Ann Arbor Planning Commission Meeting 8/3/2022

001alrighty welcome to the wednesday august 3rd 2022 regular meeting of the honorable planning commission for detailed information about meeting procedures please review the full printed meeting agenda that is provided i believe we have some paper copies up there also for those of you in the room uh tonight we are joined by mr kowalski uh who is upstanding the position of mr leonard in his absence so mr kowalski could you please do the roll call i can commissioner give randall present commissioner abrams here commissioner silva here commissioner mills here commissioner hammersmith here commissioner dish here commissioner lee here commissioner clark absent okay and commissioner white here okay we definitely have a quorum all righty we are on to item number three which is approval of the agenda i may have a motion to approve commissioner white

002seconded by commissioner abrams any discussion of the motion all righty uh all those in favor please say aye raise your hand all right uh motion carries we are on to um item number four which is minutes of the previous meeting we got a couple of them in our packet have you all had a chance to review um motion to approve the minutes commissioner mills uh seconded by commissioner abrams uh any discussion or anything nope all righty all those in favor please say aye raise your hand great thank you any opposed okay motion carries now we are under item number five reports from city administration city council planning manager planning commission officers committees and written communications so um [Music] concerning dish i have nothing to report as we did not meet last night as it was

003the primary election and you have heard my report on the last time council met alrighty uh mr kowalski anything to report from planning i do not have anything at this time other than as you already mentioned i am stepping in for brett leonard tonight so i'd also be available to answer any questions if you need it all righty uh any other commissioner officers or liaisons would like to share anything commissioner mills i will report out that the orc did meet uh last week yes last week um and we discussed a couple of different options that mr leonard brought to us in terms of sustainability incentivize require that kind of thing and i expect that we're going to see the whole commission will see that sometime soon so that we can have a conversation among all

004of us about which is the right approach or suite of approaches we also discussed some changes proposed changes to um stormwater and some in response to a letter from the state um asking for some changes and then some other things that uh that um the floodplain manager brought to proposed and so again i'm expecting that we probably will see some of those at least sometime soon okay thank you all righty uh and then we also have written communications of which we had many um so i hope people have had a chance to be able to review those um i would also just say that we got quite a few very late in the in the session um and so um perhaps we can discuss it at the end of the meeting about um the realistic

005nature of whether we can receive communications 15 minutes before the meeting and actually have them be read so we are on them to public comment uh which is item number six so this is an opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes about an issue that is not listed on the agenda for this evening so we'll call on you you just have to you have taken microphones but others aren't the ones that aren't such as you mine is on so i will move it closer to my mouth so again time for people to be able to speak on items that are not on the agenda we'll call first on people who are here in the room and then we'll move to remote participants to speak during this public hearing remotely press star nine if

006listening by phone or use the raise hand feature if viewing through the web link for public access for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id 977-6634-1226 city staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name if available for those accessing to the web link when you hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or backgrounds on so that we may hear you clearly for either method of communication please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is there anyone present in the room that would like to speak on something that is not on the agenda tonight for this evening seeing none we will

007move on is there anybody who is in line remotely mr kowalski i have no hands raised online at this time all right okay item number seven is public hearings for the next business meeting would you mind filling us in on that yes you guys receive your communications we have um let me go through my list here a couple public hearings scheduled for the next [Applause] meeting and i may have left that just off my sheet here if you give me a minute we can pull that up i apologize okay we have two um the scheduled public hearings for the next meeting would be the plat count plat road town homes 30 60 80 plat that's a site plan to develop 43 town homes on the 8.4 acre site and the other public hearing would be

008for the again revisions to the west boulevard and north south maple road tc1 zoning district those are scheduled public hearings for the next meeting all right thank you so uh now we will move on to our regular business which is item eight we will first be discussing item eight a with the number 22-1333 which is 2424 east stadium boulevard i'll introduce this first and then the petitioner has up to 10 minutes to present on this evening so 2424 east stadium boulevard university in site plan for city commission city planning commission approval a proposal to construct a four-story residential building totaling approximately two thousand or two hundred and fifteen thousand square feet and housing a hundred and eighty five dwelling units an exist an existing seven thousand seven hundred sixty square foot office building facing east

009stadium remains primary access to the site is off east stadium and manchester road which leads to approximately 185 below grade parking spaces this development contains commercial and office zoning and approval is subject to combining three parcels 2424 2452 east stadium boulevard and 1950 manchester road 2.64 acres zoned c3 or fringe commercial and 0.55 acres zoned o or office staff recommendation is approval so i believe we are up then for your ten minutes of presentation mr kowalski i take it you are recording yes i'm promoting people and uh christopher chang he's uh he's going to be online as well and i'm promoting people as we speak perfect alrighty hello uh good evening my name is sam besnos and i'm the ceo of the bez tech companies i'm also one of the owners of the property i'm

010here with john mayesky maskey architects who will be describing the project beztack is a local michigan developer builder and operator of multi-family apartments and senior living facilities we've been in the ann arbor market for over 30 years operating we are a family business that's been around for over 60 years we have currently 669 apartments in ann arbor area with about 17 000 square feet of commercial and we also own or operate about 35 000 units nationally among 15 states and we're very excited about this project and appreciate your consideration i'm going to hand it over to john thank you um i think josh is in the background helping me out so josh you mind just forwarding the the one more slide just first thing i want to run through because it's very brief i'll try

011to run through this quickly and then you can ask any questions that you'd like it's just to talk about the site initially when you see the site you can see there's an existing four structures three of those are going to be taken down and the retail office building which shows up here in white will remain next the site basically has these boundaries you can see that goes around the different parcels and that's where we get these three different lots next just some site context next that kind of leads us to our design concept which really was to try to work around the existing building that's to remain and find a way to get access into the site from the two different locations and most of that kind of came out of the process of having

012three neighborhood meetings where we had a lot of input especially at the first two meetings and then the actual legal meeting at the end i think there was a general consensus that we were heading in a very strong direction and i believe we had four if not five meetings with staff and the fire marshal this building was really very much driven by fire trucks being able to drive around it as i'm sure you've seen on many other projects and we were trying to do our best to make that still allow the architecture to do what we needed to do the first floor basically has the key entry point off of stadium but there's a secondary entrance which probably will become somewhat more of a dominant entrance because of the fact you can get out onto

013manchester and then go to a signaled light so in many ways that's wonderful that we've got this traffic flow split but it also provides the benefit that if somebody's coming to the front door they can easily get there from stadium next as the building kind of stacks up the lower level is all parking it's basically all below grade except for that one little portion that's on manchester where our amenities go over the parking next this takes us up to the typical layout of the units as we go up in the building and the building is predominantly studios one bedrooms two bedrooms next the different parcels are basically combined under zoning two of them fall under basically the c3 zoning we're under the far on that one the other office we're right near it but it's

014a substantially less far of 75 percent where it's 73.9 next total units we've kind of already run through it's well parked it's it's a unique location it probably needs to be parked more than i think maybe some of the commissioners would like to see as far as vehicles go but we think it's parked right for this particular location given that there's retail that does the office and the retail does provide us a little breathing room when guests would come because that's probably not going to be used in the evening hours but we wanted to find the right balance for the parking and we really think we've done that next the design concept having to do with height was something we spent a great deal of time talking about this is a very strange site when

015it comes to all the different points we had to calculate for height and it took us some time to all come together on that but we have all agreed that it's well underneath the height parameters of 55 feet next and basically the overall building is about five feet predominantly to the parapet below that point but as typical there's an elevator overrun which does stick up to the maximum height that you can barely see in one location on the building next just click through these josh perfect sustainability we just want to run through that you know it's just we're going to design the building to actually be leed certified um when we say equivalent that's not that it wouldn't be certified it's just that there are other opportunities out there that we might present to staff

016but right now it would just be leed certified we will have a rooftop solar array it's 100 kilowatts the best comparison i can give you is when we did it on hoover and green we had 150 kilowatts and that ended up being powering 15 in the end of the house panel so parking garage lobby corridors everything other than the actual units here we'll probably be in the range of about 10 of the house panel with 100 kilowatts underground parking um all of the increased capacity for bikes we we're in excess of zoning requirements and we actually will probably even have more energy star appliances locally sourced material it is going to be an all-electric building that's something we've been asked to do and obviously we have access to local transit facilities at this location next

017prospective views just want to walk you around it this is really looking from the front there on that right side that tree is pretty much the feature tree that we did want to save on the site several the other trees are also being saved but this is a beautiful tree and so we've taken a lot of care to stay away from that next this just kind of brings you into the courtyard as you'd arrive at the building inside next this is that view more of a bird's eye view when you're over on manchester and then that's the pool amenity and deck and this is actually standing on the pool amenity and deck next really just gets into the materials i think typically there has been some interest in that do you want me to pass

018around the board you want me just to display it okay so all the materials are here if anybody wants to see them but predominantly what we're doing is we have dark bronze anodized windows that you'll see as number one that also happens to be what we use as a panel for number six when we frame the windows the brick actually has this kind of lighter terracotta color it's slightly mixed the wood that we're going to use is not real wood it's similar it's long board similar to what we did on hoover and green it's a very very sustainable and substantial product it holds up really well it's extruded aluminum it's been recycled and then it's covered this will be a much darker color it's a little bit more on the cherry side than what you

019would have seen on hoover and green we're using hardy panels not the typical hardy board that you would see but hardy panels and that's kind of a rain screen system where the panels are attached but then we're using a board to cover that up so it effectively has a board and bat and feel where you see a lot of the white and on the big infill of the big frames that you'll see running around the building they're actually filled in with a hardy panel and a rain screen to allow that water and stuff to get out behind it and then that's a little bit of a darker color that you see on the sample board as well generally speaking really really solid materials we've worked very closely with the developer it's it's hard these days

020things are extremely expensive but there's nothing on this building that i wouldn't like to see on it and we spent a lot of time trying to work through it so with that i'm not sure where i am on time but i want to open it up to any questions you still have a couple of minutes if there's anything else you want to get in under the wire so that's very rare but i'm going to speak that time to you thank you okay thank you uh i guess we should have the staff report then from um mr chang yes uh good evening uh i would say that uh they did a very nice job of making their presentation just a couple other items i'd probably want to to add they are also doing and meeting the

021ev electric vehicle parking requirements with 22 ev installed spaces they also are putting in uh conflicting land use buffers at the southeast corner of the site to screen from the multi-family residential there will be some landmark trees removed and they are mitigating with trees planted throughout the south and east portion of the site looking at it they also are in review for their stormwater detention since infiltration is not possible at this site they are over detaining so they are detaining at 120 percent and i think maybe anything else that wasn't mentioned was that they do have bus stops that was i think it actually was mentioned but they do have bus stops and i'm open to any questions you may have thank you alrighty so then we can move on to the public hearing and

022then we can have a discussion so at this point we have an opportunity for people to speak up to three minutes um we'll first call an individual's present in the room to address the commission and then remote participants to speak during the public hearing remotely press star 9 if listening by phone or use the raise the hand feature for phone access call four seven and 877-853-5247 meeting id nine seven seven six six three four one two two six city staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name if available through those accessing the web link you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak and when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or

023background sound so that we may hear you clearly for either method of participation please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is there anyone present first that would like to speak anybody present in the room that would like to speak on stadium please come you up state your name and address and you have three minutes uh william two one two five bedford apartment six i think you go to this this one there you go yep you got it we will be back to one two five apartment six i live behind this is what they're proposing they say that the university inn is a two-story building but if you go to the back of the parking lot in uh lamppost plaza the basement is above ground so it's actually a three-story building

024so if you put a building in that's four stories at stadium is going to be five stories in the back and just beyond that little parking strip that's part of the lamppost plaza there's another eight foot drop down to the ann arbor woods apartments so from that vantage point it would look like a six-story building there is currently a strip of trees between the university inn and the parking lot with trees that are 40 or 50 foot high that screen that building and according the plans i've seen that's all going away and the stuff they're putting there would not have any ability to screen that building to the south so that's what i say and i got one other thing there's a black cherry tree there [Applause] right on the margin between uh current property

025in the 1950 manchester that they've got down as a 36 inch diameter and i've measured that thing several times and it's a joint three two trunks one of them is a 28 inch diameter the other one's 16 inch so combined that's a very large tree that deserves special consideration thank you anybody else present that would like to address the planning commission on this okay seeing none we will move on to see if there's any anybody waiting in the queue for phone and i have nobody with a hand raised online at this time okay oh a hand just popped up okay go for it so wait let me okay um anna why sake is it you have three minutes to address the planet commission thank you um i also live near near the development like the

026previous speaker my name is anna waisaki i live at 2137 medford road apartment 15. um i would say that there is much about this development that looks great um i am speaking now because i am an active member of the church that we saw on the map journey at 1900 manchester and the construction period of the development um as far as we can tell is going to play some vulnerabilities on journey of faith i'm not the most versed in speaking to those but as far as i understand the construction process um it it appears to have you know sort of a bare minimum consideration in mind for a journey of faith so i am concerned about that as a lot of also vulnerable members of the community access assistance at this church so i just

027wanted to mention that and i also wanted to say that um the previous speaker i've seen him pick up grounds near the trees volunteer his time i've learned about the trees in this area uh through my neighbors such as him so i appreciate any mitigation and if there's more mitigation that we can do that that is something that's really valuable to the community here thank you anybody else mr qualski there are no other hands raised okay we will move on then to i will read the motion and then we will have discussion so the motion reads the anniversary planning commission hereby recommends the city planning commission approve the university insight plan and development agreement 2424 east stadium boulevard subject to combining the parcels and washington water resource commissioner approval moved by commissioner mills seconded by

028commissioner sovay alrighty we are in discussion anybody like to start us off commissioner weich i'll start with the trees uh because i had questions about them myself so on the site plan um i think i'll start with staff and i don't know if the developer needs to respond i count either 9 or 10 landmark trees but you measure it by inches and on the site plan it looks like it's 90. so the speaker's comment around the 44 inch tree are there any responses to that that we can share about the mitigation of that tree i'm not sure exactly which tree specifically the speaker is talking about is it the one on the south side of the building between the parking lot i believe that's what he was 576. okay the the whole tree thing was

029something that we went through with each individual tree and we worked with city staff to determine which those trees were what diameter they are and which landmark trees would need to come down so the specifics of each tree have been reviewed i'm not sure if if the speaker realizes he might but but i just want to point out that our building is set 20 feet back from our property line and um that pretty much puts it close to where the existing university inn is but then in front of that which isn't our property it varies from 20 to almost about 20 28 29 feet of another strip of land and and i'm sure the speaker has had a chance to look at all those but many of those trees are not on our property and

030they're not going to be touched so the mitigation that we've proposed is to replace the trees that we needed to remove to make the development work some of that access on that side unfortunately is for the fire department to have access and to give them enough of a sidewalk to be able to run around and walk around the building other opportunities that we looked at to try to mitigate that involved actually having the fire department have a road around the building which then caused even more damage to the trees that we were going to propose so i just want to point that out and i would really quickly want to just address the other speaker's questions we would absolutely be working with the church to make sure whatever we do had no impact on their

031parking whether that was during the weekdays or especially obviously on the weekends so that would just be a standard part of doing a project in ann arbor so i can assure her that that will be something that we'll have a great deal of discussion with them about and we can absolutely mitigate any concerns that they would have it's never perfect it's construction but i'm sure that we can work it out so that it wouldn't be an issue all right thank you to the last point around the church mr chang is it possible for the developer to note that in the development agreement if the developer is agreeable to try to figure out some kind of mitigation because it's an older congregation it's probably one of our oldest congregations because they used to be on campus

032and then that building burned and then they moved to this site and so i know they service uh a largely elderly community and uh they also have a food bank uh that's there uh during the week yeah let's start let's start with uh thanks yeah there is an uh a somewhat updated draft development agreement that the petitioner just sent today i did have a brief discussion with our attorney's office so there's going to be some give and take obviously when we're discussing the the draft development agreement and this is something i'm sure that we're going to have to discuss so i'm sure we're going to have a meeting uh in the near future okay go ahead um thank you um i i just want to point out that we've been in conversations with uh the

033church the journey of faith and pastor alex since we acquired the property nearly two almost two and a half years ago we met with members of the church initially to discuss the proposed project and kept them apprised of the progress throughout they did i believe some members attend the public uh meeting and some of the neighborhood meetings that we had as well so um i think they are i can't speak for the church obviously but i think they're well informed of our intentions and we've showed you know good faith in trying to cooperate with them as good neighbors i'm not sure uh which you'd specifically would be looking for in terms of you know cooperation but we certainly you know intend to be good neighbors and continue to work with them as much as we

034can sure and if you all are um still negotiating the development agreement and you are agreeable to have some kind of provision this is something that we've talked about with other developers and local businesses or entities around the development so mitigating the construction debris the noise like when things are going to happen how it might disrupt the service where people are parking those types of things are the uh some of the concerns yeah around that so if if you feel like you've had a good set of conversations and staff feel like that is working well uh my questions and concerns have been addressed yeah well well thank you i mean we certainly will want to try to mitigate it i'm not sure you know uh you know if what they'd be looking for you know

035you know we certainly can't provide additional parking or anything like that i mean they're whether or not they're parking on our site during their services i can't speak to a general basis but as it relates to noise and debris and that kind of stuff we certainly will do do our best thank you anybody else commissioner mills digging in a little bit to the site plan and just better understanding the trees i'm curious of the landmark trees that are coming down how many of them are associated with fire lanes and in particular just driving by the site there's a couple big trees in the front is did i am i correct in understanding and reading the site plan that those are remaining that won't be affected by that odd fire lane to the northwest correct yes

036those won't be okay because there's like two that appear like right run right on the property line and one that's a little bit east okay great the other ones though uh that are being removed tend to be on the south side and that's where you're saying that's a that sidewalk is requested for fire access yeah it's the sidewalk for fire access and the fact that we're putting an underground parking structure there that's going to really impact the root zone okay a few trees that are there the ones right along that south side great other than that and help so may this is the question for staff um that entrance or that that second curb cut onto stadium that appears to be like is it only for the fire lane is that the intention there and

037yes correct go ahead mr ching yes and discussions with the petitioner and the fire marshal it is really for emergency vehicles only and i believe it's going to be curved also so it will prevent others from accidentally you know entering the site is it done and i mean it is will it all be paved i can't quite i guess i should have looked at that on the site plan before or is there options to make that not impervious given how rarely it ought to be used you know up top my head i don't i don't recall if it's paved or it's got some type of pervious pavers on there but again it's going to have to hold you know fire apparatus so whatever the type of surface it is it'll it'll obviously be able to

038hold you know emergency equipment yeah i would just add it is at the fire marshal's request it is paved we've made it as minimal as possible and we're basically trying to do a mountable curb so the truck can get up it but i don't think anybody else would want to go in there we have no intention to ever use it we'd put a gate up but nobody wants us to put a gate up so we're just trying to downplay it the best we can that's simply for the fire truck to pull into hook its hose up to and then meet the distances it needs to run around the building is it really about your building or is it about the one that's adjacent well it's it's all about a little bit the reason why those

039buildings have an impact is in in a scenario where we knew what was going to happen with all of that property in the future you we tried to see if we could get an easement to go across we couldn't agree on that because i don't think for the long term they have any idea what would happen with that property so we're self-containing this and to some extent if somebody were to build another project next door it would benefit them as well got it and so that so the location there is really to get at something presumably on this midway down the eastern that would be the western property line yeah it gets you down the west in a partially across the back south almost to the corner just a little bit and then if you

040go off of manchester that's actually the access drive to the parking but we need to have that for the fire truck as well and so that's the other point that the firemen can want run back and forth on the back of the building got it and coming in the main curb is that just that there's not space to turn around no there's enough on the inside on the main curve when you can drive around they can get in there the fire truck can turn around and it can fight the fire that it needs to do within that side yeah and actually it can actually get to the portions it needs to reach on the west side it's just really this southwest corner that's not accessed got it well good job downplaying it the slight plane

041it really stands out in the sight plan and um thanks for accommodating that uh it was much larger so we've really tried to get it to the bare minimum yeah um yeah uh we don't have control over the kind of there's lots of interplaying things going on here presumably uh i didn't pick up on this trash's oh there it is uh being accessed like the because that's the other thing that often drives design um that pickup will be in the kind of interior portion of the building correct okay yes so we don't have to worry about it driving through the building and some of the other things we've had to do we actually have enough space for the trash truck to turn around and pick up and those are stored within the building behind a

042door but then that door is open when the trash truck comes and picks it up great um i i just want to give compliments on the ability to work with this odd shape and working around an existing building um i also want to acknowledge and we didn't hear those voices tonight but we had tons of emails from folks complimenting that this will be electrified and is it true that there is no natural gas hookup here not even backup no that so the the idea that we are not infrastruc connecting know connecting additional infrastructure is really fantastic um you know uh i and so i really want to commend the team for thinking about that making that possible and saving yourself some money and not connecting to the gas um from the get-go so um i

043appreciate limiting the surface imperviousness you know i think you're right we we regularly talk about limiting parking i um but that it's under the building i think is is a real benefit that it's not a gigantic surface parking lot i mean this is a quarter that's that's well served um you know our mo our most frequent buses run down up washed or not and that's just beyond that you know your main entrance consider your front door entrance and so um i i i really appreciate this building um and the and uh and again just fitting into an uh in a unique space so thank you thank you commissioner hammerschmidt and pretty much exactly what he said at the end there i was um very pleased to see the amount of emails that we got um

044from people really excited about this particular project the electrification and how that's helping meet the goals that we have in the city um i'm going to ask if you are including gas for a generator so i'm glad to hear that you're not are you removing gas lines are there existing gas lines on the property i would assume there are so yes but that's awesome um i guess my only real question on that note is um have you had conversations with gte like time is doing this is adding more to the grid um we we've had those preliminary conversations and and dte is on a project like this is generally willing obviously to add it to whatever they need to do and to bring the infrastructure into you know cover what we need for this building

045so that isn't an issue trying to communicate with them that is an issue but that's that's a separate matter i'm very excited about this project i want to thank you guys um usually it's not something to ask and beg developers to consider not putting in gas so just having this come to us and this is just your goals with this project it's really been about this so thank you i'm looking forward to seeing this thank you commissioner abrams hi um excuse me maybe just picking up on the conversation around electrification and uh energy efficiency i wonder i had kind of two questions so i guess one is um about the selection of the vtac system and whether or not that's the most efficient system that you could could spec there and i mean that's outside

046the scope of our purview but maybe i just wanted to raise it as a question and then also just assuming that there are other things that will make the building efficient like insulation and an efficient envelope which will make that elec electric system even more efficient so i think that those would be great um two questions i guess one is i wanted to just maybe spend a little bit of time discussing the concerns um raised by this by the speaker about the building height and i think i see like a substantial elevation difference from north to south on the site so when you say it's a four-story building with a maximum height of 55 feet maybe just for everybody's benefit we could articulate where the benchmark where zero is okay um and then what is

047additional on the south side of the building we don't have a section so it's hard to see the relationship of the building to the ground at the south side of the site well josh if you wouldn't mind pulling up the height diagram i think that's the best place to start and it specifically it specifically shows i think go back one more to the height diet one more than that perfect this specifically shows the actual grading on the site so you can see the benchmark for the overall grading around the building creates an average height of 869. the overall maximum height that we're allowed to go to is 924 that's that red dash line it shows up better in the elevations because this is a plane oblique but if you look along that south side of

048the building you'll basically see the existing grating is potentially right at the midpoint at this the 869 which is the average grade that it happens to be on the other parts of the site um but yes the front of the site is approximately three to four feet higher than the southern back corner but as you draw down to the east over on manchester we do drop down and that's where we specifically dropped the the building you can see the facade step down when we switch between the c3 and the zero i'm sorry the o zoning you see a step on this drawing and that shows you where we're trying to address the height issue that was a concern and that was brought up with neighborhood meetings initially but i understand the concern it is effectively

049though a four-story building at that point it is lifted up to those neighbors to the south but we are trying to keep it well within the height limits that are permitted and is there maybe just help us understand is there uh what is in this space like where that 853 elevation marker is i mean i know there's a driveway but is there my understanding is that to the south there's parking that's part of the trader joe's complex right josh if you'd go the ground floor plan we basically what we have is um there's a real skinny lot that's trader joe's parking lot that runs along that south side so there's a strip of weird property that isn't part of our site which basically achieves somewhat of an existing land buffer and it has trees along

050it on the south side then there is parking kind of non-conforming parking one-sided parking with a strip of pavement then there are a whole bunch of other trees that are not on our property and then you hit our property line and then there's 20 feet where some of those trees are still within that area but effectively that kind of sidewalk runs around for the firemen to get around the building great so effectively there's quite a bit of landscape buffer there is um okay thank you and then my last question um maybe is more for staff in the staff report um there's a sentence in there that says there's concern with safety and and i wondered i think it's uh let's see it's under traffic staff comments page three and i just wanted to know more

051about that i think it's like i took that section right from the the traffic engineer who stated that and we had the petitioner um actually put this on the site plan so in the future if the if the turning driveway is approved with the condition that future safety and operational issues may require this drive access to be converted to write in and write out only so at this time they're not expecting any type of issue with the traffic circulation but we had them put it on the site plan in case there needs to be changes in the future so that means they'll observe the conditions at that stadium curb cut and if necessary convert that just with signage to a write-in right okay that's all thanks commissioner weich can you say more about the um

052the the entrance and exit because i that's a path for me to bike to work and it's already a fairly precarious path because you have folks coming out of the trader joe's they they crest the crosswalk and they sit in the crosswalk so as a biker i either have to go around in front which puts me out on stadium or i have to go behind which may get the ire of a car that's trying to pop out to get to that um turning lane so are we saying that traffic said it was okay for them to exit and make a left turn out of this development is that what you said and then you're noting it on the site plan that if it is a problem and i i need some clarification of what a

053problem is is that an accident and then um then it will be changed to right and right out yes that would be my understanding um you know i'm not the traffic engineer but i think it has more to do with the if you know the traffic volumes are increased in their circulation issues that at some point in the future if it is causing congestion at the entrance there at washington and stadium that we'd have that option since it's on the site then that yes we are going to make it a right turn only right in right now so what uh if i can ask a follow-up uh what triggers that determination so is it a car pedestrian incident a car bike incident a car car incident oh sorry i was just gonna jump in um

054if that's okay um my name is lori and i'm the traffic engineer that had worked on the traffic study for this project um i believe that the concern was with the west bound left turn movement into the site um just concerned that that movement may be backing up traffic through the intersection however our traffic models and our trip estimates um did not see a much bigger increase than what's currently there now as far as those left turn movements um and the q we do a queuing analysis and that only showed you know at the most um one vehicle waiting to turn in there and so it was approved but just they want to monitor that if there is a problem with that movement backing up then we might need to do something about the restricting

055turns in and out so i think my question still remains and so i don't know if it's for staff or to you a chair give randall to get answered which is what triggers the change in the direction of that traffic so how because it feels odd to me if i'm reading this correctly and understanding what i'm hearing correctly is we're going to wait until an incident occurs and then evaluate what we do so if i'm not hearing that correctly could someone just abuse me of what i'm hearing not something that i've ever run across personally since i've been here since 2015. so um uh i don't know if mr kowalski has any sense of that either in terms of the past or perhaps miss pollock if that's something that you've experienced or mr chang because

056you've been here for a long time too any of you experienced people that's been here for a long time what would you um has there been a precedent in the past where we've had to kind of wait and see in terms of a traffic um potential traffic issue um there were um i'm thinking a little bit far in the farther past 10 years or so ago well actually closer than that there's if you remember even the south pond project had um if you guys remember south pond the large single-family development behind arbor land there that had lots of issues with circulation um the part of the agreement was to have them pave up to that entrance of it but there were um kind of a qualification that said well if the city but it wasn't

057directly within the development agreement it was kind of a wait and seeing an enforcement type of issue meaning that if that did become a problem the city was going to possibly go back and either look at if traffic was going um north on chalmers which was dirt there may be an issue with that you know restricting turns coming out of that development but it was always done on kind of a like i know you're yeah i think you're looking for a definite metric but like to say that this happens but at that point in other developments i'm thinking of it was really based on a kind of a complaint driven aspect almost like if we see these issues this is becoming a problem the traffic engineers i mean they have uh kind of a complaint

058type system so that's basically where it was there wasn't because like you said there's no it's not saying there's nothing in a metric says one accident it triggers this as far as i know again i'm gonna refer it wasn't my project directly and obviously i'm not a traffic engineer but that's how it's been done in the past that we've had i don't think we've had them in like in much larger projects there's been things that can be added to development agreements that have to if this triggers this then that's done but um i don't think that's the case in this project so probably the short answer to that is it's kind of uh um yeah kind of i don't say complaint driven but really based on the situations that that occur after the development is

059up and running i mean these sites do get monitored i mean people do look at these and and we do hear about this isn't working this is working so that may be a long way to answer i hope it helped a little bit so i have seen things similar in the past yeah south pond wasn't ever built though sorry what was that south pond wasn't ever built though correct we never got to sort of test the water well you're right exactly but i'm thinking of other projects where it wasn't that uncommon where that said well you know we're good with this right now but we reserve the right to go right if this is an issue and i think whether or not that's included in the in the well i don't want to speak out

060of my league but i think it whether or not that was even mentioned up front if something becomes an issue the city can go in there and you know whether or not it was mentioned in the first if this becomes a problem the city can go back in there and take some corrective actions to help address the problem if you don't mind i just wanted to add a little a little bit of history to that too that the city and it's probably not you as a planning commission but the city traffic planners i think for a long time have been looking at this intersection and we had seen many preliminary designs for the intersection so i also believe part of the caution and part of that request to put that on was to give the

061city some flexibility should they change the intersection and i don't want to say what that's going to be but you know you could imagine it could be a roundabout it could be something completely different in the way those come together so give i believe it gives the city a little flexibility once that would happen i it didn't come up to be honest as a safety issue it just came up more as an issue of how do we address something we might do in the future to make that intersection better i would just like to piggyback on on your comment as a as a biker through there i think this is this is um a really rough spot in an otherwise pretty bikable area which is hard because stadium has a nice has a nice lane

062there and then you can connect up to the system that goes through county farm park which is wonderful and there's this section that's terrible right in that little zone that you're at so i'm thrilled that you're going to be rebuilding the sidewalk in there i think it's a bigger issue for mr weich about how to integrate bikes into this area that i feel your frustration and there's only so much they can do i think about it they've oversized their part their their sidewalk by two feet they've made it seven feet wide instead of five feet wide which i appreciate because i think that people do want to be able to use that little that little zone in through there and frankly i would encourage the city in the remaining stretch in front of the the

063um the parcel that they're kind of working around and connect all the way up to manchester to replace that section at the same time because it's it's awful in there you almost have to get off your bike it's so bad in terms of how pitted it is so um i think the city has to do has to be thinking about some of these larger issues about connectivity here because it really is pretty great on either side and then it just falls apart right in this short little section here um any other comments commissioner lee yeah um i think what commissioner weich was trying to say is that we should have some level of an evaluative framework and not like wait for something to occur but rather to have like a defined period after stabilization to

064say hey let's evaluate what thoroughfare looks like and obviously i think we all of us have said that strengthening non-motorized transit uh in our city is important reducing single occupant vehicles miles traveled is an important facet of what we're trying to achieve so again i think bringing housing that is closer to the attractors of jobs within the city is important um that this has obviously been a difficult site yet it is actually so i like the idea though the difficulty of pre-allocating resources on evaluating you know six to 12 months after stabilization it's kind of a tough you know how do you allocate resources that far so i understand the concern it just seems like a difficult thing to try and you know mechanically structure in the development agreement so um understand where you're coming

065from so i just wanted to say probably better to try and set that as opposed to wait for something bad to happen to take action um that being said actually my question is actually with respect to the development agreement i think it was let me just go to the section p7 this one is for staff it says um developer agrees to be included in a future special assessment district along with other benefiting property for construction of additional improvements at east stadium boulevard manchester road such as street widening storm sewers curb gutters sidewalks and i wanted just a little bit more um i guess knowledge for for my own sake i mean what does that necessarily mean i mean i think clarification is important for both developer and just for me um what that p7 really

066means um as far as like what can we expect is that just the flexibility to say anytime in the future there could be a you know future assessment district and they'll vote in favor of it um and i'm just trying to understand what mechanisms that particular section means for both the city and for the developer so i i did go over the draft development agreement with the city engineering department and there's a lot of standard language and i think that is a standard paragraph that is included and that they wanted left in now with that being said we still have our attorney's office to review the draft development agreement and i think there is going to be some give and take with the developer as we're reviewing and approving the draft development agreement and that's

067exactly why it is a draft at this time so if the developer wants to discuss this further i'm sure their attorney in our attorney's office will be discussing it further but i i think it's a standard paragraph our engineer did look it over and and wanted to leave that that section in okay got it thank you um i just needed a little bit of clarification and then yeah overall i think it's fully electrified brings additional housing i think you guys made a really good looking development with the constraints of the geometry of the site from the visibility of the height obviously from the south uh rear i think the um conflicting buffer will help uh you know i thought about a lot about what the the sound attenuation might be or carry of the amenity

068deck on the south eastern portion uh just making sure that we didn't necessarily disturb any of these sites adjacent sites but the again the conflicting land use buffers designed well so i think a lot of thought went into this so kudos to you guys i look forward to supporting this thanks commissioner sobe one final comment i don't have any questions i really appreciate the project but i did see you know it was evaluated to be tc1 or there's a question of why to zone or not zone um and with parking uh and this is more for you know planning commission and that the hearing is coming up to rezone more and uh washington is one of the next you know to be blanketed and i think while this isn't tc1 the targets about not a

069lot of surface parking are here electrification and housing density are here so i really appreciate this being the gateway to washington and the discussion of tc12 and the efforts for electrification so just you know additional observations not really around this project per se but what this project can lend into other projects as well so thank you so much commissioner lee um this question for petitioners in an ideal time frame what does it look like i'm asking on behalf of basically the church and you know other peoples that may be impacted by um construction in a perfect world right mobilization construction costs or you know oh they magically go down sure that that won't happen but in a perfect world what's the timeline in a perfect world um our plans would be to start uh sometime

070next year you know spring or fall depending on of course the approval on the doc the planning uh the finishing the planning documents and submitting for permits so um you know we we've been working with staff for a while on this project and as everybody recognizes and i appreciate all the comments so far it's been extremely challenging working through all the limitations of the site you know we were we knew that going in um the location we felt was very attractive but knew it was challenging so our hopes you know are to start that i mean we're our company's been around for a very long time we're actively building four projects right now uh three of which we started in the last 60 days so we hope you know we'll be able to build this

071as well once you break ground what's the time i guess that's the build time um impact to that probably um i you know i'm not the construction expert but i would say sometime in the range of 20 to 24 months would be my guess gotcha it's going to take a little bit of time to do the underground garage and some of the logistics on the site uh the infrastructure first gotcha thank you okay thank you commissioner weich one small thing and i want to echo the rest of the commissioner's comments around doing the project adding the housing doing the conversion the care that you seem to be taking with the electrification in solar would love to see more solar on the rooftop but i guess you've put in what you're going to put in one

072thing was just on the bike racks you have in the site plans just a standard hoop and i'll send this to mr chang for staff consideration but there is a better rack that you can put in where you can get more bike racks in it's the boston bike rack it's black it's a powder coated post with a ring track so that you can lock more bikes to it in the same space that you've allocated which if this will be activated potentially for students or young professionals that are here there's just a lot of opportunity for them to leverage bikes and then be able to move from this site throughout the city so just wanted to put that on your radar screen anything else okay are we ready to wrap this up and have a vote

073okay uh let's do roll call vote okay i'm i'm sorry who is the original motion moved by and second oh move by mail second bicep okay okay um if we're all ready for a vote at this time um commissioner mills commissioner gabriel yes commissioner sovay yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes and thank you for the electrification and commissioner lee yes commissioner clark is absent and uh commissioner white yes okay um this project is approved thank you all okay we give me a minute to shift around some people here all righty so we will be moving on to 8b which is 2502 packard street alrighty this is the george site plan for city planning commission approval a proposal to convert 23 462 square feet of retail space on the ground floor to

07442 residential units new dwelling units will include approximately 205 square feet of mezzanine space for a total of 8 600 square feet of new floor area if you all wouldn't mind moving your conversation to this side that would be great thank you new dwelling units will include approximately 200 205 square feet of mezzanine space for a total of 8 600 square feet of new floor area relocate a solid waste area north to drive from its current location to the location south of the north drive and add two bicycle parking spaces 6.52 acre zone c1b or community convenience center staff recommendation is approval okay so we will start with the petitioner presentation which will be up to 10 minutes uh hello thank you for your time my name is ken gold i'm vice president at somerset

075development we are a new jersey based developer we have projects here in ann arbor michigan and around the state of new jersey and in suburban illinois and at the village of hoffman estates i'm joined tonight online on zoom by my engineer andrew wiseman my architect steve dykstra from hobbs in black and my attorney um pat lennon from honigman i'm hoping i get to pay him by the word tonight so um oh and additionally i'm joined by um adam rich adam richards who is a specialist uh from epro who handles um vapor barrier mitigation systems uh and uh environmental mitigation systems uh this project i know has a long history um with a lot of issues uh with the previous developer and and you know there were a lot of construction issues and you know we're

076not here to talk about the past so i i just want to acknowledge that you know there we know what we know what happened here um we were under contract to buy this piece back in december of 2021 we recently closed in june and the entire time that we were under contract through now we have been marketing the retail space i have not had a single phone call i have not had a single request i have not had a single tour there's no interest in the space um and that is why we are looking to turn the space into more units to to generate you know more more housing for the community uh and a better overall product uh all the units will be one bedrooms and all the units will be fully electrified products

077uh appliances um and with that i think it's i think i'll hand it off to andrew to walk through the site plan just to show you that we're really not changing anything it's just the interior spaces good evening commissioner members my name is andrew wiseman the civil engineer for the project noah confronts engineers been involved in this project uh various incarnations for many years uh first i'd like to thank the planning staff for their assistance bringing this project in front of you tonight we're very excited about the improvements to the george and i look forward to going forward with those improvements uh i would like to let you know that the improvements are basically restricted to the existing building inside the existing building externally there are no improvements proposed with the exception of relocating the

078trash enclosure on the north side of the drive to north side of the building to the north side of the drive if i could share share this i could show you a rendered copy i have but that is the only change externally the parking count shall remain the same with the additional residential units we are adding three internal bike parking spaces in the garage structure and that is pretty much all we are doing uh from a civil engineering standpoint on on the site is there a way we can show that i know jeff here this screen right now sure you should be able to there you go okay you got it so this area inside the u this is where the existing retail spaces are being converted into residential units the trash enclosure currently is

079located on the north side of the building here is going to shift to the north side of the drive here and the parking count will remain the same this is a loading area that's just being shifted as a result of this change to the trash enclosure configuration i can let steve dicer go through what's the architect hops in black is proposing as far as the floor plans go but i just want to show you these floor plan drawings and elevations steve he's he's in your muted yeah he's he's there he's in as there you go steve are you saying anything steve we can't hear you if you are we don't see him as a as a box on the screen i see him as a box yeah he's there so i can go through what's

080happening here i'll continue this conversation this is existing university this is the existing retail space which is going to be converted to the 42 units this is half a mirror image of um that's this portion here and here's the mirror image so the extent of retail conversion the residential is represented in these clouded areas here and a couple units will be proposed in this bottom u portion of the building and you can go back to the floor plans for a second so so yeah yeah these are so these these units there's there's essentially four different sections that we'll be converting as you can see here these they're separate um the larger space is around somewhere between nine and ten thousand the smaller space is between 11 and 1500 square feet uh we'll be these will

081become one bedroom with lofts as you as was mentioned earlier that we're putting like a loft space up there so these will all be one bedroom one bath units walkouts directly to the parking that's in front and behind it uh they're back to back uh they'll all be one bedroom one and a half bath and again they'll all have electric appliances and we're really just keeping the architecture in line with what's there um just you know replacing the the the back sides of the spaces currently are solid walls so we'll be putting in windows and the doors will just line up you know with the units and it'll be you know pretty straightforward so um i guess if steve's unable to talk i don't know that we have much more to say yeah i'm sorry

082but he's i think he was at a panelist i'm not sure why you know we've only been dealing with zoom for like two and a half years i think we've figured this out i even promote him as a co-host but okay all righty well why don't we move on to the staff presentation then if um if you feel like that makes sense would you like me to stop sharing or shall i keep it open mr khan would you like him to keep sharing why don't you stop sharing for now but be prepared to open it back up um for for the conversation um yeah thank you um i i do want to provide a little bit of history of the to the site um for those folks who may be less familiar with it this

083was the site that um was the old georgetown mall which was uh one of the early shopping malls in ann arbor uh had a kroger shopping um center and and other retail establishments um including a dry cleaner this site struggled after after being constructed in the 60s by the time the 1990s 2000s hit the site was struggling to maintain um tenants and uh eventually the site was sold to a developer who came in with the original proposal ownership changed during early construction [Music] it was eventually acquired by the petitioner who uh indicated that they're um that they have been attempting to lease the retail spaces um as i think some of you know um the uh site was originally contaminated from the dry cleaning operation but the contamination was contained because there are heavy clay

084soils in the area so the contamination was removed and vapor barriers were installed the petitioner is going to be working with the county with regard to maintaining those vapor barriers during during and after construction um every time i've spoken to someone who's inquired about this the uh uh site whether it's prospective owners or um uh anyone i've i've talked about the interest the strong interest that the city has in um you know in a retail component here that that we really feel that this this part of town um does not have a great deal of retail even though there are a lot of rooftops out here um and um as the petitioner indicated earlier in their presentation they've struggled to find retailers who've been willing to take the take the plunge here so i do

085want to say uh as staff we're disappointed too that there's not a mixed-use component however code does not require a mixed-use component code requires code allows residential uses as a um as as a permitted principal use uh and so staff um is supportive of the project because it is consistent with code i would like to read the recommendation staff recommends approval of the site plan because it complies with all applicable local state and federal ordinances standards and regulations it will not cause a public or private nuisance and and it will not have a detrimental effect on public health safety or welfare and that's the summary of of my report thank you mr khan we will move on now to public hearing and this is an opportunity for people to speak up to three minutes we'll

086call first on individuals here present in the room and then remotely um to speak during the public hearing remotely press star nine if listening by phone or use the reins hand feature of viewing through the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and then our meeting id 977-6634-1226 city staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly for either method of participation please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is there anybody present here that would like to be able to speak good evening my

087name is dr lauren sergeant i live at 2815 ember way i moved to that neighborhood near the georgetown mall because i wanted walkability and i walked to kroger and rite aid and the post office and the dry cleaner and this is not about the city code this is about our stated goals to increase walkability sustainability all that kind of stuff and also about faith in agreements that are made when that building was built there was an agreement with the neighborhood with the community that we would have a mixed use facility with retail with services we have now lost two krogers we've lost the packard food co-op we lost food and drug mart we've lost all kinds of services that existed in that neighborhood my walkability walked away from me and this has got to stop

088if we talk about getting out of cars well how are people going to get their groceries and their pharmacy and all that kind of stuff and also if we let the developer do this what's to stop the next developer from wink wink not nod with agreements to have mixed use livable community facilities i think this is a really bad decision to allow and i oppose it vehemently the other thing i think you should know is that i thought i was alone in this but when what going through the site to look for the retail that was supposed to be planned my neighbor and i were shoot out of the the site and this happened to other people as well i found out yesterday i'm talking to folks at the polls this is really a bad

089deal back to the drawing board if you want retail there don't charge rents that are downtown level or downtown chicago level rents how about reasonable prices and food drugs and uh services thank you thank you anybody else present here that would like to speak on this project okay seeing none we will move to the virtual line is there anybody yes we have several callers um so caller with the last three digits 593 you can now address the planning commission and you have three minutes you need on mute caller with the last 3g 593 if you can unmute you can address the planning commission asking them to unmute here we go okay hi can you hear me now yes yeah matt this steve dykstra i made it i just wanted to say that i am available

090here via phone my computer had sound issues so if there are any questions that i could be available to address i'd be happy to do so if i if that works uh over the phone line here that's all i really need to say i think uh andrew and ken covered the architectural issues pretty well okay thank you okay so um all right this time then we will go to um looks like ellen abramson if you can uh please unmute and you have three minutes to address the planning commission yes hi thank you my name is ellen abramson i live at 3204 farnborough court i'm about a 10 minute walk from um the george and a long time resident so i well remember the little georgetown mall we had and all the wonderful amenities there so

091um i'm representing myself and neighbors i've spoken with just as the previous person who came up and spoke in person i um there's been a lot of excitement among the neighbors and a lot of patients over many many years to see some retail walkable retail installed there you know i have a friend who i thought we'll meet for coffee it's sort of midway between where we live uh my daughter was babysitting for children who are so excited of course these children have grown up now but you know oh there'll be a maybe there'd be a candy shop maybe there'd be an ice cream store this is all to say that the neighbors i think by and large would be very very disappointed if um the planning commission approves this proposal we've been patient we've had

092trust in the agreement and having that trust broken doesn't does not feel good i also agree perhaps there are ways to interest tenants i'm quite sure that there is a price point for rental uh fees that will uh bring interest in parties and um and i'm going to say that maybe there's some sort of compromise maybe retain some retail and make a few additional residential units perhaps there's room for compromise here i would still like to see some retail thank you thank you okay um okay um mr james damore you may un unmute and please uh three minutes to address the planet commission thanks matt can you hear me yes we got you good great uh uh thanks uh members of planning commission i thought i'd put my two cents in regarding on the george

093proposal um i've read a large number of the letters opposing this amendment change and i agree with them um as jeff mentioned this was once a major retailer servicing the neighborhood um look guys i really appreciate your efforts to increase the supply of housing through this and your various tc-1 efforts throughout the city however i really think throughout all of this you've been making changes to benefit the developer or in this case the current owners while asking enough in return you're not demanding enough in terms of affordable housing as nearby communities have done you haven't done enough to protect natural features when they're allowed to do so as other people have mentioned on this one the existing surrounding neighborhood residents were promised a vital new replacement for georgetown mall and while be sure the impact

094of the pandemic cannot be discounted this isn't a forever occurrence retail and shop space is important for residents and particularly new small businesses if antarctica is to densify and create viable transit oriented development along important travel nodes we really need to insist on the environment to create healthy communities by keeping a local shop option in place um perhaps in this situation a review of the current retail space is in order i think that's it um again i agree with others have said here let's work with the community and get something right here and act on behalf of the community thanks guys for considering my remarks thank you okay next up uh caller with the last three digits five three four um please unmute and you have three minutes to address the planning commission good evening

095this is tom stahlberg and i'm calling from lowertown in ann arbor lowertown being another location that lost its retail slightly different story over here i'm also a commercial landlord mixed-use landlord during the copa pandemic i gave my commercial tenants free rent for over two years so they could survive and come out and be able to open up again and thrive they are now open filling their place to full capacity and thriving and paying rent as a building owner as a business owner we have a risk return this is one of those times where there's some risk nobody foresaw covet it did a lot of damage i think in michigan a third of the dining and bar establishments closed that's based on a liquor license uh reporting number uh it's been tough and right now at

096the time the businesses that went out of business have reduced the competition for what could come in here if these units were reasonably reasonably priced competitively priced even priced at a loss they could get tennis in here now the competition is reduced because people were hurt by coving this neighborhood needs walkable retail just like my neighborhood needs walkable retail we were denied ours for very different set of circumstances and our developer even closed our local market to put in their sales office that was insult to injury for us i'm looking at other people experiencing the same thing on the other side of town as you know i'm a long time advocate of transit oriented development principles and i do not agree with some of the ways he's handled our current transit zoning issues including the

097mass resulting but packard is on the list of quarters to be rezoned you take out the commercial and then turn around in the very near future mastery zone this corridor to tc1 looking for mixed use you're kind of going backwards right now we're not going to hit our 820 goals if we don't have the mixed use part of mixed use the commercial retail part of mixed use if we end up with all residential or in the case of the lower town 99 and a half percent residential then we do not have the mixed use to create walkable neighborhoods and people will get in their cars and drive and people will own cars if we want to produce parking which it seems like we do we can't have people owning that many cars which they have

098to own if we don't have the mix the commercial part of the mixed use thank you if we're trying to look forward this is going backwards thank you okay um another caller um caller with the last three digits 194 and please unmute you have three minutes to address the planning commission you could i believe you're still muted call it the last there you go hello yes we can hear hello thank you this is rita mitchell calling and i'm um in in agreement with the prior speakers with my concern about actually driving out retail that's been planned for and counted on by people who agreed initially to have this additional housing i'm worried that this is a precedent setting kind of decision and i hope that you'll really really reconsider how it can be managed for

099this case and for future ones there is a development near on south main street near madison which has also no retail that was promised in its ground floor it's called the yard um and and what i'm worried about is that the expense of the the floor the ground level um businesses that that will be charged by the developers will drive out and and and we'll drive out what could be our potential local small businesses um i'm thinking forward to the tc1 plan for west stadium in north maple those businesses that are there are there because they can afford those rents if new development comes in and brings in an expensive floor plate like this one that our local businesses can't afford we will lose those unique elements of our community and i really want those

100to stay i mean i we really need them and and that is will it be contrary to the goal that has been stated for the tc1 and for this kind of of development so i'm asking you to reconsider this and to work with the developer because there's something else that has to be done and i really believe it's reduce the price of the floor plate and i would like to know how much outreach the developer did to seek tenants because it sounded rather passive um in terms of of how um there was there were no encounters it looks like that no one asked to be there but did he ask people to look at the space and talk about renovating or whatever the needs are to keep it that's a question i have but really

101if we're going to have the walkable communities we want we have to have the walkable services and ideally they will be supported by our small local businesses that's what we want i think thank you bye thank you okay um caller with the last three digits five four two um please unmute your phone and you have three minutes to address the planning commission call her with the last three digits of five four two if you can unmute your phone you have three minutes to address the planning commission um we may maybe we can skip one remember ahead we do have a one other we can come back to caller 542. if you want um pat lennon if you would uh like to unmute your phone you have three minutes to address the planning commission uh thank

102you can you all hear me okay yes we can great my name is pat lennon i'm an attorney with the hongman firm i'm here tonight on behalf of the applicant you probably heard mr gold introduced me i promise to only charge by the word so i'll be brief i i want to begin by thanking everyone for their thoughtful comments tonight uh you can tell everyone really cares about this property and the community uh at the same time i want to emphasize the fact that you know we're in the midst of a site plan approval application and as part of this application one thing is not in dispute and that is that the proposed site plan satisfies all the requirements of the ordinance uh you know this has been confirmed by city staff and it was

103tailored to comply with all the requirements the developers spent a lot of time uh prior to submitting the application to be sure that what they were putting together would fit within the framework of the ordinance so i'd ask you all to keep that in mind throughout the discussion tonight beyond that additional multi-family housing is is good for the site and good for the community there's a tremendous demand for more housing throughout the state and the and the community has a need for it in this case you have the unique opportunity to add more housing without adding new structures the structures are already there we'll just be populating the inside of them they've long been vacant and will certainly continue to be if this path isn't isn't taken again we've heard a lot tonight about trying

104to make retail work here nothing would make the developer happier or the petitioner happier than to make it work unfortunately it just hasn't but even if it did this site is still permitted to be used for multi-family purposes and in fact it's already primarily used for just that purpose so unfortunately as you might imagine our client you know can't be asked to sustain empty space particularly when there's a community for housing and particularly when there's a demand for it and an opportunity to establish it without establishing additional structures so we think that's a pretty unique opportunity and we hope the planning cons commission sees it that way as well you know for all of those reasons we we hope the planning commission approves the plan tonight because it does comply with the ordinance and it

105does serve an important community need thank you for your time and consideration thank you okay so um at this time let's go back to uh caller with the last three digits five four two um could you please unmute yourself and you have three minutes to address the planning commission mute through your phone star nine oh star nine sorry star nine if listening by phone that's oh yes we can hear you uh i really apologize i have to say that the system really gives conflicting information on whether or not you're doing star six or start nine but that said that's the problem for another day um i'm kate mccune and i live at 1912 anderson in the neighborhood and i would start by saying i completely agree with the previous speaker in that the issue before

106you seems like it's clear that the present owner is entitled to do this but what i would like to do is turn my question to the commission and to the city planning department to look at why these retail fails are happening over and over again and i wonder if um you know my background is in retail and i have consulted in retail for 30 years and i wonder if there's expertise on the commission around developing retail within multi-use i wonder if there is advice and uh in the planning department for working in concert with developers to understand what's in entails in maintaining retail and frequently small retail i got interested in this at 211 packard which i think is a great apartment building that is put in really unworkable retail that is bound to sales

107it's tiny and you just have to think like how does this stuff get passed so um i guess my my question in general is as a commission and as a planning department are you working at developing an expertise for ensuring this kind of thing will work because time and time again in the last 50 years in the us we know that if you build it they will come won't happen and so you know i guess i would just challenge you going forward to if there is that expertise let us know more about it and participate more in it and and again go back to in this case you know this is like locking the barn after the horse is gone um you know the work on this should have been done in the initial phases

108so um thank you for your time and i appreciate you hearing me thank you okay um caller with the last three digits zero zero zero please unmute your mic and address the planet commission three minutes or less hello this is kabitha lobo from 2642-h in the georgetown community and i'm also a small business owner in the community as well um and i'm calling because um i yeah want to kind of echo what many of the other speakers have said and really speaking to the promises that the developers of the george made in um in deciding to build this development and what i believe is a pretty disingenuous effort that they've made to actually secure retailers in that space um i want to point out in case the planning commission doesn't already know this that tenants

109you know people who rent at the george are required to show three and a half times income just to rent there which makes it fairly inaccessible to many people and um it sounds like it might not be surprising if they were expecting that of people in their retail space as well so i think if they as many have said made the retail space affordable and competitive they might not be in the issue that they're in so it feels like a pretty disingenuous effort on their part to do that and um as many have also stated you know looking at ann arbor's sustainability goals and also desiring walkability in our neighborhood i speak for that myself but also amongst the neighbors in this community would be a tremendous asset and something that was lost by this

110community so i really encourage the planning commission to take that into consideration in their decision thank you okay um it is uh sorry you've one more caller on the line um is it adam jeskevich um please unmute you have three minutes to address the planning commission hi uh my name is adam josekovic i live at 1430 las vegas drive in the fourth ward near the west stadium corridor although my my grandmother my late grandmother lived in pine valley apartments right near georgetown mall and i often went there as a kid i do believe that having walkable groceries and other basic daily needs is essential to the neighborhood and ann arbor's goals and our needs um as a community and also as a society and humanity however i understand the reality of this situation with this

111particular development i'm just sad and disappointed that the retail is not going to happen and i want to echo it was the caller right right before the the um one right before me um we need to figure out how we're going to solve these issues going forward with future developments and hopefully we can figure out why this this happens and fix it thank you okay um i see no more hands raised at this time okay thank you you'll you'll get your chance i'm going to read the proposed motion which is the anniversary planning commission here by approves the george site plan 2502 packard road for planning commission approval moved by commissioner sovay seconded by commissioner dish we are in discussion commissioner dish okay um we will call on you when we're ready yeah and you

112might want to stay standing um okay so this uh this this is a this is a a very complicated site the georgetown mall had been empty since so retail failed before this proposal came up and i'm not saying that it's impossible for retail to happen here but i want it to be clear that nothing was removed to create this project either in 2011 when the first efforts to develop it began or recently none the less walkable neighborhoods are critical to our carbon neutrality plan and our transit corridor zoning effort will not serve the purposes that we hope if we can't succeed in having mixed use in those projects and i understand that you are not currently on a transit corridor there's nothing that requires you to do any of this but in uh one of

113you i forget which one of you said we want retail to work it just hasn't and i feel an urgent need to ask you to help me understand why because we need to learn from your experience because we are going to move forward and we will need to succeed so i i i'm going to pose a series of questions and i would love you to answer as much as you can and i would urge you to make sure you can answer everything that i'm asking you now when you come before council so i'd like to know how the retail space was priced relative both to the surrounding neighborhood and relative to downtown i'd like to know if you reduced the price in order to try to attract retail and if you didn't why not are

114there constraints on you that make it difficult for you to reduce retail price um and i'd also like to hear a little bit about the configuration of the space as i look at what you're planning to do with the space i find it a little difficult to believe that there would ever have been a kroger grocery store in that space so it may in part you know we might be talking there may be a problem with configuration here i'd also like to um and i realize i'm asking a lot so if you forget them i can remind you or whatever uh and then just finally are do you have criteria that you in mind when you're entertaining types of retail so are there some kinds of retail that you feel mix badly with residents residences

115i believe is the what i meant there so things that create an odor that people might not want to live above and would make them not prefer your housing so um and then there's also the question whether and this is sort of the la the thing i'm least interested in but whether um retailers or their financial backers are worried about look at parking when they think about gee whether we're gonna give you a loan to start up there the reason why i'm less interested in that is because we are talking about walkability and density and so some of those models are antiquated and it's frustrating for us that we deal with financiers who have an antiquated model but so if you could start at the front end of my questions i'd appreciate it detailed question

116by just giving a little more background as to what somerset development does and what we are so good at and it is essentially everything that has been said by the community here we are if you look at what we've done our developments are transit oriented walkability new urbanist that is the core tendency of what we do i would love to stand here and tell you that i i could fill this space up with retail i'd love to do that to answer your first question i believe which was the the pricing i think that was the first question um we started somewhere between 20 to 25 triple net but at the same time i didn't go out to market at that i went up i told we hired uh collier's jim chaconis everyone here sees his

117signs everywhere i said go to market see i don't even go out with like we didn't go out with a price you know i told them what i wanted but we didn't go out with a price we said go out and see what's out there i got nothing i got no phone calls i got no tours but you know i'd also like to address the um i bought this we bought this building in june so whatever was agreed upon some agreement you know i'm not privy to that i have no i'm sorry if there was something done but you know i just like to throw out that i'm not going back on anything we i previously said because i didn't own the building until june um june of this year so we had started showing

118the building when we were in when we went to contract in december i had no bites no nothing uh the previous developer you know wasn't wasn't particularly active so i can't speak to what he was what he was doing or what price he was at i can only tell you what what i get i will tell you that to me the first time that i looked at this building which was in october of 2022 of 2021 i immediately said retail will never work here and that is because of the configuration of the building um it's set down below the road so there's i think about a six or eight foot retaining wall so the visibility is poor you have to drive in under the building to get to the retail area which is very confusing

119no one really knows how to get in there there's no there's there's no signage there's nowhere to put like if i came here for a signage package i would need a variance because i need to go on top of the building it the who this building was not designed right in order to get both the retail to work here um i'd love to put a kroger's here but kroger's needs 25 000 square feet contiguous i've got a 10 000 square foot block an 1100 square foot block an 1100 square foot block and a 10 000 square foot block with poor visibility and poor directions it's i want nothing more than the retail to work it it just hasn't so and again it's not because of pricing it's not because of uh poor visit it's not

120because of poor traffic it's just it's visibility layout and the general market right yeah i mean i i found out about this property in october if you're telling me that it was had issues back to 2009 nothing that we here sitting can do to fix there's not much we can do to fix it there's there's a market and there's supply and demand so i'm sorry what was your what was your next question um no you you actually covered it because i asked you if you reduced the price but since you didn't have that yeah i reduced it to zero i said go out to the market and find out we'll find out so what does i guess i could say what does go out to the market sorry so i hire a broker he and

121he has connections i mean i'm the guy that sits behind the desk and stands in front of community boards i don't i don't go out knocking on doors i i hire a broker to do that that's what colliers does okay oh right okay i'm sorry yeah yeah good oh the the parking question um parking uh i would say is not really i'd say signage is most important to a retailer and to put this in perspective we might somerset development redeveloped the old bell labs in new jersey which is a two million square foot redevelopment we've got 150 000 square feet of retail it's doing great right we we to the caller that that called and says the old buildings we gave free rent during covid during during the worst of it we didn't we didn't

122collect a penny we didn't ask for a penny we let them survive we know we need retail to create better space i'd love retail because then i could drive my rents on my apartments that that's what work i want to create a better community it i'd love to put it there it just it hasn't worked i'm good commissioner weich all right uh you can stay because i have questions uh i'll start with um staff uh question because i like the rest of the commission we received i don't know 35 maybe more communications i had an additional 25 conversations with residents either adjacent to the property or in the neighborhood and i emailed mr khan to try to ascertain some information so one mr khan can you just uh just for this part of the conversation

123clarify uh that about in a development agreement that between the city and or planning commission and any of the developers or owners of the property starting with packard place i think is what it was called was there an agreement in order to make the development to have retail be attached to it happy to answer that um the short answer is no the longer answer is that packard square did have a development agreement associated with it it was a pretty straightforward development agreement addressing things like some off-site improvements like water mains and sanitary sewers that are off-site as well as park dedication issues and that sort of thing but there was no reference in the development agreement to any commitment um to provide a certain amount of retail space so then i asked you why uh

124are res why did residents believe there was a development agreement and so in your experience working with this development was there anything that would communicate because as we received these comments and as i talked to folks the thing that kept coming up was they agreed to do retail you shouldn't change it we i actually thought it was a pud at first and that it was a part of the pud and then i asked about that and was told there was no pud and this is a by right because it's in c1b which is already a mixed use it's under the floor area ratio and so again i was just confused as to why there was all of this energy and there was a lot of energy around this and it wasn't until you clarified uh

125that people were like oh i thought there was an agreement oh i thought there was a pud and then that changed so did you have any insight or can you share with us i i can say the city does not enter into agreements like that to um guarantee uh for a a by right project like like this a certain amount of retail space so so whatever agreement folks are talking about it's not an agreement that the city signed on to i i can't speak to a previous developer or the previous developer on what they may have or may not have said in in meetings with neighbors um all i can say is i'm not aware of any such agreement either an agreement that was um signed by the city or an agreement signed by the

126property owner okay so then um so like the callers like the speakers and house i want walkable neighborhoods as well i would love to have retail a pharmacy uh all of those things activated just the other day i woke up we were out of eggs we're close to a bushes but it's like just less than a mile and i have to drive because there's no way to get out of my neighborhood to the bushes in a convenient way and i was like ah if we had a neighborhood grocery store i could walk down and just get my two eggs finish my breakfast and then go on with my day so so that is a real felt need and i would love to see that kind of development happen and but the thing that is striking

127to me is this is already zoned for that this is already a mixed use zone and so if the developer is correct that the building was poorly designed which is making it hard to activate the retail is it correct that there's nothing planning can do to force the developer to put in retail here there's there's nothing that that my department can do um there are certainly comprehensive plan documents that that speak to the desire for walkable neighborhoods and mixed uses but that's different than code when we review site plans um for for projects like this that that are not requesting a rezoning we focus on what code says and all the reviewers are focused on the standards and i can say um this evening that the petitioner has met all of the city standards okay

128so uh now to the petitioner um how are you planning to mitigate the 10 000 square feet that's over the brownfield that you're dealing with the the vapor that's there because when i looked at the staff report there's a section of one of the retail spaces where the contempt the brownfield or the contaminant is acutely but you're still planning to put residential on there so could you just speak to how you're planning to mitigate that it's interesting to bring that up because the reason that i even have to go under there right now is because the building was built so poorly because they didn't run the plumbing before they did that so even if i were even if retail were going to go in that space you'd still have to run plumbing and you'd still

129have to to penetrate the vapor barrier having said that um i have um adam richards on on the line from epro who is he's the rep for the geoseal um uh vapor barrier uh that can speak to exactly what goes on in that video but by phone i don't see anything okay while we while we get him if if he's not i mean i see somebody raising it isn't that nine three seven that's the one i'm hoping okay so would is that okay well okay so i think um you should be able to there you go you should be able to speak now you can hear me now yes yep okay yeah my name is adam richardson with epro we uh manufacture the geosteel vapor intrusion barrier system um for you know redevelopment of contaminated

130sites so as you can imagine we deal with um you know tenant build change of uses you know we deal with this quite a bit and our policy doing maintaining the integrity of the system is to you know have a certified installer make the repairs we have details um if the barrier is damaged how to make those repairs uh so the certified installer will come in and make you know essentially ensure that that barrier sealed and all the pathways where you know the contaminants in the subsurface are mitigated from entering the building um this building is the the application of this barrier is unique the original consultant designed it with 18 inches below the slab uh so there's you know uh that'll be dealt with uh you know from the design of the utilities um

131obviously we have specifications protocols on how to properly uh work around our barrier and then uh you know ensure it's properly repaired so that's you know this is we deal with it's on a i wouldn't say daily basis but as you can imagine this this occurs especially with uh retail or you know old buildings that are being uh renovated for reuse that answered your question yeah thank you uh can i ask two more questions sure okay so again in my conversations with residents or adjacent residents one of the things that came up and i also emailed mr khan about it as well was the repair of paige street which is behind the development uh that goes from there's entrance behind the development on page that then goes to king george and it was damaged during

132the original construction and the neighbors have written in as well as to you they've indicated asking if you'd be willing to repair that mr khan indicated that there had been no conversations between staff and you about repairing that street and the street is not scheduled for repair until 2027 so one of the things i wanted to just bring to you from some of the folks that i talked to for the neighbors that are around was it would go a long way if paige got redeveloped uh during this conversion to retail and then uh the other thing uh that came up was um the again and i am a broken record because i bike in the city and every day someone tries to kill me with their car when i'm on my bike and it's not

133a pleasant experience and so the activation of the bike lane and the sidewalks on packard need some attention because people whip in and out of the development which can create a potential harm which you just sat through the conversation we had with the previous developer about that on stadium so i just want to give those two things to you or actually it's three the sidewalk the bike lane on packard and then paige being redeveloped from the back of the development to king george as something that i've heard from neighbors around this development first i'm hearing that so i i i can't really give you an answer on the spot i'm trying i'm going to pull up exactly to see where you're you're talking about i'm i'm done okay um and then what what specifically are

134you asking about the bike would you want re-striped or i'm not really sure what you're what you're asking well it so i'm not a traffic engineer all i know is uh cars are dangerous and uh if i collide with a car i'm gonna die and i wear a helmet but it's you know above like 25 30 degrees there's a nurse practitioner in the room she can tell me whether i'm right or wrong a speed with a collision i'm not going to make it so things that calm the exit and entrance of the development onto packard as it intersects with the sidewalk that's there as well as the bike lane that's there is something that that i've heard from a number of neighbors that i've um talked with and i was planning to bike it today

135just to take a look at it myself but i i didn't have a chance to to go buy it today so that could just be something that you could talk with staff about or with engineering uh to see if there are any things that can be done to create a little bit more uh safety for bikers that have to cross the entrance in the exit of the development um sure jeff call me whenever you want will do commissioner lee thank you um so i grapple a lot in my professional life with retail office leasing etc um just as a point of clarification on co-star you're listed at 28 triple net so yeah i don't i told that's news to me i don't i don't check regularly so okay gotcha you do have a price out

136there okay um okay just wanted to say um could you just clarify what triple net means please yes triple that would mean that the um the reach of the tenant would be reimbursing for all common area maintenance property taxes and insurance on top of the listed rates so okay given that they just bought this i'm guessing taxes uncapped you guys are probably looking at 10 12 maybe 13 a square foot on top so i'm guessing that the total occupancy cost of the tenant looking to locate there they're probably looking to pay about forty dollars a square foot i i don't i don't agree with that number really the only thing would be taxes it's all there's really no common area maintenance because of where it is in the building there's no additional charge to them

137so it would really just be the taxes so you're probably like five bucks a foot what are your nets i guess that's my question um what do you mean what are your triple nets so you don't have like snow plowing that they're like allocated to it demands keeping to minimus yeah no i i could i don't have them available right now so oh okay gosh i need to get them for you sure yeah taxes are probably gonna be at five six bucks yeah and i'm not just looking to have objective facts you guys are listed at 28 triple net nets are where you are looking to pass through operating expenses i think somebody asked why does retail fail i think a lot of what you said is true um the visibility the ground level activation

138of something being depressed into the ground right so a good example might be liberty plaza the part that we've all struggled with on division right when you have great separation and it's it's underneath it's it's a little more less desirable um and i think retail is difficult because fundamentally it's changed in 2000 to 2010s um amazon to live um traditional middle of retail kind of failed you had a bifurcation right you had flight to quality you you you have deep experiential retail so somebody asked hey what how can we have retail succeed i mean it's going to be about your sales we generally track occupancy and health ratios so basically say what are your sales relative to your overall occupancy cost so like a healthy group is going to have like a five to eight

139percent you know health ratio and that's what you want to target um relative to overall sales now i would say the ti costs sound pretty tremendous if you have that vapor thing that you gotta worry about so that that's you know and at the end of the day my question at the very end of this is are you willing to compromise at all given the community feedback you've gotten so that's going to be my ask for you but i'm going to go kind of talk a little bit more about the general market as we're seeing right now um i would say that uh we've had and i'm just gonna talk facts um over the last i just checked i have won retail uh downtown i've gotten 19 inquiries in the last since may 4th i

140have coffee 1500 square feet korean corn dogs chicken wings steakhouse coffee i had a marijuana consumption lounge that inquired vegan italian medical office yemeni coffee japanese restaurant i'm just simply saying this is what i've seen as far as my marketing in downtown retail so it's it's on state and packard so it's maybe about you know a mile and a half from the george's location um all of that said um retail is tough you're right place making access visibility and making sure that people go through the space and i think fundamentally pure retail has changed right we've early in my career with stabilizing shopping centers that were basically struggling from losing pure retail tenants and it all went to basically service oriented quasi-retail so pediatric yoga essentially like anything that has to do with you know

141physical therapy things that you just can't buy on amazon essentially so so now we're in this era of hey why do people still go to coffee shops right it's that stochastic alert of maybe i'll run into somebody that i don't know like why don't we go into the office and so it's that kind of randomness uh that that allure that possibility and it's that meaningful place making where people might have a chance to build the relationship that keeps people going to retail uh it's it's the experiential component to it so you you have this again bifurcation of high-end retail and then you kind of have this discount whether you're going to you know an outlet mall to go discount shopping i mean finding a deal is awesome right so between those two things retail is

142tough look no further than hoover and green you know they're listed at 27 triple net so and they're close to the stadium but they don't have very good traffic or thoroughfare and angela's great signature is awesome at what they do so is jim i think colliers is great as well so it's so i just wanted to basically you know all of this is to say you know what makes good retail um we grapple with that often because i think 20 minute neighborhoods are important we want to encourage people to have access to food we want to make sure that they don't have you know food deserts and so really the kind of question is i mean have you tried thinking about percentage rent scenarios where you're saying hey instead of you know paying me a

143flat base rent with nets recoveries can i can you just report sales every month and pay me you know eight twelve percent of your gross sales and so we'll share the risk so looking at those kinds of arrangements again the ti cost i i don't know what that you know brownfield vapor mitigation is going to cost especially with the trades where they are right now but with respect to um you know i guess you've you've heard the community great great attorneys too i mean we use hongman too i mean you know i guess the ask is would you be willing to compromise given how much you've heard from our community and and consider at the very least creating a few 1200 square footers that you would dedicate and then you basically either have to say

144i'm creating you know centralized mass or it's a loss leader in my performer right it's like you have to choose and so the question is would you be willing to compromise i mean you guys just closed on us you you have a target performer 270 a foot i mean you know at an eight and a half cap rate you're probably going to have to secure at least 22 triple n i get it i understand why you have certain pressures on your end would you be willing to compromise to at least put you know three 1200 square footers that could be on a percentage rent basis to say you know we'll work with local operators to try and create meaningful place making uh you're right kroger's probably not going to go there yes you look at

145lucky's um and the loss of certain retail around that neighborhood i think it would go a tremendously long way you guys are experts at place making so trying to be creative with leveraging local talent because they do exist i'm telling you they they exist so that would be my ask is would you be willing to at least compromise to retain some to try and create it doesn't have to be 23 500 square feet okay like that's not the ass it's could we have some neighborhood amenities that are considered to be loss leaders that you might find actually turn out to be pretty profitable because you've leveraged local talent so i actually met with the broker on site today to talk about that very thing um because i'd love to put a coffee shop here if

146you're getting interest in in a coffee shop in your location send me an email like let's talk i'd love to put a coffee shop i actually i don't think i'm allowed to talk to petitioners outside the room i um the big thing he actually told me was that a lot of these coffee shops around here um or at least what what the ones that he's been dealing with they can't find the the workers to actually work the space so that even if someone were to even if you know i'm just going to say zingerman's just because i know they're like if they if they were going to say hey we want to put a coffee shop right well they'd have to find someone to be the manager and and they're having a hard enough time

147filling their own spaces let alone what's currently out there so um with respect to the percentage rent yeah i mean we've done that it it was successful in new jersey like it makes sense but that's really almost always almost after the ti is already done so you know what you're getting to it's a little bit different um to answer the cr the core of your question about uh compromising um if if i could walk out of here tonight with an approval i would be happy to to leave the two spaces at the front can can i andrew east on can you put the key plan back up can he get back in he should be able to yeah yeah he should be able to he's still he's still on andrew weissman he's still online if

148he's listening who knows there we go there we go here i'm just trying to share it yeah yeah no problem i don't have an option to share oh here we go let me maybe i'm going to give you permission again let's see no no i'm good you should see it there you go there we go yep so if you go to the floor plans this this that you see the large block and the smaller block so there's there's two of each this is just the lower the southern portion yeah so i there's there's a couple reasons why i'd be okay with what we'd be okay with keep would put no go back to the floor plan please the smaller block because there's two of them yeah they're about 1200 square feet each so i think

149the tote i think the number was 22 64. you know so you have two 1100 1200 square foot spaces which i'd love to put a coffee shop or convenience store or any of these things and the reason why i'd like to put it there is in large part because of the visibility from the street and the ability to put signage because it's furthest back so you have the most time seeing it when you drive by and it's got the easiest place to put signage because i don't need to put it at the front i can have it you more time to see it and not only that the parking is set up perfectly if if i i've heard we've heard the community loud and clear again i'd love to put it here place making walkability

150this is this is what we do as developers i i encourage you to look at what we've done in new jersey and the type of product that we do um so if if that gave me the ability to walk out of here with an approval to to say yes i will keep these two spaces as retail i we would we will sign up for that to right now okay gotcha what i could ask for um thank you that's it thank you as far as uh yeah question phil thanks uh okay here we go down the line commissioner mills you could have started the other side of the line um i have so thank you in terms of the question that we got about expertise about retail it is really nice to have your expertise commissioner

151lee um bringing the numbers and explaining triple net to those of us who don't know that um i that sounds great to me because i share everything that was said about the importance of walkable neighborhoods you do too people like to have coffee shops right who knows what that'll transform to the other thing that really just strikes me about this is that this floor plate is done in such a way that it is able to accommodate different kinds of uses like and that's why when we're thinking about rezoning for other places like thinking about how to make that first floor flexible but we regularly hear this about not wanting to tie people we don't empty space is awful for lots of things the question i so there's one for you uh oh actually i think

152both of these are staff questions so one is about the trash enclosure and i just noted that you're moving it from close to your building to close to the property line and so i'm curious about um what regulations exist on that and any screening staff that is required for that for the trash enclosure because this comes up sometimes just there we go um you were asking about the uh screening enclosure of the um of the solid waste area yeah if there's like any any other you know vegetation that because that right now that property line is not green um right but i would note that on google street view at least it's the doors are closed like it's a nice looking trash enclosure but it's just um there is a conflicting lattice buffer that's required

153on the south side of the site or on the right side of the screen uh because we have residential zoning to the south however the north zoning zoning to the north of the site is some commercial and so no uh conflicting land use buffer is required so the developer is meeting code requirements to provide us a screen and it you know intends to keep the dumpsters within the within the screened area okay just wanted to verify that thank you the other question that i had is what the trigger for review was here because um is it that is it the addition of floor area that we then had to do is it because of parking associated with it and i'm curious about how future changes to parking requirements might change the trigger whether we're discussing

154this at all so if you could just answer why it is that this is before us right that was um a call made by the city's planning manager brett leonard who felt that the additional units warranted up a planning commission review if i if i could just add to that it was in our most recent code changes as obviously as you know we made significant changes um one of the categories in there is addition of units without um expansion of florida i forget the um exact terminology but so this was it's no question it was required in the table and the reason why that was it's if we have any additional again it would only go to planning commission obviously um so but i remember part of our discussion back in the history of that

155was because of the parking requirements because a site like this again so it was we we recognized we had pulled it back uh some levels of review needed but because we had parking requirements well we do still have parking requirements right now um that was the trigger and that's why this is going before you as a as for planet commission it's only because of the additional units even though they're not expanding it so it is a pretty clear um line item within the site plan review requirements chart now that is something that we've discussed i just discussed with mr leonard last week actually about now that things are are changing in the city regarding parking requirements that may be something because without that again you're looking at a use here that's allowed they could have

156built an entirely residential project and to start with their entire so so there's not there's not a lot of value added through this process necessarily um so that's kind of a long-winded answer to your question and do you have thank you for that and thank you for like thinking about what this means if it's not triggering different you know multipliers in the parking table um because i also agree that in terms of adding new witness with minimal visual impact this is super again taking vacant space and making it occupied is a great thing in my mind um do you remember six months ago before i made those changes if this would have gone all the way up to council it it would it you don't know it's okay i don't remember if it would go

157all the way to council but i know it would have still triggered at least planning commission action i know that okay but i i i can't recall off hand whether or not wait it would go all the way to that's okay well and the fact that they are adding floor area i assume may have even in this situation may cause a different trigger too okay that i think that answers my um the answer to my questions and i would be in order to uh make the changes that commissioner lee suggested that the petitioner seems very willing to make um what would you recommend in terms of amendments to the motion or yeah well i'm not sure again because you're not necessarily requiring it so i'm not sure how to add something into the motion that

158we don't have a trigger in a certain like i don't i don't know how to catch we're just we're you're asking him to look in to this but i don't know how to really add that into the motion that like guaranteeing that he looks into it i guess you know what i'm trying to say there's nothing that and and you could also it he can and again i know we want the assurance that he's going to look into it kind of but it nothing precludes even if he got approval for what exactly he was asking tonight nothing precludes him from pursuing that path i mean he he could change you know tomorrow some big retailer comes in and if he's agreeable they could he could this face with retail so it doesn't necessarily preclude him

159going forward with that because the parking numbers would still work so you know there'd be no change in floor area if he decided to fill out that additional space with um retail rather than residential but i'm not sure i guess i would need something more specific to kind of link it into emotion just you just want to say that he works with explores that as an option but sorry i and maybe i misunderstood or there is misspeaking on either side i understood it as the petitioner is willing to not convert those two units and so yeah yeah it would be creating slightly fewer oh then i'm sorry so you're saying with the re so these two units excluding those two units from this so then that would require if you were to come back into

160the future to add additional units it may trigger you better it may take coming back to us okay so i think if um we could add that in there i think we would need the uh you know kind of square footage or some identifying nature like what units what sweets that would remain commercial use okay sorry sorry um if i could if i could interject yes in general it might be beneficial to provide the petitioner an opportunity to be explicit with regard to what he's actually offering yeah well can we just i'm i'm willing to to have there's there's four units that i'm there's four blocks of space that i'm looking to convert to residential units i'm willing to have the two smallest spaces which are closest which are furthest from packard remain retail okay

161and and i i i know the number is 2264. that's the number my architect gave me but at the same time are we amenable to making that just a condition while we work out the the total because i don't want to come back and say oh it was 2265 when we really measured it yes all right go ahead you're good um my i guess my concern would be actually i mean like i think it's a good faith gesture my concern is i mean all it makes sense to obviously dedicate end caps but one of the most critical variables to retail success is actually clustering as well so just dedicating you know a very tiny sliver i get a little bit of hesitancy i mean it seems the clustering is just important when you're able to

162daisy chain like trips and say like i'm gonna visit this store i'm gonna go check out this one so um that's my only like point of hesitation don't get me wrong i mean i think it's still a good gesture um i i guess from my standpoint where we were going was probably an approval with the condition that you know within a certain you know time frame that's reasonable that you would not be look i mean because it should have a sunset what we're not looking to do is to have an economic deprivation of like we don't want you to hold taken space forever like that's not that's not the intent we want to see meaningful activation and i think the community during the community input process when this and by no fault of yours right

163it's your predecessor during those community meetings even if it wasn't codified in a development agreement my guess is that there were discussions real substantive discussions that led people to believe that there was going to be retail here so i i think that's probably where the genesis of a lot of this kind of discord and this grunt told me uh with the general public is on this approach my concern about just limiting end caps is that we don't necessarily have any kind of meaningful clustering or concentration um and so it would be service only and i think that's you know it's better than nothing i'll tell you that so you know i'm of the mindset that uh you know a condition an approval with a condition of like a sunset clause of i don't know 18

164months or something like that of devotion of this particular spaces you know is denoted on exhibit a1 or something like that the geographically basically located on your floor plan would be dedicated as a retail um using commercially reasonable efforts to you know lease up so it's something along those lines i i don't know the right answer um but i think where we were going with it was an approval with a condition in that respect i'm not sure that we can set a time limit on a condition we've not we've never done that before i i don't think we can do that within the codes saying like after six months the condition goes away it has to have a or it can be in perfect territory i'm fine within perpetuity right i'm fine like it it'll

165make if i i i'm fine with that i'm fine with going and saying this is approved this has to stay retail i'm fine with that okay um so it would be a condition yeah i suppose an approval with a condition i um mainly i'm looking to try to echo the sentiments of the folks that gave their feedback during the public feedback process when this was being developed and felt that you know what they said wasn't realized so that's it for me okay we had before commissioner hammerschmidt commissioner sovay and then i saw commissioner dish is something like immediately on this piggyback that makes more sense i think i was going to say something that you realized during that last explanation unless there was something else just to correct to make sure that we're clear in

166the record we get final thank you for i was going to deeply apologize that i can't even remember that on my own things i was excited about um i just wanted to ask mr kahan if he wanted to also we've gotten really excellent advice from mr kowalski i wondered if mr kahan also had um anything that he wanted to say about this kind of you know i'm always a little nervous when we amend things at the table i always think it's good that we respond and we rethink but sometimes we you know you guys spend a long time thinking things through and maybe there's something we're not seeing so i invite thank you um what i what i would add to the conversation is that the developer from what i heard is offering to convert

167the four westernmost dwelling units that are proposed to be residential to retail uses so that would um mean that the 38 dwelling units on both ends would remain and if um if the planet commission is comfortable amending the motion you could amend it to say something like subject to converting the four westernmost dwelling units to retail uses resulting in a total of 38 dwelling units being approved or something along those lines and i just want to clarify is the are are is he correct that it's the westernmost units um let me think about it on a map yeah yeah yes packers are a little out of an angle there but it's mostly west yep okay the two furthest into the building is probably the another good way of looking at it okay commissioner white i'm

168just moving forward oh you're okay well look let's well i don't think we've had a formal no motion yet i just want to make sure before we do that there were some other folks that had things to say to commissioner sobei anything that you wanted to add to that yeah did you find them wait this says there's only 2 400 square feet available and then our staff report says it's like 23 or 2 400 square feet i mean i guess i'm just i'm not convinced that enough effort has been made i i again i i hire a broker and and i don't check the listing so i i can't speak to what's what's there right but it's just hard for us to to sort of like suss out whether or not i don't know like

169enough is really being done or these these are the right i don't know that's just it's concerning to me that i'm trying to figure out like where this space is i'm not even seeing those other 20 000 square feet is like available i mean i i met with my broker in that space today so i i i can't answer why he doesn't have that listing upright if you're if or if it's somewhere else i i don't i don't yeah i mean this is tricky like i i but i can see both sides of this you know like we don't want this space to just that they're empty we need housing right but i don't know it doesn't appear to me and i don't know commissioner if you want to chime in on this just like

170by just a quick like search and you know you just said you're getting tons of inquiries for a property that you're trying to lease like something just doesn't downtown that's very yeah that's very different yeah and let me als let's um the what i do see listed are two spaces that are at 1200 square feet or 12 19. so it does not look like the 10 000 square foot blocks are being marketed which would indicate that there isn't a commercially reasonable effort being made to market those spaces would that be an accurate statement no i i i don't agree with that if if my broker doesn't have it upright the leasing agreement that i have with him says to lease 24 000 score for 23 685 square feet so i i i don't agree with

171that at all if there's an error made by being made by my broker i will happily call my broker and tell him to get those things up there sure but i'm telling you that my leasing agreement is for 23 600 whatever that number is so but if nobody knows that those bases are available to lease then nobody's contacting that's i mean i don't know that that's why you're not getting inquiries about it but i i i respectfully disagree i think if someone wanted that space and jim chaconis is as big a name out here as anybody that the market knows so okay i just want to point that out that like i tried to find this and it's not there that's all i'll say for now commissioner i guess we'll kind of add like i've

172talked to clients who look at this space and walked away like so they're they're looking there and it just doesn't work for everything that's pointed so there has been effort for i've talked to people under all the ownership so maybe not you because it's so new but that's my take the question of why retail doesn't work because every project that we ask for we ask for everything in one project we don't have site plan light and we have resistance to incremental commercial near neighborhoods that should be walkable because people are concerned about people parking in front of their house on public streets that people have claimed to be their own parking this is the kind of issue about why neighborhoods don't become mixed use is because there's resistance to incremental growth and we think that

173brand new expensive development with all of the burdens we ask of them have to carry all that load carry all that expense hit all of these market rates and then we wonder why it doesn't happen we don't have slate plan light so that's that's why we have these new developments that don't work like old developments do in an incremental way this is a buy right project like we have this weird gap right now with parking and everything i don't see the conversation in the hoops that we're going through right now i want to be able to enable things to happen in the space and i've looked at a restaurant i've looked at a yoga-ish space for this thing and they all said they would pay premium somewhere else the amount of ti work that needs

174to happen tenant improvement allowance so what the tenant needs to put into the space what the landlord can afford to put in the space and the rent and then how long it takes to succeed and have a profit margin on that those are just very big hurdles in this space and it's a silo and doing 2 000 square feet of it makes it harder in the cluster part it's got to be a cluster of a neighborhood not a cluster and a corner of one development so i think that's less successful it's like an argument to like us picking where this is going to be successful within this one building so i wouldn't support emotion i support this as proposed i've talked you know i do a ton of commercial small business renovation stuff and i

175think right now we actually just have an issue with our ordinance to allow these small changes to happen and i don't really want to talk about it anymore that perspective was incredibly helpful no i'm serious like i think i think yeah i kind of wish we would have honestly like i didn't mean to make you feel like i was attacking you either like i just i just wanted you to see what i'm seeing but that that was a really helpful perspective so i appreciate you sharing it so where are we here folks i don't have a lot to add and i don't take up a lot of time i'll just say i think the primary reason why this conversation has been frustrating is that the misinformation that this was a pud and there are like

176informed members of our community who have a history on planning commission who have written blog posts about this as as it was a pa about how it was a pud and why people are bad because they're inflexible so i just want to be very clear to anyone who's listening out there there was never agreement with the developer as far as we understand this was not a pud this is a this is a development that meets the ordinance according to the zoning that it is and so i'm not it's confusing to me that we're yeah that we are kind of wringing our hands over this i also say i also lament the fact that there is not retail in this neighborhood and that there is not more mixed use and that's something that i think this

177commission is committed to working on but i don't think it has it's going to happen in this project commissioner dish i think this has been a really actually helpful discussion and i think that when we agreed as i forgot that not everything will go to council this is the kind of thing that we will need to talk about here because we need to hear we need to hear confusion we need to clarify confusion we need to try to avoid creating more confusion but this will be part of our job and to do the kind of work that commissioner weich did in the neighborhood was enormously helpful um because because the fact one of the things that residents said when we were going to make that change where by right side approvals wouldn't go to council

178anymore even if this one really would never have gone to council they were concerned that they would lose the place to be heard and be responded to and i didn't think they would and we have shown that they won't because we deliberated the issues that were raised and so where we are right now is we have the motion we have a potential amendment to the motion which some of us feel might be a good thing and others of us have suggested might just be a symbolic thing that doesn't doesn't get what people really want in this neighborhood which is services within walking distance and so i think that we should propose the motion the amendment that and then vote yes or no on it i mean i don't know if this is how to do

179it commissioner mills is nodding her head and she's used to doing this so i think we should propose the motion because we discussed it and mr khan gave us language i mean the amendment and then either we um we approve the motion as amended or we approve the motion as it was presented earlier yeah we vote on it yeah yeah i'm sorry oh i didn't mean that i didn't mean to prove it yeah vote vote yeah no there's only one way to vote okay the original motion are you talking about the amendment to the motion what we do on council is we read the amendment and then we either vote it up or down and then you read the whole notion either as it was okay got it or as amended because we we did

180vote okay so the amendment then would be um that they'd be offering to convert the four western most dwelling units to retail use 38 units would remain um yeah that's it yeah that's it so we'll move by moved by commissioner and seconded by commissioner dish so we will have a oh yes so further discussion on this or do we all kind of know where we are commissioner mills i do have a question for staff if we to be clear if we were to approve the new amendment tonight they would if they wanted to convert those four westernmost units to retail they would have to come back to us through the same process if we were to approve the site plan that we see tonight with the 42 dwelling units on it if they choose not

181to do they have to build out all 42 units they or can they they can just keep the 38. i want to make sure that like we're understand like i understand this yes and i'll confirm mr khan are you still listening yep he's still there that's correct yes that is correct sorry to confirm with jeff as well they can't they can't add units right now they couldn't add them without our approval but they don't have to build them they can just keep it as it is correct they don't have to build the entire thing as shown right what i'm hearing is they wouldn't have to build the entire thing as shown they would have to change some things they would have to add presumably the bicycle parking because that's one of the things that doesn't

182currently meet our standard they would want to move their trash so it's not outside people's front doors but they don't have to build them all in that case again to allow for the flexibility that this zoning district allows for even though i strongly support the idea of neighborhood residential i think it provides the most flexibility to approve this neighborhood commercial thank you very much um i think it makes sense to approve this to allow for that maximum flexibility and hope that there's a lot more effort put into the kind of innovative not 28 triple net but figuring out like an alternate arrangement to get that coffee shop there is what that's how i i will be voting down the amendment because i think that voting it down allows for the maximum flexibility any other discussion

183i see you talking over there so there's discussions which i'm happy to do with the second degrees and then we'll go back to the emotional okay so you're withdrawing the amendment okay okay the table is good to give the flexibility i just wanted i mean yeah if we have the agreement what the motion does is put it in writing if we're saying the thing we really want is the most flexibility then we should take that out so that we provide the most flexibility so oh i'm sorry thank you i'm done talking the public did i apologize all righty so withdrawn then so now now we are back to our the original motion shall i read it again or are we good okay all right let's have a real call about that okay we're all set

184we're all set okay okay um commissioner mills yes commissioner gabrandal yes commissioner sovay yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammersmith yes uh commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yes and commissioner white yes okay uh motion passes thank you very much thank you thank you all righty um i would like to have us take a 10 minute break so um let's come back in 10 minutes folks people in the room can see okay all righty sorry about that we are back in session to move on to item 8c um which is 1301 morningside drive um this is item number 22-1332 a special exemption used for city planning commission approval request for a child care center for up to 40 children to 10 gear givers in the existing building with a site plan to show existing staff and conditions

185staff recommendation is approval with conditions so i think we are up then for the petitioner presentation ten minutes uh we can hear you go ahead okay good thank thanks hello my name is dave uh last name is g uh with me are my my partners uh my wife pam and erica harwood um and we are applying for a special exemption used for our facility at 1301 morningside i don't have any uh any slides uh like a previous presenter did but i think you have a few notes based mostly on the uh comments that came in in written form and i just highlighted a few things uh around the questions and the concerns that were raised the first thing i'd like to highlight is the number of children and the number of staff um we put

186uh 40 children out there based on the square footage of the building and the licensing requirements for for children at 35 square feet per child um we don't know exactly what licensing is going to approve for us um it's kind of a chicken and egg thing we have to get yep mr gee you are breaking up on us come on mr ghee mr ghee we just lost about 30 seconds of of what you said you you your connection isn't very strong you were talking about a chicken and an egg thing yes so what i was saying is that um we don't know exactly how many children will be licensed for until the state gives us a license the number 40 is an estimate based on square footage but that's not the official number the official

187number comes from licensing and regulatory affairs um we expect that that it will probably be lower than that and we also want to mention that the ratio for older children that the four to one ratio is based on the youngest child the youngest age group um the ratio for older children is eight to one obviously we're not going to have all babies obviously we're not going to have all preschoolers so the actual number of caregivers is going to be something uh probably also lower than 10. so the the numbers um are our estimates and uh we're putting those out there mostly to have some numbers to work with the second point i wanted to make is about drop off and pick up unlike elementary schools or middle schools so uh forza and wines are close

188by to this this address unlike those those schools there is not a designated start time or designated in time for daycare parents bring their children when their schedules dictate that they bring them and what we have found in our current location is that that often pick up time is spread out over several hours that there is not a rush of traffic at a particular time a few here a few there and so it doesn't happen at all at once and likewise with pickup that there's only uh people coming when their schedules dictate that they come and so there is not a big rush of traffic at any particular point in the day another point that i wanted to make is about the number of cars so we have experienced in our current location that the

189number of cars that business places is smaller than the number of children and there are two reasons for this the first is that we have some groups and we expect that there will be sibling groups at our new location as well and so obviously a ceiling group all comes in the same car um and so that reduces the number of cars the other thing is that one of the one of the really great things about this neighborhood and about the neighborhood we're currently in on patricia is that it's very walkable and we do have families that walk to drop their children off as a matter of fact when we had our public meeting back in june there were two people who came to the public meeting specifically because they live in the neighborhood and were

190interested in care for their children so we know that there is interest for uh walkable child care um there was a discussion last week at the uh variance uh board about uh about parking and one of the things that was mentioned in the comments was about the possibility of the parking lot we don't like that idea for several reasons firstly because it would require the removal of four mature trees and we obviously don't like that secondly it would create a large area of impermeable surface and we don't want to do that and then it would it would also take away from the playground space that that we have there that is required by licensing and then it would just not fit very well in the neighborhood to have a a parking lot on that particular

191location so um those are the reasons yeah and getting getting a lot of cars in there would uh would be a real issue so that's the reason why we're we're not proposing to build a parking lot um while i'm talking about playground space uh there was also comments about the possibility of looking at commercial properties and we did in fact look at commercial properties we looked at quite a few of them and uniformly what we found is that while there was plenty of space available indoors they almost never had outdoor space and an outdoor space is a requirement uh for licensing for tiles together so those properties were just not workable we wouldn't have been able to uh qualify for for our license um and then the last point that i'd i'd like to make

192is that there is a lot of precipitate for this particular kind of space for instance there are a couple of locations of gretchen's house one on mount pleasant one on mount vernon that are likewise located in residential areas in fact the one on mount vernon if you look at their website they list 17 staff members there's also a location on 8th street there's a location on miller avenue there's a location on 5th avenue all of these are in residential areas and and they are successful and well integrated into the community at those locations so there is plenty of precedent for for doing what we're proposing so those are the the points that i'd like to make i would be more than happy to respond to any questions um and uh to explain more about what

193we do and why we do it i can tell you also that there is a lot of interest in child care we we already have a dozen families and we get calls every day in fact we had an interview with the respective parents this morning so there's a lot of need parents are desperate for child care and we have a real passion for that and would really like to do what we can to help with that need so thank you all right we will now move on to the staff presentation mr chang okay i do have a presentation it's somewhat brief but can you see the slideshow yes we can yes excellent and you can hear me okay yep excellent okay uh the location is at 1301 morningside drive which is north of miller air

194and to the west of newport and it's on the west side of morningside drive as you can see from the map it's just south of forsyth middle school and wines elementary uh here's a close-up of the neighborhood it is zoned r1c single family residential that is why a child care center is required to get a special exception used in a single family dwelling neighborhood uh here's another close-up uh of the actual house it's approximately three thousand square feet one story um they're asking for up to i think that was uh who mentioned earlier 40 kids with 10 caregivers they did in fact receive a variance from the zoning board of appeals from eight parking spaces they do have a carport that's in front of this house that a couple of the caregivers could park at

195they could actually park probably another five cars in that drive way but we those didn't maneuver in and out if you happen to be one under the carport so they in fact get uh space variants from the zda um this is also within 250 feet of the residence and they can park approximately 25 cars that would accommodate the pickup and drop off of the kids again here's an ariel of the same uh house within 250 feet there is parking on both sides of the street fronting this house along morningside drive and we can refer back to any of these slides if you'd like to if you have any questions on them and i'm also here for any questions you may have thank you righty now we will move on to the public hearing and this

196is an opportunity for persons to speak up to three minutes um we'll first call on individuals who are present in the room and then uh move on to those who are remote to speak remotely you press star 9 by listening to the phone or use the raise your hand feature for phone access call 877-853-5247 and then our meeting id 977-6634-1226 city staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name you'll hear an automatic announcement that the host is allowing you to speak and when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly and then hit star six to unmute for either method of participation please state your name and address at

197the beginning of your comments we will start with anybody in the room here would anybody like to be able to speak on this petition for three minutes come right up and introduce yourself i'm maya skiba i live at 1310 morningside i lived there for 50 years at 40 i'm sorry um 40 or 45 years ago i called the city i wanted a stop sign at the corner and um the stop sign didn't do what i'd hoped it really doesn't slow people down much many people don't don't hesitate to turn the corner the neighborhood's filled with new children because we're kind of turning over it's neighborhoods too it's on a hill and i just see kids riding bikes scooters everything down the hill i worry about the parking lot changing over the driveway also in the

198morning and at night people drive their children hill ridges at the top of the hill there's a walkway there and you can drop your child off and they're almost four sides and you avoid the parking or parking light of course i um i just see it bringing a lot of a lot of traffic to the neighborhood beyond what the neighborhood can handle the city seems to be into quieting streets but this seems to be accentuating the activity i have had an experience on mount pleasant where i picked up a friend at 8 30 every morning to go to the y and it's very busy there at 8 30 with people dropping off their children thank you would anybody else like to come up and speak i've lived in this neighborhood since 1969. if you could

199please stay your name and address yours first earhart wrote 1244 westport road um i live four houses from the proposed site the um i've lived there since 1969 and this whole as you saw from the map this whole area is a residential area single single family and there's just this is one isolated blip in this whole map of 1950s somewhat homogeneous homes put in by neil stabler at the time and um i don't think that a commercial school like this has any business in the neighborhood i'd like to also talk about the assertion that kids could walk to school my wife and i walk so around the neighborhood say within a mile of the house all over the place there are very few people with children left we've aged people around us of age very

200few people have moved out very very few new people have moved in and it's obvious when you see children there just aren't many around there yes the schools are nearby forsyth and tappan but i'm talking about the homes so i i think that the whole idea of having a a school in the middle of this it may sound like a nimby protest here and it probably is um i might mention that two doors down from the school in each direction are people with vicious dogs and one person even has a nice drainage pond it's about three feet deep for people to fall into but that's beside the point i just wanted to say that this is not a good idea and i hope that you'll turn this down we've a lot of old people in

201the neighborhood i'm maybe among the oldest but the young kids and old people are iffy at best and i hope this won't come to pass thank you thank you um good evening my name is lee roosevelt i live at 1256 westport which is two doors down from the proposed child care center i absolutely empathize with the need for more child care i'm a nurse midwife i work with families every day that are attempting to find child care the type of child care that we're actually missing in this city is subsidized child care that's affordable for people people that can afford private in-home child cares figure out a way to make their child care situations work this situa this the child's place does not take state subsidies for kids so this will not increase affordable child

202care in our community i'm also the mother of an autistic child i chose to move to this area because it's a quiet area there are kids riding bikes in the street safely it felt like a neighborhood that i could raise my son in safely if you're adding 50 cars into the neighborhood and it actually makes it worse to me that there's not a set pickup and drop off time right now i know when forsyth lets out that that's not a safe time for my son to be able to play outside but if you're talking about the hours from seven a.m to six pm that pretty much means that the entire front area of our house for our kids is not accessible for them and is not a safe place for them to be without constant

203adult supervision i'm i'm confused by the assertion that they're not children in the neighborhood there are many many children in the neighborhood my son plays with the children the neighborhood they ride their bikes around adding in 50 cars twice a day into the neighborhood does not create livable space for the kids that are living in the neighborhood i am pleased to hear that they aren't going to be building um an additional parking lot because that would be an additional hardship for the neighborhood but i really if the city is going to approve this i really wish the city would sort of have some very clear objectives of what it's going to look like to make this a safe area for our kids to play the hill that goes immediately up westport that ends at this

204is not visible people come flying up that hill quite frequently parents have been out there encouraging people to slow down frequently and as a result we've been able to slow some of the people that are flying up that hill that's not going to be the case when you're talking about 50 families that don't live in the neighborhood that we can't come up and address and say please be more careful and mindful when you're coming up that walkway it's just not a great area to add 50 cars twice a day thank you thank you you can come right up thank you just state your name and address hi my name is risa gottlib i live at 10 43 westport i had an address on newport about two years ago which as you know is a much

205busier thoroughfare road and part of the reason that i decided to buy my home into the neighborhood is because i wanted an area that was quieter i can also attest to the fact that yes there are children in the neighborhood this intersection is extremely busy what was already spoken about is a lot of the overflow traffic for forsyth and wines where people don't want to access it through some of the normal means to get to it our neighborhood is excessively busy with people driving really quickly during um you know pick up and drop off times and there is one of those like really fantastic i mean i grew up in ann arbor so i'm very familiar with the little walkways that happen in neighborhoods to the schools um we have one of those that is

206just around the corner from this intersection of westport and morningside i also know that on either side of the proposed location the homes are sort of set on a hill and people pull out of their driveways without looking even when you're on the sidewalk walking let alone having 50 plus additional people coming in and out of this area um it's it is it's seemingly a good idea to have a child care center right like we need that it's echoed amongst the community before this proposed location there was a home here for um i don't it was actually there just as i was moving in and it was closing and leaving but it was a home where there was like several people who i think had like developmental issues um and caregivers and that's part of

207the reason why the house is sort of chopped up um i think it's sort of interesting that like just before this conversation we had all of this talk about you know population density because what i think that piece of property would have done great for is like a duplex or even a triplex because it has two kitchens already um and something where you know it could have been like an affordable housing issue or uh addition to the community that i think would have been like really fantastic when i saw go on the market i was actually very excited about that and i have to say like i think that this is just such a bad idea for the community for the traffic i just can't imagine how much more insane it's going to be during

208the times when people are picking up and dropping off i mean it's already extremely disruptive that it is used as a thoroughfare on top of that i don't know if this is just hearsay but the other day i was driving home and i saw a lot of the tree workers that are going around to sort of chop down some of the trees to help with some of the power outages because we actually happen to be one of the neighborhoods that has like really extreme power power outages when there are storms um but i was told that there is a plan i don't know if this is hearsay of a traffic light going in at miller and newport is this true possibly we don't know if that's true it's going to make this intersection near our

209house even worse because people are going to avoid people are going to be avoiding the intersection and using it even more as a cut through to get to schools and to the preschool and it's just going to create a tremendous amount of traffic that's going to be a really big problem and possibly dangerous for a lot of the people in the neighborhood older and younger so thank you for hearing all of us i appreciate that it's late thank you all righty so um remote participants mr kowalski do we have any yes yes um okay so uh caller with the last three digits uh seven 763 um please unmute and you have three minutes to address the planning commission carl s digit 763 you could please unmute and you can address the planet commission here we

210go thank you very much for making the time for us and saying going so late my name is matthew cruz and my wife larissa is with me we have a two and a half year old boy we live six houses away from this residence at 1500 hill bridge boulevard i'd like to thank the speakers that came before us the first lady that talked about that being a very dangerous hill was very right our street is called hill ridge because we are at the top of the hill in the winter especially the plowing here is not consistent we have very icy very bad snow going down morning side there that makes it very easy for your card to split one of the things that the other gentleman said that there was no children i think maybe

211towards that westport side that he lives is possibly the case but in the last three to four years um morningside hill ridge boulevard wines and bonders have about 30 to 40 children all under the age of about 10 some are a little bit older most of them i'd say we're between two and seven years old and as the last speaker indicated many of them ride their bikes with confidence safely in the street and you will find children running back and forth between both sides of hill ridge boulevard um you know they look both ways but they're not used to a lot of traffic so there would have to be a lot of changes after a bit something happened like the first lady said where someone gets hit so today i'm we're requesting that you deny

212this exception because it will actually affect the morning traffic of the residents that leave their homes to go to work and without question the safety of the young children especially in the afternoon that live here on all those streets i won't go into the map so you can all see for yourself that there's three streets that lead up the hillside which could very easily be the path that they are to hill rides hill ridge our street that could very easily lead to the drop-off point for this day care the first gentleman already mentioned that this neighborhood roads were not planned in a way conducive to having these traffic patterns furthermore um the daycare tried to talk about their planning but i just don't think they can predict the traffic rush they cannot necessarily guarantee sibling

213groups are going to attend their daycare and as far as being walkable they submitted 347 postcards which they announced in their letters attachments nine individuals attended only two participants expressed interest of their children attending there so therefore there are people that attend are likely to be bringing children from outside of this subdivision if it was the other way around and we were and it was everybody here fill in that capacity then they would probably walk there and we wouldn't be worried about all the traffic stuff but we can't impose that on the daycare so uh moving on to a few other points they talked about parking but what about cars standing so they can say that there's not a set time for daycare drop off but if you go to all of these daycares most

214of them have children there because they're working parents and you know nine to five so you have people going there between 8 30 and 9 and picking up between 5 and 5 30 and day cares are actually pretty strict if you show up so you've reached your three minutes all right thank you very much okay thank you thank you um i would just suggest that they're they're um okay sorry um the three minutes uh is there anybody else that so we um have another caller on the line caller with the last three wait that was the sorry adam jeskevich um you can unmute and please address the planet commission okay yep there you go hi my name is adam joskewicz 1430 west fake drive i think it's entirely reasonable for a neighborhood child care facility

215to have limited parking and be within a single family neighborhood i grew up across miller from this neighborhood going to hazely elementary and forsyth middle school i walked to and from elementary school and middle school as a child and hope today's kids can continue to do the same as a latchkey kid this would have kept me out of some trouble in middle school having a child care facility is a third place for kids beyond home and school is valuable for the community if there are issues with traffic we should address the traffic calming concerns as a kid i used to cut through from foresight every day we just walked though it's extremely concerning to me to hear that parents are using it as a car centric pickup and drop off location i think that's something

216the city or the school district should look into regardless of this proposal thank you okay um one more um adam birkenstep you have three minutes please on newton address the planning commission thank you hi can you hear me we can great uh my name is adam vickersdeath i live at 1315 morningside drive which is two doors north of uh um this proposed new facility i really just wanted to echo what other people have said that the main concern about this proposal is the huge potential increase in traffic coming into our neighborhood from outside of it um 50 40 even 30 cars coming and going twice a day is going to fundamentally change the nature of our neighborhood we currently have a street morningside drive which is quite quiet for most of the day um and

217it's a healthy street and i know that the council is in favor of maintaining healthy streets i think it's deeply regrettable that the city staff so far have chosen not to carry out a comprehensive traffic impact analysis on this proposal and i think really the this proposal should be rejected until such an analysis has been carried out that's really what i wanted to say thank you thank you okay um another caller with the uh last three digits five five six um you may unmute and address the planning commission for three minutes or less call it the last three digits five five six hello can you hear me yes we can hear you hello go ahead i want to um my name is larissa i live on he'll reach like six houses from the uh the

218daycare and i i want to support the previous speakers against like the against the daycare being set up in this neighborhood i i also researched some of the violations that they have in their patricia location so i'm concerned about the safety because it says that in the violations that they have in the lara site that seven out of eight child care staff members did not complete their health and safety training and then they have another one where uh for four out of eight childhood members did not have complete fingerprint results to determine eligibility um they didn't complete the fire tornado drills um they also were tired again for not completing the health and safety training so the licensee also did not have a complete physical so i'm just concerned that if they cannot keep up

219with their current location how are they gonna transfer to you know to this new one that's all i wanted to actually talk about thank you oh yeah go ahead you can continue you still have time um okay so then i also concerned that like there is going to be a lot of traffic on hillary where there is a lot of children um running their bikes and everything i think when people want to come back maybe they will just go around and take the cul-de-sac and that risk like the children and the people who go out for walks and just not just the young toddlers and children but the elderly in our community so thank you thank you all i wanted to say bye okay um there are no other hands raised at this time okay

220all righty um so i have to read the motion had a hand pop one more okay okay just had one pop up um okay caller with the last three digits eight two eight you may unmute and address the planet commission for three minutes or less i don't know my name is kathy strachan and i live on orkney which is in ward one this is not my neighborhood so i i don't have any skin in this game but i would like to urge you to listen to the people who live in this neighborhood people move to a neighborhood because like that one woman said you know it's quiet she likes to have it and then someone wants to come in and change the character of it and i think that that traffic is going to be

221a nightmare i'm glad i don't live there that i don't have to deal with it but um i just i really hope that you'll take um strong consideration of what the people who live in that neighborhood are concerned about and i hope that you you don't approve it because it sounds like they're not in favor of it and as a like i said as a person who has no skin in this game it's not affecting me directly but i empathize with the neighbors and so i hope you'll listen to them thank you thank you okay um um one more a caller with the the last three numbers five nine five may unmute and address the planning commission hello can everyone hear me we can hear you hi my name is sajeev krishnan we live in

2221201 trail crescent in the neighboring neighborhood i guess and we are one of families who are strongly considering sending our children to a church place it has been quite difficult for us in the last year especially with a year or longer than a year long wait times with multiple daycares and especially as working parents it's incredibly challenging for individuals such as ourselves to find uh what to say dependable we have been considering this simply because they have an established facility already with a number of individuals and we since we are close in the neighborhood we are one of the families where we do plan on walking over to this facility in addition we have two children so it is one of the uh sibling families who plan on bringing them over i do recognize some

223of the concerns that the other residents are bringing up over here but i strongly hope the commission over here considers the proposal because while we weren't able to attend the public meeting we've still been in touch with uh the team over there and hopefully this is able to open and we're able to start our children in the daycare soon thank you okay we have uh one more caller caller with the last three digits six six eight if you unmute you can address the planet commission for three minutes hi my name is uh eric helverson i live at 1505 hill ridge boulevard i just uh not to bring up all the points in opposition that have already been expressed i just wanted to uh voice my support for the opposition to uh to the daycare we

224do have a very quiet neighborhood uh there are while i don't have any children of my own uh we do have plenty of young children around in the neighborhood playing in our streets and it's really a uh it's really a great healthy young environment to have watched the neighborhood turn over we've we've lived here 20 plus years and i've seen it seen it change and it's it's really nice that the young families here can uh let their kids play and play freely without having to worry about all the extra traffic that uh that the daycare will generate so um i uh hope that uh all the comments in opposition uh ring true and uh that you uh the commission votes this down thank you very much okay um another caller with the last three digits

225seven six zero if you may um unmute your phone and you have three minutes to address the planning commission hello can you hear me yes ken hello my name is francis mills i live at five parkview place um i grew up within walking distance of daycare i loved it i've lived two different addresses in ann arbor here that were always walking the distance of daycare never once was bothered by graphic issues in fact i would point to a little preschool on eighth street as being a very similar location to this possibly worse cut through risk and uh nothing but a very quiet pleasant place with my name um also i had two children paul was taking them to uh daycares within walking distance and yes i uh it's tough to uh believe it unless you've

226tried it first but uh i think uh avondale gear centers in residential neighborhoods is uh nothing short of nightville location thank you okay that is the last caller i see no other hands raised online okay i will read the motion which you will have to bear with me is quite long um okay this is uh the anniversary planning commission after hearing all interested persons and reviewing all relevant information including an accompanying site plan finds a petition substantially meets the standards in chapter 55 unified development code section 5.29.5 point d session accept special exceptions and section 5.16.2 point b child care center and therefore approves child's place llc special exemption use for child care center at 1301 morningside drive this approval is based on the following findings one the proposed use will be consistent with r1c

227single family dwelling district which provides residential use including special exceptions for religious assembly and child care centers number two the proposed use will not adversely impact traffic pedestrians bicyclist circulation or road intersections based on that location morningside drive provides access to the site and the proposed use is consistent with the existing and other surrounding uses traffic to impact number three the subject site meets the youth specific standard for at least 7 500 square feet of lot area and the existing conditions together with the variants for off-street parking granted by the zoning board of appeals meets the standards for off-street parking and on-street drop-off and pickup spaces number four a site plan documenting the existing and proposed conditions of the site has been submitted as part of this application the special exemption use approval is based

228on the following conditions the child care is provided for no more than 40 children and that the ann arbor planning commission approves the attached site plan which demonstrates compliance with the applicable special exception use standards as no development which would otherwise require site plan approval has been proposed okay moved by commissioner dish seconded by commissioner mills we are in discussion of the proposed motion commissioner mills i first of all want to thank folks for looking out for what's happening in your neighborhood and for participating it's really really great to for you to bring to us the issues that are going on um in your neighborhood to one of the you know also folks that are participating on who called in like um whether it's this proposal or for something else like it it lets us

229know where there are already problems so um the first question that i and um i'll just say i the uh my kids have been in three different child care facilities two of them had only one off street parking spot one of them was a lane well it used to be annie's now it's elena's downtown they're licensed for 103 people with one off streets parking spot so we i mean this and um we everyone was walking and biking their kids there the other place was little blue preschool right like so this idea of kind of going to places in neighborhoods or around or like getting there where there is where you can't expect to have a parking spot as a parent dropping off like i um my experience has been not to show up necessarily in

230a car and i and many of my kids had friends in this particular neighborhood at both of those places right so like i would hope that you know i if i lived in this particular neighborhood like i would look forward to having another option because we were also on waiting lists forever right um because we don't have enough spots overall in the city um also i mean maybe maybe this is me as a parent when i am in a car like i am watching out for the kid that's gonna zoom in and out so the fact that there are kids on the street if any like i would i don't know as a parent i think that and other parents coming don't want their kids to be hit by the cars either so i think

231that that's that's another um kind of i don't know maybe that's just my observation but one of the things that i'm i i have been thinking through it does sound like though there needs to be options for traffic calming and for kids at play signs regardless of what happens so i'm curious from a staff's perspective how you go about doing that how do you get a speed bumps how do you get the how do you get the signs to say watch out for the kids playing um do do you have any ideas mr chang well i did have a brief discussion with the city's traffic engineer unfortunately we didn't talk about signs or or speed humps and it is a discussion i could have with him um regarding some type of petition possibly from the

232neighbor that would want something like that installed in the neighborhood um what we did discussed though was that this this project it didn't meet the threshold to actually have a traffic impact analysis and the reason is it takes 50 peak hour trips peak hour trips are you know typically 8 in the morning 5 at night and because of those 50 trips that this one has 40 kids possibly up to 10 caregivers but the expectation is that you know they'll be families that bring multiple kids that would reduce that 50 count and there'd also be families that went walk and bike so as far as you know the conversation we had with the traffic he was supportive of you know the the number of kids and the location in a residential neighborhood but i would have

233to discuss further with signs of speed bumps or additional traffic calming in the neighborhood because that seems like one way or the other something that would be really helpful in this particular place particularly if people are using are dropping off kids at the cut-through to to the middle school and and elementary school there so um so that's one of the that's one of the questions and and i was going to ask about the traffic study just another point to one of the speakers brought up the idea like alternate uses of this property like is this a good place for a duplex and sadly i mean this is zoned so that a duplex is not allowed there um so uh so there's no special exception that would allow for uh for a duplex there without re

234without completely rezoning so um that's one of the reasons that that's not that's not an option even if it does have two kitchens um uh there's accessory dwelling units but that would require some additional things so um that's um just just for information that's why we don't see duplexes in that particular neighborhood is because of the zone the the zoning underlying classification of the zoning commissioner dish i want to follow up on the discussion that you just started commissioner mills and i agree that it is really useful to hear from the neighborhood because it lets us know where there are already problems and i understand that speed bumps work by by neighbor petition and that we are also back logged with those petitions it's a long process um because you have to have a number

235of meetings and this does this uh this geographic configuration there they are explaining to us that there is a hill and that of course as we know visibility is reduced on a hill and they're explaining to us that people speed through this neighborhood because they use it as a drop-off for schools and we know that this is a problem because we don't have the bus service that we need and so parents are driving their kids to school in the morning right we don't have the right so in i live near that's not the way it works uh i live near steam school and we've had to make a lot of adjustments in that neighborhood to control the driving uh you know there had to be no parking and no standing and all kinds of things

236to control the informal drop-offs that parents are doing so it sounds to me like there's there are some issues here that were that are not that are being exacerbated by this project and that aren't easy for us to capture with our usual approaches and so um kids play sound like a signs sound like a good idea but um it it does sound like we need to take a look at how parents are using this neighborhood to drop their kids off at the pass through and i thought it was a good question whether there is a plan for a traffic light at miller and newport i have no idea i don't keep track of all the traffic lights we're putting in but we do we do understand that things like that do exacerbate cut through traffic

237so i do not think that there's a problem with this proposal but i think there's an existing situation that this for which this proposal creates a tipping point and we need to address the infrastructure here to make sure that we maintain a safe environment for people to walk and play but those are not reasons to deny the special exemption use these are reasons that we might need to do a little thinking outside the box to capture what sounds to me like real issues in the neighborhood with traffic right now commissioner survey so i i hear one thing which is about the public right-of-way and traffic our role is to approve land private land use right and so there's kind of two discussions being had us hearing about infrastructure issues and what can we exacerbate in

238the public right-of-way and what our role is to understand the private land use in the city and you know in this case a special exception use within a neighborhood um one of the things thinking about the traffic limits and things our current ordinance especially with covid you know we really looked at home occupation and the amount of traffic and trips any single home for people working there could have and any single family home could have up to 24 visits per day so if we look at this neighborhood every single one of these homes could have 24 visits just by being at home therapist or something like that and so when we think about kind of that ratio that we're up to you know 50 visits if everybody's driving and things yes it's a special exception

239instead of you know buy right like home occupation uh but uh i think when we think about these things paired in a neighborhood uh with schools and i i see and you know i was guilty sometimes of driving my kid over to ever white at times when it was just a little bit more convenient but i should have walked and i did walk too and so it's just sometimes that threshold of convenience um but the more the more you build up daily habits you know if i'm dropping two kids off instead of one and coming back and working more at home and things like that that's how we build walkable communities these incremental pieces and it goes back to site plan light incremental things like this improve having things in each of our neighborhoods amenities

240in each of our neighborhoods but it sounds like we have some traffic issues and the way that the community has organized around this project to highlight the issue it can organize to get the infrastructure that is actually going to solve the truck the traffic that this project and our role is not here and built to do anybody else commissioner abrams i don't have a lot new to add to the discussion but i wanted to i think begin by just underscoring the gratitude and the appreciation for all the comments we've heard tonight um before and against and we also received a lot of emails about this issue as well um and so we did we do receive those and we read those carefully um i think that i i in some ways what i heard was

241a kind of confusing depiction of what the neighborhood is like now i actually have very good friends who live on morningside so i've been there quite a bit but on the one hand it's like we're being told that it's this place where kids can ride their bikes and play in the street we're also being told that people drive like crazy through there and fly around the corner so it's like i'm not quite sure if the daycare center is you know disturbing the piece or just contributing to the mayhem and so it's a little bit difficult but what i do think is that while i love the idea of kids playing in the street and i live in a place where my kids could play in the street that isn't actually like what streets are meant

242for like it isn't the land use designation right and so i think it sounds like there is a traffic problem here uh people speeding um people not obeying stop signs or maybe they're needing to be stop signs so i agree with all the comments about that i think it's really important to carve that you're saying no to me but people are that's what i heard um they're worried about people cutting through that there's already a lot of traffic of people dropping off at forsyth so so but i also what i think i'm hearing and what i received what i heard through the email communication is i don't think that it doesn't sound like there's fundamental opposition to the idea of a daycare in this neighborhood i think people are worried about the number of children

243and the number of staff and so i think in the community meeting the number was given as a range between 20 and 30. and in the motion it's capped at 40. and so i was wondering if we could hear from the petitioner whether they would be open to a lower cap and whether you said you expected it to be less than [Applause] and that you expected the caregiving staff to be less than 10 and i just wanted to hear a little bit more about what you thought the range would be and what you'd be amenable to you need to unmute mr ghee please unmute okay now you can now we can hear you i was waiting for for your host to unmute me sorry um yeah would we be uh amiable to a lower cap

244than 40 i think i think we would i'm looking at my partners and i i think we would uh we would be amenable to that um as i say the the 40 was kind of a just a working estimate um we we get the number the actual license number comes to us from licensing and regulatory affairs it's not something that we can set for ourselves so until but until we get the zoning approval we can't even ask them what the number would be so it's uh it's a little bit of a guessing game um so yeah i think the answer to your punch is yes we would be immutable to 30. sorry having trouble turning on my microphone um i feel like that that would be a reasonable compromise so i would if but i'm

245trying to read the room here about whether there's any appetite for that making that motion um or what or whether you want more discussion before i make that motion commissioner hammerschmidt what would the staff know the staff number i'm guessing would then adjust down as well if we kept it at 30 children and i'm not sure what that staff number would be because i think you were doing a four to one ratio which is the worst case scenario in terms of infants right yeah yes that would that would be in in terms of infants four to one uh an infant as defined by the state is any child less than 30 months so that's two and a half which is in my opinion hardly an infant but yeah so 30 divided by four that would

246be seven possibly eight uh staff commissioner weich so having run a daycare center uh for several years i can appreciate all of the licensing concerns and having spent a lot of time with licensing to comply things change so the the only concern i would have about the cap is just what does that do downstream if they wanted to expand within their site their footprint would that mean they'd have to come back uh to us uh to do that again and if i understand correctly mr g mr g you also had some concerns through this process because i think i heard you comment at city council some months ago when you were trying uh to get your approvals and your licensing and that created substantial cost to you because you had to acquire the property and

247then you weren't sure how things were going to go so i just don't know how would it it's not i don't based on licensing it's not they're not going to get 50. it there's just no way for them to get 50 kids in that footprint 40. it's probably no way for them to get 40 in there because kids have it's it's about mobility if they're doing infants it's the cribs the the spacing of the cribs have to be in a certain way for fire things i mean i would be surprised he's the business owner you should speak up because this is where we're trying to go for you uh but i would be surprised if they're over 25 in that in that square footage just because they have to have so much space for those

248kids to move around um and and right now he's just doing raw numbers but once they put um things in the room that changes the the configuration of the room and then it changes the licensing requirements for that room and then that's all based on just a raw square footage and there's already walls in there and hallways and those things are going to eat up their square footage so i would be surprised if they had more than 25 kids i would be surprised if those 25 kids generated more than 12 cars um just you know like 12 to 15 cars in your time and i and i hear you like uh we we have a parking lot and we share our parking lot with four other businesses and we had to reserve the front of

249the parking lot so that parents could come in and do drop off and pick up so these are real concerns i have three kids that are young but i live on a major road in ann arbor so my kids can't play on that role now we have a traffic island and on my traffic island they go down about 45 mine traffic island they go down 45 miles per hour which is a risk you know for my own kids so i am especially sympathetic to the concerns that you have and i i'm happy to continue to raise those issues with traffic around the concerns and it sounds like this development is at a t so i think that's also the concern that i hear you saying it's at the end of the stop sign the parcel

250is right across the street from the stop sign and it's it you know i can see where the concern that you're raising are there and i think those things are valid uh as commissioner silvay said it's out of our purview so we can't if if staff says it doesn't meet the threshold to get the traffic evaluation because it's not more than 50 trips per day we can't deny it based on that peak hours because that's how the the the traffic report works but that doesn't mean you can't talk to your council members you can't talk to the city to say these are the concerns that we have and it sounds like the developer is wanting to be agreeable with the neighborhood and to fit into the fabric of the neighborhood um to work with you

251all that i that that is my assessment um here so uh am i correct that you're somewhere between like 25 and 30. that really is our expectation that the number will come out somewhere around there you're right and and thank you for your comments uh you are absolutely right uh the square footage calculation is a very rough calculation and uh and things like kitchens and hallways and bathrooms don't pound in the square footage yeah realistic play space and and so on um yeah we would we would probably not ever get it close to that 40 number and i think to write that 25 to 30 is much more realistic cars yeah and 12 to 15 cars sounds right also and i do want to just point out i i don't know who said it but

252we only have one kitchen there are three bathrooms one kitchen uh six six bedrooms um so that's and we do offer some systems oh yes and and we do take state subsidies we don't have any children taking the subsidies right now but we have in the past and we will take state subsidy children absolutely any other comments commissioner lee based on what commissioner weish and abram said i would be friendly to a motion to amend the condition down to 30 as a capacity looking up their existing location at 1217 patricia it looked like their capacity was 7 to 12. um based on 1500 square feet so would be actually 14 it's actually working we just got it changed based on the new state law in the last month because of the need for child care

253gotcha no understood relative to that takeoff of like doubling in square footage i would be friendly to that amendment that's pretty much it thank you any other comments okay so we would then need to amend the motion so that in the second part of this under this special exemption use approval is based on the following conditions to child care providers for no more than 30 children is that correct mr kowalski okay yes that's what i have listed the only modification i have is that that to change from 40 to 30. yep so do we have a motion we have a motion for that we have a second to that motion oh oh i'm sorry i thought that's what you were okay yes all motion motion second by abrams any other discussion on that know the

254discussion okay so um should we vote on um are we ready to vote then with that yeah yeah right exactly yes it's friendly yeah i believe if it's friendly you don't have to have an actual vote okay friendly friendly okay alrighty so let's just update the motion then okay and then we can be ready for a we'll call vote okay so that means the motion okay okay so roll call vote uh commissioner mills yes commissioner gabrandal yes commissioner sobe yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yes and commissioner white yes thank you the motion is approved as amended all righty we are now moving on to our final opportunity for public comment this is for people to speak up to three minutes on any issue that is um uh that

255is not listed on the agenda uh we're first calling people in the room which looks like they are currently leaving and then we will also um sorry words are starting to fail after 11 o'clock because [Laughter] we'll entertain people virtually as well so to remember to speak remotely to so to speak um remotely press star 9 if listening by phone or use the raise the hand feature for phone access call six three four one 877-853-5247-6634 two six city staff will select callers that are raised their hands using the three digits of your phone number or my name you'll hear an automated announcement please go to a quiet area please state your name and address anybody waiting in the queue all right yes i'm sorry um yes we have one caller at this time um and

256i'm jessica if you could um mute sorry unmute and uh you have three minutes to address the planning commission hi adam here again um super brief i just want to say the discussion on the george was very edifying i really appreciated the question questions and clarifications by the commissioners as well as the answers from the petitioner and um special thanks to commissioner lee for cutting through some of the jargon the petitioner for willing to be more than accommodating on a buy right sight plane revision and commissioner survey for grounding the conversation i hope we can take some lessons from this situation and i hope this neighborhood can eventually regain some walkable retail services thank you thank you all righty on to item number ten commission proposed business i would just say i'm sorry there was

257one more oh sorry apologies really i'm sorry not so quick anybody else adam goodman if you uh you have three minutes to address the the planning commission hi uh adam goodman 400 virginia avenue um so i i sent an email to the commission a little while back about bike parking and tonight made me realize there was one thing i i hadn't noticed that might also be worth looking at so in the in the university yin project uh it looked like all of the bike parking for that building is b is class a which means it's indoor and secured and generally you know that's a good thing right we consider class a to be the best form of bike parking in the uni in the in the udc uh but that means there's not really anywhere

258good for for visitors to lock up the bike so um i think that what the developer proposed there is allowed under the code because you're you're allowed to upgrade to better class of bike parking but that might not actually be what we want i think we might actually want a mix um in in in all of these sorts of developments so that there's some back parking for visitors as well as for residents um so you know it might be something to think about on in future projects that's all i have thank you thank you i agree uh okay on two have one more caller another one caller with the last three digits of six zero four you can mute and address the planning commission please call us there you go hi this is eric lipson

259on rosewood street and when we moved into this neighborhood on rosewood we had two kroger stores within walking distance one was at the georgetown mall now known as the george and the other was at the corner stadium in south industrial and despite all of the talk that we have heard over the years about mixed use the results have been extremely disappointing the george just being one formerly south main market being another for all the talk of walkable cities all we get is a food desert around here you there's no more walkable supermarkets you have to drive or take the bus so these experiments on us on the neighborhood also break until they actually take effect the george is a giant ugly thing i was pleased to see and hear one of the commissioners actually addressed

260the issue of the fact that the dumpsters were going to be closer to the residential area anyone who has ever lived near a dumpster area knows that at six a.m that's when they come and beep beep beep pick up the garbage so once again uh the incompatible uses between these giant complexes and residential areas become apparent uh and the lack of any real real retail or any retail whatsoever the same you know it's the 600 block of south main there's no retail there anymore they want to turn that into residential as well so why don't we figure out some way to actually make this work not a lot of constant rhetoric about affordability and mixed use and all that but let's actually try to figure out a way to incorporate that into our planning process

261so that we get both affordability and real mixed use because just letting the market control this is clearly not working thanks very much thank you anybody else um [Music] that's the last caller okay on to item number 10 which is commission proposed business anybody i just we have the public hearings that we read earlier but um i don't have anything else on offhand i would just like to um and we don't have to discuss this now but today was an excellent example of a lot of communications just dribbling in throughout the whole day and it's very difficult i think for us to keep up with all of that and i suggest that we at some point talk about a cutoff in terms of it being realistic for us to actually absorb those prior to the

262meeting so anybody else all right on to item 11 adjournment moved by commissioner lee seconded by commissioner mills i'm sorry uh who i was writing your note who moved in lee and mills wait i'm sorry who who made it and who's second are you sure you want to leave come on this is my first meeting back you guys are getting done so quick come on you