 Alright, I'd like to welcome everyone to the October 2022 City of Columbia Board of Zoning Appeals Meeting. I am Gene Dinkins Jr., Chair of the Board. At this time I'd like to introduce other members of the board. We've got Marcellus Primus to my left, followed by Catherine Finner. What's your name again? John Gregory. John, just say John. John and Celia McIntosh. Okay, I'd also like to introduce a staff that assists the board. We've got Hope Hastie, Zoning Administrator, Erica Hyen, Deputy Zoning Administrator, and Sky Robinson Barnes. The board is charged with hearing applications for special exceptions, variances, and administrative appeals. All testimony is recorded for the record, and anyone wishing to speak will need to be sworn in and come to the podium to speak. No testimony can be taken from the floor. When you come to the podium, state your name, and please speak clearly into the microphone because this meeting is being recorded. Applicants with cases before the board are allotted a presentation time of 10 minutes. This time does not include any questions asked by the board or staff regarding the case. Any member of the public may address the board in intervals of three minutes or five minutes if by a spokesperson for an established body or group of three or more. The applicant then has five minutes for rebuttal. The board reserves the right to amend these procedures on a case-by-case basis. Okay, so those of you who plan to speak must be sworn. If you are here as an applicant or to speak in any case, please stand at this time and raise your right hand. Okay, do you affirm or attest that the testimony you will give today is the truth and nothing but the truth? Okay, thank you. All right, so at this time we'll like to turn the meeting over to staff. Good afternoon. We'll start out with the consent agenda, which starts with the approval of the September 1st, 2022 minutes. The next item on consent agenda is 2022-0031-SE, it's Broadway, Flora and Poe Streets, a special exception request to permit an alternative parking surface. And the next item on the consent agenda is 2022-0032-SE, the 50 block of National Guard Road. It's also a special exception request to permit an alternative parking surface. And that concludes the consent agenda. At this time, would anyone like to remove a case from the consent agenda? No, there was an email that was submitted, it was included in your packets. Okay, will we give anybody a chance to call in or not? No, not anymore. All right, well, do we want to make a motion? I move that we approve the consent agenda subject to staff comments. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. All right, thank you. Moving on to the regular agenda, we've got case 2022-0033-V, it's 1800 block of Pulaski Street, and it's a variance request to the minimum required neighborhood compatibility standards, which is a new section in the new unified development ordinance that was adopted last August or August of 21. And the applicant is here to present the request. James Kozler with the Wilson Company. This property is on the 1800 block of Pulaski Street. There's four lots that we are looking to combine these into one lot and build two duplexes on here. Per community standards, the driveway cannot be closer than 15 feet to a protected lot, which we are surrounded by a protected lot on both sides. The width of the property at the street is only 22 foot, two inches. The zoning is MU2, which is mainly for townhomes. Everything around this property is townhomes, except for these two protected lots. One's been there since 1900. The other was recently moved there. It's under construction. Nothing is being done to it. It just sits vacant. The other variance we're asking for is for one extra parking space to get a total of 10 parking spaces. With community standards, it's 1.1. You need to. Sorry. So we're asking for one more parking space. Included in a packet is a bunch of pictures of everything surrounding it. Everything on that street is townhomes. There's Columbia public housing to the right of it, to the left of it is a neighborhood of townhomes across the street is townhomes. That's the 1900 house and that's the house under construction. Our property would be in between those two. So we only have 22 feet to fit a driveway in there. Along with this, we would, for transitional buffers, we would be required to put a fence up and trees to hide it so that you won't see most of the parking from the street. The house will be set back. The two duplex will be set back on the property. So you really will not see much of that either from hope. Can we? Okay, perfect. Thank you. That's the other adjacent townhomes. It's a neighborhood, I believe, about 20, 25 townhomes adjacent to this property. That's across the street again, townhomes along that street as well. So we are looking to do what the zoning requires or allows in this area, the only holdback is the two single families that are out of place for this area. Thank you. Well, hang on a second, James. So I must say, I read this twice when I first read it. I didn't know you had to ask for a variance for an increased parking spaces where I commonly have this the other way. So that was new to me. So that's, really, how can that be? But certainly an unusual configuration. So you haven't had any contact either positive or negative with these adjacent residential structures or owners or anything? No, I have not. Interesting. I have questions. Okay. Okay, hope if we could go back to or whoever, Erica, whoever's running the show, go back to the slide that shows the access line. Yeah, well, yeah, right there. That's a good one. Now, I'm seeing, so your property is between those two properties. And if I read the survey plat correctly, the driveway, the little loose gravel driveway of the house to the, I guess, the left of this picture south of the property is slightly encroaching on your thing. But there's a line of power wire going down there. What's going on with that? So there is a, those are, we've talked to Dominion. That is just a service line to those two structures. And they have already agreed to move that pole to a new location to service those two houses and our new houses. Okay. All right. Now, when I looked at the plat, there's an alleyway that's not opened that I think runs between, runs to the south of that, the house, the greenhouse on the left. And yeah, yeah, and it says it's an unopened alleyway. Do you own any other property around in the area or? Our client owns the property behind it. It's that vacant lot that's, I can't see the tax map number, but it's the long skinny one across from the alleyway right behind our blue highlights. Okay. He owns that, but because we cannot, because of the alleyway, we can't combine it with this lot, these other four lots. So it's just a separate property that's gonna be, have its own partial number and everything. Okay, so I'm sorry. So there's an alley, there's the alleyway that is to the east of, to the west of it, and then you own that little notch. Is that what you're talking about? Are you talking about the property above that? No ma'am, it's, I'm trying to find the tax map number. The tax map number ends in 07, it's to the left. To the left, so right along the edge of the alley, but on the southern line, continues to the southern line. Yes ma'am. Okay, so is there some reason why you couldn't have just a ten foot wide driveway coming in from Pulaski Street and then exiting out onto Morris Alley? The alleyway is not usable, it's overgrown, there's no access to the actual street on Richland Street. That could be fixed, couldn't it? I mean, it's public property, it's not, it's still public, right? I believe with our conversations with city staff that it wasn't gonna be usable. I mean, you're not leaving much room at all for those houses on either side. The minimum width for the two-lane driveway was 21 feet, so that's where we got our dimension on the driveway from. Okay, 21 feet and you've got 22.2. Yes ma'am. So you could do it. We could, but our variance is not for the width of the actual driveway, it's for the location of it, being within 15 feet of a protected lot. I see, I see, okay. But if you, I guess what I'm thinking is that if you were able to access Morris Alley so you'd have come in one way and come out the other, you'd have good circulation and also you'd be able to have some buffer for those houses, you know, instead of just an ugly fence, the basic fence. Even with a 10-foot driveway, we wouldn't meet the minimum of 15 feet away from a protected lot. But it would be less, it'd be a kinder, gentler way to do things and you'd be able to provide some vegetation. And that's where I'm kind of coming from. You would have vegetation, but because of our transitional buffers that we're required to do, we would still have a 8-foot fence along both property lines. So the vegetation would actually be inside of the fence on our property. I see, I see. So it would add no vegetation to it. It doesn't help them at all. It doesn't help them at all, ma'am. All right. Because we're required to have a transition buffer on both lots and both sides of the property. And at the back left corner, there's a vacant lot, that little notch you were talking about is a vacant lot that could be eventually done as a single family. So we had to put a transitional buffer there as well. So we have three sets of transitional buffers. But there's no access, there's no access at all to it, I guess. There's not, but we're still required. Unless you open the alley. Yeah, we're still required to put a transitional buffer there. I see, I see. Did you consider putting street parking? Just using the street parking? I don't believe there was enough spots to make it viable to have street parking. There's only, we only have 20 feet in front of our actual property. Well, this looks like there's kind of a fair amount of parking. And the zoning ordinance does require that the parking it has to be on your lot. Right, but I'm thinking instead of adding, I guess my thinking is instead of adding an extra space, you could put green space, put a tree, you know, something instead, I'm going, I'm sorry, I've moved on to the parking piece. Move down to the parking piece. Instead of adding a space, you could simply have, you know, one of the people or whatever park on the street, or maybe nobody would want to park. I don't know. We could, yes. Okay. I got a question for staff. Is the eight foot fence, is that for the zoning ordinance or because we've gotten a lot of fence height variances? So an eight foot fence is allowed as part of a buffer yard. Okay. So instead of the buffer, they do a taller fence. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're correct. The regular fence ordinance does have a seven foot maximum height, but this is part of a buffer yard. So that's why it's allowed. They put it's loud. Okay. Um, who, who are you James? Who are you guys? I'm, I'm familiar with the townhomes, Arsenal Hill and all that. Who are y'all targeting for occupying these units? Uh, believe it's going to be student housing. Student, okay. I'm going back to law school here and thinking about easements of necessity and so on, and you've got the problem of, of otherwise those lots are landlocked in the back, I guess you were not able to come to any kind of an agreement with the shotgun house owner or no, ma'am, we're able to find them. I'm sorry. Were you able to find them? I mean, okay. I mean, right now, all those lots are kind of landlocked as they are. Well, the idea being that if you could acquire those two adjacent properties, then you do have a nice, you know, nice square parcel. There will be a heavy amount of landscaping on this project as well, because of our transitional buffer, we have to have 52, two inch caliber shade trees and we also have to have at least 80 shrubs, um, straight, spaced out where we can on the transitional buffer. That's where the blue squares are on this property. It looks like you're just kind of making a little tiny forest of, well, it seems kind of silly. It's like you could you not spread the trees out? We haven't done the full landscaping plan on it, but we do have to have them within the general area of where the transitional buffer has to go. We have to have that requirement of trees in there. What I just got curious quite what's going on with the house is not finished. I mean, is that it's been like that for, I think a year or two. I think it got moved to the site somewhere else. And there's the power pole that I don't think has even hooked up. But there's, I've never seen anybody like that thing going on as far back as we can go on a couple of years on Google Maps. It looks exactly the same. OK, bizarre. Well, my deck got pancaked in June and it's only just now gotten finished. So I have an idea that some of that problem may have to do with the shortage of construction labor. Yeah. OK, any other questions for the alphabet? All right. Thank you, James. Thank y'all. OK, would any members of the public like to speak on this matter? OK, James, I'm actually the owner of that property at 1819, the one that's south of it. That's not finished right now. OK. And I've ran into issues, like you said, with construction, with COVID, having issues with getting the contractor out to get things finished up. So that's what I've been kind of battling. And then just with my full time job, you know, I haven't had time to get down here, get it done. So that is on our agenda to get done. But the first I had seen of it was the sign that was posted this week. And that's why I'm here to kind of get. So yeah, that's why I kind of stopped in here to kind of. When you turn around, I can't hear you. Yeah, I wanted to get the chance to see the plans and see what was. And actually, I had a lot of the same questions you all were asking, you know, how this is going to be laid out. So that's that's why I'm here. I would like to see the plans to a defense and how that's going to look. And I guess the good thing with me not finished my construction, I can match it up even more to what you're having for your property. You know, again, and work closely with the city when I was getting my plan and I like the idea of how we're trying to keep everything the same as, you know, in the historical value of that neighborhood, right? And trying to maintain that. So that's that's what we were looking at doing. And I just wanted to kind of speak to that. And I can give everyone my contact number and contact email. It should be on file. But anyway, the contact them or follow after. I know there's other people that want to speak as well, but that's why I wanted to bring them. Thank you. Thank you. OK. Good evening. My name is Jerome Singleton. I actually own the property at 1823 Pulaski Street, the shotgun house. OK, so that's the one on the other side. Yes, sir. OK. Nobody's ever tried to contact me. I've always I've getting kind of calls all the time. People asking about the place, but I haven't gotten any calls about this. But I learned about it by the sign being in the yard, just as everybody else. So I have an interest in and just exactly what what are they trying to do with it? The driveway that they're looking at coming through or actually separates Mr. James House in mind. Right. Just just got some concerns about what it looks like. I mean, I don't know what what ability I have to even stop it. But I'd at least like to know what it is and see what what challenges is going to create for me so I can bring it to your attention. Well, we when when we speak with the applicant again, we're asking for a little more detail on this proposed driveway. We'll ask. Thank you. OK. Hey, there. My name is Kristen Puckett, and I'm the president of the Arsenal Hill Neighborhood Association. This was just brought to my attention very recently. And while the neighborhood in general is in support of having some of these vacant lots developed, we had some real concerns that I guess I'll just lay out here. First is that if you look at the scale of the shotgun house with an eight foot fence directly by it, it's going to seem like a wall. And I understand the reasoning with the buffer. But, you know, in terms of highest and best use of this property, if it was being developed into two residences that didn't necessarily need an driveway that required an entrance and an exit, you can minimize the width of accessing that property and allow there to be a little bit of a buffer. The fact that it's going to be student housing, we dealt with having a lot of student housing in our community. We love our community. It's diverse, but that brings us into whether or not they're going to have an HOA who's going to be responsible for maintaining an eight foot fence. We all know here in South Carolina, the moisture and the humidity always makes wood suffer. So is anybody going to be on that maintenance or after a couple of months or years? Is it going to be warping and look disheveled? Trash, is there are they going to have a common area to dispose of trash? Are they going to put the trash bins out at the street? If so, there's not the width to put them in front of the property without blocking the driveway or they're going to be in front of the other these other folks properties. How is that going to be addressed? Again, like the neighborhood in general is supportive. It's just, you know, it's a tricky piece of property to develop. And we want to make sure that our neighborhood continues to grow and thrive in the way that it has. And I feel like we were on a great trajectory. We work frequently with the folks at the battery. They attend our little neighborhood association meetings. They have their own HOA. They were just made aware of this when I was made aware of this. In general, I would I do feel that, you know, it would have been nice to have gotten reached out to to have had some discussions about these things before they came to y'all to directly ask for variance because, you know, personally, regardless of whether a house is finished or a house is large or someone paid eight hundred thousand dollars for it or whatever, walking out of a property and having an eight foot fence slapped against your property line is not something that any of us would want in our neighborhood. And we're setting a precedent that is going to allow this type of development. Again, we want these areas to be developed. But, you know, it could also be a single family residence tucked away back in there with a large yard with a narrow driveway that's not going to have such, you know, an impact on those two neighboring structures. And one thing I will say the two single family homes are actually very characteristic of this neighborhood. The town homes are not characteristic. They were only built because during urban renewal, the city swept away large swaths of the historically African American downtown to prepare for high rises, which is actually what before our zoning got changed recently, our neighborhood was zoned for high rise development. I live across like across the way around the corner on Wayne Street. And, you know, it's it's the potential uses of this neighborhood has certainly been been changing. So that's I just asked y'all to consider that consider those points. And I mean, I know we're here, but it would it would be great to have the ability before any decisions are made to have an open discussion with the property owners and the developer to see if we could. Work something out with staff or something to where we could come to a good agreement with for everybody, you know, because. Yeah, I understand they're in a tough spot. So, you know, do you remember that we do recommend that, but they're not required to do that. I mean, it's required to be posted. So, right, right. But I understand. Well, thank you for your testimony. Thank you. OK, hope you can hear me very well. My name is Mark Ruiz. And actually I own 1813 Pulaski Street. And so I do see that the owner of the shotgun house all the time because of when they're doing the maintenance. And I have seen the construction of the house that is still under under construction for probably three years now. I've been in the property since 2016. That property is of slightly over 2000 square feet. Three three stories, two car garage, home value, roughly three hundred and twenty thousand dollars. I personally have a household income of over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And I was a little little concerned when I saw the sign posted. And I there's been no just no really discussion. I actually just a few seconds ago figured out what is actually happening with the land. So very fragile neighborhood. You think about you have public housing, but then you have, you know, someone such as myself. The next door neighbor to me is the director of on campus recruiting at the University of South Carolina for the football team. So very the neighbors, you know, it's a fragile neighborhood. And I think what was how it was designed and what it's bringing in today is kind of a positive to the neighborhood. And so really want you to consider the effects of of those who actually live right there. And it's true having because I was thinking about that an eight foot wall. Now, there was a situation with the pandemic where my my job was going to really well, it relocated me to North Carolina, but I didn't have to go. And so my house was on the market for probably. Fourteen days and several people looked at it and they all had concerns about what was next door to me. So I could see that that was starting to have an effect on the home value. So I'm just asking you, please consider consider this very seriously because it's affecting real people in the in the neighborhood, just because they they haven't come and spoken to us about it. And to be honest, I'm not the type of person that's going to go out there and be like, what are you doing? You know, stuff like that. I kind of trust in our our county and county officials. And so I'm leaving it in your hands and appreciate you let me hear me out. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Your testimony very much. OK, is there anyone else who has not spoken who would like to speak on this matter? OK, good. Well, with the applicant, like a few minutes for a bottle. As concerns on the fence, we would love not to do the fence and the buffer. It cost us $60,000 extra to do this fence in the buffer. So we would love to not have to do that. That's a requirement as a requirement from the from the city because of the two single families beside it. We would love not to do that. I understood. Yeah, I understood. How about the driveway that one of the Jason owners was curious about the configuration? Can you give me more details about that? Yeah, the driveway would be a concrete driveway, like you typically see on a single family residence house. So from the street, it would look like a single family residence house. The the actual structures themselves. We haven't finished design work on them yet, but we have to. It's not in a historical district and it's in the OVCC, I believe. The overlay, I think. I can't remember the letters, but it is something that. Yeah, so it does have to conform to the neighborhood on the looks of it. So we have been in talks with the city on that to get some preliminary floor elevations to them to prove the look of it. So it would match the area. It would be something that's basically a concrete driveway that we conform to city regulations, basically, yes, or whatever that is. About the disposal of the trash or dumpster area. What's the thought was? I think that was a really good question someone brought up. I hadn't thought of that. Our original plan or our plan would be to like we done on other property properties, we have the carts that they wheel out to the road. Say that one more time, Ben, on other properties like this, we've had it where they had the the carts, the trash can wheeling on trash cans that they take out to the curb. So they would be wheeling them down the driveway to the curb somewhere there. Correct. And we would love to narrow the driveway to, but that's also a requirement from the city on how wide it has to be. Is that with requirement? Is that for emergency services? It's for two way traffic. Not from that city. So that it's a street, not a driveway. James sort of thinking a lot of that may be a little bit of an issue. You know, I don't know how they're going to not be in front of the neighboring properties, trash cans. Yeah, that's something like you have to consider putting something in the bag that might be something that if we if we were to grant a motion in favor of this request, somebody might have to work in. That would be a problem. Yeah, we might have to work in something to do with that into into the motion. Because yeah, that would be a problem, you know, covered area that one I guess in fairness, I mean, you're just getting into the design of this site. Is that correct? Or do you have plans or we have plans to address them right now to get drawn up, we're waiting on some responses, I think from the city on the elevations to make sure it's good. But we are ready to start construction once we get a land disturbance permit. Sure. Did you all explore having any sort of agreement with either of the two properties to the north and south to come off of their parking lots? I mean, you're sort of wedged in there sort of an alternate. No, we have not been transitional buffers kind of limit us on where we can. We have to have that many trees and we almost really need that space to fit the trees based off city requirements of how much space you have to have for the tree roots and everything. If we could get rid of the transitional buffers and that would be an avenue we could explore, but with the tree requirements for the buffer zone, we're not able to accommodate all of that. It makes sense from a technical standpoint, but not from a practical standpoint. Again, we would love not to do the buffer in the fence, but it's a requirement that we have to do. I mean, I would definitely trade that off. Do we have any other questions? Not board discussion. Any questions for him? Do you have anything else you want to add for? We're going to move in. Let me ask a little question because this is kind of a unique with those fences being along the property line close to it. How far out do they come to Pulaski Street? They would come up to our property line. Okay. I don't have the measurement from how far the road sits back from from the property line, but it would go to the property. Okay. They just hope or they just come all the way out to the street. The eight foot fence. Yeah. They're a little short. They just sit right away, right? So I mean, you would have, you do have a site visibility triangle that you can't bring it all the way out because of the site visibility. You have to be able to see, you know, the pullout. So yeah, but it'll come out past the structure a little bit. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Well, we've heard the applicant testimony and some public input and then some rebuttal. So let's move into board discussion. Could I start? Absolutely. All right. Well, I'm trying really hard to stick with the criteria for variance requests. Yep. And so I'm looking down and I'm going, yeah, okay, fine. One and two and three are fine. But number four, I don't see how this applying these to things would effectively prohibit or unreasonably restrict the utilization of property because it could be single family. So that's one that we know that could be used as a single family property or two single family properties. The authorize the authorization of the variance will not be of substantial detriment to adjacent property or the public good. And the character of the zoning district where the property is located will not be harmed by the granting of the variance. Well, it's kind of hard to say that eight inches, eight feet, an eight foot fence on either side of these little tiny properties is not going to be a substantial detriment. And it's also, I mean, I think that the character of the zoning district would be harmed somewhat by this also. I mean, we're looking at the, we don't have a picture of the across the street people, but we had some testimony that those are, you know, houses and single family houses as well. And I'm a little concerned about that. I don't think that the variance is the minimum variance that would make possible the reasonable use of the land building or structure. Because as we know, we said the land could be used for a single family residence with a normal sized driveway just going down and you would have to have no walls on either side, no fences on either side, because it wouldn't be requiring any transitional buffer. And I don't, and I think arguably seven also it would be injurious to the neighborhood because I think like I say, an eight foot wall on either eight foot fence on either side is pretty scary. Looking and it's it's sort of a big spot into the into the neighborhood. So I'm a little concerned about that. And, you know, I think that there may be, there might be some ways around it, but I don't see them right now. And it really does seem like this is kind of not fitting in with the character of the, of the adjacent properties. You know, it's these lots have to be combined really to do much of anything because of their size. And I mean, it's an odd place for a single family dwelling. You go down, you go down the axis, you go down a little driveway. I know it is have two little houses in the back. Say something like that side by side or one big house or but if you have one big house for the driveway leading into it, on one side, you've got that fairly large apartment complex. And on the other side, you've got a smaller apartment complex townhomes across the street. You've got whatever townhomes there are. I just across the street. He said it was it was a single family. There's we we heard right, sir. That was single family. You live in a single family. They're connected. I mean, they're all their townhomes. Regardless what they are, my point is in theory, yes, certainly you could build a nice single family dwelling and have a big yard. But I think that's going to be a tough sell. I mean, it would be expensive to buy this property to combine these parcels where you can do that. And I just think you're going to have a hard time finding someone who wants to put their nice single family home right here in the middle of all these apartment complexes. Dick Harputley and put his his estate over there behind the tennis courts. I mean, people do it again. And then that's, you know, that's one example. And I'm sure you could. I just I think it my personal opinion is this an odd place for a single family. Dwelling and if it's not a single family dwelling, you're going to whoever develops it or if anyone is able to develop it, you're going to have to fight these same very issues that they're fighting, meaning the I suppose the alternative would be to for him to actually reach out to the which it appears that he didn't do to reach out to the next door neighbors on either side and see what if he could cut a deal with them and then you don't have that problem. Well, I mean, and that's we always recommend that that's good, but you don't have to do that. I mean, no, but you said, you know, they came. But if the alternative is to have to put up eight foot fence on either side, then our job is to say, whoa, that does that does seem detrimental. Either you talk to these people and see if you can do it. So you don't have to put the eight foot fence because you're no longer in a transitional situation or admit that in fact putting eight foot fence. I mean, I wouldn't want an eight foot fence next to my house and I'm on a slope. So it wouldn't be the end of the world. I feel like there's a creative solution somewhere else that like this doesn't have to be the only solution. Like come back and ask a different question. Okay, well, let's let's ask staff. Is there any way that they can move forward their development without an eight foot fence? What do they do? They approach us for a variance for a fence height or something? Yes, that would then have to be a variance to the landscaping standards to the buffer yard, buffer transition yard standards. That seems like a much better choice. Well, you know, really we had, we had both of the adjacent property owners and I didn't hear anything from them about the fence. I think they were confused about it. Yeah, it's the first time I think I've seen it. I've seen some of the work that this, the applicants done, they build good stuff, but the access is funky here and the two eight foot fences are funky. I'm concerned about the trash. I think the development itself will be nice and add and be good for the neighborhood. It's just the accesses. You're gonna have two curbs right beside each other. Yeah, I feel like there is a better way to do it while still achieving the development. But I don't know if we, does he own the property or can applicant come back up here? Sure. If he hasn't closed already, it's closing in the next couple of days. Okay. I think he has already closed. Okay. I mean, I almost wonder if we all did. It seems to me that what you could be doing is having the deferral is a much better option. I would think we're all concerned would be the variance on the landscaping standards, which is what they were saying, instead of having to put up an ugly eight foot fence, you don't put up an eight foot fence, you do something else. Is that an option to have a variance for the traditional buffer? That's what they said, but you have to grant a refile. So it would be a different request. What he's asking about would be, is there the potential that they could come back with a similar type request, but also include a variance or a fence or some sort of creative, better landscape buffer? Is that an option for the applicant? I mean, yes, they could change the request, come back with a new request for the buffer transition yard. What would that look like? It'd be the similar request, what you're asking for, and then they would, in addition, ask for a variance for the buffer requirements or could they work with you all to figure that out? Is that how that would? Yeah, I think we could work with them on that. And I missed part of the conversation, sorry, but were you discussing deferring it or? I mean, it was mentioned. And I guess the reason being is it seems like a lot of people are hung up on the fence, so we're trying to figure out a way to not have that fence, basically. Right, it's the fence, it's the width. And I think the trash was valid, too. Yeah, yeah. It's not just the fence. And that's why we discuss it. Four discussions, four, so you know. You got any thoughts, man? No, I was just saying, it wasn't just the fence. Mm-hmm. Yeah, what do you think, Warsaw? It's not a requirement. That's right. It helps to avoid getting to a situation like here where it's sprung old people, that's right. Mm-hmm. To come back, maybe to come back. Mm-hmm. To give them the opportunity. All right, do some revision. So you would like to see them, as we meant to rework their request to address some of these issues and then come back before us? Absolutely. I mean, Captain, it sounds like you would, too. Oh, definitely, definitely. I think the fence is a huge problem for me. Let me just... Mm-hmm. And I think there are workarounds of various sorts. I feel like the basic use of the property isn't wrong, but there's something about the way that getting to it is just causing a lot of problems. Right. And just going back to my property law, admittedly, what, in 1981, but thinking about, I mean, I think you do have the possibility of those alleyways are still dedicated to public use. So they could be vacated, that there's a process to have that done in South Carolina, contacting a good lawyer. There's a number of options that might prevent not having to have such a wide fence, a wide driveway, even if... I mean, that alleyway is too small. They don't own that alleyway. I think... No, I know they don't own... Gene, I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I know they don't own the alleyway. The public owns the alleyway. The public has the right of way to that alleyway if I understand looking at the map. I didn't look at... But the public owns that. And it would be possible, I think, to get in touch with, I don't know, Robert Anderson, whoever, streets, whatever, the city and potentially develop that alley so that it is drivable. Because it's actually an alleyway. We have alleyways, I mean, Elmwood Park. We've got alleyways in University Hill. There's not enough width in between Mr. Mark and Mr. Roy's James's property for a street. No, no, no, no, I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. Okay, if you go... If you look at the plat, can I get the plat that's the city, you know, a certain company that we know? Yeah, that. I'm looking there and you see, it says Morris Alley Unopened. Right. And that runs south of the house. And then you come along and you've got something. It's an alley. I mean, it must be at... It's not on that plat, it's not showing the structure right there. Yeah, that's where that parking lot comes in. I mean, that alley is smaller than that driveway. Well, I mean, yeah, I realize it's smaller than that, but it's an alley, it must be large enough. I don't know. The other possibility would be the alleyway running to Richland Street. But what I was saying earlier, Catherine, is we'd need to be careful with this. I mean, we have an applicant with a request in front of us for property on a specific request in front of us. I understand. You can bring up the point, which you did, but we don't need to stray too far into trying to tell them to acquire this alleyway. And I mean... Oh, I understand. We don't necessarily need to try to fix it for them. I'm saying there are other options for them that they might wish to explore with competent professional property lawyers or whatever. I'm just suggesting that there are other options. And one of the options that we do have, whether you like the idea or not, is that there are alternative uses for this property if they don't put a townhouse development there. There are potential alternative accesses. There are potential alternatives to the sides really killing the two houses on either side, destroying the property values on either side with an eight foot fence. And it may be that they modify the landscape. They have a landscaping modification variance instead that might mean that they don't have to put a fence up, which I think the neighbors probably would greatly prefer. Okay. If I could just offer one thing. I just want to put this out there that there is a mechanism for alternative compliance for landscaping that's approved at the staff level. And if the fence was the only issue here, there is the possibility that a condition could be placed regarding working with staff to come into alternative compliance, have an alternative compliance for a landscaping plan that would fit with that. That's very helpful. And if not, if we were not able to work through that, the applicant could then come and request a variance on the landscaping. So, you know. I like that. There's other things we've been talking about here that are in play, but with that being the case, it doesn't really sound like they need to reapply and request a variance for this fence situation. Yeah, how would that look? Would we just almost deny the one that would work? Somebody would carve it into a motion. We would place a condition. A condition. If you were wanting to approve, you would approve with that condition that they go back and meet the requirements for alternative compliance. Hang on a second. No, not you. Sorry. Sorry. No. I know there's an alternative on that buffer. The other issue is that their driveway has to be 21 feet. We only have 22.4 feet. So, that only leaves us less than a foot or so on each side of our driveway to do a buffer. That's why we chose defense, because it was the least invasive on the sides of what we had to work with. So, we don't have enough room to do a shrub wall or anything like that. No, I think what we're discussing is perhaps saying you don't have to put anything, that nothing, to me, the way I'm looking at it is nothing is better than an eight foot wall. Nothing. Well, the city may have something to say about that, too. Yeah, I mean, if the city is fine with that, we would be very happy. You know, the applicant would be fine with that. Well, I understand that, but it sounded to me like if I understood hope correctly, it is an option that you might be willing to approve it without offense. I mean, a driveway is just considerably more appealing if I were in this, having a concrete driveway coming next to me with no offense is more appealing than one with offense. If you will, hang on. Let's get Hope to tell us one more time what she said. I want to speak exactly what I said. Instead of applying for a variance, it's called alternative compliance. So, it's just a different mechanism for providing a somewhat alternative landscaping plan for a project. And I would envision that as the applicant works with the city to come up with a mutually agreeable plan. We don't know what it's gonna look like. It doesn't matter. It was out of our hands. It'd be between the applicant and the city. That's correct. The city staff makes the final decision on that. Okay, so that's... I don't know if that's granted or not. So, it sounds like it's sort of dovetailing in because that's to go back to what is actually being asked in the variance is the width is part of it. And so... No, no, the variance, as I understand it, is to put a fence. You have to put the fence. They want to be, they want, I'm sorry. They want to add a parking space, which I don't think any of us have a problem with. And there's a problem with the fact that there's no, the width is not adequately wide to transition between other uses because they're single families on either side, they're having to request them very narrow width. And because the driveway or paved area has to be 15 feet from a protected lot. Right, so I guess what I'm thinking through is when we're talking about sort of an alternative compliance, you know, part of your concern was to have your buffer on that north side was why you couldn't connect to the other. That was part of it, yes. The third. But I think the plan would have to still include some trees, I would think. For the alternate landscaping plan, we still have to probably do the trees. Typically the developer would present an alternative plan that would provide some landscaping, of course, and just not necessarily. Right, but me and the code 100%. If your driveway gets narrow or due, then do you have room for more trees there that you don't want to have, you know, as Catherine said? I don't think the problem is the width of the driveway is not something that we're trying to get changed. That's the requirement. It's that a driveway cannot be within 15 feet of a protected lot. So both of those single family homes are considered protected lots. Our driveway can't be 15 feet. So if we're 15 feet from each, that's 30 feet. That's over the width of our property. Our property's only 22 feet long. Or why, I'm sorry, yeah. All right, thank you, James. Thank you. We'll continue this discussion. Okay, so as we move forward, so to me, that kind of tables the, realistically deferring this for, well, deferring it for the fence reasons. I guess we could, not we could, the applicant could defer his request if he wanted to take time to meet with the adjoining property owners. But it's my opinion. I didn't hear a whole lot of negativity from the adjoining property owners. They testified in front of us, they had their chance. And can he say, he wants to raise it? Public input is close. Public input is close. I did hear some concerns. And some of it was just that they were baffled by what was even going to go on. Well, yeah, I mean, that may be the case, but there wasn't a strong negative reaction from the adjoining property owners, at least in my opinion. So, I mean, we can't defer it. They can defer it at any time. They can walk up here and defer it, or we can continue to deliberate and make a motion and take a vote. I mean, I'm under the opinion that this works. I know it's not perfect, but I think it's an odd place, as I mentioned earlier, for anyone to construct a single family dwelling, I think you're going to end up with something like this or it's going to sit vacant, which that's not the worst thing in the world either. But if you have a development like this, anyone's going to have the same issue because of the extraordinary and exceptional conditions pertaining to the property, which is this lead in with, and they do not generally apply to other properties in the vicinity. So, as you can tell, my personal opinion is in favor of the request. And I think that you do have options as long as you had single family, you wouldn't have to have any transition whatsoever, and that there are people who look at it. But that's not what they're here asking us to do. Right, but the point that looking back to the criteria for variance request, I believe that there are other potential uses for the property, going down four, five, six, that you could do that would not require this and that there is substantial detriment to the properties on either side, and they haven't even had a chance to really process this very much because they're not people like Border Zoning Appeals members who are used to pulling up the packet and going through, they were just kind of wondering that came here to see what was going on, and they really haven't had much of a chance to process it, but I'm sort of looking out there and I see them kind of going, yeah, we are kind of having a bit of a problem with this. So, I think that what might be a better alternative would be a motion conditioned upon approving it so long as the fence is not required by staff. That alternative compliance is worked through that would not require a fence, such that staff would not require a fence. A fence, I could try to articulate that, but that was kind of late in the day. Well, yeah. Do you want a motion? You want me to try a motion? Well, we have established that thanks to the hope of bringing that in our attention, that yeah, that any motion, a positive motion to approve would work. Let me see what I can do. Let me see what I can do. Okay, go ahead. I move that we approve subject to an agreement, achieving an agreement with staff for alternative compliance that would not require the eight foot fence on either side. And in case that is not possible, then they would either have to reapply or we would deny. I'm not sure how you could translate that. Are we specifically talking about only the drive portion or are you also including the back? I think only the drive. I think he's having to use the... Pardon me? I think we should specify. Yeah, pardon me. There's also some other eight foot fences and so that's, are we saying... We're talking about the eight foot, the man, the eight foot buffer yard fence required for transitional yard between the, for transitional, between transitional uses for between, as a transitional buffer between protected uses. You're referring to the fences along the driveway? Correct, correct. On either side of the single family uses. Because that's what I was thinking. It's like I feel like there's a break like when you're looking directly between the properties, the no fence is the better solution, but when you get to the backyard of the hallway. Right, right. I see what you're saying. It doesn't mean it's an eight foot fence. Okay, so I'm referring to the only, to the extent that there's an eight foot tall wooden fence to be constructed running from, more or less, running from east to west along that section adjacent to the single family houses. Okay, all right, so we're still, okay, this is still discussion and we're gonna, we're getting there and we're gonna craft the... I think you have a motion now. That is not our motion yet, okay? So... It was a motion. Well, it's too vague, it took two minutes, so. All right, I move that. Hang on one second, hang on one second. John brought up a good point. We're still in discussion. John, please tell Catherine what you would like for her to work in her motion. I still want to work in something on the trash because they can't put, they can't blot the driveway with the trash. Agreed. So you got to be able to work the trash in. We're just looking for... That doesn't seem like a zoning thing. I mean, yeah, maybe not. That seems to be the outside of purview. You can make any condition that you would like, but do keep in mind that it has to be enforceable by staff, by zoning staff. Yeah, let's leave the trash, I mean, that's not, let's leave the trash out of it. All right. Okay, Catherine? I move that we approve only so long as staff is able to come up with alternative compliance plans, mutually satisfactory alternative compliance plans that do not require an eight foot tall wooden fence to be constructed adjacent to running east and west adjacent to the single family properties. So for staff, I mean, can we even do a motion like that only so long as? Why not? Because if it's... Good legal language. I mean, if it's, what she's saying in her motion is, if we can't get rid of the fence... Then the motion, then we deny the variance. Can we even do that? I'm not so sure that... Well, it would be approving with that condition, so... And if the condition fails, then you'd have to go back. So then if staff was not able to approve the alternative compliance plan at the staff level, then they would have to come back and request a variance. Yes. On that. That's an acceptable motion. Yes. Okay, all right. We have a motion, is there a second? Okay, we have a motion, a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motion passes. All right, thank you all very much. Do we want to do one for the parking? We need to do one for the parking. It's all in the same. It's all in the same. It's the same, yeah, it's the same case. Okay, is there any other business? No other business. Okay, all right, very good. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, all right, very good, Joel.