 Everyone turn their cell phones and PDAs to the silent or vibrate mode. The administrator will now proceed with the roll call. Good evening, Mr. Tupper. Here. Ms. Mendel. Here. Mr. Dolphin. Here. Mr. Rates. Here. Mr. Kohn. Here. Mr. Stigemeier. Here. And Mr. Frost. Here. We have quorum. Thank you. I'd like to briefly review the meeting format. Applicants with requests before the Planning Commission are allotted a presentation time of 10 minutes. This time should include but is not limited to an overview of the project, case history, and any pertinent meetings held regarding the request. This time also includes all persons presenting information on behalf of the applicants, such as attorneys, engineers, and architects. This time limit does not include any questions asked by Planning Commissioner staff regarding requests. Members of the general public are given the opportunity to address their concerns in intervals of two minutes. The administrator has a timer and will make presenters aware of when their time has expired. The Planning Commission reserves the right to amend these procedures on a case-by-case basis. The Consent Agenda. The Planning Commission uses the Consent Agenda to approve non-controversial or routine matters by a single motion and vote. Examples of such items include approval of site plans, annexations, and street names. If a member of the Planning Commission or the general public would like to discuss an item on the Consent Agenda, then that item is removed from the Consent Agenda and considered during the meeting. The Planning Commission then approves the remaining Consent Agenda items. The administrator will now read the Consent Agenda. Your Consent Agenda this evening consists of the approval of the November 5, 2018 minutes and five annexations in comprehensive plan map amendments with zoning map amendments. These consist of item number two, which is 908 Oakland Avenue. Item number three, which is 1124 South Ott. Item number four, which is 1315 Basil Street. And item number five, which is 112 Silo Court. Do any Commission members or guests today wish to have items on the Consent Agenda removed and placed on the regular agenda? I'd like to ask for a motion to approve the Consent Agenda. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion to approve the Consent Agenda as presented. We have a second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Anyone oppose? Consent Agendas approved. That's going to bring us to the end. We will now proceed with the regular agenda. That's going to bring us to item number one, which is S Plan 2018-004, which is 2440, 2484 Forest Drive, 1513, 1519 McDuffie Avenue, 2401 through 2501 Washington Street, 1400 through 1522 Lincoln Street, 1503 through 1527 Garden Plaza, and 1505, 1526 Garden Plaza. And this is the Gonzales Gardens redevelopment project. It contains multiple parcels, totaling about 15.56 acres, and is bounded north by Forest Drive, east by McFadden Avenue, south by Washington Street, and west by Lyon Street. Garden Plaza, which runs directly through the development, is probably owned right away, but city maintained. And the entire project is zoned RG2. The applicant is proposing a group development, which will contain various housing types. There are eight single-family residences along McDuffie Avenue that have already been permitted as those lots is on an existing street, and which is titled Phase 1 of the development. The remainder part of the property will be developed into 126-unit multi-storey apartment building in the associated parking. There's also duplexes, town home style residences, as well as quadruplexes. There will be 519 off-street parking spaces, whereas the applicant obtained a variance through the board is owned in appeals, which would allow them to provide 457. There are sidewalks throughout the development, landscaping on the exterior, and sidewalks as well. The applicant has completed a traffic impact study. And the applicants, I believe, are present and can go into more detail about that in that case. Before the applicants, any question for staff from the members? OK, if you'll state your name, please. I'm Julia Prater from the Columbia Housing Authority, and I have our civil engineer, our architect, and our developer here with us. You, Jonathan, pretty well summed up the plan that we're asking for. And of course, the application includes our landscape plan, stormwater plan, and the architectural plans for the buildings we propose to put on the site. And we have reviewed the staff comments, and we don't have any concerns about the staff comments. So we certainly accept those recommendations. Any questions for the applicant? Thank you. This is on a forest drive across from Providence Hospital. Yes, the former Gonzalez Gardens site where we demolished the old Gonzalez Gardens. And your traffic impact study was OK? Yes, sir. Because we are proposing a realignment of Lyon Street, the SCDOT and the City of Columbia wanted to see a traffic impact study on how what the impact of that would be. And of course, I think everybody's in agreement it would improve that intersection because it's pretty bad, right, you know, where you turn on that light, right, it was right by the fried chicken place, just as you went through the light at Millwood. So we think it would be a much better alignment here and the traffic study did come from that. Thank you. Do any other guests want to come speak on this? All right, I'd like to ask for a motion, please. Mr. Chair, I'd like to make a motion that we approve the site plan for the Gonzalez Gardens Project and Forest Drive. I have a second. Any further discussion? Mr. Ways, is that with staff comments? With staff comments. If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Anyone oppose? Motion's approved. Your next item this evening is a zoning text amendment for 1600 Gervais Street, 1616 Gervais Street, 1620 Gervais Street request to rezone from a C3DD to a C4DD. And Ms. Bailey, our zoning administrators here to answer any more detailed questions. And I believe the applicant's also here. Any commission members have questions for staff? I think you clarified one that the difference between C3 and C4 is 70 feet is the maximum height in C3. Unlimited height is unlimited, obviously, in C4. But parking, you go to the parking one more time. There's not a difference in parking between C3 and C4. The main difference is a little more allowed use-wise in C4, but it also changes density and height. C3, the maximum is 75. C4 is unlimited. So parking, the city center overlay has a parking reduction that comes with it. It can be up to 50% for off-site parking within 400 feet. So if there's a parking garage or there's on-site parking, you can count towards it, but they have to show that in any kind of video. OK. Any other questions for staff? Are there any guests who would like to come up? Is the applicant here, first of all? My name is Gene McDonald, and I'm with HED Architects. And I'm here with Brad Bennett from Chinatoss Development. And the main purpose of this rezoning request on our part is to essentially give us more flexibility with the C4 classification as opposed to the C3 classification. The current C3 classification limits us to five stories and height, which the footprint that we currently have at Jervaine Pickens is, we believe, too limiting in terms of height with five stories. We don't know exactly how high we would be right now. We're going through a multitude of studies right now to really understand it. Right now, we're looking at a mixed-use scenario that would involve studio, one bedroom, two bedroom, and three bedroom apartments, potentially. No four bedroom apartments. And this process, we're hoping to sort of kick this off, have the flexibility with the C4 zoning and be able to work with the city and the neighborhood and the university and others to make this a successful project. Thank you. Thank you. Hold on. Any questions for the applicant? I just have one quick question. I mean, it's been suggested to us that the proposed uses can be student housing. Can you share with us whether or not that's about your case? We see this as open, mixed-use housing in general. Typically, with student housing, you would have a four-bedroom unit in that ratio, which is more indicative of student housing. So are you the developer? Do you do anything for young professionals, or is it strictly student housing? So what attracted us to this site is its walkability to the Main Street District, the VISTA five points, the CBD, it really is part of the core area. And this is something that renters of all ages and backgrounds are looking for that type of walkability and accessibility to amenities on the ground floor, et cetera. As Gene mentioned, we're primarily going to be looking at studios 1, 2, and 3. So you can't do this in a C3 zoning? That's correct. Thank you. Any other questions for? Just to clarify, you could do it under C3 zoning. You just couldn't do it at the height and the flexibility that you want. Is that correct? You can do it under C3. So you could do something at C3, but to make this an economically viable project in development, the flexibility C4 allows us to do that and explore the color height above five stories. And this footprint, the size and the perimeter of this footprint, I think it's difficult to make this, on their part, a financial product. How many stories are you thinking? We do not know at this time. Have you met with the stakeholders in the neighborhood and the university to discuss your plans at this point? So we've reached out to the mayor. We've met with city staff. We reached out about a week and a half ago to the neighborhood. And there was some miscommunication. Met with them today. Although once you get the C4 zoning, you really won't need. I think to make this a successful project, it has to be successful for the city. Clarify that just with the rezoning, it's not project specific. Whatever project, if it were to be rezoned, whatever project were to come here, would most likely trigger site plan review, definitely design review with DDRC. So there will be further review for anything that does come to be at this point. But you wouldn't be able to control what the height was if it's C4, right? Correct. There would be nothing to cap that. Any other questions from anyone? Thank you. I'd like to ask if there are others who would like to come forward to come forward now. Good evening. My name is John McGill. I'm on the Executive Council of the University Hill Neighborhood Association. And as one of the gentlemen just told you, we met with the developers this afternoon earlier. We asked them, what are your plans? What are you going to do with this site? They told us, and this is a verbatim quote, we don't really know what we are doing. We asked them how many units they were going to build. They couldn't or wouldn't tell us. They clearly want to be able to build a high-rise building here. They have said that the 75 feet is not sufficient. We in the neighborhood are concerned that we already have, we believe, an overpopulation of student accommodations in the area. Weekends, these students disrupt our neighborhood at night. Sometimes during the week as well. The last thing we want to see is a high-rise student development. If you Google this development company, Trinitas, you will find that all they do is student apartments. They don't do mixed use. They don't do professional developments. So the neighborhood is adamantly opposed to permitting this change in the zoning. Thank you. Thank you. Let me ask staff a question, please. We got this kind of late on Friday. And so usually I write out and take a look at things on the map that we're looking at right now. Where is the residential? Where is the University Hill neighborhood? University Hill is essentially on the map that's on the screen or the zoning map, which is the next map. It's basically south, or at the bottom of your page. So University Hill goes, essentially, Gervais, Senate Street, over to the railroad track that borders five points. And then it goes south to Blossom. And then it has a jagged line where it meets the University on the Westerline. Please come forward if you'd like to speak. Actually, the CCN boundaries, I'm sorry, Catherine Fenner, University Hill neighborhood vice president. The University Hill neighborhood boundaries are from the back of the properties that front on Gervais. So our official do. And then as he says, on down to the train tracks and down to Blossom, blah, blah, blah. And Robert Mills is the neighborhood that's the other side. Thank you. Would anyone else like to come forward? Of course. How can you miss me when I won't go away? I mean, I understand that this is just the first bite at the Apple. But I believe as Counselor Mandel pointed out, you're giving away some leverage we have to try to get something that's more reasonable. When we spoke with them today, they didn't seem to think that there would be many cars there if they were renting to students, that they would all be using the SodaCap connector. Yeah. And they like the fact that there's this proximity to five points, which is exactly the problem we have. We already have a problem with the old high-rises in our neighborhood capstone in Columbia Hall. Those students walk through. They do not use their inside late night voices. They use their woohoo rebel yell voices. It's a real problem. The only high-rises in our neighborhood that are higher than the Clarion, which is C3, are the Heritage, which was being occupied in 74. And all of the 1960s, Columbia Hall and Capstone. So we do not have high-rises in our neighborhood. We have people who have spent a lot of money on low-rise buildings to maintain a beautiful historic neighborhood. The university spent a lot of money to upgrade, to put the annex behind McMaster School and spent a lot of time and effort to make that match the historic McMaster School. And these guys, when we spoke to them, said, for example, they have an issue with overhead power lines, and it's going to cost them a million dollars to bury it. Well, the station just down where the Greyhound station is put in, they buried their power lines. Basically, from what we can figure, they're trying to put the most program they can as cheaply as possible. And it's going to be in a very, we've got this beautiful law school. We've got the children's law office and the historic building. Rick Patel just spent a lot of money to upgrade the hotel, and then they're going to put some cheap housing there. We suffer an awful lot with students walking through our neighborhood going to five points late at night. I don't mind if they're going to class, that's fine. And we're really concerned that this is just going to set them up because you're not going to walk down Jervais Street to five points. It's crazy. You're going to walk through our neighborhood and you're going to walk back through our neighborhood. The fact that, on top of all of this, when you extend the city center partnership, city center design district, allows some release of parking, we already don't have enough parking. We need them to provide the parking that they need plus parking for their significant others or the guests and so on. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any other? I see we do. My name is Dan DiAlberto. I'm an attorney that works with the university from time to time. Just wanted to make a couple of points regarding the rezoning of the site. First is that university for about a year now has been working with city staff to consider what is part of your rezoning or your zoning rewrite that's going to be considered for five minutes later on tonight. The university has been working with staff on what's called an IUM zoning in that zoning rewrite. Institutional university and medical. And as part of that, that required zoning district, if we undertake that, that zoning district requires an IDP, which is an institutional development plan. As I mentioned, we've been working with your city staff to consider such a large undertaking, as you might imagine, that that would require effort on our part. First of all, your staff has been exceptional to work with through that process. We've had a ton of dialogue over the past year about the IUM zoning for the university, and that will be forthcoming at some point probably next year. And so we are very pleased to be undertaking those discussions with the staff. But I will say, though, that if we do undertake those efforts to obtain the IUM zoning and to do an institutional development plan for the university, I can tell you that this rezoning of this site would be wholly inconsistent with what we would put in front of you for your consideration for an institutional development plan that would encompass all 450 acres of the university downtown. Our master plan, as our architect will discuss, Derek Gruner will discuss momentarily, generally limits the height of building's new construction in the university to four to six stories. That's a decision we made over a decade ago to kind of build the character of the university in the area around the university at that height level. And that's what we would like to continue to maintain. The building that you see on the other side of the block here is the McMaster School of Art, which is a university building. Secondly, I just wanted to note that, although these parcels are designated SD3 in the land use plan. You'll notice that in the staff's writeup about this particular rezoning request, the SD3 is a land use designation, and it notes in there that it is for the city center. Well, if you look at the C3 zoning that this is designated right now, as noted earlier, that's a 75 foot height limit. And I wanted to be clear that under the new zoning code, that C3 would become GC zoning, which is general commercial, which also carries a 75 foot height limit. Thank you. Thank you. Just to clarify, I have a question. The university's stances that they are against this rezoning. That's correct. We are against the rezoning. We have obviously no problem with student housing. We like student housing. We have students, they need a place to stay, but we are really against the rezoning at bottom because of the height issue. My name is Derek Rooner, I'm the university architect with the University of South Carolina. Thank you for these couple of moments. I wanted to reinforce some of the things that Dan said, that we stand in agreement with the University Hill neighborhood in this matter of opposing the rezoning. USC does not categorically oppose private student housing. We supported the empire. We really like the housing that's along the Plasque Street core. We think it's the right location. We think it's the right scale. When you look at the district that is southeast of the Gervais Street, Pickens intersection, the district really where the University Hill neighborhood occurs, you will find a couple of high rise buildings from the 1960s and 70s. A couple of them are from the university, one of them at least is not. I really like to think that we've evolved past this point where we would do tall buildings next to houses. We have been pretty consistently promoting that we think a dense, high quality, mid-rise development in this district is the right thing to do. And by this district, what I really mean is south of Gervais Street. And generally, east of Assembly Street, you can really get some very good floor area ratios with mid-rise four to six story development. The adjacent First Church of Christ and the historic McMaster College Building, which is on the National Register are three stories tall, as is our law school. A building that would eventually take full advantage of a C4 zoning is going to, I think eventually find itself at odds with the city's center of design, development, guidelines, wherein it states that it is critical that the city be consistent in considering height of proposed structures as they relate to the adjacent development context. So I just asked you to think about that juxtaposition of a building that fully takes advantage of C4 next to the buildings that surround it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Do we have anyone else who would like to come forward to discuss this? Mr. Shipwood, this project was originally conceived to be a project that would reach across to the main street and take advantage of the Gervais Street urban core. It is reaching into students, but with one bedroom, two bedroom, and three bedroom, it's designed to reach more towards main street. You can cast it to be a student housing project. The student housing is not one bedroom, two bedroom, and three bedroom. Doesn't do just student housing. They do other things as well, which is obvious by what they're playing as. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Robin Waits, I'm with Historic Columbia. I'm actually here for the five minute information session. But just wanted to reiterate what Derek mentioned, which is the historic context that you have that this proposed rezoning is sitting within. We actually hold the title to the Whaley House, which is a three-story building, have been very supportive of the work that the law school has done. And of course, Oregon Yard, the one-story building that sits on the corner of Pickens and Senate Street. Having a building that's five stories plus would certainly negatively impact the historic content that is surrounding that building. So we would encourage you to support what is there and the future zoning that will limit height in that region. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to come forward? If not, any further discussion? I'd like to have a motion, please. I'll make the motion. I would move that we deny the rezoning from C3 to C4 for, let's see if I can read it, 1600 crossed out 1620 Gervais Street and one other address, what is it? 1616, I don't have my glasses on. So 1600, 1616 and 1620 Gervais Street. Do I have a second? Second. Any further discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Anyone oppose? Motion is approved but denied. We will now continue with a short presentation on the zoning text amendment. Good evening everyone, I'm Krista Hampton, the director of planning and development services and I am delighted to be at this point with you where we are kicking off the discussion of the draft zoning land development ordinance rewrite. First I wanna say thank you to you planning commission members. You've spent a lot of time on this. We will continue to spend a lot of time on this but I appreciate all of the work that you've done. So tonight is really just to kind of introduce it to the public that this is coming up. It's very important you all have been engaged a lot of the time. I wanna kind of review the key themes tonight of the code, discuss some changes that we're gonna make prior to your review in January and some next steps. So a more in-depth presentation will be made at your January meeting. That's where you will take public comment and we hope that you will make a recommendation. So the key things that have been addressed by this code throughout the process are to create a user friendly code, implement PlanColumbia, modernize the regulations and support infill and support and encourage sustainable and green development practices. So theme one, create a user friendly code. What this document has done is reorganize the structure so it's actually logical. Our current code, it's very difficult to find things. You don't know where administration is. The new code, you actually start with administration. Who does what? You go into districts, regulations, land development. It's a logical code. We use flow charts, we use pictures which is fabulous. We modernize and streamline the procedures so that it actually makes sense, get rid of steps where we can. We clarify language and use measurable standards. So there is a large section at the back of the new code relative to definitions and standards. Number two, the theme two is to implement PlanColumbia. That was the land use plan. That's what we started off with. When we started this process, we realized that our policy guidance in the comprehensive plan was not adequate, so we started off by rewriting that land use plan called PlanColumbia. This is the implementation of that plan. We aligned those regulations with that and I'll remind you of what those policies were. We reorganized the current zoning districts to align with those land use districts that you hear a lot about. I want to, this is underlined in red because I wanna make sure everybody is aware of this. Residential districts largely stay the same. They will be getting new names, but those aren't broke. We're not gonna have to fix them except for just a few tweaks here and there. Residential zoning districts will stay the same. We're modernizing the district layout. So each district has pages with pictures and then charts so it's easy to understand. The use structure, you know, what uses are permitted in that use table. We will no longer use the outdated standard industrial classification that is no longer published. They're actual uses that people can understand and the development standards have also been modernized. So here are the principles that came out of PlanColumbia, high quality design, strong neighborhoods, connected greenways. All of these, I hope you remember, terrific guiding principles that remain valid. Our third theme, add context sensitive regulations and promote infill. So we're a city that has, as we've heard recently, neighborhoods next to commercial all throughout the city. We want to make sure that we get as much compatibility in there as possible to promote infill development. So we've revised the parking and landscape standards. A lot of this, you'll hear context sensitive. So instead of a one size fits all, depending on the district, it will rely on its context. Is it a neighborhood? Is it a community area? Is it a regional area? We have a lot more flexibility as well for minor deviations when something makes sense. For instance, I'm building in a historic district. We want you to build like the character that's there. Our current code oftentimes will not allow you to do that. We want the flexibility to say, yes, let's do it this way, even though it may not meet the code because it's what's there and it's what's compatible. Our nonconformity provisions, we enhance those, again allow for a little bit more flexibility. Finally, we are incorporating sustainable development practices, enhancing our tree protection standards, incorporating alternative energy. We have a lot in the code too with regard to community gardens, agriculture, we food policy council helped us a lot with that. Bicycle and pedestrian issues are addressed too. We've got bicycle parking standards trying to include connectivity between developments as well. So the next steps, first of all, the code in all its glory is at the project website which is www.weplannedtogether.org. So you can read it there, it's a great PDF, you can navigate through it. There are some changes that will be incorporated. Those will be added to the code prior to your next review. I wanted to bring those up because we've heard a lot about them, city council, a few members have asked for those to be incorporated back into that. That would be the inclusion of demolition review within community character districts. That was proposed to be removed and that's what you see in the code currently, but we will be putting that back into the community character districts demolition review. So you will be seeing that, you'll probably have a few other changes that we will highlight from the document that's currently published. Some of those are just cleaning some things up that we've noticed as we've been looking through the code. So you will again review this on January 7th and make a recommendation we hope to Planning Commission. They will hear it at their public hearing in March, that will be March 19th. It then takes two readings for it to become effective. However, it will not become effective on the date of that second reading. So now you'll have a code with a bunch of new zoning districts. So we have to do the work of remapping the entire city, but let me remind you that residential districts will largely stay the same. So I'm gonna say that to you a lot of times so I hope to get the word out on that. So the effective date of the actual code will be nine to 12 months later during which time we will be working with you and the public to map the city. We'll probably start with those residential districts, work on our corridors, commercial areas. We'll put a draft map out, get feedback, put another draft map out so that by the time that effective date occurs we will have a new map and a new code to become effective. There will be transition provisions. They're already in the code about what do you do if I had approval while you were going through this process. That's all addressed in the code. This map will require your review and recommendation as well as city council adoption at that time. So you've still got a lot of work ahead of you, but I thank you already for what you've done. So that's it in the nutshell and I'm happy to answer any questions. I'd like to thank you and John and all the commission members who have been involved in this. It's been a long and lengthy process. There's been a lot of changes, recommendations and a lot of thought put forth in this and I commend you on a great job. And I encourage the public to come to the meeting in January. We have about a 500 page book that we're trying to figure out so you might want. There it is. But it has a lot of pictures. It has a lot of pictures, that's right. Any other questions for Chris? Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, if there's no other business, I'd like to say happy holidays to everyone because we will see you next year and ask for an adjournment. Thank you everyone, all in favor? Meetings adjourned.