Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the city of Topeka planning commission meeting. We are commissioned appointed by the mayor and city council to plan for the orderly growth and development of the community to hold public hearings and make recommendations to the governing body on planning items. Please know that the governing body rules state that public hearings for planning cases shall be conducted solely by the planning commission. No additional public hearings will be conducted by the governing body. Tonight's cases are tentatively scheduled to be heard by the governing body next month. Agendas can be found on Topeka.gov. Some of tonight's cases involve public hearings. For those cases, the procedure will be as follows. First, the planning department staff will summarize the case. Next, we will hear from the applicant or the representative. Then we will receive public testimony. Comments will be limited to four minutes. For agenda items that do not involve public hearings, public comment is allowed provided the person has signed up on Topeka Speaks or has notified staff prior to 3 p.m. today. Since we have an overwhelming amount of people speaking, we will stick to this policy. So if you did not sign up before 3 p.m. today, you will not have the opportunity to do public comment during this meeting. Comments will be limited to four minutes. Finally, at the end of regular business, the commission will entertain general comments regarding matters relating to commission business, provided the person has signed up on Topeka Speaks or has notified staff prior to 3 p.m. today. Comments will be limited to four minutes. Colleen, can you take the roll, please?

Yes. Mr. Lawley?

Here.

Ms. Heron? Here. Mr. Brooks?

Here.

Mr. Bolling?

Here.

Mr. Mock?

Here.

Ms. Hannon? Here. And we have six present for a quorum.

All right, awesome. We will now move on to approval of the minutes.

Move to approve.

Second. All right, calling to take the vote, please.

Mr. Brooks? Aye. Mr. Bolling? Aye. Ms. Hannon? Aye. Ms. Heron? Aye. Mr. Lawley?

Aye.

Mr. Mock? Aye. And the minutes are approved 6-0-0.

Thank you. All right, now moving to Declaration of Conflict of Interest, ex parte communications by members of the Commission. All right. Aye. Due for item 1, Z2608, I do work closely with that organization. However, I'm not part of this particular project. So I do feel like I can still vote and have a fair opinion. I just want to communicate that relationship. And I did have conversations with members of the NOTO committee. arts district in reference to a public comment that will be made today. We were in conversations about a different project, but it did come up and we did discuss it briefly. Moving on to action items. Z2608.

Madam Chairman, Z2608 is a request to change zoning property from ONI to Austin Institutional to M1 two-family dwelling district. William Sharp, our planner, one of our planning staff, he wrote the report, and he will be presenting the report and recommendation.

Thank you.

Okay. So this is a request for rezoning at 1600 Southwest Topeka Boulevard. The applicant is requesting a rezone from ONI, Office and Institutional District, to M1, Two Family Dwelling District. It's approximately 6,353 square foot lot. Previous use was vacant for the property and this rezoning, the purpose for the rezoning is to allow for a duplex to be built on site. So getting a little bit into the zoning and character of the surrounding neighborhood. This is on the southeast corner of Topeka Boulevard and 16th Street. This part of Topeka Boulevard is mostly residential and dispersed with office. I'm sure driven down Topeka Boulevard, you can think of the bigger houses and offices that line those streets. So the surrounding zoning reflects that. To the north you have M3 multiple family, south M3 again. East you have M12 family which for some duplexes over on Harrison Street and across Topeka Boulevard west is office and institutional with M3 multifamily mixed in. And The Kansas Bureau of Investigation, KBI, is directly south as well on that block. A little bit about the future land use of this area. Again, Topeka Boulevard has traditionally been for offices, office use. You've seen that in the past. Our land use growth management plan and neighborhood plans also reflect this future land use as office. However, The last, well, the last rezoning for this property was in 2011. It was a neighborhood-wide rezoning that the Planning Commission initiated. This property went from E, multiple family, to the ONI 2 office district. There was no applicant or builder lined up for getting anything built on this lot during that rezoning, so it was just a neighborhood rezoning, and It's been vacant for several decades. Parcel has been vacant for over 30 years. That last structure on site, it was an apartment building. It was demolished in 1989. And it appears that nothing's been built since then on that lot. And again, the original zoning was E for that multiple family dwelling district. The apartment building was there for several decades in the 20th century. Was rezoned in 2011 to ONI 2. However, no offices have been built on that site since then. The applicant sent, I'm sure it's a The commission is familiar with Scent and that they're a nonprofit to help people get into homes and houses. They have plans lined up ready to build a duplex on this site, and that's why they want to get it rezoned to that M1 two-family dwelling district. So with that all in mind, staff is recommending approval of the reclassification of the property from O&I 2, Office and Institutional District, to M1, Two-Family Dwelling District. I don't want the presentation to take any questions, and the applicant's here as well.

All right, thank you. Any questions for staff, by commissioners? Okay, thank you. Would the applicant like to come up and speak?

Good evening, Chairman and Planning Commission. Thank you for having me up to speak tonight. This is a part of our plans in hopes of bringing more units to our infill and empty lots within our city. We are working with a partner who made us aware of this particular model, which we feel would put some more of our lots to use and be able to bring more affordable housing we plan on pairing this with the funds that we recently secured through the affordable housing trust fund to help some families mixed income families get into more units within the house in our community and how to use infill lots in an effective adequate manner and so we hope that you move forward on this rezoning as this would be a critical part and play hopefully see more of these around our city and a lot that fit thank you any questions for the applicant

I love the concept. I think it's great. I've always thought like we need to infill these lots. So I love it. I just have a kind of a more technical question. There was a note by Public Works that any future driveway should be off the alley. If the driveway is proposed on 16th Street, it'll need to be 80 feet from Topeka Boulevard. Have you laid a duplex out to make sure that worked?

Yeah. So what we're planning with this, one, we're planning on this being, hopefully, a modular build. And we're wanting the driveways to come off the alley to be efficient and to use carports in back of the house. The thing that is really efficient about this is if you look at the footprint for the particular model that we're using, it would fit on the footprint for a single family home. And so if you look at the history of this lot, it was originally divided into 25-foot lots, which would fit exactly what we need by going back to this. And so it would be, if we place it just right, it would be already platted in the correct way, and everything would fit just right with this, and the families would have green space along with it. Perfect. That's good.

Any other questions? All right. Thank you, Jonathan.

Thank you.

And now we will open up for public comment. Okay. Seeing none, we will close public comment and move to any further discussion by commissioners.

Along Topeka Boulevard, I know that's great. We always want more office space, but there is a lot of unleashed office space on Topeka Boulevard, so I don't see that somebody is going to jump out and build an office there anytime soon, my opinion.

Thank you. Anyone else? Yeah, no, I agree. I'm always excited to see just opportunities for empty vacant lots to be used in a way that is very needed by the community. If there's no further discussion, I will take a motion.

Move to approve. Second.

All right.

Colleen, take the vote. Yes. Mr. Brooks?

Aye.

Mr. Bolling?

Aye.

Ms. Hannon? Aye. Ms. Herron?

Aye.

Mr. Lawley?

Aye.

Mr. Mock? Aye. Motion passes 6-0-0. Okay.

Moving on to Z2609.

Madam Chairman, this is an application for rezoning to change the zoning from C2 commercial to M12 family dwelling district. Paul Turner, on our planning staff, he wrote the staff report, and he's going to present it along with the recommendation. Thank you. Thanks, Mike.

All right, so this is Z2609, just like Mike said, proposing a change in zoning from commercial to two-family dwelling. The site is 2016 Southwest 10th. Currently there is a single-family home on the east half of the property. The west half is currently vacant. The applicant intends to split the parcel down the middle and build a new single-family home on the west half. In the past, this property was developed. There were actually two residences on the west half, 2020 Southwest 10th and then 976 Southwest Lindenwood. And the property's already platted, Melrose subdivision, so they just intend to split right down the middle, create two 50-foot lots. And then their plan that they've shared with us is just one single-family home at this time. The neighborhood, so this is basically the very west edge of historic Old Town. Kind of in the core parts of this neighborhood on the side streets, it's mostly smaller single-family homes. That's really the predominant character. And then along 10th, there's a lot of mixed offices and commercial uses. There are a few legal non-conforming residences in those commercial districts, including the existing one at 2016 Southwest 10th. Additionally, there's that PUD right next door. That was a recent rezoning. That was the adaptive reuse kind of mixed use building that allows for residential or commercial uses. The future land use plans, we've kind of got two future land use plans that we were considering. The current adopted plan was adopted in 2003. That plan designates it as office. There is a draft update that I believe is actually being presented tonight. So it's not yet fully adopted, but it's in kind of a finalized state. And I know the neighborhood worked really hard on this update. And they have this as a mixed-use commercial or residential future land use designation. So it's not the officially adopted FULU map yet, but... We did take this into account a little bit with what the neighborhood was feeling. And then staff is recommending approval of the rezoning. We'd be happy to answer any questions. And then we have an applicant's representative here as well.

Thank you. Any questions for staff by commissioners? Okay. Would the applicant like to come up?

Good evening. Thank you for letting me be able to talk on behalf of Watson Real Estate Development. Yeah, generally we're just looking to utilize the vacant lot that we currently own and transition that into BUILD A TWO-STORY NEW ORLEANS-STYLE GARDEN DISTRICT HOUSE, FOUR BED, TWO BATH. WE STILL HAVE YET TO DRAFT THE PLANS BECAUSE WE STILL NEED TO REZONE IT FIRST, SO HENCE WHY WE'RE HERE. SO IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE 225,000 RANGE, SO 225K. THAT'S THE ESTIMATED I think appraisal is what is anticipated, and the cost is about $175,000 without land acquisition costs, which we already have.

All right, thank you. Any questions for the applicant? Okay, thank you. All right, do we have any public comment on this item? All right, I will close public comment and move to discussion by commissioners. And if no discussion, I'll take a motion.

I would make a motion to approve.

Second.

All right, thank you. Colleen, you want to take the vote?

Mr. Brooks? Aye. Mr. Bolling?

Aye.

Ms. Hannon? Aye. Ms. Herron? Aye. Mr. Lawley?

Aye.

Mr. Mock?

Aye.

The motion passes 6-0-0. All right.

Thank you. Okay. CPA 2601.

A little housekeeping before we get to that item.

Brief intermission.

Thank you.

Chairman, members of the Commission, This has been a long time coming to get here. Gerardo and other staff have been working with the neighborhood, the Neighbor Improvement Association for Old Town, for over a year on this neighborhood plan. The neighborhood has been very engaged in this and done a lot of work, and we're very pleased to get to this point. So this is on tonight for action. There's a public hearing that's been advertised. And The neighborhood is here to speak to this, I believe. Also, I want to mention that they did submit some comments. They're attached to the report in your packet. So there are kind of two parts to this. Request that the historic survey that was done for part of the neighborhood in, when was this done, 2021, be recognized. And it is. And that's something that Commissioner Pearson mentioned at the last meeting on this. The second part to this has to do with the affordability of housing on particular blocks. And there's a comment in here. It states that while we know we can account for future inflation, infill housing shouldn't be more than 30% markup on our lowest valued property on that street. There's a little bit more to it, but it's in your packet if you want to read it. So we would ask you to take that into consideration. Staff has looked at this. We think there might be an alternative to this, a specific language. And so we don't support the details of that, but certainly there is an alternative that could be considered. And we can discuss that some more if you'd like, if you have any questions about that. But with that, I'll turn it over to Gerardo Munoz Camacho, our neighborhood planner. Thank you.

Thank you, Mike. So this is a historic Old Town neighborhood plan update. Just a quick recap from our last Planning Commission meeting. The neighborhood planning process started in May 2025 with our kickoff and it had committee meetings from spring to the summer of this year with our final meeting being back in July of 2026. Planning Commission and Governing Body for August and September. The planning area for this plan, the north is 6th Avenue, south is 10th Avenue, the west is Summit, the east is Topeka Boulevard. Some key issues that were found, decreased homeowner rates, infrastructure needing improvement, lack of green space in the neighborhood, lack of infill housing options, as well as vacant lots within Old Towne. Future land use, as stated before, is changing slightly to support more commercial mixed use and residential uses in the neighborhood. Earlier, there was a case regarding that. On the southwest portion of this map, you can see it being commercial residential in the purple. So for infrastructure projects, that was part of the plan, talking with the neighborhood as well as selecting projects. our engineering staff helped us look at projects around the neighborhood and then when meeting with the neighborhood, deciding on what to focus the DREAMS infrastructure money to. 26 cyber projects were selected, that being all of the cyber projects that were identified Six curb and gather projects as well as mill and overlay on Southwest Lincoln from 6th to 10th Avenue coming out to 1,139,250. The cap on it is 1.4, but 70,000 of that is being allocated towards a park that is being proposed by China County in the neighborhood. Here's a list of the selected projects as well as the quantity, cost, contingency, design estimated costs, inspection estimated costs, and total. Again, these are just estimates, but it helped the neighborhood as well as us be able to budget out what they could do with the allocated funds. As you can see, all the sidewalk projects are selected. as well as the curb and gutter, the mill and overlay, alley approaches, and sidewalk ramps in the neighborhood. Not all of the alley approaches or sidewalk ramps were selected, though. Here we have a map of the remaining projects. The remaining projects are a mix of curb and gutter, those alley approaches and sidewalk ramps I had mentioned, as well as mill and overlay on Southwest Polk. The total estimated cost of remaining projects is $1.4 million. That does not mean that the projects hopefully won't ever get addressed, but they are listed in the plan to hopefully help the neighborhood in the future be able to support any grants they might apply to. And here's that list of remaining projects, again, coming out to about 1.45 million. There are some mill and overlay projects that are listed here that I failed to show on the map, but they are listed and they are in the plan accurately. Plan highlights work to stabilize the intensive care block group, improve overall housing conditions through rehabilitation funds, new infrastructure focused on accessibility throughout the neighborhood, AND ACTIVATE VACANT LAND THROUGH NEIGHBORHOOD SCALE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. STAFF RECOMMENDS APPROVAL OF THE HISTORICAL OLD TOWN NEIGHBORHOOD PLAN UPDATE AS AN ELEMENT OF THE CITY'S COMPREHENSIVE PLAN. SO NEXT STEPS, THE PLAN IS AVAILABLE ONLINE AT TOPEKA SPEAKS, HISTORICAL OLD TOWN NEIGHBORHOOD PLAN UPDATE, CITY COUNCIL REVIEW IS TO BE DETERMINED, PROJECT DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION IS TO START IN hopefully start in 2028, although it will most likely be a longer process for implementation. And I can answer any questions.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions for staff by commissioners? Commissioner Brooks?

So what are we approving? Just the plan? Everything we saw? So what was the 30% thing that... Will you explain that a little bit? Because are we approving... I didn't see that in the...

Yes, that was the comment that was later after the presentation was submitted. Okay. But, Mike, did you have something to add to that?

Yeah, so the written comment from the Neighborhood Improvement Association is included in the packet, and it makes a statement about the 30% markup. on the lowest valued property. I think there are a couple concerns about that. One would be that the lowest valued property, we don't know what that is per block, so that's pretty specific. I think also that, I think we're crossing a line if we're getting into controlling price levels. I think that's a little bit, that's just a line I don't think the city should cross in a neighborhood plan. As an alternative, we could add some language in the objective section of the plan, which is probably more powerful anyway, toward maintaining affordability or something, and we can offer some language. But the neighborhood is here to explain that a bit more and to express their desires at this time. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.

All right. Thank you. That was actually going to be my question. So any additional comments for staff? All right. Awesome. So then would we open it up for the applicant? Or is it just opening it up for public comment?

Public comment.

Okay. All right. Awesome. We'll move on to public comment. Is there anyone that wanted to speak on behalf of the neighborhood plan?

Although I do appreciate the, like we don't know me, but that's okay. So, Shamika King-Sims with Historical Town Neighborhood Improvement Association. Thank you for First, let me just say thank you to the staff for the work, which was very difficult. I don't know how much you guys know about neighborhood plans and the things that go into it, but because the neighborhood has waited so long to be able to do this, we did not want to just run through this process. And as you guys know, other things came up during that process that required us to step back, evaluate what our priorities are as a neighborhood, and be able to move forward. So while that may have been a challenge to the staff and certainly to our neighborhood siblings who are also waiting their chance to get their neighborhood plans updated. I also think it's important that we set a standard of care and intentionality so that if these plans don't get updated again for another 10 to 15 years at the least, it was done with love. So the comment that I made, which Also, you know what's interesting is as we keep coming back for rezonings and other different issues that come before the Planning Commission, it requires the neighborhood to be thinking about, okay, what do we want our future to look like? And so when we're looking at housing that's going up to... $195,000, $215,000, $250,000 when less than 10 years ago we have a neighbor who paid $58,000 for their house. That's a pretty serious markup. And it changes the texture of who is in the neighborhood and who can stay in the neighborhood. And recently in April, I was invited to go to Durham, North Carolina for a challenge called the Compassion Challenge where developers and planners and neighborhood advocates came together to consider what happens to low-income neighborhoods when There are these investments, such as Hayti in Durham specifically, which is a historically black neighborhood. What happens when those neighborhoods aren't invested and then suddenly are invested? And what happens to the neighbors as a result of it? And the big thing that kept coming up was displacement. And one of the... pieces of this compassion challenge was that historically black colleges and university students would come and look at the issues in Hayti and try to figure out how do we keep long-term residents here. So how do we have responsible growth as well as meeting the needs of the folks that are already here. And one of the things that came out of that, students, there was a group of students who suggested that Around 30% of displacement or higher should be a warning flag to the community that hey people are starting to get priced out. People are starting to make choices that maybe they wouldn't have to make if our if there were more. pieces in place to make sure that neighbors are able to stay and whether that's through homestead, you know, being able to opt out for age on your property tax or other homestead kind of type credits, people need some sort of protections in order to stay in their neighborhoods because we're talking about residents who've been here for 40, 50 plus years in some cases. So 30% was something that came out of that conversation. And in addition, when we look at neighborhood health, we've stated that 30% or more of housing that starts to become rentals is a warning flag in terms of housing. Is this block stable? So at that point, that's when we start to slide from dark blue to light blue or pink or red even. So it wasn't like I pulled 30% out of the air. That seems to be a number where people feel that this is a percentage where people should start to pay attention to what is happening on this block or on this street. So I'm fully aware that somehow the language may need to change. It might be too specific, but it's also not out of the realm of possibility. What we're trying to avoid is displacing our neighbors, and that's our goal.

All right. Thank you. Any questions for the applicant? All right. Well, I just want to say thank you so much for your commitment to getting with planning staff and just making sure that this is reflective of the community and just for the passion that you have for your community. Just for clarification, when you were mentioning the 30%, you're more so saying that you just want to make sure that there is some kind of awareness or intentionality towards minimizing displacement, not necessarily capping pricing at 30% of the lowest price? Or is it just keeping track of metrics to see how much displacement is going on?

That's a really great question. When I initially wrote the comment, it was definitely looking at pricing because I was thinking of this zoning that was coming up today and how $225,000 and $250,000 compared to $58,000 just ten years ago is enormous. But again, I think we would welcome conversation or language around minimizing displacement. We need some Some sort of flag, I think, is what we're just asking for. And we can continue that conversation. And I know, Gerardo, you're probably so tired of me, and I'm so sorry. But, again, we just really want to be intentional, and we want to keep our neighbors housed to the greatest extent possible because they're our biggest asset. Did I answer your question?

Yes, you did.

Okay.

Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you so much. All right. Any additional public comment? All right. We will close the public comment and move back to any discussion among commissioners. I guess I just have a question for staff. As far as when it comes to – I completely agree as far as, you know, there's a fine line between having any kind of opinion on pricing. But even when it comes to data aggregation, is that something that – the city or staff has the capability of I mean I guess there's data that's aggregated just by nature of the neighborhood health map but I mean outside of that is it even a what is a possibility of something like that?

Commissioner, I think that's challenging when you're talking about price How can the city track that when we don't really get that information? What we get from the county is property values in the parcel data. The city's not privy to sales data. And probably most importantly, historic sales data. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to go back 10 years and figure out what a house sold for necessarily just based on how records update and everything. So I would say it's a little challenging to track price data, the city to do that, I would say.

OK. All right. Thank you for that clarification. Just an additional thought, just because I think it's important, you know, when we do have public comment just to speak to that. I guess let me ask an additional question for clarification. So the neighborhood health map, it does communicate the percentages of renters to homeowners?

Correct. And we get that information strictly from the parcel data, depending on if the property owner lives in the property or their mail goes somewhere else, basically. So that's something we can easily track as the renter versus occupied.

And then how often is that updated?

So this would have got updated in the neighborhood plan, but we update neighborhood health every three years.

Okay. And so, Ms. Sims, that might be something that your NIA might want to track, is the neighborhood health map every three years as a solution? Or the NIA. I don't know. Maybe that's something as an NIA. We already track it.

We get it as soon as it comes out and kicks it out to the NIA.

Okay. All right.

Awesome. One of the things when we're looking at real estate in general, post-pandemic, a lot happened. And so there's a lot of all over the U.S., all over Topeka, prices just really shot up after the pandemic. And also in a lot of these neighborhoods where the number of rentals went up, so did the number of investors coming in and buying homes for cash, which drives the price up. I mean, if people were looking at even Likens Foster, 10 or 15 years ago, they would not realize that houses are selling $160,000 in Likens Foster. When I first started in real estate, someone told me, if you sold a house for $100,000 in Likens Foster, that would never happen. Well, that's not happening anymore. So part of the data is there's no way that we can anticipate something like happen post-pandemic on pricing. And again, the investor pool that comes in and buys, as you know, and they're buying these houses for cash and they're fixing them up and using them for investment income. So that's really difficult to do.

Yeah, and especially because the cost to fix up a property anymore is just a lot more expensive for the traditional consumer, so you are seeing a lot more investors. I think the data said that home prices in Topeka as a whole would have 50% since 2020. So, you know, that's something that you're seeing across the city for sure.

All right.

If there's no further discussion, I will take a motion.

So just to be clear, so I'll make a motion to approve, but nothing to do with the 30%. It's just the plan. Is that fair?

I think if you want to try to address the concern, there's something you could modify.

There's a feeling in me that wants to address it, but it's going to take a lot of mental processing. Because I was like, I don't know how to solve that problem.

Well, I think where you'd want to look to do that is page 32 of the plan. And the last bullet under housing... States provide a variety of housing types when the neighborhood belong for different price points. It's really just talking about variety. You know, that includes affordable housing too, but I'm not sure what the exact answer is. I just didn't want, my only thought of speaking out just now was just to not try to address what the NIA is asking you to do. So maybe there's some language that can be added. We can offer some tonight.

So we've done dreams before, right? I mean, the whole thought is that there's an infusion of capital that makes the neighborhood nicer. And then you start infilling. And then it starts increasing property values. And then it ends up taking the people that want to live there, that are living there, and they kind of get pushed out. That's the reality that we're talking about? So, but we've done dreams before, so have we seen that happen in other neighborhoods?

I don't think we've tracked that specifically.

And I think you're talking about gentrification, and I don't think... I don't think there's really been any substantial gentrification in Topeka to that extent, where it's taken neighborhoods and pushed people out. I could be wrong. Don't necessarily have the data to say yes or no.

Yeah. I mean, I think it'd be worth considering on the next round of dreams to think about this is a structural question that requires a lot of thought. I just don't think we can answer. To me, there's nothing to address at this moment. But maybe someone else has another idea.

I mean, I think we could possibly put something that special consideration or intentionality be given to maintaining a certain amount of stock in affordable housing. But I guess one of my questions that I'm thinking of is like, If we put something like that in this neighborhood plan, I mean, the desire would be that would be for the entire city. So because we haven't done that with other neighborhood plans, is that a potential issue? Or maybe I'm overthinking it. I might be overthinking it.

I don't think so. I think each neighborhood plan has different thoughts about things. There's neighborhoods that welcome investment and are chomping at the bit to have some more development in their neighborhood. So it just depends on the neighborhood.

And even if we add something to this plan, I mean, it's not going to stop the market from going and infilling housing. I mean, if we put a sentence in here that says no infill housing, are we going to say no to infill housing? So I don't think you can, there's nothing we can do to stop the market from being the market in my mind.

I mean, you're right.

Maybe that's why I'm struggling.

The plan's a policy document, so it's setting some policy. So there's some guidance in this plan. It gets a little more specific if there's, you know, yeah, I mean, that's it. That's it, basically. It's a policy document.

Would the planning policy for the city of Topeka kind of marry to this? Because we already have something in our planning policy in reference to affordable housing, if I remember correctly.

Neighborhood plans in the past have had ideas that have germinated into Policies or regulations. So yeah, that's possible that so for instance neighborhood plans are going way back, had this notion of accessory dwelling units as a thing that used to be legal, basically. And so a lot of neighborhood plans mentioned that, and at some point that got legs and got adopted as city ordinance. So, yeah, it's possible that something in this plan could spread into other plans or other policies.

Okay. I'll move to approve.

Okay.

Second.

Colleen, take the vote.

Mr. Brooks. Aye. Mr. Bolling. Aye. Ms. Hannon. Aye. Ms. Herron. Aye. Mr. Lawley.

Aye.

Mr. Mock. Aye. The motion passes 6-0-0. Moving on to A2602.

Yes, members of the commission. Planner Ann Marie Driver has been working on the analysis of this annexation, and she wrote the memo, and so she will be presenting this item tonight.

Thank you. This is an annexation request. The property owners involved are St. Peter and Paul Orthodox Christian Church and 37th and Gage LLC. They have consented to annexation. The area that's being annexed is a 19.35-acre property. The applicants are proposing to connect to city sanitary sewer and water. Connection to city utilities requires annexation. The Planning Commission here is here to make a finding that the proposed annexation is consistent with the Comprehensive Plan or Land Use and Growth Management Plan. The site that is undergoing being proposed for annexation is 19.35 acres. It is the area on my map above that's hashed in red. It is surrounded by the city limits on three sides. It's within tier two of the urban growth area. The urban growth area is that area that's contiguous to the city and is the next priority for urban growth. As I mentioned, connection to the reason this is being annexed is because they're requesting city water and city sanitary sewer. Staff is recommending the Planning Commission does find that the annexation is consistent with the comprehensive plan. Thank you.

Is the applicant here?

The applicant's not here tonight. They just consented to this. They didn't really apply for it.

Any public comment? I will close the public comment and move to discussion by commissioners. Okay. I will take a motion.

Motion to approve. I'll second.

Can I take a vote? Mr. Brooks? Aye. Mr. Bolling? Aye. Ms. Hannon? Aye. Ms. Herron? Aye. Mr. Lawley?

Aye.

Mr. Monk?

Aye.

The motion passes 6-0-0.

All right, thank you. Moving on to discussion items.

Okay, so I will be presenting this item tonight for discussion. I guess I could go to the next step here. So there are a few things on for discussion as far as these text amendments are concerned. The first one of these is data centers and energy storage systems. So what's expected is just, you know, until the moratorium ends, is close to being taken away. There's no, staff's not recommending any action on data centers, just to be clear. We're just kind of giving you an update, sharing information as it becomes available. So just to clarify, on June 8th, the Shawnee County Commissioners adopted an amendment to the county zoning regulations for data centers and energy storage systems. The county's regulations now require a conditional use permit for data centers and energy storage systems in industrial districts and some of the other rural districts. They are prohibited in their other county zoning districts. Shawnee County zoning regulations do not apply to land in Topeka city limits. On July 14th, Topeka's governing body adopted a 12-month moratorium within city limits on the acceptance, processing, and approval of data center applications. If there are existing data centers and approved data centers, not like there are a lot of approved data centers or anything, but if there are, this moratorium does not apply to those. It applies to new data centers. It doesn't mean that the Planning Commission can't discuss it or we can't study it. In fact, that's really the purpose of the moratorium is to give the city time to get more information and come up with regulations about data centers. In fact, the basis for the moratorium, it's in the whereas language of the ordinance, is the need for adequate time to evaluate the impact of large-scale data centers on the health, safety, and welfare of the community, and time to draft appropriate zoning, environmental, and infrastructure regulations. I'm reading right from the ordinance on the moratorium. On July 28, Compass Data Centers, which is the developer for the proposed data center that's outside of city limits, south of Topeka, along US 75, They conducted an open house at Washburn Earl High School. The information presented at the open house, information about water consumption, energy requirements, noise, and other impacts, is now on the Compass Data Center's website. And I can provide you with an address if you want, a URL if you'd like. It's pretty easy to find. If you just Google Compass Data Center's Topeka, it'll probably come up right up. So as we discuss this, keep in mind there are quite a few people that have signed up to comment on this particular item. And we will pause the presentation so they can do that. But as you hear anything else here tonight, and this applies to the data centers, energy storage systems, but all the other land uses we're talking about, what questions do you have before you make a recommendation on text amendments? That's the type of feedback that staff would like to hear from you tonight. So these text amendments, they affect these parts of the zoning code. And that's important because I think the point here is this is not the entire zoning code. There are other aspects of the zoning code. This is very limited. But there are a lot of aspects to these sections of the code that require a lot of thought. So one thing that we presented at the last meeting was that there are a lot of different types of data centers. As you can see on this slide, there are very small data centers. They're accessory data centers. They're in the basement of a big building, big office building. Any large user of data needs to have a server room. There's something called a micro data center. That's pretty small. Dedge data center. I'm sure there are at least a couple of these in Shawnee County. I know of at least one. I don't know how big it is. And I'm not sure it's an edge data center, but there's at least one existing data center that's operating as a primary use in Topeka. It's been there a long time. Moratorium does not affect that data center. There's small data center, so that's up to 10 acres, up to 50,000 square feet. There's mid-sized data center. That's up to... 20 megawatts, which is a lot of power. They do require a lot of power, that's for sure. But that's what you're talking about. You're talking about 50,000 to 250,000 square foot up to 40 acres. And then there's the hyperscale data center, which is much larger. The definitions I was able to find are 50 megawatts or more is considered a hyperscale data center. That's a lot of energy. The large ones that are being considered now for cloud computing purposes are considerably larger than that even. So I think it's important to keep all these different types in mind. At the same time, what we anticipate doing as staff is bring forward a recommendation, probably just require a conditional use permit for data centers. That way you can kind of consider the facts of that particular data center, its location, maybe adopt guidelines or standards associated with those data centers to address things like noise, buffering, that kind of thing. One thing that's important for people to understand, though, is zoning does not regulate utility usage directly. That's not really a zoning issue. Zoning regulates how neighbors are impacted by other things. But it's not quite that black and white. And then there's this thing called energy storage system. So an energy storage system is a facility that captures energy produced at one time and stores it for use at a later time. It's not limited to a battery type system, but these exhibits here, these exhibits on the slide, that's an example of a battery energy storage system. I think the concern about these is not only the aesthetics of them, but they can get really hot. There's a concern about fire hazards with energy storage systems. And these, I'm not aware of any of these. I don't know where these are located right now. I think there's some in Texas, maybe some in California, but I We haven't done a lot of research on these. I did get a question from somebody about one. So with that, I think that's all we have on data centers and energy storage systems tonight. If you have questions, but I think if you go to the website, the Compass Data Center's website, it has the boards that were on display at the open house. And I think those boards tell you a lot, especially about water usage and energy usage. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. So what we're going to do now is we're going to open it up for comment for this data center specifically. And then once public comment is done, then we'll open it up for commissioner discussion before we move on to the text amendments. Okay. So we will open it up for public comment. I will call the speakers by name. And just please keep your comments to four minutes. Unfortunately, we won't be able to do extra time today. And we just ask that you don't address anyone specifically and just keep your comments neutral in that sense. All right. So the first one is Thomas Underwood.

for data centers.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm happy to speak now, but I don't want to talk about data centers.

I apologize. We're not quite there yet. I'm so sorry. Thank you. Brett Blackburn.

Thank you, Commissioners. It's been about four years sitting in that chair, another year and a half sitting in those two back there. My name is Brett Blackburn. I didn't really prepare much for tonight, but I'm a fourth generation Topeka businessman. I'm sorry, fourth generation Topekan, third generation Topeka business owner. I own a business in Topeka for 33 years. One of my grandfather's first big jobs, important jobs, was this building when they built it. doing the landscape. I'm a former planning commissioner, former Topeka City Council member, engineer by profession. I now live on a farm 2.2 miles from the proposed data center. My family's had property in that area for over 60 years. As most of you know, I was probably considered over the years the most pro-development planning commissioner or city councilman that ever was anywhere in this building. I'm here not to speak pro or against data centers. I'm just here to talk about maybe some of the things you might think about in due diligence when you take up those issues. especially with hyperscale data centers. They're not just another building. Some of them can use as many as 500 megawatts. Think of Shawnee County using 5 megawatts and one center using 500 megawatts. This industrial power consumption is amazing and the potential for millions of gallons of water use, whether they say what they're going to use or not. Sometime between now and 2060, they're talking about the state of Kansas having about 1.86 million acre feet water shortfalls. So those are just some of the things to consider. You know, even if a data center uses water only for humidity or only for backup, it's still a considerable amount of water. Not only will we be asked to consider the issues dealing with the golden factors, oddly enough there's probably a few little issues in Taco Bell and crazy enough maybe even Arkenberg might hit when you have these things come up. I want to digress for one second. I remember when they first did the plan, and Dan was just a young planter. Now look, he's so experienced now. But anyway, other things to consider when you do your due diligence. Stormwater runoff impact to local water bodies. Impact on species. As an engineer, one of the things that I have to do is many environmental studies. Where I work, we probably have to go to a greater extent than most anybody else because we use federal funds. So those are some of the things you need to look at. The Topeka citizens, and even the citizens of Shawnee County, need transparency. You know, disinfectant is the, you know, sunshine is the greatest disinfectant. So you want to make sure that you let people ask the questions and you provide the answers to them. You know, mostly... what you need to know is what kind of guidelines will you use, what kind of questions will you pose, and that's important to the staff, that's important to elected officials, and you all. But some of the things that I think would be important to consider and have well-informed answers for are what's the power load, what the noise level, what the stormwater impervious impacts are, what the emergency response plans are, actual water use, property tax implications, road damage, and who's paying for it. Thanks.

Thank you.

I didn't time that, but I got close.

All right. Up next, Rebecca Marple.

Hi, my name is Rebecca Marple. Why am I here today? My land is at 85th and Stuart. So that's six steps from the proposed side of the Compass Data Center. I want to know how will this affect myself, my children, my neighbors, and the surrounding neighborhoods. This data center, this hyperscale data center, is not like the ones we currently have in Topeka, and we drove by some of them today. So one house is BNSF data, and the other is in the old Hallmark building, and it's half of the building. It has some records there. I grew up by one, the old Casey's in Carbondale, Kansas. So this is drastically different. You can't compare a regular data center to a hyperscale 600-acre data center. And that's what this is. This isn't a data center that uses Facebook. I remember in the last meeting someone mentioned, you all like phones. Well, but it's not the same thing. Facebook has been around forever. And it's not caused a massive swarm. I have serious concerns. We can't say it's Evergy's problem to figure out because it's all of our problems because it affects our health and safety. I'm a teacher. If my student can't find their bus, I can't say it's my problem. It's 401. I'm off the clock because it goes on bigger than that. And even if you don't live six steps away or a mile away or even five miles away, it is still something that you have to look into and take account of the concerns, the health of my two kids, who are two and four and play there, the health of our crops, our cows, our livelihood. And we have to protect these things. So I would ask that you classify, keyword here, hypersensitivity. scale data centers as heavy industrial, and that they can only be put on heavy industrial land, and that we put a cap as to how many megawatts they can have. Because again, I think our current ones here are around 50 megawatts. We're going from 50 to 400. We have to put an energy cap as to how much energy they can take, because again, that's not just Evergy's problem if we have a blackout. It's ours because we live here. We need guidelines, the strictest guidelines possible in regards to road setback. generator use, waste water contamination, proper disposal. I wouldn't just look at their signs because the ones that we saw at their actual open house have been disproved time and time again. 600 jobs became, well, we hope people will open restaurants there. 600 jobs became 30 in their actual CUP that they submitted. So I would not go there by that because I don't think they necessarily want to tell the whole truth, but what they hope we would like to believe is the truth and that's their job. They want to put a hyperscale data center there. I would also severely look at limiting the noise decibels allowed and the temperature control because again, as we were saying, these things get very hot. Like your cell phone, if you use it too long or if you take it out by the pool, they get very hot and it can increase the temperature of the surrounding area and that's where my kids play. That's where people live. That's where cows are, our crops, everything. It's a spiral effect. We need to have the strictest possible guidelines there. I went to the last land and development planning meeting. And right before my turn, the microphone started buzzing. And everyone was annoyed in one minute. And they sent the text guy to fix it. So imagine that buzzing in one minute. and being by that hyperscale data center next door. What can that do to you 24 hours a day? I ask that you take into consideration all of those things. And remember that Compass is actually from Canada. In Canada, their average data center size is 1 megawatt to 40 megawatts. Their electricity corporation has very strict guidelines, and they don't tend to let too many large hyperscale data centers in. And that is why they are all coming here. They have strict regulations. We need to too. Thank you.

All right. Chris Tyler.

My name's Chris Tyler. We live on 109th Street in Waukarusa, Kansas, right on the Shawnee County line. And I'm basically here. I made a comment to you all this morning. And first of all, thank you for representing us, representing the Topeka community. since even though we're on the Shenandoah County line, we're part of you guys. Please consider how big this mega center data center is going to be. My husband and I went to DeSoto, Kansas on Sunday to look at the massive site that was there and also the devastation to the surrounding area with the community. There were boarded up houses. We compared it to Montero. There was a church that still had the cross on the building and had boarded up windows. All those buildings are going to be just bulldozed over. In fact, there was a couple of bulldozers in yards. There were people that were still living in some of those houses. And the massive, massive utility lines. My husband, who will speak later hopefully, has been in the utility business for over 40 years here in Kansas and also Texas. And he was amazed at the utility lines that we saw, the massive tier lines that just ran on and on, encompassing that whole place. Please take into effect too that Compass data centers are based in Canada. And from our understanding, they build their buildings in Canada and simply move them here to assemble. So how many jobs are really going to be benefited in this area? How many guys are going to have a job that they can actually say they helped put up Compass data center? Please stop and just research as much as you can, and I know hopefully you will. It's not just about the money that you think that will be coming into Topeka and the surrounding area. It's our future and our kids' futures, too. Both of my kids went to Pauling South and Pauling Central, and they're adult men now. And funny enough, they both work in IT. And but hopefully I've instilled enough into them to take into effect the things that are good for IT and the surrounding and people that enjoy IT information and things that we hope might not be allowed to come into community so I appreciate all of you again and the work that you're doing and please take into consideration just all the people that this will affect not in just Shawnee County and the Waukarusa area but miles away so just take into a fact that you're here to represent us and and we hope that you will I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you. Amber Schmidt. Amber Schmidt. Okay. Dennis Brinkman.

My long-term career has been in stormwater management and water quality considerations. In fact, I was district conservationist here in this county for 16 years. And so mine is directed to protecting the water for contamination. And it's true, in this system here, they're going to use a closed-loop system to cool the computers and so on. Very similar, except for it's vastly bigger, just like your car. And it works great, your radiator in your car keeps your engine in control of the temperature very well, until the hose breaks and you have a problem. So hopefully, and it's mechanical, and we're talking about thousands of gallons of water, not just a gallon and a half in your car. So hopefully the sites are planned for the containment. How are you going to manage that? They don't just fill it up once. You have a flush and fill for your car. If you go to a shop here in town, you're going to have it flush and filled. But I'm sure there's a rule for how they manage that filled fluid. They can't just pour it down the storm sewers. So you have all this material. and somehow has to be contained and managed so then you don't have a, in fact, to talk about when they do their flush and fill, maybe 50,000 gallons of water. There's a 10-acre containment pond on it. It's supposed to have some water quality, but I don't know if it can handle 50,000 gallons at once. And they had mentioned about that, well, they could just dump it in the stream. Apparently, there's not a regulation with that type of material that you can't, but I don't know that totally. The other problem, if they do have fires, we know the lithium batteries you can't put out, so there'd be a lot of water sprayed. And all that's going to run into somewhere that hopefully stays in the site and not run off and have a chance to get controlled and monitored, you know, be able to cleanse. A good parallel, I don't know, a biosolid from the sewage treatment plant, they use it in their area for agricultural uses. In the Northeast, they used a lot of it before it got regulated for they understood it, so much so the land ended up being contaminated. You can't sell products off there. But luckily, here in Kansas, KDHE looked across the nation, and we have rules and methods in place that prevents that from being a problem. So really my charge is to scour the nation, where all these different centers are, what are they doing on storm water management, on containment of some of these materials, and come up with the best guidelines of how it's going to be done and monitored. And I think that would be it. And if they do use diesel to power their backups, or they're going to do a containment dam like you see a fuel tank, you'll already control that. So review other guidelines wherever, and maybe someone has come up with good language how to manage and take care of those areas. Thank you much.

Thank you. Carol Marple.

Thank you very much for listening to us. I do believe this is a county and a city problem, the data centers and what we're going to require of them. Our farm is across the road. We're at the data center. I do own a house here in the city. What I'm going to talk about is to ask you that you enact very strict requirements for data centers. As I said, it's just not a county concern, but also a city one. The city is working so hard, and I will say that I pretty much grew up in this town, and I'm not as old. I'm younger than you think. forget it, I'm not that old. But now you think I am, so we'll just skip that chapter and go on. What I wanna say, I've watched Topeka grow. I went to grade school here. You know, we're doing wonderful things in the city. You guys have revitalized the downtown. We've got the plaza. We've got restaurants down here, apartments, hotels. But I want to ask you, what would happen if a high-rise data center was put in downtown? I mean high-rise. The noise, the heat, the excessive use of utilities. That's not what we want. We want people to want to come to live in our community. And we are a community. There are deep roots here in both the city and the county. What happens if somebody decides they want to rehab an empty warehouse and add to that warehouse and put a huge data center in it? You know, that's going to affect the people that live there, the utilities. We know that the city has problems with their utilities. They're going to have to add so many water lines, sewers, just everything. I think a start would be that any data center, any huge data center, has to be zoned heavy industrial. I think that's a start. The other thing is we've got to take the time. The city's going to have a workshop tomorrow to listen, to ask questions. We've got one chance, one chance to get this right. And there's a lot of burden on everybody's shoulders here, property owners. We do not want to do something that is going to jeopardize the future of our families. and people that live here, that want to move here. So I ask you, and I think you're doing that with the moratorium, but please, please take the time. We're all learning new things and finding out more about the data centers than we ever thought we'd want to know. So I just thank you very much for all your hard work, and I see a lot more hard work down the future. Thank you.

Thank you. Amy Gillette.

Hello. My name is Amy Gillette, and I live in Topeka outside of city limits in the ETJ on the south side, about two and a half miles from where the proposed data center will be. So I want to start just with some of those slides that we saw. What is a hyperscale data center? And what is this question of scale, essentially? So the slide said 50 megawatts for a hyperscale data center. With Evergy's large load tariff that they put forth, their bottom level for that is 75 megawatts. Okay, so from the CUP of the data center that's going to be coming here, ours is going to be 400 megawatts. So at the beginning of this year, Evergy's biggest customer, according to them, was 80 megawatts. So at the beginning of 2026, biggest customer in the state for Evergy was 80 megawatts. And our proposed data center is supposed to be five times larger than that in terms of energy consumption at 400. So I think what was proposed thus far, a cap on megawattage, would be a great idea. Also, yes, seeing that data centers only go into an area zoned as heavy industrial is a good base level to start with some of these regulations. So the closed-loop water systems have been brought up. One of the things that doesn't get talked about quite as much with those systems is what is the indirect water usage? So if this center is going to be using 400 megawatts of power, power plants are some of our most water consumptive entities in the entire state. So it's not just the water that's going into that closed-loop system that we have to worry about and where it gets dumped. All those are big concerns. We also have to worry about that indirect water usage. What is getting used by those power plants that have to make so much more power and eventually more power plants are going to have to be brought online? How does that figure into it? So talking about battery storage centers, we had Chris mention this just briefly. Our biggest battery storage center in the area is the Panasonic one in DeSoto, Kansas. And that was a $4 billion plant, and it is currently largely coal-powered. Essentially, that 4 million square foot battery plant doubled Evergy's load. period in the state, requiring significant upgrades to infrastructure. They basically need to keep a Lawrence-located coal-fired plant online until 2028 to meet the energy demands just of this Panasonic plant. And despite receiving billions in incentives and support, they are still using coal and having all of the associated greenhouse emissions. So really, really briefly, I wasn't going to talk about that stuff, but what I do want to briefly touch upon is the idea that this is a huge economic boom. So we keep getting these investment numbers thrown around, $3 billion. But a $3 billion project is not going to add $3 billion to the local property tax base. According to our Kansas statutes, commercial industrial machinery and equipment is generally exempt from property tax. So if it's $3 billion investment, what actually makes up that $3 billion? And what if that is going to be taxable? We've got land, buildings, but everything that goes into those buildings, particularly with data centers, are what are most valuable. So a capital investment of $3 billion is not the same thing as $3 billion of taxable assessed property, the way that's been discussed. And to make any judgments about this kind of stuff, we'd have to know the plan for build-out, right? How much will actually be invested in phase one? When will phase one become taxable? What happens if future phases never occur? And so on and so forth. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Rachel Chu.

Hi, my name is Rachel Chu and I'm grateful for this opportunity to share some of my concerns. I'm a Shawnee County resident. My husband and I own land. My concerns with the hyperscale center is water. the look at the land, what it will do to communities, noise, and just, you know, it's a tremendous amount. I know we need centers, but I don't feel that we need one that big because of all the things that can go wrong and the things that it will affect. I have six children and a grandchild on the way, and I'm also wanting to think of their future. So thank you.

Thank you. Kendra Fritz. Rick Tyler.

Madam Chairman and Commissioners, thanks for the time and staff as well. Appreciate you sitting here and listening to all of us, a lot of us anyway, that live in the 66546 zip code. That's also the zip code where this proposed hyperscale data center is being proposed. So we all have a very pressing concern, legitimate concern about what's going in in our community. Just to give you, and I didn't tell you where I lived, I'm at 3210 West 109th Street. That's Waukarusa. You heard from my lovely bride a few speakers ago. And she said very eloquently what some of our concerns are. But to put it in perspective, Stewart Road runs on the east side of our property. Our address is on 109th, but our house sits way back. We would be at about 103rd Street if 103rd Street went through to the west. The proposed site for the data center is at approximately 85th and Stewart. So this proposed center is directly north of our house, about 2.1 miles or so. There are people that live closer than that. You've heard from some of them tonight. And they'll, of course, be affected just as much, if not more, than my wife and I. But we built a house about a dozen or 13 years ago with a big deck that's off the back that faces directly north. Right now, today, if you stood on that deck, you'd look right up the valley, if you will, of one of the tributaries that goes into the Wakarusa River. You see mostly green pastures and green trees. Off to the northeast just a little bit, you can see the corner of the Walmart distribution center. So we're not you know, thrilled about that. But it's not it's not that obnoxious. And they've been actually, I think, pretty good neighbors in the community. If you look off to the northwest a little bit, you can tell when there's games at the Kenbury baseball diamonds. I think that's pretty much over for the year. But just a little bit further to the north, you can look off there and I can tell you when Washburn rules having a soccer game or a football game. And if the winds out of the right direction, you can even hear the band during during these games. All of those things are farther away from our property than this data center is going to be. I heard all kinds of things at the Compass open house, how big it was going to be, how small it was going to be, what they're going to do for landscaping, noise abatement, all of those kinds of things. But what I know is, so I don't really know what it's going to look like, and I'm not sure if they really know what it's going to look like. But I do know that I'm going to be able to see it when I'm sitting on my back deck, and I'm going to see it every single day for the rest of my life, if that thing gets built. As my wife told you, I spent 47 years in the electric utility industry. And that's been already discussed a lot here this evening. But a 400 megawatt load is a very, very large load. I'm concerned about all the power plants that Evergy says they're going to have to build. They're in the process of building two combined cycles plants, one near Hutch and one in southeast Kansas. And they've got another 910 megawatt plant that's in the works that's a simple cycle plant. I'm concerned that the power consumption is going to be overwhelming for them and may eventually cause problems for the system and for their current rate payers. My time's out, I see, so I'll leave it at that. But I would hopefully ask that you consider all these things when you make your decisions regarding this plan.

Thank you. Sarah Weber. My apologies. Hold on one moment. Sorry. I got ahead of myself. All right. Thank you. Okay. So we will close public comment for the data center portion.

Sorry, what was the question?

No, we were closing public comment for the data center portion, so I just didn't know if Mike wanted to take back over or...

I just would say, is there any discussion by the Commission? I will note that we'll come back again in September and have another discussion about data centers. So if you want to think about what you've heard tonight and come back and give feedback then, that's fine too, or just have a discussion now. When you're done with data centers, we'll move on to the rest of the text amendments. Mike will run through the other items that we're looking at changing. So however you all want to go here.

We'll open it up to discussion among commissioners.

So I have a question. A number of folks brought up classifying as a heavy industrial site. Can you explain what that means? What does that impact or why would that be helpful or not helpful?

So the city has two industrial zoning classifications. So just a reminder what we're talking about here today. We're amending the city zoning regulations in regards to data centers. So that's what we're talking about here. So the city has light industrial, which is I-1, and heavy industrial, which is I-2. We have a lot of I-1 zoning that allows, you know, the Walmart Distribution Center, for instance, that's a... That's a use that's allowed in I-1. The I-2 tend to be really the more noxious uses, like slaughterhouses and things of that rendering and things that have that sort of impact. I don't want to run through all the uses necessarily, but that's kind of the difference between, you know, warehousing is allowed in I-1, you know, distribution is allowed in I-1. All that stuff you see on Topeka Boulevard, I believe most of that's all zoned I-1, all that, you know, the different free-to-lay and all those others. So the food processing is allowed in I-1. That's not an I-2 use, so just for example.

So what does that do to the data center? I mean, why make it I2? I guess I don't understand why people are proposing that as an option. Or do you understand why?

It's the most restrictive zoning district that we have.

Oh, OK. I got you.

I think people are speaking somewhat generally. Most people don't read zoning codes all the time, so they don't know necessarily the difference, but I think they're speaking generally. It should be in heavy industrial zoning.

I misstated that. It's not the most restrictive, but it allows the most obnoxious uses.

Commissioner Bowman?

I still think I'm back where I was when we talked about this last time. One of the things that I hear across the nation about data centers is a lack of transparency, and some of that also may be the lack of understanding all the implications and unintended consequences, and so I'm still back to I'm not an expert in data centers, and I'm a person that's kind of data driven, so I'd like to see, you know, we mentioned having a consultant or consultants that are experts in telling us, you know, for instance, the one that we may be looking at, what are the implications? What is the you know, what is the water usage, what is the impacts on the environment, you know, all those kind of things, environmental impact studies that have been done in these areas. I think there should be enough data out there for some of these ones that have already built where they should be able to start compiling data, but that's just my thought. I don't have a way to form an opinion on the impacts if I don't know what those are.

Any additional discussion?

I think it might be a good idea if we come up with an organized strategy to tackle this. Meaning, what are the subjects that we need to be discussing? Which first is, how are we defining them? We might use this list. We might, how did the list of them, based on their electricity uses, fit in zoning? How are utilities affected? If we're going to allow them in certain zones, is that by CPU? or some other strategy. How do we handle traffic and noise, residential buffering? And at some point, we're going to have to determine how many of the community can support, which I think is based off how much electricity there is, because it will become unsustainable at some level. There's one being talked about in the general area right now. But if five more show up, that's going to be a problem. And are we even able to regulate energy use, meaning can we require renewable energy of some sort, which is maybe a more extreme strategy than other communities have asked for, but something to talk about at least. So just some thoughts I've had. Do we base it on golden factors, which we base almost all of our information on? I'm just trying to think of how we eat the elephant.

I have one other thing, too. On the income side or the revenue side, I think there needs to be more into how incentives play into that. What is the actual return on investment in five years, 10 years, 30 years? What is that number? Because, you know, as someone's mentioned, it may not all be what we think it is. So I think there needs to be more into the actual side of, okay, what are the financial benefits truly after all the incentives and everything that's happened. And when will we see those?

Thank you.

Did you have any additional comments? Dan, I believe you were going to make a comment.

No, I was just going to reiterate that we'll come back again in September for another discussion. And so we've heard from the public, we've heard some comments again tonight and from last month, and we can put some more thoughts together about how to possibly regulate these and just share that with the commission. Again, how this applies to something that wants to locate in the city. That's really what we're tweaking the regulations for.

Thank you. Commissioner?

One more thought to consider. Someone brought up kind of the building up of heat. I don't know if it's technically a heat island effect, but It might be something to look into. I mean, I think everybody's comments are from a good point. Like some comments, I already know the answer to. And I think that'll get solved. Some of them are like, oh, yeah, that's a good thought. So I think that might be worth looking into if there's a way to minimize any potential heat buildup. And maybe that's not even a problem. But I think we should address it if we can.

A lot of my thoughts around this are just thinking of commissioners here and also future commissioners that are going to be receiving these projects. Technology changes so much. These are the type of data centers we're looking at now, but who knows what type of data centers we're going to be looking at in the future. And so I'm really interested in just seeing how the city of Topeka and staff are going to involve some of the presentations to include some things that maybe aren't quite in the golden factors, but maybe are some things that need to be in consideration. So I'm really interested in just kind of when commissioners receive a project, what information is going to be given to us in order to make proper decisions because I think It's kind of like land use and resource use are really going hand in hand with these conversations. And it's kind of hard, I think, to divorce them. And so I do think training, you know, from my thought as chairman is I think for commissioners is really important, making sure that we're all getting the same information. I know someone mentioned, you know, the low tariff with Evergy. I've read through that, but I'm not sure if other members of the commission have. So I think. Just planning staff, getting some unified resources, because I know we're kind of limited to what we can discuss amongst each other. But if there's some resources that you all can be providing to us, I'm even open to taking time out of my day for a workshop just to make sure we're educated. I think that's something that's really important that I'd like staff to consider. And then I'll do additional research for September and bring additional thoughts. But those are two things that came to mind right away. All right. And then I think no additional comments by commissioners? Okay. We can continue with, oh, my computer timed out, discussion items, text amendments.

Okay. So back. Thank you. So the following, what we intend to do is come back in probably October. I don't think we're going to have this ready for September. But what we anticipate is advertising a public hearing. So it would be come back before you for a recommendation. Some of these are substantive. real Effective policy differences others are really just kind of minor things to clarify some things So I won't dwell too much on manufactured homes and tiny houses But this is a very important part of this Because this is something that I think what we've recognized Planning Commission committee Staff is that there's kind of a gap in our zoning regulations when it comes to factory built homes so Just to clarify, current zoning regulations allow site-built homes by right in residential districts, one per lot. There are no minimum size requirements for site-built homes. So just repeat that. You can build a tiny house as long as it meets building code and it's site-built. Homes manufactured off-site, factory-built homes, only residential design manufactured homes are allowed by right in residential districts. So this is just a, If you want to see a picture of a residential design manufactured home, that's what they typically look like. They don't have to look like that, but that's what a lot of them look like. So this means a manufactured home on a permanent foundation, which has minimum dimensions of 22 body feet in width, a pitched roof, and siding and roofing materials, which are customarily used on site-built homes. Building codes, they're built to HUD manufactured home standards. They're not built to international residential code, which is our local building code for residential use, residential building. Homes that do not meet the definition of residential design manufactured home are not built to HUD manufactured home standards. They're built to IRC. They're not permitted in Topeka single-family residential districts. They're only permitted by PUD. through a planning and development. And that means you have to have a minimum of an acre of land. And so a typical residential lot, you're not going to find one of these. So those are just a couple of examples. Staff has actually been inside the one on the right. That particular one, if you want to see what it looks like, it's out on, I don't remember the name of the road, but it's out by Big Springs. past the Big Springs. It's on the east side of the Big Springs quarry. OK. This is going to be a little redundant. City of Topeka zoning and building codes do not prohibit this construction of installation of tiny homes on land zone for residential use. But there are standards affecting what types of tiny homes are allowed, where they may be located, and the manner of their construction. So we've drafted a definition for factory-built homes that do not meet the residential design manufacturer home and are not built to HUD manufacturer home standards. So our opinion, staff's opinion, is that adopting this definition or something like it and adding a line, adding a row to our land use tables and the zoning code to allow these, that would take care of that gap. What this doesn't do is if someone wanted to do a tiny home village somewhere, is that allowed in any of our zoning districts? Not really. It would probably require a code amendment if we were going to have it allowed by right in any particular zoning district. So that's something that might be brought before you is something to deal with that particular question. Again, right now you could do a tiny home village by PUD, but I watched some kind of, I don't know, presentation or something online. There was a tiny home village developer owner in southwestern Missouri, and they said they just don't even bother trying to go anywhere that requires rezoning because too much uncertainty, too much, just a lot of uncertainty, a lot of time, a lot of community pushback. Okay. Yes, that would be a good idea. So a letter was submitted to us by Tom Underwood, who's here, and has asked to comment about something that's in the following. It's dealing with pawn shops and secondhand shops. And so I could go through that, and then you could allow him time to speak if you'd prefer to have him speak first. Whatever, that's whatever you decide you'd like to do.

Okay.

So we'll just open up for public comment for Thomas Underwood.

All right. Well, thank you very much. Again, my name is Tom Underwood. I'm here for my wife, Lisa. We're the owners of the building. It's actually a historic building in the Noto area. It's at 1001 Northwest Central, basically the northwest corner of North Kansas and Gordon Street, right across from the Noto Arts Center. We recently discovered, we purchased that in 2018, we've had a shop there, we also lease out part of the building to other people for their shops. We recently discovered quite by accident that Noto area and the collective area is actually two zones, X1 and X3. X1, which we're located, we discovered is not zoned for antique stores. I think the language and the statute and the codes talk about secondhand. We would probably take umbrage to that term. We prefer much more high-scale antique than secondhand, but that nonetheless. What's interesting is that when we purchased the building, in fact, when I way before we started there, there was an antique shop in this area. And so we were very surprised, to say the least, that we were not, that the area is not zoned for antique shops. And as you all know, other areas of Noto certainly have some well-established, well-known antique shops. This is having a negative impact on our business, certainly, and it will have a negative impact on, again, the person who wants to lease a property. Moving away from simply a building owner and a business owner, I can also address in a more broader sense, I think, the more comprehensive issue as raised in NODA. As you may know, I was the executive director of the NODA Arts and Entertainment District from 2017 to 2024. Noto is much bigger than the 8-900 blocks of North Kansas Avenue. We've dismissed that notion. I think once upon a time that made sense. That's very obsolete. That is just not the case anymore. When I was there, we established the Business Improvement District, which goes as far north as Moore Street, Jackson, and Quincy, some of which our business is part of the bit. the following year in 2022, common consumption, follow those same boundaries. So X1 does not allow antique shops, X1 does not allow theaters, X1 would not allow hotels. We can have payday loans, we can do other things, but we can't do those things that are really kind of a part of that NODO area, NODO environment. So our recommendation, our request is that it be considered to zone the entire Noto district as following the bid boundaries to an X3. Again, even making an exception for an X1 would be fine. That really doesn't address the comprehensive issue. So I see I've got about a minute left. I shot through that real quick. I know Pedro Concepcion is here tonight. I'm going to cede my last minute if you want to allow that to Pedro. as a CEO of another district.

All right, thank you. Pedro, do you have any comments that you'd like to... All right, run fast, run fast.

Quick, quick, quick.

Hi, my name is Pedro Concepcion. I'm the CEO of the Noda Arts and Entertainment District. Thomas Underwood honestly put everything in a nutshell. This actually will help small business owners kind of come into the area and give them more ability to create more opportunities. We're trying to push from becoming an X1 to an X3 so we can actually provide the opportunities for business owners to actually grow Noda as we keep growing every year. We really would like you guys to look at this. And if you have any questions, really try and figure out how we can make it happen. If there's any issues, how we can sit down and figure out how we can come together and address the problems that honestly have been not understood for a while. And the map here explains it. The 800 and 900 block is an X3. And then X1, it's... the north side we are requesting that if it becomes x3 for the bid boundaries which goes from norris to morris quincy and jackson that's a broader area i understand that's probably a more complicated area but we're really trying to understand how we can make this happen thank you very much all right thank you and we will close public comment for that item

And give it back to you, Mike, for the rest of the presentation.

Yes, thank you. So I kind of skipped ahead to a slide that deals with that particular issue. The timing of this was really good because I just had a conversation with Tom Underwood, what, a week ago, two weeks ago, about this because he had a tenant that tried to get a business license. The city does not require business licenses for all businesses. the city, particularly the city clerk, they require businesses for certain businesses and one of those is secondhand goods sales, secondhand shops. And so he had a tenant that was wanting to get a license so they could sell secondhand goods. In the process of getting a license, the city clerk checks with the planning department on the zoning. They checked with us, and we said, oh, I'm sorry to say this, but there is X1, and it's not allowed. And it seems kind of strange that it's not allowed. We can only speculate. When X1 and X2, there's three X districts. They're mixed-use districts. When those were created, that was back around 2000. And it was done to implement neighborhood plans in North Topeka and actually south of the river along 6th that has X1. And you never know what the consequences are going to be exactly when you establish standards. So those standards really date back to that time. And they exclude pawn shops and secondhand goods shops. They're in the same category. A pawn shop... I think some people may think it's a sign of blight, a pawn shop, but one person's sign of blight is another person's lender of last resort. So some zoning codes probably treat pawn shops as a financial institution because that's essentially how they work in a lot of ways. But in our code, pawn shops, secondhand goods are the same category. I think it would be really hard to separate antique stores from other secondhand goods. How would you do that? I mean, when does something come in antique, and how do you regulate that? So I think it's reasonable. We haven't really analyzed it very much, but it seems reasonable to amend the code to allow secondhand shops and pawn shops in X1 districts.

The folks who spoke tonight mentioned rezoning.

That's another way to tackle the problem. You rezone it to X3. But that is a much more difficult process, as you know, because we're notifying people. We're publishing a notice. We're going through all of that. And there are limitations in the Kansas statutes on cities rezoning property. There are certain things that prevent that from happening. One thing to think about is that there's X1 along 6, and there's X1 along, excuse me, southeast 6 and southeast, or southwest 6, and there's other X1 areas in North Topeka and even Oakland. There's a segment of either Sardu or Seward, maybe both, that's X1. So one of the concerns might be, well, does this mean a lot of X1 zoning includes single-family dwellings? That's the idea. It's supposed to promote mixed use. It's supposed to also maintain compatibility so someone that has a home doesn't feel encroached upon by an incompatible commercial use. So those are all considerations. The thing about a home becoming a secondhand shop is it doesn't automatically happen. It has to meet building code if you're changing a residential occupancy to a commercial occupancy like mercantile or something like that. So I think something to think about is amending the code to allow secondhand goods sales either allowed by right or as a conditional use permit. You know, we have all that land up there, and this is kind of true of other commercial districts, where you're hoping that there will be retail development, but there's not a lot of retail development because e-commerce and for other reasons, And so, you know, if you're denying someone the ability to make use of an existing building in kind of an older commercial district like this, that's not something you want to do. You want to facilitate commerce and not be an obstacle to it unless there's a good reason. So I think that's a solution is you just amend the code, be part of this amendment, and that's something that you can make a recommendation on. And I have a lot of it. If you want to discuss that particular issue, you can, but I can go back and go through the rest of the presentation, which maybe I should do just in the interest of time.

Well, and just for a point of clarification, we're not voting on anything tonight.

We're not voting on anything. Okay. Yep.

Yep.

We'd have to advertise a public hearing and you'd have to hold a public hearing. So I'm going to go back and go through the other slides. And I'll try to be as quick as I can be. So these are the things we want to address here in these slides. So Senate Bill 418 was passed in the past legislative session. It removes some obstacles to buy-right housing. to single-family residential zoning, and it essentially preempts protest petitions and mailed written notice for rezonings to single-family residential districts. So our current zoning code doesn't make any distinction. If someone's rezoning to single-family, they're subject to protest petitions. There's not a lot of that that happens, but occasionally it does happen. So that's what that's about. And we have some language that's drafted that's in the memo that's in the packet.

Okay, drinking establishments.

So this one's a little bit trickier. So currently in the C2 district, C2 zoning, I'd say your most prevalent commercial zoning along arterials is C4. C4 is not a very restrictive zoning. C2 is a little more restrictive, and it's really more intended for smaller scale, something that's more compatible with neighborhood uses. But C2 actually allows some uses that are fairly impactful, like an auto repair shop, like a You know, think of you live next to a tire shop and you hear that impact wrench every morning, you know. That's allowed in C2. Subject to some standards. But drinking establishments are not. So that's complicated. So if someone has a restaurant and they want to serve, You know, they want to serve hard liquor, beer and wine. That's an accessory use. It's part of a restaurant. But it kind of makes it difficult to administer. So that's something that we're – there's some language in the packet that we suggested, but that needs some thoughtful consideration. Okay, so this one – Do you remember the rezoning case a few months back? Maverick at 7th and Fairlawn? Yeah, 7th and Fairlawn, between 6th and 7th on Fairlawn. There were a lot of concerns about the truck activity there, the large truck activity. What's interesting is the zoning there, there's zoning there, the C2 zoning, and currently there's no distinction made between fuel pumps for trucks and fuel pumps for cars and light trucks. There certainly was a lot of concern about trucks, and consider that auto service station type 1, which is a convenience store with fuel pumps, is allowed by right in C2 districts, which means that currently someone could have services for large trucks. I'm talking semi-trucks with trailers. So a suggestion is maybe just treat those as truck stops because truck stops require a conditional use permit in commercial district, in the C4 district, and they're allowed in I-1 and I-2. There might be a different way to handle that that's a little bit more nuanced than that, but that's a thought. Okay, so this is something that... This is something that seems a little bit arcane in the weeds. But it's something that's impactful because it does affect a lot of residents. So picture yourself. You own a home. And let's say you work on three or four hobby cars. You like to restore old vehicles. And you want to build a shop building that's 1,200 square feet. And your house is 1,100 square feet. Can't do that. Our current code does not allow that. There's a reason it doesn't allow it, and it's probably a pretty good reason, because it really has a potential to have a negative impact on neighborhood character, especially as designed. But it might make a difference how large the lot is. So we get questions about this all the time, and we tell people they can't do it. If we're going to tell someone they can't do it, there should be a good reason for that. So we've had several variance applications that have gone to the BZA. Two of them that I'm aware of have been approved to allow someone to exceed 90%. And I'll give you a couple examples. So this is a central Topeka neighborhood. Pretty typical, you have a lot here that's less than two-tenths of an acre. It's actually two of the original plot of lots, but the zoning lot is 50 feet wide. In this case, the principal building footprint of this one, the house is 1,528 square feet. That's a 440 square foot detached garage, pretty typical. A typical two-car garage is gonna be about 480 to 500 square feet. The other parcel right next to it is less than half of an acre. In that case, that building footprint is 1,900 square feet, and that garage is 775 square feet. So both of these meet the current standards. So this is one of the variance cases that was determined by the BZA. This one's at 1610 Northwest Grove. It's on the north end of Potwin, but it's really not like the other Potwin lots. Most of the lots in Potwin are about two-tenths of an acre, 25% of an acre. So this one, it was to add an addition to an existing garage, and... It's 112%. Collectively, the detached accessory buildings are 112% of the footprint of the principal structure, and that got approved that way because it was so unique, so different. But I've got to say, a variance process is not a slam dunk. It's a lot of uncertainty, so it's not... You know, we had another case where the owner had three acres or has three acres, and he wanted to build a small greenhouse on three acres. In his mind, he has kind of an agricultural piece of ground, but he happens to be in a city, so he didn't meet the standards. So he ended up getting approved. He's on three acres. All they want to do is build, like, a 200-square-foot greenhouse. But he went through the BZA and got it approved. And I think he ended up, it's like, wow, that's great that you got that approved because there was a chance it wasn't getting approved. And I think he felt like the whole thing was ridiculous. He had to go through this process. He's on three acres. But anyway, that's why that's important. That's why it's an important issue. So here are some of the other amendments. Animal care and services type one and two. I don't know if it was by error, but I think there was a real concern about Animal daycares, I think there was a lot of growth. It was a growth industry for a while. Maybe it's kind of leveled off. And our code basically does not allow you to have any outdoor play areas for animals. I think we went through a PUD not too long ago to allow someone to do that. And it's just not realistic. If you operate a doggy daycare, you're going to want to be able to have a place for them to relieve themselves outside. Okay, automobile sales and service. We get a lot of requests for someone wants to sell cars, and they happen to be on a lot that's zoned C2. It's not allowed in C2. In my opinion, there's a good reason it's not allowed in C2. But there might be a way to deal with that other than requiring someone to rezone, maybe through a conditional use permit or something. Crisis centers. I don't want to go into this too much detail, but... There are really two types, and one really isn't a homeless shelter. It's not really a shelter. It's really just services. And right now our code is a little restrictive about that, and maybe that should be looked at. Okay, indoor recreation. So not that long ago someone wanted to do a simulated golf inside of a – It was formerly, I think, a hair salon or something. It was in a strip mall. And they had to get a conditional use permit. And it was 2,000 square feet. Our zoning code doesn't make any distinction about how big it is. It's just the land use. It's simulated golf. It's treated like a billiard hall, a bowling alley. It's kind of a sport. It's an activity you do for indoor recreation. And they had to go through a CUP. It seemed a bit unnecessary. There might be a way to distinguish between large and small. Or maybe just don't worry about it. Maybe it's okay to have a bowling alley. in a billiard hall in C2 on land that's on C2. But the concern about C2 is that C2, it's not called neighborhood commercial, but it's essentially like a neighborhood commercial district. So you're going to have C2 on smaller parcels and directly adjacent to residential. So that's why C2 is a little bit more restrictive than the other zoning districts. It has been observed that reception conference and assembly facilities, I think actually they're not permitted in X3. I think they require a conditional use permit. So why, you know, that could be just a place where someone has a wedding reception or a party or something like that. You know, that's something that staff thinks should be looked at. RV short-term campgrounds, so right now, They're allowed by right, I believe, in C4, I1 and I2. Not sure about I1 and I2, but I know they're allowed by right in C4. They're a really unusual use. Maybe there should be some standards that control where they go on C4 land or I1 land. If you think about where lands that are zoned C4, where those might go. Short-term rental, special use requirements. So one thing that's come up occasionally is there's an issue with not having a local property manager for short-term rentals. That's something that's easily fixed by just adding a standard, the special use requirements. There might be other issues with short-term rentals, but that's just one of those things. Uses in the D3 downtown district. So there was a THERE'S A LOT OF WORK DONE ON THE D3 DISTRICT WHEN THE DOWNTOWN MASTER PLAN WAS ADOPTED. WHAT WE'VE LEARNED OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS IS THE D3 DISTRICT AS IT SHOWS UP IN THE LAND USE TABLES IS QUITE RESTRICTIVE WITH KIND OF LIGHT INDUSTRIAL USES. AND SO THAT'S KIND OF A PROBLEM BECAUSE A LOT OF THOSE BUILDINGS ARE ZONE D3. THEY'RE FORMALLY USED FOR INDUSTRIAL PURPOSES. There needs to be a way to use those buildings. They're not going to go to retail. There's just not enough retail demand to fill those buildings. So that's why that's a consideration. Something that has come up with zoning applications, I can think of one that was particularly controversial, was setbacks and buffers in industrial districts when they're adjacent to residential. It's not very tightly controlled the way it is now. So that's something to think about. And there are others, there are others not listed here. So be happy to take any comments or questions.

I have a question regarding the, about the X1 and the secondhand stores. Could you allow the use of secondhand store but limit it to retail and consignment only?

I think that would be hard to do. I think you could at the beginning of regulation. So treat consignment in a less restrictive way than just like a thrift store? Yeah, than the short-term financial lenders. Pawn shops, yeah. I suppose that's – I think that's probably a question for legal and not the – him on the spot right now, but that's something that, you know, any of this we would want consultation from city attorney.

Yeah, I'm just going to say thanks, Mike and team, for being thoughtful. As we see, less is more in my mind, regulation-wise. And if something doesn't make sense, we do something about it. So I appreciate that a lot. And a lot of the stuff you said was common sense to me. So I just want to say that. Thank you.

On that second hand, you mentioned one way, rather than doing it by right, the conditional use permit. And I think if somebody's trying to lease property and get a tenant, Conditional abuse permit would be kind of tough because by the time they get around to getting it approved, the tenant said, I found someplace else.

A four-month purchase contract is probably not very realistic.

Yeah, it does. Not for a tenant. Maybe for sale, but not for a tenant. Or a lease contract. Yeah.

And I think what I would be interested in seeing just within that conversation is just maybe commissioners just taking a look at X1 and maybe there might be some other uses that we're not thinking of that may make sense for that particular area. I'm not saying that we do resort it, but if we're already looking at it, maybe look at some other things just based off of what's already existing in the community that we can maybe relieve barriers to any further opportunities that could be there that haven't been considered yet. But those are all my comments. All right. If there's no further discussion from commissioners, we will move to report from a special committee on housing. Jim, you want to come up and present, please?

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the commission. It's good to see you all again. Given the lateness of the hour, you get the abbreviated version. That's your takeaway from the evening tonight. Thank you for the opportunity, Manager, to supplement the written summary that was provided in the agenda packet. If you all have looked at the reports of the committee, the housing committee, over the last six months or so, you know what we've been up to, and I will spare you that. But some of the things that... Mike was talking about this evening, the manufactured housing issue, for example. We recently dealt with that and other initiatives by the staff. Our general mission is to try to make housing development cheaper, easier in Topeka to build up the housing stock. And at that end, we've met with the Kansas Housing Finance, Kansas Housing Resources Corporation, home builders, realtors, the Federal Home Loan Bank, just about anybody we can get to, again, just to try to help us achieve our mission. There's just a couple of things, Madam Chair, I wanted to add to what was in the agenda packet. The first is the status of the missing middle amendment that you all passed back in November of last year, November 17th. And, Dan, I don't know if you've briefed the Planning Commission on the action that the Policy and Finance Committee took in July. I will be brief. When the Planning Commission and the Housing Committee first started talking about the missing middle, the duplex, triplex, fourplex text amendments, the governing body decided that the Policy and Finance Committee should be monitoring what we're doing, just kind of keeping track of what we're up to. And so that issue stayed with the Policy and Finance Committee following the adoption of the amendments by UGAL back in November. So November of 2025. And it took until July 10 of this year for the Policy and Finance Committee to finally send the matter on to the governing body. And what they sent to the governing body was a... with no recommendation for consideration by the full governing body. How that will be read by the full governing body, I have no idea. I have no prediction as to when it's going to be on the agenda. Dan, I don't know if you have any knowledge as to that. It's not on any of the August agendas of the governing body, and I think they'll be taking up budgets right through the end of September or so.

More than likely in October sometime.

Okay, no prediction other than October would be nice, and no prediction is the outcome. Second thing, the update to the 2020 housing study. You all know, because you've heard from me many times over the last year or so, this is sort of the touchstone for the housing committee. Okay, the 2020 housing study. It is being updated as we speak. I don't know if a final version has been produced yet, Dan.

Not yet. The consultant will present to the governing body. Oh man, I think I forgot. It's either the first or second meeting in September. The consultant will do a presentation at the beginning of the meeting. I haven't gotten the final documents yet.

and I and maybe some of the others of you attended the public sessions that the consultants that are doing the 2026 update to the housing study that they put on. I made the comments at that meeting that I was very concerned about what I saw as the preliminary findings by the consultants because it appeared to me that they were working towards a conclusion that the housing situation in Topeka has greatly improved since 2020. And given the fact that the cost of housing has gone up, rents have gone up, far exceeding the increasing incomes of Topekans, and the fact that over the last six years, fewer than 1,000 dwelling units have been constructed in Topeka, And given the fact that the housing study in 2020 said that we were short 14,400 housing units, it was a mismatch. It didn't sound correct to me. So what I have here, and I'll be done in a second, Madam Chair, because I... I ask you, I'm not going to read what I just passed out here, but these are excerpts from the cities recently adopted, the governing bodies recently adopted 2026 Consolidated Action Plan, the CAP. Dan's people, the housing division, under Dan's supervision, put these things together. It's like a 250-page document that goes to the federal government, and if the feds like it, then they give millions of dollars to Topeka for housing and community development-related purposes, okay? Again, I'm not going to read what's on this three-page memo to you, but take a look at the first paragraph, the first numbered paragraph in particular, and the last, number 10. First paragraph. I said I'm not going to read it to you, but there's a couple sentences here that I think are really critical. Providing sound, decent, and affordable housing for all people has been a national standard for most of this century. Without it, our health suffers, our learning suffers, our productivity suffers, and most of all, families suffer the physical and social ills that emanate from inadequate and unsafe housing conditions. Unfortunately, housing affordability in Topeka has decreased over the past several years, because of rapid increases in home values, increased interest rates, construction costs, insurance costs, labor costs, and other factors. affordability has tightened materially over the past decade. The end of paragraph number one, the city does not expect the gap between housing costs and incomes to close materially over the next five years. Paragraphs numbers two through nine give a little bit more. It's cherry picked out of a 240 page document, but it's important reading. It's good reading because it provides a detailed and I think very accurate, Dan, description of the housing market and the housing stock in Topeka. Okay? And it actually creates, I think, a more dire picture, paints a more dire picture of the housing condition in Topeka than the 2020 housing study did in terms of numbers of units that are needed and the lack of affordability. Paragraph number 10. Third page of the memo. Median home prices rose by 63% from 2019 to 2025, while rents rose by 20%, household incomes only increased by 13%. Approximately 33% of all households in Topeka are cost burdened, et cetera, et cetera. There is not enough affordable housing to meet current demands. There's not enough senior housing to meet current demands. The Planning Commission bylaws under which the Standing Committee for Housing was created charges the committee with advising you all about the quality and quantity of the Topeka housing stock. This document, recently adopted by the governing body, is as good a description of quality and quantity of the Topeka housing stock as anything that I have, anything else I can offer to you. And I'm taking your time tonight. I'm sorry, I'm taking your time tonight and giving these excerpts from the Consolidated Action Plan to serve as a reminder to you as to how serious Topeka's housing problem is and how much more work needs to be done. The Housing Committee will continue to work on it. We're pretty limited in what we can do, but we can take ideas, concepts, and proposals to the full planning commission, and you all can take into account those proposals and so on for your consideration and good judgment. But any time you feel... like you're tired of hearing about Topeka's affordable housing problems, go back and take a look at the Consolidated Action Plan or at least this three-page memo with the ten paragraphs. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Cowell.

All right, any comments or questions for the Committee on Housing?

Okay. We will move to general public comment. I know there was... So there was Sarah Weber that wanted to talk about the Watson Realty development, but when I did public comment, she didn't come up. Did I need to?

I think Mike is talking to her right now. Okay.

Okay.

I suppose you can let her talk since she I think she technically signed up. So.

Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, then we will close general public comment.

Well, I think you could let her talk if she wants to is what I was saying. Ms. Sims, you said no? She doesn't. Okay. Okay.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for checking. All right. Well, communications to the commission.

Just a reminder that we'll have a meeting in September. I don't believe, it's possible some of these text amendments might come back for action. The data center will not, let's be very clear about that, the data center will not come back. It's possible some of these other ones might, but we might still take some time to work through some things and have another discussion on text amendments, maybe show you a few more things. And more than likely, the Lug Mop's coming back next month finally. And that's it. No other action items. It's possible there will be no action items next month and just some discussion items.

Okay. I would actually probably like to have a little bit more discussion and not necessarily a vote just because we had a lot going on today. And I feel like I would have liked to hear a little bit more details, but we didn't have a chance to get into it.

Yeah, I think what we'll try to do next month is touch on some stuff that hasn't been touched on, so maybe the list gives some thoughts on some of those things. I think it's worth Mike going over that 90% rule. I think it's worth Mike showing some examples about maybe why those variances were approved and kind of working through that as well. So, yeah, we can keep talking about some things.

All right. Thank you. If no further comments, we are adjourned.