 and the County Board of Commissioners as an advisory board to the elected officials. You should know that the elected officials have the final say on any issue before us tonight. If you wish to speak on an agenda item tonight, please go to the table to my left and sign up to speak. For those of you who wish to speak, please state your name and your address clearly when you come to the podium. Please speak clearly and into the microphone. Each side, those speaking in favor of an item and those speaking in opposition to an item will have ten minutes to present for each side. The time will be divided among all persons wishing to speak. Finally, all motions are stated in the affirmative. So if a motion fails or ties, the recommendation is for denial. Thank you. Can I have the roll call? Present. Present. Present. Present. Present. Present. Mr. Miller. Present. Mr. Vang. Present. There's it. Thank you. Our next item, approval of minutes and consistency statements for the January 10, 2017 meeting. May I have a motion for the minutes? Mr. Chair, I move that the minutes in the consistency statement be approved from January 10, 2017. Second. It has been moved and properly seconded that the minutes and consistency statements from the January 10, 2017 minutes be approved. All in favor of this motion, let it be known by the usual sign of aye. Aye. All opposed? The minutes carried. The next item I have are adjustments to the agenda. Grace Smith with Planning Department. Staff has no adjustments to the agenda this evening, Madam Chair. However, I would like to affirm that all public notice requirements have been met and carried out through the General Statutes and Unified Development Ordinance and are on file in the Planning Department. I also would like to make an announcement for those in attendance. The Fire Marshal has asked, and he's in the back of the room if you haven't met him yet, that everyone please have a seat. He will let you know if you need to leave the room before over capacity. If someone leaves the room and a seat opens up, feel free to take that seat. But it's very important that we not exceed the capacity for the room. In addition, if the Planning Commission and the members of the audience would indulge Planning staff, we have a quick verbal survey that we would like for you to answer with a show of hands. I'm going to ask a few questions about how you learned about our meeting tonight. We're trying to do some research about our outreach and notification processes. So if you would, raise your hand and keep them raised until the staff lets me know that you can put them down. How did you find out about tonight's meeting? Did you receive a letter from the Planning Department about this meeting? Thank you. Did you see a sign on the property? Okay. Did you see a legal ad in the newspaper? Okay, we're good. Okay, did you hear about it through a neighbor or friend? Okay, great. Just hold them up just for a minute if you don't mind. We've got four people counting, so it shouldn't take long. All right, we're good. Thank you very much for your help and your indulgence. Yes, sir. Mr. Brian. A question. You noted after our packets had come out that Village Heath Z1600014 would have to be continued. Do you need some action on that? No, I was going to let you know that at this time, but I wanted to make sure everybody was going to be home. Staff intends to ask for a continuance for Village Hearth case. The applicant resubmitted that case, and it's under review, and it will be ready for next month. So the staff would ask for a one-cycle 30-day continuance. Okay. I move a 30-day continuance. Second. It has been moved improperly. Second for a 30-day continuance for Village Heath item number Z1600014. All in favor of this motion? Let it be known by raising your right hand. All opposed? Item. Okay. Thank you very much. Item number, I do have some adjustments. One of our commissioners has requested Mr. Commissioner Al-Turk will be leaving early. So I want to go ahead and get a motion to excuse Mr. Commissioner Al-Turk at some point to leave the meeting. Can I get a motion? So moved. It has been moved improperly. Second. That Commissioner Al-Turk be excused from the meeting early and has permission to leave at the appropriate time. All in favor of this motion? Let it be known by raising your right hand. All opposed? Thank you. I do have an additional Commissioner Neil Gauch has asked to, because there is an item that he has a three items? Why don't you tell me what all three are? Thank you. Yes, my firm is representing the applicant on a number of projects on tonight's agenda. So I would ask that I be recused from Churchill Commons, North River Village and Fendle Farms. Madam Chair, I move that the Planning Commission allow Mr. Gauch to recuse himself from consideration and decision in cases A1600010, Z1600022, Z1600023, Z1600014, Z1500040 and Z1600019. Second. Motion by Commissioner Miller and second by Commissioner Whitley that we recuse Commissioner Gauch from the items as stated. All in favor of this motion? Let it be known by the usual signed of, no, excuse me, raise your right hand. Let's be clear. Okay. Thank you. The motion passes and you're at the appropriate time. The next item, what, there is a lot of interest here in one particular item. I'm going to ask the commissioners for permission to move item number B under seven, public hearings, zoning map changes, North River Village to the end of the agenda. So that we have an opportunity simply because there are other people who have like one or two want to and we can clear them quickly. So. Oh, we're not. Okay. And since Mr. Alturk is leaving early I want to know if he had a, what his druthers might be about that. I feel like in the past with big cases we moved into the front, right, so people can leave after, but and. Move the big cases to the front. Well, it's in an appropriate place at this time. If we just like to leave the, if it is the preference of the commission to leave the agenda as is. Okay, it looks like. Madam Chair, I move we adopt the agenda as printed with the one correction we had with the contains. Okay. Okay, it has been motioned by Commissioner Harris and second by Commissioner Miller that with the one exception of a continuance for Billy chart that we leave the agenda as indicated all in favor. And it seems to me based on what we were informed that that fire code that we need to take some measure to alleviate this and moving this moving this item be forward would do a lot to help and so that other people can sit down. It's, it's, it's up as far as it can go right now. Yeah, it's commissioner goes. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Commissioner Melvin, Willie, but I do think the first case on the agenda actually is not going to take that long. So I think it's fine the way the agenda is right now. I think the problem is actually first. Right. It's actually first. Church Hill Commons, I don't think is going to take that long. I don't know that there are many people signed up for them. We do have, I do have some, I do have some individuals who have signed up. We'll follow the agenda as planned. Okay, it has been moved and second that we followed the agenda as planned. All in favor of this motion, let it be known by raising your right hand. All right. We'll stick to the agenda. Thank you so much. Okay. Yes. This. Okay. Item number six, the public hearing comprehensive plan, future land use map, amendments, concurrent zoning map changes for item Church Hill Commons. Item number eight, one, six, zero, zero, zero, one, zero and Z one, six, zero, zero, zero, two, two and Z one, six, zero, zero, zero, two, three staff report, please. Good evening. Thank you. Jacob Wiggins with the planning department. This case is there are three items involved in this case. There are two zoning requests for the commission's consideration as well as a plan amendment in case numbers Z, 16, zero, zero, zero, two, two, Z, 16, zero, zero, zero, two, three and a 16, zero, zero, zero, one, zero. The applicant for this particular request is Rob Griffin. This is within the city of Durham's jurisdiction. This is a request to zone property from industrial park to commercial general with a development plan and to commercial general. The plan amendment request associated with this is to change the future land use map from industrial to a commercial designation. The acreage is 16 and the proposed use of the subject site, assuming the request were to be approved, would permit 150,000 to 275,000 square feet of floor area for any use in the CG district. The subject site is highlighted in red in front of you. As I noted, there are two different zoning cases involved with this. One with a development plan and one without. The parcel without a development plan is a cemetery, which is located along the South Miami Boulevard Frontage. There is no development proposed on the cemetery. It's proposed to remain as is. The applicant included this parcel just to maintain conformity in the event that the request is approved. The site, as you can see, fronts along both Page Road and South Miami Boulevard is generally located at the southeast corner of Page Road at South Miami. The requested district, as I noted, is commercial general with a development plan and commercial general. 16 acre site, permitting 150,000 to 275,000 square feet of floor area. No development on the CG only portion, as I noted, which is the cemetery parcel. They are proposing a maximum pervious surface of 85% for the subject site and a maximum building height of 90 feet. The existing conditions, as you can see here, this is also noted in the development plan within your packet, showing the existing site and its location at the intersection of Page Road at South Miami Boulevard. The proposed development plan for the CGD portion, this indicates access points at the subject site. Some other commitments, again, the intensity is noted. Roadway improvements along Page Road and South Miami Boulevard. Access points in a building and parking envelope is provided. Some design commitments. There's no architectural style has been chosen for any buildings at the subject site. The applicant has committed to providing flat or pitched shrews for any buildings. One or more exterior building service materials, and those service materials are noted in your case packet, as well as no distinctive architectural features for buildings at the subject site. The future land use map, as you can see, this site is currently designated as industrial, and the applicant is requesting a change to commercial. The change to commercial will permit the CGD and CG districts at the subject site. Staff reviewed the plan, plan amendment request against the regular comprehensive plan policies. I'm going to determine that it does meet the policies of the future land use map and comprehensive plan, and the general staff determines that both zoning requests and the plan amendment is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other adopted policies and ordinances. Thank you. I do have two individuals who have signed up to speak. Patrick Biker. Good evening, Chairwoman Hyman, Vice Chair Busby, members of the Planning Commission. My name is Patrick Biker. I live at 2614 Stewart Drive. I'm an attorney with Morningstar Law Group in Durham. I'm here tonight representing tribe properties for the Churchill development on South Miami Boulevard near Research Triangle Park in southeastern Durham. With us tonight are landscape architect Bob Zumal with McAdams. And is Rob here? And Rob Griffin. Rob Griffin with tribe properties, the associate director of development for that fine Durham company. We're here tonight to request your recommendation for approval. I'll take a lot less than 10 minutes, I promise. We're here tonight to request your approval of a plan amendment and the zoning map changes to support new office space and new restaurant space near RTP and Imperial Center. I trust the members of the commission are familiar with the quintiles building and the outstanding track record tribe properties has as one of the leading office developers in Durham. Now they need more inventory so Durham can recruit more businesses to our community. But a key ingredient to recruiting new businesses here is new quality restaurants. I can tell you, having worked in this section of Durham from 2006 to 2016, there's a strong demand for quality restaurants. You can see from tribe properties track record with Mez and Page Road Grill and the unrelenting demand from customers of those fine establishments that more sit down restaurants are needed in this section of Durham. So in order to bring in new office space, new restaurant space, we are here to ask for your recommendation of approval for this plan amendment and these zoning map changes. Our team will be happy to answer any questions you may have and we thank you for your time tonight. Thank you. I do have one additional individual who has signed up to speak. Bob, Zumwalt, your Zumwalt. Okay. Bob's just here to answer questions. Okay. All right. So there are no additional individuals to speak for. I have no individuals who have signed up to speak against. If so, I will close the public hearing and give the commissioners an opportunity to ask questions. Commissioners. Commissioner Miller. Patrick, I'm a little concerned about the cemetery there. I'm assuming South Miami Boulevard, I'm assuming South Miami Boulevard is a state road at that point with limited access. And when I look at the development plan, it looks like the building envelope and the parking envelope go right up against the cemetery there. If members of that family want to get in there to that cemetery, members of the Witherspoon family or whoever want to get in there, there's nothing indicated on the development plan that you're going to leave some sort of way for them to get in there. I would hate to see them blocked by the arrangement of buildings. We did try to make an attempt to reach members of the cemetery were unable to reach any of them. There is a sidewalk along Miami Boulevard. So you could get in that way. That's good. It might be difficult to organize a barrier all that way. It's full. Did you give any consideration? When I went out and looked at the property because of the grading and what have you that's going on there, I wasn't able to actually kind of get in and see. I kind of overlooked it from one end. Did you give any thought to making any kind of a buffer around the cemetery? Right now we're not proposing a buffer around it. We would match the grade. The idea is to match grade with the development of the cemetery so that it's not either perched up on a hill or cut down in the middle of the road. It's going to look like it's blending in. Clean it up a little bit. Just make sure it's taken care of. I may be entirely alone here, but I think cemeteries deserve a certain amount of respect from all of us. And I realize that the land around it has changed and the development pattern has changed. But I would love to see there being some sort of vegetative separation between the edge of the cemetery and parking lot. Sure. And I've asked the same thing of other developers. This isn't the first time I've brought this up. Would you consider making a buffer there of giving like 10 feet and some plantings around it? Right now there's a 10 foot yard around it and there would be required landscaping in that yard. But we don't have any problem doing that. Thank you very much. That's all I have, Madam Chairman. Jacob, we can move to the planting department. For the record. Yeah, we would be happy to plant the perimeter of the existing cemetery with a 10 foot type A buffer. Thank you very much. Sure. Thank you. Commissioner Al Turk and Commissioner Harris. Thank you, Chairwoman. So this property is in the compact neighborhood tier, it seems to me I mean I'm looking at the comprehensive plan and I mean it says auto oriented and low intensity uses shall be discouraged in this tier and that we should encourage alternatives to automobile use. And so I'm curious why you go with the commercial general rather than I mean I also see here in policy 2.24b that we should utilize a design district. I'm curious maybe from staff or the applicant why at least for staff why did this application pass muster in that sense. Jacob Wiggins with the planning department. So staff generally expects this particular compact neighborhood here to a way. I'm going to defer to the acting planning director. I think she can provide some additional information in that regard. Good evening, Sarah Young. This is a compact neighborhood. It is not on the proposed orange light rail line alignment. And so at this point we are not pursuing a design district implementation in this area. Can I follow up with I'm not sure what if there are requirements by the UDO to install sidewalks here in this case. Jacob Wiggins with the planning department. Yeah, typically this type of development exists in sidewalk would trigger sidewalk requirement. It doesn't need to be a proffer. Or a tech. No, sir, that could be something that would be handled at time of site plan. Just one thing I could add if it's helpful. The Imperial Center has got a series of greenway trails that run all through it. Please speak into the microphone. There's a lot of office space within walking distance of this site. And so being in the compact neighborhood here, we are committing to the maximum street yard. So pulling the buildings up to Page Road in Miami. And the parking will be reduced so that we're not over parking anything. And it's nice that there are so many offices within walking distance. So I think you're going to get a lot of that by nature of that. Thank you. Commissioner Harris. Madam Chair, I'm ready to move the item of the motion. Hearing no additional questions, we're ready for a motion. Madam Chair, I move the approval of Plan Amendment A160010. Second. We have a motion by Commissioner Harris and a second by Commissioner Busby that we move the Plan Amendment Church Hill Commons forward. And for this motion, let it be known by raising your right hand. All opposed. Thank you. Madam Chair, I move zoning change 1600022. I'll pay it with a favorable recommendation. The motion by Commissioner Harris to move zoning recommendation which one was it. Z1600022. Z1600022. Second by Commissioner Busby. All in favor of this motion, let it be known by raising your right hand. All opposed. And Madam Chairman, likewise Z1600023. Motion by Commissioner Harris. Second. Second by Commissioner Busby that we move item Z16000 and that was 22 forward. I'm sorry, 23 forward. All in favor of this motion, let it be known by raising your right hand. All opposed. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Harris. Let's move on to the next item. Public hearing, zoning map changes for Village Park. Staff report, please. And this has already been continued. Something for all of us. Okay, yes. Jacob Wiggins of the Plain Apartment, as a matter of clarification, that case was continued. We're on case Z1600019. Yes. Thank you. We're ready then for North River Village. Z150040. Thank you staff report. Jacob Wiggins of the Plain Apartment, please excuse the typo on the top of this page, this report or this presentation I promise you is for North River Village. This case has been submitted by Halverson Development Corporation. This is within the city's jurisdiction. The request is to change the zoning designation of approximately 29.8 acres to residential suburban 20 to mixed use with the development plan. And the proposal is to provide a range of 12,000 to 90,000 square feet of commercial area and single family dwelling units at a density of 4.0 dwelling units per acre. The context map noting the location of the subject site. The case area is highlighted in red in front of you. You can see it is located at the southeastern corner of Guest Road at Ladder Road. The area surrounding subject site is primarily zoned to the west of the city. There are some PDR zoning to the west of the site as well as some commercial zoning to the north of the subject site. The requested district is noted as the mixed use with the development plan district. Approximately 29.8 acres, a maximum of 90,000 square feet of commercial area. The maximum of previous coverage is 70% for the subject site. And maximum height commitments for those in the commercial use area. And 35 feet for those in the single family residential area. The existing conditions page is noted in the development plan in your packet. It highlights the outline of the property as well as its location at the intersection of Guest Road at Ladder Road. The proposed conditions page you can see on this page the applicant has noted site access points both internal and external as well as designating commercial use areas and the residential use area. That designation is a requirement of the unified development ordinance for this particular zoning district. A summary of the commitments. The applicant as I noted has a commitment to provide a range of 67,000 to 90,000 square feet of commercial floor area for the single family units at a density of 4.0 joint units per acre. This density is both the minimum and maximum allowed in the zoning district. The future land use map designates this area for low density residential which provides a maximum allowable 4.0 joint units per acre for the single family area. The plan also notes the access points to the building and parking envelope for the commercial area. They've committed to a pedestrian path to easily elementary school. Internal pedestrian pathways connecting the residential and commercial use areas. Open space along the use area boundary line and roadway improvements along Guest Road and Ladder Road. As you are probably aware a couple of these proffered commitments were proffered after the staff report was initially released. So in doing so staff updated the staff report and that has been provided to you all as well as the revised development plan with those proffers. Summary design commitments, design commitments only apply to the commercial use area for this proposal. There is no particular architectural style which has been chosen. The applicant that has committed to providing answered and or flat roots for those buildings. One or more exterior building surface materials and you can find those proposed building materials in the development plan and the summary of the development plan in your packet. And the distinctive architectural features which could include one or more of the following glass door front covered drive through canopy parapet and or canopy. As I noted the future land use map for the area is low density residential. The comprehensive plan does permit the use of the MU district within the suburban tier in this area. Some comprehensive plan policies in addition to those noted in the staff report, the staff reviewed this plan against for consistency including the proposed density, suburban tier land uses contiguous development infrastructure capacity as well as other transportation and facility impacts. At this time based upon the revisions provided by the applicant, staff determines that the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and applicable policies and ordinances and I'm happy to answer any questions you all may have at the present time. Thank you. I have a number of people who have signed up to speak and I have 21 people who have signed up to speak against and an additional 12 who have signed up to speak for so I'd like to have. Madam Chair, if I may. Normally we give 10 minutes to the folks speaking for and 10 minutes against given the large number of folks that have signed up I would like to propose a motion to allow 20 minutes per foreign against. Motion by commission second. Commissioner Freedman that we allow 20 minutes for each side all in favor of this motion let it be known by raising your right hand. May I have a little discussion Madam Chair please. I'm concerned I mean a public hearing is for not only for us to hear but for the people to speak. We have a lot of speakers and I I'm grateful for the motion to change the rules for this case because there are so many interested people but for me my feeling is is for anybody's right to be heard to be meaningful out to be given at least two minutes so the notion that we would I want the time to be equal that's fine but for the notion that somehow somebody could get squeezed and only wind up with a minute or 30 second because of the people who have gone before them have used more time seems to me unfair and I would prefer to just go ahead and give everybody that wants to speak two minutes. That would be my substitute motion Madam Chair. I'll second the substitute. Okay I do have a substitute motion by commissioner Miller and a second by commissioner Brian that we extend two minutes two minutes to each individual who would like to speak all in favor of this motion let it be known by raising your right hand all opposed thank you and in order to expedite this I'm going to call a number of names and if you will line up to go ahead and speak okay four point well he can't really call on I'm going to allow you to ask that question please I think thank you thank you point of order and I'm going to move back to the rules thank you very much we're going to start by giving those individuals who would like to speak for and starting with Patrick biker okay Madam Chairman the amount of time for foreign against will be equal at the end of the day and then just as a formality we request any remaining time at the end of the speakers for the project to reserve the remainder of their time for rebuttal thank you technical difficulties here there it goes alright good evening chairwoman okay are we all set well just let me ask the gentleman who was caught up in traffic if you will just come forward and sign your name I will allow you an opportunity to speak there's a sheet there thank you there's a sheet there right sir right there on the corner on the left on the left sir there it is thank you okay alright good evening chairwoman hyman vice chair busby members of the commission my name is Patrick biker I live at 2614 steward drive I'm an attorney with morningstar law group in Durham I'm here tonight representing Halverson development for north river village a proposed 30 acre mixed use development with us tonight are Tom Vincent the president of Halverson Earl Llewellyn and Sal Masara from our traffic engineer and landscape architect Jarvis Martin with steward martin and McCoy our property values expert and Craig and Justin Morrison of simmer on homes the home builder for north river village first I wish to address the concern in the staff report regarding the location of the commercial component for north river village what has happened over the past 40 years in northwest Durham county is the construction of a vast amount of residential development almost entirely single family detached homes with nothing close to the amount of retail services that those homes require this is in stark contrast to central Durham near downtown and Duke University and to south Durham where commercial development has kept pace with residential development the result of this lack of quality commercial development in north Durham is many thousands of people who need to drive many hundreds of extra miles every year to meet their basic household needs about 12 or 13 about 12 or 13 years ago Durham's elected leaders recognize the need to undertake a complete overhaul of our land use regulations strong community leaders like Becky Herring Lewis cheek and Howard Clement all of whom sadly are no longer with us and their colleagues voted to adopt a completely new comprehensive plan in 2005 that plan stated in policy 2.3.2 suburban tier mixed use through the unified development ordinance encourage mixed uses by allowing mixed use developments where one of the uses is shown on the future land use map while the wording of the comprehensive plan has changed subsequently we are following that mandate today I also want to stress there are no inconsistencies between north River Village and the mixed use requirements in section 6.11.7 DURUM north Durham needs housing options that are not completely automobile dependent north Durham has labored far too long with insufficient quality retail venues we are here to start changing that tonight in addition I believe there is strong evidence that there are two specific challenges facing this section of Durham first we have seen traffic congestion on latter road approaching guest road primarily during the morning commuting time our traffic engineer Earl Llewellyn will address in detail how north River Village will fix that problem I only wish to add that it is only north River Village that can fix this traffic problem there are no funds whatsoever in NCDOT's or in the city of Durham's budget to build any traffic improvements at guest and latter accordingly if there is anyone here tonight who thinks the current traffic situation in Durham we submit those persons need to be in support of north River Village keep in mind all of the traffic improvements associated with north River Village must be completed by our team prior to the issuance of any CO's for this development second our team has seen significant evidence relating to declining property values in this area our real estate appraiser Jarvis Martin will address that issue if I did not mention my assessment that north River Village will create well over 100 permanent living wage full benefit jobs for Durham jobs that typically do not require a college degree those are the types of opportunities many of our citizens need our next speaker is our home builder Craig Morrison and then Jarvis Martin will address property values and then Earl Llewellyn will address traffic issues followed by resident Mr. Jim Polk and then we will have the rest of the speakers proceed in order for the sign up sheet thank you Madam Chair Madam Chairman could I request that you ask the audience to refrain from reactions and interruptions I would like to hear I would like to hear the presentation and the interruption this is my train of thought and we all might learn something thank you thank you Commissioner and I will have to insist on a point of order as we conduct this hearing and please be respectful of all speakers thank you so much my name is Craig Morrison I live at 1803 Grand Oaks Road about a mile from this site I'm a lifetime Durham residents and I've my company Simron Homes has been building communities and homes in Durham and the surrounding areas for over 35 years we've been working with the developer for well over a year on the conceptual plan we will if the project is successful we will build hope to build the homes we're convinced that new four-cell residential housing proximate to services is in demand and we constantly get requests for that that demand is built up in the last year to two years we believe it's an appropriate use for the corner I pass through that intersection this morning as I do every day and my family does we would encourage you to support this project we think it's a reasonable appropriate use thank you Mr. Martin, could you please state your address for the record I just don't have it here 1803 Grand Oaks Road thank you Mr. Martin good evening members of the commissioners my name is Jarvis Martin I reside at 3608 Mossdale Avenue here in Durham I've been a longtime residential commercial praser in Durham with over 30 years of experience and I'm with the firm of Stuart Martin and McCoy I would like to take just a moment to thank each one of you for your service I haven't had the opportunity to sit on that side of the dais a while back I will understand that's what makes Durham the place it is individuals willing to give their time and effort to make our community better I have been asked by the applicant to look at property values in this area at two prior public meetings within the community I shared information with those in attendance as it relates to values of existing homes and resale values as they compared with our most recent tax value and in this case a lot of the homes in this general area did not keep pace in terms of their resale value as it relates to the tax value as to what some of them actually paid at the time they acquired them prior to the economic turn down for this presentation I was asked by the applicant to look at the effect of mixed use commercial development and nearby residential community and what I did was to look at demographics in the immediate area where North River is going to be located and then look at other areas that would have some of the similar demographics I was studied that we did in Durham and Wake County we looked at a total of about 11 sites I narrate for this presentation my information down primarily to two sites one being at the intersection of highway 98 and Sharon Road where there's a food line we looked at the homes that was in walking distance of the site to see what effect that those homes have in relationship to homes that were further away our research revealed that those homes within what we call walking distance of a half mile sold at a higher price per square foot and they sold at a quicker time frame than home further away we also looked at homes on Fayetteville street where there's a food line and properties again within walking distance of a half mile radius and homes that are further away and have a similar result that those homes that were in close proximity with some walkability were selling at a higher price per square foot and at with quicker marketing times we looked at again other sites there were some sites dependent upon drivability where there was no impact either way close proximity or further away but we did not find any location where there was a negative impact of having convenient services such as community shopping and grocery stores within close proximity so in summary we are determining that again these are the things that home buyers are looking for close neighborhood shopping walkability and the convenient to meet their immediate needs thank you thank you Mr. Martin Mr. Llewellad Anderson and Vincent Good evening Earl Llewellad with Kimley Horn and Associates we prepared the traffic impact analysis for this project sorry address located 300 West Morgan street suite 1500 in Durham to NCDOT congestion management unit as well as the district office and city transportation department all of which have approved this study we in conclusion can note based on the staff report that all with all the committed improvements all the study area intersections will operate at or better than the city's adopted level of service D and the street segments will operate at capacity but what we want to do relatively quickly this evening is to show you a traffic simulation that is an additional stage of analysis built upon the traffic study that visually compares traffic operations before and after the project is built out what we have here if I can pan this appropriately on the screen this is a simulation of the morning the a.m. rush hour if you will traffic conditions in this area at about 725 tend to back up greatly along Latter Road westbound to make a left turn on guest road headed into town so we're going to take a look at this and you can see at the far end of the screen here this is roughly where traffic cues start to develop at about 730 745 range and this is about probably I would say somewhere the order of 12 to 1400 feet yeah what we're looking at here this is actual signal timing actual traffic volumes collected as part of the traffic study and so you see that traffic volumes are not getting through on one cycle in fact what we've done over here at the far end is tag a vehicle and it's just getting past Green Oak Drive and moving through one cycle still waiting in advance of Autumn Drive and I will point out that I experienced in looking at the field that people are sometimes allowing gaps to get out of these residential streets and sometimes not doing so so we just passed through the second cycle and it looks like that vehicle has stopped here for the second time not able to make it as I said this this queuing situation begins it's quite long in the time before 725 but it gets very long extending the 12 to 1400 feet at about 725 you see that vehicle finally able to make the turn through the third light cycle so that's the existing conditions now let's take a look at what the future condition will be bear with me one moment this is basically looking at the same time of day at about 730 morning peak hour with the improvements that are proposed as part of the site which specifically includes left turn lanes along the entire length of Ladder Road but a second left turn lane here on Ladder turning onto gas now it looks like there's a lot less traffic on the network here but it's actually more it's existing traffic it's traffic generated by the site and it's also background growth compounded annually through the build out of the project and what you're seeing here and we'll continue to see is that with adding a second left turn lane you would expect to cut that queue from 1400 feet to 700 feet well actually it's even better because all those queues using two lanes are able to exit Ladder Road in one cycle you don't have the compounding queues every morning what that does is not block the existing residential streets of autumn drive and green oak drive much more efficient situation fewer backups, fewer likelihood of rearing collisions that occur in that style of congestion you'll also notice that these queues stay within the available storage that we're projecting here which is about 200 to 225 feet so visually that's one of the huge benefits of this project as Patrick said there's no funds program from City or NCDOT through their transportation improvement program which is a 10 year long window of funding again I would add with these improvements which I believe in total including all the site access turn lanes signal modifications are on the order of about 2 million dollars with those improvements again the intersections in the study area operate at or better than the city's adopted level service of level service D all segments will operate below capacity as confirmed in the city staff report thank you thank you our next speaker is Tom Vincent Craig well we've had we'll have a Jim Polk be our next speaker Madam Chair Jim give me one second did you sign in oh I thought I was signed in I didn't do it personally okay um I will need you to sign in I have no problem with signing in go ahead and speak I can do it afterwards okay yes thank you I have no intention other than to be recognized so that was an oversight on my part thank you not a problem Chair members of the commission let me say good evening to you and on this evening I come here with excitement and elation and also I bring the following information as consideration to this North River village development my name is Jim Polk and I live at 512 Latter Road Durham North Carolina 27712 my resident I've been living there for 39 years my resident is less than 500 feet from the northeast edge of the property that's under consideration for development my family and I have lived there all of this time in North Durham and it is a welcome for us to have an opportunity to say we support some economic development as well as some enhancement to the quality of life for those of us who have resided in North Durham for that many years the traffic study that you just saw I've had an opportunity to observe participate in the traffic on Latter Road for all of those years and frequently and occasionally in the mornings and sometime in the afternoon the traffic would be backed up from guest road all the way to my driveway which is less than a mile but with the proposed traffic improvement that the developer is willing to do to add those two turning lanes as you notice it will have an enhancement to the traffic movement in North Durham unlike anything that we could propose otherwise so I ask us to real give consideration to that in addition to it the project is proposed to bring residential quality living also employment for people in North Durham and that economic piece for me is also a salient point given that the economics development of that property would also enhance the life of folk who would be in proximity of that property good retail services and employment opportunities is a welcome site in North Durham I would urge us to think in terms of progress for not ourselves just today but all of the folk who are to come given that Durham is one of the rapidest growing cities in the southeast state we need to plan to smartly how to address the things that would come and be developed so I would urge all of us in here today all of us that we have some opportunity to participate in the quality of life in Durham to embrace this notion with an opportunity to believe and know that we can improve what it is that we have I would like for all of the folk who already know some of the things that I would like to say given the time restraint to stand up as in support of the north village development property stand up please Madam Chair and all of you I say thank you and the future of Durham is better because of you thank you and I thank you all for all that you do for the quality of life in Durham and the service that you render to our community thank you very much thank you Mr. Polkin could you head for me thank you so much Mr. Vincent Mr. Heather Shepard Brett Smith if you'll follow Hi my name is Heather Shepard I live at 1204 Torridge Road Durham 27712 my husband and I moved to Durham back in 2001 and moved up into the north Durham area back in 2003 and there really has not been a good shopping area in our area for that entire time that we have lived up there I know there are grocery stores in our area but they really lack in comparison to those that are in surrounding areas such in southern Durham the Harris teeter is much better down on 9th Street than it is even off the one off of Horton and there's really not a lot of other mixed use property and other retail shops up in that area so there's no support anything that north Durham is willing to do to grow and keep up with the rest of Durham we like the changes that have happened in Durham over the years and we'd like to see them extend up into our area of the neighborhood thank you Tom Vincent oh I'm sorry Brett Smith is that you correct come on up as a member of the EnoForest I would like to say that we are very supportive of this use of commercial property coming in I think it would add a lot being new restaurants whatever it decides to go there whether it's a publics or whatever I think it would bring a lot of value especially considering the homes that were going to be brought in full time jobs that could be brought to this area for somebody that lives around here that works in real estate I think it's a great thing so I would just like to show my support thank you Tom Vincent and Benjamin Anderson good evening Madam Chair I have to apologize I forgot to add my wife Caroline to the list if I can yield half my time to her when I finish as long as she signs the list thank you very much I'm speaking my name is Ben Anderson I live at 4330 Lazy River Drive so I'm speaking in support of this development I'm usually cautious when it comes to new development in places such as North Durham but I'm very enthusiastic about this for several reasons one being the traffic improvements that are being proposed it is very clear that it would be very hard to find the financial capabilities to put such improvements in place through public means so I see this more as a private public partnership and the proposed improvements would be an improvement I think in the traffic pattern secondly I want to support it in terms of the jobs that it would provide Publix is a company from the state that I grew up in I'm very familiar with it I have lots of friends families that have gone through that company and it's a very entry-level job giving people access to not just short-term jobs but careers with benefits very good benefits and so for that reason and the reason to provide other economic stimulus to the area as well as opportunities for small businesses people say they don't want it to be like South Durham I don't think one development this type of development would be like South Durham I think it would be a very responsible type of development that would benefit the area greatly thank you like he said my name is Caroline Anderson and I also live at 4330 Lazy River and I was just wanting to wave in support mostly because we're really excited we're transplants from Florida and we've met a lot of people from the south and they really like Publix and it is a great job creator like he said but personally this might not seem like a big deal to other people but I drive 40 minutes to go to the Publix in Morrisville so I know that's taking sales tax dollars out of the county and so that's just a minor maybe a minor thing but I know it's important for me and again we drive on that road every single day multiple times a day so we would love the traffic improvements so thank you thank you Thomas Vincent thank you madam chair members of the planning commission my name is Tom Vincent I'm president of the conference and development corporation excuse my voice tonight I'm going through a little bit of a down spell I just wanted to make two points the first one actually really amplifies I think the emphasis that you heard from the crowd here in terms of the need for a quality mixed use development that has quality commercial retail restaurant opportunities for that area she was trying to improve the picture there make it a full screen but right in any event a couple of points that I want to make this is a very unique delineated trade area in the 30 years that we've been developing mixed use developments Publix anchored centers there are almost 32,000 people that live within this delineated trade area the lion's share of which almost 78% are north of this site so you have all those folks living up there with no shopping opportunities no mixed use environment whatsoever no quality sit down restaurants no other retailing opportunities when we delineate a trade area normally we would find an area probably a fourth of the size of this trade area but because of where the site is situated if you look at that map the site itself is down in the lower central portion of the delineated trade area so all of those folks living north of the site have to drive past this site whether they're coming down Roxborough or whether they're coming down Guest Road to go past a lot of road to get to any food stores whatsoever from a pure traffic perspective and environmentally that's not good there's no reason that this volume of people if we were talking about 10,000 people an area that was early in its growth years that might be a different conversation but that's not the case the folks that are already there are driving past this site to get to any sort of shopping options that they have available to them the other thing I wanted to expand on Patrick had mentioned about jobs we actually did a fairly detailed analysis of potential jobs we did it in concert with publics historical specific numbers that they have for stores of this size but when you take not only the proposed publics but all of the retailers proposed restaurants the single family homes we'll talk about those in a minute from a construction perspective but just the commercial side of the mixed-use development you're talking about probably over 500 permanent full-time part-time jobs for this development the construction jobs alone will probably range over a two-year period that's our estimated build-out for everything the single family might even take a little bit longer but using two years to capture period almost 200 construction jobs when you factor in not only the workers the off-site improvements the equipment operators the folks that make material deliveries to the site everybody in that food chain you're talking about a tremendous economic opportunity from a jobs perspective from this development as well those were just two things I wanted to touch on I know there'll be other things that'll be asked that we can hopefully respond to at your leisure, thank you Hoffman, thank you Good evening, my name is Paul Hoffman I live at 2014 Vintage Hill Drive in Durham, I've been there 20 years and I think that Northern Durham needs this project and the reason being is how many times do you go out to dinner with your wife and you have to drive so far how many times do you see the stores that are out there now that are improving because Publix is coming I've shopped at Publix in Florida I used to live in Florida and they do a fine job Northern Durham needs this we need the economic growth and we need the improvement of the quality of life and I know two times a day one's going to work and one's coming home and it's these road improvements that they're going to do are going to be tremendous for the community and I know for a fact that anyone that's opposed to what we're doing here look around we'll see them at the Publix we'll see them at the restaurants Thank you Debbie Schwartz Thank you Madam Chairman, members of the commission my name is Debbie Schwartz I live at 5324 Fair Oaks Road in North Durham I've lived there for almost 12 years I joined this project's opponents in their desire to protect the character of our neighborhood however I believe this project will actually enhance the character and therefore I strongly support the rezoning this project will significantly increase the walkability of the area and options available to the residents the two mile radius there are almost 7,000 homes and many thousand more people will benefit from the development the two miles to Horton Road each way, every day is over 1,500 miles every year per person who doesn't have to drive to that intersection and beyond to eat, shop or run errands reducing traffic pollution and energy the malls on Guest Road are old and unsightly this is an opportunity to build a high quality facility attract high quality businesses and perhaps encourage existing businesses to renovate and upgrade new jobs will be created and city taxes will city revenue, tax revenues will increase from the orange person and North Durham County residents who come in finally North Durham is being left behind as Durham progress prospers property values have stagnated realtors tell me people don't want to look at homes in North Durham because quote there's nothing there we cannot let our fear of change blind us to opportunities for improvement let's put something there thank you thank you Ted Maynor yes good evening my name is Ted Maynor I live at 4302 Guest Road I've been there 37 years a lifetime resident of Durham I support this program the reason I think the gentleman was late getting here we need a restaurant Popeyes has opened up and that's why you had a problem getting here everybody's trying to get the Popeyes 37 years a gentleman says 39 that's a long time to live anywhere I live next to Enoe River I'm a friend of the Enoe River I'm a Durham treekeeper a volunteer for key Durham beautiful I'm actually a senior member of the appearance committee and I just speak for as an individual today progress I think is what you're talking about when I lived on Wharton Road as a young elementary school guy my dog used to sleep on Wharton Road he'd go out there and lay down he had to be an old dog but progress came and you know you kind of got to expect they're good with bad and I respect the concerns that everybody has against the program progress is something that you've got to take sometimes good with bad so I just want to be sure I gave you my support to the program thank you the next individual Tamara Jeans and I am the granddaughter of Ethel Womack we own the other side of the corner lot at Guest & Ladder please speak into the mic so my family owns the other side of Guest & Ladder I am 52 years old and so I've been my family has grew up on that corner ever since I was born so we have seen all kinds of things happen there but we have seen no progress the only thing that really came was Lattimore and we did not complain when Lattimore came so I just I am for the progress of the public and give me I am nervous up here but I just want everybody to know that Northern Durham needs progress and I've seen what the city council has done with downtown Durham y'all have done a fabulous job so I hope that y'all can see fit to do that with Northern Durham thank you so much I do have one additional name that is not identified as well actually two names that did not identify four again so I'm going to call these two names Lisa, Day, James and Elizabeth, James that's it I'm going to indicate so is it four that's a good transition between four and a day okay that's a good transition that's just the same thank you good evening Madam Chairman and members of the planning commission I'm Lisa, Day, James and I am a resident of 1822 Grady Drive and I'm a homeowner there since 1998 I'm concerned that the traffic impact analysis that you've already had done has not studied the Grady Drive guest road entrance it is just north of the intersection of Latter Road there are approximately 40 homes on Grady Drive and our subdivision which is known by heritage heights has around 270 homes we only have three ways to ingress and egress out of our subdivision and one of them is Grady Drive so we have a lot of folks that come north if they want to go north on guest road they come up to Grady Drive there's a concrete medium across the guest road which prohibits a resident of our neighborhood from turning left on to guest road in order to make a turn one has to go down to the intersection with Latter and make a left hand U-turn in front of westbound traffic coming up Latter I am a real tour and I have been one for almost 17 years and I know that it's difficult to stop progress but I would respectfully ask that the commission consider making improvements to the Grady Drive entrance ingress and egress from guest road and I appreciate your time thank you this was the last individual speaking for we'd like to reserve time for a bottle we did have one person come in late if you don't mind she'll sign on good evening thank you for your time this evening my name is Cindy Burns and I live at 127 Continental Drive and to be polite to myself I've been in Durham all my life except for about 7 years which still puts me at 40 plus so I've had lots of time to watch the growth in this area biggest thing for me I remember when Willa Del was built I remember when Cross Creek across the street at Foodline was built they were both built 30 years ago that was it that's the last thing we've had in North Durham was 30 years ago with Willa Del and Cross Creek which houses the Foodline to which both of them were built in the same year 1985 so two competing grocery stores right across the street from each other same time so it can be done my concern is that we are very Durham is y'all have done a great job of protecting Durham I completely understand why North Durham's protected so much heavily than Southwest Durham and I'm not saying and I don't think anyone that's really supporting the project saying that we want to be a Southwest Durham but for 30 years to go by and we're at the mercy of those two developments to make their appearance better I mean 30 years later we have at Ollie's and multiple dollar stores we would just like something just a little bit more variety and the restaurants I mean I know I love my Italian pizzeria I love the Mexican restaurant several of my North Durham places up there but I would love to have more of a sit down go in sit down place to have a variety where it's you know for an evening without having to go far you know and when I say I mean I know in Durham you can get just about anywhere within 20-30 minutes but sometimes you want us to just hang out in your neighborhood in your own area and we don't really have that I love like I said I've been out in North Durham all my life I grew up there somehow ended up buying a house in the same neighborhood I still have not figured that out because as a kid we all know we want to grow up and move away and here I am living in the same neighborhood so I love it I appreciate it I work with it every day but I really think and believe that this particular project is going to hurt us it's going to help us and it's going to bring us to more together provide jobs those high school kids Northern they would absolutely love to be closer to a place to go eat at lunch so just my two two cents in reference oh and the sidewalks on guest road have you noticed how much more of the use they've gotten since they've been there no one ever walked guest road now we have sidewalks I have regular people I see and blow the horn out every morning because he's out running every morning so I think if we just connect the dots a little bit more because unfortunately those sidewalks go to nowhere thank you so much thank you are you going to defer any of your additional time we would like to keep their mind of our time for a bottle thank you Madam Chair okay we'll clear the clock we'll close individuals who are uh against 42 I'm going to call three people at a time if you will come forward Megan Gray David or Dave Owen and Robin Jacobs please state your name and address my name is Megan Gray and I live at Tumacarthy Court Madam Chair, members of the commission in 2003 this area was defeated in a rezoning proposal for 15 acres of commercial development at the very same southeast corner of Gasinlada now it's 2017 this proposal is named mixed use and it's actually virtually no different quoting from your staff report the development plan does not readily indicate how the commercial portion of the site will develop therefore the proposal could potentially develop in line with strip commercial principles in lieu of node principles as prescribed by the comprehensive plan in 2003 the developers proposed the grocery store as part of a strip mall and two to three out parcels on 15 acres this phased plan has the commercial side of 15 acres that goes first and then later the remaining 15 acre residential portion what might happen if that second portion doesn't come to fruition this is a strip mall in 15 acres and a set of houses on the next 15 acres there are separate entrances for each this is no different than existing strip malls in Durham and it's not really mixed like an area like Meadowmont and Chapel Hill again to quote from your staff report suitability map indicates that this site may not necessarily be suitable for the mixed use district the submitted development plan provides two separate and distinct use areas featuring two uses which may not be immediately recognized as compatible large scale commercial and single family residential staff cannot determine whether the resulting development would meet the intent of the mixed use district statement the current plan does not indicate how utilizing a 30% residual proffer will result in a unified development to create compatibility between the non residential and residential use areas I liken this to a Tupperware container with a center divider that keeps the two sides doing each of their own thing because that's essentially what it is this this plan does not fit with the residential local area which via a Zillow report Madam chair thank you individual minutes rather than the whole 42 to be used by the group okay well two minutes I do know of some people that were yearling time to me well then they need to do that I'm sorry I was called first I wasn't sure what to do okay okay okay thank you continue Megan this plan does not fit with the residential local area which by the way a Zillow report that came out today shows 27712 growth of value in the homes at 8.5% for 2016 alone so there is no problem with home values in this area the developer can show you plenty of traffic simulators but the data in hand says that the traffic will actually double if this is developed how does a gridlock situation enhance our community this plan creates new commercial structures when there are dozens of vacancies within a two mile radius and over 90 acres offered for development within four miles we do have some signs that will show you that a little bit later this plan would create more potential for blight and vacancies with four nearby groceries operating under 100% capacity we do not need more retail the future in fact is delivery services and companies like Amazon are betting 100,000 new hires in the next year on this future this plan takes us to the past and not to the future the developer will tell you that people in the area want this strip mall surely not the residents who experience it every day we don't feel that a mile or two is a significant distance to travel for our groceries we move to this area and I mean this area, not four or five miles away with the UDO and a residential designation if neighborhoods five miles away would like a strip center or grocery store there is plenty of acre available for that need we are placed into an unfortunate situation we purchased homes in good faith based on the UDO and now we are forced to defend the UDO that a Florida developer would like to change unlike the development team this is personal for us because this is all that we have if the UDO is meaningless and can be changed at the whim of a run of the mill strip mall why do we have the UDO in the first place the profit of a developer should not be taken priority over the quality of life of the residents of Durham in order to be fair if someone else could do it for some time if you have okay so imagine if you will imagine the life in the community if this development comes to fruition while a developer in Florida counts as money my neighbors and I sit waiting to get out of our driveways trying to get to our school or work while a developer counts as money my elderly neighbor falls and breaks a hip but emergency vehicles are stuck in traffic and cannot reach the injured person while a developer counts as money elementary school students watch their friends leave their school and the overall quality of a once excellent school goes into decline while a developer counts as money a weekend hike to the Eno shows trash and oil runoff from impervious surface instead of clean water and natural beauty while a developer counts as money with the oversaturation of grocery stores food lion workers receive pink slips when they come to work in the morning while a developer counts as money the noise in my yard is so loud that I can't have a conversation with my neighbors while a developer counts as money the three o'clock in the morning noise of a dumpster pickup wakes a young nurse from Durham regional she doesn't get the sleep she needs and for her next 12 hour nursing shift she is prone to making mistakes in patient care we do not need more retail space we do not want more retail space let's stick with the UDO plan that is currently in place and may I ask all those who are here opposed to this development to please stand thank you Robin Jacobs they're together I'm going to call several Robin Dave is following Dave Owens follows Candace Lachemi Debbie Leonard okay I'm sorry you've given up your time and then Ra Trost I couldn't hear it so I'm offering each person has three minutes and they have two minutes and they have deferred their time two minutes each individual speaking has two minutes unless some other individual who has already signed up defers their time and with one speaker three additional people signed up to defer time two minutes with Robin Jacobs thanks I'm going to try to talk fast my name is Robin Jacobs and I'm the executive director of the Eno River Association my address is 4404 Guest Road in Durham I'm here representing the Eno River Association the board of the association opposes the rezoning of this property in the interest of time my focus tonight is on storm water and increased amounts of impervious surface in low density residential zoning more roofs, parking lots and other impervious surface mean more storm water leaving the site at higher velocities rather than standing and percolating into the ground this development is only 2,000 feet from the Eno River although regulations require storm water retention on the site even under the best circumstances such facilities only work as well as they are as they are monitored and maintained and as we all know whether climate or not freakishly intense storms are becoming more and more the norm in addition to on site storm water the proposed development will create new street services on Lada and gas where there will not be any retention or control of storm water or the petroleum and other pollutants streets collect. Guest road is all downhill from this development to the river Lada also slopes downhill to streams that run directly into the Eno during storm events water is piped off Guest Road into a 5 foot hole next to our office right next to the river when it's raining hard the water shoots up several feet into the air out of the hole and gushes into the river about 50 feet away carrying its trash and pollutants. Over the past 50 years Durham has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to create safeguard and maintain the 404 acre west point on the Eno City Park located along 2 miles of the Eno from Guest Road to Roxborough Road thousands of Durham residents swim, fish, hike, picnic and enjoy a real sense of nature in the park every year doing whatever we can to protect this investment and minimize degradation of this special resource just makes sense the city storm water services division will somebody give me about three seconds just go ahead and finish thank you the city storm water services division is working right now with the consultant on an assessment of the Eno River watershed the assessment is like a health checkup for the watershed and its streams including according to their maps the stream that flows from the pond on the proposed development directly into the river the assessment will evaluate existing stream conditions and water quality throughout the watershed and identify potential projects to improve the health of the Eno River again approving this rezoning now seems like a step in the wrong direction please wrap it up the Eno River Association urges you to recommend against the rezoning thank you thank you so much Dave Owen my name is Dave Owen I live at 509 Wanderidge Drive in Lochhaven Hills next to the proposed development two native crows perched on the roof of empty retail space they tried to gauge what might come next for such a forlorn place when asked his mate I wonder if this spot could be of use for those who wish to execute that guest road market ruse you're right my friend the former said the match is excellent why should they clear a forest grove and act extravagant with ample asphalt on the ground and finished walls erect commercial traffic everywhere no zoning laws to wreck but what about the former asked the road to Roxborough where strip malls line up tic-a-tac not clearly apropos the latter took a big deep breath then snickered with a grin let's hope guest road will not parade that same mistake again such hustle traffic noise and lights are not the vibes we need to raise our chicks in peace and calm is all that we've agreed the Eno holds our sense of place of modest means and faith to change the zone for commerce sake would be to dissipate the native crows then blurted out three cause with gratitude we plan our safeguarding respect for neighborhood thank you Candace lock me please lock me Susan Hertz and Jane Forbes I'm sorry I can't share here she's coming okay she's not here yet yeah we got you thank you good evening commissioners thank you very much for this opportunity to speak tonight I appreciate it very much I've also written letters to all of you a couple of times and also to the city commissioners and some of you have responded to my letters and I really appreciate that very much thank you I would like to go on record saying that I am completely opposed to the project and I would also ask that this property not be rezoned my address is 5101 Green Oak Drive I've lived there approximately nine years and that's my choice to live in North Durham prior to that I lived a few years on Lebanon Circle so very very close to this project for a number of years I like living in North Durham I chose to live in North Durham because it's quiet and because there's land and there's nature available I hear owls a lot in the evening I have deer that come into my yard and that's something that's really important to me I think that this project would negatively impact the area and would have a significant impact it would bring noise pollution it would bring light pollution it would bring traffic pollution to the area when it's really zoned residential and that's the way I would like to see it stay I think that the Eno River you heard from a number of people this evening how important the Eno River is this particular property serves as a buffer for the river it also serves as a buffer for wildlife to be able to come and go in the area and as things begin to encroach more and more you see more and more dead deer on the side of the road you know that's something that's a piece of property really serves a purpose for wildlife as well and I'm not really interested in any more shopping or retail I chose to live in North Durham for the beauty that it has to offer and the quietness and the single housing single home option so please do not rezone this thank you Susan Hertz to who Jane Forbes thank you very much my name is Jane Kirby Forbes I live at 1419 Imperial Drive in dorm North Carolina 27712 I live in the Brogdon Heights area which is across Latter Road from this proposed development and I have several concerns my first concern is traffic neighbors there are three neighborhoods that join each other going up from Guest Road North Guest Road and frequently people cut through all the neighborhoods to get out to Latter Road or get out to Guest Road at autumn there is no allowance it's very difficult now to make a left turn it's going to be increasingly difficult to make a left turn out of our neighborhood and the two adjacent neighborhoods that road frequently to get out of the neighborhood to make a left to go to the food line which is right down the road there is a need for development in North Durham I would encourage you to use the currently zoned commercial areas for the purpose of commercial ventures leave our residential areas the way we have chosen to have them and the reason we live in North Durham my other concern and I will say I do not mind increased residential per acre but I have some concerns because of overloading of the schools and the roads changing the zoning to commercial near and elementary school has me concerned because the increased traffic both in the residential area near the elementary school and transient traffic that is near the elementary school and the increased student population and lastly the threat to the Eno which you have heard most eloquently by other people please protect the Eno river thank you Aaron Floyd and Sherri DeVries if you will move forward and talk to me who is this Sherri DeVries you have six minutes thank you Madam Chair Vice Chair Commissioners thank you for this opportunity I am Sherri DeVries I have lived in Northern Durham for 16 years and in the process of moving into Seven Whittier Way in Lattimore this sits at the crossroads of Guest Road in Lattimore and Lattimore Road in North Durham I request that you vote not to recommend the rezoning of the parcel at Guest in Lattimore which would change zoning for this 30 acres from our 20 residential to dense mixed use I am speaking as a citizen directly impacted with this home across the street from this proposed development and my reasons for opposing the rezoning request are as follows the proposed rezoning is for land that is currently wooded with several residential homes the developers request for rezoning in order to build mixed use including a grocery store and other retail within a strip mall configuration and dense residential does not meet the definition or the spirit of plan set forth in the Durham UDO this parcel at Guest and Lattimore Road was to remain residential and that heavily influenced the Lattimore residents decisions to buy homes in Lattimore this proposed rezoning is not in keeping with the goals of Durham's comprehensive plan this proposed rezoning does not produce more attractive new development that is appropriate to its context does not improve the urban fabric and function of new development and redevelopment does not enhance the visual appearance of the community and does not protect rural character citizens are concerned that Durham's rural areas are threatened by encroaching urban and suburban development Durham should protect aspects of its valuable rural character in an increasingly urban county and that is directly quoted from the comprehensive plan this proposed development and rezoning request will negatively impact all of the adjacent intact residential neighborhoods and the elementary school site that surround this 30 acre parcel rezoning and developer plans will mean clear cutting this land permanently damaging and eliminating crucial wildlife forest habitat that is currently contiguous all the way to the Eno River just 0.6 miles downhill from the site wildlife travel through this area to the river and are sustained by the habitat and wooded areas the amount of impervious surface that will be installed at this site will also create a very large amount of storm water runoff we do not need an additional grocery store we already have four grocery stores within 1.5 miles two food lions, one Harris teeter and one Kroger the traffic is already horrible here and the developer has not fully estimated the traffic increase for this proposal there are many alternative development sites in northern Durham that would be appropriate for redevelopment and revitalization on parcels that are already appropriately zoned for this type of business activity please do not offer your support to this rezoning request thank you thank you such a long meeting I had to go to the restroom sorry about that my name is Aaron Plourd I live at 5014 Green Oak Drive I want to thank you for your service to the community you have a really big job and what you decide here today not just with this rezoning but with all development in Durham has a profound impact on our community far into the future on that note I know that you've heard on both sides of this proposal some very passionate but what I think is really at the heart of this matter is about the comprehensive plan and about public good to see that there is sufficient evidence for this development that should sway you to vote in favor of rezoning the lot that is up for proposal it doesn't seem to me that there is much objective measure around this proposal and the impact that it would have on this area I believe that this rezoning is a litmus test for the comprehensive plan whether it's a living breathing plan that we're going to we'll serve our community far into the future not just a year or 10 years from now but generations from now but if it is that highly funded developers and law firms who have deep pockets and a lot of resources and get the stamp of approval because they follow all the rules and check all the boxes I don't see what the point of a comprehensive plan is I don't see where the vision in that is I hope that you take a stand and do the right thing especially for those families like mine that will be right next to this development I didn't move here because I wanted a public or anything else I moved there for the land I hope that you do the right thing for the future generations of Durham and not just for developers thank you thank you so much I do not have any other individuals who have signed up to speak yes that is correct and I added you to the list let me Mr. Raymond there's another sheet okay let me take just a moment this is the original sheet oh this wow they just keep coming Madam Chair just for the record to be clear this is the original sheet that we did count when we made sure they were equal time so we're not adding new speakers these were folks who had signed up earlier thank you so Mr. Longo there he is I'm going to call all of the other names that I have on the sheet to make sure Stephen Wood Ken Ray Tom Berman right and if you'll all just come forward Tom Berman William Richards and Josie Owen we're ready for you Mr. Raymond Longo my name is Raymond Longo I live at 2107 Bayleaf Drive in Durham I've been resident here since 1980 I'm against their new proposal Ms. Gray and a couple of the people I've recovered most of what I want to talk about what I will mention is the traffic simulation does not take into consideration at least in the simulation the ingress and egress from the new development people come want to go to Latter are going to have to cut across coming out of development one have to go to Lattermore going to have to cut across two lines of traffic if they come out the west side and north bound going on Latter road they're going to have to cut across traffic to turn left that being the case what you need to look at is the intersection of Horton and Guess that has two left turn lanes going northbound two left turn lanes going southbound off of Horton Road one left turn lane going westbound one left turn lane going eastbound in addition to has all the right turn lanes available the number of accidents that occur on that intersection since they've increased that is amazing I don't have the statistics but I'm sure they average at least once a week that similar thing is going to happen right at Horton and Guess with the increased traffic there are going to be increased accidents there is no way to avoid it with that I don't know if your automobile insurance is going to go up because they'll declare that a dangerous intersection have no idea but I'm sure it would that's all I'd like to mention is the yield to Miss Gray let me make just one adjustment because there's one name that was high on the list that I overlooked and I apologize for that and that's Mr. David Parker if you will get in the in the queue to speak there were just so many names on this list and so much interest so thank you yes we're ready Madam Chair and all members I live at 4602 Guest Road I am the only property on Guest Road this developer did not want to buy so I am directly next to it and I am strongly opposing this and there's a lot of issues that have not come up and everybody's complained about latter road, latter road, latter road what about Guest Road and the dangers about out there I have lived at this address for 18 years I have seen Guest Road without lights I have seen the horrendous accidents that have happened now with the lights and now it's a four lane highway instead of a two lane highway it is worse so when you come out of this new development you will only be able to turn right on to Guest Road and try to do a U-turn at latter that is extremely dangerous there's only three or four cars that will be allowed to try to make that U-turn there everybody else will be blocking the traffic trying to go north there's something else that nobody's talked about yet and that is the noise and light pollution which will directly affect my family and the life of because my master bedroom actually faces this project significantly light pollution robs us of rights of privacy and fair legal use of our land when glaring unshielded lights shine artificial illumination into our property at night is an unwelcome violation of our space and light pollution can also disturb our sleep something else no one else has talked about is the nuisance is the garbage as meat decays it attracts bacteria that feast on ammonia acids and the meat proteins, vegetables can also rot and slowly liquefy bacteria attack the vegetable cells and the fermenting liquids warm up the garbage bags as more gases and liquids are produced the bags may rupture in addition the rats and flies will be attracted to rotting garbage to pose a health threat these past spread disease that can be serious to humans if they get into our food supply would not only easily elementary school in the vicinity I have my own children and my family health and safety at risk in addition the rats and flies will not stay at the garbage they will venture out and land on and everybody else's although there is no single magic bullet no one size fits all older management solution exist so the smell will blow onto my property which will bring the value of my personal life my personal health as well as the property value down and I have had my property value by four different people and my property has gone down since they said this property was going into existence on top of this within two miles two and a half miles of this project there is land on Rocksboro Road already zoned for this kind of project Haverson says or Patrick Baker Biker said and I sent you all the newspaper article that there's 40,000 unimposed people fine like I said two miles away there's already land zoned for this if he's so worried about these people go out to Orange Factory Road where there's land out there already for sale on Rocksboro Road which will cover Trayburn Bahama everybody else out there I'm just asking you all to please oppose this thank you so much please come forward as I've called your name and state your name and address come on Hello my name is Ken Ray I live at 1416 Miramont Drive that's right at the end of autumn that is my son Zach Ray who is bringing you some maps if you would take one and pass it down I would appreciate that oh my god while you were passing the map down I would like to say that I'm sure the people who run Ty Spoon, Matt at Land Dragon Inn would be pretty disappointed to hear your opinion that their establishments are not quality dining establishments that's just too bad one of the things that Haverson's over optimistic traffic cartoon has failed to show you is how each weekday morning noon and five dozens of people escape the traffic going towards guests by turning on our street autumn drive they turn that autumn drive they blast down to Redmond they make a left on Redmond and they're back out on guests again our neighborhood isn't meant to handle what's happening now you can only imagine how many more dozens of people would use our street as an exit valve every single day if this development were to go in and I bring that up to bring this up if you'll flip your map over with today's global positioning satellites you can be pretty darn sure that people who are headed towards the city on guest road and wanted to go into the new development would say hey I can bypass this stoplight right here by zipping on down to Lebanon Circle going up Lebanon Circle and getting right back on guest road going down to the development that would leave them driving right in front of easily elementary school on a road that's barely 15 feet wide this area was not appropriate for a strip mall when it was made this area is not acceptable for a strip mall now and as long as people live on autumn drive and green oak and as long as children go to school easily elementary school this neighborhood will never be an appropriate or acceptable location thank you very much thank you Mr. Ray Tom Berman Josie McNeil Owen from 509 Wanderidge Drive I meant to give my time to Megan Gray I'm not talking well so may I give my time to whoever's left here thank you yes and you are signed up so okay thank you very much and thank you for your patience and hearing us out tonight it was a great job with downtown and whoever put together the comprehensive plan knew what they were doing they made this parcel low density for a reason now I don't know the reasons was it the elementary school was it the Eno was it to give us a visual break from the endless strip malls that come off 85 whether you're on gas or Roxborough or Duke I mean this is a great place to be and I think it's a great place to be in Durham by keeping the zoning that is already here and I think that if you go look at the public's and carry which I did I'm not from Florida so I don't know anything about them I went over there and went around the store I don't see it being much different than Harris teeter it's not a place that my teenage kids would have hung out or what I think Gochelina is probably better than any of those so I don't know that we need this but I guess the thing that is really bothering me is that we're focused on all the people that live north of Lada Road and dug on it the people between Lada and 85 are getting hammered look at your community crime map holy cow in that area of strip malls from Roxborough and Duke all the way over to yes down around Horton Road where all these other grocery stores are is nothing but crime every day there was a murder at the BP on Guest Road today two days ago they were pulling some people that had assault with a gun out of the CVS over there at Lada and Roxborough so what are we getting to have a better grocery store here's what I feel like we're gonna get we're gonna screw those people that live south of Lada Road again because what'll happen is publics will put one of those other grocery stores out of business and we'll have another commercial eyesore down there where we already have a bunch of them thank you let's wrap it up our next individual my name is Tom Barman I live at 503 Parkview Drive in Lockhaven Hills thanks for the time tonight to speak with you in our neighborhood we had a vote to see whether or not we would support this proposal or not we have about 160 homes and our vote was 82% against this proposal and our neighborhood is adjacent right next to this proposed land the developer claims that this will increase access for food and grocery stores but that's not true because we have two other major grocery stores at the same latitude two more within two miles and then if you go another four miles you have four more grocery stores so we're already oversaturated as you can see from the posters we're also oversaturated with vacancies and retail space so Durham North Durham does not need any more empty retail space the developer also claims that this is going to bring in jobs but I think what we'll really do is just shift jobs from one store to another like the previous gentleman commented food line or some other grocery store will then become vacant south of this location and we'll have the same problem again and again this also sits a bad precedent that if this land is re-zoned the land immediately across the street will also be re-zoned much easier I believe and in this whole intersection we'll look just like Roxboro Road and we'll have this never-ending retail the chain begun at this intersection this will also kind of continue the sprawl in Durham which recently was noticed as Durham Chapel held the second most sprawling medium-sized metro for cities in the US finally ironically sorry I'm running out of time when you think of Publix although it might not be a Publix you think of the word public and you think maybe community minded or working together but that really isn't the case because if Publix was thinking about how to help Durham County they would come in and say Durham where do you need a grocery store where are places and you can look on maps that have looked at food availability thank you and please wrap it up there's a food desert where they could put things there are empty storefronts where they could put things and instead they're trying to round this down us they could also use spaces that could be rehab the way Starbucks and Harris Dieter did also in North Durham so there are good examples that they could follow I think they need your leadership to help keep them aligned thank you so much William Richards and then I'm going to call the names of all of the last individuals that I have Jeff Williams Keith LePage Daniel Thomas and Roxanne Van Faro if all of those individuals will come forward and William Richards please so my name is William Richards I live at 5116 Green Oak Drive one of the roads that would be directly across from an access point on the proposed strip mall which is what this will be regardless of what they want to call it I mean it's a grocery store with a bunch of other smaller stores and a huge parking lot and a lot of people are interested in putting a store there if it was Harris Teeter Kroger or any other business I don't think we'd be having this conversation so kudos to the public's marketing people they've certainly done their job I grew up in South Florida went to publics with my mom dad every weekend very familiar with it and all I can say is that it's a grocery store you know they have food and you can buy it that's all that it is I've heard arguments that the neighborhood is stagnated and that there's progress and the future and everything but I don't see what's so innovative about another strip mall we've been doing this for decades and people have been complaining about them for decades it doesn't fit the character of the neighborhood this part of town is quiet it's part of the reason why we moved to this part of town I thought it was for people who wanted it to be quiet another thing is that one of the things that they've been talking about especially when they initially proposed this project is the walkability of the project and there's nothing about the plan that's walkable starting with the fact that you'd be walking to a grocery store and I can't think of anything else I'd you know less like to walk to I certainly don't want to be carrying 50 pounds of groceries home and additionally the roads in the established neighborhoods are anything but walkable as well and the proposed road improvements would make the area even less walkable than it already is in order to get from Dover Ridge to the shopping center you would need to walk down meandering roads and then cross four lanes of road traffic and then you would need to walk through an enormous parking lot and I can't imagine that anyone's going to walk to that public instead they'll drive and then what's the point it'll save you just three whole minutes to the next Harris cheater which is literally three minutes away I time it every time I drive it just because I'm going crazy you're thinking about this so we have four grocery stores within two miles and Harris cheaters the furthest one and it takes three minutes thank you so much please wrap it up my name is Jeff Williams I live at 304 Hard Scrabble Drive Madam Chairperson thank you and commissioners thank you for the opportunity thank you for your service I'd also like to thank the staff for their thoughtful analysis of this application and state that I am opposed to this rezoning the unified development ordinance is a good thing it and the associated zoning maps have the ability to purchase land and under clearly understand the limits of its use of both our land and the land around it both now and in the planned future I believe this rezoning does not honor the spirit or the intent of the development ordinance four minutes that's how long it takes to get from the subject property to the two shopping centers two grocery stores and two chain drug stores at Horton and guest road I believe that the cost of this small convenience will be the degradation of the peaceful surroundings at Latter Road and that's just the tip of the wedge as sure as the excitement of the shiny new store wears off as fast as that of the smell of a new car another outside money to interest will come with tales of turn lanes and wonderful shopping experiences before we know it the 70 acres at Russell and guest road will have a target please recommend against this application and spare us from the mind numbing retail cacophony that is New Hope streets or Briar Creek please reject this rezoning and preserve the peace and tranquility that so many of us cherish north of the eno thank you the page thank you Danielle Thomas and Roxanne Van Fowler I would like to thank you all for allowing us to speak our mind I would just like to talk about easily not many people here today have actually spoke about easily and how it is going to affect them like their website said the retailer said we don't want any negative impact but I believe that it will be a negative impact upon the school easily just as a school that kids learn about math and reading it has a hands on approach to more important topics such as the environment and wildlife this year my son was able to have an opportunity on a field trip outside by not having a lot of homes and traffic in the area the environment blooms and the wildlife thrives this trip has happened for many generations I once was an easily elementary school student and I remember that trip there aren't a lot of kids today that can say I see owls I see bunnies I see deers and birds and other animals at school by rezoning this area that would be selfish of us taking away from the kids within excuse me I'm so sorry taking away these kids from learning something so important to us I asked that the type of learning what type of learning is more effective a hands-on approach or a textbook today we teach our kids about global warming pervert preserving the wildlife in our environment we teach our kids as a community to recycle plant trees protect wildlife and not to litter if this area gets rezoned my son would be devastated like he says we need trees and oxygen and what about if you all left home today went home and everything was gone that's how these animals feel very sad excuse me let's all be role models to these kids by showing them do it we want to save the environment not just now but later when they become great leaders of Durham as you all are let's not be hypocrites to the children but what we are teaching in the classroom versus what we are doing in the wildlife in the environment please keep the current law is saying no to rezoning thank you thank you and Roxanne Farrell I live at five zero three three green oak drive less than a quarter mile away from the proposed development ladies and gentlemen I want to speak to you tonight about latter road we've heard a little bit about it but I wanted to expand on that a little bit latter road is a critical east west artery for northern Durham it's only one point two miles long and it is the shortest most direct route between gas road on the west and rocks for a road on the east the nearest east west artery is Horton Road which is one point five miles away because the river lies in between into the north it's the east west arteries are further and not straight so longer as someone who lives so close to latter road I want to share my experiences the first two words that come to mind when I think of latter road are narrow and windy there are only two lanes one in each direction and there's very poor sight distance as you drive along their trees and houses all along both sides the posted speed limit is 40 miles per hour but most cars drive about 50 miles per hour there are no sidewalks I have walked along latter road and received many stairs I've had to walk in the ditch and across driveways I've imagined biking on such a road I have done so to my own peril it's very dangerous safe drivers will slow down entirely almost to a stop when they see you dangerous drivers not so much safe drivers might also pull all the way around you into into the other lane at their own peril in the 1.2 mile stretch of latter road there are eight intersecting roads into residential areas with no stop signs or no four-way stops and no traffic lights a road like this requires foresight from planning commissioners yes traffic has been increasing and will increase continue to increase so the question should be how can we make this road safer the last thing we should do is build 60 new residences along this road and the last thing we should do is believe that an extra turn lane will solve a potential traffic nightmare thank you thank you well I do have one additional adjustment to make I believe the proponent has three minutes remaining what one thing madam chair if I may when we when we made sure we had equal time we did add one additional speaker who was speaking against so I'd like to just make sure we add additional two minutes for mr. biker and for the proponents to make sure we have five minutes and that way both sides have even amounts of time so that means mr. biker you have five minutes for rebuttal Patrick biker again for the applicant our landscape architects Salmos are with Kim Lee Horn would like to address the environmental and stormwater issues we believe we thoroughly addressed traffic and the market issues that were raised by the opponents but we would like to give further testimony in regards to environmental and stormwater issues so I'd like to introduce mr. Sal Masara a good evening Sal Moussara I'm with Kim Lee Horn and associates 401 Fayetteville Street in Raleigh just in response to some of the concerns which we absolutely appreciate in terms of stormwater and environmental impacts bottom line this development like every development is is beholden to both local and where applicable state regulations in terms of how we deal with environmental impacts and the effect of in particular stormwater from these projects the project has not been engineered yet but when it is engineered it will meet in a minimum meet your local regulations to address stormwater quantity in stormwater quality both of those have to be addressed before that stormwater leaves the site and bottom line we have to deal with stormwater generated by new development such that characteristically when it leaves the property it functions in the same way it does today before the site was developed so in terms of slowing the water down releasing it at a slower rate that is the standard that we have to meet in that we will meet quickly comments regarding consistency with the comp plan we always appreciate the hard work of your staff they are your technical kind of advisory in a technical advisory role to this body and we appreciate the fact that after their study and analysis that they find the development is consistent with the comprehensive plan in their opinion thank you thank you madam chairman just to clear up some issues that were brought up about guest road or traffic engineer will use up just a last couple minutes thank you we did focus our simulation and traffic study presentation tonight on ladder road for obvious reasons there are existing backups in that area but to to address guest road because that is important it was mentioned tonight we simply want to point back to the staff report which indicates that there is excess capacity on guest road it was widened to a four lane median divided facility I think 2005 2006 that time frame with our project the volume to capacity ratio will only be 61% so just a little above what it's capable half of what it's capable of carrying so just want to clarify that thank you madam chairman our team is happy to answer any questions the Commission may have thank you for your time tonight okay we're ready to close the public hearing unless you have signed up to speak I cannot recognize there may be an opportunity for some of the commissioners to ask questions that but I'm I've got to close the public hearing at this time recognize commissioner Brian I'm just trying to get on the list I was just about to ask okay I have a little cheat so I okay I'm closing the public hearing they give the commissioners an opportunity to ask questions Commissioner Brian has was first Commissioner Whitley and Commissioner Al Turk and Commissioner Busby okay we'll start with Commissioner Brian thank you madam chair I want to just make some statements and I want to begin by thanking everybody who contacted me to express their opinions about this I want to thank everybody who came out tonight to listen to speak I have noted that there are a number of people who feel that development in North Durham is stagnant especially when you compare it to South Durham as a 42-year resident of South Durham I just want to caution you to be careful of what you wish for a lot of what made South Durham a really attractive place to live has been lost to development without any really noticeable increase in the quality of life now that's the public service message I've noticed that there is quite a bit of support for this project and I think that may be at least partially due to the fact that Publix is involved with it however all this support does not change the fact that this is not a true mixed-use project and should not be approved with mixed-use zoning I think there are several consistency problems with this proposal as it's been submitted and I also have concerns about location and what will actually be built there if it's does get approved but what I want to talk about is are the consistency problems that I see in the staff report when staff was you know measuring this project against the policy 2.2.2f suburban tier spacing of commercial nodes staff concluded that the proposal meets two out of the three standards in that policy but they let the applicant off the hook on the standard which I think is the most important one namely separate distinct nodes of commercial development by a distance of at least one half mile measured from the outermost edge of the node if we're going to let developers applicants who come in off the hook on this standard then I believe we're setting a very bad precedent and potentially opening the door for future commercial sprawl and in my opinion we the policy the proposal should meet all three standards in this policy in order to be consistent with the comprehensive plan it doesn't and I don't think it's consistent with the plan there's another policy which the staff does not talk about in their report which I believe should be considered and that's policy 2.2.2d suburban tier mixed use in an abbreviated form what that says is is through the UDO establish and utilize a planned zoning district that encourages an appropriate mix of land uses that are physically and functionally integrated and I believe that this proposal fails the physically integrated test and I'll say more about that in a minute another another policy which I found and I found this online and and for those of you who may not be aware of it the comprehensive plan is online at the city of Durham website and I reviewed the chapter 2 on the land use element prior to coming to this meeting but another policy I found there is policy 2.3.2e also called suburb urban tier mixed use and Mr. Becker quoted the first part of this policy earlier which is through the UDO encourage mixed use by allowing mixed use developments where one of the uses is shown on the future land use map the part that he did not quote was projects qualifying as mixed use shall incorporate significant vertical integration of residential and non residential uses in order to achieve achieve true mixed use rather than the multiple use projects that typically result from only horizontal integration and again there there's no vertical integration of uses on this so when I looked at these policies and compared to proposed project to them I concluded that it really does not is not consistent with a comprehensive plan I also disagree with the staff conclusion that it meets the unified development ordinance the applicant did make a number of late pro offers to address some of the intent of UDO subsection 4.4.5 but if you look at what it says in that this is what it says the MU district is established to provide innovative opportunities for integration of diverse but compatible uses into a single development that is unified by distinguishable design features that's the key part that's missing the only thing we know about the residential part of this is that the houses will not be over 35 feet high everything else about design relates to the commercial element and there are no distinguishable design features that unify this project specified anywhere now I also went out and I looked at the website that this project set up and one thing I noticed on that website was an artist drawing of what this project could look like if I assume that this drawing reflects the true intentions of the applicant then what I noticed was a commercial piece and a residential piece with a buffer of trees between them and that you know really made me think that this is really a project consisting of two separate distinct uses which the applicant intends to buffer against each other to me buffering these two uses from each other is opposite from integration of uses that's required by the policy that I referred to earlier since these uses are distinct if these properties are to be developed I think they need to be developed independently of each other I think the commercial part should be developed with commercial zoning maybe CC or CG in order to do that the applicant would first need to go through the plan amendment process to see if he could get a commercial land use designation placed on the commercial piece and then I think the residential part needs to be developed under residential zoning maybe RS 20 or RS 10 or maybe even a PDR but in my opinion trying to blend these two distinct uses together under the auspices of mixed use simply does not work in this case now as I said earlier I have other concerns but I've already talked longer than I should have so I'll yield the floor for other to other commissioners thank you thank you commissioner Brian commissioner L. Turk thank you chairwoman I want to echo a lot of what commissioner commissioner Brian has said first by thanking everyone for coming and reaching out emailing and writing letters I think this is obviously a very contentious case I've only been on the commission a few months but this is by far the most contentious and so no matter how I vote I know I'm gonna upset a lot of people so with that in mind you know I try to base my decisions on two things public input and the staff reports that commissioner Brian mentioned in the first public support you know it seems like based on the emails that we've gotten and the attendance here this is a very split you know there are a lot of people who want this development they want new development North North Durham and there are others who do not and so you know based on how split this is it's hard for me to make a determination based on you know just public input but I do want to then say that you know the second thing I look to is the staff report and I think there are a couple of things in the report that are that I'm generally in favor of and and I will say that I'm probably more in favor of development than not but there are a couple of things in the staff report that I think are positives the I think the traffic simulation and the traffic assessment that was made is pretty is convincing to me that this would help with flow of traffic and I and I think you know the impact on school might be minimal at least in terms of the new students I understand that it may have other impacts on the school the elementary school nearby but I do want so let me just just quickly go through some of the concerns that I have and and I want to again echo Commissioner Brian on some of the the consistency with the comprehensive plan and you know there are I'll point to a couple of policies that I that I noticed policy 2.2 to e this is a this is in the suburban tier and you know the policy the comprehensive plan says discourage auto-oriented commercial strip development and encourage commercial nodes I want to point out that the staff said that you know based on the development plan that is that the applicant has given us the staff cannot determine whether you know this would develop in line with strip or commercial node so that's really one I think that to me is one of the biggest concerns and I want to point to another policy in the comprehensive plan policy 4.2 3 a commercial development design and I'm quoting here again this is this applies to suburban tier says develop design standards to limit ex expansive parking lots in in front of strip commercial development again I think that the development plan that we've been given does not show that you know that this would not be developed in a way where there's expansive parking lots in front of a strip commercial development and the comprehensive plan I think is pretty clear that you know we should encourage again discourage auto oriented strip development encourage commercial nodes and and I think as it stands right now I don't see how the development plan shows us that there are a number there are a couple of other you know they continue the two policy 2.3 1 a contiguous development you know again I think that the staff report shows that you know not sure that this application is in line with that particular policy of taking advantage of existing urban services and then finally again compliance with the UDO you know they're in the last paragraph of that section staff cannot make a determination based on the development plan whether this development would meet the intent of the mixed-use district statement given I mean I think given these particular concerns I I mean I guess I have a question for staff given that there are a number of policies where the application is not consistent with the comprehensive plan and the UDO I guess I'm puzzled by the fact that you determine that this request in general is consistent with the comprehensive plan in the UDO and then I guess I would ask that the applicant whether it is possible you'd be willing to enable to provide more details I think in the development plan for us to to determine whether this is in line with mixed-use development thank you certainly Jacob Wiggins with the planning department one thing that I would like to point out in regards to the comprehensive plan some of the policies that were pointed out you start off with the phrase you know through the unified development ordinance and when there's that language that really means that's more like a homework assignment for staff something that staff should work on and incorporate into the ordinance it's not necessarily policy in of itself it's something that staff has to do to try to work into the ordinance over time in regards to some of the specific policies I believe Commissioner Bryan noted that staff found that two of the three commercial nodes the staff believe that the development did meet two of those and that is sure I don't believe that staff is necessarily letting anyone off the hook I believe that staff just pointing out to the commission that based on our analysis it does appear that the proposal meets two of those three items the proffers that the applicant provided namely the internal pedestrian pathway as well as the open space did in staff's opinion meet the more closely aligned with the intent the comprehensive plan as well as the intent statement for the MU district as defined in section four the mixed use district in itself is flexible by design and I believe that the the ordinance gives a fair amount of discretion to the applicant to design a district of their choosing it does give some guiding principles as you all have noted overall based on the proposals or the proffers that the applicant gave staff felt that those more aligned with that however I believe the commission certainly has it within their discretion to review those as well so I believe we have staff felt that it did meet the minimum requirements of the UDO and that is what we based our report on the chair recognizes Commissioner Whitley yes let me speak to the transportation my question is is there any plan by the city to create the same traffic calming that this project would bring to that area bill judge with city Durham Department of Transportation there are currently no active or funded roadway projects at the intersection of guests and latter road by either the city of Durham or NCDOT there is a another project at Roxborough Lata infinity to address some issues there but which is relatively near to this site but but none at the specific improvements that the applicants proffering to me maybe I should have added are they in the long term plans to not right now I mean obviously we're we're always looking at potential projects and needs most of the focus in this area has been directed to the Roxborough Lata infinity intersection that has well similar and slightly worse problems so that's that's why we've been basically working towards developing a project on that intersection but there's always a potential that at some point in the future that there could be a project at this intersection okay now you've heard the developer you've seen the developers traffic calming analysis what's your opinion of that yes we did review the traffic impact analysis the city of Durham as long as well as NCDOT with the applicant and that was the solution that all three parties basically agreed would be the the best use for roadway improvement to address the existing traffic as well as the proposed development traffic thank you mr. Judd mr. biker why is your project a mix use project thank you for asking that Commissioner Whitley our team started on this project a good year and a half ago and we were very diligent reviewing both the comprehensive plan but even more specifically 6.11.7 in the UDO and we found that very particularly and so to our knowledge this project meets every requirement whoops don't drop that in 6.11.7 which is you know five pages five or six pages of standards I think the best what an analogy for us to look at and it was a project developed in Durham a long time ago now was Woodcroft where it was developed with a shopping center in the front and residential on the back and you can see people walking down the paths to buy something at the hardware store or the grocery store or go go to eat it one of the restaurants so I believe it does meet the intent of the mixed use certainly meets the intent and again it's something that we put together a first-class team to put this project together and you see that on our website we're not trying to hide the ball here we've had that website up for over a year so that people could look at it think about it give us their input and we've had a lot of input most of it to be frank has been positive and so to the extent that there are issues with it as commissioner al-Turk raised that really needs to be addressed through changing the standards in 6.11.7 because this is what this is how we design our project we have to follow this ordinance it's the roadmap and we follow it and if people are not happy with it that's fine but we need to change the roadmap so that people who are looking at investing in Durham creating jobs creating tax base and investing in traffic improvements know what the rules are and so we believe we follow the rules we believe this is the first-class project and and again we put it out there for everyone to see there's not there's certainly no hidden ball trick is since baseball season right around the corner we want to be as transparent as we possibly can but we believe we have done everything we can to meet the standards that are enunciated in the udo and if those standards are not correct and we've talked about changing the mixed-use standards many times but to my knowledge no text amendment has ever been submitted by either the private sector or the public sector I hope that answered your question but and if you want any further details and obviously our our team is here answer that thank you thank you I am I too want to thank people that have sent emails and sent letters and I must say some of the letters were quite creative and in telephone calls that I've received both for and against you know is we can always make a good decision with public input I'm a firm believer that and I want to thank each and every one of you for coming out tonight I wish that we could afford to live in a community where there was plenty of land space where we would have to worry about traffic and and development I've been to Wyoming and I saw why the rustic atmosphere what was appealing about that but Durham is going to grow whether we like it or not in fact I think it's projected to have somewhere close to now a quarter of a million and we and we're going to grow to four hundred thousand by in eight years and we must develop I remember the fight over South Point and I remember all of the disaster scenarios that people feared some of those came true but the point is that South Point gave us extra revenue as a city to keep our taxes lower it's not as low as I wanted to be but because of that development it made it better we were able to do different kinds of things as far as recreation and and traffic calming guess road needs this traffic calming whether this development is approved or not and I like the idea that it has open space it means it's not just a big I've heard y'all call it strip strip mall but most strip malls do not provide open space and they certainly don't create a path for people to walk to to get their goods and services I for one will vote to approve this measure thank you Commissioner Whitley Commissioner Busby thank you Madam Chair I'll also thank everyone for coming tonight in particular I really appreciate the work of the staff I know over the past few days we've gotten numerous updates on this proposal this is a proposal it takes a lot of staff time so we appreciate your work and certainly appreciate all of you coming out tonight I think we probably should apologize to Durham restaurants that don't have all of you out taking advantage of Valentine's Day tonight and I think we can all agree and I appreciate the respectful debate that we all love Durham and it's worth reminding ourselves that on Valentine's Day the thing that I think is important to recall and Commissioner Alturk I would agree we've gotten a lot of emails and letters and phone calls the folks that are saying please do not rezone this have raised legitimate concerns about what this might mean and having made investments based on what our current UDO indicated would happen at the same time we do make rezoning those those happen most of you I noticed I went back through all the emails of folks who are in favor of this rezoning and what it was really interesting to me about two-thirds of you were very specific in saying I want the public's so good job for public's for their brand recognition our challenge is we aren't here tonight to vote for against public's we are here tonight to vote for against a rezoning at this particular site and so that leads me to one question actually mr. biker for you I've heard some of the citizens who spoke tonight and the there was a some pictures of currently zoned commercial vacant land in the north Durham area and I just wanted to hear your response to the concern that's raised and saying why this location when there is plenty of adequate commercially zoned property for for a public's to come to northern northern Durham and to provide those services I may ask Tom Vincent to echo some or to reinforce some of these points it's it there's several things vice chairman one several of the commercial sites are sites that I've looked at for other projects and they have had other development challenges that made them simply unfeasible now it could be a water and sewer issue it could be a rock issue it could be a topography issue there are a host of issues and we'd be here for a long time if we went through all those sites and talked about all them but trust me I've looked at many of them and they all are problematic so it was not that we said well we're not even gonna look we certainly evaluated them they were all rejected for perfectly legitimate reasons which had nothing to do with zoning but they had to do with the the challenges there's a saying to win a horse race a thousand a thousand things have to go right to lose a horse race only one thing has to go wrong well zoning is just one issue in in a brain bringing a successful project to completion there are a host of other issues and so those sites that that other people have referred to have those challenges and that's why they didn't work if you want to talk about the trade area Tom Vincent can go into that more eloquently but it's mainly because this location serves a huge area to the north and to the west and that is very important because when we that's why I reference 2005 when we adopted the plan that was when we adopted the suburban tier members of the Commission that sent a signal that this area was going to be developed with water and sewer and we were going to encourage mixed use within the suburban tier and so that's why this site was evaluated those are many of those other sites were looked at have I've looked at them others on my team have looked at them for some for one reason or another and it would take too long to go through all of them in detail but trust me we've looked at I've looked at them many times over the last 20 years great that's you have anything on the trade area that's helpful thank you if there's anything else if I didn't address your question I hope I did you need anything else no that's great you're very helpful I appreciate it I had one other question for Ms. Jacobs with the Eno River Association if you don't mind coming to the microphone you had mentioned the Eno River assessment was taking place and I was curious I may have missed this you may have said this what's the timing on actually this is the third one that I think the city has done they did Ellery Creek and Little Lit Creek I think was the second one they're now working on Eno and they're out actually walking around and looking at creeks and the land conditions on the Eno there's a preliminary report that will be presented I believe in the middle of March as part of Creek Week there's a public information I don't know yet whether I doubt if that's the final report it's a public information session so I don't really know how long it'll be before this is completed but certainly staff is working with consultants so great that's the next step I've been sitting on that question ever since you testified thank you and I have to say that having heard so many folks in support of this proposal I would love to say I'm gonna stand here tonight and and vote for it and allow a public's to come but as Commissioner Brian and Commissioner Alturk have raised concerns I share those same concerns about is this the appropriate site is this truly a mixed mixed use development seeing some of the concerns raised in the staff report give me pause in supporting this project so I know my time is up thank you thank you Commissioner Busby Commissioner Gibbs well I think I may as well chime in on the mixed use thing to start with outside of the downtown district the 9th Street mixed use does have a definition that seems to follow all the way out to the county commercial on the first floor residential up above regardless but when we get out to suburban areas and even areas within the town limits I think we're good we really need to reevaluate the term mixed use to me this project is a good example of a mixed use project if you apply the downtown tier rules of mixed use that means somewhere in there you're gonna have have to live above the grocery store or live above the whatever restaurants may be coming in but having said that I just think we need to reevaluate in our our comp plan a more flexible definition of what that allows some creativity in mixed use development but I that aside there is this is another really hard one I'll be glad with some easy ones come along everybody that I that I have heard from or that we have heard from their reasons for being for or against have have merit some things that I agree with on both sides this is a to me if this this project is a really good project it has one of the the best home builders in Semarine Publix has its reputation which regardless of the cynicism that I have heard from lots of folks and that's something I want to ask about too and we don't know what kind of restaurants may be coming but it has the potential to be a really good project not a strip mall and I think it it would make a nice little village there it with the school nearby but that's I didn't really mean to get into that one thing that has come through in a lot of the things is the the distrust of the developer distrust and cynicism in describing Publix and we don't even know that a Publix is gonna come in there and that's a problem I have I that's been an issue in my mind the traffic concerns I think there will not be any any traffic remediation if this project is not built and if this project is not built it will remain RS 20 and I if you think there's a lot of traffic associated with this think about a hundred and thirty unit or a unit that matches Latimore across the street that can give you a whole bunch of traffic and impact but as far as development further out further north there ain't gonna be any except for small developments well and any kind of residential developments nobody wants to be annexed into the city so that water and sewer can be run out but and if it does then you will see development take off to a certain extent since it's in the not the news the the Falls Lake a little river basin and all those other things and I these are just some random thoughts that I've had but whatever happens in the vote tonight I really don't would not like to see a celebration against any of our other neighbors because we are neighbors I am I live in the northern northern Durham and I'll in my comments with a question madam chairman madam chair regardless of what the vote is tonight this will go to the city for their review and an action on that is good okay and that's because I the ultimate decision on this I think should be made by elected officials but thank you commissioner Gibbs commissioner Freeman thank you I also want to echo the thanks for all of the feedback in the insight in the area around comments questions even just detailed rundown of what what folks were feeling in on this case I want to step back from this conversation and say that this split in the community marks what I've been talking about on a number of cases in that we don't have a neighborhood level planning process in place to make sure that we're planning together rather than on this piecemeal when developers choose to move forward with a project so I just wanted to say that up front and then I I had a few questions and I'm not sure I don't see mr. Stephen Woods who mentioned the noise and light pollution but I wanted to know if I guess if you could speak to it mr. biker if that was brought up previously and if you had any thoughts on it yes certainly the UDO has very stringent standards on light pollution and obviously this project will abide by them and then in terms of noise I'm sorry in terms of odor other things I I can tell you I live I can smell Q shag off of my my wife and I smell it every day when we go outside and it's part of living in a in a in Durham I love it other people might not but there they're but getting to that to address that point that's something where obviously we're going to locate all the the service areas are going to be located quite far away from the existing homes they would be placed between behind the commercial area and that way we can plan accordingly for the new houses that are built so we have looked at that I mean this is getting into a site plan issue but obviously to address that concerns since it came up we had we did think about it we've been as proactive as we can to design a project that has as little impact as possible on the surrounding houses thank you thank you and then also I know it was Sherry the freeze or Megan that talked about the mixed use or the property that came up in 2003 and then what were the differences between this before and now I'm not sure which one of you it was I know but if you could just speak to that again I I couldn't catch there was something about suitability that I missed and I just wanted to catch on catch up on that sorry yeah so in 2003 Ken Spaulding and AAC developers out of Charlotte proposed half half the size so 15 acres but it was the 15 acres of commercial that you basically see in the plan now so if you take away the residential portion you only get the commercial portion that's what they proposed with the grocery store with other stores and out parcels pretty much exactly the same thank you and just just to touch on I think the first staff a question for staff I'm because I'm recognizing that this area is a is not urban is in downtown Durham as Mr. Gibbs Commissioner Gibbs mentioned for a rural transition into suburban what does mixed use mean or in your in your analysis of it what exactly does that mean sure Jacob Lincoln's apartment so this this property is located within the suburban tier so the the copyrights a plan does permit the mixed-use district within the suburban tier the and by extension therefore when we look at the ordinance for technical compliance it is a permitted district within the suburban tier in terms of what that means staff follows the copyrights of plan policies and the language in the ordinance when we're viewing it so specifically I know I heard someone else mention horizontal versus vertical mixed use is that factored in at all sure so that's in the yeah so there's two options for the mixed-use district there's horizontal integration or there's vertical integration and they they are what they sound like vertical integration you typically see non-commercial uses on lower floors and residential above horizontal is something that allows for a horizontal approach the applicant in this case has taken that approach and is there a preference in this suburban tier around planning for the future sure so the ordinance does not specify it's an option that the the applicant it's at their discretion in terms of their design thank you and so I just want to step back in again and say that I think that this is the type of issue that could be addressed in a more neighborhood level planning session and it doesn't feel right like Commissioner Gibbs said for me to make the decision on whether or not this project should move forward knowing that it doesn't fit with the existing neighborhood and it would create a huge shift and I guess where the commercial mixed use projects would go going forward so I just want to be mindful of that and saying that I just don't feel comfortable with it and I think it would be a great to have a public in northern Durham I'm not sure that this is the right property I'm not I can't say that for certain in this case based on Mr. Commissioner Brian and Commissioner Altaric's comments those were also my concerns as well I just didn't feel comfortable that's all thank you. Thank you Commissioner Freeman. Do I have other commissioners who would like to speak. Oh I'm sorry your last Commissioner Johnson. Of course Commissioner Miller will drive us home just to be sure I just wanted to make sure that I think everyone for one reaching out over what seems like the past month with your correspondence for in support are in opposition to this is a hard case application. I share the sentiment of Commissioner Freeman and that I don't necessarily feel comfortable making decisions with with something that I feel is more of a neighborhood level conversation decision to be made. So nearly all of the concerns that have been raised are were notes that I made so there's positive to this this project and their negative. So if the issue is traffic probably not going to get traffic from a public investment standpoint. So this would be an opportunity to do it. This this notion of bringing economic development to north north Durham is you know this is not one can make an argument. This is an opportunity to do that. The one point that I do I would like to to speak to tonight is that when we've had prior applications and just like tonight you know we we commonly hear that Durham is growing and we got to do something with the growth. But the reality is that we have a choice of what we're going to do in regards to Durham and growth and we don't just have to accept it as an inevitable thing. So that's why we're addressing issues like affordable house and where we're going to invest transportation dollars. And so the question becomes what do we want Durham to look like. We have a comprehensive plan. We have the UDOs etc etc. And the question is is it going to be a vision that we just change when we want to make something when we want to rationalize why something makes sense or do we stay with the vision of Durham does not have to be a city where we pack people into downtown Durham and South Durham like we've chosen to. Those are the the populist areas that we've chosen to drive economic development in an intense way. North Durham doesn't necessarily have to be that way even though we're growing and that's something that we just have to be you know adults and humans about and do the hard work of figuring out what is Durham going to look like 10 20 30 years from now. So I'll conclude with saying that my concerns are to the point that I don't feel comfortable just saying that I support this project in the sense that I'm looking at this more from a public servant standpoint and that you can look at the project on its own and see the positives. But then what does it look like from a community standpoint from that. What's the net benefit. So it is very likely I'm an economic development gamma analyst. I look at data to help drive my decisions in that it's very likely that one of I drove the area. This is this is taking up a lot of my mental space and energy over the past two and a half weeks. So I drove the area and I've noticed you know there are multiple grocery stores in a close proximity. Not all not all of them are going to likely stay there because the market is just not going to support four or five grocery stores. So what happens when. So what's the net job impact. That's the question. So you may create a hundred jobs with a grocery store that you're going to bring with the public. But what happens when one or two of them go away. What's the net impact of that. And the reality is from an economic economic development financing standpoint is that it's very costly to do in field with big open store fronts like grocery stores that close down. So who's got. How are you feeling as a as a community a local level community and the ability of someone who's going to be willing to come in North Durham and actually put in the capital necessary to turn a huge grocery store front or whatever it is into something 21st century. Do you take that risk or do you do a project like this that's much easier. I'll just be honest with you. This project is much easier than going and trying to do it in field with something that's been developed. And so I put those comments to my commissioners in the sense that this is the reality. Like we know we want to do things for Durham and we know North Durham has challenge has challenges and issues and concerns just like East Durham and other parts of the city. But what's best when we look at it from a Western net benefit for not just the neighborhood and community level but what we're trying to do for Durham and making it a magnet for people who want to come because we'll get to a point where you just can't come to Durham because they're we ain't got no more room. You know. So we can't just use that we're growing. So we have to make these decisions to accommodate growth. I think that we should see this as an opportunity for us to have a Congress a larger conversation of what do we want our Durham to look like going forward. And so I'll close with those remarks. Thank you Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Hornbuckle. Yes ma'am. Mr. Biker I'd like to thank you. I think you've presented a quality development. I'm a lifelong resident of Northern Durham County and I really think it is something that is needed in Northern Durham County and you have my support for it. I think that the only way people complain. I'm a retired deputy sheriff. I know the traffic problems that guests and latter very very well investigating many accidents in that intersection. Your development is going to be probably the only way there is going to be any help or alleviate the problem there or or at least something to attempt to help the problem. So I'm going on record and as is I'm in full support of this project. Thank you. Commissioner Miller. Thank you Madam Chairman. The first thing I want to address in this is what appears to be misunderstanding about the traffic impact of the project and the effect of the traffic improvements that the developer proposes to make and I'm relying almost entirely on Appendix 10 and the staff report and I'm looking at page five here. This project is expected to add 10,270 some some trips per day. That's 103% of the current traffic generation. Now that's not as the traffic today. That's the traffic calculated against the way the land is zoned and if it were developed. So right now this if this are 20 piece of property was developed it would generate 500 trip and 80 trips per day. So if we subtract that out of the 10,270 or whatever it is it comes up to something under 10,000 and so they have added traffic improvement substantial ones. Mainly the Latin guess intersection. Today it's working that intersection as if this property was developed a single family homes at a level of service C with all the improvements. If this project is developed out it'll be working at a level of service C. That's a zero sum game. It's gonna be right where we are. But that's not the whole story. We have other roads and other intersections that we have to measure. One is autumn drive. Currently it's functioning at levels of service C. If we build this project with the proposed improvements it drops to level of service D in the morning and level of service E in the afternoon. That's much worse with the improvements. Later on in green oak drive today level of service B in the morning level of service B in the afternoon with the improvements drops to level of service C in the morning level of service D in the afternoon. So the traffic improvements are necessary just to tread water and keep it the way it is with double the traffic volume. So the project really doesn't it doesn't make you substantially worse but it does not make it better. And I think we have to be honest with ourselves about that. If you're in favor of this project because it makes traffic better you're mistaken. Look at your staff report appendix 10 page 5. Mr. Gibbs talked about mixed use development each site of downtown and Night Street. There's actually no mixed use zoning in Night Street or downtown. Those are design districts and different completely different standards apply. I am persuaded actually by something Mr. Plored said and that is this is a litmus test on the comprehensive plan. And the question is are we as a community serious about comprehensive planning. Do we have the discipline as a community to follow the comprehensive plan. I have been on the planning commission for about three and a half four years and I have been involved in zoning matters here in Durham and across the state for over 30 years. And this is one of the few instances where I've seen the staff come out and say look at the intent statements. Let's really look at our policies and it says basically this project doesn't measure up. One it's not mixed use. In other words if this rezoning was submitted as a I mean we could get the same project essentially if we had rezoning for a CG on the front half and didn't do anything on the back half and we would say no it doesn't conform with the comprehensive plan because the comprehensive plan says this is supposed to be low density residential but somehow we cast it as mixed use and it's exactly the same project and somehow we say it is but it's not mixed use. The staff says in the staff report that the development plan is so sparse they can't tell whether or not what's being proposed to be built here on the commercial side is consistent with nodal development or with strip development. And I think that we can't vote in favor of this unless we can answer that question. We can't vote in favor of this because we violate our own policy on commercial nodes and I have been pounding the table here ever since I've been on the planning commission about what commercial nodes means. If we're not careful we will wind up with the guest road north of the Eno River looking like guest road south of the Eno River and Roxborough Road from I-85 all the way up to to Infinity Road. Mishmash of piece meal, commercial zoning, the new things are great when they're new and then they begin to decay and instead of going back and fixing those we take another green field and we put it in a new strip shopping center. It's kind of slash and burn development. That's what this is and we shouldn't do it. Guest road. We got to have discipline. We've got to make sure that guest road going north doesn't become an endless succession of disconnected commercial development and we have a policy about it. It's called the commercial node policy and that says no closer than half mile but this is much less than half a mile from the next commercial node of the street. So under that policy even if you decided this was mixed use we have to vote no. We have to vote no. That's what we're here for. We're here to apply the policies. That's what our city council and our board of county commissioners wants us to do. We hear from the community and we apply the policies. I was invited along with a commission member Brian to Mr. Biker's office to look at a possible development plan for this and what they showed was a strip shopping center with a parking lot out in front and a couple of sites reserved for potential restaurant sites, a buffer and then a single family home development. That's ordinary. It's a 1960s approach to land use development. That's not mixed use and I heard the staff say well they will have a footpath. Well, there's something wrong with our ordinance if projects become mixed use because you've added a sidewalk between them. That's not what mixed use is and while it may be possible under the code we don't have to approve it and we certainly don't have to approve it and say it's appropriate in a place where our comprehensive plan says this should be low density residential and it's zoned low density residential. So for these reasons I've got to vote against this and I know this is going to disappoint some of you folks who live further out. My observation is is about 50-50, four and against. The people who were against tended to live closer. The people who were four tended to live further out. Do I hear you, you folks who live further out, about how difficult it is to find places to shop and to eat? Yes and we can say well that was a choice you made. I don't think that's really an adequate answer but I will point out to you that the comprehensive plan isn't a map that's a mile around this site. It's the whole county and I encourage you to look at it because we have reserved commercial shopping center sites. They're zoned and ready to go. Here and there. Now we're dependent upon the development community to decide today is the day to do it but there are at least three shopping center sites in Trayburn right now and I don't know what the developers plans are for developing those sites but one day that's going to happen. I'm sure it has to do with market analysis and so some of it has to do with water and sewer. There are a lot of things that have to come together but discipline. We have to have community discipline and in this situation we've got to follow our plan. The plan makes sense. It's a good one. If we're going to have a shopping center here then let's have it at an appropriate commercial node further up. Yes and if somebody comes along and wants to propose that I want to seriously look at it but I do not want a current crowd nodes and I do not want to have a commercial node every time a street intersects with a thoroughfare like guess road. So to my colleagues on the commission I'm going to vote against this. I urge you to vote against it for the same reasons. This isn't the end and the beginning and the end of of the development question in North Durham but we're going to have better development and development that makes more sense if we follow our policies and we follow our plans. Thank you commissioner Miller. Before I call for the point of order please before I call for the vote I'd like to make an observation and a comment. I am so appreciative to all of you for participating in the process. It is important that you take the time whether you for or against the project to come out and be heard. So many of you took the opportunity to do this and I could not go this evening without saying how important it is to have input into these processes. So thank you all for coming and now I'm going to call for a motion. Madam chair if I may I'd like to make a motion as was mentioned by commissioner Gibbs raised the question it's worth pointing out we are an advisory body we will we will make a favorable motion to send this forward to the city council it will then move forward to the city council regardless but with our notes and our votes. So having said that I move that we send case number z one five zero zero zero four zero to the city council with a favorable recommendation. Can you hear me now. Yes I would like to request 30 days of review I would like to know if Mr. biker might be opposed to that before I say it. This is a substitute motion so do I have a subject. I have a isn't this the 90 days didn't we know this is the first okay this is the first. So I just want to make sure they're all let me be sure I have a motion by commissioner Freeman and a second by commissioner with nothing oh I did okay a second by commissioner Miller Whitley okay I'm sorry that we continue this item for an additional 30 days I'm going to call for a roll call vote on the substitute motion first yeah I voted on the substitute motion first so roll call for the substitute motion no no yes no yes no yes no yes got a call for the question again well the original question I believe is on the table but just to repeat it we move case number z one five zero zero zero four zero to the city council with a favorable recommendation. Second I didn't hear a second okay okay mr. Al turk a motion by must be second by commissioner Al turk that we move north river village item number seven one five zero zero zero four zero forward with a favorable wrecking recommendation all in favor of this motion roll call vote please no no yes no no no no no thank you I'm going to ask for a five minute recess ordinance saying a number of bunch of yeah it's a bunch of crap it is it's ridiculous let's continue with our agenda the next item on the agenda is fendall farms fallow assemblage staff report please thank you jacob wiggins with the planning department so this case is for fendall farms and fallow assemblage the applicant is bob zemmalt with macadams this is within the city's jurisdiction this is a request to change the zoning designation of approximately 423 acres from plan development residential 3.0 zero zero do plan development residential 2.903 the applicant is proposing as part of this residential development a range of 1200 residential units the subject site is highlighted in red in front of you this is located the primary street frontage is along leesville road along the southern border of the site along the western border of the site you'll find dock nickels road this is in the southeastern part of durham county directly to the south of the subject site is portions of the delweb arbor's development as i noted the applicant is requesting a pdr district for approximately 423 acres with a range of 1200 residential units at the subject site the maximum of previous coverage as noted on the development plan is broken down by each property the fallow tract is proposed at 60 percent impervious surface and the fennel farm tract is noted at 24 percent impervious surfaces and the maximum height of any of the residential structures would be 35 feet the existing conditions as shown on the development plan this is for the portion of the property which is located to the north as you can see the site is traversed by a number of riparian features this is similar on the existing conditions to the south you can also see on this existing conditions there are a number of lots which have already been platted at the subject site as part of previous approvals the proposed conditions again this is looking at the northern portion of the property you can see the plans note potential stream crossings access points as well as an internal roadway network and the southern portion notes very similarly the potential stream crossings exterior access points as well as an interior road connection so to summarize some of the commitments i noted the the residential density the applicant is also proposing this to be age restricted those living 55 or older they're proposing for what they're calling pocket parks as a property commitment access points to the subject site as well as a building and parking envelope as part of the tiae with this request there are roadway improvements required on leisville road dock nickels road highway 98 and olive branch road i mean as you saw in the development plan there are riparian buffers and the associated requirements for those are shown in terms of design commitments no architectural style has been chosen all units will have covered porches and or stoops and front or side facing entrance stores that will be pitched roofs one or more exterior building surface materials as noted in the staff report and the applicant has not committed to any distinct architectural features for this project the future land use map designates the entire site as a flow density residential and that is comparable to the parcel's directly adjacent which are also noted as low density residential comprehensive plan policies reviewed by staff when looking at this proposal are in front of you and at this time staff determines that the request is consistent with comprehensive plan and applicable policies and ordinances i'm happy to answer any questions that the commission may have at this time thank you i have two individuals who have signed up to speak patrick biker and mr is bob zoewald good evening again chairwoman hyman vice chair bosby members of the planning commission i'm patrick biker i still live at two six one four steward drive i think i'm still an attorney when more and still longer than durham off to check on that i'm here tonight representing realto capital for this zoning map change with me tonight or i'm a carlson who is a director with realto our traffic engineer orle wellan with cunley horn and our landscape landscape architect bob zoomwalt with me the best way to think about this rezoning request is that we are taking the existing zoning and adding conditions to it to make the overall development less intense the primary way we are doing that is by committing to an 80 age restricted community this is expected to create far less traffic and far fewer students when compared to the existing zoning the result is that the impact on the public infrastructure is far less it is important to understand that we are not asking for more houses than the existing zoning allows we are not asking for a change in the type of use it's still completely residential we've retained the condition relating to phased grading we've retained the condition relating to signage and we've retained the condition related to pocket parks however we have changed one thing that being that the commitment to an 80 age restricted community in conjunction with that with that we've had to submit a new tia and we have adjusted the road improvements based on new developments in the area and the traffic expected from the proposed development traffic patterns have changed in this area with the buildout of the carolina arbor's community and so some of the previously suggested road improvements no longer make sense the new road improvements which have been reviewed and approved by ncdot and the city of durham respect the new traffic patterns and accommodate the new traffic that is expected ultimately this rezoning will result in a less intense use than what is currently permitted as of right for this 400 plus acre assemblage in addition to that this rezoning addresses an important market trend it is no secret that our population is getting older in fact the fastest growing segment of durham's population is age 55 to 74 i'm almost in that accordingly the need for age targeted housing has grown as we have seen risk age restricted communities are doing very well here in durham we believe this development will be no different in that regard accordingly we hope you will support this request so we can provide a fine neighborhood where our aging population can enjoy a great sense of community mr bob zoomall would briefly like to address one technical issue for the record and then our team will be happy to answer any questions we hope this is the easy project that one of you just mentioned a few minutes ago that you want to get an easy project we think this is it good evening again bob zoomall with macadams 2905 meridian parkway in durham just a quick clarification um i just wanted to have it on the record text commitment number eight prior to the issuance of a building permit comma dedicate an additional 10 feet of right away through the rest a phrase was left out of that to make it clear it should have said prior to issuance of a building permit on the fowler track there's a little piece of frontage up on the fowler track and we just wanted to make sure that that was clear we've talked to bill judge about it and the staff and we just wanted to make that clarification and we'll add that to the text we just don't want it to get misinterpreted a year from now so that was i just want to mention that i do not have individuals who have signed up to speak against so i'm going to close the public hearing and give our commissioners an opportunity to ask questions i'll start to my commissioner miller no one on this commissioner miller commissioner harry so i want to remark out loud at the hearing today uh some of the remarks i made when i visited your office patrick and spoke with your clients about uh this proposed change um i think we're all becoming a lot more sensitive to uh pdr rezonings uh and and mixed-use rezonings uh when they come along and how they compare to our uh policies that are stated not only in the conferencing plan but also in the intense statements in the udo and one of the things that i would like to see in this project because it is so big are some design commitments that uh about the way these units would look something that would reassure us and show that we're serving the policies in the conferencing plan concerning monotony and development and also repetitious placement of garages i would love uh if you could add those things to this other developers in projects in recent months had uh began to introduce those commitments to the development plans that we've been seeing uh now having said that i intend to vote for this whether you include that or not i know that this is a little bit different in that it is an already approved project uh that has an approved site plan it's already part of it's already been through subdivision review that's a long way down the street to start asking for a lot of changes uh but i i did want to take this opportunity to throw that out and say i think the project would be better with those commitments um and i also want to make sure that when developers come with big pdr's that i am treating them all the same way and feeding them from the same spoon so thank you very much i understand the changes that you're going to make i will vote in favor of this project mission or harris i have a question and it's for staff uh i'm looking under the tax commitments yes sir under age restrictions and my concern is my concern is occupied only unit must be occupied by one applicant who is at least 55 or older is that language from the applicant is that language within my concern is as long as someone's staying there this whole 55 then anybody they can have as many as they want as long as one person is over 55 whether they're the owner or not i'm jacob liggins with the planning apartment so this language that you see in the staff report is directly from the development plan my understanding is that is correct um but i would likely deferred to the applicant to clarify that if that is the intent of this commitment the um it's dramatically cut down to two lines versus the four paragraphs on the development plan so if you look at the development plan that condition is give or take a thousand words versus the 10 that are in the staff report so i would look at the what's on the development plan it's much more restrictive and it just follows the it follows the the federal housing and for older persons act of 1995 so we took it straight i wouldn't i wouldn't expect the staff to put all that in their staff report and so jacob liggins just for a point of clarification it is actually all in the staff report and attachment seven yeah but yeah i mean which uh you really can't i can't read yeah i'm over 55 i can't okay are the other commissioners who would like to speak to this issue not i'll enter it madam chairman i move that the planning commission send case z16 00019 forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation and this is a city jurisdiction case thank you second motion by commissioner miller that we send item z16 00019 second by commissioner van forward with a favorable wrecking recommendation all in favor of this motion roll call yes yes yes yes thank you um the next item that we have andrew andrew chapel item number z16 00024 staff report please good evening jamey sonyak with the planning department i will be presenting case number z16 00024 andrew's chapel before i start my presentation i just wanted to point out to the planning commission a couple minor typos from the staff report page two top paragraph should read a hundred two 350 single family units page two under d consistency second paragraph at the end should be attachment nine not appendix eight and under attachment nine the reference should be policy number eight point one point two h not eight point one two j the applicant is jeremy midland mi homes of raleigh the application is located within the city's jurisdiction the applicant request to rezone the 114.17 acre site from plan development residential 4.793 zoning with plan development residential 4.437 the applicant proposes 500 residential units consisting of townhomes and single family development this site had an existing zoning case which was approved by the cd council on june 1st 2015 through a legacy case which was z 14 0006 also known as briar creek assemblage there was an approved annexation and utility extension agreement in march of 2015 essentially the applicant is seeking a modification of the original rezoning case to allow more flexibility in the number of townhome units and enlarge the townhome building envelope it should also be noted that subsequent to the prior application state statute has been amended and the stream buffer areas can now be included in calculating calculating the density of a site as shown on the context map there are four parcels highlighted in red the address is 409 507 511 and 735 andrew's chapel road it is located on the south side of andrew's chapel road east of dalweb arbors drive one of the parcels is located beyond the date the durham wake county line and the property is located in the suburban tier the site satisfies the criteria of the pdr district as highlighted in this slide and in the staff report under the existing conditions map you'll see that the property is vacant with a combination of farm meadows and hardwood forests water features are on the site include three farm ponds and two intermittent streams the property is adjacent to andrew's place which includes large-scale commercial and residential developments to the south and to the west is a plan development residential application to the northwest is also another plan development residential application and the planning commission recently approved 149 lot single family subdivision pdr 3.172 off of leesville road to the northwest the proposed commitments i'm sorry the proposed conditions map shows the access points to the site the location of the buildings and parking envelope the general location of tree protection areas and the project meets the requirements of the planned development for pdr zoning district the applicant proposes 500 residential units with a mix of single family in townhomes the single family range is 100 to 350 units with townhomes being 150 to 400 units they have committed to a minimum lot size of 3500 for 3500 square feet for single family lots the development plans show the construction of the Breyer creek parkway extension with bicycle lanes sidewalks additional asphalt for future bicycle lanes on andrew's travel road as well as another a number of other roadway improvements prior to the site plan application a street closing application for a portion of andrew's travel road will be submitted prior to the final plot approval a one-time payment of 60 500 will be made to the Durham public schools for additional students just going to summarize some of the design commitments that the applicant has included on the development plan no architectural style has been chosen but each building will contain sloped or flat roofs with a combination of fiberglass shingles asphalt shingles or standing seam metal each building will can will utilize one or more of the building materials stone brick stucco cement board siding or vinyl siding and front facing gables entry porches or window shutters are the architect architectural features proposed the request is consistent with the future land use map which identifies this area as low medium density residential and recreation open space staff staff has determined that the proposal is consistent with the comprehensive plan and the policies outlined in this slide staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plans and the applicable policies and ordinances i'll be happy to answer any questions that you have okay i do have two individuals i have chris meal who has signed up to speak for the project did i pronounce that correctly it's mail just like a mailman all right very good thank you yes my name is chris mail i'm a civil engineer professional engineer with eden's land offices at 2314 south miami boulevard here in durham also with me this evening mr john blackley registered landscape architect also with our office and mr jeremy medlin with mi homes as the staff stated a simple building envelope moved to allow mi homes to place townhomes on a larger portion of the site that's that's currently zoned we have site plan approval the first phase of the project which is all townhomes we have construction document approval and utility permits under construction phase two single family also cd approval utility permits obtained and that will start construction very shortly um here to answer any questions you might have thanks thank you are the other people who would like to speak for you have two other individuals with you if not i will move to i have two individuals who would like to speak against um jeff ammons and ken ray hey good evening thank you sure no problem my name is jeff ammons i live at 4821 boulder creek lane in raleigh and i'm here today as a member of the board of trustees of the Montessori school of raleigh and we have a 40-acre campus that is directly across the street from this project um if you see on the map our campus has been totally engulfed by the del web the previous project and everything else were sort of an aisle in there um our issue today is not so much with what they can do with the rezoning on their lot size but they own a hundred and some odd acres across the street from us and if you look at their existing conditions map they did not include the main entrance into our school campus and i'm not sure if that was done intentionally or not but what has happened is one of their proposed access points does not line up with our driveway and the city and the do t require that driveways be a minimum of 400 feet apart and their driveway currently is shown only about 150 feet away from our driveway they have to widen it they have to do tapers in the turn lane and as you if you've ever been in this condition before and you have a driveways that do not quite meet up it's a total disaster we have a whole bunch of kids moms school buses we have an athletic field we have 40 acres we have plans to grow our school we've been there for almost 20 years so on this little andrew's chapel road we were pretty much the only thing there and so i'm not sure why our driveway could not have been worked around it's the only access it's the only driveway we currently have to use our school and so i come today asking that that we get these roads to meet the standards that Durham puts out and the do t puts out such that we do not create this terrible situation with playing chicken in the suicide lane turning into the campus so that's all i have to say about that i'm glad to answer any further questions or talk about any more but i just wanted to highlight that that is not shown on there thank you i have no other individual signed up to speak so i'm going to give commissioners well he's not here i'll ask again ken ray i think he signed on the wrong sheet because he was here earlier so we'll close the public hearing now and give the commissioners an opportunity to ask questions are the commissioners who would like to speak i'll start mission or brian i have a question for uh transportation uh you you've heard what was just stated about the driveway to the Montessori school and how it doesn't seem to line up what can be done to address that um yeah bill judge for transportation the um really unfortunately there's not much that can be done at this point the um as they they stated the the driveways are offset this project was previously rezoned and has site plan approval where they've established that that access point at the time it was rezoned well still is currently i think the school has probably less than 50 students so there wasn't probably as much thought or detail put into that offset the school has since contacted us and ncdot about looking at opportunities to expand the school and as part of that expansion that's where we we identified this potential problem with the offset but um the school's pretty well hemmed in on by delweb so that they they don't really have an opportunity to to relocate the driveway to line up and um the this access point location has already been previously approved by ncdot so we'll just have to manage it the best we can um well thank you for that i don't know that it helps anybody um i also have one more question for staff this doesn't seem to be a very big change but i noticed that a piece of this property goes over into wake county does this proposal have to also go through a rezoning in wake county now this this uh has already gone through the annexation process okay thank you commissioner miller so my question is for the developer if you guys could come to the mic i mean i was out there at your property uh and it's it looks like you're clearing and grading there's nothing built uh is there some way that you can adjust your access points to address the problem that uh that your neighbors at the Montessori school just uh raised uh unfortunately i think you know we're just so far down the line that you know trying trying to make an adjustment in the in the layout of where that access point is you know that would take us all back through the site plan process you know they're ready pretty much within the next week or so to start going vertical with with homes so we will we will cooperate as as as much as we can with but what does that mean help me understand what cooperating as much as you can means if you got if you don't mind my name is jeer me medlin i'm the applicant i did not sign in to speak no that's fine if you've got an answer to the question we want to hear and shine some more light on this what chris was stating is that our first 63 town homes are already under development those lots are already planted those homes have already been permitted so we are far far down the road on that portion of the project the project that jeff is referencing or the portion of the project that jeff is referencing is our phase two portion of the project that we also have site plan approval on we also have cd approval on we also have utility permits we're well down the road with dot the roads are rough graded at this point the blasting has already occurred when we went through the initial zoning this issue was not brawled up and i and to my knowledge everyone was notified and nobody had a concern at that point jeff has reached out to me last week he did we spoke by phone we spoke by phone again today and i told him i would meet him on site and i would see if i could work with him i can't promise you that i can do anything because durham has their own agenda dot has their own agenda in my homes is you know i've got i've got my duty to fulfill but i did tell him that i would meet him next week and see if we could work out some kind of some kind of uh mutual help that we could that we could assist him with with his road widening that he's got to undertake at some point when he in the monastery school chooses to expand or do whatever they're doing um as was pointed out it is a small school it is a drab gravel path is their driveway that he is referencing it's not like it's a paved collector road or something of that magnitude is a gravel path um we're here to we're here to be a good neighbor at the end of the day that's what i'm that's what i'm offering is to be a good neighbor to the monastery i appreciate that look do i have a question for for the gentleman who spoke for mr ammons mr ammons if you come to the mic just that helps the people who are watching from home um i when i went out there and looked and i looked around and i looked at their property quite frankly i did not notice this prop situation and i did not anticipate it so uh you're gonna have to help me picture it um i don't know what how your property is laid out but he characterized your driveway as a gravel road is it possible that the solution may lie on your property could could your driveway be moved to a better place well currently our our driveway is that like the southernmost end of our property line which is the closest to them so we can't and then and they're just down here so we can't go any further or we're into some of the del web area so uh it um but but it did appear they own across from where our driveway is i mean we have a big concrete monument sign we have a soccer field right there um it is a gravel road we hope to pave it at some point but you know and i appreciate this situation jeremy's in i'm not trying to throw him under the bus or anything and when the first rezoning came through there was no you know the road layout wasn't exactly on there and typically you know as part of the d o t and getting the roads planned they do an existing map and they show what all the roads are and if you see the map on there they show some of that they just never showed our driveway and i appreciate all of that my question is is it possible to move your driveway on your land to create a greater distance and consequently less likelihood of confusion as your parents come and go and their residents come and go um we could we have room to we have more we have more frontage on andrew's chapel road but we do have a soccer field as part of that so you know it would require a lot of internal work through our parking lot and to our school and that in those items it's not just a matter of swing it out another way without having to build the road but we have additional frontage on andrew's chapel and so if i may one more question madam chairman uh so i'm the question is to the folks from my homes uh is this you mentioned being a good neighbor are you in a situation where you might be able to look at that and help them move their driveway not not knowing their property and not knowing what would be involved i cannot make that commitment thank you very much thank you madam chairman the other commissioners who would like to speak uh commissioner gauche and commissioner whitley on this driveway situation i i have a question for i think mr ammons uh my my question is you know when did this become an issue because evidently wasn't previously um ncdot uh had some sort of sign up on the side plan and was you know at that time they didn't think that this was an issue so when did it become an issue uh well i mean we're not privy to their plans and so as we saw them developing and then this most recent rezoning request came in it showed where the driveway was and so that's when it first came to my attention that we got this in the mail and they said you know review this document that we have and i saw the driveways didn't line up so you know i don't think the earlier requests had the site plan all laid out and showed exactly where the driveway was we just knew hey the develop behind us they're developing across the street from us uh i happen to be a civil engineer traffic guy they always make you line driveways up wherever i go a line driveways up uh you either need to move it further away you need to move it closer you know um and so this one is just right in the worst spot i mean they they're triangle for the uh the turn lane in the middle will be stacked right through their intersection turning left into our school uh in the morning afternoons ballgames that kind of stuff so it just came up most recently when this request came yeah i appreciate your evaluation of of the site i mean at the same time i appreciate ncdot's evaluation i'm having trouble understanding why um you know why it occurred this way if it is an unsafe situation generally when driveways are not well dot was surprised by it when we didn't meet with them and they went back to the existing map and it just wasn't picked up on that map either so i mean it makes no sense do you have a driveway permit sure yeah and so i don't understand and and to me no matter what what the case was or why it happened that doesn't mean we just kicked down the road further a dangerous situation no i i i appreciate that but i mean at the same time there's there's a site plan that's been approved you obviously have a driveway permit your site plan whenever you built the school or whatever uh was approved there is there's maybe there's a mistake here i can't understand there's no one from ncdot here that can answer this question i don't know bill judge has any insight on this i'd be hoping to hearing that this is a kind of a confusing situation yeah bill judge with transportation again i i think primarily what happened on all the parties involved the the school has an existing driveway permit for i think it's less than 50 students the existing school the so when the new development site plan was coming in there was an understanding or an expectation there was no no knowledge i guess that the school was looking at an expansion now that water and sewer was was coming in and that was probably the amount overlooked with all the development between delweb this development has now brought water and sewer to the area the school now has an opportunity to expand to a much larger campus and that wasn't taken into consideration when when this driveway point was approved was the potential for the school to want to expand okay that that makes sense so is the school looking to expand certainly yes i mean we bought 40 acres a long time ago we was with the foresight of that would be a good area to grow one day so and we were limited by the water in the sewer so certainly now that that's come our intentions are to grow the school that has come and it hasn't come at no cost i mean developers have extended the utilities out that way and i appreciate your concern however i mean i don't see why we would make this developer change its driveway so that you can expand your school without you having to pay whether we expand or not they should be lined up i mean well i don't i don't know if that's true ncdot did not come to the same conclusion we're aware of your driveway and the driveway that was being do t claimed they weren't aware of our driveway because of i just have trouble believing that matter to you what bill judge said was that there wasn't enough capacity at the school for that driveway to be an issue even if they weren't aligned that's now if they expand there could be an issue there and i appreciate that issue needs to be addressed the question i'm trying to figure out is who should address it the do t missed it when they approved theirs because they didn't see they don't have all their driveway permits sitting and where they pull them up they go to the existing map that supplied to them the existing condition map and it wasn't drawn on there so in your opinion it was the developers fault i should i think it should have been included on that map yes okay i mean i think i've got all the answers i need i i i understand the issue and i'm not disagreeing that it is an issue i think that the question is really who needs to address this issue do i have other commissioners who would like to speak yes mr commissioner would leave my apology it's getting late it is getting late mr judge yeah leave it to do t to give us a problem but has it ever been the position of the city of Durham when there's a problem to say well it's okay because one party is small and only have 50 children that this big development can come in and do what it has to do and let them worry about it bill judge with transportation no i mean certainly there was no intention on anybody's part to basically have the developers responsibility or not passed along to a school or any other property owner it was just simply the the facts that were known at the time was that the school was a relatively low volume driveway i have not spoken directly with ncdot that the school met separately with them from from us but um so i can't speak directly as to whether they thought of the school or not but even had they thought of the school they would have had to basically make their decision based on it being a driveway for a school of less than 50 students which is significantly less than what now the school is proposing additionally i should point out the i believe the as part of the developers plans while they do line up or potentially could line up i think there's an existing house there that they're at least maintaining for a number of years so that's part of their phasing that the existing house would basically have to have to come down in order to line up with the school which they're not proposing at this point my thinking is that dot made a mistake am i wrong i mean i won't say you're wrong i would just say that they made a decision based on the information they had at the time and they made a decision that um that has allowed for an offset between the driveways so would i be wrong to think that dot needs to be proud of solving this problem they certainly will be and that's i guess what i was trying at earlier with my sort of first response is that we have a situation it's less than desirable but we'll just have to figure out the way to manage it as the school comes in with the expansion plan how to how to best provide for that so the city that i love will come to the aid of the little guy well it won't be a city effort alone it'll be a combination of the city the ncdot and the school um developing a developing a solution that's what i wanted to hear thank you thank you commissioner whittley are the other commissioners who would like to speak commissioner miller and commissioner miller commissioner freeman madam chair i've i've already spoken please let didriana go first and then i'll close with my brief remark thank you commissioner freeman thank you i i just want to um sitting here i just can't help but want to apologize to the school on behalf of all the bureaucrats and and deciding making these decisions for you and then questioning you about the way things have gone i just want to make sure i say that up front it doesn't feel right for the questions to be directed to the school that's been sitting there for 40 years and then second of all i just want to make sure that i say understanding that site plans have been set forward and being a good neighbor as mi is trying to be i don't think it's i don't think it would be good for us as a a body of folks around the the on the planning commission to move forward with this without at least giving um mi a chance to revisit it and as i'm sorry i didn't catch your name as the gentleman mentioned he doesn't know the layout of their property so to at least investigate what's possible or what's not possible before we move forward i would like to request a 30 day at least um review because it just it just doesn't sit well with me that we're in inconveniencing a school for a site plan over or oversight of whatever whomever is at fault we should at least be able to take some time and slow this train down regardless okay we'll staff comment first yes jimmy sonyak planning department we're just conferring with my colleagues and it's our opinion that 30 days isn't going to be enough to review this and come back with a solution that makes sense for all the parties um what's 60 days because 60 60 days would be favorable 60 days adjusting the 60 60 days work thank you seven motion by commissioner uh freement for a 60 day continuance and a second by commissioner uh whittley um all in favor of this motion let it be known by i did own what the questions okay can question uh before we vote on that i would like to know what the applicant think about a continuance thank you i appreciate the opportunity um i would i would not like a continuance i would like to go ahead and have a vote and i'm saying this out of respect but i would also like to to to establish this that i don't know what the school's in game is what their growth what their growth patterns are going to be for five years 10 years 15 years i really don't have any idea um i can't tell you whether their uh the alignment of andrew's chapel road is going to dictate a right in a right out a left over a full movement uh there's just too many variables there's just too many variables um at this time we do have approval we do have we do have um our zoning in place and our site plan in place we're not proposing to change any of those details uh i i have made a commitment to work with the school and try to reach some kind of um neighbor league cooperation but at this point i can't i can't commit to you any more than that because there's just too many variables uh commissioner miller i'll recognize has another question again a question for the developer is it my understanding that the site plan that you currently have approved is for the existing zoning not for the uh the zoning uh that you are asking for tonight yes sir we we do have an existing zoning that was approved about i know you have an existing zone i'm asking is your site plan refer to your existing zoning or is it based upon the zoning as as as you're asking for us to change it i'm referring to the existing zoning that not the one that i'm asking for this evening so here's my question to you then if for some reason the zoning that change that you're asking for tonight was turned down would you just go ahead and develop the project the way you currently have it approved more than likely sir okay thank you i have a motion on the table and i do have a second that we offer a 60-day continuance all in favor of this motion let it be known by raising your right hand yes yes yes yes no yes let's move to the next item public hearing text amendment to the unified development ordinance mass grading buffers oh good evening good night i don't know maybe good morning michael stock with the planning department tc 16 0006 is a technical text amendment technical changes text amendment to modify the standard some of the standards to the mass grading buffers within within section 9.5.1 or section 9.5 mass grading buffers and revegetation on november 2nd 2016 the joint city county planning commission or jccpc received an informational item regarding mass grading the discussion at that meeting resulted in two requests from the jccpc the first request was to initiate a text amendment that revised mass grading buffers to match those allowed by state statute and that statute is in your in your agenda packet as a attachment b and the second request was to provide a report at a later date regarding costs and benefits of mass grading and that's still in progress and for future discussions at jccpc and in order for them to provide policy direction to staff this text amendment obviously addresses the first request the text amendment basically does three things it it increases the buffer widths along right of way and developed and undeveloped property for mass grading buffers to those allowed by state statute through the review of the state statute we came upon some issues uh well at least i came upon some issues that i ran by the city attorney's office um questioning whether the current current rules in the udo were exceeding the authority of the statute and the opinion of the city attorney's office was that it was so there are additional modifications found in your draft ordinance that does the following it it specifies that the mass grading buffers um per the state statute only applied within the city jurisdiction um and that it also focuses on just protecting existing vegetation so any uh any request or any requirements to uh further to add further vegetation or increase opacity uh is beyond the statute mass grading buffers are temporary buffers around the site around the preparation of a site for future development so the statute is pretty clear for protecting existing vegetation for future buffers future project boundary buffers which you see a lot of times in your development plans at least indicated in your development plans so the additional vegetation would be provided at that time for your future project boundary buffers that are more permanent buffers that's the extent of the changes i'll be happy to answer any questions that's correct yeah it's it's increased to to match the extent allowed by state statute so all the numbers are at the maximum allowed that's correct yes got to have there i have no one who is signed up to speak are you here to speak i don't have any are there commissioners who would like to speak to this issue commission of us b thank you madam chair miller well and i appreciate the staff's work on this the the only thing i would i would note is that while uh and i this is the intent of the joint city county planning committee was to say let's let's go and use what we have under authorizing legislation which the the intent i was at the meeting was to strengthen the mass grading buffer provisions and the good news is to some degree that's true in other cases we have the unintended consequences of actually taking some steps backwards on our mass grading buffers because we were out of conformity with our enabling legislation so i just want to point that out that uh while this is an appropriate approach it is unfortunate that it's not as strong as what the the joint city county planning committee had initially hoped with their aspirational recommendations and so just want to make that point because the second bite of the apple is obviously then very important which is what are some of the the longer term opportunities to actually review mass grading buffer provisions moving forward so there there are no changes i'm going to recommend here uh it is just one of those be careful what you wish for moments because we all wanted to see these provisions get uniformly stronger and we got a little stronger and we got a little weaker in my opinion and and and to to add on to what commissioner busney has said it is the intent for jccpc to take a heart take a harder look at mass grading in general and see what are the opportunities to yeah what can they do what are other other ways to do site preparation for development that aren't necessary mass grading um they're not anywhere close to giving policy direction yet they're going to be getting information at future meetings and then staff will get some direction at that point um and we've we've just been collecting information at this time there's no timeline at this point are the other commissioners who would like to speak if not can i have a motion madam chair i move that the commission move the tc one six zero zero zero zero six mass grading buffers forward uh to council with a favorable recommendation second uh motion to approve item tc one six zero zero zero zero six forward to the city council with the favorable recommendation second by commissioner um harris all in favor of this motion raise your right hand thank you thank you we have new business you still have old business you still have old business there's a second item under old business the unfinished business okay yes there it is thank you ready yes all right so you previously back in november and december had some opportunity for discussion and input on the work program and the item was continued and so i am here and all ears i have some comments commissioner harris with reference to your open space huh a wheel where i'm sorry i don't have anything yeah all right i take it you guys are ready for us to do more work next year right thank you so was that the whole work plan or was it a budget thing my notes indicated it was a work program never mind it's late commissioner miller commented extensively on it and he has uh apparently so we're ready to move on to the next item new business good evening i'm scott whiteman from the planning department um here tonight to present and for your review and hopeful recommendation of the urban open space plan this is a project that's been under development since 2010 it was recommended as one of the projects that should be put in a work program in the comprehensive plan when it was adopted in 2005 this would join four other adopted open space plans which include the downtown open space plan from 2012 as well as the new hope corridor the little river open space plan in the eastern Durham open space plan when the planning began for this it was done being done in conjunction with the downtown open space plan and then the two were divided into two separate projects this plan would cover the entirety of the urban tier plus the three compact neighborhood tiers that are encompassed within the urban tier it does exclude this the far southeastern portion of the urban tier which was already included in the the eastern Durham open space plan so there are three key components of the urban open space plan an inventory an analysis and recommendations the inventory includes an inventory of some already existing plans some adopted some just prepared these includes the parks and recreation master plan the Durham trails and greenways plan and the watershed management plans this map here is included in your document and it shows the properties that were shown in the LRB creek and third fork creek master plans as high value properties that should be considered for acquisition which this would be adopted as part of this plan neither the watershed master plans were actually adopted by council we also included an environmental inventory which included things like biodiversity tree canopy temperature change this map here is showing some of the biodiversity and wildlife assessment of lands within the urban tier as you might imagine the only areas that have any real value are in the stream buffers and they're actually quite challenged since this is a heavily urbanized area we also prepared an inventory of parks and other open spaces including informal open spaces such as cemeteries and historic sites so moving on to the analysis we prepared an open space suitability map in conjunction with the the open space committee of the Durham open space and trails commission this took a bunch some key factors into what makes a piece of land a high priority for preservation or acquisition these included things like riparian buffers tree cover and proximity to planned and existing parks and trails ran a model and ranked all the the properties within the urban tier based on the number of criteria they met so the the ones shown in this map in blue are the ones of high suitability one important thing that's a recommendation of this plan is that this not be a static but a dynamic model and so will staff and the DOS will continue to work on refining the criteria and updating it since certain things will will change over time we also prepared an analysis of access to parks using the city's benchmark of every citizen being within a half mile distance of a public park the analysis is actually using existing pedestrian street networks not as the crow flies distance generally it shows that the coverage is pretty good in the the urban tier there are some gaps you'll see like in the western near duke university kind of northwest part of the urban tier although a lot of those are filled with kind of informal open spaces like dukes east campus duke homestead that sort of thing there are also some areas which are not really residential and don't necessarily need to have the same level of service for for park access that residential areas do two notable exceptions for the access to parks are the colonial village area in the northeast part of this of the urban tier and the tuscaloosa lakewood neighborhood in the southwest portion we also performed an environmental justice analysis the definition for environmental justice borrowed from what are our transportation planning definition for for what we call a community of concern these were areas where populations with concentrations of minorities latinos elderly persons low-income persons and people with limited English proficiency any census block group with four of those five was considered a community of concern the good news is as like with the rest of the urban tier these most of these areas have they're the first seven most of them have pretty good access to public park land you see on the the top two on this slide are the far eastern portion of northeast central Durham near wellans village the area that's not covered is mostly commercial the other one is the area along id 5 kind of between walltown and brogdon middle school i'll note that with the development of the west lwc creek greenway this area will have better access to open space in the near future some areas that aren't as well served like i mentioned before on on the bottom shows the area near colonial village in the northeast part of this area also the the areas north of duke's campus which is now in the urban road compact neighborhood so there were a series of objectives and recommendations that would apply generally to all areas within the the planning area to generalize a bit they are a well-maintained and integrated open space system increased recreation in open space improve access to open space protect and improve environmental quality engage communities and stewardship of open spaces and increase tree canopy they were also the the study area was also divided into districts to make it just solely for a more manageable geography for for graphical purposes and there were specific recommendations and suggestions for each of those five areas which i do have on here but i won't go into detail detail at this point since it's 1015 but i'd be happy to to address any of those if any of the commissioners have any questions so with that i'd be happy to answer any questions and we would request that the commission recommend approval of the urban open space plan thanks commissioner harris uh first of all i found this to be very confusing because when i look at this i'm looking for open space and it's urban and so it don't go in the further north than 07 to 5 east of roxburgh road in carver street west of roxburgh road and by the same token it on the east side it doesn't go in the further than uh do more in drive and 70 which as i look at it i have to mind my make it mindful of myself you know that it is just the open area and not the suburban area that's right yeah just the earb here is adopted in a comprehensive plan the second thing and more important is you have district one through five it would be great if you call it another normal creature area one through five or you know zone one through five because if i think of district two i'm thinking northern derm but district one east derm but your district doesn't line up that way i don't think we hadn't considered that people might confuse those with the the packs yeah it does because most other districts you know it's associated with police districts and when i look at your district one which is uh which would be normally district two and your district five which would normally be downtown you got south derm here so if you could just change the normal equation yeah commissioner harris will try to consider a better term for this commissioner brye i want to thank you for bringing the plan forward all i want to do is call your attention to what i think are some very minor corrections uh page four uh under the unified development ordinance uh the first senate starts up all developments most comply standards i think you need to have the work with between compliance standards i wholeheartedly agree with your edit with commissioner bryne moving quickly along to page 38 your community of concern number three uh into the second sentence the representation of four environmental justice committees of concern uh this is the only one where you have not identified who those committees of concern were all the others you identify who the committees of concern are so i think you just need to be consistent let the record flick out of my head yeah and uh finally on page 58 uh under objective one items number seven and number eight for responsibility uh shouldn't historic preservation be included in that yeah that's i think that's a reasonable request that's all i had thank you madam chair commissioner freeman thank you i i just wanted to thank you for uh pushing this forward as well and including an environmental justice population but i want to make sure that we don't um confuse uh or muddy the water and saying like the minority race population i i just feel like this this needs to be narrowed down some the there's a difference between the cross section of race and low income than there is of just race and the same thing for ethnicity there's a difference in ethnicity and i know what you're where you're going with the area of concern but it's not quite clear or there yet and i'm not sure what to yeah and to be it's it's uh it would have to be at least four of those five things it would not just be a block group that has a popular high population minorities it would be one that has low english proficiency or low income and maybe i'm missing something because i didn't see that that noted that that had to be four yeah it's sorry i mean i'll be able to find it on the spot right now but i assure you that that that explanation is in there admission or gibbs oh however recent state legislative i'm sorry sarah young the planning department i'm sorry page 32 hard to see low light past 10 o'clock at night it says for the next phase of the analysis block groups within occurrence of four or five communities of concern are analyzed further so that's where it stipulates that that's the threshold well rather than saying just communities concerned like specifically like the environmental justice populations four or five of the specific environmental justice populations being caused for concern okay commissioner gibbs did you also have a question uh i don't know how descriptive these things are about the physical access uh i've heard you mentioned access and that that brings to mind does this record anything about the accessibility handicapped accessibility or would we find that somewhere else or could it be included this just as a general term if if not a detailed thing this does not include that it's kind of more general than that we're we're looking more at just access from say that someone's residents to a public park i believe the the parks and recreation master plan is much more detailed about what improvements each park needs and i think that's probably the most appropriate place to to deal with yeah accessibility okay yeah right thank you commissioner commissioner one additional comment to the staff i did not get an approval sheet for the uh open space urban open so i wrote it on the back of my last page so you know it's on the back of the last page right over i did okay uh commissioner whitley um thank you for giving your report can you tell me how this open space is going to benefit eastern well one of the things it's to provide general priorities about uh how to increase open space in the the urban part of Durham um and then one thing in particular we don't get to a whole lot of detail in this because there's already been a lot of analysis from other groups about the shortage of trees in east Durham but one of one of the records trees the tree canopy how east Durham the tree canopy in east Durham is much lower than it is in mostly other parts of urban Durham the tree canopy in east Durham is significantly less than it is in most of the other parts of urban Durham and that when we prioritize funding for tree planting programs we should prioritize the east Durham since that's lagging behind the other parts of the city so we need more trees and what else so in general uh like for example when we're when surplus properties are from the city or county arise we can use the the suitability analysis determine whether it's something that needs to be should be saved for open space purposes or if it's something for example if it's the middle of a neighborhood maybe it's more appropriate to be used for a development of affordable housing or something like that um we have plenty of housing what we don't have is banks we don't have pox that um are well kept like other pox we don't have the recreation that our children need and we have plenty open space since there's very little development thank you can i get a uh just commissioner miller would like to make some comments very quickly um so this document contemplates the comprehensive plan but i did not see and so and i have a question the comprehensive plan the future land use map has um large areas of land that are designated recreation and open space do those designations in the future land use map very closely correspond with the properties identified in the inventory in this document or is there a disconnect it probably is a little bit disconnect there is with all the all the open space plans which i think is something that really needs to be addressed in a new comprehensive plan it worries me because we you know the first word of comprehensive plan is comprehensive the um and so that worries me this document contemplates a comprehensive plan but it doesn't include or at least i i don't interpret it to include in the implementation measures uh any suggestions that we change the comprehensive plan to more specifically include the recommendations here in other words when when we're asked to rezone property or to evaluate development projects how will i use this document to that make that evaluation do you intend for us to use this document for that evaluation and what is the policy and regulatory path from this document back through the comprehensive plan that would allow me to do that so as i know it sounds like a bit of a circular reference we have plans that were adopted prior to the comprehensive plan that are adopted as reference in the comprehensive plan and that we have other adopted plans that come afterwards after the comprehensive plan which when we say it's uh the zoning cases um consistent with applicable plans and policies it's not just a comprehensive plan it's all adopted plans i realize that but it seems to me that uh you mean the state statute talks about the comprehensive plan uh and so one of the things that i would like to do is when we create a document like this that is so related to land i would like to have the uh an implementation measure here is to go back and make the comprehensive plan contemplate this document by with specific policy saying you know when we talk about a uh that you know uh a residential uh design in the urban tiers supposed to work with natural features and what have you it would be nice if it if it gave me permission to cite this and saying well this development plan doesn't recognize the the reservation of open space in the inventory or or some other policy i just want i'm looking for a policy path to connect this document to the work that we do here every month and well we do do that with the um so as uh a representative of of Dost uh we review all zoning cases that come in against existing open space plans um we don't actually have a lot of rezonings in the areas that are affected by the current open space plans probably have a lot more in the urban tier but we do flag any recommendations uh from any of the open space plans that would be affected by his own change yeah but Dost does that but we're the ones that that are charged with it we would we would provide through the case planner those comments to you that's for example like in the eastern germ open space plan there's wider stream buffers require uh recommended in certain areas so if there's a zoning case that would be affected by that we would say um in order to comply with the eastern germ open space plan you even need to provide a x width buffer i guess what i'm saying is is what i really want before i can vote to say that this is a good document is a clear policy path that connects this to the comprehensive plan it's a city council and the board of commissioners adopt this it will be an adopted plan just like the comprehensive plan which would be but it's not the but the comprehensive plan loses its comprehensive quality when when there are other plans that it doesn't contemplate well that's fair but we kind of puts us in a tough spot of where we can't adopt any like the night street plan or anything like that we couldn't adopt subsequent plans without amending the entire comprehensive plan uh commissioner whittling yeah i do have i do have something i would like for you to consider um open space um development um around our creeks um we have taken advantage of it on Taylor street but um where the elementary school is but there are other opportunities along those creeks that we could we could really um be more creative than than we have and there are lots of places where we could we could um eastern could benefit from it um and i just wanted to throw it out so you would have something okay i agree with that i think this does address that and we have preserving land near streams pretty well commissioner freeman thank you um just tagging along on that comment that reverend whittley just mentioned it's very important to also acknowledge the economic i'm sorry the environmental justice issue that can arise in building in flood plains especially that elementary school you just mentioned because they have sewage coming into the building but um i wanted to also ask i know you know you mentioned that this was going back to daas what's the diversity look like on daas and do people look like me on daas because i'm i'm unfamiliar with the makeup and i'm happy to answer that question as the planning commission's represent representative to the to daas to the Durham open space and trails commission it's a combination of city and county appointees and so i don't have the exact numbers i know that it's fair to say that like most committees that diversity is really important and is something we're continuing to strive towards we do have a mix of representatives from from the city and from the county um different backgrounds different parts of the city different ages so it's it's a fairly representative body i i also did want to say thank you to scott in particular as the staff person for daas scott stepped into that role this worked its way through multiple committees at daas and so is really we spent a lot of time on this trying to get this right and so i know the input that all of you've offered tonight is very helpful to make this as strong as possible i would urge this body to move this forward and and recommend that we we move this along this in my opinion is is a long overdue piece of the puzzle that daas has said we want to make sure we have an urban open space plan commissioner miller i hear your point i would love to over time make sure that we we do have a comprehensive plan um i but in in that absence i want to make sure we still have an urban open space plan that puts forward what we'd like to see and it gives us some tools to help make decisions as we move forward on proposals so at the appropriate time i'll be ready to to make a motion but i know you you may have additional comments with any of these motions that there is an inclusion around conditions for this community of concern to be spelled out and then also making sure that there's a cross-section because i'm recognizing that the areas i'm assuming you're saying across the abcd areas five not in the single area of environmental justice five and what i'm afraid of is that exactly what you're saying will happen and that folks will think we have something in place to address the issue and actually not address the issue specifically because you're spelling it out but you're not saying it and so you're not saying specifically that black and brown people are disproportionately at risk in this community in this urban area of not having access to the urban open space and if it was spelled out specifically like that it'd be different but if it's not i feel a little antsy about saying we have a tool or anything to move forward with so just because you're madam chair rich i got a personal for you let me recognize commissioner busby and commissioner witley and did you finish your okay your comments thank you well and thank you madam chair what i was going to say i'm ready and willing to make a motion but actually i may want to have you make a motion to make sure that we adequately capture your your point and i'll be ready to second that motion we're at commissioner freeman if you could uh after the meeting and either your comments or through an email just specifically tell me where your concerns are i feel confident we can address them you my question my question is um you're asking us to approve this without um we have creased them run through all our of eastern that needs dredging and needs cleaning environmental justice and creating open space that our kids can do science projects and we have elementary schools that are close to those these creeks we have residential homes are closed or we may have parks that these creeks run through um where they underutilize because we haven't did we haven't we haven't developed open space for them so you want us to approve this without um that being brought forward or is there a way to to get commitment to have this done that you will look seriously about and um and ask for our approval i would defer to scott as well to add any additional points i know the the goal here is to make sure we have a good strong plan in place that everyone feels comfortable with and and does make sure we're adequately addressing the issues i don't know if anything did want to add anything scott mr wittley i i can't say that it addresses all your concerns uh i think this is the the first step in trying to preserve open space and establishing priorities but uh there's always work to come fighting for funding those sorts of things um i i think malcolm said it um when everybody has something on their plate and there's nothing in mind that doesn't make me a diner i guess what they're suggesting is that like all other plans that the city has um we have to wait i'll go ahead and make that motion that we approve this um open i'm sorry urban open space plan with a condition to make sure that we address the inadequately addressed the or adequately address the disparity and low-income communities of color and the environmental justice section does that help start i'm just trying it does okay okay uh motion by commissioner freeman that we approve the urban open space plan with stated adjustments second by commissioner wittley um all in favor of this motion let it be known by raising your right hand all opposed thank you stated adjustment yes i'm sorry what was that oh you what