Ann Arbor Planning Commission Meeting 10/5/2021

001this meeting is being held electronically to protect public health and safety due to the coven 19 virus and to comply with orders issued by the governor the michigan department of health and human services and or the washington county health department we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting but please be patient as there are occasionally technical issues that persist even 19 months into this to speak during public comment opportunities you'll be able to speak through the webinar link or by phone depending on your method of access and the devices that you have available to you both the telephone number and the web link are available on the public agenda which is in the public notices section of the city website for phone access tonight you can please dial 877-853-5247 and then enter

002the meeting id which is 977-6634-1226 this information is also available on the published agenda it's on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 at t channel 99 and it's online at a2gov.org watch ctn where you would select the government channel mr leonard can we please have a roll call of course commissioner mills here in ann arbor commissioner gibb randall here in ann arbor commissioner sovay commissioner abrams here from ann arbor commissioner hammerschmidt here in ann arbor commissioner dish here in ann arbor commissioner lee commissioner clark uh faintly but i did did you say from ann arbor and commissioner white here in ann arbor we have a quorum of um with seven members uh it will does just a reminder to petitioners and the planning commission it takes six affirmative votes to affirmatively advance

003petition very good thank you um item three is approval of the agenda may i have a motion to approve the agenda moved by commissioner weich seconded by commissioner abrams and i see mr leonard's hand because we don't have minutes right that's correct i would ask that you remove that my apologies that'll be forwarded on the next agenda okay so that would be striking agenda item four any other changes or discussion of the agenda um all those in favor of the motion with that amendment please raise a hand or say yes that is all the hands so um it it carries item five now is the reports from city administration city council the planning manager planning commission officers and committees and any written communications um council member dish do you have a report for us tonight

004i don't think that there was anything that happened last night that would interest you although you might be pleased to hear that we had a first reading on energy benchmarking um which though not our primary responsibility here on planning is clearly something that we care about i'm happy to be corrected by mr leonard mr leonard you're up you can either fill in the blanks or add anything of your own i would never correct only augment um a couple of quick notes uh you might notice like in an absence of our agenda previously the planning commission had postponed 336 south ashley a site plan this was a designated consumption facility that was proposing in addition they have withdrawn that petition and therefore it has vanished from this evening's agenda correspondingly i would um i shared with

005the commission and it has also been attached in additional communications for public review i have shared a report as i promised of recent variants applications uh regard specifically regarding electric vehicle parking if you have any additional questions on that please don't hesitate to follow up with me but i try to put together what i thought would be the helpful details for your information thank you commissioner mills for helping me to make sure i was doing so and then finally uh in our working session next week is anticipated for a pre-pud petition meeting for 1855 to 1875 north maple this is a proposed residential development being conceptualized for the southwest corner of maple north maple and m14 so again that'll be a pre-petition session for that and that's what i have very good are there any

006other commissioner officers or committee liaisons that have anything to report i wanted to note that the orc did meet last week um we discussed tc1 rezoning and kind of the communication plan um for uh the um those folks that are kind of within the footprint and then within a thousand feet and just so you know i unless the plan has changed um during our work session in november the plan is to have that as a public meeting um and invite folks who have questions that way we can all hear it um kind of what the questions and comments are associated with it won't be the public hearing we'll still have a formal public hearing at a meeting where we um where we um vote but this will be an opportunity for those folks kind of

007in that area or any others so if you're interested it might it is the it's the meeting in november the november work session okay so the second tuesday in november um we discussed kind of the plan for that and the communications associated with that um and also potential changes that could happen in parallel the kind of height um discussion um and the distance for uh in associated with um the tc one district when we were talking about the the highest you know um that's currently a thousand foot setback so there was some discussion of that and i'm expecting that that will kind of continue on and then we also discussed some mr leonard brought some good maps and data associated with non-conformities in r2a districts um and so hopefully we'll see some of some relatively

008simple text changes um to that going forward is that a fair assault okay um anybody else okey dokey on tonight number six which is audience participation this is the next on our agenda is an opportunity for public comment it's an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about an issue that's not listed as a public hearing on this agenda so tonight we have dedicated public hearings on site plan review thresholds and um for the 38 3874 research park drive proposal if you wish to address the planning commission on any other matters now is an appropriate time for that to speak um please press star 9 if you're listening if you're listening by phone or if you've joined us through the web link you can use the raised hand feature that's at the

009bottom of the screen if you're watching us right now and would like to dial in the phone number is 877 8535 and our meeting id is 977-6634-1226 mr leonard will call on those who've raised their hand and again if you've dialed in you press star 9 if you're here watching us through zoom use the raise hand feature um he'll call on you by the last three digits of your telephone number or your name whatever depending on how you joined and when um once you've unmuted please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we can hear you more clearly please also state your name and address at the beginning of your comments caller with the phone number ending with 955. call her with the phone number ending with nine

010five five you can press star six to unmute your phone and address the commission for up to three minutes good evening uh commissioners it's kirk westfall 3505 charter place just a couple of brief comments i am enthusiastically awaiting further action on limiting parking minimums i think particularly in light of some of the reports we've gotten about variety of climate change and the fact that we're still insisting on all developments to be accompanied by in most of the city to be accompanied by parking i think is something that should be assessed um very soon um the uh other issue is thinking about what's going to happen on corridors during the tc1 rezoning process which could be somewhat lengthy and just what the philosophy is on development proposals that come in that are in opposition to um

011what these parcels are going to be rezoned to um i know it's a fairly common practice to do something like a moratorium if something is designated for rezoning and there's that awkward interim time where you don't want bad development to happen before the good zoning gets put in place i don't know if that's on such a wide area for so such a long period of time um so i'm wondering if there's any other creative ways around you know tapping the brakes on bad development while we re-zone for good development and i think one idea could be looking at city-wide commercial parking maximums either from a form-based perspective or some kind of ratio perspective uh i know these are being discussed for tc1 but um you know i'm just trying to think of what would be

012what what level of card dependence are we comfortable with accepting um before these commercial areas get rezoned um you know could it be like parking shall cover no more than three quarters of the site or something like that um something that we'd be comfortable with for the whole city um just throwing that out there because my suspicion is that as the economy heats up you're going to get many more development proposals that are you know 30 more seconds do we want so much for being brief this last thing uh has to do with parking unbundling and i don't know the legality of this in michigan but um just putting some conditions on parking for residential buildings where the developers for the parking they do include they may not include the cost of renting a space

013in with the room rent um and just insisting i know other cities do this insisting on a certain minimum amount that they have to charge for residents to park in their parking structures thanks so much have a great night thank you if anyone else wishes to provide public comment at this time you can press star 9 on your phone if you've dialed in or use the raise hand feature at the bottom of your zoom screen if you joined us through the through the zoom meeting all right seeing none let's go on to item seven the public hearings for the next business meeting mr leonard can you walk us through what we have yes uh for the next uh business meeting which i believe to be on october 19th we have three new public hearing schedule

014one is for 106 north fourth avenue it's an addition for city council approval this is a proposed building edition of 910 square feet to an existing 5240 square foot building in the historic district the second public hearing is 2145 independence boulevard this is a2 montessori child care center special exception use for planning commission approval this is a request to allow a2 montessori a child care center for 30 children with 10 teachers added at the existing church of the good shepherd and then the third public hearing is 1525 south state street a natural features mitigation for city planning commission approval a 24-inch landmark tree was removed during construction that was indicated to be saved on the plan they need to present an alternative medication under the udc penalty and will be coming to the planning commission

015for consideration of that mitigation plan very good um okay we're on to 8a which is our unfinished business and this is the proposed amendments to section 529.6 site plan specific standards in chapter 55 of the unified development code yes so thank you um i'm promoting um matt city planner matt kowalski who is newly shorn and helping on this petition um and so i want to start off with a couple of uh one mia culpa and just one set the stage of our recommendation so since you'll recall that we've been working on the table a table format for the site plan review thresholds for some time and the mia culpa is the version that was included in this packet i stupidly took on some changes to while matt was out of town i didn't use the

016correct version so a new version has been uploaded to the packet this afternoon the difference is the newest one is referenced as an october proposed oregon state and i i just want to be clear those included a few changes where we had clarified that n a doesn't mean that you're exempt from permits it just means that your site plan um we also had referenced a couple of specific references to the building and we had previously changed some references from administrative approval to planning manager approval and removing a uh i wouldn't say antiquated but a prior version which referenced a level three site plan review which we're no longer using that terminology so my apologies there has been an uploaded version of that those are the only changes that have been ones that have been previously

017discussed and actually presented to you i was just working off of the wrong table so that's why both the originally published version and an updated version you will find online at legistar a second the reason that we were postponed last time and the reason that i'm recommending postponement to you today is mostly about stormwater in large part i am confident and i feel that the dialogue at the planning commission and the orc leading up to this point the proposed site plan thresholds i think are in good shape i like the table format personally that's ultimately obviously up to the planning commission to to determine but uh as a reminder one of the reasons that we sort of have paused this is because our stormwater regulations are specifically tied to the site plan review process it's

018kind of a unique trigger in our udc in that we had requirements applied to development based on the process that it was happening as opposed to perhaps the characteristics of the development itself at that last meeting you'll recall we explored some of the different aspects of that i'm happy to go back into that but just as a quick reminder right now the city's code reads that if you are a one and two family residential property you are required to do um we we often refer to it as a worksheet but it is it is calculation of what's called first flush and that is just that sort of the first uh detention of the first flush of sort of cleaning out the mechanisms that you have on the site for a rain that is a rain

019event of designed around a one-inch rain event then apart from one and two family our ordinance has a series of thresholds for that require different storm water management techniques based on the quantity of impervious surface if you are one in not one and two family and you're any other type of development and you are five thousand square feet of impervious space or less no storm water is required in any regard if you are five thousand to ten thousand square feet we require first flush as i described if you are ten thousand to fifteen thousand we require flush and something called bank full which is again the detention quantity for the full bank of a storm event based on that nearby capacity and then if you are over 15 000 square feet of impervious surface you

020have to do those things as well as detain for a 1 storm event or previously that was often referred to as a 100 year storm event so um that that is so we discussed um that in changing some of our site plan thresholds and the triggers that we had there we were actually removing some projects from having any site plan requirement are excuse me stormwater management measures required as part of them since that time we took your direction from the last meeting and [Music] we have had conversations with the city storm with members of public services and also taken some of the advice that came out of your discussion with a couple of modifications one of the modif so the proposed ordinance that's presented to you reflects basically two approaches and would be grateful for

021your direction as to which of those approaches seems most desirable the first approach or option a i believe in the ordinance is what i am proposing is is a change that is probably most consistent with the city council resolution directing a desire to make projects easier or more cost effective for review those proposed changes do a couple of things they would change the requirement of three and four residential and pull them into that one and two family where regardless of the square footage of impervious surface of a three and four unit residential structure it would require first flush [Music] storm stormwater treatment that would be a change in that if right now that is governed by those other thresholds that is is it under 5000 nothing required is it 5000 to 10 000. first flush

022is required is that ten thousand greater other measures are required um matt and i did some research this after this afternoon um four recent four unit developments all fell within the five thousand to ten thousand square foot of impervious surface threshold which means that this option a would not result in any change to the requirements although it would be happening in in a different way instead of requiring first flush under the 5 000 square feet of impervious surface it would simply require five thousand square it would simply require first flush through the worksheet that would be the same for a three and four unit if it were um fifteen thousand square feet or twenty thousand square feet which seems unlikely or on the flip side if it was less than 5 000 square feet in

023that circumstance a three and four unit would be having to add storm water infrastructure that is not currently required under our framework today the option a further makes it clear that it's no longer site plan that is triggering compliance with these standards it is any development activity or construction activity or impact to natural features so it also separates the natural the site plan review threshold from the determination of which stormwater standards apply rather it is again would solely be distributed attributed by the type of development that's been proposed so that is option a and as i said i believe option a is consistent with a desire to make things to frankly not change our stormwater regulations or make them easier option b is a proposed option that has come out of conversations with our public

024services team one of the um and i think um to be clear some of this is just once we started delving into this it warranted that conversation and looking what those standards are option b proposes a different approach whereas it would largely keep the same structure very similar to option a it would eliminate site plan as the sole determiner and add permitting or site plan as the trigger for storm water having to be met a couple changes there however though is that it would take what is currently a category of development which is greater than one and two family but less than five thousand square feet it would now require that first flush to be occur for those developments where right now no storm water is required for those developments so in those circumstances it's

025going to be potentially adding a little bit of infrastructure requirement i would say incremental the more the larger change being proposed is to actually then eliminate the subsequent structure so at this point you would only have two categories of project when you're when you're regulating by impervious surface 5000 and less is first flush 5 000 and more would be everything that is it would require first flush bank full and detention for up to a 1 storm event whereas now that is only required for those developments that have 15 000 square feet or more that would also have some benefits potentially not a guarantee but potentially with our community rating system at the city we are one of a few committees in the communities in the state and i'm not going to [Music] speculate at the

026numbers because i'll get it wrong but we are in the upper echelon of communities in the state of michigan where our our flood insurance rating is um beneficial to our property owners where we get a they get a higher discount than many other communities in the state of michigan and the country for that matter because of a variety of stormwater regulations and measures that we take advancing and requiring more for these types of developments have the potential to improve that i acknowledge and this is a little bit of the conversation we had through the floodplain overlay discussion i think that would be a perfectly valid policy discussion i don't feel like that's what the resolution from city council is directing the planning commission to look at as far as small and moderate scale develop and

027so i really value i think it's appropriate for us to be looking at that standard if we're going to be looking at it at all i'm happy you know to bring any other expertise to that point or questions that you have but i think that there's a bit of a i just think it's a bit of a policy direction that i would value the planning commission's perspective on i think the planning commission absolutely values progressive stormwater management and to do option b would be to be pushing the envelope in that regard i don't i think in fact it's going to have some offsetting implications to development and that you might be transferring obligations of process costs for stormwater management costs which is also a different benefit for our community as well option a is a

028little bit closer to and not exactly but it's closer to just keeping everything the same um in the context of eliminating the site plan threshold adding three and four unit and then everything stays the same for impervious surface five thousand and less is nothing five to ten flush etc etc etc i think that's a little bit more consistent with that city council resolution that was driving this analysis and i value the planning commission's feedback in what your senses of the direction you'd like to explore in that regard and then the last piece of that is because we are starting to talk about changes to that section of the ordinance that is one of the reasons that i would like to recommend postponing because i think it's important that we actually notice thus far public notice

029has been strictly focused on the site plan thresholds this interrelationship between these two sections is i think important for us to get right i think it's important for us to share with the public that we're looking at both of those sections if we are going to make adjustments in that regard so with that maybe i'll just give one second to matt to see if there's anything i missed particularly with the updated uh table from [Music] the version that was originally published there was the one little addition about we're going to cover regarding the site the sustainability options thank you so much yeah i sort of gloss over that um also totally unrelated similarly unrelated to what city the city council resolution is is i've added a provision for your consideration about electrified and solar renewable

030energy projects and it is what i think is a fairly simple perhaps elegant way to incent uh projects that are fully electrified with no natural gas connection and with 60 of their rooftop covered with solar renewable energy or an equivalent if it's better on site somewhere in those cases any project that would normally require planning commission review would change to uh planning manager review and then a last piece that i just wanted to highlight that has been in the draft previously but i just want to make sure it's been called out i am also from the council resolution direction of keeping thing trying to simplify the process you'll note that after the table there are standards and process determinations about how those different levels approve site plans planning manager does not require a public hearing

031it's an administrative process i have replicated that language in the planning commission set stanza as well that would the result as drafted would be that planning commission site plans are an administrative process also not through a public hearing process city council those petitions are still going to be petitions that are associated with a legislative action and so i wanted to highlight that you've seen it in the language before i don't know that we've spent much time discussing it i think it is faithful to easing the process for projects but it might be going a little farther because it's going to potentially apply to projects beyond small and modest projects so i just wanted to make sure that that has been highlighted as well and thanks for the note on the electrification as well so with

032that um happy to answer any questions of the commission after or before the program all right we'll have the public hearing and then we'll open this up for discussion um this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed site plan ordinance amendments if you wish to address the planning commission on this item please press star 9 if you've dialed in or use the raised hand feature if you've joined us through zoom for phone access again the phone number tonight is 877-853-5247 and our meeting id is 977-6634-1226 city staff will select callers that have raised their hand calling on you by the last three digits of your telephone number or your name if you join through zoom and um you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing

033you to speak please move to a quiet area and mute any background sounds so that we can hear you clearly please do state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and i see a hand up uh mr darren mckinnon you can unmute yourself and address the planning commission hi good evening my name is daryn mckinnon with first martin i was a member i guess i still am a member of the advisory work group that was put together as part of this process and i appreciate you giving me a chance to speak quickly tonight i will say that i'm mostly happy with all the proposed changes uh that are we've been working through this for quite a long time now the single biggest item from a cost standpoint that i see as an

034obstacle to most projects is the stormwater it's it's significant in cost and it if you think back to where this kind of director from council came from in my opinion was we've got these buildings that perhaps modest improvements can be made but they're not being made because some of the regulations make them you know cost prohibitive storm water is at the top of the list of the things that make projects small modest projects cost prohibitive so i'm a little concerned especially with the option b which actually makes it harder and therefore more expensive so i would i understand mr leonard saying uh postponed and i understand how this conversation with city staff probably went where it got to that but that's clearly the opposite of the goal of this on option a i guess it's

035a step in the right direction for certain projects but i would say if there's a way to ever so slightly i realize there's a strong desire to not open it up too much allow for projects beyond three and four family residential to have whatever would be deemed tolerable for um first flush retention only and nothing beyond that i realize there's you know very difficult to where you draw that line but i think that there's an opportunity there to allow some projects that are commercial in nature to move forward which would then provide an ability to do some increase in storm water because if you've got these old buildings there's no storm water detention right now so you go from nothing to something which i think is a benefit to the community and if it's only

036first flush it could actually be accomplished at a low cost if you get beyond that these are the standards that brent was mentioning they become extremely expensive and just very quickly the project is shelved so thank you everything else looks great appreciate all your work on this thank you caller with the phone number ending with caller with the phone numbering with one three four you have three minutes to adjust the planning commission um thank you mr leonard and chair mills this is ken garber 28 haverhill court i apologize i haven't been following the many discussions on this topic i just looked today at this for the first time so i'm coming in completely cold with three questions the first is about um the last entry in table five 29-1 which mr leonard just told you

037about his new change for electrified developments with 60 rooftop solar putting them in category m or planning manager approval if i heard them right these projects will not go through planning commission review now we of course want to incentivize building solar and electrification many of you have heard me talk ad nauseum about this topic but what about large and complex projects i think of valhalla glen and lockwood senior living major developments with hundreds of units both fully electrified granted neither had enough solar to qualify for this new category and both originally came in with gas heating so they would have gone through commission review regardless but if they had started out all electric with 60 rooftop solar under this ordinance change uh it sounds like they would have been exempt from commission review and approval

038i liked both these projects but they benefited from going through planning commission and the neighbors deserve to be heard at the public hearings as we see more large electrified and solarized projects they shouldn't be able to skirt commission review maybe i'm miss reading this but um i i'm happy to be set straight if so but i think i heard mr leonard um correctly also not all building electrification is good electrification for example electric resistance heating whether in the form of baseboard heaters wall heaters or electric radiant heat is very inefficient same for the p-tech units you see in hotel rooms these are basically individual air conditioners that can heat the room when you reverse the flow we don't want to encourage these forms of building electrification also electric reheat systems may be the single most

039inefficient hvac system type around so not all electrification is good so i question this change to begin with but if you do end up keeping it at least by at least specified geothermal heat pump air source heat pump or vrf system my second question is about section b approval procedures uh under planning commission approval if i'm reading this right there's a change that eliminates the public hearing requirement when planning commission reviews a site plan if so this is a bad idea too uh finally i am right if i am i right that these amendments eliminate city council review of site plans where the petitioner does not request the rezoning and that the planning commission vote would be final for these site plans if so i'm conflicted about that but i'm out of time so thank

040you thank you very much if anyone else wishes to provide a public comment uh a comment during this opportunity you can press star 9 on your phone or you can use the raised hand feature in zoom all right seeing none i'll close the public hearing and read the motion the ann arbor city planning commission postpones further discussion and consideration of pro of the proposed site plan amendments until the november 2nd 2021 planning commission meeting moved by commissioner hammerschmidt seconded by commissioner dish we're in discussion and i assume that it's fine to not just discuss postponing it but anything else that has come up mr leonard um that's my intention yeah okay great anybody want to kick off conversation or questions go ahead commissioner randall um could we start with the questions that mr wilbur just

041addressed so that we can make sure those are kind of clarified and out of the way it's it's my understanding that the two developments that he brought up valhalla and lockwood both required rezonings and with those rezonings therefore would not fall in this category am i correct about that that yes that's correct so those two petitions because they required legislative action they would still need to go through the process um i think his other questions were accurate reviews as i mentioned the text on the planning commission process is proposed to change it to be more focused and administrative it would still be you as a body but it would not be a public hearing and generally yes i think it's an accurate read what this proposes is absent legislative corresponding legislative action site plans would

042be approved by the commission i would also though add i think this is correct that it doesn't exempt them from staff review which is still extremely robust so am i right about that yeah it's you know just as a reminder whether whether staff the planning commission or the city council are approving a site plan all are bound by the same ordinance criteria for to determination whether or not that is approved so it is absolutely the same criteria so in other words you may qualify for this you still go through a robust staff review you're just getting approved by you or by you know somebody the planning manager or whatever rather than having the public hearing and going through planning commission correct i mean i guess i i would i just want to make that distinction

043for um for the caller because um you know i know going through planning commission i think this is an interesting incentivization but and going through planning commission is is no small thing too but the staff review is is a lot of the lion's share of the work of going through the system in my own experience of it that's what kind of can happen over and over and over and over again um and doesn't mean that you're not table the planning commission or denied or you know whatever it is too but um i just want to make it really clear that everybody has to have staff review no matter what the project so it all still has somebody going through it with the fine-tooth comb so i think that's that's correct really important to to point

044out um that it's not like it's a free-for-all in it you don't get any review so um um so in terms of the stormwater so um so if like there's a project i worked on where you know somebody wanted to add um you know 250 square feet of something to their building but it was a it was a it was a public building actually not not owned by the city but a public building so would they still be required to do storm water because they're not just three and four bedroom like a a residential unit like how does that work yeah so um it's a good question none of the changes that we are proposing here would change so the city relies upon the washington county water resources commission's stormwater rules and design standards right

045inherent in that is a mechanism that is apropos to your example where if you are doing a modest addition to a site while the site might determine what you have to do from an impervious surface perspective if it is less than 50 disturbance of that area you don't have to extend those standards across the entire site and so what we're talking about here would not change that so what that would mean in that circumstance is that a two i think you said 250 square foot addition that would be calculated into a that would go into the calculation of what standard is going to apply currently is it one or two family if it's not then we go to the five thousand ten thousand fifteen thousand thresholds based on the addition of that and the balance

046of impervious of impervious space on the site that's going to determine the category but then the standards are going to apply to only that portion that you are disturbing if it's a small amount of the site the flip side of that is if you are disturbing greater than 50 of that site and it's determined that you have to provide everything you will be expected to meet that standard for the entirety of the site okay so it's not just the kind of three to four bedroom thing it's it's just a little bit more complicated than that yeah and that's and we're not yeah you're not changing the big picture with that yeah yeah and the the regulations are still the same we don't impact those we're still pointing to them at the county right it's just

047when when we want to invoke them okay okay um um it's really hard for me answering stormwater questions coming [Laughter] you're doing great though geez you probably you've probably gotten over to speed on all kinds of things in the last couple of months so um it's a little strange to me that you can have an impervious area under 5000 square feet and not do any storm water yet we still if you build a shed that's 250 feet and you're in a single family residence you're doing so yeah i would i i agree i think that's a weird that's a weird sort of um exception in our code and that's with anything not just the downtown that's any so we have other standards for the in the downtown where we provide different because of the land

048um limitations yeah yeah right yes the short is it applies anywhere so if you are if you are building a 4 800 square foot duplex a duplex with 4 800 square feet of improved surface you are going to provide first flush if you're building a convenience store that has 4 800 square feet of impervious surface you are exempt from storm [Music] okay it's it's just tricky because it's that feels like a big gaping hole to me um but i also understand the intent of not trying to to to keep this streamline it's it's a hole in in our code um i would also just say that i get it that storm water is expensive i i totally understand that the first flush rain garden approach is not that expensive it's just not compared to the

049other stuff that like did they having to do you know bankful and hundred year and uh and having it needing a standpipe with you know metered like it's just a whole different deal so um it takes up space but it's just not that crazy expensive either to do that if we're allowed to do that kind of fill it up and when it gets filled up then it spills out into some safe place essentially so i guess that's part of maybe what we consider too if it's more than that and we have to follow all the county standards then it's a whole different ballgame so i guess i just kind of want to put that out there so these are just my initial thoughts right now so i'd just be curious to hear what other people

050have to say too and when i also want to follow commissioner gibb randall go ahead commissioner dish i am confused so um we learned the distinction between detention and retention last time and the new the the paper with the new uh requirements on it uses all the language of detention is that simply conflating detention and retention or does it really mean detention which is to say you keep it for a while and you gradually release it um i'm gonna pull up the code i think our code references detention so matt's gonna actually pull up the code yeah well in the memo that you've written says detention but um so what we talked about last time in the meeting was that three to four family development be required to do retention with rain with rain gardens

051um to the first flush standard yeah i think the first flush is the most important aspect of that versus retention detention terminology i know they are different but i think the important item is that it's designed to accommodate the volume of the first flush okay can i come in here just for a second because i might be able to explain this so because you say if it's less than five thousand square feet of imperfect would add first flush requirements which is essentially what you're saying commissioner dish it's first flush retention requirements but once they go up then you start getting into the more robust system with the standpipe and the restricted outlet and that's where a lot of the cost comes in so that's the the detention requirements are a lot more expensive than the

052retention requirements and they're just not using in my understanding of this you're not using the word retention with um the first flush system that's my understanding right that would be correct so it is retention exactly as commissioner randall just referenced retention for the small for the five the first flush um it says retention infiltration which would ideally be the goal between those and then as well as with between the 10 000 to 15 000 again a retention infiltration but as we get larger that's a much larger volume to retain so there is that d tension that's referenced above for the uh one percent or the hundred year storm is referenced as a detention system i don't think that retention of the first question yep exactly it says retention of infiltration of first flush detention of

053bank full and hundred year storm events and i i would i would just suggest i think if the question is great and i i don't i think part of this is making sure we're giving you the information and an understanding i want to be clear though i don't i unless you want to go down that road i am not proposing that we change sort of the building blocks of different ways to address stormwater on sites we have we have these defined in the county and the question is which of our sites do we want to link to which one of those tools and so i i think it's important to understand those distinctions but i just want to be clear i'm not proposing changes from the county standards of when it's retention or when it

054is detention relying on them for that expertise i think for our question here i i really do think it's more about as you go from nothing of course to first flush to bank full to one percent storm event you're you're talking about volumes of water meeting the design standards of those for our question is right now we make those connections in a certain way which by changing some of our site on thresholds it necessitates us reconsidering some of those i think from just a usability of the udc so i just want to be clear i don't i'm not proposing that we change first flush from retention to detention or anything my apologies if i'm using the terminology wrong but i the volume calculation and again linking those approaches is more important than us i don't

055think it's appropriate for us to try to sit here and design what the appropriate system is i'm not asking for that i think i think the memo is a bit difficult to follow honestly okay um because it references uh it references the for it it references existing in the um option a it references existing requirements which i had to look back in my previous notes to figure out what they were although you say them below and option b anyway it's just it's really it's extremely hard to follow but um i so so i get it so first when you're talking about first flush you really just mean infiltration retention that's great and that's the worksheet option that we talked about and um [Music] and most multi-family projects already have first flush for five to ten

056and we're adding it for zero to five which seems smart so um [Music] but so i i think that i'm so what i would like to know is how consequential so we're adding something at a range that um we're adding something for commercial and multi-family from zero to five thousand or just multi-family so that's that's the question okay and that's kind of the question is that this this analysis has daylighted i mean i don't want to say it's daylight it's staff has always been aware of this there is a segment of development now that doesn't require any stormwater we are so on top of that because we because we want to change potentially what types of development require which site plans and the way our stormwater is triggered by that we have to figure out

057the right place the right way to fix those connections and so option a maintains a gap for anything over one and one to four family resident so it pulls three and four into one and two so we're now treating one to four the same as we've traditionally treated one to two it maintains the gap for other projects that have five thousand square feet or less and it maintains the increasing structure as you get larger four four units again just based on four project examples that we looked at about over the last six years it would have no impact to those because previously they would have fallen under the flush 5000 to 10 000 now they'd fall under the first flush under that one through family so that that is that is option a option b

058is instead of taking three to four families into that one and two it's take anything that's five thousand square feet or of impervious surface into that category so one and two family residentials and anything else that has five less than five 000 square feet of impervious surface all becomes first flush so that's taking a category of development into that category it's not i don't i i can't tell you right now off the bat how many that is i don't think it's a lot of development activity that is less than 5000 square feet but it would be taking potentially a bigger a cat it's filling that category but then option b goes further than to eliminate the sort of incremental structure and so maybe the question is maybe an approach is and maybe i'm hearing this

059from the commission is sort of a hybrid that you actually would like that less than 5000 addressed but maybe not so far as to bring everything all of the storm water mechanisms into every project above it so sort of keep the hybrid but plug the hole at a first flush level maybe that's what i'm hearing maybe what option a and option b seem really difficult to compare to me because of but but i don't know how consequential it is in option a to eliminate detention of bank full for 10 to 15 and eliminate thankful and detention of one percent storm event for multi-family over 15 square feet i don't know how many developments fall into that so on the one hand option a becomes a lot it's it's stricter for multi-family between zero and five

060thousand it leaves the gap for commercial most multi-family fall into five to ten thousand anyway so the stricter probably doesn't make any difference and so the significant thing there is leaving the gap for the commercial but then for stuff that's super big it eliminates it eliminates what it seems like we need because we have 85 of our construction in the city that was constructed without detention and we're saying go ahead and make new construction without detention so i am confused by what a is doing i'm sorry and this is what's up first of all i'm sorry this is why i wanted to have your your feedback because you know i just want to make sure this is clear this is i think it's really important that we get this right and everybody understands but i

061want to be clear a doesn't change the existing framework so a is not going to increase a is largely not going to increase the rate at which we realize stormwater management in our community beyond the rate we're getting it now so large projects are still going to be subject to that slightly smaller projects in the 10 to 15 are still going to have to do more than first flush but not the full not detention we are still going to get first flush for five thousand to ten thousand square feet we still have a gap in five less than five thousand so i want to be clear option a doesn't doesn't give a pass to larger projects from stormwater management investment it doesn't plug a hole yeah i think if i if i could i think

062maybe part of the confusion also i think because of how we wrote the the bullet point there because one of the bullet points it says if greater than 15 000 square feet at a limit but those are meant to apply strictly to the example above the three or four unit so i think as it was written like we had a three or four unit project that was the example and then if that three or four unit project was greater than fifteen thousand square feet it would only require um for slush but so that those like bullet points were only meant to point to that three or four example um so i think that that's kind of part of the confusion i believe maybe commissioner dish you see that and you thought like greater than 15

063000 no so that was only meant for like a three or four unit project right now if it came in today if it had 25 000 square feet it would have to of impervious which again would probably be very unlikely for a fourth four unit building but if it did it would be required first flush bankful and one percent or 100 year but under option a then the revision it would it would only require because we're taking out site plan it would only require for slush and i think one other thing that i wanted to add to which i think might uh help make some of the difference too is that so again taking a three or four unit as uh brett and i looked at those examples that they're all less than ten thousand

064square feet so that right now they've triggered first flush so obviously those are typically smaller sites more compact as you guys know very well i mean um these are typically r4c site zone sites so under option uh a again that when you get the same option right here you get the exact same storm on under option b they would then be required to do first flush uh bankful and hundred year so that's kind of that that difference they would then so then again you start getting into and you look at those sites that's not only retention but that's detention and that's clearly where on these sites with four units you'd have to go underground um and i mean as i think we all know that that drives drives up the cost significantly so that's maybe

065one way i also kind of kind of look at it is that that three-four unit 5000 as an option a no change but on the at least the four that we looked at and under option b they would then be required to do um even more than they are now so painful as well as hundred year so i don't i hope that clarifies it a little bit yeah i think that does so in other words these uh there are very few if any three and four family units on a footprint of 10 to 15 let alone bigger than 15 square feet these were just dumb regulations that we had on the books which were taking off i mean i shouldn't take down like well but they they apply to everything else too right we're sort

066of pulling three and four out of that they're still going to apply to everything else okay just and just for details the the numbers of the four we pulled um uh 1300 south main game day condos that was about 7 300 square feet of impervious surface davis row which was a series of town homes on davis not right at the corner but a couple properties in yeah that was about that was just over five thousand it's 5056 square feet um uh a four unit on hill uh 143 hill was 551 square feet and 542 north main was a four-year unit that was eight thousand five hundred and sixty square feet so when we're you know they do range but they all fell in that five to ten thousand square foot category while we're talking about

067the stormwater stuff the commissioner dished you have more okay i also want i saw this in the staff report and i want to make sure that i understand the that this is the distinction in comparing the language i think i'm seeing this too the in option b this is also changing the trigger to be a grading permit not the development which seems to me based on the nods that i'm getting like that's going to capture a lot more things is that potential that that you would need a grading permit and not go through any of these site plan processes now yeah i think i think both option a and option b accomplished that option b requires a grading permit specifically which would include a lot more activity for example that would include maybe just redoing

068a parking lot that doesn't require site plan it just you're just redoing a parking lot where you're maybe milling it that could potentially require a grading permit i don't want to speak for that option a um and frankly these are just approaches crafted by two different people option a just says for any development or construction activity so what that's going to mean is anytime you're doing something that requires a permit whether it's grading permit or a building permit so both of those are adding a much broader application of these standards than the former when site plan is required i think the question is a good one i don't know if it should be limited to grading permit or it should be any permit that's something i might look at based on the direction but in

069both cases that is the intention to say it's no longer just site plan whenever you're doing something that meets these requirements that meets these physical attributes you are subject to these stormwater management requirements i think that regard so my inclination is to go with option a if the goal of this exercise of like these revisions that we're doing right now is to reduce costs for smaller improvements i think that option a is truer to that option b at the same time i think it would be while we have unearthed this and there is a suggestion floating this by environmental commission which was like what i read in the staff report as the intention of like this length of delay i think forwarding this to them to say like let's this is not you know you

070guys should talk about it and bring it to us if this is something that we should or city council if this is something that we need to like that we want to change later but for right now i think that option a seems truer to the scope and so i i guess i would suggest it just a little bit differently you've been directed as the planning commission to do this work for that purpose and i think that any changes here i that's where that language came from i agree i think it warrants their that commission's perspective but i think that's a little bit different than a more open-ended conversation i think it is i just think it's good practice for us to share with them how we intend to answer this question that council's asked

071of us that's quite different from how do you want to change the stormwater regulations and and so i i guess i would respectfully suggest that based on the direction we get from you what we share with them is this is the direction that planning commission has directed staff to go in this is the impact it's going to have or not have on stormwater help us help us take your feedback along with the planning commissions to the city council for that decision got it that's helpful for me i didn't quite understand like what you wanted from us and to bring to them that's i think option a seems truer to what we're doing but when we come back what this question has raised for me is um by taking site plan away and knowing that there's

072like other permit activities how many projects are we captured like do we have some sense of of how many projects have these other permits going on that will this will trigger because again if that's if they're minor enough right now to not require site planning i don't want to inadvertently be capturing them in the future right yeah i i think the i don't have that answer for you i think we do you deserve that answer before you take action i think that some of that is built into the regulations that when you're not disturbing a lot of the area this isn't going to come into play when you're not adding impervious surface it's not going to come into play so but i will answer that i think that's a good point to make sure that

073by by pulling it away from site plan it's not having the opposite impact um commissioner gabriel i have a couple more things on my list but if yours is since you know about this area if you're okay um the other things that i have aren't uh let's see are not about the stormwater options so one is i really appreciate you mentioning the public hearings and um like pointing out that change i did not pick up that change previously before i have before i put in my two cents i want to ask if there's no more public hearing associated with coming before planning commission for a site plan where we are the final body is there notice provided will will there be the postcard sent to the neighbors no i'm not comfortable then removing that personally

074i think that um i recognize like that people can come and talk to us about anything but i i would actually prefer here like i i think that that feedback is i think that that change while it doesn't apply to the rezonings that change would this change applies to a whole lot of projects and i'm not i'm not comfortable yet going to the point of um that i don't think that was the intention honestly when we talked about this um like removing public that part of it i don't think was was um is um a necessary aspect i don't think sending the postcards adds that much to development so if we can add that back in i would that would be my preference and then um the third and people can respond to that too

075like react um because that's just my vote um the third part is about the electrification and sustainability elements and i think that's awesome thank you we talked about this in one of our work sessions about what it is that we can and you know like how can we be contributing what's in our goal i think that this is a fantastic way to say how can we limit projects like what are the impacts i in terms of what the threshold is was that how much was this voted uh like um vetted with osi um so not at all um it comes out of city policy documents um so we have um you know the sustainability framework talks about renewable energy expanding renewable energy the 60 threshold is something that we've talked about before as it relates

076to sort of a balance of um providing some space for access mechanical equipment on a roof and the electrification just seemed consistent with that the ideal companion to uh solar is that it's driving as much of the energy usage of the building as possible so um so you know um unrelated to the sustainability framework other cit you know other council policies do talk about that as a goal as getting toward more electrification looking for other ways that to provide accessibility to other electric electrical sources our community at large so um i think it's consistent with that but in short i have not um discussed it in detail um with them um i i don't i i honestly don't think there's a right or wrong there it but i think it has to be a reasonableness

077of is it viable and is it beneficial enough to maybe provide that benefit so to be and just one more thing to be clear and that same discussion as we're talking about with public hearings if that happens it's also going to have that impact where it's no longer going to go to planning commission it's not going to have a public hearing it's not going to have notification so it won't have citizen participation because administratively approved don't so i just want to highlight that to the extent that we're changing that that provision goes back [Music] then that would have implications to those categories of products i'm up to well so one i would like osi to weigh in specifically on the language around electrification okay um to to see if there are things that could be

078electrified that we actually like i mean the idea of no natural gas hookup like cool but do we want to put stipulations on the means by which folks are heating i don't know i think that that's a good question and i don't because that language is not i would imagine that many of our planning documents don't get into that level of detail like i would like them to weigh in on that but i also think weighing in on all of these things like that means no notification to the surrounding properties right i think that i'd like their take on it but and as much as i'm excited about this like honestly when i saw it i was super excited um to see like this might be an opportunity i worry a little bit of a

079little bit but this is where i saw other hands go up so i welcome impact input on this of putting this in with a packet with a in a in a change that was really intended to do one thing and and we're now doing another and i'm not so worried about like it being well first of all i think making that known is important but also like this would be a big deal like i think that this is a really this could be a really big deal for um our ability to to move forward and to to do things incentivizing and my guess is that it's gonna get a little bit lost personally so i i love the idea of it and we that we would know how to do it but i welcome others

080thoughts um and i also i want to give a little bit more thought to whether if it is a fully electric building and it does have lots of solar on it is that is that the check that you need to have mr leonard sign off on it or do we want notice given to neighbors and opportunity for our discussion of it i i don't know how i don't know yet i haven't formed an opinion but that would be a change and i think that's an important part that we're talking about so that's my list um commissioner gabe randle and then commissioner clark and then commissioner weich um back to the stormwater piece i would say based on what you are what you were saying before mr leonard about trending towards option a but i would

081be interested in plugging the hole and and the the numbers that you gave us some of them were just barely over 5000 you know so it's not like they were all like way easily over that and again that first flush is not that difficult really in terms of cost and so i that's that's the direction that i would that i would give you in terms of moving forward because i think it's kind of an odd gap that we require people who build a single family to build a patio have to do something and then if you're building you know that that just seems a little odd to me um and then the other piece that i think is uh what the you know caller had brought up on what commissioner um mills is talking about

082is this whole kind of idea of like bad electric you know um and that my guess is is that we probably can't get too prescriptive because first of all it's like you know technology's gonna change too like we put something in there it's gonna shift um it has to be this system and you know ordinances are like really as you all know a big deal to change so but this is where i think perhaps some some um some guidance from the office of sustainability maybe they could help us with this because yeah it would be kind of crappy and missing the point if we just get a bunch of really inefficient electric you know because of that um in terms of the public piece that i hadn't really thought about that um chairmills i mean

083like prior to this too and so that is tricky it is part of what adds time and cost too in fact the scheduling for the public participation like for the citizens participation thing like that adds a lot of time you know to the project too because you have to notice it you have it you know so um i'm not saying one way or the other which way i think it has to go but it is part of how to make it leaner in terms of getting through the system more quickly so um yeah i'm not sure how i feel about that either go ahead commissioner clerk i just had another question for brett about um can you hear me okay just barely um so my question is about what happens with the things that are

084on a planning manager review when they get denied is the next step for the developer to just immediately go to like a lawsuit or would they go to have some avenue to go to light planning commissioner council with that denial to try and make their case um just curious about that yeah currently currently the way the udc is structured there is no sort of internal appeal process for site plan at any level whether it's staff planning commission or city council so they would have the same sort of rights to avail to them within legal action or um of course you know we you know but to be clear we spend a lot of time with petitions both at the administrative level and at your level on city council trying to get to compliance so but

085the short of it is is whatever approval authority um currently the way the udc is structured we don't provide any additional appeal structure to that and can you still hear me i just changed my microphone okay cool so my other question was about um the electrification and just um it's more of a comment just following along with the caller that talked about you know how some systems can be more energy intensive especially since we're in a cold climate when those overdrive systems kick on um the heat you know the certain lower end systems can get really expensive very quickly in in the lowest temperatures um that's not to say that i don't think it's a it's a good goal but i just think that consulting the office of sustainability or whoever else may be of

086use um would be a really good idea and then also i want to just be mindful that we don't incentivize um you know if we're doing multi-family developments and the tenants are responsible for paying the utility bills and a building is built with really poor insulation low r score the building envelope isn't sealed and there's these backup electric heating systems that kick on as soon as it gets cold that we're not saddling um renters with incredibly high utility bills and that's just something we need to be mindful of commissioner wage uh so two uh things maybe to start one is on the stone storm water between option a and option b is it possible when that comes back to the commission it could be presented in a table because it's hard to scan and comprehend

087the information and hold it to compare so for me just visually i would benefit from a table presentation and then um if there could be some explanation for how the gap well something around how the gap got created in the code that we've been referencing between residential and commercial so is it intentional did someone decide to create this gap and our undoing of it has an unintended consequence downstream or is this just something that because we are now evaluating it we have daylighted this gap so any background or additional information around the gap i would benefit from as i come up to speed um on this storm water i also wonder so still inside the storm water if we would be open to splitting these decisions up and that we would conclude the work on

088the site plan and then that would give us time to do the stormwater i know they are related so i know that some things kind of trigger the site review or site plan review but i i just wonder does it actually make sense to keep both of these in lockstep um as we move forward just so that we can get an approval for the site plan revisions that commission has been working on for some time moved along which i think might benefit the community as we figure out the storm order so those are like three requests they don't have to be dealt with today and if you you know review the third one and say no let's keep them in lockstep i i won't protest and then um on the electrification i wondered if there

089was a justification if you have an answer today if not if it could be in a memo for why it would stop at the planning manager and not stop at the planning commission and so that way it would skip a city council step so when i first sort of thought about this i thought one incentive would be for a developer because of the time that is involved of going through staff review and then getting a staff recommendation to go to commission if then they have to go to council that adds time and money but we could stop at planning commission which would then allow for the public head hearings and community input but would not require the council component and could be an incentive for developers so i imagined you considered that and made a

090decision for why you made the recommendation you did and if you are willing to share that i would love to understand that either now or in a memo and then i have one more question but i will pause in the event you want to respond now sure uh so as to where that sort of 5000 or less came from i i don't know i'll try to find that out i'll spend no i'm sorry oh yeah i didn't you don't have to answer that it was just the the electrification one if you want to answer that one now but um you're a human being so you get to answer what you like i'm sorry um i don't know i'll give you that information on the background about where it came i speculated it was just that

091at the time we didn't have a lot of stormwater regulations and by adding them there was some sense of moderating it for small and modest projects and so we built in additional standards for a larger project so that's probably but i'll i'm speculating i'll try to get you some more i would back that i was here when we that was 20 i was here that's exactly why when we came up with that structure i wasn't directly involved with it but that was exactly why the 5 000 it was kind of like smaller projects it wasn't as and then like then after and at that time there was nothing for single or two family so that's why there's that apparent gap because then later many years later we realized well you know the majority of our

092develop you know these things are singular to family are the major contributors well not the major but one of them to the stormwater so that was added after so that's exactly why that gap exists because we tried to facilitate smaller projects with 5000 and then we realized a single family and i think it was and i don't know why we think we as a city didn't go back and open up that 5 000 for other but the single family and two family was added after so that's why so all right thank you matt and then as far as electrification um the reason that that's there is keep in mind that this proposed site plan thresholds already takes a large category of site plans from city council to planning commission so currently so this proposed framework

093would take any permitted use site plans that don't require a rezoning or legislative action and they would automatically move to planning commission and again the philosophy of that is that both the planning commission and city council are complying with the same criteria of standards in order the reason that i propose adding that in from a planning commission down to planning manager was frankly from the challenges that we face when from a incentive base versus a regulatory base and so that's that's why i got placed where it did conversely um i think you could explore not making that change to for site plans to move generally from city council to planning commission and maybe that is an incentive tool to to accomplish that but that's why i got put there because uh the majority of them

094have already been moved under this proposal and i was looking for even in that category what would be the ways to incent um more sustainable development consistent with uh sustainability framework and other companies thank you and then um the question around that so it would would staff be open to density being added to that um threshold so if we hit a certain density level plus um electrification plus solar that it sits at the planning manager um sort of level or is that something we would discuss at a working session to sort of negotiate that because i i agree with the previous commissioner's comments around maybe getting a benchmark from osi on electrification and solar so that they that's the threshold we're looking at as opposed to just the electrification so they're you know like now

095that they're going to move through these benchmarking of buildings and it's going to be focused on energy efficiency that part of that could be if they hit this threshold then it can come over to um the planning manager as opposed to coming to um the commission so so just like density is also one of those uh thresholds that i in particular am interested in like you know we have the i don't know if i can talk about developments that are still before the commission i mean we're before the commission can i talk about them yes no the toll house one you know it's like it's on a site where it could go to 147 units but they're only proposing 57 but if they had proposed 147 with electrification and rooftop solar with that fit being

096able to be approved in your threshold and they could see that as an incentive because they don't have to come to this multi-step process of their first reading and then their revisions and then their second and then that gets us as a community something that we value so the a2 0 goals get hit but um more housing stock also gets hit and so then there's that twin incentive that's already built in we could look at it i think it would be my initial thought is it would have it of course has to still happen within the context of the udc so you couldn't be deviating from the densities that are already provided there so it would have to be sort of a subdividing of those but it's something we could explore okay and then i

097have just one final question which i would love to take offline uh just for the sake of time which is um the caller reference valhalla and lockwood i went back and looked at the first memo from staff for valhalla and i recognized that it was asking for um a zoning change i think from rs our for something okay right yeah so they were moving around uh with it and staff denied the first two and then approved the second two and i just wonder if you could take developments just to to give me an example of how those sites that may have been i guess let me go at it a different way i'm the thing i am concerned about is the denial at the pro at the planning manager level where the commission would have

098disagreed with the planning manager whether that planning manager is you or someone who follows you and given that our udc does not have an appeals process which i heard you answer and understand i i just have a pause on that and i would like to try to answer my internal question of what are the potential unintended consequence with this incentive and i don't have a good rubric to begin to answer that question and i feel like staff you would and you would be able to say it would hit this but not that and you'd be able to say that more quickly than i can do the research so if that's not too much staff time to help me with that i would appreciate it and i'm happy to do my own labor if you just

099point me to sites where you say it would be this one it would be not this one it would be this one not that one yeah we can definitely follow up and have that conversation with you but to be clear in that case that was a legislative decision um so yes i know i know i i i recognize that yeah but but but that's really significant because um a site plan is there a site plan doesn't have discretion a site plan is measuring a proposal against standards and and i i don't want to say that you know i i have to measure it against the same standards you as the commission have to measure it against the same standards and that example there that you're talking about that was a difference of opinion that staff

100had and the planning commission had on a legis legislative decision our opinion on the applying the standards once that legislative decision is made is the same those are the same standards that we're evaluating with so but that's a really important distinction but uh but yes i'm absolutely happy to talk talk that through and we can come up with some other examples where there has been a divergence of opinion maybe on site plans between a staff perspective and planning commission not a lot of them are coming to mind to me right now um but i'm happy to have that discussion no i don't i don't presume that there are what i'm trying to anticipate is the unintended consequence of changing where that decision is made um as an incentive and so i can think of some

101but i don't know that they make sense so what i'd like to first do is hear some from you and then i can put that through my own rubric and say ah okay my concerns are not valid and we can move on and i i think that's pretty quick um but i i actually don't know how much labor it's going to cost so i want to acknowledge that thanks so much commissioner clark i want to throw out there um another quick point just like i've been hearing a lot about talk about benchmarks and my first um reaction is enthusiastic about benchmarks being really promising area um especially for like tenant consumer protection that's kind of out of our lane right now but um so i think that's that's great but i i want to just

102put a word of caution in incorporating any thresholds into um decision making uh from our view um as a body because those thresholds um often might incentivize a landlord or developer to influence behavior of their tenants in ways that are not exactly socially like if you have a tenant that's struggling with mental health issues or something like that um or you know just things happen and they might be leaving a window open while having their heat going and that might not reflect accurately the building's capability but rather the usage and um the potential for landlords having worked for a housing first organization that avoided evictions um this was something that that came up um was tenants not necessarily maintaining their apartments in ways that were the most energy efficient ways and then those scores reflecting

103poorly on housing for populations that may struggle more with keeping their their housing running as it was intended to could potentially incentivize landlords to increase in evictions of tenants or find reasons and ways to evict people that are difficult or that aren't efficient tenants just because to protect their building score so i just want to be mindful of that in the discussion and i know it's a bit outside of our lane um but just as far as planning standards go i think that thresholds could be opening a lot of doors once we start talking about that it might be a longer conversation commissioner hammer schmidt and then commissioner dish oops sorry similarly to commissioner mills i appreciate you calling out the eliminating the public hearing i also don't think i'm comfortable with that i maybe

104would like to understand where the rationale behind it um at some point doesn't have to be now but i think it's really helpful to hear from the public and i think i understand the like trying to streamline but this sort of relates to the electrification and solar incentive too i think that it's important for people to know what's happening adjacent to their homes um and so on that electrification and solar piece like again i understand the intent but i don't know if i'm super comfortable like taking that away from coming we're like using that as a way to make potentially major projects not come before planning commission i also think we offer some good suggestions to developers outside of just electrification and solar so i think like my opinion on that is like i don't

105right now support it i don't think um there's a lot of stormwater conversation that i like mostly followed but i agree with commissioner gibrandal and that like closing the gap so if there is like a hybrid something between a and b um and then i'm i feel like i harp on this every time that those n a's in that table there are still some n a's that like just aren't it's not felt like that it doesn't require a side plan it's like literally that is not um compatible if you just want to leave them with n a one of the n a's is capitalized and the rest of them are a lower case and that is driving me nuts so the very least just like make that one lowercase um i think that's it do

106that fix the nice things commissioner dish yeah so i have one question for commissioner mills and commissioner hammerschmidt because honestly i i was distracted for a minute commissioner mills when you brought up your concern about the elimination of public hearing uh and is it where exactly on the table are you worried which which categories that would lose a public hearing are you worried about is it only specific to the electrification incentive or were there other shifts to require m instead of p that you're worried about um in particular the uh there could be um [Music] site plans that are you know already zoned appropriately for you know um 1500 or not 1500 we don't see 1500 units but 150 units that my reading of this is that they would not if it doesn't if it

107doesn't require rezoning our shifting is that it comes to us now is that right mr leonard so so to have i mean i think that it's important but at the same time it's it's a change and i do think that there is some benefit in letting neighbors know what's going on um and in neighbors ideas for things that we might ask for because that happens like and sometimes we bring up things that actually don't cost a whole lot but the people think about but we're not in that neighborhood that's what that's among the reasons that i think um having for those situations were i think it it warrants still having public hearings to be clear like we already recognized that there's a whole bunch of m's on this table that's mr leonard doesn't actually stand

108for mr leonard stands for planning manager and i mean i and we know that that would not have public hearings but that's moving a decent amount of you know things that right now like the buck stops with us to him um and things that are smaller um and i i am supportive of that and recognize that there are there are things on the table that that pertains to so new construction of residential buildings up to um [Music] five and six dwelling units like that's one of the things that there won't be a public hearing on anymore and i'm not proposing changing that um but um yeah i i um so that's where i'm i'm asking for specifications so so the specific area that really concerns you is new construction that part of the table and

109you're not worried about the five and six ah sorry yep but you might be worried about the seven plus dwelling units that might come in with electrification and then be exempt that's for example one um well right now as written five to seven or you know seven units that would come in as written without electrification there would be no public hearing and there would be no notice wait no it says p there doesn't it am i but this was the distinction that mr leonard brought to our attention today which was that and what's that sorry it's not it's on page nine it's like uh like it's not in the table it's not in the table it's it's right after the table um if i'm writing this correctly and maybe i'm not i think it's that

110anything now that comes to us where it's like the buck stops with us would not require a public hearing and along with that that was my point of clarification along with that along the way there would be no meeting with neighbors ahead of time but also not even just meeting with neighbors it's that there's no notice that something would be was being proposed in their neighborhood yep okay i'm sorry could could you i i don't have page numbers in mine so oh it's along this far if you look along this i guess yeah i'm not in the top guy so okay wait a minute could we just read this i'm so sorry we were up so long last night and i'm clearly not in the best uh shape so i get what you're saying um

111yeah so is it planning for a development it's the comment box commissioner dish on it's comment lb2 yes i see it okay which i hadn't seen previously so this is why i appreciated it at commented out and brought up okay uh okay gee yeah well i'm with you on that okay um i thought yeah yeah so i why would that take away the public hearing and then just so yeah so could we just talk a little bit more about why that's true and is there any flexibility there and yeah all right so i mean i'm actually just i think we need to talk about it more and then so i'm still trying to figure out that a and b options here i'm worried that we yeah so if we make a hybrid of a and

112b in the way that you guys are thinking about it actually it's gonna add cost to smaller developments so it will in fact then both options not just b b significantly against the mandate from council because it takes a large group of developments the ones that are between 5 and 10 and it adds detention to them so that so and that could be a disincentive for infill project am i making a correct leap there like infill it would be adding more expectations of of sites greater than 5 000 square feet of impervious surface and those sites am i correct in thinking that infill is often at that point if we're yeah by way of example of those recent four units those are those are instances of four unit residential infill in our community that are

113all in the five to ten thousand square foot range yeah right so and i'm not i'm not being anti-stormwater i'm really pro-stormwater but these are trade-offs we're talking about trade-offs and i think we want to air them in the most honest way possible so that when we make a choice we know what we're making so um couldn't agree more yeah well i'm totally okay but in any case um yeah so okay so could could you walk us through um currently when we when planning commission approves a site plan it goes to council is the is the reason we have a public hearing because it's going to go to council i mean why is taking the going to council part which i thoroughly support as a best practice i do not want these to go to

114council but why does removing that step mean that there's no longer a public hearing so it doesn't have to just as a reminder from where we started we we regulate private development through state law state law enables us to do that state law says that site plan review is an administrative process we put ordinances in place that we measure a site plan to to say it meets this or it doesn't meet that if the answer to all of those questions that we pose and the answer to all of them are yes the site plan is approved that is the same process whether i do that in my office or city council does that after a public hearing at planning commission and a public hearing at city council notified to 300 every property owner within 300

115feet and 2 000 emails so it is this the same standard so in our ordinance historically we as the city have said despite not having to we are going to hold public hearings for this administrative process and so in approaching this language to the point of trying to make things easier for small and modest projects eliminating that step would simplify the process to an extent not substantially but to an extent public hearings do bring information and they do add notification requirements and they do add frankly an uncertainty to a staff determination of or the planning commission determination of those standards being met or not being met and so this this change here says let's do how we do planning manager approval and apply it to planning commission as it is drafted in our current ordinance

116and it could continue to be it is whether it's city council or planning commission we want to hold the public hearing even though that's not required by law we want to add that to our process and so i just i from the from the lens of trying to make it simpler i went the other direction with this change to be clear there are both large and small and modest projects then that would be impacted by that there would be small and modest projects that don't have to go through that process there would also be large projects of 150 units that are really zoned would not go through that process so i think the discussion is good and that's why i thought it was really important to highlight but the short the short answer is we

117can keep it it as it is based on a city policy that we want to add more process than the minimum required i'm not saying it's a bad but that's a policy decision we want to make and so that's that's where this change came from though from me probably weighing more a faithfulness to how do we make the process easier and this would be a way to make it easier it's not a right or wrong like you said there are trade-offs so can i try another line of argument on this which is um the rationale for not forwarding site plan approval to council is exactly as you said because it's an administrative decision and it's a best practice not to not to create the impression that there can be judgment call negotiation over an administrative

118decision that's a bad impression to create and that's why that is the rationale for the for the chain for the big change that we're which is if it's a site plan approval if it's buy right it doesn't go to council so essentially what you've done uh and you're expressing it in terms of simplicity but actually what you've done is you're being consistent and you're saying if it's an administrative decision it's an administrative decision with respect to planning just like it's an administrative decision with respect to council so in the council end it means we don't send it to council council sets legislation and policy it doesn't do administrative decisions so then at the level of planning to be consistent we should treat administrative decisions like administrative decisions i think that's a strong argument i also

119think that there might be an argument for saying at some degree of density an administrative decision it might be useful to have some feedback at the planning commission level not at council uh from the neighborhood um i can't so i can see a like a there's a there's an intuition on the part of commissioner mills and others that a certain size of project it might be useful to keep these public hearings that are not required from your perspective and possibly from mine as well because the simplicity part doesn't work for me but the consistency part if it's an administrator decision one place it's an administrative decision in the other that works a little better for me so possibly from your and my perspective it really doesn't matter the size this is the nature we are

120talking about the nature of a kind of decision and when you have a public hearing you are saying what you say matters and can change this project well it should be able to so or maybe it should right so i mean i i i saw your headcock and i'm i'm open to having this discussion about whether i'm totally open to having a discussion about whether there's been something good and useful and ann arbor exceptionalist about inviting more public participation but we'd want to talk about would that just then be all projects at planning or would it be a certain size of projected planning and how do we justify that um so i hope that was not completely unhelpful in thinking through the resistance to the removal of the public care i i think that's a

121great exercise and i think a way to add an example is you know the public hearing cannot impact the standards the public hearing can't say you can't have 10 people say the ordinance says that you can do 10 units here but i think it should only be 6. the ordinance makes that decision i think the way a public hearing can be beneficial is through the rubric of staff giving the planning commission that staff report it's conceivable that some information is brought to the commission's attention that wasn't put forth through the process by review to that point um i think we hear more frankly about standards and and and thoughts generally about outcome than we do missing information or incorrect information but i would say that that's an argument why public hearings for this administrative decision

122can be valuable maybe there's some bit of information that's presented that didn't come out of the process that is relevant to the criteria but at the end of the day those criteria are evaluated and you're absolutely right an administrative decision is the same whether it's happening in my office at your table or at the city council i'm going to chime in here quickly because uh to the point of like what is the line in my look at the table and this is why this having this as a table is really helpful unless we're talking about a private street or construction of a residential building in a mixed use district we're not seeing anything that is less than seven units that's the only thing that comes before us everything else is going to planning manager or

123if it's rezoning then we are seeing them on their way to city council so we're really only talking about things that are at least of the size of seven units or that they're some other use that there's a lot of things that are some other use that are also in our purview too so um maybe that's the wrong level and you know we could continue to do that i i see but i also see that um like if there's not tons of discretion uh um i get that i it's not necessarily the public hearing part i think it's just the um that there's development that there are there are changes and if suddenly the bulldozers show up right um because you know i think that that could actually lead to some more out pushback that

124was not the intention of changing this personally um commissioner clark and then commissioner abrams i was going to ask um i know that the postcards that get sent out to all the neighbors they can add kind of this unknown variable and it's a whole process from the developer perspective especially for small developments i'm wondering if there is a way to do um instead of like public engagement but incentivize early stage developer like charrettes community charts because i do think that the public engagement provides useful opportunity to sensitize people to what's going to happen in their neighborhood and can give the developer developers um an opportunity to diffuse tension i'm a little bit hesitant to say on one hand i i it's great that we can reduce expensive expenses on smaller developments and it is a

125really cumbersome process on a smaller project to go through the postcard notification all that on the other hand i am concerned that if we um only have public hearings for larger developments then the public understanding of the current development situation in the city is going to be that only all these big developments are getting passed and they're never hearing about the more like mid scale um like human human scale smaller developments or for example if we bypass the public process with these sustainable developments um people won't know that those developments are happening and then they'll see the the only thing that we're hearing about are these bad developments so finding a way if there was a way to do some kind of a light especially now that we're in the the covert era of um

126digital everything like virtual meetings for some um and then others required in person but one of the big things with those note cards going out to the neighbors and all that from a developer standpoint was the timeline that um if you have to do subsidized paperwork you have to make sure that those are through the system by a certain day and you have to get your documentation that you held that meeting and you have those notes well if those postcards get delayed and they're not in your two week time frame or whatever the requirement is your entire project is is thrown off its schedule and that comes with a lot of different subsidies and stuff that require all those processes and boxes to be checked so it would be really beneficial to make that process

127as straightforward and clear-cut as possible and maybe framing it less as like um a combative interaction but more of like an informational character and engagement i enjoy those sessions i think they're great for getting people to maybe understand details and show intention behind developments and like um commissioner mills just said it can be very startling when the bulldozers just show up and there might be things the developers don't know that maybe the neighborhood used to have flooding issues with the site and they're annoyed and very concerned their houses are going to flood and they can easily diffuse that with hey no we're actually putting in this system so um that's kind of my thoughts it's a complicated one and there's benefits and drawbacks commissioner abrams and then i just looked at the time and realized

128that we've talked a long time on something that we're going to postpone i'll be quick um i wonder just two quick things one is i wonder if we can think about this in phases as opposed to an all or nothing so i think it would be possible to take a small step and prepare ourselves to take another step i think it's easier to remove the public hearing than it is to add it back so maybe we think about that um and then the second question i had i wondered is the is the format of the physical postcard is that is that illegal is that regulated by law would it ever be possible to switch to email or trans transition over time because i think that that would be cheaper and faster and would maybe cut

129cut back some of the cost and time constraints of the notification uh um if there's anything else um commissioner mills to your point maybe i could do a quick recap and maybe i'll maybe i'll even address some of the questions um so generally i'm hearing support for postponement but an urgency that we've been working at this and you want to see this move forward so i'm um i am hearing some pressure to make sure i'm giving you a as good a product as we can at that november 4th meeting um we will consult with osi on that electrification language although i have to say that i think um i'm leaning towards removal of it the conversation about the public hearing maintenance at planning commission level suggests to me as it was maybe brought up before

130that this warrants a larger conversation than maybe shoehorning it into this particular one it's not to say it's not an idea worth pursuing but i wonder if we've got enough enough to tackle in this context i do think that it's important that we that these are not bifurcated that the storm water aspect and the site plant review thresholds go in concert unless you are comfortable with the site plan for thresholds going forward knowing that there's going to be a lot of projects that don't have storm water at all in that interim i don't think that that's probably legal that we want so that's why i think it's important to keep them going um i am hearing the one thing that i am not hearing a lot of um consistency of but i'm going to propose

131an approach to fill the gap of stormwater main facilities of 5000 less with from the standpoint that it's infrastructure that's critically needed in the city if we keep it moderate at a first flush approach it should be able to be accomplished in a relatively um cost effective manner um and we will also explore um sort of presenting maybe even tablifying it like um to commissioner weich's uh suggestion and as i am quick to do with a lot of other aspects of the udc that seems to resonate with the planning commission as a great way to display information maybe we even look at that whole seg section as a way to present that in a little bit more understandable way and [Music] will work to address commissioner hammerschmidt's editorial eye and um as it relates to

132the public hearing i guess i'm generally hearing that this is perhaps going a little bit too far afield from the direction of city council resolution so again this is i'm hearing some different voices on it um so at a minimum i think when it comes back to you i will present a recommendation but i will have some alternative language at the ready should the commission want to explore that further [Music] i am reluctant to delve into much changes with our citizen participation requirements that that's its intention is to notify residents early in the process those deadlines can be really burdensome to a project but they are also designed to be measurable so that we can assure that some of that information is going out in a timely basis and frankly it requires some space it

133doesn't require a petitioner to respond but it requires some period of reflection based on that conversation to see if they want to make adjustments to their proposal i think that's less genuis if that conversation happens and then they're just submitting their application the next day um i'm not saying that they always take advantage of that but at least building in the space we're probably going as far as we can to lead them to that water to to maybe respond to some of those questions um i to the point about noticing i can explore that i know that that's something that's been discussed in a lot of ways at the state level we also have some charter issues i don't know specifically if those relate to notices but i i think that there has been discussion

134about allowing electronic notices i don't think it's allowed by state law yet i'm speculating so i will follow up on that too and um that's what i'm hearing as maybe a product to come back to you any major i missed or mischaracterized or misread the room on great thank you very much for keeping track and recapping um i realized that what i read was that we would postpone this to november 2nd but that is election day so it's actually november 4th it's a thursday yeah i'm sorry my typo um uh no you you corrected it when you just said that which is why i noticed that um so i read the motion before effectively reminding us what i said an hour and a half ago which is that we're going to postpone this until the

135fourth thursday november 4th yeah yeah and all in favor of the postponement just raise your hand or say yes that is all of the hands so the motion carries i just gotta notice that i'm i need to go find my laptop plug so and it's also ten after nine can we take a five minute break um and then we'll come back and do regular business order uh so this is item 9a the 3874 research park drive site plan for city council approval and we'll start with the petitioner's presentation you'll have up to 10 minutes folks um and then mr kowalski can offer comments um and the staff's presentation and then we'll open it for the public hearing sorry my bad mr chang will be this city planner presenting this petition this evening oh okay very

136good mr covert we're ready for you whenever you want to start thank you good evening everybody uh my name is tom covert i'm with midwestern consulting uh it's great to be here with you tonight to review the 3874 research park drive site plan it's formerly known as or also known as the vanguard project but we'll be referring to it here tonight is the sartorius site plan you will see that in this next slide that we have a long list of folks here that make up the stakeholders team from the development side of the project uh in the interest of time i'll assure you that all these folks are here on the call tonight and available to assist and answer questions should you have them as they come up with regard to the site plan and

137with that i'm going to ask that um mary lavin is she brett did you promote her i have not seen ms levin all right so i'm going to um we have a caller um yeah i was going to say did she raise her hand yeah we um i'll go ahead and promote the caller we'll see if that's the right um mary are you able to hear us uh yes i am able to hear you yeah and thank you can you hear me perfect thank you great so um i i cannot see the screen i'm just on the phone so i appreciate that it gives me the chance to speak for a moment so i'm the president of sartorius here in uh the u.s and i'm the key stakeholder for this project here in in ann

138arbor uh we're really excited about this opportunity to expand our live cell analysis site there uh just a little bit about sartorius sartorius was founded in 1870 um so we have a long history of success both here in ann arbor in the u.s and uh founded as the mentioned in germany so we have been uh continuously operating as a company and also a a important community sponsor for the last 150 years and we're looking forward to being a partner the items that you have spoken about tonight i also have on the line with me dr reinhard bontos he is specifically here to talk about our corporate responsibility activities to promote sustainability uh why are you on the line are you able to speak i think we just moved him in okay great thank you yep

139fine how would you would you just like to highlight some of the proactive activities we're doing to ensure that sartorius is a sustainable company not just globally but also specifically in in over yes it's a pleasure to me so good evening to everyone so ingredients from germany it's a pleasure to join the meeting it was so far a very interesting one but just coming back to the topic um here so what we plan to do here in an hour and what the intention for for that meeting here is as well is to build the center of operations um as the foundation for our sustainability growth sustainable growth in in north america as was already mentioned before sustainability is one of our major targets and objectives in our commercial activities what will be about so you

140see on that slide here that a multi-purpose site is planned so the very core of the um business in the nava will be the operations where we're going to consolidate several businesses which are currently distributed across north america and what will be about assembly engineering and also then the distribution since we're a company focusing very much on the biopharmaceutical industry um it will be as well then this center is planned to be a center of excellence and for regions so regions used to be and life sciences to indicate a status of cells or organisms furthermore it will be as well a repair center for the products we have installed the us as well one part and one element of our sustainable strategy or certainly sustainable strategy beside that it's uh is well product development or

141an r d scale up hub so we plan to further invest into the today's r d activities we have in particular already today in ann arbor and to involve our customers into that it will also include then training a demo center and this is in particular of interest from the sustainability perspective since we know um and this is the the reports we had look into that the major impact when you have a look at the emissions footprint um we are involved in as a company is about the product use and the product uh utilization at the customer site and so the side in an arbor will be then as well focusing on training and in order to help our customers to use their products better to do that more efficiently with less energy consumptions reduced

142and more focused work workflows they do so as a summary so what we plan to see here is an increase in efficiency and resilience to be closer than to our customers in the north american market and also then to reduce complexity for instance when you think about logistics for the north american market where that side will be play a major role thank you reinhardt and mary moving along context-wise we are the central properties of the research park drive industrial park area we're located south of 94 east of state street north of ellsworth and then west of the ann arbor railroad which you can see here we are these properties highlighted in green we're about 16.9 acres zoned office research and lab we have studied the existing conditions of the site you'll note that we are

143five of the properties in total we have frontage on research park drive both on the east and west side of our property there are some flood plains and wetlands associated with the mallets creek drain that exists to the long and the northern border there are some landmark trees that were planted with the existing facility and infrastructure that sits there today that is planned to be raised the building that is you'll see in a minute that we're preserving some of these landmark trees and then utilities exist both in research park drive east and research park drive west which we plan to connect to the project itself is a building of about sixty thousand square feet of office and two stories so the footprint of the office is thirty thousand square feet on each level and and

144that exists in this area we have a seventy thousand square foot uh research and development facility which will be one story we are we are parking um this site with 299 parking spaces 150 of those meet the ev charging requirements per the code and then we also park with 64 bike parking spaces you'll note we have three access points we have one to the west here on research park drive and we have two to the east along research park drive for loading unloading and fire access a couple of key features to the site are that we are completing a lot of the sidewalk connections that exist currently we'll be putting sidewalk in each frontage alarm research park drive and then we'll also be adding sidewalks so that you can get from the site all the

145way out to state street where there's public transit and those kinds of things that happen so we're completing those sidewalk connections we have a food truck patio on site a pavilion some patios from gathering spaces and then we've preserved the landmark trees here adjacent to the previous development in research park drive this is just a quick overlay of the site on the aerial that exists a picture of the aerial what exists there today again pedestrian scale we've moved the building up near research park drive we've completed the sidewalk connection on this side of research park drive to get you out to state street and then again along each of the frontages of the property utility service to the site is pretty straightforward we anticipate having a sanitary lead to research park drive to service the

146building we are planning to construct a 12-inch water main in parallel to the eight inch that exists in research park drive and then taking that eight inch offline to to meet the current standards of the 12-inch water main service we also plan to bring a 12-inch water main through the site and connect to the other side of research park drive to complete one minute i guess it would be fire hydrant access and and the ability to fight fires at the site if needed we have a rain garden we have storm water detention in the form of infiltration tom i'm going to turn it over to you here here if you want to talk about the building uh absolutely thank you uh tom phillips and black uh down the block here one more north state street

147good evening um commenting about uh architectural aesthetics um here you're seeing the uh south elevation of the building um actually that is the east and west below you want to flip the next one tom and this is the north elevation and south elevation uh the south elevation is the building's main entry we'll go to the next one so commenting about architectural aesthetics we work closely with sartorius to design what we feel is an elegant modern composition uh with an envelope composed of insulated metal panels and glass and the the concept is to help convey the dynamic nature of their culture um the high performance glass is designed to shed heat ten minutes thank you we're very proud of it and we we feel it's going to be a cutting edge asset to the community thank

148you uh there's also uh we have so 9 000 square foot of solar panels on the roof which you'll see on the roof plan that's a kilowatt uh system array and we'll be happy to answer any questions thank you thank you very much all right um mr chang uh yes i'll just follow up i know they had a lot of information to cover there so some points uh as there was pre that was previously mentioned uh you know approval is contingent on combining the five lots before permits will be issued uh they just started to get into the the sustainability they are adding solar panels to the roof i believe it was 150 kilowatt hours at dc and 125 if it were kilowatt hours at uh ac which the alternating current which i did have

149a brief conversation with the offices to stay in the sustainability of how much power that is it's approximately between that would power between 15 to 18 houses uh yearly and that all depends again on you know on a typical 2000 square foot home depending on you know how they're heating and cooling their house um there was also something that came up just today and it was from the the neighbor to the south um that is actually a school i had listed it in the staff report as office space but is actually currently used by the washington intermediate school district and that is used for special needs students they're not opposed to the the proposal but they are concerned with the stormwater detention on site if some because there are playgrounds in the rear of the

150site and i think yeah if it shows right kind of where the hand is located i don't know if you can see my cursor but where the hand is where they have either a playground or or a student garden so they did have concerns that they were that were brought up regarding the stormwater detention uh because it was brought up so late in the day i did send an email off to the county drain commissioner's office which has approved this proposal i do have some questions uh regarding you know this that does have infiltration on site so i'm curious about how much water may be stored in those detention ponds and if fences are possible uh to put or they're not required i know from the from the slopes but it's a discussion that you

151know i'm sure that the applicant and um the neighbor they're happy to to explore further just for the it's really more for the safety of the students i think there's about 40 to 50 students that are out there um so i'll follow up with the county drain commissioner's office and in fact the the uh the petitioner tonight may have more information regarding how much standing water would be in those ponds other than that i think they've mentioned everything there is electrical vehicle parking on site and i'm open to any questions you may have all right very good um before we get to those questions we will have the public hearing for this item so this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed 3874 research park drive site

152plan if you wish to address the planning commission on this item please press star 9 if you've dialed in or use the raised hand feature if you've joined through zoom for phone access if you're watching us right now you can call eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven and then you can enter our meeting id which is nine seven seven sixty six thirty four twelve twenty six city staff will select callers that have raised their hand um again you do that by pressing star nine on your phone when um you are promoted to speak please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we can hear you clearly and please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments caller with the phone number

153ending with 134 caller with the phone number ending with one three four you have three minutes to address the commission um thank you mr leonard and chair mills this is ken garber again 28 heavyweight court as a science reporter covering biopharma i commend the petitioner for providing modern lab space to sartorius and other life science companies and for its commitment to ann arbor this is a good developer but there are some problems here the solar array covers only nine percent of the flat roof area 150 kilowatt power output by my calculation will provide only four percent of the building's electricity demand that's based on doe estimates of commercial electric usage per square foot i realize the petitioner can add more later but it would be nice to see a bigger investment up front and gas

154heating for new construction is just unacceptable in 2021 we just can't lock in co2 emissions for the next half century come on mr mccousland mr big mr phillips put in a geothermal system you have the land area but there's a larger problem beyond this building emissions have to stop buildings like this perfectly evoke the cognitive dissonance of the strange times that we live in we know we must quit fossil fuels but we can't help ourselves this petitioner talks a good sustainability game with the building envelope insulation the high performance glass the led lighting but let's look at emissions referring to the us eia commercial building energy consumption guide and dte's current energy mix i calculate that this building will emit about 696 metric tons co2 equivalent emissions per year from electricity consumption alone now we

155had gas combustion emissions which i estimated 572 metric tons co2 a year for heating the total 1 268 metric tons co2 equivalent emissions a year that's a tangible 0.3 addition to the city's current overall commercial emissions at a time when we're desperate to lower those emissions of course this project meets our zoning code and you have to approve it as is i get that but let's not call it sustainable now what about future petitions your zoning code options are limited to incentives for planned projects we can't require solar or heat pumps much less zero emission buildings and conventional wisdom says forget the building code too because state act 230 supposedly keeps us from exceeding the state i think that's wrong and that we can have our own code but that's another discussion at least do

156this have staff calculate and report the greenhouse gas emissions of every future development that comes before commission that way you and council will at least know the climate impact this idea has been out there but let's implement it thank you if anyone else wishes to um participate in the public hearing please press star 9 on your phone or use the raised hand feature to raise your hand see no indications all right then i'll read the motion the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the 3874 research park drive site plan and development agreement subject to combining lots before issuance of permits moved by commissioner wyche seconded by commissioner gbrandal who wants to kick off conversation or questions no one ready for a roll call to that end oh

157go ahead commissioner give randall go ahead i think we're kind of in this awkward place of like um [Music] this is a whole lot better than we normally get and then we've been reminded of our kind of like ultimate goals from one of our callers you know so um and he also states you know where where we don't really have wiggle room and things like that and i don't know if he attended our session several weeks ago where we really sort of got the pretty specific line about where where our influence can lie and not um so um i i i want to aspire you know but i also feel like my hands are tied to and i also on one hand want to commend the developer for what they're doing here which is a

158whole lot more than what we usually see and um and i think it looks like a great project it it um it makes me think with all of those bike parking spaces and things like that that man we gotta get with it with our state street bike scene because it's tantalizingly close when you hit the intersection at eisenhower and then it all completely falls apart from there over to this area and um i think as a city we really need to get with the program uh with with i know state street the states recorder has been studied for a lot of years but we just have to act because uh it's just in um i've i liked it once and i will never do it again um with that overpass uh so we really need

159to figure out how to be able to move people through this area too so that um somebody who works in a place like this who actually may be partly attracted to a place like this because of all the different sustainability elements finds that it's actually quite dangerous for them to to bike here um so uh yeah i i i i'm supportive of everything that you're saying here i i do see that you know it is kind of a small solar panel area when you look at the whole roof um i get it that there's other needs that are up there too but it does seem kind of small in terms of the what you could be what you could be running from that so that would be a wish but i know that you know

160we we only have so much influence with this um so at the very least i would love to see um the way that your electric capacity is set up so that there could be more not just the roof can handle the the structure but that your the way your panels are set up and things like that there's more opportunity for that in the future as well so that's it for now great i was going to similarly chime in um that i was excited to see this and i'll be honest i had this vague recollection of right before covid having seen something else on this site and i didn't go back and dig out things and compare my sense and maybe this is um for the development team this seems to be utilizing more of the

161site than previous or it's a larger building than before is that right that's correct yes great the previous project really only utilized about a one one parcel and maybe a quarter of the other where this sprawls into the second parcel right okay well i for one am excited to see more development here and i also am excited to see the plan that that there is land envisioned for future expansion um particularly i mean i think that all of this is suggesting that this is the beginning of what could come i'm really excited that you have only provided one more parking space than what our current minimum is um i'm really excited that this will lead to 30 new spaces that have ev chargers installed in them um and um also you know the connection down

162the down the road beyond your property line is that am i understanding that right that you were talking about the sidewalk connecting even correct we have offsite sidewalk improvement yep um i did some of the calculate when i saw the development agreement i was doing the calculations about the solar and i don't know the original thing i thought it was one panel and knowing that it is a thousand panels um is quite different um i you know i certainly i would share commissioner gibb randall's um hope slash expectation that we the city intends to be carbon neutral in a decade and your roof space will be super valuable in helping us get there and so even if it's not envisioned immediately making that building so that there can be future expansion of solar um would

163be i think a really wise investment um this seems to be like something that you intend to be here for a while and so i i would just encourage you as you're thinking about future expansion the opportunities for thinking about ways that you can utilize some of that property for additional you know for geothermal heating um looking at the changes in technologies you're a german company we have a lot to learn from germany um like this is stuff that i'm imagining you have already deployed there um and hope that you bring it to ann arbor and and find a you know um folks here that um i mean i think the things that you're doing to build this so that people are driving evs there that they have an ability to park and charge during

164the day um and that they can walk there and use use the bus um i think is really fantastic so um yeah commit commissioner just to be clear that you know the uh we acquired you know more land than the first option that you saw a couple years ago and that's that's primarily to be able to have future phasing for this project and and ultimately i'm sure that we'll look at additional you know green energy type opportunities the the real reason why our solar array is really where it's at right now is because we we haven't developed the entire uh footprint interior but you know this is a lot of lab space so we're gonna we're gonna be in you know incurring a lot of rooftop units we just don't think we could fit it

165to be perfectly honest by the time that the the amount of mechanical gets up on this roof to be able to really have anything greater than what we're anticipating with the solar array that we're that we're suggesting that context is really helpful um and i and although it is not a requirement seeing this within the development agreement um that it's um this is what caught my eye that like the expectation that there will be solar panels on this site um is within their development agreement i think is great and that you would use that as the floor not the ceiling i think um is is uh um exciting so thank you commissioner clark go ahead um so yeah i just want to echo some similar sentiments but looking forward to seeing this be built um

166i'm especially excited about the commitment to sidewalks that's awesome so um and i just had one small question out of curiosity and was just wondering um if bike parking will be provided or even electric bike parking but yup other than that thank you for bringing this forward i i don't know if we have a we have a plenty of bike parking i don't know about electric bike parking specifically i'm not sure what what that entails even as far as the charging capability or what's needed there i think the one thing that we we try to emphasize with this project not unlike our last petition that we had for the previous uh iteration of of the site is that you know we are trying to keep people in a walkable community that is somewhat self-contained so

167if you really delve into our site plan it's a little difficult with the with the limited time we had but we do have not unlike the previous version we do have a spot for food trucks we have outdoor spaces for employees we have now we can circulate through the entire park which will be beneficial for the entire tenancy of the park which is you know a 60-year forlorn area as i think we all know uh in addition to that you know the walkability aspect to the new hotels that are out on state street in the retail and the restaurants was a big attraction um you know for sartorius to choose this the this site uh you know for their consolidation here in ann arbor so you know it's meant to keep a lot of people

168very practical to the site and not to dump out onto state street um you know as we tried to do with the previous project so i think we're accomplishing that and you know with the acreage that we have there um you know we could you know ultimately you know the plan is obviously to have that further growth here at this location and you know we envisioned at least a probably a doubling of the site if not more so and you know in addition this is generating you know a substantial amount of new very high paying jobs for the area as well so it's it's a it's a huge benefit to our community that you know to keep a tenant uh an occupant of a building like this in our community it's it's it's a big

169it's a big boost for us mr colbert did you raise your hand if i could real quickly um with regard to bike parking spaces we have basically three different areas where we're proposing for bike parking we're proposing two areas near the main entrance for a total of 14 bike parking spaces out by the main entrance and then over by the uh what we're envisioning is the employee entrance we have an 18 bike parking spaces so those are in real close proximity to the building so if there were uh the notion to electrify those it would be something that could be done relatively easily because they are located near the entries where people are going to be using them so that was something that we had thought about with the design commissioner clark go ahead really

170quick i was just hoping you could point out on the map just where the food truck area is going to be because that does sound really exciting too i'm just curious yep so this is um the layout plan and then the food truck patio is here it's kind of this gray shaded darker area with a connection to a pavilion area and then outdoor patio and seating areas great other planning commissioners and there's even closer up commissioner hammerschmidt i'll just confirm i agree with everything that's been said i think this project looks fantastic um aesthetically and everything um the what mr chang brought up about the comment that he received today from the school i just wanted to i guess verify with the petitioner that they're going to be working to address any of those concerns

171that they have in terms of potential flooding or water infiltration into their site yeah i i've already indicated to we'll reach out to the neighbor actually it wouldn't be flooding which would be the concern in fact you know this site has no storm water at all on it currently so what we're doing is a vast improvement to the area um but we'll definitely meet with them to make sure they're you know any concerns that they may have you know for safety especially during the construction period that would that we would meet you know any concerns of theirs you know there's there's you know clearly there there is some activity going on there you know it's a conditional use to school there so it's you know we're we are obviously you know we fit within the

172zoning they're sort of shoehorned in there but you know but i i think that there's no question we would want to be you know we would want to be careful with what's going on obviously with uh with activities there but i think as far as from the standing water perspective you know that that's something we'll take into consideration great thanks and yes extra thanks for the sidewalk connections i think that's gonna vastly improve this area so thanks any other questions or comments if i can um mr covert if you could just stop screen sharing so that i can see people's faces a little bit better thank you very much while we vote uh mr leonard can we have a roll call though oh wait commissioner gibrandal is going to sneak in go for it commissioner

173get randall just one other little thing when you're pointing out the the patio area i know this isn't required but you might consider adding a few trees because that is just a big huge paved zone with a whole lot of nothing in terms of shade and um i just think it would be much more comfortable for people to hang out in that area if you were able to integrate some some um some shade and trees in through there again probably not required so that would just be out of your own um your own kind of concern for your employees and making that a space that feels hospitable to them uh because otherwise they're they're in the middle of a lot of a lot of pavement for sure that's that's somewhat planned it's probably not really

174representative of what you're looking at for sure sure all right any others before mr leonard does the roll call vote mr leonard please commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish i see a yes yes sorry i couldn't on you commissioner clark yes commissioner white yes commissioner mills yes commissioner gibb randall yes motion carries unanimously uh proceed to city council thanks folks and thanks for you didn't have much of a choice but for sticking around for our last conversation thank you everybody thank you very much all right um we are on to item 10 now which is another opportunity for public participation persons may speak for up to three minutes about any item of interest if you wish to address the planning commission at this time and you've dialed in please press star 9 on

175your telephone to raise your hand or if you're watching us through the zoom link uh you can rate use the raised hand feature for phone access uh you can call 877-853-5247 and our meeting id is 977-6634-1226 city staff will select callers that have raised their hand calling on you by the last three digits of your telephone number or by your name um you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak um please move to a quiet area and mute any background sounds so that we can hear you clearly and please also state your name and address at the beginning of your comments uh mr garber you can unmute your phone using star six and address the planning commission oh but like there we go there you go okay yeah sorry about

176that um yeah ken garber again you've heard a lot from me tonight so i'll be brief on the question of public hearings for site plans that fall to planning commission to decide i'm surprised it's even a discussion the public has to be able to weigh in on these projects and we should encourage that participation remember that this change would apply to projects big as well as small granted i come from a neighborhood organizing background not from a professional planning background so of course this is my view but i see public hearings essential to the democratic process and also critical for making developments better i don't think that any significant project can be adequately reviewed and modified and approved without public input that's all i have to say thanks to everyone for your hard work and

177have a good night thank you would anyone else like to participate in the public comment opportunity if so push the raised hand use the raised hand feature seeing none we'll move on to item 11 which is commission proposed business commissioner gibrandil you still have your hand up i assume it's not for commission proposed business but is there any commissioner who does have commission proposed business that they'd like to bring to us tonight i don't surprise langley all right um then we'll move on to 12 which is adjournment may i have a commissioner move that moved by commissioner weich seconded by commissioner gibb randall all in favor please say i or raise a hand that's everybody's hands and a thumb from commissioner dish have a great night folks we'll see you next week