Ann Arbor City Planning Meeting 8/17/21

001a tuesday august 17 2021 meeting of the ann arbor planning commission this 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 however please be patient if there are technical issues to speak during public comment opportunities you will be able to speak through the webinar link or by phone depending on your method of access to this meeting and the device that you have available to you both the phone number and the web link are available on the published agenda which is in the public notices section of the city website for phone access this

002evening please call four 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id this information is also available on the published agenda in the public notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 at t channel 99 and online at a2gov.org ctn where you will select the government channel item 2 is the roll call mr leonard could you please assist us with that absolutely commissioner mills present in ann arbor commissioner gibb randall aaron ann arbor commissioner silvay here from ann arbor commissioner abrams here from ann arbor commissioner hammerschmidt commissioner dish here in ann arbor commissioner lee here in ann arbor mr clerk commissioner wage i'm here in ann arbor david very good um item three is introductions do we have any mr leonard none moving on then to item four and i

003think mr leonard you had a would like to amend the uh agenda yeah we had a petitioner i was trying to manage some scheduling and um i would request the agenda be modified to switch items 10a and 10b in order all right um would a commissioner move the agenda as amended moved by commissioner abram second and by commissioner white any other discussion on the agenda all in favor please raise your hand or say yes i see all hands now so that uh we will move forward with the agenda with that change um item five are the minutes of the previous meeting can i have a motion to approve the minutes of the august 3rd 2021 meeting moved by commissioner weich seconded by commissioner silvay any discussion or corrections of the minutes all in favor of

004the motion please raise your hand or say yes that is all hands except mr uh commissioner lee only because i wasn't president i had no internet so do i can i not vote to or abstain unless there was something attributed i guess it's up to you generally if you're gone and there's something attributed to you okay you weren't there then you would say that you have a problem with them but otherwise you could say no problem i'm sure all right so commissioner lee's in favor too so we're all in agreement uh the motion carries um item six are all of the reports um council member dish would you please kick us off i do not think that there was anything of specific interest to planning last night i have just combed through my notes and

005other than the fact that there may be a social district in downtown ann arbor which will allow you to stroll the downtown streets with a legal drink in your hand which may be of interest to you for other reasons i don't think there is anything specific but as usual i invite correction mr leonard uh no reports uh for ordinance revisions committee um later this month i anticipate a continuing discussion of uh rezoning of tc1 particularly focused on the state eisenhower area and some additional steps towards uh considering parking requirements very good and so and to clarify for anyone who is watching us and is following or wants to join in that meeting that is a public meeting it meets on tuesdays it'll be next tuesday seven o'clock it's not televised but the agenda will include

006uh a link to the zoom mr leonard is that advertised as well as a call-in number yes perfect very good thank you are there any commissioner officers or committee liaisons that have anything to report all right seeing none i will move on to item seven which is the first opportunity for public comment this is uh for persons to speak for up to three minutes about an issue that is not listed as a public hearing on this agenda so we have four public hearings um those public hearings are 30 90 gettys 700 tappin the mill creek town homes and the 336 south ashley if you have if you wish to address the planning commission on anything else um now is an appropriate time to do so to speak um if you've already dialed in you can

007press star 9 on your phone if you have joined us through zoom and want to provide a comment on something beyond those four public hearings you can use the raise hand feature and if you are watching us on tv and want to call in now the dial-in number is 877-853-5247 66 34 12 26 mr leonard will select callers that have raised their hand um and again uh you do that if you're on a phone by pressing star nine you'll get an automated message that the host is allowing you to speak please mute any background sound including television and move to a quiet area if you can also please state your name and address for the record at the beginning of your comments and please keep your comments to three minutes anybody want to make a

008comment now all right there's still another opportunity at the end of the meeting to comment on anything and as mentioned there will be four public hearings so lots of opportunity to participate tonight um item eight is the public hearings for the next business meeting one new uh item for the next business meeting it's a public hearing for 660 earhart road it's a proposed site plan and wetland use permit for city council approval the proposal is to develop 57 single-family homes on a 34-acre vacant parcel uh subject to a land division uh as part of that petition a wetland use permit is component to that application as well the site is zoned r1p and then as a reminder of the site plan review thresholds well not a new public hearing item that was postponed from our

009previous discussions to that meeting as well very good thank you there was another item that was postponed from tonight but is that postponed indefinitely uh that item will be pro proposed to be postponed to the october 5th meeting that will be based on action this evening of the planning commission very good thank you okay well we let's move on to the business before us uh first we'll start with unfinished business um from uh this is the 30-90 gettys avenue annexation and zoning for city council approval and if you remember this it's because it was at that meeting where uh we had an incorrect link so to make to dot all of the eyes and cross all the t's we're bringing it back mr kowalski you have a presentation and then we'll open it for public

010hearing great yes good evening everybody um let me switch over to i've been having a couple of little internet issues so please let me know if this does not switch directly over to my presentation um am i sharing not yet nope okay sorry all right let me uh try one more time apologize there we go is that good yep there you go okay good evening again okay so 30 90 gotti's um before you tonight for an annexation and zoning the uh there's my screen would advance it's a one and a half acre parcel uh they want to annex to hook up to sanitary as well as water and if we could i apologize my screen is not advancing at the there we go um okay so here you can see the subject site there's currently

011one single family house on the property again about an acre and a half and they'd like to annex and we recommend r1a zoning and staff is recommending approval at this time thank you very good okay so this is will now open the public hearing for folks to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed 30 90 gettys annexation and zoning if you wish to address the planning commission on this item and you've already dialed in press star 9 if you're listening by phone or you can use the raised hand feature if you're viewing through the web link if you are watching us and want to dial in now uh the call-in number is can enter meeting 877-853-5247 6634 1226 city staff will select callers who have digitally or well electronically raised your hand again

012to raise your hand that star nine on your telephone or the raised hand feature in zoom uh please when speaking move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we can hear you clearly and state your name and address at the beginning of your comments we'll give it a little bit because it is being televised and so there's a delay just for your education commissioner weich everybody else knows that i usually do a little bit of a tap dance here on those kind of nights an actual tap dance would be better it would be yeah i was i was going to say is the camera going to shift you know do we have not well it's actually not me commissioner lee is supposed to be playing us the music at

013this time but he's asleep at the switch so we're just going to move on actually because that's been enough time and i'll close the public hearing and read the motion the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the rothfuss annexation and r1a single-family dwelling district zoning this is at 3090 gettys road subject to obtaining an updated access easement description for 3100 gettys road moved by commissioner lee seconded by commissioner sovay any discussion of the annexation and zoning mr leonard i think we're ready for look for a roll call vote great uh commissioner gibb randall commissioner sovay yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yes commissioner clark commissioner weich yes commissioner mills yes mission carries unanimously very good we're on to new business and we're going to

014take 10b again first so this is the mill creek townhomes rezoning and site plan for city council approval mr leonard is going to start moving in the development team i take it um and they will have up to 10 minutes to provide us a presentation um it looks like potentially uh miss thatcher will give us the staff presentation uh fill in any gaps and then we'll have the public hearing before our discussion thank you guys hear me okay we can all right thank you so this is the mill creek townhomes rezoning and site plan for city council approval it has landscape modifications the address is 3002 chelsea circle um the rezoning portion of the petition is um the site is currently zoned r3 townhouse dwelling yeah yeah your uh rusty bing time away we're gonna

015go to the petitioner presentation first and let you fill in the gaps after okay got it thank you for filling the awkward silence while i am promoting and adjusting everybody's all right mr hirsch you should be getting permission to share your presentation all right uh see you you have updates yet we can okay thank you uh so first of all uh thanks to all the planning commission for being here and uh hearing our project tonight um just as a reminder uh we're back kind of once again uh we did bring this before uh the planning commission at a working session in october of 2020 uh in conceptual format so um we've worked to incorporate some of the the comments from that meeting um as well as the staff comments uh during the review process and

016considered the feedback from the the residents to bring the presentation that we have in the project for you tonight i'll just start off with the uh the development team here um we have mike martin um darren mckinnon from first martin darin's not here tonight but mike martin is standing in um myself tom covert and tina fix as civil and landscape architects from midwestern consulting and then wayne chubb from hobbs and black architects with us tonight who david nims has also helped on this project as well so just to go over the the site location and give some background context we have the site here bounded by i-94 to the south stone school road to the to the west um we see the current zoning map here surrounded by similarly zoned r3 um r4a to the

017north our one seed to the northwest and then mary beth doyle park to the east so the as jill had mentioned our three zoning district is the townhouse dwelling district the existing zoning uh just kind of some stats here it allows for 10 units per acre we have 281 existing units at the sites which is about eight and a half units per acre but they only have the one home typology which is which is the townhome style um and an outdated community center uh as this development was built in the 1970s so the the rezoning um we have a couple of um criteria that we feel fits uh the needs for this infill project um rezoning to r4b allows for some diversification of housing allows us to propose some stacked flat type apartment buildings [Music]

018providing opportunity for more uh potential tenants different a wider range i guess we also have the the density that is maxed out by the rf 3d zoning we're proposing 102 new units which would be just above that maximum for our three uh but well under the maximum for r4b for the entire site um [Music] and as we see here we're also including this the infill of the sidewalk gaps along birch hollow road um just as a kind of a precursor to one of the more important points of this project we'll go over the the new building this is kind of the infill area kind of a modest area of the development the existing community center exists on the south side of birchallo so that will be demolished and rebuilt on the north side making room

019for these three new apartment buildings um in this fourth over here to the east so the new community center will have a updated amenities pool um and just provide kind of a modernized facility for for all the tenants taking a look at the overall layout here again kind of a modest area for the the infill here and then showing some of the the overall site the project aspects again we see the the green dash lines here are all um areas where existing sidewalk is or i'm sorry sidewalk does not exist it exists from stone school to mary beth doyle park along the south side but not the north so we're making those connections kind of increasing that pedestrian connectivity [Music] one of the things we've also incorporated throughout the review process was inclusion of a

020raised crosswalk here to help calm traffic which we think is going to be a nice addition to the project so we have some basic calculations here for for the parking spaces the r3 townhouse zoning district requires two parking spaces per unit um and that's what the site is currently parked at or around there um the rezoning to the r4b would require the one and a half per unit but the the proposed parking fields were um proposing closer to one space per unit um so it just kind of brings down that total for the site uh below that two per unit which um you know i think is appropriate and um the amount of parking that's actually necessary we get a look at the proposed and existing utility infrastructure here kind of another reason this is

021a great candidate for in-field development all of the existing infrastructure is readily available we have water main running along birch hollow and also throughout the entire site the same thing with sanitary sewer that we're pretty easily able to connect leads to there is minimal storm water management systems as far as uh detention or anything like that goes so part of the project would be to you see these big um orange highlighted areas uh on the north and the south side here that would all be underground detention that would be storing um and treating runoff from the development areas um and uh allowing that to really slowly into the city storm sewer rather than just free flowing as it does now we'll take a look at the landscaping it was mentioned that we were requesting modifications

022but again kind of similar to other aspects of the project that's just in a request to [Music] keep keep everything existing outside the scope of the infill area um and not necessarily bring all of that stuff up to current standards as again it was all constructed in the 1970s kind of under different regulations and circumstances although we do see uh one of the um modifications we're requesting is for landscape uh the conflicting lane use buffers uh that would result as um from the rezoning and that's strictly in just the number of trees that are provided in those areas but as you can see there's the intent is really met with all of the existing vegetation that is around the site here so we are providing uh proposed landscaping for the the infill area for current

023code um and then we're also making improvements to the streetscape all along birch hollow by um either planting new or relocating existing street trees then again adding that uh sidewalk infill um so that kind of presents a new face to uh to the birch hollow so right here we see the apartment buildings um kind of have a summary here but i'd like to hand it over to the architect wayne chubb just to kind of go over some of these finer aspects at about a minute and a half okay uh hey everyone it's uh great to see most of you again uh i won't reiterate a lot of what ted said but these are the three stories stacked flats uh the if you're familiar with the existing complex they're all a town home style two bedrooms

024um what we're proposing here is one all one bedroom uh buildings and a couple different sizes with outdoor balconies so we're we're excited about the diversity it's bringing to the project as well as the neighborhood and the city um and the fresh look the clubhouse of course is a is a great amenity to the existing tenants as well as lecture so being able to make that all ada compliant is is one of our major goals you can see the existing up in the upper left-hand corner but again a new amenity to the to the community we won't reiterate a lot more but uh be more than happy to answer questions about the actual architecture if anybody has them yeah so just to kind of wrap it up um go for the meeting obviously to answer

025questions and discuss with um all the commissioners project and anything uh that they'd like to see or have answered and then also um goal to to have recommendations for the approval of the rezoning uh the site plan and the landscape modifications excellent job coming in just at 10 minutes so thank you um now miss thatcher uh things to fill in from the uh planning department's perspective sure um so in the staff report you have the staffs analysis um both the zoning and the site plan there are two outstanding issues under the staff comments one is from transportation one is from engineering revised plans have been submitted and are under review but we do not have those two reviews back yet so staff is recommending approval of the zoning and approval of the site plan subject

026to satisfactorily addressing the outstanding staff comments that are that are still coming in if you want more information on those i have them or it's in the staff report but overall staff does believe that this meets all appropriate codes thank you very good um all right let's move then to the public hearing this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes uh about the proposed mill creek town homes rezoning and site plan approval if you wish to address the planning commission on this item press star 9 if you're listening by phone or use the raise hand feature if you are viewing through the web link if you are watching us right now and wish to dial in uh you can um access the meeting through dialing two four 877-853-5247 and entering

027meeting id nine seven seven sixty six thirty four twelve twenty six city staff will select callers that have raised their hands um using the last three digits of your telephone number or calling or calling on you by name if you've joined us through the web link um per usual please keep your comments to three minutes and mute any background sound and please start off with your name and address um again if you've dialed in and want to provide a public or comment during this public hearing you can press star 9 on your telephone seeing none i will start to read the couple of motions um but mr leonard if you can let me know if somebody sneaks in um we do have two motions before us tonight um the first is on the rezoning and

028the second is on the site plan and i'll read them both if we decide we want to separate them we can do that later um the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the mill creek townhomes rezoning from r3 townhouse dwelling to r4b multiple family dwelling that's the first the second is the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the mill creek townhome site plan with landscape modifications to allow landscape elements which are part of a previously approved site plan to be maintained and continued as non-conforming in areas where no alterations are proposed subject to a variance granted by the zoning board of appeals for ev parking spaces can i have those moved by a commissioner moved by commissioner sovay seconded

029by commissioner dish we are in discussion and i just want to note that i'm still seeing on my screen the presentation from the um [Music] from the petitioner which maybe is useful but if if anybody would like to get that off the screen just let me know um there we go uh so i was excited to see this i wasn't here in october i wasn't um i i wasn't sitting on the planning commission so i might raise some things that you already talked about um but it is really exciting to see a plan for infill housing and uh that will increase the diversity of housing in this part of town um so um i'll ask sort of a silly question which is your pool i'm so excited that you're you know refurbishing your pool um

030is is the lap part 25 yards because that's nice for people and if you have a chance to make it 25 yards that would be great i mean i don't live there but if i were a swimmer and live there that's what i would want um and i mean i am a swimmer if i lived there that's what i would want i noticed in the so i have two but i have two things that i wanted to raise and one is that i noticed that residents at the public meeting raised concerns about um the removal of the playground that perhaps existed or does exist south of the birch hollow road now so i wondered if you had thought about how you if you could respond to that or um i know that you're thinking that

031mary beth doyle is a great place for people to you know have recreation and i think that's really true but i can imagine that um if you have people with kids in this complex the playground is a nice thing too um and sorry if you have them in other places and i'm just missing that um and then just i i did want to inquire if there was a discussion in october about the bike parking um because um i uh it so i i noticed that you are providing um okay wait remind us on that you are providing at the community center six class c bike spaces um might be nice to have more of those your development's kind of big i think it would be great if people walked or rode their bikes to the

032community center uh and walking might be you know your the development's big enough that that might be that might start to get a little bit far so um just six class c bike spaces might not be enough there and um but but more more to the point um each of the multi-family units has four class c and three class a bike spaces and that just doesn't seem like a lot to me given the number of residents so you're talking about um roughly what 30 units in each of the um yeah in each of your new three-story buildings and um i imagine that some of these you know these are beautifully priced for students or young professionals and they do like to bike around um and a three-story um one bedroom a three-story building with a

033one-bedroom unit you don't want to store your bike inside so um i'm wondering if more bike parking could be added or and was that something you all discussed in october and thoroughly aired and nobody thought it was a good idea and if so i'm completely happy to be entirely ignored um and that is all i wanted to say so it sounds like that is inviting the petitioner um yeah i'm happy to speak uh a good evening thanks for having me and uh great to hear that you're a swimmer and a past life i was a swimmer as well but ended up the flip turns with the most exciting part so i've moved on but i do love swimming i don't know that it's 25 yards maybe ted could do a dimensional drawing on it my

034guess is it's probably a little bit less than that because we also have the hot tub there but um yeah it's probably is not 25 yards with respect to your second question about the open space in the playground i think at that meeting there was some confusion as to when that most recently existed i actually grew up working at mill creek as a landscaper and kind of a utility guy and that playground hasn't been in that field for probably more than 10 years and as you mentioned mary beth doyle park is their playground is just off the screen here and it's a beautiful you know city installed with you know the proper safety measures and everything else and for us to replicate that just seems like a waste of resources it literally is as just

035as you get into mary beth doyle park um in response to the last uh a point about the bicycle parking i think it's a very good one because i certainly agree with you that having a bike on the third floor one bedroom apartment isn't necessarily practical i think that what we've done as a product team is meet what code has allowed for but i think that there are opportunities as we get into the project that if the demand is there that we could certainly add some uh you know after the project is completed and the demand is there so it's a great observation and i think that would be something we would share with our management company to keep an eye on and if we need more bark i'm sorry more bike parking we'd be

036able to to put it in other questions or comments from planning commissioners commissioner clark and then commissioner weich um just to kind of tag off of that last question um is there space that you've identified that would be possible to build the bike parking um it could if it were to be set aside for later issue can you just like identify where on the parcel that would be i don't know that we've actually necessarily taken a look at that first time we're hearing the comment i think it's a good one i i would be happy to as we continue to move forward um you know look to address that but i believe uh who's in control ted if you went just down with your cursor i think there's some bike parking there that could certainly

037be expanded right there um yeah right in there it could also be expanded so i think there's some natural places in close proximity to where it is currently going to go in we could also do which we've done at some of our other commercial properties where we bring in for the summertime a temporary bike rack and then offsite it during the winter so you meet the demand as it's there and then if it's not there you take it away so that you don't have the permanent installation and we've again done that successfully at a number of our commercial properties anything else commissioner clark okay commissioner white i'm again because i'm new i wasn't in the conversation in october parking um i am always concerned about more parking a third of our land use in the

038city of ann arbor is for car storage so i see that this zoning only calls for one and a half units which would only really take up your existing requirement for the proposed change would only take your required parking spaces from 562 to 574 and a half let's just call it 575 but you're proposing another 100 parking spaces is that did you already discuss this this have we talked about why a hundred more parking spaces are being included in this and they could go for the playground that hasn't been there for 10 years or to get to that 25 yard swimming pool that commissioner dish once yeah it was not something that we discussed in october i think that there's the practicality of um in this location it's been our experience that we would need

039at least one vehicle space per unit just based on our resident behavior and the rest of the project isn't set up to necessarily accomplish having people park elsewhere and then be in proximity so it really comes down to commercial viability uh and so in this instance i think that we're again trying to deliver additional housing units and with that um you know does come a degree of things that maybe we aren't as supportive of uh with respect to parking but in this instance we've kept it to one space per unit um and uh you know we believe that that's uh at a pretty minimum level of parking to still have a commercially viable project okay i i may be confused so if staff or another commissioner can guide me in this so my understanding is

040there are already 562 parking spots in the development is that correct right um and if i'll just add to what uh mr martin had said and that just kind of the practicality of um the existing layouts what i've done here is highlighted you know the the buildings are kind of set up in this typical uh three building blocks surrounding uh a field of parking um so you know the r3 zoning requires the two parking spaces per unit um so when you go and compare that to the proposed rezoning obviously it's um closer to that one and a half that would be required for the whole development but it's just kind of impractical to have these three or four i mean this this building will utilize existing parking but these three buildings would be a little

041impractical to have them utilize parking um you know behind some of these other other buildings and then like i mentioned um you know for the new units um really just keeping that down to one space per unit rather than the the one and a half per unit that's required is that was that a design choice yes okay i have more questions but i don't know how to ask them appropriately go ahead mr leonard uh and then um there's other i'm i'll cut we'll come back to you commissioner weich yeah that's fine thank you i just wanted to follow up on the questions commissioner weich in short you know i think this is really relevant to our upcoming conversation about parking requirements but i just i just i i think you're there but i just want

042to make sure that it's clear our ordinance does set minimum and we over i would say over the last couple of years there have been numerous times where a petitioner has come in and said for marketing purposes for programming purposes i want to provide more parking than the minimum required by the ordinance and so you're talking about that dedication to land use i think that's sort of the policy decisions to what extent does the city want to you know we're talking about eliminating the minimum so by at a minimum we're not sort of having a heavy hand to drive up parking spaces but then the other piece of that is at some point do we want to start establishing maximums for residential uses we do it in some other uses but not there yet i

043also um commissioner gibb randall i see your hand and just thought i would jump in because we do have a lot of commissioners that were not here in october um to let you know what the context of that meeting was um just so that it's clear to everyone in some ways if and correct me staff if i'm wrong in some ways it was similar to the what we had at the last working session almost like a pre-petition um discussion it was informal but it was the petitioner asking us like whether the idea of you know told us what they were interested in whether the idea of rezoning won and and doing so without bringing everything without having to redo effectively all of the parking lots like but that was the context of that discussion it

044was um so we didn't have all of the specifics at that time but it was just generally discussing particularly in light of some of what if my recollection is right and you can correct me if i'm wrong mr leonard but what the what the comprehensive land use plan says for um the typology in this particular place of the typology of housing and so um were there other elements of the comprehensive plan that um were uh that it supported even if the typology was not exactly as indicated in the um in the comprehensive plan mr leonard go ahead and now you can correct me yeah no i i appreciate that and i i i i really appreciate you bringing up the zoning particularly because that was a a large component of that session um this is

045reflected in the staff report so the commissioners have seen this but i want to highlight it for the discussion the future land use map for this area designates it as attached single family and [Music] there is a different multi-family future land use on that same map and the discussion was how did what are those two land uses how do they relate to each other i frankly think that the attached single family it was intended to be really specific to the town hall model which this the existing development at that location um reflects however um our definition of the townhome district would prohibit stacked flats would prohibit units that are all on one level and so i think the petitioner wanted to have that similar conversation with the planning commission at that time recognizing very honestly

046and up front that that's a deviation from that but from a programming perspective they're very similar and it actually affords some additional housing typology if it were so hopefully that provides a little bit of background there um commissioner debrandel um i want to follow up on a couple of things one is that i think that in terms of my own opinion with the parking i think that one unit per space makes sense you know given the kind of practicality of that i i'm okay with that i don't i think it would be i think i would be frustrated if i had to park you know 500 feet away because the overall development met the goal and then you know you have to hike it over to where you're going so i think for me i'm

047i'm okay with one parking space per um per unit with this um i would like to push back a little bit on the bike parking i think that um i would like you to commit to making more bike parking for this i think that it completely makes sense that you would have bike parking here mary beth doyle is particularly connected um with viking because it has its own a direct connection over the highway it is specifically for pedestrians and bikers to be able to get to other parts of town and um i'm not interested in you saying you know maybe it'll happen if we see i think that when you're doing this work it's mobilization all these things yeah we're happy to do that so that's that's where i'm coming from with that okay um

048so the other because i just think it's easier to do it all at once then to sort of have promises and when you got the concrete truck there you just do it you know rather than getting them back again um i would like to get into the weeds a little bit on storm water and so i don't know if that's mr covert um or misfix that could go through that with me a little bit um so i noticed on the general overall site analysis you know existing site conditions plan that the the kind of general soils mapping which i understand is general is a fox sandy soil which generally has very good infiltration rate i noticed when i went into your storm calculations that you had class d soils which is about as bad as

049it gets and i understand that there's layers and all that kind of business and and that you likely hit some bad soil when you went down the thing that i would um that i would encourage you to do because these are not from my understanding they're not necessarily open bottom systems and that you know when you're first doing your soil testing you may not go down as deep as what these things are actually going to be because you're doing it early in the process and not later in the process is that um would you consider if as you're digging this thing you run into sand seams which i definitely have along mal's creek and other places um to be able to if you hit a sand scene that you would consider having an open bottom

050system it doesn't mean you get rid of the detention and the the metered um outflow rate but that you would consider not having some sort of bottomless system to be able to tap into that should you have conditions arise as you are doing your excavation that you might be able to take advantage of that yeah so i can speak to that a little bit um so i'd have to go back and look at our um infiltrate infiltration testing report to see exactly that we went down but um like you said a lot of times it's early in the process but um we kind of make a very concerted effort to understand where um the bottom of these systems would be and that potential layer for infiltration and then um even further than that we have

051to make sure that there's a three foot thick layer of that type of soil whichever we encounter that can that has infiltration capacity so um i i definitely know that we had um the elevations of these detention systems kind of uh worked through more or less um before we did that testing and down to the depths that we were anticipating trying to be able to infiltrate and even below it was just all clay um uh there there was a lot of fill that we got through on on the north side um but below that was clay again and then uh even in addition to that um you know we have our outlet to existing storm sewer along birch hollow that um you know where we just kind of have to work with whatever depth that's

052at to have an outlet um so and having said that um the depths that we went down to um you know just didn't support being able to infiltrate um the only way to get around having that outlet would be if you were able to infiltrate your entire design storm which um you would need you know very significant um permeable soils which you know and we were just running into all clay so just we just really didn't have that opportunity and i'm not saying get rid of your outlet at all i'm just saying as the digging process is happening sometimes things present themselves because of glaciation and all those kinds of things and if should you run into sand because we did some of the wetland mitigation work in um in the park and there's all

053kinds of layers in there that um if the situation presents itself it would be great to be able to uh uh be able to take advantage of that opportunity i'm not saying get rid of the your connection or any of that it's more like create an open autumn system if if the situation presents itself um may not you know but i just wanted to kind of put that out there that you know the more that we can pull off mal's creek clutter um because we just know it's such an it's in terrible shape and it's such a big issue you know for the city in terms of flooding and all kinds of water quality issues and things like that so it's more just if the situation presents itself and you can take advantage of that

054obviously keep doing your detention the way that you're doing it no matter what the situation is but i guess i'd just say look for opportunities as you're doing the actual digging because you never really know until you really excavate the whole area so yep and then uh i guess i'll just add one last thing we did run into um a little bit higher than expected groundwater on the south side so these are um pretty shallow systems to try to avoid that situation so yeah we definitely we've run into those situations where you have clay and then a few feet below a permeable layer so you over excavate and replace with engineered fills so you can get right we did not run into any of that here okay well if if you happen to when you're

055digging out the entire area just saying keep your keys your eyes open for opportunities is all i would say instead of just being married to you know the closed bottom system um it would be great if if there's any opportunity to be able to pivot with that um certainly alrighty thanks um before we move on i see commissioner abraham's hand and then i think i saw commissioner clark's hand up there at least for a minute um commissioner gibb randall you had specifically said mr covert and i want to ask the the petitioner it looks like he's on but i'm not sure do you were you expecting him to join in to the discussion i just want to make sure we promote him if we need to i didn't realize that mr hirsch was the engineer

056for the project okay well i think he i think mr covert's name was on the slide too so and i see his name on the attendee list i just want to make sure that we've got your full team promoted that you planned a little secret little secret tom's running double duty right now so uh if we really need him he'll pull in but he's uh he's got another he's he's he's two two-timing so okay your hands weren't tight and that's for you tom so i had to turn um commissioner abrams and then commissioner clark yes you wanted to jump in i just want to say i couldn't really hear anything shannon was saying i wasn't sure if it was just me but then i was having to kind of like turn it up and then

057it was i was getting blasted by really loud volume i just wanted to make sure that everyone could hear i was able to hear her but okay so maybe something weird again there's always something new when we are zooming um commissioner abrams hi thank you i wondered uh was there a traffic study done i didn't see anything about that in the staff report that could be either the petitioner or ted i'm pretty sure we did we did one right yeah yeah there was a traffic study and that's that's uh all been submitted and um that was one of the last things that's uh under review that um [Music] yeah we're waiting for for final comments on we've had a couple of revision sense but the bottom line being that um uh there's really no significant

058impacts to um [Music] pedestrians or and or vehicle traffic okay um and then my other question was about pedestrian circulation um i just wondered i think i saw in the presentation or in the site plan a plan for a raised sidewalk that crosses north south across birch hollow drive i wondered and then of course there's the filling in of the sidewalk so there'll be a continuous sidewalk on the north and south side that entire way um i wondered about crossing to the east to the park and what the plan was for that and whether uh there's an existing crosswalk there yeah so there are existing crosswalks over at the chelsea circle intersection that leads over to the park okay great those are my only questions for now thank you commissioner white you're back i am

059i'm i'm stuck with parking i i get fixated on things all right so um i understand i cannot we cannot demand this but we can ask which is has the petitioner considered for these additional hundred parking spaces which exceed the minimum requirement putting in solar or coverings parking coverings that would have solar tops to help with the electrification of the development or uh to be moving towards the city's a2 uh zero guide so if we have to have the parking can we make the parking uh do something productive other than just store the cars uh yeah i'll take that one so in the new parking area we are going to meet the um requirements for uh ev parking uh with those delivered and then ready to be delivered and then you know in the future

060as the code allows for uh with respect to additional solar it was mentioned earlier in the presentation that the buildings uh have flat roofs so uh at some point in the future we could potentially add solar there but with respect to considering um solar coverings on the parking spaces you know one of the things we're trying to do here because it is a small project is is keep costs um you know in the realm of feasibility and you know there was also a slide here that talked about how you know the majority of our project right now is you know 70 to 80 percent of you know the area's ami and um again i think that uh you know our intent is to limit um you know the cost in this area to try and

061continue um you know in in that vein so we have not contemplated uh solar covering uh for the parking spaces and you know my gut reaction would be is it would just drive costs to a place where the feasibility of the project would come into question and that's just unfortunately the reality of of costs these days if i may just add to that [Music] just for clarification sake um [Music] i think it was mentioned that the 100 or so parking spaces that we were proposing was in excess of the minimum when in reality that is actually under the minimum that's required for the infill portion of this development it's it only would be an exceedance if it was considered you know as part of the the entire development which was developed for two parking spaces

062per unit yeah i'm i'm aware of that i'm i'm still holding my position that it exceeds the required parking uh but it it feels like based on the way the infield development is going you're sort of separating that out to provide the additional hundred units of parking up for those but when we i'm looking at the whole of it because this is the one opportunity that we get to speak before you develop this because then it is what it is for however many years i think you said it was first developed in the 70s if i'm correct so we're now sitting at 50 years with this development and that means that we may have another 50 years without the benefit of sort of this forward-looking position about the reduction of land use for car storage

063so i i i think you've answered my question i'm gonna actually chime in here commissioner weich because that was something that was on my list too um two i want to make sure that i'm understanding this appropriately staff before i make my comments so one of the things that's before us is the landscape modification and the landscape modification is effectively to not have to bring all of the parking a lot of that is about the parking lots and not having to bring to tear up all of that parking to bring it up to our modern standards and we have the power be according to the udc we have the power to grant that um or to recommend to city council because they ultimately would approve that but that's within our realm is effectively like landscape

064islands and shrubbery is that right it it is i'm sorry it's landscape islands and landscaping of vehicular use areas but also significantly it is converting raised landscape islands often to stormwater detention devices capture areas so it's i would i would say it's a little bit more involved than just plantings it is it also involves infrastructure and how drainage okay so to be clear i mean our current standards effectively say that that when water hits this site it shouldn't leave right away right it needs to be taken care of more or less but that wasn't always our standard and so there may so has any analysis been done on the site as a whole to know about whether the site as a whole is up to the the stormwater standards yeah i'll let mr but the

065short answer is no i'm sure it's not okay got it so it's within our control to say okay don't rip up your parking lots to allow for that infiltration um and to uh of stormwater the thing that is not within our control that if i'm reading the staff report appropriately is that when we added less than a year ago the ev standards in here we didn't have that ouch and that if they don't want to build the evc even if we even if we say okay we're gonna for better for worse like grandfather your existing parking in this you still have to have you still have to provide the ev spaces so that's why they have to go to before the zba because the zba is going to expect them to have e and for

066this land use type they effectively need to have some kind of ev infrastructure for every single space on this site is that fair is that right okay so this is where my suggestion we i we don't have any control and i don't think that cba and some just for other commissioners edification sometimes we have a planning commissioner that also sits on the zba the zoning board of appeals which um is the is the body that is quasi-judicial effectively that determines like whether there's a hardship i don't know all the deals but um because there is because it's associated with zoning sometimes we have some benefits of having a commissioner serve on both we don't currently have that because there wasn't an opening and we didn't get a volunteer honestly the last time there was an

067opening um but i would just plant that this is a place where i think the discussion around evs would be really helpful for them because what my recommendation would be is that if you're gonna build parking here knowing that you need that variance like if i were on the zba i would say well have you maxed out everything that you could possibly can on the new parking that you're building because i understand that what you're building of the new parking that you're building you're going with the requirements for the new things but but there's a whole bunch on your existing that you know if we were you know what this what the zoning or what the zoning currently calls for is for oh goodness the if this is in the staff report 67 installed chargers

068and we're getting 12 and so like you but you're building more than 67 parking spots and so in my mind that would be that would be the happy medium is to max out whatever you can on what you're building um i don't have control over that um and because that's not a standard that in my mind like it's not before us but i'm just i would i like commissioner weich i want to bring that to you as like that in my mind is showing good faith effort towards that um and if that's something that you considered yeah i i'll i'm happy to take that i think that um you know certainly uh appreciate the sentiment and know that you know that's the way we're going and again trying to balance kind of you know the

069car priority with the kind of human housing priority and still end up with a financially feasible project which everyone comes before you and says that and everyone's reading the papers about costs and everything else and so we're trying to be very practical what i would uh commit to this group tonight is that we have taken a deep dive into uh expanding um beyond the base for this infill area similar to what you just said uh we haven't contemplated doing all you know 67 spaces because we don't um again i think financially that that would be impractical or infeasible and would potentially put the project in jeopardy but we definitely want to uh and this is going to be part of our conversation with zba go to them not just for a variance and say hey

070we just want to do the minimum we want to go to them with hey we did an analysis this is what we can do beyond the minimum and bring that to them as kind of you know to your point kind of a hey we're trying to meet the spirit here and still um you know uh make all these things work uh between you know uh costs and priorities and all those sorts of things but we're definitely willing to take a harder look at it when we go to zva bringing them a plan that goes beyond the minimum in this infill area mr leonard i just just for just a procedural perspective i just want to clarify for the planning commission your proposed motion is reflective of the the plan that the petitioner is presenting here

071and the propo and that and part of that is proposed ev parking that they are proposing um conditioned upon variants being granted by the zoning board of appeals so as a recommending body i just want to i just want to be clear that you could modify that if if you desired you could say you know to your to your discussion your prison or your sort of summary you could the planning commission could determine no we don't think it's appropriate that a variant speak granted that you know that that in fact we would want that to be applied across all of the sites i want to be clear if you do that it is a recommendation the zoning board of appeals is not bound by your recommendation they are they apply their own standards to a

072variance ask so it may very well end up being something different but i just i just want to clarify from when the planet when you were saying that you know you really don't have that authority um you essentially you could send that message as part of the action any action that you take about eb parking being compliant or being compliant in this area in the manner that you wish to articulate it is a recommendation but i i just want to add that that it's it it's more than a take it or leave it in the current form if that's what the commission desires okay well then i welcome some additional thoughts on that um commission i have i have two other issues that are in this kind of realm or not in parking though so

073if commissioner right it sounds like you have an immediate follow-up so i will turn the floor over to you just really quick uh can i could you email the um motion to us so that i can see the wording of it given what mr leonard just said and then is someone from staff available to help modify the motion to come towards the recommendation that was just made that we tie the 64 eb parking spots to the variants so that that can be considered by the body i can i can work on that language and provide it mr munner is great at like helping to draft our what's in our minds and do it while we're talking um and for what it's worth the motion is at the top of the staff report so what i

074always read is from the top of the staff report that's linked to in the in the agenda so that's where you can find it um commissioner dish is yours about parking and this issue too go for it then okay thanks yeah sorry i didn't mean to interrupt it so hard to do the uh um i just wanted to note i i very much like this idea of asking of recommending uh going beyond the minimum of with evk uh ev installed or i think ev installed would clearly be the best place to go beyond the minimum um and i i just so i'm trying to think so i'm looking at the site plan and so you know my guess is that um it would be great to provide more installed parking but it would be great

075to do it in a way that is as accessible as possible to the town home people and i mean i know that anything is accessible because you can always go there but people want to come home park their car and charge it up overnight usually and i don't know how many ev owners you're gonna get in these stacked flats i think you'd probably have more in the townhomes if any and so um and so i'm not asking you to rip a existing parking lot and fix them it's just if if we could think strategically about where to place these so that they would so that it wouldn't feel like too much of a drag to go park your eevee you know by someone else's apartment and then walk back to your town that would be

076really fantastic because i i sort of i'm i'm picturing in my mind a picture where you provide a bunch of extra ev-installed parking in it and it isn't serving the people who it could serve and i'm i'm not i'm not wanting to have that happen so that's by way of a comment from practicality and i think that's that i think that that is well served i mean that was one of my i don't i don't know right now we know ev ownership is not not everybody that lives in these is going to have an ev and it you know there could be well people that live in some of the existing buildings and so in my mind it would be fine if that ev infrastructure was you know if it was possible to add into

077some of the existing parking lots without totally digging them up i think that would be actually preferable but my sense is if you're gonna build it um and i think that this is increasingly just so you know um and you know we're not there yet that's not what our ordinance says um but i think that there's been some discussion on parking that if you build it it should be future proof which in which means eevee ready but increasingly like and as commissioner white was saying and as has been a discussion among this body um we we want to not have people build it and so if you're going to build it it should come with all of these things that um are ready for the future um [Music] mr martin is if i assume that

078you want to talk on this issue and i'm welcome to that open to that yeah sorry let me get my mute off yeah um i'm again i certainly appreciate the conversation and we did take a look at what would be required uh if we were to bring it to the entire community and the cost estimate was probably in excess of three million dollars one of the issues that exists is that uh mill creek is served with single-phase electricity there is no three-phase electrical and so we'd probably have to go out to the street and have dte bring it in um to uh you know even have the capacity within the community the reason why we're asking for the variants is because the community's just not set up for it um you know and that's just

079the reality uh it would be incredibly invasive and again just given the cost you know if that's the way it's going to go um then i think that you know the the evs will have won and um you know we'll probably move on from the project because we just can't afford to pay for it uh and that's that's prac just you know practically speaking we would have the ability to meet the requirements in the infill location and even exceed them to a certain degree and we'd be happy to do that but our main directive here was that you know housing is of utmost need in the city and we thought this was a great infill location to accomplish that and take advantage of existing infrastructure and resources and the community assets like mary beth doyle

080park but uh you know at the end of the day we're also not trying to uh raise prices on everyone you know 500 um so they have a place to plug their car in which i got to tell you we don't have an ev in the community right now so um again i i appreciate the sentiment we're certainly willing to um achieve go beyond uh have a conversation about that but um if we have to go back out through the rest of the community it's just it's too cost prohibitive and that's not i'm not critiquing any of the thoughts or any of the rest of that that's just reality and so i would uh you know leave off with that that we have explored it and that's just it is what it is and i

081would um pulling together uh kind of where commissioner watch started is that there's almost enough parking i know it's not in the right location but there's almost enough parking already here and so if it's to be built um uh you know making sure that it's kind of future-proofed but i i recognize the the struggles and i mean this idea of affordability but at the same time our climate commitment is something that we deal with regularly which is among the reasons why we've encouraged not building parking um [Music] commissioner lee and commissioner silvae is it on parking commissioner sobe is maybe commissioner or maybe commissioner lee go for it yeah yeah my mine was on parking just as a point of information i was just googling hey what percentage of cars are ev in the united

082states right now it's less than two percent they're projecting it to be about 13 by 2035 so um i i do want you i'm thinking of 67 chargers um up front with you know non-electric cars parked at them and that to me is is the thought that i'm like ah that's i don't know about that but all that being said um i just want obviously equity and access was kind of where my thought was so commissioner dish bringing that up um so if you live at kind of the tertiary existing units you might not necessarily have the eb and i certainly understand the infrastructure doesn't necessarily exist to try and get it there is going to be difficult but uh so i think having it at least ready is i think important um but i

083just wanted to think from a practical standpoint of utilization of how many ev cards are actually going to be at the site requiring 67 when we have less than you know two percent current uh market share with 13 and this is a new york times so i think you guys could i could certainly send around the link i just want to make sure that uh overall at least my stance on this is i'm in favor of infill we do need more uh you know units uh i also do think that um some however we could try to balance out equity uh or accessibility to those chargers would be great i don't have a magic bullet for that but i just wanted to just say like from a utilization stand a point out of a hundred

084new spots uh saying that we're gonna have 67 new ev stations seems at least i i don't know i want to be realistic obviously construction costs are pretty much through the roof so uh from the standpoint of sidewalk continuity infill and supply uh i just wanted to say that i want us to have some sense of like uh perspective in terms of utilization so uh but all of that being said uh obviously i think access is very critical so i certainly don't want somebody living here that has an ev not have the ability to charge their car so that that's what i had to say on the matter thanks commissioner silvay i'll let the petitioners speak to that if they want to before i kind of go around it in a different sort of way

085if you want to let them go i would just briefly say that you know we are going to have ev stations at the community center and so um the ability for all residents to charge would be accomplished there and that would certainly be an area where we could focus on adding additional chargers uh almost like uh you know the supercharger lot uh something along along those lines where there's a majority of uh plugins actually up in that area for access mr hirsch were you going did you want to add on to that uh yeah i was just gonna say uh i think if i'm hearing things correctly maybe to meet the intent of accessibility um you know because we we do have the infrastructure planned you know whether it's installed ready or capable for all

086of the the new parking spaces but again strategically placing them um you know this is an existing building maybe the the installed units go along here um similar to you know installing some here accessible to existing units to the south or here just kind of strategically placing those as best we can that was my only comment thank you um commissioner silva go ahead then okay one i i actually really like i'll just wait real quick about the community center as the charging port sounds like a great balance and i think a lot of these things are really about balance and i think the other thing i was kind of going around looking at the plans maybe one of the questions i actually have um we talk about accessibility and making one making the community center

087accessible great um when i look at the 30 unit plans i know there's three buildings and there's one kind of standard plan um and there's a 12 unit which are all kind of walk in um what the plan tells me is that there's no elevators so there's already an economy in construction that is trying to find the margin of making this project work so um like no elevators from an architect's standpoint is like finding that balance but it does also raise the question i just want to know from the topography standpoint i guess it's hard to i can't kind of read into the site too much are all of the 30 unit buildings split level at entry or do any of them have ground floor accessible or is it only the 12 unit that has

088ground floor accessible units i would probably have hobbes and black answer that question but i would also say you know the the the community does again getting to our point about providing a diverse housing type um you know we do have 57 other one bedrooms scattered throughout the community 172 bedrooms and 54 three bedrooms and so there's a myriad of accessible units uh in the rest of the community as well uh and one of the things we're doing here is we are a bit imbalanced with two bedrooms and so you know these buildings would help get us uh you know the diversity and better unit mix for the community that's helpful yeah and if there's any kind of topography explanation about those three that would just be helpful but yeah and ted can respond on

089topography but there it's a pretty flat is from what i remember um the first four units um you know our are have the ability to be accessible in full nature because as you you mentioned there is no elevators in the building yeah and i mean the elevations look like that and so breathing between the elevations and plans it is kind of trying to negotiate which one we should be looking at for each of those buildings but it is kind of my roundabout way to understand you know where we're probably at a cost margin with no elevators in those buildings and really just trying to make some efficient single family or you know single bedroom to kind of add to this mix which i really support so that was it if you kind of come back

090and dig into that and can respond at some point that'd be helpful thanks so do you have anything to offer on the elevations or i think that was the question on the grading yeah so as far as topography um i guess what i would say is that um you know there's following the slope of the road um and tying into existing grades there is some some fall along the length of the building but created in such a way that you know there'd be that that access at each one of those um ground level entry points commissioner lee uh i i just wanted to clarify right now we are looking to approve the rezoning from r3 to r4b again i'm just trying to recap and then limit landscape modifications to improve landscaping simply because if we

091trigger a heck of a lot more site improvements uh just completely throws financial feasibility out the window um instead of uh i'm going to switch from the electrical electrical evic parking to the landscaping and detention i am not an expert in detention runoff calculations etc but i'm only bringing it up as a point simply because uh obviously this year more than i think ever we've had a lot of issues with you know five inches of rain falling in a single night um so can staff or somebody else speak to as far as liquid planning for the site uh whether the current standards are not you know necessary from that landscape modification perspective i i'm not really sure i don't know how to phrase the question as effectively as possible but i'm just basically saying i'm

092not an expert in water runoff uh do do we have any concerns from the detention perspective of making sure that this site and the addition of this info housing won't adversely impact overall water control um so that that's kind of a general question that i have again just i'm thinking of 94 being flooded in southeastern michigan having drainage questions on a more macro scale so that is the question i have regarding that limiting the landscape modifications to improve landscaping portion does my question make sense it does go ahead mr hirsch yeah so i just respond to that um in explaining that the the modification is essentially um so per code um a certain amount of these landscape islands um have to be kind of depressed and accept water um water has to flow into them

093and then uh ideally infiltrate and you know be kept kind of on site before before leaving so um again going back to the existing layout um you know we do have these existing landscape islands but the the site wasn't developed in such a way as to direct water or drainage to any of those islands um so to effectively add that stuff would be again as you know others have alluded to ripping up a lot of the parking and kind of redesigning that and then even beyond that you know we we did only uh do the infiltration testing in the infill areas but we do know that you know everything uh in the areas that we've tested is underlying by a lot of clay so really there wouldn't expect to have even really good opportunity for

094infiltration in landscape islands if that were to be required gotcha um that's actually really helpful from a layman's perspective so i appreciate that um that that's pretty much the extent of my questions overall i do support this based on that conditional um zva uh feedback but again as i said sidewalk continuity is always a good thing i like the design community centers are very important and making these eb ready i think is doing a pretty good job of balancing a lot of myriad of factors it'll help add more housing stocks so overall just wanted to thank you again for that explanation on the water runoff thanks commissioner lee's question about stormwater actually raised another issue that i hadn't thought about before um how much i mean not all of what is being developed here but

095some of what's being developed here or a good amount was green space previously i think that the arguments that have been made about mary beth doyle providing much of the functionality and improved functionality makes a whole lot of sense and our need for infill development but the question is was this green space relied on for um for effectively stormwater management of the existing development and is that calculated into the sizing of your storm water for this site like i mean is presumably if you're running off from the parking lots or whatever now um is i just want to make sure that that's you're designing this for that as well right so the the existing green space um wasn't it wasn't constructed in such a way to hold water at all it was just kind of

096sheep flowing across it and out into the street undetained um so and actually what what part of the detention system is um designed to do is accommodate so these these buildings to the south here have peaked roofs and downspouts that discharge at grades so essentially half of these buildings in the grading is in such a way that that'll actually contribute to these existing systems as well and those are designed to handle that volume so you're taking account for the new imperviousness that you're adding plus some of the existing and because you've got not great soils right now like even though it's green it's not actually doing the absorption that we would hope is that that that people imagine um is that fair yeah so so these systems are designed you know to accept anything that's

097flowing towards them in the post-development condition got it okay thanks that helps me give me some comfort on that um i wanted to also so on circling back to the discussion about evs i i'm not led to 67. um i think i would like to send the message to zba that more than what is currently shown is important so as we i'll just voice that i'll let others duke out what that number should be but i wanted to voice that um uh on bicycle parking i also heard a commitment from the developer that like yeah we can add more bicycle parking but i think that we ought to be drafting that into our approval language as well in terms of numbers or where that is and i would just voice that what in my mind

098is missing here is class b parking by the by the entryways because as a renter um some people will want it class a inside locked the spaces that you have right now class c kind of out on the curb are great for guests but class b covered by an entry door is where if i lived here where i would want to park my bike and so i that's him i think upping that would be great um and also had a question for staff and maybe this was just a typo but it suggested in the staff report that there's already 224 existing class a spaces and 224 existing class c spaces and that was not my perception having admittedly it was pretty quick and it was a year ago cycled through this neighborhood uh myself like

099i didn't see this as a place where there was a bunch of bicycle infrastructure so do you know either that for the um miss thatcher i don't know that you put together the staff report but even um the the development team like where those ex where the existing bicycle infrastructure is i'm afraid i don't know the answer to that just because uh we don't have the floor plans to all of the other units that exist so it would be great if the developer could uh fact check that for us yeah yeah so the that number um was based on the number of existing basements in all of the existing units um considering those as um potential locations for storing someone's bike oh is that is that um what we normally is that our normal procedure

100staff i'm just curious oh we do it we we specify indoor storage sometimes it is accommodated in a desert like a bike room um and other times projects have accomplished that by providing garage or interior space so um it it can meet that yes it's i mean if it's an indoor storage space available to that to that unit it would be a class a okay and then i mean this is i've seen this in other places and i don't know that the residents there know that that's bicycle infrastructure so um uh the but the the class c so this is this is effectively bike hoops are there that many bike hoops throughout the existing development i think um might have been the typo i don't i'm not looking at the report but the intention was

101just that the 224 existing basements um it just says you know we were considering the the required number of class a and c is provided within those basements um [Music] got it in my mind class c at the um swimming pool the community building additional class c is important additional class b where you are doing new development is really important um i would at minimum want to see if what you're required to have is 77 spaces i would want to see 77 new spaces in what you're building which doesn't i mean you're um i think that collectively across this space in public spaces and also something that is covered um seems like it would be about right that's i'm weighing in but commissioner gibrandal i know you brought this up before so i like i

102welcome thoughts on that um so that was that was point number two that i had and then point number three is in the com um the discussion with or the the meeting that you had with neighbors there was some discussion about existing covenants and is this rezoning aloud within covenants and i'm not quite sure what that was all about but one of the things that i noticed is the shape of your parcel is weird it has this weird thing off to the north and honestly in discussion tonight at the dinner table um my husband noted that there's a park there a city park that he couldn't find a sign for um and it there is it's it's mill creek park um but it seems like it's part of your property so i'm not i'm this

103is a question for staff or for you all like is that city park land is there an easement and i'm really curious about how rezoning this affects like the my my reading between the lines and pulling these things together is the discussion about the covenant is what agreements were made in the initial development that our rezoning would negate or override and i want to make sure that um that we're aware of those things so mr leonard i'm guessing that you've got yeah so um this is this question has been raised and i'd welcome um i'm i presume the petitioner has been part of this too um i i want to acknowledge that a city planner alexis deleo is the one who has been sorting this project but is out of the office this week so

104jill and i are doing our best but what i can tell you is on this question it came up from a city staff perspective and just like you observed or some member at the dinner table observed this it shows up in many uh documents as a park however weak um to my knowledge we have not yet found any um indication that it has been officially dedicated as a public park or there is an easement there um as far as the original zoning my recollection is that this was actually planned and constructed prior to being annexed into the city um i'm not positive about that but um so um so um i think that is something that we were investigating i don't know if mr martin has any follow-up information on that but we were trying

105to answer that question um but in short i don't have the answer now i believe that it's been passed down to me again this was built i think maybe i was one or maybe not even alive yet but uh that it's been told to me that all the negotiations for the development were done with the city of ann arbor so um it's probably been lost to time with respect to files but um you know around here the development was approved by the city it was part of it was part i believe it was part of the city so maybe it came in during the approval i don't know do you know the status of the park i all i know is that a gentleman in my office and alexis were you know talking about that

106as you just described and that there was not really a conclusion or concrete direction one way or another presumably it's been part of our survey part of our legal description and part of our tax bill for all these years so um it's just again i think one of those things that uh we don't have clarity on and it's it just so i mean as uh commissioner mills pointed out it's uh very it's maybe what 10 feet well i mean it is a very narrow strip odd shaped and basically is just a little bit of a green space buffer between two housing communities that i think even if there was a sign there that designated it we would be lucky to ever find somebody utilizing uh said park and they would probably migrate to mary beth

107doyle so um yeah it's just kind of a mystery yeah it's listed on the city's website as a .95 acre park because this was an active point of discussion and the petitioner may not know that uh and maybe not all planning commissioners it was our coveted project to go to every park in the city of ann arbor and take a picture with the sign and the discussion table was there was no sign and that was crazy um but also like it the reason that i think it's important to sort out clearly is because you know unit density like is based on the overall size and so understanding that i think is really important when you're trying to think about you know allowable units because again while we're talking about development on just you know the

108central portion here what is before us tonight is rezoning the entire all of the acreage um and so um so that was part of it but also maybe this is for the petitioner too there were discussion i mean in the in the citizen the meeting with citizens there was a lot of the there was a lot of discussion about covenants or previous things can you shed any light on what that's all about uh again um we don't have any records of any covenants i think that um simply put it was neighbors that objected to the potential project and um had uh created that um you know messaging um but there's no record of any covenants and any title work or anything that we found that talks about that space so um again i think that

109was just something that was thrown out there that um got traction just because it was in the record but there's no evidence of a covenant that exists okay well and i mean covenant can have lots of different meanings i was just curious what was going on okay um overall like i i'd like us uh i welcome ideas about the right amendment related to bicycle parking and the right amendment related to ev infrastructure on any parking that is built here um overall though i mean i as i said before in october i like the idea of infill i mean i and um i mean one of the reasons for infill is to use the existing infrastructure that's around there and this is i think why among the reasons i'm pushing like commissioner weich on the parking

110that you're building i understand why that people want to have something by their by their unit and so and it's not like you're building a bazillion spaces right around the new development but but also thinking about future proofing this i think because we know that um there that this infrastructure with any hope will last decades um and there's lots of changes that will happen um to the the way that people get around um in that time um that will that will have to happen um and so making sure that it's resilient to that i think is really important commissioner abrams um and mr leonard sorry can we go to mr leonard first in case i said something wrong and then commissioner abrams i just forgot to lower my hand oh okay thank commissioner great um

111yeah so i also generally am in support of this project i think you know as we all know and talk about a lot in these meetings we need more housing built um and this project definitely achieves that and it increases the density um on the site which is something that allows you to provide more units than you would otherwise i think the other thing we talk a lot about in this body is sustainability and how ann arbor is going to meet its carbon neutrality goals by 2030 and this isn't something that we can mandate but we often just talk to petitioners about any possibility there is to make the project more sustainable in particular around um i'm thinking here in particular around fossil fuel energy so two things i'm wondering about one is just if

112you've looked into building electrification and if you haven't uh i'm asking you to just please do so i think we're hearing that it's possible uh maybe for maybe not no cost but low cost and lower and lower cost i think it's getting cheaper and cheaper so i think it's something worth looking into um if we're thinking about future proofing in regards to easy parking this would be another aspect of that so having the new buildings that you build here not be dependent on fossil fuel energy so electric appliances uh and electric hvac so heat pump systems and then the other of course is solar panels so um this isn't news to anybody right but like 20 you know i mean 25 ish uh of the carbon emissions are due to residential use right and there's

113some subset of that which is big in ann arbor which is which is renters um who don't have the ability to to pursue solar on their projects i think somebody else might correct me on this it's upwards of fifty percent of our community our renters 56 57 i think is the number um and so i think any time that people who are doing multi-family developments can invest in solar it's a huge boon to our community's ability to reach those goals so i know that there's a cost uh and and the project has to pencil out and that may may or may not work but i just i hope you're looking into it and considering it and thinking about the kind of longer term operation and maintenance cost for the project and return on investment in

114addition to what it costs you to just get the project off the ground so those aren't things we can mandate but they're they're things they think we're kind of obliged to ask of the people who come before us and and show us new construction thanks commissioner lee yeah i'll make this brief y'all echo also electrification um similarly i saw that the new lighting going is all good leds so because this is a capital event if the existing site lights could be also i don't know if they're led or not but looking at retrofits would be really something that's great has a great roi um and then just getting back to bike parking um this site does have a bicycle or 57 i've actually biked there to play disc golf before so um i definitely know

115it's bikeable it's fairly flat and it's a viable mode of transportation for that particular site so anything we can do to obviously encourage that so led lighting looking at the overall site if it's not already led i'm sure you guys have already done that um and then also just looking at uh bike parking and electrification and that's contributing to the overall uh a20 goals so that's it thanks i'm not seeing digital or real hands up um but i'm wondering the two hanging issues on bikes and trans and parking lots mr leonard had you drafted some language for commissioner weich that he could play around with um and throw out potentially as a as an amendment i did i provided some language to commissioner white his request the proposed change would modify the motion regarding condition

116upon a variance and the way i structured it um this this obviously could be modified but the way i structured the proposed language to commissioner weich would be that condition upon a variance being granted for ev parking not to exceed 37 evi spaces or 118 evr spaces what that would have the impact of resulting in is that your recommendation would basically be saying hey a variance to provide at the end of the day this site should provide a minimum of 30 ev installed spaces and 50 ev ready spaces and it doesn't specify any minimum standard of the evc so that would just be either complied with or it would be granted by a zoning board of appeals so those numbers are modifiable but i just tried to structure it in such a way that it

117would give the ability to um consider a medium commissioner and i i i sent the um an email to ms thatcher but i don't know if she saw it with a clarifying question because mr leonard was talking because i wanted to make sure that i understood that the variance is so that they do not currently comply with the um zoning requirement which would be much higher than what we're looking at so when i look at both the staff report and i look at the site plan they are called both of those documents are calling for well required and permitted is not distinguished so i will start by saying that so it's in the same column so it was 65 percent of the parking be um ev capable which would be 436 25 ev ready which

118would be 168 and ifd installed which would be 67. so by statute if they are moving from the zoning that they're in to r4b would they have to meet those requirements so that was the question that i sent so that i could properly understood the revised motion um that can just be really simple and this really isn't what i'm looking for but i'm happy to go along with this uh because what i'd like to see is more housing less parking or um solar over the parking if the parking has to be there but those aren't things we can require at this time mr leonard the question about um what i heard was um i'm going to rephrase commissioner weich is the the multipliers that are in there aren't necessarily that's about making any modification it's

119not specifically about zoning is that um so so no it's a good question i i apologize i'm trying to do the math i'm not sure that i don't i'm sure our staff report is correct so but let me just um i just want to sort of talk through it so um at 383 dwelling units under the r4b um that would be 1.5 spaces as required times the number of dwelling units um so that's like 575 right so it would actually be 57 ev installed would be required so i think the calculations there were done based on the number of spaces proposed not the minimum required and the ev parking applies to the minimum spaces required so if they want to choose to add an additional hundred spaces those don't have to comply with the ev

120parking requirements um so uh so the minimum to comply would be 57 and [Music] i can do the math here shortly on the other percentages so just to be clear if um [Music] planning commission has a couple options in this regard the site plan doesn't meet that requirement you could simply find that based on that you don't recommend approval of it as indicated here the petitioner is asking for your consideration and sort of telegraphing that they intend to apply for a variance to the zoning board of appeal to seek relief from that um i will i would just add from a you know this is a conversation that that we started having at a staff level i think i've shared it during the planning commission i do think that that that is our standard which

121i've just described that in order to comply with our ordinance without a variance the entirety of those spaces would need to be provided i do believe that our intention in part as part of that ev ordinance um was to future-proof parking lots when they are being developed and significantly modified for that purpose of helping to support and accommodating that growing growing our infrastructure to accommodate the trends and ev vehicles that commissioner lee was referencing and as recently evidenced by another variance granted by the zoning board of appeals i think the way that that is currently specified that it is any site plan for city council approval this project is a great example of attention there that as part of this project vast amounts of the existing parking here are not being proposed for substantial investment

122or modification or digging up and so that that standard um [Music] i think that standard just is a factor in in those circumstances as as noted at the outset by commissioner mills we have flexibility in the ordinance built in for for landscaping we don't have that built in for ev parking perhaps it's something we should look at in the future but we don't have it now so um but um i i'm happy to follow up on those percentages here in a moment but they they should be reduced because it should be the percentages of required parking if i recall the language correctly commissioner dish um i i'd like to ask mr hirsch if he could return to the slide where you had um you had some numbers on the uh the ami that your rents

123are pegged towards or uh what did i say yeah yeah i said area being income okay good sorry it there it is between okay so existing attainable rental rates in mill creek are between 70 and 80 ami so i'm interpreting that to mean that the folks who rent in your places are somewhere uh that your rental rates appeal to folks who fall within that range am i am i misinterpreting or is that correct no i'm happy to take that one um you know we do a side by side with um the county when the county's affordable information comes out which is in april every year and look at where we fall taking into consideration there's a whole mathematical sequence of not just the rent but you have to include the utilities and everything else to

124get to a total number and we do it by by bedroom and at that time we are all in rental rate including utilities was it for one bedroom was thirteen hundred and fifty five dollars seventy percent of ami was thirteen hundred and ninety eight dollars so we were under that by uh approximately forty dollars a month uh the two bedrooms we were 1673 the metric for 70 percent ami was 1678 so again just under and then our three bedrooms we were at uh 1982. uh 70 percent is 1939 80 22 16. so we were just over 70 percent so that's uh you know the the current rents in the community that's how they track uh vis-a-vis ami calculations okay that's that's great and and i know that you're not running an affordable housing projects so

125i know that you don't qualify people you don't ask them to show proof that that's all they make so that they get access to your facility but um clearly you're you're serving a clientele already that um that uh that or your your rents are less expensive than what many uh much of the housing in ann arbor goes for so um i know this sounds like i'm taking a diversion but i'm really not um i am i am i am so happy to see an infill project like this one this is creating density in a way that is um not just palatable to people but it's actually really constructive and affirming because you're providing greater diversity of types of housing in your existing location and you're using this opportunity to upgrade the communal amenities in in

126this site and i i also think that's really wonderful and we are right now spending a lot of time debating asking you to kind of to make a pretty significant um investment in adding additional eevee parking and i am i am in favor of us doing that but i want us to find a sweet spot and i also want us to think about where this money is best used if we're asking you to put more money into this project would we get closer to our sustainability goals by saying to you boy it would really be great if you minim at minimum electrified the appliances but even like maybe exploring as commissioner abrams abrams suggested electrifying this new portion using heat pumps for the heating i mean where would i rather you spent the money i

127am just not sure how many electric vehicles other than electric bicycles are going to be in this project and i'm not trying to make generalizations about who buys electric cars i'm honestly not saying anything about i'm not trying to um whatever it is that i'm not trying i'm not trying to say that only people of certain income buy electric vehicles but i did hear you say that there isn't currently an eevee on the site and i do think we should expect that evie um there will be more over time um i also appreciated the two percent figure that commissioner lee gave us and so i just i would like us to just pause just for a minute and think about of all the things that we can suggest um is this the one that gets

128us the most bang for our buck when we know not only um do a lot of carbon emissions come from housing but we also know that indoor air quality in the united states is incredibly poor due to the fact that we all have gas heating and gas stoves which um release a lot of methane in our houses and that's not a desirable thing so if i just don't want us to ask for too much of an amenity that may not pay off for a long time whereas maybe if there is additional investment it could be in something more productive and i'll just i i don't we don't need to debate this for another two hours i just wanted to have a just a tiny moment of thinking about priorities and also realities in terms of

129who what are we trying to accomplish with this development and who does it serve commissioner dibb randall i really appreciate you bringing that up commissioner dish because i was kind of thinking the same thing one question that i do have is that you say existing attainable rental rates in mill creek what are you planning for these new units is that this is not like considered affordable housing we can't hold you to anything if you're not kind of committing to that and so what i'm wondering is i think generally you're you know your development is there and you're probably not going to you know double that rate or something like that because you kind of want it to be side by side you know not too far away right from but i'm just wondering what your

130plan is for what you would be charging for these new units because if it's going to be significantly higher than are we are we getting what we think we're getting by seeing that statistic there because it only refers to existing not what you're proposed is yeah i mean it's a good question i think that um uh you know as you mentioned it's not we're not designating this or or you know uh trying to find uh you know tax credit housing or any of that sort of thing you know we don't really know i couldn't sit here and tell you a certainty what the rents are going to be this project is you know depending on how the you know entitlement process goes potentially up to two or three years away in the future so you

131know our expectation is that they will be market rates for that type of unit in this location um you know relative to what surrounds it not just in our community but across the road and uh in general in southeast ann arbor um but to try and pin down uh we're gonna be at x of of ami i i don't have enough information to sit here today and um you know forecast that would you say that um because of your location and because of what you know about your neighbors i'm sure you probably have some sense of what competing rents are because that's your business um is this a pretty common niche in this part of town given what's going on around you like is this something like if you you know if you charge twice

132as much you're probably not gonna get it here right because yeah i mean it's not downtown for sure i mean it's not you know super it's not super walkable we're out next to i-94 i mean it's uh you know there's certainly going to be limiters on you know upward rent pressures based on you know just you know kind of proximity to uh what people are willing to pay more for so if you have another unit or whatever this other neighbor is nearly to the north of you you know i don't know if that's similar if they're condos or if they're wrong uh no i mean if you go further to the north of us we have uh we are actually on the project immediately to the north which is homestead commons which is actually on

133a per uh on an ami basis is even lower than the 70 percent um to the right of that if we were looking at the screen as another what i would say a lower income product no move the cursor the other way uh and then yeah to go to the right there and then keep going and there's um you know one of ann arbor's last trailer parks is also right there so and then next to that is hikoni which is a you know a subsidized housing project so um you know that's certainly uh kind of the general area okay so i guess i um and so there's a certain limitation just based on geography and whatever the conditions are around you that are that are going to govern that for the most part i guess

134what i i um if we're if we're going to relax some things because we want you to be able to do it we're not gonna a lot of people come in front of us and say i can't afford to do that you know and so if we're if we're getting this if we're if we're relaxing some of the things that we're asking for in some ways then what kind of guarantee are we getting that you're going to actually be building something that is you know in a reasonable in something that is in this neighborhood of of cost in terms of rents and so um i just want to be careful about like what um it's one thing if it's affordable housing because then we know you're locked in you know to that you have an

135obligation to meet that you have no obligation to meet that here you're just bound by whatever the real estate market is in this area and so i you know um yeah again i would also just i would point out that i think a lot of petitioners that come before you and say we can't afford to do that are doing so even when they have you know a brand new project that has 350 units this truly is an infill project of you know 100 units and so we don't have the ability to spread out some of these additional costs beyond providing the actual unit and the housing um to some of these things that are uh you know not aspirational i mean they're they're they're great i'm just we don't have the ability to take an

136extra you know five dollars per unit and spread it over 300 units right it really is kind of this this infill um you know opportunity uh so i i think that that would be kind of you know our our perspective on on that is it it's really a little bit betwixt in between with uh you know what it is and what we can accomplish based on its size i would actually um to commissioner dish's point i would welcome your thoughts um development team mr martin in terms of you know really the ev ordinance is driven largely by our by a20 goals and and within a20 there are a whole bunch of other things as commissioner dish pointed out so are of the things that we have discussed i mean and knowing your your you know

137the market that you're expecting what what seems reasonable in your mind here like what is possible um because i i am with commissioner dish i would rather not have infrastructure go unused um i think it will be used uh before the end of its life but i but i recognize that there may be some things that we can have immediate gains with in electrification in solar panels so um yeah i think that um my perspective would be that um you know if we were able to cluster more plug-in uh ev stations around the community center and it seems to me like that's a pretty smart plan right because that provides access you know for people throughout the community i'd like to go back to our team we hadn't really contemplated you know our thought was

138is that given the existing utility infrastructure that was in place which you know again if we look at footprints and what we have to bring in and everything else you know utilizing what's there is the most efficient you know our units right now have a smattering of uh appliance uh utility usage we have some that are on natural gas and some that are electric i think that we could as we get into this we could go through a costing process of what might be possible with respect to potentially swapping some of those things it might be on natural gas for electric again going back to kind of the ami conversation uh you know still trying to keep conscious about you know keeping those in place utilities still somewhat practical but again certainly happy to evaluate

139those things and agree with the sentiment of uh you know the the uh sudden emergence of a you know a large quantity of ev uh vehicles in this development in the next 10 years is probably unlikely so if we can accomplish those goals uh you know of providing equal access and being strategic about where we do place the ones we put in um you know there might be some opportunity to look at some other some other goals and again you know we feel like the merits of the project are pretty strong um you know with respect to providing additional housing and some of the other uh you know kind of diversity of housing type and uh you know completing that sidewalk and the idea of the complete street and some of those other things are

140you know things that were were you know putting into again what we consider to be a relatively small project uh so happy happy to talk about it uh but i think that's where we would stand right now commissioner dish yeah i don't want to take up a lot of time here i just wanted to say that i think we went down this road because you have to go to the zbea to get a variance from the eevee parking requirement and so i think where our conversation started was you wanted to swap likes for likes and so you were asking for a variance for the ev parking and so maybe you should give more than the minimum was where we started and i think where we've opened the open the conversation up a little bit more

141is thinking about yeah maybe maybe a bit more eevee parking and yep play strategically clustered to the community center great but rather than swapping likes for likes we've broadened the conversation to what other things could be done to also forward the a20 goals and i think there would be things that would be less expensive for you and more effective for the overall um a20 goals and i know that this can't be made up on the fly tonight and i'm not asking to write it into amendment and and you know tattoo it on your forehead or anything like that right too permanent to permanent but um you have some time before you go to the zba to look at that and then it will come to council with the recommendations from the zba and it will

142be a firm commitment by then and i feel um comfortable with that i don't want to i don't want to actually bind this too closely to a particular number of charging infrastructure that where we could get better outcomes with something else so what i'm hearing commissioner dish if i'm hearing you right is that rather than channeling to zba the parameters that effectively let zba do their thing that this is going to come before both of the like both things have to happen before it comes before council again and this is something that council is going to have to weigh to is that is that fair but mr leonard because the because in my mind what this a lot of this hinges on is that like zba determination like should there be something about is there

143if the if for some reason the zba like if if this proceeded to the zoning board of appeals for variants on eb parking and it was not granted then um staff you know if if if your recommendation include that condition that condition was not satisfied it would proceed to city council with a recommendation for denial that it doesn't meet the city's code is that the question yeah but that's assuming that there's we tie it to a specific number of evie parking which is not what i what um right well two two reasons if you modified it to tie it to a specific number and that wasn't achieved um then um so a couple scenarios one no variance is granted the petitioner would have to either modify the plan to provide all the required ev parking

144spaces of all categories otherwise it would not satisfy the code two if it were another option would be if the planning commission didn't modify the the motion as presented it's conditioned upon you are reviewing a site plan that doesn't meet the code you're acknowledging that you are inherently saying that if a variance is not granted to provide this level of ev parking then it would not meet the code or third if you were to modify that in some regard the same standard would would apply however in that case it the zoning board of appeals could make some other determination the petitioner could meet whatever that standard is and then technically despite your recommendation of a particular number it would proceed to city council compliant at that point with code either way what i would say

145is there's time before it gets back before commissioner dish to think about what it is that what knowing the elements of you know that we have dual goals um in the city both about affordability and about sustainability um and and thinking about cost-effectively how to achieve those um there's time for that commissioner gibrandal i don't know if this is an option and and i have to assume that you could you could weigh in on this giving your third option that you were talking about that the zba would kind of come up with their you know it'd be sort of an alternate route i'm wondering if you know none of us here perhaps commissioner mills just because she works in this space more than the rest of us probably nobody on the development team necessarily knows

146what the bang for your buck thing is that the city really wants and so what i'm wondering is is there a way to in this process of reevaluating obviously you all have to do the math and all that kind of thing that steps you're the development team that's your job but i'm wondering if there's a way to get the voice of the sustainability office into this conversation so they can say really what's going to make the biggest difference is you know five av stations but electrifying one of the buildings or putting solar around the building or whatever it is it's thinking about it as more like here's this pot of money that's gonna have to happen no matter what you do in terms of how you're handling um the edie thing and that you know

147it can be and and that amount obviously is going to change depending on on what the strategy would be but that if we could get some sort of expertise because they would have to hire that expertise essentially to be able to really run all those numbers and i feel like we have some of that expertise in the city in terms of being able to um have them weigh in i i don't feel like i know that to know like because we're we're sort of hanging our hat on the on the ev thing because that's a code that we actually have not because we're looking at whatever we think is the most efficacious approach for this for this project in terms of meeting our goals so i don't know if that strays so far away from

148what our options are mr leonard i'd just be curious if if that's something you could see as a pathway between now and zba to be able to get a sense of just where it does make sense to put that extra energy into so to speak um in terms of dealing with alternative energy scenarios for for this yeah i i don't my initial reaction is i don't think that's appropriate the this discussion about um other sustainability factors uh on this um ultimately has to be relevant to your decision on rezoning of your recommendation on rezoning this property the site you know the site plan is being measured against standards set forth in our udc and that's that's why the e-parking specifically i don't i don't think it's necessarily because that's something we that you have leverage

149on it is something that it's in our code that's not being complied with when we're talking about um electrification and other aspects i think that's a question to the planning commission is if you don't feel those things are being satisfied in a way to meet our master plan to support the rezoning then i i think it would be difficult for you as the planning commission to make that recommendation contingent upon something happening um so my my gut is if if that is a that is a scenario that you that you feel is important before you the planning commission makes a recommendation on the zoning aspect of this as it relates to our our comprehensive plan then i think that's an investigation that you would want this team to look at and come back to you

150before you make that zoning determination i don't think it's as relevant to the site plan i don't i don't see those things as a detail to be worked out akin to an outlet dimension okay alrighty that's helpful thanks commissioner dish okay i don't want to delay this so i don't want us to postpone this site approval this has been a thoughtful discussion and this is a thoughtful project and considerable time and work's been invested into bringing what's before us all i'm trying to do is to respond to the idea that there was it was indicated that um there will need to be some kind of negotiation with the zba to justify granting the variance to our code around evie and i would rather see that be a really useful offer and that's kind of between

151you and them and so we've made some suggestions as to what you can do and you know you might end up just deciding it's a whole lot easier to just throw in 10 more ev spaces and you know place them as we've discussed and so that's i was responding to the idea that there's a negotiation that needs to go on at the zba and i was trying to and then it seemed like we went down a big road where we started to you know amend and specify and i just wanted not to have that happen mr leonard yeah i just want to be careful um the zoning board of appeals isn't by no means is a negotiation so they are you know they're they have to consider the variance standards and and make a determination

152i mean i think it at times it can come across in that way because one of the one of those standards is is the proposed variance the minimum necessary um to achieve appropriate for the issuance of a variant so it's you know it's a it's a it's a nuanced way to use language but but it isn't a negotiation in the same way that planning and development or a conditional zoning or in some cases a typical zone rezoning are from a legislative perspective from my perspective like i just want to channel to zba the discussions we've been having about ev parking because i don't know that that how much that like and and the balance around this has come to them you know yeah and i that can be done to me to be clear we

153can convey to the zoning board of appeals in that petition that you know the planning commission discusses at length and think believes that given the circumstance of this site a higher provision of ev parking compliance can be attained by this project that can absolutely happen as a communication but i you know i just want to be clear that you're making a recommendation based on that and advice the zoning board of appeals will be making ultimately their determination given that that's the case i'll just start wearing it and i said look we don't have control over them um uh and we don't i mean you know we can channel them the things that they might consider but they have their own standards and we have ours and so the things before us are twofold does this

154have has the petitioner made a case and and that supports rezoning one from our three to r4b and then two do we believe that the site plan complies and that we ought to um allow the landscape modifications which would allow the existing parking lots for better for worse to stand as they are um and i think on the first part at least i'm i feel like the case for rezoning makes a whole lot of sense and on the site plan i the the the change that i think ought to be made is about the bicycle parking in part because we know that um that this is a place where people will like the petitioner agrees that it makes sense there's economies of scale of doing it now as we have just discussed um and so

155i would like to see that as as um when this moves forward that that the the version that city council sees um includes those provisions um sometimes mr leonard that's just we channel this to staff and it doesn't need a formal amendment would you what would you advise here yeah we can definitely do that what i i just want to be clear i heard some reference to adding class b bike parking which is not required under the udc in this circumstance adding additional class c parking so um what i'm what i'm happy to do is work with the petitioner and just take that feedback and work with them to identify some spots on this on the site where they can accomplish one or both of those and what we would do in that circumstance is

156just communicate to the city council that this was a question that was raised to planning commission that the opportunity for more of that and this is how the petition responded they added x number of additional spaces on the property and that would just be incorporated into the site plan that gives particularly uh commissioner and council member dish the opportunity to take this conversation and share that at the city council table with the opportunity to respond to whether or not that resonates as being responsive or not to to the discussion so um i don't feel like we need a motion we're have i'm happy to work with the petitioner to explore that what it means is that we will work with them to accommodate the best we can and communicate the outcome of that i'm comfortable

157with that other comments questions discussion right now we have the two motions as initially read no amendments if there's nothing else then i think that we're ready for a vote if you could do a role called vote cleave with mr leonard absolutely uh so this on both motions as originally drafted with the clarification that um i would say i will actually work with the petitioner both to address additional bicycle parking and ask for at least a response for other sustainability aspects but i would really say that that is largely at their discretion of seeing what they can incorporate and we will but we will communicate that they investigated that what they concluded am i understanding both of those accurately okay and you will continue your research on the park and what the deal is there

158because that's going to factor into a lot of your calculations yeah i did find a one map that referenced dedicated but it's somebody wrote it by hand and i can't find any other language to it so okay uh commissioner gibb randall yes commissioner yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yes commissioner clark yes commissioner weich yes commissioner mills yes unanimous very good thank you very much all right can we take a what time is it can we take a five minute break to fill water bottles and stretch our legs and come back at 9 30. okay we'll call us back to order and we're talking about item 10a since we switched that around in our agenda this is 700 tappan street the amended planned unit development zoning for city council approval um we'll

159do our normal st petitioner presentation for up to 10 minutes and then move to um mr kowalski and then we'll open the public hearing and commissioner clark i don't know if it was if you're there you want to just go off you maybe she's not back yet i'm thinking that we should wait just especially since we lead off with the petitioner presentation so that she can be here so if you can bear with us for just a minute in the meantime matt could you put up that um that one particular uh drawing from the pud supplemental regulations it's page two sure i was actually going to ask uh mr atlanta was gonna i was having a couple network issues he was going to drive the powerpoint show so within that uh brett i had added

160it's we might have to scroll through a couple slides yeah but go through oh you're ruining all the surprise of my show there you go i believe that's the one you want incorrect yep thank you okay and we lost commissioner clark um so i don't know if she's having network issues i can keep my eye out for her but um why don't you go ahead we will catch her up when she gets back on if she wants she's able to reconnect okay should i begin then go ahead yep okay all right thank you um my name is scott munzell uh i'm representing rich devarti the owner of dominic's as well as mike mccloud who is a tenant at 700 tappan street mike is on the call but i think he's phoning in um i appreciate

161the lengthy discussion you had on the prior application so i will try to be fairly brief um to start out this is a this is an application to modify slightly modify the text of an existing planned unit development in the supplemental regulations that deals with the timing of curb cut removal it's important to understand right at the get go there's zero physical changes being proposed at the site mr davardi intends to do nothing for the foreseeable future um and this as i'll explain this requirement was triggered due to um the special exception use application uh that mr macleod has had for his marijuana dispensary that's been there for quite a few years but um it's important to just go back and give you a little bit of history the original planned unit development was approved

162in 2009 actually that was an update from a prior version but the reason it was really done was that as many people are aware of dominic's it's an unusual uh location this is one of the things that really contributes to the charm of the city which is that different uses spring up in different places and mr devardi had the casa dominic's going it's a commercial you know restaurant use surrounded by residential uses it was considered non-conforming under the city's zoning ordinance uh back in 2000 well in the 2000s and that created certain operational issues for him and so one way to cure that in a way was to uh seek planned unit development zoning for his properties in which which he did and therefore it currently is quote unquote conforming because um it's the uses

163are captured within a pud at the time mr devardi was not sure of what if anything he would do and so uh but he had a proposed kind of concept plan of what could happen and that is the screen that i'm that's shown there and basically in the pub it broke it down into four different areas but you can see the cross test cross-hatched areas where areas that mr devari thought he might undertake some construction in the future but the city council just approved the pud with the concept plan which is not unusual you know you can do a two-step uh planned unit development so he had the concept plan approved and he knew that at some point in the future if he were to undertake actual construction he'd have to come back and provide

164an actual site plan for the city to review which would have to undergo the typical site plan process now when it when and if according to the zoning or the supplemental regulations um when uh where did they go they basically said that um there was reference to the curb cuts excuse me and um which was pointed out in the staff report but the important language actually is the next sentence which was not included in the planning staff report after it talks about the off street parking spaces about the numbers it says then says all useless curb cuts shall be removed and the curb shall be restored as part of the first pud site plan approved within the district now mr devarti never applied for any changes he never applied for a uh site plan a

165pd site plan to undertake any of the changes that had been approved with the concept plan and so therefore there was no trigger for the curb cuts to be removed so from 2009 all the way up through roughly oh the late you know 2018 2019 for 10 years or so the curb cuts all remained in place which was exactly what the language that the city council had adopted would have anticipated that curb cuts remain in place until a pud site plan was approved and then he would have to um you know take out the curb cuts so um it's not it has not been out of zoning compliance until this technical thing happened and i'm sorry this is kind of long but the city when they adopted the medical or sorry the marijuana dispensary regulations

166required every dispensary to submit a site plan so what happened was mr mcleod submitted a site plan as part of the special exception uh application and that then the city considered a first site plan which triggered the curb cut removal requirement remember typically a site plan isn't required until you're actually undertaking construction mr mcleod is proposing zero construction on the site and so this is one of the ironies this is where we got caught up in kind of the un uh the unfortunate language and concept of what the city council uh approved back in 2009 which typically and would not require the curb cuts removed until there was a site plan contemplating construction but the the special exceptions from marijuana dispensaries just required a site plan so even though there's no construction being proposed it's

167it's put us in this unusual um uh kind of uh situation what we would like to do is um you know mr mcleod's uh building is in b it's 700 tappan street and so when you look at that you could see at the back or the west end of 700 tapping there is some diagonal crossed in hatched lines that is currently an existing legal parking space that's used by a tenant who lives above dominic's in uh right next door in the area marked a and so she uses the curb cut to park in that legal parking space um we and so now there's the site plan which the city is saying hey you need to remove that curb cut we uh we don't believe and mr davari wants to retain that parking space and therefore

168the curb cut um and there's no again this contemplated that there would be construction in that in that legal parking space which would eliminate the parking space because there'd been a building over it and therefore the curb cut would have been useless which is what they were referring to in the supplemental regulations where it says all useless curb cuts shall be removed and the curb shall be restored as part of the first site plan um but now i mean the curb cut is not useless and it's in it's being used and it's it's an important uh aspect for mr devarti and his his tenant which if that curb cut was removed the tenant would then have to find on-street parking in this neighborhood with thousands of students um which is not a very workable um

169solution but again i do want to note technically the site plan there was not a non-compliance with the zoning ordinance until the site plan requirement of the special exception use for the marijuana dispensaries so so it's a complicated scenario that why we arrived at where we are today um so again no plan to make any construction and so we would like to tweak the language of the supplemental regulations such that it reflects what we believe the true intent of city council was which is when there is construction that would in one of those areas that would then eliminate the parking space 90 seconds that's when we would remove the curb cut so um citizen participation meeting happened one person attended no objections she supported it we believe that the public benefit we'd offer is a

170rain garden in exchange for the creek it'll meet city code we're still having issues there but one of the important things to remember a key part of the application is that there would be permanent planters installed that would prevent any parking north of the building on 700 cap in which seemed to be one of the major concerns for safety there's never been a pedestrian incident in that location and the planters would then prevent any parking on the north side of that building um in the what's considered front yard so that was one of the major issues that mr mccloud has addressed so that we think that the public benefit of the rain garden um in exchange for the tweaking to actually comply with what we think the original intent of the city council was that's

171what we're asking for um and i'm happy to answer any questions thank you mr kowalski you want to fill in from staff's perspective sure good evening again everybody um okay we'll do a quick uh mr manziel covered quite a bit in there so i'm not won't necessarily go back into all that history of the approval dates um unless there's questions for that um so we'll go through a little brief thing here if brett if you could just advance the next thing outside i think we're all kind of familiar with what we're talking about here but again it's directly across the street from the business school and the law quad so um the aerial photos kind of zoomed out a little bit there you can see a little yellow square um so it's really surrounded by

172a lot of pl land so here is this is really the uh the crux of one of the issues is this picture here um so this is the area again that um uh that they were prohibiting to block off with with the planter blocks um but leave the pavement in place but um kind of construct planter box to prohibit parking because that was as mr manziel indicated that really the the largest source of concern there was that parking there that was previously used for parking people would have to back out angle across the driveway um one in this shot you can also see what they're proposing as part of their kind of benefit the area up to the top that kind of graston area there um is is where the the proposed rain garden will

173be and i do have a slight amendment to my staff report in that i did speak with the stormwater reviewer today so he is working with um i believe it's washington engineering on this to um uh and he feels that they for what that's worth they could modify that that will that will meet code i don't i don't have a plan yet that says that um but as part of that so essentially what that rain garden would gather um would be their their roof all their roof water really and and they they are also proposing a trench train kind of along this the pervious area here that would remain uh yeah kind of exactly parallel thanks brad right exactly they're kind of a trench strain that would pick up some of that impervious uh or

174that the drain off of that impervious uh surface there um so if we could go to the next slide and so again so this is um where the curb cut leads to that the parking space which is behind that building it is technically a legal space because it is behind the front line of that building um so that is really the space that the petitioner wanted to preserve so again they have agreed to kind of block off that that area to the left in this picture and uh but however preserve the access to that parking space along that building um i think we could go to one more slide i think it's kind of another view oh well it's mostly pavement okay and then the last view i believe okay again is what mr manzelo

175say if we can leave this up for a second so i will fill in so it is correct again the original or the most recent the pod that really that covered this in the 2009 that was approved it did envision a much larger development i mean again you can see here the concept plan that was approved had these areas cross hatched to be filled in obviously that hasn't happened however the zoning was approved um the zoning was approved with the restriction of the curb cuts to be closed um uh two curb cuts it had a maximum of two kirk cuts in there so right now that district that covers abcd that you see on there has um has a maximum of two curb cuts proposed as a requirement so in going in and looking through

176the procedure so this was also an issue as mr munzel mentioned when the the site plan through the uh so when this was originally uh approved the pud the provisioning center was not uh well obviously the building was there but it wasn't a it wasn't even legal back then when this was actually approved so the provisioning use did come on afterwards and um that current the operator of that is a tenant of that larger complex so they also as mr munzel mentioned the site plan as well as a special exception use so through the deliberations of that the special exception use that was approved by planning commission in 2018 they uh as one of the conditions of in that they also requested the planning commission at the time and i'm not sure if any members

177on on the board right now were were there maybe yeah because sarah um had requested that that curb cut be closed prior to that the the petitioner submits uh a site plan showing the curb cut closed um prior to issuance of a co um unfortunately a co was issued an error but while i should the ceo was issued so they have a co to occupy that building so the curb cut obviously still remains so we've got a couple of issues and really again that that zoning that that covers this parcel is is really the crux of the issue because again for the zoning conformance thing as they go through the process for the provisioning center and whatnot there are certain requirements that you know the property has to adhere to these to the zoning of

178the district and right now as staff looks at it you know again there's requirement for two curve because they exceed that it doesn't specify which curve cut can be needs to be closed it just says a maximum well i think i believe it says one on monroe and one on oakland i believe um so it doesn't say which one along the road has to be closed but obviously the the other one along monroe access is a larger parking area this one's kind of that vessel space and through the deliberations i was not the original planner that was involved with the special exceptions or the the beauty site plan or actually even the original beauty for the larger project but in speaking with that planner and again going through some of the records i mean it

179it in part of going through staff's analysis here on on our takeaways from what they're proposing is that um it was that kurt cohen was a significant part of discussion through the pud originally um the pud site and even obviously as part of the original pud but as indicated previously that was a much larger development that was proposed but even after that as the site plan for these for 700 tap in with the special exception use was presented that was also um a significant talking point of planning commission was that curb cut now we didn't there was discussion it wasn't necessarily specified between the parking that access is kind of behind that building versus the parking along that the kind of parallel to that sidewalk which is really again that the large much larger safety

180issue but there was all part of the larger discussion that planning commissions at the time had deemed really that that curb cut was was um kind of an important item to be closed and and it would improve the safety of the area and and so so on and so forth so staff had used that in part of our justification as well we looked we did discuss with the traffic engineer of course um and and really where the petitioners agreed yet cutting off that one parallel to the sidewalk that was you know a no-brainer again the safety backing out across the sidewalk uh the transportation engineer absolutely guaranteed you know that's that's that's a true hazardous situation there really there there was similar feedback on backing out of that street or back sorry backing out of

181the kind of the tenant space for lack of a better word behind that building um now that would be used a lot less frequently than obviously a customer space access along parallel to that building um so but but again that concern was there that the traffic either needs to back out onto monroe across that sidewalk or or back into the space um so uh again i i think that kind of covers a lot of the discussion let me see if there's anything else in my notes that i may have left off between myself and mr manziel's presentation but i think um we've we've got that all covered i believe right now so i i do expect some questions and so on so um i am definitely available to answer any questions uh thank you thank

182you mr kowalski um i'll open up the public hearing this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed pud amendments at 700 tappan and the surrounding property if you wish to address the planning commission on this item press star 9 if you've dialed in or you can use the raised hand feature if you've joined us through the web link if you are watching us and want to dial in now the phone number is 877-853-5247 6634 1226 city staff will select callers that have raised their hands calling on you by the last three digits of your telephone number or if you're on zoom you can see your name so mr leonardo will just say your name um you'll hear an automated announcement when um when mr leonard promotes you

183to be able to speak please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we can hear you clearly please state your name and address for the record if you've dialed in or have joined us through zoom and want to provide a public comment use ray's hand or on your phone you can press star nine okay i'm gonna start reading seeing no one i'm gonna start reading the proposed motion but if somebody does raise a hand just let me know mr leonard i guess the motion is short the motion reads actually i don't know that the proposed motion that is in the script that i have is actually the full motion give me just a minute to pull up the full motion because it just seems oddly short the ann

184arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the casa dominic's planned unit development pud revised supplemental regulations can i have a commissioner move that moved by i don't know just a minute half of you are covered by something on my street move by commissioner dish seconded by commissioner lee anybody want to kick off conversation or do you want some background from the two of us who have seen this a couple of times [Music] commissioner give randall do you want to start off or do you want me to that's fine yeah this is the third time i think we've been around um i have to say i'm feeling a little impatient with this to be perfectly honest um uh i know i should probably be starting with questions but my sense

185is that when you put forth i see what you're saying about the language but when you put forth the special exception use you open yourself up again to analysis and with that analysis we were super clear about closing off that curb cut because it was part of the original debate it was part of our debate and when i look back at the aerial photos from 2009 forward there's cars parked pretty consistently in that spot next to the house to be perfectly honest i feel really it's disingenuous to say we want to keep the pavement and put a planter in front of it which is like why wouldn't you just remove the pavement it's like what's the point of that so that you can move it and and then have more cars parked there because clearly

186it's being used that way um so i feel like you're kind of taking up our time frankly i don't feel supportive of granting this at all and that's my bald opinion about this at this point in the night [Music] i can add in that just for other commissioners benefits some of the discussion in the past some of like we talked about which curb cut we looked at the initial language and so there was a healthy discussion over like did it have to be that curb cut there was a lot of discussion about whether they're where would customers park um especially if there was handicap parking i remember like pulling up google street view and showing that there are handicapped public parking spots right there we like a lot of these things are things that we

187did cover um at you know google street view right now not on the monroe street side but from the tappan street side is a shot from october 2020 showing a car in the place where two years prior we said like there should i mean and this is a question for staff like is that ever legal like is are i i seem to recall before that that's you're that's you're not supposed to park there that's correct i mean there's certain properties that have there's actually a book back in city hall a binder that had certain properties have been grandfathered in with the use of parking in the front open space we did not have that recorded on this site so that's correct i don't know when the site was established or the sorry the parking um

188but that's correct that's that's you can't park in the front open space and so i mean it's a non-starter for me if the pavement stays even if it go even if it's something even if it's planted unless it's something that you really like it's so it's such a great rain garden that it would be too wet to park in i don't i i feel like this is i it's difficult for me to imagine this is kind of an ingrained seems ingrained here that that's a place to park and so um i i share commissioner gibrandal's uh sense of deja vu um in this discussion commissioner clark and then commissioner abrams um yeah just to echo your sentiments of um kushner get randall um i was just actually hoping for a point of clarification about the

189um occupancy that was issued by error i'm not quite sure i point i was just hoping that maybe clarify yeah i can take that um so um ideally when we have a development like this we make sure that we've satisfied all the conditions prior to issuing a certificate of occupancy um in this circumstance we just are we just broke down so i just have to own that mistake we had signed off on the issuance of a certificate of occupancy for this um for this use we shouldn't have now that that's been issued i don't think it's appropriate to remove it but i want to be clear right now they are in violation of the approval it's not being operated consistent with that so like any other zoning violation we can take enforcement action on it

190um but they had expressed an interest in pursuing this as an option and as i'm interested in ultimately compliance rather than penalty we thought we'd afford the opportunity for this process to bear out if it's unsuccessful we would work with them to establish a reasonable time frame to comply with standards for approval and if not citations would ultimately be issued anything else commissioner clark you're good okay commissioner abrams related to the to the cfo i just wanted to confirm that an alternate time or like an alternate chronology for this would have been for the correct chronology would have been that the cfo would not have been issued until the curb cut was removed right i mean given that it seems it seems odd that we would grant an exception based on an error um that

191doesn't really make sense to me so uh i'm not inclined to vote in support of it that's all thanks commissioner dish yeah i just want to make two points um i did look back at my notes from our extensive and lengthy and illustrated with google street view pictures discussion of this in january and i did find unequivocally that we were saying the parking lot which is not really shouldn't be referred to as a parking lot because it's not an official parking lot needs to be torn up that is what we said in january so that's not happened and what's proposed is to have a raised planter and use the rest as a patio which i'm not quite sure how many months it would be useful as a patio but when it's cold and no one's

192sitting on it as a patio it's going to still be a parking space so that was an equivocal and there was a um there was a reference to the intent of counsel when they created this and i just i want to object to the argument that um the there are two languages governing the the arrangement of curb cuts in this um in the original pud which i looked back at and there is the language of maximum of two cur two curb cuts and then there is the provision in the pud that a useless curb cut should be removed so it's not clear that i mean i don't think that one can state unequivocally that only once a third curb cut is rendered useless must it be removed there is a very clear statement that there

193is a max of two curb cuts and that's not what we have so um i'm not going to support this either commissioner solvay yes for all of that the other thing i'm curious from staff how to calculate parking because the other item in the pud is minimum two off street parking spaces maximum of ten um and similar to like the curb cuts of deciding which ones and this seems to be the useless one there's a few garages and carports but then when we're looking at uh aerial views right it's all like gravel drives but like a whole series of parallel car parked cars and these gravel drives so when like on different lots not this lot right so i guess i'm also just curious how and when does parking get calculated to see if we're

194at two or ten because i mean in my mind you've definitely have at least two elsewhere get rich why are we fighting over one parking spot close it for five but from staff review of this entire pud i am curious how do you calculate this parking to evaluate if we're between two and ten right now that's that that's a good question because again in in some of the ways that the way that pv was written that's the sub it was a concept plan so it didn't um i think ideally when you look at like you said you walk around the site there's gravel there it's it's not like a set parking area right there so what would the situation that was again through a build out so if they were to like right now they

195if you walk behind there they probably have about 10 spaces when you look because i did so that's where but how we would and it was just 10 spaces for the entire district so it wasn't you know by by use so i mean i guess we wouldn't like like we didn't assign like one for this 700 capping or anything else like that so it's just kind of also right there'd be nothing that precludes this the resident of the you know using one of those other spaces in that district and then i think i again ideally when the when the pd if and when that was ever built out that would be the maximum they can because we wanted again to lock that in so there wasn't a larger parking area in there to keep kind

196of what they had or you they could reduce it so but we haven't calculated like as it pertains to this 700 happen i haven't gone back in and you know like uh kind of calculate out where the other parking how that relates to this or how those uses relate to the parking on the site i guess i should say i'm not sure that fully answers your question but we didn't go back into a lot of that analysis of the parking of the other uses yeah i think it's just like are we looking at this relative to site b or when we look at what the special exception use is triggering are we even actually looking at a b c d with some of these blanket right like pud regulations um because there's like a lot

197of part right so now like do we get strict on the whole district or are we really just kind of trying to look at site b in the aspects of the special exception used in site planning well i think all right yeah yeah if i could jump in on that i think it's a good question i want to echo some of the comments that mr munzel made that i think he was accurate the the language that was adopted by city council when they created the pud reference site plan and that that's a that means something in the context of our code in this case when the special exception used for the marijuana provisioning center came in um not only consistent with our code but consistent with state law a site plan has to accompany the

198granting of a special exception use permit and so in that case we only considered the site plan for the special exception use we did not look at the whole site and so when we're looking at that two to ten parking requirements as a zoning designation we in fact didn't um and maybe that was just an oversight on our part we didn't look at removing that spot as impacting that because we didn't really envision it to be an appropriate parking spot regardless i think if a substantial development were to come in for this site that's where that two to ten parking range would would be mandated and at that time we'd be reviewing it according to our standards and the like does that help yeah that helps a bit and i mean it's kind of the

199other logic of it from my mind is if there's a future more intense development that reduces parking even more it makes even more obvious the reason to get rid of the one parking spot we're discussing right now and close the curb cut like i can't believe we're spending our time talking about one curve cut for one parking spot um versus pedestrian safety especially with you know what we're seeing with curbside pickup i can just see a lot of people driving into this curb to get like a window drop off sort of thing and things like that like i can't support this any other questions and i want to make sure what i so the the ask before us is to amend the original casa dominic's regulations effectively on like the idea that that there can

200be a maximum of two maximum of two curb cuts that is the it would strike that effectively is the is the proposal yes mr leonard i mean apart from this like that's the that's the action that's before us um i'll leave that to matt to summarize matt can you summarize the proposed changes to the regs yeah well what what and actually what which again a question from mr menzel i noticed in the last revision hey i'm trying to figure out your man the strikeout version is over you know right now that the regulations are i think i lost you were coming back so be careful about what you say okay am i back now i think you're back and in sync go for it wait i'm sorry [Music] we can see your lips moving along

201with your voice okay okay sorry okay thank you so um this so if everything was it was not approved tonight it didn't go to council or was denied by council the existing supplemental records stay in place so what the petitioner has proposed what in front of us is actually that strikeout version they have in there it actually says four curb cuts now which i would ask at mr menzel it went because in the in the uh the strikeout version it says there's now they're proposing to have a maximum of four curb cuts and the original pud says three right i mean sorry i said it went down to two so i was a little kind of confused by that that that changed so i might want him to explain that a little bit but really

202that wasn't what they're proposing until kind of to delay the curb cut until there's a site plan that's submitted for uh that involves 700 tap in and that area within there and then that would kind of trigger that uh that the removal of that that curb cut for that area so that's kind of essentially what they're proposing is that to kind of delay that until that a major redevelopment that involves 700 happen would would be triggered a site plan for that area there but the the the uh there's a couple other changes within those regulations again the strikeout version that um it says yeah it permit a maximum of four curb cuts uh two from monroe one from tappin um and then it basically the language is probably a building permit being issued that they

203would uh in areas b or c that they would uh remove that curb cut so area well i don't have that map up right now but that involves 700 tapping in the adjacent parcel so that that's really that that that is the proposed changes is to kind of delay that until that a site plan that involves site as you can see here thank you brett uh areas b or c is submitted and then prior to that the curb cut would would be eliminated um with uh well it doesn't say the impervious removed but we would make them and remove the impervious as well another and the only other addition to the supplemental rags really would be the um that they added in their the uh requirement for the rain guard to be in the location

204located in the northeast corner of area b so really the only changes are regarding those curb cuts and then that the addition of that rain guard especially as drafted especially with increasing the number of curb cuts i cannot support this um so any other comments um mr bunzell i go ahead i just wanted to respond briefly to some of the comments that were made if you look at the um the drawing if you can put the drawing back up what what i tried to do in the supplemental regulations is you know dominic's has been there for longer than i've been in town it's probably longer than most of you it operates there is the loading area for the restaurant is in the southwest part of drawing a part a so rich is going to keep

205the curb cut on oakland which near the letter d and people you know the the the delivery trucks come in into that area and then they exit on monroe street at the northwest corner of a and i think that's what he uh proposed with city council why there was a reference to only two curb cuts what what i tried to do was clean this up and so and again the language from the existing the existing supplemental regulations while it does refer to the two curb cuts you know it then does give the timing for when that's that's my that's what we believe the city council's intent was i looked at all the materials and so i you know we're we are quite comfortable in the conclusion that city council intended dominic's to be able to

206function right i mean he was coming to the city council to try and create the conforming um status for his property and so they knew that there would be those two curb cuts and he said hey i may eventually do this development in which case the curb cut the eastern curb cut on monroe and the southeastern curb cut on tapen would be the ones that would be removed but the the point of the whole of the language that was that they didn't have to be removed until the first pud site plan okay was approved for the district now mr leonard mr kwalski will confirm this that typically in order to do construction you have to have a site plan and so and until the and i'm pretty sure of this too is that the the

207marijuana um dispensary issue state law and city council in the ordinance notwithstanding that's the first time when you've had to provide a site plan without any construction so when the city council passed this pud back in and i've seen this in many city approvals the idea is hey the trigger for things is the site plan application okay it's not the permit it's not the building permit it's not the cfo it's the site plan and so the city council would have been thinking okay they're going to remove these curb cuts when they're actually doing construction when they're going to actually do the development as proposed by the conceptual plan so i don't think it's unfair at all to say that city council sat and said hey we're approving the concept plan when mr devarti proceeds then

208he's going to have to take out the curb cuts um thank you but so what i tried to do in drafting the supplemental regulations was just really reflect the reality i mean let's let's face it though the site plan has been improved since 2009 and there haven't you know those curve cuts have all been there but just very briefly on a couple other points one i know mr mccloud has worked at having no parking there um he's put cones up and he's really done it you know he's worked at having no parking there he doesn't need the parking a lot of his clients are walking by the planters are actually a better solution than removing the pavement i mean even if the pavement was gone you might have people drive up on that curb cut

209so we were really trying to address how do we stop anybody from using that the planters just like at the bloom marijuana dispensary where it was the solution we came up with um mr kowalski mentioned the trench drain we're trying to address the runoff created by the impervious surface not only of that lot but also the building by putting in the rain garden the idea was hey let's let's we're making a minor tweak to the language let's provide a public benefit that reflects the realities of 2021 as opposed to 2009 and we thought the rain garden to allow for infiltration was a better uh public benefit at this point in time thank you mr munzel i thank you very much all right um any other questions comments from planning commissioners all right mr leonard we

210can do a roll call vote please commissioner gibrandam no commissioner sovay oh commissioner abrams no mr dish no commissioner lee no commissioner clark no commissioner white no mr mills no uh recommendation fails it'll proceed to city council with a recommendation from the planning commission of denial all right um next up is tennessee this is 336 south ashley um thank thanks for your consideration sorry thank you um mr leonard this was rec this was crossed out on the uh on the agenda so can you suggest what the right order of operations is here yes my apologies uh as you are you know we do our best to make sure projects are ready to go we have to make a three determination a half weeks in advance of an agenda that we're going to be able to

211work through remaining issues and i was unable to do so on this particular petition but we had advertised it as an item so what i would recommend is you open the public hearing to see if anybody has comments and then i would recommend after closing the public hearing a motion to postpone consideration of it to the october 5th planning commission meeting all right we can do that so we will go right to the public hearing um if you have called in or joined us via zoom and would like to provide um participate in the public hearing for 336 south ashley you can press star 9 on your phone or the raise hand function in zoom if you are watching us and want to call in it's 877-853-5247 and our meeting id is 977-6634 12 26

212um city staff will select callers that have raised your hand please keep your comments to three minutes and state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and someone on the line if you want to provide a public comment please either use the raise hand function or press star 9. and again if you're watching us this will come back so you can if you're interested in this item uh october 5th is another opportunity um seeing no one joining um would a commissioner like to postpone would move wait first we need to move the item and then move the postponement can you um i would just take action to postpone consideration of 336 south ashley to the october 5th 2021 planning commission meeting all right so the motion is to postpone actions moved by

213commissioner white seconded by commissioner gibb randall any discussion all in favor of the postponement please that is everyone great all right we are on to item 11a which is a revised meeting schedule mr leonards yes um attache is the current meeting schedule i'd like for you to consider modification to it to move your october 12th meeting working session meeting to october 13th the reason for that is that monday is indigenous people's day that means city council is moving to the tuesday it's not something we picked up when we first set the schedule so i'd like to propose moving the working session to that wednesday the 13th okay can i have a commissioner move to approve the revised agenda moved by commissioner weich seconded by commissioner sovay any discussion all in favor of the proposed motion

214please raise your hand or say yes said was that a quick hand commissioner lee yes awesome that's everybody sorry i wasn't catching you quick enough um item 12 is oh commissioner give randall could you please ask our wonderful mia gayle to resend the invitation so it shows up magically in our outlook calendars that would be great thank you thank you item 12 is public comment this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about any item of interest if you wish to address the planning commission at this time please press star 9 if you're listening by phone if you've joined us through zoom you can use the raise hand function if you are watching us and want to call in the number is 877-853-5247 and this is the bazillionth time you'll

215hear it tonight but our meeting id is 977. 6634 1226 um staff will select those who have raised their hand if you decide to call us you press star nine to raise your hand uh there is somebody who's joined on through zoom at least if you'd like to provide a public comment please use the raise hand feature to indicate that now see no indication all right then we'll move on to item 13 which is commission proposed business is there any i'm going to do the thing that i always do when we see something in our code that's a little broken and actually i think that all of that discussion over the mill creek proposal suggests that no matter what happens we need to revisit the ev ordinance because the idea that you do not need

216to put ev infrastructure on extra parking that it's only required on the required parking is extremely problematic in my mind that the extra parking you can build without that is problematic as people on the orc know i have been pushing in our in our rewriting of parking to as at an additional um incentive to not build parking is to require ev parking ev infrastructure around anything that you built um and so but even if that doesn't make it into our overall parking changes i think i would um mr leonard like this is a quick fix that we need to definitely not have that just apply to required parking explore what that means yeah it's in the parking section that you're going to be looking at for you comprehensively so i don't think it's an inappropriate

217time if you want to address it okay great anything else is the removal of parking minimums um is that in the subcommittee is that a part of an rfp process it would just be helpful because i'm i even asked mr leonard today for like a visual representation of our planning code so that we can look at a parcel know what the building heights issues are the setbacks and the parking minimums it's all in the udc but it's just too much text to synthesize and so to be able to see it visually would be helpful because um i'm just really struggling with how we're how we are intended to meet our housing goals if we have to have so much of the land use be dedicated to parking it it actually feels farcical right now like

218we're on one side we're saying this is an important part but our zoning makes it nearly impossible to implement it i mean a full third of our land use from what i understand is dedicated to car storage so just just helping figure that out as we look at these new developments and then with this infill project this is another 50-year development that we won't have any more input on once they go to the construction phase and the estimates for ev vehicles is that by 2030 a four-third of all new cars will be electrified so while today we're only at 3.4 percent the estimates to get the fleet uh to meet the um the um gas reduction sorry i'm going to stop losing my access to words emission reduction is going to go through the electrification

219of our fleet so um i do i do want to figure out how to balance what commissioner dish said today in the conversation about you know let's not put an owner's sort of requirement on a development you know but let's figure out how to get ourselves ready for our goal and take into consideration what commissioner lee talked about um with all of that so it just feels it just feels complicated unnecessarily complicated i think is the way that i would describe it and so i don't know if there's a way is there is it only in the subcommittee that we talk about this are there other conversations where we have these conversations around how we're going to address our planning objectives especially as it relates they to zero so and if i got something wrong

220commissioner dish i'm sorry so because your hand went right up after i called you up preemptive apology do you want mr leonard to go first commissioner dish or do you want to go okay mr leonard yeah so um i think those are great questions commissioner um i think one of the as was i think the the petition this this evening was a great example i think one of the one of the policy decisions that you and the city are going to have to come to is i think frankly the heavy-handedness of that balance i think one one part of it is um a lot of communities are doing this is they're starting to say well at a minimum why would we prescribe a minimum amount of parking if somebody from a market rate perspective thinks

221that they can um function without that level to that to that imbalance of land use why would we say no no no no you we are forcing you to contribute to that so i think i think you know i don't want to say it's easy because there'll be a lot of perspectives about even that aspect in our community to just say no minimum is required i think the sort of more significant policy decision is the maximum side of things when you and so tonight is a great example where you have a property owner saying that in order to achieve this infill from a market perspective i need more parking than the minimum and so the city could um get to a policy framework that says no we we're going to have we're going not only

222are we going to eliminate minimums but we're going to uh prescribe maximums and but i think the policy decision there is that in that circumstance you might very well have property owners in that circumstance say well i i'm uncomfortable then making that investment because i'm concerned about it that my marketability might be lagging the city's aspirations as it relates to vehicular miles traveled so but you're i just want to say that that is absolutely apropos for the just the coming discussion and then generally um one of the things that we didn't get to with the orientation orientation and i'm going to send you is we have a series of subcommittees on this group and so on one of them is the ordinance revisions committee um group they tend to meet the fourth tuesday um of

223of the month because three are not enough and they help staff with sort of the um [Music] nuts and bolts of crafting language to ready it for presentation for the whole planning commission as a whole but with something like parking we have put together sort of a work plan um in that regard but we might decide that that weren't some working session conversations at mile post along that rather than waiting for it to be more full so um i hope that helps respond to some of those questions yeah thank you and then the only other thing which would be helpful and we can talk offline about it is a process standpoint does it originate in planning commission and go to council or does it originate in council and then comes to planning commission and then

224um are there protocols when council picks up a public hearing that we have already discussed so this is going to go back to council they'll have another hearing about it are there any protocols that would preclude a commissioner from commenting on it when it's before council so that's it and you can answer that whenever so yeah i can follow up with you on that i think it's i'll follow up on the second part in particular but just to say both of these things happen we have our own work plan of things that of of ordinance changes that we as a com planning commission think need to be taken care of and honestly parking has been on there for years like but it's been the one thing that like see has been really hard and we've

225decided we can't punt it anymore that was decided before you got down that you're interested in it awesome because that's the kool-aid that you know that's what we had collectively put on our work plan this year but there's also we also have a box and recognizing like we rely you know we're all volunteers we rely heavily on staff um that we need we make space in our work plan for the things that council sends to us to be responsive to that because they do send us things um often with a time with a with a due date so those things are the ones that get often bumped some of our own priorities quite frankly just out of like there's only so many hours but it but both so commissioner dish i just wanted to say

226that i appreciated uh commissioner how starkly you put the insanity of our affordability goals alongside our parking minimums and uh there are members of council who are who are also initiating the could we revisit this idea of parking minimums so it's not it's this is a case where it's coming from both and so i you know we and i i do think that tonight's discussion showed the need for revisiting it and i i think this project was a little bit unusual we don't i don't know how often we see infill projects and so what struck me as weird about it or like hard to get my head around was they were actually proposing fewer parking spots than required for the new housing but the the thing the the the the site overall with its leftover

227two purrs averaged out higher and so it just and it just made it really hard to think about it and it does put it in where mr leonard said it puts it in the discussion between minimums and maximums and i think maximums are something we want to explore but we wouldn't but but this discussion tonight shows us a project like this could fail if we put our maximum somewhere where someone who wants to do an infill says uh i can't and there's they're sort of too remote to assume that there's enough public transportation right so it yeah but anyway i i just think you put it really really well and i'm grateful for how you put it anything else during commission proposed business we got like another hour yeah all right that then we're on

228item 13 uh which is a adjournment anyone move to adjourn moved by commissioner abram seconded by commissioner sovay all in favor raise your hand that is all hands and you can wave good night see you what what is this this is the third week no so only orc meets next week