 Good afternoon to you. Here. Present. Present. Here. That's by our heads for just a moment of silence. Lord, for all that you've done, bless us and keep us all. We ask it in your name. Amen. American Men and Council, today's work session is for one City Council discussion item, the Development Standards Text Amendment, Stormwater Impacts. We have Ms. Christa Hampton, Planning and Development Services Director, as well as Ms. Dana Higgins, our Engineering Director. And I think they will collaboratively work on some opening statements and work through a presentation. Thank you, ladies. Thank you. Good afternoon. Today we're here as a result of our conversation from the text amendment regarding parking standards and landscape standards for redevelopment of existing sites. So today, our agenda, we are going to review the details of that text amendment, go over just the three parts of that. We will then, I'll turn it over to Dana to talk about the stormwater issue and the impacts of this amendment on that, and then we'll open it up for questions. So there are three parts of this text amendment that are impacted. It's a transitional buffer yard, and I will be describing what each of these are, a street protective yard, and as it relates to sites that are currently nonconforming with the existing ordinance and the landscaping related there, too. One thing we want to make sure people understand is that the buffers we are talking about are not the buffers related to stormwater. So, you know, a lot of our different ordinances, for instance, our building code, we'll talk about town homes, zoning, we'll talk about town homes. They're two different things. Similarly, when we're talking about buffers, it's about use, and it's not about the stormwater buffers. So those are not impacted by this code. The first part of the text amendment relates to transitional buffer yards, and just in layman's term, that's an area between two different uses of intensity. So it's intended to provide an area between, let's say, a commercial property and a residential property, or an industrial property and a lesser commercial property. So what this amendment does is exempt renovation or reuse of existing structures. So this isn't new construction. These are existing buildings, only where the buffer would require the reduction in the number of parking spaces in an existing lot. So a fairly narrow area, existing buildings, existing parking lot, the buffer in that area of the parking. So what this does not exempt is the entire buffer requirement. Only the vegetation that may be in that parking space that would cause the removal of that parking. All other requirements remain to include a fence. So if a fence were required, it will remain in that place. And I'll show you some examples. So in this one, this is over off of Sumter Street in the top section in the back, and I'll make sure I don't touch it because you know what happens with the smart board. In the back of this area would be required. You can see on the bottom of the slide that is where the vegetative buffer usually would be. If this building were redeveloped, which it was, the vegetation would not be required. However, a fence would be required in that location. Correct. So that used to be the freeze auto. Karen, you redevelop that. So because what would have happened, the vegetative buffer would have required the removal of all those parking spaces. So this amendment would relieve that requirement. However, an 8-foot fence would still be required. Can you go back to that? If they would have to remove this parking. Correct. So if they would have removed the parking, a parking variance would have been required. The one today, so I don't want to get confused with September. So September, I don't know the specific zoning of this classification, so I don't want to answer incorrectly. But more than likely, yes, sir. So Chris, I have a question. If the parking, if for some reason they had to, is there ever a situation where they would lose parking somewhere else and then still have to, this is what I envision that it means, you only have to, you only have this exemption or change if you would end up practically pulling up a parking space. Exactly. Is that the only time it applies? It's only when you are going to remove a parking space. In this instance, transitional buffer yards, so let's go through each one, but the one we're talking about right now, transitional buffer yards, the only way it's not required is if you're having to remove a parking space. And I will say, I think that the language here may need to be a little clearer because I think there are a couple of different interpretations of it. So it needs to be a little clearer so that there are no, it's just real clear with, because it was clear to me, but it wasn't clear to others. Right. And that's, I understand that there are folks who don't read it the same. The zoning ordinance gives the sole authority for interpreting the zoning ordinance to the zoning administrator. And I have spoken with her, Hope Hasty. She is of the same mind, and she can make a formal interpretation that is logged and thus establishing that fact, that it is only in that area. So it would make that clarification. But since we're still in a draft mode, we couldn't just clarify it in a draft mode. That is absolutely up to council's prerogative. I mean, I would, I would rather not have to put her in that position if we're still in draft phase. But it would need to go back through Planning Commission. State law requires anything, any change that was not reviewed by Planning Commission to be re-reviewed by Planning Commission. So that, that's just the step that would need to occur. Okay. My question. You first. Is that contingent upon? Especially, is that contingent upon? The interpretation is up to the zoning administrator. So she, she... It will ultimately feed into... So the Planning Commission would have to review any changes to this text. If you were to make a change from what has already been reviewed by Planning Commission, it would go back only to Planning Commission. It wouldn't go to the Board of Zoning Appeals, just to Planning Commission. Just a quick question. So renovation and reuse. What kicks it, kicks this out as far as addition. Is there any addition? Let's say it's a restaurant adaptive reuse building and they want to do exterior commercial fridge, you know, connected to the building. Does any addition to the square footage boot this, this policy? It would, we have in the last part of it, provision about additions and when non-conforming site features have to come into play and it's a, it's a sliding scale depending on the value invested. Okay. And actually with, with regard to additions, it's the amount of the addition. So 25%, 50%. What I, when I was speaking with our land development planner who reviews landscape plans, we have had a handful of projects ever have to come into compliance due to expansion. Right. It is a rare exception. It was based off of a construction percentage value, not the addition to the four walls. There's two. There's one that's based on construction value, which is the, the one that we'll talk about in a little bit, but then there's also an expansion. Okay. Size. So there's two different thresholds. Gotcha. Thanks. So here we are. The, this is Spotted Salamander. So the red area, these are two actually different projects, two developments. One is the Spotted Salamander to my right and the one in the middle here is an office building, but those three properties are all residential. So this would exempt from the vegetative buffer if there were to be a redevelopment of the Spotted Salamander as well as this building here, it would exempt the vegetative buffer. As you can see down below, there's a little kind of a screenshot. Street view to show where, however, a fence would still be required. And this is in a historic district. So obviously the fence would need to be reviewed in that way, but additionally, that area there behind would need a fence. You know, I haven't done a scientific analysis, but I ventured to say that's accurate. Yes. All right. Street protective yard. The area between the street and the parking lot, it has not come into play in our downtown districts that have zero lot lines. So most of the time you have a building there instead of a parking lot. But the street protective yard is that area between the parking lot and the street. And this, again, would exempt renovation or reuse of an existing structure only in those areas where the parking space is impacted. So if parking space is not impacted, the street protective yard is required. Here is an instance that we came up with. This is off of Sims, off of Divine. You can see right there in the front, there are two parking spaces adjacent to the right of way in the red where it would not have that street protective yard that would normally be required. However, in this example it shows it does not exempt you from everything, that transitional buffer yard that we just talked about because you have a residence right down to the bottom. It would be a modified one, but it would be required there between those properties more than likely an exit fence. The final piece is nonconforming site features. And what this is, is an element of the property that does not meet the standards. So landscaping for a current site, nonconforming means it has parts of it that doesn't meet. So let's say you have a large parking lot without any trees in it. What this amendment does is to existing parking lots and sites, it increases the threshold at which the site does not meet current standards, must make partial improvements. So it used to be at 50%. There were some improvements that you had to make to an existing lot. This has bumped it up to 75%. And then at the 75%, previously it required full compliance with the landscape ordinance. This is just the partial compliance. So again, if you had, if you were investing in a building more than 75% of its value, it would require that the entire site come up to current standards with regard to landscaping. At 50% previously, you could do some of the items. So we're eliminating that partial at 50%. And at 75%, now it's partial. Does that make sense? I know I've said it a couple different ways to try to get it through. Could you give us an idea of the difference between the partial versus what those specific items may be that makes a difference? Sure. So we've already talked about transitional buffer yard. So we know what that is. So that would be the buffer yard, which may be anywhere from 15 to 30 feet with or without a fence. The street protective yard, the area between the street and the parking lot, as well as what's called interior plantings. So as when you see new parking lots, you see that most of them have tree planting areas within them. Older lots do not, generally speaking. So it would require that you put in those kind of interior parking planting areas within the parking lot. And I don't have a picture for that one, but there is an example, one of the stormwater examples that's two-notch and covenant that would show you kind of what that would mean, the Old Midlands Shopping Center. What are we trying to achieve with this? It's the same that what you have is a lot of times when you're redeveloping an existing structure coming into full compliance with the landscape code is a struggle because the lots are usually pretty tight. So all of these were a result of what council asked us to do which was look at how we can encourage redevelopment of our existing building stock. We've got redevelopment taking place. Currently they would not be required, I mean currently they would have to come into full compliance with the landscape ordinance. All of the standards. This amendment would, they would have to come into partial compliance. Screening, so they would not have to do interior, they would not have to do the interior plantings, those kinds of things, but they would have to come into partial compliance with the protective yard, with the buffers, and they would have to do any screening necessary of for instance dumpsters and those types of things. They would, yeah. But they would not have to come into full compliance which would be all of the other items. Well in some, in the smaller sites. I would just say we have a cost wise too. I mean I think one of the things that we should be doing as a city government is helping people improve the appearance of properties in our city. And you know, if I go to make my building look better or to make my company grow for me to have to in some cases lose parking amounts to where I now have to go rent parking places off site, it's just, again I think it contributes to the fact that we may not have quite the appearance renovations that we could enjoy around here. I mean we got great tree cover and it's a pretty city. We just need to modernize our building. We need to take the penalty away from making that investment and that's what interests me here. I know y'all saw one that we saw downtown where in that particular instance the owner spent a couple of million bucks renovating two empty buildings that were occupied by homeless folks and at the end of the day they had to plow up some four or five parking places behind their operation to landscape and then if they had to put the wall in it was going to cause some 13 or so more parking spaces which was going to result in them having to go rent places off site in order to meet the parking requirement and I just don't think that's what we really intended to do with this. Anna? I think, I mean I'm in agreement but I just think that the language that we have here is not clear because it says what I'm reading, from what I'm reading it's really not about the number of parking spaces but it's about the location of the parking spaces, right? Because if we're only talking about parking spaces that will be located where a buffer would be, is that correct? Correct. And so this really refers to what require a reduction in number of parking spaces in an existing parking lot. It's wide open and I think you really, I think that is why people are misinterpreting it because it's really not about the number of parking spaces. It's about where those parking spaces are relative to the buffer or the landscaping requirements. Am I not reading that right? Well that's where it says where the protective yard. So in that location where the protective yard would require the reduction in the number of spaces. So it's only in that spot where the protective yard or in the case of, in the case of the transitional buffer, I'm not sure which one you're looking at, where the buffer. So only in that where the buffer would require the reduction or where the protective yard would require the reduction. And those are defined areas Okay. I mean, I just think it can be cleaned up. But if y'all understand it. But it could be cleaned up. I was just, I was going to add, Ms. Harbert, I've been doing this for years. I still don't understand the way zoning codes are written. I mean, you almost have to have a degree in that to understand it. I don't think you can, you can actually, I don't think it's possible to make the code language itself easy to understand. And that's one reason why I think when we finish with all this is we'll try to put some brochures together that not just this, but all the lot of the things that we're doing just kind of put it more into layman's terms. But I tend to always call an expert when it comes time to interpret. Building code and the landscape code and the zoning code. Well, I think. Herbert and Mr. Till is sort of getting that same issue. And that is. Making sure. That language is clarifying. Making sure that it's simple. Of course, code and language. Code and language and planning language is not in any of our real houses. The person's on the outside. What is this? What is a non-conforming what is non-conforming features of persons outside of this? And one thing we do have to our one thing we do have a favor is this. The new code has definitions in the back that are actually written in English. So and a lot more definitions. Our previous code had very few and they were fairly obtuse. So it we do have that in our favor. So for instance, non-conforming is defined. We have a lot of good definitions. I think that's the deal. Ms. Hanson or Krista. Educating designers, landscape architects who understand this stuff. This is this is pretty pretty common practice. They would pick up on this pretty easily about exactly what the new I guess limitations are the new guidelines. Wouldn't you say? I would believe so. But just like any of the rest of our code, I mean, they they call our land development planner. So it's all about interpretation the back and forth presentation of that particular property. Do we or can we make sure to educate and market this when we roll it out to specifically, you know, architects, landscape designers, general contractors because we're talking about an inventory of buildings that are pretty affordable. But it does take a designer to come on board. There probably going to be some life safety upgrades to stuff like that. Just just to let them know, don't overlook this. I think we're going to have probably a couple dozen updates to the educate them on. But I think it's something they'll pick up quick on especially with that back and forth interpretation with our staff. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, I'm for the record, I'm real comfortable with the language that's there. I'm just saying all code language is difficult. And I just, I'm very comfortable with how it's written. But Joe, I can agree with that. But in my wheelhouse, I'm an expert. I shouldn't say an expert, but I'm an expert from Genesis to Revelation. I understand that theologically, but that these are other matters that a lot of us don't understand. And I think practically, practically, folks need to understand. Just to tell her those that he has a knowledge of those. Our wheelhouse is totally different. Folks on the other side are in the community. Their wheelhouse is totally different. Their understanding of what it means to talk about the issues that we're talking about these days. So if we could just put it in a diverse wheelhouse, where everybody understands what the issues and what the language really means. I think that's kind of why we have examples put together. And I think, you know, sharing those examples, obviously you can't change a language in the code because the code language is the way it needs to be legally. But what we can do is make sure that it's been suggested by this body already is sending out information and showing pictures of examples to those the folks and making that readily available. So there's no question. And I think that's probably the proper way to do it at the appropriate time. Mr. DeBall. Chris, my hang up on this discussion is I think it's still a link to the discussion we're going to have in September on the 7500 Fairfield Group. In your opinion, are they linked? Talking about parking in this one and talking about parking in the other. Is that the only thing? It is. I don't believe there's a substantive link except for that you're talking about parking spaces because what we're talking about in September are what is the city going to require for parking spaces? What we're talking about now is what parking spaces are there, whether they're required or not, and whether this landscaping will take them up. Because for instance, in some of these instances in the downtown area where it might be taken up, they're currently not required. So it really has no impact on that. Except for most of these are non-conforming with regard to the number of spaces they have currently that are required. Most of these places couldn't be built with our current parking requirements. I just want to, because I guess it's the lawyer in me, so please forgive me, just give this as a consideration really for the language to make it simpler. It says what require the reduction in parking space in an existing parking lot. I think just even the reference to a number of parking spaces gives, because then someone might say well it's not a whole parking space, it's half a parking space. And you get into those kind of discussions. So I think even just putting the word number makes it slightly confusing to people, but what you're really saying is the reduction in any parking space. Within that area. Within the required number. I don't think it's about the number. It's any. And I think the number of parking spaces would be what is what may be throwing folks off. You can see the difference. Yeah. Because you don't care if it's a tenth of a parking space. Well in some instances you can, if that parking space will still meet standards, like let's say it's an 11th parking space and it's, and you just need two feet to get, you can, that can still be a parking space and you can still put the landscaping in. But yeah, I hear what you're saying. Site specific. Yeah. But it is any. You are, you're correct. It could go, as I've heard lawyers say before, it could go either way. You could argue it from either side. So either in the number or any. At 475 an hour they'll tell you that. That every dime. You know, I'm open to counsel's pleasure if they wish to make some language to make it more terrifying. We're, we're happy to, to work with you on that. But do y'all, y'all see what I understand is saying the number of parking spaces and we really don't care about the number of parking spaces. You care about the reduction of parking space period. And I could see someone arguing. Well what's, you know, in the number, how many numbers? It's not a full parking space. So I don't have to, I don't have to, I don't have to comply with it. I just, but you know, I don't have to implement it if y'all want to. But that's where the interpretation of staff will come in. And that would be hubs, correct? Yes, sir. I think it makes it more difficult for staff, but I will leave it there. So would this be retroactive? Like if somebody go back that had to, let's say, put in the curb cuts along the buffers and the, this was the other word, the words we're talking about here. No, because that would make it not more nonconforming. I mean, it's, it's currently nonconforming. So I can't go back and say, well I did this three years and I'm going to tear all that up. You can't make something more nonconforming. Okay. I'm going to make sure. We have plenty of that already. Thank you, Krista. I'm going to turn it over to Dana. Ms. Higgins. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. One of the request was to look at the stormwater impact. And today we're going to talk a little bit about stormwater just to give you a little background before I get into the calculations. Rainfall data is published by NOAA and DHEC makes it available in their BMP manual. They have it over many different return frequencies. This is the chance of a storm happening in one given year. It ranges from one year frequency to a hundred year frequency. Basically a one year storm has the chance of happening a hundred percent in one year. A hundred year storm has about one percent chance. You just basically take the number, divide one by the number. So a two year storm is about a fifty percent chance. Today we're going to talk about the ten year frequency. That's about a ten percent chance of a storm happening in a given year because that's what we require our consultants to design by. Pretty rare. And this data is gathered, I understand, over about a forty-five year average. So the information is provided over the duration of a twenty-four hour duration. That's pretty redundant. And for Richland County the amount is five point three inches. So those are the numbers that we're working with today when I present the storm water information. We also felt like it might be easiest to show you the volume of water that is impacted over a twenty-four hour duration. So the volume is actually calculated based on the rainfall data, the area that's contributing, the land cover, which is grass would be pervious, and impervious would be like pavement, the slope and the length of the watershed contributing. So any questions before we get into the, okay, I brought my hydrology book in case anybody needs to deep dive into this. We have four examples today. So the first example we're going to talk about is actually the Jim Moore site, which we have a resident on Marion who I've talked to and actually was very interested in the site. This particular project, they are not going to be doing any demolition of existing structures and not impacting the parking lot, or they are demoing, I'm sorry, the existing structures and they are demoing the existing parking lot. They are not renovating anything. So they are going to actually have to come into full compliance. This text amendment does not apply to this. They will have to fully comply with our existing landscape ordinance. And what would be the full requirement for people such as myself? That would be the interior plantings, the street protective yard, the buffer requirements. Yes, pre and post have to equal. That's right. Quantity, they have to control their quantity. That's exactly right. Okay, so this actually does impact Cotton Town, so we felt like this was a really great example because they will have to come into full compliance. Our next example is the Midas property on Bull and Gervais. That's a great point. Thank you for making that. So the Midas property, we took a look at the existing conditions on the left and we have a lot of impervious area. The condition on the right shows everything in red is bringing the site in full compliance, which is what they were contending with. They did go for some variances, but we just felt like this was a good example to show what we would not be requiring in the future based on this text amendment. So what you see in the red, they would not be required to do the street and buffer yard requirements except for the fence. So because it's all impervious now, there is no additional impervious that this text amendment is going to create. It's actually not going to adversely impact in creating more stormwater. It's actually just going to, there's going to be a lost opportunity to reduce the stormwater impervious area. So in order to look at the calculations from a stormwater standpoint, we took a look at the volume of water for the 10-year storm over a 24-hour period. And there was around 93,200 gallons. So if the ordinance was implemented and this text amendment did not go through, there would be about a 2.4% reduction in stormwater. So it would be around 91,000. Example number three. Example number three is a bank located at Park and Lady. Is that correct? So this actually has a street protective issue. They have an existing parking lot and they are looking at renovating their structure. So the text amendment would not require them to install the street protective yard that you see on the right side. This is no new impervious. It's already there. But we would not require them to dig up the impervious. So the volume of water before is 314,000 gallons. If we had them put in the landscape buffer, it would be 306,000 gallons, which is about a 2.5% reduction. And our example number four, which y'all have already talked about a little bit, is the covenant and belt line. Two-notch, excuse me, covenant and two-notch parking lot. So this particular example, existing conditions on the left, proposed conditions on the right, with the text amendment, everything in red would no longer be required, which is what Christa was talking about with the tree plantings within the parking lot and the buffer area. So the loss of the opportunity of removing the impervious, it's about 1.9 million gallons before it would be 1.855 with about a 2.5, 2.4% reduction. So we would be losing that opportunity. We also wanted to talk a little bit about our permits. There's been some confusion over whether this violates our permits. So we just kind of want to talk about two important ones that have been discussed. We have an MS4 permit and a wastewater consent decree. So our MS4 permit is municipal separate storm sewer system. And this permit was issued to us back in January of 2010. We are actually required to monitor our water quality and quantity within the city limits. We also monitor for pollutants, and that's through our stream gauges, but also on construction. Make sure there's no sediment that goes into the catch basins. And we also try to educate the public. We try to do the blue thumb landscape to let herbicide and pesticides are discharged properly. And this ordinance does not violate, this text amendment does not violate that permit. We also have a wastewater consent decree that was issued in 2014. Early on we did have some supplemental environmental projects that were storm water related. And that work was done in Rocky Branch, Smith Branch, and Gills Creek. And those were creating watershed management plans. We did a stream cleanup. MLK was one of those projects. So those were done back in 2015. But both of those, the text amendments will not violate. So going back to any of the example slides, I want to say this back to you in normal English. Basically what we're saying is the impact of this new text amendment would only impact about 2.5 percent of storm water drainage. Is that what you're saying? Yes, ma'am. That's exactly what we're talking about. It actually, we took different examples and they all landed around 2.5, 2.4 percent between the different properties, no matter what the size. On this particular one, again, and I know no one in here is an estimator. But in our sense, and Will, you've got more background just than anybody, if we required the purchaser and redeveloper of that shopping center to put those trees in the parking lot and do all that, would that deal have ever happened, would that site have been renovated? In your opinion? Yes. I'm just curious, what's a lot of them? Thank you. That most people are using, which is an anomaly, I think, with four and a half inches in less than 50 minutes. I'm not sure there is a system design that can handle that volume coming in every direction. But as we continue, and I know y'all are doing a ton of storm water projects everywhere from Rosewood to Shandon downtown. I know coordinating with DOT, it may be good for us just to remind people and share the information of what all the other projects we're doing and some of the innovative things that we're doing to try to handle some of the storm water that's out there. Can we go and give it to you now? You do not have to give it to us now. I wasn't sure if I was requested. No, but if you could provide that for everybody, I think it would be helpful just to keep everybody up to date. Absolutely. I'd like to share it with constituents as well. We actually have a CIP on our GIS that's very interactive, and we'd love for you to keep it up to date monthly on what the progress on the construction and we also have it outward facing the public. We actually just implemented a customer portal for lodging complaints or anything questions. Maybe if you could share the link with us, that would be good to share out. Absolutely. That would be very helpful. I just have one more question for clarification. So most of what you showed is about a 2.5, 2.4 differential on just that particular site. That's correct. And if we're fortunate as a city, we might see 15, 20 of these redevelopment projects in a year. We're fortunate. Correct. Probably would be less than that. So if it's just around a 2.4, 2.5% on some 10 or 15 parcels in Columbia, the global impact on stormwater in the city of Columbia is negligible. Correct. Anybody have any follow-up or any other questions? Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, ladies. So we have Madam City Manager, I think we got a 15-minute break before we start upstairs. We were going to... I was going to seek clarification, so it's scheduled for second reading on the 16th, and that's still the will of the council. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thanks. I had mentioned to Ms. Wilson, new business and work session, we've got some suggested very simple editing to our surplus property policy. I was going to, if it's okay, take a few minutes and just kind of run through this so everybody's aware of it. So if there's any issues, we could get it on the agenda for the first reading, perhaps on August the 16th meeting. The next meeting. I was going to say, are we going... Well, we don't have new business in the work session, sir, but I thought this evening... I mean, the council can do that now. I guess if you want to talk about it, it was a notice for the work session. It's on you have new business in the council meeting. Right. When I had sent it around, I talked about the work session, but... Well, I think the email referenced it, but I guess it was also talking about the new business from the evening. Meaning, maybe I misunderstood. I mean, we don't have new business on this agenda if it's okay with the city attorney to talk about it now. We have copies of this for you to have then. It's fairly... This won't take me just a second. We're not going to vote on it. Just... We'll like to get a copy in everybody's hands. It's basically somewhere at some point, way back when we had a thing that said contiguous real property owners would be informed of the city's intent to sell the property, and they'd be given right-of-first refusal type things. We're dealing with some big properties and some big buildings, and these are just suggested edits that came from staff to modernize this as we look at some of our bigger properties. That's basically... I mean, can I just... What I would say is everybody just take a look at it. I would ask Ms. Wilson if we hear no objections to perhaps put it on the agenda for the next council meeting. Not today, but the next one. I can't say that. You can. I think if you're adding... Like we discussed, if you're adding it to new business this evening, then it's going to go through the process. So that's fine. I mean, you're just doing it now, I guess. We're just trying to follow the process, sir. Yeah. We just suggest tonight maybe it's just to go on the agenda. Okay, that's fine. I thought we did that to refer stuff to committee. No, yeah. Just so it can go on the agenda. We want to make sure that city manager doesn't have any announcements or anything she needed to make before we... I didn't know if you had anything that you wanted to share before we break before tonight. Okay? Just making sure. Okay.