 Next to here. We are live. Good afternoon, welcome to the Durham Planning Commission. The members of the Durham Planning Commission have been appointed by the city council and the board of county commissioners as an advisory board to the elected officials. You should know that the elected officials will have the final say on any of the issues before us this evening. Tonight's meetings being held virtually using the Zoom meeting virtual meeting platform. In this virtual meeting platform, the public participants do not have the ability to talk or be seen on video by default and to maintain meeting decorum and a discernible record of the meeting, the chat function has been disabled. We do have the opportunity to speak during public hearings on each of the items this evening. If you have preregistered, we've got your name and we will call on you when we open the public hearing. If you did not preregister, but you would like to speak, we'll give you the opportunity to raise your hand in the Zoom platform if you've called in by phone, you press star nine on your phone, we'll recognize you and you'll have the opportunity to speak. If you would like to call into tonight's meeting, you can call 1-301-715-8592. When you are called upon, we ask that you give us your name and your address and then you'll have the opportunity to make your remarks on the case that you've requested to speak on. Finally, all motions are stated in the affirmative. So if a motion fails or ties, the recommendation is not favorable. May we have the roll call, please? Being commissioners, I think we have one absence for this evening, Commissioner Williams emailed in and said that she would not be able to make the meeting. So I'll go on with the rest of the roll call now. And Mendolia? Here. Baker? Here. Busby? Here. Cameron? Here. Cut right? Here. Durkin? Here. Kenchin? Here. Lowe? Here. MacGyver? Here. Miller? Here. Morgan? Commissioner Morgan? Good evening, I'm here. Okay, thank you. I'll see you. And Commissioner Cease? He was said he'd likely be a few minutes late. That's right, thank you. I appreciate that. I was thinking about the same time you said it. So he'll be a little bit late. And Commissioner Williams will be absent. So we have a quorum. Great, thank you. I think we'll hold off on the excused absences just in case, I think Commissioner Cease was traveling. So just in case for some reason he's not able to join us, we can just do one motion at the end of the meeting, if that makes sense. We, and Grace, make sure I have this right. We have two sets of minutes now before us this evening our April 13th and our April 27th, 2021 meetings. And I assume we can do one motion for both of those if they look okay? You can. And if you have any edits or changes, just let me know and I can document that for whichever set it up last year. Okay. Any comments on either of the minutes or the consistency statements for the April 13th or 27th meetings? All right, here and none. I'll accept the motion for the two together, please. So moved. Second. Great. Moved by Commissioner Morgan, seconded by Commissioner Cameron. And this is approval of the minutes and consistency statements from our April 13th and April 27th, 2021 meetings. And we'll have the roll call vote. And Mendoia. Yes. Baker. Yes. Busby. Yes. Cameron. Yes. Cut right. Yes. Durkin. Yes. Kenshin. Yes. Lowe. Yes. MacGyver. Yes. Miller. Yes. Morgan. Yes. Okay. And I don't see Commissioner Cece yet and Williams is absent. I'm here. Oh, you're, oh, you snuck in on us. Okay. Snuck in. And your vote on the minutes. Yes. Great. Thank you. Sure. Great. Now that Commissioner Cece is here, why don't we just go ahead and make the motion for an excused absence for Commissioner Williams and that way we just have it done. Sure. Moved, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Commissioner Miller. And a second. Second. Commissioner Mendolla, seconded and the roll call vote. And Mendolla. Yes. Baker. Yes. Busbee. Yes. Cameron. Yes. Cut right. Yes. Durkin. Was that yes, Durkin? Ms. Durkin? Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. Kenshin. Yes. Lowe. Yes. MacGyver. Yes. Miller. Yes. Morgan. Yes. And Commissioner Cece. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Grace, adjustments to the agenda for this evening. So the planning staff does not have any adjustments to the agenda. I did send out an email yesterday that we were able to, we really wanted to come back with an information item for this evening, but we weren't sure we were gonna be able to get it together. And it really came together as of yesterday. So I added that per our action from last year where we had said that we would, that we could add items there without making adjustments to the agenda. So I've done that. Other than that, there's really no official adjustment to the agenda. I would just state for the record that all notices and excuse me, advertisements and notices have been carried out in accordance with state and local law. And those affidavits are on file in the planning department. Thank you. And we appreciate you allowing us to slip that information item in. I think you will find it very helpful. We will move to that information item. I mean, I know from my perspective, I think the more often we have these when it comes to the comprehensive plan and that work, the better. So this is great. And so we will hand it off to the planning staff for about a 10 minute update on what is next. And then we'll move to our two cases this evening. All right. Thank you. Let me get my screen ready. All right. Can everyone see that? Okay. Can everyone see that? Sorry. Yes. Okay. Great. Perfect. All right. Good evening. My name is Kayla Seibel and I'm here on behalf of my team to give a brief update on what's next for Durham's new comprehensive plan. So last time we met, we talked about the community goals and objectives. We have two upcoming work session presentations for city council and the board of county commissioners followed by a joint public hearing to consider the adoption of the community goals and objectives on June 15th. A small follow-up item from last time, we've proposed some revisions based on your feedback that are consistent with resident input. We will share those with you and with the elected officials once those revisions have been through our internal review process. So thank you for those. This update is focused on what comes after the goals and objectives work, including a schedule and engagement strategies. The community goals and objectives is the foundation of the rest of the plan will be used as a guiding through line for drafting each section. We will also be using input we've heard through engagement so far as we've worked on our initial drafts. After this meeting, we will follow up with how we're displaying this information on our website. We're working on making this information about our schedule and our scope easy to read, accessible and translated into Spanish. This slide has a short description of each section. We've shared information on each of these sections and past presentation with the exception of the Bradtown focus area. I will read through these really quickly just so everyone has the same information. So starting with the goals and objectives, as I mentioned, this is the foundation and guide for the rest of the plan work. The place type guide section will list all of the desired types of places residents would like to see in the future, their character and how they should be serviced. The place type map is a map showing where the community wants to see the place types located. The southeastern focus area is will be a draft report and recommendations to be used as early guidance for land use cases in this area. As a reminder, this is requested by council as something we worked on sooner to provide recommendations based on the large volume of cases in the area. The Bradtown focus area, this is a portion of the plan will be showing place types and policies that will apply in Bradtown. This part of the plan is a way for our team to partner with the community group, in particular a community that has faced a legacy of disinvestment from the city and county over the history of Durham. And more recently has seen a large increase in new development pressure that threatens to displace lifelong residents. So we're really excited to have this partnership built into our process so that we can ground our plan and make sure the plan's recommendations are responding to residents' needs and priorities. Moving on to the policies. Policies are for how the community goals and objectives are implemented in new development proposals and work plan items. The metrics and indicators will be ways we track data for understanding how Durham is doing in implementing those goals and objectives. Our implementation list section, this will outline the strategies for UDO updates, procedures and work plan items. And then finally, the plan draft that will be our platform or formatting and the adoption process for the full draft plan. So moving on to time frames, we're nearing the end of the goals and objectives work this June. We're continuing our work on the southeastern focus area to develop early guidance to use with development projects happening in the area. Those recommendations will be in draft form and presented at the end of September. We've started working on the Bractown focus area already building relationships with the Bractown Community Association, developing shared values and agreements and scoping out that work together. We see this work continuing through the end of the plan. Going forward, the major portions of this work will be interconnected with portions of this work happening simultaneously. We've already gotten a lot of input in the previous rounds of engagement about policy recommendations and places residents would like to see. We intend to build on that input and the community goals and objectives and start these sections this summer. The later portions starting next spring are the metrics that indicators, implementation lists and getting the plan ready for adoption. Many portions of this work are intertwined and happening concurrently. This slide summarizes the work shopping process and engagement strategies for the three key remaining sections, the place type guide, the place type map and the policies. We've challenged ourselves to do this work transparently starting with including resident perspectives from the beginning and early drafts of this work. We did this when we were writing the community goals and objectives where staff wrote an initial draft then we discussed the drafts with the outreach team first and then we held small group discussions with residents to ground truth those drafts. We're following a similar workshopping model here where we'll be working with smaller groups listed in each of these boxes to get the materials and draft form before the large engagement efforts. So looking at the three sections, you can see the groups we want to workshop each section with on early drafts. While we're still designing the Braggtown work with the Braggtown Community Association, we'd like their perspectives on shaping the place types and policies that will be used community wide. Similarly, we'll keep our outreach team involved in helping us with these sections. And as our work becomes more technical, we'd like your involvement for the planning commission. We're interested in hearing what preferences you have about regular communication and involvement before the big public engagement efforts start. We have a staff technical team to help us better understand the service and operational needs of different place types and policies. And for the policy work in particular, we're planning to structure policy working groups to help draft these. We envision these to be small groups working on writing policy language and comprised of residents and staff to bring multiple perspectives to this work. So all of that is our workshopping model that helps us get ready to share materials for community wide feedback. With our community wide engagement approach, we're going to engage on the place type guide map and policy groupings in two different phases. We're aiming for this to be October and March with each phase of engagement lasting about three months. We've heard support and encouragement to continue the engagement ambassador program. So we intend to continue that with these two phases. For those who don't know, the engagement ambassadors are a group of residents with connections to parts of our community that staff may not be able to successfully engage. They're engaging underrepresented communities to make sure they're included in the process and that their voices are heard. This group receives a stipend for their work. So for a broader community engagement approach, we plan to use digital tools like surveys, interactive maps and forums. And finally, we wanted to show a simplified timeline of the different plan sections and when work will be starting, ending or continuing. This work is interrelated and we're taking in input and revising our process as we go between each of these phases. You can see each section listed on the left column of this chart and filled in part of the table indicates each section will begin and end. The top row shows the general time frames by fall, winter, spring and summer, all leading to starting plan adoption in late fall of 2022. We've indicated a star showing the major community-wide engagement for the place type guide, map and policies. With all the engagement that we do, we work to simplify our language, remove technical planning jargon where we can and add definitions if we can't and publish our work into Spanish. And also to improve transparency, you may have noticed this with the previous rounds, we're sharing data sets in the form of a spreadsheet of all the input we've received in each phase as well as sharing the revised versions of the drafts that we put out there based on the input in the previous phase. So in between each engagement phase, staff is revising the drafts based on what we heard and iterating from there. And just like we always say, this is a new undertaking for us and a learning process. Lessons we learned in each phase of engagement will inform the future engagement and this is an iterative process and will continue throughout the development of this schedule. So with that, Lisa and I are available to answer questions and hear it if you all have any thoughts or preferences for how we can involve you going forward. Thank you. Thanks for the update. It's ambitious and it's exciting. So yeah, we can take a few minutes for commissioners to share feedback and I see Commissioner Miller has his hand raised. We'll start with you, Commissioner Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Caleb, I hope, pardon me. Help me understand what place types mean. I mean, clearly you know what it means. Help me understand what it means. Sure. So place types will replace the future land use categories that we use now. And what are those categories that you're replacing? So the residential categories like low, medium, residential, compact neighborhoods, commercial, the place types will be more specific versions of those that describe the character and intensity. All right, so what are the new place types? What are the names of them? We're developing those now. We have some... You've got to have some idea. Sure, yeah, we have some internal working drafts but our plan is to workshop those with our outreach team and the Bradtown Community Association as they're able. Yeah, but what are the types that you have in your internal working drafts? We can follow up with that information. I don't have it on hand. Okay, and another plan that uses place types, what are the place types that those other plans come up with? I just, I'm having a hard time getting an answer to a question that I mean, you must have thought through. So help me understand, I don't understand what this is. Oh, maybe I can jump in here. Thank you, Lisa. So the categories are not very different. So we're still gonna have different kinds of residential categories, different kinds of commercial categories and excuse categories. The actual things associated with each of those place types is what will be more descriptive. So instead of just saying for this specific residential land use, it has a density range of X. Because right now we define these things in terms of density period. Correct. In the residential categories. Correct, so this will be looking at things like building heights, building placement, open space, the kind of street character where parking is located. And it's not gonna have extremely detailed information about that, general guidance about what to expect around all of those aspects with development in that location. And so there are two aspects to place types. One, defining them. And two, placing them on the map. So in other words, these are colors that you're going to paint the new future land use map with. Yep, we're figuring out what the colors mean. And will these still be just categories or will there be specific ones that are unique to places? You mean will all of the categories apply in multiple parcels? Yes. Or we have to say that this place is so unique it needs its own place type. Which might be different from a different place type over here. That's similar, but not the same. Yeah, I don't think we can say we definitely won't have any unique place types. We don't have unique place types to apply to a single parcel right now because we haven't started talking with residents and looking at mapping everything, but it's possible. And are we going to, do you see moving forward the tier system or something like it or a replacement for it that's not like it? So I think probably maybe in between the current system we anticipate going away in some degree. We know that we, in particular, we have compact neighborhoods that are aligned along a transportation system that's no longer planned. And we did hear resident concerns around some aspects of the compact neighborhoods in places where it hasn't yet been applied. We know that we need to have places where we have high frequency, high quality transportation options associated with dense or mixed use development. And so we need to build in place types and place types that accommodate that. Thanks, and so if I may, Mr. Chairman, another question that has to do with the way the new comprehensive plan will relate to the zoning regulations. Under our current comprehensive plans, the tiers themselves are actually zoning categories because even though they're reposed in the comprehensive plan, they're also contemplated in the UDO and depending upon which tier you're in, the way this or that zoning district function may change a little bit or change a lot, quite frankly. The RS-10 in this tier might be different than the rules in the RS-10 in that tier. Will that idea carry over into the place types idea or will the place types idea primarily be just policy? And will we have a clear division between the plan and the code in terms of which one are rules and which one are policies? Or will we have this confusion where things crossover? So I think we'll have a period where obviously we need to transition because the development tiers are referenced in our ordinance that's still our current law, but that we want to move away from that strategy. From having the... The development tiers as speculated for you. Having to look to documents to know what your rules are. All right, so these are all goods, but you've really helped me understand what we're talking about when we say place types. So it has a lot to do with envisioning future land use development and also, I suppose depending upon how they're applied, identifying the places we're under the new plan and with the code that we revised to match it, are places that we like where they are and the way they are. In other words, they'll have a more protective quality. Is that true? Did I get it right? Yes. All right, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks, Commissioner Miller. I'll just note that Commissioner Sees had asked to have the presentation sent to everyone and the staff was kind enough to offer to do that. That'll be really helpful. Commissioner Morgan. Yeah, thank you, Chair. Kayla, I thanks for including the Southeast Area Study and I had a question around the area studies themselves. I noticed on the last slide that you had indicated that the timeframe for the Southeast Area Study is shorter than Braggtown. And if you can tell us the differences because I know we're just getting started with the Southeast area study. And I was just curious as to what activities are different between the two studies, that would it require Braggtown to be longer? Yeah, I couldn't speak to that a little bit, and Lisa, you can chime in if you want. So the Southeast Durham focus area is more limited in scope than the Braggtown focus area. It's to respond as quickly as we can to provide some guidance. That's better than what we have in the current COMP plan to help you all with your cases, your case review. But it's based on the Coulson objectives and the input that we're collecting now from residents. So as far as the Braggtown, the differences with Braggtown, it's built on more relationship building with the smaller group as part of our equitable community engagement, co-developing the engagement around the place types and the place type mapping and policies. And so it's a longer time, a longer period of workshopping these concepts with residents and making sure that, because Braggtown has a lot of a list of priorities they've brought to your meetings, they brought to staff and those can apply in a lot of places that are similar to Braggtown and we really like their insight and their perspective in helping us shape equitable policies. So that's part of the response Lisa, do you wanna chime in? Yeah, I think some of that's gonna be in the Southeast area study because as the neighborhood is starting to get more organized there's a group called the Leesville coalition that's organizing and there is even a website. And so they are really probably looking forward to having some input and there may be further engagement beyond just the time period that you've set but I'm understanding that's probably flexible if the need arises. Yeah, and just to chime in on that. So it will just be the recommendations for the Southeastern focus area will be in draft form. We can use those recommendations but certainly we'd like the Leesville coalition you mentioned and anybody in the Southeastern focus area to participate in the rest of the plan and help us refine it. So I mean, is that just the difference in, I guess in scope if you identify a larger scope that's similar to what you're doing with Braggtown would that be available or is there something that needs to be considered in order to allow for additional time? I was just gonna clarify commissioner Morgan that this was the Southeastern focus areas one that came directly from city council asking for immediate relief from everybody is unhappy with kind of the existing guidance for this area. So trying to make sure we've got some initial recommendations for this area in the short term but this is all part of the work of the overall comprehensive plan. Braggtown is the only community that we are working specifically around our equitable outcomes and engagement approach for that particular work. However, we want to continue working not only with the Southeastern residents but with folks across the county to look at each area because we need to parcel by parcel identify place types on the map and policies for the community. So we will be very interested in continuing to work with you all beyond that shorter timeframe. Yeah, my only concern is would that be available to that community should the need arise? I guess in say, I guess there's a meeting on the 20th to meet with the residents you might find you might have a larger scope than what you're considering right now. So I'm just seeing, I'm thinking there will be but I just, that's why I'm asking would there be that consideration as well? I think as Kayla mentioned all of our work has been iterative so we'll be sure to be responsive to things along the way and we can see what comes out of that meeting. Thanks for bringing it up. All right, thanks. Thanks, Commissioner Morgan. Commissioner Baker. Yeah, I was just going to say I'll be brief but I support this. I was kind of looking for some missing sections when you showed the plan sections and I didn't really see any. It definitely has what a comprehensive plan should have. It's got all the pieces. I personally support the place type strategy focused more on form and design and character over the old school sort of focused on density and separating uses. I would just say there's a big discussion in the planning and comprehensive planning world about future land use maps and whether it should be like parcel specific versus more general and I don't think there's a right approach or a wrong approach but I'll just plug that I tend to prefer the more general approach because I think that it allows more focus on policies and it doesn't, you're not, there's not a threat of like falling into what we have kind of like now and other communities have where there's almost like a second layer of zoning and people are constantly requesting amendments to the future land use map which isn't a good thing. I would also just as a plug really, really like to see a comprehensive UDO rewrite and the reason I mentioned that now is because I would love to see things start to move now so that once the place types are ready and adopted that we can kind of hit the ground running in fully rewriting the UDO and maybe even doing sort of a comprehensive zoning map update that those would be transformational changes and I think are really, really needed. We've all seen the zoning that exists in term now and I think this is a huge opportunity coming off the back of the comprehensive plan. And then lastly, I just wanna say that I would really like to see a focus on growth management and so there was a little discussion just now about the tiers and I think that there's a way of rethinking, you know, getting rid of the tiers that we have now and thinking about tiers less about what is developing and focusing more on the when and how much to grow. And so I'm just gonna plug that. That's all I've got, thanks. Thanks, Commissioner Baker. Commissioner Amandolia. Thank you, Chair. I have two quick questions. And again, I wanna thank the staff for all the work y'all have done on this. The first question I have is about the working groups for figuring out the policies. First off, are they like, is the idea that they're gonna be kind of issue-focused that we're gonna kind of take the comprehensive, like the goals and objectives kind of topic and form those working groups? And then the second question is, you had like planning commissioners as a potential like stakeholder in those working groups, is that like we're invited to participate in those? Do you like want all of us on a different working group? What do y'all envision that being? Those are great questions. So the way that we're envisioning, we're working on filling out this structure more fully for the policy working groups right now what we're proposing, but we're envisioning it based around topics like the goal topics right now. We are interested in finding out who from this commission is interested in being involved. I think maybe Kayla also mentioned we're planning to have staff involvement as well as residents, both community members and resident experts, so who work in policy related to those things. So that's kind of the general structure right now and we would definitely like to have you all involved in that. Awesome, that's helpful. Yeah, and I think that's exciting to have everyone kind of coming together to co-create this. My second question is about the Southeast area plan and just I guess, September feels like really far away given how many cases we continue to see in Southeast Durham. And so I guess I'm curious if there's any way for, well, first off I have a clarification. Are we getting a draft of that Southeast area plan in September? Is that the goal or is the goal to have that done by September? And then my second question is, is there any like earlier time we can get like some kind of idea of what y'all are thinking about so we can have some guidance before then? Sure, I can speak a bit more to the timeline. So this month we are hosting a community information meeting with residents and also hosting two focus group with groups with residents that we haven't heard from yet through the online platform, including a Spanish speaking focus group. So we need to report out on the themes we've heard so far from residents back out in the information sessions and focus groups to get those perspectives. We want to share some draft work recommendations back out with community members around July and have those discussed again before we package the final draft report for September. So there will be some earlier indication of what we're recommending before September, but it would still be all in draft form even in September. Does that help? Yeah, that is helpful. Thank you. That's all I had. Thank you. Thanks commissioner. Commissioner Miller, I'm going to circle back to you. I see your hand up again. So I just wanted to throw out there. When you engage people, please remember that in my opinion, the most successful engagement, in other words, the engagement that is going to reach the most people is going to be based upon geographic affinity and not broad county wide issues. Now there are people in the community who have much that's valuable to contribute based upon their knowledge and interest in and passion for county wide issues. But if you want to reach people where they live, please reach them where they live. And I really do think that's the best way to do this, to reach all the way down. I mean, even then you're going to have to resort in places to some extraordinary measures to make sure you're reaching people, but you've had experience with that now. And then finally, it's a question for Grace. It's not so much related to this, but it is stimulated by the discussion we're having. Grace, we're getting a lot, or I'm getting a lot of questions about what's going on with Northgate and Waltown. So at some point soon, and that's selfish because I'm going off the commission after the June meeting, I would like to be briefed on what the situation is with Northgate so that when members of the community approach me, I can respond to them intelligently and soberly about what we are doing, what we can do, and what the city's actual official position is with regard to the redevelopment of Northgate. And I guess, place making and place identification for the neighborhoods that will be most impacted by what happens at Northgate. So it does circle into the comprehensive plan. And I was hoping we could set aside some time to really talk about what's going on at Northgate, even though we don't have and we may never have a case there because all of us on the planning commission are to some extent a liaison to some aspect of the community. Thank you. Sure, Mr. Miller. It appears to be the developer's thought is that they will develop that property by right. We don't have any exact information to share in that regard and what the city's position is today on that, but I will go back to the powers to be and let them know that it would be nice if we could and when we have adequate information to share about what we know about what's going on and exactly, well, better information. So I wouldn't wanna share or disseminate inappropriate information or erroneous information. So I'll work on something for that maybe. And if it's not an item that we bring it to the meeting, maybe if at a minimum, it's an email to the commission explaining what we know about what's going on with the project and the efforts of the community. I know Commissioner Baker has mentioned that he's been involved in some of the outreach or the efforts that they have made to meet as a community and I know you have to. So I can work on that and come back to you. I don't have anything that I can just throw off it. No, no, I can, I realize that. So that's why I'm asking here. Just from my own point of view, I think it would be healthier for the community if there were some sort of public airing, even if it was to explain what in this case, development by right of that site would be and what the city can and cannot do and also what the measurable impacts may or may not be. I mean, I've seen a lot of stuff swirl around and it looks like they're talking about two phases of development. The first one certainly does look like it's intended to be by right. So in other words, it's going to start with a site plan, I guess and a lot of conversations around that. And then there's a second phase where some of what they're proposing to do looks to me fairly ambitious and might not be doable by right, but what do I know? So, but I would like to be better informed and in doing this kind of out where people can attend our meeting or perhaps watch this on TV might not be a bad thing for everybody. A little public airing of what's going on I think can only be healthy. So thank you very much. And again, thank you. Yeah, I'll delve into that and get back with you all and let you know what I come up with. Great, thank you. And then as we wrap up, I just wanted to add a couple quick things. I really appreciate my fellow commissioners comments and the staff, Kayla and Lisa and everyone. This is really exciting. I appreciate you proactively bringing this to us. I like that we're keeping the ambassadors program. I think that's really worked that has helped us really have the community actively engaged and the staff is really doing a lot of the hard work to reach out and listen. I agree with commissioner Baker. I hope we can add the UDO rewrite onto this so that we don't have such a lag time. I understand it's a heavy lift, but it really is also something that needs to be updated. And then, you know, in terms of, and I want to commend the commitment to breakdown as well. I think that's really important. Finally, in terms of our engagement, you know, I heard a couple of different things and I would say I'm getting to try all of them. So more of these updates as appropriate at the start of our meeting, definitely those are welcome. The second is engagement in some of these committees as appropriate. I do think having some planning commissioners being given that opportunity and then to be kind of listening as much as offering our input and our assessment would be really important. And then I do hope that we will begin, we haven't been doing them as quarterly as we should, but I think heading into all of this work, starting to have our quarterly planning commission retreats as well, those are public meetings and we'll have to do them virtually for the time being, but it lets us have a deeper dive. And I think that's also valuable for us and also I think for the staff to hear our collective feedback. So I know that was one of your questions. And I hope we can do all of those things plus whatever else seems appropriate. But again, with that, thank you staff for your really great work on this, looking forward to working with you and advancing all these moving pieces. With that, any final comments? Kayla or Lisa to wrap us up? No, thanks. Yeah, thank you for having us. Thank you. We'll look forward to seeing the information from the presentation that you gave earlier as well. So we're gonna move to our first case. We have two cases this evening and the first case is 405 T.W. Alexander and it's case Z2 quadruple zero one five and we will start with the staff report. Great, thank you, Chair Bozby. Go ahead and get started. All right, Alexander Kale here with the planning departments. Be presenting tonight on 405 South T.W. Alexander Z2015. We do wanna make a note before we start presenting today that as staff in land use team work under the direction of Mr. Stock to make things better, more efficient and a better read for people that you may see changes in the form of presentations. If you have feedback as you see the presentations, feel free to share them with Mr. Stock and we'll work to incorporate them. And I'm hearing that my, there we go. Bear with me. Exactly, I think we need to organize your slideshow. There we go, is that showing better? Perhaps, I don't see it at all. Not here either. It's not up there. Little fun. Still great. There we go. That's still not got it. You're still. Yeah, there we go. There we go. Great, thanks for bearing with me. So if you see changes that you like and things that you don't like, make sure you let Mr. Stock know we'll work to incorporate them including staff sharing their screens. So the case summary today for 405 T.W. Alexander, this is in the suburban tier. If it is annexed, it will be into the city. It's currently in the county jurisdiction. The site is around nine acres. It does have an existing zoning and existing legacy development plan on the site. That is an office and institutional too. Very outdated zoning. It was approved in 2000. The applicant is proposing a rezoning to the plan development residential 19.745 density. Existing future land use map does designate this as office. And staff, if approved for this rezoning are recommending a flum change to the medium high density residential. There is a watershed overlay. The Falls News Jordan Lake Watershed Protection District B. This proposal is for up to three buildings that consist of 176 multifamily residential units with amenities. The zoning of PDR 19.7 is sitting amongst a bunch of other kind of patchwork as we see sometimes in some of these areas of different zoning designations. Residential suburban multifamily is that orange color that is northwest and west of the site. RTP is directly to the east of the site. That's the large swath of green on there. And then we have office institutional directly abutting the site as well. If we look at the aerial map, you can see this is a relatively up and coming, it's a growing area. The EPA site is adjacent to here on the eastern side. So federal land that exists to the east is a multifamily subdivision to the north and northwest. And it's a clearly a growing area. This is on the corner of Hopson and 55, just northeast of that. So there are a few commitments on this project. The applicant is committing to trees preservation areas on the development plan, site access points, project boundary buffers, the building and parking envelope, which we'll discuss in a minute. The maximum impervious surface, some recreational open space amenities are offered on this development plan as well. Electric vehicle charging stations up to four of them have been included on this development proposal. A bus pad and shelter developed or built to go triangle and go Durham specifications is included as a tax commitment. And then there's also a commitment with a sidewalk connection to an offsite property that's not part of this project that works to increase the connectivity of this site with the rest of the surrounding area. You can see in the existing conditions, the development plan page two, there is an existing stream and a hundred foot stream buffer on this site and a 10 foot no build setback is in there as well. Just to the east of this site, there's a small little triangle parcel that is not included in this application. And we'll talk about that in just a minute, but it's just the larger triangle on the western portion of this parcel. The proposed conditions for this site, the staff was made aware of some proposed changes to this at this afternoon that I will call out to the best of my knowledge, but hopefully the applicant will be able to provide some additional information on this. The building and parking envelope that is being proposed was a little bit unclear. And since this afternoon, we've staff was informed that the building and parking envelope will just be on this one parcel, there won't be offsite parking. So hopefully that provides some clarity and the applicant provides some more information about that to y'all as well. I know that was a point of concern for some of us. Summary of community input is something you'll start seeing in these slides in these presentations. There was a neighborhood meeting that was held in accordance with the UDO on February 5th, 2020. Three community members were in attendance and the neighborhood meeting minutes were attached as an agenda item. There was also one phone call received just tonight about this project or some confusion about the 405 TWA Alexander site as there's a similar address nearby, but that was all worked out. And there was no comments yet on social pinpoint. However, this is a case that was added relatively recently and so there was not necessary a lot of time as some of the other cases that have been on there since we launched on April 15th. Staff has determined that except for the future land use designation, this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other adopted ordinances and policies. If this request is approved, the FLEM designation should be amended to main consistency and that would be to medium high density residential. Again, just wanna recap that there were some changes brought to staff's attention today. We don't have an updated plan with these changes, but hopefully the applicant is able to talk more about these today. Staff is available for questions at this time. Thank you very much. Before we get to the hearing commissioners, are there any questions for Mr. Cahill? Okay, seeing none, I think we will likely come back to you as we move forward. We're gonna open the public hearing and we had only one individual signed up to speak and that was the applicant, Jared Edens. So Mr. Edens, the floor is yours and feel free to take the time you need, including to share the changes that you're proposing. Yes, sir. Thank you, Chair Busby. Can hear him okay? Yes. Okay, good. Yeah, so Jared Edens with Edens Land we're the developer of the project. Appreciate Alex's time working with us on this. It's gotten a little complicated along the way, but I think we've figured things out as we've gone. I'll just touch on a few high points and I can speak to, there are more clarifications than maybe changes, but I can speak to those in a minute. But as Alex said, we're asking for 176 apartments on roughly 8.9 acres. These would be four story apartments, market rate apartments. I think when we look at the area and the property itself, I really do believe that apartments are the highest and best use for the land. As Alex stated, the property's been zoned for office for 21 years now and there's just not been an office market to develop there. You really don't have the visibility for retail. You have some road frontage on TW, but the property sits low. It doesn't have great visibility for retail. Really too many environmental constraints to do any sort of industrial use. I don't think single family would make a lot of sense in this location. You could make an argument for townhomes, but I think when you consider what's going on in the area, you know, with the jobs that are coming, we've heard about the Apple campus, that's 3,000 plus jobs. That's gonna be a five to 10 minute bus ride from this location. Those are definitely higher paying jobs, but you've also, you're gonna have a lot of support companies that follow Apple. Anytime these larger corporations set up shop, you've got the small companies that follow them. I think that's more the target market for this apartment complex. And if we could, Alex, if you don't mind, if you could bring up the DV2 sheet, I could point to the landscape clarification. Yep, I will do that right now. Okay, thank you. And I'll go ahead and begin, but you know, Alex had referred to a triangle piece. There's a small triangle piece adjacent to the property. Originally the triangle was part of the application and it's part of the property for purchase. And originally we were gonna try to use it for something, but we went through, you know, through months and months of the zoning process and working through title work and things like that. And we found out that the small triangle piece is really still governed by the RTP restrictive covenants. And it was just decided that to clean things up and move forward, we would just adjust our plan and remove that completely. So that's why you just have the parent parcel of 8.9 acres located. But the note Alex was referring to on the DV2 page. And yeah, if you could zoom in there to that common property line, you know, we still have to purchase the property, right? Even though it's not really gonna be used for anything because of the covenants. But one thing we could possibly do on it is place the landscape buffer that's required between the apartments and what we'll call the RTP property. You know, if we're able to place the landscape buffer on the RTP property, then it allows the parking envelope, not the building envelope, but the parking envelope just along that common property line to extend out another 10 feet. And that was the purpose of that note. And I would admit it's a poorly worded note. This is, you know, parking envelope area only if it's offsite, you know, landscape buffer and easement is utilized is basically the purpose of it. That's the reasoning for the note. So the change I guess there, I just had, I had some better wording I thought that I presented to Alex this afternoon that might help clarify what that was meant. But again, that's only talking about, because we're required to state on the development plan any kind of variation that may come up as site plan. So I'm not saying we'll have the landscape easement on the triangle property, but if we're able to make it work there, it just frees up a little bit more a parking area for our site. So that's the purpose of that note. And also the offsite parking, again, when we were originally just trying to figure out a way to still utilize the parcel in some way, we were looking at maybe having a parking over there. But again, that was, when we look at the code restrictions and what that entailed, we ultimately just decided we weren't gonna park, you know, or to have anything to do with that parcel as far as parking goes. So the other change was just to remove, there's a note on the cover page about the offsite parking. And that was just the change would be just to simply remove that note and any reference offsite parking. I believe it's in general note seven on the cover page there. So that's the two changes that we would hope to incorporate and just pass that on to council. I don't think they're major land use changes, but it's just, I think we can better clarify it before we take it to council, that's for sure. Again, I'd be glad to answer questions you have, thank you. Thank you. I do wanna give the opportunity, if there's anyone else who is attending tonight's meeting that would like to speak on this item, you can digitally raise your hand and if you're in by Zoom, and if you have called in by phone, you can press star nine on your phone and you can raise your hand and we'll give you the opportunity to speak on this item. Okay, I don't see anyone else who is asking to speak. So we will close the public hearing and commissioners, I see we've got a couple of hands raised Commissioner Miller, we will start with you and you're on mute. I have three questions to her for Jared. And so Jared, you and I talked earlier about the, what I thought was a confusing note and thank you for changing it. Essentially, as I understand it the, if I were to see your new, the new notes on that sheet on the development plan, they would make it clear that there are two alternatives for the parking envelope. One would be the gray shaded area that you show there and the other one would be a slightly enlarged one just along the common property line with the RTP, Covenant Triangle and in the event that you can move your buffer onto that piece of property, then you would get a 10 foot wide, increase in the parking envelope for the length of that shared property line. Is that right? Yes, and I'm pretty sure you did a better job of explaining it than I did. So I appreciate that because that is the intention. And the wording was vetted by staff, before I got to you guys, I just thought that the wording we came up with today would just be a little bit more clearer for council. It's hard to catch things when everybody knows what you're talking about and when they're exposed to people who don't understand that sometimes clarity problems arise. And since I am the person who frequently does not understand, I'm the one that was confused. So the next question I have for you, there's another triangle that's included inside the building envelope. It's the little point on the other side of the stream buffer. As a practical matter, do you see buildings going up on that pointy triangle down there? You see what I'm referring to? It's hard to talk about it when there's no map on display. Yeah, I'm sorry, I was muted. I apologize. No, there would not be any buildings in that location. It wouldn't really be feasible. It's more for if some parking can fit there, possibly some open space. There'll be a sidewalk connection along the road between the two little islands, so to speak. So we may do something with open space on that side, but there would not be a building. Yeah, there would be no practical internal communication there. Correct. And then finally, the last question I have is for staff. So this property currently has on a couple of sides or in close proximity, property that is currently zoned for multifamily suburban, what is the density that could be gleaned out of that RSM zoned land? Yeah, that's a great question. Give me a second while I look. And I wish I had thought of it earlier, Alexander, because I realized I'm causing you to have to scamper through the code. Commissioner Miller, do you have any other questions or comments while we wait? Yeah, so essentially, if you drove down there, you saw that as you proceeded south on TW Alexander, everything on your left-hand side or to the east were these kind of big 1980s, and I suppose probably 1970s, rural office campuses, they were all the rage there for a while. And then the rest of the land, with the exception of a townhouse project and a couple of little residential things going on, and then an apartment complex, it's really hard to get a picture of what the future of this area is going to look like there on the edge of the RTP. And since I expect that the RTP is about to begin a decade of significant change, I'm trying to figure out what this area at the southern limit of Durham County is supposed to look like 10 years from now and whether or not this rezoning is consistent with that vision. And that's why I'm asking Alexander, because the land around it is zone multifamily, and I've kind of wanted to compare densities for that property. There's a bill pending that will make down zoning illegal. So it's unlikely that we're going to be able to change. If that passes, we won't be able to change any of the zoning down there. So I'm just trying to guess what this area is gonna look like and whether or not this rezoning is consistent with that. So there's 20 units and acres. Is right much for suburban apartment complexes. Correct. So to answer your question, it would be eight dwelling units and acre without a development plan, 12 dwelling units and acre for small lots without a development plan and 18 dwelling units and acre with a development plan. So in other words, if you brought in, if the owner of those properties rezoned them to the exact same zone, but with a development plan, they could bring in a residential density for multifamily apartments, very similar to what this applicant is asking for for this parcel. Is that right? Correct. And if they didn't wanna go through the trouble of rezoning it, then they, depending upon the housing type they selected, they could have up to 12 units and acre. Correct. All right, that's what I thought. Thank you very much, Alexander. Mr. Chairman and colleagues, unless you convince me otherwise, I'm inclined to vote for this resume. Thanks, Commissioner Miller and Mr. Cahill, well done with the calculations. We'll go to Commissioner Baker. Yeah, I'll be quick. I'm just thinking about the goals and objectives that we have been discussing and that the community and the plan department have been working so hard on and thinking about a sustainable and equitable city. And so I'm just gonna ask some two or three questions that I very frequently ask. So I'm sure you're expecting them. One of them is, are there gonna be any green building elements as part of this development? So renewable energy, energy efficiency that's above and beyond what's required, solar panels, anything like that. That's for the applicant. Yes, nothing that we're prepared to commit to. That doesn't mean there won't be green building because a lot of builders just start to do at least some of those aspects just naturally but nothing that I can commit to tonight, no. I'd love to see those commitments in the future. Is there gonna be any affordable housing in the project? No, we're not proposing affordable for this project. 176 apartments is actually for apartment complexes, very much on the low end. If you get much lower than that, it's not very much a viable product. And it's just honestly much more difficult financially to do something like that when you've got 176 units. And then where can residents go? So they move in there, can they live without a car? Can they get food and services and the things that they need on a daily basis without a vehicle? Right, so I haven't analyzed all the, I think the staff report said this is on data route 12. We're committing to building a covered bus shelter on TW which would have a sidewalk connection to the property. There is some retail nearby that I would imagine has to be on the bus, the A bus route, but I couldn't tell you with certainty where people go and how long it takes. But I do think that that kind of transit is very accessible in this area. Okay, that's all, thanks. Thanks, Commissioner Baker. Commissioner Durkin. My question is also about affordable housing but I was curious if you considered using the affordable housing density bonus. That way you could have more than a hundred and seventy-six apartments and they may make it work a while. Yeah, I mean we've looked at a lot of options, trust me. It's a fairly difficult site with the topography and how it lays out. So we've looked at several different ways but you just run into a parking limitation. You know, even though the affordable, the bonus units don't have the same parking requirements as the units that come with them. It just, you just can't really physically fit it. You know, if we were able to use that triangle piece, like we had hoped and grab another 20, 30 parking spaces over there, it could have made a difference maybe in the calculations. But it's just, I don't think it really works for us on this property. Okay, and can you say why again, you're not using that little triangle piece? Yeah, so during title work it was, we uncovered that that parcel is under restricted covenants of RTP. So it's confusing because it's on Durham's land use map. You know, it's like identified on the land use plan as Durham having some sort of governance over that triangle piece. But as it turns out, to have that removed, I think would have required us to go to the county commissioners first and remove it from the covenants and then resubmit the zoning application. And there just wasn't that kind of time to go through that sort of processes for that small piece. So we just decided to remove it just to keep things simple. Okay, that's too bad considering it would be worth the time if you're able to add 17 apartment, affordable apartment. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately the land contracts in this business aren't indefinite. So we have landowners don't give you, you know, years and years and years to go through processes. And sometimes you just run up into limitations. Yeah, I fully understand that and appreciate that. But I guess my taking, putting on the planning commissioner hat versus putting on my an attorney for developers that, I would hope that some of those calculations would be a factor differently. And I understand that your limitations in that role are limited. I just would like to hear things like the county's helping you in that process to open up affordable units, which is above and beyond your role, Mr. Edens. And but related to this, do you know what the anticipated rents are or right now what you're forecasting rents to be? I mean, I don't and I mean, shoot the way the market changes almost daily. I think I saw in the staff report the average was around $1.26 a square foot for the area. You know, we generally apartments, we assume $1.30 to $1.40 a square foot. So, you know, your, your sweet spot when you talk to department guys, they'll tell you, you know, a two bedroom, a thousand 1100 square foot apartment unit is sort of the sweet spot there. So, and you're looking at something in the, you know, $14, $1500 a month range for a two bedroom unit. That's a lot. So, I know that's where I'll end my comments and one more push for somebody using that affordable housing density bonus and make it easier to have access to sites that would help to do it. Thank you. Thanks, Commissioner Durkin. Commissioner Morgan. Thank you, Chair. Question, actually a comment or question for the applicant, Jared, you and I spoke a little bit about this and there is property just to the west of that that's owned by the county. Can you elaborate a little bit more of your thoughts behind that? I know maybe a little out of scope there, but I think it does kind of put in context what could happen in that area, which I think Commissioner Miller was concerned about as well. Yeah, no, I almost regret you bringing it up because it just made me want to purchase it. Because yeah, the county does own a large track at the corner of TWN 55, you know, that's about as good of a mixed use spot that you'll find in this part of town. So, yeah, I mean, I have no idea what the county's plans are for land. I don't think the county gives up land very quickly or easily once they have it. But yeah, if there was a redevelopment or a city venture possible, that location would be prime. Yeah, that seems like that would be a good area for any kind of affordable housing funds that could be used for that purpose. That's just my thought behind it, that's all. Yeah, that site would definitely accommodate the retail and drive revenues in such a way that would more support the affordable, I'm quite certain. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Commissioner Morgan. Commissioner Amandolia. Thank you, Chair. I have one quick question for the applicant. So you mentioned extending the sidewalk offsite to connect to the sidewalk on an adjacent property. There's also a sidewalk on the other side of the road. And I'm curious, hello, my cat's coming to join. There's also a sidewalk on the other side of the street. And I'm curious if there's any kind of crosswalk plan there to make it easier for pedestrians to be able to cross the street at that point. Yeah, so we haven't looked at that, that the sidewalk that we're building is basically will be around the corner of the triangle piece because since that's not technically part of the application, it's not a requirement, so we're gonna fill in that gap. I mean, I know that any pedestrian crosswalks and things like that have to be vetted through DOT. So I haven't had conversations with them about that to date. I'm not saying that we wouldn't, but I just, I haven't to date. I'd be hesitant to speak too much because they're the final approval on where those go and the signalization and things like that. Okay, it would be great to see you pursue that because that does connect to a much longer sidewalk trail that I think would be worth adding to this site. And I'm sorry to interrupt, but I mean, that's a conversation I'm willing to have with DOT between now and council for sure that it's not unreasonable at all. Great. I have one just brief comment about this case and it's not necessarily specifically about the application, but it's just reflecting on something that I brought up at the last meeting, which is again, this Apple deal is making everything we do on this commission harder by having folks with five times the wage of Durham expected to move to the area over the next several years. We're already seeing housing values go up again, which means property taxes go up. We're gonna start seeing more folks coming with developments that have higher price points for their units. And it's just pushing up against all the goals we've been trying to achieve. And so it's disappointing that this deal has happened, especially in the way it has without any community engagement. But I hope that us on the planning commission do the best we can to continue to push back against these trends and say, we still want more. I don't care that Apple's coming. I care what Durham residents who are living here right now need. And we need housing that is affordable. We don't need housing for people who don't yet live here. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Covray. Thank you. Just a quick question for the applicant and trying to understand a little better. And Mr. Edens, I mean, you're here frequently and you're talking to a number of developers. What's the, I mean, help me understand the conversation around affordable housing and the fact that you know very well, we're going to ask for this when it comes up and what developers comments have been their thoughts. You're going to go through this entire process and leave it on the table and spend a significant amount of money potentially, not get the rezoning request that they want when affordable housing could have been incorporated potentially, I heard all the reasons that it wasn't in this project. And I'll add to that the effort to find space for affordable housing, I don't know, right? You're just sort of giving this to a second hand. And so I don't know what that effort was like. It doesn't feel like there was a lot of effort put into that. So help me understand a little bit better the conversations that are happening. And if you can talk specifically about this one, obviously this is what's on the table. I'd be open to hearing that, but I am curious generally what these conversations are like knowing full and well that you sit in front of us month after month and hear this concern. And do you tell your developers they're probably going to say no to this. In fact, in March of 2020, was that the conversation that was had? Right now, I appreciate the question. And I mean, affordable housing, I think, you know, the commission has the attention of the development community. I mean, we're, you know, we're working on several, I mean, a lot of projects in Durham and the topic does come up and we do have, we have zoning's come into you that do have affordability incorporated into them. You know, we have zoning's that when you get them do have 10% across the board affordability. I mean, you'll be seeing them early next year, but some have been, there's been some articles about it. So we're, I mean, we as a developer, we're definitely looking at it and incorporating it, you know, when we can for this side, again, it doesn't take too many lines of calculations to sort of realize that it gets really tough to do the affordable when you've got this unit count, when you factor everything in. So, you know, for this particular property, I mean, you know, the finances are a real thing and that that was a concern. But, you know, we've also tried, you know, we had a project that would have had 22 affordable units, the parcel K project that came in March. And, you know, that was not received too well, you know, but we made the effort to try to do it. So we have put it on paper and we will plan to put it on paper in the future. Cause I mean, it's an important issue to us. It's just not really possible for this property. But you do have their attention that the topic comes up often. I mean, I can assure you. Thanks, Commissioner Cartwright. Any, any additional questions? No, thank you. Great, thank you. And I just had, Mr. Reads, I just have one final question for you. So this project looks to add 37 new students. And so there's no proffer at this point for the Durham Public Schools or for the Affordable Housing Fund. Can you share your thoughts on this case and any proffers to either of those as this moves forward? Yes, I mean, we've made those, both of those proffers, I'm pretty sure on 100% of our zonings, you know, since those funds were set up, I mean, my view has always been that that's a council level decision. Those are council funds that have set aside, you know, those numbers are sometimes negotiated. I've tried to keep our conversation at Planning Commission about land use and not how big a certain check amount will be. But I can assure you that we would be paying contributions to both of those funds at council, as we always do. Thank you. I don't see any other commissioners with questions or comments. I'll just share that I'm inclined to support this as well. Commissioner Miller was asking a lot of questions along my line of thinking. And I feel like this is an appropriate use and it's headed in the direction of what we're gonna see more around RTP. It's not perfect. I wish, I don't like the fact that we're gonna have to create some, probably some circular van or bus system if we're gonna have people getting from this development, even just across the street, if they're gonna be at EPA as support staff or other things. But I think it is better than what might go in there otherwise. So I'm gonna plan to vote for it. I will entertain a motion at this point. Mr. Chairman, then with regard to case Z2000015, the property at 405 T.W. Alexander, I recommend that we send the case forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation and a further recommendation that if the rezoning is approved, that the future land use map be adjusted to show medium high density residential for the site. Is that a correct motion, Ms. Smith? You actually don't have to make the motion for the flum. If the inconsistent zoning is approved then the flum map would automatically be adjusted. But thank you, it's not a problem to include it. Second to motion. Thank you. Motion by commissioner Miller, seconded by commissioner Morgan and we'll have the roll call vote. Amondolia? Yes. Baker? Yes. Busby? Yes. Cameron? Yes. Cut right? Yes. Durkin? Yes. Okay. Kynchon? Yes. Low? Yes. MacGyver? Yes. Miller? Yes. Morgan? Yes. And Cease? Yes. Okay, it's you, Nandama, thank you. Thank you. And we'll move to our final case this evening. This is the courtyards at Doc Nichols. It's case Z2 quadruple zero three zero. And we'll start with the staff report. Great, thank you, chair Busby and honorable commissioners. Alexander Cahill here again tonight. Thank you for being with us. This is for courtyards at Doc Nichols Z2030. Again, you may see some things a little different. If you see things that you like on the presentation, make sure you let Mr. Stock know. And if you see things that you wish we were talking about, please let us know as well. So this project is located at the Southwest Quadrant of Canard Road and Doc Nichols Road in North Durham. It is currently in the county and it is pending annexation with the concurrent annexation case submitted. The current zoning is residential rural in the Falls and Jordan Lake District View Watershed Protection Overlay District. And it's currently low density residential on the future land use map. This does fall within the suburban development here. The parcel is about 75 acres in size. The rezoning request from the applicant tonight is for a PDR 1.796. And then there would be no change to the future land use map is that current proposed rezoning falls within the low density residential flow. The proposal is up to 133 single family residential units. If you look at the zoning context map, it's surrounded by residential rural zoning to the Northwest and South. And then to the east of the parcel, it is PDR 2.903. You can look at the aerial map and see that there is a adjacent development single family residential to the east of the site, to the south of the site, and then mostly undeveloped to the north and the west. But we know that development applications are coming in in this area. The summary of commitments. So again, the applicant is committing to the tree preservation areas on this development plan, site access points, well, project boundary buffers, a unique building and parking envelope, which I'll call out on the proposed conditions sheet, recreational open space with some different amenity choices, graphic commitments, numerous traffic commitments, and then just one screen crossing. If you look at the existing conditions sites, there are a lot of environmental features on the site. And we know up in this area, this tends to be one of the challenges with multiple perennial and intermittent streams. There's quite a bit of stream buffering required, no build setbacks. And so there is a lot going on with this project that staff has spent a lot of time looking at, and hopefully we call it appropriately tonight. The proposed site conditions. So this development does propose a building and parking envelope that's mostly just the eastern portion of this unique piece assemblage. There is one stream crossing that you can see that is in the, more towards the southeast middle part of the property. And this zoning again is for a PDR 1.796 pretty low density residential, but about as high a density as you can get with some of the environmental features on this site. There was a neighborhood meeting held in accordance with UDL requirements on August 5th. 17 community members were in attendance at that meeting. I am not sure if additional correspondence with the community members occurred after that meeting from the applicant or developer, but I'm sure they can provide additional insight on that this evening. Staff did not receive any additional phone calls, emails or social pinpoint comments on this case. However, we do want to caution that this case was just added to social pinpoint recently and it was not up for a very long time. Staff does determine that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan, including the future land use map and other adopted ordinances and plans and policies. We are available for any questions that you may have and the applicant is here tonight as well. Thank you very much. So we will open the public hearing and we do have a number of people who have signed up including I think a fair number of people who are with us this evening that have not had a chance to sign up in advance. So we had five, I'm sorry, four individuals who signed up in advance as proponents in support. We had one individual who was signed up in opposition, but again, I think we've had a number of folks who are also with us this evening who plan to potentially speak as well. With that, why don't we start with the applicant team and Mr. Ghosh, I know you're with us. We also had Laura Holloman, Jason Coffey and Ryan Akers. I'm not sure if they are all part of the applicant team. So I'll leave it up to you and you can let us know how to proceed. Yeah, they all are part of the applicant team. And thank you, Mr. Cahill for your presentation and good evening, Chair Busby, Vice Chair Kenshin and members of the Planning Commission. My name is Neil Ghosh, I'm an attorney with the Morning Star Law Group at 112 West Main Street in Durham. I'm representing the applicant for this project, which is Epcon. Jason Coffey from Epcon is on the call with us and we also have Laura Holloman and Ryan Akers from McAdams. I think you all are familiar with Epcon. They have done a few projects in Durham. Primarily they build age targeted single family community, which is the plan here. Actually this project will be age restricted. This project is on an assemblage that is about 75 acres in size, but there are streams and other environmental features which encumber much of the property as Mr. Cahill alluded to. This community would consist of a maximum of 133 homes. And this project will require a pretty significant investment in infrastructure. For example, Canard Road on the north side of the property basically the gravel road today. Across the frontage of this property, this project commits to building out Canard Road to city street standard with three lane travel sidewalks and bicycle lanes. This project also includes a fair amount of improvements along dock nickels, including provision for a bike lane across the frontage. As we work with staff through the review process on this application, they expressed the desire for this project to complete the sidewalk on the dock nickels road, including some sidewalks to fill in the gap. There's a parcel that kind of this assemblage snakes around or U-shaped kind of around. There's an intervening parcel between us and a portion of dock nickels road. I've kind of approached that homeowner to try to acquire an easement or the outside sidewalk, but ultimately that property owner was not interested. And I don't necessarily blame them because in order to maintain the ditch and swell section on that portion of dock nickels road, the sidewalk would have ended up being just a few feet from their front door. That having been said, the community will provide continuous sidewalk network through the property. So though circuitous, you will be able to stay on a sidewalk to walk down dock nickels. The, I know there's a number of people who have signed up. I think it would be appropriate to stop here and listen to what they have to say and hopefully have a chance to respond to what else we hear. Thank you. Yeah, you've got about seven and a half minutes left of time that you can reserve. So we will plan to move to other individuals who'd like to speak and then we can circle back to you. So for other folks who would like to speak, I know Stephen Nill had signed up but was uncertain if he wanted to speak or not this evening. Sorry, I was muted. Stephen Nill, you were signed up to speak but you were uncertain if you wanted to speak. So I'll give you that opportunity, but if you're in the meeting and you would like to speak on this item, you can hit the raise hand function. If you've joined us via Zoom, if you've called him by phone, please press star nine so you can raise your hand and we will call on you and give you the opportunity to speak. Mr. Nill, you are welcome to start if you would like and we'll give you two or three minutes and we can see who else is interested in speaking as well. If you can give us your name and your address. I know you've spoken with us before and share your comments, please. Thank you. Stephen Nill, 1021 Restoration Drive in Durham with the Leesville Coalition. I know it was mentioned before. I live in an EpiCon community, the Courtyard City of Andrews Chapel. They're a great builder. Are it over the issue that I have, we have which is pretty much the same issue we've seen with the commission here is the relentless unchecked, poorly designed development process in Southeast Durham. This is just another one of those that now seems like it's gonna come in under the timeframe for the small area study. We were told by Scott Whiteman that the small area study was gonna be presented to council in June. And that was one of the reasons that they were just gonna keep to greenlighting new developments because they couldn't wait. They needed that they needed the housing according to Mayor Schull. I think EpiCon's a great builder. It's about the highest end you're gonna get in this category. The third phase of our community, the average house price is over 650. And with the way real estate's going now, you're gonna be looking at $700,000 alms. So I'm not sure how council feels about that in terms of the need for, let's call it more affordable housing. Even the communities that you've greenlit that have told you in the past four through four, five months that they're gonna be building things into 200s. Some of them are setting them out for bid. They're actually putting them in the MLS and not even doing straight pricing anymore. So prices are gonna go up. So all I can ask is that we try to control this until there is some infrastructure in roads, in transportation and everything for this area. Nothing against EpiCon. They've been a great builder for me and for my neighbors. But just it's again, it's the bigger picture issue that no one seems to be able to deal with except this group here. Thank you for your comments, Mr. Neal. And Chris was kind enough to put in the chat box, a list of people who were not able to sign up in advance, but have signed up since they joined this call. So you can see the names that we have listed. And so we'll just go in order. We'll start with Geraldine Carver and we'll give each speaker two minutes. Again, if please give us your name, your address, and then you can make your remarks. If I'll time it, if you hit two minutes, I will step in and then you can finish your thought and we'll move on to the next speaker. But Geraldine Carver, we will start with you. Good afternoon, all of you. I'm Geraldine Carver. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Thank you so much for creating a space for us to communicate. I'm a resident of Dural Acres. We've been here. I've been here since 1977. The majority of the residents in our neighborhood are senior citizens. And we would like to keep our neighborhood as private and contained as possible. We understand that there are, the Dotnickels project is coming to our area. And yes, my address is Panoramic Drive. So I'm right down here at the end of the street. So I really wanted to know where would the Panoramic Drive intersect? Where will it stop? And also if there would be a buffer between at the end of Panoramic and whatever street that backs up to Panoramic Drive. That's the first question. The second question is about the applicant had petition for annexation into the city. I wanted to know how that would impact us because I was not a proponent of annexing to the city. Cause that would increase my taxes. I'd have city taxes and county taxes. So that was my concern. But those are my two major questions. And the last one was when would this project began? Thank you, Ms. Carver. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna have each individual speak but then Mr. Ghosh who's the applicant, he's gonna come back and he's gonna work to answer your questions. And I can tell you if he doesn't answer all the questions we as commissioners can continue to ask some of those questions as well. But I know Mr. Ghosh has been capturing those and he'll answer those when we get back to him. David Howe is next. Good evening everyone. My name is David Howe, H-O-W-E. I'm currently in Virginia. 15466 Winsong Lane, Montclair, Virginia. I own property on Canard Road. I do not have a question. I'm simply sitting in monitoring the meeting to gain more information. Great, thank you very much. Thank you. Brian Calloway. Hi there. Can you hear me okay there? Yes, go ahead. All right, thanks. Brian Calloway of 307 Gresham Avenue and Northgate Park Durham. I was standing here to oppose this proposal, this application. In the application it reads as staff presented, the project commits to 29% tree protection and replacement on a 20% UDO requirement. The natural heritage inventory identifies the site as a programmatic priority for tree conservation, which the applicant has addressed with the additional tree coverage percentage. I wanted to ask the planning department, not too many months ago, there was a programmatic priority for toilet paper conservation issued in my household. If I heard that priority and then committed to throwing away 71% of the inventory, would the Durham planning department also give me a gold star for conservation efforts? Would I get the same kind of mission accomplished banner that they're unfurling on this project? I've just been watching Durham over the recent years just gobble up a lot of our green space on our exterior for what amounts to very low density development. As if this isn't the year 2021 now, where we know what climate change is, we know that we want more density, we know that we want more transit options and opportunities for our city. We have elected officials that have run on platforms that explicitly call for continuing to make land use decisions that help combat urban sprawl, protect our watershed and preserve natural environments. That was written by our Mayor Pro Tem and her team. So I feel like this application is gonna be dead on arrival to our city council. So I just wanted to ask the planning commission to jumpstart that denial. So I appreciate it, thanks. Thanks, Mr. Callaway. John Wallace, you're next. So we'll work to get you off of mute, Mr. Wallace, and you can get started. Turn this, Chris Pearson, I'm receiving the response. Okay, we will move on to Val Schumate. Val Schumate, are you with us? Good evening, I'm Val. Sorry about that. No problem. We hear you. I've been following the conversation but also moving around a bit. I just wanted to let the group know that in addition to what Mrs. Carver had to say for our very quiet and senior neighborhood in Derea Acres on Panoramic, little concerned about how Dr. Nichols is going to connect to our community. And in a late, I would say within the last year, we've had a number of persons just kind of like coming to the neighborhood and sitting, we did not know if they had intentions of criminal activity or what, but we did have to check in with the sheriff several times for cars coming in the neighborhood and parking. So we are concerned about how Dr. Nichols will in fact connect to Panoramic and the precautions that we might need to consider going forward with this project. Thank you, Ms. Schumate. Could you give us your address as well? I'm not sure if you did that yet. Actually, I'm at the intersection of Panoramic and Summer Rose. So I am with Summer Rosa, but I'm also on Panoramic in the intersection, 5319. Thank you. Thanks for your comments. Thank you. James Hsu, you are next. There's a response from James Hsu. Okay. We'll move on to Chantel Farrell. Yes. I would like to, my name is Chantel and I just wanna say that I live at 812 South Plum Street and I just wanted to just see what was going on because there's a lot of construction going on around my area. So I just wanna make sure I'm aware what's going on in my area before it actually happens. Great, thank you. Thanks for joining us. So, Chris, can we just see if we can circle back for either John Wallace or James Hsu if they're still with us? It looks like both actually just unmuted, so James Hsu. James Hsu, are you there and are you interested in speaking on this item or John Wallace? Good evening, this is John Wallace. I joined just for information only, thank you. Thank you very much, sir. And James Hsu, are you interested in speaking or are you just here for information as well? Final call, if there's anyone else who'd like to speak on this item again, you can digitally press the raise hand function or if you're on the phone, press star nine. And I don't see anyone else. So, Mr. Ghosh, I will circle back to you. You had about seven and a half minutes, which I know you don't need the whole thing, but if you can make any final remarks and to the best of your ability, answer any of the questions, we'd appreciate it. Sure, and let me start by apologizing because I probably could have explained this a little bit better on the first go around here. This project is not going to make a connection to Panoramic at all. There is no access from this project to Panoramic. In fact, there is a partial portion of the parcel at the end of Panoramic that is part of this development. But if you look at the development plan, I don't know if Alexander, if you could pull that up. You look at the development plan, you'll see that the building parking envelope does not actually cross the stream over to that section. So that, well, you can't see mine now, but the section on the western side of the stream there does not have any building and parking envelope at the end of Panoramic Drive. Yeah, there you go. You can also see that the zoning line actually kind of jumps around and leaves a portion at the end of Panoramic Drive. That's not part of the zoning. So there's going to be a remainder parcel, so to speak, that is not part of this zoning that will remain at the end of Panoramic Drive. Yeah, that parcel there. That's not part of the zoning. It's going to remain at the end of Panoramic Drive. This development that we are proposing doesn't cross the stream to that area at all. And in fact, there will not be any connection to Panoramic Drive from this community. I probably should have explained that the first go around and I apologize that I did not. There was, I believe it was Mr. Nill, which I have to say is very jarring to hear some, my name is Nill, to hear you all say, oh, Mr. Nill, if you'd like to speak, I always think you're talking to me. But anyway, I understand his concern about the speed with the small area plan is being conducted or being adopted. But I will say, and I recognize that this is, in some respects part of the problem, but this project was started well before there was a mention of a small area plan for the Searles region, right? So I can't speak to the speed with which the small area plan for the Searles area is being implemented or created. If I will offer my own assistance in that regard, if I could help, but I will say that, it's something that staff is doing, it's something that is needed in this area, and it's something over which we as an applicant have no control. But I believe Mr. Nill also mentioned that he lives in the Epcom community and very much is a fan of the builder. So I think his comments were more about the process than this project specifically. And I think maybe we're demonstrative of his frustrations and his neighbor's frustrations with continued development in the Searles basin while there's a small area plan going on. I get that, but I'm not sure how we can respond to that. And then there was another gentleman, I believe it was Mr. Cowley, who was speaking to kind of the tree safe here and whether, you know, I think he said that he felt this project should be denser. And I will say, and Mr. Cahill said it in his presentation, this project or this land here has a lot of environmental features. And the existing conditions page, which is page two of the development plan, I think is really helpful to point that out. It's not just the streams, it's also all the topography. This is a very challenging site. And as Mr. Cahill said, this is probably as dense as you're gonna get on a site of this type of development. One thing that we did, which I think is really crucial is we have, in the development plan, limited the impervious area to 24%. That's the max. And I think that's, you know, most projects in suburban tier, even in Searles, are at 70%. This project is limiting the impervious area to 24%. I think that's a pretty big deal. And that's going to help with the environmental impact here. We're kind of reducing our footprint, so to speak. We don't want a denser development here because that's going to have a larger impact on these environmental features. So I actually think that the 29% tree coverage or tree save is a real benefit here, but more to the point, the limitation to only 24% impervious, I think is critical to the environmental impact of this project. But hopefully that answers the questions. I know there were a few folks who had questions about panoramic. Again, we're not connecting to panoramic. I probably should have made that clear when I first presented, but happy to answer that question. And I think I touched on the different points that folks made. So thank you, and I look forward to your feedback from all the planning commissioners today and hope to have your support tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Ghosh. I will note, we did have one individual who has not yet spoken during the public hearing who did raise their hand. So I would like to give them the opportunity to speak. It's the 919-987-5831 number. So we'll get you off a mute. And if you can give us your name, your address, and you can share up to two minutes of public comment, we'd appreciate it. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Okay, my name is Denise Lam-Willison. Actually calling in for Brickie Lam, who lives on Panoramic Drive at 2019. And so myself, like Ms. Carver and Ms. Shoemaker, of course, were concerned about what the plans were for Panoramic. So more than happy to hear that there will be no connection. I had a couple other questions, one of which you're building 113 homes on 75 acres. So what is the acreage requirement gonna be for each home? And what do you anticipate the cost to be for each home as well? Great, thank you. And if you have any other questions or comments, you can make them now and I'll give Mr. Goche the applicant the opportunity to answer those next. Both were my two questions because you guys have already cleared up the fact that you are not going to be connecting to Panoramic Drive. Great, thank you very much. Mr. Goche, you're still about two minutes. So if you're welcome to answer that question, please. Sorry, trying to get unmuted here. I think the first question was about, and I wanted to clarify one thing. I think it was Williamson, if I heard the name correctly, said 113 homes. The zoning actually would allow for 133 homes. Just wanted to make sure that was clear. And the, I'm trying to confirm with my team on the lot size here, what we think the average lot size would be. Hopefully we can get that answered. And I will say the price point here, based on sales in other communities, in the area of EPCON communities, that is, I mean, I think these times would probably be in the $500,000 range. And Nell, this is Jason Coffey with EPCON Communities. 500 Stone Hins Parkway, Dublin, Ohio. I just thought I'd weigh in on the lot sizes. Again, typically our lots are 54 foot wide and the depth just kind of depending on the type of homes anywhere from probably about 120 to 130 in depth as usually our lot sizes. Thanks, Mr. Coffey. And I agree with the price point. It's going to be probably in the 500. We have some of our homes will be below that, but it's probably an average. That's a probably good number for an average sales price. Great, thank you. There are no individuals asking to speak who have not yet spoken. So we're going to close the public hearing at this point. Commissioners, we're going to come back to you. I will note it's 720. We're going to hit that 732-hour mark where our closed captioning staff have asked that we take a 10-minute break. Let's go ahead and get started, but I may interject at some point and just ask to take that break. For those of you that have joined us, we take a 10-minute break. You can just stay on your computer and we'll be back in 10 minutes and pick everything up. So, Commissioner Miller, we will start with you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can somebody show sheet C2 of the development plan? Thank you, Alexander. Can you blow it up a little bit? Thanks. So this is for you, Neil, or for the planning staff. My first question concerns this panoramic drive connection. When I look at this sheet and I follow a panoramic drive and I drove a panoramic drive today, it looks like there is a stub off of panoramic that goes right into the west side of this piece of property. Why does that connection not have to be made? Yeah, Mr. Miller, I know what you're talking about. As you can see on this development plan sheet, there is no building and parking envelope on that side. So we're not planning on crossing that stream at all. And in fact, that's exactly why that connection would not need to be made anyway, is if there's an environmental issue there, that's an enumerated exception in the EDM. It would be available for the exception. So what happens in that triangle there? Oh, that's nothing. We're not touching it. And so, but you didn't have a tree-saved star there. That's correct, because I don't believe that there's a tree stand there that will qualify for that too. But there's no building and parking envelope in there. Yeah, that's the problem is, is that from panoramic, it's hard to see very far into the subject property except for maybe a little bit into the notch or the kind of dorsal fin up at the top. So my next question is, why in the world if we were going to add a lane to any of the roads in this area, would we take a two-lane dirt road at Canard and make it a three lanes of travel? Why? I can't see it ever needing that much. So that question is both us. Our understanding is Canard is planned to be kind of an east-west collector street. So the portion of Canard that it does today is only a portion of what would be intended for the future build-out. So it would go much further to the west from this property and ultimately build-out. I mean, obviously this project would only implement across the frontage. All right, I could not tell that from the maps. Thank you for explaining that. Now, is EPCON also the developer, was the developer in a project we had a month or two ago over a little further to the west that's still at the southern edge of the county where we had an age-targeted project with a similar product that was kind of... I think that's probably true. I mean, EPCON had a project in front of you all, I'm gonna say in March. Two months ago, yes. Yeah, yeah, that was EPCON. That project was age-targeted. This one is age-restricted by conditioners. That's what... When I was reading the staff report, I was a little confused. So when we say age-restricted, we're talking about the age restrictions that are contemplated in the Fair Housing Act. The Hope Act. All right, good, thank you. All right, that helps also. That's three questions down. And the next one has to do with something that I'm never sure I perfectly understand. So we're talking about a 29% tree save. And will most of that occur in the required stream buffers? Well, certainly the required stream buffers, I couldn't tell you how the percentage was, but I will say the required stream buffers are included in that figure. Okay. So is that area kind of in the western portion, north of Panoramic, all of that is part of the tree coverage or tree preservation area as well. Because there's no building parking envelope in that area. Tell me about other open space, not contemplated in that 29%, is there any and what will it be? If you're referring to active open space? Yeah. Yeah, like for amenities for this site. Sure, that's what I'm... I believe there's a zoning condition that speaks to that. There will be at least three areas where there's going to be amenities. Those areas are going to be at least half an acre. And there are provisions in the zoning condition about what a minimum requirement for any one of those. This site would include, well, let me turn it over to Jason so he can maybe speak more specifically. If Jason, yeah. Yeah, this is Jason Coffey again, EPCON communities. Yeah, this is gonna very much function like the other communities you've seen, including the one previous. The difference here, it's gonna be a standalone. This is not a second section of a community. This is a brand new standalone community. We'll have a clubhouse, pool, and other amenity facilities as well from, and we continue as we go through the design process, kind of what fits. There was some challenge from a topo standpoint, but we at least have pocket parks. There's gonna be an opportunity for potentially pick a pickleball. Again, other activities for our residents in this location. All right, thank you very much. So as I recall from having driven over and looked at your community, the one that we were talking about in March, there was some pretty dramatic engineering over there on another site with difficult topographical features, but you built a lot of land retention walls. Do you see doing that same kind of thing here? Oh, I mean, definitely. There's a lot of topography to deal with here. So it is going to require some engineering for sure. But it looks like- I think that's page two. The two big ponds. Yeah, at the end of the stream. Yeah, well, are they not at the heads of the streams, not at the ends of them? Yeah, they're at the head of the stream. Well, that's fair, yes. And so, yeah, I'm just trying to envision what this site looks like after you grade it out, because it's a pretty remarkable piece of property. I was, I went really early in the morning, so I was able to drive very slowly down Doc Nichols Road and look over into it. And also from Canard Road, I mean, it drops down pretty much just about everywhere you go. And so I was trying to envision what it would look like, essentially scraped off with just these stream buffers left, was a little disturbing. And so I'm kind of with Brian on this. I would have liked to have seen, although I realized that you're at 24% impervious surface and at 29% tree save, I sure would have liked to have seen a larger portion of the natural forest preserved on the property. But I also realized that 24% impervious surface is nothing to sneeze at. And it also seems unlikely that another developer is going to come in here and ask for fewer units. And if we equate the number of units that get built in here as a, the amount of land disturbance that occurs as a function of the number of units and the impacts on the natural features, if that's a fair connection, it seems unlikely that anybody's going to want to do fewer than two units an acre. So I have weighed that out. Tell me about your stormwater catchment rate. What do you plan to do here? And for that, I think I will turn it over to Brian Aker, so I believe on the call. Yes, I'm on the call. I'm sorry, there's a helicopter flying over my house, but we're going to follow the standard 210 and probably 25 year storm events for detention. We are in the water supply watershed, or the falls late. So we're going to follow the new nutrient removal rates. I don't think we're going to go anything in excess of the base detention requirements. We are up against a floodplain, so we don't want to inadvertently over detain coming into a floodplain for reasons that have been stated before, but we're going to follow the coordinates otherwise. So I'm going to ask you this, because you're at the head of the stream and it's not a situation where you want to keep water moving, which is what you folks taught me when we talked about your project in March, why would you not go to a hundred year flood containment? And so we can incrementally control the way water is going to rush down these streams into these other properties that are all probably going to get developed residential in that case. So I don't know if Alexander, if you can pull up the existing conditions, but there's a Lick Creek sewer extension that was part of the Searles basin that extends up to a property just north of this, that property does have FEMA floodplain. It's within a stone's throw of this property. So our, you know, while we don't have, you can actually see it on this plan, that heavy dashed line to the north and to the east. Yep, that is FEMA floodplain. So we're within stone's throw. I don't think that detaining a hundred year is really requisite in this condition. I think following the ordinance that's established is prudent in this case. Staff, do you have an opinion on whether or not it would be a good thing to contain more of the water? I'll jump in. I don't know if anybody has anything to add, but we agree with Mr. Akers, you know, and our stormwater team, the engineering team that does the analysis did not flag anything additional for this site. We are also the opinion that too much catchment on a site such as this can create issues downstream. And so a 10 or a 25 year would be more appropriate than a hundred year. Now, while I've got you, Alexander, I read in the staff report that you thought that going from 20 to 29% tree save was an adequate response to the National Heritage Program's identification of this property is programmatic, something I hadn't seen before, programmatic priority for tree protection, very alliterative, and I cannot say it 10 times fast. Is it good enough? I would have liked to have seen a little bit more. And again, I'm inclined to want to vote for this for a lot of the reasons that we've talked about, but I would, it seems like at this low a density, we might have organized the way these units are going to fit into this property so that we could get more natural areas saved. I mean, really, we're talking about remarkably low density. And I think that when we approve really, really low residential density in the suburban tier, the trade-off ought to be a natural area preservation and the 29% is 50% more than the required minimum, but I was hoping for more. This is Jason Coffey. Maybe I can maybe help address a little bit. Again, we're still on a land use component of this. And as we look at, you can look at the Topo maps, just like we are, and trying to figure out the best way to make this project work. That's what we thought the end of the panoramic was a really nice tree-save location opportunity that we normally wouldn't see. We would expect, I think, basically a spine road, probably paralleling kind of a dock nickels. Again, some road fairly close to dock nickels as a starting point. And then as you see between each of the ravines, we'll probably have a cul-de-sac or some kind of road there, but by and large, the majority of the ravine areas are gonna be preserved. And there's probably, again, keep in mind, that's a minimum, which doesn't mean we're not gonna have more when we get done. So I think that's a couple important components as I see some opportunity here, so. So if you can foresee it, and you've been thinking about it with a more practice dive than I've been thinking about it, I would feel a lot happier about voting for this as if it was a 32% tree-save. And like I said, it just, with this very low density, I mean, if you had brought up a piece of property that was 50 acres and told me you were gonna put 133 units on it, I would have said, okay then. We've got 75 acres here, and it just seems to me that we ought to be able to save at least a third of it when our National Heritage Program identifies as this 29%, I mean, as a tree protection priority. And so I was wondering tonight, is there any way you can make a proffer to increase that percentage to over 30%, a couple more percentage points? You sure win my vote? Yeah, it might take on, if we're basically at 75 acres and we get to, you know, get to your, even get to 30, you know, I would say, yeah, that's an easy one to get to 30% for sure. All right, well, that's half and four to ask for. Oh, well, okay, yeah. So I was hoping to save, to be able to walk away from this case, feeling good about it that I had saved a third of this piece of property. So I was looking for something more like 33%, can you do it? Okay, I'm gonna, I mean, yeah, we would love to do it. I wanna maybe ask Ryan from a standpoint of engineering side because there's some component of an engineering factor. So Jason, I'll address Mr. Miller's comment. The way this product works is it's age restricted. These are folks that don't have steps in their house. No, no, I realize that. And I saw your units in the other place and I'm assuming it's the same architectural product. Yeah, yeah, so everything is flat. And in order to flatten a site on topography, we have to shake the earth. And in doing so, we're condensing it and making it very much a cluster development. So while I think we can probably realistically achieve that 33%, whether or not it's gonna be tree safe, I can't commit to that because I need to put retaining walls and recovery slopes and things that are gonna otherwise be open space. But today I don't know that I can make that work from an engineering standpoint until we get further down the line. Further engineering at the site. This is, these sites are very much engineered. Oh yeah, I know, I saw your other side. It was, you used a whole lot of that kind of concrete block retaining wall. Sure, and in doing that, we end up saving a lot of land. We put them walls, but we save open space and that is our goal here. Whether or not we can get from what we're trying to go for is above code to a third of the site. I don't know that I could commit to that until we get further into the engineering plans. I'd love to think we could, but we know that. Yeah, we're voting tonight. And then the last thing I wanted to ask about, so there is a little strip of land in the curve of Doc Nichols that you don't own. What is that all about? Yeah, so that is the gap in the sidewalk that I was talking, so there's property over there. I had a house there. Well, I didn't see the house on the map. I did see it when I drove past. On the existing conditions map, I don't think I saw a house there. Oh, well, that would be a mistake. There is a house there. Well, I saw a house there, but you know when you're driving past, you don't necessarily take in all the corner markers. Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. So anyway, yeah, that's what the deal is there. It's not owned by us. We did approach those for various reasons. One of which was, well, to inquire whether they wanted to be part of this development south of EPCON, they were not interested. And then we also pushed them later to try to acquire an even so we could put sidewalks. Right, I appreciate that. There, and they were not interested in that either. Primarily because that sidewalk would have ended up very close to their front door, to be fair. So I don't really blame them for not wanting a sidewalk that close to them. That property is not 80 feet deep, is it? Well, I couldn't tell you, but I'm gonna say no. I mean, it's just very, it's a very thin sliver. I thought it was strange. Thank you very much. Those are my questions. I guess I'm on the tipping point on this case and I'll have to wait to hear what the other commission members say. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks, Commissioner Miller. And we're gonna give you a 10 minute break to be on edge to think about where we are. Commissioners, we're gonna take a 10 minute break. We will be back in exactly 10 minutes. You can go on mute, go off video and take a stretch and we'll see you soon. We'll start back in just a moment, but Commissioner, if you're back, if you can come off of video, we'll make sure we have a quorum. Great, I see most of us. So we're gonna pick up the case that we've been working on. This is the courtyards at Docknickel Z2 quadruple zero three zero and Commissioner Morgan, you were up next. Thank you, Chair. I had a question regarding that western edge of the parcel that we're not doing anything. I just wondered, I was question with the app and what kind of plans do you have for that particular area? Anything that would be considered maybe recreational use or some kind of pocket park or something like that that could be an improvement for the area or for the community there? So you're talking about at the end of panoramic. Yeah. Okay, so no, actually that plan is pure tree preservation. So in perpetuity and it would be held by the HOA as a tree preservation area. That's one of the, actually review that as a benefit. So no, it wouldn't be a park or something like that. It would remain as is with the trees as they are. Yeah, I just was wondering if there's any place for walkability or anything that could be a good area for any kind of hiking or any kind of travel through that particular area. My thought is is you're saying you would leave that with the HOA, would that be part of the 29 or 33% tree save that you're calculating here? Yeah, absolutely, that is part of the figure. Okay, I just just trying to think of what you consider something like that because that might be certainly attractive for both the community there as well as for the folks in panoramic. I guess I'm thinking in terms of it's not being used, would that be sold off for development elsewhere, which then we'd get into more expansion into that area and maybe bring up the same concern that the residents have. Commissioner Morgan, are you talking about the park that we're not zoning? Or are you talking about the park kind of? Yeah, the park that's not zoning the far western edge that kind of like the western tail that's kind of going to the west of the parcel itself. That's going from panoramic drive into that area. You see what I'm saying? Well, I want to make sure I understand. That area with a, yeah, thank you. Okay, so the portion that isn't being rezoned is not part of the tree preservation or tree calculations. Also is not something that I think we'll end up with the HOA. That's not programmed from this site for this development at all. The part north of that, that is being rezoned, that part is going to remain as it. Okay. And that tree preservation area that would belong to the HOA. That's the independent drive, go ahead. Okay, keep going. Okay, at the independent drive, I mean, there are no plans for that parcel. It's not part of the zoning at all. I mean, the intent there was to leave what would be a compliant code compliant parcel that could be developed for a single family home. But that's not what EPCON is planning to do. It's just not part of their development plan. Okay, so that it is could be used for other purposes as separate from this community that EPCON is proposing, okay. Right, yeah, yeah. Now I was just curious, because it seemed like a good area that would be very useful for the community and certainly for some of the folks that are concerned for making that connection to panoramic. Well, the intent here, and we had the neighborhood meeting, that was the concern we heard from a lot of folks on panoramic and Summer Rose Lane was whether there would be a connection to panoramic. The intent here was to completely avoid the connection. Yeah, they would just rather it be left alone and obviously not develop even into the future. Okay, I just wanted to get a better understanding of what was the future plans for that area. I see, so EPCON doesn't have a plan for that remainder parcel. And I will say realistically, the only thing that could be built there would be a single family home. Yeah, under the current zone, I would say. And I would see some of the parcels to the north that see potentially connecting to it as well. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. Yep. Great, thanks, Commissioner Morgan. Commissioner Baker, you're next. Thank you, Chair. I'm just pointing out that this is a massive site, 70 plus acres. You know, we deal with a lot of smaller rezoning cases, smaller parcels of land 20, 30 acres where developers are putting in quite a bit on the 20 or 30 acres. And I just, I'm going back and I'm thinking about all of this discussion that we've had about the goals and objectives and thinking about the climate crisis and thinking about the exclusionary nature of, you know, so much of the new development that we've been seeing. You know, today we have 70 plus acres of forest on this property. And we're about to clear 71% of that and get rid of it and we're going to replace it. And I guess one of the questions is, what are we replacing it with? And does it accord with the goals and objectives that we've been talking about? So does it incorporate the elements of equity and sustainability that we've been having all these conversations about? You know, me personally, I'm not a huge fan of the idea of setting in restrictions, demographic types of restrictions and portions of our city and having age restrictions. But I don't know if y'all remember, but we actually unanimously, I think it was unanimously voted for an age-restricted community and it was because the developer came forward. And I think it was on a relatively challenging piece of land, the developer came forward and made some really important commitments. They were replacing the forest that they were tearing down with a level of development with a mix of uses and a mix of housing types and the types of elements in general that we've been talking about. I'd say it wasn't perfect, but it was an effort and it was some level of progress, I think. So we are a planning commission, we hear a lot of developers give us a lot of excuses. And so I just don't buy that the developer couldn't do more on this to bring it into consistency with the goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan. So for me, this is just another very easy no vote. I grew with Tom and some of the others that have spoken that this just isn't good enough. Not against development. Of course, we see a lot of different types of development but this just isn't cutting it for me. So thanks. Thanks Commissioner Baker. Commissioner Sees. Thank you. I have a couple of questions for, I guess mainly aimed at the applicant team. The first question is I heard a lot of discussion about the sidewalk along the Eastern perimeter and not having that continuous across the parcel that is excerpted out and that makes perfect sense to me in terms of the pragmatics that you were describing, Neal. My question is I was unclear as to whether the sidewalk where it stubs into or at the northern edge of that parcel and at the southern edge of that parcel, were you stating or is it the case that that sidewalk will be connected back into the development at that point or is it just going to be a sidewalk that is stubbed from where the street happens to connect? So let me see if I can explain this. There will be a continuous sidewalk network so you will be able to walk on the sidewalk along Doc Nicolls, come to that intervening parcels, northern property line, the sidewalk will come into the community, there'll be a continuous network and you can come back out to Doc Nicolls. Okay, thank you. That's a big clarification. I just wanted to make sure. With the amount of open space, the stream buffers and the topography that is present on site and much of which will be retained but not the areas that are being developed. You mentioned the improvements or activation of the open space with the three particular parks. Is there any discussion or intention or commitment with regards to trails or actually accessing those areas? And I'm raising this question largely kind of thinking about Tom's discussion of the retaining walls and the amount of grading that was referenced. Is the protected forest or the forest to remain, the open space to remain, is it really just going to be a residual element to this 72 acre tract or 70, whatever the acreage is, 74 acre tract? Well, okay, I think forgive me if I'm not understanding correctly. And I think maybe I haven't explained clearly what would be going on here. So there's a fair amount of tree save on this property, 29%. A lot of that is in the riparian buffer areas and in that kind of portion to the west, north of the panoramic leftover, if that makes sense. So that's where a lot of the tree save is. That's not really considered, I mean, it's an amenity. That's not considered the open space or active amenity or part of that for this community. There will be active amenities within the development that are going to be, well, Mr. Coffee mentioned, clubhouse, I believe pool clubhouse will be here. And if I understand correctly, maybe you're concerned with, so are those amenities going to be accessible for the residents? I mean, yeah, that's kind of the plan is that there will be amenities for these residents to use on a daily basis. Let me ask the question in a different way. Okay. So you've got these fingers of these protected stream buffer areas coming into this large parcel. Is the intention with the engineering and lot platting that the majority of the edges of those buffers will be at the rear of private lots? As is the case in the platting that you see over on the, I'm looking at the sheet C2.00 proposed site improvements. So the platting of the subdivision to the east of Dock Neckles kind of reads very clearly and much of what is left there as residual space is just platted to the rear of the lots. Although the cul-de-sacs in that case are exposed and I don't know that subdivision. I haven't been in it. But I'm asking about the core of my question is trying to understand the relationship between what gets built with what is being proposed here and the character of the land as it exists today. Understood. And I think Ryan Akers would be better seated to answer that question. Because I know that McAllens has worked on the, he's working on the layout and might know better or maybe, Jason. Yeah, let me, this is Jason Kyber. Let me at least maybe take a stab and then if Ryan wants to add to it as well. Again, these are, again, we have an age targeted community. All the mowing and landscaping is done as a part of the association. So our lot sizes are such that the depth is the minimum we can make it. So the rest of the area beyond that is gonna be part of this open space. We can't commit to necessarily a larger tree save because we're not sure there's some engineering components here, whether it be walls or wherever it may be. But the lots will not go all the way to the stream buffers and things like that. The lots will be, again, typically 125 to 130 deep. And that's all we wanna do. We don't try to make them deeper. We don't extend them all the way to the stream. So I don't know if that, is that what you're asking from a design standpoint? I think you answered my question without necessarily intending to do so. It's that you're backing lots to these protected areas largely. That's why I'm here. And I apologize if I'm not being clear in that, in my question. But where I'm going with this is I was inclined and fairly easily inclined to vote favor of this project. But the more I quite honestly heard the applicant team and its entirety, I'm not pointing out any individual concerns. But the more I heard the applicant team describe what is being proposed here, the more certain I am that there's some real inconsistencies between what the PDR zoning district is stated as serving in terms of the design intent and the PDR as a means for encouraging high quality design, encouraging efficient use of land and public services and provide a variety of dwelling types as well as adequate support services in open space for the residents of the development. And so I guess what I was attempting to get at with that questioning related to that last phrase, kind of the open space for the residents of the development and to me open space for the residents of the development speaks to the ways in which it can be experienced or accessed, whether it's just a line of sight, not just out of someone's backyard. So that's part of where I was going with that. The couple of the other concerns that I have that I think I will attempt to explain better than I addressed the first point. And I think this came up with the recent application we had, I don't know if I stated it in the meeting, I stated it in my comments to council, the Olive Grove Road or Olive Road, the project nearby that I think council just recently approved. Where the note is identified on this site improvements here is referring to collector plan, improvements along Canard Road with three lanes and three lanes, 11 foot widths. Fundamentally opposed to us being redundant when I say us, I mean the city and city transportation staff if that's where the origins are coming from or planning staff, if that's where the origins are coming from. I think it's a mistake to put on a rezoning application in this manner, not specific intersection improvements, I don't have a problem with that, but specific dimensions, particularly lane dimensions that speak to the character of a thoroughfare predicated on the assumption that the engineering standards and policies and approaches to what constitutes a collector plan, a collector road today will be the case in the future. We have a comprehensive plan underway, transportation standards evolve, transportation standards from the federal level all the way down to the local level. Just last year, the NCDOT adopting a complete streets policy, although there's not a great amount of specifics to that in terms of design standards. There's reference to it to NACTO design standards. I just think it's fundamentally flawed to put something like an 11 foot lane on what is effectively a zoning document. We can refer to that as a collector plan and improvements in the future, but those are specifics that I don't think belong in this. And furthermore, I think it's just excessive without understanding the role that that thoroughfare will serve in the future. That's not so much a comment. To what this applicant has provided because I suspect that's coming from staff, but it is a concern that I have. I do have concerns that Commissioner Baker expressed with regards to this kind of being single use age restricted for what is a 70 acre site? It's a large site and take out the 29%, 30%, whatever the number is, a tree saved. You still got 50 acres of buildable area. That's a full neighborhood. That could be rich with a lot of variety, a lot of complexity, a lot of different dwelling types. Granted, that's not the most viable or clearest path for completing the development in the manner that is practical with what this particular act is bringing forward. I recognize there's a business model, there's a efficiency to the delivery of what's being presented and what has been encapsulated and what this applicant's brought forward, but the bottom line is this is a large site. It's a PDR, if you fairly low density, even if you take out the 29 acres or whatever the acreage is, 29% of the tree saved, it's still a low density. It's a single use, a very narrow segment of a single use. We don't have any sense, anything that's been presented to us that speaks to high quality design, which is the phrase that's in the design ordinance. And the biggest problem of all is just the discussion of the way in which the topography will be dealt with with significant grading. And I'm married to a geriatrician. I can appreciate the concerns about great access and have worked 20 years doing grading plans myself. I understand that, but I don't think this is a site that through the PDR zoning mechanism should be handled in this way. I don't think it's consistent with the intent of what that district provides or is intended to provide as a land use regulatory mechanism at present, and I suspect with the comprehensive plan that it's going to evolve even further away from being consistent with what our city is after. So that's a long-winded way of saying that I've got multiple concerns with this application. And I'll stop there. Thanks for your question. If you have any response, I was going to maybe try to clarify a little bit. I know from a standpoint of we will have lots that do back up to open space, but it's not going to be a solid wall. We're going to have vistas along our street paths as it again, transition into the ravines. You're going to have along a walk paths. I want to make sure that again, part of this is, we talked about land use and there's really not a engineering plan that goes with it or a layer that goes with it. It sometimes is tough to kind of get into some details that you may be asking for that we just don't know at this point, but we would expect all of our communities to have a lot of land use. We would expect all of our communities to have vistas into the ravines. So people that are walking along our sidewalks get to enjoy the beauty of what we're preserving down in the corridors and the tree preservation areas. So not sure. And I will say, Commissioner Seese, if you visited some of EPCON's other community, so their homes sent a feature outdoor, like a private outdoor rear area, which does provide some sort of privacy for the home owners. But the other thing it does is encourage that backyard living. And there's typically a continuous corridor behind the houses where neighbors gather. And so in EPCON communities, you get a lot of activity in the backyards rather than the front where the streets are because they have these outdoor spaces. So I think that understanding what your concern is with respect to the open spaces, what you're going to get here are lots that back up to those areas, but there's going to be a two way maintain, you know, green space behind that. Good. And thank you both for making those comments. And Mr. Coffey in particular, I appreciate what you're saying. It's, there is a flaw in the way in which the PDR criteria has been written, the way the UDO has been written, the way in which it has been used and is being used in particularly in recent years in that there isn't the expectation that the development plan provides a mechanism for adequately addressing some of those characteristics that would enable everyone, the public, the community, the staff, planning commission to understand more about what it is that you're proposing and to then be able to better assess it relative to what the intent of this district is identified as such in terms of the UDO. So I appreciate what you're expressing. Thanks, Commissioner Sees. Any commissioners who haven't spoken yet who would like to speak on this case? And if so, you can raise your hand. You're supposed to be, can I jump in real quick? Yes, please. All right, thank you. I just wanted to, before we got too far behind, there were a lot of things I wanna make sure we followed up on quickly. The first is, and these are questions for the applicant, you talked about a sidewalk connectivity throughout the site and that isn't a text commitment or demonstrated in a graphic form on the development plan. So staff would like you to clarify on what you mean by that sidewalk connectivity system. You're also talking about an open space layout behind the lots. We don't see that committed on the development plans. We'd like to see, hear from the applicant what that's gonna look like and then of course get that commitment so we can get it updated on the development plan. I also wanna quickly talk about two other aspects. Commissioner Baker brought up a good point about the goals and objectives. Unfortunately, at this point, staff have to work under the current comp plan consistency statements and policies but definitely as soon as those goals and objectives are adopted, we'll be able to operate under those new ones. Hopefully, fingers crossed that goes through in June at that joint session. So we're kind of limited to the current comp plan for these cases that exist for now. And then the last thing I wanna address is the age restricted nature because this came up in our staff discussions and review of this report. Staff of course have concern about the preponderance of age restricted housing especially clustered in one part of the city and or having it at all. We know multi-generational families and living is important to Durham. It's one of our values. It creates sustained and cohesive communities. The only reason that staff did not have as much concern about this age restricted nature of this development it was because only 80% of the units were restricted at 55 plus and that only required one adult to be restricted at that age. So entire families could live there essentially. But otherwise we've had some of the same concerns that did ask the applicant to address that which they provided some thorough responses on. But if we could get the applicant and developer to talk a little bit more about that sidewalk connectivity and this open space layout that you're offering we'd love to hear more about that commitment and what it looks like. Sure, and I'll say, hold on, yep, I am unmuted, never now. About sidewalk commitment, I would say that there are zoning districts in the UDL like the MU district which requires a continuous internal pedestrian system through the community. That's exactly what we'll be talking about here. It's something that EPCON does anyway. So if it's not a requirement already of PDR I would think that the commitment here would be that there would be a continuous sidewalk network through the community to the public right the way. And then with the open space requirement, open space commitment. So I'm not sure that we can make a specific commitment. I wouldn't know how to phrase it. I think to Commissioner Cease's point, you know, I was trying to understand what his concern was. I think he explained it to it and we were responding to that. EPCON's community, if you've been to them their home's feature, outdoor courtyard. And, you know, they're part of the Asia-stricted market is looking for low maintenance. So they have HOA maintained yards. That includes generally kind of a space behind the houses which I think most people will call their backyard. That's not really what happens in an EPCON community. It's more like an HOA yard that is kind of continuous through there. So, you know, if that's what it is, I don't know that we would make that into a zoning commitment but just to try to give you an example of what EPCON communities are like. So I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't know how to put that as a commitment. Mr. Cahill, does that answer your question? I mean, I think it does. What we're hearing you commit to is what are UDO requirements. So I'm not foreseeing anything additional that you're adding other than you're trying to provide a dialogue or a context around the current development plan. But what you're describing is things required in the existing UDO at that level. Yeah, I think that back. Okay. Great. Mr. Cahill, I assume your questions have been answered. And if so, I don't see any commissioners looking to speak for the first time. So I'm gonna circle back to Commissioner Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I have a question again for the developer to take one more throw at this to see if I can make this case something I can vote for. EPCON is big. Man, you guys have developments all over the place and all over the country. Do you not have a townhouse product that would be complimentary to your single family product in this site? And if you were to deploy some townhouses in here, would not that make it so that you could perhaps give us a little bit more land in the programmatic priority tree protection area from the natural heritage program? This is Jason Coffey. Interesting you asked that. We have had some different kind of attached units in our history, both a four plex kind of pinwheel design that was attached, that would actually take more, right, more space here than we would like. If it's a pinwheel, I can see where it would. Yeah, but we have recently been doing some R&D and looking at townhouse opportunity. We did not see just because of the nature of this location, we did not see this as necessarily a townhome location. Everybody else sees it that way. What's that? I said everybody else sees that part of the county as a townhome location. Yeah, and we just thought that in keeping with, we have Andrew's Chapel, frankly, which is around the corner, and the success of what we sold at that location seemed to make sense with the market and we didn't really get into demographics, but the demographics, I know you're talking about some different types of housing and there's a real need for 55 plus housing. Yeah, I'm not arguing about that. Yeah. I'm arguing about attached units and how you could add this to this product, add this to this development in a way that would free up some more space. I'm looking to add it one, because I think a variety of housing types is nice, but also because to give you some greater opportunity to cluster units in a way that we could trade for more preserved natural area. And of course, I'm a big proponent of committed elements in a development plan that give the developer a certain amount of freedom overlapping ranges of unit types as long as they stay under a unit maximum, so that when you get in there and you see, either because of engineering considerations or even market considerations, you wanna shift your numbers along the way, you can do that. You might have to change your site plan, but you can do that. I'm for that kind of flexibility, but I am looking for a way to make this development just enough better on the broad range of issues that we've raised here that I can support it and write comments to the council saying I've been a skeptic about the serral space and but not this one. Would like to be able to do that. Got two months left on the planning commission and I don't have very many opportunities to be a cheerleader for a project and I was hoping you could fix it. So this would be the project. So we'll say, Commissioner Miller, that because of the way this process works, I mean, one of the things we did when we had our neighborhood meeting was discuss this product type. So, in fairness, we did make it clear that what we were considering here a single family detached home. And my understanding is, and I'm happy to correct it by the planning staff if this case, but I'm not sure that we could kind of change the unit type without essentially having to, I mean, not to start all the way over, but go back to your neighborhood meeting and that type of thing. If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, I think what you're saying is that you would like to see a commitment here that instead of it just being single family that single family and or townhomes would be allowed on this property. If it would make it easier for you to give me that 33% tree save that I've been angling for. So I think we're gonna be able to answer tonight. I mean, it's very, very close. At 33%, I think it would be like an additional three acres which is just kind of hard for us to know specifically if we can get that close. I've got a goal here. It's going to be to save as many trees as possible, but this site does have some challenging topography that's going to know bones about it, so we can require some retaining walls and grading and clearing. We admit to all that. So we're at 29%, which is almost 50% more than what would be required. And we're not gonna be able to commit tonight to doing an additional 30% in order. Well, we can delay if that would make it easier for you to answer the questions with certainty. So, I hate to say it, but when Commission Member C speaks about the intense statement of PDR, it reminds me of when I joined the Planning Commission and that I frequently cited the intense statements too. And I'm a little bit ashamed that as my service has dragged on, but I have stopped doing that and I'm glad he's back to remind us that these intense statements are real things and their expressions, strong expressions of policy and that the PDR tool, and in fact, all development plan zoning in Durham is set up so that we can get better. We can have better design and better planning. And I know that the staff told us that the goals and objectives that we should be looking at are the current development, I mean, current Comprehensive Plan. Quite frankly, I like the goals and objectives on good design in the current Comprehensive Plan. So I'm untroubled by the fact that we are working off the old one. So while I came into this case thinking, okay, there's a lot here that I like. What's the likelihood that we could do better on this piece of property under the current climate where the council's approving everything anyway? But I'm convinced by what I've heard the public say and what some of you commission members say that I believe this project could be better. It could more closely conform to the vision of PDR that the PDR intense statement lays out for us. And I would like for it to be, have just those increments of betterness in it like a unit mix. And also saving more of the natural environment there since it is a programmatic priority for tree protection than we're getting. And so I have slowly been persuaded into a no vote and I've done everything I can to give the developers an opportunity to make it a little bit better. And we're not getting there. Well, let me try to address a little bit. I don't know if I can get all the way where you're thinking, but I think there's a couple of components. One is we do now have a townhome product, like I mentioned, we did not anticipate going here because frankly, we had the neighborhood meeting. They were, I think happy that we were doing the detached homes that we've done in our typical communities. I'm not sure, again, no, alluded to that. I'm not sure if that does to commitments or things we have alluded to to the neighbors. When it comes to the percentage, again, of tree save that the difficulty, which I mentioned before, is without engineering, you can make any number. We thought by going from 20 to 29, I know that's maybe not what we've heard some other folks think we should be. We thought that was a significant improvement from what the UDO says and the commitment there. And even that was we're taking some risk knowing that we may have to do some different things and lose lots and lose different things because of when we get into the actual engineering, when Acres and their group get through with this. So we really thought that was a huge improvement. We can commit to doing a different product, some amount of product. Again, it's new to us, but I don't know that a factor can affect the percentage just because of where we are in the process and the uncertainty as to what you can actually say from a tree perspective given that we're almost 50% above the requirement. And we thought the large stand of trees at the end of panoramic was not only a great decision for the neighborhood, but also a great decision for the ability to get the additional tree save that we thought would be warranted in this area. And we thought both of those were really supportive from the neighborhood and we thought we'd get support here tonight because of those two design elements we brought to this community. And I appreciate all of that, I really do. But I always have to fall back to the ideas is that a satisfying even more than the minimum code expectations doesn't entitle anybody to a rezoning. Rezoning is a political decision, not an administrative decision. You're not applying for a permit here. You're asking for the rules to be changed in your favor. And I think we always have to remember that when we look at a rezoning. And those are my final comments. Thank you, Mr. Chairman for letting me go a second time. And when you're ready, I'll make a motion. Thank you. Well, I'll recognize commissioner Durkin and then if no other commissioners raise their hand, I'll be back commissioner Miller for that motion. Commissioner Durkin. Sure, thanks. Before I assume answers, yes, can staff confirm whether this parcel would be included in the Southeast Durham small area plan? Yes, this would be in that area. Okay, that's what I meant. Thank you. So given that fact, I'm running no for this. I think we need to slow down in this area, especially given what community members have said and knowing that the small area plan is coming and coming soon, I think we really need to think a little bit more holistically in this part of the county and the city and what we're doing and what we want the development to look like. And a development of this size, this acreage and at that price point is not something that I would like to vote for without having the small area plan further progressed. Thanks. Thank you. Commissioner Cease, the second time. Commissioner Cease, are you, I think you raised his hand and then got frozen. So I'll give it one second to see if he's able to join us again. All right, commissioner Miller, I'm gonna, we have talked, he's spoken before, so I'm gonna ask that you make the motion and we'll wait for him to rejoin to vote. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. You're sure that you don't wanna give him another minute or so? Yeah, he'll have the opportunity to debate the motion once he rejoins us. All right, if you wanna do it that way, then I'm perfectly comfortable making the motion. Then with regard to case Z2000030, the courtyards at Dock-Nickels, I move that we send this forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation. Seconded. Thank you. So moved by commissioner Miller, seconded by commissioner Morgan. Commissioner Cease, I know you had your hand raised and then you got frozen and bumped. We have a live motion, but I will give you a moment if you would like to make a statement on debating the motion and then we'll have the vote. You're muted. I was simply going to add in response to commissioner Miller's comments that in terms of talking about mix of units and numbers of units and things like that, I mean, this is a site where notwithstanding commissioner Durkin's question, which I think is absolutely appropriate concern with regards to the Southeast Durham plan, this is the kind of site where you'd almost want to see twice the number of units occupying half the amount of built acreage in terms of saving trees. And so I wanted to make sure I stayed that and I'll leave it at that. Thank you. So we've got the motion and a second and so we will have the roll call vote. Mandolia. No. Baker. No. Hang on one minute. I just broke my pen. Baker was no. I'm Busby. No. Cameron. No. Cut right. No. Durkin. No. Kynchon. No. Lowe. No. McIver. No. Miller. Unfortunately, no. Morgan. No. Zeiss. No. And it's filled unanimously. Thank you everyone. That was our final case for this evening. Grace, is there anything that's worth noting as we head to our next meeting, which is the regular June 8th meeting? Sure. I'll let Mr. Stock fill you in on what you can be expecting next month. And again, we appreciate you taking the time to hear from the policy staff today tonight about the land use, excuse me, the comprehensive plan and the steps forward. Our pleasure. I'm gonna let Mr. Stock take it from here. Hello all. Michael Stock with the Planning Department. We have two cases scheduled for that meeting. One is a continued case Griffin place from your April 13th meeting and a new one. It'll be up in the Bahama area. Oh, and Mr. Stock, will you remind everyone on the call and anyone that might be listening of the committee meeting too that's coming up? Yes, and there is a, the special planning commission committee meeting is a meeting at seven o'clock tomorrow evening. I believe the Zoom information is on our website. Michael, is that case in Bahama a big one or a little one in terms of acreage? It's a little one. It's right at the intersection of Staggville and Bahama. It's just an expansion of a CN zoned area. All right, thank you very much. Thank you. And just to clarify, the meeting tomorrow is the policy committee that was set up a while back. And Commissioner Baker is leading that effort. I don't think that group has met since December if I remember correctly. So I just wanted to clarify that because I saw a couple of surprise faces. So this is a committee that was set up a while back and has been, I think paused in its work and is picking up some of its work again starting tomorrow if I have that correctly. Mr. Chairman, it's going to need members too. So I guess I'm speaking for Mr. Baker but we're going to need some members because at least one is dropping off. Thank you. Thanks. If there's nothing else, this meeting is adjourned. Thanks everyone for your time. Have a good night. Thank you.