Ann Arbor Planning Commission 2/15/22

001to order good evening and welcome to the tuesday february 15 regular meeting of the ann arbor planning commission for detailed information on meeting procedures please review the full printed meeting agenda which is available online we're on to item two roll call mr leonard would you please assist us yes sorry i just need one moment to get my notes up here the abbreviated introduction now doesn't give you the time to do that i don't know i my my microphone is on oh well can you hear me now there we go all right i called us to order all right well for those in the watching us on tv all right super okay uh sorry about that present here commissioner here very good item three is approval of the agenda can i have a commissioner move the

002agenda moved by commissioner gibb randall seconded by commissioner weich any discussion of the agenda all in favor please raise a hand or say yes that is all of the hands the motion carries item four are the minutes from the previous meeting we have the minutes of the february 1st 2022 meeting in our packet can i a commissioner move the minutes moved by commissioner hammerschmidt seconded by commissioner lee any discussion all in favor of the motion please raise a hand and say or say yes that's all the hands on to item five which are all of the reports um [Music] council member dish could we start with you you can and i don't think we did anything of interest to planning commission what do you think um anything else to add mr leonard no all right

003any planning commission officers or committee liaisons have anything to report out for those following along just to and to remind ourselves we did not have our working session last week because of a conflict in terms of meeting space um and we did get a couple of packets of written communications ahead of time that were passed along to us thank you planning staff for that all right item number six is public comment this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about any issue that is not listed as a public hearing on this agenda so this is not the time to talk about the 3874 research park drive site plan for any other items of business we'll first call on individuals who are present here with us and then remote participants if

004you have joined the meeting remotely please press nine if you're listening by phone and or if you've joined through the web link use the raised hand feature if you're watching us now and want to dial in the dial-in number is 877-853-5247 and our meeting id is 977-6634 12 26 mr leonard will select callers that have raised their hand calling on you by the last three digits of your telephone number or by the name that you posted in zoom in joining with the web link you'll hear an automated announcement the host is allowing you to speak please move to a quiet area and mute any background sounds so that we can hear you clearly for either method of participation please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments anyone present here uh who

005would like to speak now come on up and i'm not sure if it defaults to having the green light on the um the microphone at the bottom at the base of the microphone yes super thank you go ahead mr garber yep all right yeah thank you chair mills mr leonard planning commission my name is ken garber i live at 28 haverhill court and it's a thrill to see you in person again i feel like we're old friends i've been attending planning commission meetings off and on as you know for about four years by listening to you i've learned a huge amount and i have the greatest respect for your collective knowledge expertise and your amazing stamina it's not easy it's not an easy job your meetings often run late into the night and between meetings

006you must process mind-numbing amounts of information all this at great cost to your professional personal and family lives you do this critical work for no pay and in complete obscurity not that you're after fame necessarily but the public only notices you when it's mad at you for something so for doing this thankless job i want to take tonight to express my gratitude for me personally you have really changed the way that i look at the world it's made me realize that the kind of built environment we occupy now did not arise from some inevitable evolution but was the result of choices we made as a society i believe there's something deeply wrong about the way we now live we can and we must fundamentally change how we organize our world and it all starts right

007here with you so thank you again thank you i don't see anyone else but maybe there's somebody hiding behind pillars is there anyone on the out the phone number line with five three four if you have three minutes to address the pension good evening this is tom stalberg calling from lowertown in ann arbor uh you mentioned that there was nothing at city council but there was there was a resolution to release some information regarding tc1 that did not pass there was mention that if you had information uh you might discriminate based on that information and that was a reason given for not passing that resolution and releasing the information however you do have information and you are making decisions and council is making decisions based on this information so i believe that any information that

008planning commission and council has regarding this should be released to the public so that we know what information that you have that you're basing your decisions on now we have been given a report by the planning department and we know that information is not complete information we know that you know more than what is in that report so it would be helpful to the public for transparency and for our evaluation to know what city council is going to make its decision on what information partial information that city council has when they make their decision so i hope that the planning staff can release that information to the public rather than having to go through a city council resolution to demand that or to go to a foia process to acquire that information next switching gears

009next meeting that you're going to have beginning next month you're going to review there's going to be a public hearing if i were a planning commissioner i would have to recuse myself at that public hearing because i have a financial stake personally in something that's going to be discussed there i expect commissioner walmu lee will be recusing himself from that public hearing as well because the company that employs him also has a financial stake in that matter uh we'll discuss that next time uh in more detail um but i do want to mention uh as public disclosure that i will be profiting by uh something that is being discussed at your next public hearing should it pass at planning commission and a council uh in its current forum thank you thank you any others mr

010leonard no all right we'll move on then to item number seven which are the public hearings scheduled for the next business meeting could you walk us through those please yeah um we have a series of uh proposed amendments that will be considered after a public hearing at the march first meeting a series of amendments to chapter 55 unified development code there are five proposed amendments full detail of these of course will be shared and full language is available in this month's packet as well first is a modification to the m1 zoning district to consider the allowance of religious assembly uses as a primary use two marijuana license types a number of licenses per lot an amendment that would eliminate restrictions on the number of licenses that can be located on a single lot in the

011city for marijuana facility types three a proposed adjustment to minimum lot sizes in the r2a zoning district proposing to change the minimum lot size from 8 500 square feet to 5 000 square feet and to change the minimum lot width from 60 feet to 40 feet four a street tree escrow modify language to remove references to a street tree escrow and instead reference a street tree planting feed and five landscape modifications consider amendments that would provide the opportunity for landscape modifications to be issued for required street trees all right thank you very much next up is our regular business and we have one item this evening which is 3874 research park drive site plan for planning commission approval um we will have the project presentation staff report public hearing and then our discussion is the

012petitioner with us giving a presentation or yes very good um mr covert does that look like everybody you're expecting to attend on behalf of the position um i think you have everybody is uh peter martin's in the waiting area um maybe sartorius um if he's under locked in our different thing maybe as indicated back monitor for that all right if one of the folks here could could email or text him that would be fine if not i think we're fine proceeding all right go ahead you'll have up to 10 minutes sure are you able to see my screen and you can hear us or hear me okay i presume yes to both perfect uh hello good evening commission my name is tom covert i'm with midwestern consulting i'm here tonight with tom phillips from hobbs

013and black architects uh and and maybe peter martin's from sartorius here in a little bit i'm also here with cameron mclaughlin from portage capital and joe vig from jsfig you will recall we were before you last october where we receive your approval recommending that the project be approved by the city council this site and this project for sartorius will allow them to consolidate various operations into a single site which is going to help them increase efficiency and reduce complexities in their operations a little bit of site context you'll remember that we are the central properties here highlighted in green uh surrounded by research park drive research park drive east research park drive west we are 16.9 acres in size we are zoned office research and lab we're south of 94 here to the north we're

014east of state street to the west north of ellsworth to the south and then the ann arbor railroad runs here to the east that's kind of the border of the um industrial park the site itself has an existing office facility which our project will include the demolition of this uh obsolete 1960s building the project is an office research development with a 130 300 square foot building the building is broken into two parts it has a single floor research and development area and then a two-story office area at about sixty thousand square feet seventy thousand three hundred square feet for research and development you'll see we have parking field around the around the building we are parking for 299 spaces with 150 of those spaces meeting the electric vehicle charging requirements and then near the entries

015a number of the entries we have spread around our 64 bike parking spaces we have three vehicular access points we have two points here off of research park drive to the east to access the site we have one entry off of research park drive west we have sidewalks along the frontage of research park drive west and research park drive east there's a food truck patio a pavilion patios and gathering space on site we've preserved three of the landmark trees that exist along research park drive that were planted with that 1960s building and we also have a storm water management system that includes a rain garden and an infiltration area you can see here on the aerial overlay that we have focused the development of the site kind of on the southern portion preserving opportunity for

016growth in the future we've created some pedestrian scale by having the building close to research park drive west we have also included pedestrian linkage here across adjacent properties and connecting the site and central portion of the research park to state street to the west and we've included with the project uh 750 year linear feet of 12-inch water main new 12-inch water main a couple images of the project here this is the view from the southwest near entry number one of the building this is the office portion and then the research and development portion you'll see a picture or image here of the same spot just a little closer to the building this is an image of the building if you were to park and access the building as an employer or guest included with the

017project are a number of sustainable elements this is a reuse or infill project within an area with existing infrastructure we include storm water infiltration and rain guard we have electric vehicle charging we have pedestrian linkages that we noted bicycle parking and a solar array atop the building our goal here tonight is to respectfully request planning commission approval of the project affirming the previous approval that we received back in echo we have a number of folks here that would be happy to answer any questions that you might have thank you mr leonard is mr ching joining us for providing a staff presentation very good yeah i think the petitioner did a pretty good job of i think summarizing what was previously approved at the planning commission back in the october meeting they did the one change

018they did have was on the north elevation of the building there were three um oblong windows that were removed and i'm not sure if tom is going to scroll they may or may not be in here but those have been removed otherwise the changes that was the only change i don't believe there are any other changes uh and i don't know if mr leonard was going to get into how this came about that the planning commission is now the final reviewer we did make amendments to the udc which would require you know site plans that would go to planning commission for final approval or to city council for final approval this one does not have any type of rezoning or special exception use so as as opposed to being previously a recommending body to the

019city council this has come back because as it is now the final approving body for this project so and there may be questions maybe brett wants to cover it more if planning commission has any additional questions regarding you know the new procedure but i'm also open to any questions um you know planning commission may have thank you very much do you want to add in anything now yeah so um i did have um at least one uh version of that question and i just want to clarify so the this um this the timing of this you the planning commission did see this site plan some time ago um and in the event that you're questioning why it didn't proceed to city council was that what decisions or factors went into that the city council has

020a policy that it um when it is considering a brownfield plan a brownfield plan is a sort of an economic development tool and brownfield remediation financing device that this site is proposed will be proposing to the city council for consideration and the city council in the passage has identified that when they are considering a brownfield they want it to be concurrent with the site plan so what happened in this circumstance is that site plan came to planning commission and then it was in a holding pattern while that brownfield plan was going through consideration it the the circumstances that timing were not at request of sartorius or or staff it was just a result of as that brownfield plan was being considered the ordinance changed and now it puts the planning commission um and this plan

021under a different regulatory framework where the planning commission is now the authorizing body for the site plan and because your actions specifically before was a for a recommendation rather than approval that's why it's returning now thank you very much any additional questions or clarifications on that can come once we're in discussion but first i'm going to open up the public hearing for this item so this is a opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the site plan um approval for 3874 research park drive we'll first again call on individuals that are here in council chambers to address the planning commission and then include remote participants if you're joining remotely and have already dialed in you can press star 9 on your phone to indicate that you'd like to speak if you've

022joined through the web link you can use the raised hand button to indicate that and if you're watching us right now and want to call in the number is four 877-853-5247 and our meeting id is nine seven seven sixty six thirty four twelve twenty six per our usual uh mr leonard will select callers that have raised their hand again if you've dialed in at star nine or using the raised hand feature if you've joined through zoom he'll call on you by the last three digits of your telephone number or your zoom name please move to a quiet area and mute any background sounds so that we can hear you and whether you've joined us in person or if you're joining remotely please start your comments with your name and address um would you like to

023address the planning commission all right yeah i like this system um ken garber 28 have a hill court again thank you chair mills planning commission um yeah as a science reporter who covers biopharma professionally i'm excited to have sartorius in ann arbor and i want this project to go forward but as you know strategy two action one of the a20 plan excludes gas infrastructure in new construction we simply can't have new buildings that lock in gas combustion for the next 50 plus years no amount of solar generation or ev charging can mitigate those emissions and no one is going to retrofit new buildings so tonight i'll ask you to postpone the vote so that sartorius can study the geothermal option and report back at your next meeting on its feasibility i know it's not planning

024commission's official role to advise petitioners on their hvac systems strictly speaking that's a building code issue not a planning or zoning issue but we are in a climate emergency and commission to its credit has addressed this issue in the past in your decisions i would argue you must now consider greenhouse gas emissions just as much as storm water parking traffic building design landscaping and natural features [Applause] electrifying new construction is the easy part of carbon neutrality the rocky mountain institute has shown that electrification pays off over a building's life cycle in every market they've looked at the hard part will be retrofitting our vast building stock that will be costly new buildings no the upfront expense is small compared to the overall cost of a project like this it's critical to hold the line on

025new buildings we dig ourselves deeper into a hole each time we approve a fossil fuel burning project to the petitioner i would say take a serious look at geothermal sartorius is a signatory to the united nations global compact and supports the 2030 agenda for a sustainable global economy i read in your 2020 gri report that the company's goal is to cut its scope 1 or direct emissions in half by 2030. how are you going to do that by putting up new buildings that burn gas gas heating not only sets back our city's decarbonization goals but it sets back yours as well by going geothermal you can make this building a real showcase 30 more seconds sir for you and for us and set an example for future projects please consider this again to commission i'm

026asking you to consider a postponement tonight so that sartorius can do that thank you again if you've joined remotely and would like to participate you can press star nine if you've joined by phone or use the raised hand feature mr leonard caller with the phone number ending with zero three four you have three minutes to address the planning commission hello everyone as we invited me my name is mary garton i live at 3080 cedarbrook road in ann arbor michigan um i would like to address in the public comment i approve this construction in principle i want to echo what ken garber has just said my only concern with this project is that geothermal or some other heat pump based hvac system is not specified if this plan moves forward using natural gas the commission will

027obligate nearly 600 metric tons yearly of co2 to the ann arbor carbon footprint for the lifespan of the building ann arbor's 820 plan explicitly states the goal of seeing that all new residential and commercial buildings be designed and built to operate without the use of natural gas the u of m in its carbon neutrality plan is moving in that same direction particularly with regard to geothermal the site plan indicates that new construction would have no impact on air and water quality but this doesn't consider the impacts of natural gas production distribution and combustion on both the air we breathe and the water we drink in comparison to an electrified hvac system over their respective lifespans given the large space available and the new construction this appears to be an ideal situation for geothermal or heat

028pump installation and the immediate cost of this requirement would likely be modest in the scope of a project of this size while the commission may not feel it has the authority to mandate a fight plan change of this nature it clearly has the right and duty to engage with the developer for the good of the community as a whole this developer has stated a corporate goal as ken just said of emissions introductions and should be interested in partnering with us with you if sufficient moral public pressure is applied reluctance on their part should be met with a public appeal on your part to arouse the community to collect collective action if not for this site and with this developer then where and when i urge you to table this and request the developer to return

029with an explicit plan to install geothermal energy or an analysis of why it cannot be used thanks thank you no other speakers have indicated a desire to address the commission if there are others on the call you can press star 9 or use the raised hand feature none all right then i will close the public hearing and read the motion [Music] the motion reads the ann arbor city planning commission approves the 3874 research park drive site plan dated january 24th 2022 including the revised elevations dated december 21st 2022 i think that should have been 2021 with the following conditions as the site plan complies with all applicable requirements of the unified development code and other applicable laws ordinances standards and regulations the conditions are one all lots comprising the site plan are combined prior to

030the issue with issuance of permits and two the developer enters into a development agreement with the city substantially in the form of that attached prior to the issuance of permits can i have a commissioner move this moved by commissioner gibb randall seconded by commissioner hammer schmidt discussion or questions go ahead commissioner gibrandal i guess i would be curious to hear the developers response given the public comment that we've had to this point about their own corporate goals and how they might align with our city goals and just what their thoughts are upon hearing um i think this is not a surprise so i'm just curious if they have some comments on that for sure commissioner thank you for uh for pointing uh pointing this out and we we definitely look at uh you know in

031conjunction with sartorius if if there is a opportunity i would uh direct everybody to their website at sartorius and related to their corporate responsibility uh initiatives that they have and sustainability is one of the pillars of their of their their platform this is a lab building so unfortunately it it is an absorber of energy it it takes a lot to have air changes that are required for safety concerns and also compliance within a lab of this nature of up to 15 times per hour and it in the climate that we're in we looked at this it's just not feasible to be able to do any type of geothermal at this site want one there's a there's a misrepresentation that uh that we have this all this extra land we do not that all that extra

032land is being set aside for a phase two and possibly three in various configurations so there isn't as much land as there may seem to appear and also the the uh there was a study done related to digging test pits related to infiltration the like that would uh make any type of geothermal in this type of soil condition extremely difficult even if even if it was feasible uh you know to to implement that so you know in in lieu of we are looking at a lot of different solutions related to the buildings uh we are implementing solar to the extent that we can i think we talked about this the uh the last meeting in october is that uh we have a challenge with the amount of mechanical equipment that goes onto the roof that

033we are limited in the capacity of of the solar array that we can put on the building and we do not have a lot of ground space to do anything uh outside of that uh primarily because we're we're building a very substantial storm water management system that didn't exist at the site in in where the old buildings stood so there there is just not a lot of room to do it but in in lieu of uh you know there's a whole host of sustainable initiatives that we've taken with this building primarily it was a brownfield meaning the building that was there was had environmental contamination it was deemed functionally obsolescent by the city assessor back in 19 when we actually acquired the site and you know in doing so when the building was demolished all

034of that remediation was completed and it you know in the uh in lieu of where we are going to build this building where we're going to have storm water management if you were to ask any of the neighboring buildings around the area here that there's a substantial problem with with storm water and flooding of basements so um you know outside of that the building is going to be well beyond the capacity of typical code of it with uh with the uh energy conservation we are taking a serious look at a lead pro program it's uh it's not an easy task to to get a leed certification with a building of this nature just because of the things that are going on inside of it so but we are we've been tasked to take a look

035at that and see if we can potentially implement a a lead program related to the facility and outside of that all of the uh things that ann arbor uh our code requirements such as ev stations are all being implemented to its fullest degree and a lot of community benefit uh infrastructure improvements such as 750 within your feed branding water main that's going to go into the research park drive so um we're we we hear the public comments we've been stretching as much as possible i think it's a misnomer to say that that geothermal is is a small investment on the front end not for a building like this it's enormous even if you were able to do it so uh you know we we have done everything in lieu of trying to take this to

036a geothermal building and as we progress with for future phases i'm sure that'll be a consideration as the technology for those items gets better so just as a follow-up to that a question that i have is when i asked about solar last time around you had talked about the the lab uses and how there's a lot of venting and things like that that you needed to do and it strikes me when i'm looking at the um at sheet 11 that that front third of the building is office use which does not have the same kind of intensive venting requirements um and so anyway that's something that kind of struck me is that your solar panel area is in your um is in the r d part of the building and um i i realize that

037um we don't really have jurisdiction to ask you for this but i'm gonna i'm just putting it out there anyway um so and then you know i guess there's just there's opportunities here and there which i know would be small but it still is something like the you know the pavilion that you have out there that's covered um or the entry area that you have that that um outside of the office building that's covered those are all like statements that you can make too about kind of your position with this and i realize you don't want to just do things just for a token but um each bit counts too if geothermal really is difficult to pull off in the soils that you have so i guess i would just i know that at this

038stage we're not we um those really are later stages in terms of how things get permitted but i just wanted to bring them up at this point um in hopes that you would consider them as you move forward with plans you know just to uh to emphasize that um when this project started uh it has morphed a little bit into that the when we call that front section that sixty thousand feet that's really two thirty thousand foot floors that actually is not resolving itself to be office space it's it's uh it's there's a actually quite a bit of lab that's going in the ground floor of the first floor as well and we've been you know a little bit challenged on how to deal with that two-story environment as well so it's not the office

039component of this is relatively small on those two floors as it relates to uh you know the lab spaces as we as this this interior of the building gets developed um as it's been kind of progressing uh as we go so it's mostly you know it's been shell development in the in the interior has followed behind where there's a lot of different activities that are going on within this building not only lab space and r d but some manufacturing of high-end laboratory equipment that all has very very sensitive operations related to it so it's been it's been an immense challenge to even implement the the things and the sustainable items that we're trying to squeeze in that's it for now other commissioners with questions or comments i would actually like to follow up on an

040answer that you uh that came up uh with commissioner gibrandal um i appreciate looking uh and confessed that i don't i don't know as much about geothermal as i ought to know um so this means like enough to be dangerous um my understanding is that there are a couple of different types of geothermal heating and one is kind of horizontal field which i'm not sure of the applicability or the viability of running those you know underneath parking lot um uh but just when you were talking about like additional space that's what came to mind but i also know that there are vertical fields that are deep rather than horizontally and i'm when you said that you explored this i'm curious what technology in particular that you were looking at and if you had looked at

041kind of the feasibility of um vertical fields here can you can you can you let me take that one if you don't mind please do so hi everybody this is uh joe vig with jsfig construction we're the construction manager uh on the project and um this is a great discussion i'm a big fan of geothermal in fact i i just finished a project with vertical wells for madonna university because this was a very much of an initiative that they were trying to incorporate um in into their priorities as well so early in the design development we did a pretty deep study with our technical consultants on the project um evaluating both vrf heat pumps and geothermal and evaluating them one in the context of potentially getting leed certification also just looking you know fundamentally at

042what the operating costs were going to be within the building and the way that we ended up with the current design as cam mccoslan had indicated is primarily because the the percentage of building that is allocated to technical high performance technical spaces uh lab research and development manufacturing etc has grown to to over half the building and kind of continues to grow within the building and the those particular mechanical systems that we did a pretty deep study on at the client's request and for our own purposes were just simply from a performance standpoint were not deemed to be adequate to meet the needs of the technical spaces which as pam mccosland had indicated we've got really substantial um levels of humidity control that are required very substantial uh air changes you know resulting in our

043need to heat and cool the makeup air and so the evolution of the mechanical design um from potentially being you know ground source heat pumps um or uh you know vrf heat pumps or some other alternative which which we as team members are all very uh supportive of um it evolved into this you know kind of package dx system that's very decentralized and very much um the systems the subsystems meet the very specific and high performance needs of those lab spaces so that's how we ended up you know at this point but we also recognized and and emmy engineering the engineers who have been working on this recognize that although we're doing package dx systems we need to provide a level of energy recovery and performance that is the highest available in the context of

044the systems that we're providing and we we do a lot of work for the university of michigan they're our largest client as as a general contractor in in the work that we do for them um in some of their initiatives from from a sustainability standpoint uh our mechanical system design is very consistent with what they're trying to do you know in in similar uh you know design initiatives so you know kind of going back to the the question at hand um would the development team consider geothermal i would say the development team the client were excited about geothermal we did this evaluation certainly the soils were a consideration no doubt we could have overcome that issue probably the issue that we we most significantly could not overcome and the reason that all of the project

045technical advisors led us to this outcome related to the performance capabilities that were required um within within the various lab spaces and and technical spaces thanks for providing that additional background in terms of the analysis that has been done in considerations given this i'm curious in light of you know the goals that you have the the company has that sartorius has as a company and also that the city has you know hopefully as you're considering this investment option knowing that you that both the location in which you're citing it and your overall corporate ethos is is intending to be carbon free [Music] how are you anticipating getting there then i'm curious if that's been given some consideration kim do you do you want to take that one or would you want me to answer that

046you know i i think that uh you know in this in this instance you know where i think we're i i understand we're focused on this this geothermal issue with with gas and it's unfortunate that we can't get there but i i believe that the uh the list of of sustainable items that we have created with this facility and of the replacement of uh you know a totally antiquated building that was an environmental concern certainly you know at some point have to be considered an outweighed with with the with the aspect of uh the geothermal heating work i think we're getting kind of singularly focused on that there's a lot of things going on with this facility that are it most likely will might be the most energy efficient building that ann arbor has at

047some point here so uh you know that that's to reducing trips off the property with the amenities that we've created uh and uh you know with with the uh sidewalks being able you know to to so uh the entire property and we were very considerate of making sure that we didn't have unnecessary trips uh outside the the uh the park as much as we possibly could so you know and again the building envelope of the you know all the building materials are over and above the typical ask you know for energy code for a building of this nature so um you know it's just you know this type of use is a challenge i mean that's really what it comes down to is that i think if you had an office building that didn't have

048the uh physical needs of uh the uh of a building of this nature i'm sure that that it would be of a high consideration there is other opportunities in this park to potentially do that or even in the phase two where we might not have labs it's just this use in particular is just incredibly challenged to get there well it's it's worth it's worth noting that the board of directors of sartorius in in the ceo in germany they're challenging us to incorporate as cam had indicated um you know the highest possible level of lead certification to the extent possible but but balancing that against the technical requirements of of the labs and the manufacturing spaces so this this has been for a number of months at least the last four or five months we've been

049working with all these technical advisors and our lead consultants and other sustainability consultants provided you know by the client to figure out you know you to kind of ask the question what is our pathway to get to our goals well the goal is to make the building as sustainable as it possibly can be but in the context of the performance requirements that that are that exist for the labs and and the certification of those labs so that that design work that evaluation has been in process for months it remains in process that's why that's why it's really impossible for us to sit here today and say the the building's going to be leed certified silver or gold or platinum or whatever it may be because because that is a function there's kind of a balance

050between the lab design and what we're doing with with the leed certification but those team members are at the table and we're evaluating this on a on a very granular basis area by area almost kind of room by room because if you look at the technical spaces there's dozens of different programs and scientists that exist within those spaces and we're going to do the very best we can to meet not only sartorius's corporate goals but the city of ann arbor's goals because they're they're actually very much aligned they're completely aligned um and and that's you know that's why we're very supportive and encouraged by this conversation and trying to give everybody an understanding of how we've ended up without a geothermal system you know in in the scenario that we're in right now i oh

051okay i appreciate um i appreciate that and walking us through it and really like i think that this is one of the tricky parts of decarbonizing um that we're going to have to start addressing and kicking i mean all of us none of us like kick in the can down the road right and hoping that there's a solution in the future i think sharing um the steps that you've already taken is really valuable to us as we were talking about and even as many of not just the folks that we heard from tonight but the people who wrote to us acknowledged like this isn't something necessarily that's within our that that's within the code um but having these conversations with those who are making investments in this community i think helps us all understand um

052kind of the road that's ahead of us um so that we can tackle this challenge and i um appreciate the kind of work that you've put into this when we saw this proposal first in october i was impressed with the sustainability elements i mean i think i remember that being a discussion around the table and so i i don't question that side i'm encouraging like i think it's helpful to talk these things out and not just say oh we it's not in our purview um understanding that you have checked some boxes is important to me the other thing that i want to acknowledge that i'll be honest like i was con well i i want to just verify with staff that the only substantive change in this were those three windows that the in particular

053one of the changes that happened that we are kind of aware of and i don't want to like let everybody know of our loophole but in moving site plan approval for these things to us right now there's not a requirement for ev parking i want to verify that the ev parking is still if it is shown on the plan if we are told there will be the eevee infrastructure that the petitioner will if this is approved that they will be held to that even though right now that is not a requirement uh that i guess that's for staff i'll take that one yes they are providing the required ev parking and they were it was shown in the previous site plan and that has been extended to this this new site plan before planning commission

054okay so and um so the same multipliers from what we saw before um and it's shown on the plan so even though it is not in in the current time while we are trying to fill the gap it is now requirement they will be if if we approve this site plan they will be required to provide that infrastructure is that right that is correct okay thank you um that made me i was wondering like if that was one of the reasons that this had come back before us and it sounds like that's not the case um it wasn't to try to skirt that um but instead it was just because getting caught up in this change of um of kind of who has discretion over this i would say that from my end that gives

055me further comfort that this is a this is a petitioner or a development that's not intending to like skimp on our goals um and i would encourage the petitioner to again we're in if if this gets approved and you all build it which i hope you do um we're in this together and so um thinking through uh how it is that we can take spaces like this like yes i think um this is not the only kind of laboratory space in the world and if we can solve it um hopefully it will be a model for other places so i you know the idea of having lots of air changes i think i can i can imagine how that is challenging for kind of a heating an electrified heating and cooling system at the same

056time we got to do it and so um i uh i think i just want to acknowledge that other questions or comments commissioner dish i you just uh said really very eloquently some of the things that i wanted to say about um even though this even though we can't require electrification as the planning commission it is i'm really impressed by the the depth and thoughtfulness of the discussion on the part of the commission and on the part of the developer to talk about what they are doing um within the limits of a use that doesn't lend itself to the decarbonization that we would like to see the only thing i think this is possibly more of a question for staff but uh you suggested that or sartorius has just suggested that this may be one

057of the most energy efficient buildings in ann arbor would there be a way to verify that claim um i don't know but we can look into it if it were leed certified i think there is a registry of lead buildings and those are ranked um um so i i guess in short i'm i'm it's seems plausible i can't tell you i know exactly how to measure that but we'd be happy to look into it commissioner did you have anything else commissioner weich so i want to thank the petitioner for doing this infill project i just wanted to come back to some of the public comments that we've received because we received quite a few probably more than i have received since joining planning in august which means that a lot of residents are paying attention

058to this development so a couple questions one did the petitioner consider um ground-based solar i know that you are looking at phases two three and potentially four but until those phases are built one way you could potentially offset your natural gas consumption could have been through the use of ground-based solar so i wanted to start there to see if any conversation um occurred with that as a potential energy source we did not primarily is because we have been tasked with uh starting the planning of phase two of this project and uh your engineering uh group is actually working in related to that with uh with the road grant uh that we have requested so we can get the road uh primarily repaved over it over in the park it's in very poor condition and in

059doing so um you know the phase two project will most likely follow very closely behind this this project so putting solar in place of where a building could be you know very quickly behind it would be extremely cost prohibitive it wouldn't be i don't think it would be to anybody's benefit because ultimately we uh we ultimately will have more roof space if we do that phase two that would augment what what were what we're ultimately doing on on the phase one piece again i'll just go back to saying that you know one of the challenges that we have is we just don't have enough space on the roof this takes uh i believe joe correct me i believe we're at some ridiculous amount of tons of cooling for this which means that there's there's just

060very substantially large units that have to go on the roof and you know from an engineering perspective you can't put these things too close together because it's a loading problem especially with snow and the like you have to be very cognizant of how these things get pulled off on a roof so we are i will say this we're not necessarily done with the solar array that we have now it was a placeholder but we are looking at potentially upsizing that we don't know we can fit it it's part of our lead uh uh uh investigation that that uh mr big mentioned it's just we we're just not there yet with it and it's all and it's also as as with the community it's a priority of the client the client is they're really pushing us

061just as you are you know they they certainly don't want to in all the announce we've actually had fairly detailed analysis engineering analyses done of the solar array and you know they don't want to put panels on the roof that are not going to be oriented or placed effectively but they also want to maximize that array but in order to do that we need to complete the placement of all the associated mechanical equipment that's going to support both the heating and cooling of the labs and the manufacturing as well as as as well as the process needs of of the labs and so once that real estate is defined and laid out and as as cam mccoslan had indicated these are these are large units you know that this scale and size of these rooftop

062units is substantial so once that process is complete um then we'll be able to define possibly some additional placement of solar you know and as as indicated in the in the comments from the community the contribution of power from that solar array is relatively nominal compared to the overall demand but but like you know the initiatives that you're that you're setting forth that client sartorius wants to maximize that to the to the full extent possible uh continuing uh from the comments uh regarding the geothermal i know that you spoke about the veritable refrigerant flow uh heat pumps did you rule those completely out for the office use we you know we we really did for a lot of different reasons now keep in mind there inevitably will be some supplemental heat pumps um vrf heat

063pumps incorporated into the project but with respect to the over meeting the overall um heating cooling and it's primarily cooling and ventilation needs that are kind of driving the project from a load standpoint it's primarily going to be the the package rooftop units but but also the with respect to the performance of those rooftop units we are trying to exceed the code exceed ashrae requirements as much as we possibly can and again part of that's uh driven by sustainability but the other reason is the client wants to reduce their operating cost to the extent possible so those kind of those goals are aligned um so that you have this massive ventilation requirement which requires us primarily to to heat and cool all this makeup air mostly that the expenses on the on the cooling side

064and and we're trying with the use of you know energy recovery to to make the system operate in a much more efficient and sustainable manner will we add some some heat pumps some supplemental heat pumps probably but that won't be the the primary design the other thing is that the heating system has um wet heat so for example a really inefficient system the way things used to be done would be like electric reheat boxes you know we've got all hot water uh reheat um to the extent possible and and so we're doing as the system design is being finalized we're trying to put forth the most efficient solution possible not the most cost effective the most efficient from it from a life cycle operating cost perspective and then uh one final question for the petitioner

065and then i have a question for staff is it uh have you all calculated what your co2 emissions are going to be for the building and are those going to be published or available to the community so that i mean one of the commenters estimates that it will be 574 metric tons of co2 um as a result of heating this space if the building envelope is at 130 000 square feet and so i guess i'm i'm and i think chair mills attempted uh this question earlier uh it just seems like a disconnect to say the the the company wants to meet these carbon goals while simultaneously building a building that's going to increase its uh production of carbon emissions and so it it just seems just from a novice i mean i i i have

066a building that i supervise that's about 26 000 square feet and we've been trying our best to convert our heating from electric power so that we can do solar and we looked at heat pumps the the vrfs that you spoke of as a way to accomplish that and so i know that these are not um small undertakings but uh there does seem to be at least from my point in the comments of our community a bit of a disconnect between what is being said and then what is being built and i would love to just allow the petitioner to give us any more insight to respond to the comments that we've received from the community just by just by way of example and we've built a lot of lab projects in in the city of

067ann arbor and washington county and by way of example like an eight-foot hood so in a in a chemistry lab and you even have these hoods in biology labs um consumes as much power as much energy in a year as a single-family home and so to address that need uh to then there's a ventilation requirement that's a safety requirement that we really can't we can't limit how we ventilate the spaces the lab spaces or the hoods or the workspaces that's that's really governed by osha and the safety is the foremost priority is complying with or exceeding the safety requirements but to offset that because you have such a massive amount of air changes what we can do is we can have highly efficient hoods with operable sashes we can have instead of constant volume systems

068where they're just running when they're not in use we have variable volume systems that are much more expensive but they are much more energy efficient and they consume a lot less energy and and therefore we have to produce a lot less makeup air that's tempered with heating and cooling things of that nature and so to answer the question about what is our uh total uh consumption going to be what's our co2 footprint going to be the client's going to going you know they are going to study that in depth i i don't know if they're going to choose to release that information as as public information i don't you know cam would know better than i would you know but but i don't think it's their intent to share all that information with with respect

069to their facilities um however there is there's an extraordinary effort underway to make sure that each one of these technical spaces which there are many in in and they you know in aggregate they make up well over half of the building square footage that each one of these technical spaces performs as efficiently and sustainably as possible and then once we meet the safety requirements and the requirements that that exist for certifying those lab spaces then the immediate priority right behind that is to do it as sustainably as possible and and this is a client we we work for a range of different you know lab clients that are often focused on what is the cost the first cost because lab space is expensive this is really not sartorius's priority right now their priority is first

070and foremost the functionality of the space to meet their corporate needs and in the programs that are going to exist within the building uh right behind that to meet their sustainability goals because that is cam mccauslan had mentioned that's one of the pillars set forth by the board of directors and the ceo and the chief sustainability officer of sartorius and so all of that when this design is fully completed which will probably occur in a june july time frame for all of these technical spec spaces that sustainability component is very much going to be a priority and to the extent that we can achieve leed certification at a very high level um the client undoubtedly is going to want to do that because they've been pressing this on that issue and and and it was

071really their push to have us bring a lead consultant on and and a commissioning consultant as early as possible in the design process to make sure that we that we maximize these goals so i know it sounds evasive that we can't give you specific answers right now because the design is the well i would say the interior design not the exterior design but that not the shell of the building has been designed but the interior design will not be completed until you know this summer and at that time um these are these are the objectives that the sartorius is trying to accomplish all right couple questions for you chair mills and you mr leonard so now that we are the approving body not the recommending body um what is our pathway to enacting sort of

072rules within the udc that allows us to meet our climate goals so this is a conversation that i we've had with you i if you will i'm i'm not asking the question um that results in the education that the a20 plan did not come into the plan i think i understand that pathway but now that we sit with the approval authority a scenario that i am working through in my head would be we postpone the approval of a project like this until we are able to integrate our climate objectives because i think the comments that we receive from the public tonight are correct that once we approve this development it is a 50 to 100 year development and these things don't change i'm in a building that is a 50 year old building so i'm

073i'm i'm just trying to reconcile the reality of what we are trying to accomplish because we are in a climate emergency uh and what we can actually achieve at this table and so it it's a joint question because as chair mills just noted the ev parking changed when the legislative sort of process changed so that means we're gonna have to take up some activity to put that back in place and that seems like a good opportunity for us to have these kinds of conversations around emissions and i know that at the council table they're having this conversation with dr schultz around sort of building envelopes and their emissions and things like that and as we think about the intersections of that planning and those constructions uh i just don't want to miss an opportunity for

074us to act because this is a hundred year commitment that we're gonna make tonight and i know it's a buy right and all those good things so i'm not asking that question i'm amazingly just asking is there any process changes that are afforded to us that won't slow the developer down significantly i'm not looking to penalize the developer i'm really looking to figure out how we can achieve our community's goals so if that all makes sense i'd love a comment or two on it sure i'll start and if chairmills wants to jump in after um so uh if i miss anything please don't hesitate um you know i think i think to even make it a step back back from some of your specific questions i think you are expressing a frustration that's experienced by

075a lot of public commenters that is experienced by the city council i'm presuming by other boards and commissions and a lot of other members of our community in that the city council has really appropriately identified some goals based on some real life concerns we don't have the legislative framework in place to implement those on the speed and pace at which you and i think a lot of others would agree we desire so to be clear to the point of a process of being availed to you to somehow postpone us decisions such as this my advice to you is no the the recent ordinance and previous ordinances set forth that site plans are reviewed as they are measured against our requirements we don't have requirements in these regards so as staff is presented to you it

076is our recommendation that this proposal meets the requirements of the city code and and it's appropriate to approve that scenario that you're talking you are talking about is um uh in some way trying to stave off the city doing its duty to make those decisions while some changes might be proposed consider considered refined and ultimately adopted and made effective in the city i don't believe that's the right way to go about it i think the right way to go about it is to do the hard work like you were reversing with ev parking which is already underway that's going to be coming back to the planning commission soon and to find other ways that our land use requirements can start reflecting those goals as you already mentioned it's not even as simple as that being

077part of our community comprehensive plan nonetheless there are a lot of alignment with city comprehensive goals that i think do support that there are also challenges when we start talking about some of the depth of conversation here there are absolutely valid conversations to discuss as to what is appropriately to be regulated through development criteria and what's appropriate to be regulated through building code criteria and those are very distinct despite our frustrations very distinct legislative frameworks in the state of michigan that we have to live within so does that help what i expected it you know does it help but no because what it what it ultimately means is we'll have to accept a development that is going to impede us from actually uh achieving our a20 goals because we will if if mr garber's calculations

078are correct we're gonna have a building that's contributing 572 metric tons of carbon um as soon as it gets up and running and i mean he the the petitioner even tonight said each one of these hoods represents the energy footprint of a single family home which when he said that i thought then why aren't we doing everything that we can to put that on a climate trajectory that is sustainable like why why aren't we just in in the idea that we're in this shared space like we have to share as chairmail said we're in this together this is not a we get to sit here and you go off and do what you want what you do impacts my quality of life my kids quality life your employees their kids and so i think you

079know uh mr garner is correct and and saying that this is a reality that we are facing so does it help no is it understandable within the legislative framework yes yeah of course and i would i i guess i would just add that you know the city has made a lot of progress in this regard and and by nature by nature of governance we have to operate within these frameworks as i'm sure you would agree we have made a lot of progress but you know i just want to i just want to appreciate like um public commenters yours like you know of course i i would definitely agree that i wish there were more efficient direct and easy ways we could get to advancing some of those goals um thus we have systems in place

080to make sure we're doing it properly we're doing it transparently we're doing it within legislative frameworks that do provide some limitations that we wish at times weren't there but um you know i i i i would say that despite the fact that um we are maybe not getting there as quickly and in all the regards that we desire that's not the same as to say that we're not making progress on a lot of fronts so yeah because it was partially to me too i i want to just remind all of us and for those who don't regularly follow that we did have a working session with the office of i'm gonna i always just call it dr stelt's office um the office of sustainability and innovations where we talked about this very issue and trying

081to understand like because this comes up with us again and again and again and not to push off shirk responsibility but like we had we had a conversation about what it is that we can do i'll talk about this a little bit more and commission proposed business because it is when we hear a20 like and and this particular goal that like i go back and print it off and i did say use one piece of paper for that um to say like what where are we on this but also let's look beyond that like what else is on our work plan like what within a20 that is that is squarely our level of responsibility so i want to come back to that but but also just to say that it this is not just the

082planning department's determination like um i think the the entire the office that is standing behind like recognizing that is tasked with helping us get to that goal has also said like continuing to ask education right like and the education of us and educating petitioners i think um uh right now i think is the is our framework there's lots of other things that we have to do that we can do too not satisfying i'm not satisfied either go ahead commissioner dish it's possible that i that i misheard or or heard what i wanted to hear but um what i thought i heard from the petitioner was that um what is constraining in this situation is the technology available to heat and cool um a building that the operations that will be contained in this building heat

083cool ventilate so what we are limited by is actually not first and foremost our lack of regulatory ability to demand a carbon neutral building this petitioner has explored many of the options that we would want them to explore and found that it won't give them the performance they need for the work that they do in this building so i'm not hearing i i think there are two problems that we are confronting as we look at this project and one is the limits of what is within the purview of planning commission to ask but the other is the limits of what we have the technology to do and i i don't want us to leave tonight thinking that there was an easy efficiency solution that got left on the table because someone was recalcitrant that is

084sometimes the way we leave this room but i don't think it's the way we're leaving this room tonight and i would be happy to be corrected if i've missed something but that is what i take from the conversation commissioner hammerschmidt that sort of sums up what i thought i was hearing as well so i appreciate this conversation i don't even know enough about this to be dangerous so this was this was good this is a good primer and commissioner dish i think that summed up perfectly what's been going through my head it sounds like if if there was a way to do this it would be integrated into these plans i do have one clarification and you can all you can correct commissioner edition i too if we're wrong um but i think i heard

085you say something about the soil conditions are an issue for geothermal but then you might be considering um considering that for me to that point you know cam mccosman had mentioned that in the evaluation of the geothermal options be it horizontal wells or vertical wells you know what are the obstacles and one thing that was evaluated were uh test fits and the soil conditions on site they're not just to clarify and build on his comment it's not optimal for the wells but it certainly wouldn't prevent us from installing the wells so i i think that's more of a kind of a tangential aside you know the client wasn't in the exploration of geothermal it wasn't dismissed because of the soil conditions on site and even with respect to that to the footprint for sure you

086know like cam mccoslan had indicated horizontal wells may have present prevented or presented some issues with respect to future development pads but but vertical wells would have been a solution to try to work around that again i think that is an issue that we evaluated for sure um but the the overriding issue is is the technical spaces so you know if this were an office building or a warehouse um using uh heat pumps you know like a vrf heat pump type system or uh using a ground source heat pump system certainly would would be um an option and an objective from a client who's so focused on these sustainable goals but the reason we ended up with this design again there are a lot of contributing discussions but the overriding reason are these technical spaces

087and and if i could maybe turn a negative into a positive this particular corporate citizen um what they're proposing is really the most efficient building possible for for a life science user that has an intensive research and development requirement with chemistry labs and biology labs and these you know manufacturing spaces and and so forth so there there is a bit of a positive story here in that there's a lot of labs in ann arbor i've built a lot of them that are not very efficient so it would be like having a lot of you know inefficient single family homes and so forth but if the community um is embracing the life science market um which i think it is and it because it's so critical i mean it's certainly if covid has made us all

088acutely aware of how critical you know the life science industry is um in order to support the life science market you have these really intensively used laboratory buildings but they in it and it becomes very difficult when you have uh you know 10 or 15 air changes that you're going to do that with complete carbon neutrality but that doesn't mean that you can't use every available technology to do it in the most efficient way possible and so i would say you have a corporate um citizen with a lot of resources that really value sustainability you know very much like what the is trying to do by taking this you know very technical building and putting forth an example of how to do it right and hopefully as as this building you know it becomes a

089catalyst for redevelopment in in this research part this kind of out what i would call kind of an outmoded research part it also becomes a benchmark for how to do the most sustainable type of development for a life science user so there's actually a really positive story but but obviously we all recognize that when you have these lab spaces and you have all these air changes your there's a challenge in that it takes a lot of energy to temper to heat and cool all the makeup air that you're bringing in when you're turning air over at such a high rate for safety reasons commissioner hammerschmidt yeah thanks that was i understood most of that but my clarify my clarification actually when i asked about the soil um in phases two three and four if they

090are not lab spaces there is the potential to consider geothermal for those phases and i think you guys said you would look into that for those phases i just want to clarify yeah i i think that it's an ongoing process where the client wants us to continue um you know geo exploring geothermal and frankly every every available technology because as as you all know like like you had mentioned or some of the um public comment had mentioned uh you know in in the letters that they wrote uh for today's meeting you know from a from a kind of a seer rating standpoint a lot of the like vrf heat pump systems now are just as efficient um as the ground source uh heat pump systems like we have clients you know like the university of

091michigan credit union that we've done a dozen projects for and they're using vrf instead of geothermal totally different type of building than the sartorius building but so i would say the client is exploring not just geothermal but every available technology that would make this building more efficient and more sustainable and they're committed to that in each additional phase um just as just as you all are pushing us to make this building as sustainable as possible they're actually doing the same thing that's great i think just to i'm gonna say one more thing and then move on to something else but also as commissioner dish mentioned like we often come away from the table asking these questions and we don't get the responses that we want like i i feel confident that you guys have really

092been looking into this and this is really an important thing to the company um i think i need a little more education myself on this this has been really helpful but i mean i i'm not i feel like you're doing everything that you can do because this is part of what this company wants you know what i i would even i would even go so far as to say can you go can you um commissioner hammerschmidt go ahead yeah i want to move to i just i want to praise this project for something else for a minute um and then i have a request for consideration um this is filling in huge sidewalk gaps along research whatever the road is called which i think is really exciting um you know it's a 10 minute walk

093to some of the restaurants that are nearby but also and there will be a sidewalk now to connect in i think um but there's this i'm looking at you know this this plan with the pavilion and the food truck pads and i think you know being able to provide that space for um the employees so that they don't necessarily have to drive um you know 10 minutes might feel too far for people to walk to a restaurant or drive even farther so you know providing those spaces as part of the site for people to gather for people to get food on site i think is great my request um i was yeah i think you said the interiors are going to be designed this summer when i was looking at the plates i was trying

094to find where the stairs are i think that you know outside of the building with all of the glazing like it looks beautiful it's only two stories like i would love for the entry lobby to not have you know a prominent elevator and to instead if possible have like a nice staircase going up to the second floor so that people have the opportunity to get that little bit of physical activity that they might not otherwise so that's my request that's that's that's part of the design it's like it's a great suggestion that's part of the design i always talk about stairs okay awesome well thank you i think this project looks beautiful um the sustainability elements that you guys are incorporating i think to me are very impressive so i can't wait to see this

095project by the way we very much appreciate these comments because we you know works we're concerned with the same issues great thank you other planning commission comments oh goodness commissioner lee and then commissioner um gibb randall uh yeah sure um so yeah as as most of the other commissioners have said our planning review is form and use so based on setback use far all of this seems to fit the water county resource the water resource commissioner has signed off on the calcs the 4.3 hour full infiltration and drain time is everything looks good this looks like a good infill development as mr leonard mentioned that the the big rub is going to continue to be that legislative framework between the michigan building energy code what that requires relative to what we have legislation or what

096we have authority over which is again um form and use so from that standpoint um i think that we will do everything we can but uh this looks to be good infield to me um i would love to see some segmentations with the office so i totally understand you know 1k 10k clean rooms can require extreme amounts of makeup air um but i think it was commissioner weiss that mentioned that um the office building can be segmented from a you know an electrification standpoint all of that said my here's my question for you guys there's no silver bullet environmental change and i think there's going to be a lot of good consolidation and efficiency that comes from this as they make the move here are there any plans to use carbon offsets and programs from

097dt related to this so is there going to be any efforts towards carbon neutrality towards other offsets it's being looked at and there's an ongoing discussion with dte you know one of the things that we're uh we're doing is that it's really not represented on this uh on this plan is that there is a dt easement that actually bifurcates the site north south that it runs through um we are actively looking at at moving that uh that line that is now most likely we are going to bury that and uh and take it over to the right-of-way easement on the east side of the property so active discussions with dte on that front and then also on on the carbon issues what you're mentioning and potentially buying offsets gotcha thank you um and as you

098guys said you guys are looking at lead certification which would be great we'd highly encourage it that said we don't control operation i don't think that's within the context of the michigan planning enabling act so please correct me if i'm wrong in that arena no uh it's just again not not in our legislative framework yeah so and i don't i don't profess to be an expert at lead but leed has evolved and to be more operational have more operate ongoing operational aspects in order to meet that criteria from a development perspective we have to take a snapshot of this building at some point and say yeah it meets our requirements and you've you've heard me talk about my concerns when we start adding operational requirements to a physical form that we have to deem to

099meet our requirements or not meet our requirements so um lead um we do we you will note in our udc we do use it at times for base points for for example for accessing premiums but we typically do not use it as a benchmark of attaining a role because it puts both a property owner in the city in a difficult situation if five years down the road those operational decisions don't attain that then what understood and so uh yeah from that standpoint what we can do is to encourage that environmental sustainability is something that really does impact us all so uh but but i think there's good efficiency gains from consolidations and a lot of good things happening here so um and for my identification how much was the geothermal so i mean on a

10020 million dollar project just is there like a ballpark i don't know if that you guys wanted you're saying it like a cost per square foot type of thing yeah or just a range or just a magnitude i suppose um that said oh yeah this is not viable it i i could i could probably if you wanted to discuss that with me offline i could probably you know share some thumbnail figures but i i don't know that i can share right now exactly you know where it fell in the cost comparison because like if you want to talk specifically about geothermal as if anyone's implemented geothermal on a project even for example the vertical wells that we just put in at madonna the challenge with geothermal was always peak heating and peak cooling so generally

101when the systems get designed you have a a redundant system to heat and cool the building during those times of peak load like january you're in peak heating obviously in july august you're in peak cooling so to say how much is geothermal that would be one component you'd still have to supplement geothermal with other what i would call decentralized systems to meet the needs of those labs during those peak heating and peak cooling times so it's it's really it would be a misleading number if we just kind of gave you that number here today i i will tell you this this system evaluation where we looked at how do we incorporate heat pumps how do we incorporate potentially ground source heat pumps with geothermal or you know more of like a package dx system with

102with supplemental wet heat like with the direction that we're kind of going um the cost we're pretty comparable on all those options because the big cost driver here is is the is the ventilation requirement and as as we all know geothermal really doesn't have a a mechanism for for ventilation you know i mean that's we're providing the the source of heating and cooling but it's it's really that how how best do we maintain really really tight parameters for temperature uh requirements and humidity requirements in a lab where you have an extraordinary amount of air changes that's what's kind of driving the cost and the geothermal by itself can't solve for that it has to be geothermal plus other supplemental systems so if you compare everything kind of apples to apples with all the technologies that

103are out there um it really wasn't really a cost decision it's a performance decision totally understood it was predominantly me trying to better understand what that cost um even at the madonna project totally understand that it's got to be supplemental whether it's mini splits or or other mechanisms of localizing air transfer so um i think it's something that you and i can discuss probably yeah and i would be if you ever want to you know just reach out to me please give me a call and i could give you i could give you some references um you know just for your own benefit yeah no i'd like that um i have a completely kind of switching gears i noticed that the proposed 12-inch water main along the frontage is getting installed and the existing eight

104inch water main is getting abandoned so is that getting just getting capped and left in the ground and maybe this is a question for staff or or tom um yeah it's a question for either mr chang or probably mr covert yeah i think it'll be capped and left in place okay gotcha just it'll be there for a long long time okay understood all right i think that's all i had thank you very much go ahead commissioner brandel thank you um one other thing on on on this train that we've been on and that is that um i've worked alongside a lot of uh leed buildings and living building challenge buildings and um the amount of glazing seems challenging to me in terms of what i'm seeing and i'm wondering if there's ways for us to

105give them flexibility in terms of how the elevation may change from what we govern from the outside as they are figuring out all of the granular stuff that they're going to need to figure out for the inside and that i know that we can be pretty rigid about what the outside looks like but i just wouldn't be surprised if if i mean again depending on where your priorities are with the way things look and perform with light and and and heating and cooling and all that sort of thing that there wouldn't be some awnings or less glazing or something like that on some of these sides here because you know going to get a lot of dramatic heat swings with two stories of glass there unless you've got triple glazing and things like that which

106is pretty pretty pricey so i guess what i'm saying is that i would be fine having some flexibility with how this exterior may change knowing that we would be very supportive of the performance of the building increasing as long as it doesn't become a total concrete bunker um to be able to meet the goals i don't want you all making decisions saying oh now we've got to go back to planning commission because we're changing the facade x percentage because we're trying to meet this performance goal that we weren't at the stage to be able to to to do when we're at planning commission stage because you're just you're still just way in the building at this point i mean the site is pretty much you know figured out but the inside of the building i

107know it's still evolving a lot so i would just like to kind of bring that to the group in terms of how the rest of you all feel about giving them some leeway with since and i truly appreciate the amount of thinking that you all have done which i don't think that we've ever gotten frankly from a practitioner around this stuff in terms of studying this at this stage in the game from where we stand and i guess i would like to be able to leave some flexibility for them to let these facades evolve as they get more understanding of their building performance to be able to give them some leeway to to shift those if they need to in terms of how the building is performing i know you turned it to us but

108i'm gonna first if it's okay turn it to mr chang or mr leonard to say sure right walk us through what that looks like and is that even something that we can offer such flexibility for i'll start and if mr train wants to add anything i will let him correct me so the draft development agreement that we would use for this and many other developments does include a provision that if that gives me as the planning manager discretion to make a determination that if there are architectural elevation changes that are significant from what was approved they can be routed back to in this case the planning commission for consideration so in short i guess i we could do one of two things we could eliminate that provision and not have any expectation of connection of

109these architectural elevations to the approval of the site plan it's not my preferred option i think what i would be comfortable doing if it was comfortable with the planning commission is keep that language as it is i will tell you typically when i go through that framework i am thinking very much about glazing the most common examples of those discussions are residential buildings where sort of a glazing percentage is reduced from what was presented at the planning commission and city council to what is being proposed for construction i have often used glazing as a benchmark of glass adding architectural interest to a building and when it starts getting reduced significantly work with petitioner to maybe reconfigure or keep that level substantial in this case if the feedback from the planning commission was that that was

110less of a concern here i i would be happy to make that judgment that if in doing that process the architectural elevations here were to be modified in this case i might frankly apply a more relaxed sense of judgment which is i just want to be clear it is still a sense of judgment that the changes still seem consistent with what was approved however recognizing the goals of the planning commission is expressed for energy efficiency um so i'd be happy to proceed in that regard and and and just to be clear i would just go into it with perhaps a higher level of flexibility and judgment than i typically would for a project that might have um and and i think that's not inappropriate because this has this does have a much higher percentage of

111glazing than most of the projects that we do see so a couple of options we could strike that proposed provision from the from the development agreement altogether that would be sort of utmost flexibility without judgment or retain it as it is i would take feedback from the planning commission if i guess i would ask that the planning commission i don't need a motion but that if generally you are in agreement um and then ultimately i would i'd be making that determination if it was modified um you and the community would have to live with that judgment i would prefer the the latter that you have some judgment with that and i trust that you know i just want to see how other people feel about it you know because that's how i feel about it

112but i don't know how the rest of the commissioners would feel about that thank you for bringing it up knowing some like as having gone through this uh like that process i think that's really helpful i'm similarly comfortable if the trade-off is not just for because we don't want to put the glass but if it is particularly like related to energy efficiency like that makes a whole lot of sense and i think i would feel comfortable applying that in lots of situations throughout the city um but this one in particular other thoughts go ahead commissioner lee i suppose i'd be comfortable with mr leonard's discretionary judgment provided that it's in concert with our city goals so relatively in support do you feel like you heard enough any protests no so um basically by some degree

113of nodding and quiet um we will keep the provision as it is so there will there will be an expectation that the building is built to this criteria but in applying that i will any changes i will clearly measure against how it's relating to energy efficiency standards before i make a determination on whether or not it's appropriate to come back here okay that's great um two little tiny landscape things that i just want to pick at just a bit um one is that your viburnum dentatum is going to get decimated by viburnum beetle and i suggest that you all change that species out and that your new england aster is never going to survive in the bottom of your um your detention basin uh it's just going to have too much water on top of

114it and i suggest you switch that guy out to something that can handle more fluctuation of flashy water levels with storm water so those are two things that you know again nothing to hold the project up but i think that you're just going to get better performance out of your landscape if you um look at those two possibilities of making a shift noted commissioner thank you see your hand bless your heart that's like the nicest that's awesome um i have a question about the other phases and this is just uh the process in which they get approved as they move forward so they would have to basically bring an amendment to the site plan um and then go through this basically process for that phase two phase three and go through the same thing is

115that correct yeah and it would be measured by the ordinances in place at that time gotcha totally understood okay gotcha so what we're approving is this phase one essentially with the five parcels being um essentially combined so or that being the condition precedent to the approval of the site plan okay perfect that's the clarification i need it thank you anything else mr leonard could you have a roll call vote please yes commissioner mills yes commissioner good randall yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner lee yes commissioner weich yes commissioner clark yes commissioner dish yes site plan is approved all right very good thank you thank you very much thank you all right while there is the movement of people in and out of the zoom room i will announce that this is the second

116third and final opportunity for public comment persons may speak for up to three minutes about any issue this evening we'll call on first on individuals present here in chambers to address the commission and then call in remote participants if you are joining us remotely this evening and listening by a telephone you can press star 9 on your phone if you've joined through the web link again you can press the raised hand feature button which is and should be in the center bottom of your screen if you're watching us and want to dial in it's 877-853-5247 and then our meeting id is 977-6634-1226 mr leonard we'll call on you by your telephone number or your zoom name please move to a quiet area mute any background sounds and as always please uh state your name and

117address at the beginning of your comments if you're here in person or if you're uh calling in remotely would anyone present like to provide a public comment go for it please since i'm here i'll just say something i just want to thank you for the very thorough and thoughtful discussion tonight really appreciate it in everything that you do take care thank you do we have any callers mr leonard nobody has yet indicated a desire to address the commission maybe give it another moment here sure and again if you've caught dialed in on your telephone and want to provide a comment you can press star 9 to indicate that if you've joined through the web link you can just use the raised hand button no indication all right then we can move on to item 10

118commission proposed business as promised i have notes but does anybody else have any commission proposed business okay again i want to remind us the things that are specifically where we are named as the party responsible for implementation within a20 one is increasing diversity diversity of housing options and by my read the indicators for success are 2 000 new units of residential multi-family or adus that are built in residential neighborhoods by 2030 the in terms of the next steps a lot of it was thinking about how this fits within our comprehensive plan discussions and then reviewing our zoning ordinance i feel like we're probably biting away like nibbling away at the edges um with the existing planning documents that we have but i would imagine that we could i would suggest that we probably could do

119more um the other is the next item right after that which is talking about mixed-use neighborhoods um again the action and the goal here is that 20 of in-city trips are done by walking and biking um and [Music] it's reducing driving and car ownership in mixed-use neighborhoods like again the action items are kind of reviewing our zoning ordinance by my interpretation like much of what we're doing to add residential into predominantly um commercial and office districts is helping towards that but i think what i really like about the implementation plan is that it's talking about like seeing if it's working so um but i i would use that long intro to say i really look forward to our conversation at the next working session or the next probably the next working session makes sense to

120talk about what is next in terms of tc one rezoning um i think that that we need to have that conversation there's also things about making sure that we um are thinking about non-motorized transport in the cip process um tiered parking which i we're supposed to be a collaborator there i'm not totally sure what it's not named exactly what that would mean and then resilience hubs were also mentioned yeah i think turret parking is intended to get the policies in place where the city uses sort of flexible or tiered parking rates for its public parking and so as a collaborator i think some of the decisions that our ordinance and development makes about providing private parking probably in the long run has relationships to the success or speed at which a tiered parking program could

121be utilized great actually because i wrote down what the things were but then i didn't make notes in terms of why this is commission proposed business i would also ask that for the working session it's been a while since the changes to the adu ordinance happened and i'm wondering if it wouldn't be too much effort to pull together how many permits we've had if there's been additional movement a lot of those changes were to try to reduce the barriers towards that and i can't remember exactly when but it feels because of covid but it feels like it's been a while so i would just like to see how we're moving on in that direction any other commission proposed business yes um as part of that discussion i think there are other aspects in the a20

122plan that the planning commission might not be listed specifically as an implementing body but we could have a role for example there's a lot of references to solar the development of solar energy and some of that is about sort of community developed solar some of it's about how we open up pathways for people to access solar and other renewable power but another piece of that would be making sure that we are taking a hard look at our ordinances to make sure that we are being as flexible as possible towards that goal so i think we've done some of that recently with providing some site plan review exceptions for adding solar or carports to us sort of modifications where there might be height flexibility if you're adding a certain degree of solar to a building or

123not counting solar rooftop solar towards height requirements but that's an example i think also of how work and policies and ordinances that we change could impact other aspects of the a20 plan which is just an example it might be worthwhile for us to spend a little time in that discussion going through that plan sort of comprehensively and and thinking about those other intersects where we might not be more explicitly mentioned that is useful and so can because this jarred by memory uh this predates probably many of you that are on planning commission once upon a time we forwarded a recommendation to council dealing with front yard solar panels that was not taken and i wonder if we might revisit that so um great other commission proposed business go ahead commissioner white just a question um

124when we developed the priority list we had a section on that list for eliminations in the code do those come through the working session or will they come directly from staff to the to the table and then we'll debate and vote on them at the table and then when can we expect those because that could probably get us some way towards some of these goals by eliminating certain things as opposed to because we still what it's like a thousand pages so the we could get to those two thousand houses if we get rid of some of the zones that we have that restrict what kind of housing to come into it so i'm just thinking of intersections unzoning yes yeah i mean i think that's you know that's part of i think it's just part

125of where we want to put our time i mean um you know parking i think is next up but we've talked about these aspects of of you know how far can we appropriately incorporate the sustainability we've also talked about revisiting premiums we've talked about um street frontage and so um i would actually ask i might suggest at the next ordinance revisions committee meeting if the orc committee would help staff sort of frame that discussion for the next working session so maybe at the next orc we actually help you can be sort of the first test of some of of getting all that stuff formatted and compared and the types of questions so that when it comes to the full commission of the working session and we'll have the benefit of that first review of um

126maybe it's the intersections i mean um the way you're thinking about it is right on i think that's why tc1 was elevated because it touched on so many of those aspects and part of it's probably going through that list and figuring out what are the highlights that actually touch a lot of those things which brings me to my last one which is can we where is our process for creating more transit uh corridor corridors because that will also address the housing uh units in the a2 zoning plan so is that just a commissioner says hey let's put it let's put a transit corridor here and then we start the process or is that a staff to planning conversation and where does it fit in the working session yeah that's part of that same prioritization how

127does that relate to unzoning or how does that relate so it's at orc so so what sort of to be clear orc doesn't make any decisions so what i'm thinking is i'd like to use that committee to sort of start okay getting making sure one that i'm presenting all of the possibilities to the planning commission at that working session then i think as the whole commission i think that orc will help me refine and sort of present those questions and maybe maybe even a preliminary prioritization we'll have that conversation at the full planning commission ultimately adopt a work plan and then we'll be off to the races on tackling those in the order that you decide okay thank you i'm imagining once upon a time a long time ago before social distancing we did have

128like a sticker exercise i think this was very early on and you might have been still with the county maybe i've done lots of sticker exercises go ahead commissionerly um i've heard cookies were a thing once again cookies were once upon a time a thing too yeah i just wanted to make a comment i love the discussions on climate change because and we all are i think well intended here because laws do exist to promote health safety and the general welfare and climate change literally is all three of those things right the health safety and general welfare and i i like the focus of where we as a body can be most effective in in implementing and changing you know form and use um so i like the concept of let's let's really focus on

129where we can be effective um and again trying to stay out of possibly operational and better you know building codes that may not necessarily be within our purview so i think it'll constantly be a attention um that we have to navigate but that i think we're all fighting the good fight and then really and i actually really look forward to seeing the adus and and what that um utility has hopefully been increased otherwise i'd like to even revisit the concept of short-term rentals being allowed in adus my belief is that if we regulate how people use adus and they're still less likely to build them obviously that's a can of worms that you know i'd like to see the data first to see where we are but um just again the the emphasis on where

130we can be most effective i think is going to be critical moving forward so that's it thanks working session in march it's going to be fun all right um anything else before we adjourn uh i'll entertain a motion to adjourn moved by commissioner white second advice commissioner dish all in favor raise a hand that is everyone have a good night oh