 On that call this January 16th meeting of the DRB to order. I'm filling in as the chair meeting tonight, Sharon is out. And I will start by introducing the board members here. We have Kevin O'Connell. Present. And Alex. Present. And Jean. Hi, Jean Leon. Present. Myself Rob Goodwin. That's four. We have a quorum. Turn over to Meredith for the remote meeting procedures. Spiel. Okay. So. Let's get this going. Okay. So for any members of the public who are viewing tonight's board meeting via Orca media, you can participate in tonight's discussion using the zoom platform. You can either type this link into your web browser and it will bring you right on into the meeting. I'll just push a little button and let you in. Alternatively, if you want to use your phone, you can dial this phone number and when prompted put in this meeting ID. And again, I'll let you into the meeting. Both of these options will let you ask questions and hear what's going on. 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You can see I'm here as the share this evening. And I had to see that we have a column that. Things move in. No other major announcements. Other than I hear that maybe the next meeting, February 5th, we will resume at least four members attending in person and city hall. So that's exciting has not happened since the July floods. And with that, I will. I will now move to the agenda. Except the motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. Motion by Kevin second by Alex to approve the agenda. All those in favor say hi. Hi. We have an agenda. And it looks like we have Brian Jones now joining us. Brian, are you there? Hey, Rob. Hey, everybody. Hey, Brian. Hey, Brian, before we got on, there was a little bit of discussion about whether to proceed or not to proceed with the 31 college street application. It's already straightforward. Amendment to an application. The applicant is not present. Kevin indicated that. We have in the past approved applications are rare occurrence without the applicant. Present. And so I guess maybe we can just discuss that a little bit more detail how four members feel about continuing with 31 college street or not, or be helpful to merit it to give the overview of it to sort of explain the simplicity and the limited scope of it. And then we can sort of decide. This sounds good. So I'll do this and it's not like opening the hearing just in case you want to postpone it. So 31 college street was previously approved by the development review board. And so the prior application, the original application was for a change of use at the Crowley center building on the VCFA campus. That's the more modern building. And the change of use was to be converted. Oh, wait, no, sorry. Yes. Yeah. The change of use was to convert the, the upstairs to sort of a shared space and the basement to personal and professional services. And am I doing this right? Yep. Yep. No, I'm just sorry. The library was that one. The 31 was just the personal and professional, professional services. It's still the modern building, but it was just going to be for like holistic health practices, stuff like that. So, but the reason it went to the DRB was because of there's no parking on that parcel itself. And so they needed to get permission from the DRB to use what was then VCFA parking in that big lot behind that stretch of buildings. And at the time the VCFA representative was at the public hearing and the applicant was at the public hearing. And so the board's condition of, of you've got to get a shared parking agreement that signed and final to the zoning administrator within 90 days of the board's decision, everybody thought that was reasonable. And then in all the mixing and dealing and everything of real estate deals, it didn't actually, everything didn't get closed and they didn't have a condo association document finalized within that 90 day period. So they missed that deadline. So they never got the permit. They got the DOB approval, but never got the permit issued because I never saw that document until they came back. It's all signed. It's in that packet. It's the condo declaration that has a unlimited from time ability to use the necessary eight parking spaces within the condo association in that same location behind the adjacent buildings in that big parking lot. They'll, they'll have a, like a deeded right almost to use those parking spaces as part of the condo declaration. So ultimately the condo declaration could get terminated if the whole condo association sort of splits apart. But otherwise there's no deadline. And if that were to happen, basically the, that sort of voids the permit approvals. And so we would have to deal with finding parking some other way, but there's, you know, it fits all the key points that were part of the need for a shared parking agreement. The only thing it missed is that 90 day window. And so I suggested to the applicant that they come to the DRB to just get that one condition amended on their, on the decision, right? There's no permit issued. So it's not that like they're revisiting and asking for a new permit or asking for an amendment to the permit. It's just an amendment to that decision. If we had just said before the permit is issued, you have to bring in that agreement. I could have just issued the permit as soon as the condo declaration was signed. That's pretty clear. Sorry, there was a long explanation for something that's pretty simple. So the condo association agreement is in force. Yeah, I mean, we, yeah, that's it got recorded. The, um, so the, the declaration that you, that's in that packet that's been recorded, um, the, the new, um, like condo plat, the condo association plat. So that condominium association has been formed and is a legal entity now. Okay. So, so it's just a, just removing the time constraint on the, on the permit as, as it's been, uh, uh, acted on, acted on to this point. Yeah. It's changing basically within 90 days of this decision to prior to permit issuance. Yeah. That's right. I had no problem with, um, going ahead with this. Neither do I. Okay. Sounds like we've got consensus here. That's three of the five for moving forward. Are there any objections to that? No. Okay. Well, I like to look like. Discussion was quite enough. I don't. I don't know. I don't know. My self needing any more information, uh, you know, I've read the application here. Um, is anyone having any further specific questions? There it is. To say officially since I said the beginning, that was not me opening the hearing. You might want to do an official like we're opening the hearing. Just to, since you don't have somebody to talk to. Yeah. on this matter. I welcome any discussion on 31 Powell Street or any questions anyone may have to Meredith. Meredith answered my questions and I think the discussion has been pretty clear and presented properly. Yeah. I'd like to welcome a motion if that's okay. To amend the sports May 23rd, 2023 decision approving application number Z2-023-0028 so that the Condition 1 is amended to read prior to permit issuance applicants shall provide the zoning administration with signed agreement or deed memorizing the shared parking agreement granting 31 College Street the right to use at least eight parking spaces on the alumnus parcel for a minimum period of 20 years. Motion by Gene. Any second? Second. Motion by Gene second by Kevin. We have any discussion on the motion being no discussion will proceed to a roll call vote. Kevin how do you vote? Yes. Alex? Yes. Gene? Yes. Brian? Yes. Rob, myself votes yes. That is unanimously approved. Thank you. Normally this is the point where we thank the applicant for the presentation and so forth. So play the music. Okay. And I mean the minutes for the last meeting we've got let's see three of the required four. Okay. Let's just maybe postponing it. Not that we need to but it's fine. We can postpone. It's tradition. It doesn't hurt anything to postpone it. No. Okay. Other business I believe our next meeting will be February 5th, 2024. That is a Monday. First Monday. And I think yeah it will be in person. How do folks feel about that? That'll be town meeting day as well. No, that's March. That's March. I'm jumping ahead. Sorry. No, there's that would be bad. Yeah. I think about it. Yes indeed. But I saw, you know, the fourth first. Oh, don't don't ask me how I arrived at that. I don't know. Okay. March, March 5th, I think is town meeting day because we've been asked by yep. No, well, we'll be having our March meeting first March meeting the day before town meeting day. And then so I'll have to actually talk to the city clerk because they're going to be trying to prep things for voting, I think. So we might have to go remote or find space like in the senior center or something for that March 4th meeting. Is the city clerk office open? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's just it's the key thing is that the first floor of city hall, the front area where the city clerks and the city manager's offices are, that's relatively untouched behind that next set of double doors to get back to where memorial chambers and city council chambers were. That whole hallway has been stripped pretty bare. And mostly like the flooring is still all taken out, but that space is usable. But generally that like just general public, we don't want going through there. But the biggest problem is the ADA accessibility. So the elevator has not been replaced yet. So that back door isn't necessarily easy to get to get in and out of. We're not we're encouraging everybody to come in through the front. And without an elevator, but you know, none of the building is ADA accessible right now. So, you know, we'll be having we can have our meetings in there. But if we get a call where somebody needs an ADA accessible space, I'll have to work something out where they have a separate, you know, zoom link up somewhere in another building or something with somebody to be with them, because we just don't have that, you know, zoom is going to be our ADA option. That's what they the lawyers have decided for for council meetings is efficient for them. So we're still it's still going to be a little, little work around the seeming, but council chambers was pretty much untouched by the flood. It's just until recently council chambers and memorial room is where we had shoved everything that was dry and recovered from all the other offices that got thrown out of the basement. Where are you? Where is planning and development working now? So we are in the community room of the police department. So it's a small room about the size of most people's maybe dining room or living room. Yeah, so there's five of us in here. So if you want to come see us, feel free, but there's no private conversations anymore. Right, that's been pretty well in the case for quite for a while now. Yeah, yeah. So we're here. So, so yeah, so starting the fifth will be back in council chambers. We'll be doing the full on zoom or commedia there to handle tech stuff. We'll be back to doing that. And she'll be great. We do have an application. We just actually sent out the public hearing notice for that today for the fifth. So just one application on that night about requesting a fence height exemption for a privacy fence. So it's not not anything big and complicated, which is great. And I think that's that. I don't think I had any other news. Pretty lean agenda this time. It's the season January and February often are kind of chill, which is okay. You know, I know of several potential things kind of in the works. Some people may be waiting to see what zoning changes get approved in February. Right. I was just going to I was just going to mention that there's a I thought I thought a really thoughtful analysis by Phil Dott in the bridge. And tell me what you thought of that, Meredith. I haven't read that one yet. I'll have to take a peek. It's written in very, you know, generic terms. So I think pretty much anybody would be able to understand it without it falling into, you know, development and zoning, Jordan ease. They have to be taken up by city council, but they're this month, this month, February, February. So there there's if you go to, if you look at the city manager's report at the end, they have those hearing dates. And I don't the once the public hearing notice is sent for that, you will actually be getting staff reports that analyze applications under both the current regs and the proposed new regs. Because they have to that's just sort of the fun little thing they make us do. And sorry, I'm just going real quick. I think that's going to get that may get released this week. I think they have to get that out really, really soon to make the deadline for that notice because they have to go through the public whole public hearing notice timing. So once that goes out, any new applications that come in have to qualify under under the new regs to actually get approved. And so there's there's a bunch of changes in there. There's some increased density in different places. There's some changes to how congregate living versus, you know, your your traditional dwelling units are dealt with so that they're dealt with in a more equitable way. And I think take a read through, you know, once that public hearing notices goes out, I'll let everybody know because Mike Miller, our planning director, will probably do a summary of the changes. That's sort of a condensed version, but I'll also look up that the article by Phil Dodd and maybe circulate that around to people so that you can see that as well. But I think there'll be some good changes in here. There's also a complete rewrite of the demolition provision. So hopefully that will make everybody happy that tries to take a considered approach to demolition of historic structures and how we deal with those in a different way than we have been. Go back get back to shoveling. Yeah, I know. That's why I wasn't going to say anything. I would gladly entertain it. Motion to adjourn this evening. So moved. Motion by Alex to adjourn. Second by Kevin. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Great. Motion passes. See y'all in February.