Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

430 lights call the meeting to order roll call please Jay Castillo Jim Jackson here Pete McGorry here David Miller Tom Tucker here Connor Whelan Mike Zuloff we were notified that Connor and Jade had called that they would not be able to attend the motion to excuse them and So moved.

Second.

Moved and seconded. Excuse those people. Approval of the minutes from the July 22nd meeting.

Mr. Chairman, I would approve that the minutes be approved as submitted. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Okay. Move forward. New business site plan.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. So this application was submitted by North Coast Design Build on behalf of SSC Market Street Sundusky LLC for property they own at 202 East Market Street for site plan approval for a commercial building addition and change of use. So getting into it, here's the zoning map. There's five total properties in this redevelopment project. It has to do with the old, recently vacated Value City Furniture Building. These properties in question are zoned DBD, Downtown Business District, and so are all of the surrounding properties in downtown. Here's a location map showing us existing conditions of the site from an aerial perspective. We can see on the southern portion that there are two separate homes which somewhat recently I understand were at least partially used for a business purpose. As we'll see, those are planned to be demolished and replaced with parking. But before I get further ahead of myself, other things of note are in yellow, the proposed building addition, restoring the Value City Furniture Building nearly to its original, original footprint. And then in blue is the existing loading dock. Here's some existing street view photos. Here's one from East Market Street, the north elevation. Here's from Wayne Street. and then let's get into the site plan so the scope of work is again redevelopment project it's of the former value city furniture building as a mixed use property. 14,000 square feet of the first floor will be first will be office commercial office space and of that 14,000 square foot that's the entire existing first floor. 32 apartments will be added as part of this project within the proposed addition there will be the first floor and then 14 on each of the second and third floor apartments above that. Other various related site improvements are planned and then as a note this property is protected under landmark preservation ordinance and requires a certificate of appropriateness prior to any and then in purple we see the proposed parking lot scope of work is constructing a new one way in one way out 42 space parking lot to serve the new apartments in the building. As well as repairing and replacing existing sidewalks as needed majorly of note here commissioners is that All of these properties are located in the city's central business district, and therefore the minimum requirement for off-street parking is zero spaces. You don't need to supply off-street parking if you're in this district. They have done so anyway, so certain requirements... the minimum number of spaces applied so and then I'll note that the new Wayne Street access drive and Circulation pattern of the parking lot were reviewed and approved by City engineering as well Moving on the proposed floor plan first floor and we have eighteen thousand five hundred total square feet if we count the building addition fourteen thousand of that is going to be for commercial offices and forty five hundred of that will be for four new apartments and Second floor, 18,500 square feet combined for 14 more apartments. And then on the third floor is the same. I can go back to any of this, of course. Proposed elevations and color renderings that were made available to staff are now on the screen. You can see the building, the elevation drawing on the left and then the color rendering on the right. This is from the northwest perspective on the corner of East Market and Wayne Street. east market street and then here' s on the north elevation so the part of the building facing east market street. Here' s the west elevation facing wayne street. Here' s the south elevation facing interior to the site where those two houses are now. And then the east elevation facing the adjacent commercial building on east market street. landscaping plan meets all code requirements. The scope of work is providing new landscaping and plantings to buffer and screen the new parking lot from adjacent properties and the public right-of-way. And then additional plantings are also planned for around the building to beautify the site, which we certainly appreciate. lighting plan. This one is a little harder to see, so I'll walk us through this. We have two fixtures, fixture A and fixture B. They both comply with our dark sky ordinance. Fixture A is more numerous. We see fixture A as the more round symbol, black symbol, a couple along the building facade on East Market. a few along Wayne Street and then a couple at the pedestrian entrance along the south elevation, whereas fixture B is just along that southern wall there facing the parking lot. last plan preliminary stormwater plan the scope of work to use new catch basins and storm sewer laterals to send water to wayne street not east market but wayne street stormwater system this preliminary plan meets all planning and zoning code requirements of site plan approvals granted the city engineer has directed like i mentioned to go to wayne street not east market as is pictured we have a combined sewer on east market so we had the opportunity to not make that worse here. So that will be reviewed again by engineering if approval is granted. Staff analysis summarizing what we've just talked about. First this project will help meet our region and more importantly cities need for housing options to support a local economy which is supported by the city strategic plan. to the proposed building addition is well below the downtown business districts maximum building height of 125 the existing building height is 45 feet 10 inches three the properties located within the central business district meeting off street parking requirements did not automatically apply we explain the nuance there for new landscaping was required for the new parking area for their plantings were proposed around the building. Five the proposed stormwater solution will be compliant six the proposed light fixtures comply with the city's dark sky regulations and lastly for analysis as proposed the project meets all of the requirements of the Sandusky planning and zoning code and I'll note that this project was granted a use variance by our Sandusky Board of Zoning Appeals last Thursday August 20th to establish for long-term residential apartments on the first floor of the proposed building addition Other departments had no objections, just several notes. Engineering, further approvals required. The building official suggested looking at the first floor of the addition to meet ADA requirements. Police department, nothing. Fire department, no objections. And code just mentioned that if transient occupancy were ever contemplated in the future, which it's not right now. The applicants made that very clear to staff. to just keep in mind that a state hotel license would be required if they want to do six or more units. Staff recommends approval with the following condition that all applicable permits must be obtained through the building department, engineering department, division of planning, and any other applicable agency prior to construction. Thank you. Applicants here as well.

Okay, any questions for the plan?

Through you, Mr. Chairman. The subject properties, those... but five parcels in addition to the, are they all owned and controlled by that same entity now? Is there any requirements for lot combinations and so forth as part of the process?

I don't believe there's any requirements for lot combinations. I do believe they're all owned in common. The lot combination would only be required if they needed to for building code because buildings can't cross property lines. But since another aspect of this project is that the applicants applying for state historic preservation funding as well, so that really limits what they can do with the building. So that's why the... the addition is so sympathetic to that historical facade?

Well, that was my second question. Oh, okay. I see that in the rendering, it's sympathetic, but if I recall concern about historic buildings, whatever, that you can't make an addition look as if it is historic technically. It can be complementary, similar materials or whatever, but it shouldn't attempt to replicate I wondered if that played into why that seems so relatively simple and has no gingerbread. It doesn't have the historic look and appeal to that addition. It looks kind of like a plain Jane stand beside there.

Applicant, like to respond?

Mike Cloud, 4205 East Lake Road. I'm president of North Coast Design Building. We had our interview with the State Historic Preservation Office a week ago Friday, which is always a very delicate dance to find out what they want and they don't. I indicated that I would like to incorporate more corblane details that would take the addition and would make it even more similar. And I got an interesting reaction. I got from her, I got, you know, acquiescence that we could add that on the addition. I got a strange pushback about the placement of transoms over a couple doors that we had to change. And then I got told that the little addition in the back where the elevator is was too fancy. I'm sorry, what about the elevator? There's an elevator, a small addition on the back, and as plain as that looks, I was told that might have too much gingerbread on it. I've got her won over, but she doesn't get to make the decision. It has to go to the Park Service. So she's having a meeting with the Park Service this week, and she's very pleased that, you know, we want to restore all the windows to match exactly and everything we want to do. She's very won over on the project. So we're going to see what she takes to the Park Service and what she can get us. And so if she gets some acquiescence that we can do a little more detail on that addition, I want to do it. I want to leave the elevator addition alone because I think it candidly blends in nice and looks nice and hopefully they'll be okay with that. The transom things she wanted are no big deal. We made them and they're taller door, no double transom, slide something six inches. I made those changes and they, you know, to me, aesthetically, I don't want to say they improve it, but they don't degrade the storefront in those spots. So we're kind of at the mercy of what they'll permit. We're working with MCM out of Tremont as our historic consultant on this, and her advice, when I first drew this, we had mimicked a lot more corbelling, and she said, don't. And I think she was right, because we said, well, if you really want us to do this with just sympathetic materials, here's what it looks like. We'd like to do more. And so we're optimistic that the that the Park Service will come back and bless these things. At the end of the day, it's all about part two approval. To get the preservation credits, we have to satisfy Park Service, we have to satisfy SHPO. So that's fluid. We have intentionally not gone to landmarks because I don't have a final approved part two. I'm signing the application tomorrow and it's going in Friday. And until we have an approved part two, Mr. Sherry.

Yes, sir. I understand the worry about the portico. Is that what we're calling it? It looks I think you had the let's go back to where you were, if you don't mind. I haven't. The little addition as simple as it is, looks a bit suspicious and could even create the illusion that that's the front of a building, right? So I fully understand it. I don't know if it's that big of a deal. I think it's still, you know, I very much think that the overall project is an appropriate adaptive reuse of the building. But yeah, they have a point. On one hand, it's gonna become an important new entrance in the reuse. On the other hand, it could be mistaken, even though it looks stylistically different, it could be mistaken as historical. One way to overcome that objection would be to do like a glass structure that really doesn't impact the building. surrounding glass or make it totally modern kind of see-through and Doesn't look like a could ever belong to the building. It doesn't have to match. That's kind of the objection The annex the new part of the building I can see would be less of an objection because Even though it's it's in a more traditional style. It's not going to be mistaken as original construction It doesn't I I don't think. I can see that, you know, maybe somebody could mistake it, and you could actually make some detail so that it's more completely obvious, even though it's in harmony with the older section, that it would be obviously modern. There's some great examples. You know, Citizens Bank on the southwest corner of east water and wane uh very sensitive to surrounding historic buildings mansard roof shapes of the windows that sort of thing and yet unmistakably modern construction right so and and i'm not sure without seeing you know more detailed rendering whether uh what would happen but i'm i'm pretty sure there's going to be no mistake there Right, and so I think they have a point with the portico. Sorry to take so long to make the point, but that's just my nature. I'm more worried about the parking. I'll have more questions, but my first question when I look at this is why do you think you need that much parking? because I think it's a valid concern, especially from a historic preservation standpoint. Yeah, it's a separate piece of property, but Preservation officers to say yeah, yeah, but you're tearing down to a start building So I'd like to know from staff if you could elaborate on the historic significance Or whether the adjoining properties of any any buildings that come down are contributing properties to the district They're not you're saying they're not I think one of them at least one of them should be So you're saying they're not in in the in the presentation but The way I understand it, you don't need any additional surface parking. I think it's important for us to be concerned about sufficient parking. But I'm not really convinced that we've explored all the possibilities. This is the first we've seen or heard of this project. I'd like to know you know why do you think any damage for parking has anybody considered any interior parking at all because that would be a better use than you know a significant fraction of an acre of commercial space the entire ground floor being commercial is mildly Eyebrow-raising because we've got so much empty commercial space not just here, but all over the country right. There's a really low demand for it It's really hard to sell it looks like you could like make shallower commercial spaces and meet the walkability Goals that we have for downtown in our downtown plan and still have some extremely valuable indoor parking worth much more than a bunch of surface parking and At the same time, we're losing walkability stuff because we're never going to have, now you have two lots that are surface parking instead of potentially some other use. So on one hand, we're stubbornly complying with downtown master plan and on the other hand we're violating it by putting in a bunch of surface parking when it could be maybe an alleyway and some construction on the street and and backlot parking instead I don't I'm not I Don't think this plan comes close to meeting the the best use or the downtown master plan And also the dumpsters a long way in pretty inconvenient Right and and at the same time is right at dumpsters right on the street even though it's in it's supposed to be in an enclosure We have for I don't know 15 years right around the corner at Subway have had a dumpster that's supposed to be in an enclosure and hasn't complied almost from the beginning. Right now it has one of two gates on it and it's constantly left open with a leaking, messy, overflowing dumpster. So dumpsters right on the street like that have a poor history. I don't think we're anywhere near close to where we should be on this.

Well, Mike, you give me a lot to unpack here, so let's take them one at a time. With respect to, let's go to the rear entrance. So first of all, this is an artistic rendering, and what this doesn't really indicate is that there's about a four and a half foot grade change from the parking lot to that level. So we've got a lot of restrictions on this building to comply with SHPO. One of their hot points is that they do not want you to change penetrations that are going to change the outline of the building. So, for example, we're going to be required to have a stair shaft that gets us all the way to the roof. We can't do that in the historic building because it doesn't exist. They won't accept us. Now, you're going to say there's some penthouses in there, but what we have is we have discontinuity of stairs that even under what used to be Chapter 34 in the building code and is now the 2024 existing building code, utterly unsafe. SHPO has agreed to this. They are unsafe in every, I mean, complete discontinuity. I've been in the building 50 times. And when I come down onto a floor, I have to work at it to figure out where I'm going to come out. So we had to create new stair access. And we had to create two. And to comply with the building code, they have to be at the spirit. There's an aspect ratio in the building that we have to meet. So the solution was, and then we have to satisfy SHPO and aesthetics about where we bring that out. So the solution was to put one in the existing building at the west end, which does not extend to the roof. Okay, and we're able to totally enclose that into a bay of the building that everybody can accept for a structural standpoint and historic preservation and to put the second which has rooftop access into the addition and tuck it into the center core of the building where there are sight lines from the street, you can't see it. That leaves us with the need for elevator access for ADA. Well, we torturously tried to get the elevator into the new building. The new part couldn't make it work, but we have an existing elevator shaft right where that's at. That's why you have a blank wall there. There's a freight elevator. And so the only purpose of that entrance is an ADA elevator entrance, and it's only going to be utilized by residents. So you've got residents on the second and third floor, right? If we take 32 minus four, we're at 28, so there's... Could you clarify...

What the, you know, location of this thing has to do with my objections about the amount of surface parking, for example? I'm going to get to surface parking. You gave me five topics. If you'll give me the opportunity, I will address each one.

So with respect to that, we're forced to put it there, really, to make it work. I think it's going to be quite discreet because it's going to be four foot down on a landscaped pathway. There'll be a set of stairs that comes down. And then we're able to get ADA access to the street, right? So a person can park in an ADA spot and have 2% grade all the way down to meet the requirement. So I think the thought that this is going to street forward this side of the building, I don't think we're at major risk there. I also think that there's actually three, not including the new addition, three past constructions here. It's very obvious from the back of the building this is the back of the building. So I think that may address that concern. With respect to parking, So one of the challenges in downtown Sandusky, Mike, as you mentioned, is there's a lot of empty storefront, right? It's not the easiest place to get large-scale retail, okay, or office. We are fortunate, and we can't announce today, but we're probably within a week of announcing of getting a really good quality first floor tenant. That first floor tenant is totally okay with utilizing street parking. you know, which during business hours will enhance walkability and there will be a lot of jobs in that building. For the folks renting apartments though, you know, this Town's very attractive in the summer. On a weekend, you can have a lot of people downtown. It can be very difficult. So from a marketing perspective, it's important for the residents of an apartment to have a dedicated parking spot. It's what makes it marketable. It's going to make people want to rent here, in addition to the fact that you're going to be a beautifully restored building. The suggestion that we should... blow out walls or something or create an entrance and put parking inside the building is not feasible for a variety of reasons. One, it's timber construction, right? So you can't, you know, there's a basement that's just timber. You can't park on top of that. And of course, SHPO's big concern is that we preserve every historic element in that building. So we're going to have to go back and redo the tin ceilings. We're going to have to restore the cast iron columns. The column bays are tight. They're maybe 10 foot apart. from column to column and they're maybe only 16 feet wide, right? So it's just, it doesn't lend itself to interior parking if that's what you wanted to do. And candidly, the code asks us, the variance we had to seek last week from BZA was to have the four units on the first floor. So the objective of the code in that district is to have office or retail space, which is exactly what we're doing. So we're creating the parking that makes the apartments viable, and we're achieving the office space. The other problem with the downtown, and by the way, I'm a big fan of downtown Sandusky. I grew up in Norwalk. I remember what this place was 25 years ago. Congratulations to everybody here for how far you brought it. It's beautiful, and it's making progress. But the market rent's still cheap, right? I mean, the market rent for office space is low, and it's low enough that without the support of, from a financial standpoint, of the apartment component of this project, particularly when you're overcoming what we have to do to historically restore the building, acquire the building, create the parking, right? It doesn't pencil without it. So having, we tried to balance getting as much office retail space and the space that we could with The right number of apartments. I think we've got a good apartment mix. We've got a couple three units in there. We've got about the rest, about the half of the rest are two, some are ones. So it's going to create a nice mix of folks that could live here. There may be some folks that want to live here and walk everywhere, but my experience having built here a lot, done a lot of business around here, having grown up kind of in the area, is that it's not a completely... How do I want to put it? Even downtown Cleveland struggles to live there without a car, right? I mean, there's only a few cities in this country you can really effectively do that where you have everything you need. People that live downtown are going to have a car and are going to drive someplace. And so having on-site parking. I'll also mention we're tearing down a couple old buildings that the current user has got every square inch there is parking now, right? It's stone or paved lots. The buildings aren't in great repair. They're not historically significant. And so I think that what we're doing is we're taking this grade change, we're tearing down some really unattractive items.

We're going to create, and by the way, I looked at this a lot of ways, and we made the conscious choice to just do double load parking, you know.

probably would have been even more marketable to have a second circulation lane, but you can't get it in without jamming everything in here. So we left a nice buffer that we're going to landscape between the parking and the building, and then we have another buffer there that we're going to plant trees and landscape between that, and there's actually a retaining wall there between the next property. As far as the dumpster enclosure, it's going to be made out of brick. You know, we'll have nice gates on it, and we're going to plant dense landscaping around it. I don't know what Subway does with their trash. We're not running a restaurant out of here. We've got an office use and some apartments. I'm sorry that Subway doesn't take care of their trash or doesn't close their dumpster enclosure, but we will endeavor to be good members of our community and not do that. We've also gone out of our way on the streetscape. We've got a really broad streetscape. I think it's 16 or 18 feet. It's all just concrete right now. We've done a little detail kind of like you see in Chicago on the Miracle Mile with a little curb with a wrought iron fence with seasonal plantings. We want to soften that. We want this building to be beautiful. A lot of thoughts gone into this to try to balance it and make the best use of the land and satisfy the... In addition to all the folks in the city here that we've got to satisfy, we've got other... interest if we're successful with the preservation tax credits, and we have to balance all those things. We've done our best to do that.

Any other questions? I'd like to respond to a couple okay, so I'm not sure I have no problem with the location of the entrance so the rest I'm The concern is with its its appearance, right? It's also so you have a prominent Entrance way back from the streets kind of kind of a strange location. I don't even have a problem with that the point is that it Reasonably needs to be less suspicious. But again, that's not a site plan issue, but I'm not also on balance not I'm loathe to say well, that's not our sandbox. We're looking at this is going to influence the whole plan Okay The parking question, I'm not advocating for it. My point was that these questions weren't explored. This is, and it's not a criticism of your plan or what you're doing because I do love that we're doing this, right? My problem is with the process and the idea that we should be insulated, that this board should be insulated from this process until we're handed a finalized plan with with with a timeline and pressure to pass it take it or leave it or or Place a burden on me.

That's a question for another day and the applicant.

Well, it's relevant to what's going on here if you don't mind, okay I'll draw I'll drop it. I'll drop that if you don't think it's relevant. I'd like to finish my point so another way of achieving more parking You're building an annex it could be a parking garage. I know that would cost more and change it but Again it the idea that it's necessary in order to To make the project viable to do it this way and only way only this way even though it

Really is not consistent with the downtown redevelopment plan Yeah, you know I reject that Chairman yes, I'd like to move to approve the application subject to staff's Proposed conditions have second Okay, it's been moving seconded

Tom Tucker?

Yes.

Jim Jackson?

Yes.

Mike Zuloff?

No.

David Miller?

Yes.

Pete McGorry?

Yes.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Okay, other business. Remember, we have a special meeting on September the 3rd at 4.30 p.m. We need four people there, and that information will be coming out soon because we had to get a mailing out 10 days prior.

Yes, the mailing was sent out, Mr. Chairman, and we have the packet ready, so we'll send that to you tomorrow morning. Okay.

And I thank everybody for making that happen.

Yes, thank you so much.

Next Thursday.

Next Thursday, correct. And we also did not get any applications for the regular September meeting, so we will not need to hold the September meeting. This will be just September 3rd.

Okay, so the 23rd's out. 23rd's out.

Mr. Chairman. Okay, so we've got the two meetings, one canceled, one special meeting for that. Okay, other business. Yes, sir.

So I would like to bring up the process for approving major projects. This is not the way we historically did it. And it's changed in recent years. And it's not optimal. And the notion that it would be improper to take a couple of passes at it, a few iterations, and try to get some input from this board and optimize the project, I don't know how you would defend that.

Okay, as the chair, you gentlemen have way more experience. Your thoughts or no thoughts?

Well, I'm only slightly reluctant to take an opposite side of Mr. Zuloff. I understand his point, I believe, and it's noble to try to optimize and so forth. However, me, I understand for my own personal, when I put myself in the position of a prospective renter, I want a dedicated place that I can park my car, that I can come home whenever I come home, any season, any weather, If I need to shovel my spot, I can get a spot that's off street parking adjacent to where I live. And in my head, whether or not that meets the goal of the downtown plan, it's a parking lot. There's nothing to me, in my way of looking at it, There's nothing that difficult about if future conditions change and it's determined that parking is plentiful and that people are actually happy to live downtown without a car, there's a valuable piece of property that can be redeveloped. There's nothing that keeps that parking lot always a parking lot. It's a parking lot. And it's been other things before and will be other things in the future, I have confidence. I don't necessarily intend to live that long.

Mr. Chairman, I mean, we've just completely changed the subject. My subject is, what I brought up is the process that we're following with not just this project, but others. And we're going back kind of out of order of defending a decision we've already made.

So the question is, you want to have additional hearings.

Okay, well, if I could just hear me out here. Not to the point of the the parking that it's always been a parking lot. No, we're tearing down two buildings sad parking so But never mind that I'm not talking about this particular Application other than an example of several that have gone way too far down the line without any feedback from a fairly experienced board of commissioners And then we're faced with, well, we got to get it done, or even asking questions of the applicant like, gee, well, if we delay this in any way, like make adjustments to the plan, is that going to be inconvenient for you after we've totally missed opportunities to address those matters much earlier in the process? That's my point.

Counterpoint, Mr. Chairman? Yes, sir. I think that I've been impressed with the applicant's ability to answer all the questions that we've put forward. And I wasn't trying to assert that it's always been a parking lot. I say the plan is to be a parking lot. In my experience, limited as it is, a lot of times something gets parked. land gets parked as a parking lot, it doesn't have a lot of structure, a lot of investment on it, that's a parcel that's easy to redevelop should there be a better use for it or not the need for the parking. And then a final comment about some of the other questions that you initially raised and I was pretty pleased and satisfied with the answers to is In my experience in working with the SHPO, if you can satisfy the SHPO, you've got a pretty gold seal of whatever strange alchemy they believe to be their purview. And, hey, if it satisfies the SHPO, it's good by me.

The other question I hear is do we have to have three hearings or two hearings on this? That is not in my experience. I don't know.

I can answer. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Three hearings?

What I'm hearing from you is they want to present and then we don't vote until down the road.

That's not what I said at all.

Okay. So what do you mean we need to know more of those? So I guess I don't understand.

Well, first of all, it's... In the best projects, everybody knew that we were working on a project, right? This is like, this board doesn't even have an inkling that this is coming until it's all tied up in a bow. Even when an application was filed, I'm not sure, I don't know, and I don't know how I'm going to know, and maybe I'd like to know in this particular case, but in many cases, an application is made and we don't know about it until we get a packet a week before the meeting, even if the discussion is largely completed and the application is filed well before that. Now, you can get into, well, how much can be disclosed, but you... You know that you can you can have discussions with the Planning Commission or unless the law director disagrees You can have confidential discussions with an applicant before anything's made public It certainly has been done in a group Yeah, okay, well and Well experience You can ask the applicant whether they're willing to have that discussion before they finalize their plans. And the applicant could say, yeah, sure. I don't see anything improper about that. Feel free to correct me.

Probably the best thing to do is to ask staff and have your questions forwarded to the applicant through them.

Well anyway anyway, and I'm not suggesting that we have you know to I don't know where you got three, but Nothing requires two hearings There'd be nothing so what I'm hearing from you is you want to be notified if someone files Is that what I heard What I heard is this isn't the way it happened in the past, and I would like to look into how we can make the process better to get closer to some optimal outcome and when possible or when the applicant approves to get some input before the whole thing is tied up in a bow instead of take it or leave it. I don't know what city in a major project would... think that that's a good idea to just say, you know, here it is, and take it or leave it.

Well, at this point, let's put together some suggestions, bring them to the committee, and the committee will decide, because I don't want to continue discussion.

I would just like to make a comment. My perception of my job is to let the staff professional work with the applicant to fine tune the proposal. I don't know, but I'm presuming that staff had some feedback into this project, and I'm counting on them as trained professionals. And then I'm taking what they recommend, what staff recommends, and for example, in this case, what the, I'm gonna say the name wrong, but the historic the National Historic Trust or whatever, their requirements, and it's basically packaging a project to fit all those requirements. And if you were starting on a piece of vacant ground... With no building, maybe it would turn out differently than working with an historic building. But I think, as Mr. Miller had said, same thing. I heard the answers that I heard satisfied me. And I think that's the way I view our job as planning commission. So that's just my perception. But I would add, if Mr. Zuloff has a plan or comes up with one, to work with the planning department, I'm just not sure that we're supposed to be in on every application with the planning department right from the beginning. I don't know if that's what I'm hearing. Aaron?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to mention a couple things. So one, in the code, there is the ability for an applicant to bring a preliminary plan to the planning commission. If we're ever at a point talking to someone where we don't feel what they're bringing us is the quality that's ready for a site plan approval recommendation, for example, we encourage them. You could come for a preliminary plan analysis and have the planning commission weigh in on that. We haven't had anybody take us up on that. We also try to be mindful of big projects and have some office hours for planning commissioners to be able to come in and review plans, have some more time to look at them when big things are coming, like we did with Battery Park and with the Sandusky Senior Lofts most recently. Frankly, this one felt like a no-brainer to me, so it didn't occur to me to have office hours on this project. But we do our best to work with folks to get what they're doing to the quality that we can recommend approval before they bring it forward to you. You do have the ability to vote no and to reject something or to postpone something that's not to the caliber that you want to approve it, which is the purview of the board when we bring forward applications. I have a question. Thank you.

What you're saying is like when he had the questions about the historical aspect of the building, you're saying you want more insight on that conversation, what they're really talking about?

Not necessarily. Okay. Ms. Blair just talked about office hours and Think it's a mistake to look at and say well. This is so good. We don't we don't need any input right? It's also now I'm not suggesting that every board member is going to have something to bring to the party or have an opinion or want to Play that role, but we do have members Well, we have at least one member that that has some experience with site plan with you know can has, I think, based on experience with other projects, as well as a pretty strong knowledge of the genesis of Sandusky's resurrection, and has had a hand in various plans over the course of 25 years, I like to think that I have some valuable input, and the idea that nothing to see here just raises my hackles. There was a long process with the Chesapeake loss. I can't think of a major project that we've done successfully that didn't have at least some iterative process. The Fike building started out with a desire to Renovate it for office space that would have been disaster right it was input from this board among others Maybe not from this word in that case most of the influence might have been the Landmark Commission I Don't remember, but they I think they got it from both directions and In encouraging them to do residential, which is obviously successful I don't think they I'm not sure they have it Well, that's I think that's a discussion for further down the road.

Also tonight was just a site plan approval, correct? No, I correct correct. Yes only item Okay, that's that's what I thought we could go on here for a while and at this point Unless anyone has anything else to add as for an adjournment.

I

Move for adjournment.

I'll second it.

Okay, we are adjourned.