Ann Arbor Planning Commission Meeting 9/6/23

001on the provided Lux Kelly will you please call the roll commissioner Abrams here commissioner Salve here commissioner Mills here commissioner Hammerschmidt here council member dish has noted that she will be a little late to tonight's evening commissioner Lee here commissioner clerk here commissioner weish here and last but not least welcoming new commissioner Julie wetherby here great you have a quorum thank you I wanted to also welcome commissioner Weatherby and if you wanted to say a few words of introducing yourself for those of you who don't know me and I think some of you know me out in the audience and some don't but my name is Julie wetherby I uh this is my second time on Planning Commission I was also on Planning Commission from 2016 to 2019. a little bit of my background I

002grew up in Ann Arbor my parents actually met in a boarding house that my aunt ran on Hill Street so if kind of goes back a ways I went to college in Boulder I lived in Boston moved back to Ann Arbor kind of that circuitous thing that a lot of people in Ann Arbor do I do work at the University I live in an old house downtown in the r4c district where there's a lot of development so I'm very familiar with sort of development and the effects of it good and bad I was on the r4c committee twice starting in 20 in sorry 2009 was the first meeting of the r4c committee and I was on that two r4c committees from 2009 to 2013. so we've been talking about r4c for a really long time

003and was on Planning Commission and zba from 2016 to 2019. so I'm happy to be here back on planning thank you and welcome back thank you moving on to approval of the agenda staff does recommend reversal of items nine a and nine B may I have a motion to approve the agenda with this amendment moved by commissioner Abrams seconded by commissioner sorry um white sorry is there any discussion on the motion all those in favor please say aye any opposed the motion carries uh may I have a motion to approve the minutes of the July 18th and August 1st 2023 minutes moved by missionary Abrams seconded by Mills all those in favor of the motion please say aye any opposed motion carries next up we're going to reports from the Planning Commission to the Planning

004Commission in written Communications so this is from City Administration City Council planning manager officers and committees council member dish is not here yet so Mr Leonard or do you have it's quite all right um I can actually switch it around do commissioner officers or committee liaison have anything to report I'm ready oh so uh bring it back commissioner dish will be arriving a little bit late but a couple of highlights from the city council that I'm sure she would have liked to share um we had uh the proposed tc1 amendments to auto-related uses were approved by the city council they did make one modification they struck the specific use standards that prohibited the storage of auto repair Vehicles outside in the c2b and tc1 districts but without with that being the only modification the changes

005were approved the South Town rezoning site plan and Street vacation was approved and the proposed alley vacation on Mosley at the former fingerly site was also approved by city council last evening yeah uh uh I don't profess to be an expert at the city council also passed the herd ordinance this is a energy disclosure requirement for the sale of residential property in the city it will be pretty a long phased in implementation and enforcement however if that's something the Planning Commission is interested in learning more about I'm happy to arrange a presentation or some more information to you in the future and the city also bought an election center last night so that was kind of cool thank you Mr Leonard do other commissioner officers or committee Liaisons have anything to report okay written Communications

006uh sorry sure of course Shirley uh from a planning manager perspective I just wanted to provide a quick update on the stats of the comprehensive plan um so I think it was reported previously the comprehensive plan subcommittee did meet and uh helped me refine an application that's going to be going out to the public to invite applications to serve on a steering committee for the comprehensive plan um I've got that sort of digitally set I'm working on just getting some Outreach materials set for that we will be um uh pushing that heavily at a couple of upcoming pop-up events uh commissioner sovay might be sharing some information about knowing about some of those another one would be the green Fair on the 22nd so that's going to be two great opportunities for us to be

007sort of sharing the opportunity for people to apply to be on a steering committee more broadly for the comprehensive plan I want to share that the conference plan team was in town from Philadelphia last week and we conducted a series of stakeholder interviews they were pretty focused at this point on elective officials and staff next up is a lot of conversation with you as the Planning Commission and sharing our public engagement with the community at large this is an 18-month process I've gotten a couple of inquiries people that are really concerned I I just want to be clear with the Planning Commission in the public I have no intention of drafting a comprehensive plan based on a couple of interviews last week this is going to be a long process we can have a lot

008of opportunities to provide feedback to the city and the Planning Commission on that document so that is underway as well we'll be working with that subcommittee again The Next Step we're going to be talking about a rubric about what what a steering committee successful steering committee looks like and then I will also be using that group to propose a selection of a steering committee that will be ultimately brought to the full Planning Commission for appointment to that role thank you moving on to public comment this is an opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes about an issue that is not listed as a public hearing on this agenda we will first call an individuals present to address the commission and then remote participants to speak during this public hearing remotely please press nine

009star nine if listing by phone or use the raise hand feature of viewing through the web link for phone access please call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977 6634-1226 City staff will select callers who have raised our hands using the last three digits of their phone number or by name if available you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly for either method of participation please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is there anyone present that would like to speak at this time Mr Garber thank you commissioner Lee Ken Garber 28 Haverhill Court I'd like to welcome back commissioner Weatherby I don't know if

010you remember but four years ago I stood here on your last meeting and thank you for all that I learned from you know hearing your deliberations at this at this body I still mean that and I'm really glad that you're back um so um yeah last month's energy committing meeting DTE engineer Mike Witkowski spoke on grid availability as you know new projects especially all electric are running up against capacity um out of deliberate neglect DTE has done very little in the last 50 years to boost capacity in Ann Arbor most of the distribution system here is 4.8 kilovolts that's the so-called primary circuit that goes out from substations to neighborhoods starting in the 1950s new primaries have all been 13.2 kilovolts but Ann Arbor is still almost entirely 4.8 I don't have the whole picture

011but the exceptions are around Briarwood which has a 13.2 connection point to the regional grid and in the area near DTE service center on Broadway where DTE has rebuilt its buckler substation and then up Division Street from there but elsewhere it's still the old 4.8 which is a big reason for our outage problem which is another subject anyway you triple capacity when you replace 4.8 with 13.2 maybe because Ann Arbor is considering Public Power our Monopoly utility is now finally talking full conversion but you can't just rewire to 13-2 you have to rebuild all your substations dte's plan has three parts each one costing 40 to 60 million dollars Witkowski said this would take 10 to 15 years to complete I have my doubts the mpsc must approve the rates to pay for it and

012poorer errors around areas around Detroit may take priority either way our building boom will be long over by then now what can we do about capacity now developers can heat with gas and they're doing it which lowers electric demand but that's just insane in 2023 for climate reasons the best solutions for new projects to be self-sufficient maxing out solar generation and energy storage and using geothermal if possible basically being your own mini power plant on the Viridian or South Town model such distributed energy really is the future because the centralized power plant model is obsolete for climate reasons and the transmission grid can't handle all the renewable energy we we need right now and there's a huge bottleneck but the average developer mentality is completely unequipped for this new distributed reality and so is our

013zoning code so unfortunately it falls on you the a20 plan page 48 includes the following assumption quote all new construction from 2022 to 2030 am I done already there's no timer here thank you Mr Garber is there anyone else present that would like to speak is there anyone that would like to address the commission remotely Mr chair there is one hand raised James Dunmore you have permission to address the Planning Commission thank you and I assume you all can hear me you are hurt we can thank you thank you um just to follow up on Mr Garber said this is something of special concern and I do hope the commission does look at that in terms of self-sufficiency of new projects um we've had our fifth outage and we've had some severe problems in terms

014of our property has been caused a lot of uh personal distress um so in the light of all the many other things as you do as you look at the comprehensive plan um I wanted to speak on something original that's going to be about a site specific comment but I figure it'd be more generic uh and Pierce said in addition to things we have to talk about in terms of the climate issue we need to think about our mature trees and you have our pearls open tonight that calls for the removal of five Landmark trees and it's almost as if the last uh tree stands in this city they're taken up by Park are at risk and those are particularly valuable not much of the work that is to be done is to be done

015by the uh environmental commission and that um other other committees but I really ask you to work hard you are passionate about density in this city you're passionate about growth we forgive my dogs they feel rather strongly about that but uh basically we need to work with a project that uh um we need to work with the natural features we need to develop a natural features overlay aside from our natural features or spoilers we need to do something that works with the land and work with our natural features rather than opposing it and right now I realize you're working on the issue of density but we need to think about other factors too and I just don't see this commission work in that direction I'm apologize for my job she feels passionately about that and

016with that I thank you for your time and have a good evening thank you is there anybody else on the remotely yes caller ending 168 you have permission to address the planet question you may need to press star nine let's try or star six go ahead can you hear me now yes we can my name is no my name is neighborhood and my home address is 3255 and this has been going to related to the topic which I just learned yesterday from our neighbors when they mentioned that there will be a new building constructed Adventures of the neighborhood it's not very neighborhood which will be a dental office they have a few objection objectives on the list I don't know if it makes sense for me to speak now but this is my only opportunity

017excuse me I believe this topic is on the agenda and if we could actually speak during the actual uh business itself that would be great great yeah thank you okay any other callers there are no more colors at this time all right thank you very much we are going to public hearing scheduled for the next regular meeting staff yes sir uh quite a few for the City Planning Commission meeting on Tuesday September 19th 2023 at 7 pm the first of which is 3701 and 371c-3713 Riverside Drive which is an annexation and Zoning for city council approval it's a request to Annex two Parcels total link 0.74 acres in Ann Arbor Township to the city of Ann Arbor and Zone to r1b single family dwelling next is 3520 Green Court which is a planned unit development

018text Amendment for city council approval the proposed amended supplemental regulations will expand the permitted principal uses of the planned unit development the permitted principal uses would add medical and dental offices expand the definition of hotel and permit development of multi-family residential housing which is currently excluded the district includes 35.2 Acres next would be 1710 duvarin Road the village of Ann Arbor amended site plan in rezoning for city council approval this is an amendment to the approved site plan that includes rezoning of two Parcels from Township to r4a multiple family residential and 120 additional residential units along duvaren with an amenities Park area and adjacent parking the total units proposed will be 604 units on the 78.5 Acre Site the parcels to be rezoned are 2528 and 2540 Pontiac Trail the total area of rezoning is

0195.9 Acres and finally an amendment to the unified development code chapter 55 of Ann Arbor city code related to premiums these are amendments to sections 5.17.4 multiple family zoning districts and 5.18.6 premiums to propose to eliminate all premium floor area options offered in section 5.18.6 to exceed the normal floor area ratios in certain zoning districts and eliminate the maximum floor area ratio standards in the D1 downtown core and D2 downtown interface districts provided in table 5.17-4 of the UDC with these amendments no additional floor area beyond the normal limits will be offered as incentives for amenities and development in the D1 and D2 districts will only be regulated by maximum height minimum or maximum setbacks and building Mass regulations plus any other applicable development standards currently provided in code thank you we'll move on to

020unfinished business section 8A this is 2805 Burton Road this includes a site plan a proposal to reduce the size of the clubhouse by 50 square feet revised EV parking to comply with current standards and relocate barrier-free parking spaces I believe that we begin with petitioner presentation would the petitioner like to come up and speak yup good evening um I think Chris is going to be pulling up the presentation it's it's up but it's not on the big screens okay he's back there and I've got it on my screen you've got it it's behind you 10 so just a little too small a bit of technical difficulties please hold for a second thank you let me get you locked in here yeah just just wait we'll get it up here in a second where do you

021have this stuff is and it's not mine and soon it'll be up for a meal so I just opened it up a minute give me two seconds thank you should bring your keyboard go back I'm gonna go back here screen again I'm sure your skin crystals looks good okay all right perfect thank you thank you staff and thank you for your patience sorry I'll remember to bring a flash drive next time but hopefully that makes it easier um my name is Ted Hirsch I'm with Midwestern Consulting we're the civil engineer for the project and the um the site plan Amendment we have before you tonight um hopefully pretty straightforward um just a few items that were uh of no uh so with the original site plan uh the the indoor Gathering building kind of a

022community area um in its early conceptual stages was proposed to be a little bit larger footprint have a couple more offices things that through detailed design ended up getting kind of valued out so the footprint of the indoor Gathering area building got smaller it all still fits within the location of the originally approved building footprint um and uh Chris if you go to the next slide um we can go ahead and skip that one so um again here's just a little bit larger view of that shows that that reduction from a little over four thousand square feet to just under 2 000 that orange outline shows the the original approved footprint there is an outdoor patio that's included with this latest iteration all again fits within that same footprint so with that reduction there's a

023lot coverage reduction far reduction open space increase the the front setback did increase just slightly a little over four feet and then there was some sidewalk reconfiguration just to provide appropriate access to those relocated points uh if you can go to the next slide please um so the top left there is the original iteration of the building design in an elevation view flat roof um and again just kind of conceptual level and um the newly proposed goes from a flat roof to a pitched roof a little bit more um Design Elements Incorporated in that as you know the the design and construction documents progressed um if we can hit the next slide second item wanted to talk about was some parking space modifications so um these orange highlighted areas basically just take barrier bear free

024parking that was originally located a little bit further and North is left as you're looking at the page so these barrier-free parking spaces were located a little bit further west originally um kind of right in front of the main entrance but with the proximity of the sidewalk to the building it kind of made things tricky to make those actually barrier free and accessible so moving those spaces down to the east where there's a little bit more space in that kind of cut out of the building allowed for the ramps and and things like that to work a little bit easier without kind of curb at the back of sidewalk the second thing that was associated with the parking space modifications was to then alter the plan to conform to the current EV standards so at

025the initial time of approval the plan the code the EV code required a series of evi installed Chargers EVR and EVC spaces whereas under this site plan Amendment the current code for this use would just require the evi and EVC so that modification was made as well uh can we hit the next so this was something that was really more of a construction item and I'll just mention that this was this amendment comes as uh construction of the project was ongoing Burton Road was kind of first on the list to make those improvements change it from a gravel road to paved road with curb and gutter the original plan had this intersection at Packard Road um basically fitted out with a left turn lane from Burton Road that would head out to Packard Road once

026construction got underway there were existing Utilities in kind of some constraints that were unidentified it couldn't really have been identified without digging things up so with the series of new utilities and infrastructure that was going in with the new road to meet green streets and things like that there were some proximity to existing water main and structures that were kind of buried that we had to work around to get the appropriate separations and part of that through coordination with the engineering department was to in the transportation department for that matter was to remove that Center left turn lane um it and for anyone who's kind of been through the history of this project it's been through a number of iterations and um the transportation department felt that that was kind of a legacy item that

027was pulled through that didn't they didn't agree necessarily needed to be incorporated um so that helped us pull in the curb lines from both sides getting the the storm structures and and utilities away from some of that existing underground conflicts that we ran into so we thought that this should just be incorporated into into the site plan Amendment since we had already drawn it up and got it approved um hit the next slide I think that's it so yeah pretty short and sweet kind of the main two points for this were the the reduction in the Gathering space footprint and the parking modification so I'm more than happy to ask or answer any questions that you guys have to ask and appreciate your time perfect thank you and then we move on to staff presentation

028okay give me one second and I will try to pull my presentation up I think Mr Hertz did an excellent job here of describing what's being proposed for the project everybody can see that correct okay Burton Commons uh just some of the things just for a little more background information especially for the new planning commissioner the site is zoned r4b multi-family residential it is currently under construction for 120 units you know you can see the zoning the surrounding zoning it's r4b you've got r1c single family and little r2a to the South there uh I will go over the site plan I think Mr Hirsch did a good job of what's being proposed as far as the handicap parking spaces and the and the uh the clubhouse it is currently under construction this was taken approximately

029about a month ago this was supposed to be heard about a month ago at Planning Commission so I don't know if I'll uh up to date this is but it gives you an idea that the curb gutter looks like it's going in and is currently under construction uh another view of it so I don't know if they've got foundations in now or not in the underground pipes but this gives you an idea of the status of the site uh that concludes my presentation but I'm open to any questions you may have thank you uh now we'll move on to public hearing this is an opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes about the proposed 2805 Burton roadside plan Amendment we will first call on individuals present to address the commission then remote participants

030to speak during this public hearing remotely please press star 9 of listening by phone or use the hand raise feature if you're viewing through the web link for phone access please call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 City staff will call uh select callers who've raised their hand using the last three digits of their phone number and by name if available for those accessing through the web link you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak and when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background noises so that we may hear you clearly for either method of participation please state your name and your address at the beginning of the comments is there anyone present that would like to speak at this time Mr Robert thank

031you again commissioner Lee Ken Garber again um at last month it's a public hearing for this project I asked the petitioner to since they're redesigning the clubhouse to make it all electric I didn't quite get to finish in my last comments what I my quote from the 820 plan page 48 but here it is now quote all new construction from 2022 to 2030 and Beyond is built to Net Zero Energy standards which includes no natural gas consumption end quote I don't know how many of you are at the um electrification expo at the farmers market last month commissioner Hammerschmidt I know was there there were people from Mitsubishi Bryant carrier Toshiba Haley mechanical Michigan Energy Services CMR mechanical they were all there other vendors as well lots of options for air source heat pumps geothermal

032systems heat pump water heaters battery storage the focus was on home retrofits not new construction but it was clear that high efficiency heat pumps thanks to variable speed compressors and other advances are now completely viable in our climate and The Upfront cost is basically on par with gas appliances once inflation reduction act incentives are taken into account from new construction there is no valid excuse in my opinion not to go all electric uh true operating costs may be higher right now since DTE charges some of the highest electric rates in the country but the difference is not great about 30 a month on average per apartment compared to gas for electric um but adding solar and building to 2021 iecc standards should wipe out that difference and I note that they're moving from a flat

033roof to a a pitched roof which should accommodate solar better on this project I mean this whole breakdown project should be all electric um I realize it's probably too late for that that's a tragedy but at least the petitioner can Electrify the clubhouse and add solar panels um I can't imagine any reason to build with gas except for we've always done it that way um yeah I guess they may have a gas contract with DTE I say cancel that cap the gas lines choose a geothermal air source heat pump system from the many available high efficiency put on solar panels and build your smaller Clubhouse I don't think that's too much to ask thank you Mr Garber is there anyone else present that would like us speak at this time is there anyone that would

034like to address the commission remotely okay we'll move on uh proposed motion the proposed City Planning Commission motion is the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission approves the bright Dawn Village site plan 2805 Burton Road as the site plan complies with all applicable requirements of the unified development code and other applicable laws ordinances standards and regulations moved by uh commissioner Mills and seconded by commissioner weich we are in discussion commissioner Mills I apologize if this was covered while I was not here in August I'm curious for staff why it is that uh this requires site plan approval by the Planning Commission I'm looking at the table when we revive table 5.29-1 where we tried to move some minor adjustments kind of down the the ladder of approval and I'm just curious what the what bumped this

035into coming before Planning Commission territory it's a good question we did have internal discussions regarding what this would fall under whether it's a site plan for planning manager or for Planning Commission it really came down to you can do a reduction in the building but it wasn't constructed yet it's still new construction it was adding floor area and we had kind of placed it into it's a site plan for Planning Commission approval so yes it is only really it is at a reduction of about 2 000 square feet of the clubhouse got it I wasn't sure there's the section under revisions Right Moving a building placement more than 10 feet and so I was like is that Clubhouse moving the 10 feet okay I'm curious maybe this will come back in commission proposed business I

036don't know that this happens that often but this just seems the all of the parking that would have fallen under planning manager approval but the reduction of building square footage in a non-residential building anyway that just seems like maybe something that we want to add to the table to speed this along in the future I'm sure the petitioner would appreciate that I think that this is fine um from my perspective thank you commissioner Hammerschmidt all right I'll ask about the solar I noticed that too with the roof can you just talk about I was looking back when this project was initially approved and and I think there was a quote from the owner that the buildings would be solar ready whatever that means um and hopefully have it in the future so just if you

037could give us any sort of update on what's been going on there with any sort of sustainability or solar yeah so I think the uh that response was in regard to the residential buildings as far as the the structure up top to be able to support solar panels in the future by being ready I think that was the nature of that response and um I unfortunately don't have a response for you tonight um something I'm happy to go and and talk to the owner about and uh work with staff and try to come to some conclusions about solar on the clubhouse yeah we obviously can't force you but it does look like it's a like as Mr Garber said it's a beautiful roof for solar so please consider commissioner salve so we don't get to

038see floor plans in this petition but moving the barrier-free you mentioned that there wasn't ability to have the barrier-free entries at the middle of the building but can you share a little bit about uh the mobility kind of path for anybody in a wheelchair if they are visiting a unit at you know page south of this right like do they have to enter at one end of the building move through the entire Corridor if they're visiting a unit at the other end of the building and where are the elevators so the elevators are kind of centrally located um and they would still be able to get to the main entrance it's um it was really just a a function of the ramps at the sidewalk adjacent to the parking spaces the way that the building

039is placed the proximity to that to make those ramps work at the main entrance would have required you know kind of the the curb at the back so it's the ramp from the parking to the sidewalk not the ramp from the sidewalk to the building correct okay right that's a helpful clarification like you know this is the hard part about planning is we don't really get to see inside of the buildings it can meet some of those standards in terms of path but it is hard and you know it's a good cross-check point especially when we're getting housing units like this this is a great place for living in place to have address a lot of those mobility issues so appreciate that clarification absolutely thanks anybody else um I think we can move to a

040roll call vote on the motion as presented for 2805 Burton Road commissioner Lee yes commissioner Abrams yes commissioner watch yes commissioner Savvy yes commissioner Hammerschmidt yes councilmember dish yes commissioner clerk yes commissioner Mills yes commissioner Weatherby yes that motion passes thank you thank you all we are moving on to unfinished business 8B this is with respect to 1800 Washington seu the Evans Scholarship House site plan for Planning Commission this is a special exception use for Planning Commission approval a request to increase occupancy from 65 to 85 no proposed changes to exterior of the house located on this 0.85 acre parcel zoned r2b and I believe that we are going to petitioner presentation thank you hi good evening I'm Jerry Kaplan the architect for the project address 5062 Arrowhead West Bloomfield I'm going to make it

041very brief I think you've already seen the material essentially we have an existing building the Evans Scholars house on Washtenaw it has an existing basement floor for more public functions and two floors above that for bedrooms currently there are 65 students at the house and that's the permit that we have for that house there's also a finished Loft area above the two floors finished in the sense that it has ceilings insulation concrete floor sprinkler system already throughout but just two Corridor walls and all we're doing is adding some partitions to change that area to incorporate four large bedrooms each bedroom for four students each bedroom to have its own bathroom so essentially you want to be able to add 16 more people to the house um that's essentially the project we're not changing anything in

042terms of the building shape site or anything like that it all stays the same it's all interior modifications to that Loft area um I guess crisp has more information that he can present to you if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer thank you we will go to staff presentation okay excellent that was a very good presentation this was approved back in 2003 for the Evans scholarship house where they demolished the old one constructed a new one in 2004 it was a special exception use that capped the number of students at 65 it was we previously mentioned it is located just on the west side of Washington just north of ferdon and as it was previously stated this is all interior Renovations there'll be no changes to the exterior of the site no

043additional parking no additional well except for the interior the floor area um approximately I think it was gee 1700 square feet something like that with the four bedrooms is that what the total was that is the the net habitable area the actual up in the attic area gross floor area is 4 000 square feet just oh Chris make sure you notice that thing sticking up in front of your mouth usually people tell me to use my indoor voice so I'm okay um uh here's a few looking Southwest from Washington Cambridge again no changes that's the access to the parking lot the existing I think it's a 20 space parking lot again here's the view looking Northeast from Washington for Don essentially the only curb cut there is to pick up garbage and trash no parking

044is accessed off there this is the altar survey of what's existing they did receive a conflicting land use buffer variants back in 2003 I believe as part of this approval to screen from the surrounding residential and here's a look at the addict or Lofts type space that has approximately 16 additional students so that would put them at 81. I had written this report so it could go up to 85 so in the future if they wanted to add four additional students they wouldn't have to come back um as was previously stated they do have bedrooms I'm sorry uh four four beds per room with a bathroom um I also I believe some questions were coming up regarding what is the maximum amount of students that could live here it really comes down to that it's

045capped by the lot area and the maximum they could have based on the lot area because it's 350 square feet of lot area per student it comes out to 107 students could live here I did do a little bit of background research with the building and housing department when you start and I also coordinated with Mr Kaplan also on just rough numbers as far as well what if we had you know because for the hell housing code you need 50 square feet per student of habitable space in each bedroom after doing the calculations on the first two floors in the third floor that probably gets them up to approximately 134 students but that's neither here nor there it doesn't matter it's capped at 107. I also dealt with the building department and again they didn't

046want to get into how many could live there without knowing what's the egress there's a lot more information for building code to determine how many students you can safely have live here so we've put it at 85 I think it probably could go up to 107 but I would I would caution you that that would still be dependent on the housing department and the building department taking a more formal review thank you we're going to move on to public hearing this is an opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes about the proposed 1800 Washington special exception use permit we will first call on individuals present to address the commission then remote participants to speak during this public hearing remotely please press star nine if listing by phone or use a raised hand feature

047if viewing through the web link phone access please call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 City staff will call Select callers who have raised their hand using the last three jits of their phone number and by name if available you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak and when speaking please move to a quiet area mute any television or background sounds so that we can hear you clearly for either method of participation please do state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and is there anyone present that would like to speak seeing no one is there anyone that would like to address the commission remotely there are no hands raised Mr chair thank you the proposed the proposed motion is the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission finds

048the petition to substantially meet the standards in chapter 55 zoning ordinance section three uh there was a late hand raised would you like to uh allow the yes um inclusion good phone number ending in 587 you have permission to address the Planning Commission thank you cannot hear you yet good evening this is Deborah Lewis I live at 10 19 Baldwin or corner from Miss proposed site and my concern with all of this is I understand it's only 20 more people but parking is already so congested in the area with students back where will these other people Park assuming at least half of them have cars has that been under consideration at all that ends my comments thank you thank you is there anyone else this time no there are no other hands raised at this

049time thank you uh the proposed motion is the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission finds a petition to substantially meet the standards in chapter 55 zoning ordinance section 5.295.5 special exception use subject to building occupancy of no more than 85 persons and approves the 1800 Washington Avenue special exception use this approval is based on the following findings this will be consistent with the general objectives of the city comprehensive plan of office uses in the area the proposed use will not adversely impact traffic pedestrians bicyclists circulation or Road intersections based on a location and the proposed use is consistent with other surrounding uses traffic impact and number three the Ann Arbor Planning Commission concurs with the waiver of the survey and plan requirements is provided in section 5.29.8 subsection B of chapter 55 as no new construction

050is proposed for the site and a survey of the existing improvements on the site have been provided moved by Minister Whites seconded by commission council member dish we're in discussion commissioner dish so I had a question about parking too but it's not automobile parking because as we no longer have mandatory parking minimums there would be no additional parking required of this petition correct uh but I did wonder about additional bicycle parking because if I'm understanding the the materials that we received um you have currently 44 bike parking spaces I have this in my notes available yes cannot see yes and currently serves 65 residents I don't know do you have any um as far as I know we need to provide one one per two so actually 44 or 43 is good for 80 85

05186 yeah that might be true um but if if I could um just to fully articulate my question first I I wondered if you have usage information on your current do you know if all those spaces are used and then secondly since we are making an approval here I think we are allowed to make suggestions not perhaps requirements but as you know we prioritize uh multimodal Transit we are trying to give people alternatives to Automobiles and we also Envision greater and greater bike networks throughout the city so it just seems to me that 44 for 80 seems on the low side for a student residence and so I just wondered if you knew had the usage on what you currently have and if you have any flexibility to offer us a few more bike parking

052spaces and of course I'd be happy to hear if any of my fellow Commissioners feel like that's a okay request I'd be happy to answer that currently we have I think about 35 bicycles that students are using we have indoor bicycle so it's all covered and it's safe and it's within locked doors and everything so there it's better than covered bicycles and we also have additional storage space where we can put easily another 20 bicycles inside the building at the basement floor so we can accommodate as many and we encourage more bicycle use and I'll also add that being a this is not a regular dormitory this is a private organization that manages this building and basically they can put a cap on who is allowed and who is not allowed to have a car

053and bring it to the site so we have currently 21 parking spaces and that's it that's the limit so they just choose the maybe the more senior people or whoever but essentially we can control it it's not like everybody is entitled to have a car parked at the site because they're getting it's part of a foundation that provides the scholarship there's no argument here either you're allowed or not allowed to have a car on site thank you that is really helpful and so if I may just make sure that I'm understanding the additional information you're providing you're saying that there won't be additional cars even if there are additional residents required either right and they can arm wrestle if they want to over who gets the well who gets to have a car but their

054organization will decide for them yes no arm wrestling well we can try I'll recommend that any other questions thank you council member dish commissioner Mills thanks um I would relatedly note I don't know how much you trust zillow's Transit and walk scores but it's 60 good Transit um and its walking bike scores are also above that 64. so I mean this is on Route 4 in terms of being able to take a bus like that is the most frequent Transit service so um I think that this is it it's not just wishful thinking that people would live here without a car I think that this is this is a key place for that I have a question for Staff first of all I appreciate building in the flexibility of not just the 16 additional beds

055that they were asking for but future proofing it a little bit in case they want to put five in each of those new rooms um I'm curious about I I know that you noted the building code um uh limitations and that hasn't been hasn't been discussed but I'm curious about your sense of weather because from the zoning side this this property could accommodate 107 108 if if there's a reason not to write the special exception use now to accommodate that knowing that building code if there is internal first of all this will be this is inspected regularly I assume as part of the rental program um and that building code would catch any of those other violations just to to save them from having to come back in the future I think it's perfectly acceptable

056to cap it at 107 with the condition that yes it will still have to meet housing and building code when they come in if they choose to expand on the the inside of the of the structure any type of additional floor or an addition would require them coming back as a site plan too so if they're going to do any type of exterior floor area they'd be back in front of you so I um I'll just say I would be in favor of that I don't like I would let other people chime in I think that the idea of internal reconfiguration to to get us additional beds um is one of the least disruptive opportunities here and so I would be highly in favor of of making that change to in the in the motion

057language to increase that again reiterating for neighbors or anyone else who's asking that if there's any if there's any changes external changes other than that would create new floor area that they would still have to come back correct but this is just saying that that if it's done within these walls um the internal reconfiguration would allow for some additional beds so long as it follows the other applicable codes including the building code I think that's correct and Mr Kaplan could probably also confirm when we add our discussions that these proposed Loft bedrooms have four beds in them I believe the lower levels have two beds so that's correct could they actually put more students in those other rooms yes I believe they can got it ah thank you if I may add something as far

058as the number of people um because of the question that was asked today I did a quick calculation it turns out that the existing two floors if you look at the habitable square footage of those floors which is about 4 500 square feet approximately allows us to actually provide uh officially according to the calculation 99 people just in the existing two floors which we don't even want to do but that's the possibility so just for the record and to be clear which the current zoning doesn't allow you to do because of the 65 limits it uh yes that's where the special exception use but if I'm understanding the table right based on the Min the zoning maximum 107 was the number 107 exactly so building code you might be allowed to have more the zoning

059would say you're maxing out 107 your current special exception use is 65. the proposal tonight is to raise it to 85 and what I'm saying is let's just I would prefer to raise it all the way to 107. oh the special exception you so that matches the current zoning if I'm happy to propose that motion all right can I can I make a motion to Amendment to do what I just said yeah to 100. do I have a second okay uh commissioner Abrams seconds we're in discussion regarding this uh motion basically to amend uh commissioner probably I'll just add the zoning compliance checks even when you submit a building permit so conditions like if they might be capping out on the bike parking when they submit a building permit if they're adding more beds you

060know or doing additional configuration uh zoning compliance might be that the zoning department says show us where those additional bike parking spaces within the building are um so I feel like that checks the box if we need more than 40 barking parking spots sort of thing um but it brings a bit up a bigger Point relative to our current zoning policy which is that we have a policy about occupancy that is actually regulated for health safety and Welfare under our building code and Zoning may not be the appropriate place to think about our occupancy limits and that this is probably an inappropriate thing to actually be on our ordinance relative to a more restrictive and more regulated space relative to the kind of pseudo-local expertise of people deciding here so I support this going up

061to the current allowable maximum and I look forward to talking about it in future business thank you any other discussion okay and just to make sure that I understand clearly we're talking about amending this to increase it to 107 to be basically in conformance or uh alignment with building code absolutely zoning zoning code gotcha uh and then again and the building code is also going to continue to regulate fire like Safety Systems egress no questions about it okay got it um I suppose uh we're gonna do a it's not a roll call it's just a hand vote staff you got you Scully um on the proposed motion to amend to a man yeah to amend to 107. so from 85 to 107. I think a roll call would be best okay um I believe we

062are going to vote okay um to amend the motion on the floor commissioner Hammerschmidt yes um commissioner Weiss yes commissioner Mills yes commissioner Lee yes commissioner averon yes Mr Salve yes council member dish yes commissioner Weatherby yes commissioner Clark yes passes unanimously great so now we are back to the original motion of uh amending this to now it's 107. so any further discussion on the original motion which is amended seeing no further discussion uh I believe we are to roll call but Steph so there are actually two motions here uh the first is I believe the one that you meant to amend which is the the primary motion there's a second to waive area the area plan requirement so I would just need to know okay I just heard those were collapsed at the beginning

063of the meeting so in that case on the uh um stat I don't want to say collapsed but the uh consolidated Consolidated thank you Consolidated motion as amended um commissioner Lee yes commissioner Abrams yes commissioner weish yes yes commissioner Hammerschmidt yes councilmember dish yes commissioner clerk yes Mr Mills yes and commissioner Weatherby yes that carries unanimously thank you we'll be moving on to regular business thank you of course um we are moving on to regular business nine uh believe that we actually switched 9B and 9A at the beginning to amend the agenda so we are moving on to 3680 Packard dentist office site plan for Planning Commission approval this is a site plan for Planning Commission approval landscape modification requested with staff recommendation of approval we are on to petitioner presentation should be um remember

064you should be able to pull it right up from the bear with me for a second I gotta everybody see it yes all right time everyone um I'm Candice Breyer with Midwestern Consulting we are the civil engineers and planners and surveyors for this project I'm here with Dr Elizabeth Barber she's she's the owner of Blossom pediatric dentistry and then Shannon Easter white our architect with funkate texture is actually on Zoom I believe so she may have some ability to answer questions if there are any as well um so just a little bit of context about location so the site is at the southeast corner of Packard and Turnberry just west of kind of Carpenter Road the US-23 overpass kind of at the Eastern limit of the the city boundary the Ann Arbor Cat Clinic is

065immediately east of the site if you know where that is and then the Turnberry neighborhood is immediately adjacent to our South property line um so the site is currently zoned office which the dental office is a permitted use for for that zoning classification all the properties East of our site are also zoned office and c2b north and west of the site is r4a r4b and then everything south of us is r1d the future land use is pretty consistent with with zoning so again the the site's designated for office use as far as existing conditions go the site's about 1.2 Acres it's mostly vacant and I say mostly because it's a little bit unique in that there are 10 existing parking spaces half of a drive aisle and an existing trash enclosure on this property all

066of those are currently used by the Ann Arbor cat clinic so I'm not exactly sure what the history of these two Parcels is but at one point they had to have been one parcel I'm imagining because yeah the the Cat Clinic uses that those spaces that driveway regularly there is an easement over the parking spaces the drive aisle and the trash enclosure that allows for shared use but not cross access um so our intent is to keep those existing facilities and kind of incorporate them into what we're proposing to do so what we're proposing to do is a pediatric dental office it's a one-story building the first floor would be used as the dentist office and then there's a partial basement which would be for storage and mechanical equipment the building has been cited to

067meet the front setbacks on both Packard and Turnberry and to kind of maximize the setback to the adjacent Residential Properties we are proposing 29 new parking spaces and then those of those 10 existing spaces we're sharing them 50 50 with the cat clinic so we'll have the ability to use five of those to give us a total of 34 vehicle parking spaces there will be four evi spaces and nine EVC spaces there are 10 proposed bike parking spaces four Class A six Class C we have one access drive that is being proposed onto Turnberry we were advised during our concept meetings with the city that driveway onto Packard wouldn't be allowed so we put the access on Turnberry and the drive location was driven partly by the building location because the building needed to be

068at the corner and then we're also trying to provide a safe separation distance from the Turnberry and Packard intersection as well as kind of maintaining a good distance to the the Residential Properties we didn't want our driveway to be right next to their houses um as I mentioned there is no cross access with the cat clinic but the two properties will share those 10 existing spaces five and five the properties are also going to share that existing dumpster um we are providing a small trash enclosure area for a few recycling carts um or potentially compost if needed and then based on our conversations with the the Solid Waste Department those carts would just be wheeled out and collected as part of the regular solid waste collection schedule and then we are requesting one landscape modification

069to allow the existing vegetation along the South and the East to satisfy the club requirements which I believe staff has supported as far as the utilities they're pretty straightforward there'll be a new domestic and fire suppression two new leads coming off of an existing 12-inch water main and Turnberry there is an existing hydrant at the northeast corner or sorry the northwest corner of the site which provides full coverage for the proposed building and then there'll be a new sanitary lead that connects to a 10 inch main intern Berry as well storm water management there are no existing detention facilities on this site currently we did get some very good infiltration testing results when we did testing so we're proposing an infiltration Basin underneath um the parking south of the building and then there'll be swales

070on the north and west side of the building to kind of direct drainage around to catch basins and then it'll all flow into the underground system and Outlet into existing storms that were in Turnberry as far as the proposed building as I mentioned it's a single story single story building it's consistent in scale with the other adjacent buildings the goal would be to use locally and responsibly sourced building materials the building has been designed to support rooftop solar panels as far as some of the sustainability features and the goal of achieving full building electrification so we're currently looking at a couple of options one would be using electric heat bumps and a conventionally ducted system or we think we might have enough space to run geothermal south of the parking lot so those are two

071things that we're we're currently looking at both obviously would not not rely on natural gas we're also specifying electric stove for the staff break room electric dryers for the laundry area as I noted we're providing EV charging stations and then there's a lot of building windows proposed to kind of maximize daylight coming in and use as much natural natural light as we can we're also providing occupancy sensors throughout the entire building so that if spaces of the building aren't being used those those lights would turn off um and then back to kind of the solar piece so this is just kind of a rough roof plan that shows just kind of a preliminary layout of of how the solar panels might might look if we put them on the building itself because currently we're we're

072looking at either on the building or ground mounted kind of south of the parking but this would provide for a little over 650 square feet of coverage on the roof and then as I mentioned we're looking at locally sourced materials so we're specifying Michigan source to Natural Stone looking at some alternative exciting options that are a little bit more efficient more durable rock wool insulation on the interior walls spray foam insulation so it would kind of exceed the the building code requirements for the the R value and with that we're happy to answer any questions thank you we'll move on to staff presentation Mr Kowalski Candace do you think you could go back to the overall site because it's going to rely on your just in one of the site love to um that sounds

073good perfect thank you okay um good evening everyone again um I want to make sure up front we realized as Planning Commission there are two motions required here tonight one is the the approval of the site plan the motion itself as well as a landscape modification which is a separate motion um so a couple of highlights that staff wanted to touch on really uh the project did evolve a little bit since we originally saw it as well we were working with the petitioner to um minimize some of the parking on the site by utilizing the shared parking which was an agreement that They Came Upon which was um supported by all staff really involved it helps minimize impact of some of the natural features around the staff or sorry around the site as it is

074stands right now the actually I'll go through the initial list right here again that we have the shared parking and and somewhat the access as I understand it that the access is not there's not Transportation access across the site but there would be shared access if there is emergency for fire and things like that if needed so that was something that our fire marshal did did look at as favorable with that ability to cross across the sites like that um the landscape modification as you guys are aware is a separate motion as I pointed out um that was supported by staff again as you can see the site is pretty heavily wooded to the South and into the East that borders the residential the single-family residential zoning districts there um that would require a 10

075foot wide conflicting land use buffer which again would require them basically clearing out the trees that are there to put in smaller trees and shrubs and possibly a berm so um staff came to the agreement with the petitioner that would be much better to keep the existing vegetation as it stands on the site rather than replace it with uh a much smaller vegetation the transportation was was a concern with the site that we looked in significantly Transportation issues both regarding the curb cuts on the site as well as possibility of cut through traffic as was indicated earlier by the petitioner the curb cut onto Packard was something that was a no-go from the start uh the curb cut directly onto Turnberry Lane the distance was also reviewed by our transportation team making sure that even

076in spite of where the building itself location is we want to make sure that you have proper clearance regarding the intersection the distance site distance from the building corner to that driveway as well as the intersection the distance of that curb cut from that intersection has to be a certain distance from there so that is met by this design as well um potential conflicts were identified with some of the we've had a couple of neighborhood meetings some neighborhood feedback in there one of the concerns that was mentioned by the neighborhood was the location of mailboxes that are just off site across Turnberry Lane if you see on the visual they're kind of it's a little bit of a highlighted area I don't have the active box it's just so it's across the street and just

077so it's on the west side of Turnberry and just south of yeah somebody's got their just south of that uh of their driveway right there that was something that again the petitioners indicated they would be willing to work uh with the neighborhood but there's there's no neighborhood association in place now currently so there wasn't necessarily a uh a main contact to to agree upon those Solutions but I think that's something that they are still willing to consider if they get a consensus opinion from the neighborhood in that area but again our traffic team did look at that they didn't feel that that was necessarily a conflict based on a traffic flow that was proposed at this location and the traffic flow that's typically generated at that mailbox location they did do a traffic impact uh

078basically a baseline traffic impact study for this it did not require a larger uh study to be uh to be conducted as well as no off-site improvements were required by that a couple of the other issues again they did mention the shared dumpster there's a small location for the recycling on the site as it stands the EV parking is code compliant and and again the petitioner is offering the electrification as a as an element required for the building as well so I think that covers all the staff items that I wanted to address here and again obviously we are recommending approval of the site plan as well as the landscape modification here tonight that concludes thank you perfect thank you Mr Kowalski all right we're going to move on to public hearing so this is

079an opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes about the proposed 3680 Packard site plan we'll first call on individuals present to address the commission than remote participants to speak during this public hearing remotely please press star nine of listing my phone or use the raise hand feature if you're viewing through the web link and for phone access again let's call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6643-1226 City staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of the phone number or by name if available you're going to hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak and when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we can hear you clearly so for either method of participation once

080again please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and is there anyone present that would like to speak on this particular matter thank you hi my name is Janet Ricky 3207 to ruin the bin um I had I came here with questions but Matt was able to answer most of those questions um just wanted to say though that there was a notice that was put on um a poll that's right next to the property it was only put up yesterday and so and this is a I'm only learning about this project right now and so I would just like to suggest that perhaps if there could be you know in other projects around the city if notice could be put up more ahead of time than at the last moment so

081that there is opportunity to give feedback on a project I understand this project will probably go through as it is which is fine but I'm just saying for for future that perhaps notice could be put up so that comments could be considered um and I just only did one have another question that wasn't um brought up with lighting Lighting on this corner um knowing that the city has a plan I'm sorry I'm drawing a blank on the name of it right now but reducing the lighting so just wondered about about um and I think that's it I again that was kind enough to answer on my other questions so thank you thank you is there anyone else I would like to speak on this particular petition thank you commissioner Lee Ken Garber again 28 Abigail

082Court um the petitioner here is genuflecting towards all the right sustainability elements um building electrification possibly geothermal solar but um I did not hear anything definitive on any of this it's the sort of well we're looking into all this right now um and um I guess uh I would be curious as to why they can't be more definite in definitive on these questions at this time um you know um we've heard a lot over the last three years of petitioners coming in and saying ah yeah well we're looking at this we're looking at geothermal we're looking at electrification we're looking at solar but it's too early in the process to really say whether we can do this I mean we we can't even we're not even going to start designing our Mechanicals for another six

083months I mean really um but we're really seriously looking at this so I don't mean to imply bad faith I mean maybe this is a really uh um you know definite effort on their part I would be interested in hearing if they have a geothermal engineering report at this time and what it says what might be the limiting factors um but it to me it sounds depressingly familiar at this point I mean once it's approved no one's really going to go back and check and see what they've done and haven't done I'd like to to see more granularity on these points on the part of the petitioner um you know there's other things they could do as well including battery storage uh and you know Conformity with the 2021 iecc uh as I mentioned before

084the 820 plan mandates Net Zero Energy buildings at this point we're not getting very many um so um yeah if it so to me it sounds like gas is not off the table at this point I'd love to be wrong about that please correct me if I'm wrong but if this 32 273 square foot building is heated with gas how calculated we'll put out 335 metric ton CO2 equivalent emissions a year I hope that doesn't happen thank you Mr Garber is there anyone else that would like to speak in the room hello hi my name is Michelle Mahler I live at 3267 Turnberry Lane I wasn't going to talk because I talked to Matt and he already explained a lot about the traffic and everything I was concerned about the entrance sort of cut out

085whatever you call it on Turnberry Lane um we have a lot of traffic that comes through and we tend to get stuck at certain times at the light and Matt already mentioned that the engineers were already looking at the traffic delays that we currently have it's normally in the morning when parents are trying to get their kids out to school my son goes to community and so we sit there for five minutes or so trying to get out and then coming in you know in the winter time it's kind of hard coming in when it's winter and snow and if they don't plow our area or salt it you can crash into their cars sometimes and so I'm concerned about the traffic coming in and out in the increase of traffic and we also talked

086about with Matt um about the possibility you know other people trying to get out of that other exit by the vet that they might get tired of waiting for the traffic you know to come out it might figure out oh there's an opening now over there at the new place let's cut through and come through at the light um so those are some concerns that I have about um the new cut out in Turnberry The increased traffic delay for our area um so that's all I really have to say um it sounds like it's going to be a nice place though but thank you thank you is there anyone else seeing no one do we have any remote callers we do thank you call up the phone number ending with 168. please press star six

087and address the Planning Commission for up to three minutes I fully support the previous speakers and I want to put fewer new comments about what happened now and the intersection on the temporary Lane and uh sorry apart it is very difficult to get out with the subdivision especially in Winter because the city doesn't put enough salt on the circuit and the intersection and as a result it creates a conservative condition so it is it's very often happens that we have a traffic accident in this corner and I think that adding additional entrance intersection right under the Century Lane it will create a very preservous conditions for our kids for our families and it will rescue them helping our uh our city it will create more problems so I think that this year should take care

088about this intersection studies about what conditions during the winter occurs there and the cleanup no of the snow the second problem is that there is a check through the documentation I don't see any estimation from which Energy electrical energy this building will be consuming our subdivision in last two or three years we were losing power continuously last year we lost 40 days because now we created here cannot support this power and many people on our subdivision are putting electrical vehicles and the power consumption will grow so if we'll put this building on our grief we'll have more outages so you need to think about citizens over subdivision our subdivision and our city rather bring in new businesses and I don't know what the value of this new forces we have already six or seven dental

089clinics in this area I don't understand why do we need to cover another one yeah I'm done thank you very much thank you there are other remote callers no other colors okay um with that we close public hearing uh proposed motion both will be taking together unless somebody would like to motion that they are taken separately uh all right again there's two motions the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission this is being taken together and concurrently approves the blossom Dental site plan 3680 Packard Road dated June 29 2023 as a site plan complies with all applicable requirements of the unified development code and other applicable laws ordinances standards and regulations and the second motion is with respect to the landscape modification and Club the conflicting land use buffer the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission hereby approves

090the blossom Dental site plan 3680 Packard Road Landscape modification that allows existing trees and vegetations to be counted as the conflicting land use buffer moved by council member Dash and seconded by commissioner Weatherby we are in discussion commissioner White I'll kick us off uh let's start with staff uh I am confused by the conflicting land use buffer and why we need this modification especially looking at the site and the trees so the like why is this the case it's like 75 feet of clearance and now we have to do a modification so that they can leave the trees in place because if they didn't do that they would have to replace them with worse trees like is this intentional well sorry yeah okay all right I don't think Mr Leonard wants to answer yeah oh

091it should be on my mic should be on so um no that's a good good question I mean I think the first answer is really most sites are not this heavily wooded of course so that that code we don't have ability as staff to just grant like keep that Landscaping as it is there we can only like the code requirement just says basically they have to if you're installing uh office use with the parking lot basically the requirements next to residential you have to put that conflicting land use buffer in there it doesn't give staff the ability but if you have the 75 feet so that's what was written directly in the code even though again staff our landscape reviewer said yeah absolutely it's pointless to rip out bigger trees which some of them are

092not native I'll give you that some of them are quote unquote junk trees but there are a lot of mature trees in there so staff right away agreed said yeah there's no sense in pulling out non-name fees just putting some much smaller ones but in the UDC requires a landscape modification to be decided by Planning Commission because there are sometimes you know there may be some sites where Planning Commission may think it's not as favorable to to um keep the existing trees in there so so that's really I know on this site it seems like Overkill exactly but one thing that it also does do is it locks in you know if this is well likely any new development I know like some concerns would be like if if the trees were removed or you

093know excess parking goes into that anything like that would trigger a site plan it would require a new landscape modification so it's not like they can just um it that locks them into basically keeping those trees like they are right now so and again that would be the nature of the site plan anyway but I think the way that UDC is written it gives you the Planning Commission that that discretion rather to Grant the landscape modification you may feel that it's better to put in smaller native trees with with bushes but um so that's that's basically why but doesn't the UDC require that because it's residential against parking that the whatever goes in there has to block windows and patios yes from being visible so that would automatically create height requirements in order to to

094create that obfuscation right correct yes it has minimal requirements for shrubs as well as um trees that's correct so again that would be another thing that maybe Planning Commission will look into like is this an effective they're they're not providing necessarily the ground cover they're the low-lying shrubs as well as the trees is this just is an effective buffer as a 10 foot or sorry 15 foot wide conflicting land use buffer so but you're correct the goal of that is to prevent you know the traffic or lights you know headlights and things like that interfering with the with the adjacent residential neighborhood sure my second question uh chair Lee is that okay uh is to the petitioner uh why so much parking so the parking is based on the number of Staff members and number

095of patients that are expected to be seen at any given time so so is that a re sorry to interrupt you but just to clarify is that a requirement of the UDC that you have parking spaces for staff because they're going to be there no there is no required parking okay that's what I thought all right good yeah so we tried to to minimize it um so we're sharing five of those 10 existing ones and then adding 29 more in Dr Barber you can correct me there's how many staff members are there at any one time on an average day we are we're a dual specialty she'll teach short appointments but there's can you can you come up to the microphone so we can get that out yeah the zoom listeners can't hear you so

096we are a dual specialty practice we are a pediatric dentistry and Orthodontics so this is the number of parking spots that we feel would be appropriate for staff and the number of patients that we need to see throughout the day okay so then a question to staff um are there restrictions for the business from using street parking no so some of the parking could be accommodated on the street that is adjacent to the property not as it goes into the turning lane because I know there's a buffer I don't know if there's parking on both sides that Turnberry off the top of my head but but it's a public street so public parking would be allowed where it's pretty right certain distance from the intersection sure okay those are my two initial questions one thing

097I'm sorry the only thing I would add to the parking is it as you all know very well we don't have parking minimum parking standards anymore right it wouldn't quite meet the minimum parking so if we still had parking they would be providing more parking on the site no which is why we got rid of it so Mr Leonard Matt is there a parking maximum for this use no no any other commissioners council member dish I'm sorry I correct myself we do have a parking Max in the office District I'm sorry and that that maximum let me run quickly I uh we also have it it looks like 74 would be the max yeah 74 spaces based on the building size so yes we do have a parking Max thank you okay okay uh okay

098yes I think we should keep uh we should come back to that does anybody want to keep talking about that and I would seed but otherwise I would I would just ask something um about uh the trees so I noticed that you are preserving an existing elm tree which is a landmark tree and five landmarks are being removed now Mr Kowalski you mentioned mature trees in that South part of the site that are being preserved as part of the eminently reasonable landscape modification I think we are likely to vote in favor of are there any Landmark trees in that vegetation that is being reserved as open space no there's well sorry there's one Landmark Tree in that area oh there is one language it looks like I'm running the the other one looks like it's

099going to be removed unfortunately that the landmark trees are hauling the corner of where the building needs to be because of setback requirements that I think there's how many seven total on the site or uh I forget how many but I believe so yes and all of them that are being removed with the exception of one are clustered right in the corner yeah right so there are mature trees to the south side of that site some of them are invasive so they wouldn't qualify as and there's like a last Siberian elm so again there's some that even though they're larger trees they don't qualify because technically they're invasive but there's only one Landmark tree that's going to be preserved there and I'm not sure what species that is off and that's the elm you mean

100or is there one in that southern part also because the elements up by the building it's the elements being preserved there's an oak on the south end it's a landmark tree being okay so there's an oak on the south end and then the Elm on the yeah it's like yeah which is good that's actually the landmark tree that's being preserved is a 19-inch Baroque that's nice so yeah that's that's like the only oak on the entire site I think that's really nice and I I wanted to just highlight that because we had heard a concern raised earlier in the open comment period so thank you for doing that um and I'm glad it's too uh so and then just I guess the other thing is um how committed are you to not heating and heating

101with gas as per the other question we heard I'm committed to fully exploring all possible options I know that's not the answer that he hopes to hear but I'm still looking at cost and what is involved I understand the initiative to go electric I support it I am from Ann Arbor I I love the city I love everything we stand for but we're still exploring the options but I will incorporate everything that I can so any of any other Commissioners have any questions of commissioner salve just think um seeing the intensity that's planned for the site you're at about the allowable is about 0.75 far and you're about 0.25 so you can do additional floor area just future thinking here dreaming big that green space could be you know two or three stories of residential

102next to residential maybe for staff that wouldn't require conflicting land use buffer if additional parking weren't required if it filled in that green space correct yes yes residential with adjacent to residential without a parking as that separation sort of thing um so I think you know relative to our required setbacks and the situation this tightly holds it to the corner and I actually just encourage the petitioner to consider the potential to create a residential buffer with a second phase of this project that is just gonna you know further match some of that Community goals of our housing requirements um and it won't be to the detriment of what's already planned there so uh I think it's a great it's actually unfortunate the only other thing I can see in this project is there's probably not

103enough collaboration of connecting sites together how you have the share without kind of that thoroughfare and so you know that movement on Turnberry and that those parking spots really kind of block depending on people's habits of parking within those 10 spaces and it would be great to see more ways that our policies could engage those interconnected sites for maybe more pedestrian friendly slower streets off of these collector corridors so this project just kind of highlights that as an example to kind of put in our reference deck of things that could be improved within our policies and courage between Parcels when they design going forward but can I speak to that just a little please when we were designing it that was definitely something that we were keeping in mind but like the residents have said

104I was very concerned about the potential for cut through from the I think it's is it Cherry Cherry Hill is the dirt road that people need to enter the cat clinic and I did not want to create a situation where there was dangerous cross traffic and excessive traffic coming to that light and so that's why there is kind of that shared parking but you're right it probably will will be you know full of Staff cars it was a trade-off between wanting to share space and utilize it the best way possible without creating the situation that the neighbors were concerned about yep and I think you know we have a lot of traffic tools that I don't think we utilize enough chicanes and bollards and things to slow down and pinch to deter those kind of

105Quick Cuts and instead say this is a slower transition point so that if you're making several errands move across this but those aren't tools that we use very often in our city right plastic bollards instead of actual chicans and slowing down traffic so like these are the best tools that we have and I'd understand like you don't have control of driving drivers habits um but it would be great to see how we can improve that going forward and this is just one of those projects I recall a couple on West Stadium and even I think on Devar and we saw like developments side by side and those streets not connecting and if you think about subdivisions and how kids connect through I'm just taking a tangent but this is just like a really good example

106project to show the collaborative nature that we could kind of foster between Parcels could really engage more of that Community Connection and those lower multimodal spaces so thanks for the project commissioner Abrams I just had a small question I noticed in the floor plan on the southern portion of the building there's about 600 square feet that are designated lease space and I wondered what you had in mind for that um do you want this specific Ally so you're leasing it to it I assume it's releasing it to a tenant that is going to be part of a collaborative effort to be a multi-purpose pediatric provider so in Pediatric Dentistry we do a lot that's focused on Airway and healthy breathing and this will be a practitioner a single practitioner who's what's called a mild functional

107therapist who will help um help with Airway issues habit thumb habits things like that evaluating for tongue tie lip tie she's also a lactation consultant and a speech pathologist so it's going to be kind of this um this area where people can go to have everything evaluated for their children and then treated but she's she's just a single person she sees one patient at a time it should be fairly low low impact for my space great thanks commissioner Mills um two questions I think mostly for staff and I think I answered the first one myself so I was curious about how the address would work for this since the entrance is off of Turnberry and so I just Googled the Cat Clinic which also doesn't have a turn uh uh um access on Packard but

108has a Packard address and at least then it tells you to turn onto Cherry Tree Lane so presumably now Google Maps is smart or people's and things okay um I just wanted to because you're not going to turn around on Packard and so I just didn't know how you handled that this is obviously the safer access point I think significantly safer access point but I just didn't know what you do and I guess this is a place where it's people are coming back regularly um hopefully they're probably not that regularly hopefully not regularly hopefully they do meet their regular hopefully every six months exactly yeah exactly um all right so that that took care of that one the second one is for staff about the comment that was made about notice being posted and uh

109do you know what can you I went to the UDC but if you can refresh us all on how notice posting works and who's responsible and if we know what happened in this situation that you're right staff so so we have the two notices one is the the postcard that you guys are aware of the other is is the sign that's posted there I did post that sign there last week actually it was there on Thursday because I went out there myself with my car and so we did post that on Thursday it's but we only have so it's taped around a uh it's taped around a uh light pole basically so we have one notice in that debate about whether to put one on another one on Packard it does the code doesn't specify

110necessarily where we put it so I put it directly on Turnberry thinking but I mean it faces the street so you could easily probably drive by it it's a white sign so it was posted but that's not the most visible location apparently a lot of people haven't didn't see it or so but that is true got it and in terms of um I don't for noticed that people would have gotten in the mail for this what is the requirement that was the 500 foot postcard they didn't have a uh no um it's 300 feet when I actually look to this is not a test because I didn't answer I know before they um when the project submitted they're required as a part of the city the CPO assistant participation ordinance to mail out the postcard

111within 500 feet so that goes out right when the project was submitted they were not required to have a public meeting didn't meet that threshold but they were required to mail out the postcard um I and then the notice for the public hearing I'll look to Mr Leonard um or Mexicali that um I think it's 300 feet that goes out before the public notice Mr is that 500 feet or the public notice that goes out for public hearings it's a public hearing put radius notice versus some participation this was a five this is the 500 yeah and that's the postcard that's mailed out right when we get the project accepted is the postcard and then the other notice is when we decide on the public hearing and so presumably in this situation and it's measured

112from the poverty boundary yeah not like the centroid of the no it's measured from the boundary the the 300 the 500 feet as well it's it's measured directly from that eventually it's probably only a few problems exactly with 500 feet or 300 it doesn't yeah it's not going to go that far when Parcels are 50 60 feet wide all right I can't tell you for our postcards that we mailed based on the 500 feet distance um we mailed 160 postcards oh so okay the city provided those addresses so I we do it assuming that they were generated correctly but that's that was our list do you remember what like what month that was that those went out they were mailed on April 7th okay um thank you for having that numerical number there um obviously

113it's a numerical number anyway sorry it's late um I so I'm curious I mean thanks for bringing this to our attention about the visibility and I think that and um of these and kind of how the postcard mailing works um and this is something kind of periodically that comes up about like how what text goes on there and kind of how visible things are so adding to her every every item tonight may come back anyway um in terms of it doesn't have to in terms of future proposed business um but overall I think that this is an appropriate use I really like what commissioner Abrams said about thinking about or uh commissioner silver sorry not Abrams survey um channeling internally about thinking about what the site could be in the future too commissioner hammerschman I

114like that too for the record um okay so I'm gonna I'm assuming that there's no gas line on this property right now right it's just trees as far as I'm aware there is not a guests there okay I have to say I based on this presentation like I did get the the sense that you guys are committed to doing whatever you can to make sure that this is all electric um it's it's hard it's worth it um but it is really hard so you have to kind of persevere and be unwavering and committed to that please don't put it in a gas line and it's like it doesn't have a cast line um arborwood is awesome it's awesome and the only other thing you said an electric dryer an electric stove I hope you meant

115induction stove induction is way better than Electric I can't see us doing a ton of stove cooking yeah no induction's great and there's no worry about like people touching a hot surface or anything like that it like and I think there's tax that it's under the iris stuff I think same with like a heat pump dryers too those might not be big enough capacity this is getting really in the weeds but those just like stuck out at me so this is a great project great location so thank you so I love the design and the what was the funky texture yeah it's amazing thank you thanks thank you any other commissioners if not um I I think everyone pretty much covered a lot of the questions I had Landmark trees um we talked about insufficient

116notice and notice uh Provisions as well and then the environmental sustainability element and I do want to actually address something that Mr Garber uh said about you know why do we hear this all the time and there's something that was running through my mind as you said that it's because it's it to me it's there's a little bit of sequence here right um there's a site plan and then there's when you're going into you have a permit set you have a bid set you have a construction drawing set so there's these kinds of like different segments of architectural drawings that you're ordering and you know for small business owners uh like yourself again I applaud you going through this process it can be a very expensive kind of ordeal to say I'm ordering an MEP

117set now uh when I don't even have like kind of like the fundamental building outline design so as far as like Pediatric Dentistry goes I mean they do a lot of crazy things like putting TVs on the ceilings you know and they have a lot of pump requirements we do a lot of oral surgery clinics and dentists so we've gone through the process so when you are ordering these MEP mechanical electrical Plumbing sets it's a very heavy spend and that's that's when you say I have the outline and this is what I'm looking to do that bid set is when you start getting commitments from subcontractors that say Hey this is what I can do it for and you see if it fits in your budget and don't get me wrong dentists are like Bankers

118love dentists they're like oh great graduate degrees Yeah we're happy to fund but you have to stay within budget and so I think the challenge that we have here is again from the zoning empowered standards of building basically setback what we are enumerated to basically enforce under the UDC it is challenging to sit here and say well you should have ordered an MEP set when we don't have a final site plan yet and so it's asking somebody to spend money preemptively so that that is the conflict because certainly I agree with you I'd love to see more stipulations and you know the commitment should be there but it is is just a sequencing issue because again you go for a permit that before you even you know you just you say I have fire Life

119Safety egress Ingress these are the items that I'm going to tackle to get things moving with the city and then at a certain point you're going to start pulling trigger on these different uh sequences so that that's I think the kind of challenge that we have we are asking for commitments before they have had a chance to say line by line with commitments from Subs hey this is in my budget so I certainly understand the conundrum we certainly want to see the commitment but I also understand why they can't basically they just don't want to make promises that can't necessarily keep this project they might go through the entitle entire entitlements process and then at the end of it they say wow we're like 40 over budget what are we doing right so I think

120that there's a challenge I certainly hear you an ra20 plan is something that we agree to as a community so I'd love again as a citizen of Ann Arbor please try to explore them with good faith I think the horizontal geothermal is definitely worth it but as you indicated about the MEP it's simply just looking at the sequencing of things I don't see how somebody could order that MEP you know hiring a team of Engineers to essentially design the mechanical systems prior to actually even having a an outline so other than that yeah we covered pretty much trees notice um I think that and just for procedural clarification staff this is a site plan buy right so this ends here right this doesn't go to council that's correct so these motions being taken together will

121be the approval of the site plan correct okay cool that is all I have to say is there anybody else that wants to have any five final words before we go to roll call vote seeing none roll call please commissioner yes commissioner Abrams yes commissioner Hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes commissioner Lee yes commissioner Clark yes commissioner Mills yes commissioner white yes commissioner Weatherby yes thanks so thank you thank you congratulations thank you we are moving on to item 9A we're at nine o'clock right now um I will be recusing myself from this discussion since it involves the tc1 district as my employer owns property in the tc1 district so I will be handing over S2 commissioner Vice chair Abrams oh yeah you need to start here you go oh yeah five minutes yes sorry I

122was just like orienting myself to the world um it's nine o'clock we're gonna take a five minute break so we will resume at 905 thank you foreign I don't know if that worked I'm waiting for CTN to be back okay welcome back to our meeting uh picking up where we left off we are now going to move to item nine a and this is a petition regarding the tc1 district narrow rights of way amendments to chapter 55 unified development code this is a proposed UDC Amendment for recommendation to city council the staff recommendation is approval and we'll begin with a staff presentation by mix Kelly thank you very much I will expand my screen here I just want to note that in addition to my presentation for Q a we have on the line via

123Zoom also planner de Leo our resident tc1 expert so she will be on hand as well uh just I want to as we're looking through what we'll talk through with this item there were a number of attachments in addition to a staff report on this item if you did not get a chance to look at all the attachments just wanted to draw your attention to them just a overview of what tc1 intended to do promote mixed-use pedestrian friendly Redevelopment reduce vehicle travel increased destination access offer housing options while easing regulatory constraints like floor area ratio this presentation is one of a two-parter of responding to council resolution r22390 which directed The Planning Commission to consider modifications to the tc1 zoning District as you heard at the beginning of this meeting the first part of that

124to incorporate limited automobile related uses was brought to you first and it was just passed yesterday evening and after presenting at some working sessions and uh now you have before you the second part which is to address constraints of existing narrow rights of way so what is tonight's motion and staff recommendation it is to modify section 5.10.2 to establish Transit Corridor is a street type designation with a reference map so similar to the downtown overlay zoning reference map which we've also renamed as a street type designation map for consistency and to amend chapter 55 of the unified development code section 5.17 to provide front setbacks based on this designation uh with 20 foot minimums and 40 foot maximums measured from Curb lines and to clarify some other parameters related to those two what is the

125goal of these amendments primarily something very simple this is not a cure-all it's not a silver bullet we want to make sure that new buildings are not blocking possibilities and future needs of our sidewalk Zone and also at the same time limit the furthest distance of buildings to 40 feet from Curb or the front line whichever is closest and these setbacks were under no Illusions they're not a substitute for other things a robust Corridor study or development Vision tailored by location design guidelines which would be informed by each Corridor location Capital Investments to fund desired streetscapes or right-of-way acquisition itself this is to keep buildings out of spaces that they'll be an obstacle the applicable corridors are the current tc1 zoned areas State Eisenhower Stadium Maple corridors and also those um just to tee up

126although the map is not does not include Plymouth and Washington that it would also eventually Encompass those quarters once rezoned so uh just to dive a little deeper into the problem definition of what was presented to us by Council trying to address inconsistent frontages some of our front lot lines are very close to curbs in fact they overlap or are one with our curved lines or sometimes they're very far away um our current setbacks allow building to front lot lines even if that is two feet from the curb even if the max setback of 15 feet is utilized that's not required right now and so we are still kind of uh at the mercy of negotiations that's our current requirement we're requesting that developers petitioners work with us to do the right thing a walkable

127and just finally you know walkable Transit friendly infill this is this is so core to tc1 it can only happen with high pedestrian comfort and space for the amenities that provide them Comfort to walk at the bottom is a table on this slide of the existing right away from Curb to property line as measured by our very own Mr Leonard um I think we did not quite ascertain the the maximum on Maple but just for a flavor of what is out there today we have on the Satan Eisenhower I'm sorry in State Street Corridor of lot lines um varying from zero feet from Curb to 50 feet from Curb on Eisenhower 11 to 65 feet on Stadium 0 to 14 feet Maple as low as two for sure potentially up to a higher footage on

128Maple 0 to 69 and on Washington 0-38 which um it you know it's uh just a good example of the variability of our property lines and what we're able to accomplish within property line regulation alone as as in the current regulation not measured from curb so State Street at Hilton these are examples from our current tc1 zoning District this first example is near Briarwood Mall just north of I-94 existing tc1 setbacks here would allow but not require approximately 20 feet from the back of curb line I did look back through the 27 December 2017 South State Street quarter study it envisioned a 10-foot Tree Lawn in this area with a five foot sidewalk um I I think staff would agree that the tree lawn space is correct but a wider sidewalk than a five foot

129minimum which is almost at the bare Ada minimum standard is probably not appropriate here so the quarter study for this area did recommend basically a 15 foot minimum which we would encourage exceeding next an example at West Eisenhower at South Main also just near Briarwood Mall the existing tc1 setbacks would allow but not require 65 feet from back of curb line so 50 feet plus the 0 to 15 feet 15 15 from the front lot line being our current regulation off of West Eisenhower and 43 feet from back of curb on South Main the measurement isn't shown uh so the proposed setback would limit the building set back to the front property line location so it actually reduced the setback in in this scenario on one side by three feet on another side by at

130a minimum 10 feet then moving on to just have a handful of these examples to show the the variation of what's out there this is West Stadium at arbordale this is a Speedway location on the top corner there's five Lanes of Road here but we have about five feet from the property line to the curb that uh and under current regulations building could be built right up to that property line and you would be between five Lanes of traffic in a building with no space for a door swing Zone very uncomfortable not very compatible with our goals for tc1 so existing setbacks here would allow but they would not require 20 feet from the curb line uh this example at North Maple and Jackson showed quite a lot of variation on the south side that

131triangle cut out on the um southwest corner was about 60 feet from the the the turn the center of the the turn radius of the curb to the property line on the North side I've shown um a Distance on the northwest corner of 30 feet [Music] um and then you can see on the northeast corner there's there's no distance between the curb and the property line As you move a little bit farther south on South Maple there is a winnowing of the distance that goes from 60 feet down to 1.1.7 is what I was able to measure from our internal GIS tools so this is uh all of the corners of this intersection would fall under the proposed setbacks with Stadium at West Liberty almost all of the front lot line Corners are three feet

132from the curb so this is uh there's pinch points basically on every corner where we would struggle without again a lot of and this this would still be the case but I think we would have less regulatory bargaining power we would have to have a negotiation and each of these Corners if they were to be redeveloped with property owners to get adequate right-of-way Washington charmer a Chalmers drive this is a proposed one of our proposed zones on Washington and this is right in front of if you've seen the Vitamin Shop business right here that is the existing setbacks would allow but not require 15 feet back uh the sidewalk here is about 10 feet so you're getting about an extra five feet from the back of curb I just showed here what 20 feet would

133be and if you can keep your mind fixed on this location this little Shadow thing here is a four Lease sign and I'll show it to you so 20 feet would be just before this four Lease sign it would basically double the sidewalk but in the future maybe possibly we could swap the sidewalk with a tree lawn so you would be walking closer to is a business The Vitamin Shoppe is just over 40 feet I think it's 43 feet from the back of curb you know these aren't super precise measurements but to give you a sense of how close it feels and what the variation would be uh that's the setup so our proposed solution and rationale um without silver bullets without having a a huge effort to study in depth each one of these

134corridors to just get buildings out of the way to put us in a better bargaining position to preserve a future that will actually be workable for the vision of tc1 um we proposed to consistently require buildings uh be 20 feet to 40 feet or from the back of curb or their front line if the distance from the curb is greater than 40 feet and to limit this requirement to tailor it just to Transit quarters as defined in the street designation map leaving the other setbacks unchanged so side streets they have limited right-of-way we are not tackling that at this time um it could still be again as some of the other examples I just gave be worked out with the developer on a one one-on-one basis but we're worried about those really large five-lane roads

135um the the transit corridors and the large arterials that are in these districts the proposed amendments account for uh desirable walkable conditions work backward from space they will need so some of the rationale for how we landed with 20 to 40 feet the National Association of city transportation officials it's highly respected Progressive organization in the space of urban Transportation they shown here is an image of what's often called The Pedestrian Zone it can be broken up into different uh different slices Frontage Zone next to building a pedestrian Zone just for walking a something that's sometimes called an amenity Zone a Furnishing Zone a landscaping Zone generally where trees go where bike racks go where benches go and then there are other zones that you can create but they specifically weigh in not on those other

136zones but just on the Walking Zone and say if you're going to have a downtown or commercial area really it should be 8 to 12 feet try not to go below 8 to 12 feet so we took that in my in mind that's one of the big big space hogs in a good way space for people another one of the big big space Hogs that we're working backward from one of the big users is trees and if you had a chance to look through the staff report you'll see that there's quite a bit of information dedicated to talking about trees and the reason for that is because they provide so many benefits if they can grow really tall and wide and are healthy but they need a lot of space to do that and I

137spoke with folks in Fort urban forestry the city tried to consult as much up-to-date information on this topic is reasonable and for the large medium to large varieties of trees that we really want that are going to give us cooling effect that are going to give us buffering from traffic that are going to make uh people's stress levels lower that are going to absorb storm water they need basically eight to ten feet too they they need kind of a minimum of eight feet so now our minimums kind of looking at 16 feet so you can see where you start to grow that space some other rationale to respond to the city council um resolution specifically they asked about benches bus shelters bike racks so we looked into those and even looking at those you kind

138of if you want to have bus shelters want to keep about six seven feet and that's for a small bus shelter we're talking about growing Service uh sun setting fueling stations we're talking about aggressive targets for for our moving together plan to shift modes you kind of need really good Transit amenities for that and this is referencing just the bare minimum another rationale just because it may not be common knowledge for everyone in terms of a bus stop waiting area you do need in order to use um federal funds to cite bus stops and you may even be putting yourself at some legal Peril if you do it without federal funds to put in a paved boarding area you're supposed to have eight feet perpendicular to the curb to do that it can include the

139sidewalk sometimes you'll see something funky where there'll be a paved area at a bus stop and then the sidewalk and then like another foot of paved area or two feet of paved area that's really to meet this proact public rights of way accessibility guidelines access board regulations so if you provide it to begin with you avoid some kind of weird math and case-by-case situations you have to do and you just have the space that you need um there is precedent for measuring from Curb we tried to get in touch with colleagues um a little over a month or so ago in Gainesville to see if we could talk to them because they do do this actually they prescribe by the area of the sidewalk zone so they Define this is how much we want for

140landscaping Zone this is how much we want for our sidewalk Zone and this is how much we want for our building front edge Zone and they do this across a variety of transects I'm assuming that they have a form form-based code or something similar so uh just in the staff report there were uh there was a kind of two-page table that just reflects conversations that happened at your working session in that was in may now where we talked about this and also conversations that happened as we were teasing out how to approach this internally as staff uh just again I'm going to add a disclaimer that adding new setback language doesn't necessarily doesn't automatically acquire necessary space for pedestrians and Transit users where it's lacking it doesn't solve the need for conversations and action on

141topics like easements donations Capital Improvements on a property or city-wide basis it just makes sure that that possibility remains open because there's not a building in the way that we required to be there so just a few of those one of the bigger conversations excuse me that came up during the working session was relocating curbs instead of buildings this uh devoted quite a bit of text to this this is very difficult to accomplish because utilities are situated adjacent to the curb includes water lines gas lines storm water infrastructure some of those have their own easements already that we've said yes you can access this this space and we start to move things it has a little bit of a domino effect that can be challenging can add a lot of cost also we need space

142for active Transportation Transit infrastructure and the central role of certain streets for urban Freight at some point you you do have to allocate a hierarchy of roads to say on some streets we will allow trucks until trucks or sunset from our cities but that's not today um so with dedicated space for other needs like those just mentioned the excess space that may be perceived in the roadways quickly evaporates I gave some examples in the table that was in the staff report for example Transit lanes are often just a little bit wider than regular Lanes bike Lanes if you want them to be buffered they you you know unless you want someone to just ride in it uh what you know Engineers might refer to as a gutter pan you that's going to be wider than

143five feet if it becomes a two-way cycle path it gets wider dedicated space for Transit um means that you have to think differently about your general purpose lines so In Sum it's imperative to plan for and anticipate the goals of Ann Arbor's key corridors before accepting to alter their curb to curb widths so just um I won't go through all of these I'll I'll revisit them in discussion if Commissioners would like but just drawing your attention to them that they are in your packet that completes my presentation thank you we'll now move on to the public hearing so this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed tc1 unified development code amendments well for we will first call on individuals present to address the commission then remote participants

144to speak during the public hearing remotely press star nine if listening by phone or use the raise hand feature if viewing through the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 City staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak please move to a quiet area mute television or background sounds so we may hear you clearly for either method of participation please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is there anyone present that would like to speak at this time thanks commissioner Abrams Ken Garber again I know Zippo about setbacks I've devoted zero minutes of my life to thinking about them or

145talking about them um but I just since I'm here I just thought I'd give a few Impressions first of all fantastic staff presentation and report and staff report huge amount of research and thought went into the uh the graphics and our arguments and counter arguments I thought you know this is a tremendous almost an academic exercise and really good um I guess the 20 to 40 feet thing is the big question and um it seems sensible to me just one question I have that I noticed in the ncna CTO pedestrian Zone illustration that was shown just now it had a bike lane off the street basically on the in The Pedestrian Zone and I'm wondering if that's something that we should is under consideration are we or are we always going to have tc1 bike

146Lanes in the roadway um you know Washtenaw right now it's probably fatal to try to ride down that although I know people who do it um you know regarding the um relocation curve argument yeah I'd like to see narrower arterial roadways as well it sounds like this practical difficulties to that um but basically um my perspectives is is that of a bike rider and I want to see that streamlined and facilitated as much as possible so if it takes the 20 to 40 feet uh standard to do it I'm in favor of that um other than that I have no coherent thoughts about this whatsoever and I look forward to your discussion which I'm sure will be much more nuanced and educated thank you thank you is there anybody who would like to address the

147commission remotely there is Adam jessicavich you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission hi this is Adam muskiewicz 1430 Las Vegas Drive um I was going to have a few questions but I think that they are mostly answered in the potential counter-arguments section of the of the staff report which I think is um is really great like the the way that that's that that's done like a lot of the questions that I did have on this it's like hey there's my question and there's and there's an answer to it so um that's pretty cool um I think the one thing that I do still have kind of a question on is this um multiple curves thing I think that that's referring to areas like on Washington others the the Washington service Drive which is

148kind of like goes through the parking lot in front of some of the businesses on Washington that's kind of a weird situation and another one I know this is not one of the tc1 things but um but might be in the future is um is along Packard there that also has kind of a weird double curb thing with Saint Aubin which I think is a city street that's kind of a parking lot as well so is is that what we're talking about with with multiple curves I think I think it is so I just wanted some clarification on that and what kinds of considerations we would have around those because I think it's kind of a unique situation thank you thank you if you'd like face chair I can address some of the concerns I

149brought up we do have one more speaker I'm sorry Victor cut you have three minutes to address the presentation Victor Cruz actually but um um honestly I'm kind of annoyed that this is back in front of you guys as it was discussed at length prior to passage of the reason first which I didn't hear discussed in the the presentation is the safety review issue second the city doesn't use them in a domain to increase sidewalk amusements and third we don't need this wasted space in our high density corridors there does seem to be a misconception floating around there that increasing these setbacks will widen right away but the landowners are under no obligation to see their land to this city they could have vegetation directly next to that sidewalk if they like it it's their

150land and the city's not prepared to Annex it using law uh any proposed building that is unsafe though will be rejected by staff under set safety and nobody is going to make a zero quit set building zero foot setback building say at the Dairy Queen lot um calculating the setbacks differently within the same zoning designation on a street by Street basis is needlessly complicated uh measuring the setback from the lot line I think should remain the singular standard and what happens when a structure becomes non-conforming when the city decides to move occur one of the best parts of this tc1 zoning was the Simplicity and I think that complicating it is a step in the wrong direction the simple zoning I think is what will help attract more developers to our city to make these

151housing goals that we have and finally this tc1 has been more or less undevelopable for the last year because of this debate over the setbacks these developments could have already been designed for viewed financed at a much more affordable interest right and I hope that you guys can end the debate today they get to rezoning Plymouth and Washington so we can actually meet our desperately needed housing rules thank you thank you no other speakers makes Kelly um to one of the first things that was brought up about whether or not at grade or raised by school facilities would be considered on some of our arterial quarters the answer is yes these would our transportation group is very interested in these in the future but they would require um setting aside money for an in-depth study

152the the um it would it would require it more study so we think that um having uh the space available to potentially accommodate an at-grade facility is supportive of that but there are no specific plans there's some things that are recommended in the moving together toward Vision zero plan but not in specifics uh with the third color multiple curbs multiple curbs we do recommend that that be a part of the conversation of rezoning on Washtenaw I think that the future of the city-owned right-of-way and what is effectively a parking lot but it's city city right of way needs to be discussed thoroughly during Community engagement it's something that is also unpackard but not in the areas to our understanding that are under discussion tonight in your Transit designation map thank you I want to read

153the motion and then we'll move to discussion so the proposed motion is the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve amendments to chapter 55 unified development code sections 5.10.2 and 5.17 table 5.17-4 to establish Transit Corridor as a street type designation on the street type designation map referenced and made a part of the chapter in section 5.10.2 to provide required front setbacks based on Street type designation in the tc1 district section 5.17 table 5.17-4 and to clarify parameters where such a setback would apply in section 5.17 table 5.17-4 moved by commissioner dish seconded by commissioner Mills we're in discussion is there anybody who would like to kick us off your survey so maybe the first question relative to the conversation about negotiation um similar we can't negotiate a

154building to be set back further when it's appropriate can we negotiate what gets put in uh the setback if we require it so could that front set backspace of 20 feet relative to whatever's on the property line be filled you know with full vegetation blocking paths that aren't obstructing could it be put Transformers and what other elements would be allowed within setback zones that would have to be under negotiation instead of requirement I'm going to ask planner deleted chime in to help answer this question um I am unmuted um in the setback area um there are some structures that are allowed in the front seat back area in all districts um but the important thing is that generally speaking whatever structure has allowed is probably much more easily moved in the future than an actual

155building um the things that are allowed in the front setback area um are things like open and unroofed Terraces and patios awnings flag poles retaining walls fountains sidewalks mailboxes lights and fences parking lots parking spaces are can be included but only if they are also enabled in the preference section um but things like solid waste containers or mechanical equipment are not permitted in the Sunset Bank area okay thank you um my next question may be about the eight foot plus eight foot as a continuous additional spot um at least my understanding similar to Ada standards that can be narrowed for doorways down to 32 inches understanding that there are pinch points but the average thoroughfare is there so has staff looked at staggered trees pinch points the Cadence of what's desired and requested and negotiated

156with in these areas relative to that or are we just creating the widest area possible for a vision that is lacking at this point there is such a variation in some key areas across multiple corridors I tried to show the breadth of that variability in the lot lines that to do this in more depth as opposed to what's being presented today we think would require a much longer Corridor study that would look parcel by parcel to present something similar to what you're suggesting staff understanding of the desire for expediency on advancing tc1 amendments and regulations did not allow for that granular level of review it could of course be done but it would require more time I think it's just the Cadence of I guess here's kind of my review and understanding eight feet for

157trees and eight feet for pedestrian space for the continuance of it instead of eight feet for pedestrian space and then trees incrementally pinching maybe that down to six feet or five feet at points when those trees are planted with a passable gray on top of those roots allow you to narrow that and maintain a more Street Front Corridor so that's where I feel like we're pushing as wide as possible to give us the space when we could be strategically thinking in a compact way to still fit some of those things um and and we're pushing things rather than being Nimble and flexible so I have concerns about the width in that regard door swings um so let me kind of go through all of my not concerns um yes we have to have petitioners do

158the right thing if we give this right away we still have to have them do the right thing within that space that we've now required them to hold setbacks are for the full building phase so even if we had them recess the potential I guess I can talk about a little bit more now South Town the ground floor recesses and then the upper floors extend out and so it gives you a lot more ground floor width but it actually enables more square footage above but that opportunity is eliminated by this setback that line goes to the sky like goes to the atmosphere right once we draw that line there is no opportunity to stagger things like that bus extension is a a specific point that is you know reviewed and negotiated we're talking with you

159know traffic impact study about that and how traffic impact studies should have more weight and not just recommendations but requirements in our site plan so I feel like we can tackle that within that requirement um and frankly like we have five Lane roads and we can do stuff we can put curves that have water run under them we can consolidate this I'm on North Main it's narrower than West Stadium and we've got trucks pulling in and out we don't have lights and that's the riskiest point we have a lot of lights and timing there and like I think creating more resistance to an area that we want to enable more projects to happen doesn't give the flexibility and I'm not interested in Death By A Thousand Cuts By zoning like I'd like we talk about

160at least you know it's on our agenda to unzone and this just feels like extra zoning I don't have the concerns this is just another ad another restriction cutting back the opportunity to do something at streetscape making it wider where it's at the subway got a car in it like at 20 feet so it's like I I'm still not convinced and I see the thorough staff report that's really trying to make an argument that I actually don't think is there in all of that time should be working on Plymouth Road and so it's a lot of time and I look forward to that amount of time moving efforts forward to allow more housing more corridors in our city to the specific point about the setbacks I was going to ask planner to Leo to uh

161um I'm sorry to recesses did you have any comments on that Alexis um I don't I don't feel I need to need to weigh in on the comment I can I can clarify that yes the front setback is for the full width of the building and um that the real it would not in its current form it would not count for what it's worth if the first floor met the front setback um but not upper stories it can be reworded to make that more explicit or to make that enabled and allowed but it's not the way it's currently proposed is there anybody else who'd like to comment or have questions commissioner Clark yeah um so I had a question about um the comparison to um other policies and Ecto guidance that aligned um the city's

162recommendations it seemed to be comparing them to Urban downtown area recommendations and I noticed that other best practices have specific Transit oriented development and Transit zoning guidance and including nacto that actually recommends and I think you know we kind of went over this ad nauseum in the last conversations so um apologizing with this kind of repeating what others have said but I'm just kind of curious if the guidance for setting uh Max ignoring uh minimums and just setting maximum uh setbacks has been considered and if the uh if there is any distinction between uh setbacks and uh sorry the right away in the um in an urban area versus the transit Corridor and if there's been any exploration of that so there are quite a few um uh ranges that are presented as an attachment

163there's a table tc1 curved a building space allocation comparison that does show what the range is for a variety of other cities most of the examples unless you have cities with very robust guidelines that cover a very wide range of different scenarios in street typologies they do just show what they would like for their downtown um what uh I would like to argue for from from that perspective is that downtown we should be matching or exceeding what is in downtowns to buffer from the enormous amount of traffic the number of lanes the um just roadway width and volume that is on a lot of these arterials met there weren't a lot of great examples for you're trying to transform and uh Urban infill arterial what should your width be so we had to draw from

164a variety of different guides um in downtown Ann Arbor the draft design guidelines looking at in some cases just two lane roads is recommending 19 feet from back of curb to building face to accommodate um the a comfortable pedestrian realm so in terms of the comparison to downtowns um I think downtowns in some cases benefit from a less stressful Street Network and matching or exceeding some of those recommendations seemed appropriate for the arterials that are under consideration for tc1 um can I so I do just want to point out that it's often kind of Designing for forgiveness is what kind of this is starting to sound like and designing roads to be forgiving to fast speeds just encourages the status quo of higher speeds and so I'm gonna have to really strongly push back on

165that idea um you know like uh commissioner Sabe mentioned the subway I mean there's yeah 28 feet between the road and that there's a concrete you know uh curb There Was You Know bushes and stuff in the front and they still hit the building because they were just driving too fast and the more that you make roads for giving for fast drivers and you start incorporating that into your planning the more you're just rebuilding the status quo you're just creating more space for drivers to go quickly through you're creating more of um separation between people that are using the road you're making spaces wider longer distances for uh pedestrians to have to go and I think that's a huge mistake to um not factor in the uh the the power that design has when we

166can't really and we don't have many other mechanisms for controlling speed other than perception and Driver psychology of like how they perceive the road and how safe it is to drive at what speeds putting buildings up to the road is you know so for example I just pulled up Denver's and a lot of cities do have um specific Transit oriented development overlays there's Transit zoning guidance for example Denver recommends specifically buildings up to the sidewalk zero setback um I actually have a whole chart uh so I won't drone on but um yeah I just I really want to cautious this against this kind of um creating and reinforcing status quo and speculating based on what the current conditions are and putting even more I guess Central um centering vehicles um sorry I was poorly stated

167but um yeah the Denver Transit oriented development plan is one with shallow setbacks recommended creating walkable and bikeable communities guidance from the Michigan Redevelopment ready Community zoning practice they say for example I'm sorry I'm gonna bore everyone with just reading this real quick um rationale zero foot build to line or build two range with a maximum front setback our strategies to ensure that buildings are constructed near and accessible from the public realm zero foot build to lines can help ensure a uniform facade you know continued in downtown districts and communities allowing a range so there's there is quite a bit of support and again build two ranges which is maximum setbacks would allow developers to build up to the front of the property line um it would also yes um to the back back set

168line that's not relevant but all I'm getting at is there is a lot of research and a lot of support out there on these Transit corridors to minimum setbacks um this does feel like just overzoning and I feel really strongly about this so that's all focusing for jumping around there commissioner Mills I think that the movement and all of the research that was just discussed about moving things closer to the street and having making for a good pedestrian experience is really important um I think what's challenging is that those build even in the zero build two lines are not consistent and so The Pedestrian experience then be with the curb just because of this like dis difference between where the front line is and where the curb is and so I think that that experience

169that that's how I think pedestrians feel the street they don't know like nobody knows where the property line actually is I don't think we're in a position where we can move entirely towards we don't know I think we have higher priorities then changing all of our front setbacks to be measured from the curb but I I think that that experience that really talks about like how close things are and being consistent with where the edge of that road is I think that that makes more sense from a planning perspective I totally hear what people are saying and I think I could see Arguments for like maybe or not being 20 feet like where there actually really is this narrow rate of existing very narrow right-of-way um allowing for things to you know for for some

170of those zones whether it's the pedestrian zone or the amenity zone or the tree I don't know if the tree and the amenities owner together for those to narrow I I think maybe 20 like both 20 and 40 could come down a little bit I but I don't necessarily take this as over regulation in this situation I think one of the things that we're trying to do is not have everything be a negotiation with the developer have somebody understand when they're reading our ordinance what they're gonna like what rules they're being held to rather than have staff trying to twist their arms I'm like well this is what we think Landing commission is going to do I think that that this is an area where in those situations where it really is a very very

171um narrow space between the curb and the property line I think that those are places where given are how we're talking about this right now I don't know if I were staff how I would talk to a developer right like what those conversations are actually going to look like um about how different you know about what they could expect when they get their project all the way into Planning Commission in terms of what that that how we're going to react and I hope that we could come up with something now so that we could take some of that guesswork away from them so I like this approach I feel like this is the middle ground approach of having occur of having acknowledging that we do have super narrow I think on okay um uh rights

172of way or kind of that space again I don't know if that's the right way that I'm calling it between the curb and the front the front lot line in some places and that I think we need to set that Transit Corridor minimum to be something that like we that everybody feels comfortable with is at least the minimum that we can go for because that's I like the idea actually of having this maximum here too because we have a lot as I think the the the presentation point out we have lots of areas where it's really big it's way bigger than what we want and so forcing them to not go all the way up to what they currently have plus 15. I I really appreciate that um but I I think it is actually

173better for the development community and not hindering development if we can agree now on what rules we're going to hold everybody to rather than this having being a one-off negotiation and people are like well what's what's going to happen when it gets to Planning Commission I would rather have it be very clear in our ordinance um so again I'm open to what those numbers are but that I I think it I'm not comfortable with people having with the current situation on some parts of the corridor where it's uncomfortable to walk it's not comfortable to walk on North Main it's not a good experience and I think that that I also think that that is true for parts of um for parts of stadium and while there's lots of things that I think we ought to

174do to slow traffic I also know that those are the edges of the city like they're there where we have core we have um our our Transit running anyway because this is these these are our arterials or whatever the right road is so I I feel like I like that this is a middle of the road solution now and but I'm I'm open to thinking about whether 20 and 40 are the right numbers I just I have a question and I don't know if there's an answer to my question but I'm curious as to on what kind of Road would drivers be likely to drive faster and would it be a multi-lane arterial where buildings are built up to the sidewalk or a multi-lane arterial where an amenity Zone with mature trees in it or

175soon to be mature trees I don't know separates the sidewalk from the multi-lane arterial as far as a technical answer to that I'm sure that there's an ite guide somewhere that says that the difference in perceived width that affects travel speed is such for buildings versus you know X for trees I just do know that trees are one of those things that can um reduce perceived width so if you imagine if you fan 10 15 20 feet wider out before you have something that narrows your field of vision um I mean I would think that trees would uh I provide that wall if they were again healthy large varieties mature so I um I am in support of these changes because I was one of the people who was concerned on Council with The Pedestrian

176experience of walkability and again I'm not going to sit here and argue for a larger minimum than 20. but I did notice that if trees need eight to ten feet and pedestrians need eight feet um then were if if we're at 20 we're really not leaving room for that little bit of space that's right up against the building for door swings and whatever those things are called where they put their menu in like a frontage zone is you know one way to refer to it yeah so you know I'm not going to argue for bigger than 20 but I'm saying that I think 20 does seem like a reasonable minimum to me if you want to provide all the things you showed us in the Portland design the Portland design actually has too small of

177an amenity zone for trees the one in the staff report I think was from Eugene Oh I thought it was just to illustrate the the oh the various things okay all right the various Lanes of the okay sidewalk Zone so but I I don't think this discussion is finished and I don't you know I'm obviously open to hearing more views but yeah anyway so I think commissioner Soviet was next and then commissioner Clark and then Weatherby maybe a question for staff our policy as it stands now um it's written like you can build a property line the idea of negotiating is more a habit built maybe a Planning Commission and with City with staff more than it is a protocol right if it checks the boxes it should be passed we don't have a policy

178on the books that we need to fix because we're allowing negotiation we're choosing to negotiate and stall out projects and frustrate developers right like the policy on the books Works relative to if they do what's how it's written it should be passed right um well I think there's somebody who said for our um non-udc regulations that would require uh probably an ADA regulation sidewalk but again we're looking at bare minimum so there are things Beyond just what you may see in the UDC that are not negotiated but rather prescribed and are in the city city code uh in terms of situations that aren't optimal when we're balancing so many different policy documents some are adopted some aren't a20 for example they're different things that staff take into account I don't necessarily think it's a bad

179habit for us to try to balance all of those things present them to what can sometimes be a complex site plan and try to tease out what is the best outcome um in terms of does there need to be as much negotiation as there perhaps is on certain projects no I think they're could be could be less in many situations and uh hopefully you know some version of whatever's past tonight would to commissioner Mills Point reduce some of that back and forth to be clear but as it's written on the UTC and along with our other codes relative to Ada building code obstructions and swings we have codes that are going to meet a lot of the concerns in a lot of different places so as a project goes through it's going to meet the

180clearance requirements right it's going to meet our city requirements and the UDC is one of those places that we're going to check things off uh yes if um go ahead Alexis let's see um I would jump in um commissioner Salve that yes you're you're you're right um that if you meet the minimum standard you should be approved there should be no more negotiation and so forth but I will point out that um outside of aside from the downtown which has historically had a zero setback it also has some of the widest sidewalks relative to the width of the road um in town but outside of the downtown most of our zoning districts we never have addressed before zero setbacks um in our districts the um many years ago the C3 District started with a minimum

18140 foot setback and other districts had similar and we never had to have these conversations about what is the shallowest setback that we can acquire and still get all the amenities still have room for the utilities still have room for the sidewalks um up until recently you know before it was tc1 in this West Stadium Corridor the C3 had a minimum of 10 feet and a maximum of 25 feet but a lot of it was built to that 40-foot minimalist FX standard so you're you're right and that if the whatever the setback is there should be no more if you need it you should be good to go but we are changing the rules continuously now we are reducing all the setbacks and we are bringing everything forward but we what we don't have than

182the corresponding policy that says oh and we've also invested in our right-of-ways to provide the uniform distance between the curb and the property lines and so forth so that's why this issue is coming to a head I think it is not you just can't say anymore well we're gonna require a zero setback and if they need it then there's no other considerations whatsoever because I'm not sure we're at the zero set that took into account well what we are saying is our zero setback requirement mftc one did not take into account what is the dimension between the back of the be just sort of assumed it was very generous like downtown and now that we've examined it block by block we're seeing it's not some of these widths are not enough to to provide and

183we should be pushing setbacks back commissioner Soviet can I just I if I could clarify so I if you're you're sort of position here is that if the set if the setback is 0 to 15. we have to we have to prove it if it's zero we have to approve it as fifteen but it can't be zero if that there's a front door there and it has to swing and it it can't swing on the sidewalk so in that case what it means is that that code might require that door to be set back four feet or whatever that Dimension is and then in some cases that means that you've accommodated that but you still have a dimension of somewhere between 0 5 6 up to 40 feet and your position that you're advocating for

184is that's good enough we have if that building addresses the door satisfactorily because we have a code in position that says you can't swing out into the sidewalk I don't care about the rest of that building and the narrow sidewalk at that circumstance so I think that's I I just want to I think that's a little bit different than what the answer staff was giving you but I think that is still contrary to what councils ask you to do is to say that yes that solves the door swing but it doesn't solve a building that narrows That Sidewalk between four two five six or whatever feet and so I think the answer is yes we have other codes that's going to address that not create unsafe situations that still doesn't solve the fact that we

185cannot put a tree in a bus stop and an adequate pedestrian sidewalk in that place but it also I guess it doesn't solve that we still can't require that we still could have the setback with a fence and a private Terrace up to the five foot and force everyone into that pinched Zone absolutely but there's more potential in the future there's possibility if we want to give up on the possibility of fixing that then I don't think that this should be done if we don't care about that possibility and let's be honest that possibility is expensive and long and so if we don't care about that I don't you wouldn't support that but if we do care about the flexibility for having that and the liability this kind of approach is going to create the

186ability to make Capital Investments or improvements there okay yeah apple Investments within that 20-foot versus the capital Investments of moving that curve or making improvements of a second curve within a five-lane road to slow it down encourage multimodal is a better long-term vision and investment than separating those building faces um I mean we they're 20 60 West Stadium was supposed to have a public hearing tomorrow um as a PUD so no it's not but like it's conditions with the public hearing are getting feedback right the intensity of some of these projects are going to have the public hearing and uh citizen participation meetings that they're going to hear you know get that feedback report too and understand like I feel like there's so many kind of pieces along this project relative to how are we

187going to accumulate these things to turn into something right like Cottage in is at zero feet set back right we're going to get new non-conformities out of this and we have to either encourage or deal with that in the long term if that thing never gets redeveloped it will always be the nail house that obstructs any future Vision instead of saying that that curve and everything with between those curves is where we can improve and we need to put pressure on the city to say this is a problem you've created this is a safety issue you've created and this is something that we should solve and this is where we should put our Capital effort instead of putting in a private development and hoping to negotiating a different way and I think that is something

188that comes to the table we you know we know from a state level we wish and we talk about electrification all the time and we braided developers about it you know we tell them our frustrations we don't have control over that it's going to be similar within this setback what we wish we could see what we spend time postponing asking for redesigns we know the opportunity cost we know that the cost can roll over into the rental cost making affordability even harder for units and I'm ready to allow more units to be built in more corridors instead of holding space that may never be improved okay we have commissioner Clark then commissioner Weatherby and then commissioner white but before I just want to clarify something that you said um Alexis which is that when we

189approved this the first time around we did it thinking that we had this kind of generous space my memory is actually that we debated this at length specifically Stadium Corridor at length and decided to approve it as it as it's currently adopted sorry there's a clarification of my clarification by commissioner Mills well I would just say I remember that conversation and I believe it was commissioner Gib Randall who we oh she raised this forward and I but she wasn't the only one um I believe we move this forward with the idea that we knew we needed to come back that this that that was not solved but that we wanted to um make some progress on this and because this required more study that we should do the study I believe that I I think

190that maybe I voted at right so that may be how you voted or how others voted but I would say as a body we said we approved it we didn't approve it with conditions or was so I'm just I just want to say that we deliberated at length it wasn't that we had didn't have enough information or didn't have the right information so uh okay commissioner Clark you're on Deck okay thanks I'll keep it brief because I've already talked um I was going to just say that I would hope that if I mean an absolute minimum if we do it if somehow this does go through or whatever um there's some consideration for doing things like permitting obstructions such this is under nacto guidance again um allowing things like Dormers and other permitted obstructions into

191shading like shading devices balconies into the building setbacks and the setback limits which adds you know interest and more engaging sidewalks and I do think that something that is getting a little bit lost here is in focusing on the large amounts of space and reserving space that may or may not be able to be developed in a very long timeline and as commissioner mentioned very well said about um where we're going to be putting our efforts in capital investment in the future um I do want to just um yeah point out that there are other ways to make the sidewalk engaging and then the some of the less walkable areas are where you know trees and things block the sidewalk from View and I guess under the idea of safety but safety for who it

192doesn't always feel safe to walk through a dark shaded area that's secluded from the road um often I personally will pick the right you know area that's closest to the street most in view just because that's what feels safe is me and what jumps to mind is where on Washington where the Y is and then across the street there's that like abandoned building city-owned um lot can't remember what it's called but uh Tom had but I always walk on the side with the building right next to the road just because it feels more visible whereas on the Y side you're walking past and there's all these kind of dark um little like egresses that kind of go in and then out and there's pillars and walking through it at night it just feels very more

193exposed and very like it just isn't as comfortable so I do think the assumptions on you know separating from the road being safer is kind of a an opinion um you think about the places where we have that along Washington always there's there's that walking path that goes off alongside the road you'll still see people that are walking right up by the road at night like alongside the road or on the grass I don't know I can't speculate on reasoning but I just know that secluded paths aren't really especially you know for women and other people that are I have to think a little bit more about safety and anyway um and then yeah I just wanted to encourage uh if you know there's space in the code to say you know the give developers

194freedom to use any um Extended right away that we might just decide on on things like signage that goes into the sidewalk other things that just make it more um engaging and less just kind of open Suburban feeling um like how it feels on Eisenhower and all that area how there's huge setbacks that are just not feeling Mr Weatherby okay so I was not here for previous deliberations so you get me and my 100 uh trying to figure this out from my perspective which is as a pedestrian I don't ride a bike I don't drive a car I can drive a car I can't ride a bike so I am a pedestrian and I pedest a lot and so when I look at you know my first when I was reading this 20 to 40

195feet I was like holy cow 20 to 40 feet that is so much and then I walked out of my house which is on South Main Street and I walked the 10 feet across my lawn five feet across the sidewalk the five feet to the across the what I call extension but has ten thousand names and you can watch my TV from the curb which is 20 feet so 20 to 40 feet you're not off in the wildly Woods you're you are 20 feet is not that far now 40 feet still seems like a lot to me I gotta be honest like 40 feet seems like maybe too much but 20 feet and and when I say you can watch my TV like thousands of people do that on a regular basis so I can

196I you can come by Saturday and you can see thousands of people watching my TV from the curb so I don't think 20 feet to me seems pretty reasonable again the 40 feet maybe um but if you walk from my house down South Main Street and you get to a pretty big place Michigan Stadium Michigan Stadium is right on the on the sidewalk it is right on the sidewalk and it is dreadfully uncomfortable has a very wide sidewalk there's no trees there's no pedestrian amenity there's no it is just you know building and then the sidewalk and it's really uncomfortable and if you walk um you know the the block before that it's it's like I mean people don't like to walk it is very uncomfortable people walk into the parking structure or the parking

197lot on Keach because it is you're you're literally kind of trying to duck to get away from the feel of the cars and the trucks there so you know I I definitely have I don't know that I have the I don't have the development opinions and background that some people have but I do have The Pedestrian opinion and I do have the aspirations for wanting it to like we want more building we want more housing but we also want pedestrian amenities we want people to be able to walk we want it to be comfortable I don't want to be splashed with icy snow on a regular basis as I'm walking because that limits how much I want to walk places that means I want to get in my car and I want to take my

198car places because the walking experience is not what we want and so I am concerned that if we go all building that we're going to say we're gonna remove the ability for people to to walk on us cleared of snow so that the plow doesn't come the plow literally will go and I've measured it 15 feet into my yard snow so you know so if we if we're really close on there that means we are restricting sidewalks for some part of our of our season um I think that uh the allowing intrusions into the setback so that there it can you can have buildings have variations I think is a really good idea because I think that makes for better pedestrian experience um I think that uh you know a lot of people when you're

199going on sort of Transit if you watch people walk down Main Street or down which I realize is not tc1 but down Stadium you're carrying strollers you've got uh grocery carts you've got a lot of things that uh you know a five foot sidewalk isn't really comfortable with and often you have people with wheelchairs and you have multiple people with wheelchairs and you have people with wheelchairs with a stroller or wheelchairs with a dog and so you know I think we we need to like the sidewalks aren't just temporary things for people they are an actual form of Transit and I think we need to be aspirational about keeping the sidewalks as part of our transit system not just a thing to get from one place to another and so I like this because it

200is still aspirational I get that that may be you know too aspirational but that we we are saving our sidewalks as places where you can walk that you don't get splashed you don't get sun you don't get you know that it is a legitimate Transit option so that's my thought out thank you commissioner white oh sorry Mr Leonard first wanted to say something I just wanted to follow up on one thing there's been a lot there's obviously a lot of thought about the important relationship between the right-of-way and private property here right and where we should be making those Investments I'd like to remind the Planning Commission that you have a role in both of those you approve the Capital Improvements plan so that also gives you the ability to say hey City we don't

201think you should be doing all of these infrastructure improvements elsewhere in the city we think you should be investing your resources here so I want I want to make sure that you don't have the budgetary authority to do that but you do have the regulatory authority to tell the city council that in your opinion we should not be Paving repaving improving transit in these areas we should be putting those resources into these corridors so I I want to make sure that you there's a lot of conversation about that and I want to make sure that you have some agency in the decisions that you promote to the city council that say this is where we think you should spend your resources instead of spending them in these other places commissioner watch I know the the

202thing that I am struck by in this conversation and I can't move from and first let me just say thank you mix Kelly for your presentation and uh something that is new to our packet potential counter arguments and responses so I thought that was really really helpful um and I'm going to come back to some of these potential counter arguments because I think that's where I am stuck 40 feet is too far so I I can just say that very clearly when I saw that I had the similar reaction to commissioner Weatherby is just like oh boy now we're redesigning for a Suburban Landscapes which I thought we were trying to get away from I understand I believe I understand the layout that we are considering so when we look at in your staff reports

203the sidewalk widths uh illustration which is really helpful I this makes a lot of sense to me and I think if city council was initiating a redesign of the streets that tc1 has come to this would all make sense because now we would say we have these this built infrastructure how do we achieve The Pedestrian Zone that we need of 10 feet the frontage for the door swings as well as a potential pedestrian amenities though and with the built environment that probably means that we would change the roadway but that's not where we are and I feel like and I've said this before and I appreciate your counter argument to this is what we are being asked to do is to ask private development to bank land for some eventual aspirational goal to rehab these

204streets and I just don't I that's just that doesn't feel right to me in a lot of ways it just doesn't feel like that's what we should be spending our time on um and I think I said this when this came to us in December and so I'm I am saying the same thing I was at the table when we had the conversation about Stadium Maple and the the significant part of the conversation was about trees and sight lines and that comes back to cars and and I just want to just say it again we do a lot to accommodate cars and if our A2 zero goals are real and our our and we want to realize them we are going to have to make some really hard decisions about how much we prioritize our

205land use for cars and that's what I am seeing like I loved what commissioner Weatherby just said I walk too not as much as you but I walk to and I bike and sometimes it's not safe for me to bike in the bike way so I bike on the sidewalk and I was like I wish this was a 10 foot right I wish this was a 10-foot sidewalk so that you and I can be here because I don't feel safe in the street and so we this is all about cars this is all about us moving cars this we we had um what's his name from Transportation Raymond he came and spoke at the at the work session I listened today wasn't recorded this was pre when we started recording the zooms and he was

206like people the the speed limit is 35 people are at um 45 miles per hour down that road and we now see the result of that a car in the subway down that road we've seen um drivers drive into Banks uh on that road if not on Stadium then off of the intersection we've seen cars flipped and it's all because we are in our community prioritizing cars we're not prioritizing pedestrians and this feels like we are stuck and so I I can't support this um as it is presented I I didn't want this back at the table uh when um it came in December um and I didn't vote on it so that it would come back to the table I voted on it so that we could get to Washington and Plymouth and we

207were stuck here at stadium and I'm really disappointed that we've had to spend your time in this table's time talking about this thing which is really a prioritization of cars this is all about cars it's really not about pedestrians if it were we'd be talking about shrinking the roadway so those are my thoughts um can I see a commissioner dish I just want to ask a question first is that okay um maybe just a procedural question which is um what does it mean that city council directs the Planning Commission to evaluate and recommend amendments that address constraints of existing narrow rights of way and hypothetically Planning Commission says we have no recommended Amendment as a that's just how that's just how that falls out yeah if if you voted to prove this it would be

208forwarded if you voted against it we would probably forward it to the city council with your recommendation of denial as a response to council asking for something and then could City Council vote to adopt it absolutely they don't need us to approve it nope got it okay thank you for that clarification commissioner dish so I mean I I do regret that we haven't made more progress on Plymouth but I don't think that this exercise which is not just an exercise but an extremely thoughtful consideration of pedestrian supportive design that comes from someone who has considerable expertise there I don't I don't look at this as as a poor use of time I think we would have gotten further with excuse me with the tc1 zones that are corridors that we need to Zone if we

209weren't short staffed on the planning staff and we are short staffed in almost every area of the city and it's very frustrating to me because things aren't getting done as fast as people want but we can't work people around the clock unless they're at U of MIT people they can be worked Around the Clock I don't agree that when it's true I don't agree that when we talk about trees we're talking about accommodating cars we are actually talking about storm water management and we are currently fighting about our use of trees as storm water management in court and I'm allowed to talk about it because we've had a decision you know the Master's report that was published this is something that is unique that we do that Detroit is doing it is it is worth

210it to me that we would have trees not just to shade pedestrians although I prefer walking in the shade also um but that we have trees to help us meet a20 goals that are about storm water which is what this city is going to be full of increasingly so I I don't accept that um I think that the other issue that is addressed with this great way of measuring from the back of curb is the inconsistency in where property lines sit and part of the problem with having a a decent looking tc1 Corridor is that you can't have it if property lines are Sawtooth and some buildings are here and some buildings are there and so this also attempts to address the consistency problem um I would like to see this reworded so that recess

211was allowed I think that makes a tremendous amount of sense and it's based on a model of a project that I think we all think we have a lot to learn from so if we could do that I'd be happy um I don't I'm I I would I believe that I've heard some concern about the max of 40 and I'm wondering if we could hear what the cost would be to you know change it so that instead of saying A Min of 20 and a Max of 40 what would we lose if we set a Max of 20 or a Max of 25 what what would we lose if we if we asked for something like that and I I have no actual I don't think this is gonna pass and it is totally fine

212because I think that it is really important that planning Commissioners vote as they see fit you bring a certain amount of expertise to the table and I respect it and I will make sure that it is presented to city council and city council will probably take it very soon not probably city council will take it seriously and then we will deliberate because we fought pretty hard over this too the the night that we decided to send this back so I don't I don't I'm not trying to so I don't know if I should be asking for changes that I think will make people happier with it because it doesn't really matter uh I mean if if you guys are unhappy it's okay I don't want to try to appease you and then you know force

213your hand but I I would like recess personally I would be I would prefer if it came to the council table with recess and um I I could hear pluses and minuses to going with a lower maximum or simply a maximum and not a minimum wait no we have to have a minimum I'm sorry stupid yes we have to have a minimum okay so uh less distance between the minimum and the maximum is is what I would mean to say so um and that we can take offline if nobody wants to talk about that tonight because I don't think that that's going to win votes that are against and I feel we should have a full expression of of the of the mixed feelings that are on the commission I think that's just fine I

214just I want to offer maybe uh a reframing of the conversation that I'm hearing I don't think anybody here is anti-tree or anti-shade everybody here loves bike Lanes wide sidewalks trees I think the the question on the table is whether the space that we are making for that in the city or in these Transit corridors very specifically should come from the streets or should come from private lot private privately owned property that we then need to acquire they're both aspirational they're both very expensive they're both tremendous you know a lot of unknowns in there so in some ways it's a it's a for I'll just say this for me then it becomes a question of like in in the abstract or in principle where should that 20 feet come from and should it come from

215the space between the two curbs on Stadium Boulevard or should it come from what is now currently the lot so I I think we're all in support of the amenities that this space would provide we could debate the wits but um and then I also just wanted to say I don't think this proposal solves the Sawtooth problem that you were pointing out because it has a 20 to 4 currently as written a 20 to 40 foot range so you're still going to get a yeah you're still going to get it inconsistent we're not going to get a consistent tree wall so narrowing it to 20 to 25 would would change that but commissioner Clark I saw your hand up yeah um just a quick question um so is there anything I mean just to be

216clear we could have a zero build to line I don't think there is a necessarily like we could have just a maximum um and that is actually something that's in Michigan's zoning Redevelopment ready um handbook um is you know build two ranges and set you know offering the minimum set back line would they even say a little support Place making issues um through inviting building facade lines and I do think that's something worth considering is that this isn't going to happen overnight so and there are going to be non-conformities either way whether it's you know if we do allow people to build up to the to the lot line and then maybe I don't know if it's getting deep in the weeds if there's a way to require you know a sidewalk expansion there's no

217reason we couldn't uh have design guidance that's separate from the zoning guidance that kind of provides developers with guidance about what we'd like to see on these that's a whole other conversation so I'll move away from that um but yeah I just wanted to point that out and then the other question I had just for clarification is there anything with the setback between the curb and the building the the developers would be able like what could potentially go there in the meantime until we get funding to do all these amenities like yeah I just want to clarify it again just to kind of some really quickly Jimmy what can they legally build in the front setback parking there and things like that in tc1 you can't put parking there but in tc1 you could put

218decks patios okay plantings signs uh uh what else was on that list Alexis would know so retaining walls and not build it but any sort of um amenity um Hardscape Furniture type features yes it's I think it's still hard to okay hard to undo though anybody else yeah commissioner dish I do want to respond to your reframing because I agree with you reframing um I did not take that anyone is against trees but I did hear the statement that when we are talking about trees we are talking about accommodating cars and I don't think that that was um representative or but that is beside the point um you are right I believe that we really should take this space out of the road but here's what it says the rebuttal and I don't take this

219as an academic rebuttal while curbs can indeed move property lines can also shift the proposed setback language provides flexibility planning staff are informed that capital projects to significantly shift curd blinds on major corridors are unlikely I don't think that's academic I don't think it's a in principle I mean I think being the realist that I am I have very little hope that that position is going to change in this city anytime soon and so I think that we have more leverage over as I think commissioner white puts it well asking for this or requiring this land banking and I'm sorry to say that but we are fighting a battle over Main Street that I at North Main that I don't think were you know going to win easily I mean it's just I I don't

220think we're going to get movement on that position or it's going to take 20 years and I don't have that time because I think buildings will get built up to the zero setback and then you can't do anything about it you will just never be able to have the zone that we want that people are comfortable in so and you all can you know but it's not about should it's about what's likely that's my judgment commissioner Weatherby yeah I think in in my view um and again having seen what happened with adding bike Lanes on Maine we will continue whether we get rid of cars or not will you continue to need that big flat space that lanes are currently so I actually see this as um we're getting it to the curb what happens

221beyond the curve to the other curve we have we can do things with that having it a big flat paved space does not mean it has to be for cars it could be for strollers and bikers and one wheels and whatever electric vehicle comes up whatever personal Transit comes up we are not necessarily seeding this to Automotive Vehicles we are seating it to things that go on big flat concrete spaces and right now we're right at the Tipping Point of that being a lot of different things um so I I actually don't think that we're necessarily saying I think what we are all grappling with is we don't want five Lane roads for cars I don't think anyone on here is like yeah we need more of those through the city but we whether we

222have no cars or not we still need Transit we still need and and personal drones you know we're a little ways away we're probably not as far away as but we still need to land them so um you know I I think I think we can say that we're we're we're promoting can we just drop you off it would be helpful um I mean we're going to get our prescriptions that way so you know but uh so so I actually am we can do with paint we can make these not car Lanes and and we are doing that and we are doing that pretty quickly like we did that on South Main in an hour for four blocks which sounds silly but oh boy people were upset so um because they went to work and

223it was one configuration and they came home and it was a different configuration I mean that's how we can do that's how we can transform and and yes that's not safe it's not ballardized it's not chicanes it's not but we can do that and we can close streets and we can and still have those spaces so so I actually am I'm less about like oh we're giving this up to cars we need big flat concrete spaces and we will continue to need those whether we have vehicles or not any other comments are you I couldn't tell if your hand was everything like I have no coherent thoughts at all um but I think this has been a really good discussion and I'm I I mean I there is this tension between like the road and

224the and the private property and I don't know how we're gonna solve that I think I would feel more comfortable with this if it was not 40. if the minimum or the maximum came down um but I think commissioner Weatherby summed up the things that were in my head of just like it's you know it's a five-lane road it's what 50 feet I don't know how wide 60. but you start eating into that and then you think about maybe this bus Harper Transit bike Lanes blah blah but we can do other things with those lanes and nothing is a perfect solution and I want to move on to the next corridor um so I think yeah I'm gonna vote Yes but I'd like the 40 feet reduced if other people were in agreement commissioner Mills

225I will make the motion to um before I make the motion to what it is I'm curious about what uh mix Kelly uh thoughts on y40 or white or better why not 25. as a Max foreign looking at some pure examples that's not too far actually away from what I think Gainesville was I actually have it right in front of me their range for example on what they call principal streets requires a 17 foot minimum and a 27 foot maximum yeah some people do things like that um I I still think we would need the language or to the front property line whichever is closer because they're the our thought was to try to catch a range of properties and look at what's currently allowed because really under the current regulation there there are quite

226a number of properties that can go up to 35 36 or so feet if a curb does move and somebody uses that advice If It Moves by like a foot or six inches or something we just wanted the space for one of the considerations was to allow wiggle room for that kind of thing and also just creativity on beha and look look on behalf of developers and looking at what some of the distances are along uh like Stadium manager Leonard and I looked at some of the distances of of buildings and we're like well that's you know 38 feet or 40 feet but it just doesn't feel that far and if you move if you like kind of swap where you're walking if you're not at the very edge of the road you're actually 10

227feet closer than your your pedestrian experience is still going to be like 20 feet away from uh from a 40-foot setback building so and you know I think I like the example like measure whether we gave that was kind of funny just being able to see somebody's TV from that far away it's a lot closer than than it feels there's places in our main street that it that are merging on you know they would round up to 30. so that I looked so what I'm hearing is sorry he's getting late no no no 40 is not definitive like 30 seems more comfortable than 25 like 25 maybe there's a lot of things that are actually already at in some corridors already at I would say if you brought it down I I would feel more

228comfortable with something like 30 to 35 just uh aligning with what our considerations were in presenting it to you than 25. okay I'm I think I would make a motion for 30. as well as an accommodation for recesses actually I see of them as like protrude it's the it's the opposite the inverse of a recess exactly overhangs um I'm sorry before that motion is a finalized voted on could we have planner to Leo weigh in on the um recess I just want to make sure that the area where that would be accommodated was properly noticed for tonight uh just to make sure that the table that that would live in would be in the right place Alexis am I making sense to you if this isn't I was focused on my notes so say that

229one more time uh just the desire is to amend the motion to not only come down from a 40 foot maximum but to also somehow incorporate this desire for can you could you actually articulate commissioner Mills okay sorry you want me to articulate so this is the idea of allowing for upper stories to hang over into what on the ground floor would not be allowable right I'm I'm catching this now um I definitely have some thoughts and this could be crafted out I don't think that we want to write it on you know a 10 45 but I do understand if I understand if I can summarize that it should be maybe that should be expressed as the first floor setback shall be X and upper stories shall be why um like all you know

230it can be expressed a couple different ways but that is that is what the desire is right yes exactly and that was very smart for 10.48. yeah um I would confer with uh the employment and the deputy planning manager but I I think that if you want to have some some wine if you want to put in the motion an amendment that accomplishes this I think that we can make that happen as it moves forward that would give us some time between a council conversation to figure out um how to meet the spirit of of the request perfect and you don't need me to repeat that you get the gist thank you sounds like to amend the motion to have a maximum uh setback of 30 feet at ground floor yes for first floor yes

231and uh greater flexibility for upper stories yes that is the my proposed amendment does anyone want to second that motion consecutive by commissioner wise we're in discussion um I wanted to maybe offer a different Amendment so maybe now is the time to do that in the discussion we're discussing okay so um I think that the 20 feet is very generous so I think it basically takes like a Max Max scenario and I think like yes a tree needs eight to ten feet but you don't have trees continuously there episodic uh similarly you don't have bus shelters everywhere you don't have so these things kind of come and go I think also the width of The Pedestrian sidewalk can can contract and expand a bit so if I take eight feet for um a smaller tree

232or eight feet for a bus shelter and I take eight feet for pedestrian I'm at 16. so I think actually I would propose a minimum of 15 and a maximum of 25. so I want to throw that on the table commissioner survey I like it but I also in principle still don't support this if we're still in discussion and uh council member dishes comments around what council will do still stands we can still we could amend them the motion to fit the best case scenario and still vote that down and then that would go and if Council adopted it they would adopt the reduced motion as opposed to the 20 to 40 which is current well no because they would then have to change it at the at the table and they are known to

233do that but um that would be very interesting uh so there is some benefit in terms of signaling to council like okay we've talked about this we've debated it here's what we think you know we got a staff report that was 20 to 40. we amended that to 15 to 25 and then that still didn't have enough support and so now the conversation is about what we sent to them as opposed to the largest thing so I think there is still some value with regard to that and if we're following Robert's Rules of Order um as the second to the motion if uh commissioner Mills wanted to withdraw her motion I would support that and then we could entertain the other without having to vote I I like 20 to 30. I mean but if

234we were going to pass this if we were gonna if if we it sounds like though this is not going to pass anyway okay um because I I mean I I yeah I don't know I like to I prefer 20 to 30 but I'm also like like I said when I started this my too many too long things I this is where I think that there is a bit of compromise and I totally get what you're saying commissioner Abrams um in terms of not needing it the whole time so I um It's A Hard call and I welcome others thoughts on now two different things that are all still tied up in talking about the 20 versus 30. in 15 versus 25. commissioner Hammerschmidt I mean I go to 18. but well no like so

235you know I I your point of like the the tree zone conservative I don't like the idea of sidewalks necessarily like that seems too hard to like all of a sudden it's like eight feet and then it's ten feet and like I don't know that just visually might look strange but if you only need eight feet and ten feet or eight feet and eight feet maybe 16 I don't know I don't know but 15 seems too low to me there are numbers in between 15 and 20. I mean I will also say that mix Kelly oh sorry it feels like it's getting to be like a ridiculous conversation provided us this very helpful table and if you get on the table the ranges are 14 to 19 14 to 22 14 to 23 12 to

23621 8 and a half to fourteen 5 to 10 17 to 27 I won't keep going so I I don't think um it's out of lack with what other cities are doing places much bigger than ours that ostensibly maybe have more traffic on there pedestrian right away than we do they may have fewer trees we have not looked at photographs it's true I will caveat that most cities do invest in design guidelines for a downtown or a specific Corridor which is what I was able to pull examples for but those are not necessarily infill quarters that are direct comparisons Apples to Apples to what we're looking at here thank you for that any other discussion on the motion on the table I think the motion on the table is 20 and 30. 20 minimum 30

237Max I haven't made it I wasn't mine was not an official motion right and I'm I'm still on the fence about friendly amendmenting any other comments how about a friendly amendment to 18 to a maximum of 30. 28. 18 to 28 I'm sold foreign going once is that a friend I don't know if it was actually friendly friendly to Commissioners Mills and white oh yeah it's our Amendment it still May Fail right I have no objection I think we're ready on that Amendment so I think that this would fall under um maybe this uh second poet in the motion there are no objections to a street type designation that's tailored to Transit corridors I'm hearing that we're primarily looking in um uh the second bullets to say uh two men table 5.17.4 from what was

238presented to 18 to 28. feet ground floor ground floor with uh and retain the current setbacks for the upper floors uh no TBD what those setbacks would be and to request a staff recommendation for upper floors yes before presentation to council Mr Leonard that's what I said hey for a vote I think we're ready to vote on the amendment this is the amendment that would modify the minimum of 18 feet from back of curb along Transit corridors to a maximum of 28 feet from back of curb unless the right-of-way exceeds that in which it would require a zero foot outline and that applies to the first floor and without any other changes I just want to be clear the 0 to 15 would then continue to apply to Upper stories if this only applies to

239the first floor until some other modification was made my understanding was that planner DeLeo and mix Kelly said they would work on clarifying that between now and when this goes to council floor but you did not give them direction that there's what is your intention for Oh I thought sorry I misunderstood did I misunderstand I think procedurally it's um just more desirable for us to craft something that's voted on by the Planning Commission instead of something we come up with between now and then yeah yeah I'm applying this to the first floor my question is no I know what happens up above yeah yeah okay Commissioners okay I'll be helpful what happened but what is the acceptable encroachment distance right right so I was going to maybe make I'll try to be helpful to get

240this to the finish line here but 50 of the setback like as an encro so like if you're 18 feet you can encroach nine feet or the likelihood I mean I I would say go all the way to the zero setback line to the extension because you still in most cases have you know you would have be somewhere between 0 and 20 feet relative to that curb to property line for some intermittent trees with no building above that's the consideration right to allowing it but the ideal scenario is letting all the buildings above go to the zero except property line alternatively if you want to give more space for canopy consider something like is that you would have a percentage right like if it's that give it 50 or 70 of that setback can encroach

241which is similar to like our play what was previously planned projects I have to average out to a certain setback might be another way to consider it we already have that in our UDC is averaging the setback of the above floors to five feet or something just to clarify I'm just adding to conversation I did not make up another try to make another friendly motion but those are like tools relative to that recess that you could consider in and I would not suggest limiting it to the ground floor only you are going to negate you don't know the circumstances in which you would still be able to accomplish what the first floor setback is trying to accomplish um so I I would suggest that by trying to do that it's just adding a complication to

242what you're trying to sort in that case you could meet that setback requirement that that upper stories could project you would not be able to attain a tree canopy um you might not be able to do bus services and the like so I I guess my two senses like this seems to be a more absolute decision of the Planning Commission do you want to provide that space if so that space should be completely vertical to give the right-of-way flexibility it's okay I said if you don't believe that space is important and those tight right-of-ways are appropriate I would suggest you just vote against it I think I think it would add what to the to the purpose of trying to make it clear this does not make it clear to petitioners makes sense to me

243and I would also say that if the reason and the reason that I am supportive of this is so for future flexibility for acquisition and that's complicated now if ground floor is set back appropriately but the top upper floors or not okay so the proposed amendment does not include a stipulation for a differential setback between the ground floor and the floors above so we are still using 18 feet as the minimum and 28 feet is the maximum yes I think we're ready for a vote on that so soon commissioner Weatherby yes or Soviet yes commissioner Abrams yep commissioner Hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes commissioner Lee is abstaining commissioner Clerk yes Mr Mills yes commissioner white yes motion is modified all right so we're back into discussion of the modified motion anyone any other comments questions

244discussion all right it seems we're ready for a real call vote on the overall motion commissioner SoBe no commissioner Abrams yes commissioner Hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes Commissioners Clerk no commissioner Mills yes commissioner weich no commissioner Weatherby yes oh I gotta do math the motion fails no it doesn't so this is one of those it's one of those situations [Laughter] sorry um we could welcome commissioner Lee back commissioner Lee um I'm noticing that it is after 11 pm you would need to take a vote to take up this item should I proceed with that or should we wait for commissioner Lee to return um I you decide while I go find him okay so as a reminder if we want to take up any new business after 11 we actually have to vote to do

245that we could also vote to not do that in which case it would move to unfinished business on your next agenda which is suck uh no September 19th okay I'm gonna I'm gonna let um our chair foreign to start consideration of another item would require a majority of Commissioners to do so I think we're going to be pretty efficient with this but it's up to the commission to take that vote to decide if you want to do that if not it will be forward to the next agenda okay um can we just get a quick show of hands is that okay a Voice vote would be fine okay Voice vote for staying and hearing this last item on bylaws hi okay and then those opposed oh okay all right um we will go all right

246moving on to 10A other business um this is Planning Commission bylaw reviews modifications to chapter 8 and by-law amendments um this is going to have a staff presentation right Mr Leonard yeah it's pretty quick so uh we had a pretty prolonged discussion previously about the bylaws this has been bouncing around while we're trying to get a majority of you at a meeting to take action and there are two proposed motions here one of the proposed changes that you were interested in was reducing uh the minimum required votes for an affirmative action on a petition either at this table or to proceed to Planning Commission from six to five that is something that would require a amendment to chapter eight of the city code um I have shared with you some proposed amendments that would accomplish

247that as well as just some other amendments that were recommended by the city attorney's office so the first action that I would suggest that you consider is recommending those amendments it's a little bit different you're not holding a public hearing for example because this is not you recommending uh land use a petition to the city council you're just recommending a change to chapter H which you don't technically have a role in it's just something you're asking for and so that's why it's presented at this manner on the agenda if that you were interested in requesting the city council to do that it would be an appropriate time to make a motion and second an emotion and voted up or down okay thank you and then the second piece of that um uh if you decide

248that you want to move forward with that I would propose that we postpone um adoption of the bylaws because we couldn't really technically approve those bylaws until that ordinance changes that's okay because you had a lot of questions about conflict of interest possibilities and the like and postponing that consideration of the bylaws until the September 19th meeting will give me the opportunity to invite our very very excellent Deputy City Attorney Kevin McDonald to come and have that conversation with some of the ideas um thoughts pitfalls fears that could um develop as part of that discussion so I would recommend both those emotions that you do propose the changes to city council get that ball rolling and we postpone adoption of the bylaws so that we can have that discussion at the 19th okay thank you

249Mr Leonard um the proposed motion number one is that I moved to that the attached proposed amendment to the chapter 8 of the city code are refer to the city council for consideration as a request from the City Planning Commission can I have motion to act on the promo amendments chapter eight move by commissioner salvation second by commissioner Mills is there any discussion commissioner Abrams just one small correction in the last sentence of section 1.175 Planning Commission membership there's still use of the gendered term he I will update that thank you I had one other question in that same paragraph it says the terms of office of members shall begin on the first day of July nearest the date of their appointment is there somewhere else in here where it talks about an appointment like

250commissioner wetherby who is or maybe not in this instance but like somebody who's uh who vacates their position midterm and is replaced midterm yeah um I can look at that I don't think it's been a problem I think a lot of this language was actually structured around the original creation of the Planning Commission you'll note for example um there was a lot of language about staggered terms and the creation of those and I was proposing eliminating those because the Planning Commission has been created at this point so um I can look at that to see if there needs to be flexibility typically it does happen terms do often end around the first of July but um I guess it's part of the attorney review I can pose that question to see if that should be

251broadened it obviously is not a barrier for the city council to appoint members outside of that right but it seems odd for us to adopt something that we already know we operate in violation of so we could just either cross it out or yeah I can first day of a month soon after their appointment I'm happy to take that discussion before progresses to city council um any other discussion uh commissioner white to that point so we're still in section one seven six so section one 176 same organization so the commission shall organize oh no that's not it wherever it is we could just make it the next Planning Commission meeting after their approval by Council because that is effectively what happens they get approved and then they take the oath of office and then they

252are seated thereafter so that would just make it easy and then it would remove July because if it happens in July it'll happen in July if it happens in August it'll show up in September yeah I think a change like that would be good any other discussion I think that uh So procedurally speaking um are we making an amendment are we just you uh by voting on this motion that would have the effect of you sending this to the city council and say please make these changes so the changes just to affirm the changes are as presented with um a gender neutrality fixing that hymn term and uh I'm gonna work with the attorney's office probably on some more General language that is as quickly as a possible after appointment um okay perfect thank you

253um we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say I I any opposed the motion carries let's move on to proposed motion number two a move that the following changes refer to the City attorney for review the proposed amendments including the draft bylaws presented at this meeting and that the proposed amended bylaws be presented back to the Planning Commission for additional review on September 19th 2023. can I have motion to act on the proposed by law amendments uh moved by commissioner white and seconded by commissioner Mills discussion all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed the motion carries might get to do that 11 o'clock motion next week [Laughter] moving on to uh public comment this is an opportunity for purposes to speak up to

254three minutes about any issue that is not listed as a public hearing on this agenda we're first call on individuals present to present to Justice Commission then remote participants to speak during this public hearing remotely please press star six if listening by phone or use the raid hand Feature Feature if viewing through the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 City staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name if available for those accessing through the web link you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak and when speaking please move to a quiet area mute any television background sounds that we may hear your clearly and for either method please state your name

255and address at the beginning of your comments is there any one present that would like to speak at this time uh seeing no one is there anyone that would like to address the commission remotely there are currently No Hands raised I will close public comment moving on to commission proposed business is there any commission proposed business commissioner salve this movie two things a little related I'd like to put on commission parole's business a review of our occupancy requirements within our residential districts um and to the housing points I am helping organize a series of events next week because I want to invite all the Commissioners and listeners to called house party a couple of the events maybe to highlight relative to this is there's a coffee with a lot of uh city employees on Tuesday

256morning Wednesday evening a several um students are facilitating a engagement session around housing they were able to meet with interface for a comprehensive plan and so looking forward to sharing some of those outcomes with them similarly we'll repeat that Saturday at the annex so both of those sorry are at the Liberty Annex right next to Argus downtown and finally one of the there's many events but the other one I might recommend you to is there's going to be a phone booth at the downtown Ann Arbor District Library inviting people to record their stories about struggling to find housing or positive actions of housing so we'll have qualitative data to transcribe and similarly share for our comprehensive plan so I invite everybody to participate thank you sounds like a great opportunity to voice and get input

257commissioner Mills business big I don't know letter changes editing table 5.29-1 to accommodate subtractions in buildings under construction can you repeat the table numbers one more time 5.29-1 okay then you might just reference the burden Road proposal that we saw tonight that about why we added that on there but I think it's yeah thank you commissioner white can I request that we create a Ann Arbor City website page for the comprehensive plan and can I request that we add updates to the comprehensive plan to the egov email delivery so that people can subscribe and receive updates yes both of those will happen actually both of those are are underway and have been disgusted it's just a matter of whether we host on the city website or Standalone website or teasing out a few details thanks

258for your patience awesome thank you any other commission proposed business if not we're moving on to a German move by commissioner Mills seconded by commissioner White all those in favor say aye aye we are adjourned thank you thanks guys good job