Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

The regular meeting of the Texas County Arkansas Planning Commission is called to order. Agendas are available on the rail, so please help yourself. We will take the items as they are listed on the agenda. I will read each item and ask the person representing the request to come forward to the podium. Please state your name and address for the recording secretary. Present your information and make any comments you have about your request. Be prepared to respond to any questions that members of the Planning Commission may have of you. Thank you. Item number one, roll call.

Stephen Cross.

Here.

Anita Pickett. Here. Jason Dupree. Here. Dr. Hickerson. Here. Corey Mobbs. Here. Chris Owens is absent. And Chairman Neal.

Here, we have six out of seven, and we have half a quorum, and we can conduct business. Item number two, adoption of the minutes. Is there any discussion, or are there any corrections that need to be made of the minutes? If not, the chair would entertain a motion.

I move we approve the minutes.

Motion to approve is second.

Second.

Okay. Roll call.

Stephen Cross?

Yes.

Anita Pickett? Excuse me on that. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? It's approved. Minutes approved. My bad on that. All right. Item number three, final plat approval. Request by Colin Kuhn for final plat approval. the highlands located on parcel 00318100 on north rondo road property is legally described as north half of the southeast quarter of the northeast quarter of section 27 township 15 south range 28 west miller county arkansas containing 20 acres more or less partial is located in the 600 to 700 block of North Rondeau Road, Ward 1. Okay.

So this property is located on North Rondeau Road.

This is East 9th right here. And McNatt Lane comes in right here off Meadows Road. So it's right in there. It's a little easier to see it on this map. Here's McNatt, here's Meadows. It's zoned R1, so it's zoned for single family homes. There is water over there and sewer. The TWU is signed off on the water and the city is signed off on the street.

From the preliminary plat, in your folder you have taken one lot out in order to accommodate those two entrances. So it's 40 lots now instead of 41. And Colin is here if you have any questions.

Are we not yelling loud enough? And Colin is here if you have any questions.

Okay. All right. Any questions of...

These streets will be city-owned. It's not going to be an HOA. Yeah.

How big will the houses be in there?

Minimum is 2,000 square feet. Are you all building the homes or selling the lots to then?

Both. Cool. We're trying to build as many as we can.

Of course, obviously.

Mailboxes are one of the new things standing off in the corner.

Correct. Yeah, so with the box.

That's the post office. I don't know how to describe it.

It's called a cluster mailbox.

Yeah, a mailbox cluster. We have two medians. Okay. One at each entrance to serve those lots. Gotcha. So it would be very appropriate. Cool.

Yeah, anything over eight lots has to have a cluster mailbox. Okay. That's the post office. We fought it. We lost.

That's a shame.

It is a shame because when you're buying a million-dollar home, you've got to go to a cluster.

All right.

Any other questions? All right. Thank you, Jamie. Colin, do you guys have anything to say besides what you've already commented on? No, sir. Okay. And there being no opposition to... Okay. Well, any more questions on the commission? If not, the chair would entertain a motion.

I move we approve option five, item number three.

I second.

And a motion and a second to approve the final plan. Roll call.

Stephen Cross. Yes. Anita Pickett. Yes. Jason Dupree.

Yes.

Dr. Hickerson. Yes. Corey Mox. Yes. And Chairman Neal.

Yes. Final approval. Final plat. It's approved. Item number four, rezone request by Michael and Marcia Yoder to rezone the property located at 4620 Old Orr. FROM R1 RULE RESIDENTIAL TO A1 LIMITED MIXED USE IN ORDER TO PLACE A SECOND RESIDENCE ON THE PROPERTY. PROPERTY IS LEGALLY DESCRIBED AS PART SOUTHEAST NORTHWEST LESS 50 BY 255.25 IN SOUTHWEST CORNER 03 That's 16 south, that's 28 west, Miller County, Arkansas, containing 39.71 acres, more or less, border one.

Okay. Mr. and Ms. Yoder are not here. They're out of the country. They told me that when they filed this application. So I agreed to present for them. They have almost 40 acres here. This is Hastings. Genoa Road is up here. This is Hastings Crossing right here, and Old Orr Road comes off of it. This is in the overlay district. They have a manufactured home on there now, and they want to put a second manufactured home. And, of course, the only zone they can do that in is A1. There is water out there. There's no sewer. So they're asking to rezone it to A1 in order to put a second residence on there. And you have to have two and a half acres per house, so they've got plenty of land.

So with not being on city sewer, do they have septic enough to hold that? They'll have septic, yes.

What kind of homes do they have surrounding that area?

Hastings Crossing, which is right here, There's quite a few mobile manufactured homes there. There's also a lot of temporary secondary residences there that are RVs. Roger, you know that area.

Yeah. That's all in the R1 overlay.

And we have a lot of the temporary secondary residences out there. We have no objection to them putting another mobile home out there. Okay.

Did they have to come before us because they – I thought you saw right.

They're rezoning a one so they can put – They want to do a whole other house, not just a percentage. They will have two on one property.

They want two on one. Right. Okay.

And it's big enough that they can do that.

They could, you're thinking of an accessory dwelling unit.

Yes. And it can only be 75% of the size of the main structure. But now they want a whole separate structure. Right. Okay. Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions? Any opposition to it that we know of?

Haven't heard of anything.

Okay. And not any more questions? The chair would entertain a motion.

I move we approve the rezoning from R1A1 on item 1. Second.

I have a motion and a second to approve the rezoning. Roll call.

Stephen Cross.

Yes.

Anita Pickett. Yes. Jason Dupree.

Yes.

Dr. Hickerson. Yes. Corey Mobs. Yes. And Chairman Neal.

Yes. Rezoning is approved. All right. Item number five, rezone request by David and Dorothy Green to rezone the property located at 1617 Dudley from R3 low density residential to C1 general commercial for the purpose of operating a convenience store. Property is legally described as south half, south half, lot one, northeast, southwest and northwest-southwest, 2915 South, 28 West, Miller County, Arkansas, containing 0.05 acres more or less, Ward 2.

Okay. This property is on the corner of Dudley and Ferguson Street.

And, Mr. Green, is this the way the house looks now?

Okay. So this is the house before. They have done, in the packet I gave you that I said was for item five, there is a picture in there. They have done some work on the building. And that's the way the building looks now. Some of you may remember it from when it looked like this. This over here is zone C1. It looks like it used to be a pawn shop at one time. And there's a house on this block here. This over here is a church. This property and everything around it is zoned R3. They do live in this house right back here behind the property. There is water and sewer available. The issue with this property is in order to rezone at C1, it doesn't meet the lot requirements. C1 requires 14,000 feet. It's only about a 2,200 square foot lot. It doesn't meet any of the setbacks except for the interior side. This gets complicated because this is a building that has always been a commercial building, as far as we can tell. Going through the directories, it's always been a commercial building. It was annexed in as part of the original city, which was done in the early 1900s. Normally I would go back and see how it was annexed in, but I don't have any of those records from that old. But it appears to have always been a commercial building. But it doesn't meet the lot requirements for a C-1. The other piece of it is in our comprehensive plan, this area is designated as a walkable neighborhood. And walkable neighborhoods have an allowance for small scale commercial businesses that serve the entire community. So this is one of those instances where if you look at the comprehensive plan, it fits. If you look at the lot requirements, it doesn't fit. But it's always been commercial. Now, even if it was grandfathered in commercial, once something is grandfathered in and it sits unused for six months, that grandfather clause goes away. So even if it was grandfathered in as commercial, that clause would have gone away. What I gave you is their business plan. They've done some work on the building. They want to put a convenience store in there. Also in that packet is a petition that the neighbors have signed, and the greens are here.

It seems to me the question is does a walkable neighborhood kind of override the lot size?

It's a food desert over there.

Well, and that is the other issue we have right now is there's no convenience stores or grocery stores in College Hill. I don't know what the plan is. They're here. They might can answer what the plan is for parking because there's no room for parking in front.

What about on Ferguson?

No. I mean, unless they park on the street.

That's what I'm, yeah.

Which.

I mean, excuse me. On the side. Come on up. We don't want to service our community just a small... Just come forward and state your name and address. My name is Donnell King. I'm 1708 Dudley. I've been in college here for... all my life, pretty much. I'm a show. Basically, we have a lot of, in our neighborhood, the traffic is mostly walking, mostly people walking. So we won't be servicing a broad amount of cars. It will mostly be the people from our neighborhood that, like, They need to get things later after times when stores are closed, or we don't have any stores in our neighborhood, and they have to try to get a ride out of that area because, as you can see, we're not the wealthiest or prettiest area, but we want to try to beautify our area. We've lived here all our lives. We own property there, and we just want to do something for our community. I've been in my community. Oh, just volunteering and doing things for the past 10 years. I have two nonprofits in Texas County, Arkansas, Texas County Jaguars, Texas County League of Champions. I volunteered for five years at We Are Washington. I just want to do something for my community. I went away and worked for a couple of years and come back home and see that it's a dire need for my community. I mean, kids, it's over 20 kids on my block, and after 8 o'clock, if they don't eat, So I just want to do something for my community.

Did y'all enlarge the space? Like from what we got originally? Or is that just the lot size, Jamie?

The 43, 15?

No, on the Act Data Scout, there's 15 by 43, but then this picture looks like it's now... 24 by 30. So did y'all enlarge it?

It may be not to scale. It may be not to scale. It may be off on that a little bit.

I mean, how do we get around this?

Well, you have the comprehensive plan, which it fits. And you have the ordinance, which doesn't fit. So it's, there's not really a precedent for one overriding the other.

From a safety perspective, if there were people to park, has TAPD said anything? Has fire said anything? Could they get ground if there was an emergency? Falls? Grandma down the road needs to be picked up by an ambulance, but there's four cars blocking. Like, is that a possibility? That's where my brain goes.

Well, that'd be it.

Possibility anywhere.

Right now on my street, if a truck had to get down my street, I'm going to recircle back over there.

I mean, that's just a car truck on both sides of the street.

I mean, we wouldn't have cars on both sides of the street. Dudley is actually a wider street if you go down. I mean, if you look at it, it's actually like two lanes in one, so we actually have the curb space really for cars and everything, two paths through if they were to park on the side of the road. So Dudley is a little bit wider than the other streets. And then on the side, we would kind of have partial parking on the side where we could at least deal with – three to four cars at a time.

Would you strap it so that people are more common sense?

We can't approve parking on the public street as a standard. Right. That cannot fill their requirement for parking. Yes, ma'am.

No, ma'am. No, ma'am. That's what I was saying. Yes, ma'am. On the side, that's what I was saying. I don't know if you see the aerial view of it. But, like, right here. See right here, we would turn this into park where the cars will face.

Huh?

This is the side to the street, right?

This is to the right of the screen.

So the right-of-way wouldn't count on the property. I did not know that.

Yeah, you can't turn public right-of-way into property.

Can I speak? My name is David Green. Yeah.

Years ago, once we moved over there to the pawn shop when it was open, Mr. A.C., if you guys remember him, they parked right there in front of the pawn shop on the city property all the time. At the same time, when the train's on the track, they turn around on our side, on that property, plenty of clearance to do what you need to do. So parking wouldn't be a problem at the same time. it's still walkable and we wouldn't be trying to cater to people who come up in cars.

We would have more walkable. I mean, because the convenience store is not even an entry-type store. It's as if you would come to, like, a service window and get something. It wouldn't be like a grocery store that you would go around because of loss prevention in the neighborhood that we're in. So we would have it where they would be able to come in to the window and get service. It's made for the people that stay in this area to be able to walk to the store and still get essentials every day.

And it'd be doubly walking up to the place for service.

What's your proposed days and hours of operations? Have you gotten that far yet? Well, we've made Monday through Friday or all seven nights a week or... We would try to do seven days a week. Okay.

Seven to seven? I mean, just in general. Probably like that 10 o'clock hour.

Right there in that ballpark.

Have you run into any opposition from anybody in the community? No, sir. They actually are for it because they're on board.

Jamie, would they have to go? to the Board of Adjustments or anything, if we've resumed?

We would, in essence, be granting the mayor an exclusive access for resigning.

We had, like, what, one, two, three, four, four stores closed down the past, what, year? I mean, there's literally nothing over there. IGA, Save-A-Lot, College Sure Drug, dollar stores probably hanging on by a thread.

And it meets every other code for the city as far as safety, fire, evacuation.

They'll have to give it to the police.

Okay.

They'll have to give it to the police. And we're willing to be willing to comply with all of it.

We're willing to comply. You know, it's just we just need you guys.

Okay, so we can move forward.

What about the you know, if we were doing a a traditional use, it would only apply to them. We resummoned it typically

It stays forever.

It stays forever, but I'm just thinking since the building doesn't meet, lot size doesn't meet, but it would be open to any C1 business going forward.

That's true. But there's not an allowance for, there's not a conditional use allowance to do commercial in the residential zone.

I mean, the same concept back when they grandfathered the pawn shop in. It'd be like the same scenario. When they got a business, cars pretty much parked wherever they can get in at. But this is not going to be where you can pull up cars, just strictly walk up.

Well, I grew up in that neighborhood. In fact, our church is not far from there. So I remember when that pawn shop was there. I remember when that was a vibrant community. Yes, ma'am. Because that was my community. And now to see it as it is now, it's just heartbreaking. So, you know, I was wondering until you said about traffic, about walking up to the place, I can see that. But I also saw when the pawn shop was there how many cars parked there, which was probably illegal back in that day also. But I would welcome a place for people who have nothing else to be able to walk up to and get essential supplies that they need.

We appreciate that. Thank you.

Are there any more questions? Thank you. We thank you. I appreciate it. Is there any discussion amongst us that needs to happen?

OK.

There being no opposition, the chair would entertain a motion.

I motion to approve. I second.

Motion and a second to approve. Roll call.

Steven Cross. Yes. Anita Pickett. Yes. Jason Dupree. Yes. Dr. Hickerson. Yes. Corey Mobbs. Yes. And Chairman Neal.

Yes. Six out of seven. The request to rezone passes. Item number six, any comments, Jamie?

I don't have anything. What? Are you laughing at me, Randall? Pardon me? Are you laughing at me?

No, I'm just playing.

Oh. It's okay if you're laughing at me. I've been laughing at you before.

All right. Our next meeting is July 14th, 6 p.m., and the chair would entertain a motion to adjourn.

I move we adjourn.

Thank you. Moons.