Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Ready? I pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right. Get a roll call, please. Chair Gutierrez, present. Vice Chair Perert present. Commissioner Gilbert.

Commissioner Esbander present. Commissioner Gonzalez present. All present. Two vacancies. Okay. Do we have uh anyone requesting to speak on anything not on the agenda? No, sir. Okay. Did everybody get a chance to see the planning commission meeting minutes of August 6? I move to accept the minutes. Have a second. Second. Second. All in favor? I I. Any opposed? Okay, thank you. May we get rid of that echo, too, Daniel?

Oh, I need another password too on this thing. One more password, Kim. Okay,

password. Our first item, please. Good evening, chair, planning commissioners. Um, I'll be making the presentation here on the first public hearing item tonight. Um, the file numbers for reference are conditional development permit number 2024-000011 and precise plan of design number 2024-000018. This is an application filed by Sunrise Church and the project is called the Peace Center. This first slide here, just want to familiarize you with the project site. Um, it is located at 2759 North Ia Drive. Uh, this is specifically located at the southeast corner of Riverside Avenue and Illa Drive. Uh the property has a zoning designation of single family residential and the church was uh constructed and established in 1992. Um you can see the boundaries of the church site on the aerial image in this slide. Uh to the east there's trap elementary school and then to the north, west and south are uh res existing residential uses. And so what Sunrise Church proposes to do is to construct a 12,000 square foot accessory building that'll be known as the Peace Center and that that building will be uh used for food distribution purposes. Um it'll be located at the south end of the church site in the grass field if you saw on the previous slide. Um, it will be set back 240 ft from Ia Drive, uh, 112 ft from the residence, the nearest residences to the south, and 77 feet from Trap Elementary. Um, in addition to the building, there will also be two shade canopies uh, constructed attached to the to the

structure. There will also be a truck unloading area on the southeast side of the building and then also a screen fence on the southeast side of the building just to help screen any noises from any of the trucks from the residences. Additionally, they'll also install a new uh attraction closure within the church parking lot and new landscape planters in the church parking lot. On this next slide here, just showing you the floor plan. Again, 12,000 square feet in size be broken up into several different areas. Um you have a dry good storage room, cooler room, freezer room, and then there'll also be a staging and processing area, maintenance room, and then various office areas. Um there'll also be two rollup doors, one on the north side of the building and one on the east side of the building. Um the one on the north side will be used to uh take goods out for the food distribution purpose and then the one on the east side will be used for the uh receiving of uh donated food items. Right here you can see a rendering of the proposed building. It the architectural style has been designed to match the aesthetics and exterior of the church itself. um specifically with the embossed uh beige colored exterior. Um also the pitched roof with tile to or with roofing material to match that of the church. Uh they'll also be adding some blue metal accents, some wood uh paneling accents and um again as I mentioned there's also the canopy and then there'll be accents on the columns as well. As far as the operations uh of the building, uh the plan is to operate the food distribution from 9:00 am to 4 pm Tuesday through Friday. Um for the food distribution operation, customer vehicles would enter the site uh at the southerntherly driveway that is connected to IA driveway drive. Um you

can see on the image here of the site plan, there are the red arrows indicating where cars would quue. They'd pull up to the canopy where they would then receive the food package and then they would follow that green arrow path out to the middle driveway connected to uh Iola Drive to exit. Um so there will be substantial parking for hundreds of vehicles on site if need be. Um though it's not anticipated that there would ever be any of that level of queuing at any time, but should it be the church site does accommodate it. Um, so in addition to the food distribution, there will be some other operations as far as receiving and staging and packaging. Those will occur Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Uh there will be no food distribution uh operations whatsoever on the weekends or during any church service hours. As far as the food deliveries are concerned, those will occur on Monday and Thursday only. Um and there would be at most two trucks on either day. Um the project before the commission tonight is exempt per the California Environmental Quality Act, specifically section 15303, new construction or conversion of small structures and a notice of exemption form has been prepared. Um the project is consistent with the single family residential zone, the city's design guidelines, and the surrounding uses. Uh there was a neighborhood meeting held for this project on February 13th of this year. Um about 17 folks attended that meeting. Uh the project was generally well received by by the public. Um for this meeting tonight, public hearing notices were mailed out to all property owners within 660 ft of the project site and the notice was also published in the Sanern Sanernardino Sun newspaper. Uh the staff has not received any uh notice

from any of those uh that notices were sent out to. And so with that uh staff recommends that the uh commission determine that the project is categorically exempt pursuant to sequest section 15303 and then adopt the attached resolutions approving the conditional development permit and the precise plan of design. And that concludes my presentation. If you have any questions and the applicants representatives are also available in the audience. Okay, let's go and open public comments. Uh, first, do you have any questions of staff before we have the applicant come up and then see if the public wants to There's not going to be any kitchen facilities. This is just strictly food in and out.

Yeah, they won't be like preparing meals there. I mean, if there is a kitchen, it's limited to a break area for the staff. That's it. But they will they will be bringing in donated goods, packaging those up, and then distributing those to to the public that come to the facility to pick them up. I had a excuse me, I think it's 12,000 square feet, right? Yes.

And breaking it down, I came up with about less than a thousand or about a thousand shortage as far as the space. Um, maybe my math is bad. I don't know. But I came out with about 8 800 square feet short that wasn't designated on this. Oh, on the floor areas. Mhm. There there's some covers over the edges of the building that when you factor that in, the full coverage of the building is 12,000 square foot. Okay. Thank you. Yes. One question. How many families do they think he'll be working with?

How many families as far as those that will be receiving the goods or working at the facility? Receiving. Oh, okay. As far as total number, estimated numbers, I would ask Yeah, I would ask the church if those representatives if they could provide that. Okay. Good deal. Maybe we can get the applicant out. Sure, please.

Pastor or somebody coming up? Good evening, council. Uh, so far since we've started in the inception of the peace center, we've fed over 1 million people, 1 million families. Uh, to date, just this year, we're over 160,000 people fed. Uh, each each month we're looking at just uh just over about 25ish thousand depending on the month obviously and how many weeks are in the month. What was your name again? David Gomez, sir. How are you associated with this? Uh I'm the outreach pastor that oversees the peace center. Okay. Yeah.

Um so the the the products that you you plan on redistributing to families, those are coming in off on the trucks, right? There's not going to be a drop off center for people to leave a bunch of stuff. That is correct. We we purchase and we work with organizations such as uh Feeding America, uh Community Action Partnership, and so they come in on semi-truckss and uh other box trucks that deliver food. So make sure it's not going to be a shelter of any kind. It's it's a distribution. No, sir. And we're not dropping off like boxes there that food that nobody's paying attention to. No, sir. Yeah. Okay. Um,

one of the things I work with St. Catherine's food bank and one of the things we get from we work with Costco, one of the stores and Feeding America, but sometimes we get produce uh that is kind of going bad. So we say no, we don't want that because we ought to be make sure that people get what they want. Uh there was also a program out at Ferguson Park. I don't know if you you were aware of it where you can get free produce and you might want to tie in with them because they have it on the third Thursday. As a matter of fact, we're going there tomorrow. Uh, and it's free

and they're they're tied in with a lot of um community organizations that give out um food baskets, produce, and stuff like that. Yes, sir. I believe the organization you're talking about is Never Stop Grinding uh NSG. Uh we we partner with them as well. We we've done many events with them as well. That's through IHP. Uh excuse me. IEHP. IHP. We have not done any events for them, but we have received grants through our nonprofit to be able to do events for IHP. Thank you. Uh for both of you, Danny, you said it was generally received by the community. What What was the not so general part that wasn't received? Well, no, I don't I don't think there was anything that was not wellreceived. Okay. No,

I think the biggest thing is I just don't want, you know, it's a great cause and I just want to make sure it doesn't turn into a homeless shelter or people dropping a stuff that's not zone for that any of that. Yeah. And you got your assures that's not going to be the case. That is okay. Yeah. We've we've been operating for just over four and a half years already, sir. None of that. Okay. There's also gated all the way around so I wouldn't have any problem. Okay. All right. Um, thank you. Any of the questions of the applicant? Thank you, sir. Thank you. Okay. Do we have anyone else requesting to speak on this item? Yes, sir. Okay. Terry Thompson. Mr. Thompson.

How you doing, Mr. Thompson? I haven't seen you in a long time. Here comes a retired cop. I'm sorry. Did you say Terry Thompson? I say, "Sorry, Mr. Thompson. I can see." Okay. I'm sorry. Back there. You can't hear me. Oh, are you getting that old Terry?

Okay. Terry Thompson, 2531 North ID Wild Avenue. I've lived up in that area for 45 years before the church was built. And uh I was speaking to some of my neighbors about this just the other day and there was some question about a vehicle stackup during the days of distribution especially along the right curb sign of we'll call it northbound yellow. I took a look at the attachments that are to this matter and I was pleased to see that there was a significant setback and the setback of the building itself provides very adequate uh staging and queuing areas that are out of traffic. I also explained to them if you want to see backup go to any elementary, middle school or high school or should I say it In-N-Out or Chick-fil-Ass or any other large business uh retail type of casual dining that that have that kind of vehicle stack up during peak hours. And looking at the hours that I see here of distribution offset by the hours of delivery by day and by time, I think that will also uh lend itself to mitigating any vehicle stackup that we may have on a yall.

And you support this project? Oh, very much so. I support it very much so. Okay. All right. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you. Any other request to speak? No, sir. Move to close the public hearing.

Second. Move to determine that the project is categorically exempt pursuant to SQL section 15303E new construction and convergence of small structures and to adopt the attached resolution exhibit ENF thereby approving the conditional development permit number 2024-000011 and precise plan of design number 2024-00001. 1 8 subject to finding the conditions therein. Second. All in favor? Any oppose? Good luck. Thank you, sir.

You're welcome. You guys are all welcome to stay if you want. I'm just kidding. You can go. You can stay for the rest of the meeting. All right. Give him Good evening, commissioners. Go ahead, Jason. I was surprised my story. Yeah, I'm surprised story didn't come here.

Good evening, chairs and commissioners. Uh, our second uh presentation tonight is a proposed truck and trailer storage yard at 2175 South Willow Avenue. The associated uh numbers are uh conditional development Uh permit number 2025- 0000002, precise plan of design number 2025-00002, lot line adjustment number 2025-00001, and environmental assessment review 2025-00001. So, the proposed uh truck and trailer storage yard is here uh on uh 2175 South Willow Avenue. It's just south of uh Slover on the east side of Willow. Um the first part would be that they're going to uh merge the properties and two properties into one larger uh 4.04 acre parcel. And there on the map you can see parcel one and parcel two will be merged to become parcel A which is the larger outline. Uh the truck and trailer storage yard is for a speculative tenant. Uh it will be screened and will have the uh black louver gates at the front to conceal it. There is an existing structure there as you can see on the slides. It's it's uh it's quite a mess. Um, but it will be uh rehabilitated and refurbished uh to look as the elevation on the right.

Um, it's 5,800 square ft, about 100 by 58 ft wide, and it's 19 1/2 ft long. Already exists, but it'll be uh cleaned up. Uh there will be landscaping as you can see, lots of trees, lots of screening from Willow Avenue. Um uh vegetation and plants. It'll look a lot nicer than it does now. Uh planning uh staff recommends approval of conditional development permit number 2025-00002 and approval of precise plan of design number 2025-00002 and find that the environmental assessment review number 2025-00001 is exempt. And if you have any questions and the applicant is here if you have any specific questions.

Any questions before we open up the public? This is a speculative speculative development. Yes, sir. You don't have a tenant. I'm sorry. You don't have a tenant yet? As of a few weeks ago when we spoke, I do not. Uh they do not. And as of yet, they they don't have a tenant yet. Okay, let's go ahead and open the public uh comments. Do we have any anyone requesting to speak on this? No, sir. Oh, I'm sorry. Applicant, of course, I got ahead of myself. I got something else.

Good morning, chair and commissioners. Nice to see you all again. Jacob Glaze, Kimley Horn. Address 1100 Town and Country Drive, Orange, California. Um, ultimately, uh, to answer the question that was just addressed, we don't have any tenants as of yet. Um, we were going back and through, we have a couple opportunities with some neighboring tenants that were looking at the piece of property for additional storage of uh, of trucks, but we hadn't locked anything yet, just not knowing exact timing of the project itself. Um but our the ownership that is taking over the property is looking forward to ultimately being a good tenant and then um bringing the bringing the piece of property which is kind of abandoned now up to code conformance and up to landscape conformance. Um that'd be great.

So hopefully that addressed your question. I also wanted to state thank M uh Jason for all his help. He's been fantastic through the process. So um as the usual the staff in Rialto has been uh great to work with. Okay. Happy to answer any other questions should you or the commissioners have any. question. You guys have any questions? The the last time you uh you requested a continuence was because of the traffic.

Yes, sir. We did request a continuence. Um ultimately there is a discrepancy in the existing use that was occurring on site. Um funny enough, the existing use is and it's actually written inside of the business license is a horse and carriage um use. And so because of that horse and carriage use, um we had a traffic, we had a trip generation that was based off of uh truck storage yard. Um but we weren't actually able to utilize that existing trip use because of the business license was reflective of a horse and carriage use. And so we had to modify our trip study to reflect a horse and carriage use instead of a truck use. Um so it was ver ultimately we were operating as a the site was operating as a truck use but didn't have a business license. So again, we're trying to bring it up to code.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. I'll ask no other requests to speak. No, sir. Okay. Move to close the public hearing. Second. Second. Any oppose? No. Okay. Move to approve the conditional development permit number 2025-00002 subject to the finding condition therein and to approve precise plan of design number 2025-00002 subject to the findings and condition therein and to find that environmental uh asset review number 2025-00001 is exempt. Second.

Second. Mr. Chair, if I may. Yes sir. Just to clarify the motion. Uh I just want to be clear that we're moving to approve or rather to adopt the two or or resolutions as well as part of all that. Okay. Okay. Good. Yeah. Have a second for that. Second. All in favor? I. No oppos. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Um, now we have uh community developer comments, correct? Yeah. Thank you, chair. Um, just a couple items for you. We do anticipate having both meetings in September. Okay.

Um, the first meeting of the month will be the Wednesday right after Labor Day. Um, so I think that's the third maybe. Um, the third. Yeah, the third. Okay. So, um we do have an item for that meeting and we anticipate um a couple items for the second meeting in September 2017. Yes. Um we have a economic development committee meeting on Thursday next week and um Tuesday for city council. We should have a revisit of commission appointments for anyone who's interested. I believe it'll be back on the agenda. So um anyway, I think that's it. Paul, do you have any anything else?

If if we come, they're going to leave it on the agenda this time. So, as of this morning, it was on the agenda and all that's all I can that's all I can say. Do you know what the process is going to be at that meeting? I do not I don't You can do me a favor, Paul. Um I I won't be able to attend the meeting. Uh you can just let me know who who who's going to be on here if I'm not on. If I'm on Okay, great. Then uh I want to find out the new members so I can we can help coordinating and get things structured up before seem like a lot of folks put in for it and it might be a full shuffling of the deck but just want to make sure we maintain order and some structure.

Yeah, absolutely. I think um the city clerk will probably reach out as as soon as everything is is done and wrapped up to um get some onboarding done and then um depending on like you said how the deck is reshuffled um as planning staff we'll make sure to get in touch with all the commissioners and do some sort of um touch base before our next meeting or before everybody gets um sworn in again. Be great. So, next meeting for the council Tuesday is going to be We should know hopefully. It's on the agenda. So, yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. Uh, Commissioner

Oh, that's right. You did tell me that. Um, Labor Day Monday, City Hall will be closed September 1st.

All right. Good deal. I'm looking forward to um we have we've been busy, but we haven't heard any comments from the city. you guys going to the your annual conferences of on potential businesses. What's the what's the sense out there? Are people holding back? I mean, can we get like uh with Here's where I'm at and I've been saying this since Mike Story was sitting in that chair before he he before he sat there. Uh I want a Trader Joe's and and the the key thing back then was the social economic the average medium income is not high enough for this. So I have been since 07 I've been sit here talking about we need more houses. So the new houses comes with newer prices which pushes up the average medium income as well as the education level that should draw in these types of businesses.

You want a Trader Joe's, don't you? I want to see the city flourish. I don't want to see we we're like two steps behind a lot of things. So, with all the houses going in Renaissance and those are $600,000 homes and you got these houses here off the 210, are we seeing any demand for more? Uh, anything other than a 99 cent store in a yogurt shop or car wash? Sure. So, um, I can tell you Trader Joe's has a a different set of criteria than just median household income and whatnot. They also require a certain level of education across the board in a city and whatnot. So,

um I don't I am not aware that Trader Joe's has interest yet, but it's something that's always on We have a Sprouts. We have Sprouts, right? Put it by the 10 freeway. I don't know anyone that drives. Um I can tell you we at ICSC we're pretty busy in

in May and staff's also going the end of September to ICS Western which is out in Palm Springs. Okay. And so we'll be out there for a couple days with um Daniel Casey, with our economic development manager, and um myself, and a couple council members I believe are going as well um to have additional meetings. Um we have some things that are in discussions that I can't say yet, right? And so I will say there are exciting things. There is still interest in the city. We are because of the volume of housing and the um price of housing and what that brings to the city, it is helpful. Um, but like a lot of cities there's heavy competition for those in demand retailers.

I think the one thing that we can brag about is it's some of these big companies that doubted us. I remember they didn't want to put a Starbucks in city of Rialto and then Magic Johnson I think it was first one because they're they're not they're private, you know, they don't have outside they're not a franchise. So they partnered with him and that became the busiest Starbucks opening they've ever had and it would flourish there on Baseline and Riverside I think was the first one and In-N-Out Burger is like killing it in the city. So it would be nice and we I I just hope that some of this historical information that you guys may not be aware of that we can you guys can help brag about that to draw some of these in.

Yeah. I um I I it'd be nice because usually Sam's Clubs like to be near a Costco and we got a Costco in Fontana. It would be great to draw in a big box store like that in here. It would have been nice to get that off holder, but that didn't work out. It became a warehouse. But those are valuable businesses that have legitimate jobs, not just warehouses that are highly automated. So that's just words of encouragement. I just appreciate it. Whatever happened to that? Um, there was a an effort by the previous mayor to get a Sams. Yeah, that's what it is. Over by Valley. Is that kind of

Yeah, I'm I'm not Yeah, I'm not aware of of that particular location. But um another thing that we're doing in an effort to sort of highlight what the departments in community development, so planning, economic development, business license, what everybody's working on, um building and safety as well, is to um put together a report monthly that um shows sort of not just what projects are on the book with planning, but um what building and safety is looking at in plan check so we can see what's actively being looked at that's going to be constructed, what businesses have applied through business license to come in. And so this will be the first month at the end of August where we're um packaging that information differently for council to look at. And so once they see the economic development, I'm happy to um share it out with you guys as the commission if you're interested in that information.

The other thing too Oh, I'm sorry, Frank. Go ahead. That would be good. Yeah. Okay. The the other thing too is uh sitdown restaurants. Every sitdown restaurant in the city is packed on a Friday or Saturday. So few of them though. That's another thing I would encourage to push too. Just trying to I'm too cheap to move. You must understand. So I want the city to flourish because I'm not going anywhere. So um that's my call. The only thing is De Vince still here back. Thank you for getting Kasa Grande going. I appreciate it. Looks great. Looks great. I was gonna talk.

I appreciate I'll talk with maybe Jason. See we could get uh the PD. we can talk to them or you can pass on the PD the the new stop signs we put Paul Meadow and Kasa Grande if if they can maybe uh it's a it's small window time 5:45 to 6:30 either day or night they will give out limitless tickets to running stop that new stop sign all the way around I mean blowing through them not even slowing down so it's it's that new stop sign they have flags on it and and it's a typical complaint uh the target employees that the kids that just pull right through. I just want someone to get hurt. But that's it. That's all I have. I I said a lot today, so I apologize.

All right. Well, we always appreciate the input, the feedback, the direction. So, um we will start getting you some more information. When you guys look at the list and the um the way we have it packaged up, I'd appreciate the feedback. So, anything that would make it um more meaningful to you and how it's organized or what information is contained, feel free to let me know or Paul or Daniel and we'll make sure we it's it's we're just starting to repackage this so that we can use it for things like this. So, um any feedback you have along those lines will be helpful.

I did have a a thought several years ago. Um the developer came in made a presentation. One of the things that we was mentioned was the um Paneras. He says, "Well, no, they don't meet the income limit. They're, you know, they don't have the education." We have two Paneras, one up north and one south. And that's what I'd like to know how these new businesses are doing and how the older ones are doing, too. Because if we need to give them a boost, fine. Yeah.

Let's help them make be successful. We're interested in making the city more lucrative as far as income, revenue and all that and make it a little bit be broader in terms of what they have to offer. I apologize. I do have one more thing. Sure. So, I went to um what is that new center uh where the McDonald's is the other side of Renaissance and they got the blue remember she came for development permit for that. She wanted to make a small bed mo but her size there. what's the name of Blue Blue by you or something.

So, I I've been trying to support her. I'll go in there and and contribute uh to Good Beer here and there. And uh her business is starting to pick up finally, but she had a lot of questions for me. And I was actually I told her to email so I could forward them to you guys because what you know what she's being forced to do right now? Uh she's looking for a spot where she can do tasting sessions of some of the liquor. She she showed me an invoice. She's going to Sierra Lakes there. She's paying $8,800 for a couple events to be able just to and it's helping her business in Rialto, but she's having to spend all that money in Fontana to drag it back to Ryalto.

So, I don't know what you guys could reach out to her, the owner of that place to get her concerns because she's a small business owner and and uh she was the one that came in. You know, obviously business owner, they're the worst employers because they never give you a day off when you're the owner. So, she's always there. So, it'd be good for someone to talk with. Yeah. We'll we'll send economic development out there to go in person touch base with her. She's great.

Yeah. And anything like that, you can always direct to staff, whether it's me or Paul or or Daniel, and we'll make sure someone gets on it. Um, another thing that I can mention to you guys that is will be helpful and sort of along these same lines is through economic development, we're looking at launching um a business spotlight where we go out in person um with it and actually do like sort of a video, you know, all about um the business, talk with the business owner, show sort of their operations and things like that. And then we'll put it on the website and we'll also run it on the uh Railto network and some things like that. So, okay. Um, I'm sure she's on our list because we pulled from business licenses and whatnot, but

she recognizes me. She's always hitting me every time I go in there. But, uh, she's hustling. I I appreciate that. I I like hardworking people. Yeah, we'll reach out to her. Okay. Um, with the big beautiful bill, there's is there any opportunities maybe like battery plants or solar or networking with AI? I mean, those types of industries. Was there any funding that you guys heard of or nothing? Not much? I don't have information on anything. I don't know that as of yet that's that's made it out this way. But, you know, with the number of um industrial buildings that we have either

existing or or on the books, I mean, there's always potential that something like that could come in and operate out of one of those or whatnot. But, um, as you're probably aware with the federal government, the bill will be now, but the money will be like, you know, years down the road. So, not not always instantaneous. Thank you so much. I have nothing else. You guys have anything else? Your favorite time? Moved or journ. All right. Thank you guys. Thank you. Sorry for so many questions. Mike story wanted to let you guys know why he wasn't here. Janet is Oh, I didn't know that.

And so she just got in there, I think yesterday or today. They're getting resettled. So he is there with her. He says, "Tell her Yeah. He said, "I wish." So, he wanted me to I looked for him in New York. Yeah. I think he must have heard you. Oh, I've always