Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, I'd like to call the September 15th meeting of the Planning Commission to order and welcome our new members that are here. Thank you guys for being here. Daisy, can you confirm that the Kansas Open Meeting Act recommendations have been met?

Yes, I can confirm that the packet was posted and the required notice was provided.

Thank you. Can we have a roll call, please?

Commissioner Pankritz?

Here.

Commissioner Ault? Here. Commissioner McFadden?

Here.

Commissioner Willer? Here. Commissioner Johnson?

Here. And Vice Chair Farber? Here.

So with six out of six members, we have a quorum and we can proceed with business.

Wonderful. Do we need to approve these minutes separately or can we do them together? Another two meetings we need to approve. Fine. I hope everybody has had a chance to look over the minutes from the last couple of meetings. First, let's talk about the August 4th meeting. If anybody has any concerns or changes to the August 4th meeting, let me know. If not, I would accept a motion to approve.

I'd move to approve the August 4th, 2026 minutes.

Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the minutes from August 4th, 2026 Planning Commission meeting. All in favor, let it be known by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that carries six to zero. And same thing for the minutes of the September 1st meeting. If there are any problems or I would accept a motion.

I'd move that the September 1st, 2026 meetings of the Planning Commission be approved also.

Second.

We have a motion and a second for approval of the September 1st meeting minutes. All in favor, let it be known by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that carries as well. Also, I would like to move the administrative... election of offices to the beginning of this agenda. If we could, and I was looking for an agenda number, Daisy, am I missing it on my packet here? 3.7. 3.7. Can we move 3.7 up and put it ahead of 3.1? Is there any objection to that? Okay. Do we need to vote on that or just go with it?

I think as the chair, it's your prerogative. Prerogative.

I will use that prerogative then, which would take us into our organizational time. Item 3.7. 3.7, yes, sir.

All right, thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. Under the commission's bylaws, the first regular meeting is September.

Is your mic on?

Thank you.

Under the commission's bylaws, typically is our first regular meeting in September. This is our second. It's the annual meeting where the commission elects a chair and vice chair for the coming year. So we'll take care of that this afternoon and we'll also nominate the commission's representatives to BZA and the Heritage Commission. As secretary, I'll run the nominations and the votes for this item. Officers serve a one year term or until their successors are elected. No one can hold office for more than two full consecutive one year terms and anyone nominated for the chair must have at least one full year left on the planning commission term. Chad Farber has served two terms as vice chair, so he isn't eligible for the vice chair again, but he is eligible for chair. Larry Pankritz's term ends in August 2027, so he's eligible for vice chair, but not for chair this year. And all other members are eligible for either office. And, give me just a second here. Actually, I'm sorry, that last piece, I have a typo in that, so disregard that last piece about Commissioner Pankratz. So let's just, we can handle the chair first, and then the vice chair, and then the two representatives here. So I'll open the floor for nominations for the position of chair. If anybody has a name that they want to nominate.

I would nominate Commissioner Farber as the chair.

Okay.

I'll second that.

A second from McFadden, great. All right, any other nominations? No? Okay, hearing none, nominations for the chair are closed. So all in favor of Commissioner Farber for chair, please vote by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, so that's six votes for Commissioner Farber as chair. So you are now the, you will be the chair.

He's in charge now, right? What was that?

He's in charge now. Yeah, now you have to stay for the whole meeting. Okay, so now I'll open the floor for nominations for the position of vice chair. Anyone want to nominate someone for vice chair?

I nominate Doug Ault for vice chair.

Okay. Commissioner Pankritz nominated Commissioner Ault for vice chair. Do we have a second? Second.

I'll second.

Okay, Commissioner Wheeler. All right, seconded. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Do you want any other nominations?

I'm sorry, any other nominations? Rolled right in. I'd like to nominate Dan. Okay. I was trying to make sure I was lining up. He is available, correct?

Yes.

Okay. I'm sorry, Commissioner McFadden. All right.

So we will take a vote then on Commissioner Ault for Vice Chair, and then we'll- Second. What was that?

Do we need a second on my nomination?

Yes. Sorry. I'll second that. Okay. So we can take a vote then on Commissioner Ault for Vice Chair. Aye. Say aye.

Aye.

We have three, three out of six voting for Commissioner Ault. All right, now Commissioner McFadden for Vice Chair. Go ahead and raise your hand and say aye. Aye. We've got three.

They could substitute back and forth. What was that? They could substitute back and forth.

Give me a moment here.

Are there any other nominations? There's not. Okay. Well, I mean, as we just went through with our training, we have to have an affirmative of some kind. So. I don't have my handbook on me.

Okay. Does anyone want to? change their nomination, or do we want to take a vote again for Commissioner Ault for Vice Chair?

I'll leave my nomination if you want to vote again.

Was that a, were you withdrawing it?

No, I want to keep it there, but we can, if you wanted to vote again to see if anything.

So we either have someone can withdraw the nomination or we can keep voting until we have a... May I ask a question?

Yes. Did both of your terms start at the same time?

Mine just started last year. I'm one year in.

Okay.

I've been on, I think. Am I on my second three-year term? Mm-hmm.

You just started your second one, I believe. I don't have the roster in front of me.

Yes, your term would end in August of 2028. Pardon? Your term ends in August of 2028 as well. OK.

Maybe we could have some discussion real quick before we vote a second time. Does Commissioner Ault or Commissioner McFadden, do either of you really want to be or do either of you like, I'll do it, no one else wants to, but I don't really need to? Or what are your guys' thoughts as nominees on this position?

If Chad's going to elect me or nominate me, I'll support it, yeah. As far as... Doug probably has a little bit more experience as to parliamentary procedure than I do.

So Doug, would you want to be Vice Chair?

For sake of time, I'll just withdraw and let Dan be the Vice Chair then. It's not that big a deal.

So Commissioner Pankritz, you nominated Commissioner Ault, but Commissioner Ault, you're saying you're withdrawing out the nomination. Yeah. Okay, so all those in favor for Commissioner McFadden as Vice Chair, go ahead and say aye. Aye. Six votes for Commissioner Ault to be Vice Chair. So that will be our Vice Chair. McFadden, correct. Sorry, McFadden. That will be our vice chair for this next term. Do the Board of Zoning Appeals representative, so that's the next commission's next representative is Board of Zoning Appeals. That was a seat that Patrick Mikesell held this past term. That board meets on the third Thursday of each month at 4 PM. So city code requires Board of Zoning Appeals members to live inside the city limits. So we have one member that's outside the city. It is Commissioner Johnson. Great. So that would mean every other member can be nominated. Do we have a nomination for the representative for the Board of Zoning Appeals?

Or is anybody nominating themselves for it? Anybody available to be there on the third Thursday of the month at four? Is that something you would want to?

Just some information about that decision because I know we have some new members. So the Board of Zoning Appeals is responsible for hearing variance cases and appeals cases, appeals to determinations made by the zoning administrator. So they meet once a month, the third Thursday of every month, and they're looking primarily at variances and whether or not there's appropriate justification and reasons for potential variance that might be requested. So that's the kind of work you're looking at. You're looking at setbacks, distance usually variances, size limitation variances, height limitation variances, things of that nature.

I'm good with that.

I'll nominate Dan McFadden for the BZA.

Second.

Okay. Any other nominations for representative to the BZA? You said Mike Sells on there now? He was. But since he's currently not a member appointed to the Planning Commission.

It's also only a one-year term. We'll switch it every year.

Thank you. I think they can remain, but yeah. You can elect them again? Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it does only last for the year. Okay. Hearing no other nominations. Making sure. Okay, so nominations are closed. So all in favor of Commissioner McFadden as the representative for the BZA? Go ahead and say aye.

Aye.

Is that all six? Any opposed? Okay, so six votes for Commissioner McFadden to be the representative for the BZA for this next term. Congratulations. All right, so last is the commission's representative on the Heritage Commission. That's a seat that Carla Waters held this past year, and it meets on the last Wednesday of January, April, July, and October, so it's a quarterly meeting at 4 PM. And it can also hold special meetings for applications, so that's often the way that those get scheduled as special meetings. Is anyone interested in serving, or I'll open the floor to nominations.

You said they meet quarterly?

Yes.

Okay. I would do that.

Okay. Commissioner Wheeler. I'll nominate Brittany. Hi. I'll nominate her. Okay. Second needs to be done. Second. Any other nominations? All right, hearing none, all those in favor of Commissioner Willer being the representative to the Heritage Commission, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, six votes for Commissioner Willer to be the representative for the Heritage Commission for this next term. That completes our nominations, our elections. So we can move on to the next item.

All right, let's go to item 3.1.

Wait until he gets these slides up.

All right.

All right, good evening commissioners. This is application number ZTA 26-002. This is a zoning text amendment filed by Dean Andrew on behalf of Kelly Dunn. The application proposes amendments to six sections across two zoning districts. These are sections 42-187, 42-189, 42-190 in the R2.5 district, and then section 42-202, 42-204, and 42-205 in the R3 district. Both are multi-family residential districts. On this one, the Planning Commission is the recommending body, and then your action tonight goes to the City Commission, who will consider that item for adoption of an ordinance. Getting into some of the background here, single family attached dwellings, what most people consider town homes, are a common housing type here. Each unit is its own dwelling joined to the next by a common wall, so it's one building with two dwellings. And in most of these developments, the units are meant to be sold separately on lots split down that common wall. That's where the current regulations create a problem. In 1989, the city adopted ordinance number 89-9316, which sets up standards in the R2 district for exactly this scenario. And that ordinance set up a 24 foot wide minimum lot width and 40 foot wide lot width on corners and a side yard that can go to a zero lot line at the common wall. The R2.5 and R3 never got those amendments made to them. So that's only in the R2 that that applies. So today, if someone builds a duplex or a townhome pair in R2.5 or R3, and then wants to split the lot along the wall, the resulting lots do not meet the district lot width and side yard requirements. So they can't be split for separate ownership. The development is otherwise appropriate for the district. The regulations do not have the dimensional standards to allow the lot split to happen. So on this request, There's three amendments here. So first, there's a change to list single family attached dwellings not exceeding two units per building as a permitted use. And clarify that the existing single family entry means single family detached. So currently in the R2.5 and the R3 regulations, it just lists single family. So this first change just clarifies attached or detached. A single family detached is your standard. standard single family home that you would think of and then a single family attached would be more than one dwelling and that are attached to each other. Second, the 24-foot minimum lot width for attached dwellings, 40-foot width on the corner lots, and clarify that the existing 50-foot width applies to detached dwellings. Third, would allow the side yard to be reduced to zero at the common lot line. So these three changes would happen on the R2.5 and the R3 zoning district regulations. Just to note, also in drafting the amended text, the staff made some Some slightly different edits than what are explained on the application, that covered most of them, but the minor change to the use and stuff was something that staff did as a, making it all kind of work together as we got into editing it. So if you did notice a discrepancy in what the application says, it's really minor, it all kind of works together to set up the stage for those lot splits to occur easily. So all of those fall within the sections that were advertised and that we published notice for. Because this is a text amendment with no specific property involved, there's no mailed notice to adjacent property owners, no signposting, no vicinity maps to provide or to put out for public notice. Published notice did go out 20 days ahead for tonight's public hearing as section 42-24 requires and the protests Provisions that are applicable usually to a rezoning or to a specific property aren't involved on this tonight. Getting into zoning amendment criteria. Section 42-21 is the authority for amending the zoning ordinance. It allows amendments to promote public health, safety, and welfare, conserve property values throughout the city, and lessen congestion in the streets. It also directs that due allowance be made for existing conditions, property values, and uses property is already devoted to. Section 42-2 sets out the purposes of the zoning ordinance. These are the ones that matter most for this request here. Regulating the size of yards and open spaces, guiding growth consistent with the comprehensive plan, and minimizing conflicts among land uses. Next slide, okay three. Section 42-25 requires the Planning Commission to report a recommendation with reasons based on what is presented at the hearing. That section also lists five factors, but those are written for rezoning requests and framed around a specific subject property. So staff has organized the analysis for this under sections 42-21 and 42-2. So getting into the next slide, consistency with the intent and purpose of the zoning ordinance. The core point here is that this extends an approach the city's already been using in the R2 district since 1989. R2.5 and R3 already anticipate this housing form. Both districts set a minimum lot area for single family attached or two family dwellings at 3,000 square feet per family. So the lot area standard is there. What is missing is the permitted use listing and the allowable lot width for after those lots are split. and the allowance for the side yard to go to zero feet along the common lot line or the common wall of that townhome. So the edits I mentioned here are the permitted use lists and the lot width standards in both districts, just a single family without saying whether that means attached or detached. If we add a separate entry for the attached form without qualifying those, you would have two provisions that could be sort of read against each other, so the amendments clarify that attached and detached exactly in the way that the R2 already does. So what this really boils down to is we carried over language from R2 that already exists, it's already written that way, and we applied it to the R2.5 and R3. So getting into consistency with the comprehensive plan. On the comprehensive plan, goal CO.2 and strategy CO.2-2 call for a diverse housing stock that includes town homes. R2.5 is listed as a potential zoning district under both suburban residential and urban residential categories. R3 is listed under urban residential and neighborhood center. Each of those categories identifies attached housing as an appropriate form. Staff finds that the amendment that the amendments are consistent with both the zoning ordinance and the comprehensive plan on this. getting into effect on orderly development. Nothing here increases density, and nothing else changes for what could be built on one of these lots. Lot area, front and rear yards, height, lot coverage, parking, access, landscaping, drainage, utilities, and subdivision requirements all stay exactly as they are currently. The 40-foot corner lot minimum is retained, so the exterior side yard on a double frontage lot is preserved. These amendments do not approve anything. They're just general regulations that would establish whether a property is in compliance with the zoning regulations. But they don't open up any additional things that we would be approving that are different than normal. Any actual lot split still goes through chapter 36 where the lot split regulations are located and gets reviewed on its own merits. So staff finds no basis to conclude that this would affect orderly development. Getting into effect on public health, safety, and general welfare. These are the same standards that have been in place in R2 for 37 years without issue. Two things worth noting here. The zero foot side yards applies only at the common lot line where the units already share a wall. The side yards on the outside of the building are untouched. and the 24 foot lot width doesn't change the 3,000 square foot per family lot area requirement. So the overall size of the lots is still gonna remain the same. Building code and fire protection requirements, including everything governing common wall construction and separation, continue to apply through the building permit process. Staff finds no basis to conclude that this would be detrimental to public health, safety, or welfare. So as far as recommended findings, there are six recommended findings in your packet. They track with this analysis, consistency with the ordinance and the comprehensive plan, resolution of the internal inconsistency in the zoning regulations for those two districts, the edits that were made and due allowance under section 42-21, and no detriment to health, safety, or welfare. As far as Planning Commission alternatives, you have four options. You can recommend approval as requested, you can recommend approval with modifications, you can recommend disapproval, or you can continue the hearing to a date certain. And staff recommends alternative number one, that the Planning Commission recommend approval to the City Commission. If you do, this is scheduled to be considered by the City Commission on October 12th. And we have a recommended motion up here on the next slide and in your packet as well. And this concludes staff's presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for that. Any questions for staff? None. Would the applicant care to speak on this?

If you would, speak your name and tell us who you are, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name's Dean Andrew, and I am representing Kelly Dunn and Craig Piercy with Stone Lake Development Company. And they had built six two unit dwellings along Vista Sur Drive that back up to Schilling Road. And those lots were originally zoned R2.5 to allow for apartments if desired, but they decided they'd rather build two unit dwellings and found that they could not split those into separate ownership because the provisions were not present. So they reached out to me and Asked if I thought there was a solution for that and there were really two options one was to just rezone those lots to r2 But I didn't think that was going to be helpful for the future or long term or other situations So I recommended to them that they file to amend the regulations in R2.5 and R3 to allow the same thing that can already happen in R2, which is you build a two-unit dwelling, you split it down the middle on the common wall and have two separate ownerships. These applicants also own some lots in Phase 2 that are zoned R2.5, so they wouldn't be faced with this again. It'd help other builders and developers, give them more flexibility for the future, more choices as to what housing type they want to build. And then the other thing is a lot of the older areas of the city are zoned R3, and so this would allow for someone to go in and do infill and build town homes that can be split regardless of the r3 zoning so i think this was the best direction to go for allowing for more flexibility for builders and developers in the future thank you mr andrew does anybody have any questions for the applicant or the representative of the applicant if not thank you thank you

With that, I will bring it back for discussion or a motion.

I'd move that we approve application ZTA 26-002 to amend sections 42187, 42189, and 42190 of the R2.5 multifamily residential district regulations. Sections 42202, 42204, 42205 of the R3 multifamily residential district regulations is set forth in the attached draft amended text based on the findings set out in the staff report.

Second.

I have a motion and a second to approve application ZTA 26-002. All in favor, let it be done by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? I carry 6-0. And that will take us to 3.2. I'm just waiting for the slice to get pulled up. Sure. Could I get a physical copy of the packet? My attachments are not pulling up up here. No. Thank you. You can give it to her. She gave me hers.

Good afternoon, Chair and Commission. This is application CUP 26003, a request by Jeff Mays on behalf of 1858 Properties LLC for the Easy Egg at 244 South Santa Fe Avenue. The requested action is approval of a conditional use permit to allow an outdoor patio accessory to a restaurant in the C4 central business district. The planning commission's role is to determine whether the proposed patio is appropriate at this location and whether the required findings for the conditional use permit approval can be made. The request is limited to the outdoor patio component of the proposed restaurant. A restaurant is a permitted use in the C4 district. However, outdoor food and beverage service on an accessory patio requires an approval of said permit, said conditional use permit. The subject site is approximately 5,960 square feet and contains approximately 4,830 square foot commercial building. The building is currently vacant and is being redeveloped for the ECA. The proposed patio would seat up to 24 patrons and would operate in conjunction with a breakfast and lunch style restaurant. The stated operating hours are from 7 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. daily. The commission's review focuses on the patio size and relationship to the indoor restaurant, compatibility with nearby property, and the advocacy of utilities, drainage, and traffic access and parking. The property is located on the west side of South Santa Fe in downtown Salina. The site is across South Santa Fe Avenue from the Homewood Suites and First Bank Kansas area and immediately east of the parking associated with the Emmanuel Lutheran Church. The property is surrounded primarily by the C4 zoning and established downtown commercial institutional hotel, office, restaurant and cultural uses. The church parking area immediately off the site and then residential property is located further west across South 7th Street. The patio would face South Santa Fe Avenue and would be integrated into the commercial store frontage. It would not face or directly orient toward the residential area of West 7th Street. The building was constructed in 1952 and was previously occupied by Tony Restaurant and later by the ODAT and the Lano Organizations. The building, like I've said previously, is currently vacant. The former Tony's Restaurant frontage included brick arches and other storefront alterations. The proposed redevelopment removes the existing storefront facade and brick arches and creates a new frontage for the Easy Egg. The property is located within the business improvement district number one. Because of that location, exterior improvements were required by the DRB, the design review board, and on June 25th, 2026, the DRB approved application CC26007 for the related facade improvements. Those improvements include a new storefront, an inset patio dining area, railings, façade materials, canopy glazing signage, and related streetscape features. The design review board action addressed the exterior appearance and design compatibility of the project. The conditional use permit before the Planning Commission addresses the land use and operating characteristics of the outdoor patio itself. And then this is kind of what was proposed at the DRB hearing. And it's kind of just show you what the general look and makeup of the Easy Egg will look like on South Santa Fe. and then the rendering just kind of shows how the patio railing storefront glazing and like all those materials that i've stated before kind of create work together to create that more active street frontage and from a land use perspective the important point is that the patio is already integrated into the building and is designed as a small accessory feature of the primary indoor restaurant And then these are the submitted plans that kind of really demonstrate the, one, how small the patio is in comparison to the overall building. And two, you can see that kind of technical. And the patio is the yellow highlight and the whole building is that blue border. And then kind of how I've said like the patio is physically connected to and operate as part of the indoor restaurant and it is not designated as a separate restaurant, bar or entertainment space. So the applicant is requesting approval of the outdoor patio. The restaurant, the indoor section would have approximately 89 indoor seats with the patio seats included, which is 24. The restaurant would have a total seating capacity of approximately 113 patrons. This indoor to outdoor comparison is important because the zoning ordinance requires that the patio to remain smaller than the indoor serving area and both size and occupant load. The applicant has confirmed that alcohol service is proposed indoors and on the patio. Alcohol service remains subject to the applicable state and local licensing and operational requirements which are administered separately from this conditional use permit. The Easy Egg is proposed as a sit-down breakfast and lunch restaurant with the stated hours of like 7 to 2.30 daily. This application does not propose a stage, dance floor, DJ area, live entertainment, or outdoor amplified sound system. The patio is intended truly to function as an accessory seating for a restaurant patrons. It's not that it's not a space for an entertainment venue. These operating characters, characteristics are important because they limit the expected intensity of the patio and reduce the potential for late night evening noise, crowding or other activity impacts. The property is zone C4. And what this really means is it's intended to accommodate a broad mix of downtown retail. That includes service, office, restaurant, entertainment, cultural, and other related uses. And what makes this interesting, like I've said earlier, restaurants are permitted, but within the alcohol sales, we look to our code and outdoor food and beverage under section 42303 on the 11th bullet point, 11, states that this proposal is not conditional use. The indoor dining area contains approximately 1,148 square feet of restaurant space in 89 seats and then section 42 306 and the second bullet point says that generally requires businesses business activities to occur within enclosed buildings but allows the accessory outdoor and food and beverage service when they approved as an additional use permit and that is under section 42 597.2 and that really just shows and really tees up why this is important So a part of the conditional use, it really tees up and goes through all these criteria. And from here on out, we're going to show the welfare and show why this proposal is not going to have negative impacts or what the impacts will be for the public. One required funding that this proposed patio will contribute to the welfare convenience of the public. The Easy Egg would add a breakfast and lunch dining option in the downtown Salina. The patio would provide additional seating for restaurant patrons and contribute to pedestrian activity and street level vitality along South Santa Fe Avenue. The project also reactivates a vacant commercial building and is connected to a larger approved facade renovation. The renovation and inset patio are intended to create a more active and visually cohesive storefront. Outdoor dining is an established and generally compatible feature of downtown commercial districts. The patio is small in scale and is accessory to the restaurant and supports the primary indoor restaurant use. Alcohol will be served as part of the restaurant operation, including on the patio. However, the patio is limited to 24 seats and operates during the daytime hours and does not include the amplified sound or entertainment. Those features alone reduce the potential operational impacts. The commission must find that the patio will not cause substantial injury to the nearby property and will not dominate the nearby neighborhood. The patio will be located within the existing building frontage, behind railings, and low architectural walls approved through the design review board process. It would face South Santa Fe Avenue with the commercial downtown environment. The patio is not oriented towards the residential area of South 7th Street. In addition, the stated hours end at 2.30 p.m. and the application does not propose amplified sound or entertainment venues. Based on the scale, configuration, and location operating characteristics, staff finds that the patio will not dominate the neighborhood or cause substantial injury to nearby property. Staff reviewed the availability of public utilities and the effect of proposal on the drainage. Existing water, sanitary sewer, electric, and natural gas service are available to serve the restaurant tenant space. City records identify a 12-inch public water main in South Santa Fe Avenue and a 12-inch public sanitary sewer main in the rear alley. The patio is located within the existing building footprint. No building expansion is proposed and the patio would not alter the established drainage patterns. Stormwater in this downtown area is already conveyed through an existing curb and gutter and public sewer system. Because the patio is accessory to the restaurant and does not create a separate principal use, staff does not expect a material increase in demand for public utility or municipal services. No off-street parking is required for restaurant uses in the C4 district. This is consistent with the established downtown development pattern, where businesses are served by on-street parking, public parking resources, and shared parking opportunities, and pedestrian access in the park once environment. The patio does not expand the building and does not create a new access point. The public alley at the rear of the building remains available for deliveries and service access. The addition of the 24 seats is limited in scale and staff does not expect the patio to create a traffic hazard, materially increase congestion, require additional off-street parking, or trigger a new loading requirement. And then this slide just kind of summarizes, it's kind of hard to see, but the operational and locational factors as part of the staff review. And I kind of just go into hours off operation, characteristics of the drinking establishment type of facility, and it kind of just lays it all out. And it's basically a summary of what we've kind of got to here, but it's a nice visual for you. The comprehensive plan identifies downtown Salina as a mixed-use center serving local, community, and regional markets. downtown is intended to accommodate commercial restaurant office cultural entertainment governmental financial residential and institutional uses the proposal supports downtown salinas goals by reinvesting in an existing vacant commercial building and adding an active restaurant use and supporting a mix of uses and contributing to a walkable park once environment The approved facade improvements and the inset patio would also improve the storefront and support the character and activity of the downtown core. Staff finds that the proposed restaurant and accessory patio are consistent with the comprehensive plan's applicable downtown land use policies. Based on the site plan, patio scale, and operating characteristics, the downtown location, and the proposed conditions of approval, staff concludes that the required findings for approval can be made. The patio complies with the C4 patio standard because it is smaller than the indoor serving space and both the floor area and seating capacity. The proposal is supported by existing utilities and access and does not require off-street parking in the C4 district and does not alter drainage patterns and is compatible with the surrounding downtown environment. Conditional use permits generally run with land. Therefore, the commission's decision is whether this property is an appropriate location for an accessory patio under the approved site plan and conditions, not whether the approval should apply only to the current restaurant operator.

They can't.

This staff report contains detailed recommended findings addressing the approval criteria in section 42597.2. In summary, staff finds that the patio complies with applicable zoning ordinance requirements because it is smaller than the indoor serving space in both area and occupant load. The patio contributes to public welfare and convenes by expanding dining opportunities, supporting pedestrian activity, and helping reactivate the downtown building. Because of its limited size, inset configuration, daytime hours, and absence of outdoor amplified sound or entertainment venue, staff finds that the patio will not substantially injure nearby property or dominate the neighborhood. Staff also finds that utilities, drainage, parking, loading, and access are all adequate to serve the proposed accessory patio use. The Planning Commission has four procedural alternatives. Any approval action requires the Commission to make the required findings. First, the Commission may approve the conditional use permit as requested. Second, the Commission may approve the request with conditions or modifications. This is the staff's recommended alternative. Third, the Commission may postpone consideration to a date certain if additional information or revised plans are needed. Fourth, the Commission may deny the request if the required findings cannot be made or if it finds that the proposed patio is incompatible with the surrounding neighborhood. And as I said, staff recommends alternative to approval with the recommended conditions. So what would those recommended conditions be? The first condition requires that the patio be constructed and operated substantially in accordance with the approved site plan and building elevations. This ensures that the patio remains consistent with the reviewed layout enclosure and building relationship. The second condition requires that the patio to remain accessory and subordinate to the primary indoor restaurant use and prevents it from exceeding the size or occupant load of the indoor serving space. And then the third condition prohibits the outdoor amplified sound, live entertainment, a stage, and a DJ area without further planning commission approval. The fourth condition limits the patio operations to the stated hours of 7 AM to 2.30 PM daily. Any expansion of patio operating hours requires conditional use permit amendment. Together these conditions maintain the patio as a small scale daytime accessory dining feature rather than an independent outdoor entertainment venue.

That's it.

Thank you. And then the staff's recommended motion is shown on screen and mirrors the motion language in the staff report. And that concludes staff's presentation. I appreciate your attention and I'm available for any questions.

I just want to add a clarification here. On the running with the land, typically the CUPs will run with the land. You do have the ability to limit that and have it only be applied to this business. Historically that's been done for businesses where there may be a concern because of the use that may have a higher impact in the future. Something like a tobacco shop or something where Possibly you want to have the opportunity to review that at a later time if it does change hands. But just to be completely clear, that is an option you have. It would be placed as a condition if you wanted it to only apply to this business, but otherwise it would just run with the land. And then on that last condition, the hours are not something you have to put a condition on. That is something you could choose to remove if you don't want to. That's just the stated hours that the applicant gave us for hours of operation. But again, it's up to the commission to decide if you want that condition on there. Because by placing it as a condition of approval in the conditional use permit, if it did change hands in the future, potentially that restaurant may not close at 2.30 p.m. So having that condition on here, just to be aware of if it runs of the land, that's going to apply to whoever could potentially move in there in a few years or at some point in the future. And that's all.

Thank you. Thank you, staff. Any questions of staff? And thank you for that clarification as well. Any questions for staff at all? I believe we have a representative here. Would you like to speak, Mr. Mays? And please state your name as you have before.

Jeff Mays, Compro Realty here on behalf of 1858 Properties. As always, staff reports very thorough. I'd stand for any questions or clarifications you might have about the business or the plan. And this is just me because I just saw it today, the hours of operation thing. They're stated hours. They close when things get, you know, on Sunday afternoon if it's 3 o'clock. You know, it's breakfast and lunch. It's not dinner. But I'd hate to have to be out there saying, you guys got to go because it's 2.30. I don't know what we're protecting ourselves from. And I understand staff's recommendation, but if you felt – If you felt compelled to put hours of operation on it, give us 4 o'clock or something. But that's when they generally close on Wednesdays, Tuesdays. But they may be busy on a nice 70 degree day. So I'd ask for any consideration in that regard. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Any other questions?

To add on to that, that would be what staff would support too. That may be a little tight to put 230 on there. If that's a planned closing time, it might restrict things on there. I understand where it's coming from.

Jeff, on the actual picture here, has an HIM beside?

Yeah, that's nothing. That's a placeholder that the guy that we do our renders, Munson, put on there for right now. We don't have anything yet. We've got a lot of interest, however, from the soft good retail space.

So is that actually an open spot then for another facility? Yes, it's an open. It's available retail space.

So that's a separate business. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. The patio, only if you look at the rendering, it's just on the restaurant side, and then it comes all the way out to the face of the curb, or the face of the walkway, as you'd expect.

So then if someone comes into that thing, do we have to approve that into that separate facility?

No, the conditional use permit is really for the patio. So the use itself is... The restaurant is a permitted use. It's only the patio dining, and so currently they're working on it, but they can't work on the patio yet until this is approved. So the other tenant space, if we look at the floor plan, That north piece is just an open box right now. That's the empty tenant space. So everything from the yellow from the patio all the way to the back of the building is the restaurant. So there's front of house and then the back of house stuff's back there. Then to the upper left, those are restrooms and a storage room, I believe. So there's like a shared hallway back there where the two tenant spaces would access those.

Okay, thanks.

When do you think they'd open?

I just talked to the contractor today. You want to call and find out? Because I can't. Honestly, we're planning. We just did an identity lease. We're hoping by February. End of January, February kind of time frame right now.

Great. Anything else for Mr. Mays? Thank you all for your time. Thank you. With that, I'll bring it back to the commission for discussion and a motion. I personally don't even see why number four is necessary on the recommendation list. And if we leave those hours off, that'll give them freedom to have it open an extra hour or two on that Sunday. Chair Harper. Chair Harper. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry to interrupt, but we do want to make sure that we check for members of the public or anybody who wants to speak on that.

Thank you. Before the commission makes a decision or a motion, is anybody in the audience here who would like to make a statement or give any input on this agenda item? I don't see any here. Are there any online?

We have two members online. I'm not sure if either of them are wanting to speak to this particular item or not, but we do have two members online. does not look like they have anything to say. So we can move on.

Thank you. So now I will bring it back to the commission. And I've stated my piece on number four as well. And I think Dustin brought up something interesting. I'd like to hear some input on the option of running this with the business alone or attaching it to the land. What do you guys are thinking? I think attached to the business. I mean, I think having that option to review that at a later time, because really we can't tell the future, right? We don't know in five years from now, you know, there might be another business that has a whole different use for that patio, you know, and we might want to look at that later on. That's kind of the way I was leaning to. I just didn't know what the input was on there. All right. Any other discussion? If not, I would be willing to take a motion on this. Do we need to add, if we decide to have that running with the business, do we need to add that as part of the recommendations there?

You would want to state that in your motion, that you would like to add a condition that the conditional use permit applies to the EZA or to the business and any other changes you make. So you can use most of that motion, but The very end where it says subject to the conditions of approval, numbers one through four is recommended by staff. You just want to clarify that however you're wanting to change that.

Sure. I guess, Mr. Mays, would that cause any hardship if we attach this to the business as opposed to the property? Okay, thank you.

I'd be ready to make a motion.

Okay, go ahead, Mr. Warren.

I'd move that we approve application CUP 26-003, a conditional use permit as a business to allow an outdoor patio accessory to a restaurant at the Easy Egg in C4 Central Business District, 244 South Santa Fe. Based upon staff's recommended findings as set out in the staff report and subject to conditions of approval numbers one through three as recommended by staff.

Was that enough verbiage for attached with the business?

Yeah, and just so we're clarifying, is that we're attaching it to the business, not running with the land, correct?

Right.

Thank you, Mr. Hall.

That's good. Is there a second to that motion? I second that, yeah. I have a motion and a second for approval of application CUP26-003 with the recommendations 1 through 3 on page 9 of the staff report and... I want to reiterate that we are attaching this to the business and not to the land with this conditional use. All in favor, let it be known by saying aye. Aye.

Any opposed?

And that carries 6-0. That will bring us to item 3.3.

All right, our next agenda item is case ZMA 26006, which is a application submitted by Mike McCall with M Squared Architects for a property that is located at the southeast corner of Ohio Street in Westchester. So the application request requires two actions. The first action is a zoning map amendment to transition the site from a planned development district to a planned commercial restricted business district. means when we get to the end of the presentation, the first action that you'll take is going to be on the rezoning piece, rezoning the property from a PD to a PC1 property. And then the second action that you would take is a review of the site plan or the development plan that the applicant is proposing.

Excuse me, Dustin, I'm sorry to interrupt, but this was the Great Plains location. So why were they...

not a commercial restricted business yeah we can get into that here just rob real soon okay yep so looking at the surrounding area this particular property is part of a planned development district and if you look to the north You'll see that we have a single family R1 properties. To the east you have single family properties. And then to the south you actually have a four square church, the Hispanic four square church that's in town here. And then across the street you have some C3 zoning that features both the Credit Union of America and AutoZone. So you do have a commercial corridor on the the west side of Ohio Street and a residential corridor on the east side of this portion of Ohio Street. And getting to your question, Commissioner Ault, this particular property was established in 1986 through a planned development district. Originally, this property was plotted for residential homes, residential dwellings. when a credit union was originally going into this particular property to develop it they proposed c1 zoning regular restricted business straight c1 zoning the planning commission and city commission at the time decided that that was too unrestrictive they wanted it to be more limiting because of the residential character of the East side of this portion of South Ohio, they created a planned development district that allowed only financial institutions. So this property has historically been restricted to just financial institutions. Then in 1992, that PDD was amended to add, in addition to financial institutions, professional and business offices. So the property currently allows two different uses. One, financial institutions, which was what the credit union that has previously occupied the site was credited with as far as a land use category. And then the other was the professional business office. So it's very, very limited on what it has historically been allowed to be used as. And so what the applicant then is proposing is to modify that to a PC1. So when the Planning Commission and City Commission restricted the development of the property to a PDD, they did so in order to protect the neighboring uh properties and plan c1 was not a tool that they had in their belt at the time so this is something that was created in the after all of the initial rezonings or the pdd was created for those properties so in talking to the applicant who has purchased this property and is intending to repurpose it and reuse it as a medical facility for an eye clinic The most appropriate tool that we currently have, which we didn't have in the early 80s, was to rezone it to a PC1. What that does is it restricts the property to the restricted business zoning district, but also requires a site development plan be reviewed and approved by the Planning Commission for any changes. And so that's the second action that you're taking. So we're looking at rezoning it again to PC1, and then there's also a site development plan that gets reviewed for the property. The property meets all of the zoning requirements of the C1 district as it currently sits. There is, however, two variations that are being requested. And the first is a waiver to the landscape regulations along the east property line. So anytime you have a C1 property that's adjacent to residential, there's a required 15-foot landscape buffer that is required. In this case, there is a driving aisle along the east side of the building that gives access from the north and south parking areas and connects those two parking areas. If that access aisle, that driving aisle, were to be eliminated or replaced with a 15-foot landscape, Buffer that driving out could not exist. And so currently there's a solid wood fence that has historically created a buffer between the residential properties to the east and the property. And the applicant is proposing to maintain the status quo of how this property has been screened from the residential historically. So that would require a variation. So that's variation request number one. The second variation request is a request to reduce off-street parking requirements for a medical clinic at this particular site from 25 spaces to 23 off-street parking spaces. And looking at the suitability of the site for development under the existing zoning, the site is physically well-suited for commercial operations given its direct frontage on an arterial street, in this case, Ohio. However, the existing PDD renders the property unsuitable for the proposed clinic, making this rezoning necessary for the applicants to viably utilize the vacant building. Looking at the character of the neighborhood, this location serves as a buffer, a transition zone between the residential properties on the east side of Ohio and the commercial properties on the west side of Ohio. And the impact, it would be very similar to the previous credit union in terms of its traffic and people going in and out of the site. Additionally, staff did receive written support from the budding residential neighbor to the east, which is shown on the slide. So Trevor Nordell did submit a letter which you have in your packet supporting the proposed reuse. And so that's something important to be noted. Looking at streets and traffic, traffic routing remains focused on South Ohio, ensuring that commercial vehicles are not pushed onto local residential roads in the area. The applicant is updating and reversing the internal circulation to allow for a safer direct patient drop-off at the front door, which will not overload the adjacent roadway. And so currently, if you look at the way this site is existing, how it's currently set up, you enter the site on the south, you come around the north, and then you exit on the north. And what the applicant is proposing to do is reverse that flow of circulation so that you enter on the north, and the covered area where the banking activities previously occurred Part of that will be turned into a vestibule and part of it will be turned into a port de cachet where it's covered for patients to be dropped off for their appointments. So you enter the north, you can be dropped off under the port de cachet and you can park here on the north side or you can circle around, park on the south or exit the site. While the map for all necessary municipal infrastructure is already established and adequately sized, the utility demands for the iClinic are comparable to that of the previous credit union, so there are no anticipated needs for any additional utility services for the site. Looking at the comprehensive plan, And the map designates this area as suburban residential. This site has operated commercially for nearly 40 years. And the comprehensive plan contains a flexibility clause in section 2.1.a, which allows you as a commission to support this rezoning because it maintains an established use and adheres to the plan's goals for locating commercial sites along arterial roadways. Looking at the specific site now and doing the site review, the site itself has a lot coverage of a little under 30% and the paving restrictions in the C1 district does have a maximum of 50% paving area. In this case, we're a little over 37% on the Ohio frontage and 39% on the Westchester frontage, so the site does meet all of those development criteria. Looking at the building orientation, the building has a north-south orientation with the front door facing Ohio Street, and that is to remain unchanged, and the Exterior building changes are going to be basically revolving around the enclosure of part of the covered area for the the vestibule for drop-off rerouting and recirculating the off street parking and then adding landscaping building design the Remodeling project is primarily internal all exterior changes are going to be basically maintenance just making sure that the building is in in good condition and if there's any dry rot or termite damage things like that replacing those pieces but for the most part keeping the building the same as it is now wrong way off street parking again the orientation we've talked about the applicant is proposing to have 23 spaces instead of 25 and has justification for this. The applicant says that they specialize in transit patterns that justify two space reduction. The applicant says that a lot of their patients get dropped off and And so they don't feel like the full 25 spaces are needed as the appointments tend to last a while. So people tend to drop them off and then leave and come back and get them. In addition, the clinic has secured 20 spaces with the church to the south for an additional 20 L3 parking spaces to be used if they need them. And so that's some information to keep in mind. The front yard landscaping fully meets the landscape regulations. Regarding the eastern boundary, retrofitting the required 15-foot landscape buffer would eliminate the site's functionality by removing a necessary driving aisle and the existing solid six-foot fence effectively creates the necessary buffer historically that has been established in this neighborhood. Signage, we do not have a detailed signage or sign package that's being proposed. The applicant has indicated that they would reuse the existing pull sign in its current location. We would note that any signs that would be proposed would have to be approved through a separate sign permit application and would have to adhere to the C1 sign regulations. Staff analysis, ultimately staff believes PC1 is the correct regulatory tool for rezoning this property. It unlocks the property for a low impact medical user while preserving the planning commission's oversight of the property through its review of the final development plan. The requested variations are rooted in the physical realities of the site and the operational metrics of the proposed specific user. The Planning Commission has a few actions. For Action 1, the Zoning Map Amendment, the Commission may recommend approval of the rezoning to the City Commission, postpone the item to gather additional information, or recommend denial based on specific stated findings. Staff recommends utilizing the flexibility of section 2.1.a of the comprehensive plan given the site's commercial history and forwarding a recommendation of approval to rezone the property to PC1 based on the findings contained within the staff report. The second action item again is the review of the site development plan and your alternatives here are to recommend approval as submitted with variations, recommend approval subject to specific conditions or revisions, or recommend denial or postpone action if more details are needed. Staff's recommendation on the second item and is for the approval of the site development plan explicitly including the requested variations for the eastern buffer and the all street parking subject to the five conditions detailed in the staff report and so these are the potential motions that you can make if you agree with staff's assessments and we'll take any questions that you might have

Thank you, Dustin. I appreciate that. Any questions after that for staff from the commission? All right. I'd love to give the applicant an opportunity if they would like to speak on anything that was presented. If you would, please just state your name for our clerk.

Yeah.

I'm Dr. Lee Weiner.

the applicant for this area. I thought you did a great job covering everything. I guess I would just say that I'm working with my father, Dr. Gary Weiner, and an optometrist, Dr. Suzanne Adkins. And my dad's been here for 30 years doing cataract surgeries and seeing patients for all sorts of different things. I moved here about four years ago with my wife, Dr. Jacqueline Wagner, and our two kids. and we're working out of a place where my dad's been for the last 25 years. We are paying rent, the rent's going up, and then there's declining reimbursements and a lot of other pressures that kind of force us into thinking ahead. I've got a long career ahead of me, so I think it makes a lot of sense to own a place. And we were so excited to find this building, which we love. You'll see we're really not changing any of the footprint. We're actually not even changing the paint color. it's gonna be just uh refreshed uh i've already had the fence that neighbors that that our neighbors share um uh refinished and repainted and uh i'm gonna have uh lots of nice trees and uh i think that it'll be a low impact uh on for for the neighborhood um i think you guys know that uh Going through the bank, you get motorcycles and loud trucks and stuff. We're going to have 70-, 80-year-olds being dropped off. We have long had an issue with falls, people getting out of their cars and trying to get across an icy parking lot, and having an area to drop off that's protected from the elements is going to be a huge benefit to the patients. So, yeah, if you have any questions for me, go ahead.

Sure. Thank you. Any questions for Dr. Weiner? Thank you. Thank you for that information. Is anybody in the audience, would they care to speak on this agenda item? Or anybody online? I'm sorry. Go ahead, sir. If you would, please, just like before, if you would, just state your name for our record.

Good afternoon. Mike McCall with M Square Architects. Just quickly based on what you guys have seen, Dustin did a really good job explaining where we started from, finding out that it was a PPD, which was very surprising that we couldn't do what we wanted. But just want to thank you guys for taking the opportunity to look at this. I think it's going to be a very good project, a very good use for the project. building. It's been there for 40 years, so it gets us up to date to the current zoning code that we have. Yeah, minimal changes to the exterior. We'll have basically a large glass block box there at the first drive through. You might say we're going to take those doors. We'll have sliding doors and as the vestibule, so it'll be actually easier to get in than swinging doors and everything else for this space. So So if you guys any other questions as far as the site we did flip that just for the convenience of dropping off and we can park and the reduction of the parking without going in and doing a lot of expensive parking changes we can flip it everything to the opposite flow to create 23 spots instead of 25 we could get there but we'd have to do a lot more work concrete work and different things plus with the additional lease space we've got to the south at the church for that use during the day from eight to five basically staff will build a park there so we'll have the main parking lot will be for patients so

Thank you. Thank you. I have a question. Sure, go ahead. You said you were surprised that it wasn't zoned right, is that correct?

Well, I was just a little surprised that it was restricted to a financial institution only. It was on our first round of comments, and we submitted for the sign permit, that's when it was found that it was only for this so we had to stop and so we've been kind of in hold for two months waiting to get this thing approved so we can hopefully get our comments from the first round of permit drawings reviewed and completed so we can get started. We thought we'd be almost done. with the project at this point and so we're kind of back at the still at the beginning of construction so as soon as if this gets approved um then we that hopefully then the permit process can be completed so we can get started so sure anybody else for mr mccall can i add something to this uh here just to clarify because this is something interesting that that came up and and resulted in them having to go through this whole process

You might see a couple more of these. I don't know if there's a broader trend just because of the age of the properties and starting to get redeveloped. But this is about the third one that we've noticed from about the mid 80s where there were these PDDs that were done that were written where the ordinance was written with a single use or they didn't have an underlying zoning district so that's really what what caused them to need to to do this whole process they had a choice to amend the PDD but PDDs are most Most ideal for a residential, where we have the planned commercial now, so that's what the change from PDD to PC is, is just because that's a better tool now. But yeah, just to kind of add a little bit to that, it's caught staff by surprise too. When we go to review for zoning, and we notice it's in a PDD, and then we pull that ordinance, because that's what dictates what can be developed, and we don't find an underlying zoning district. Yeah, not really sure what the reason for it is, but I did notice that there's a little bit of common element of they're all from mid to late 80s. So this one was one where there was no underlying zoning. And so you guys, if you've seen these PDD or planned commercial applications, we always have the underlying zoning district where we're really using the underlying district, we're making some modifications from it, they go into the ordinance. Whereas this one was written around basically a custom set of here's what can be developed here without that ability for when it changes hands or the use slightly changes, all of a sudden it doesn't fit in there. And so this one had been amended a few times over the years to just add a new use, but it never been gone back through and had it kind of redone to where there's an underlying district that We'll just work for other places. Hopefully Dr. Weiner doesn't move out of it anytime soon, but it's set up for the future also.

So when they're buying properties, how do they know that? I mean, is it supposed to be on city maps or?

That's a good question. That's kind of what my first question was, is why didn't we know this when the property was purchased? And it just, I don't know, it just kind of slipped through the...

So I don't know the answer exactly why it happened on this one, but what we get often from staff side of it in development services, we get zoning verification applications that come in from title companies to do title work. They do usually... There's a request they can make that will, they can check any or all of these boxes on this form and say we want info on this, this, this, and this. And often the zoning ordinance and what's allowed to be developed is one of those. I don't know if that got missed. I don't know if it was overlooked. I'm not really sure on the specifics on this one. But that's generally our process and... Usually that's addressed at the title work, when that conveyance is done. I don't know why it wasn't here. It's probably also not the only one that that isn't checked on. So it came to staff's attention as soon as we started looking at it and then realized the nature of the problem was a little bit more than what we had all expected.

So it was a big surprise to us because we were that close to having the permit to start building, and then we had to stop.

And knocking two months off costs just money, right?

It does. It does. It does affect the owner and the bottom line of the project, yes. So I appreciate your guys' time. Thank you, Mr. McCall.

Thanks. Thank you. Anybody else? Sure.

I'm Jacqueline Wagner. Lee Weiner's my spouse. We own the building together. When you look at the city's online map that's available to anyone, if you look at that property from a user, on your cell phone, whatever, it says PDD slash C1. So there is some confusion there. So I don't know if they're looking into that a little bit further, because if you click on it, it does say PDD slash C1 on the overlay there. So there's... Maybe looking into that further, because that's a significant discrepancy that can lead to these confusions.

Yeah, and as soon as we pull that ordinance, too, that's getting corrected, because it is incorrect on the GIS map. So we're working on that, and we're probably going to be looking at some of these other smaller PDDs. It's a little tricky to find out what ordinance, when the ordinance was written, what it tracks to the property, but... She's absolutely right. It shows PDDC1 on the zoning map. Thank you. Thank you.

Anybody else?

Anybody online? Dustin? We do have a couple online, but neither of them have indicated they want to comment.

Okay. All right. With that, I will bring it back to the commission, and I'll remind you we have two action items here. The first one we would need to work on is the zoning change from PDD to PC1, if you want to discuss or make a motion on that one.

I'll move that we recommend to the city commission that the rezoning request to PC-1 planned commercial district restricted business be approved based on the findings recommended by staff. Second.

Second.

I have a motion and second to recommend approval of the requested zoning change from PDD to PC1. All in favor, let it be known by saying aye. Aye.

Opposed?

That passes six to zero. Now that we have the zoning change, we're now looking at the site development plan and this is involving the variations that were attached as well. Any discussion or motions that need to be brought up on those?

I'd move that we recommend to the city commission approval of the site development plan for the proposed medical clinic including requested variations to waive the 15 foot eastern landscape buffer to reduce the required number of off street parking to 23 spaces subject to the five conditions recommended by staff. Second.

I have a motion and a second for approval of the site development plan, and that is going to include the five recommendations that are on page 13 of our staff report. All in favor of that, let it be known by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that carries six to zero as well. And let me just say on behalf of the Planning Commission, I apologize for the delay from last time. We were planning to hear this. There were some clerical things, some membership things that allowed us not to be able to hear that. And we wanted to make sure that we got it right. And so I wish you the best and speedy work, Mr. McCall. Thank you guys for being here as well. That will bring us to 3.4. Item 3.4.

Thank you, Chair Farber. This is application number ZMA 26-007. This is filed by Jeff Mays on behalf of I'm going to mispronounce that, LLC. This is a request for an amended planned commercial zoning ordinance for the Auburndale district addition, together with approval of a site development plan for a proposed home two suites hotel, as well as a request for a deferred approval of the additional site development plans that would be needed within this subdivision in the future. The property is a 9.19 acre tract on the east side of South 9th Street, north of Avenue A, addressed as 3135 South 9th Street. It's the same property approved the preliminary platform back in July for the Auburndale district addition. The property is on PC3 and would stay PC3, but with some changes here. What's changing is the set of development standards and the the site plan approval process that would apply to this new subdivision The hotel site is lot five. It's about two point one seven acres and the proposal is a four-story 109 room home two suites This is a request area right here so you've if you were here for the preliminary plat you've seen this but it is just south of Lowe's Okay, so The surrounding zoning, we have PC5 to the north, we have county heavy industrial to the south. To the east we have C6 and to the west we have PC3 and then across on the other side of 9th Street is some PC7 and there's some PC5 to the southwest there. And to get some background here, just briefly because Most of you or some of you saw this in July, but the replat of the Auburndale addition was approved in 2001, and the development includes Lowe's, the Holiday Inn, and some commercial outlots along South 9th Street. The property was zoned PC3 in 2010 by ordinance number 10-10550, which set the development conditions that are still in effect today. So this is C3 uses with a 40 foot height limit, signage and parking limits, and a planning commission site plan approval before any building permit. On July 21st, you approve the preliminary plat of the Auburndale District Edition, along with a variation from the public street frontage requirements, both on eight to zero votes. The final plat is also on tonight's agenda following this item, so as a companion case here. Next slide. Okay, so this just shows the existing plat context with the subject tract as an undeveloped southern portion of lot one. So on the left side in yellow is the request area for this. This would be the Auburndale district addition. Overall is the replat of Auburndale addition plat. And then on the right is just an aerial with the lots within the Auburndale district addition just colored separately so they're easy to see there. So this is the approved preliminary plat, and I'm aware that these are hard to see, but I did wanna put it up on the screen at least. This is what you approved back in July. It's six lots, with lots one and two as common area access easement tracks, so they are providing access to the lots. as internal drives. Lots three, four, and five are development lots. So three and four are on the north side of the plat, and then lot five is on the south half there. And then lot six is an existing detention basin that serves as the regional detention pond for the broader Auburndale addition. Next slide is the final plat. As you can tell, it's very similar. So this carries the same configuration forward. really no changes since the approval of the preliminary plat. And this is just a graphic of making it a little bit easier to see from a distance of how this lot layout works. There are, lot five is a hotel site, so that's the, to the south there. They would all, lot three and four are up to the north, they would all be accessed. through this lot two, which again is a common area. It is a shared access easement. And that comes off of this lot one. To give a little bit more detailed background here, lot one is an existing access easement that was put in place with the Auburndale addition plat. It hits the intersection at South 9th as Riffle Drive. And on that existing plat, it is an access easement that comes in, heads east, and then turns north. So the idea here is to bring Lot 2, this new common area shared access, off of that where it would continue straight, and it gets you the necessary amount of frontage on Lots 3, 4, and 5 to meet the subdivision regulations to get directly into those lots. And getting to the nature request, this is similar to the last item. There are two actions that need to happen here. The first is the zoning. It is technically a rezoning. Even though we are staying with the same zoning classification, the code states that any amendment to a planned commercial district ordinance goes through the exact same process as initially done to establish that planned commercial. So there are two actions in front of you tonight. The first is a recommendation on a new PC3 ordinance written specifically for the Auburndale district addition. The zoning classification doesn't change. What the new ordinance does is it carries forward the 2010 development limitations and sets some amended standards for lot five. It would approve the lot five site plan and establish a lot by lot site plan review going forward. So for lots three and four, the request is to defer site plan approval until a future date when those are gonna be developed. The reason that this is needed comes out of the ordinance from 2010, ordinance number 10-10, or 10550. That was written for the Auburndale addition as a whole, which treated lot one. In the Auburndale addition, lot one is this entire subject area. in that original plat. So that ordinance was written around lot one as a whole, so it placed development limitations on that lot as a whole. In this case now, we're subdividing that into individual lots, and so we need to have an ordinance that will handle what is intended to be developed now, as well as set up limitations, or the necessary limitations for the future, and they can be handled as individual lots within this new subdivision. So currently there's no existing path in the existing ordinance for an individual lot to get site plan approval and be developed in the future unless we change this ordinance. The proposed hotel also exceeds the 40 foot height limit that the 2010 ordinance established. So the two requested variations are part of this action as well. And on those variations, There's, as I said, there's two that are being requested. Both pertain to lot five only. The first one is the building height. The applicant is requesting a 59 foot two inch peak height of the building. Staff suggests that you consider a rounded standard of 60 feet just to make that clean and easy to apply. Measured from grade to peak, because a rounded number just kind of works better in the ordinance and in application of that. The second is regarding front yard landscaping, and that's going to go into both of those later. But the applicant states that the entrance drive consumes a significant portion of the front yard and requests a reduction of 286 square feet in the required landscape area. Okay. So get into the requested variation one. This is the location of it, so that's lot five. That's the whole request area for the first variation. This would be for the building height, for the hotel building itself. And then the area for variation two, in the next slide, is here. Sorry, I meant to drop the bottom graphic off and leave it for later. Top left is the actual plat and it's just a smaller area. It's right where that new shared access drive comes into the lot. As I said, these have, they have the appropriate amount of frontage because the plat got approved and it met all the standards. But there's not a lot of frontage on that street. So our landscaping requirements are based around the lineal feet of street frontage. So this one's unique enough in the configuration that there's a variation that needs to be handled here to allow this to meet the requirements. All right, so we can get into the nature of requests for action two here. The second action is a site development plan for the hotel on lot five, which was filed concurrently with the rezoning. Under the arrangement being requested, lot five is reviewed now and site plans for lots three and four are deferred. So they would come back to the planning commission at a later date, lot by lot, before building permits can be issued on those lots. That would continue the same pattern as was laid out in 2010 for the Operndale addition. The site development plan includes a hotel, the parking lot, utility extensions, an emergency access drive, signage, lighting, and landscaping. And it does also include the construction of the access drive to get to the lot. did not draw that on that the request area but getting from the existing riffle drive to the development law is included in this both both actions tonight are recommendations so those will be forwarded to the City Commission and they were they are scheduled to hear this on October 12th And this is actually a little bit different with a concurrent site plan than the ones that we've done in the past couple years. A lot of those have been deferred site plan approval. If those of you that remember looking at Panda Express a few months ago, that was where it was a deferred approval. So the planned commercial zoning was set up first, then a later time they came back and got site plan approval on the lot. The concurrent option under the planned commercial process is a recommendation to the city commission. So in the case of Panda Express, the planning commission approved that site plan and it was done there. When you do it concurrently, the rezoning ordinance and the approval of the site plan, they both go to city commission. So that's where we get this one being a recommendation on a site plan, Some of you might see as being a little out of the norm, but that's just the way this concurrent approval works. Go to the next. Okay, so zoning ordinance requirements here. The underlying district here is a C3 shopping center, and hotels are a permitted use in that district. The planned commercial zoning exists precisely to accommodate site designs that need some deviation from the underlying zoning district regulations. And those modifications are made through the approving ordinance. So that's the framework we're operating under tonight. Next slide, so variation review criteria. One note here, the zoning regulations do not set out a separate review criteria for planned commercial deviations. So staff applies the variance factors for approval of a variance from the zoning regulations. It's a very similar set of criteria there. This includes uniqueness of the property, effect on the adjacent properties, the nature of the hardship, public welfare, and the spirit and intent of the zoning ordinance. So the applicant's materials explain the reasons for each request, but there's a few pieces where they don't quite walk through these criteria, so in our presentation, we're pulling those together to put them under those criteria and show how those work out. The next slide. So for the rezoning criteria, these are the five statutory factors that apply to any rezoning request. The full analysis is in your staff report, so I won't go through every detail, but I'll just hit the highlights here. Next slide. So, Before the criteria, the point that's worth repeating is that even setting the height question entirely aside, this amendment is necessary, even though we have the same underlying zoning district. The 2010 ordinance attaches its site plan requirement to the parcel as a whole. And after the replat, there's no mechanism for an individual lot to be developed. The plot configuration you approved previously makes this work because the drives sit in their own common area tracks. Each development lot has a definable front lot line. So setbacks, landscaping, and sign regulations can be applied lot by lot in their ordinary way. To kind of explain a little bit more on that, if we were to not amend the ordinance, lot one would have to have a site development plan for the entire lot one at this point. And that's not how this property is being set up. It's being set up to develop one and then find tenants or developers or buyers of the other lots and develop those in the future. So getting into staff analysis for the rezoning criteria. On character of the neighborhood, this is an established commercial development on a commercial corridor and a second hotel here fits this pattern. The 2010 ordinance expressly gave the existing hotel site a 46 foot height allowance On suitability of the property, the property is already zoned for this use. The constraints are the height limit and the site plan approval mechanism, not the use itself. On public facilities, all of this was reviewed through the preliminary plat process, which included this site plan and the reviewing agencies that include both internal departments with the city as well as external agencies. Those positions haven't changed. On the way it conforms with the comprehensive plan, the future land use map designates this property as commercial, and the proposal meets the plan's commercial location and development criteria, including a shared access and no commercial traffic on residential streets. Next slide. So the first variation for building height, turning to the height variation, the 60 feet is 25 feet above the base C3 standard, and it's 20 feet above the limit that was placed by the previous ordinance, which was 40 foot building height. The same 2010 ordinance already allows 50 foot building height at Lowe's and 46 feet at the existing hotel, the Holiday Inn. So taller structures are not new in this district, it's just that all of the other lots there were restricted to a 40 foot building height. The building's main parapet is at 54 feet and the 59 foot two inch peak is reached only at the kind of architectural feature part of the building that you'll see on the elevations, there's a portion of the building that does reach up higher over the main entrance. The architect's letter attributes the height to the mechanical, plumbing, and structural requirements of a four-story hotel, along with the architectural features required by the Hilton brand. And next slide, so it's height, the... Running through these criteria, the condition comes from the property's position in a planned district already built around taller structures, and it wasn't created by the applicant. A four-story hotel simply is not achievable under a 40-foot cap, which staff considers to be a hardship. The adjoining property is commercial and industrial with no residential properties affected. The fire marshal also raised no concerns with the height and did work to get the proper amount of hydrants and access and everything to the site to support a hotel of this size. And planned commercial zoning expressly contemplates this kind of deviation with the increased limited to being in this case limited to a single lot. So it's scoped appropriately around the request and what's actually needed. So staff's evaluation supports the variation and you may wanna hear more from the applicant on these criteria directly. They can likely explain that in more detail. So we'll go to the second variation here. This one's a little bit more complicated. I'm gonna walk through it. tried to diagram out this out there are some numbers here that a you don't necessarily need to remember these numbers but we can come back to them if you need to but to explain what's going on here it does get a little bit complicated for a few minutes and so I hope the picture helps on the on the next one you can actually jump over to that picture and I'm gonna gonna read here so the landscaping variation So staff measure the front yard independently. What's colored here with different colors is effectively the front yard for the hotel. You can see the gray area is the proposed entrance, the shared access drive. Where that blue and green starts at the top of that, from that point south is the Lot 5 development lot, and to the north would be the shared access drive and a piece of the other development lot there. So the blue is the driveway. The green is the area that's being proposed or shown within the front yard as landscaping. And then the red is where parking spaces encroach into the front yard. Those all kind of become relevant here as they work through some of these numbers. The total front yard is about 2,192 square feet, of which 1,754 square feet is required to be landscaped per the zoning regulations, the landscape regulations. The entrance drive and the curb, they take up 718 square feet. There are parking stalls encroaching into the front yard that take up another 494 square feet. So that leaves 983 square feet of what I've called plantable area. That would be the green there, which is a shortfall of 771 square feet from the requirement here. So... The important part here is that the shortfall kind of has two different causes. One being a very narrow frontage that you have to get onto the lot, so you have to put a driveway through it. The other piece is the parking, so So some of this possibly goes into how you approve this variance or what kind of conditions you might want to place on it or some room for you to figure out what the best solution is here that I've laid out out of a few options I've laid out. We can go to the next slide here. So the first Actually, you can keep it on the last one. It's better just to have that picture up. So the first 286 square feet is the entrance drive. This is a genuine physical constraint. The lot's only access point that will be open to the public. The other opening onto the site is a fire access or emergency access road. Its location follows from the plat that you approved and it does meet all the subdivision regulations for required amount of frontage. Once it crosses the front yard, full compliance is not really possible and that's not through any action of the applicant. That's just getting a driveway onto a lot. This is the portion of the relief that the applicant had requested. The remaining square footage comes from parking stalls placed in the front yard. So that's more of a design decision that you might want to consider rather than a hardship. And hardships get defined very, very strictly around being something that's not a decision by the applicant or something that they're designing to create that hardship. The first criterion in the variation is it expressly excludes conditions created by the applicant. So that's why I'm differentiating these two here. To be clear, these stalls don't violate any parking regulations of their own. They're not an issue in and of themselves. It's just how they interact and they kind of conflict with the landscaping requirement. And for us to complete a zoning review, we have to have both of those in compliance. And so it's one or the other at this point. So we have to figure out a way to make this work. And the plan is within the 60% cap of having paving in the front yard. So the zoning regulations contemplate this, that you're gonna have some parking in front yards. It's just that on a property that has such a small amount of frontage, that usually works for something that has a lot more frontage, where you can have some parking go into the landscape, because you can offset it somewhere else. And this one doesn't really have that available. So the issue is simply that some of the area is consumed or where the landscaping requirement could be met is consumed by parking. And there's open ground on the east side of the lot where they could possibly go without losing any parking. There's some area on the west side of the lot that both of these are being outside of the, technically were outside of the front yard. but where there could be an opportunity to offset some of the square footage for landscaping that would otherwise need to be in that front yard area. So you can go to the, go to one more, there we go. So there's three options I've laid out here. The first, which would be staff's recommendation, is to approve the variation with a mitigation condition. Basically, fully landscape the area shown on that graphic in green, and then provide the remaining balance just immediately adjacent to it. So to either side of that area where it's the front yard, the same square footage of landscaping right next to it and they could figure out what the balance is, goes on the west side versus the east side or something like that. That would provide the square footage of landscaping that's required and it would also allow them to keep the parking where it's at and it would also allow them to have the driveway through there. So the second is a straight reduction. that would allow them to reduce the landscaping to what is shown on that graphic there. And if you're inclined to extend that option, staff doesn't see a significant detriment on the frontage that faces an internal drive for commercial development. So staff recommends that first one, but the second one is is clear to do, it's fully within your authority to do, and staff doesn't really see any issue with it. It's just a choice between what we feel are probably two of the better options. The third would be require revision of the plan to remove the parking stalls out of the front yard. There are some areas to the east of the site that is open, that's owned by the developer that isn't being used for development as far as we can tell is somewhat open and they can probably expand on what the plans are for that. But just saying that there is some open space. If you did want to go that route, the staff would recommend one of the first two with the option one being the most preferable there. It would just preserve the landscaping and it would allow them to develop the site as it's shown here now. So next slide. So this is the proposed development plan. Dustin, can you? So what I was talking about about open space is to the east side, there's a line, go to the east side.

Like here?

No, that's west. There's open space there. I don't know what it is. It's just open space right now. That's what I was talking about on that piece. Okay, so we can move on to the building elevations now. We can show those.

Goodness gracious. Can we act on, can they act and then come back to act on the site? They're gonna act, it's gonna take two actions anyway. You just gave them a whole bunch of height and elevation.

Yeah, no, I'll break, I'm gonna break it down and make sure we take these one by one to make sure you guys get through them all. Good, okay. So these are the proposed, the north and the south elevations. So the north would be the side facing lows. As you can see, that central piece that's shaded a little bit darker is the part that's a little bit taller there. The one on the bottom of the screen is the south elevation. And we can go to the next slide. It's for the east and west elevations here. Go back one, there, yep. So the west is on top, the east is on the bottom. So the west would be what faces South 9th Street. And you can go to the next slide. So as far as site plan development review, on the review itself, the plan complies with all the bulk regulations. The lot coverage is about 16% against a 40% maximum, and all setbacks are met comfortably. That's understatement. There's plenty of setback to the main building. The access comes from the common area drives. So there's the one that we showed where the front yard is. There's also a secondary access that has a access easement established for emergency access easement that gets you further to the east of the lot where there are some hydrants on the other side. So in the event that there's a fire or an emergency, all the emergency services can access the site fully around on all sides. The plot conditions do carry through, including confirmation of the emergency access road before vertical construction. And the parking shows as 128 stalls against the 127 that are required, so that meets that requirement as well. We can go to the next slide, yeah. The interior parking lot landscaping and the required tree units are provided. The accessory storage and trash building meets the setback standards. There is a detached structure on the lot that would handle those. Signage is within the what the district and the existing ordinance allow. Lighting is shown in a photometric plan that was submitted by the applicant and drainage goes over to the existing regional detention pond that was sized for full build out of the entire Auburndale addition. We do have a handful of minor corrections to be made that are nothing significant. They're drafting cleanup stuff that'll need to be made. None of them affect the ability to approve tonight. Next slide. So the suggested findings for the ordinance track the rezoning criteria. So they're consistent with the character of the neighborhood, suitable for development under the existing zoning. Adequate public facilities exist and the conformance with the comprehensive plan and the necessity of the amendment to the ordinance itself. And staff findings on the variation. For the height variation, staff finds all four criteria are met. For the landscaping variation, the findings rest on the, it's essentially impossible to have full compliance with the access drive once the access drive crosses the front yard. So again, staff has recommended the first of those three options for how to handle that front yard, and we can go through those before you take an action if we want to walk through what those mean. And the record also supports a straight reduction of the drive-related portion of the landscaping if that's where you want to go with that. And the site plan does meet all the zoning regulations as arranged under the proposed ordinance. And next, alternatives. On action one, you may recommend approval as presented. You could recommend approval with modified variations or conditions. We could postpone to a date certain, or we can recommend denial. Recommending approval of the zoning amendment requires five affirmative votes. On action two, the same four paths are available here. So you can approve as proposed, you can approve with conditions or modifications, you can postpone to a future date, or you can recommend a denial. And action two, it assumes a favorable recommendation on action one. So we need to handle the rezoning before we can approve the site plan. especially with the building height relying on the approval of that, or on the recommendation for approval of the ordinance. So staff recommends that you recommend approval of both actions. So a new PC3 zoning ordinance, including the 60 foot height on lot five and the landscaping variation with the mitigation condition added into the conditions of approval. And the site development plan for the hotel. So this is a summary of the recommended conditions of approval. The full text is in your staff report. In short, C3 uses and limitations with the 2010 signage and parking limits carried forward. 60 feet building height on lot five and 40 feet on the remaining lots. The landscaping condition, and conformance with the approved site plan is required, and Planning Commission approval of site plans for the remaining lots would be required when those are ready to be developed. And a statement that this approval is not a building permit or a sign permit, that there are some additional permits that have to be approved in order to actually get out and start developing that lot, as well as just a condition to make the corrections that we have, and we have just small punch list of little things. And then here we have recommended conditions. And if we need to zoom in on those as we go through them, that's something we can probably do. That text ended up a little bit small. Following your action tonight, the protest period runs through September 29th and the city commission is scheduled to consider this on October 12th. So that concludes staff's presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions and we do have the applicant's representative as well as the applicant's architect on Zoom as well.

Thank you. Thank you. That was a lot of information. Yeah. There was a lot in the packet, but you actually answered a couple questions that I had too, so I do appreciate that.

We can go through the landscaping. I tried to make it to where there is easy options. Whichever one you pick is pretty straightforward. I know we don't often lay out the different ways you could handle this variation, but because of that, I didn't. I didn't want to leave it open-ended for you all to figure out here in the meeting.

I know that was a lot. Are there any questions for staff before we move on from that? All right. You got anything you want to say, Mr. Mays?

As I'm the applicant, as staff said, Sid, the architect, is online. If you have any specific site requirement as we talk about parking or access or landscaping, I'd like to give him the opportunity first to answer any questions that you might have specific to site development or any concerns. Sure. Some of this is driven by Hilton and what they require, particularly from a height design standpoint. But I'll let Sid speak to all that.

All right. Mr. Sid, if you want to, you can go ahead and speak. We see you on there.

Hello. How are you guys? Could you show the site plan on the screen or can I share my screen? There you go.

One second. He's checking on that for you.

Or I can start with the building elevations first, the height. I can just explain why we need the variance for the height.

OK.

Either one. Would it be easier if I share my screen instead?

I'm not sure if we're set up to... Oh, it doesn't let me share. You can try it if you want.

That might be a little bit...

I don't know if that might... It might be easier if you try that because you can zoom in on the ones that... Yeah, I just sent you a request. Okay. Thank you. Should be good.

Yeah.

We do have it here if we need to switch back over, though. I'm not seeing that. I hit allow on this.

Yeah, I got it. I got it. I just want to show you a hotel we just finished in Texas and one in Louisiana. This is the design. The feature that we're talking about is this beacon tower. Can you see my screen?

Yes, sir.

Yeah, so this is the beacon. This is called the beacon by Hilton, and that's the architectural feature that goes up to 59 feet 2 inches. The average height of the building itself is not as high. You're at about 48 feet for the top of the roof and 51 and a half feet to the parapet. It's just the beacon that goes high, and it's a very attractive feature, and it's very popular among hotel guests, so that's why we're asking for the variance for the elevation heights. And the floor-to-floor requirements are based on the structural and mechanical requirements because we need to have duct work coming from the roof, ducting fresh air into each guest room. So to provide space for that in the corridors and the guest room ceilings, those are the heights that we need to follow. So we get to 48 feet because of that. So that's any questions on the elevation?

No questions here. That makes sense.

Awesome. And on the site plan, I don't have the site plan. Let me see if I can find it.

We do have that up if you want us to bring it up on the screen.

Yeah, if you don't mind, please.

It should be up.

The site plan kind of lays itself out. The size of the building footprint plus the parking requirements, the driveway width requirements for the fire code, those kinds of requirements, they all kind of dictate that that's the maximum landscaping that we can provide on the northern side and on the western side. And the way we connected the lane also, there's really not many options or any option to be pranked.

Yeah, and so do we want to walk through those three different ways here? Do you need any more explanation on this? I think we all understand.

The thing that I think is a little bit different about what you're entertaining here today as opposed to, if this was sitting down on 9th Street as a stand-alone hotel and didn't have any, But if you look at like Lowe's from the 9th Street, as you're up from 9th Street coming off the pads, getting onto Lowe's, all we really have is the landscape islands in front of Lowe's because Lowe's is able to pick up their front yard landscaping requirements on Schilling. But as it relates to 9th Street frontage, there's no front yard. But on this site plan, we still have all the islands and the tree units that meet the requirement. The request is to ask for that relief just at the entrance. It's similar to the exercise we went through at 9th South where we're asking for help on the back so we can have room to build that and not have 30 foot of front yard landscape that's redundant against 9th Street. So that would be the only thing. As you consider variations against landscaping, think of it in totality of the overall development as much as just this hotel site plan would be our only request.

And is there a preference for you guys between that mitigation or just the relief from it or what?

I'll defer to Sid's opinion here as well, but clearly we've designed it the way we would like to design it and not lose parking or whatnot. I don't want you guys to fall on the sword here, but I think, again, if you think about it, think about coming into Lowe's from the west and the lack of any front yard. We'll still have all those islands and all of that that's irrigated and whatnot. You're not giving up all of the landscaping. It's just that little bit of front yard right as you come in. Right.

so but i if sid has anything to add i'll certainly refer but that would have been my only point thank you anything else to add mr sid uh no just that you know the requirement parking requirements we are satisfying those almost you know 127 is required we are right there at 128 so there's really not much room for us to do any other you know move things around sure sure any of you guys have anything else for the architect

Nothing here. Thank you. Anybody online or anybody in the room? Anybody else that wants to add anything to this or online, I guess?

We do have another member online, but they do not appear to have any interest in this particular topic.

Okay.

So we can bring up that motion again real quick on the screen. I was just going to point out If you want to modify that, I'll point to what you would want to change here.

Well, item three in the front yard, or the required landscape front yard is 1754, but that needs to be changed. They're asking for the modification to what?

Yeah, so I was going to point you to the wording. Can we go full screen with that?

It's really slow. Sorry.

It takes a while.

Well, the recommended motion includes those seven conditions, which includes that 1,754 square feet, which we want to reduce. Isn't that correct?

So since you all have your packets here, so if you look at the recommended motion for action one, because I can change the numbers as long as you get the motion correct and get the decision correct. That gives me the ability to deal with the numbers, and you don't have to on this. But if you look at the next to the last line, it says... requested front yard landscaping variation for lot 5 with the mitigation condition you would just take out that mitigation condition and you could say full with a reduction to the required landscaping that would be the the second one where don't don't make them offset it and put it to the sides but you just what what was shown on that that graphic that i showed if you want to go that route you would just take out that mitigation condition. You would just say, with a reduction to the required.

What Jeff is requesting, right?

Yes, yes.

Right, Jeff? Is that the way we're leaning, guys?

Yeah.

Same.

You need a motion?

Yeah, if you're ready for a motion, we can take that.

I move that we recommend to the city commission approval of the new PC3 ordinance for the Auburndale District addition, including a maximum building height of 60 feet on lot five, and the requested front yard landscape variation for lot five with the mitigation condition recommended by staff.

With reduction instead of the mitigation, correct?

With the what? Reduction. Reduction condition, right. Recommended by the staff subject to the seven conditions recommended by staff and based on the findings recommended by staff.

Second.

Does that make sense? Just to clarify on the record, then that's the Requested front yard landscaping variation for lot five with the reduction in landscaping, correct? Right. Great, good.

All right. We have a motion and a second on the floor to make a recommendation to the City Commission for the approval of the new PC3 ordinance. That includes the maximum building height of 60 feet on Lot 5 and the requested front yard landscaping variation with the full reduction condition that was recommended by staff and subject to the seven conditions that you will find on page 15 of our staff report. All in favor of that motion, let it be known by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Aye. And that goes 6-0. We have an action 2 on this item as well for the site development plans. Is there any discussion before a motion is made? Ready for a motion if anybody is prepared for that.

I move that we recommend to the City Commission approval of the site development plan for the proposed Homewood 2 Suites Hotel on lot 5 subject to the same seven conditions recommended by staff except for the reduction in the landscaping and the plan set corrections identified in the staff report based on the findings recommended by the staff.

I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Second. All right. I have a motion and a second that we recommend to the city commission approval of the site development plan for the proposed home two suites hotel on lot five. And we've already mentioned the seven conditions recommended by staff. And thank you for adding in that full reduction in there as well. All in favor of that motion, let it be known by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? And again, that is six to zero for that action as well. That will lead us to item 3.6 and due to a- 3.5.

I'm sorry, 3- Did we do 3.5 already?

3.5, right? I'm sorry, 3.5. Thank you. And due to a prior scheduling conflict, I'm going to have to turn this over to our newly elected vice chair, Mr. McFadden, and he will handle the rest of the meeting for us.

Dustin, is this one as long as the last one?

No, it should be easier because this is a final plat and it's an administrative review comparing it to the preliminary. Just go straight to the recommendation. Yeah.

Just go straight to the recommendation. Thank you all. Thank you.

Okay.

Great. Next up, item 3.5.

All right, this is application number FP26-003, a request for approval of the final plat of the Auburndale District Edition. This is the companion case to the zoning case you just heard, and it covers the same subject area, the 9.91 acre tract. This is an administrative review. The question is whether the final plat conforms with the preliminary plat, and that you approved in July with the applicable codes. There's one action and one motion at the end. The applicant is Jeff Mays of Compro Realty on behalf of the property owner. The request is a final flat approval for the Auburndale District addition, replatting a portion of lot one, block one of the replat of Auburndale addition into six lots. The property is at 3135 South 9th Street, and that's on the east side of South 9th Street, north of Avenue A. It's 9.19 acres, zone PC3, and the comprehensive plan designates that as commercial. Getting in the background. The background is the same as what we just covered in the previous zoning case, so I'll keep this short. The subject property is an undeveloped southern portion of the Auburndale district, the east portion of lot one of the 2001 replat of the Auburndale addition. One point that's specific to kind of the background here is that lot one of the Auburndale addition had been split once already. So when a portion was added to the Holiday Inn site, under the subdivision regulations, a platted lot can only be split one time before a replat is required. So any further division has to come through doing the plat process again, which is why we're here doing another plat for this. On July 21st, the Planning Commission approved the preliminary plat and a few variations from the public street frontage requirement, or the variation from the public street frontage requirement, each with an eight to zero vote, subject to 10 conditions of approval.

Next slide.

The final plat finalizes the legal configuration of the property. No construction is proposed with this application and no new entitlements are created by it. It was filed July 24th, well within the effective period of the preliminary approval. The applicant reports no changes from the approved preliminary plat other than what the commission required. Condition 10 called for correcting a note that referenced an old lot number. That correction has been made and now reads correctly. The question before you today is conformance with the approved preliminary plat. So does the final plat match what you approved and does it comply with the applicable codes? Notice was mailed out 10 days ahead to adjacent property owners as required and final plats don't require a published notice. If you approve tonight, that plat will go to the city commission on October 12th and would need to be recorded within 60 days of the signatures. And going to city commission would be for acceptance of the dedications and authorizing the mayor to sign the final plat. And this is just the existing plat context again. It shows that subject area in yellow on the left side within the Auburndale addition. And again on the right is just the individual lots inside the plat. And next slide is, this is the approved preliminary plat. And we can go to the next one. And this is the final, the proposed final plat. Comparing the two, the boundary, the lot configuration, the lot lines, the common area tracks, and the easements are the same. The differences are drafting little cleanup stuff. The next slide, that's the lot layout again. As it would be recorded, these are lots that would be created here. Lots one and two carry the internal drive. Lots three, four, and five are the development lots, and lot six is the existing regional detention basin. So for staff analysis, it's in your report. It's full length, so I'll move through this quickly. On lot design, we have six lots on a single block matching the approved preliminary plat. The C3 district sets no minimum lot area, width, or depth for individual lots. Utilities and services were established through review at the preliminary plat stage. and the positions on those are unchanged. Storm drainage goes to the existing basin on lot six, which was sized for full build out of the Auburndale addition. And there's a plat note, plat note four, that identifies lot six as a non-developable lot. Access is through the internal drive on lots one and two to South Ninth Street at the signalized riffle drive in Ninth Street intersection. No new curb cuts are proposed. That's an arterial. It already has a curb cut. There's nothing new proposed on South 9th. The plat shows access, utility, emergency access, storm drainage, and no-build easements, along with the easements carried forward from the original plat. No new rights-of-way are being dedicated, but they will be i'm creating those common area shared access lots so in lieu of having to dedicate street right away public right away those lots one and two will be locked in as non-developable lots to be to serve as a shared access easement and Because there's no new streets created, there's no street name review or anything like that. And the improvements are the ones established through the preliminary plaque conditions. And they're developer constructed. Infrastructure comes in a single phase with the hotel on lot five. And the remaining lots would be developed lot by lot under deferred site development plan approvals. And there are no special assessment districts involved in this and the improvements are being financed by the developer. The future land use map designates the property commercial and the subdivision is consistent with that designation. On zoning the property is PC3 and from ordinance 10-10550 as proposed to be amended by the case that we just, the item we just covered. The setback lines and the frontage attribution on the plat followed the common area tracks, which is the structure that that ordinance will rely on. Again, the staff comments. First on conformance, staff finds that the final plat conforms to the approved preliminary plat with the differences limited to labeling and notes. Staff also reviewed the drawing against the final plat drawing requirements in the subdivision regulations and the required certificates are present on the second sheet of this plat. Second is covenants. Condition nine of your preliminary approval required draft covenants with the final plat application. Draft covenants were submitted so that requirement is met Some of that originally came in as excerpts from the 2001 covenants for the broader Auburndale district edition, but staff has also been in corresponding with the applicant on where they're going with those covenants. So they will need to have those finalized and those get recorded with the final plat when it gets recorded. Third, the plat corrections. There are just some minor, again, I said, As I said before, there's some minor corrections to be made that is normal for a plat like this, and staff would be handling those as part of the final steps to get that recorded. After all the approvals are done, that gives the developer an opportunity to clean up any minor corrections there are, and then that final proof gets sent back to staff. staff has that reviewed by the county surveyor and our city surveyor to make sure all of the marks on the plat are correct and then at that point, once that's approved, that gets cleared to print to MILRs and signed and taken to be recorded. So for recommended findings, the recommended finding here is that the final plat conforms with the approved preliminary plat, including the variation that you approved to the subdivision regulations previously. with all applicable codes and regulations of the city subject to the recommended conditions. On the 10 preliminary plaque conditions, the first eight, conditions one through eight carry forward as written, and then condition nine on covenants is restated as a recommended condition tonight. And then condition 10 from that preliminary approval is fully satisfied. and provided a table of that in your report as well in more detail. So for alternatives, you can approve the final plat on a finding of conformance. You could approve it with conditions, making that same necessary findings. You could postpone to a date certain, specifying what additional information you need from either staff or the applicant to help you make the decision, or you could deny stating findings of fact and the code sections that the plat doesn't comply with. Staff's recommendation is for approval subject to two conditions. Condition one handles closing everything out, that once the plat corrections are resolved, the applicant submits a final draft of the plat and covenants for for a final review by staff to confirm compliance and then they would be printing MILRs and we would be getting signatures on that and they would be executing the covenants and getting those ready for recording. That condition carries all of that together. And then condition two simply states that all of the preliminary plaque conditions that are still relevant are gonna be carried over. So in the end the approval letter will have more than two conditions but it's I just made it easy here that you're referencing the relevant preliminary plat conditions and bringing those in. From here, the plat would go, as I said, to the city commission on October 12th for acceptance of easement dedications shown on the plat and authorizing the mayor to sign. And then the next screen has the recommended motion. And this concludes staff's presentation. And happy to answer any questions. And again, we have the applicant here as well.

Do we have any questions of staff? Any questions for the applicant? No need to say anything. Anybody online with a question or concern?

We do have a member online, but they do not appear to have any comments at this time.

Any recommended motion?

I'd move to approve application FP26-003, final plat of the Auburndale District Addition subject to the two conditions of approval recommended in the staff report after finding that the final plat conforms with the approved preliminary plat of the Auburndale District Addition, PP26-001, and with all applicable codes and regulations of the city as set out in the staff report. Need a second.

Got a motion.

I second.

And a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. And it looks like we've got a five to zero approval for application FP26-003 with the two conditions found on page seven.

All right, so this leads us to our last agenda item, at least for our current business, and this is application final PDD 26002, which is the RL Lofts PDD, which has been filed by Justin Jennings with Hutton. They are the project managers of the RL Lofts project. And this particular application is a final plan development district transition from the former school building from age-restricted elderly housing into 61 general occupancy units. Because the building footprints and floor areas remain exactly the same as the previously approved preliminary plan, which you guys approved a year ago in September, This request is evaluated for substantial compliance, meaning we are reviewing the plan to make sure it conforms to both the preliminary plan that was reviewed by the Planning Commission in September of 25, as well as the underlying ordinance, which is number 25-11257. Looking at the surrounding area and the zoning, the Arloff's property is zoned as a planned development district with R3 underlying zoning. The properties to the north consist of Blue Heaven Studio as well as the Flanders Lee House. And then to the south you have St. John's Lutheran Church. To the east you have Emmanuel Lutheran Church and a parking lot, that's a public parking lot for the downtown area. And to the west you have R3 Zone properties with multi-family dwellings as well as the Christian Science Church. So that's the surrounding area. For a brief history of the property, The Lincoln Building, which is the North Building, was constructed in 1915, with the South Building, the Roosevelt School Building, constructed in 1920. These particular properties were converted to senior housing 55 years and up in 2004. The City Commission has approved the amendment to the PDD for RLOFS in 2025, September of 2025, and we are submitting and reviewing, or the applicant has submitted and we are reviewing the final development plan for conformance with the preliminary plan. The property meets all of the current R3 regulations with the exception of some variations that were approved as part of the underlying ordinance. These variations include a reduced front yard setback, for both buildings, a reduced north side setback for the north property line adjacent to the Lincoln Building, and an allowance for two ground signs instead of just one, and a lower parking requirement to 58 off-street parking spaces from the 102 that would typically be required. Looking at the site development information, The building covers just under 18% of the lot, which is below the 40% maximum that's allowed in the R3 district. And over two-thirds of the site remains open of building space and pavement. So most of the site is going to be landscaping, green space, and open space for recreation and other uses like that for the residents of the building. The building orientation, both buildings are parallel Mulberry Street to the south with their entrances facing into the interior central courtyard that consists of green space, a walking trail, and parking lots. And if you look at the building design, both buildings are part of the National Register of Historic Places. None of the buildings are being proposed for any exterior changes with the exception of Maintenance of the building tuck pointing, restoring some of the doors, restoring some of the windows, things like that nature. The Selena heritage commission did review and approve a certificate of appropriateness for those exterior changes in September of 2025. And just looking at some of the elevation drawings, here is the Roosevelt Building. This is the main frontage of the building facing in towards the inter-campus area. Again, this is Roosevelt Building. This is the south elevation. And the picture on the left is the west elevation, with the picture on the right being the east elevation of the Roosevelt Building. Looking at the Lincoln Building, this is the main frontage of the building facing in to the campus and the inner courtyard. Here we have the north elevation of the building. And then we have the west and east elevations of the Lincoln Building as well. So none of the exterior elevations are being changed or being proposed to be changed with this particular development project. Looking at off-street parking, the variation that was That was approved as part of the PDD that was adopted in 2025, allowed for 58 off street parking spaces. And that is accomplished through 29 parking spaces next to the Roosevelt building to the south. which is seen here. Another 29 off street parking spaces next to the Lincoln Building to the north. And then both of these parking lots are accessed by the respective adjacent streets. So the north building is accessed off 7th or the north parking lot is accessed off of 7th while the Roosevelt parking lot is accessed off of 8th Street. In addition to those off street parking lots, there is a new driveway curb cut that has been approved and is part of this particular development plan for a new trash enclosure. Previously a trash enclosure was located near 7th Street near the opening of the the parking lot for the Lincoln Building and that trash enclosure is being relocated to behind the building or to the north of the Lincoln Building with a new driveway accessed off of 8th Street as part of this final PDD. looking at the public utilities storm drainage and services the site does have existing services that are currently feeding and operating both of the buildings both the lincoln building and roosevelt building and all those services and utilities are considered to be adequate and not requiring any change For the landscaping, the landscape plan provides 47 tree units within the front yard setback, which exceeds the 42 tree units that are required. Additionally, the new trash enclosure is being proposed with an eight-foot masonry wall that's going to consist of brick on the north side of the Lincoln building. Signage, when the preliminary plan was brought to the Planning Commission, the plan was to have two ground signs on the site, one ground sign in front of each of the buildings near their main entrances. the inner courtyard area. Since that time the applicant has requested to relocate those signs to the near frontages of the streets. So the Roosevelt sign is being proposed to be relocated along H Street. The sign itself would remain around 10 square feet with the same design and materials that was originally reviewed and approved as part of the preliminary development plan. Additionally, The Lincoln sign is also being proposed to be relocated from the main entrance of the building out towards 7th Street. Both signs would meet the required setbacks. And both signs, because they were reviewed as part of the downtown design review board's approval, would require a new certificate of compatibility. So they would have to go before the... DRB for their review and approval prior to a sign permit being issued for both of these signs. Staff summary, staff finds that the final development plan substantially complies with the preliminary plan and all conditions set forth in the PDD ordinance. The site layout, parking, landscaping meet all requirements. Relocated ground signs will need to be reviewed by the DRB to account for their new placement. The alternatives that the Planning Commission have are, one, to approve the final development plan as submitted. You could approve the plan with specific conditions, postpone consideration if additional information is needed, or deny the plan if you find that the modifications are not in the public's best interest. Staff recommends approval of the final development plan subject to one condition. Our recommended findings support this approval because the plan meets the substantial compliance criteria under section 42-406C. It strictly conforms to the development limitations established by ordinance number 25-11257, including the 61 unit limit and the minor modifications do not diminish the character or compatibility of the neighborhood. The recommended condition of approval requires the applicant to either obtain a new certificate of compatibility with the DRB for the relocated ground signs or install them at the original approved interior locations. We ask that the commission confirm with the applicant that they accept these conditions for the record prior to making a motion. And with that, we do have a motion of recommendation for the final development plan. And we'll take any questions that you might have.

All right. No questions. Do we want an applicant to speak?

Sure. I'm Justin Jennings, the applicant on behalf of Roosevelt Lincoln Lofts LLC. I'm the architect. Bob Ross was with me earlier. He's the construction project manager. I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. Where are you estimating the completion date?

Here in about a month and a half. So is it going to be open to low income families then too?

It is a low income housing project. So there are units designated for low income families.

I think we're good.

I did have a question on the condition for the monument signs and the relocation requiring another review by the design review board. Will that need to be a scheduled review or could that be an administrative review?

Yeah, that would be just like the first review where we would go before the Downtown Design Review Board with your proposal. It will not impact the development of the project or the redevelopment of the project or your occupancy because you could occupy the site without having the signs up, but it would be required before we could issue a sign permit for either of the signs to be erected and installed.

That makes sense.

Thank you. Real quick I want to add that what Dustin called out there about confirming actually comes from the process of this approval that at the final PDD stage when there are conditions added that they have to actually be, the applicant has to agree to them because the other option is that says if the applicant does not agree to the revision suggested by the Planning Commission or in conditions or declines to revise the plan as submitted, the Planning Commission may deny approval of the plat and return it to the applicant. So it is good, be good practice to get that on the record of whether that is something they can do or what not, so.

We have a motion.

I move to approve the application FPDD26-002, the final development plan for RL Lofts as shown on the plan set revised July 10th, 2026, attachment 5, subject to the condition of approval and based on the recommended findings in the staff report.

Second.

Do you have enough verbiage in there to cover what you were needing?

What you ideally need is just a confirmation that that condition's not a problem to them, that they're good with that, that's all. So, okay, just making sure.

Okay, got a motion and a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. And we've got an approval on a 5-0 vote in favor.

I can't find the application number.

Application number FPDD26-002. And I think that concludes business for the night. We would jump to. We did annual elections, 3.7.

We have no other new business.

No other new business.

I did have one.

Any unfinished business.

I did want to just mention something here. It would be. It would have been good if we still had Commissioner Farber here. But I wanted to just mention something that you can think about, we can discuss further later. But it gets to what a couple of commissioners have expressed, places where we can shorten things. There is one opportunity that I don't know that we've ever discussed while I've been here, probably has been discussed before. But in the planning bylaws and our boards in the city are allowed to have a consent agenda. A what? A consent agenda. So when you watch city commission, there's a number of things often in the meeting that are on a consent agenda and they will take them all as one motion and approve them all. There are some applications, and this is probably a good example, Our first four items were all public hearings, so those can't really be put on a consent agenda. But these last two, there was a final plat and a final PDD, those are an administrative review by you. What would happen if we had a consent agenda, there would be an extra place on the agenda that would think it would go after the public hearings before administrative items. All of them would be listed, there would still be a staff report in your packet, but we wouldn't have to do a presentation.

You wouldn't have to do the last two presentations then?

Yes, if we had this, and now there's some caveats to this, so just make sure everybody understands. If there was feedback from the public ahead of time that they had wanted to speak on it or Typically, that's not going to happen on a consent agenda item. But if there was someone that wanted to speak on it or some situation.

Or a commissioner could actually pull it back out of this consent agenda.

Yeah, that would be the other thing is a commissioner could pull it back out if they wanted to discuss it further. But it would open the door for you to be able to approve some of these. Now, Planning Commission deals with a lot more public hearing items than the other boards that So it's not that everything could go on a consent agenda, but here and there it would shave off some time doing presentations. So I just wanted to kind of mention that. Kind of in conjunction with that, we were from the last meeting, from not being able to hold the last meeting, we were looking at the bylaws and the planning commission's rules and procedures and We noticed that the last time the bylaws were updated was 1997, and then the rules and procedures were in 2004. It's likely that at some point in the future we're going to want to discuss any updates we want to make to those. And the consent agenda is already in there as being able to do it. But we want to probably have some discussion in one of the meetings. We would put it into preliminary discussion items or something like that and have a discussion about it. So staff's willing to entertain that and put together some info of what that might look like. I just kind of wanted to mention it. here and like to give you time to think about it and can give, I'll give Commissioner Farber a heads up that he might wanna look back at the video for the last few minutes here and see what he thinks and then you guys can discuss it at the meeting and bring it up. We'd have to just make a motion to do that, right? Yeah, I think so. I think it's all set up to where we could just start doing it at your direction and we could look for those that don't need to actually have a presentation.

I think that makes sense, yeah.

It seems to work, I don't know why it wasn't done in the past, I don't know if it was tried and it didn't, or whatever might have happened before, but it seems like an opportunity to kind of get to some of those things. Good.

Anything on the agenda for October 6th? I can't remember, let me look.

Yes. Yeah. So we do have at least two.

I have two items.

I think we have at least two. Three. We have three? Okay. So we have three at this point.

Okay.

Motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn. We have no public forum?

Anybody online?

We do not have anyone online anymore, so anyone from the public who's interested in speaking would be in the room.

All right.

Motion to adjourn. I'm going to stay here.

I move to adjourn. All right. Second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? We passed. Five to zero.