 Are you all set, Megan? I think I'm a lot bigger or smaller. Ready? Yep. All right. I will call to order 632 the meeting of the Essex Junction Development Review Board for, it's not December 15, but we are February 16. Okay, so we have any additions? Do we have any additions or amendments to the agenda tonight? We do not. All right. Second item is public to be heard. Is anybody in the audience who wishes to say something that is not on the agenda tonight? Anybody? Nobody. Very good. Anybody connected remotely? Can you tell? I don't. We don't have anybody. I don't see anybody on the screen right now. Yeah. Nobody else. Okay. Good. Don't want to miss anybody? Okay. Item 3, the regular minutes from November 17. It seems like a long time ago. Is that right? January 12. All right. So I have an old agenda. That's what I have here. Good. Excellent. Thank you. No wonder it's all so fun. All right. Meeting regular meeting minutes from January 12. May I have a motion to approve those minutes? It's your chance. Motion to approve. All right. Any discussion changes corrections? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any pose? Motion carries. I'm happy to read script number one for you. I would love that. Okay. The meeting of the s X junction DRB will come to order. You did that already. Sorry. This meeting is a hybrid meeting held at both to Lincoln street. And on zoom. Uh, this meeting is a hybrid meeting held at both to Lincoln street and on zoom because there may be technical difficulties or reasons that otherwise prevent or interrupt remote public participation. It's important to note that the open meeting law only ensures the public's right to participate and comment at a public meeting by attending at the designating physical location as posted in the notice and agenda. If a member of the public or of the public body has technical difficulties, access this meeting remotely. Please alert us by using the chat feature on zoom or by emailing our Mahoney at sxjunction.org and in the event of a technical difficulty that cannot be resolved. We will continue the meeting if necessary to March 16th should have been able to come up with that right off the top of my head at 6, 30 p.m. at to Lincoln street sxjunction. Please note that all votes taken during this meeting that are not unanimous will be done by roll call vote in accordance with the law as required by the open meeting law. It's let's start the meeting by taking a roll call attendance of all members. But you guys are all here in the room. So you're all good. All right. Thank you very much. I do have a potential conflict of interest that I need to disclose and you all can decide what you think on recusal. I. I know the applicants on the first hearing. I work with them briefly on on the project. But over a year ago, I haven't actually seen the drawings that are being presented until they came in the packet. So, I just need to know and as far as I know, I don't know that I'm currently working for them. So, I'm I've got an open mind. I don't think there's anything about the work that we did, which was relative to the apartment upstairs that is germane to what we're actually reviewing, which is the site point. So, I'm on the board's mercy for this, I guess, but I think it's fine. So, anybody have an objection to me staying raise it now if if and that includes the applicants and if If you think it's fine, then I'll stay. Anybody else. Okay. I guess I'll stay. Great. So, we are up to the public hearing first one is a conceptual site plan to renovate second floor of a two story building into a six bedroom six one bedroom apartments at one Jackson Street in the MCU district by fat tire LLC Ron Lathanton and Christie Wilds owners. I see the applicants are here. I don't know if there's anybody with you, but you're welcome to come up to the table and give us a little run through. And, and I also want to make sure that everybody aware of the you got to we have two conceptual applications in front of us tonight. None of them are in the design control district. So, technically, the only thing we're reviewing a site plan, even though in the first package, there were a lot more drawn. But the real issue is is site plan and I just wanted to keep going. You're welcome to tell us all about the the bedrooms and the drawing the elevations, but that's not really we can only look at those. We can't really make you do much about. Oh, I need to know. Highlighted piece. Okay, so all who intend to speak tonight on behalf of any or all of these applications repeat after me or answer I do. I hereby swear that the evidence I given the cause under consideration shall be the whole truth and nothing but the truth under the pains and penalties of surgery. Thank you. Thank you. All right, off you go. Can we get a copy of this up on the screen? Is that how this works so they can present I have it all up but like what what should I put up? I would think probably the site plan. Yeah, I would go with. So in support of the application, we have the site plan. We have some other floor plans. We have the city engineer comments and we have a staff report. All packaged up for you. So we've seen all of those. Have you seen the staff comments? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. So when you go through the site plan and tell us what you're doing after that, maybe you can just address the staff comments and either tell us here, combine with them or if you have any questions or comments. Yeah. Okay, so this is the site plan for the property that is back there near the city's municipal. Municipal. Area. Maintenance shop that we bought two years ago. Formally. Light commercial. In fact, I guess it would be flexible there for a long time. A lot of employees. Not enough parking and we. Moved our business in there. Chase moving in storage, which would do a lot of long distance moves. And there was this front building. It's two stories that was kind of vacant was not leased up. Hasn't been leased up the second floor was fit up for office space conference rooms, things like that. Being that there was a lot of space available in Chittenden County that was vacant due to COVID and people working from home. We thought that why compete in the market of office space leasing on that second floor that we might try something different. And we knew about this housing problem that we're having. Maybe that would be a good use of the space. The construction of that building is very, it's. A significant to the village of at the time of sx junction, our city. But. Has been many things over the years. It's posted and being a big timber posts and being construction. High ceilings in the first floor about 15, 14 and a half, 15 feet. Florida's Florida Joyce and then. The second floor has a flat pitch roof. That is at its highest, maybe a 10 foot eight and as low as like nine foot. And we plan to other two sets of stairwells that service that second floor. We are nestled up against the railroad. And we have a lot of people that don't speak with them too much, but they are there and we were the building was served by the railroad. For many years when it was a creamery and then maple factory. And many other things. I haven't, we have a neighbor, which is commercial with an apartment building or apartment that he lives in. Next door, there's a residence next door with a commercial. And then on the property that he leases out. My other neighbor, our other neighbor is the city on the other side. And we have gathered a lot of information from different variations of drawings that we've had. About the property and the physical property ourselves, we happen to have keys to everything so we can get in and look around. And then we came up with this site plan, which there was a little kerfuffle. It was off scale a little bit. I've corrected that and I believe that that's what we're looking at for current plan is correct. It was off just a smidge, not a smidge in the same way in both directions, but it's now fixed. The overview of what the property is, I guess, and if you all know kind of where that is in the corner of Jackson and Elma. And then I would think you probably should talk about plans for. Yeah. So, you know, interestingly enough, everything that you see here is already exist. We're doing we're doing nothing to the outside and we've done nothing to the outside. This was all either done from Plexus seal or Preston netty who purchased it from Plexus seal Preston netty did get permits and they did do some exterior work. It's beautiful. Now, if you haven't driven by it to see it, it's, it's really very pretty. And they are offices are in the red brick building which used to be an old boiler room. So, we've really the integrity of what the building used to be has really been maintained and the our plan is to not do, you know, typical cookie cutter apartments but to really as much as I can to try to maintain the integrity of that space we're leaving the existing floors and we're going to refinish them and they're beautiful old wood. There are some really nice big beams that we're leaving I'd love to leave a couple of open ceilings and some I'm not sure if we can or not. But so anyway, everything that's there on the exterior is existing. The landscaping is existing. We did verify I think the water sewer, the water line and the sewer is sufficient. We've spoken to Terry Haas about hooking up and we know what's involved with their steps there. Yeah. The building is currently sprinkler sprinkled and we've spoken to a sprinkler company to get the sprinkler, the sprinkler upgraded to whatever is required for residential. We had our fire inspection with Jesse Diggins. Dolbecki. State Fire Marshal. Oh, State Fire Marshal. And he everything was good. So, yeah, so I just I just wanted to speak a little bit about the building because it's really, we really do like it and it's really interesting space, really nice loft space. So, I think at the end of the day it'll be really nice. We're not bulldozing anything. No, yeah. I think given the significance of that building in the landscape of the village city, you know, for 120 years, some of the houses that are scattered around there are as old or have been, you know, added on to lead Terry's property is, you know, his mother's house is across the street and it's very, there's very few buildings in the pictures that we see of the 1900s. And so we thought, you know, we don't want to just go bulldoze something and put up vanilla envelopes with steel doors and little character, I guess, is the point we're trying to make. Excited. It's, it's awesome. And I will also disclose that I worked on the building for Flexifield for probably five years before they ended up moving. And, and I worked with Nettie and Cresta on the renovations to the building. So I know it pretty well. I don't know it as well as probably Ron knows it because he's physically spent a lot of time in there. But I'm pretty familiar with it. So I'm going to ask the rest of the board to ask a lot of questions. And I do want to go over the site plan components because the project, as I understand it, is basically a fit up of existing space. Yeah, already exists. The building itself, you're not proposing to change on the outside. Nope. And so what we're really saying is for this particular use, which is allowed in this district, what site plan elements would land development code either provide some guidance on or suggest or require in order for this to handle that use. So one of them was parking spaces. There were a few parking spaces that can we just go through the staff comments here and maybe just the ones where the staff recommends we're doing something. And I don't actually have that item E was the first was the Oh, he's talking. Yeah. All right. So I want to touch on on these items and then and then when we need to respond from the applicant, we can get to that. So if you watch on staff, can that walk through those if you'd like the full once you want to do that and then if the board because there were a couple of things that the You were requesting that the board make a determination on. So I want to make sure we get to those. Again, this is conceptual. So we're not locked into something but we're providing our input on the plan and, you know, generally speaking, I don't see anything wrong with it. It's allowed and it's in an existing building and you guys are going to work out how all of that comes to play with the fire marshal everything. So that's great. So I want to make sure we touch on the other pieces. Yeah, happy to run through if you want me to run through. So so let's let's us start with with the parking area in general. So it's existing all the spaces exist there now. There's a couple of areas on the site inside the parking area where the aisle width between the existing parking spaces that are 90 degrees is narrower than 24 feet, which is what the plan development code requires. Some of it meets or exceeds it. There's a few spots where there's some pinch points. And in looking at that, I don't see an issue with that. It's all existing. Everything's all good. But in looking at it a little bit closer now that we're going to have residents coming and going. We thought it would be good if we talked about spaces 2531 and 32 and eliminating those by eliminating those three spaces you would still have sufficient parking for the uses that are at the site. But it would provide a little bit more space and help us with those aisle wits that are required by the code. Can you point to that site plan and just tell me which ones those are. I can't really read. So there's two right there. And I should point I should point here we're going to get to it, but the site plan right above the cursor. There's an island between the building and the parking that's there. And we'll talk about the site plan and the scale issue after. But there's a few features that are not represented on the plan that are really there in the world. And so based on Google Earth imagery, you can see that it looks like there's a lot of space behind parking space number 32 on the plan. But if you look at Google Earth, there's a little bit of a pinch point there because there's an island. With all the backing maneuvers that are going to be taking place with all of those parking spaces in that tight little spot we thought it might be good to get rid of those last two and provide a little more space for backing. And then the other parking space is number 25, which is on the end of row here. By eliminating that it just opens up space between 20 parking spaces 25 and 26 if a car happens to be in 25 and in 26 inches that that exit and entrance way right there. So we're not proposing tearing up pavement. This is take stripes away. There's just no no striping there. Leave the pavement. If it works anything like the parking lot by my build my office building, which is also an apartment. A car is a little park. They may be in the in the non numbered spot, even if it's not technically a parking space seems to work fine. And in this case, the code requires a total of 25 parking spaces by the requirements and they have they have 32 now. If we take these three away, they'll be left with 29, which is still more. Right. So the applicants have any issue with unstriping three spots? I do. Yeah, I went. The two grassy areas that on the east side that Jeff is talking about. I don't know why I didn't put them on there. It was not intentional, but they are there. I went out and measured there. We're short about two feet between the end of that stripe of the parking space you're looking to get rid of and 24 feet. And so I'm just wondering if carbon that dirt out of there and filling it with pavement makes it a travel portion of the road. The open areas of grass that are on the corner there are almost pointless in the first place. I'm not sure why they're not full of covered in pavement and already just the way that they're shaped. And that, you know, we bought a piece of property that was okay with this parking venues for a long time by flexi seal. And by removing those spots, we we wonder what position that'll put us in because we don't know what's going to go in that bottom space. Right now it's considered to be storage on the first floor. It could be a use that's allowed might be a brewery, you know, and then with with food, you know, and what does that do? Look at what Black Plano has up on the hill. Lots of parking, but it's full all the time when they're open. So I'm wondering what happens then and I'll let you finish. Do you have a little drawing? I can pass that around. I didn't I didn't submit it here. But so so where we're talking. I can come in point to you guys, but those are the islands that are there. So up against the building more. Yeah, the ones that they're talking about. We're talking about is that one and that one and that one. And there was there was discussion with with staff that just there's a lot of maneuver and going on, especially in the corner over there with people backing up. And we thought we might just give them some more space. So we're talking about these two. Yeah, those are the islands. I'll add to that. We've been in there as tenants or been in there as tenants slash owners of the building running a business in that corner for three years now. We never had any problems with traffic. So I'll add that I personally parked over there probably 50 times and I don't remember the islands. If you look at them there on the screen, they they make hardly any sense to me. Yeah, even there. Well, they may be I'm wondering if they're new, new grass. I think that the previous owner. Doug and Doug and Fernando put in, I think. Yeah, I don't have any documentation that goes back far enough or shows them. Actually, I've never seen it on drawing before. They did. I think they added an overhead door maybe to that little shed and that that shed. So that right where that black car is parked that shed was a delivery spot for all their panel trucks. So that was shipping and receiving essentially came out of there as well as the overhead doors on the larger metal portions in the back. Yeah, that that image says a lot. And I did measure that off. I think we're we're we're about two feet and change short on the measurement of to 24 feet. But I fully I do understand what you're trying to accomplish and I'm not certainly not. I'm opposed to doing it, but I'm not. I'm certainly not. Well, let's keep talking about it because there's some other topics that were involved in. Residential use and landscaping that we haven't talked about yet. So let's keep going. I'll keep plugging along. So another bolded item is building height. I don't think this is any question, but the elevation views were said they were not to scale. So I don't know how tall the building is. I just need the applicant to look at us and say they're less than 58 feet. They are less than probably 30 feet and less than 58. Yes, thank you for that. I was going to say, even if they're not, you're not going to do anything about it. Correct. Well, there is one taller section that used to have an elevator or some kind of a big hoist. And it's just out of the picture on the screen here just below that. But I don't think that's even close to maybe 40 feet or something. Yeah, the north edge, which is right there is got like, I don't know what the architect would know, but it's like a wall that sticks up above the roof line to heighten the facade of the building by like three feet. I don't know what it's called, but it doesn't matter. So disagree. I'm just not in a position to guess. So just so you know, this is one of the oldest structures in the village city. It was heavily involved with railroad activity and was built for purpose. And it had a number of different parts and pieces to it. The newer pieces were added for the maple canning operation. It had a big chimney on it, which I think got taken down. The base is still there. The base is still there, but the chimney, which probably did exceed 50 some feet. Yeah. And guy wires and everything. They're all gone now. So what you have there is still in many ways historic, even though it's industrial historic, it still represents an interesting chunk. And I would argue that you're not hearing anything down lower. Not suggesting that. All right. Good. What was the next item? It's related to, it's a little bit later, but I want to talk about the access drive. We're talking about this aisle with an access drive. The code says if we have two-way traffic, we have 24 feet wide. And the existing access drive that serves the property from Elm Street and Jackson Street is less than that. It varies from 21 to 22 in general. I'm just bringing it up because it doesn't meet that code requirement. I'm not suggesting that it needs to change. It's existing and they're not proposing anything. But as we get down a little bit further here, one of the other items of concern is now that this is a residential use, as opposed to some industrial type use. We have pedestrians that are going to want to come and go to this facility and to their homes. And the obvious destination for them is Elm Street and the sidewalk network that's on Elm Street. And there's really no way for them to drive or to walk down that road other than walking down that road, which is already less than what the code would require. So I bring that up to say, hey, the road is a little narrower. Perhaps we should suggest a sidewalk or some other provision for pedestrians to get down through there. I don't think the code requirement itself is in play here at the 24 feet because it's existing and they're not proposing to change anything on the site. But I wanted to bring it all to your attention because to me it's all part of this one group of comments about that existing site. Okay, we can zip through. So we talk about screening and landscaping. I'm going to bundle those all together into one. The applicant is not proposing to remove any landscaping that's there now that's existing or proposing any new. There is quite a bit of landscaping that's there now. I'm not suggesting that it's inadequate. I'm just bringing it to your attention that you guys should take a look at it and make sure you're comfortable with it as well because they're not proposing anything new. We talked about the pedestrians already. So if we talk about sidewalk along the road, another comment that staff had is if we're not going to put a sidewalk on there, maybe some sort of a traffic calming measure to make sure that cars are going slowly on that narrow access drive. I don't know if it's speed bumps, something like that. The idea is to keep those pedestrians feeling safe and we don't want people whizzing in and out by them. Bicycle racks, because the parking lot has more than 15 spaces, it requires a bicycle rack and we're proposing that they provide a bike rack at at least one of the entrances. Either outside or it could be inside. The code doesn't really address interior ones, but staff believes that that would be adequate to have one inside. There is a fairly good size kind of foyer in there. Lighting is another one because we're introducing residents to this property now. That means coming back from work when it's dark out in the winter, perhaps even leaving when it's dark out in the winter in the morning. So we're thinking that lighting is appropriate for the parking lot just for safety. They're proposing some building-mounted lights that are not providing the minimum light levels in all of the parking area that the code would require. There's a lot of, on the perimeter, we go from pretty bright at the building, at those building-mounted lights to almost no light at the perimeter. So it's not very uniform, which is the goal of what the code is trying to do. So I bring that to your attention. Let me zip ahead because there were a couple other lighting items that I should talk about from the staff report. Okay, so there's a few that we have less than 0.2-foot candles. We have non-uniform levels throughout. There's a discrepancy. This is a very, very minor for the applicant. One of the sheets indicates that the lights have a correlated color temperature of 5,000 Kelvin and then somewhere else I saw four. Five is no good in the code. So I just bring that to your attention and remove the conflict there. Mounting heights, it says on the lighting plan, the building-mounted lights are all 15 feet. When I look at the building elevations, I see varying mounting heights of the lights. I can't scale it because it says it's not the scale, but they're not the same, so they can't be all 15 feet. So we just need to clean that up. Of course, it's going to change the light levels as we move them up and down around that building. That fixture is okay as long as you mount it straight down. It has the ability to tilt, cheat a little bit and throw some light a little bit further, but as soon as you do that, it doesn't maintain its compliance with the code. I, in my other business, have run into this before where folks have cheated a little bit to get a little more light and we ended up having to put them back. So it was the same fixture, a little sensitive to it. And I think that that scale issue with the plan is going on in the lighting plan as well, as I can tell this. I think that scale issue is still lingering around. And so before final approval, that should get squared away so that the site plan that the DRV approves is the scale, is right. These distances are what they should be. These buildings are this big. The way that I tested that very quickly is just Google Earth corner to corner building measurement from one over here to way over there. And I was off, I don't know, 10 feet, something like that. So it's not going on still. Okay, let me jump. We're almost done here. Lighting. There is a survey of this property. If you don't have it, let me know. Yeah, okay. It's old. It's old. There is one. Okay, so all the commentary about the curb cut and the access drive, that's all kind of lumped in together. It's all existing. The code gives you guys the ability to say this is okay. That curb cut is okay. We're not going to require changes to it. It's at a funny angle. It's a skewed to the road. It's not the width. It should be. It doesn't have all the right radii, but it's existing. How long has it been there? Probably longer than me. The rest of this is all pretty much easy stuff for the applicant to just address if there's going to be any air conditioning equipment. There's code requirements about how high it can stick up. We don't have that information yet to confirm that compliance issue. We bring it to your attention just so that you can tag it as part of the final approval. Can I just ask you a quick question about that? Of course. What's interesting is that we have an existing mini-split air conditioning heat on the top of our roof, which is higher than what this code says is allowed. It's higher than 58 feet? No, higher than 2 feet? It's up on the roof and it's like one of those units. It's 4.5 by feet high sitting on the base. It's like all the others that you see around town, right? Everybody puts in these mini-splits. The rooftop units are enormous in some places. 81 Main Street and the doctor's office next door, they're 6 feet high. Yeah, and Maple Mill, they have these huge units. So I don't know what that part of the code is about. Are we really limiting the height of rooftop units without screening or something? That's what it says in that one section that's in there. So I just bring that up. Yeah, no. I mean, if we need to get a very variance or whatever, how do you go about that? Yeah, we'll talk to staff about that because my own feeling is if it's existing, again, you're really only here for a fit up and a site plan. So if there's an existing something on the building and you don't make it worse, I don't think it requires any action from our... That's what I was going to say as you were talking. If it's there today, no problem. But all of a sudden, now we're going to introduce these six units. I could see more air conditioning units coming up or some other thing. Which is... Now they fall under the purview of the code at that point. Yeah. I was looking at three main street from my roof over there and of course I can see it very well. And I was looking at those units over there and they got to be like six feet tall on the top of that building. But what constitutes the top of the building? Because the edge of my north base of my building, the facade is like three feet higher than the actual horizontal roof level, but it's membrane all the way up over the top of it. So my question would be what is the top of the roof? The top of that little facade extension? There are a number of ways to measure that. Right. I'm not sure our code is sophisticated enough to tell us. Yeah. So we just have to work it out. So we would have to work it out. Sure. Yeah. We're good with that. Yeah. And I think the question in particular to the actual setbacks and what's going on in this setback itself. So, yeah, I'm not sure where this ventilation equipment is right now. I mean, it's all on the horizontal flat roof. Yeah. And it will be in the for the project as well. We bring it up and we can talk about it at final. I think. Yeah. Right. That's kind of the whole idea with the conceptual review. Yeah. So similarly, we got satellite dish. I don't know. They won't be allowed. We don't know. No satellite dishes. I think that the applicant actually has addressed this one already about the dumpsters just to make sure that they're covered and plugged. And I think I saw a note that you had indicated that there would be. In terms of stormwater management and erosion controls, you're not proposing any changes outside. The only comment that that staff would make is if you, if there is exterior disturbance, we need to make sure that we have erosion controls. We have to dig something up to trench in a new utility service or something like that. That's where that would come into play. We talk about the landscaping and that's pretty much it. That's the big items to me are the drive width and the parking and the landscaping are two of the biggest items here. The rest of them, I think are just compliance items that we've noted and the applicant can deal with those as part of the next submittal. Super. Board members. And who has a question? Who has a comment? I think it's great and my only comment, which I think is what has been talked about is, is lighting. I think that is. Living there. But I did drive over there. Oh, right. Super cool. Oh, good. So I think it's great. And my only comment, which I think is what has been talked about is, is lighting. I think that is. Now that. Living here. But I did drive over there. Oh, right. Here and I never been on the street. I thought it was very cool. Place to do. Yes. That's why. I would say that most people haven't been on Elm Street and even much smaller segment have never been on Jackson Street. It's. It's fairly well hidden, which is actually good and bad. Yeah. It is industrial. Your two biggest neighbors are the railroad, which is all the way along one unit because it curves. It's almost more than one side. And the city's DPW. So I would say my. My concern and it's not, not really a concern. Usually when we think about the whole landscaping and screening and buffering, you're trying to screen new development from residential areas that might be impact. In this case, you're actually bringing residential, you know, activity into an existing industrial. Well, you can't like self impose a landscaping requirement. Essentially, you're, you're putting the, you're putting the residential activity in a known industrial area. So I don't see how that goes that way. It's, the code's kind of designed to have it go the other way. So I'm not really that concerned about the landscaping per say, but I am a little bit sensitive to the notion that residents will be there. And now you have people that, you know, hopefully will walk. Now there are a number of shortcuts through there, which usually involve the railroad track. So I can't really say that as a legitimate shortcut. Oh yeah. We see that all the time. Yeah. And, you know, I used to walk over there from my office. So I kind of know the options. But it will, once the crescent connector goes in, and I'm not holding my breath, but we hear it's coming. It could get more, it could get more activity. And it could become a more desirable place for all kinds of things, including residential. And so I would suggest that we're sensitive to the notion that it's connected well to the rest of the community. When we talk about traffic calming, we normally talk about ways to slow the cars down, which usually includes either making something narrower for some portion or, you know, adding bumps and, you know, to slow down the cars. So since we don't really have a lot of room to work with, and if we make it narrower, we're already starting from something that's essentially sub-regulation. So I might look to have staff be more engaged in discussion with the applicants on how that really could happen. And sort of do what we can with what we have there, knowing that we have this competing interest between slowing down the cars, which, you know, frankly, they're just not that many cars. I don't know how you guys are setting up the various uses inside the building, but the more industrial, larger trucks, bigger activity, I believe, is towards the back and would go in the other entrance. Yeah, they go 11 Jackson Street. And you guys don't maybe know this, but there is a whole other more industrial truck access to the rear part of this facility. So probably the type of driveway activity that happens in the front would be more what would be customary for residential or maybe delivery trucks and things for, you know, Amazon or post office or something. So I'll put that out there, but I think, you know, for me, that's probably the biggest thing is, if it is residential and it's probably, you know, if you can sleep through the trains, because my office was on the other side of the tracks, I know what happens. It's a nice place and it's going to get better. And I think we should recognize that. So the improvement should include some connectivity aspect to it. And that will probably extend to the lighting. You know, the parking lot probably has to have a little bit more uniform lighting. Maybe they can do it with a pole or two. I think they're worse. I'm in there. I don't know if they're on your property or if they were on the Leo former, Leo property to the north. But probably lighting is a thing. We pay for one pole. I'm not sure where it is. It's still locked. It's on the other side. The lease law. We lease a lot from the city. And there's a couple of poles. Let's see. I don't really have an issue with the parking. I think it could probably go either way at this point. I think, you know, maybe trying to get 24 feet, you know, would you rather lose two feet of earth or lose some parking spaces and it's pretty close. I'll say it's still, for me, it's still related to the overall aesthetic of the building. I'm a resident. Maybe somebody wants to have a flower bed out there or there needs to be something that's maybe residential in character that's not so industrial. There's not just not to interrupt you, but so there's the building that we're talking about and then there's an attached building and then there's our offices. And then this whole area is all green. It's nice grass section. In addition to some grass areas that are in the front of the building and there's some perennial grasses. I'm not sure what kind they are, but they planted that are still there. The railroad tracks grow up pretty well and then that hedge is enormous and it's real nice. I was thinking more of that northeast corner where some of these grassy areas are. I think that part feels pretty industrial plus as the pavement goes north, it's still a lot of pavement. Just think about how to maybe soften that a little bit and I wouldn't say pave the whole thing over, but maybe you can find a happy medium in there that makes us, well, I'm not really that worried about it. If it was double loaded parking, you're more worried about it because then you might hit a car instead of rolling up on the grass a little bit, but it's appropriate to call it to our attention. I think that the one of the complicating matters amongst us is there's another building entrance over there. And so that's not really there now. It's you guys, but you guys get out and get in your car. Now we got potential residents coming out of that corner walking that way to get to their car parked along the hedge into backing cars. That's kind of where we're headed. I think if everybody was approaching from the other direction, things might be a little bit different. I mean, I, yeah. It's not, it's not, I'm not saying there's a lot going on there. It's a change in, it's going to drastically change kind of the look and feel of this building now that you introduce residential to it, I think. I think it's a great place for it, but it's going to change that a little bit. It was made for commercial and industrial. Let's see the lighting one we talked about kind of already the rest of the compliance issues. I don't think are really an issue. So how about this side of the table? What do you guys have to say about this? I'm curious about the concept that you raised around pedestrian traffic coming out of the building. I think the only sidewalk in the whole entire, like if I think of that Elm Street, Camp Street neighborhood is on the other side of the street. And when you go down Camp Street, the Jackson Street condominiums at the end, Risley Court, nobody has sidewalks. So even the condo complex at the end, which is I think 30 condos, I don't think there's a lot going on there. I don't think there's a lot going on there. I don't think there's a lot going on there. But at the end, which is I think 30 condo units, they don't have sidewalks. They don't have connectors to the street. In their driveway, there's no sidewalk, because the sidewalk is like on the left, it's on the interior. Yeah, being on the opposite side. So, you know, you'd have a sidewalk and then it would end and then you'd have to cross the road to go to the sidewalk. So it's a little bit, I think because the area is so old, it's got some interesting, it's got some old features. Yeah. See what you're saying? Yeah, and you can't see it there, but Adam over there, he has a beautiful garden in the front of his property with sunflowers and bees. Top sun on the screen. Beehives and whatnot. To add to what you're saying, and going back into the lighting, I kind of looked at the zeros along the borderline that would be the top left corner of the screen. There's a little triangular-shaped section of grass. That is our line, that the top line would be, the grass is ours. And, you know, the lighting kind of dies out along that edge, probably five, six feet short of that edge of the pavement. And it was just because there's a neighbor right there who actually lives there. It's not like a commercial building that's vacant throughout the evening and then they come to work in the morning. Adam lives there and then the little white house at the top and so we're trying to, you know, I think the lighting people thought maybe we'll try to go the direction of kill it short of the line so that there's no trespass issues. The color temperature issue is there are selectable light fixtures, I understand. And I think that was just a little slip of the thumb on the typewriter there. But, you know, the, but the foot candle levels, I understand it completely. There's a uniformity factor that needs to be met from highest out, you know, foot candle level to lowest. And so I will work on getting that resolved and there's plenty of electricity back there. It all goes overhead. So probably the whole city's electricity goes right across my parking lot. So we should have no problem finding some way to solve a lighting issue. The only other thing that I hesitate to bring up, but I just will is that we have had problems with the general community population using our driveway and Adams property to go to the railroad tracks and to crossover and kids and just some troublemaking, you know, activities. And so we all of a sudden put a sidewalk there. Does that then increase that traffic coming onto my, our private property? I mean, I want people to be able to walk. There's a lot of dog walking in that area and I like that whole feel of that area. And so I... It becomes less private when you put apartments in, though. I mean, we still own it, but it's... Yeah. You know, people live there. I just know Adam has had some... Yeah, that's all kind of died down. Okay. Ever since Adam got a face shot of one of the kids and then went to school and said, you know, this kid and they said, oh, yeah, that's Elijah. So the next time the kid came through, they said, hey, Elijah, how are you doing? And the trouble stopped. We don't know that his name was Elijah. No, we don't know his name was Elijah. We just made that up. We just made that up. I just... Adam was, he, because he lives there, it was very helpful. He was watching stuff. Having people there in the apartment will... Yes. Okay. That's what I was thinking, because there's people there at night. Yeah. More eyes. But a little bit of lighting is going to help. And the lighting will help. Yeah. That's true. We'll go back to the lighting people and see what we can do. Yeah. I will, just for the rest of the board there, that little triangle of grass was new from the last owner. It wasn't there before. That was a auto body shop. And so that was another commercial use at the time. Now that it's got a residence in it, it probably changes the character a little bit and they probably didn't want all the... I mean, it was one big chunk of pavement all the way across there. And it was really hard to figure out who had what... had cones and rope and some other stuff set up. Yeah. It wasn't really ideal either. So I'm actually happy to see that there's more definition to the property areas there. Yeah. But it may also give you an opportunity to do something about the lighting and hopefully it can be done so that it doesn't bother the other neighbors there. So I will say from a staff perspective, in terms of lighting, I see the highest importance is to have areas where you have a lot of car backing out... backing up traffic as they... just because your cars don't have headlights in the back. And we will have people of all ages potentially walking there. Thanks. All right. So any other items that we need to comment on for this? Is there any... Maggie, do you have more... been somewhat quiet? No. I like the idea kind of adding on what you were saying, turning it into residential area. I feel like often when we're bringing up suggestions or things we'd like to see, I'm not sure if it's not as relevant as an existing space, but it is kind of like spaces to gather or like setting something up outside so people have that. And I haven't heard anything about that. So I'm just curious if that's kind of more because this is, you know, not new landscaping coming in. It is what it is. But that would be my only... Yeah, like when we have sort of new residential developments, we've tended to ask them for, okay, so where do they barbecue? Right. That was the main thing. Is there a jungle gym or a playground or what? A triangle. Right. I was like, I'm gonna put it up. Yeah. This one is a little tricky with the railroad. I mean, that building, you can't quite tell, but the right-of-way for the railroad follows the arc of the railroad, but the building it encroaches on, it's that close. And it's just the way it is. It's not going anywhere, but they're right on the railroad property line there, that side, so they can't really do stuff over there. And they do have the beautiful green space kind of near where their offices and that big hedge. But, you know, those are all things they consider. So as you guys bring in a new tenant type, I think the, you know, there's a little burden on you to show what else comes with that. Gotcha. And so we don't really care what's going on in your apartments, that's up to you, but outside that we get to talk about that. So we're gonna make suggestions and we're gonna tell you to go read the land development code for what we're looking for, because we've tried to put some things in there. And we're not saying you have to do everything that we list, but you might want to make an effort to think about those couple of things, like the lighting, the safety, the pedestrians walking into the middle of the... I just gotta call it the village, right? I mean, the city. But, you know, how do they get there safely and, you know, it works for you too. You might want to walk in and get a bagel or something while you're going down the tracks or you're going some other way or maybe you're walking over to the park to pick a string or something when it's nice out in the summer, I don't know. But you've got a little bit of a, you know, maybe think about what you can offer for the residential units. And there are only six. I just want to point that out. There's only talking about six. It's not a whole building. The only thing that I thought that I was pretty firm on was having an outdoor faucet so that people could wash their dogs off before they brought them into the property because we have wood floors. So that was... I think that's one of our... That was one of my hopes. Do a little dog wash, just a little... Yeah. You know, because dogs, you know, they get muddy. You know, the bike rack thing is big. You know, people, especially in sort of loft style apartments, they're going to be interested in, you know, the... I don't know if you guys know, but there is a trail that leads from Maple Street Park and it follows the railroad tracks on. I don't know where it goes, but there is a network of trails, including the short track, the pump track that I put in. But there's a lot of biking and a lot of recreational activity that happens just down the track away. And it's still, you know, something for you to think about on how you could maybe tie into that. A lot happens on those tracks. Yeah. I don't want to know. And there is a dog in daycare right behind our building, so... Not anymore. Oh, not anymore? Oh, okay. That's getting bulldozed. So... Oh, sorry. When the Crescent connector goes in, there'll be a way to get across the track. So without sort of just walking across the track, you'll actually have a road there. So that's part of the Crescent connector. And when that goes in, this neighborhood, let's say, it's going to be much closer to Pearl Street and Park Street than it is now. And easier to access. And easier to access. Okay, that's great. So you might want to stop in and talk to the village city staff about what that all looks like in the future because it's going to be a game-changer for that neighborhood. Yeah. Okay. So I guess we could have a motion to... I'm going to suggest a motion to approve the conceptual plan with consideration for the requirements that are in the LDC that have been pointed out by the city engineer and with the ongoing consideration for the other items that we've talked about, including safety, lighting, and pedestrian connection. Does that work for people? Anybody want to add something? Can we have a second to that? Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. All right. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much. This is what happens when your wife is out of town and she comes home right before your meeting. You leave without any... You leave without exactly what you thought you had to go with. All right. All right. All right. Good evening, Brett. We have for the next public hearing another conceptual site plan to remove an existing residential or several residential buildings and construct a new building with 34 studio apartments with parking at 227 to 229 Pearl Street in the MF slash MU1 district by 227 Pearl Street, LLC. And I see we have two representatives with us. Would you like to introduce yourselves? And I think, Brett, maybe you missed the swearing in last time. So do you mind if I read that again? Most certainly. Go ahead. Okay. So I hereby swear that the evidence I give in the cause under consideration shall be the whole truth and nothing but the truth under the pains and penalties of perjury. I do. Okay. All right. Introduce yourselves and we'll have to have you tell us about your project. My name is Brett Krabowski. I am actually 227 Pearl Street, LLC. And I am Greg Dixon, the project engineer for Crebs and Lansing or with Crebs and Lansing. I think you did a pretty good job of explaining what we're trying to do here. 227 has right now four buildings on it. Three are used as residential. And then I believe the last one is just a garage or barn or something like that. What we're looking to do is take those buildings down and put up one single building with 34 studio apartments. And with that, we have our site plan, which has not only the building on it, but also sort of how we're going to lay out the parking and how this project will fit into this parcel. I don't know if we wanted to bring that up so everybody could take a look at it. So what that means. But we feel this building fits into the general theme of this area, considering some of the larger buildings right next to it. As mentioned kind of in the last project, residential use is a need of this area. So we are trying to sort of fill that need with a very specific studio apartment. And yeah, so be happy to chat more about all the staff comments and anything else that the board wanted to discuss. So this is the existing conditions plan. On the ground survey in the fall of 2022, as well as trying to identify as best we could, a lot of the utilities within the pro street right away, which is a little bit messy, but we're still working those out. And then if you wanted to jump to the next plan, you can. So while you're right on that one, you still do you have three structures that are there now, including one that's kind of drifting into the setback for the stream there buffer. Yeah, that back house is existing. Yeah, it's there. Right. So yeah, and it's it's not following in, but it's it's obviously yeah. So you're going to clean that up for us. So we don't have to worry about it. Yeah, I mean, we've actually we've actually already. So the topo that's on the plan or the plan with the proposed build a new building footprint is the topo on that is the actual topo. We've actually delineated the brook already. So we've the setback is what the setback, the 50 foot setback from the wetlands that started, but was delineated in the fall. Yeah. So we've already been monitoring. Well, it was listed there. What was that about? They're just trying to keep track of. So that was monitoring. Well, those were we did some test pits, some infiltration testing and some test pits to do some preliminary work with stormwater. Okay. So we wanted to get that done before the ground froze. So we identified that stuff early and pretty much about the same time that we did the topography as well. Our intent is to move that house. This project will have to go through active 50. And therefore we'll be reviewed by a and R. I think it'll be a conversation that we'll have to have with the wetlands department. I think removing a structure within the buffer will be a pretty easy conversation to have with the wetlands department, but it is something that we will have to discuss. They still consider that a disturbance, even though it's a good disturb. Unfortunately, yes, but I do believe the threshold for meeting the EPA clean water acts, if you're taking it out of it and re-vegetating it, you don't really have to prove a lot of the big issues that would be if we're going the opposite way. Yep. Awesome. All right. Anybody else have questions on the existing pipeline? Yeah, there's some comments about staff because there's some reference in there. Approximate property lines. The property has been surveyed. We know where the pins are and we've done the necessary research. So we do know that the meets and bounds are correct. There were a number of disclaimers on the drawing. So maybe we weren't quite sure. Yeah, I think I put it is no way a boundary survey because I didn't do the boundary survey, but we did get the boundary survey from Hamlin Engineering. So they gave us the lines. Actually, Larry Burke did it. Larry Burke actually did the boundary work. So is the normal thing going forward to say that the little note on the drawings that says these, this was taken from a survey done by so-and-so, and so we can all be fairly comfortable. They hadn't produced it yet, so that's why I didn't have it yet. But now they have produced it and given it to me. So when we come in on the next one, it will say something that bi-plan based by Larry Burke dated blank. And so, but they did give me all their line work and we located the same pins that they found when we did our survey work. So we feel pretty confident that we're showing pretty much the exact same thing that they have. And Jeff, as far as A&R and all the stuff that might happen with Army Corps and fooling around with disturbing the inside the 50-foot buffer, they're going to take care of all that, right? We don't have to worry about that. And I think other than taking that out, I don't think you're doing anything in there. We have to both. You're making it better in this case. All right. I don't know what you're doing for storm water and I could see maybe storm water in there, but I think it's important to note just up front that this is a conceptual plan that you guys submitted. There's a lot of comments here. There's a lot of shots over the bow, if you will, of here's the things we're looking for the next time. Yep. That's basically what a lot of these comments are. There's a lot of them, but they're just... I'm confident you guys are going to meet those. We'll just bring them. We run it through the code. Here's what we're looking for. Yep. Should make the next submission go up. Yeah. We have a lot of the comments you've made or expected, obviously. And we actually have all the information teed up to basically put on plans and kind of move forward with this. So a lot of the work has already been done on the comments that you've made. So they obviously weren't expected. I just wanted to bring that up because there's a lot of them and a lot of them are... I expect that you would expect them. All right. Regina, I'm not sure that those engineer comments were in our packet either. So I wrote Terry and asked for the maple mill set but I neglected to ask for these but I don't think we had them either. The engineering comments are summarized in the staff report. And the staff report. All right. So just walk us through them so we don't miss them because they may be a little bit new for some of us. I can do the same thing. I'll zip through very quickly. Again, a lot of them I'm just going to say, I know you'll meet them. There's just a couple that I think are worth flagging. The property line, we've already dealt with that one. When you tell me property lines are on a tax map, it just raises a flag to me and then when I see you on the setback. We don't want to be in an unfortunate spot where the building gets built in the wrong spot and we got to deal with it. And while you're doing this, can we go to the proposed plan? Parking requirements. So the land of element code requires a total of 71 parking spaces for the proposed building. The applicants requesting a waiver to allow 49 parking spaces. The comment that the staff made is you should provide some information, some supporting information and support of that waiver request based on a similar type of use. That information has since come in. Staff has looked at it and finds it acceptable that that adequately shows support for the parking waiver. The numbers are based off of 11 Park. Yeah, I read the letter too. I thought it was great and that's exactly the kind of information that is helpful to have for any of us to be trying to make a decision like that. But in general, we would like to make sure that we're not just paving the world so we can say we have all this parking. I think we've done that already. We don't need to do it anymore. So I appreciate that. It makes a big difference knowing that these are all studio apartments and I know Greg touched on that first. You might get some pushback from the DRB a little bit because we want to know how come you're not taking care of one, two, three bedroom type units. But I'm guessing the answer is that because you can't rent those and you get all the energy is in renting the studios or the one bedroom. So maybe you can talk about that, but we're not quite there yet. Yeah. Okay. So obviously building elevations will be coming. So another request that the applicant is making is for a waiver is to reduce that aisle with that we've been talking about in the previous application from in the parking area of 24 feet between the 90 degree parallel spaces as well as the access drive. They're requesting 22 feet instead of 24. We have looked at that and feel that it's a code compliance issue. Code says 24. The land of element code says 24. It's a compliance issue if you do something less. And in this case, we just don't see any other reason. There's no limiting factor there to support that. And so staff does not support that approval of that request. I know that they have mentioned in there that they are trying to minimize impervious area, which is in general a good thing. I'm not going to say that that's not. Based on, I just kind of ran some numbers and I get about 640 square feet more if we provide that code compliance issue and make it 24. So that's staff's opinion. We throw it back out to the DRB for your consideration. Okay. Let's see. I'm going to skip a lot of these drainage things. I actually drainage I do want to touch on because there was some question as to whether or not this project needed a state permit state stormwater permit, which also then triggers some land of element code, some local stormwater requirements. And it turns out that it's very likely that this project is not going to require a state stormwater permit. Whether or not you guys approve the waiver request to reduce the aisle, what they're not, there was some question in my mind as to whether or not we kicked over that threshold, but I don't think it's going to matter. So I just wanted to bring that up that the land of element code, while you don't need a stormwater permit, the land of element code wants you to try to maintain pre development hydrology as much as you can. So just because you don't need a state stormwater permit doesn't mean nothing. What's the limit now? It's less than an acre, right? They're still fighting. We are in a very interesting scenario for this project. The limit is a half an acre of new or a half an acre of redevelopment. We are in a process where we're doing a quarter acre redevelopment and a quarter acre of new, which does not require a permit, even though it tallies up to more than half an acre. It's a very, I've passed it with a bunch of the guys over there at state stormwater. We do fully intend to do as much as we can. As I mentioned, we already have done infiltration, infiltration testing, as well as a test fit to about a depth of I think six or seven feet. We did not find any water, but to be expected with the slope that's right next to it and the soils were pretty good for infiltration. So our intent and another reason why we're trying to reduce that with is to provide the most room we can kind of on that on the edge of the property between that next building to have that area to infiltrate as much as possible. I do think we could probably use the front yard for that a little bit too and kind of try to pull stuff towards the front of the building without actually going onto the road. With the infiltration testing that we found out there, we do not expect this to actually hold water. I think it would be one of those things where you see what you normally see a storm event. It would fill up a little bit and then infiltrate pretty quickly. I do think as part of reaching out to the wetlands department, we might need to have some sort of drain for the rooftop, as well as the foundation drain of the building that might need to go towards Sunderland Brook. Stormwater is allowable in wetland and buffer areas, and it's just a conversation that I need to have with them just because I think the depth of both of those two things is probably going to exceed the ability to bring it back up to the surface, but it's something that I'm looking at right now. But we do fully intend to have quite a bit of stormwater. There's really no other place to put it back here, but we're going to kind of put it in a shallow grassline swale on what is showing the left side of this site plan, as well as another shallow grassline swale kind of at the top of the bank in the view of the property. Yeah, and they did not provide you, and this is kind of further down and might be jumping ahead, but we did not provide you as any rough sketches of the building itself, but we do anticipate before stories flat roof. You know, there were some discussions with the architects, Greg Rabbit who's basically going to be doing the design and about a pitched roof. And I think if we go four stories and then go pitch, I think the building's going to, the mass is going to get really big, I think, and it might really be much bigger. I mean, obviously Gabe's, you know, the handy building is right next door. That's three stories with a large pitch. So if we go flat in four stories, we're going to be roughly the same size as that building next door. You know, we would meet the height requirements in the zone at like 50, like 55 feet or 56 feet. We would certainly be underneath that, but I still think the mass of the building would start to get pretty big if we go with a pitch. Does that impact your storm one or two if you can't sort of capture it on the roof and pipe it where you want it? That's what we're looking at. So we had roof discussions kind of early this week. I also just had a baby, so I'm coming back. My wife just had a baby. So I'm just getting back in the swing of things and Brett and us in the architect were chatting about it earlier this week. And so it will definitely affect it. As I mentioned, the foundation drains, because we do intend to put a basement in this building as well. So the foundation drains are going to be, as you would expect, almost eight feet deeper than the existing ground. And we have to somehow drain that somewhere. And I think it is an allowable use to put storm water towards a wetland as long as it's treated. And in this case, it would be groundwater and rooftop runoff, which you don't need to treat those two things. So it would be... And we do propose... I mean, all these units are going to have many splits. So that's the flat roof, too. That's where we're... I got nothing against flat roofs. Yeah. I have a couple next door here, so they turned out okay. But again, to Jess's point, I mean, that's the flat roof. Okay. But again, to Jess's point, I mean, there's a lot of stuff we're still working on. And we plan to have all that addressed in the next submission. That's great. I just wanted to be... I just wanted to get it out there that just because state storm water doesn't come in, doesn't mean you're off the hook completely. Yeah, that's fine. You know that. I'm just throwing that out there. So you are showing some accessible parking spaces. There's no grading on the plan, so I can't confirm that the route... It looked like there must be another door kind of around the corner just to make sure that that route is accessible, as well, all the way to the door. It looked like there's one in the back that's going to line up with the... Yeah, there is right now the plans that we have. There's going to be an entrance to the front and all the way to the back. Yeah, I think we've even already moved the entrances. Yeah, it's all good. We talked about the property lines, screening, buffering, landscaping. None of that's at this level, but it is something that you guys will want to look at. Sure. Bicycle access with the number of spaces and their staff has recommended that you put bike racks actually at the front and the back. And they could be inside as well. We plan on... So with the basement, all the units are going to have storage facilities in the basement. So, I mean, yes, we can certainly provide bike racks at one of the entrances, but everybody is going to have storage, private storage, basically, in the basement. So, essentially, that's your inside bike rack or bike storage. I think when we come with the next plan, we can just certify that if I could... Yeah, it's okay. I mean, given its location, I could see biking as a motor transportation. Yeah, certainly. It's perfect for it. So, again, lighting in the parking... Sorry, can I just ask? There will be an elevator, I presume, and will the elevator go down to the basement? Cast to. Okay. So, no lighting was shown. That'll be coming. You've kind of heard a little bit about lighting tonight, so you know what we're looking for there. I highlighted the waiver sections and the sections of the code that you guys will want to pay attention to in granting any waivers for the parking spaces and that parking width if you choose to. The curb cut and access to the public street. Again, that one's proposed at 22 feet wide where it exits and enters off of Pearl Street. Staff doesn't support 22 feet there. We'd love to see 24. And so maybe there's a happy medium. There's not to say that you can't approve one and not the other. Maybe it's 22 in the parking lot and 24 at the entrance. I don't know. But I'll throw it out there that I think that you have the ability to do one or the other or both or neither. So, all of this other stuff about roof overhangs and the equipment up on the roof. I won't go through all that satellite dishes. It's just a code compliance issue. The dumpsters, you show a dumpster area. There needs to be a little bit more detail in there. We talked about erosion. We talked about stormwater. We didn't talk about erosion prevention and sediment control. You'll need to have a plan for that. Especially if you're going down over the bank with a discharge pipe. We'll be interested in seeing that slope stabilized. There'll be, I'm assuming there'll be details of the building design and architecture and finishes as part of the next submission for you guys as well as a landscaping plan. And that is pretty much it. I believe a lot of these are shots over the bow. So to speak for where we'll be looking for in the future. I do have a couple of highlights from the staff, from the city engineer comments that I would like to just bring to your attention. So the sidewalk out front along Pearl Street, there's a lot of utility crossings that are going to disturb little pieces of that sidewalk at a time. We're going to put in a water service and then 10 feet later, we're going to put in a sewer service and we're going to take out a water service. And by the time we get done all that, there's all these little chopped up pieces of that sidewalk. We don't want to see this one fixed and this one fixed. The whole thing will get replaced. It's going to, it's in tough shape to begin with. That's what I was thinking. Let's do it all at once. We're going to make a start and an end and replace the sidewalk in between there. We're also moved. It slightly shifts the access. Yes. And so, and there's also another egress out of the property. So I think we're going to have to fix all of that. Just, just want to make sure I've seen it where we've done piecemeal or at least tried to do piecemeal. I think it's much better if we pick a start, pick an end and go for it. I think the same thing would have to go with the curbing as well. Yes. All of that. All of that would be, let's just do continuous replacement for all those disturbances. And then have to continue to try to fix what they've disturbed. Yes. They have to fix what they've disturbed. And that's what we're saying is we're asking them as part of the project, those little sections that we, that we get those. I don't know where the exact bus stops are. I mean, yeah. It might be down. I think it's down a little further. Yeah. I think it's not far from. It isn't. I mean, that's kind of the, it's why we're building here. Right. So it's on the bus route, et cetera. So, we actually have over here, just bring up the bus thing in Carp, Leaven Park, we actually have some units with no cars. And they're actually carpooling and busing it into, we have some traveling nurses that don't have cars and they're busing it into the University Health Center because they're either busing it from here or parking out on Pine Street and getting bused in from Pine Street. So. Yeah. So they're, they're two options are Pine Street or Fanny Allen and they, and from home. Yeah. So they choose home. So. Yeah. If you have any authority on that, there's, I think there's no bike lane in that section of Pearl Street. Probably. The bike lane ends. I mean, that's another thing if you're having studio apartments, that's a lot of my husband bikes to the hospital. I don't think we have room in there. That he bikers around sidewalk or I don't allow him to ride his bike to 15. So I mean that, that bike lane ends that portion. So that would be something. I don't know who could make that happen. But that was the case. There is a plan. There Regina for a center lane or some kind of multi-purpose. It just seems to be now a lot of people living. They just rebuilt it for the, for the four. Yes. So right. There's a, there's just a multi-use path that has been put in. Oh, that's right. It exists now. That goes. This is, this section of Pearl has a scoping study for reconfiguration of the road. There's currently no type nine for when it will be implemented. Yeah. And there's a little bit of, there's no conclusion to that scoping study. So it needs to be sort of brought back around, but there is a strategy and a plan. It just needs to be figured out. So it's not soon. Sadly. But the other part by Ford, which was amazing. Yeah. Yeah. How long did that take? And I think as the applicants, we'd love to see it, but I don't think we can. Once you're by the Ford, it was less pressure anyway. Cause yeah. No, anyone that's tried to bike that knows the rigors. Not wanting to be on 15 directly, but trying to make it through there. So, no, I think, you know, generally speaking, you're absolutely right. It's an ideal place to continue the large scale housing. We've said it time and again that putting it on, you know, major transportation routes is ideal. And this is one of them. And so it's, it's a pretty helpful continuation of the big picture regional planning to get denser housing in that location. So, so we're starting off on the right foot there. Do you have more comments? I think I have two more. Just to alert you guys that as part of that final submission, we will be looking for existing as well as proposed sewer and water demands. I'm assuming that you are going to need additional allocations. So you'll need to work through that. And the last one, I'll highlight is to just alert you, Greg, to the land of element code details. For any work that's inside the right away, you need to follow the land of element code details. It happens all the time where we get a sidewalk detail that's different than what's in the land of element code on your site. You can do whatever you want outside in the cities right away. It needs to comply with those. So it's really easy to just use those. Copy and paste. Or redraw them, whatever, but you'll, you need to use those details inside the city right away. It's a comment that comes up a lot. So I just highlight it to you. It'll save a little bit of work. That was that. Unless you guys have other questions for me or the applicant. I don't know that the only one I have that is maybe a few because we've already started is the whole width of the aisle. I can see a nice flare to the curb cut. So it seems nice there. And I don't, I mean, if it's 22 feet all the way down through there, I mean, I'll just say that the only thing that, I mean, cars are both getting smaller and bigger at the same time. Like the people that have trucks have extended trucks with tow hitch and every other thing you can possibly add onto it to make it bigger. And the people who have small cars, they're getting like you think you can just pick them up and put them in your pocket and take off with them. So it's hard to know how to handle this one. I feel like our particular area is probably more in the normal size car than it is in the truck type of car. You know, those trucks tend to be, you know, maybe in somewhere that's sort of less dense. But I don't know. I'm conflicted about that. I know when you have a larger vehicle, it makes it difficult for everybody. But at the same token, I'm not really anticipating, you know, like a 24 feet seems like it feels like we should be able to find some compromise on here. We've got a fairly good size parking lot. There may be some areas that are reserved and maybe we could think about parking. So instead of reserving spots for small cars, maybe we reserve spots for big cars and put that whole thing around so that some of the spaces are large and you make the people with large cars park there. And then all the rest of the spots can be kind of, you know, smaller. So something to think about. I for one am flexible. I might be tempted to keep the entry aisle at 24 feet and say, you know, it's a big street. It is only one way, you know, where you enter, you're only allowed to go one direction. But I would be maybe looking for engineering input on how all that works and that can come from the Krebs side or it can come from the city side. I don't know that I'm an expert on turning radius and stacking and all the things that happen when you have people that are trying to get to work and it's too late to ride the bike. So they had to jump in the car and now they're, you know, there's a lot going on there on that particular piece of road. So I'd be looking for additional input as we move forward by encouraging everybody to be flexible about how not to provide the biggest parking lot we think we might have to have. Let me tell you one of the things that did come out of all the staff discussions because we talk about this and we're all trying to be responsible with minimizing impervious area and all that good stuff. And I realized that people hopefully won't have cars in this spot. But what it came down to for us is in the end, it was code compliance. The code says 24. How come it says 24? Because it does. That's what we hold everybody to. And so that's why the comment ended up in there is we could not find some other thing that would... Some of us like to challenge the code. And that's how it works. This is what we do. You know, we now have a review process that's almost five weeks long, just because. And so you get these tiny little projects that can't get on the docket until all this time has gone by, even though it should have been... And we don't understand that either. So I'll just say that I understand the code is there to protect everybody's best interest and to provide for the safety and health and welfare of the residents. But there could be times when, you know... I mean, shared parking does the same thing. It just does it differently. Trying to... I would say trying to take some portion of this parking lot and make sure that it works for every possible permutation, but not every space works for every possible car is still a good way to attack this. So I just still encourage some form of flexibility in showing that you can figure it all out and balance it against... That being said, I'll also say that the number of parking spaces that we're showing... I like the reasoning behind that if you haven't read the engineering letter that said, here's what we have, somewhere else, right? So that was good. I think those numbers make sense. I don't know if we could even take some more cars off, but let's begin up to the applicants. You could maybe take a couple spots off the length of the thing and end up with a wider aisle somewhere. But anyway, there's a lot of ways to do it. I'm not sure that we're all happy with it just yet, but since it's only conceptual planning, I think we just tell you where we feel the pinch and we ask you to keep working on it. And I'll say that there's some pushback from the city staff on this is what the code says, this is what we want. And so we've got to keep working our way through that one. I don't know how you guys feel, but you want to just... Anyone else with a comment on parking? I'm just really curious why in all this, no one has said 23 feet. It's just been like, what's in the middle? What are we going to do? How do we fix this? Where do we find the common ground? And what's in between 24 and 23? There was a compromise mention that. It used to be 25. I was just curious. I hate to say this, but everywhere else in the world, we're talking about... I've seen 20, but you talk about... I understand in regards to the code and land development code is at 24 feet, but necessarily the land development code isn't always right and doesn't always work in the best interests of what the goals of the municipality are, the common goals of everybody else. So that's... In my mind, I view land development code as more of a guideline than as a hard rule. That's why DRBs are set up where you guys have the authority to basically wave. I mean, in the old days, if you wanted to wave the regulations, you had to go to the zoning... You had to go all these extra steps, right? You had to go to the zoning board of adjustments and you had to... It just took a lot of extra time. And so the permitting process has been streamlined, thankfully, where boards like yourselves are giving the right to basically make determinations on the fly that are basically fit the applicant or fit the site specifically what this project is trying to achieve or what a given project is trying to achieve. So I think in this area with close proximity to the brook and everything else here, I think you might consider two extra feet, not a big deal, but in the previous application, you guys talked about how important it was that they replaced a piece of asphalt with some grass. And it wasn't a lot of grass, but you guys even made the comment that, well, yeah, it made a difference, right? So same thing here. I mean, yes, square footage-wise, it's really not a lot, but if it adds for an area that we can treat the stormwater or adds the area that additional grass can be planted, then I think it's worth it to take the advantage. The social engineering comment that I was about to make is everywhere else in the world is that, yeah, if we're trying to get people to drive smaller cars, then don't make the highway so big, right? Or there's ways that you're almost... I hate to say this, but the engineering limits choices, right? And I don't necessarily say that's right or wrong, but it's certainly something that society has done to say, hey, we make parking a lot smaller, there's a lot of advantage to that, and maybe driving a full-size pickup truck with four doors isn't the best use of resources. We have a state mandate to reach certain energy goals by 2030, and it's not gonna happen if we keep making our cars bigger. So there's all kinds of reasons why trying to drive smaller cars should be promoted. I don't know that the city is quite caught up to that in the Land Development Code yet, but it's still worth remembering. I don't know what is our... Well, we don't have to answer it now, but the Land Development Code in some places allows for a certain number or percentage of compact cars only. And I'm just saying, hey, that's given a bonus somehow to the compact cars, but it's not penalizing the big cars, and there's a possibility that we could do a little of both there and still provide for them. So... I also think it is a residential apartment building that somebody is gonna go and look at that apartment and say, I want to live here because of XYZ. If they have a monster truck, that could be part of their consideration to not live there. Here's another one for you, Brent. Some apartment buildings sell the parking spaces separately from the apartments, and there's a possibility that says if you need a parking space in a half from what everybody else has, you have to pay for it. There's a guy in my... Sorry, there's a guy in my parking lot that insists on parking his truck in two spots. This is not a special looking truck, but it's taking up two spots and it's driving me nuts. I've seen people do that when they had some kind of fancy car. They didn't want to get a scratch on it, but come on. Does he pay for two parking spaces? The only other thing I was going to mention is kind of taking a more macro approach to the width of the entire parking and aisle space in general. It's still 58 feet, which in other municipalities, whether you have an 18 foot stall or a 20 foot stall or a 20 foot wide, 58 is used in other municipalities as a total width for back to back parking. 60 is also. So I'm not saying that it's out of character with other municipalities, but there's still... There is that parking width of 22 feet, but not every car is 18 feet long. And so it's something to... I think looking at the entire width is something to think about as well, 58 feet compared to 60. Anyway, I think there's a room for assigning spaces based on vehicle size and then tailoring your parking lot to allow for that. Maybe that gets you where you want to. Suggestion heard. Anything else on parking? Lighting and so forth. It's not quite there yet. I'm looking at this. There's existing fences down both sides of the... I guess that kind of... I don't know what your landscaping plan is going to look like, but it's... Existing fences that are not the... Right, you don't have a choice. We did have a project come through a while ago that had... You know, like two foot shrubs planted up against the six foot fence and everybody kind of went, you know, like, we don't get that. Like, can't really... Doesn't help the people that was supposed to help. So just think about how it gets integrated with the fencing when maybe the fencing sides aren't the spaces that get the most plantings or something. I don't think we have to figure that out. I think as you might expect, the bulk of our landscaping will be in the front. The... The review for the building itself when it comes, you might have your architects just consider showing us, you know, a streetscape what's there and we take a picture or something and just, you know, because what's there is already pretty interesting or not, and we're sure that this will have you know, the ability to improve that. It'll look... It's not going to be hard to improve on the existing buildings that are there. Can I ask a question about the existing buildings? I don't know if I'm allowed to ask this, but I'm going to ask it anyway. How many apartments are there now? There's seven total. Yeah, there's a four in one, two in the other, and then the structure that's about to fall into the ravine, there's only one there. It's a small single family house. What happens to the people who are in those seven apartments? So as of right now they're not all occupied. So there's already some that are vacant. Oh, okay. Everybody is aware of what's going on here. And so we've obviously told everybody that, you know, we're going to give everyone ample heads up in regards to the specific timing of this and when this happens. So, yeah, the house on the right is actually one of the units is actually occupied by the brother of the owner that I bought this from. We've already been talking about him as far as relocating this to another apartment that I own. I'm just thinking of like the housing crisis. Oh, yeah. No, no, we're well, yeah, we're definitely obviously well aware of it, and that's why we're giving everybody, you know, a big heads up as possible in regards to all this. And it works to our advantage as well because if you if you surprise people with this or do not give them adequate heads up, then in this state, it's a tenant state they'll just dig their heels and it's going to take you six months to get them out. So you're you're better off working with the tenant to try to find you know, you know, different accommodations or, you know, alternative accommodations for it. Okay, that makes me feel better. I actually thought there were more built there were more apartments. Yeah, no. No, no. Other board comments? Staff have any more comments? There is a public comment that came via email today. And this is from Steve Eustace, who is not in a but he is city resident. And his question is mostly or comment is mostly about the fact that some of the sidewalk that exists today is five feet six inches wide, not five feet wide. And his request is that the new sidewalk that goes in here would also be five feet six inches wide as opposed to the minimum requirement we have in the code of five feet wide. Does lots of running in this area and the extra six inch six inches feel helpful? But just so the board is aware that LDC requires five feet wide. It's not it's something you certainly could request and not require. What's the rest of the sidewalk along around is it all is it just five foot six in this section or is it all I think it's actually smaller because that's the there's no bike lane there so you might want to make it bigger because you'll have the bikers and the walkers and the runners. I actually think that part of the sidewalk is smaller than the other parts. I would spin it around the other way because I think what we would probably do is match what they just did all the sidewalks for the other bill for the other bill. Yeah, the other and so I think it makes more sense to just match what they have instead of making this one and if that's what they're talking about we would probably just match what Mr. Handy did continuation past our or through our property. Yeah, he said I can just say in terms of what's there so he's measured the sidewalk width throughout between West Street extension extension and 235 Perl and it averages five feet six inches. We'll match whatever is there. That's a drastic expense. All right, anything else? Any other comments? Nobody else on camera? All right, I'll take a motion I think to approve this conceptual application with staff comments and additional comments that have been given tonight. Thanks for the application. I said before it does a lot of good things that we're kind of looking for and you're further along on a lot of ways then you wouldn't normally need to be at conceptual so that makes it easier for us to kind of see what you're doing and the staff comments are engineer very excited about it so it's a great as you guys know, I like infill sites and this is exactly what I really like to do. And as we told the previous at the previous hearing think about the things that you're able to offer for your residents in terms of amenities, one of them is location, I mean it's ideal but they kind of do like to do stuff outside access, you're right on the access so that's fine but I think the bike ability, I mean obviously we've had discussions when we developed across the street here the benefits of developing infill projects like this, the biking I think is huge, I mean we offer we're going to be offering storage for the tenants in the basement so that they do have bikes and stuff that they're going to be encouraged to have those and then there's multiple parks within or whether you're going to ride a bike to the edge over off of Susie Wilson Road or even farther down through to really you have the whole Fort area, I mean just a wide open tennis courts and all sorts of stuff there as well so there's a lot of amenities that are extremely close if you just give the people the accessibility I think I'm going to have to write a novel about transportation management for 252 so I'm sure we can share that with the one that's great yeah having a stream right there is kind of fun although I don't know how much is encouraged with it but it's not really a public resource in the sense that you get to go do a lot there but it's nice I mean you might be able to put a picnic table or something out there let people enjoy it alright anything else, we had a motion did we get a second second any further discussion all in favor say aye aye vote motion carries thank you very much, appreciate it we'll be back soon other development report I would like to graciously welcome our new community development director formerly on camera welcome do you want to say a few words folks may not know everything about you already or just a simple hello well hello yes I've just been here for a few weeks but I'm very excited to be working with the different commissions and departments of the city to build the city towards its goals both short term and long term please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any specific concerns about the LDC if there's anything that we want to put on the agenda in the future for updating I certainly have ideas and these are recommendations that we can bring forward with the planning commission when the time comes thank you and I just want to touch on that the status of the current rewrite of the LDC do we know anything more about the timetable we do not as a right now Chris is getting up to speed on what those amendments are so we can just finally get it back in front of the council direction on what to do next with those once they warn those for public hearing everything that comes through to you folks needs to be looked at under both the existing code and the proposed code so it definitely creates a bit of a bit of extra work but that's just the process and how it goes and yeah any last time we talked about maybe a joint meeting with either the council or other review boards are we having any joint meetings with anybody anytime soon not that we have scheduled for you yet we are what we have been doing you alluded to this earlier so it will be helpful to let you guys know and we can get you this documentation when we get it figured out but we have thought through some internal review changes so things like tonight when you've got these conceptual plans we're thinking through a process that these would come to you much faster so as soon as we get them we figure out if they're complete meaning you've got at least all of the basic details that you need on there and the community development department would do a review on the zoning side of things but we wouldn't necessarily do a technical review with Jeff or Chelsea or Ricky or Fire Chief because it just takes a lot of time and we're reviewing plans that are just really conceptual in nature and don't have a lot of that detail anyway then those would come forward to you and so you can look at some of the basic things that you'd have issues or concerns with and then we would move forward into the final design stage and have all of the technical review happen as well as the zoning review create those comments then get those comments to the applicant they address all of them then it comes forward to the DRB for the final review so that kind of back and forth the technical review sending them to the applicant making sure the applicant is acknowledging those comments or revising those comments then coming forward to you has also been happening at conceptual and that's the real time scenario we really want to do that at final so that what you guys are getting you know and are confident that it works for all of the code reasons and then the other part of the change that's less to do with us and more to do with you is that once you get to final if you've got some concerns about lighting or landscaping or something else and you're not really like how it works we're really going to suggest that you're continuing your hearing you're not closing it and putting that to staff to figure out what's the right thing we're going to suggest that you continue and they've got to come back forward to you with the revised plan set so that you're comfortable with it before we actually close the hearing so we're going to speed up the conceptual side of things and we're going to slow down the final approval side of things if we're not happy yes which is fine does it right now do we still allow people to do um preliminary and final all at once is that a size of project thing so for the most part what you guys are seeing are site plans and that's basically going to have a conceptual and a final if somebody wants to do a subdivision or we're in a plan unit development category then there's a conceptual and the preliminary and a final yeah and I think yeah the code right now does say they can combine those two so one thing in thinking about this process is the land development code amendments actually take conceptual off the table we made it optional for people to come in for conceptual and you know being here on this side of the table whereas before I told you that was a good idea from the consultant side of things it seems like the way that this process works we'd be better suited requiring people to come in for conceptual and requiring people to come in for final um so there might be some things like that that we're going to sort of think through in that land development code package and we might recommend that some things are held back um just so we can kind of see how this new system will work and one of the things we're trying to kind of prevent with all of this is um some developments that have been done and we're realizing after the fact that they're not done very well and really trying to just get way upstream of that and get the system working in a better better way good I think um the quality of some of the applicants is it makes that tough because some people come in they've done it before they know what they're getting into they're ready to you know take the brunt of the process which can be uh you know it can be significant um and others come in and they just want to do something and they don't really have that experience and they don't know what they're getting into and then you feel like you're dragging them back and forth to try and get what they should be doing done so yes anything that we can do to help everybody get through the process would be great yeah and after us after the DRB then it goes to the planning commission it's a where does it go after us after you um you shouldn't know you're brand new to the process so no don't feel that um so after you guys uh after you guys give your final approval then it essentially goes to um the zoning administrator and so depending on the size of the project that's Chris who's going to issue that um permit or to Terry if it's smaller um she'll issue that permit um and but a lot tends to have to happen in between those two pieces um and particularly this last application they're going to go to act 250 they're likely going to do a lot of that before you guys see final I would gather they don't have to do it that way but I would imagine that's how they're going to do it um and there's all kinds of other state permits and lots of things that have to kind of get all lined up before they're ready to actually build so some of the other applications that we've already seen we're going to see again if we've sent them off well these will see again because they were conceptual right so the other I'm just thinking about a couple of the other ones that we had yeah I'm trying to think of what you've seen so far 261 will come back yeah or um I'm just curious about the one on the other one on Maple Street where they were going to fix I mean doesn't have a so the Maple Street one is an example of it came in front of you after the fact that it was built so that's like a completely abnormal one and we are hoping to avoid that oh okay good so the because I've noticed that some of the things we sent them away for lighting wise are still a problem so I was just worried I was just like how does that they came to us before but we were the planning commission at the time so it's sort of a different problem because they only plan now but before they also did this so it came in front of them it was approved with all these conditions it made it through the rest of the process and got into construction they built it and this is one of the places that we've been struggling is somewhere during the construction the projects change yeah and and that's happened a it's happened three or four times since I've been on the you know well in let's say 10 years and and and that's three or four times too many really because it it's it's such a big process and for everybody else who's doing what they're supposed to do and for the community that expects that to happen you know it's just disappointing and sometimes frustrating and so we'd like to just clean that process up a little bit and and you know it probably includes a little bit more attention during initial like when somebody ends up with an extra story or none of the you know it doesn't look like what we were showing that I mean it's pretty hard to imagine how that gets that far with yeah but it does you know it's happened and and it's happened in probably many municipalities and it's it's one of those things where you have to you want to what's the political term you want to trust but verify something like you know what I mean you want to make that agreement but then you need to verify that it's really happening that way that one was abnormal but there was things that we sent them away to do so who like do they how do we know that they get done yeah so the basically when you send them away with conditions if you're not holding up the process and asking to see that back in front of you again that basically goes to staff to work that out so the part of this improved process that I suggested you don't want to close the hearing as soon as you guys close the hearing you have 45 days to make a decision and that's it and no further evidence can be talked about or anything so you want to continue so you actually get those plans and you can decide for yourselves if that's what you want to achieve in this particular situation that original planning commission approval for that project had a number of things that were just talked about as from the planning commission and they were put in as conditions of approval so we've been trying to work those out so that they end up being okay and in line with land development code the lights are the last thing and we will be doing a drive-by right now to see the last time they were bright yeah last week they were too bright still yeah so we will never seen it what they were talking about and then I drove by I'm like oh that's what they're talking about just if you're driving around in your car and you see something that's too bright chances are that it's too bright and it really is bad and that includes people you see it all kinds of places and especially with the homeowners that have the security lights on the driveway that look like flood lights that come on when in motion they aren't supposed to do that you know like where they aren't supposed to point out and be visible past the property line so it's it's a tricky one the only time we've ever actually allowed something like that to happen in an approval was at the fire department so that they didn't take their hundred thousand dollar more plus trucks and have trouble backing up right that's the only time everybody else is supposed to observe the you know dark sky compliant and not have them based out so that they're bothering the neighbors or traffic so if you're I don't know how we sort of enforce that because most people can go out and buy those and put them up themselves and then you have it and it was never approved it doesn't comply and it can be bothersome so just that's my plea for trying to remember to be gentle with your lighting yeah consider it right I have neighbors yeah it's bad for birds too alright any other good questions about the process we're always trying to make it better so thank you for that once you see the process happen in a few cycles you'll be experts and thanks for all coming tonight wish we got more people out in the audience but they'll probably come by when they see the final for this because they're pretty interesting projects so anybody have anything else to say I'll take a motion to adjourn I second that you make it I motion to adjourn second it meeting is over thank you thanks