskey and kind of drill down into what the future build out could look like. So on the one hand, we have these existing building footprints. We have a proposed zoning map that's part of the proposed zoning ordinance update that you all have been working with John on. And those building footprints will conceptually grow to the height that is being specified in the zoning ordinance you're working on. There are additionally vacant parcels that we can imagine could build out with a predefined setback, you know, within say 10 or 20 feet off the parcel boundary. We use 10 feet for purposes of this analysis. And within that dataset, excluding the parcels that are publicly owned, you know, your parks, public or exempt parcels. And within that, we were able to determine some additional building footprints that could be created. And so with that additional pool of building data, and then building on top of the buildings that already exist, we were able to create a scenario that involved increased building heights with which we could evaluate the proposed change in relation to what is existing today. And in this first round of analysis, we looked at just purely looking at the build-out according to the proposed zoning district. So in your your B series districts, which are the business districts. You range from 30 feet in the business neighborhood district to 45 feet downtown. And then you have the other zoning districts. And I won't belabor the point of what all the details are on those, but basically we're able to use those heights to assign new values to the buildings, which again, drape on top of this elevation data. And you can see here how that kind of looks coded as as building footprints on this image here, just to provide a sense of what's being analyzed. And then using that combined surface model, we can then look at these view sheds. And there's a lot of text here, but I wanna say that the takeaway is that, I guess the good news is that from Both vantage points, there's certainly an impact on the full build out, as you can imagine, there's going to be an impact on a reduced visibility from different parts of the community. And you can kind of use this tool here, which I'm sure could be shared, at least when everything's finalized, to see kind of a scrolling view of What is observable from that Anderson road point with current conditions. And then if you zoom out it actually it's it's a little hard to see here but if you zoom out you'll see the bay start to emerge. In that scenario, and then you move into the build out conditions, you know, you can start to see there's a little bit less of the bay that's visible. But certainly the bay is still widely visible from that vantage point again is assuming no tree cover and some other things that can be picked up in the in the model, but that's the first thing we looked at. There is a reduction in the viewable area within our study area. There was about 7.2 square miles within that kind of rectangular study area I showed before. It drops down to about 4.7 square miles, but you still see, if you really zoom in, you can see that The spire of St. Francis Church is still visible from that point, as is a good portion of the bay with that full build-out scenario. This is kind of a punchline here in bold that there is a 35% reduction or 34.96% reduction, but you can still see those vital features that are part of the community's identity and aesthetic.

Can you scroll back to the map that's got the yellow and the orange? Yes. Are you able to blow that up a little bit?

Yep. Yeah, I'll pop this out. And this is one way of looking at it.

Explain to us what the yellows and the orange means on the map.

Yeah, so in the yellow, based on those current building footprints and current assumptions, again, residential being 20 feet tall, non-residential being 25 feet tall, the yellow represents what you can see today. from Anderson Road and US 131. And you can see out in the bay, you don't have to look too far into the bay to see some water. You've been overlooking downtown. If you zoom in here, it's a very small point because it's just a little, the spire was just put onto this model as just a small, point feature, but you can see the yellow shows that you can see the spire. Now the orange is when you have the full build out of all the buildings in the community plus those conceptual building footprints maxed out at their heights that are maximum allowable under the proposed zoning ordinance. Again, I'm going to show you that future scenario. The future is kind of moving from the right slider over to the left slider. The spire is still visible. When you zoom out, and I'll try to show this, I'll try to put a fine point on this in the bay where you can see where the change occurs. But if you look up where my cursor is, in current scenario, you don't have to look too far into the bay. In the proposed future zoning, you have to look a little bit farther out. So there is a reduction in what you can see there because you can imagine that from this point, You're out here looking over all these buildings that are now you know in the downtown area 45 feet tall building footprints that are 45 feet tall. It's going to, it's going to chip away at what you can see and how far you can see But it's it's still there is still a view in that scenario of the bay. That kind of makes sense. Okay. Um, And I know we'll eventually focus on US 131, so I'll try to get back to that part of the analysis sooner than later. I think there's a similar couple of slides here that pertain to the second vantage point, which is that point by Morgan Street, a similar concept you can actually see The terrain kind of levels out at that point. You can hit this plateau as you drop down the hill of Spring Street. And so there's actually a pretty dramatic change there. Same factors are at play here. You still have the full build-out of the zoning ordinance related to the current conditions. And when you're at the Morgan Street intersection, I believe there's a hotel there. Colleges, I don't know all the businesses. But you're down the street here, and at this point, you're seeing a little bit less. When you're right in the vicinity, not much difference. But even there, you can see the buildings are starting to – get a little bit taller and you see a little bit less around them. And so the viewshed does change a little bit more dramatically at Morgan Street. Importantly, you cannot see the spire at that location in either scenario because of the way you're now kind of entering into the road grade being overshadowed by the adjacent shops to the east. So you really can't see the spire in either scenario in this case. compared with when you're uphill at Anderson Street. But out in the Bay, you can see that there's that difference where what you could see today relative to what you can see when you build out. It's a little bit less. So again, just another, I'm sorry, this is my homepage of my browser once in a second, but... We can move down now to, there's a substantial reduction, but the view of Little Traverse Bay is maintained. I'll speak really briefly on the St. Francis Church spire, but I don't want to dwell on this point. As you can imagine, St. Francis Church is not too far from downtown and it's not too far from where some of those relatively dramatic build-outs would occur in the zoning ordinance update. And so there is a change In the visibility, if you were, for example, standing on top of the spire, what you could see from that point or another way to look at that is where you can see the top of the spire from out in the community. It reduces a little bit. So there's some statistics on that in this study, but it does not reduce a lot. But here's where we really wanted to get down to specifics about where having a reduced building height could benefit the visibility in the zoning ordinance. This is specifically along the US 131 corridor. We want to look at some different points where we study the impact of having 35 foot tall buildings versus 25 feet tall. There's a lot of text here, but I think the maps can kind of paint the picture for you. Same concept here, except that in addition to toggling the build out scenario by the zoning district. We also have kind of what you might consider an overlay on this stretch of US 131 where the black line is thick. And this is on the left side of the screen, the current scenario. And then on the right side of the screen is the, or I'm sorry, not the current scenario, but the 25 foot tall building limit scenario. And on the right side is the 35 foot tall building limit scenario. And from different points, there are different impacts. You zoom out, these are set up so that you can compare them side by side. You can see that from Anderson Street, again, a change in those buildings would slice down the portion of Little Traverse Bay that you can see. Moving further down the corridor, that's a consistent pattern. It's more dramatic in different locations. You can see kind of this point at Sheridan Street where You see that there must be a building kind of in the way, kind of in the east side of your visual plane where it runs up to a point there in the bay where my cursor is. And then over here, when it's 35 feet tall, that's even more chipped away. And similar concept is seen in all these locations. But the theme is consistent that up until you get to the US 31 and Charlevoix Avenue intersection or roughly US 31, US 131, The theme is that the view diminishes, but does not get eliminated altogether until you get to that point at the bottom of the hill by the intersection of US 31, US 131. And then there was really a tiny view that you could see before. And now, essentially, there's no view of the bay. So that's really right. If you look in Street Viewer, I'm sure many of you drive that intersection. A pretty developed building footprint around there. There's not much you can see very far. You're kind of in a bowl of topography. So it kind of makes sense that you're not seeing too far into the bay from that point. You have the hospital there and some other features. So technically, there would be a benefit, a very tiny benefit from eliminating or reducing the building height from 35 to 25 in that location. So that was as much of the formal analysis that we had really prepared today, but I did start to play with some other scenarios involving, I think the ideal thing we wanna find out is really from everywhere in the community, if we toggle those buildings between 35 and 25 feet, where do we see the difference being made? One of the limits of this type of analysis is what you really want to do is show who can see the bay, any point in the bay, which is a giant geographic canvas from any point in the city of Petoskey. And one of the limiting factors there is with this kind of GIS analysis, you have to base that off of kind of seeing from a specific point or seeing to a specific point. To analyze the entire bay would be a little bit limiting. So what we can do instead, or what we've done so far is take specific vantage points, look at what's kind of in the way of the visual field from those vantage points and look at specific impacts. And I had a very... preliminarily completed analysis of some other portions of kind of setback from Spring Street or US 131 that I can just touch on briefly that shows what those look like in different locations. And I'll share that just briefly, but that's kind of nearing the end of... what I'd be presenting here. So let me just pull that up and we can refine this a little bit further. I believe it's going to be this screen. So, you know, this is a little bit of a different view, but what we can do is look at block by block and see when you have, say, from Conable Avenue, I'm sorry if I am butchering the pronunciation of that street, but from different points, maybe a house, or I believe there's an apartment complex across the Bear River here, There are kind of relative high points. If you want to look kind of block by block and see the impacts from different points, we can certainly look at that more closely and determine if specific blocks reducing the heights of buildings would make a discernible impact. And some of this was done on the GIS program, but something that we're still kind of developing. um to see where those impacts would be most um most felt and one other idea may be to see if there's an interest in looking at specific landmarks like harbor springs lighthouse or harbor point lighthouse to see kind of where that lighthouse is visible in the city of petoskey from the perspective of a driver sitting in a car at four and a half feet tall a pedestrian walking at roughly five and a half feet tall, maybe somebody on the second story of a building 14 feet tall. That's the kind of thing we can easily look at as we toggle these building sites to get a better sense of where those impacts would be felt. So I certainly want to start the conversation and I can dive into any part of that corridor that I did an overview on. I know I said I'll limit it to 15 minutes. I know I've gone over at this point. So I'm happy to take any questions or take your direction on what you'd like to talk about further.

And it's John, based on your analysis of the 131 corridor, looking at the 25 feet versus 35 feet, what's the reduction in viewshed?

The reduction in viewshed for all points is not something that I've yet done a percentage reduction on, but on a block-by-block basis, from giving a first blush look at this, In the area, there's certain areas that are more prominent impacts than others. So in the kind of the middle section from Porter Street to Morgan Street, there is a pretty sizable difference when you take those buildings down from 35 to 25. Elsewhere, it's still, if you're behind that corridor, whether it's 25-foot buildings or 35-foot buildings, there's really no major impact because your visibility is pretty significantly limited in any event. And up near the top of the hill from basically Hillcrest up to Anderson Street, those are pretty minor impacts. I do not currently have percentage reductions for those like I did for the kind of current condition to zoning build out condition analysis, but I can certainly provide that as a follow up.

Now, the interactive maps that you're doing, we can provide the link publicly.

Yeah. Yep. There's certainly the ability to do that. And I have some just some background information on those maps that can help explain some of the limitations. There's always limitations with data like this. I think some of the major limitations that you have to keep in mind are that, you know, A, in the thick of summer when the tree canopies are full, that's data that we're not really seeing in this analysis because it does not factor. The USGS data and our building data doesn't factor tree cover. And the other thing is just the granularity of that base surface model. It's not the same level of detail or quality necessarily that you get in a full survey of in the city of Petoskey, but it's a pretty good representation. So there's some of that information on these links just to help the public navigate if there's different ideas or concerns they have about maybe something they see on the map not quite matching what they see in the field. Yes, we can certainly share that information. I can also formalize the kind of block-by-block analysis I did, and I can also provide a percentage reduction analysis for the 25 feet to 35 feet.

Any questions from the Planning Commission?

Ted? Thanks. That was a great presentation. I now understand these models more. I just want to be crystal clear on your modeling of the basic scenario versus the build-out. And again, did you say the basic scenario was taking those footprints, putting in your GIS points, and then putting a residential at 20, a commercial at 25 feet? And did you also add... Buildings that weren't there. Did you build out the current to a full build out, not actual?

Yes. I think there's a number here somewhere. I will find it. There ended up being an additional 118 conceptual building sites that were not, you know, parks or relegated to exempt status that were unbuildable. And also that were not exceptionally small parcels. So anything that you could get a building in a 10-foot setback from all property lines that was not built, designated as exempt or a park or something of that nature. I went ahead and popped those up to the full height that's allowable under the proposed zoning ordinance. We ended up with 118 of those such sites analysis.

One question with that would be that the base scenario was not the actual buildings nor their actual size. It was more buildings with hypothetical sizes.

Oh, excuse me. The maximum build-out scenario had those additional conceptual buildings in them. The base scenario had everything up until 2020. So it did have conceptual heights. It was kind of an averaging or an estimate of an average height, but it did not build out those sites to a conceptual envelope. It was just those building footprints up to either 20 or 25 feet.

It did not build out those sites. That's a key point.

Correct. The base scenario did not.

So the biggest assumption was we didn't have actual buildings. We had to put in numbers for residential and commercial. That's right.

That's a very good point. Yeah, that is a big assumption. Yep.

Then the full build-out, that's where you added the buildings and you put in the heights in our new proposed zoning ordinance?

Correct.

But you put everything along the corridor at 35 feet too, right? I think you said.

Yeah, that was in kind of the step two of the analysis. Step one, the first couple of images I showed, that was – the buildings along that corridor were built out to their full height, irrespective of being in a 35 foot or 25 foot overlay. So if they were in that corridor, but say they were zoned BC or in the proposed BC zoning, I believe that's currently a 37 foot maximum height. So it was further down in the analysis, I think the third set of images, that's when I started to use the 35 foot cap on all the ones on US 131.

I just wanted to comment. I don't know how you chose the vantage points. Vantage point number one at Anderson Road, I was just out there today, is not a great view of the bay. You actually saw it earlier in the township when you were coming over the top of the hill some day. Then as you got to Anderson, you were high but flattening out a bit. It wasn't as good. Then you started going down the hill again. And the other vantage point, at Morgan was again a flatter area, and to me it was much, you could see some bay for sure, but it was much more profound as I was to Hillcrest. I started to go down, then everything really blew and opened up. So it is kind of this dynamic, different points are quite a bit different. going down that hill, obviously, you know that.

Yes, yes, that's true. That's consistent with what I found.

I would just say that some of the points might have been more interesting to me, especially that hill-crust spot, but that would be further work.

I think it would give us a much more accurate idea of what we're losing.

From Sheridan or something?

Then I have a general question. So have you done a viewshed overlay for a city using this model and what we're currently doing? Has someone implemented this kind of thing?

With a specific city, I have not done this model. What I've done some work with is coastal views and kind of corridor-based, using the same type of analysis with points along a corridor of a view, just in a general location in a countywide planning effort. And actually, I take that back. I have done this work, but more on an academic basis for a study that was done in the city of Detroit with skyline views. It's almost the opposite impact, looking at where you can see the skyscrapers from a low point rather than a bay from a high point. But for other client communities, we have not done this exact model.

I just wondered if we did this kind of model and we're happy and used it, it seems like we'd be using it to determine building heights potentially down the corridor and other places within this view shed. So once there was a proposal before us, then we'd have to get information. Would that be all available to us already or would we be paying you or someone to build or show us that scenario?

Yeah, I think this, I guess I might defer to John on some of that as well.

You got the basic model.

From a few points.

Yeah, so he's got the basic digital elevation model, the DEM. Yes. Let's say a year or two down the road, you have a project somewhere else in town and you want to kind of do a viewshed analysis. We just give Dan the point and then he can run the analysis based on the model.

And he has the base materials there. Base materials. Right. And then he'd have to decide what vantage points he'd want to view that building.

The Planning Commission would or the applicant has. Now, Madam Chair, while we're talking about this, do you want to open it up to the residents to see if they have any questions for Dan? Okay. So, does the public have questions for Dan?

Do I have to announce my name? Yeah. And talk loudly.

No, that's hard, but the microphone's up there. My name is Dan Verkerke. I live at 1104 Preeby. Did you say that the buildings were based on a 10-foot setback from the rear?

The conceptual, so there were 118 parcels that are not currently developed that are assessed for use that could be developed. So they're not parks and they're not public property that are wide enough to accommodate or large enough to accommodate a building with a 10-foot setback from all property lines. So yes, that was a 10-foot conceptual setback. And I realize that that's quite a significant build-out. You're not going to have too many sites, if any, that have, except maybe in the downtown district, that have that type of a full build-out of a specific parcel. But that was just for conceptual and analysis purposes to see what it would look like if that specific parcel got really built out and built up. But yes, that is a 10-foot.

The farther back towards the back lots, wouldn't that give you more of a view? Because I think by the houses, it's not going to be 10 feet. It's going to be closer to the road. I believe, is it 20 feet? 40. 40 right now.

Yeah, and that 40 is referring to the current, are you saying that that's the current setback for commercial buildings that you're aware of? Yes. Yeah, that's a good point. Yep, and that's one of the assumptions is to kind of be overly cautious or conservative about assuming that these sites are going to be really built out. But we could get a finer tooth comb on that and use really district by district proposed setbacks, which I think would make that a more refined model. I think that's a good idea. That would not be hard to update in this model. And I think I heard, if I understand you correctly, from a vantage point, maybe up the hill, if you have the building pushed up to the front of the property, it's going to have more of an impact on the viewshed than if it's pushed to the back of the property.

Yeah, that's... 35 and 25 feet could make a big difference. That might make a bigger difference than what you're saying now.

Yes.

Compared to a 10-foot setback. 10 foot would be more conservative.

Yeah, 40 would make it better, yep.

What's that back there you're looking at? Off the highway or off the property behind it? Front or back?

Currently, those 118 conceptual parcels, it's all based on 10 feet from all property lines. So that's a very loose setback standard. Yes, I'm trying to find the right words, but that is a pretty built-out scenario and probably a lot more stringent than several of the zoning districts, if not all of the zoning districts that are proposed.

All right. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah, and talk loudly. Okay, I'm Paul Morgan. I live on Morgan Street. And in putting this together, what was an acceptable loss of view from the planning standpoint? Well, we haven't made any value judgments yet.

I'm Rochelle Martinez, 1105 PB, and I had a couple of questions. One is myself, I'd really like to see the viewpoint for this analysis from Sheridan Hillcrest area, because that's a different view than up on Anderson, as Mr. Paul pointed out. And I read some of the planning packet and it mentioned, we had talked about that we really wanted the buildings along the corridor, which is our neighborhood, to be limited to what they are now, which is the 25 foot. And I think the language in the packet says it may, and we'd really like that to read, it shall be. So that's just something to keep in mind. I also saw a page go by, that you had, it said 62%. And what was that 62%?

Yes, I will find that. I'll let you know momentarily.

Thank you. There were lots of new or certain scenarios that he had developed. Point number two.

Yes.

Point number two.

Here. yep if you don't mind i can just quickly pop that up on the screen um that would be from the morgan street intersection um and that i think is consistent with uh what the gentleman said um a minute ago uh regarding the kind of the the flaring out of the view at that location um as you come down over the hill uh and it's actually you could see more um This resonates with your comments about Anderson Street being a little limiting. But from this location at Morgan Street, when you're there in the current scenario, this estimates you can see about 9.3 square miles. And then if you build out fully, you get down to about 3.5 square miles. So that's 62%. is that reduction if you were to go and keep in mind these first few maps are assuming that everything is built out to their full zoning potential under the proposed zoning districts, which can be up to 37, 45 feet, not the 35 feet. So that can certainly be refined to reflect the 35 feet, but A LONG WAY OF SAYING THAT SPECIFIC PERCENTAGE IS JUST ON THE INTERSECTION OF MORGAN STREET WHAT YOU LOSE WHEN YOU BUILD OUT TO THE FULL ZONING DISTRICTS.

62 IS PRETTY HIGH. AND THANK YOU, MR. VERKERKE, FOR POINTING OUT ABOUT THE SETBACK. BECAUSE AS WE PUSH THE BUILDINGS BACK, THAT VIEW DOES BECOME able to be able to see, of course, down the road, but it pushes it into the neighborhoods. Our current setback is 40 feet, which we still have a lot of problems with car honking and the traffic and the garbage trucks at 40 feet setback. So we're hoping that that's not pushed back to the 20 that's in the proposal. So thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay. Albert has his hand raised.

Oh, yes, absolutely. All right, Albert.

I just unmuted myself. Can you hear me okay?

Yes, yes.

Okay. Excellent analysis. I would like to, if you could, that same frame you had up a minute ago from Morgan Street, I believe. Can you expand that so you can see all the way across the bay? Yes.

Yes, I can. One moment. And I'll get this in the large view here. As I was doing this analysis, I realized the side-by-side view that I had a little bit further down might be a little bit more helpful. Well, either one. But yeah, this is.

That's the view we have today, right? Correct? That would be pretty close to the view we have today. Then if we go the other way, you can see the view, you know, I like seeing the full bay because that's really, we see all the way across the bay. So we would lose a lot if we, if we especially went to the 37 foot or 35 foot height anywhere in there. So I don't know what, where the recommendations will come out, but I'd like to recommend that the planning commission consider having that view shed at 25 feet in those areas, all the way from Anderson road down to the probably Charlevoix or at least Spring and Porter area because that, what the yellow, go back to the yellow, please. Showing the whole yellow. That is our golden goose. That's why people come to Petoskey. And to do anything to take that away is something we shouldn't do, in my opinion. So again, that's going to be up to the full Planning Commission to make a recommendation as it comes forward. But I'd really like to see the corridor in that area maintained. I believe your notes say something like, although a significant reduction in viewshed would happen, a portion of the viewshed would be salvaged. I don't want the viewshed salvaged. I want it maintained. So that's where I come from, and I think that's where... And I've been... I live on Hillcrest. Right now I have a peak of the bay because the trees are up. So I know the bay and I know people think it's just our neighborhood, but this is what brings people to Petoskey. And so I really like to see as the commission looks at this, as a full commission, as the zoning committee looks at this, that they really consider the 25 foot. I mean, this proves that we, in my mind, that if we want to maintain our golden goose, the egg that the golden goose lays, which is the view of the bay, that's what brings people to Petoskey, that we need to keep that corridor, at least that corridor. And I really compliment your idea of looking at other places in the city, because there are other places in the city where if you're going on a north-south street in Petoskey, just about anywhere, you get a great view of the bay. So I really compliment the study. I'd really like to see this piece of data kept in mind as compared to, if you flip it back to the left like you did before.

Off screen now, I have to find that. I'm sorry.

There you go. I mean, that we just, you know, there's 62%. You know, that's, you can't even hardly see the tip. You can see the tip of Harbor Point, but you can't see the whole, there's a whole set of beaches that you see on these beaches. Southwest edge of Harbor Point. I mean, that's all our viewshed. And that is something that I would really hate for us to lose. And so that's my final comment, I think. But sometimes I think I sound like a broken record, but this is very important to me. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Albert.

Thank you. I was just wondering, you know, how much of that, change from yellow to orange is split between the properties along Spring Street versus properties that are downhill between where 31 ties into 131 north. From that intersection north, how many buildings from that point north that are below their maximum height now that that your illustration assumes that all of those would be at their full height as well. So there's some difference between what would happen along Spring Street and the impact that everything north of 31 would have if it was built out. Am I thinking of that right?

Yeah, I think I understand. If we could, we might look at using the same, if you remember the study corridor that we looked at on US 131 up to about a quarter mile past the intersection with US 31. If we were to toggle different segments of that, the building heights between 35 and 25 to see exactly where the impact was greatest, and I think that resonates with something John mentioned with finding exact percentages, we could see where this stark change occurs looking from different points in the viewshed up on along the road on Long Spring Street and find out if there are specific pinch points where it's the buildings farther up the hill or farther down the hill that really impact the change. Is that consistent with what you're asking for?

A lot of it I'm asking for, but I'm just thinking about how much of that reduction, that last slide that you showed from yellow to orange would be attributable to the two different geographic parts of the study area.

Actually, Rick, what you're getting at, that's the whole purpose of the overlay. Because some areas, the height needs to be depressed. At 25 and other areas, it can go up. But we need to know where those articulations are. So maybe Dan, what we need to do is The reason why we started at Anderson and 131 is that's pretty much where the city limits are at. We can't do anything in the township. But if we take those key intersections going down 31 all the way down to Spring Street at each intersection and then do the analysis on the viewshed and what the percentage of reduction is, that'll start giving us an idea of what the heights need to be. Does that sound reasonable?

Yes, definitely.

So maybe that's the next step.

Right. That and accounting for the 40 foot.

Counting for the 40 foot setback. Yeah. Yep. That would make a big difference.

And I would like to see a viewpoint from the water tower. Like that's really the crest of the hill.

Over the water tower? Yeah, right over you.

That's a question, that vantage point, as you come over the hill into town, the point is in the township. The obstruction is in the city of Petoskey. So I think it's valid to look at that.

And if we could, instead of doing the street connections, if there are places where the view reveals itself, but it's just past a sign for the PUD, That's that side of the street. And then you see the big view. But there are odd little places where it comes to full view. But if we could pinpoint those, that's what we care about.

Does that make sense? Well, I was just thinking, you've talked sometimes about some of the view of, if you will, the... Did you look over Kmart towards that? Oh, yeah, that's right.

That's where we used to steeple.

Yeah, he had that in the Anderson view.

It's like a 360 view. And I know we're there, but I don't know how to tell you where it is on a map. You can't pinpoint it. How about an area? Can you pinpoint it on an area?

Thanks, Dan. Yeah, that was great. Information.

You're welcome. Thank you all for the direction. Could I ask one or maybe entertain one additional point of interest? Just kind of thinking through this even as late as today, you know, I mentioned it's kind of limiting to use the bay as a canvas for what you can see because it's so big, but would there be interest also in using, you know, for example, the Harbor Point Lighthouse to see kind of From the other side, if that's something that is kind of a focal point as you're looking out at the bay, what the impact would be changing the US-131 corridor between 25 and 35? Is that something you'd want to see? How much is visible to and from the lighthouse?

Well, yeah, all the way to Harbor Point is part of what everybody's interested in trying to preserve. He's saying the opposite from Harbor Point.

I mean, I would think from the end of our break, while looking back, it's nice to see the church fire. I would not want to lose that, like the view of our downtown.

Yeah, I think that's reasonable, man, to take a look back into town for what we don't want to obstruct the community.

Yeah.

Okay.

Maybe more from the end of the breakwater.

Yeah, the breakwater. So we have just been focused. Yeah. But when you're coming from the north into town, should we be concentrating on that as well?

That drive-in. You're talking about where the Sunset Park is at? Yeah. That area? Well, he's got the model. He just puts the... Well, that's all pretty much our plan. Well, that's true. Yeah.

Well... Right.

You know, that's going to come up, I would think, at some point, is what's going to happen at that property rotto. You know, I guess I would... This is very interesting. the tree canopy is an issue. I mean that, you know, when we look over the waterfront from downtown, it's all blocked because of the trees. So I think this is a tool, but it may not be the tool because that's a pretty, if you have a point in a neighborhood and I mean, so I think this is an important tool, but it's probably not the only tool that we should consider, you know, when we're looking at this.

Yeah. Yeah. It can't give the full picture.

Right.

Right. It can in the winter for the most part.

Well, yeah.

I mean, I understand.

I'm just saying evergreens. Right. I've got my evergreens. Yeah.

Go ahead.

Max, you got a question?

Hi, Max here in the green shirt. ArcGIS has a foliage layer, don't they? Like a vegetation import that you can overlay, but it's not going to give you the volumetric proportions, but it could. In a sense, I'm not sure how accurate it is. Yeah. that to the height of full growth maple or some sort of extractions, we can interpolate that data relative to the 62% that Ms. Martinez had mentioned as well after our constraints are manipulated relative to what's actual.

Yeah, I see. Yep, I see what you're saying. And that's something I've thought about, especially more recently in this analysis as I was trying to look at vantage points from neighborhood locations. Conceptually, I thought, you know, looking at the overall terrain, if you're at a high point, it's a good place to test out and see what these impacts are. But then you realize if you drop somebody on the Google Street View, you look around and it's all tree cover, to your point. And the same issue comes up with the urban viewshed I was doing in the city of Detroit. But I think, yeah, I was thinking about how you might do that. The USGS does have a kind of a percentage-based land cover or grid with what percentage of a given square on the land is tree canopy cover. And I believe they have a height. layer as well. So there may be a way to bring that into the fold. It could be a little bit complex and the data might not be, you know, like you mentioned, might not be completely accurate, but we could think about ways to do that. And I might, I might toss something around with John internally before we develop it too far to see if it makes sense. But I appreciate you bringing that up because that's something that I just began thinking about as well, how you might bring that USGS tree cover data in and maybe make hypothetical sticks or cylinders of trees based on the kind of cover that USGS has occurs

and separate that and then do like a focal point view. And it's super, it's pretty easy, but I'm, you know, I'm not here to tell you what to do or how to accomplish it, but that's just a thought.

Great. Yeah, I'll take a look at, you know, I don't currently use Rhino. I can check around and see what capacity we may have or how we might bring that analysis into what we do with GIS. I can certainly ask around about that and talk with maybe some folks in our office and talk to John about it further. Definitely an interesting idea. Yeah, thank you.

I think it'd also be a good idea if we could look at the view shed from some of our public parks that are within neighborhoods, because not all residents have a view of the water, but at some of our local neighborhood parks, you do have a view. So I think there'd be some other good view spots to potentially look at.

Yeah, I mean, you know, he had 118 sites. But, I mean, what are the most likely, you know, I mean, it seems like you could get that down to a couple dozen.

I think what he was trying to do is build out the most conservative model.

Those were 118 new build-outs.

They're currently parcels that have the potential of being developed from the ground up. I'm surprised there's that many in the city.

I guess that's what I thought. Maybe there's two dozen that are... Maybe it's old data like downtown was actually made up. Because that's, you know, that's a whole other thing. It's directed information from the earned up hotel over there.

Okay, well, I'll get with Dan. He's got some notes. We'll kind of finesse this a little bit and come back at the next PC meeting to show some other view sheds in terms of how we can. And we want to get to a point where we have an overlay concept. that manages building lines. And the only way we're going to do is by this kind of analysis. So it's a great tool. Yeah. Wonderful.

Thank you very much, Dan. Thanks, Dan. Have a good night.

Thank you all. Yep. I appreciate it. Good comments. Take care, everybody.

Thanks. Any more general comments? Sure. From us? Yeah. Okay. So we're discussions. Yeah. Cause I didn't want to, you know, he's, I haven't made any questions answered. It was a striking presentation with the power of what that model can do. It's also a bit extremely apparent that it's based on assumptions, you know? So we learned that we couldn't, we didn't have current building heights in, we had assumptions and I suppose you could, I'm, Sure you could. Excellent. I'm sure you could put actual current building heights in that. We do. It's all from 2020 bang. Those were the footprints.

No, and the heights.

Were the heights? Okay. Because he said he had used 20 and 25 feet. Was that for the new build-ons? New build-ups. Okay. Okay. So we do have that, right? Obviously, one thing affecting this was the different heights, but it's also the setbacks. You know, you're talking about a view. Is the buildings here on the road or are they here? So as far as front yard setbacks, I'm talking about down there. order coming into town. And that previously was 50 feet is what I'm seeing. And we're proposing 20 feet, which I don't even know. It's just a massive change. So he ran the model with 10 feet, which was even more restrictive, which is none of the above. 50 feet would be the previous, which would be a bigger view. 20 feet is what we're proposing. So you'd certainly want to do a model with 50 and 20 to see the difference as well as the heights. Gary Dolan- Carolyn pointed out, and several people have a what about different vantage points I thought of them on the street there's other spots in town, so you can do all this stuff. Gary Dolan- And it's very powerful it's kind of powerful though don't get too enamored we've got a picture of the bay with colors on what you can see. We don't have an actual picture of what you're going to see. In other words, someone pointed out some of the beaches in Harbor Springs. Maybe it's the lighthouse. There's some things that might affect you more than others. It's hard to see until you visually see that. Also, percentages are interesting. But I mean, I can see a peak of a bay from a few windows in my house. But a peak and a panoramic view are just two totally different things. And Albert pointed that out. And I did ask him the question. It occurred to me, had he done this? said no, but you can see how you could use the tool. And I don't know what our budget is, but I assume he gets paid to work. So we can do all this stuff and we can put different vantage points in different places and we can play around with different setbacks and different building heights and different scenarios. I just wonder, where does it all end? And a little bit in the end of it, how accessible is this whole thing? Are we making this very powerful tool? But you have to know what your assumptions are. Is that Or do we need a little simpler approach, which, you know, maybe using some of this kind of technology to come to something where we think this is a good setback, this is a good building height generally in this area.

That's what, when it started out, my scope was to take a look at the 131 corridor, the business corridor, in terms of what the impact with increasing height would be on the view shed. Okay. Okay. Because that's going to dictate if we keep it at 25 or if there's some areas that you can keep it at 25 or other areas you may be able to go 35. That's not going to have an impact on it if you should. That's where I was going with the analysis. is to try to create this overlay that would manage the height as you move down the hill and get into the city core.

Okay. So maybe it's more of an idea that we're using this model not actively as someone comes with a new thing they want to build to tell them what height's okay, but it's to have used it to determine some numbers that we have. Is that what you're talking about?

In terms of this current code, yes. Yeah. I mean, but since Dan's built the model, the model's digital. Let's say, for example, a couple of years down the road, a proposal comes in for the hole and they want to build it up. Well, you could also take a point into the neighborhood and then run the analysis to see how much that height blocks views of the bay from that direction.

What would your zoning code read like then, like in terms of heighth? In terms of height? Yeah. Well, in the view overshadow, it would say what that the Planning Commission will use the computer model to make a best decision on what height's okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But every time we do that, we'd have to engage.

Well, yeah. I mean, it's just like doing the traffic study. Yeah. And every time you do a traffic study and you update it, you have to bring in a traffic engineer. He does the study for that area and then he uses the base model to create the simulation. Wow. Once you build the base model, then the analysis is fairly easy depending on what points you want to look at. Okay. The data center. I think that would provide the fluidity that's needed based on the topography of a petoskey on a bowl. Every community is dealing with it. Like when we did the master plan for Redmond Township, which is only 900 people, they were concerned about viewsheds. So we did an analysis on the viewsheds on what areas need to be protected from a broader scale. But yeah, I mean, once the model's built, you can just plug the numbers in.

So I really strongly think I would want him to use, it's not hard to put in, you know, we have this question now, we have a 50-foot front yard setback on that B3A district coming down the hill, predominantly, most of it is, you know, and it's proposed to be to 20. So I wouldn't use 10 feet. I'd use, I'd probably do a 20 and a... And then it gets to the vantage points you want to put in. Do you want to put higher up in that township as you come over the hill? Do you want to put a few more hill crests and a few things going down where the view widens out?

You know, I think based on what Dan's put together, I'm thinking we're pretty much 90% there. We just need to fine tune what other locations are to define what the impacts on the viewshed are to determine if we go up or down.

There's no, we have the graphic representation of orange and yellow. There's, there's not any way to integrate that with an actual simulation of a photograph or a view that you know of, is there? So if you could convert instead of yellow and oranges, you can take a point on the street and look out towards the bay and it would give you a computer generated That's actually all right.

That's common. You can do it through SketchUp. I could control all of them, elevate. I'm looking at Carolyn, because I would assume that you would use SketchUp or use ARCHICAD. But the effort that it would take would be cost-restrictive.

OK, that's it. All right. We need a big data center out in the township to generate the power to do that sort of thing. There you go. All right. Let's move on to old business. Hold on a second.

Oh.

Okay.

Yes. Hello. I'm sorry not to overstay my welcome. I did just want to clarify something. There's a lot of good discussion there. One thing I caught early in the discussion, I did make assumptions on building heights for existing from the 20, but I use the 2020 footprints, but those 20 and 25 foot residential and commercial were used to create the base canvas. I will look at the Bing maps layer again. And if there is, height data in there. I will update that to use actual heights because I know that can be overly general for, you know, you have everything from clearing hospital to a typical commercial building that's going to be a lot shorter. So I'll check that again. But for the base scenario, I did use those generalized 20 and 25 foot heights. I just wanted to clarify that one.

Okay, thanks. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Okay. So shall we move on to old business proposed zoning ordinance districts and map? Hopefully you all have your map from the last meeting.

These maps are covered because they're so small. Well, not only that, but we need a stronger color chain. Or hashing. colors and hashing so we can. So that's really limiting. It's just hard to.

It's real hard to see office service. I think the rest of them are pretty functional. Okay, how do you want to do this? I don't know.

I think we had some general conversations. I think one of the areas that we need to focus on is that we have the Emmett Street corridor in that area along the Greenway. We have that listed as a business corridor and there's been some discussion about maybe changing that to business neighborhood. So that would make a big difference in the map.

What are the across the streets again?

Well, Fulton and Washington. Michigan State, Grove, Washington. Basically where you have the commercial area down there, you have the loss of Lumber Square, all that. That's only two there.

That's Fulton and MF, right?

Yeah.

That's MF. Currently it's Fulton and Washington. residential flex and then business corridors. But business corridors, it's too intense for that.

That's a strong neighborhood. I think dimensionally it might differ from what we end up with with a business corridor. And even use-wise, it's probably a little different. Because of the traffic speeds and traffic volume are different. The highway versus car.

Yeah, that's a good point. Any other comments about Emmett Street?

I would favor, yeah, that would probably go to a business neighborhood.

Well, dimensionally, volumetrically, we have the Zip building that's inclusive of that. You have the new offset longer square. I mean, those are huge four-story buildings.

Well, the ZIP building is pretty tall. That was built a long time ago. But the lofts are within the allowed range now. They're three. They're under 35. They only went lower. I would hate to see

Well, that's where the business neighborhood is protected. Directly adjacent, we have a conflict. So how do you... And you're talking about the ZIP building? The Los Alamos Square. I think in the BN district. Oh, you're right. It's a different use. Yeah. Okay.

I think the other area that I'm, you know, I have a, it's not a concern, but an area of interest would be the industrial areas that are along the Barrow River, along the Standish, which in the master plan are called for redevelopment sites. And right now they're, they would maintain their industrial zoning. So I don't know what the planning commission's, intent would be I'm kind of leaning towards something like residential flex in those areas because the higher and better used to be housing a lot of this. The industrial? What would flex allow? Single family, multiple family. So no businesses at all? Very. I don't have my proposed code. You can get your proposed code here.

and look it up real quick now. John, would we keep, we'd have to keep some industrial, though, somewhere, wouldn't we?

We'd have to keep some, but you have that down by Curtis, the old Curtis Field down there.

Okay, so you're talking about the area more out by Washington and Buckley.

Yeah, I mean, what that would do is then those existing businesses would become non-conform, and if they ever wanted to make any changes, it would be more difficult for them to make changes. That would be the impact on that. You're just talking about the industrial, changing industrial to... What about residential multiple?

It'd be nice to do pretty... I think that area could handle the higher density. It's low, so if it gets built up, it doesn't impact views, in my opinion.

Flex does allow dwellings up to five to 12 and 13 or more units. And then Flex also allows bakery and confection, childcare, food market, health and fitness, personal services, sales and rental. See how fast I was able to find that? That is nice. You saw our future ordinance at work. John, how would you feel

that these current owners of some of those buildings, which would be non-conforming if this changed, how much of a burden or taking would that be of, would they view?

Well, the one property owner over there on Buckley, on the Buckley side or on the river side of Buckley, that's that kind of like composition of buildings that they've all strung together. He's interested in, And he would like, eventually, to have that converted into housing. That would be wonderful. Yeah. He sees the need for it. And he sees what they've done with the maple block. So he's looking at it like an opportunity.

Not a constraint. Not a constraint. Has he looked at the contamination?

No, I mean, we have brownfield.

Yeah, luckily, you can get money for that. still so i think john i think there's some cleaning up on the edge of like my i currently live on a split block of zoning uh it's a little but it's so hard to see on this map some of this yeah it's left over from when yeah and it's just a dot on the map but it's the wrong it's the wrong well what we could do it's a little it's a little hard to see here because it's so small but that area that's actually kind of up It seems like maybe there's some ways we can simplify it a little bit.

John, it's my understanding that all of those industrial sites have been approached for redevelopment and they're going to be relocated. So I think from everybody that I've had brief conversation with, they're stoked to see their business be relocated. the Buckley where like Van Calker construction and all.

He's looking at opportunities at the Bear Creek for kind of like a commerce park.

Yeah, that would be fantastic.

The idea is that the conversion of industrial would go to residential.

I mean, I think it'd be a great business neighborhood along there. We could entertain like, you know, Retail, there's some shops on the main level and then second floor. Flex. Yeah.

Flex. Yeah, exactly. I've got an idea. I got the grandpa. Oh, she's got it.

And you've been on. Residential flex.

That's residential. Is it? Yeah. I've got to get. I would.

I think that that area could handle more density, though. What are you allowed in residential blocks? 13? 13 up. Over 13. Over 13. What about the residential multiples? Pretty much the same thing.

You don't get as much business opportunity with residential multiples, with any of the residential. The commercials, hardly anything. You get a bakery.

We're saying a business corridor would be will allow residential, but it will also mix commercial business neighborhood. Yeah.

Well, wait a minute. So business neighborhood. How dense. Can you do housing and business there. What can you up

as high as it doesn't.

Does this neighbor you can only do live work units?

Yeah.

Under commercial flex, you can do 13 or more units with a special use approval up to 12 units permitted.

That's residential flex.

That's flex.

So flex is really that's a better fit. That's a better fit.

So what about residential multiple? It's the only difference is permitted instead of going through a special use permit for 13 or more, it's permitted by right, but it's the same, pretty much the same residential uses. Not many more, the multiple family is, has childcare, food market, health and fitness, nursing and convalescent center, but not as many as in the flex area. The flex has got more smaller businesses that go with it.

And then we do have that conditional rezoning potentially. Yes.

Oh, you're dying to try that out, aren't you?

Not really. Trying to understand it. So there's a conditional rezoning in the packet, which is a little, for the new thing, which is a little hard to understand, but it does allow a zoning use in an area that's not currently allowed, but it's also not called spot zoning, so it's okay. It's not supposed to be more intense. And it's not supposed to be a different dimensional standard, excessive dimensional standard. So if someone can determine that there's a use that somehow doesn't hit the table, but is really not more intense than something like that district can handle, there's a way to do it. So that kind of might free us up a little bit to not worry so much about, did we forget one use in this area? You know what I mean? That someone wants to come in and it seems like, boy, that would really fit. It's not in the table. There's a way to do it.

Those are two big areas in town to change the business corridor along the Emmett Street area to business neighborhood and some of the industrial to flex. Kind of changes the composition of that section. Yeah, yeah. It's a positive change. Very positive. The other thing that we talked about that came up was the old over where the Demmer Rehab Building is, which used to be H2, and we got rid of H2. There was some talk about maybe making that property commercial. Lisa, can you?

Well, H1 is actually where the Demmer Building is. Yeah. It's a lesser use. H2 is the hospital corridor. Right.

got it. No, no, they're all H. Right, just H. It's just H. So you still want that as H or you want that as a different classification? No, we discussed it.

We decided that H. Keep H. For now. For now.

I know we decided two locations for H. Right. That was included in it?

There was some conversation about it. But then our H wasn't matching our two H's.

Well, no, we decided we would do sub-ABC. Is that how we did it? So it was the McLaren property, the Demmer property, and then if the rehab place would go under H. And that would be rehabilitation, ABC.

Yeah, OK. Those are the big ones that I had. Unless there's probably some small ones like Tedstock.

You know, my only other comment is if we ever blow this up, is there a few things that make sense or doesn't it matter?

I think the, um, I'm going to put a little something here.

OK.

They all have a question?

Yes. We are very active. OK. Rich?

What qualifies residential suburban?

It's hard to see. It almost looks white.

Right.

So it's an area right here, and it's an area over here.

What's the designation?

Suburban? It's the lot size.

Lot size, and it's limited for what's going to be allowed for anything more than it. Nothing's going to be allowed more than a duplex. If we allow triplexes and glaplexes, they're not going to be allowed there. But it does allow duplexes, special condition.

All right. What were we just talking about?

Talking about Suburban. Suburban allows single family and it allows duplexes with a supplemental standards. Those are the two that's only going to be allowed there.

And the intent, it's sort of is that are the finals the most restricted or most low density in terms of land uses the residential districts. That's the one family detached values.

Okay. I guess I don't have any thoughts, but I know, so back to the viewshed thing, that I think one of the most sensitive areas is right on the curb by the hospital, those, they're showing in pink here. Yeah, that's the, it doesn't, it's neighborhood. So I don't know what the height is on that. Of course, you've got the viewshed thing, I guess, but.

The other one? I'm done. You're done? The one that I was thinking about the other day that we mentioned was Rosedale. You know, Rosedale right now on the map is shown as RS. Right. You know, the character of that is really more historic, more tightly packed. I think that should be... That is kind of interesting. I saw that. That should be yellow rather than white. That's a single family in my mind. Oh, okay. The residential neighborhood... For instance, yeah. That better reflects. You go down the street that's older.

What is south of 31 that orange? Is that Bayview? No, it's not Bayview.

It's where the row house is.

The little row house there where they're building that new house. Oh, nice. Okay. There's some apartments. There's also residential multiple.

Bobian is also more single families. John, I hate to talk about it again, but if we have issues like

if you think of the corner brochure and things like that, you know, you're not supposed to spot zone and we have some of these little spots, could things like that in the future be like, would that be like a conditional rezoning thing too, possibly? Is there another way to do it? They're already there, so.

And I think the way we set it up is some of those small ones can actually exist.

Yeah.

Okay.

Carolyn, you had mentioned Bobian single family, like that house on the corner of Arlington and Bobian. I believe that's multifamily. You just don't know it. And then as you go back towards the apartments, there was one that was built illegally and it's a triplex and it's new, but they're converting it back to a duplex. So a lot of those, but you're right in the sense that it's largely single family. It wasn't intended to be single.

Yeah, it's just what it's along Arlington is actually the multi-family.

Yeah, I think I'd agree. That should be like a bright yellow. Which one? This triangle that as you run parallel to Arlington past that first block between Bobian and Lafayette as you head back to those apartment complexes is either vacant lots or largely converted duplexes

How about we do this since we have limited time. Are you guys ready? You want me to give you guys each a large 24 by 36 colored map? Then that way you can kind of zoom in on some particular areas. Like that? Yeah.

How about 18 by 24?

Well, 24 by 36 is going to give you the detail that you need. Okay. Yeah, you get too small, you won't see the lots. The larger, the bigger, the better the scale that you can see the lots at. That might be good. I'll get a map for each one of you for the next meeting. It'll be in your packet. Then you can highlight areas and at the next meeting we can get into the small lot by lot discussion.

Do you have any comments about zoning in the map? Anybody want to say anything? Oh, Albert. Yeah. Okay, Albert. You think he's still there? Albert, are you still there?

There.

I just had a hard time getting it unmuted. Can you hear me now? Yes.

Okay, sorry. The screen one popped out. I really like the idea of the large map. That's important. And Cynthia mentioned before, I'd like something done that's simple, and it sounds silly, but... The OS and PQP are both green to me. I cannot tell one from the other. So if we could, the simplest thing probably would be to make that OS color something other than green. So you can see, I can't, especially when you get down by the waterfront, it's hard to tell the OS district color from the PQP. So if you're going to redo the map, if you could, Probably the smallest thing to change would be the OS and make it some other color than green because every time I look at this, I can't figure out which one's which because I'm not colorblind, but boy, those are not very far apart.

I think if you cache some of those colors, that'll be better than getting these subtle shades of, you know.

Well, we're going to steal the H1 secondary services blue because that's pretty easy to tell. So we're just going to use that. Some of these are still too close.

That one could just be the diagonal lines that I had to blue.

That would be easier to see. A hatch represents like a mixed universe. Yeah. That's the only problem I see with that. For somebody coming in to read the math that is a developer, is they're going to misinterpret the hatch for an overlay. Take the small crosshatch, the college, that color.

Yeah.

I just wanted to point out to the planning commission, get it on your calendar. Joint work meeting with the city council scheduled for 6 p.m. on Monday, August 17th to discuss the CIP. That concludes plans. We don't have a lot of time because we have to be out of here in a couple of minutes. If anybody on the planning commission has any ideas for capital improvements, that's your opportunity. Send it over to Lisa. so we can get it into the internal review process.

Well, we were going to do a neighborhood study, I think, on Emmett Street. Yes. And then also the 31 going through town, that area that's just kind of cement, we wanted to look at that.

Yeah. The city manager and I discussed last year a couple of those went into CIP, but then he also said that some of those could be general fund budget. So I'll get those to them because there's the other one. There's the sub area plan. Then there's a discussion about updating the non-motorized or having a mobility plan. Those may be just budget items. But if you have any CIP, like capital projects that come out of the master plan, let me know. Let Lisa know. That's all I've got. All right.

Commissioner, comments?

I just had a couple, you know, I'm trying to put it all together and I just still am a little bit having trouble understanding some of the decrease in backyard setbacks. residential and commercial, both we've seen here. I've never seen in a survey where people said, this is a great time. We just need smaller period setbacks. And, you know, in the commercial, a budding residential, that was some of the concerns. But even in residential, you know, I know you made the comment, John, why is it 35 and we put 25, but, you know, I mean, A modest sized room in a lot of houses, a family room can be 24 by 24. 24 feet is 25 feet is literally nothing. So I'm a little bit uncomfortable with that. I'm just going to say that. And I'm a little surprised if the current business quarter is 50 feet, frankly, I would step back. A lot of establishments out there are quite a bit off the road, which helps with the view. Why we changed the number to 20. And that's what gets with, we talked about height with a viewshed overlay, but of course, a front yard setback's a thing. And I wonder, again, if that stretch coming into town is a little different business corridor. Again, it's not 28th Street and Grand Rapids. Then as you turn the corner and go in the hospital towards the bridge, in other words, they almost seem to have a different character. So that 20 feet works really well in some areas, but maybe isn't. And I'm wondering about that.

We discussed that. I thought we discussed it. And we said that from the entry to Spring Street would be 40 feet. I didn't realize it was 50 feet. I always thought it was 40. I've always thought it was 40. But anyway, that we would need that setback. But then after us, Spring Street, it would be 20 feet.

I think it comes down to our viewshed overlay. That's going to really determine what that is.

But I would say character, too. A lot of what we've been trying to do is to keep the character. So it's a pretty simple math problem to say, what's the average setback coming down the hill? Let's use it. It's not complicated.

My intent was to keep, and I thought that's what we discussed and agreed on, that we were keeping from the top of the hill to Spring Street. I don't think it's reading that way now. Okay, great.

He's raised his hand again.

We've got to get out of here. Albert, we've got to shut down the meetings. Are there any updates? No. I adjourn this meeting at 7, 4, and 6.