Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Okay, welcome to the July 14th South Miami Planning Board meeting. Everyone please stand for the Pledge of the Flag.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. All right, we'll do a quick roll call starting with up here on the podium or dais. Gus?

Augustin Barrera. Augustin Barrera. JR Corbison.

Jay Miller.

Danny Alvarez.

Danny Alvarez. All right, sounds good. So we have five people. So we have a quorum, correct, Marcus?

That is correct. You have five. A quorum is a minimum of four.

All right. Any administrative matters today? I don't see any.

I don't have administrative matters, but just want to point out that the fourth item will be deferred to the August meeting.

Yeah, so anybody in the audience that's here for the fourth item, which is the discussion around the property on 62nd Avenue, that is getting deferred until the next meeting. So just FYI. All right. With that said, items 1, 2, and 3 all really relate to the same area, same property, but we're going to take them with item 1 by itself and then possibly tackle 2 and 3 together. Does that make sense?

That's fine. So I'll just read the first item by itself. Perfect. Go from there. Okay. So the first item is PB-2026-012. The applicant is Byrd 58, LLC. The request is an ordinance of the Mayor and City Commissioner of the City of South Miami, Florida. Mending Policy 1.1.4 of the Future Land Use Element of the City of South Miami Comprehensive Plan to modify the description applicable to the mixed-use commercial residential future land use category to address the transition from commercial and mixed-use development to residential, provided for correction, severability, conflicts, and an effective date. This item will be presented by Mr. Mark Ivers of the Corradino Group. Thank you.

And before we proceed, just in order to resolve it first, ladies and gentlemen, tonight's agenda includes at least one quasi-judicial item. If you wish to speak with respect to the quasi-judicial item, because it is quasi-judicial, we ask that you be sworn in if there's anyone on Zoom or if anyone here in the audience wishes to speak on that item, that's item number three regarding the rezoning. We ask that you please stand up and raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? And your response is? Thank you very much. Chairman, it's all yours.

Okay. All right. Mark? Good evening.

Mark Alvarez with the Corradino Group here on behalf of the City of South Miami planning staff. I have a report for the staff for all three items. It's a combined report, but I can do the first item separately. So this will be, I'll speak to 2026-12, which is the future land use policy change, text change, policy 1.1.4. And the change that's being proposed, and this is,

I don't have a thing.

The applicant proposing this is the property owner, which is represented by Michael Mamero. The property is Byrd 58 LLC. It is not city proposed. The change is to policy 1.1.4, which is a policy that focuses on not allowing the encroachment of non-residential future land use designations into single-family residential areas. This is being changed as it's written. The blue underline is the language that's being included. The red strikethrough is being deleted. And it would change it so that the redesignation of properties to commercial retail and office, CRO, or mixed-use commercial residential may be approved if on a section line or half section line road and may be extended only within the same block. And under no circumstances shall or in no event shall it extend beyond such a block across a right of way or an alley into a single family residential future land use category. Any request for future land use map change under this policy would be accompanied by a declaration of restrictions prohibiting development under statutory processes that preempt local zoning, such as live local. And then it goes on, business office land use zoning regulations shall contain provisions to protect the quality of life in the adjacent single family residential neighborhoods. So the effect of this policy with this little diagram here is right now we would not be able to do what's being shown in that diagram. In other words, allow a change in land use to a property behind a CRO or mixed-use NECR designation. We could not extend it into a single-family residential land use. This would allow that to happen, but only in a way that it would happen to a property that's adjacent or abutting the CRO or MUCR land use. And it can only go up to the block. In other words, it can't skip across the block. So this is essentially what happens, and it can only be along section line and half section line roads, which limits it to our major corridors in the city. It could not ever happen on a local road. This is not relevant at all to TSDD. TSDD was designed to protect against this to begin with. And it has a lot of what's considered local roads. This would only be along Red Road, 62nd Avenue, Ludlam, and going the other way from Byrd Road to Hardy, I'm sorry, Byrd, Miller, Hardy, Sunset, and 80th, which is at Davis. So those are the only streets that this could be effective on. And again, we would always have to have a declaration of restrictions to go with it. The actual places where this policy would become then effective is these are segments of the future land use map. So one part is up on Bird Road between 65th and 67th. There's a small section where you see red, and there's yellow behind it. Yellow is single family residential. Red is commercial residential and office. So there could be an effect. From this policy to allow that to more easily go back into the single-family area also between just West of 58th Avenue you see on the sort of right side of that top diagram. There's also an area there are about four I'm sorry five single-family homes in a row behind the commercial area facing Byrd Road Going further down, this would also become effective in the area we know as Madison Square along Hardy Road, where we have an MUCR designation, which is Madison Square. And it would allow that to go, again, within the block to single family residential properties. And if you look carefully, Madison Square includes Not only the south side of Hardy Road, but there are two parcels on the north side that also create a little opportunity to expand that onto the north side. The other place, the way it's written right now, from how it's proposed to you, it does not include RO. And in not including RO, it actually deletes the protection to single family neighborhoods from any kind of encroachment from RO. And I'm going to suggest a change. With that change accepted, this would also have an effect on Sunset, which is just west of the downtown. We have a number of medical offices. You know them, and they look like houses that were converted. That area is currently protected, and we propose that it gets protected again in the same manner. They could only go through in the block, but never across the street. And then there's also a section on also on Red Road, right near Bird Road, right just south of what used to be the drugstore. There's a residential office, and that would also be susceptible or exposed to have, I think there are three or four single-family lots right behind it that could have that spread into it. And finally, the other area is Red Road itself, south of downtown. There's a large RO section that has single family residential behind it. Having said that, there are a number of benefits. And I will say, this is proposed by the applicant. However, the city has been looking to this kind of relaxation on this policy because we have been looking at a number of these corridors before. And actually, what's great out behind, we had discussions two and a half years ago about making changes on Byrd Road that would allow a different kind of transition instead of having single family abutting to the commercial that we would create. another category for those blocks that would allow the transition to happen through architecture, going from four stories to two, the same way we've done in the TSDD. We've created this transition within the zoning. So this would enable a more contemporary and effective transition through the neighborhood by allowing this relaxation on 1.1.4 because right now that policy stops us from doing this at all. It enhances some greater economic opportunity in the city, more redevelopment. It would also increase housing inventory near transportation corridors because it is limited to those major corridors. We believe that In reality, most people, we think that single family abutting up to commercial is not the best quality of life, and we have better ways to do that in this day and age where we can create that transition. And again, we have seen that effectively implemented along 62nd with the TSTD, where we have written into the code the transition, and it has been used. They're not built yet.

They have been approved.

So I'm going to go back to that other slide and just say, oh, sorry, went the wrong way. We have discussed many of these areas. And I can go by what the discussions were with the commission. There has always been an interest in creating that kind of transition along Bird Road. There has been the same interest along Hardy. I can tell you at the time, the commission was not in favor of having any transition along Red Road south of downtown. And on Sunset, a little bit not too interested either. So we do want to, I'm going to go, sorry to skip around a little bit. Sorry. So we do want to introduce a little change in the language of this. One of the things we find that's been left out. So in other words, the way it's been written, RO encroaching into single family residential is currently protected from policy 1.1.4. With the way it's written right now, it's left out, which means we have no protection at all. We would like to write that back in. And that's why, where you see the highlight, we've put residential office in. And then the last sentence is just essentially generalized so that we don't have to write all these land use categories again to say that implementing zoning regulations would contain the provisions that help control the quality of life into adjacent single-family residential neighborhoods. So that would be the staff suggestions for modification. And that's it. That's it for this part. So if you have any questions, I'd be happy to provide some insight.

Well, first of all, is there, before we go to public comment, is there anybody else that wants to speak on this particular topic? Because we totally own it. In other words, is there anybody else that?

Yes.

Yes. Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board, Mickey Marrero, attorney for the applicant. I'll save most of my specific presentation for those two items. But in speaking with Mark and the city attorney and going through this, by the way, although I'm here as an attorney for this owner, I happen to live in this area. I live two blocks from the property, so I know it well. And since I've lived there, I've always thought it was a little odd. partially a product of the fact that you have this mishmash of unincorporated aid in South Miami and this Northeast area. And I frankly, spoken to some of your elected officials, I'm technically in the unincorporated part. But I want to be in South Miami. I'm hoping someday that gets normalized. But because of that confusion in that little area, it's left some zoning unintended consequences. And if you start with the and the CVS going a long bird road, You have a little pocket of four or five single family homes between the CVS and the Wells Fargo. And then the Wells Fargo, the Sanovo, those go to 41st Street. Those are much more commercial than what we're proposing to do. And then you have another break. So it's a little bit abnormal. So when we first spoke to staff, we realized this issue was an impediment. Because as a single family resident in that area, I totally understand why those protections are there. But most zoning that you'll see, it's by block. And here you have a block that's, because of the remnant zoning, that's mixed. And it limits what any commercial owner can do in their property. And I think we still have the protections that your staff suggested, which I would certainly agree with, that wouldn't allow you to cross the line. This only applies to section or half section line roads like Bird Road, so major roads. You couldn't do this on a local street. And you can't pass the block. You can't go past 41st Street. wouldn't truly allow intrusion into the residential neighborhood, only intrusion into the already commercial block. So you have these little pockets of single family remnant zoning, which legally nonconforming, if this is rezoned, they can stay if the city wants to rezone all this to allow mixed use or commercial. Ultimately, we're seeking general retail. We just want to redevelop our property. But at the end of the day, I think it fixes something for the city that has this remnant confusion that just limits the ability for these properties to redevelop. Because at the end of the day, under the current regulations, my client was trying to find a way to develop this property. Those buildings, as you know, at 58th and Byrd are very dated. I don't know exactly when they were built, but they may precede my life. Been there for a while. But in order to redevelop them, you have to meet current code, meet current parking, meet current dimensional regulations. And you can't because of that restriction. So this staff has provided protections that it can't exceed the right of way. And further, we had offered to submit a covenant that we wouldn't do live local, because I know allowing commercial opens that door. Staff's already put something in the language which we absolutely agree with. We couldn't take advantage of live local here. That's never been our intent, so we have no issue. So we certainly support staff recommendation. I'll save my more specific presentation for the actual zoning item. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, let's open it up for public comments. If anybody wishes to speak, please come forward, sign in, and then let us know your name and address.

Good evening. My name is Alan Montesino. I did sign in already and give my address of 5841st Street. I'm actually directly across from the applicant's property of interest.

I'm not sure this matters, but are you in the city of South Miami or...

I'm on an unincorporated date. I believe that I was allowed to be here because I was abutted, again, literally across the street.

It's more of a curiosity. You're on a three-minute clock, so just wanted to let you know. Understood.

Thank you. I do have a longer presentation. I'm not going to take any bit of the three minutes, really. Like Mr. Morales said, most of my material that I want to present today is for items two and three. I'll save it for then. But one of the big focal points of my presentation did have to do with policy 1.1.4, which is Just the applicant's egregious question to put this aside is basically just a giant rule change. My concern with the way that it was presented there's sort of a false limitation here. Because if we're saying that we're only going to be able to encroach into the half-sectioned areas, well, once we do that, the new half-section area will be the next one over. It will sort of Pac-Man into the neighborhood. If there was a true limitation of this encroachment, I think that would be very different. But as it was described, it just seems like today we'll be encroaching this much, and tomorrow we'll start it from the next point on. Just like I said, moving the goalpost here and kind of allowing for an unregulated encroachment into the existing single-family homes. That's really it. That's my opposition towards changing policy 1.1.4. I mean, policy 1.1.4 is the reason that really items 2 and 3 shouldn't be able to proceed forward at all. Asking for it to change at the very beginning of the meeting just kind of seems like, all right, these are the rules. Can we just pretend they don't exist anymore or change them and then move on? So again, just a Do we have limitations towards or do we not? And that's the question that I have when we're talking about changing the exact policy that's in place to make sure that we don't encroach.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Good evening. My name is Gregorio De La Garza. I live at 5807 Southwest 42nd Street. That's unincorporated. My parents and I moved in there in 1966, so I've seen the whole South Miami change from Snapper Creek all the way to Bird Road. Like you all know, in the northern part, you might have one house is county, another house is South Miami, another house is county, another house is South Miami. The reason that I'm here is There's no information here. To me, this is like putting the cart before the horse. In the future, how many stories can they build? Can they go two stories, three stories? How many apartments are they allowed? What's going to be the problems with the lighting, the parking? Right now as it is, this terrible situation with the parking in the area. the fancy restaurant that has a ballet. They would take their cars two blocks away and park blocking the sidewalk and the swell of my neighbor. And you ask them, hey. They go, oh, this is public property. OK, well, we put plants there. Now they can't park there. I live, I can see the parking behind. the CVS with the wall. These people might be going to the restaurant, spend $200 without wine, but they don't want to spend $3 for parking. So don't park in front of my house. Now, sometimes it'll be full. Sometimes it's not. But I say, let's see what the plans are first before proving anything. I think you're jumping the gun on this.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Any other comments from the public in general? Anybody online?

Yeah, I'd like to speak.

All right. You need to be sworn in. He was? He was not. Okay. I mean, he was on the phone, but he did not raise his hand.

Understood. Sir, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Your answer?

I do.

Thank you.

My name is Michael Mendoza. I live at 5806 Southwest 41st Street. I was listening to the presentation, hearing the benefits, and I just wanted to speak and say I object to those benefits. I don't see how this is going to improve the quality of life. There's not four or five houses. There are five houses. And there are kids, mothers, families that walk down this block every single day. And the Wells Fargo and CVS are completely different zoning. The commercial is backed off. It's spaced out. And I think if you actually change it to these five that These 5 houses here and push it back. It's going to affect detrimentally everyone else. Who is on 41st street on the other side, which this zoning should not be supposedly affecting, but will affect. It will affect our quality of life parking as it is goes from 57th Avenue all the way up. to the Wells Fargo, there's a lot of people who are parking all the way up. And there's people from, as the previous person alluded to, from Cala Mayor who park all the way down the street. There's going to be increased traffic and increased infrastructure burden. I just wanted to come in and say I object to this zoning and the wording changes and the fact that it's being coined off as an improvement and beneficial to the quality of life here in our neighborhood.

That's it. Thank you for your comments. Anyone else wish to speak? If not, I'm going to turn it back to Mark or the applicant for rebuttal, any of the comments that were brought up here.

I'll answer the idea of no limits. So it is limited. The idea that we can't, as you saw on the slide, we can't go, we can't jump the street. In other words, it's not a Pac-Man effect. We can go to the edge of the block until we hit another right of way, which is not a section line or a half section line road, and that's it. We can't go further. the comment that we had we had talked about this earlier during the rezoning that we we never got to do about two and a half years ago with the Commission and there is an idea that we can create better transitions by using the entire block and most of those transitions again that code isn't written yet but if we do change you know I'm trying to parse out the items here but if we're allowed to change that whole depth of the block to an MUCR designation, it's a mixed use. And with the mixed use, we can have the commercial on the front of the main road in this coming case, Bird Road, which is what it should be. And then we can transition back into a residential product. And again, this is exactly what we did with TSDD. On a slightly larger scale, we see that the two buildings there's a residential approval on 62nd entirely residential but we have a medical office that was approved and on the back of it it has town homes and that would blend right into the neighborhood so we don't have this harsh transition between commercial and existing residential obviously that will require a redevelopment of the whole block so And we are not, with this policy change, forcing any changes in the land use designations or rezoning at this point. Anything except with this applicant we'll follow up with afterwards.

So what are the height limitations along Bird Road? Just using that as an example, since that's driving this bus.

For Bird Road, it has a number of different zoning designations. It's somewhat of a patchwork between the county and the city. But for what we're talking about in the next two items, it's CRO, which is two stories or 30 feet. MUCR allows more than that. So MUCR depends on having a zoning code. Like most of our land use designations, it doesn't control height. It controls use and density and intensity. So it would need a zoning code that implements that. In this case, or I should say in the case coming up, would be CRO, which is two stories. All of the RO, residential office, is two stories. The only one that goes to four stories is the MUCR designations around where Madison Square is. Those are allowed to go to four stories. So there's nothing above four.

But for this case, it's two. Before we go to more questions, is the applicant on the next two, do you want to make some comments about this or not?

Very briefly, Mark.

Global perspective.

Yeah, thank you. And very briefly, just Mark touched on most of it. But again, there are limitations. And I think that staff's done a good job of putting those in there. It can't go past the block. Really, this is meant for blocks that have the mixed zoning. And I think when you think of, as a zoning attorney, we see it all the time, but planners and zoning codes try to have zoning by block. What I think is more of a conflict is what's been left here, when you have residential, especially low density residential, sharing a lot line with commercial. That tends to provide more of a conflict. As far as the parking, again, speaking as a resident myself, I understand the limitations of parking in that area. I know Cuyahoga, New York is sometimes very busy, and people park farther away. This actually would help solve that, because right now, the buildings that were there today were built before the parking code is what it is today. So the right amount of parking isn't there. That's what drove us getting into this with staff, because we couldn't redevelop our property. To demo and come up with the current code, we don't have enough room, whereas some of the other properties that do go to 41st Street do have enough room. So this would bring the zoning, normalize the block, wouldn't let you go any further out than the block. The limitations are very clearly in that proposed language. So I think allowing this more space. And again, we're proposing in the next items general retail, not a mixed use, not a high scale zoning. It's max two stories. We probably only want to do one. We just want to normalize and improve that retail space. So it would just be parking towards the back. It would actually meet current parking requirements, and at least for our properties, keep parking off the street. And if more properties did that, you would have that solution. I can't speak to the parking issues of Cuyahoga, but that's a separate property. Thank you.

Thanks. Chairman, if I may, I wanted to just make two points for clarity. First of all, there may be some confusion as to whether there could be a gradual march of zoning, if you will. And what I think is important to know is that the definition of a section line road or a half section road is fixed. It's a particular road. And so it's not defined by where your zoning is located. It's based on the township section and range system that we have in all of the United States. Section line roads and half section line roads those are fixed those don't move with the zoning designation so that will that's one protection the other thing I wanted to remind the board is that this item covers more than just this property and So mark had a good slide that showed you all the different areas that would be affected although I suspect that many of the same issues presented here by neighbors may be in those other areas. I just want you to keep that in mind. We're not talking simply about this one property, but rather a change that will affect several different areas.

So thank you. So it would lead to at least my first real question, which is, Why tackle this as a change of our overall policy as opposed to a variance for this particular need?

Because the administration thinks it was, first of all, it was initiated by one particular property owner, but just by a petition in the same way that you could write your congressman. Yeah. But the city has agreed, and the administration agrees, that it's a smart change. It's a smart development, something that I think Mark has already said they were working towards when they were petitioned for this change.

And in addition, because it is comprehensive plan policy, we can't create a variance for that.

Yeah. There is no variance for this process.

Correct.

That's also very important. Thank you, Mark. So we can't get it done that way. Got it.

So this is necessities changing the rule. Yeah. Got it. OK. All right. Let's open up for questions to Mark.

Mark, can you go to the original diagram where you showed the impact on some of the properties, the diagram? This one? No, the first one. Keep going.

No, I know where you want. It's up here.

It was one of the, stop, that way. So here's a problem that I have. Go back to the diagram. We just lost it.

Okay.

Here's the problem that I have. In the middle diagram where you're showing intrusion into the residential property is the two lots abutting that intrusion are people who have spent their life savings buying single family homes. And next year, somebody could buy the other one. And it reminds me of a little parcel in Merrick Park or not America Park, the plaza where a little homeowner was all of a sudden surrounded by commercial. He was left all by himself after he made an investment in his home. So I have an issue with intruding into that residential area. With regards to the common made, today we are moving the line. We're redefining section line road and what happens behind it. three years from now, we can redefine it again and say the section I wrote in the street that abuts the section I wrote. That can be done the same way we're doing it today. There's nothing that stops us from doing that.

Right? But in this policy, we're not allowed to do that.

We're moving the line. Five years from now, two years from now, 10 years from now, they can move the line again. There's nothing that stops the line from being moved again and impacting more residents who, again, have fought and bought their homes.

Your concern is creep.

Yep. creep and the impact on the houses that are still residential as individual parcels keep getting commercialized. It gets piecemeal. It becomes a jigsaw. And all of a sudden, yeah, it's just a parking lot. But guess what? The retail could be open until 10 o'clock at night. There's lights. There's noise. That impacts the quality of life for the people that are abutting that parking lot. Are they going to access the parking lot from Red Road, or are they going to access it from the road behind? Because that increases the traffic in the residential neighborhood. So I really don't like this change that you're proposing.

Just to respond, though. It's difficult because we're parsing the issue. And this policy stands in front of not only, it has been brought by the applicant, but as a staff, we have looked particularly to the Bird Road corridor for a mixed-use transitional type of new development. So new development, especially following a comprehensive plan change, and this is only a policy, but then the comprehensive plan changes, the designations would have to come in. theoretically a block at a time, and then the rezoning. And during that time, there's a lot of notice and people know what's happening well in advance. What our concept was for this area was, and I agree that people live there now and they've made their investments, but they are also abutting commercial development in every place I've ever seen. Even when people buy a house behind commercial development, they at some point may find that they don't like it. And what we really had envisioned for this was to create, in terms of new development, to allow the commercial to happen on the lower floors.

Hold on. Marcus, can you mute? I mean, yeah, can you mute them? All right, thank you.

on the lower floors and allow residential above but most importantly to always transition the building back to a residential only product we can only do that by changing our comprehensive plan designation which mucr i'm jumping ahead but mucr does for us and then we would have to have a zoning designation that would implement that, which we don't have yet. And that was part of the discussions that were going on about two years ago, working out a zoning designation that would effectively do that. There's still narrow blocks, but something that would do that. And we could create a better product facing those homes on the south side of 41st Street. So to do that, the only tools we have to do that are the land use development regulations. And to do that, we have this policy, which is a very strict policy. And we had looked to that policy before that we couldn't move around that policy because it's very strict. If there are five homes left on that block, single family homes, We can't move. We can't do this. We can't change. We can redesignate it, and we can't rezone it. So we're pretty much stuck with those five homes, whether they're looking at a parking lot or a commercial store or the back of the store.

Again, you say we're stuck, but again, people have made their investment. So you're saying it's for our benefit, and we're not thinking about the residents and what they want.

I understand. I wanted to explain the thinking that we have behind this, and we are very supportive of this policy change because it's been a difficulty for us.

I think the broad stroke of defining all these section line roads, there are some, based on some of the diagrams, that this does make sense, and then there's some section line roads where it doesn't make sense based on the quality of the residences that are there. So I would, for one, would like to see a more detailed analysis of where it actually makes more sense. Because here, if I remember correctly, we're looking at two stories. So having a two-story building behind you with a solid wall, you should have a house. That's not going to bother me. Having a 10-story building bothers me. That's what I'm saying. You can't just do a broad brush and say, hey, 1.14114 just basically eliminates all that. So that's just the opinion of one member.

Let me just before add to this. I mean, I've driven around this and looked at it reasonably carefully, I think. And one of the reasons probably there seems to be some tolerance for it is because CVS and Wells Fargo both have put their parking lots behind their properties towards 41st Street, right? So it's not a daunting wall of a building right there. But does anything in this prohibit somebody from taking these properties and in other places and building commercial all the way to what's allowed on the other half of the block, if you will, even if it's just the two stories? I mean, technically speaking, the CVS and the Wells Fargo are both probably two stories, but they're big ass properties. non-attractive buildings that you walk out your door on the north side of 41st Street and you're like, holy shit, I live in a commercial neighborhood now.

Has that is that part of the agreement here is that we can agree you mentioned parking being behind what you're proposing Which is again why I'm not sure so that why we have to tackle this the way we are but this policy amendment so what would be in what would be in front of that effect happening would be Those property owners we have one today with what to two parcels but for the rest of the block and other blocks those property owners would have to come before this board and and do a future land use map change and do the rezoning and have a proposal. It would be all the same process. The only part of this that we're changing right now is we have a policy that doesn't allow us to do that at all and doesn't allow us to make the judgments on how we can better create a transition in those areas. There's an aerial slide, and maybe it helps to... Again, we're looking at only this area, but... If we are to create better transitions, and I think there's a slide here, yeah, that shows the front of Byrd Road, which is a very transportation, it's an auto-oriented corridor, and it's a fairly hostile corridor with a narrow sidewalk. It does what it does. It's done it for 60 years, but then right behind that is single-family homes, which is a beautiful neighborhood. But we also note that on the southeast side, there's the city-owned parking, actually, that supports the commercial. So we already have some of that encroachment in effect. We are looking at a staff level, not really responding to the applicant right now for this one particular case. But at a staff level, we're looking for more flexibility to address those areas with the comprehensive plan and with rezoning. We cannot do that as long as policy 1.4 stays as strict as it's written, and that's really the issue at the staff level.

I mean, really the issue is whether you have to tackle 1.1.4 each time somebody wants to go against it, do something outside of it, right? We can't.

Once 1.1.4 is amended, then others can apply for rezoning and a future land use map change. So they still have these two additional applications that they'd have to seek. And they'd be reviewed by you, and they'd be reviewed by the commission.

So we're saying that we have a, I mean, it's sort of the same issue, though. It's saying we're gonna have a general tolerance within our 1.14, whatever.

To consider the changes.

To consider the changes, but you're saying because that's not an absolute commitment to the changes, we would be just as strong a footing looking at the next application that has to put this building up, let's say, with the building flush against 41st Street, using that example.

Correct, and that's why I've emphasized a couple times to keep in mind this is like a general rule, and we're not looking at any one site. We're looking at many sites that could be affected. Yeah. Okay, and then every single parcel, as every property owner wants to make this change, you'd review them again. And there may be covenants that may be proffered. For example, the covenant with respect to laws that preempt local rule. We're thinking of live local. That's the most prominent example. And there could be additional ones as well.

OK. Other questions? I'm sorry. Did you want to?

Just to address that.

Again, Mickey Murrow for the applicant. Marcus, speaking of it from the global citywide terms, for our property, and I understand your concern about creep. I get it. Frankly, as a resident of that area, if the creep was going further, I might be here as a resident objecting. Frankly, that's the honest truth, because I think that would be improper. But we're limiting this to blocks that already have commercial. that already exist. You mentioned jigsaw. I think it's a jigsaw now, frankly, that we're trying to fix. And I understand that someone's home, they may have purchased it with the assumption. But frankly, if they bought their homes on a block that had commercial to the east, to the west, or to the north, It was already there, and I think, frankly, their property values, and I'm not an appraiser, but with this allowance, their property values may go up because now you can normalize that block, and it gives more flexibility. That's just a layman, not an appraiser, but someone that sees these things. I think that could very well be the case. This would not allow it to go beyond 41st Street, in my case. I know there are other areas, but it just limits it to blocks that already have some commercial zoning in them, really just allowing the zoning to be fixed and normalized. It doesn't allow it to go further. Yes, theoretically, you can do a lot of things as a legislative body. Commission here could rezone whatever they wanted. The county could move the UDB. These things can be done, but they're generally met with a high degree of resistance and unlikely to happen. The reason I think your staff is supporting this, and when I went to them, they were telling me that we're already looking at doing this, is because it makes all the planning and zoning sense in the world. Right now, what I have is a small business owner who is unable to develop his property and replace these dated buildings with better quality buildings. And just so you understand, the GR zoning maxes two stories. He was proposing one story, but he couldn't do more than two. The only way you can get higher than two is by live local, and we're required to and happy to submit a covenant that we won't do that. It's required by this, and we're happy to do it. We would have done it anyway. All my client was trying to do was want to demolish that existing commercial strip, redevelop it with something modern, contemporary, new, and be able to park it. But with this current restriction, he can't do it because there's not enough space. And what I can suggest in hearing, I think, a lot of the concern from my neighbors and from you all is what would it look like on 41st Street. Maybe you can recommend, at least for my specific items, if we get to them, that we proffer a covenant that we would limit the structural development on that property, not on this global amendment, but on that property, to something that wouldn't go all the way to 41st Street. He wasn't planning to do that anyway. He was just trying to find enough space to park it. And without doing this, that part, that zoned residential, we can't use it for parking. It's not allowed. It can only be a home. So even if we put parking there, like the parking that's there now that I think is legally nonconforming, maybe not legal, but it's there, that can't count towards parking because it's in the residential. It can't even count it if you have it. So this allows you to develop it. Without this, you're going to have the same old wooden buildings there for an extended period of time. That's what we're trying to avoid.

I have a couple comments.

If you would allow me to make a clarification of the parking behind the CVS. It's up to the chair Quickly, yes Like I said, I moved in in 66 you had the shopping center there with CVS is now A&P and all that you had the wall with the parking and you had the alley where they had the garbage cans and people pick up You still have like an alley there for the drive-through coming out. So there is a buffer between the parking And the building and the wall, I don't know how much of a buffer they're going to have. I don't think they have much room. If you put a wall and a setback from the building in there, I don't know how they're going to fit it in. So I just want to clarify the thing with the CVS. The parking behind the CVS has been there for over 60 years. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

I think there's some conflicting messaging here because Mr. Marrero mentioned that having a commercial property abutting a residential one creates conflict. And Mark, you had mentioned that residential next to commercial was not a good quality of life or something to that effect. But then in the language here, we chose to keep the language in this recommendation that zoning regulations contain provisions to protect the quality of life. So some of the messaging that you guys are giving is in direct conflict with the language that you're proposing. So how do I reconcile that?

We left that in there because we do want to leave every protection. But the other problem that we have is that, again, taking this policy by itself, and just because it is something that stops us from changing the future land use designation, it also stops us from rezoning a whole block in unison. We have to leave that in there because there's an interim period where it may be a year before we get to create a zone. We'll have a lot of discussions about creating a zoning code that fits that kind of transition and we would certainly hope to solve all of those problems, but in the meantime... without speaking to the application at hand, but if it were GR in that area, we would still want to make sure that there's a setback required from the single family residential anyway. We would want to make sure that all the conflicts would be addressed in the interim period until we get to where we want to go with this. And the reason we support it so much is we do want to look at that Bird Road corridor in particular, but also some of the other corridors and think about how do we change the land use? How do we create good transitions that are modern, that are developed with new buildings and have residential facing residential? But we're not up to that yet. So until we get to that, We want to leave all the protections in there. And then as we get to that point, we don't have to worry about that anymore.

I understand where you're coming from. But to me, it seems like we're eroding at least one layer of protection there, which, again, stands in conflict with what the message is in the language. But that's a matter of interpretation. But I did have a specific question. Going back to the map that showed the different areas throughout the city where this is going to be applicable. One that stood out was these properties along Sunset Drive. Because the block is oriented To map vertical law it's a much deeper intrusion than what we're talking about here on Burr Road So is there any provision to account for that we can add that provision what happened is the way this was written?

To come before you it was this and it spoke only for CRO and mixed-use It's on staff level we decided to make an amendment to this I'm not going the right way to add in the RO, which is, I've lost all control of this, but those areas on Sunset and Red Road, which we're very sensitive about, we wanted to put RO back in there. We can either have RO be the strict interpretation.

I understand that to protect those areas. I just mean, regardless of the designation, the orientation of that block, the way that this is written, PRESENTS A MUCH BIGGER OPPORTUNITY FOR INTRUSION INTO THE RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOOD COMPARED TO A BLOCK AS ORIENTED AGAINST A SECTION LINE ROAD.

I WOULD ACTUALLY WANT THAT FROM THIS BOARD. include RO the way it's been suggested on the staff recommendation, see if I can get to it, I know this got stuck, back into the policy or to include RO in a way where the protection is strict the way it is. In other words, there's no intrusion for all the RO instances and that would protect those blocks entirely. As well as the red road or to the third choice is just to have a distance Attached to it as well. Are there any are there any other problem? Are there any other I'm gonna try to get to it I don't know what areas that have that condition you try to unstick this Thanks Marcus Yeah, thanks Yeah, so those the long block so these on Hardy Road similar situation I Yeah, on Hardy Road, we could limit that either with a distance measure. Probably just because that's a long block there as well.

And all this leads me to my last point, which is I understand the distinction between agenda items one and two and three. But the way this is being presented, this is sort of acting as a catalyst to push this agenda that I'm told otherwise was of interest. But maybe we're doing this the wrong way. Maybe we should just be talking about this in general terms as opposed to with this specific example in mind. I don't know. It's just hard to reconcile all this and understand how this is good for the people that live there.

Well, the second two items are dead if we don't pass this, correct? I mean...

Correct. If this did not pass, we have to change our recommendation because now we're not consistent with the comprehensive plan.

What I would recommend, remember you're a recommending body. So yes, to be consistent, if you're going to vote no on one, you might vote no on two and three. But do vote on all three so that it can proceed and the commission can make a decision. And then provide any input, by the way. So for example, we vote no on one flat out. Or we vote no on one, but we recommend these changes if you're going to proceed. And then do the same with two and three.

But you can't vote yes on two and three if one doesn't pass because you can't do a variance. So how does that make sense?

You're only recommending in all three cases, it's only a recommendation. So yes, to be internally consistent with your own proposal, you should recommend denial on all three.

Yeah.

Right. I'm with you. What I'm also saying, though, is... keeping the realities in mind, keeping all realities in mind, you might also say, no, we recommend denial on all three. And if you do proceed anyway, despite our recommendation, consider X, Y, or Z. I'm just giving you that option. You could do a flat denial. You can do an approval. You can do an approval with conditions. You could do a denial with conditions in a way, right?

To me, if we turn down number one, Number two and three, if I was the applicant, I'd pull them. Because I don't know you're going to be better off going to the commission.

I mean, it depends on how.

It's conjecture. Let's just say, hypothetically, this gets strongly turned down. Anyway, we'll take it as it comes. Let's not cross that bridge. Mark, are there other properties besides these five here? that you're showing us that are impacted by this same thing? Or are these selected because you think they're the ones most likely to be impacted, but there are other zoning within the city that could also be setting bad precedent?

No, everything that's in the table is everything that will be impacted, including RO. Specifically with the CRO designation, it would be on the other side of Bird Road by Ludlam. I think there are eight properties behind that.

So we would be, if we were to try to, I think Danny's comment or whatever, if we were to try to tackle some way to limit the encroachment within the longer blocks, so that they couldn't go beyond the front third. I mean, I don't know what the distance of those blocks are, if that's standard. But, you know, somehow or another make it so, because I agree, the people that are just behind the longer blocks, if we let them go all the way back out there, that is a quality of life change.

Significant.

So going to sunset, we approve this. Now, if I'm a commercial developer, I want to buy all those houses that are on sunset because now I know that I can go further back. So now I'm eliminating more residential.

I would actually look to you to suggest something when we go to commission to address that issue.

Because once you open that Pandora's box, how do you close it?

So there's some saying there are a couple of, again, when this was advertised, it did not have RO in the text. So that's why we're speaking about it and it's not written. But if on sunset, your choices would be either to include the protection for RO the way it's written, which would allow it to go back into the block, or to decide on a distance or a number of lots measure, or to simply say, just the way the policy reads now for RO, there's no encroachment, which would solve the issue on Sunset and on Red Road, which I can tell you honestly, when we had all these discussions two and a half years ago, the commission was not interested in making those changes in those areas. They felt also it's too sensitive. Now we just pull RO out. Right, but actually what we have to do is put RO back in, but I'm saying you would do it in a strict reading of that policy. So it would go back to the way the policy reads for RO, and we would provide a relaxation for the CR and NUCR because those are the corridors that we really are interested in.

Mr. Chair, I don't think it's good policy for us to negotiate how far we should intrude on sunset, whether it's a third or one parcel, or it should come with a recommendation from staff that we can then analyze. But just start picking arbitrary numbers today, I don't think is good policy for the citizens of this community.

I would actually recommend just to leave it as the strict interpretation on the policy. In other words, if I have to recommend.

Mr. Gara, sunset and red road to the south would be. I think Danny Gara is trying to chime in.

Yes.

Thank you, Chair. I think that this is an interesting conversation because it's taking into account a lot of different locations in the city. and it's kind of hard to have this conversation at a broad stroke. I will say that I think the applicant, which is confusing because we're talking about a change and there's an applicant in the same conversation, mentioned that they were proffering to put a covenant that would not allow live local, which some of these properties, even as they stand, already do allow live local and they could find a way to gerrymander that. into functioning, even on a small lot. So I also think that there's a challenge when you have residential properties abutting a commercial property, any rotor infestations, noise, and other challenges that make the properties not that enticing. So squaring off or improving zoning could have a positive benefit. But this is pretty convoluted. And so I've heard a couple of board members say that if we denied this, and my recommendation would be that we defer it because I don't think we want to kill this, but I think it has an opportunity to improve.

Thanks, Mr. Guerra. Any other comments from the committee members?

I don't know who MB is, but there's an MB with her hand raised.

I want to say something.

We're past public comments.

OK. Sorry.

All right. Any other comments from committee members? If not, do we have a motion?

I make a motion that we defer the item until we get a better explanation as to how this applies to all the properties with definite dimensions and distances and recommendations so that we're not negotiating on the dais.

I'll second.

Any further discussion? If not, let's go ahead and put it to a vote.

No question. In the case of a motion to defer, if we all agree to defer it, we defer it. If we don't, what happens to this?

If you don't agree to defer it, there can be an additional vote. The chair can entertain.

This opens back up to a new motion?

It opens it up to a new motion if the chair wishes to do that. Could die for lack of a motion, lack of a second. Correct. This one has a second already, so I think we know where it's going.

Just curious.

But yeah, you could entertain other motions. And if the board gets lock jammed for any reason, it's typically considered a recommendation of denial. Thank you.

I vote yes.

Yes. Danny Guerra?

I'll wait to hear the other votes.

Feel free to go now.

I'll wait to hear the other votes.

Danny Alvarez.

Yeah, just to be clear, it's a yes on the deferral, correct?

Correct. Yes. That's the request. Yes. A yes vote would defer it.

Yes.

Danny.

I do vote yes.

Okay. And I also vote yes. Now, just one clarification. Is this to the next meeting?

I think it's when we think we can have the information ready to roll.

Yeah.

Next meeting? That's the city's call.

OK. Deferral to the next meeting then.

I think for us saying next meeting could put a time frame that they may not be able to meet properly by doing their due diligence on all these parcels.

The homework is Mark's homework.

What we're saying is we don't want to force him to do it for the next one. If he has it for the next one, great. We'll take it up on the next one.

I think we can do it. We can have it ready for the next meeting.

The reason it's relevant, Mr. Barrera, is because of notice. If it's deferred to a date certain, we don't have to re-notice the meeting. The people who are interested in this item, they're here today, they'll know what day they'll come back, we're going to announce the date.

So just to be clear, what was put in front of us today didn't cause us to move forward, right? So we're deferring it until... The city thinks that they have a package to put in front of the planning board. Yes. I would leave that up to Marcus and all the people involved in the city planning and zoning. We're not going to legislate it.

We understand. So you do not want the motion to be to a date certain. It's just going to cost the city more hearing fees, I mean notice fees.

Well, no, as long as they decide before the next notice and they have it correct.

No, that's not how it works. You got to vote today to a date certain. If you don't vote today for a date certain, we have to pay notice fees no matter what. Through the chair?

If we vote for a date certain and we need to defer again, we do have that option, yes?

Yeah, and if we don't, we don't have that luxury. Correct. Got it. Okay, to the next meeting. Okay. That's a friendly amendment. Mark, you can get that done.

Is that accepted by the mover? You were the mover? You okay with that?

All right. Well, we need to vote on it again.

Yes.

We need to vote on it again.

You were the maker of the motion.

I accept a friendly amendment that this be deferred to the next meeting.

And I'll continue to second.

All those in favor? Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Thank you, Chair. Aye. Thank you, Board. OK. All right. Just for the benefit of the residents and people online who are watching, Marcus, when is our next meeting? What's the date, the exact date? Well, we're going to hit it.

Well, we can say it right now. August 18th, I believe. August 11th. 11th.

August 11th, for sure? OK, perfect. So for the record, it'll go to August 11. We still need I think we know where it's gonna end, but we still need votes on items two and three So do we wanna and to get you all to the all-star game a little faster?

I think based on your deferral the last one. I'm perfectly fine if we defer the other two.

I don't need to make a presentation Okay, do we want to just do we need to put well, that's fun. Let's make a vote, please Yeah, the next to the next meeting.

Yes.

Do we have to vote on them individually? I

I think it's fine to vote on both of them at the same time. It's just a deferral. Make a motion to defer items two and three to the next meeting.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

And again, for the benefit of everyone who's here, it'll move to August 11. Same time, 7 PM.

Cool.

Thank you, board. All right, I think anything else to discuss? Minutes. Oh, yeah, we have minutes back in the back. You're welcome. Thank you for coming out. We appreciate it. All right, so minutes from June 2nd.

Move to approve.

We have a second. Second. Any questions or comments? If not, all those in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Aye. I think I saw Danny Alvarez mouth aye.

Aye. Yes. I do say aye.

Yeah, okay. All right. With no further issues, we'll see everybody on August 11th. Meeting adjourned. Thanks.

Thank you.

Sometimes it's kind of fun to use that thing.

You know, I'm so tired of people threatening with the global.