Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. Today is Monday, August the 11th, and the meeting is called to order at 6.03 p.m. Next up will be the invocation and pledge. I've asked Commissioner Kemper to do the invocation, and Montauk will do the pledges.

Pray with me, please. Lord, we give you thanks for a beautiful day. We thank you for the life and health that you've given to all of us. We ask, Lord, for wisdom. As we debate the city's business, we pray that the things that we say and do would give honor to your name and that you'd be glorified in all that happens. We just praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Up next, we have item B, public comment. The public is invited to address the board regarding any topic not already on the agenda for action or public hearing. Comments regarding any discussion-only items on the agenda may be addressed during the public comment section. The time limit is three minutes per speaker. A public comment card should be presented to the acting secretary prior to the meeting. According to the Texas Open Meetings Act, the board is prohibited from discussing any item not posted on the agenda but will take comments under advisement. Would anyone like to address the board at this time? Seeing none, we will move on to the next agenda item. Item C, action items. Number one, action items are board discussion and consideration for action. Presiding officer will invite comments before the board votes. A public comment card should be given to the acting secretary prior to start of the meeting. Item C1, consider approving the May 12th, 2025 minute meetings. Meeting minutes, there we go. Would anyone from the audience like to address the board about this item? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion for action. Before we do that, is there any discussion among the board? Anybody need to review or remove?

Okay.

Got a motion from Commissioner Kemper to approve as provided. Second by Commissioner Montauk. Any further discussion? Seeing none, please cast your vote.

You don't see anything on your side? No.

There we go.

Thanks, sir. Item passes unanimously. Item, Action Item C2, conduct a public hearing to consider and make recommendation on a request for a special use permit for a daycare use generally located south of State Highway 78 and east of Woodbridge Parkway within the Sachse City limits. You have a presentation?

I'll be doing the presentation tonight. Okay. I'm Philip Finehall, City Planner. Good evening, Commission. The request before you tonight is for an SUP to allow for daycare use. This location is at the south of Highway 78, east of Woodbridge Parkway. The applicant and owner is Victory Shops Woodbridge LLC. They're asking for that daycare use. They are approximately 5.4 acres in size. The site is currently vacant, and the current zoning is PD11, which allows for uses concurrent with C1 and C2 commercial uses. Generally, for any uses that require an SUP, the Planning and Zoning Commission and City Council take into consideration the appropriateness of the proposal, such as screening and situational suitability. In front of you is the aerial map for the site. As I said, it's east of Woodbridge Parkway and south of 78. Here is the conceptual plan of the project. The request tonight is for the proposed lot three block A, the easternmost portion of the property, indicated by the blue star on the image on the screen. With the commercial development adjacent to residential, an incompatibility buffer is required As part of this, a six-foot masonry wall is required that will be built by the developer at the time of development. Additionally, as part of that incompatibility buffer, a landscape buffer is required with that. Canopy trees will be required at 50 feet on center, directly adjacent to residential where this commercial is. Future land use plan supports this proposed rezoning request. Future land use plan has this as commercial. While this proposed use is allowed with approval of a special use permit, staff has general concerns about the request given the proximity to an adjacent daycare use that had a special use permit approved in February of 2023. The recommendation of P&Z will be considered by the city council at their September 15th, 2025 regular meeting. Is there any questions for me at this time?

Any questions? So there's already a daycare center in the development?

Directly adjacent to the east of this site. I'll show you. Right here. The learning experience is right there.

And so... Phillip, if you pull up the aerial, you can see it a little bit better.

Why is that a concern?

And which staff? You said staff was concerned. Which staff?

Planning and zoning, the planning staff.

Oh, okay. Thank you.

It's just a concern with, you know, playgrounds being directly next to each other and everything like that.

Are they separated by some kind of wall or fence or something?

No, sir. They're directly adjacent to each other.

Is the playground on the same side as this one, or is it on the other side of the current?

The applicant is here tonight, so you can talk about the location of that, too.

One is there currently. Is that playground on this left side what would be up against this or over here?

The one that's existing, it looks like their playground is right here where that laser pointer is. And the proposed, the playground would be on this side.

I believe they put a masonry wall behind the existing one. Will this one match?

Correct. It'll match.

I think if I remember the conversation of the adjacent daycare last time, a couple years ago, we had discussions about the buffer to a business that sells alcohol. Is that correct? Because there was one in the vicinity.

Correct. So daycares are... So a daycare would be coming in after the 7-Eleven, as well as the adjacent uses, such as specs. So it would not have any conflict with that. Anything new that would be coming in would have to be 300 feet from property line for package sale. Mixed beverage, such as restaurants, would still be able to serve.

Okay, gotcha. So the other open blocks adjacent to this one can serve alcohol for consumption on site but not packaged? Correct. Drinks. Okay.

Any other questions?

Is there any concern about, because already the 78 Are we, is there any concerns about traffic flow patterns or any backups for anything as far as, you know, just access or anything like that?

There has not been any TIA study done for this at this time. I don't know if the civil plan will require that at this time, but it's an allowed use by right, so we've taken into account the required count for that.

One other thing to note is, and I believe they're going to present it here tonight as well, I think the proposed user in this operates a little bit differently than your typical daycare use. But the applicant themselves can address some of that as well.

Does the applicant have a presentation?

Yes, they do.

Come up and state your name and address for the record.

801 South Street in Texas is our address. So just a quick presentation here that I threw together just to kind of walk us through the uses and really the overall development. This is an elevation concept elevation of the retail building. I'll be walking you walking you all through. But basically, here's an overall site plan that you saw. We have our two pads out front that are under development now. My Retail 1 building, which you saw the elevation for facing Woodbridge, is in for building permits. We have stopped and slowed down the civils. Because the original orientation of this building was really to face the front doors 278 but due to the adjacent site and the requirement for cross access we weren't able to really get a fire access around the building so we had to we had to Redo our site plan here to to face it more Kind of kind of saying like they're they're parallel to each other instead of perpendicular The way we would it probably would have worked a little bit a little bit better But here we like the the overall uses of the site plan basically the retail building on Woodbridge would would act as having two front doors to most most tenants is the way we're looking at this with a with a parking field there in the middle of the of the two uses and Spanish schoolhouse it would is the is the daycare or preschool as I'll try to kind of express and show you all they operated a lot differently than your typical TLEs your kids for kids or your you know kinder cares or Montessori schools from that from that perspective so Just going to go into them a little bit. Spanish Schoolhouse was founded in 1999, opened their first location in Frisco in 2003. They're currently operating 19 locations, 13 in DFW. They have two opening in the next two months in Houston, so they'll be at 21 locations by the time we get going on, if we can proceed with this site. They are the nation's largest language immersion facility. immersion program. Um, what I mean by that is that they're, they're 100%, um, Spanish teaching and speaking in the school. Um, So their true mission is really they have a Spanish program that immerses children in the Spanish language and appreciation for world cultures. They want to create a global awareness for their students. The demographics that they go after, and you're going to see on my last bullet point there, over 70% of the families speak English at home. A common misconception of this brand is that because it's a Spanish schoolhouse that it's for Spanish speakers. It's actually for English speakers that wanna learn Spanish. As we all know in Texas, the Hispanic culture and probably the second largest language that is being spoken is Spanish. And so they're bringing that program into higher affluent communities. As you could see, they target locations with 115,000 median household income. Parents are typically dual income professionals of one to three children. House values in the 400,000 to 750,000 range. And as you can see here, really, they pride themselves on not being the typical daycare. They run a smaller school. It's about 100 to 125 students versus 250 to 300 students. Their environment is 100% in Spanish. They build their buildings with a kind of centralized plaza rather than having your small little entry where you check people in, and then you got your hallways that are lined up with your classrooms. And also, we wanted to point out that they really do thrive next to other daycares or preschools, as we like to say. They're completely different than what we're typically seeing, as I mentioned earlier, from some of those other brands. And then, so here's an example of their location in Frisco. You know, you could see that they're on the bottom pad there right next to the Essentials Preschool. You could see the two buildings with the two playground facilities that are separated from each other. And then they have a recent one that was built in Allen next to a Kids R Kids. Right next to each other, same thing here. The Kids are Kids has been there for a little bit longer, so you'll see that their landscaping is a little more overgrown, so you can't really see them as much, but they are directly next to each other. This is at Alma and Exchange in Allen as well. And then just here, I showed an overall kind of aerial of what our site looks like with an overlay now. You could see this is the TLE that's here now. This is where they're Playground is we are proposing a smaller 3,000 square foot playground That would be behind this building and Spanish schoolhouse is only is taking about 60% of a multi-tenant building For us here, so the rest of the building may be retail restaurant Office uses some other type of uses that would go in here. We see them as a really good fit and At the end of the day, this is most likely going to be an MOB or retail-type building. The reusability of this type of use is pretty easily converted into medical, dental, commercial-type uses. And then you got the outdoor playground and things of that nature. But we'll have the screen wall. We'll have the landscaping things to help screen and buffer that from the residential. Yes, sir?

Does the Spanish schoolhouse take up the whole building, or is it just... It's about 60%, sir. The area you see in red there, roughly, is about... And what happens with the other portion?

That'll be a retail, restaurant, medical, dental type uses. It's going to operate similar to the multi-tenant retail that you see adjacent to that, what we call retail one.

Are the two icons that you have up on the front buildings, are those... For sure.

Both are under lease. I believe the McDonald's is pretty far along on their permitting process. We're finalizing a few things with civil engineering. The Lanes is a new tenant. They're under lease. They're in their due diligence phase. We've got some time to go on that one. Most likely, just because of... It's probably easier if I show you. That second pad there in the front is a little difficult to... to develop, because there's a large TxDOT drainage easement that covers the majority of this front parcel here. We would have loved to build multi-tenant retail up along 78, but due to that easement, I couldn't get a building that would be able to justify that. So that's the main reason we ended up with two restaurant pads up top.

Thank you. Have you had a conversation with the Learning Center at all?

That's owned by a different, uh, the, uh, the original developer who developed that recently sold it. So it has an individual investor now that, um, I've reached out to, I've got some coordinating to do to make that connection on the access drive that we have to make here in this, you could see this little small triangle here. So I've reached out to them to, um, to get an agreement with them for some cross-access and temporary construction easements and things of that nature and haven't heard back.

Any other questions? Nice. We'll declare the public hearing open at 6.23 PM. Thank you very much for your presentation.

Thank you.

Would anyone from the audience like to speak on this item? Seeing none, I declare the public hearing closed at 6.23 p.m. So any further discussion from the board?

Yes, sir. From the developer standpoint, they have been able to reach out and talk with the adjacent property owner. Again, there's two learning centers or two child development centers right now. notification or anything on that, talking about this special use permit?

So with any sort of public hearing or zoning process, we send zoning notification cards to 200 feet from property lines so they would have received a postcard saying that there was a public hearing tonight for this daycare use. And then there's also been zoning signs posted on the property every On both frontages, Woodbridge and 78.

So they've had an opportunity to ask questions and be here publicly?

Correct.

Okay.

I'm curious if you said staff had concerns of the adjacency to the other daycare. Does staff have any recommendations for revisions that would help it, or is it just a general concern because they're right next to each other?

It's just a general concern from us. There is no recommendation.

Okay. And I would like to point out that this site is still meeting all of the city requirements. So, you know, it's really the board's recommendation to city council moving forward and say this site is in compliance with all of our zoning regulations. It just requires the special use permit at this point.

I mean, I would just say based on the two examples that were presented, it seems like this site preschool concept thrives adjacent to the same type of business, but different concept, I'll call it. So they're picking another pad right next to a daycare. And there's two examples of that in neighboring cities in the Metroplex. So it seems like that is being done for a specific reason.

Anything else? I'll entertain a motion to vote in favor of recommending this to the city council.

I make a motion to move forward as presented.

Mr. Montauk? I'll second. I'll stop for Mr. Cox. Just to clarify, that's a motion to approve? To approve as presented, yes.

I have a motion to second. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, please cast your vote. Passes unanimously. Last thing on the item is adjournment. Meeting is adjourned at 6.27 p.m. Thank you, everybody.