Ann Arbor Planning Commission Meeting 5/16/2023

001welcome to the May 16 2023 regular meeting of the Ann Arbor Planning Commission for detailed meeting on our detailed information on procedures and agendas do we not have any we don't have any paper we do on on the ends please help yourself if you uh are here and want a paper agenda um could you please call the roll Mr Leonard yes before I call the roll I just want to announce to uh anybody watching and those in the room and we are having some technological issues this evening any callers who are sharing any public comment with the Planning Commission via Zoom that is either by phone or by login via Zoom the Planning Commission will be able to hear those comments as is typical but those that are watching this meeting on either on CTN

002or via the YouTube feed will not be able to hear those unless our masterful CTN DJ is able to sort of works magic with the ambient microphones in the room but just to be clear the Planning Commission will get all of those comments and everybody watching will should we'll be able to hear all of the discussion within the council chambers uh with that uh as requested I will call the rules and commissioner give Randall present commissioner Abrams here commissioner sovay here commissioner Mills here commissioner Hammerschmidt absent commissioner dish here commissioner Lee here commissioner Clark commissioner white here we do have a quorum of seven members okay all right we will move on to item number three which is the approval of the agenda may I have a motion commissioner wife seconded by commissioner dish all

003those in any discussion did I see a hand no okay alrighty all those in favor say aye aye aye okay we have motion carries um all right minutes of the previous meeting this is for the May 2nd 2023 meeting moved by commissioner discounted by commissioner Mills any discussion nope no vote please all those in favor aye motion carries all right next are reports from City Administration City Council planning manager on and on so why don't you kick us off my pleasure thank you Cherokee brandl last night city council passed on first reading the 721 South Forest project but a promise to have a robust discussion on second reading and we passed a over half a billion half a billion with a B dollar budget which contains provision for a new planner and uh lots of

004incredible work on sustainability which will no doubt suck up immediately all of that new planner's time and um there was there's also you know there's beautiful social resources also Justice work being done so I don't remember anything else but if Mr Leonard does he should chime in uh those are the only items I recall from the agenda thank you council member dish last night and my staff from and enabling that I didn't have to be there to know that um as for our portfolio planning manager uh only one uh up uh we have an Ordnance revisions committee meeting scheduled for next week we will be discussing some proposed uh what I think are somewhat minor but hopefully clarifying adjustments to our plan unit development ordinance great any representatives from different committees Liaisons um I went

005to the DDA meeting last week and there were a couple of things one is um the Triple A ta is going to be uh they're they're gearing up for this this transition to being able to make the 30-minute trip from Ipsy to Ann Arbor and so that is that's kind of moving it in gear um and uh and then the other piece is that there I know there's been a lot of exploration and interest in public bathrooms and there is a an interesting pilot that's going on with a company called the throne and you may see some interesting things going on around town with that it's kind of a you have to use your phone to get in you can have a card pass that they issue there's some issues around security and privacy that

006they've been kind of working out um sorry yes and get a little closer there so stage tuned it seems really interesting uh in terms of what they're figuring out it's not um not an easy one to solve so correct yes those are Ada accessible yes all right so any anybody else nobody else all right let's move on to item number six which is public comment so opportunity for uh persons to speak up to three minutes about an issue that is not listed on the public hearing for this agenda we're calling individuals first here and then we'll move on to uh remote participants to speak uh remotely press star nine if listing by phone or use the raise the hand feature of viewing to the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID

007977-663-41226 to unmute press star six City staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name if accessing through the web link you'll hear an autonym that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area for either method please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments we start with folks here in the room is there anybody present that would like to speak on an item that is not on the agenda for tonight Mr Garber I see I need no introduction um favorite court right I have a report yes no it's Haverhill Court I'm telling you the address I'm sorry what I'm telling you your address because for now um but um I do have

008a report because council member Edition um planning director Leonard omitted one item from yesterday's Planning Commission um you caregiver Brandon will reappointed for three years along with commissioner Clark and commissioner wife so I congratulate you and um also um I thank you for doing this you probably know this means another three years of putting up with my demented Rants and the deranged comments of other angry members of the public so um but I guess that's why they pay you the big money but in all seriousness no thank you for your service to the community um I really enjoyed these listening sessions I've learned a lot from from the three of you and from everyone else on the commission so I look forward to more of the same thank you thank you anybody else in the

009room do we have anybody in line virtually we do color with the phone number ending with five three four you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission good evening Harvard later tonight we'll talk about the Southtown Resort quite a lot of houses to offer especially in terms of sustainability features but that's uh for discussion later last night I raised the city council some issues about sustainability uh so I hope I know there's Planning Commission takes it very seriously I hope that keeps uh entering into our discussion for now I want to talk about a store zoning categories that are grouped together B1 B2 c1a and c1ar and their group together for a reason those are the downtown and downtown transitions category you'll call us downtown if you like to separate them with two groups

010YouTube the four groups together who treated the characteristics of their zoning uh the rules within them and that's what they're creating one that they were intended for and the last uh applications of c1a or C1 AR cameras business owner uh with the garden and if you recall that uh there wasn't on the appropriate application uh it's the same building was ended up being approved uh but approved as a tud which means uh nine thousand dollars just short of that any other per unit uh to the affordable housing fund when it was appropriately approved um as a tud rather than Tyra the Physicians as is request prior to that we know there was Morningside lower tax and that one went to school AR material system conditions uh that one if you compare that to a CD

011the exact same site plan if approved as a PUD would have provided us for nine million dollars just short nine million dollars in affordable housing fund and what we got was something that was accomplished compilation of multiple things we don't see one AR experiences my project modification those are no longer allowed I should not have been allowed at the time because our plan project ordinance was not in compliant the commission and Zoning enabling act so we got rid of it um but we should have lost 9 million dollars in terms of the affordable housing had that been approved as the PhD which was the only difference uh in what it's like 30 more seconds so I should think later on tonight about comparing the Bayside zoning that we have for South Town and the c1a

012are also compared to a PUD essay what would we get if we have the same building as a PUD thank you for that consideration thank you is there anybody else yes Luis Vasquez Vazquez you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission oh yes thank you Mr Leonard you are correct it's Luis Vazquez from uh a resident of upper lower town uh in the first ward in Ann Arbor um I just wanted to comment on uh 721 South Forest um I was pleased to see it uh pass at first reading last night in front of City Council but I was kind of just made um to hear that the developer uh wants to scale back that development and lose the opportunity for 70 uh Apartments within that development um and and also just to comment

013on uh zoning in general doing things by PUD piecemeal is really I think in my humble opinion quite ineffective in getting to the goals that we want unnecessarily delays the process of getting developments approved and I would like to see that change I am hoping uh through the reform of the comprehensive land use plan achieves this and and makes something like a 721 South Forest and uh what you're about to discuss with Southtown making them buy right developments so thank you for your time thank you no other speakers indicated okay we will then move on to item number seven which is the public hearings for the next business meeting which is June 6th we have two new public excuse me we have three new public hearings scheduled for Tuesday June 6th um first is proposed

014amendments to chapter 55 the unified development code section 5.15 permitted use tables and section 5.16 use specific standards to permit and regulate event space use and additional zoning districts and section 5.20 landscape screening and buffering to amend the requirements related to conflicting land use buffers the second public hearing is for 21.95 East Ellsworth Lockwood plan unit development text Amendment this is a proposal to adjust the East Side setback by four feet from 144 feet to 140 feet and the South Side set back by four feet from 68 feet to 64 feet no new construction is proposed and lastly 39.45 to 3957 South State site plan and special exception use a proposal to reduce the size of the existing building at this location by 1 384 square feet and add a drive-through Lane along the rear

015of the building thank you okay we are on to our um we don't have any unfinished business so we are on to item number nine which is regular business and uh 9A is the South Town rezoning site plan and Street vacation uh this is 1601 South State Street a project with three petitions to redevelop the block bounded by South State Street White Street Henry Street and Stimson Street a petition to rezone a block of 10 Parcels from r4c multifamily dwelling to c1ar with conditions campus business residential with an offer to reduce the maximum height limit to 100 feet set a maximum vehicle parking limit to 0.25 per dwelling unit and set a minimum active open space requirement of 50 square feet per dwelling unit two a site plan for city council approval to construct a

0162020 square foot mixed-use building with ground for ground floor retail office and child care space and approximately 215 apartments and three of addition to vacate the public alley in the block site includes addresses 1601 South State Street 1605 South State Street 1607 South State Street 1609 South State Street 1611 South State Street 1606 White Street uh let's see uh and which is 72 140 72 148 square feet it's 1.7 Acres zoned r4c staff recommendation is postponement so the petitioner has 10 minutes presume that we are about to have somebody vacate our I'm going to leave at this point based on my involvement in the project thank you thank you wait for whatever yeah yeah unless there's some coordination that needs to happen between the two of you should be ready to go yeah General um

017yeah thank you very much for having us here tonight um we're really excited to talk about this project I myself I'm Adam Smith I'm the director of design of synecdoche Brandon Cheney is our civil engineer on the project from netterville Sydney mcgowski here from our team as well she's our studio director we've all been working on this project the owners could not be here tonight unfortunately but as you can see here on the the first slide this is our our full team here with aspect Structural Engineers out of Vancouver helping helping us on the project working on the project ETS engineering for electrical and Green Path engineering for mechanical and plumbing we've been working together for a year on this project so far to to get it to the point where it's at now so

018the three three points of this are the rezoning the LA vacation and the the site plan in context this is very close to campus between just south of East Stadium on South State Street be in between that and South Industrial within a half mile you have walkability to the stadiums to the athletic campus to lower Burns Park into multiple amenities around the neighborhood across South State Street you have the the full athletic campus and South State Street is a main direct thoroughfare to uh central campus and then down to I-94 and the tc1 zoning there called out and these are also the neighborhood that this is becoming a 15-minute neighborhood with all of these amenities you have things like Revel and roll Benny's Diner produce station beer Camp the tennis center down the street ruse

019Rose you know these are major local businesses and this developer Forum they've been working in this neighborhood they know this these neighbors here and this project is really a part of growing this even more into a 15-minute neighborhood for this space they've recently developed venue there as well so the land use plan uh calls out this area you can see in this little green square at the top here that's that's the site along number five it's called out to be an area where mixed use and residential could could happen and then area one of the South State Street corridor plan also calls out developing non-motorized Transit mixed use and you can see by adopting tc1 it's already blending into that area one for more mixed use and more um multimodal Transit along that Corridor knowing

020that that area is growing the zoning around there is pretty mixed so south of it is more um commercial and and then um M1 zones with R1 R before c uh right next right next to it and then further up the way is the cam is a c1ar zoning as well at Packard and then obviously to the to the to the east is or to the West is the Campus U of M campus so we chose C1 AR zoning because it not a lot of the needs of of this project and we think the 300 far it works well for this this site we also worked with a height so that the massing doesn't produce large Shadows across onto our neighbors who are the Ann Arbor Housing Commission right to the north so even in

021the winter time you get this this moment where the sunlight still moves across the facade of the building to the north so as to not block a lot of sunlight and the the building Mass on White Street is brought down as well so that it is not too too tall against the neighborhood and not producing Shadows across the neighborhood as well right now there's 38 dwelling units and 10 structures on that site and we're proposing to have a hundred and I can't see the number exactly right there 178 I think it is on there new uh dwelling units um in this structure here which fits into the the mix of of scale in that neighborhood and with the limited parking that we're we're offering here we also know this is a very heavily uh or

022a strong multimodal uh area with three bus routes directly uh on the Block that take you from uh downtown Ann Arbor to the Medical Campus on uh University of Michigan to Trader Joe's to the mall to St Joseph Hospital to Wayne or to Washington um uh to uh to Ypsilanti uh and and all over and the bike lanes that are that are there now and what's proposed is to have it all ages and abilities Network alongs the South State Street um connecting up to central campus and down towards the mall and then also the proposed Tree Line trail running along the train tracks that would be great and then also another connection across Stimson to connect to what's already a okay bike lane on South Industrial um so we see it's a very good uh

023non-motorized Transit spot uh the LA vacation is just for this strip down the center of the site that contains a overhead line there and then we are removing seven uh curb cuts that are existing and replacing it with two new ones that are only on Henry Street and White Street so there'll be no curb cuts on South State Street and no curb cuts on Stimson as to hopefully not have delivery vehicles stop on those streets and there's no uh entries off of South State Street so we've positioned our entries along uh Henry and white and the package rooms are also along those so knowing that deliveries are going to take the easiest travel route we've positioned lobbies mail rooms packages at spots where it's not on stimpson and State Street um we're using we're using

024the 10 foot setback around the the most of the site and then on the State Street site side we're actually using the five foot minimum which is an exception that we can use so long as the area of setbacks around the entire site meet a certain square footage we're well above that um per the per the zoning ordinance and also we have a couple public there's still a few engineering comments that are on the staff report that we're so working we've been going back and forth with staff and and planning to to address all these comments that we have addressed all of these knowing that the trash dumpsters will be larger we have a right-of-way contained for the street light at the corner and those are all addressed comments so it's actually three buildings um

025completely it's separated by a concrete Podium at the base and then two buildings on top of it because of the building code it can only be so big for the type of construction we're using so it's three separated buildings the parking spaces underneath we have 53 parking spaces with eight EV charging stations and eight and the rest are all EV capable we're going next week for a zba for a zoning variants because we do have an extra we we're looking to have the the parking indoor parking area not count towards the far because we have a high water table it's technically infeasible for us to put the parking down that low and then also have storm water detention underneath it we'd be in the water um so our proposed variance is to have the covered

026parking with a park on top of it and the other options are parking with no Park no parking which would be more of an issue and then not being able to get it into the water table so the building is built as a as a building on top of a park in this area is all accessible to the public on top and it's all it's all open flexible and Garden area we also have a lot of bike parking around on myself as a bike rider uh we have five times the amount of Class A Bike parking on the ground level so this doesn't include anything in units but at different levels of on-ground bike parking and racks of bike parking for more density but knowing that e-bikes are heavy and they should be on the

027ground as well a lot of these spaces around her for visitors as well not just for people living there the street design we've we've set back from we meet our minimum five foot set back on State Street and also get the sidewalk amenities space along along that street so it's a lot of space for people and same thing on Stimson where you see there's space for people there the sixth level and up have a green roof and solar panels all around I can address a lot of these later too and then we have a lot going on sustainability wise solar power we're working through geothermal um and a lot of wall insulation to try to meet passive house Baseline passive house standards we're doing a panelized system for construction which is mass Timber and CLT

028to reduce the amount of noise dark sky lighting bird safe glass will be installed throughout the site throughout the building the materials of the building are actually pretty sustainable they clean the air as they sit there we have paved drain pavers that act as a water sequestration in the on the site as well as the water detention these are some data we can go over about CO2 that's that's being built with and plans of units a lot of diversity of unit types two bedrooms one bedrooms Studios and that is it so I want to thank you before my time is up there's a lot to go through and a lot I'm sure there'll be a lot of questions about so looking forward to it thanks you got it you got it right there under the

029under the line yeah yeah I'm sure we'll have the opportunity to go through a lot uh but first uh we move on to a staff presentation thank you very much um I felt that Adam did a great job I feel opposite now and did a great job explaining the project um I'm just going to go over a bit in the staff report focusing on our staff analysis um but as mentioned this is actually three petitions in one so there are three motions um to pass tonight the first is a petition to rezone it is the current zoning is c1a nope current zoning is r4c and the proposed zoning designation is c1a r with conditions attached to the staff report included in the packet is our template that formalizes and documents the conditions these were voluntarily

030offered by the owners and applicant team and they impose a height limit um a maximum vehicle parking limit and a minimum active open space requirement project also includes a site plan and a street vacation petition bear with me a second um repeating myself but they are requesting and rezoning from r4c which is a multi-family dwelling District allows 10 dwelling units per acre to c1a R which is campus business residential with the conditions they had mentioned um the conditional zoning offer letter can be found in the file as well as a petition that addresses some questions to help the Planning Commission with their deliberations we have provided in the staff report a comparison chart of most of the zoning District most of the parameters of the r4c and c1a our district um I would note that

031the comprehensive plan as a whole encourages more dense development with a particular emphasis on more housing overall and a wider range of housing types and encourages more sustainable developments living arrangements that enable lesser no Reliance on personal vehicles and reduced vehicle travel Miles City Council and planning commissions do support have in their actions have supported projects that further these goals the proposed c1a our district designation is a reasonable choice to meet those goals given the site's proximity to campus and although the r4c district and c1a R1 is the residential district one is a mixed-use district they are a little bit apples and oranges in terms of being able for a direct comparison but for arguments um sake the r4c district probably has an far of 100 we suggest that because a typical development is a

032two-story building covering about half the site um so that's about 100 far and the c1a slash our district is 300 percent um so it seems that the proposed rezoning is moving toward about three times the density is what could be currently achieved again it's apples to oranges but for discussion purposes I feel that this is in the ballpark um but and are and although our City Utilities our infrastructure and our currently our desires to support the rezoning um the scale of the area um is is more in the residential category and so staff support the rezoning with two conditions one that the development uh provides 19 feet of setback from the back of the curb to the building face this enables the space needed so that this higher level this more urban level of pedestrian

033amenities for the number of residents that we can expect can be accommodated and thus the second condition that for our support is that the development conforms to the standards of the c1ar district to which it has to which it has requested um and with those two stipulations the proposed rezoning will be in keeping with the goals or applicable goals policies and standards for development I'll get into a second about why the the Project's a little bit too big um and speaking of which the site plan um is very well described Podium two buildings on top it has over 200 000 square feet includes ground floor stuff um and plus residential above I let me back up myself again one thing that is not in the staff report is a comparison of the permitted uses in

034the r4c and c1a slash our district so at a quick and at a quick and high level the r4c district allows for single family two family and multi-family dwelling units the c1a r District allows for all the kinds of household living that's a category just for labeling purposes and that is the single family two family multiple family um dwelling c1a our district also allows all forms of group living which is fraternity sororities student cooperatives shelters and and so forth it allows for some Community kind of uses like museums it allows for child care all kinds all levels of education schools it allows for nourishing facilities hotels short-term rentals Recreation and entertainment uses restaurants general merchandise laundry services personal services and veterinary services and all forms of office that would be general office financial and medical

035offices it does not permit many of the auto oriented uses such as Auto Repair Auto Sales and a lot of any of the manufacturing or research uses back to the staff report the site plan the project has a measures from exterior face to exterior face around 240 or 246 000 square feet which calculates to a floor error ratio of 345 percent the c1a slash R District allows 300 percent but it does allow pedestrian and Men The Pedestrian amenity premium which gives three or 800 square feet on top of what you can earn based on the lot size if you do that math the far would be then 311 percent they have requested a variance to not include the parking the floor area used for parking which is within the podium if you remove that then

036the numbers drop and the floor area ratio calculates to 308 percent some details about the site plan that probably have already been mentioned but the setbacks from the property line are an average of 10 feet as required in the c1a slash our district they have been flexed on the State Street side but if you add up all of the setback area around the site it balances with the minimum requirements um also the building has been set back so it provides 19 feet from the back of the curb this is not something we usually measure from but this is taken from the downtown Street design manual guideline for Destination streets and 19 feet is the width that was deemed ideal in the downtown to provide an eight foot eight foot walking Zone plus an eight foot

037amenity Zone that can include Street trees it can include parking meters street lights so forth bicycle hoops and it also includes some space for door swing or tablescape areas and so forth um and that has been provided for the the site as well site provides pedestrian amenities it has a pedestrian Plaza on its south side it's got active open space whereas none is required in the c1a slash our district um the reduction in driveways has been mentioned as well as the limited parking and I have repeated in the staff report the um some of the information provided on the site plan regarding sustainability and I'll just mention again that the development team focused on three main major components to prioritize for sustainability um for the building materials the lack of gas equipment and the electrification

038and its location prioritizing multimodal transportation finally the project includes a street vacation interestingly the Hat the north half of the site was plotted in 1890 the South half was um uh platted I think just about 20 years later and there is an unimproved alley if you were driving by on Henry you would the gravel driveway looks like a private driveway it's it's about in the location of the unimproved alley there are no Public Utilities in this alley just electrical service um so there is is no impact of vacating this alley standardized procedures mean that when an alley is vacated you put a line straight down the middle and each half the land goes to the abutting properties on each side all of these properties are under the single ownership so the owner will get all

039of the land um the project has been reviewed by a plethora of Service Unit unit comments um and I've included a planning comment in the staff report but it repeats nothing else than what had already been mentioned um that the development should provide at least 19 feet of setback from the back of the building face which it does and it should meet all the dimensional standards of the c1a slash our district without variances which it currently does not engineering staff are still working on their review I know that there have been discussions and Communications I think that things are well on their way the same with the fire marshal and solid waste and storm water Management's outstanding issues the staff report notes that a park contribution per dwelling unit will be made and we are

040still working with our transportation Engineers on the transportation impact analysis um I think that we will I think that we will get there but currently the transportation impact analysis needs to be revised and address more of the multimodal aspects and um be more robust in recommending the phrase I believe is changes in operations not to say these would be done but what changes in operations mean is switching from one way to two-way or from two-way to One Way adding turn Lanes taking away turn lanes that adding on-street parking taking away on street parking no left turns no right turns that those are examples of changes in operations um I believe I mentioned that the project has been scheduled for a variance to be heard at the zoning Board of appeal appeals meeting next week Wednesday

041which is May 24th um because of the outstanding staff issues um and the complexity of the project staff is recommending that the project be postponed thank you alrighty we will move on to the public hearing now for this project folks in the room can have three minutes or remotely if you're speaking remotely press star 9 or used to raise the hand feature for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-663-41226 to unmute press star 6. City staff will sell callers at a raise their hand or use the last three digits to your phone number you'll hear an automated an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak please move to a quiet area for either method please state your name and address at the beginning is there anybody here that would like

042to comment on this project hello my name is Michael Lewandowski I am a representative of the owners of 1513 White Street which is just a kitty corner across the street from the proposed development uh we have uh some slight concerns maybe more than slight about uh parking specifically we do applaud the Project's commitment to try to reduce car traffic in the area and have multi-modal transportation as a focus of the project however um we also uh live in the reality of residents potentially not always living up to the same standards that the project has indicated and that the neighborhood which is already a relatively clogged at certain points with parking would simply become overwhelmed with parking as residents use the public parking in the neighborhood as opposed to the designated parking that they would be

043able to get through the project this would be especially concerning given some of the use around the neighborhood as the project manager indicated it's very close to the athletic facilities around the University of Michigan campus and of course everyone who lives in Ann Arbor knows that on football Saturdays parking around that area becomes pretty crazy and so would be concerned about being able to utilize that space as well for those kind of activities not just for football but again it's near all kinds of athletic facilities and so if the parking in the neighborhood would significantly reduced based on the residents in the building we just wanted to make sure that the project is at least aware of that and that the commission would be aware of the potential issues given that this is being you

044know plopped down right in the middle of a neighborhood where everybody already lives that you know they still want to be able to park potentially on the street or have friends or something park on the street and it would potentially be an issue otherwise that's my main concern thank you thank you anybody else present like to speak on this project hello Adam Goodman 400 Virginia Avenue I'm here tonight because I'm really excited about this project I think that it is um almost everything that our city has been asking for from developers and it it's you know you some of you have described it as as well very difficult maybe with more colorful language than that to get developments that are for example all electric and and here we have one not only is it all

045electric it's it's pushing boundaries it I believe that this would be the first mass Timber development in in the history of Ann Arbor which is which is really cool I think that's that's fantastic um I of course also very much appreciate the commitment to multimodal Transportation here and providing very limited amount of parking uh the Planning Commission and and city council uh recently chose very deliberately to remove parking minimums from our zoning code city wide and I think that was a correct choice and you know the the public streets are our public property they don't they don't belong to any one of us so uh you know I I think it may be valuable to acknowledge that there will be an impact but I think it is consistent with the goals that the city hit

046that you and city council have have put in place for developments so you know with all these things with all these great benefits uh I would think that you know we should be the city should be bending over backwards to make sure that this gets approved as efficiently as and expediently as possible um and unfortunately it doesn't seem like that's quite what's happening it seems like this project is getting run through the the ringer that is typical of Ann Arbor and makes us somewhat Infamous among local and Regional developers maybe that's a broader problem that we can't solve for a particular project just because we'd like it but it's still a little discouraging and also I have to say I don't particularly understand the staff recommendation about uh no variances um but that seems weird

047to me are we saying that you want to preempt or override the zoning board of appeals on this um and and you know I I also bring this up because it seems to me it seems clear to me from the presentation from the developers that if this variants were denied the project could still move forward but it would be worse and not just worse for the developers in the future residents but worse for the neighborhood in the community as well thank you thank you anybody else present that would like to speak I can't get Randall Ken Garber again um as Mr Goodman said this project checks appears to check all the decarbonization boxes you can imagine um but it's a huge rezoning request from r4c to c1ar we heard Mr Leo talk about three times

048the far they're asking for a variance on top of that they're replacing perfectly good well reasonable reasonably habitable anyway existing housing so the bar is really high here this has to be a model project and maybe it is but um you know we don't see projects like this very often so it to me it's an opportunity to learn as well as to ask questions it sounds like there's going to probably be a postponement so I'm not asking for all my questions to be answered tonight but I've put them together in the form of a pop quiz um and like any pop quiz there's some gimmies on here but um maybe there's some toughies too I hope um first we're told that electric heating sources will be vrf ductless units with electric v-tac units on the

049roof VTEC stands for vertical terminal air conditioner one per unit these are less efficient than ductless vrf why do you need v-tax could you eliminate them and get more solar capacity on the roof number two well the vrf employ air source or geothermal I talked chatting with them earlier it sounds like they're 80 sure it'll be geothermal but not 100 sure so what's your backup plan if it doesn't work if the soil samples prove on um inhospitable to this sort of solution and if you do geothermal are you are you concerned about the issue of thermal degradation which we've heard from some reluctant developers in the past um three the 110 kilowatts of rooftop solar which I've read isn't very much about enough for 14 houses I know you're putting in two green roofs which

050makes sense but how do you expect to power the building during an extended outage with the diesel generator four is that diesel generator absolutely necessary how will the diesel fuel be stored and could a battery panel be used to satisfy the fire protection code and to deal with outages five will there be a gas connection to this building um pretty sure there's not but I just want to make absolutely sure um six where you have an Erv or energy recovery ventilation system and or heat recovery chillers seven will the building envelope comply with the 2021 iecc for multi-family including an external installation shell you mentioned something about passive housing I'd like to hear more about that eight have you modeled um your building energy use intensity iecc zero codependents sets a maximum for our climate

051zone of 47 kilo BTUs per square foot per year for multi-family residential how do you stack up nine have you explored Zero Energy path and mass Timber construction well it still include how much concrete and steel will you still be using I had a bonus question but I guess I'll skip it laughs thank you I don't know if we got all those down or you all got all those anybody else present that would like to speak all right well we will move on to the virtual list and this is where the folks who are tuning in won't be able to hear these uh the people in the room will be able to hear them that's correct uh Lauren you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission hi thank you for accommodating my question I'm

052Lauren I live at 801 Rose just right across the street um I want to iterate what a few folks have already surfaced just briefly um certainly this area is known to be a high traffic area so in terms of the infrastructure accommodation I I do like what I'm hearing around supporting the 15-minute neighborhood but I do have some questions in terms of really addressing the infrastructure needs not just of this immediate neighborhood at these addresses but also then extending with the projecting growth of the current proposal and these infrastructure needs lie around grocery store cycling infrastructure noise ordinance in terms of accommodating the train that regularly honks in this neighborhood and then also the growing infrastructure around autonomous vehicles with a2go from Main mobility and so I'm just wondering and uh like the similar speaker

053was bringing up questions I don't immediately expect them to be resolved but I haven't heard how some of these infrastructure needs will be addressed again for the existing neighborhood and then to accommodate this projected growth of the development I want to come back to the grocery store in particular because 4M a big figure in this proposed project they themselves have a lovely venue that's been out since October a great new space in the neighborhood however it did take away a very significant need for grocery stores and while I do understand that this is a mixed-use proposed development with the potential for retail on the ground floor I would like to see some greater interest in acknowledging the grocery needs of again this neighborhood but also to meet the projective growth I have a hard time

054leaving similar to discussions around five corners proposal further up north on South State Street that the few places mentioned will really accommodate grocery needs for the targeted Market it sounds like of students and young professionals produce station is a lovely place for Specialty Foods banana One-Stop shop for all Groceries on the cycling infrastructure side 30 more seconds I 100 support 15-minute neighborhood but there needs to be further investments in the cycling infrastructure to accommodate everyday traffic along with the sporting events that occur in this neighborhood overall I support this project and would like to see further improvements to elaborate on it thank you thank you to everybody else in line Abdul Rahman you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission hello um I'd like to address the Planning Commission in saying that I am

055very much in support of South Town uh I'm a columnist with Michigan Daily I recently wrote a column about how Ann Arbor needs more mid-rise buildings um and I wrote about how we need them in places that aren't downtown and this is literally almost exactly a home run of what I was saying we need I mean this is this is going to add more housing to the area this is going to be a very Sustainable Building it's going to be a very Innovative building first with second master in the building of Michigan First National Building in Ann Arbor Fishman and so investment um like there there couldn't be more hope like smash hit home run City gold things in this in this whole entire plan uh I think that the variant should be approved uh

056the one that says something about you know setbacks um the plant team fee whatever fee it's like across the street from Yost Yosh is like taller and closer to the streets than this building is so um I just think there's almost literally nothing wrong with this building except for that it's on how parking which makes it taller um like there's I mean it's just like a very much hope run building it has a lot of things right it's very little wrong um I mean it's gonna be great it's gonna look nice it shows pictures like renderings and whatnot uh I really hope to see this building be built I live down the street um I live in a taller building in it uh but like it's great I don't see any reasons against this building

057um it's a human master plan uh it's close to downtown it's close to building the same size as it close to uses that are similar like there's all these reasons that the developers iterated um all of those reasons in the master plan to approve all the different uh requests that the developers asked for um yeah there's just a lot there's a lot to like here very little dislike um and I really hope to see this get built the way the developers the vision with the public spaces and all the stuff that they're asking for variance is for um yeah please approve this thank you Luis Vasquez Vasquez my apologies uh you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission uh thank you thank you Mr London no problem um do we fast guys from upper

058lower town uh just wanted to speak very briefly in favor of this development proposal that you see before you uh obviously the developer uh and City staff and um others have put in a logger thought into this project I would like to see it move forward expeditiously with or perhaps some of the minor tweaks um and variances Etc uh this looks like a uh a great project overall thanks thank you call her with the phone number ending with zero four three you can press star six to unmute your phone and address the Planning Commission go ahead good evening um this is um I am ma'am you might mute your the sound on your computer we're getting some feedback oh is that better because I'm on my phone so I'm not on my computer yeah that

059sounds better thank you yeah it was so um I so if I viewed it I don't think [Music] if you can focus on muting the sound from the meeting however you're watching that via the phone your computer or the television um we'll be able to hear you on your phone but if you could mute the meeting sound however you're watching okay thank you can you hear me yes White City has a valid concern um because I get 810 um there's a lot going on on that student has been for the last few years my particular concern is parking um I uh I was concerned about parking when the Airbnb was built um I understand all of the housing and and um and uh having walkable areas but when the house was built on at 8

06030 Henry Street there was supposed to be parks and spaces in the garage and they were never used so I was very concerned about parking for for my guests on a homeowner they had a renter up in one part of my unit it very very difficult to park in the Stream I did my due diligence I got the number of neighbors or owners to ask for if these parts implements for that street I was our our request was basically denied or they said if it wasn't warranted but after the building was built 8 30 there were additional parking spaces that were taking away for buses to kickoff so I so I I really concerned about the parking issues the other thing is that a few years ago I asked what the 10-year or 20 years

061plan was for um this particular street it's already a one-way Street and I thought I heard the woman mention that the possibility of Transportation having this as a two-way street we really concerned so my issue is really to have to do with parking and with all of this going on are we going to be able to have a practice permit um with certain hours of her just like we have on all other streets that are busy my petition was denied and I I got to write the number of uh uh owners 30 more seconds business happens uh getting a person permit for at least our size of the Street between states and on the stadium thank you anybody else in the queue yes Brandon dimchoff you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission [Music]

062less than half a mile from the proposed site I'm calling today to say how excited I am to see a mass Timber project proposed in Ann Arbor and I hope you approve the project tonight uh without delaying it I don't need to repeat with the petitioners and the other callers have said but I do want to reiterate that the extra far requested by this project is used purely for putting a roof over car parking to provide a publicly accessible Plaza with about the size of the Library Lane surface parking lot it would be a tragedy in my opinions including also the zba that they should deny that variance as it would simply make the project worse by having exposed cars instead of a publicly usable area why should we prefer a surface parking lot to

063a public Plaza if it would make any sense so please prove this and please encourage the EPA however you can to pan through your hands thank you thank you Alex Lowe you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission hi this is Alex Lowe calling in from South Southeast East Danada uh first thing I want to talk about it is while I'm not a fan of dudes really this kind of feels like it should be a PUD because the requested uh c1a Slash are bad zoning kind of limits it we the this this site should be way better there should be at least three multiples of it so I I think that it's a little different uh uh a little bit uh we should add we should have more here but you know we've got

064uh we're going to work uh like what we uh we have I do hope get uh uh given all of the uh let's talk about uh thing that the developer uh has plans for uh for antipartum that goes unused in their uh in their parking structure uh uh a lot of people who are going to eventually living in this area may not own a car at all and so you know people people would be talking about game day party and everything this would be a a a opportunity for them as well uh on uh on one street is it is the parking problem is uh is so bad in this area it sounds like what we uh uh what we need is for the city to start putting in t-shirt parking at the same mode

065that's uh that should resolve at the issue of uh partying for uh for individual uh individuals uh who are coming for the game versus homeowners Etc everyone will uh will have an opportunity for uh to have Legion parking even if we only turn it on or to turn on the legions for say large events or whatever other than that I think that that this development is really good and sad that it can't be any bigger but yeah you you take what you can get right thank you no other speakers no body Chris all righty I will read the three motions the first one is the anniversary Planning Commission hereby recommends at the Marin city council approved the South tone rezoning South Town rezoning petition to C1 AR campus business residential district and accept the conditions

066that the maximum Building height is limited to 100 feet the maximum vehicle parking limit is one space for four dwelling units in the minimum active open space requirement is 50 square feet per dwelling unit subject to executing a conditional zoning statement of conditions second one is the anniversary Planning Commission hereby recommends that the Marion city council approved the Southtown site plan in 1601 South State Street and development agreement subject of variance granted by the zoning board of appeals to exceed to exceed that the maximum far of the c1ar district due to the enclosed parking garage and combining all Lots priority issuance of any permits and the last one is the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council vacate the unimproved flooded alley in block three of the Hamilton Rose

067and Sheehan's addition to the city and town of Ann Arbor moved my commissioner Lee seconded by commissioner Abrams we are in discussion commissioner weich all right um first of all thanks for bringing this project and developing it for our community I have a I have a lot of questions I will start by first thanking you for including the post and ring hitch for the bicycles that is something I asked every developer to do and when I looked at your plan I was like look it's already here that's a good sign um I wanted uh to address one of the callers comments about Lucky's Market uh that was an invest a joint investment out of Colorado with uh kroger and Kroger withdrew their funding which uh required them to close immediately they closed 39 stores in

06810 states so I don't know why that came into this part of the the conversation but I just want to clear that up um I think oh wait sorry so let me start with this one uh why did you request uh c1ar instead of a PUD because of the we started this building off with the building type and I want to address also why it's that height and this is where it see what AR works with it uh we're proposing using a a newer version of the Michigan building code and this version limits the height of this construction to 85 feet and so see when AR met the far of what 85 feet would do on this site it meant a lot of the the goals of the project we felt it was the right

069scale for the for the neighborhood and we also use the the setbacks that were on the chart and what what we ended up with uh that makes it I think a proper use and everything we wanted to do would fit it came to the variance of of the parking uh which we can talk about later but that's our only only variance on top of that okay so then uh with the parking um can you bring back up your slides where you showed the options for the variants do I have control yeah here we go it's a few slides back oh yeah okay so then if the variance at the zba is denied um which how how are you planning to address that or is this if it's denied or how we address the variance you

070can do both uh I mean as you can see here we laid out our five what we we looked at as options what would be buy right and uh the four down below they always miss something in the project if it's denied uh it's I think it's a failure we wouldn't have the ability to have as much of a park on top of that area uh as what would be more beneficial to the project so I think with the technical and feasibility of building the water detention into the water table we have a fairly high water table in this this area that even getting the parking halfway down getting the volume halfway down we looked at that as well we'd still be pushing down into the water table and then our water our storm water

071detention which is fairly large would also be in there um so if those four always miss something and the variance gets everything for for every part of the project storm water parking that that's needed there and then uh Park on top for for everyone so then we're looking at and I did send some questions to staff um when when this got on our agenda so we're looking at 300 what is it 308 308 percent of far with this variance and then Mr Leo you you talked about the fact that they wouldn't qualify for the square foot pedestrian amenity or do they okay so that brings it down from 311 to 308. or is it from 345 to 311 to 308. I think 325. and then it would be the variance of taking the parking out

072which would then still put them above 1ar District allows 300 for far which is the ratio percentage of the lot it's 300 of the lot area that's your building size and then there is and so that that's just 300 percent and that floor area um is 216 444 square feet right then you can go 8 000 square feet above that so to 224 000. right so with the pedestrian amenity premium the the way it's worded it says that you take your the 300 percent what that number is and then you can add 8 000 square feet so there's no sort of Max cap but if you do them but if you do that they may still stay yeah they'd be maxed out but the 8000 yeah but if you do for the the extra square

073footage that we are in debate about yeah and if you do the math the 300 uh 300 far Plus 8 000 square feet that's 311. okay great thank you my questions um since this is a uh our first mass Timber residential development I think in the state of Michigan right because there is one last number what's that first tall Mass Timber tall okay good uh thank you for that qualifier um in Ann Arbor could you just take a moment and talk about this material uh because it's new and then um can you talk about it sustainability um uh benefits as well and I think you had a slide about the capture card carbon and then um can you explain uh both the height so the limitation I know you just said that the you're using

074a a newer version of the international building code and so you have a cap of 85 feet for that but you are also developing the building on top of a either a Podium or some kind of concrete still base so could you talk about those things yes as well just for a moment uh yeah I'll start with the with the code I guess so that so this is where uh Michigan we work with the 2015 Michigan building code this is adopted Statewide uh the state we've been working with close uh colleagues at Michigan State University Department of Forestry uh lobbying State uh representatives and people working at Lara to update the go to the 2021 IBC which has Provisions for a new building type which is for engineered Mass Timber and Tall Mass Timber buildings

075so anything now you see out um buildings have been built with wood and mass timber for a long time and they've been predominantly up to five stories that's what's allowed now with the new building code that's adopted by the 2021 IBC which will be adopted in Michigan hopefully shortly that would allow us to build with exposed Mass Timber up to eight stories of residential and 85 feet from the ground plane so that's where the 85 feet is a cap from the ground round and not from the concrete Podium level we can't get any more height out of that by strictly staying to that building type and not adding a variance on top of that this is a building material that the wild glulam beams and columns have been used for for a while engineered Lumber

076like that cross laminated Timber is used for the floor decking which is a fairly new invention from the from the 90s that is used for entire floor decking with a concrete topper on top of that so there's a lot of mass in that floor decking and it also offers fire resistance rating for the floor that's another big change of how we can build tall with with mass Timber is that it offers really good fire resistance um and that's what's required for residential buildings um so from that we've you know for for its carbon so a tree growing is going to capture a lot of carbon over over its lifespan and this is going to use a lot of lumber the lumber being forested in forests is as we've learned for the past uh we've been

077going to the mass Timber conference from last year Sydney spoke at the mass Timber conference in Portland this year about this project we've learned that deforestation is not really is not a is not producing Lumber in in the United States it's not a forest stewardship managed way of producing Lumber and that Forest need good for Manchester management to keep biomass from falling down and then drying out and then burning causing these massive wildfires fires out in the Pacific Northwest so when a tree falls and burns it releases all that carbon so we're taking it cutting trees down in a sustainable way that is then going to be replanted putting into a building that is uh sequestering a lot of that carbon in the building so this diagram and chart you see here this is how

078much carbon it would take to to produce this building versus a typical concrete build construction and versus typical Steel Con steel construction so already we're about half of the carbon that it takes to build a building this is I mean these are the real numbers what it takes to build buildings it takes a lot of energy it's 193 000 mature trees of carbon in one year and 4 000 over 4 000 flights but what using wood it's sequestering about 80 percent of that carbon that otherwise is being produced into the atmosphere and keeping it inside the the building and then new trees are planted and sequester more carbon and the cycle continues so that's the that's the really great sustainable um product of mass Timber and then it has to be on a concrete Podium

079because of the use underneath to separate um you know we have we have cars parking underneath and we have other commercial uses we have electrical rooms we have generator rooms that we need a certain level of fire resistance between that and other parts of the building so that's why the podium is required by building code to be concrete but we're doing as much wood as we can thank you this question no it's a helpful question or answer um I think this question now is for staff Miss DeLeo if you could just walk me through again the the um the setbacks the 10 foot and 19 and the five so I think my understanding is because they're exceeding the setbacks in other parts of the development they are developing to the 50 minimum of that zoning

080area which would be 10 so 50 of it would be five so they would fit that but we are rejecting what is in the zoning ordinance and is required are requesting 19 instead um uh not so much of a rejection but but uh yeah but but an add-on going above and beyond so yes the c1a slash our district requires a 10-foot setback from the front lot line this site has four front lot lines no side no rear um the evolution of uh planned projects um we um expanded a little bit of the flexibility it's in a section of code that allows for alternatives to um setbacks and yards the yard meeting the space between the lot line and the building that is the front yard example um the C1 air slash our district requires 10

081foot minimum for upset back all mixed-use zoning districts can reduce a minimum front setback half if then you increase another setback to balance the whole thing out and so they are um I guess a video they started with 10 feet on all four sides um shifted the building to five feet on the State Street side they can give you maybe more specific exactly the calculations but in the end the total amount of front setback area remains equal or more than the minimum required the but setbacks are taken from the lot line and here the atom you might need to remind me the dimensions but um the then the public right of the public sidewalk is in the public right-of-way side and it might be 10 feet um between the curb and then the five foot

082tree lawn and the five foot sidewalk that might be ten feet so this building would be 15 feet from the curb of State Street which is not terrible but given the number of occupants in the building a five foot sidewalk is just too is too tight it's not very it's not going to be very comfortable you can imagine um two people passing by it's on a sidewalk five feet wide is fine but if you have 30 people trying to make it to a nine o'clock class or whatever you're going to want an eight foot wide sidewalk and you don't want that sidewalk too close to the street because there's there's things passing by you you want all that space so the ideal amount of space between the back of the curb and the building phase

083is 19 feet this project by minimum code that they is let's call it 15 for discussion purposes so we asked them to voluntarily push it back farther on all sides so that 19 feet is achieved between the back of the curb and the building face and this is more than the minimum we'll accept per the zoning standards which would be um five feet from the lot line and then whatever Dimension it is then from the curb so if I can clarify thank you and you know we I've emailed I emailed you this and you answer and so I I just want to make sure I fully understand it so the way that I read the motion however was that staff was recommending postponement and made this conditional so that's why I said that it was

084rejecting this at the beginning and but in your description just now you talked about it as a voluntary request of the development so is there is there any distance in those terms or is that a difference without a distinction well I tried to just think I tried to be very clear with the applicant team like what would it take for the step staff support right I had two two principles I thought that the building needed 19 feet from the back of the curb to the building face because it is a sort of urban style building going in a residential scale and I thought that for consistency and uniformity that it needs to have a measurement of mass that is 300 percent far Plus 8 000 square feet because that's what the minimum standards are and

085they are meeting the my 19-foot request but the building they did not reduce the size of the building so the building okay I'm sorry you just said something new they are meeting the 19 so is that longer in the the the post bone met so when you when you emailed me on Friday it was the postponement was conditioned on that 19-foot and so now that it's being met I honestly cannot remember exactly what I wrote on Friday okay but I did not mean to imply that the postponement is sort of the totality there are outstanding staff comments right across departments so there were two there were two I'm just I am if if you will permit me I just want Clarity so that I understand because I'm going to do something in a moment and

086I want to make sure the thing I do is the right thing and and this is how we disabuse me of that now so the and let me just net it out I don't understand why we were postponing this this is a referral to city council so council is going to get this there's going to get a first reading then there's going to be a second Reading Plus a public hearing they have to go to zba this feels like an unnecessary delay uh in a process that is already ongoing so given that I haven't been working with the developer for a year and you have I want to defer to make sure I understand what you are communicating to us at the table and when I emailed and we exchanged and thank you so much

087quite prompt quite exhaustive I really appreciate your um uh response to me it seemed there were two things and the two things were the developer needed to meet a 19 foot minimum setback and the developer needed not to exceed 300 far is that did I read that correctly I know there's all the staff comments yeah so that the traffic and all those things but so those were my two original stipulations for my support of the zoning designation okay and they have met one of them okay the building is does provide 19 feet for whatever manner yes and so now the issue is the far which is up to zba uh it is okay sure if I could so uh so we I just want to sort of echo that we we did have some staff

088conversation in this and the question of the site plan before you is does it meet the requirements of our code and in its current configuration it does not you could do that and that is that is achievable in a couple of ways one the Planning Commission could deny the site plan because the proposed zoning does not the proposed side plan does not comply with the zoning that's being asked for and so that that's one scenario the second scenario is the Planning Commission could uh approve the site plan without postponement subject to uh or conditioned upon the granting of a variance by the zoning board of appeals that has not happened yet I want I want to sort of stick in I don't want to speak for Alexis but I want to speak in for my

089voice um this petitioner as as noted we think the c1a r is an appropriate zoning district for it the notion that there are hardships around this particular completely new development on basically what's going to be completely a blank slate property seems like a heavy lift from my perspective but that's not my decision to make that's the zoning board of appeals and so in the context of that timing I just want to be clear you could absolutely go against any recognition to postpone if you wanted to do so it would have to be with the full knowledge that this site plan has presented does not meet the c1ar zoning that is being asked for by the petitioner and if that's if you wish to do that I would recommend strongly that it is conditioned upon the

090granting of that variance by the Zoning Board of Appeals so I have two follow-up questions is it okay chair give mine okay well the first one okay so um the first question is then why are we seeing this now and not after the zba well there's there's no requirements that one has to happen before the other um I think there's merits actually in both um that the zoning board of appeals uh could consider it earlier or the Planning Commission considered earlier I I just want to be clear there's no right or wrong answer to that in this case we were intending to bring this uh to you obviously it's scheduled to this agenda we have to make that decision about a month in advance the coalescing of the fact that this was scheduled before the

091zoning board of appeals and the fact that over that time period since we were aspiring to have all staff comments related except for that outstanding one that's what my recommendation was then at that point uh to Mr Leo is to given the fact that we had so many outstanding technical comments and the fact that this question remains to the zoning board of appeals I thought it was appropriate to bring here for preliminary feedback from the Planning Commission or action contingent upon that but it gives the Planning Commission actually the opportunity if you would like to transmit any comment to the zoning board of appeals in regards to this petition but you've been very clear at the table that we are Separate Tables you are somebody else we should not use our table to influence what

092they do at their table because when we've talked about EV Chargers when we've talked about whether those are there are two churches I think that came through and I know I had a whole host of questions um like oh can we send a like we approve this but put a note on it and you told me that would be inappropriate and so I'm I'm just trying to understand because I'm confused yeah would it confused that a development that does not meet our zoning is at the table being asked for us to vote on it it would seem that that doesn't make sense it's non-conforming and I don't understand why we would approve something that is not conforming this has nothing to do with your development this is a staff question that I'm trying to understand

093because it's a fair critique I would say that in the past um and I think part of that is is I wanted to bring that notion this is a complex project you might recall the Villages of Ann Arbor was another example it was just a relatively large project and we thought that there might be some complexities and aspects of the project that actually warranted maybe a couple of a couple of reviews by the Planning Commission it's not necessary again you know I I guess I would I would turn that around I would not get so focused on why it's here you you have the opportunity now to consider this proposal and the desire you want I just want to be clear but it it's if if I can yeah it is disorienting to hear you

094say that because you know when commissioner dish brought the last development to uh the when you introduced last night the Pud that we approved against uh staff recommendation uh Council had a very strong sort of reaction to that like why are we getting this thing that staff has denied and then planning is approving and so I'm just confused I'm really really confused it doesn't seem like we want to have these kinds of developments and and I'm getting mixed messages I'm getting messages that says we're in a housing crisis we need to develop and then we get developers who go out acquire land do very Innovative things they've answered I think almost everything we've asked at the table in this development and yet we can't actually approve it well because if if I'm understanding correctly we

095can't actually approve it because it's non-conforming to to the zoning that's incorrect you can approve this if you if you desire to approve it you can approve it and that I would but I would advise that you you are a regulatory body okay and so your job is uh is not to um you don't have the ability always to make a decision absence absent the parameters of our code and nor do we as staff and so we do our best and it's not always linear it's not always easy frankly and we try our best to find those balances in this case if you desire I just want I just want to be crystal clear that you can the Planning Commission is full within your authority to approve this if you do that I would highly

096recommend that you are concluding that it will meet the requirements of the UDC on the condition that the zoning board of appeals determines to grant that there is something unique about this site and the cons the characteristics of this project that warrant deviation from the requirements of the c1ar zoning District you can do you can absolutely do that I would not advise that you approve this site plan at 340 or 311 or 345 percent far and conclude that it meets the requirements of the c1ar district okay and then to the developer if zba denies you if you go back to your parking thing are you able to do the build to do the development inside the 300 far because another question that I asked uh to staff when I saw this is where does this

097fit within our zoning and the the only thing that would make this work at your far would be a D1 right right or a PUD because then you don't have the same kind of height restrictions and and we can Flex the far so and I forgot my planning book I actually I've been carrying my planning book today I've been looking at everything no seriously I I have actually spent a lot of time on this on this development because I am I am confused and I can go get you one what's that I can go get you one no no no not the UDC I carry the UDC and my I have it annotated I know I've I have all those things there I'm talking about my uh planner citizen planners book that I got from

098the extension uh MSU because they walk through all these things and and that's why I was pushing back Mr Leonard was the because it sounds like we're being asked to approve a non-conforming development and I think I appreciate your Clarity I'll let the developer answer my question and then I'll see to my colleagues so yeah I mean if we if we do not we have a tough choice to make of there's 24 000 square feet that also could be taken away from housing which we definitely don't want to do and the the infeasibility of pushing the parking down and the storm water Vault down doesn't uh doesn't work either then it's either no park that's accessible or uh no no parking which is still somewhat needed in this this area as we've heard from other

099concerns but you could build a development with no parking and then that would be the cost and that would get us inside the far that would meet Miss deleos requirements since you've already met the 19. I think the struggle would be making the project work for the developers as a cost so then there might not be a development would be the next thing all right thank you I'll I'll see is this directly related to this okay and then I would like to follow with some something I have a couple things that are but this one is directly related to the why don't you go first and then I'll go ahead because I have a Litany of things including one that directly follows on from this okay so there are so many things about this project

100that I love there is one thing that is really hanging me up and that is Airbnb because this developer came to us several years ago and said she was doing a development for young professionals and she has several properties around town and they are all listed as short-term rentals all of them I feel a little salty about what she came up and promised us that was legal then but she I feel like she kind of misled us because right now I have a hard time seeing how this could not just turn into Airbnb land and that is exactly the opposite of what we want because if this becomes all Airbnb in my mind it's better if you leave those existing houses which are at least affordable and that's kind of a black and white statement

101I may not totally feel that way but I there's been some history here which a few of us have been around and when you deviate a little bit people remember frankly I don't think I even would have thought about this if it hadn't been her coming forward but she did so I need some sort of assurance that this thing is not going to become short-term rental land because that is completely antithetical to our housing issues here so there's again so many things I like about this project really but that is really hanging me up and so she's not here tonight to be able to talk about her own history you all weren't on you know representing her at that point but um for me I am glad we are not that that we have more

102to discuss tonight because that one is a big one for me because I truly feel like that actually makes our housing situation worse if that becomes instead of like we can count on these you know the housing that's there that it then becomes open to the world and I'm just going to say one story that I had that I was just in Vancouver where they're having all kinds of issues with housing we did a short-term rental in a building and big building uh 30 stories something like that many units there was a fire alarm on Wednesday night at seven o'clock you know how many people came down like everybody had to leave the building 30 people came down and we just chatted with people everybody was Airbnb people so they are just not that efficient

103if they could be short-term rentals 100 of the time all the time that just doesn't happen so there's a lot of empty in a place that still makes money for people with Airbnb and again it's not just there's other places too so I want this thing to have people living in it that's what I want yeah I want commissioner Mills to be able to follow on the conversation of commissioner wych but we have Council has heard Str concerns from constituents and there was an exchange which I think might have been from the between the owner and council member ire I can't tell because the way the communication was forwarded I couldn't tell who wrote to council member ire but I wanted to read you the words of this communication because it in my mind it

104suggests that there might be other um conditions that might be offered with this project so I'll just read it we will use a number of the South Town units for short-term rentals the preponderance though will be a long-term will be long-term rentals here is another important point and I'm still quoting we will convert uh 63 short-term beds in the same neighborhood from the current short-term rental status to long-term rental status once Southtown is complete once that is done there will be a net reduction in 4M short-term rentals another important point is that we are actively partnering with others to draw young mostly female entrepreneurs to Ann Arbor with the hope of creating opportunities for current and future residents our Str properties are at the center of this for these attraction efforts we actually set our

105rates much lower because that makes the opportunity to be part of this small but burgeoning startup Community possible anyone should feel free to confirm this with our various Partners including Ann Arbor Spark so this paragraph and I'm sorry I could send it around as an email because but is it oh yeah that's right it's in oh it is yeah yeah you're right it's in your packet you read this or no anyway yeah it's it was it was actually you had to enlarge it a lot so um I actually called Ann Arbor spark and I asked um how it was that Str properties could be at the center of a partnership to draw young female entrepreneurs to Ann Arbor it was uh the person with whom I spoke could uh it couldn't explain the connection and

106so I'd love to hear you clarify that and I'm not at all I do not mean this as a gotcha I just mean that is interesting to me and I'd love to hear how that what that connection is um I'm pleased to hear that there will be a net reduction in 4M short-term rentals I wondered if were if the phrase is a number of South Town units for short-term rentals and preponderance for long-term rentals I wonder if those could be Quantified and offered as conditions and I wonder but I also yes thank you I was looking right at you tell me how bad of an idea that is no no not a bad idea I just um I think this is a good opportunity just to uh remind the Planning Commission um about the nature

107of this petition this is a conditional rezoning and so what that means is it's provided for in state law it allows this petitioner to come to us and say we'd like to rezone it in this case to c1ar but we are going to add conditions to that that further restrict it is not to be used to further relax so it is not to Grant variances but to further restrict they have to be completely voluntary so this is not something that we have the ability at this table to impose upon them so um and it and the the notion of that would be perfectly appropriate to consider in the context if they wanted to do to do so um if that was desired I would ask that you sort of give us the space through a

108postponement so staff can work with that petitioner on making sure that that language is right um a couple other pieces I just want to be clear the c1ar is as a couple people have mentioned I think insinuated I just want to be clear it permits um short-term rentals so part of you know part of that zoning district is intentional I presume on behalf of the petitioners making sure that they have that use I think the petitioner to my understanding has always been clear that short-term rentals were intended to be a part of this that's not to say that there aren't some different perspectives on whether that's a good thing or not but I I think it is fair that there's never been any sort of in this case intention to sort of obso vacate that

109in any way um and then lastly the notion of um as the question as you were reading that the notion of removing um short-term rentals elsewhere I I similarly want to caution that that might something that warrants a lot more information um absent Perpetual ownership or deed restrictions of those properties um that's a really tough thing for us to be able to measure and enforce over a long term so um so it's just to say that if that were something that the petition were interested in staff would be happy to work for them would work with them to sort of look at that as an opportunity but I just want to set that stage so everybody understands that process yeah I think I should be clearer I offer the quantification of a number of and

110preponderance of as food for thought for staff negotiations and the net reduction um is pleasing to me but I understand that that's not part of this decision and I also understand that the conversation we're having now which I'm really glad that you brought up commissioner gibrandle because I feel like I needed to bring it up as the person whose liaison to the people who represent the people of Ann Arbor we heard about this and so I was going to raise it in my capacity as doing that that is separate from the discussion of whether this proposal meets the requirements of the zoning and I believe that is what commissioner Mills wants to pursue so do you maybe we just keep on going where you were going to go commissioner Mills and we let you guys

111chive in on everything later thanks short-term rentals were not on my bingo card and that's not on my list so if you want to address that now you are welcome to otherwise I can go with my list um what I can say about it it's not a secret that these that a portion of these are going to be used for short-term rentals and for uh for this building to also do it we've designed let me go to the floor plans we haven't been designing in a way that it's meant to be like short-term rentals with six bedrooms or like big group spaces like uh we weren't involved in in their past projects um but these are all designed to be you know possible for families they're mixed sizes and and a diversity of sizes throughout

112uh throughout the buildings um so that they can be if they are used for short-term rentals because that's what makes the project get built because that's what can make money uh to get it going for a year or two and then it can transition they also do offer pretty uh affordable short-term rentals that we've been looking at their um their prices of what what they have nearby and it is really competitive or affordable for the neighborhood and surrounding Ann Arbor that it does make it welcoming for people who can't afford a 150 a night rental they offer ones less than a hundred dollars uh in in their buildings and I think that's really good for for the neighborhood and also to to making it um you know it's represented by two women that own it

113and and strs that are owned by women and a business that's run by women makes it I think safer you seeing someone who represents you the same way uh it it makes it uh more comfortable to to go to they know who the face of of the business is um so yeah I mean these these units are not designed with short-term rental design they're designed to be units that can be flexible that can change they're not fixed to a very like unique use so that we we thought about that throughout the process that these can be used for for any terms of rentals from a day to to years and most of these would be used for for longer term leases all right so I want to ground us back to where um we were

114left off before and remind us all that we have three petitions before us and one of them is about uh recommendation a recommendation to council about rezoning that was offered that includes conditions that these folks offered that we are not suggesting other things and that one if it is rezoned stays with the land the second petition is is associated with the site plan which per the conversation that commissioner watch was having with Mr Leo before is the one that if we passed it tonight if we decided to act on that part tonight we would need to add a I'm not going to call it a condition a stipulation effectively which is what is drafted for us that it is uh that we are stipulating we're approving it but only if the variance is granted because

115we can't just pass it without that comment about the subject too without that stipulation because it doesn't conform with our current plans and that one uh that's time limited if if my if my memory is um serves me right like that does not run with the land forever if we pass a site plan is that a pro is that an appropriate way to to have that it expires at some point a variance does run with the land it means that there is something about the land that no one regardless of applicant can comply they are saying that that land is so unique that they should not be allowed they shouldn't have to count at grade four area used for parking site plans uh you can pull a permit for site plans are valid for three

116years you can there's an extension process okay if someone was um if the site plan were to expire the variance would still be there and the next iteration could then use that variance that's on the land and the rezoning could still be there which is what I'm going to come back to rezonings run with the land as well and then the third one is about this vacation of a an alley and Alice vacate and um that one presumably also goes forward regardless once we vote to vacate it that yeah once it's done it's done it's done okay so I okay thank you for clarifying that and now what I want to say is now I'm going to my other no it's just a minute I like this plan a lot I want it to be

117built but I also know that things happen and I want to make sure that we have our bases covered if this plan doesn't get built and that's when I'm concerned about and that's what I have taken as my job I'm Planning Commission to poke holes into to make sure that the that particularly when we're thinking about rezoning and particularly for things that are not the norm that we don't have unintended consequences by rezoning thinking we're going to get something and that is forever the case you know that runs with the land even if the site plan doesn't pan out that particular development so um I think that this brings up a couple of different things it well actually I'll go to my list of amusements that I found from this like things that I hadn't

118thought about for a while um within our UDC but the first thing that I want to say is that I think oh in the comments that we got tonight I think what I like about this space and what a lot of people like about this space is that it manages to get us housing and sustainability together and doesn't divorce them and my concern is that the rezoning does not keep those things married together and so we could be rezoning this and not get something and get something that is hooked up to natural gas and get something that does not have any solar panels on it and get something that does not consider geothermal and get something that is not passive house standard and get something that is not to mass Timber Construction I am very

119uncomfortable with that and I cannot support that I'll just be really clear um I can't I can't support rezoning this in that context because you know to commissioner White's point when you compare it to kind of what is around there or where what other districts this would be allowed in you've got D1 which I don't think you're gonna also convinced me that this is D1 or you have PUD and the benefit of doing pud is that those things are all stipulated and spelled up very clearly because that's a make your own zoning District so without those sustainability elements associated with the land I won't be able to support this um so I already mentioned but PUD is what I think is your option at least for me in the comfort of or or something else

120that may tie those sustainability elements to that space to that land um uh the other thing in terms of your conditions and this is also what I typically do with puds is um their you made the case about the 85 foot limitation within the building code and so my question is why a condition of a hundred feet that was offered up yeah so that condition is mostly for parapets elevator rooms above or stairwells that need to access the the roof area per the fire code and getting to the solar panels and things like that that's that's what it's for it's giving us a little bit of leeway room for for that okay and again so I imagine what some people's worst scenario is right like might be and how what we're seeing in on a

121site plan deviates from what could what would run with the land forever so that 15 feet is not hugely impactful but I would just suggest that your shade studies are not are going not for a hundred foot tall structure it's an 85 foot tall structure so that's something that's in my mind that I want to make awaren to people also um the open space that's offered as a condition what is shown on the site plan that we're seeing is about twice what is in the condition we're seeing about 890 square feet 91 I think square feet per unit and what's in the condition is 50. so I just want to point out I mean I don't know what the if that is also kind of what the rationale is there I think it's a matter

122of the design we kept adding more outdoor space so we set a bottom limit that we didn't want to go below but we're always just trying to go beyond that we almost got to double um which is great which is awesome yeah unless the site plan doesn't work right and which is another reason for me that it's difficult for me to approve the site plan knowing that it's hinging on some other body Beyond us just to be real clear because if if that site plan doesn't work then and and we do the rezoning at the same time again that's locked in forever so those are just a couple of things um that were in it I I didn't go through the parking calculation because effectively like we don't require any parking parking maxims awesome but

123at a um so I didn't see how far off you were from what the working maximum was um okay for one explanation for the sustainability um components that um I wouldn't say are added in that they're just designed holistically into it and that actually this project for the funding for this project it helps it if it has more con uh more sustainability into it more geothermal more um more insulation better Windows all of these things are actually helping the to make the project work financially which is a new model for for us as The Architects working on it but it's a really good one for how everything is is in it it's not just tack on things that it's all working together and it can't work with without each other so every component in it

124just has to be there to to make the building work and make the and it makes the financing work for this particular project which is great that's awesome that is such a that's so such good news for kind of what is going forward and I don't know if everything and yeah um I don't have the expertise to check every single one of those things there's so many sustainability elements in this and I think that some people have their like favorite one right and and and so this is where among the reasons why top some way that ensures that somebody's favorite thing happens even if this is n shaped I don't know building that we're seeing I don't know um uh that's not an end anyway um if this one doesn't come to fruition like what

125happens what you know what is the possibility because our rezoning of this is not conditional our rezoning of this is for Forever Until somebody else petitions us to rezone it so that's what I'm thinking of um so that's just that's specific to this I would just the things that I thought were interesting from this project that I hadn't thought about for a while is first of all the premiums are viable in some C districts and I had to look that up because we've been talking about that but only in D districts and this is the only premium that's that that is possible and in order to do that premium they have to have some minimal sustainability like we have that to unlock the door they're going by Way Beyond that but I I hadn't I

126didn't know that or I knew it but I never thought of it the other thing that may appear in commission proposed business is did you notice the table in the staff report about how many of these properties that are being combined are non-conformities in our 4C and this is a problem this is an ongoing problem in an r4c and among the problems in our foresee I mean the only way that you can actually meet that density is to combine lots and so you will see that again you will hear about that again later thank you again I want this I I want this to be built I want to just make sure that we're preparing ourselves like we've got we're thinking about the future and doing that can I can I just add a note

127to to your concerns excuse me I I understand your concerns with the rezoning and that how that runs with the property and then if for some reason this this site plan actually fails to come to fruition whatever site plan then in the future still has to come in front of the Planning Commission right so you still have room to voice those concerns of sustainability if and I find that very doubtful if the site plan is not to move forward and the reasoning does and I would just say uh yes and no because this is the real opportunity to to lock that in um there are limitations on what we can ask for when it's a it would be by right at that point if we and I as my understanding and so um uh so

128at that point too if we just took on the zoning tonight Council still approves the resulting but the site plans then are ours entirely so there's no more going before city council and so so this is this it's the rezoning um that's I I believe in the current context our primary thing but you should correct me Steph if I'm speaking amiss because it's past my bedtime me too um yes now some sort of plan must accompany a rezoning but it is procedurally possible to do a rezoning with just a area plan conceptual plan and then the site would be um um rezoned and then the the follow-up site plan for redevelopment would then be considered by right uh well it would be considered by right and our current procedures have site plans that do not

129associated with a legislative decision like a rezoning to be approved by the Planning Commission yeah but to be clear this one because it's associated with the legislative action this site plan would progress to the city council with this rezoning but you're right if if it were rezoned successfully all the way through that process then any project that met these the c1a our requirements which as you indicated do not include a lot of the attributes of this project that are appealing to you I want to be clear you could you can always ask but that subsequent petitioner can also say no thank you so that's so everybody's right can I ask the planning staff is there a condition that can be applied to the zoning that would make you feel comfortable moving forward I know that's

130kind of a unique request but just was curious yeah I think that I don't want to speak for um uh commissioner ditch but I think that's sort of the question I think um what I would suggest is if in the context of the reason if there are issues that the Planning Commission feels that are important to ensure that any subsequent development happens if this is owned a c1ar that's where I guess I would request I would request the space for staff to work with this petitioner to um the crap language make sure give the petitioner the opportunity which is difficult for them to do on the spot here and present potentially an amended condition statement that addresses more or all of those things I'm going to also butt in just being procedurally um we have

131had conditional rezonings that a condition is that the proposed site plan is what is the permitted development that has longevity issues but in general or not in general we will consider any condition that reduces or adds more requirement parking maximums because there is non reduced height limit because there is none prohibiting a gas connection prohibiting a certain use but we would not consider any condition that allowed more commissioner Abrams just a clarification question can we put in a condition that's something we don't actually regulate in the UDC put in a condition sorry can the petitioner include a condition that something that is not already part of our UDC um I might have to double check with our attorney's office but I if it's voluntarily offered and if it's enforceable I think it may be acceptable

132Brett gave a thumbs up to that enforceable thing because so many of the things that you're listing commissioner Mills are not things be currently regularly in the UDC okay yeah like I think that um maybe as an example if the condition is the building must be white I think that that could be but then color is Timber with geothermal and real gas hookups I think that you know that's not in our UDC but it it's enforceable I can think it's enforceable um but um behavior is hard to enforce okay thanks commissioner dish so I just want to ask is this a way this isn't technically correct but um do voluntary conditions offered by the petitioner um offer us the same kind of security that's supplementary regulations in a PUD do I believe yes they get

133documented in a conditional zoning statement of conditions which is the worst title ever and that is um insert the proper legal term but that is execute that is recorded is executed it is documented it is made enforceable anybody else well maybe from folks that we haven't heard from before we move on to seconds commissioner Lee anything yeah um I'd like to say just generally I think this is an excellent project um really impressed by what I've seen the question I had specifically was on John Madrigal the project Engineers comments about the proposed zoning not being appropriate for existing utility infrastructure that was in the overall package I um it said that there was a 2025 water main that had to be basically upgraded in the CIP so could I just get some clarifications on that

134particular everything else looked to be fine the fire marshal signed off and I just kind of looked at everything else it was only this particular division on the engineering and so just wanted a little bit of clarification where we stood there but um existing water main on Stimson and State Street is properly sized for this density development the water mains in Henry and white are undersized they are sized for r4c but they are undersized for c1a R I think that in the evolution of the reviews and the documentation that was documented that was noted the project team isn't has agreed is included to elected to not wait until the year 2025 when the city will be upsizing they are going to upsize as part of their project and I think that once that next review

135from engineering is completed the documentation will catch up that that is how that comment will be resolved got it understood um thank you thanks for the clarification um just refreshing myself on the UDC on what constitutes rezoning so for the purpose of establishing and maintaining sound stable desirable development within the territorial limits of the city um and the zoning districts has shown on the zoning map shall not be amended except to correct an error because of a change in Municipal policy or because of changing conditions in a particular area or in the municipality generally and I I would think that it actually satisfies the changing conditions of our municipality uh generally regarding the issues that we face in sustainability affordability now there's obviously been raised I think valid concerns regarding the affordability component of this

136um you know I I think strs are complicated uh me personally when we were looking at actually this is maybe this is kind of a segue but like adus for example I thought we could get more adus built if we actually allowed strs right if people could actually figure out a way to and be free to rent it out you know if it's an Adu in the back or something we we were pretty careful to say you know that's not the case um there is that component that history that exists of this particular petitioner and I am reading through the comments and trying to just make sure I understand but to me the intent of the rezoning um under the UDC seems to comply with what's being requested here so I'm looking at C1 AR

137very specifically to see if it complies on purpose statement again and I apologize if I'm just preaching at the choir because you guys obviously all read it but uh again for those listening in um or intended to encourage the orderly clustering and placement of high density residential and complementary commercial development near the campus business district so to me I was just trying to you know you guys have shown good context um is it near campus business district I think it expands it at the periphery um and I think that that is I think the answer is yes and I'm really looking at this from the lens of is it you know present future needs and best promoting public health safety morals order convenience prosperity and general welfare and I like this project I'd like to

138see it advance I also hear the concerns that are being voiced uh I just based on the context of the rezoning request I think it personally complies my question was mostly on the clarification actually and um and hopefully that gives enough of a thread for somebody else to pull from so I will end it there thank you else before we have any comments or questions or anything okay so shall we you've got a list yeah I mean we don't have to go through all my things I think the thing I'm still struggling with is this site these how many 10 units are in r4c which were all non-conforming we don't like well I don't like r4c I've been trying to figure out how we can move r4c to D1 or D2 as a sort of

139a city-wide approach we get a developer or petitioner who comes in upgrades 38 units a net of 178 new units in our heisland crisis and we say we don't want it because to do the rezoning we decouple the sustainability which we have no ability to do with our current UDC so we're in this cycle of we want things but we haven't changed the code to get the things that we want and then people come and bring the things that we want and then we tell them nope that's still not going to work so for my my part tonight I do not want to vote to postpone this I want to vote to approve this and so if we take a vote to postpone I am going to vote against that and I don't know if

140there is a mechanism for me or anyone who might support us moving this forward to amend the motion so that we do not postpone this I I just I just don't think it is I think we are asking for too much to try to couple our sustainability goals to this zoning without actually changing our zoning code the developers came and built or the petitioners came and presented something that our code has and then they checked all of the boxes that we wanted including the extra feet that you asked for which on Friday was not there so good job on doing that so I hear like hey let's do this let's build this but we just keep putting Roblox short-term rentals we are putting roadblocks if we rezone this a new petition can come and not

141have all these sustainability things so then we're just left with our non-conforming r4cs and not the housing that we need so I don't know how to do this in a Midwestern nice way but can we can we actually be honest about what is happening I'm just this is just kind of a frustrating sort of cycle so so I don't know chair get Randall or staff if there's a way to amend and if you can give me language and I can propose it and see if someone wants to Second it and then we can discuss that but I do not think we should propose postpone this because the zba is already a condition and if that gets denied the site plan won't move forward I'm just seeing commissioner speak do you want to speak or no

142I mean well I actually wanted to bring up something else but I mean I can respond I mean well no I I'm I'm very much interested I'm sorry I'm very much interested in figuring out procedurally what we need to do to accomplish what we're trying what what I think is before us I mean if you have more comments I guess you could I have those but I would like to respond to your suggestion that we're not being honest about what we're trying to accomplish um I have been um I've had a lot of conversations about what happens at the table and I've heard from many many different people in the city that it is not preferable for us to negotiate with a developer at the table and what I heard was a postponement would be

143uh what I heard was the the zba the the conditional upon the zba variance being granted is not a part of the proposal right now so we would have to add that if we didn't want to postpone but I also heard oh it is in there oh in the second one okay all right wait so the second motion is subject to the variance but also the correction is that right now we there's no motion to postpone we have been we have moved the full three emotions so to be clear to you if you are so we could just vote so we can just vote it there's nothing changing if we want to postpone it somebody needs to uh motion well I want to make that much so okay but in any case I am not

144what I am hearing is that we've heard a lot of ideas for what else the petitioner might offer us to ensure that we can have sustainability and housing and that those things should have further conversations and that nobody should be asked to decide on the spot because these need to be offered um it is in our place to impose them and um what but the the thing that I wanted to ask which we haven't talked about is the sentence and I want to ask this of Staff it's the sentence in the report which is highlighted in yellow on page five of 25. um my notes the project increases the development of the block about three times over what is currently allowed while Staff feel these increases are acceptable in order to meet the goals of

145the comprehensive plan exceeding them is not staff recommends approval provided without variance and I just wanted to ask is there any way to get to 311 far which is the maximum allowable plus The Pedestrian premium uh do you have any other ways other than build this building without parking build this building without a park is there another way staff um I think it doesn't matter where the about 24 000 square feet come from in terms of compliance it can come from the top floor can come from a middle floor it can come from the parking area can the building could be maybe narrowed a foot all around whatever the numbers work out um but there's a probably a a great number of ways to reduce the building by a total of about 24 000 square

146feet can I just clarify a few things so with the reduction it's if we were to meet the required 311 percent it's either essentially shrinking the building losing losing Apartments which we obviously don't want to do or it would be losing the parking which we also think does is not feasible for the project the unique thing I don't think we pointed out in the code is that within the UDC if the parking is at least 50 underground it does not actually count towards the far so that's the unique stipulation we can't do that because of the high water table and so that's why we feel we have the hardship to actually ask zba for the variants so it's only the distinction between it being 50 or more underground rather than at grade but does that

147get you if if that comes completely out of the equation it's still not under 300 though right it is with the premiums we meet we then meet the far requirements okay I get it everybody's looking at each other does anybody actually want to speak and commissioner Abrams I feel confused and I think maybe there's a misunderstanding going on here so um just to clarify is staff is this is the staff um position that the project as presented to us this evening does or does not meet c1ar it's currently within the 300 percent with the 8000 premium [Music] right now it's 24 000 square feet too big sorry assuming if it gets the variance if it gets the variance then then the variance effectively changes the standard right but if but if we if we were

148to approve it tonight it would always be with the stipulation that the variance must be approved right so so what we would be voting on tonight would meet staff's level of approve of of what they're asking for I don't think so so with the variance it meets the 300 percent yeah but yeah their thing is they recommend approval without variants did you not that is my staff recommendation that is what I understood yes but in terms of procedures if the variance is granted my recommendation is sort of moot um the variance is in hand it Me by definition it meets the code it meets the code but it is it exceeds and you don't you're not comfortable with that is what you wrote in the report yeah my um my staff position is more on

149principle and more philosophical I will always I will draw that Line in the Sand for a discretionary approval as um as meet the standards but don't exceed and you will have my support and that is um you know I agree with a lot of all of the statements at the table but for consistency in applying the code for being treating everyone uniformly if someone says I would like to rezone my I'm considering rezoning to this site it's a great and also propose a site plan that meets those standards whatever the district would be um and there with the discretionary decision such as rezoning um the standards are does it meet the goals of the comprehensive plan that's somewhat subjective that is discretionary um and so at some point you need to draw a line in

150the sand what when when does it meet when does it not meet when is it too big when is it too small when does it further our goals when does it impede our goals and my my principal is meeting the standards as written now there's procedures and there's the zoning you can get a variance and the variance that's what a variance does it changes the the standard for this particular site and that's also that's an entirely separate body they come to their they have their own findings they have their own approval criteria I can make a recommendation to them too and they don't have to follow it either I mean I didn't but like I I am only providing a recommendation the Planning Commission is a in this case they are a recommending body to

151the plant I'm sorry to the city council um I have provided you with my advice pros and cons what are the implications what are the ramifications what are the what is the precedent setting but in the end you need it is your determination uh for the rezoning does it meet the goals of the master plan have the conditions changed in the city as uh commissioner Lee well articulated does the site plan it is a fact the site plan as drawn does not meet the standards of the c1ar district if they receive a variance it does um what is your opinion about the site plan um and then the I mean it's a lesser but the alley vacation what is your recommendation to how the city council should act um and you are free to come

152up with the same conclusion that I have um radically different or marginally different um just as the city council can take your recommendation can take what maybe the zoning board of appeals has done and say and my staff recommendation and say we've come to a third conclusion or fourth conclusion and that is the way that the process has been set up and that the way the process is worked and it will continue to work that way commissioner Mills before I move to postpone I want to address something that commissioner white said because I think it's really important here which is I don't love the idea of putting like additional stipulations on things I think that we need to rethink uh clearly what our zoning is overall and not on a block by block basis I

153think that you that we may disagree though and I think that's part of the community conversation that we're having right now with the comprehensive planning process because I think that there is not a community consensus on whether it should be D1 or c1ar or D2 or something else and so that's where until that time I want this project to go forward but in the meantime I think that there's a we know that the two things that were among the things that we're asking of the consultant in this is like help us weigh housing sustainability like where the balance is because we can't have it all and where is the comfort for both you know um kind of how how do we what's the prioritize and like how much housing in in which places so that's

154why like I I I'm with you I don't and honestly I would much rather have this be in a normal Zone rather than a whole bunch of makeup things but in the meantime this seems like there's a couple paths forward from my mind which is um this could be the right zoning with some possible if offered up changes um or there's another kind of make your own zoning ordinance or zoning District um potential but that's so that's my position now I am going to move to post we will have conversation about the postponement if that's like but you can you can talk before I move to postpone well I just I wanted to ask you specifically a question um or just or it's to everybody I guess but you might be well suited to respond

155to it um which is that in in deliberating over uh a desire to see a PUD or a c1a or Zone rezoning with conditions or it just staying r4c um I guess on the one hand I'm wondering about the um what am I trying to say I think what I'm trying to say is that the the rezoning petition in front of us to see when AR is undoubtedly no matter what would get built there better than what exists would you agree I think what I'm struggling with is it's not like we actually get a menu and we get to order from it so we can we can kind of so like here's an amazing project and yeah it's true that there is this kind of like catastrophic what-if scenario where we rezone and the project

156falls through and then something gets built there and it's not sustainable but it wouldn't it would always be better than what is there now in terms of sorry in terms of meeting very specific goals for housing density housing availability mixed use potentially this didn't include the sustainability elements it would be difficult to convince me that that that creating a new patch of c1ar makes sense here but 200 units of housing is better than 38 right I agree but at the same at the same time I don't know that we've had that Community conversation I don't I think we would have that different people I think that I I would imagine that sentiments may be different if this were not an all-electric building I am 99 sure that they would be different if the and that's

157why I'm that's why I'm trying to like this runs with the land and so yeah if it doesn't pass like right now nothing's going to get built because they're an online conforming and if it's rezoned honestly nothing will get built if they can't conform to that except you could have a building that comes in and would it be better I kind of want to I kind of need to run the I don't know because because also there's so many other elements that could possibly be part of that um I think going I don't know I I'm happy with I'm not pushing just to be clear I'm not pushing this towards a PUD okay if that's like what's in your head if this is if if if we know that if it's tied to this site

158plan I have a lot more Comfort to be honest but that's not what was before us tonight it's not necessarily tied to this site plan um and so I yeah I think that there's a lot of benefits in this I think that this is moving Us in the right direction but I also think it's it it is in the context of a of an overall change in our place and doing this on a on a Case by case basis just seems like instead we should be rezoning whole swaths and that's what makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable especially rezoning with these conditions towards something that I'm not sure would be the zoning that if we were to rezone that entire neighborhood would be the right zoning like we haven't had that conversation at all

159so I don't disagree I think what I'm struggling with is that this here comes a project that is you know by all accounts and by by everybody's what they've shared this evening like an incredible project and one that kind of checks all the things that we are always asking for in the kinds of development here and yet we're gonna kind of hold firm on this one it's hard it's just like it just feels like we kind of move the what is that expect yeah we move the goal post in a way um and there are projects that come before and I guess we have that discretion because it requires the rezoning and that is this moment when we can do that but this project in a way like already meets all of the things we

160would typically ask for at this pivotal moment when we can ask for things um and in some ways I feel like well what's going to put this project at risk it might be something like Perpetual postponement um so I think I think this is you know as I said I think last time I was in the last meeting for me is always about trade-offs nothing is always very straightforward and so I'm trying to weigh the risk to the project um and the message that we send by making development here so difficult and postponing against yeah the risk we take in approving the rezoning and having this project not come to fruition and what might happen there in its place so I think that's just where my thinking is just to be transparent um but I

161think at this moment I would not be in favor of postponement commissioner Lee did you oh sure I was hoping to articulate what I was hearing from Sarah um commissioner Mills um there is an element of like does this feel like spot zoning right like the when you look at the continuity of the overall Zone kind of going down it's it's our 4C now I'm pulling up the 2009 Land Use plan I mean even though that's you know 14 15 years ago now it's what we have right so we're obviously in that process right now it does categorize it as South multi-family so in in some elements of it I'm like I feel the moments of the current comprehensive plan do to a certain extent support it but I I just wanted to articulate the

162hesitation of saying you know now we got all of this again r2a r4c bam C1 AR you know that's that's way up there um so so I'm just looking at it from so I just wanted to articulate you know maybe that hesitancy is why that might be there um and the the counter I suppose that I would have is in accordance with the 2009 Land Use plan is it currently is ratified um South multi-family would some it would fit uh with our current comprehensive plan so I just wanted to articulate that point but by also I hear you loud and clear it does feel like one blood Zone you know Island and the sea but also I completely hear the we can't keep moving you know it feels like we're moving goal posts because this

163is more than we could ask of any petitioner right this is an excellent project that's kind of what I prefaced it with so um so a bit of a I'm somewhat torn I don't have uh I don't know which way I lean right now so but just wanted to articulate that thanks Clerk um I just want to say thanks to commissioner Lee for kind of articulating what I'm finding difficult with this far better than I could have um while a project is absolutely fantastic I'm not sure that um the community benefits of it are a factor with the rezoning aspect and that's just kind of a big question and again uh commission religious articulated it far better than I could and I just wanted to kind of thank you for that comment can I say

164something really quick um so I think we're kind of talking about this as spot zoning and our approach as a team was not spot zoning and I thought that I that's what I heard you were saying commissioner Lee in the sense that it is adjacent to campus program the comprehensive plan is asking for increased residential and it's a mixed use site kind of what um commissioner Abrams was saying so we didn't do tc1 for several reasons the the building massing would have been taller it would have cast a larger Shadow on our neighbors and we thought it wasn't right for this area and we also didn't do a PUD because we wanted to use a buy right zoning to fit into our comprehensive plan so we did look at other Zone types um but it

165does seem a little bit like we're kind of talking about these conditions onto a buy right zoning that don't necessarily apply to the UDC so I did just want to say we did look at other zoning types we thought this was the best and it actually fits into what potentially could be rezoned in this neighborhood um not spot zoning that was our approach any other comments yeah I guess I just want to reiterate that I'd really like this to be real housing and that we're talking about housing as we're going along here and that by doing this we are essentially making it possible for them to have no long-term in here so just realize that we as as it as we have it right now there is no guarantee that there's long-term housing as part

166of this which would not be addressing our housing needs so for me I would like to have some sort of assurance in some way shape or form obviously that's has to come from you can't come from us but that's um I I believe in our housing need and I really want this I want this project and I really want it to address it in a genuine way so I just wanna leave you with that did you I don't know that it will be supported but I would like to move to postpone this to uh uh whatever date certain if that makes sense um I think we're mostly talking about language of conditions and hopefully wrapping up some staff comments so I would I would suggest June 21st it's a month um to give us some

167so yes I would recommend a date specific and that would be my initial recommendation of a time frame the net the first June meeting is not a possibility um we will do whatever is desired but you already have a pretty full agenda on the fifth okay um and I think that would be kind of tight just to have any sort of meaningful back and forth with the project Team all right so are you proposing that second or that second public Hearing in June uh postpone until then okay okay I will second it discussion of the proposed oh commissioner dish then commissioner White uh just a question of Staff um this is not the last vote on this project so if this body were to choose not to postpone informed by the discussion that has happened

168this evening could staff continue these conversations with the developer so that it would come to city council reflecting some of what has been learned this evening and what is Steph's what might staff's preference be um I may not address the preference part but yes the project is already going toward to the zoning board of appeals on next week and um whether I guess whether or not it's postponed I think in about a month say four weeks time we will have wrapped up all the outstanding departmental comments and so we would move to schedule it then um for city council action and it's the normal course of business in our cover letter if you will to the city council what were the what was discussed at what were the the concerns or what was the discussion

169summarized of the City Planning Commission and then if if any were addressed how were they addressed did that's sort of their normal process for giving a quick update to city council what were the Planning Commission concerns and how they were addressed and as you know there are often city council members who follow along projects and that they can provide their own background for those things if it's postponed this is more formalized but if it's not postponed if the emotions on the floor are um are approved tonight it was it's a little less formal but that is still the normal course of business Mr Abrams oh I'm sorry I we actually commissioner white was that's okay um I think I wanted to just say one I don't support the postponement um I don't support it because

170this is not the end point of this conversation it does go on to the legislative body and we don't do spot zoning at this table we only make recommendations because city council is the person or the body that actually does the zoning in our community so I just don't think I take all those things and this will be the one time I'm not Midwestern nice they're Straw Men commissioner Abrams I wanted a clarification on the last question that commissioner dish asked but if we approve the motion on the table and don't postpone we are approving a specific set of conditions in a conditional zoning statement of conditions and are you suggesting that new conditions could be added to that in between now and city council that is enabled that that is that can be accommodated

171that's interesting because it's like written into our motion but then that can be changed I but I want to be the city council gets their own motion yeah that could happen but I just I just I would urge the Planning Commission to take the action that you feel if you feel that those are necessary those should be in the body that you are the city council is asking for your advice if if they're not necessary pass it as it is if you feel strongly that those should be in there I I wouldn't recommend that you leave it to me to be the Arbiter of this is what I think the Planning Commission manner Mentor this is what I don't think they meant problem commissioner Clerk so forgive me if this is kind of like a

172silly basic question but I'm curious just on like a hypothetical if we were to approve and let's say go City through Council I'm not saying this is a likely scenario or could happen or whatnot but just theoretically if the developer were to get approval of the rezoning and then sell it did we land on the environmental requirements are tied to the zoning change so like or they could sell the property in theory and somebody could buy it they'd have the buy right zoning without the requirements correct yeah there would be no requirements for sustainability there'd be no requirements for Energy Efficiency there'd be no requirements for Mass Timber or solar and that's if Council were to approve um the rezoning as presented yeah so and then it's really a PUD is what's required to tie

173those Community benefits to the rezoning is that correct or unless they offer unless they offer okay thank you that's I just wanted to make sure that was like kind of spoken out in plain language yeah just another effect just another factor I think I've heard a lot of Commissioners say recognize that the Pud is not necessarily what you're looking for just as a reminder that also has the requirement of affordable housing that's going to add a pretty significant cost to this development I don't know what that is um but I'm going to guess it would be in the two and a half to four million dollar range I wasn't necessarily suggesting PD was I was just curious about distinction yeah no I and I've heard that but I just I just want to add that

174that's another reason why this petitioner might not want to see PUD that you specifically heard by right that has a real cost factor for development any more discussion on the motion or commissioner Abrams I'm still undecided over here so one thing that would help me would be to hear from my fellow Commissioners who are in favor of postponement what it is they're hoping will happen in the time between now and June 21st thanks Mr Mills I am from zba about whether that stipulation on the site plan is possible because this then factors into how staff or whether that variance is um is granted because that factors into in some parts staff's recommendation um overall the other thing is that I would imagine that the developer May well I'm hoping that a lot of the concerns

175of other staff in this building who were reviewing this are tidied up because I think that there's some outstanding staff elements that we didn't actually talk very much about tonight but like knowing that that's all done that's my lesser concern um if there are any changes that the proposer would like to make to the rezoning petition um I think that's um that's what I'm interested in seeing that too so number one and number three of what I gave are the key things that I think would happen in that time yep and for me the number three which is um you know that up sorry then the number three is important in that there's some sort of quantification some sort of something or that this is going to be actually long-term housing um and um and

176maybe this is really kind of a larger issue in some ways about like how we allow this District to be okay for short-term rentals maybe that's something else to add to our work plan to discuss I don't know but it it is an issue for um for for how we experience housing in this city um so that's what I would be looking for in that time commissioner dish I'm also going to support postponement um because I would like to hear back from the zba because if the variance isn't granted they're going to be significant changes to the site plan either the Park's going to have to go or the cars are going to have to be swimming or you know I know that's catastrophic and I I would like there to be space for the

177petitioner and staff to consider what further offers the petitioner might make and I did hear the developer of The Architects before the developers say that the sustainability features improve the financial viability of the project and so I am fairly confident that they're willing to offer those um but I would it's a it's a lot easier on Council if what comes from the Planning Commission is what the Planning Commission intends to approve and also what happens on Council two is people imagine the best case scenario but you all are very experienced and you've seen things not happen right and so you remind us no you haven't approved X you've approved the possibility of X but it's also the possibility of a really messy building that doesn't have any sustainability features and that's your job is to

178provide that foresight and thoughtfulness and I can try to say that on Council but it doesn't always get heard and the meetings are you know full of stuff and so I think here is a good place for us to to send a clear message of what we're trying to support and I don't think that a month is a catastrophic delay and I um so I don't I don't think that we're trying to Scuttle this at all and and I think I'm I think that we are not taking the advice of Staff in that we are stipulating to the zba variants and I'd like to hear staff when they advise that we offer them time to discuss further for the for the things that the petitioner might like to include in the thing so I guess

179it's it's complicated for me I'm trying to hear all the voices at the table did you want to say something thank you for reading my eyes from so far away since I'm masked it's like um yeah I'm just I I really am having a problem with our procedure tonight uh is what I'm realizing because um if I don't think it should have come to the table yet I think I think this um an extra month doesn't cost you anything but I imagine it costs you quite a bit um and and so I I wish we would have approached this differently I wish we would have delayed it if if zba is going to be the linchpin then we should have delayed it pending the zba but we often approve Things based on zba so it's

180we're just I just don't like what this feels like it's it's just like we finally have a petitioner who's doing what we're asking without us using the tool of the Pud to extract it and uh this process is it seems fraught with so many moving parts that it can be hard to figure out what to expect and to plan at the here especially on something we want like I don't mind it on things we don't want to because it you know it's like oh we don't want that so you'll have to start all over in your process but um yeah yeah I wish I would I wish this would have come if if the zba is going to be this conditional piece because that hits the issue of the far since the two things were

181the 19 feet setback in the far we got the 19 feet set back again thank you but the far we can't get because they have to go through this process because of the water table and so it just feels like an unnecessary delay uh to postpone it and then bring it back and then send it Forward were you all planning to break ground this year if the um approvals were in place it would not be this year no okay so because how many other steps we have to go through and we've already been going through months of delays so every month is another yeah like you actually three months it's not really a month here it's more like great three-month delay it that pushes everything else back because you got to get to the next

182schedule the next schedule so uh it does impact everything um quite considerably especially if we're planning to do things like geothermal which need to happen earlier we need to get into the ground earlier uh then the building foundations do stuff like that can I ask for a clarification too from Brett and Alexis so would it if if we were to get tabled at this meeting would it be the intent that we would actually go before zba before then we meet back before plan Commission because my understanding was it typically we like to do that we first go to Planning Commission receive a conditional approval and then go to zba um your the public hearing has been advertised you are going to the zba on May 24th um okay the the order of operations is not

183um established or required by code the norm is Planning Commission zba City Council but the only required order of operations is city council last just wanted clarification so are we ready for a vote on postponement commissioner Lee I just did want to point out that it is it is a fact that there's a tremendous carrying cost to holding land um and you know paying for Consultants civil architecture so um and and I certainly want to make sure that petitioners feel that we're like we're in this together right we're all trying to effectuate this together and so again I do feel torn because I think the core issue I hear commissioner weish loud and clear and I think we need to with the urgency of the climate that we have we should be trying to effectuate

184this quickly and that we should be working together towards this um and I think the challenge is just simply that once a rezoning occurs once you move forward that we have to make sure that that is the correct Zone and there's a little bit of hesitation and that hesitation almost merits and that's the trade-off in the balance that I'm struggling to make right now because I don't want you to feel like it's this table against the petitioners right because again I want people to recognize I mean I was just doing some back in the nap now it can cost I mean it's easily going into twenty thirty thousand dollars in additional costs just in mortgage interest alone right so um when you're looking at the holding costs it's significant and so I I would like

185for us to also act with urgency the fact that zba is May 24th that it could hopefully align I mean that makes me want to say I don't care if we have a a long agenda June 6th I'd like to hear it June 6th I I'd like to um try and balance to the certain be respectful of the fact that there are tremendous hearing loss and they have come to the table with really an excellent project and that's what I led with I also feel that there are valid concerns about the um the longevity and the the permanence of this rezoning while we have a Antiquated 2009 Land Use plan uh and and for us to assume what the the new comprehensive plan will impute and that's not to say you know actually as I'm

186looking at the context there are kind of a lot of just dots when you kind of go up you know South Industrial you know it's throughout so is this the right Zone that's ultimately what we're tasked here with is the nature of short-term rentals appropriate for this area that is the question that we're trying to Grapple with and I think that and if we aren't you know if we're not 100 sure I I also want to make sure and recognize that we are trying to do this together with you um if this gets postponed then I absolutely 100 want to make sure this gets on as soon as possible and not have to continue to wait um and so just just trying to voice that you know level of urgency and we should be tackling

187this with our petitioners not saying yeah we you know maybe in a little bit so moisture Mills this is a question for staff and then I actually I want to ask petitioners probably something um how many votes does it take for a the amendment to pass to amend a motion to amend the motion uh be the majority of votes but it would take so the majority could have modified emotion but it takes six votes to affirmatively pass on a recommendation to the city council so another way to say that you could with five votes you could modify the motion to strike the requirement that it requires 19 feet or that it be conditioned upon zba status but you would need six votes if that five votes was the final vote on that motion as modified

188that would be a denial a technical denial even though they denial it would be a denial it would be a diet no got it okay so this is it's really important that some of that I'm not comfortable with the zoning as is right now the rezoning as is so if this is not postponed right like I'm gonna be at least one no vote on the whole thing and so I know that there's a cost associated with this and I want this to happen and so my question to you is and I don't I don't we don't count votes ahead of time I don't know what other people are thinking you can try to read that um what do you prefer do you prefer us to postpone it or do I'm just curious not that we

189will but we're right now deciding about postponement so do you prefer that we postpone it or do you prefer that we have a vote tonight I so I would prefer that we vote to approve it with a condition that the zba also uh has their say on it as well with with that one with that one variance so the conditions you know that you're also asking for assist for sustainability on that site plan or on the rezoning I think it's important to note that having right having more housing on that site already does contribute to a better sustainable environment because less people are traveling further distances more people live in a denser area so one any building of any type that already checks the the one sustainability box I want clarification I guess on conditions

190to adjust it where I heard that it's the conditions are to reduce something and not to add so we've already um I mean we've come to the table with a lot of ads on the project that we're aiming to do and we've we've tied deep into the project so that they don't go away um and then we've reduced you know we don't have gas going to the site we have none of that um and so other factors I guess could you clarify what you mean by conditions to reduce yeah so and that's the requirement I think for for what kind of conditions can be added from my perspective I I um I'll let staff explain that more clearly if what is built here if what ultimately gets built on the site is what we're seeing

191in the site plan I'm happy as a clam awesome and so but if but because there are two different actions there's three different actions but the really the two actions and that they they appear to be tied together but they're not actually tied together right now that's the concern that I have and so something that ties them together solves that concern in my mind but but what I have to vote on tonight does not tie them together and so that's why I can't vote tonight to support the rezoning component of this because like at least that one of the three emotions I can't vote to support that one tonight um because because the second action which I am comfortable voting on which is contingent on zba action like I'm cool with the site plan so

192long as zba is um and I'm fine with the with the vacation so it's it's that it's that first one that's associated with the rezoning because it's not actually coupled together that I'm uncomfortable with it so um I think in terms of what I think staff was saying before about the conditions that you can offer you can't say um CA see what you can say better than I can but like you can't say we we're giving ourselves more far but you can say right like more development potential but instead you can say Works we're constraining this site for the future to to something not being more expansive but but more restrictive or like tying their hands more is that you guys can probably say it better no I said it okay yeah that's exactly right

193the a conditional a statement on a condition a conditional offer a condition offered could take a district that has a maximum of far and further restrict it to a lower far a proposed condition cannot take a district that provides a 400 far and affect a 450 far so commissioner Mills would it would it what appease you then if we actually then tied in the site plan approval with the conditional rezoning because we are comfortable with doing that so all the sustainable initiatives that we were proposing through the project would then be tied in with the conditional rezone from my perspective I am comfortable with that but I also want to make sure that From staff's perspective that makes sense if and I mean I'm happy to get to something else and I also heard some

194other folks that were uncomfortable with other elements of this site so the plan or the rezoning potentially so that's speaking for me but staff is that a feasible thing yes it's feasible um I that would be a more specific direction that I think staff could work with the petitioner as this advances um but I I want to be clear that that is most likely going to have the effect of locking in this site so that only this project can be built in any change to it is going to require a rezoning or any time you will change to a site plan that would otherwise be administratively approved so I I don't know what like typically that's exactly the language that we would we would reference we would say that any administrative adjustments can be made

195yeah um you recently had a petition come back to your table that had that language they wanted to modify something that didn't meet that test so it requires a rezoning so absolutely we could do that that is a more specific Direction I would go so far as to say that we a staff would be comfortable working with them after this meeting before this progresses to city council to do that but I I just want to name that that is that's a pretty significant locking down of this site and you have to come back no matter what if if things don't happen the way you want with zba because if you do that then no matter what you're coming back maybe even more than a month right like that requires a whole lot more yeah instead

196of it being I think instead of all it's something as simple as saying it ties to electrification this site can only have electrification no gas connections can come to this site if is that's a condition because then that leads people to use you would have to use different you could use different elements in different mechanical systems that are more efficient that are not burning fossil fuels but it's a simple move that um adds that that condition so no so it would reduce it would limit so you couldn't bring natural gas to the site all right go ahead sorry Mr Abrams just as procedurally if I understand correctly you need six affirmative votes in order for this to move to city council there are seven of us sitting up here you can only afford one no

197vote I have a I'm just this is maybe totally inappropriate I just feel like it's going to be hard to get there and I think instead of having it voted down a postponement is probably preferable what happens if it goes up for a vote it gets voted down then it goes on to city council with a recommendation with denial right okay but it still goes to the city council but it does still go to City Council in any case um I'm just looking at the numbers actually though I am curious to hear what commissioner dish would say how city council would View discussing or passing something that has been denied by Planning Commission can I have her okay thanks yeah we had this recently and it was because of a recusal right you know just

198very recently we had not enough people here and one uh commissioner Lee was recused and so we had a technical denial that went forward right that there's no actual such animal as a technical denial but to use it to describe when all of the votes are are positive but it didn't meet the threshold right so it was it it is recorded as a denial but um we feel or a lot of people feel that it it's a different message when all of the people voted in favor of it but it didn't pass versus when there was the opportunity for a unanimous positivity but some people voted um voted no so it's just more of a it's a Vibe than a actual procedural aspect thank you for clarifying um yeah commissioner Lee uh yeah for what

199it's worth uh let me just be perfectly clear I would be against postponement and I would vote in favor of this project we are talking you know the more I'm I feel that we have given it due diligence I think we have had very thoughtful discussions I would love to see this project happen the carrying costs are very difficult the more I think about it would we be comfortable would I be comfortable with the city would it be in the best interest of the city to see greater intensity of use in this particular site I think the answer is yes um short-term rentals again complex question uh would we have we have long said I think we want affordability and sustainability those are two Hallmarks of what we ask for we have engaged citizens here

200and I thank you all by the way for for sitting here and listening to again us to liberate and it's because we do care we want to make sure that we're making the best decision possible in the best interest of the city um so I just out of transparency and like commissioner white said saying Midwestern nice no longer kind of thing let me just be perfectly clear about you know the way I'm going to vote which is I would be against postponement and I would be in favor of recommending this for approval so let me just make that unequivocal oh sorry commissioner white I just have a question for Mr Leonard so uh does a postponement require six affirmative votes or a majority of the members voting this moment would be the majority of members

201voting because it's not okay it's a simple majority so if for um planning Commissioners vote in favor of postpone met if you were whipping the votes uh the postponement will happen and uh and then we will see them on the 21st of June four or five simple majority yeah commissioner dish sorry to be talking so much so um I I do agree that it is delightful to see sustainability and residential development you brought up uh adu's commissioner Lee and we did have a discussion a number of council members had a discussion this body probably had a discussion because you guys discussed it when I was yet here um and the market pushes for strs because you can make a lot more money with them and I I completely understand the idea that um some portion

202of this project might be used as strs uh as it gets itself on its feet and those transition away completely understand that but again let's take the scenario where this project doesn't survive and we do attach the sustainability we do receive a sustainability offer from from you which is wonderful my understanding is that the funding is not fully secured for this project yet and let's just say it doesn't happen and so it moves on and that means we have just approved something that could have 218 strs in it forever because that's what this zoning allows and our decision on why we wouldn't allow it with the adus is because council's policy intent in permitting adus was to create more opportunities for people to live in Ann Arbor not to stay for a month or a

203weekend but to live in Ann Arbor and so I just want to be really clear that I don't see the c1ar zoning as preferable to what is there if it's not a sustainable project and if I'm not opening the door wide for a whole huge building full of of single-term rentals and I'm not talking about you right now talking about another thing and that is what we are doing and so I have been reminded in the past that the reason why strs aren't appropriate for adus is that it conflicts with council's policy goal and I feel like I don't think that we're all thinking entirely clearly about our policy goal right now with respect to what residential means so I I am going to support postponement and I I am I'm sorry about the cost

204to you I am sorry about that but I would have to believe that the zoning would be better no matter what and I can't say that are we ready for a vote then on postponement so the motion is still to postpone to June 21st uh commissioner Gib Randall yes commissioner Abrams no commissioner dish yes commissioner Lee no commissioner Clark yes commissioner Mills yes commissioner White no uh four votes in the affirmative the item is postponed to the June 21st meeting thank you I think I think we all really want this to happen people so we're going to see how we can get there why don't we take a short break so that we we've been sitting here for a long time so let's just uh let's just say five minutes so that we don't get

205home too late already we are on um item nine we are on item 9B which is the annexations for Ann Arbor Township um this is uh hang on a second here city of Ann Arbor petition state of Michigan to approve the annexation of a number of Township Islands Parcels in Ann Arbor Township the director of the state of Michigan's Licensing and Regulatory Affairs Lara Department recently approved the annexation of the following 11 Parcels 2775 Newport Road 2737 Newport Road 2466 Newport Road 2318 Newport Road 2354 Newport Road 2108 Newport Newport Road 1375 Berg Road 1429 Bird Road 2114 Victoria Circle 2118 Victoria Circle 2126 Victoria Circle uh the city of Ann Arbor has now initiated the rezoning of these partials to our 1A single-family detached after the Planning Commission public hearing this rezoning petition will

206be sent to city council for final approval staff recommendation is approval do we uh have any kind of we have a very brief uh staff report city council passed a resolution in 2011 directing staff to begin a process of annexing Township Islands within the city's ultimate service boundary consistent with boundary agreements reached with Anna versile and Pittsfield townships approximately 500 Township Island parcel still exist between the three townships within the city's ultimate service area recently Laura approved the annexation of 26 vacant Parcels in South Township but denied the city's petitions to Annex Parcels in Ann Arbor and Episcopal townships that was around two of our city initiated annexations um um the um that decision was contested by our attorney's office and on January 11 2023 the director of Laura approved the annexation of the 11

207Ann Arbor Township Parcels before you this evening but denied the annexation of the remaining Parcels now that the 11 Parcels have been annexed a City Zoning designation must be established staff recommends r1a for all of the parcels since they are surrounded by irony zoning and single-family zoning is consistent with the recommendations of the land use element of the comprehensive plan staff recommends that the petition be approved because the parcels are within the city's ultimate service boundary and are consistent with the uses and intent of the r1a Zony district and R1 a and the r1a zoning district is compatible with surrounding zoning districts that's my staff report okay we will move on to the public hearing so this is an opportunity for people to pick up it is getting late people sorry for persons to speak

208up to three minutes we'll first call on folks here and then move remotely for those listening remotely pressed R9 if on your phone or raise hand through the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 to unmute press star six City staff will select callers I think you all know the rest of this so let's see if anybody here would like to speak on this petition if so please state your name and address come on up uh yes my name is Robert marins I'm 2466 one of the seven properties that is to be annexed into the city uh I just found out about it within the past few weeks I think it's effective as of the beginning of the year and uh I was initially objecting to the annexation part of

209a large group that petitioned the boundary commission and you may know the history there was a back and forth between the boundary commission and the city and it was brought before a judge and uh the decision was made to exempt most of the properties except for the seven Parcels of which I was one one of my points that I made when I spoke before the boundary commission was the environmental impact of the not the annexation per se but the Damage Done to the environment with the removal of trees vegetation uh because of the insulation the forced insulation of utility line sewers water and so forth that's going to be particularly impactful on my property and several large trees are going to be have to be removed to provide the water access as well as the

210sewer actress so I just wanted to mention to the Planning Commission as well as to city council that this is a factor that should be considered in the future the environmental impacts of annexation and the forced hookups of sewer and water I think the the number of trees that are going to be have to be removed from my property and other properties needs to be considered When taking into account future annexations so that was the main thing I wanted to mention thank you thank you for your comments um anybody in line virtually we do call her with the phone number ending with three four one you can press star six to unmute your phone and address the commission for three minutes go ahead um I'd like to address the public hearing about zoning mixed-use plan

211uh this is George so isn't that the same type of thing you know excuse me ma'am this we have another time in the agenda where you can speak on what you're you're covering but right now this public hearing is for the annexation and if you can be patient enough to Wade through this okay yeah so if you can just uh let us get through this next agenda item um then we just have a couple more before you'd have a chance to be able to say something thank you very much anybody else Alex Lowe you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission um once again I want to complain about the default zoning that seems to be offered on all of these uh contracts at annexations these the zoning that's provided is is basically whether

212to add its first and make and make it the least useful people at a piece of land in the city it should default to D1 or T4 tc1 and it can get negotiated down from there please thank you anybody else no there's any person okay I will read the motion which is the anniversary Planning Commission hereby recommends that the Marion city council approved two 775 Newport Road to 737 Newport Road 2466 Newport Road 2354 Newport Road 2318 Newport Road 2108 Newport Road 1429 Bird Road 1375 Burt Road 2116 Victoria Circle 2118 Victoria Circle in 2114 Victoria Circle for rezoning to r1a single-family dwelling they have a motion commissioner Lee seconded by commissioner sovay discussion commissioner White all right um so while I appreciate the careful analysis that has been conducted to bring these Township Islands

213into the city I find myself in opposition of this proposal for this area to be rezoned r1a our city is currently facing a pressing housing crisis and it's crucial that we utilize every opportunity to create more housing particularly denser housing that can accommodate more residents as such I want to ask staff whether there would be another zoning designation that could work here I was thinking r4c but we don't love r4c for a lot of reasons but something that would allow for the construction of multi-family dwellings I recognize that the parcels in question including the land that's near the Steiner School present a unique opportunity to present or to meet this pressing need by zoning these areas with a higher housing density we can increase housing capacity while still allowing single-family homes therefore making a very

214valuable contribution to the alleviation of our housing shortage so are there any other options because r1a has a minimum lot size of 20 000 square feet that is a very large footprint 000. square feet and we're bringing in 11 Parcels at 20 000 square feet so you mentioned this in your interview with MLive about how we constricted ourselves to Too Much single family housing and that as you were looking back over your 30-year career you had some thoughts about that so I was surprised to see this come in as r1a right Council has the ability to Zone these partials whatever whatever they would like to Zone these Parcels I believe that the most appropriate process to rethinking all single-family zoning districts and all single family neighborhoods is the upcoming comprehensive plan process I I think

215um choosing 11 Parcels along the Newport Road Corridor which has long had a history of r1a zoning and rezoning them to a multi-family would be inconsistent with the current comprehensive plan and so I believe um that there is likely going to be discussions throughout the course of the upcoming comprehensive plan um review that will include what to do with single family zoning including zoning that is our ir1a I'm going to see if Mr Leonard wants to add anything to that nope you should stick around longer Jeff are you any other I mean I I don't we can't do a lot of politicking at the table so I don't know if I make a motion if I would find a second and then a discussion about a better so let me ask you this question if

216if you could make another recommendation what recommendation would you make that would allow for multi-family dwelling I I would I would recommend that Planning Commission in city council rethink a lot of the elements of single family zoning districts and that um that would result in a more consistent application of um of of of those changes I I think choosing 11 Parcels um wouldn't be consistent with our our current comprehensive plan sure I mean I appreciate all of that but we don't get a lot of opportunity for inbound uh zoning changes like this and so just accepting them to be in their existing ones I think just cements what is in place and we're already 14 years overdue uh with how we want to use the land and now we have 11 Parcels coming in and

217we're going to say oh well they're just going to come in at 20 000 square feet so I mean maybe if someone makes emotion I will second it and then we can have a discussion and then that way like in playing Spades you find out who your partner is yeah uh commissioner watch I would add one thing is that some you were interested in exploring um particularly going to r4c that would require different utility recommendations under the city's specifications so um I I totally agree with with um um Jeff's articulation I think the comprehensive plan is the place to have that I think that it would be um I just think it would be sort of um arbitrary to pick these Parcels in the context of a larger land use pattern I think it would

218be more fruitful to have that conversation over a broader land use pattern but if that were something interested we of course we are happy just like the last magician we're happy to do the work of the commission um specifically with r4c that would be one thing that I'd want to explore this was reviewed by staff from an R1 perspective I presume that that would be similar findings for r1a through most of our art districts but once you go to r4c we do require for example larger levels of water service it might bring in fire suppression different it might be different fire hydrant requirements so that might be a different sort of layer of the infrastructure in that neighborhood and whether or not it could accommodate that zoning without some other more significant Capital Investments but

219I'm speculating at that so that would be something that I would sort of explore if if the commission wanted us to do so commissioner dish would there be a similar issue and similar objections to just a of an R1 designation with a with a smaller lot size like r1b you're you're welcome to recommend um whatever whatever you you'd like to recommend but we we are we are recommending approval of the r1a for consistency commissioner sobey I'll open up this conversation um a land use pattern actually adjacent to my home property is that we uh I'm zoned um R1 so you actually know it r1c um but uh all there's four Parcels because we're on like a horseshoe that front Pauline which are all zoned R2 so anything that fronts a major Corridor is zoned R2

220well any interior residential Parcels are zoned R1 so similarly we have several Parcels here along bird and Newport that would match a very similar pattern next to my adjacency that's actually R2 that allows duplexes uh rather than like an Adu relative to the scale and simultaneously reduces the minimum Lop size so there is a pattern uh within the city for R2 adjacent to R1 relative to the scale of the corridor and that seems appropriate at the parcels on Newport and bird so I do kind of lift that maybe to the table as a pattern I've recognized for rezoning that it wouldn't be out of character with how our Landers patterns actually look commissioner White staff what would be the impact to R2 instead of r1a would it have the same utility load I don't know

221that answer we if if uh if that was the Reclamation Planning Commission made um we would probably pause that recommendation before progressing to city council so that when it went to city council we could advise city council whether or not that from a staff perspective we thought that the infrastructure was in place to support that or not um so um if that was a desired Planning Commission that's that's my that's how I would look at it I I would presume that R2 is more similar to R1 but I again I don't want to speak for a lot of technical expertise across the organization that has vetted this from an R1 perspective yeah so I think my concern is this is the time to do it I mean kicking things to the comp plan uh we're

222not we haven't even started that that doesn't start till June and then it's going to run for 18 months and then there's going to be a set of recommendations that are going to go on for X many years and who knows if we'll get back to this and so I just think that this makes sense to Zone it for something denser than a 20 000 square foot lot so if I would try to make an amendment to this uh what would staff prefer would you prefer that I make a amendment to have you go back and look at it at R2 or would you prefer for me to make an amendment at the table for it to go from r1a to R2 um it's really it's really discretion I mean We believe We believe our

223one is appropriate if you disagree with that I would suggest you just make them the motion we can augment the planning commission's statement on that to the city council with any technical detail and present that to the city council in totality so I don't feel like you need to direct us to go back and do that we can answer that if that's your desire um I did want to clarify Jeff what is the comprehensive plan say about this neighborhood sing Single family so it's a single family so I just wanna I just want to highlight to go to R2 is a distinction from our comp plan map however there are other recommendations starter comp plan that talks about housing um the development of Housing typology and and along corridors and seeking multimodal uh you know

224opportunities so um the map is not the only uh criteria so um but in that case that map does support staff's recommendation and just take that just take that in your consideration I mean the how that plan is regardless of its age has been affirmed as your comprehensive plan and it is your policy document today um so uh I would never suggest you abandon it um until you have a new policy document in place okay so oh sorry commissioner Mills if you were keeping on going on that thought keep on going uh one of the one of the things that strikes me in this conversation is based on some of the comments that we heard I mean I don't know this this is true of all of these Township island or all of these Annex

225Parcels but many of them are not currently served by the public utilities and so I I don't know what this decision distinction like what the plan is there but they don't have any line right now right so planning for expansion for different densities is different right like extending utilities based on kind of what we're anticipating and I'm just curious from a planning perspective how the relationship between the utility like how that conversation happens between you know what is Envision for water and sewer going across these places um and how that intersects with zoning what a question um and this this is something that we're going to have to wrestle with so right now our public services division is starting to do some analysis of some of our systems I think the first one that they're

226doing is sanitary our sanitary sewer system and one of the things that we're gonna have to reconcile as a community is do we want to constrain our land use decisions around the capacity that we have with our sanitary sewer system or do we want to identify policy positions about how we want our land and these patterns to evolve and invest the significant capital to upsize our sanitary sewer system to achieve that we could do it either way I think that the comprehensive plan will wrestle with those issues I don't have the answer now as it relates to Newport about what infrastructure there is there now and what infrastructure is not there what the city's Capital Improvement is all I can tell tell you is that r4c is a a bright line in our engineering standards

227that say when you are our 4C it requires a higher water main size and so um again I don't think the same applies to R2 I think R2 is more of a as I raise that's sort of more of a deviation from one aspect of our comprehensive plan um but it's it's certainly uh as a job site it's it's at your this is your your decision we're happy to write any additional information that would be helpful for you to do so um we've vetted R1 because that is consistent with the patterns there and one final that's that's sort of related to this um the big parcel in the northwest corner of all of this that is the Steiner property yes because when you look that's that's a good chunk of real estate right um and

228maybe it's not redeveloped now but like what is I don't and I don't know what the one plans are but as I was looking at this I thought like that's a big that's a big property so I don't know I don't know where I fall and it's late and so my brain stopped working commissioner watch I'm happy to compromise to r1d because then we would be able to get four single-family homes in a subdivided r1a and it would still stay in the R1 but it would at least create a little bit more density as opposed to having a 000 square foot lot so so that motion would be to uh thank you mend the motion to substitute r1d for r1a so moved all right discussion of the motion Mr survey um this is this is

229kind of longer term things too but it does kind of raise some of our conditions relative to key Lots right where we might have like a narrow front that slips with a larger one behind and how our land use kind of allows for different types of parcel splits um or private drives to access on them so it's just kind of more considerations as we're moving into some of these parcel split ideas um because we want to create density and it might not always be adus so I just kind of raise that too just for kind of a a lens to look at some of these larger lots that how these might split we I I don't think we enable a lot of innovation yet for that we have kind of very singular ways to do

230lot split um but I look forward to seeing Innovation so maybe something could come about and Inspire us to help our ordinances along as well so I I support it I seconded it but I just want to kind of offer that discussion and visibility I see quizzical looks on lots of faces without necessarily raising hands anybody with a quizzical look want to say something yes commissioner Mills I was just curious from Steph's perspective are there unintended consequences of such a move that I'm not thinking of other than the possibility to develop more housing units on the same the same amount of land not that I can think of not that I can think of at this time the uses are the same I mean we have the same uses as different setbacks yeah um okay

231I I I would say that I think it's safe to say that staff looks forward to a community discussion about what to do with 22 percent of the city's land mass um it may be even more than that um I I think um the the point that commissioner White made was was uh a good one 20 20 000 square foot minimum lot sizes are awfully large um and um I I do think that um um no nobody at staff wants to defend that but we're we're just we're looking at this more so more from a process standpoint and and maybe um a standpoint of of um of um applying our comprehensive plan uh commissioner dish then commissioner watch unless I'm mistaken that most of these Parcels have homes on them most do yeah all about

232all but one so if I'm weighing the commitment to having a community conversation around what to do actually we've already asked for the comprehensive plan to come back with how do we achieve greater density we actually haven't left it wide open and said Drew let us know what you think about single family zoning we've actually asked for suggestions for how to achieve greater density so I don't know these Parcels have things on them have homes on them now uh they have 21 months to make the transition to City sanitary and up to 10 years to connect to city water I don't know how many of them are going to jump right in to get under that 21 months but you know the the we're going to have time to have the the comprehensive plan address

233the questions that would attend achieving greater density city-wide on single-family zoning and so I'm not sure how much is gained by our enabling denser zoning on 11. properties that have homes on them already I mean in the next two years do you think somebody's going to raise their house and put three on it if they wanted to they could right they could come to us and say please rezone this so I can subdivide right so I don't know I feel like it's more symbolic what we're talking about right now and so maybe that doesn't I mean if I felt like it made a material difference I might care more but maybe for the maybe for the symbolism I'll opt for the symbolism of community discussion over Planning Commission yeah okay commissioner Mills did I see

234that you had a hand up no okay commissary oh I'm sorry yes no no you go no no it's I mean you you were I could be I can be quick I I don't think there's that much hanging on this decision but I'll say that um while there may not be that much gained I think there's also maybe not that much lost I I can kind of go I can kind of see both sides um and I think just all of us up here understand intimately how long it takes and so if we were I would say that the city if if the city is poised to take on a transformation around R1 zoning the day when that's actually going to get passed at city council is three to six years away so I I

235and I think in that time it's perfectly possible that somebody could uh divide and and build twice as many or three times as many homes on some of these Lots so um I also it's it's only a few Lots so um but I think I would be in favor of a amendment to R2 thanks R2 or r1d sorry sorry and not r4c which is in the middle of the town do you want D1 so first of all thank you Mr Khan for uh saying that staff would not defend r1a I really do appreciate that I think I think that's a helpful uh signal um at least for me to understand that that you were just using a process approach not a editorial approach for this which means we have the opportunity to make this modest

236symbolic change to not Zone something at twenty thousand square feet it doesn't mean like you have noted there are already dwellings there they will probably conform to the r1a because that's what you recommended so they'll come in already bigfooted and now they're we can make an opportunity for there to be more density if someone wants to and then I just wanted to um share this just two things from the resolve Clause that city council adopted when they initiated our city planning comprehensive plan review it's the second resolve clause in context of largely in the context of a largely developed City they are expecting the comprehensive plan to make recommendations of adding new homes and desification and single-family zoned areas and other areas and Zoning districts and so for me this is just consistent with what

237city council has already said and we just do it at the table and send it along to them they can always change it as Mr Khan said they get to decide what the zoning is but this says let's at least put a little bit more on these Lots so thanks for your consideration have a process question with people that live here any obligation with that or is it um is it just like they they have from now told city council and that's their chance I'm just curious how yeah I mean it's still a resulting in their Parcels anybody who's interested in this was made aware of it it is possible that somebody was presuming it was going to be consistent with the surrounding area but it will be re-noticed um to uh this with the

238city council with the updated modifications you can make adjustments just like the city council can make adjustments okay all right thank you okay are we ready then for a vote on the motion to so the motion is to modify the recommendation from the planning mission to rezone the 11 Parcels to r1d instead of r1a commissioner give Randall yes yes commissioner Abrams yes commissioner dish no commissioner Lee no commissioner Clark yes Mr Mills yes commissioner wage yes motion carries uh Now we move on to the actual vote correct that's correct so now the motion is recommending a rezoning of the 11 Annex commercials to r1d do I have to read them again no good okay should we call the unless there's any further discussion yeah sorry any other it seems like we've discussed this but yes

239you're right correct any any other further discussion okay all right Randall yes commissioner Subway yes yes commissioner dish yes commissioner Lee yes commissioner Clark yes commissioner Mills yes commissioner white yes motion carries all right uh we are on other business of which we have none we have one more opportunity for public comment so whomever was on the line uh this would probably be the time to speak on um I I guess I do I have to read this again just just curious so if there are um that is communicating to anybody's Watching You on YouTube or CTN if they would like instruction on how to provide some public comment so I would recommend yes okay this is an opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes about any issue that is uh on this

240or any any issue that is that is on the agenda uh or first calling individuals who are present uh to address the commission and then remote participants to speak during this public hearing remotely press star nine if listening by phone or the raise the hand feature or viewing to the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 to unmute press star six uh City staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits to your phone number or by name if available through the for those accessing through the web link you'll hear an audit an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak please move to a quiet area for either method police state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is

241there anybody present who would like to speak hello again so I just want to go back to the South Town discussion for a moment I sort of began in my earlier comment by saying I was a little bit disappointed with with the process that we were making it too hard to get to get this through and now the discussion tonight was even even worse than I feared um it seems like we are so afraid of getting an imperfect result that we're going to risk making it impossible to get a good one and you know I've I've come to this Podium and said this before but really I I wish if there were one message that would sink in here it would be don't make the perfect the enemy of the good for my part um

242I do in fact think that just about any c1a slash R development in the proposed South Town location would be better than than the current r4c and you know I didn't say this before but I guess if I did have one concern about the development it would be that it's too perfect it might give us the idea that developments with similar features could succeed everywhere in Ann Arbor and that we should demand them anywhere and everywhere and deny everything that falls short I don't I don't think that would be a good result because you know we will learn many good things from this development assuming it moves forward we will have a better idea about feasibility but it is one anecdote in different sites different conditions different things might happen so I I really just

243think we need to be more permissive in our zoning and our deliberations to make it possible for developers to give us the things that we do want instead of spending so much time on the things we don't want that we get nothing thank you anybody else present that would like to speak anybody remotely yes call her the phone number ending with three star six to address the final question for three minutes uh go ahead but try to speak up a little bit all right can you hear me yes we can hear you please go ahead and speak up I live at 1440 Kohler Road I'm in the proximity of the new proposed rezoning of the misuse development uh I just wanted does anybody take in consideration a past success the failures of other mixed use

244developments in our area I do believe that George was considered a mixed-use development or proposed to and it was okay and rezoned and it was developed as such but I don't see much success then that makes use of development so far so why are should we should we consider rezoning another personal land from an excuse that might wind up the same way shouldn't it be more peaceful more useful to rezone it or have it some kind of plan to resume for affordable housing instead of office space and so forth which in my experience from where I live that has not been too successful thank you anybody else in the queue Scott Trudeau you can unmute and address the Planning Commission for three minutes good evening finally commission I'm Scott Trudeau 526 North Main um I'd

245also like to address some of the concerns that were raised in discussion of the South Town development this evening regarding short-term rental concerns I I share the concern that Bertram potentials speak into the supply of housing we need a lot more housing and that's a problem however when we're talking about newly constructed purpose-built Str units um the those units compete in the same way that new housing competes when we add new supply to the housing market which makes less suitable properties that are currently converted as Str is more likely to convert back into housing so even if we're getting a new scr that doesn't mean we're not also getting more housing units break up somewhere else um so I think that's like and I also think we don't have an infinite demand for sdrs um

246and so it's not like this is good news this is a large building at the odds of this being successful as a entirely necessary building I think because it's an overblown concern um and so like I think it's just not a good reason to let a great product but stop this great project by the way it's going forward um and then also a council member district reference council's policies regarding short-term rentals and council's policies written in the zoning ordinance and says they're inappropriate use in the C1 AR zone so that isn't council's policy they should change the policy um speaking of policy I I agree Adam Goodman said it better than I will but I think c1a are on this site even if it just meets the current standards of the ca1 AR Zone which

247is the policy that is on the books would be far better than what's there now we have an urgent housing crisis and more housing sooner is going to be better than later also it is to ensure we outline um it meets the purpose of rezoning like we can re-zone this for the purposes that are in the ordinance and for the definition of c1a are in the zoning coordinates itself its purpose is for near-campus mixed use with a significant amount of residential like that's what it's for um so even with all of you know even without all the great stuff we all want to see happen it's a perfectly 30 more seconds the zoning District or the site um and I just want to say share the exasperation of commissioner weish um I agree with Mr

248Abrams that this is a case of moving to both those um I think we're sending a very clear message um cmdish I think we're sending a message that it's business as usual in Ann Arbor and that we're going to continue to like have a broken Zone code that doesn't achieve goals that we want to achieve and um we're going to drag developers through the process a few people are going to win the ones with the deepest pockets and the greatest love and they're going to make a whole lot of money and we're not going to get we're not going to be able to achieve the ambitious and Urgent goals that we desperately need to achieve so please have some urgency thank you thank you Alex Lowe you have three minutes to address the plan Commission

249this was a really frustrating uh meeting to watch really really frustrating we're talking about a block of housing and I pulled up arcgis and started looking at at the wet at Wendy's houses were worked out 1920. 1920 1901 uh 1954. these are buildings that are over 70 years old they have terrible uh terrible insulation they have terrible energy utilization something amazing on a golden platter here and now and now we're complaining because it has it's toughed with the wrong kind of caveat really really this is that this is the the best thing that uh that I've seen come to Planning Commission in a long time with the only exception be that amazing Avalon development so come on let's let's not argue about tiny little things because uh makers were worried that uh that uh that

250if we don't get this development we might get something worse that is still a thousand times better than what's there already don't compare to the perfect compared to what's there or already there is nothing that can be built in SeaWorld c1a slash r that isn't a huge Improvement that there are what exists on this block Jesus no more tweakers commission proposed business commissioner Mills Mr Leonard could you please add into our s our work plan uh an annotation where we have r4c non-conformities to the the table from the site plan from today or from the staff report from the South Town uh proposal or uh it's like a staff report that we saw today can you clarify what you want I want to be able to reference back when we as an example all of

251the non-conformance CTS so I just want to sort of file when we come back to r4c this example remind us of this example sorry that's the yes remind us of this example and so and specifically that table and this is not super high priority but it I I feel like um having short-term rental be available to that zoning designation in its entirety is something that I'm uncomfortable with and um this is kind of bringing it to light in a way that I wasn't aware of before so I know we have about 85 things on our work plan but just as a reminder one of the ways that we allocate short term rentals is it's a lot in the same places that hotels are so a hotel could go into the c1ar just as a reminder

252that's not a residential district that could be all office it could be all commercial it could be a grocery store there's no requirement of residential in the c1ar so um I I get I get what you're talking about but I I just wonder if you are really concerned about this E1 AR you're what I'm hearing is you're worried about commercial zoning at that site because I don't think we would differentiate between hotels or short-term rentals and so um I guess I would I can take the note but I caution I don't know that you're necessarily saying that circum rentals is inappropriate to see when they are what I was hearing a lot of discussion at this table is you don't know this unar is appropriate for that location I guess that's what I'm saying then

253yeah so thanks for clarifying that anybody else I hear Whispering over here anybody else no okay uh okay we are on to adjournment then motion to adjourn commissioner Mills seconded by commissioner weitz all this in favor we are adjourned