Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

The regular meeting of the Tex County, Arkansas Planning Commission is called to order. Agendas are available on the rails, so please help yourself. We will take 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 any 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. First item, roll call. Anita here. Jason Dupree here. Boots Thomas

present. Dr. Hickerson is absent. Chris Owens here. Cory Mobs here. And Chairman Neil here. We have a form so we can conduct business. Okay, next item. Item number two is adoption of the summarized minutes from the previous meeting. So move to adopt. Motion to adopt. Second. Second. All in all in favor say I. I. I.

Any opposed? Minutes are adopted. Okay. Okay, next item is a reszoning request by Byron Beline to reszone the property located at 700 East Broad from W1 warehousing and wholesale to C2 commercial central business for the purpose of operating a commercial amusement venue. Property is legally described as part southwest northeast 1.67 acres and part northwest de 2.91 acres and point part southwest northeast.2 55 acres section 30 town timeship 15 south range 28 west Miller county Arkansas containing 2.223 223 acres more or less. Ward two.

Okay. This is the property here. Um it's the old Stone Studios property. They've moved out of that building. It's that building. I'm sure you all know it. Right now it's zone W1, warehousing and wholesaling. Um most of downtown is C2. There's some C3 over here. Everything around there. This is the rail yard back here. So, it's all warehousing. Um there is obviously water and sewer available there. Um Mr. Bolin has asked to reszone it for the purpose of putting in a mixed martial arts venue. Um is that still the plan?

Yes, it is.

Okay. Okay. Um, we have an option. There was some concern internally among staff if we reszone at C2 about the possibility of a bar or going in there or a nightclub. Um, as you all know, we have problems downtown with what we have down there now. Um, and so we do have the option of reszoning it. So, a bar and a nightclub would be a use by right in C2. So, if we reszoned at C2 and someone decided they want to come in and put a bar in there, they could do that. If we reszone at C1, which we can do because it's more restrictive, they would have to have a conditional use for a bar. They would have to come to us. So, there was just some concern internally about, as you all know, we don't just deal with what we think's going to happen. We have to deal with down the road. Um, this property is not in the entertainment district. So, they if they had a liquor license, they can serve alcohol, but they could not carry it out of the building. It's not part of the entertainment district.

They're about a block out. They're a good The entertainment district ends at Hazel Street. They're further. They're a good two or three blocks out. And there's no plan. There's there would be no reason to extend it down there because there's nothing between the entertainment district and this building except the Mountain Valley Water building. And I think FedEx has a some kind of facility there. They always have their trucks parked at. So there's no entertainment between the entertainment district and this building. Yeah. And I think it would be hardressed to extend it down there. There's no discussion. Entertainment district ends where it's at Hazel Street. at Hazel Street. Hazel is

Hazel is the street that next to city hall where the parking lot is over this way. Yeah. And then it goes front street when you come around the rail behind in front of the front street stage and you come around that turns into Hazel Street. Yeah, I thought so. I thought stop short of the auto museum. Yes, it does. Very good. Okay.

And Mr. Valin is here tonight if you have any questions. And even um there is another part to this. If we reszone at C2, he does have to have a conditional use permit for the MMA venue. So that would be part two of this. So, but he is here if you have any questions. Okay. Or I'm here if you have any questions. So we for the MMA you'd need a conditional use permit whether it was C1 or C2 either one, right? Yes. I believe it's item number four is a conditional use permit. What

I gave you guys is this is a list of everything that's allowed in C1 and C2 because it came up today and I've highlighted the things that would be allowed in C2 that would not be allowed in C1 or would be restricted in C1. Okay. Um, he would need he would still need a conditional use permit. All right. Any more questions of Jamie,

a procedural question. Uh, Mr. Chairman. Jamie, if I remember correctly, uh, if the board chooses to amend a zoning request, we can go stricter but not more lenient. Is that correct? That's correct. And we have laid out in our bylaws that list from less lenient to more lenient. And the C1 is more lenient than C2. So, you could reszone at C1 tonight without it having to come back. Very good. I I thought that was correct. Thank you. But if if it Yes, you could do that. That's what I had, Mr. Chairman.

Okay.

All right. Thank you, J. U. Mr. Mr. Beline, would you like to come forth and state your name and address and uh share whatever you'd like on your project? was my name is Byron Belan 8121 uh Memuire Rowlet Texas um what we're doing we are the owners of BMF we're the one we do fight nights we do MMA kickboxing we do boxing and we have host events and uh we're going to be purchasing property from from the guy there and um we're going to put a lot of money into this building um a couple hundred thousand just on renovations not including to purchase uh you know we're going to do a lease and then we're going to purchase it in 18 months um at st substantial amount and we have already talked with the city uh the what is the city um Texas I mean Texas Arkansas police department the chief said he has no objections to us doing it uh he was behind us 100% uh and we also we were hiring as security the city uh police department They gave us the information we need. You know, post the vehicles out like they do in the city. They have two vehicles that's parked out there. You know, you're required to pay for the city uh police department. Yeah.

Uh and also our chief of police uh that's going to be the head of our security staff. He's a a police officer uh currently. His name is Charles McDuffy. And so, you know, we have zero tolerance for BS. Um and pretty much that's what we want to do. have it resone so we can get underway with construction. Is your is your company sanctioned or licensed by We Yes, sir. We have

Yes, sir. We are licensed not only uh we have uh the state of Arkansas. The uh athletic boxing commissioner is John Webb here in the state of Arkansas. We have uh uh MMA, we have uh boxing, we have uh promoters license, we own event license, we own um matchmakers, we own probably 14 license here. We've had license here in the state of Arkansas for uh approximately since I think 2020. Um we're just now deciding to bring it to Texas. Uh we're trying to bring Texas uh hub it with like Dallas, bring Dallas here. We're going to bring Louisiana here. We're going to bring Atlanta, Georgia, Florida. And we trying to get people from everywhere to come to Texas. Um

if you're part of a professional organization, would you be able to draw in some known contestants, some, you know, people somebody people might know about? I mean,

Oh, yeah. We we already got we've already we've uh been negotiating for uh two years to get fighters here. We were going to put the fight we're going to do it at the uh John Webb told us is do it at the uh place but they only hold 500 people. That's not that we couldn't do it there. Um, and we we got Florida's been negotiating the promoters there for several years. Um, and want us to get, you know, we're not going to just do fights because it's not because we're going to have a lot of money spending every month that uh, you know, and so we, like I said, you know, we're going to have a liquor license. We're applying for the liquor license which we've already talked to. They uh, the

what is it? And um, Little Rock, they submitted us with all the application, everything. um you know because we're going to also do uh people want to have a party, we're going to we allow them to do it because we have to make a certain amount of money because our you know our insurance is right at roughly right now we're paying about 16,000 a year just just for the fighters and you know for the fighters we have to have we have to have a uh a bunch you know our shity bonds then we have to pay for every fighter we're responsible when they fly in they they're not responsible for paying it we have to pay for for it. Uh, and then we pay for the their hotel and the meals while they're here. So, it's a big enterprise. Oh, yeah. And you said you've already applied for your liquor license.

No, no, we're not going to apply. We want we not we are going to be applying for it once we find out about if this get resone. Gotcha. Okay. But you plan on applying. Oh, yeah. We have here we have the application right here. Okay. Yes. What kind of seating do you anticipate? uh for this facility. What kind of who how much seating? Uh how many people are you going to be able to get in to watch the fight?

Well, uh we going we we're building outside um patios. Um we're going to there's right now there's an outside uh loading ramp. Uh we've had people come in uh out and look and to revamp that. We're going to make that outside. We're going to have all that. Uh we're looking at probably 800 to a,000. All right. I have a question. Have you spoken to the fire department? Yes, ma'am. He we we've already talked with the fire department uh the chief and he we took him uh drawings and he's he's he's went over everything with the uh not with the state fire marshall in Little Rock as well.

Good. Well, a couple of us on this panel are old enough to remember when we had professional wrestling here in Texas at the Boys and Girls Club and that was a big deal back in the 60s7s that Yeah, that was a big deal. And we also licenses as uh for wrestling. Yeah. Yeah. And I think Friday Night Fights, that was a big thing. Wow. All right. So, you you do anticipate perhaps a liquor license? Yes, sir. You do anticipate perhaps selling beer or what have you. Do you plan on putting in a bar or anything like that? Yes, sir. Okay. All right.

Well, that'd be an exciting enterprise. That would Yeah. Wow. That'd be great. Well, we tried to do one uh in Triana. Um you know, the kids be fighting and instead of them fighting in in the community, why not come here and fight? Yeah. you know, and uh you got we right now we probably have 40 kids just from this area that we already have signed up. Only thing we got to do is um once we find the venue uh once we get set up, all they have to do is uh submit it to uh the Athletic Athletic Boxing Commission

and tell them, "Hey, look, we're going to we're going to do a sanctioned fight or we're going to do a sparring." Um you know, sanction and sparring is too different. you know, if you got a beef with him, y'all can just come in here and we and we set our ring up and you fight and y'all show hands and hopefully it's done with it. Now, the sanctioning part, we have to give a a 10day NOI, notice of intent. Uh, and then that's when the state comes in, they look at our ring, check our ring out, and then they and then they send when we do do the fight, you know, they'll send their people out, and they get a percentage off of your uh ticket sales. And so all the ticket sales has to go into a metal uh box that's locked and then that's how they determine what what we owe them.

Yeah. There there's a a Golden Glove boxing team out of Atlanta, Texas that they go to tournaments. That's pretty big deal. If you did youth boxing or anything like that, yeah, that's that's pretty big deal. Yeah. And there's one guy here in Texas Canada that's pretty good now. He's he's MMA. He's they got him he moved to Dallas with better training. Uh, and I'm I'm definitely gonna get him to fight. All right. And so I want him to fight for us. Great. Is this venue are you planning on having like teaching the MMA sparring or do you plan on it just being an event?

No, no, we're going to do we're going to we're going to we already have a lot of equipment. I'm I'm an MMA instructor as well, licensed by the state of Arkansas in Texas as well. Okay. So, so you plan on like doing adult classes, kids classes.

But see, kids with kids, we have to do they have to sign a waiver. And even with the fights, you have to sign a waiver um on all fight nights um which the attorneys drafted that uh months and months ago. You know, everybody had you can't just come in and fight and you can't just come out the street and fight. You know, you have to have mouthpieces in for um sparring. You have to have mouthpieces. You have to have head gear and the gloves go, you know, uh you know, you and it's weight class. You can't be 270 pounds fighting 120 pounds. It don't work. Uh you know, you got flyweight, featherweight, the different division. Um even in, you know, that's how it is. Good.

So, so will you be uh allowing uh for events like taunt taekwondo type tournaments or anything like that or just if if somebody come to us with taekwondo, we can we can host them because we're licensed. Okay. Um, and there was an a company that was licensed here and and um they no longer licensed the state because whatever they got into things with with the state and so um as far as we know we're the only licensed uh promoter, event planners, all the things in this area. Okay. So, would this be something that um you could bring your family to or would it be age appropriate since you were

I would say be age appropriate. I wouldn't I wouldn't I mean I I mean depending on the fights, you know. Um personally, I wouldn't bring my 5-year-old daughter to a fight. You know what I mean? Um I'm just being honest with you. But, you know, my son, he could fight. I'd bring him, you know. Um you even have little girls want to fight. But, um you know, with my daughter, she's a girly girl, so I wouldn't bring her to it. If you watched MMA on TV at all, it could get a little I I know I would cry. All right. All right. Any other

any other questions, sir? Okay. Thank you, sir. Do we have any opposition? Seeing none, chairwood,

m Mr. Chairman, I think uh I'm excited about this. I think this would be a great venue for texture can. I'd like to give him a shot and see if we can make this happen. Uh, I do like Miss Jamie's idea of the reszone to uh a C1. That makes it uh open for review by this board if he chooses once he gets his liquor license. And if he chooses to do that, then we could we would have a conditional use permit review for that. Okay.

Uh if we reszone at C2, the business will be there and the next uh owner if should he fail at some point down the road years from now the next owner could come in and as a use by right open a bar or a nightclub so it gives us no oversight to that okay oversight would be minimal but I I think the reszone would be appropriate and it wouldn't affect our uh conditional use on item number four that we have on the the MMA So, I

I would uh like to make a motion to change the zoning from C2 to C1 and uh approve. I'll second that. We have a motion and a second to uh for a motion to C1. Motion and second. Okay. Have a roll call. Alita Picket. Yes. Jason Dupri, yes. Chris Owens, yes. Cory Mox, yes. Boots Thomas, yes. And Chairman Neil, yes. All right.

All right. Okay. So the second part of this um they will h they will have to come back and get a conditional use permit for the bar part of it when that ever occurs when that occurs. But the second part of this is the conditional use permit for the MMA arena for the commercial amusement venue. Okay. No, I don't have anything else. It's the same property. All right. I move we approve the conditional use permit. Second that. Moved and second to approve the conditional use permit. Roll call. Anita Picket. Yes. Jason Dupri. Yes. Boots Thomas. Yes. Chris Owens. Yes. Cory Mobs.

Yes. And Chairman Neil? Yes. Very good. Okay. And Byron, I'll get you a letter and everything out tomorrow. They're telling the city board has to review. Oh, that's right. The city board has to approve the resoning and that will take place the first Monday in September, but I'll put all that in the letter. They don't have to approve the conditional use permit, but they do have to approve the reser. Yeah. Our vote tonight was a recommendation to the city board to have the final word.

Good luck. Hey, best of luck. All right, item five. Okay, so I finally got a hold of someone at the Flying J um the Flying J headquarters office, Christine Christy Snider, and I sent her all the draft ordinances and everything and they have no issue with being reszoned to mixeduse Highway. Perfect. Cool. So the first thing we have to do is get the mix get the ordinances on the books and then reszone them. Yes. So we have two ordinances, one for the truck stop and one for the mixeduse highway.

Okay. Uh okay. And I believe this time I highway zone comes first, right? And then Yes. And then we'll agree for the truck stop under the mixed use highway. Right. So the board of directors has to pass the mixeduse highway reclassification zoning. Correct. They Yes. They have to pass both of them, but they have to pass it. Do we have to pass them first or have we already passed them? Mixed highway first. Okay.

We haven't passed either one, but we've done the workshop on. Okay. I think we were all ready to last time we just decided to make J. Are you you happy with the script? I'm happy with it. I wrote it, but it's up to y'all whether you're happy, but we have made all the changes you guys asked for. I'm sure you didn't have any reservations. No, nothing's got yellow marker on it. It was your favorite.

Yeah, we added um minor garage minor repair. We added a definition for that. We added a requirement for a lighting plan. Um pavement screening, that's all the same. Actually that never mind the lighting plan is in the truck stop ordinance. Yes, mixed use highway ordinance is just but we did we did add the minor repair garage. Okay.

Okay. We talked about area overall area parking area and building area. Did we finalize that? We you guys wanted to go with 80,000 square ft as the minimum lot area and I think that was the same for C3. I think we pulled Yeah, we did the twoe limit on inoperable vehicles.

That's under the truck stop ordinance. Well, if if if some other operator comes in and wants to build a bigger facility, they can amend the ordinance through the board of adjustments. If they wanted to add another 10,000 square feet, let's say they can add, they just can't take away. Well, we didn't want them to be small. Board of adjustments is a variance committee and they they can take our our any ordinance we have and make adjustments to it case by case. Cool. They're the only board that's allowed to do that by Arkansas Wild.

You're still on the board? Yeah. Jason and I both serve. He's still on. I was on first. So, an interesting board. All right. So, we need to uh So, is your desire I think this is how we're going to have to do it to pass the mixeduse ordinance here, get it passed through the board. I think we could go ahead and approve the truck stop ordinance tonight, but I can't take it to the board until this is on the books. Does that sound right?

Yeah. So the truck stop ordinance is are you referring to Triple J flying J? Well, no, that's reszoning them is a whole another issue. We had a truck stop ordinance where truck stops were only allowed in the mixeduse highway zone. Okay. Okay. Two two things, two separate ordinances. We're creating the we're creating the mixeduse highway zone. Highway zone and then we're going to do the truck truck stop, right? Yeah. And that truck stop ordinance is where we had lighting plans and drainage plans and Yeah. Yeah. Um we don't currently have a mixeduse highway zone and we were creating it. I'm sorry. I No, you're fine. Yeah.

Well, the chair if uh that's good. If it's your wish, chair would entertain a a recommendation for a mixeduse ordinance. I move to approve the ordinance as written for mixeduse highway zone. Second. I have a have a request for an ordinance and approval and second. Roll call. Anita Picket. Yes. Jason Dree. Yes. Boots Thomas. Yes. Chris Owens. Yes. Cory Moms. Yes. Chairman Neil. Yes.

And then I think we can go ahead and approve the truck stop ordinance tonight. I just can't take it to the board until the other one is passed by the board. But that'll get that off our plate. Chair would entertain a request approval of the truck stop truck stop ordinance. So truck stop ordinance is section 2884. Well, that's what it is right now because the entire ordinances are being redone. So everything will be reumbered. But do we have to approve those once they're reed?

We do not. I've I've already reviewed the ordinances and sent in our changes and most of them are just happy to glad stuff. Um but the board hasn't passed the new uh code of ordinances yet. So once they do all the numbering will change but right now it's 2864 which falls under supplemental provisions. It's where our parking provisions are and temporary secondary dwellings are and bed and breakfast and all that. Am I correct to say that our truck stop ordinance that we're think talking about right now is a uh an amendment or edit edit to what we currently have. It it would be an addition to what we current addition to and it ties into the

mixed use highway. And this all started because we had some board of directors that were concerned about truck stops being deep inside the city limits. That's correct. Yes. Okay. Very good. All right. Any more discussion? What are we calling this ordinance? Truck stop ordinance. Truck stop ordinance. Yes. I move we approve that truck stop ordinance. I sweated for hours over that name. I'll second move to approve and a second the truck truck stop ordinance. Very good. Brokart. Anita Picket. Yes. Jason Dupri. Yes.

Boots Thomas. Yes. Chris Owens. Yes. Cor Mox. Yes. And Chairman Ne. Yes. All right. Very good. And I don't believe I have anything else. All right. That I can think of. Velvet. No comments or you've all already staff commented. I staff commented. My voice doesn't feel like commenting anymore. All right. Chair would entertain a motion to adjourn. So move. All in favor say I. I. I. We we would always say don't leave before the troops when we would leave before