Planning and Zoning - Regular Meeting

yeah he's ready okay it's a little after six o'clock I guess and we're ready to open our public hearing uh we'd like to uh call everything to order and we're going to discuss to the request to reone property located 501 South Grand Street from R1 to commercial owner Southwest Baptist University U does anyone have anything to say about that or well if who who well staff wouldn't share their until we get to the regular meeting okay okay this is for the public who either in opposition to or in favor of this is their chance and you don't think we're part of the public go ahead no I I'll say my I'll save myself here so okay I'm on edge my seat then we will uh close the hearing and go to the public meeting we' like to call that to order and we need to do a roll call call um I think everybody is here except Richard and Dr burs so um I guess we need to talk about what's on the agenda here so does anybody on the board here have anything to say about the EST yeah I I don't know if we're going to get a a recommendation from staff or not but Jared are you going to make a

recommendation or not uh yes I will be I don't know if you want to go for first or us all right we're on here uh so this is uh we're talking about Southwest Baptist University um that on Grand Street um yeah there we go there's the map it's a 7 acre parcel um and the request is for it to be Zone commercial uh currently we have some holes in our zoning map uh where things hadn't been zoned uh before um north of there is a treatment center it was never zon commercial it's still zon uh residential there's some issues with that like we've talked about in the past and we're going to that's another agenda item uh about the map we're going to talk about here in a little while um but I if I'm not mistaken uh and Mr Crowder's here can probably explain better than I can about uh the purpose in the request uh Beyond just continuing the use like it has been in the zoning that it's been um my recommendation is going to be to um to accept their reest for the rezoning to commercial um especially with the intention of looking at uh zoning maps and doing some doing some adjustments to the map in the in the different zones um in the coming well in the near future anyway but like I said I understand we have a representative from s spu that can probably explain uh the request better than I can why would we want to Zone it commercial when we can go looks to me like it should be reone conditional use R1 um if if you're going to

reone if if we did conditional use under R1 we wouldn't need to reone um it would just be a conditional use um but if I understand correctly this was going to there would be some offices there would be some offices in this building uh that would be not related to sbu use uh primary or or their what's been their primary function um so they would that's that'd be covered by conditional use uh could be I I guess um that's not really listed in conditional uses for residential but uh you are the Planning and Zoning Board so you can make recommendations to to that nature too what did we do with the body with the car with the Auto V shop right below that the uh auto body shop that was or the auto detail shop that was a conditional use as well I'm not we probably need to let SC speak to this but under six of if you go to 40511 or 0.12 under six you can have conditional user you can have counseling or Professional Services you know it spells it out pretty quick what you can have if you just to go commercial I mean you can have a furniture store over there you can have basically anything that that's and I'm not sure that's the the best interest my my other question I guess to jump around here just a little bit have any of the neighbors been contacted at all I I did not see this notice in the paper I'm questioning whether it even noticed

up correctly okay it was put in the paper uh back in January yeah and then run again after that are you sure uh believe so and I didn't I don't do those things I've never seen it I uh I don't I don't do the the notices in the paper uh City cler does but I asked her about that today make sure or not today earlier in the week to make sure that those had run and she said yeah that that they had rerun with new uh dates and times on them yeah 4051 1256 counseling our Professional Services which do not create a noise perceptible by a person oh hold up sorry I trying to read it off yeah DOL courses Public Utilities I guess professional like uh Professional Services like I don't know what the office offices are for would be the the question in my opinion I think you know I want to try to run the meeting here but I think maybe you have Mr Crowder say what their what their intent is yeah well Mr Crowder would you like to be here my name is uh Darren Crowder I'm the vice president for regional campuses for Southwest babis University um thank you all for taking this up tonight and um reviewing it um I think the question is what's the what's the planed use and that is um for office space is is kind of the the the initial kind of thought that we're looking at um I think we

we're looking at options um it's sbu's desire to keep higher education in Salem Missouri like we have no intention of leaving but our frankly our enrollment has been down a little bit we're just trying to figure out how to how to balance our books a little bit and having some options to um to do some different things with that property would help us with that so um so that's kind of why we we're looking at the at the designation but I mean our our desire is is office and um clinical space not necessarily um like we're not looking for a furniture store or or a dispensary or anything like that so um but in talking with uh Mr Brown that his recommendation was commercial so that's why the application was for commercial technically I think under under your current zoning rules R1 is not even an appropriate zoning classification for us because we're higher education and in your R1 classification I think if I read it correctly it's elementary schools and preschools so um so we're technically and I'm a little concerned about the special use simply because we already do night classes and things like that so that that does concern me and then um and this is probably just an uneducated question that maybe I shouldn't be asking but somebody is if it's our desire down the road does that conditional use go with the property or is it with the owner only on the property so that would be a question that we would have so just to answer one question uh you're about uh reviewed uses for res residential one uh it does say Public Schools but it does say Elementary and high school okay high school is on there high school is on there not higher education but it does say public or private okay yeah uh which which is up to the board to yeah you can make a call on thatal uses go with the okay I'm

sorry can't hear you over there condition sorry yes so I think I think from my perspective conditional use would be a concern for us because it does it it if we move to a direction that selling the property but still remaining in salum in the property as part of the sale is an option for us that ties our hands with what we can do with that property so okay I just had a big concern going commercial I mean I if you if you go commercial you sell the property you retain the property you know if you're the owner there somebody comes along and says I want to you I'm just pulling something out of the air I don't think will happen want to you got seven acres there I want to put a big new lot over here uh I don't think there anything we can do ventage we have into his own commercial or log Landing or log Landing I mean what a log Landing so like for logging like where they stay I don't know AB a buying yard for for white open white open STS so I I can I can answer a little bit of those questions uh right now um commercial as far as it's defined in the in the city and what's allowed there are pretty well shops businesses downtown sorts of things um anything more uh yeah I don't know the word I'm looking for um manufacturing yeah log Landings and things like that uh would be more industrial manufacturing according to what we have in our code

right now um as far as the counseling Professional Services these things that are that are uh generally listed out here as conditional uses in residential districts and this is just my interpretation of of this was I believed that to be more of a well it does say within a residence um well it doesn't say within a residence on this one it says talk about noise percep uh percept by a person of normal sensibilities within a residence joining the counseling and professing services I was I was looking that counseling professing services to mean more of a um an inhome type of business um where you might have a counseling uh off office inside your in your house or whatever I think there's conditional uses that you might be able to like argue because there's truck uh truck trailer parks and stuff like that and the conditional uses but those would still come before us before actually turning that lot into that and I think the difference here is we're talking about a a commercial building essentially what we're going to put office spaces into which would be different in my opinion than than uh a private home type business and again that's that's my interpretation of it so um that's why we're here that's why we have a board I guess see way too broad to Zone it commercially that's just my personal

opinion I think you can have I mean none of the neighbors zero to my knowledge and I've got to checked this out none of the neighbors have been contacted I question whether you noticed this up correctly or not but maybe it has been I certainly haven't seen it I saw the the 128 notice but that's the only notice I've seen um I think we're asking for something that we don't want Mr chairman may make comment I think another comment I just would like to make um the whole area is R1 but the treatment plant to the South and then what hopefully Returns the recycling center to the north are clearly not yeah R1 uses so so that strip there I think we that that's why we feel like commercial use because it kind of fits the the the property that's there already so the whole area was kind of initially and I I don't mean to go like too far into the past but that was railroad yeah it was railro it was a railroad area and that was a tie yard way back in the day yeah uh then you have the industrial sites of you know the the uh sheltered workshop you have uh K Hills next to that jet and then you have the bank which you start hitting the highway that's going to be but like that strip there at least on the nor on the Eastern side is somewhat you know it wouldn't be spot zoning by any means I understand where you're coming from where it's like a neighborhood you have commercial Zone in the neighborhood and then like okay if he sells it off and it becomes a car dealership and they put in a big lot or something like that but I I still don't see you know like K Hills is right there that we have industrial right next to right next to houses already the car detail shop was a big deal just across the street from yeah we spent long time talking about the size of signs and how many cars could be

parked there yeah and on the East and on the east and west side is residential yeah and it we spent some time and I was a little bit on the the person that was kind of bringing up a bunch of stuff about that because there were places there that were uh because we had two come into us at once you know we were talking about oh if we allow a detail shop but then we had the motorcycle detail shop the next what two months later that we denied or we initially denied and then he eventually got it um I I I don't know in my opinion I think that and we're kind of going through I think I'm jumping the gun a little bit but we're also looking at different zoning policies and the mrpc zoning here in a little bit if you looked at the uh at the agenda but I I think there's enough space there now and the way it's been used so far seems to not have been a problem and in my like my own personal opin opinion would be uh to go ahead with it um and I would I would so move uh I I move to approve the change of zoning from residential 1 to commercial of 501 South Grand was it South Grand yes yes okay do we have a second on that motion I guess we don't have a second on that motion so motion dies for lack of a second yeah so it's up to the board if you guys want to take other action I would have no problem graning a

conditional use but I will not vote for V's own commercial at this point now let me add a cave off to that after I want to be in say three years I think it's been more like 5 years we finally come up with a proposed working on some zoning that we actually can work with and it it may all change you know if we can get our act together and act and get some Planning and Zoning or get some zoning that actually is Meaningful which we've been asking for for at least three years I I understand uh this may be a mute point it may it may all be Zone commercial down through V if it is I I can live with it and we won't know until we come up with new definitions for the zones that you so and in my opinion right now to say that all of it is higher education without having offices you're going to have teachers with offices and everything else in there already it may not be a commercialized office you know they're going to sell portions of it but to say that there's not offices and it hasn't been a problem so far I don't I I just don't see the issue with that becoming a commercial Zone either uh because like I said you've got industrial across the street and you've had Commercial Business down down the way and that whole strip is kind of running through town towards um oh what is it not Tiger Pride drive but uh Third Street Third Street there you know and then even on Third Street you have uh the public utilities off the Third Street so I I don't know that's that's my thought a a quick introduction so I did check with our city clerk and this meeting was noticed in the February 18th paper thank

you if I don't know if it helps or not I do have uh what is permitted in a commercial Zone if you guys wanted to look over that um I got a couple of copies of that that section uh 40526 yeah I've got it just that there were uh any concerns about what opening up that commercial door might do well I mean you know there's a list that starts out you know antique shop apparel shop client shop arst supplies an automobile parking lot Baker Grace you know Bank barber shop shop I mean the list is quite extensive what's allow there in fact it goes over there a full page on the on the second one looking at 4 5 260 yeah what most of these type of businesses have in common is their their storefronts uh office type uh retail or office type um well Greenhouse probably is not commercial Greenhouse is allowed that one was an odd one but uh I don't I don't know why that was in there miniature golf range newspaper magazine shops um I mean Notions I don't know what Notions is I'm sorry we were sorry yeah well I I just I don't feel comfortable opening it up until we we get all right together and and decide if that's going to be a commercial zone so be it open it up and let them have after but you haven't noticed any of the neighbors up so none of the neighbors have been noticed that you know potentially we got a big change coming

here and it's going to affect the value of your house and it's probably not going to increase the value of your house so I don't know um I'm not aware that there's a requirement in our code to notify anybody individually but run the right here on your paper there's a there is a place to fill that out but again as far as the the notice requirements in our code I don't believe why would we put it there if it wasn't required that part I don't know uh unless it's just this this application way predates me I didn't know if that was for for more information for the board just to have an idea about what was around them but as far as the notif the notice requirements in our code it was just uh the newspaper personally I think it's going to be a moot point because I do think we're going to do some changes there and if you look at the map of mpc's um you know recommendations it already denotes that as a neighborhood business district which I think where we have to come up with yet and I you got more on that later but I think that you know we're going to be arguing over something that's going to change here anyways within probably you two or three years but I don't I don't think you're going to get an automobile retailer or anything like that situated in that zone in three years you know it's can go can I speak to that is I'm glad it's not my meaning I'm sorry is that all right if I speak to that sir I mean that that as representatives of the owners that's a concern to us I mean I think I mean just we're trying our best

to stay in the Salem Community and provide higher education we're a private Christian institution we run off tuition and so um honestly maintaining and keeping that property is is a large expense of our stuff and so one of our future plans hopefully to stay in this community may be require us to to to sell that property with the condition that we keep use of that property so a conditional use ties our hands to be able to do that and that becomes becomes a problem for us and and if the future use is probably going to be commercial anyway because you already have a treatment center plant and you have the other industrial SL commercial to the north I guess we would just request that that you go ahead and make that change change now so I mean we we we want to stay in this community but we've got to we've got to be able to maneuver in order to make that [Music] happen I don't want to see them run out either so you know if it if it requires that they sell off you know a portion of the building for off spaces uh and if they can't they end up leaving you know and I don't know who's going to buy that strictly with the the residential designation either you know right now we're already talking about like how it's not really fitting uh within its own zoning we don't really have a private higher education zoning classification spelled out in our zoning anyways and so that would be my thing I don't want to see them leave uh so I I I would still recommend that we go ahead through with the with the commercial space

a second motion I would so move I it's up to you all M so you guys keep looking over here at us but it's your decision I'm just looking this [Laughter] way I guess if there's no second motion it would again fail for lack of a second now we going talk yeah so the next item uh that we have on there just a little little uh catch up on the the map that we've been we've been talking about here um mrpc came in did a study um went through town every street kind of looked at how the how the streets were or how how the uh the different properties were being used um compared that to what our zoning map had looked like um oh thank you from 80 7 with the with the updates you know since '87 um and then put together this recommendation uh some recommendations for us as far as what uh future zoning maybe should look like um there are some mistakes on here that need to be corrected but uh they're easier to correct um they're easier it's easier to know that we've got some mistakes uh correct those and then get a new map with everything on it uh

so the there are uh added there's there's one added designation on this map uh as far as recommendations go that we don't have on our current map and that is a neighborhood business district that's the blue um like I said right now in commercial uh what's allowed is is downtown type shops uh and businesses uh places where you would have uh storefronts and office fronts right sharing sharing the same walls next door um down the streets uh what we don't have in here U are things like tire shops um uh places where you might have a couple hundred cars parked out front uh like a department store um things like that um I'm trying to think what else um larger gas stations we don't even talk about gas stations in here um a lot of old type uh or outdated probably type wording in our commercial uh it would work for a commercial for a down what we've got here would would be more of like a what the downtown business district might look like but then the red on the map would be more of a uh Highway type commercial where you that you might see along a highway um so that's that's the major difference uh as far as designations on this map would be the blue stuff um yeah we've got agricultural already we just don't have anything designated agricultural uh we have a section in the code that speaks to agricultural and those are those bigger Parcels especially on the outskirts um just wanted to show you kind of what the recommendations were we're going to have uh going to try to schedule a meeting again uh and have a representative from mrpc come down and talk a little bit more on on what their thoughts and how those recommendations might uh look towards or for us a little bit more in detail and how the code how our current

zoning code would have to change uh some of the wording and some of the definition in order to to make things flow a little better why and I realize it's a real fun ideal but why is all 10th Street commercial so we think that's just an error in the map that northwest corner northeast corner yeah yeah we think that's just an error um I did want to add though what we're going to ask for you all we're looking at basically a workshop so not a meeting where you all would be voting on it but where we would invite an um an friend from mrpc back have her facilitate a workshop with you all and invite the board of alderman so that they are part of the conversation as well um about what those definitions should be for each of those zones as Jared stated our current commercial definition really fits fairly closely to the neighborhood business districts in blue so we would need a new definition for what just commercial means in red okay um and so that's what we would be asking from you all you know look at in your code book that um we had provided previously look at those sections that have the definitions and then see what tweaks what changes we need to make um the other thing that we would be discussing is you know obviously we know about the red in the northeast corner that needs to be fixed but are there other Parcels or other areas where we need to recommend a change and it be zoned differently than this draft map shows again this is just a draft so we'd be looking for all of that type of input from you all when we have this Workshop okay yeah the intent tonight was not to get into deep Weeds on this but just to introduce it to you all and and give you a better understanding what

we're kind of looking for from you so that then staff can draft from that proposed order ordinances and changes yeah there there needs to be some real redefinition of what right what qualifies in but we will need from you all what that needs to be I mean we'll work on the the word smithing of it once we get the concepts from you all what that should be okay any other questions about that process or do you all have your your zoning books still at home maybe I see several pieces not not a huge number but I see several pieces in fact I have to own one of them that you're going to run into some real resistance that you're taking it from commercial and putting it in R1 gotcha and and again that's that that will get some apples up including my own gotcha well and that's part of that Workshop discussion about are there things proposed on this map that need to be changed so going going backwards on zoning it's going to be a tough order I'm just saying my opinion I don't think that's anyone's intent it's just do do we have a current zoning map of what things are currently okay thought so not just checking not an upto-date one no they did land use they did actual use not zoning well can we yeah can we can I get a copy of that I can email you I've got on my computer I can see what what being what land is being used now so we can kind of take a look I don't think I have one that shows actual current zoning other than the one I

made okay yeah okay so if we have that then we can send it out to you all yeah that'd be that'd be awesome to see like what it's being used as cuz I know there's ones that are well jar Jared said they did develop one that shows the actual current zoning changes since ' 87 that yeah that'd be awesome if we could see like that that more data is better than not for me so do you want all three or just I would love all three okay I'm just worried it's going to confuse things oh I understand okay I I I think I get I'm I've been working with Zoning for a long time so so yeah I can send those out to everyone uh if you if you'd like them that'd be awesome um and they are this one's labeled at the top top left hand corner zoning recommendations and then we've got one that that'll be current zoning and then one that's uh more of a land use current land use how how things are being used currently uh regardless of zoning so I can I can get those out and again there there will be some mistakes on on those but uh we've just I know on the the current zoning we went through that with a pretty pretty fine tooth comb I think we got all those um those are that one's right but as far as uh land the land use one there was some mistakes on that that they didn't maybe quite understand what was going on with that property as they as they went past it so and again a couple of large mistakes on this one but but we know those are mistakes yeah any other questions about that okay that's all I got do we have a motion do we have anything else I think there's anything else we need a motion to adjourn I would make a motion we adjourn

to have a second I'll second all right we'll adjourn