Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Oh, really? Okay. Nice. Well. I hope you stay. I do, too. I'm enjoying it.

That's a lot.

I think mine's also technically filling because it's like, and it's not a full, it's like three and a half years.

And yeah, I mean, I'm sure that I'm not going to be nice enough. Absolutely. So that your plan is July, or even least, or No, we're just commenting them. My spot is just the infield for somebody that left the commission. John Gerstle, You know, we do have to be nice, this may be my last month, I knew. John Gerstle, This one is. John Gerstle, It's not. John Gerstle, So. John Gerstle, never got back to change. John Gerstle, voice with the debate may or may not. John Gerstle, Know he called me. John Gerstle, Because it looks like care.

So for this one, just disclosure is on with brands.

Okay, so that was, we're not explicitly discussing. Yes, you're probably okay.

Yeah. So once the site plan or additional use. Well, no.

Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Syracuse City Planning Commission meeting for June 16th, 2016, 2026. We'll call the meeting to order and tonight we'll excuse our chairman, James P. He is asked to be away for today. So we'll start off with invocation of that by Commissioner Chavez.

Father in heaven, we are humbly gathered today as a group of citizens for the great city of Syracuse. We ask you to please bless us that we can have a thought-provoking and beneficial discussion tonight. And we ask you to please bless those who are in need and who have been fighting the wildfires throughout Utah, that they might be protected. And we ask you to please bless us that we might receive some much-needed moisture in the coming days and weeks. We love thee and pray for these things. In the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, amen.

Amen. And now if you'll join me in the Pledge of Allegiance, I'll have Commissioner Baker.

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.

And now will the adoption of the meeting agenda? A motion to adopt the meeting agenda?

I move we adopt the minutes.

OK. We'll adopt the meeting minutes of May 19, 2026. And a second?

Second.

OK. And now it's an public comment. This is an opportunity to address the Planning Commission regarding items that are not scheduled for public hearing on this agenda. Please consider others to limit your comments to three minutes. And if you do come up to make a public comment, please state your name and your address for the record. Seeing no movement, we'll move forward to agenda item number four, public hearing for text amendment. And turn the time over to you guys.

Okay, this item we have talked about before. This is a continuation of that discussion. We were looking at a potential text amendment to the MXD zone, which would require recycling bins for all future MXD projects. Um, the proposed text is here in red. Uh, I remember last time we had some discussion about measuring maybe as a pedestrian travels versus as the crow flies and, um, We've set the rate or the ratio at one half cubic yard for recycling and one half cubic yard for trash, which is the same capacity of containers that you see at a house. So this is the proposed language that would get forward to city council for a final vote. And, of course, we did post this notice on the state website and our website and all the other legal means that are required so that we can hold a public hearing before we forward this back to city council.

Thank you. Any questions or concerns from the commissioners?

One question. The very last sentence talks about who's going to be picking that up. Is that going to add to the trash collection contract that the city has?

The goal there is to make sure it's not the city's contract. There is, I guess, the... The brainchild or the example of what spurred some of this is the townhomes behind Jersey Mike's. Those are townhomes, but it's an MXD project and they're rental and they don't have driveways and everything. um they they use the city's contract and they don't really have a place for the trash cans or the recycling cans so we wanted to make it clear that in the future and we wanted to make sure they had their own private contract trash hauler it's not through the city maybe that's not clear and in that maybe we could clean that up if you have a recommendation

No, I just was, it wasn't clear to me if that was, you know, we were adding to the city's trash collection contract, but maybe.

Yeah, the way I read it, recyclables shall be hauled to a recycling facility by a private contract trash hauler and not through the city contract.

Okay, that's clear.

Have we done research as far as, is there a recycling, if they're going to pick up recycling with a dumpster, that's a different truck than is normally the city facilities. So is there a company that can provide these services that can recycle dumpsters? Yeah.

Yeah, the hauler that we have is Robinson Waste, but I believe there's a few others. There's Ace. I can't remember the other one. We did a little bit of research on which companies that the apartment complexes use. There's another one that doesn't come to mind. Republic. There it is. Thank you, sir.

Three of those have a recycling. Yeah. Okay. That's the only concern.

Prior to the city's recycling mandate, we opted into recycling with a private contractor. So they're certainly available. I had a question about that too so recently, the mayor had a big push and we had a big show and tell about the importance of preserving space in the landfill recycling rolled out across the city, why is it that residents and apartment have an option without it being obligatory.

Do you want me to take that one, Noah? I'll see if I get it right and Noah can correct me if I don't. That big push was directed at single family residences, which are those homes that are picked up by the city's contract. So we only dealt with the ones for the city's contract. In addition to what you're doing here tonight, there is a concurrent proposal that will go through the city's council that expands recycling, not just from single family residences, but to all multifamily residence complexes, both now and in the future. And so the short answer is we didn't include multifamily units or multifamily complexes in that original proposal, but now it is proposed that we will be expanding to that.

So this language addresses what is the law as of today, and there's future language coming. It sounds like they would expand that language. Is that accurate?

Yeah, this language talks about site plan, site design for future multifamily residence complexes. And there is a concurrent proposal going to the council that will talk about how we're going to get the existing complexes into the recycling mode. I can tell you they haven't seen it yet. I haven't turned it into them yet for their agenda. Basically, it's going to say each and every one of you need to come up with a plan. Here's the criteria. You present your plan to us. The city will approve it or amend it or such. It will come up with a final plan for your particular complex. And then you've got a certain amount of time to implement it. So we're giving them several months to come on board.

Thank you.

I think that was great. I'll add that the priorities of the city, I think, is still to push recycling no matter where you're living. It's just the way you do that is not always easy. And if you look at... uh, 90% of the types of housing units that we have in the city, it's all single family primarily. And then we just have a little bit of, of multifamily. So we're, we're trying to get around to that, but that one's a little bit more of a complex issue since they're, you know, multiple units in one management and that sort of thing. So we're, we're, I guess the single family was the lower hanging fruit. And even though it did create some waves, now this next step is to keep cleaning it up and continue with the same objectives.

And the very highest hanging fruit, of course, will be commercial and industrial. And we're not there yet. Let's tackle residential, multifamily residential at some point. I'm sure we will be addressing commercial and industrial, but we're not that point at this time.

I just want to note that, I appreciate the pun there, Noah. I'm sure it was unintentional, but it was a complex issue, wasn't it?

And before I fail to, there was no public comment at first, so we'll close the public hearing part of this and continue any further discussion from commissioners.

Just one quick question. When we say future mixed family use, does this include projects that are currently under contract or that are currently being built?

The word that is commonly used is vesting. There's a point in time that a project goes through entitlement that they can rely on the ordinances that were in place at that time. So any project that's currently under construction is vested at a previous date. So this would not apply to anything that's currently under construction, but it would apply to our future projects.

Thank you. One more comment. This is sparked on by our lawyers comments. When I was on Ogden City's planning commission, we tackled recycling a little bit. One of the big topics was glass. And I know Ogden City this month again tried to discuss that. Are we doing anything in the future that you know of for glass recycling?

Not that I'm aware of. And I do know that we do not collect glass currently, but there are some glass collection areas nearby if you're into that sort of thing. But I know that glass is easily recyclable. The only challenge there is the different types of colors and sorting and stuff like that. And when you get a bunch of broken glass, it's not easy to sort broken glass by color.

You have to be very careful to tell residents no glass in our recycling because it contaminates that whole load.

And as an apartment complex, I feel like you'd have an issue with potential broken glass and the danger there with a lot of people just chucking stuff in the dumpster. Might be tricky.

So I don't know if we add that a little bit just to say, you know, for these larger complexes with dumpsters, no glass recycling. Or if there's something from the recycler themselves that's posted there that just says no glass.

Wouldn't that come down to contractors' guidelines? Yes.

It will, and we currently don't encourage glass recycling for our single-family residences. It's not my intent to encourage it for the complexes because we don't have a glass recycler on the hook at this time.

My point was more of restricting it so it doesn't ruin what we're trying to do.

One of the, I mentioned that we would, that my proposal at least is that we will require the complexes to create a plan. It will include such things as educational efforts. Are they going to tell new tenants? Yes, they are. Are they going to renew something every six months to all tenants? Signage, no glass allowed, et cetera. All of that will hopefully be part of their plans that we will be approving.

Great. Thank you.

This language says recyclables shall be hauled to a recycling facility. So I guess it doesn't list them out. We're at the mercy of the haulers a little bit and the infrastructure that we have in place at the current MRF. That's just a fun word to say.

Approved recyclables, yeah.

MRF, multiple... It's multiple something recycling facility. Okay. Anyway.

Hey, any further discussion? Motion for city council.

Just a point of clarification. Is this a recommendation to the city council?

Yes.

And I make a recommendation that we approve this. Uh, adding this development standard to our, to our code with regards to multifamily projects.

You're making the recommendation to, uh, approve it to read to city council to approve it. Right. Yes.

Thank you.

Now second.

Thank you. We have a motion and a second to forward this to the city council. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you. Next is a public hearing text amendment. This is a potential amendment to commercial development standards regarding the definition of the word site.

OK, this next one we have also talked about before, but we're making it official now since we hadn't done an official public hearing as required by law. Currently, our ordinance says the entire site shall be developed at one time unless the phase development plan is approved. So our example included a parcel, but the developer was arguing that the site limits were not the same as the parcel boundaries, which... that that creates a problem because the rest of the parcel is sometimes left as weeds and you know and that's different than say a commercial subdivision where they'll create future lots that aren't developed but they are on their own parcel so we want to just make it clear for purposes of site planning a site shall extend to record a lot boundary so it's one in the same It's just a slight clarification so that in the future we don't run into some more problem as we did recently.

If this is a public hearing, we'll open this up to the public if there's any input on this particular item. Seeing no movement, we'll close the public hearing for this text amendment and go to county or commissioner's comments. Any questions?

I have a question regarding the process of subdividing a parcel. If somebody came in with a proposal for a site plan and it became apparent they were only going to develop the first part and have a additional phase planned, we push back because of this code. What kind of a process is that? Is that like, oh, we can do this in a week, come back and we'll run this through the next meeting? Is it something that's going to extend their timeline by a considerable amount of time?

Yeah, the developer is usually not excited about delays. But if, let's say, a developer submits a site plan and we notice that he's not proposing to develop the whole thing, we would essentially push pause on that site plan and tell him that he needs to do a subdivision. We could try to run it concurrently to try to save some time as long as it doesn't create problems, but we just want to make sure that the site boundary is... meets zoning and there's easements and access and everything's lined up before they just jump into site planning and sometimes a landowner or developer will get all the way to the finish line and then they throw something at us and you know it's always good for them to the nice thing about a commercial subdivision is is you can work out some of those bugs through the subdivision process before you jump into the detailed site plan

And to be clear, so in terms of timing, you're talking like months of setback. So if, yeah, if somebody comes in and they want to do a site plan and it's not subdivided at all, if it's commercial or industrial, they have to go through both preliminary and final plat and they have to get it recorded. And once we have a recorded plat and they parcel exist, then we can move forward. So yeah, you're talking a couple, probably two to three months at a minimum.

would it be a viable option to allow them to be held to a strict phase development process to avoid that additional subdivision? Could you just say, you can proceed as long as we have in writing that you will present a additional phase within X amount of time without creating that huge bottleneck with the subdivision? Or would that require the parcel?

The most orderly thing is to create a recorded subdivision where you have those property boundaries recorded in the county. And then that way, if it ends up being a year or five years or 10 years down the road, people don't forget the agreement. Right. Worst case scenario, let's say it's a little bit bigger site. They'd just be required to landscape it. They could always just say, fine, we'll just keep it at the same size. And they'd be required to develop the entire. But it doesn't mean they have to build a building on the entire thing. They could subdivide it later.

They would just need that boundary wall, for example, minimum amount of landscaping to keep it clean, right?

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Thank you. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Is the commercial subdivision going to be their best option or could they go towards a lot line adjustment and do we have safeguards in place to keep from odd sized lots after the fact.

We do. If you read through our chapter eight, that talks all about subdivisions and there's some language in there about not creating unbuildable lots and having nice squarish shapes and things like that. So I think that there's already plenty in our subdivision ordinance that would prevent that.

Thank you.

Any further comments?

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, And then this also is a recommendation to the City Council, if we can get a motion. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, I'll make a motion. Okay.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, I move that we recommend the City Council adapt the language change to 10.20 point 090 the site plan review code to include the additional language discussed.

do i need to do that's good okay second we have a motion on a second um any um all in favor any opposed this is unanimous and we'll move it on to the city council okay item number six public hearing tax amendment this is a potential amendment to the town center overlay zone

Okay, we just have a whole bunch of text amendments. I don't believe that this body's reviewed this one yet. It was reviewed at the city council level. The intent is to have a town center that is walkable. You know, that's kind of a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot, but At the, at the base of that is we want it to be safe, you know, and our town center has a state highway, two state highways that come right through it. If you look at a map, our town center is basically the epicenter of that is 2000 West and antelope so that main four corners area we want the goal and if and i took a snippet out of our general plan kind of what we're going for which is a little bit contradictory to what you see in suburbia but so i think there's plenty of opportunities for suburban style development but in this particular intersection we're trying to go for a little bit higher standard And which also means requiring something more. You can see on the north two corners of it, we have a clock tower and certain building upgrades. And then if you look at the CVS, there's kind of a tower feature and some pedestrian plaza type things. And we still have two more corners that will need to be developed. There's also a few other corners in the town center down by 2500 West. But there's a great example that we think works well for a corner property is Zeppi's. except for maybe the drive-through turning radius is a little a little narrow on on zeppies if you ever go through there and you notice all the scrape scrape marks on there it could just be bad driving or it could be that it's too narrow or combination of both yeah Yeah. But if you look at the Zeppies, they have a window or a door that faces to the intersection. There's a sidewalk and there is a tower feature that is taller than the rest of the building. It has a hipped roof and it does have some windows kind of denoting a second story, even if it's just pretend. And it has architecture that addresses both sides of the street. same thing with town center. You look, there's a tower feature that's taller than the rest. It encloses that CVS, same thing. So that that's the goal. Uh, this is just another project example in North Salt Lake of a mixed use building. That's on the corner that has, they call it a chamfered edge, uh, or sometimes it's just a rotated type building, but, um, It does make us safer. So if you look at potential conflict points for pedestrian, anytime a pedestrian has to cross a drive aisle or a road, that's always a potential for danger. the pedestrian can go right from the sidewalk into the street without crossing any drive aisles or drive-through lanes or anything like that. So that would be the goal in our town center. There's some proposed language here that we feel that would strengthen our position. We already have some language in the ordinance that requires some enhanced architectural features, but we thought that this would better prepare us for future development. So yeah, if you look here, this is what it says, chamfered corner, a storefront, operable door or window, glass, so it's transparent, awning over the storefront, sidewalk, a two-story tower feature, upper level of the tower must feature windows, hipped roof, raised seam roofing, and no drive-through lanes or parking allowed between the building and the roadway. So we understand that that is not, this is probably not a popular ordinance for the fast food places of the world. But, you know, we do have a lot of places and sites in the city for that sort of development. But the town center as a goal, as stated by our general plan, is trying to go for something more like these other examples.

This is a public hearing, and so, if there's any public online or in the chat in here if they want to make any comments now's the time to do that. If you want to come up to the. State your name and address, please.

Sean Jordan, resident of Syracuse. Some things that I was thinking about as you were having this conversation were some of the recent accidents in different cities throughout the state. Sometimes people are impaired and they drive their vehicles off the road. I've seen that happen quite a bit lately. And so I'm concerned about You know, this being a major highway and people missing the stop sign or and then maybe careening into established businesses or homes. So those are my thoughts and concerns. So some way to protect the building. We don't need mothers to look over their shoulder and happen to just jump out of the way just in time. I would prefer there to be some safeguards between them and the home. Thank you.

Okay.

Any other comments? PB, Harmon Zuckerman, seeing no movement will close the public hearing and open it up for Commissioners.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, I have a couple thoughts now. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Regarding the gentleman's question that just came up off of those highways are state highways that correct so we don't have any control of speed limits or anything like that that we can impose to help reduce the the risk of a pedestrian casualty right.

Not entirely. We do have a good working relationship with UDOT. A few years ago, we had a corridor plan that was done. And the landscape architecture firm proposed some enhancements. Sometimes you'll see them along main streets where they'll do on-street parking or they'll do special light posts or street trees or whatever. You know, you'll see them maybe more on maybe more rural areas where a state highway goes through a main street. And so after that, I had met with UDOT and explained this plan. And they were actually open to some of those things. But the city kind of has to co-sign essentially on some of the maintenance of it as a public improvement. I know a lot of city RDAs do these public improvements and main street beautification plans. And so I wouldn't say that it's completely out of our hands, but you're right. It is a UDOT road and anything that goes within the right of way has to have their approval and their safety stamp. There's also things that can be done. I think it's a valid concern, especially if you're pushing people to street and these are busy roads. You don't. It's not like exactly pleasant, but, uh, so there are some things that can be done. Um, and you've probably heard about bollards, you know, bollards are, are physical posts and things that can be, be placed, um, that can protect pedestrians, uh, and, or even boulders, you know, sometimes boulders are like the caveman solution of bollards, but, um, So anyway, I think it's a valid concern.

Yeah, the picture you showed of the one in Salt Lake had a few of those features in there too.

Yeah, I know like up in Heber City, I know they've done a lot of work with UDOT to try to do that. What sometimes happens when there's a historic main street, they'll do like a business bypass to get some of the trucks around it, which has other issues. But we've already got the highway right through the middle. Yeah.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, It seems to me that i'm sorry I was just gonna say why I picked this one is you know you can put planter boxes and cement planter boxes in different ways to help build a barrier.

Yeah, Clinton City did that. If you see up there, they have some raised planter boxes. Anything you can get in the park strip between the pedestrian and the driver is good. And I know street trees can be a little controversial because they do raise up the, they can raise the cement and then they create tripping hazards and all kinds of things like that. But yeah, anything to create safety there is good.

Yeah, and keep it maintained. Okay, Blake?

Yeah, a couple ideas. Just in the spirit of having a pedestrian-friendly area trying to artificially create this main street situation, you think about cities that are pleasant to walk through, right? There's shade. There's access to stores, right? You want to be there. You're not just hurrying through. A lot of these places... It's just an oven. You're just surrounded by all this concrete. There isn't any shade. It's, it's terrible. Right. And you, I think a couple of examples, like there's a, uh, there's a strip mall on Riverdale, uh, right before you go over the railroad tracks, um, by the quick quack. Um, and there's another one in Brigham city when you get off the highway. It's just like a wall of stores. There's no windows, there's no architectural adornments, there's no trees, there's no doors. It's just this flat wall, masonry or stucco or whatever with signs on it. To me, that's not any more appealing than a parking lot, right? So this North Salt Lake example, I think is nice because they've got some trees, they've got windows. It looks like a place of business that you wanna access. if you go across on 2000 West, again, like there's a Thai restaurant or whatever, like I can't imagine anybody just walking down the street and just popping in, you know, it's clear on the other side. And I understand that that's older for this language, but I guess my thought is just, I feel like we need to steer this in a way that's going to make it attractive and actually kind of have this spirit of this walkable area and not just kind of check in the boxes of whatever the, you know, this is what you do to, build this thing, right? You got to think about the human experience, I guess, on the level of walking through it and if it's pleasant or not. So I guess I'm saying a lot to say I appreciate the line item requesting doors and windows. I think that's very critical in making this something worthwhile.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Quick question to address the safety concern. Can we just require some type of substantial feature or barrier to be installed within the 40 foot site triangle required at the intersection.

Yeah, this is what this process is about, is taking input and we want to have something we feel good about before we forward it to city council. Yeah, we could add something like that. We just have to be careful that whatever is added doesn't block the visibility of traffic, creating another traffic concern. Right.

And just one thought on the actual traffic triangle. So with the way it's measured, it usually ends up being mostly out in the road itself. So if we were to do something like that, I would recommend making sure it's outside of the right-of-way itself. OK.

I agree. OK. Any other comments?

I had a question about the 4BI, where it says the operable door or window. I think the intent is that business would be conducted out of that door window with is that understood in that word operable if somebody would just put a stock door out there you know it has glass and it you know i i lived here for a while before i realized the cvs that was an actual operable and it felt like the back of the it feels like the back of the building and i don't want the i don't like that and our other ones it's the back of the building that is facing both streets and that that's our business center and it's there's not much effort you know to make it look like you should walk along antelope in 2000 west is everything is faced on the inside And so I don't know how we can get that wordage, but that's where it would feel more of the intent of this is to make it feel that we're including that space with it. And whether we need to include more to that or the operable door or window in which business would regularly be conducted, something along those lines where it's not just, yeah, there's a window there. Yeah. We don't do anything.

No, you guys are hitting on all the interesting urban design conundrums and site planning things that come up. And I remember when the CVS was coming in, I looked up in Google earth and street view, like all these different CVS is around. And I found this one that was just beautiful as like in Charleston or something. And it had like the real door that faced the corner and like all this brick and And I had presented it to them and said, why don't, why don't you guys do something like that? And of course it's an argument about suburbia and how everybody dries and it's a different context. There's, there's a, there, I can't remember if it's a CVS or a Walgreens, but there's one in sugar house in Salt Lake. There's one that faces the door, like real door faces. And so the window is kind of a compromise. It's like, well, can you just give us something that looks like a door? Yeah. But maybe we don't want to compromise. It's just we'll limit what business. So like even the Zeppies, that's not a real door. That's an order window. There's another project like on Antelope. There's a two or three story business office that's just south of Davis Hospital. It's on the corner. There's a gas station, a subway right there. by the ed kennelly just east of the ed kennelly truck corral wherever you probably notice that has a window that faces right in there and or sorry a door that faces right to the corner but um we had gone there for some reason and that door doesn't even i think it's just locked or it kind of goes into the back corner of the building. And so then the real doors. And so it's like a, it's just a ceremonial door that you look at driving by and it makes you feel good, but maybe someday, who knows, someday maybe we'll walk more after AI takes over and we just, whatever. I don't know.

No, your experience with that, that developer, I mean, you'd, people don't walk because there's nowhere to walk, right? Like you got to give them a reason to get out of the car. They're not just going to wait around for that to happen. So I think if we can create and cultivate an experience, like Commissioner Shea said, have opportunities, even the window, like you mentioned, there's school kids all over that intersection all the time. Like how many would be, you know, popping into Fizz or wherever if there was just a little window, you get an ice cream or, you know, if there's a green space to hang out nearby, maybe there needs to be If there needs to be kind of a green space gathering area in these major kind of town square areas where people would hang out and have a drink and have some shade and, you know, have a reason to be there, not just hurry up and pass through.

Yeah, that's really what we're trying to foster, but also operating within an environment where we are really hungry for business and economic development. And I know that a few times it comes down to saying, well, those are our standards. And if you want to build here, you have to follow it or you have to approach the city council. change the ordinance. And I've had instances where they say, okay, where do I, how do I apply? You know, and so it's a conversation the city has to have in a balancing act between attracting business and having a high standard of development. I know that, yeah, for example, in Farmington, you know, they have a Maverick that has a that is up against the street. Or in Logan, there's a Maverick that's up against the street. And we had a similar standard Maverick in our town center, but they didn't want to come up to the street because of the standard gas station prototype. And so unless there's a very watertight policy that the entire city is bought off on, then You know, it's an administrative function when we get a site plan and it comes in and if there's questions about whether or not you have to do it or it's recommended, you know, sometimes... you know these people are trying to get a business that that is successful and they have a certain footprint or a prototype that they know will work and and so it's a compromise that has to be reached on a design and sometimes sometimes it comes to a point where it's like well we're just going to do the bare minimum of what's required and

Do we have specific language that defines what a corner building is? Because I'm just curious with the northwest corner of 2000 and Antelope where the Walmart is at, if you did a substantial enough corner feature and then your buildings were just 100 feet off of the corner, are you subject to these same requirements or is that a type of workaround that's possible?

Might not be a bad idea to have a definition. Corner building, you know, corner building.

No, I think he brings up a good point.

Because you could just put a substantial enough landscape feature in the corner, go 50 feet off of the corner, and hey, I'm not a corner building. The corner's over there. I think there should be a limit, a boundary distance.

Maybe if the parcel is adjoining the corner, the edifice has to be within a certain distance of the sidewalk or whatever it is.

So the town center does already have something. A lot of times zoning will have a minimum setback, but the town center actually also has a maximum setback, which is 30 feet. So yeah, I don't know if they'll be able to get around that, but... Maybe Colin can help us wordsmith some sort of good definition for a corner building. Because otherwise you're left with a plaza or a landscaped plaza. Or even just landscaping, which is more suburban and less... You know, it depends on how it's designed, but I think is what we're after is experiences and places to gather and things like that.

So could we have a public space in lieu of? I wouldn't be angry if they voluntarily landscaped a corner of the city to become a nice amenity. You just have to guide it somehow.

Yeah, but you also have to understand that they're already required to have 15 feet of landscaping. And the maximum setback is 30. And so we may end up with... kind of a lame-o landscaped area of gravel and a few trees and they'll call that a plaza or a picnic table or you know so we again we we have to be prepared to clearly communicate our vision or else we may end up with somebody who's not willing to cooperate and then we'll do the absolute bare minimum right yeah makes sense malicious compliance okay any further discussion

I think this discussion has been good for Abe to hear too, so he can take it to the city council, bring these concerns up.

So this is a recommendation to the city council, if we can get a motion.

i guess i'm questioning have we we've had a lot of discussion but is there is there any changes any changes that well we want to make or the operable door window is already on there is there anything that needs to be adjusted to make like what is operable like yeah how do you clarify that

That is business. It doesn't feel like you're sneaking into somebody's place without them wanting to be there.

I was reading 3B because it says the building shall have a street-facing storefront, which our current town center does not have. The two buildings are not street-facing. The doors that are there are stock doors that they bring in product from. Uh, and so that future ones would be changed. And then that, that has an operable door and then is also surrounded by a glass storefront denoting a main entrance. So is that, is that enough to say that all the buildings that are on there need to have a storefront door that's facing the street that has glass?

And if it's operable, is it like the second window on a drive-thru that they just keep it locked and don't use it? Yeah, technically operable, but... You know what I mean? Like Wendy's or whatever. Yeah, they use it as a storage room and just no one's going to use that, right? So how do you make it so it's actually a mandatory entrance and not just a meeting the guideline? I mean, that's the most important thing. David Price- change that we could make on here for you to come up with language that would.

David Price- guarantee that somehow I don't know if we just add where businesses regularly conducted is that. David Price- To that line is that enough.

David Price- Can you put as approved by site plan review or something like that and just defer to a later review by. David Price- The planning firm it. David Price- As soon as we passed a lock it and.

Yeah, I mean, we can require all kinds of things. And then once they have their occupancy, how they operate the business could be difficult to enforce later on. We're happy to come back with some more language if you guys want us to.

In my mind, I feel like we have limited commercial space. It's still available. It's a lot easier to set some language now than regret it later and be like, well, that was our, that was our one chance and we'll never get another shot. So to me that that door thing is an important enough piece of this language that it might be worth giving some time to.

I had lived here a long time before I realized that that CVS drive-thru was actually operable, because I never saw vehicles there. I thought, is that? And then there was that chain that goes across the stairs, and it made it really look like you shouldn't go over here, and that nobody's... I thought it was like a fire laying drive-through to get around the building. And so it was really weird the first time I built.

I don't know what would happen if you walked up to that window either. They may not serve you. I don't think they would, yeah.

I'm pondering this a lot too. Is it easy just to say an operable door or window to allow public access?

Could be. I will say so. Cause I, I do a lot of these site plan reviews and have this discussion like every time when there's some aspect of the code and it always comes down to splitting hairs to, you know, what is could mean and stuff. Right. So to, to the point where I would say fluffy language is ineffective language that might as well not even be there. So yeah, If we're going to require something, if you want to require something, you need to make it explicit and clear and that there's no like could or should or we want. It's you will do this or else basically or else it's just not going to happen.

That's what I was thinking. If it just says allow public access, then it's not a stockroom door or it's not a back door. The intent is for the public to have access to that door.

What if it's required to remain open with business hours or something like that that would indicate that it has to be available?

Those are good ideas.

Just doors open, that door's open. They can't just lock it and shut it off.

Yeah, so if I'm understanding our conversation correctly, I think we're okay with the CVS window that is open to public access during business hours. We're okay with the Zeppi's order window.

Yeah, Zeppi's is great.

But we're not okay with the back of the Thai restaurant that is just glazed over with signage and nobody ever goes in and out of there.

Correct.

Can we just add, like the verbiage that Blake said, just open during public hours?

Do we run the risk of new developers coming in and saying, well, you let, you know, a guy restaurant do it. You let CBS do this.

You let, is there a way to prior to the code?

Okay.

Well, they do make that argument all the time.

I'm sure they do.

They do make that argument, but that's not a legitimate risk. That's not a concern.

I mean, you can, you can grandfather until, you know, the Neanderthals will run around and then you got to have a start stop point somewhere.

Yeah. So I think with the discussion we've had on that for I it's operable door window that's open during or available for public access during business hours.

Yeah. That matches business hours and other doors or something on those lines. So they can't.

And then with just that small part, I think we can move this forward. Are you good with that Blake? I'm happy with that.

Okay.

Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. A motion. And again, this is a recommendation of the City Council.

I'm going to try this, I guess. So I move that we make the recommendation of the City Council to adopt and change the City Ordinance of Chapter 10.100, the Town Center Overlay Zone, to include the sections we've discussed here, Section 4, with that addition that 4B.I. have the text to include operable door or window that is opened or public during business hours.

That's great. Second? Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Okay. That motion is adopted or moves forward to the city council. Next is number seven. This is a preliminary plat request from Alex Fleischman of AWA for approval of the preliminary plat for Syracuse Landing. The proposed project comprises approximately seven and a half acres in the GC zone.

all right so this is uh so i guess per discussion about the site plan stuff from earlier so this would be an example um we didn't have a site plan application here but if we did this would be their first step and then after this they're gonna have to do a final plat even though it's a small plot so uh non-residential plots require both preliminary and final So the next thing about this one, general commercial zoning, standard stuff. There's no special agreements or anything outside of an MOU memorandum of understanding, which wouldn't apply to the actual plat itself in this case. So this is on the Southwest corner of Antelope Drive and 3000 West. Going down to the actual plat itself here. So this one's a little unique in terms of layout. Most commercial plots, they just kind of have all of their lots and they'll put the detention in a corner. But we've got both parcel A, which our city signage is on, that's currently existing there as you're getting off the highway. And then this parcel B is our detention, which is sort of in the center. So once this is all built out, this will kind of finalize the development for this area. The park and ride is done up here, and then this is building out to the west. And of course, we've got the highway. But what's proposed here meets all the requirements of the city code. And again, this will just be the preliminary plot, so we'll see this again here hopefully soon to get the final plot taken care of, and then they can get going on the individual sites. So I believe I just said it meets all the requirements of the code. We recommend approval. But if there's any questions, I'll entertain those.

And again, is this one to the city council?

Nope. This is just you guys.

Okay. Hey, this is a public hearing. So if we have any feedback or comments on this particular item, please come up to the stand. Seeing no movement, we'll close the public hearing and open it for commissioner feedback.

Just one point of disclosure. I'm not connected with this application, but I am connected with a tenant proposing to lease from the developer.

Okay.

I'm aware of that. I don't see that as a reason to recuse or disqualify, but I do believe that disclosure was appropriate. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you.

Feedback? Comments?

I'm fine as long as you're not planning on putting a large sign by the freeway. Just kidding. How tall is that sign going to be? Just joking.

Thank you, Link.

Okay, seeing no comments, can we entertain a motion?

I feel like there should be comments, but I'm... Yeah, at this point, there's not really a lot of information, is there? You said parcel B was the detention pond.

That's correct.

I do kind of like that detention pond being in the middle. I think that rather than being that the first thing that you see when you're driving by is just the weird little depression in the ground. I'd rather see a building, as we discussed, that matches kind of the city look rather than just kind of a detention base. And I think that's potentially more attractive that way. So I don't know if that was accidental or if that was guided that way.

Do we know if the developer is going to be doing above ground or below ground? Are we doing basins or?

The plan is a basin right now, yeah, just a standard above ground.

I know that they were exploring buried detention, but the groundwater is too high. And so they'll have this community detention in the middle, but then each lot will be required to have some detention as well. Understood. Yeah, just basins and swells and things.

Will any of those lots drain into that detention basin also? No.

Yeah. So there's like a bunch of shared parking, um, that's kind of central that will gather. And I think some of the, some of the waters even going North, I remember, right.

Is there any retention into the city system or is it all onsite detention?

It's all on site. I think Jeff is our city engineers online too. He can maybe add more color to that. But my understanding is per our standards, you have to detain on site for a hundred year storm. Okay. But yeah, so no, no retention, but detention. Yes.

Yeah. Let me know if you need to need to go into any more on that.

Is that Jeff talking to us?

That's Jeff. Yeah, it's a little quiet. But just to reiterate, he said if you have more questions, just let him know. He can clarify.

OK. OK. And we'll entertain a motion.

I move the Planning Commission approve the request of Alex Fleishman for approval of the preliminary plat called Syracuse Landing at 1625 South 3000 West on 7.568 acres in the GC zone. Second. Second.

We have a motion and a second.

All in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. That passes unanimously. Okay. We'll move on now to a conditional use permit request by Chelsea Robinson. This is for approval of a home occupation for Adventure Island Preschool located at approximately 1391 West 450 South.

All right, so this was just triggered by a discussion with our business license professional. So once you get over a certain intensity with certain home businesses, it triggers basically more review. And this is kind of the biggest type of review that we can do for home businesses. However, what's proposed here isn't necessarily the maxing everything out. So, for a major home occupation B preschool, we only have a couple of standards. One is they have to have a rear yard that's entirely fenced, which is the case here. And then they can only have up to 12 students per session. So, They're just proposing, I believe it was eight students per session, but they're free to increase that. That wouldn't require any sort of re-approvals or anything if they wanted to go up to 12. This permit just allows the ability, the flexibility to go up to that. However, should the preschool be successful enough to need more than 12 students, which would be great, we just ask them to move to a commercial space. They provided a drawing of the home showing the area that will be used. The code does require that less than 30% of the single floor square footage be utilized for the business, which this does. It's well within that allowance. And then also, this isn't a code thing, but it seems like it comes up every time. So the applicant has graciously provided a pickup drop-off plan. So... These things are communicated to the parents so they know what's going on. They just have the driveways blocked off here. So don't block people's driveways and then just follow the flow of traffic for pickup and drop off. So again, code wise, it's very minimal. This meets all the requirements of the ordinance. We would recommend approval as it's an administrative thing. And the planning commission is the approval body for this one.

Thank you. And this is a public hearing. So if there's any public input online or here, please come up and raise your hand if you're online.

No one online for the public hearing.

And Chelsea is not here, correct?

Chelsea is here. She's online if you have questions. OK. And do you have any questions for the petitioner?

I'm curious how a session is defined. Is there an exact language for that?

Not in the code. Generally, the way we've interpreted that in the past is if you have a class of preschool, right? Like you've got all the kids that come in for the preschool and here's the group together. That's a session for a certain period of time. But if they have multiple classes, multiple employees, that kind of thing, that would change things. There aren't employees in this case. So the number of sessions per week, though, is not regulated for preschools, for home preschools. So they can do as many as they'd like. They just can't do any more than 12 students per session.

My question was, would there be room or a potential loophole where you would have... multiple sessions overlapping that would allow more than 12 students in the building at the same time. But maybe you've got like a one starts at eight and goes till 12 and maybe another one starts at nine and goes to one. So there'd be a period where there's higher than the allowed number of students in the same building.

Yeah. With the way the code's written, if you really wanted to get creative, I could really overload the system with the way the code is. It's, it's pretty minimal in terms of the way it's regulated right now.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Where this is a conditional use permit. That's where the condition comes in. Is that accurate. So if there was an abuse of that we'd be able to revoke that permit.

Yeah, and I mean, there are other safeguards in place around noise and deleterious impacts with the number of kids and things. If it becomes an issue, it's something we can potentially review. It's never been an issue as long as I've been here. We had one that came up. I guess we've had two. I guess there was a preschool and there was a swim school. The swim school was revoked, and that, I think, was more just on the applicant, but... But yeah, as far as these go, I mean, we've got tons of them throughout the city. And if we need to review it, we can.

Okay. I appreciate that. And we'll close the public hearing, but we can open that up now to Chelsea to see if she has any feedback on her plans for sessions.

Sorry, I have to unmute my microphone. Can you guys hear me?

Hold on just a minute, Chelsea.

We're going to try to turn the microphone or the speakers up.

Okay. Hey, Chelsea, try now.

Okay. Can you hear me now?

Hold on. I'm waiting for a thumbs up.

And I guess while they're working on that, I question about this. So the applicant is asking for eight students per session, six sessions per week, but then the permit allows 12 students and only four sessions per week. Is that, I'm trying to read through it a couple of times. I'm trying to, is that the case?

I can actually hear the applicant. I think the speaker may be just right here. So we can maybe transcribe a little bit.

Yeah, she's coming in really soft. I can hear it too.

I can like yell, see if you can hear me better.

Just one moment. I'm going to check one thing on the settings here.

Okay. Well, maybe let me take my AirPod out and see if I talk into my phone speaker, if that will be any louder.

It's not you. You're fine. Let's try that.

All right. Let me know.

Much better. That was on our end.

Go ahead. Okay. From what I read with Syracuse city ordinances and the state of Utah city ordinances or not city, but state like licensing, like a session is like the defined class period. So minor would be in two hour periods for it. And so like, Six sessions would mean I would have like a morning class that was three days a week. And if I was able to add an afternoon class, that would run three days a week as well. So that would be considered the six sessions. Eight children is what you can have legally. That's the ratio for a teacher versus child ratio without having an employee. But if I brought in an employee, I could have up to 12 students.

And so Chelsea, you're not recommending that your sessions overlap. If you do six, it will be three morning and then three non overlapping in the afternoon.

That's correct. Yes.

Thank you, Chelsea.

Does that answer your question?

I think so. Okay.

Um, so was this application subject to review by fire and are they required to have an evacuation plan?

I will have to have a fire inspection. It had to pass through this before I could schedule the fire inspection.

That is something that she'll need to schedule with our fire marshal. So it's pretty common practice.

Who is, by the way, in the audience and available for questioning if you so desire.

I was going to email about a list of things to make sure everything was prepared. Okay.

Well, we hope you get all prepared because he looks forward to meeting with you.

Okay, any other comments or concerns.

Okay, so then, this is a public here we've closed the public hearing, but now this is approval of a conditional use permit by Chelsea Robinson for a home and occupation for a preschool. entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion. I move the Planning Commission approve the request of Chelsea Robinson for approval of a major home occupation B conditional user permit for the Adventure Island Preschool located at 1391 West 450 South in the R3 zone.

Well, second motion. Second that. And Scott with the second. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. This passes. And now we'll move on to the last item on the agenda. This is a minor plat amendment to the Syracuse Arts Academy subdivision to dedicate the land as a public right of way. And this is a disclosure. I'm on the board for Syracuse Arts Academy, and I've made that disclosure public.

Okay, hopefully you've had a chance to take a look at the packet. It may be easiest to describe it with looking at the pictures. So if you look at the current plat, parcel C3 includes this northern part, which the city actually owns this northern part. But when the plat was recorded, it became combined with land owned by the school and then the city. So create a little bit of a title issue. There is a trade proposed where C1 went to the city and then this land was going to go to the school. And this is where their access road is. But because of that title issue and some complications with some UDOT rules that we weren't aware of that would create a problem, it's proposed to just separate this off so that it remains in city ownership and it will be dedicated as a public right-of-way. On the ground, there'll be no physical changes. It's just kind of a legal and management agreement between the city and the school. So this driveway essentially back to the school will be maintained by the school, repaved, landscaping, all that. But it will be maintained as it will be public access all the time. So it's a little bit of a softball, but it's good to get lots of eyeballs on it and see if there's any concerns with the flat amendment.

So I think you will see... a revised First Amendment, for lack of a better word, that cuts off that top piece and gives that back to the city as Noah has explained it. This particular version that you're looking at right now does not show that, but it's all late breaking news throughout the day today.

Yeah, it shows a line here, but I think the intent is to make sure that's clear that that's a property line, not just a right-of-way line. That's probably the biggest change. And so this is a discussion item. Only no action is necessary, if I remember right. Yeah, we didn't do a public hearing or anything like that for this one. Yeah, discussion item. So the intent here is to get input, and then we'll come back next time with the public hearing.

So for input, then the school still has use of that property for public access. But it remains property of the city.

Correct.

And I imagine it's the same kind of like pavement level and it's just going to go as if the road continues on. You're not really going to be able to tell. That's a road and they have a separate driveway into their facility.

So there is a second driveway that is for fire only. Let's see if I... Here we go. So this is somewhat recent. So see, this is their main access point and it lines up with 3060. And so at this point on, you can see it necks down a little bit. So this is where... they will take care of all of the maintenance. But the other access end of the site is a fire access through here, and it has a gate on it, but the fire department can access it in case of emergency.

So, Neil, in response to your question, yes, the only thing you will notice differently is the fact where the 30-60 narrows at the beginning of that process. what was built originally as a private drive, but will now be a public road. There's a maintenance agreement that we've worked out. Syracuse Arts Academy will do all of the maintenance that NOAA indicated. And specifically in that agreement, it says that neither party will gate either the west end or the east end of that thing. It's just going to look like a public road all the way down until it makes the bend and becomes the parking lot. And then it's private from the parking lot after that.

And then we'll have legal and everything just work through as the MOU or.

It's a maintenance agreement.

We've called it a maintenance agreement. It's all ready to go once we get this plat drawing corrected and so forth so that it's clarified. But yes, both the plat, well, of course, the plat will be recorded and the maintenance agreement may or may not be recorded depending on whether I think we've concluded it doesn't need to be. Maybe it's a good idea. We haven't crossed that bridge yet. Thank you for the clarification. Okay.

You can see where the parcel lines were before the subdivision as well. And so we're, we're just trying to clarify. Maintain that that same boundary line.

Thank you. Hey, Any other questions for this discussion. Great. Thank you for bringing it to us. Okay. Next is a motion to adjourn.

We adjourn.

Okay.

Second? We're all in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Thank you. Now we'll just adjourn into the work session. First is Department of Business City Council Liaison Report.

Thank you all for being here and the work that you do. I think the only thing of interest for you guys really is we met and we talked about the signage recommendation. As a council, we decided to lighten some of the recommendations, but a lot of the recommendations were adopted. We We looked at the code and where we were being redundant with our night sky and just alleviated some of the language. We didn't create conflict in the codes. And it wasn't a unanimous vote. It was all but one voted for. And so other than that, Heritage Days this week, it's a big time for us in the city. And we'd love to have you guys out and participate in all the events and the activities and being part of the community and just being accessible, I guess, as the planning commission to the constituents that we represent.

We have a ribbon cutting next week.

We do, yeah. Costco, it's a big deal. We're all really excited. Love to have you all there for that as well.

Thank you. If you do come to Heritage Days, and we encourage you to, unlike one of our neighboring cities last week, please be on your best behavior. There were some problems in that particular city, and we hope they don't occur here as well.

So now it's your turn, city attorney report. Was that your report?

Yes. Just be good. Thank you.

Okay. Discussion items, upcoming agenda items.

All right, so we've got a few things that are still just waiting. So let's see. The stuff that's down in the West Lake Landing subdivision, like I've mentioned in the past few meetings, we're just waiting on updates on those. That's the one on 2700 South and 2000 West. uh rocky mountain wellness just west of city hall still waiting on an update on that one as well um holiday oil site plan we're we're getting close i think that'll be uh that same west lake area uh just the very corner um so hopefully we can polish that one up and have that to you soon um let's see um Um, we did get final applications for Falcon landing. The one that we talked about there, west of the temple. Uh, so they've got both final plots in and that will comprise the entirety of the preliminary plot area. So hopefully that will be the next meeting. Uh, and then let's see. We also received an application. Walmart wants to add some charging stations, and it's a pretty significant shift just north of where the gas area is. So they're going to need site plans. It requires a change of the parking area and also a building permit for the stations themselves. So we'll take a look at that hopefully soon. And that... Oh, I guess we're looking at some, some changes of code also, but I guess we did see that one already. Nevermind. So that's all we have right now.

Thank you. And commissioner reports. The updates. I did see posted that the mayor opened up applications for the planning commissioners and we have, are we having changes there or did they read,

uh yes we sorry uh last city council um they passed a resolution to appoint um kelly nielsen to a four-year term and uh what Courtney, thank you. I was trying to remember her name. There is a new one. Mr. Shea has been an awesome planning commissioner. His term will be up at the end of June. So appreciate your service. And she'll begin the first meeting of July.

So Scott, this will be your last? Yeah. So we truly do appreciate all of that. You've been a wonderful asset to the city.

It's been a pleasure. Enjoyed it.

I'd also like to show my gratitude for Kelly. Yes. He's coming back and I'm glad he's returning. Appreciate that. And Scott, very much. It's been awesome. Scott having your expertise and your experience and I'd really appreciate it. Working with you. Hopefully we'll see you around in other capacities.

Kelly. Thank you. Okay. Any other concerns, questions, updates? Okay, motion to adjourn.

We are adjourned. Okay, thank you. All in favor? Aye. Thank you.

Yeah.