 Welcome Planning Commission members. I'll now call the October 5th Planning Commission work session any session. All right, so I guess we'll first we'll just do a roll call. Mr. Cohn. Here. Mr. Hart. Here. Ms. Hartz. Ms. Hartz here. It looks like she's joined it. Okay. Ms. James. Here. Dr. Mandel. Here. Mr. Stigamire. Here. Mr. Tupper. And Mr. Frost. Here. Okay. You have a form and I think I'm just gonna turn this over to Rachel and Krista to talk about the zoning map revisions and share their screens. All right, let me get my screen shared here. All right, and if you're, if we have any members of the public following along, please feel free. If you have any questions during this, you can email cocboardmeeting at columbiasc.gov or you can call 803-545-3425 if you have specific questions so that we can pat you through and get those answered during this work session. All right, so I just wanted to update everyone on the status of the map. So as you know, we've had our ordinance adopted as revised in May of this year and we had an effective date of November of 2020. We are coming to you tonight to update that to March 31st of 2021. So with this, new zoning districts were created in the ordinance and so because of that, we needed to do a new map. Our public input meetings that we had all set to go in March did get cancelled. So we held a virtual public meeting last week on the 29th and we are in the middle of doing our virtual one-on-one meetings. We will be coming to you all with the full map in November. So that's why we're kind of giving you an update now and going over the mapping process, the new districts, and some frequently asked questions as well as we're going to show you a tutorial on how to navigate those draft maps if you all wanted to take a look at them ahead of time. We'll be going to zoning public hearing in January. So again, this is just a process so in September we're having our virtual public meetings. This month we're coming to you with the date change and then November we come to you with the map for your recommendation and then council beginning in January. December will be filled with us just doing notice and doing postings throughout the entire city. So with our effective date being March 31st of 2021. Good evening everyone. Krista Hampton here, Director of Planning and Development Services and those of you who have been with us on this journey from the beginning I'm looking at you Dale and a few others. I have seen these themes previously. So of the entire ordinance itself we have several key themes. The first is to create a user-friendly code because our current one certainly could use help in that area. So we wanted to be easy to navigate to find information and so we have charts, we have pictures. That's the main theme. The second one is to implement Plan Columbia which was the Future Land Use Plan. Prior to Compass it was implemented into the Columbia Compass Plan and so its policies and guidance we wanted to put within the Unified Development Ordinance including infill which is number three is to modernize the regulations to strongly encourage and support infill and redevelopment within the city. We are largely a built out city unless we annex and so most of our development is redevelopment infill and we want to make sure that we make that easy for the appropriate type of development and finally our theme is to support and encourage sustainable and green development practices through incentives for green development practices and other types of development regulations. Our new zoning districts are divided into four main categories residential which Rachel will go over will largely stay the same. We have some mixed use districts now but one key component of this code is that we really emphasize mixed use along our corridors and so we have a number of those. Institutional and campus zoning districts these are also new to reflect the fact that we are a government and institutional town to a large degree and finally we maintain our industrial zoning districts and add a new innovative district so to support this very important category of development. Alright so I'll go over our residential districts with you all we have the transitional conservation district and the large lot reserve district both of these are pretty similar in that these are often undeveloped or developed at a very low density and maybe annexed in or they might just be assigned this as a holdover with the TC district that transitional conservation district they can either be rezoned or it will remain in conservation so this could be wetlands or something along those lines. With the large lot reserve district those will be rezoned at appropriate time so once that land is kind of plucked out for development that's when it will get rezoned to what is fitting for the proposed development in the area. Our single family districts again are staying pretty much the same you have your large lot your medium and your small lot so they're the RSFs so again this accommodates primarily single family detached dwellings at varying densities so because we don't want anything that's going to substantially interfere with those residential natures of the district. We have our two family districts so there's the straight residential two-family district and then we have the mill village district so and these areas accommodate single family and two family duplexes at moderate densities. The mill village area those are the smaller lots with the they have the smaller lot area requirements for the duplexes. Our residential mixed districts are very similar to our current RG districts and again this provides a moderate density mix of residential single family, two-family townhouse and small to medium scale multifamily dwellings. The important thing to remember about these RM districts just like with the RG for anything above a single family residential it has to have the lot area, it has to meet the setbacks, it has to meet the lot coverage requirements, parking, all development standards come into play so even though a use such as multifamily might be permitted in these districts it doesn't mean that that's going to work in every lot zoned RM. So that's been a question that's come up a lot so I wanted to touch on that before we moved on. I'll turn it back over to Krista. Two new districts we have the MU1 and MU2 are intended to be adjacent to neighborhoods so that they help with that transition. They are low to medium density and also can include some of our residential uses. The next set of districts and I'll put an overview of these. We're going through this fairly quickly just so we can make sure we have time for questions and that said if planning commissioners want further information beyond this those of you who have not been part of planning commission another primer on the code or zoning maps or any of this we're happy to help but the next four districts are activity centered in corridors and what's terrific about this new code is that it brings into play context whereas before it used to be C3 with C3 no matter where you are no matter the context we now have districts that take context into effect and into account pardon and it ranges from neighborhood which is really intended to be embedded or directly adjacent to neighborhoods and serve them to the community activity which serves a larger area still walkable but you may get into your car and drive to another community activity and regional which as its name indicates is intended to draw from a region and maybe more high intense both commercial and residential and finally downtown which is our central business district and is intended to support all of those uses and intensities expected there we have office and institutional district which is very similar to our C1 which is for doctors offices also some commercial and low level commercial and residential our general commercial district which is somewhat analogous to our C3 we still have a lot of auto oriented corridors and that is their character and that is going to be their character and this district is intended to continue to support that and finally we have a mixed commercial district which is somewhat similar to our downtown activity center but is aligned more with the inner Vista district still allowing that that mix of uses but in different densities and a little bit of flexibility from some of the bulk requirements all right so next we have the institutional so we have institutional general district and the institutional university and medical district these will often go hand in hand the institutional general district will often come first and then they will merge into that university and medical district and that includes larger sites government offices the university medical is large hospitals large universities they will file an institutional development plan and have that approved and that's where they will transition from the general district to the university and medical district so they get that plan in place for traffic pedestrian walking plans and continuity parking all of that will be included in that institutional development plan we have our transportation utilities district so railroad airport bus stations as well as utility related services will fall under this area and then we have our light industrial and heavy industrial those will stay pretty much in line with our current light industrial the m1 and m2 districts and then the new district is our employment campus district that is for some light industrial development research and development it has an expectation of that high quality design often within a campus setting some research and medical labs some manufacturing as well as some multifamily restaurant and retail will be encompassed in that district in addition to our base zoning districts we currently have a number of overlay zoning districts and those districts either supplement or modify the requirements of the base zoning district so we are keeping all of our existing well except for a few but are the pd which is fortunately going away but those with which you're most familiar those overlay districts we are maintaining and they will be mapped in the existing locations those include our historic districts which are currently called dp districts and now are a little bit more logical with hp historic preservation all of our city center design and five points in avista our design districts are staying the same community character as well in the outdoor advertising sign we have a new overlay district that was a result of the west jervay street planning exercise that has a heightened setback requirement in the jervay and the ug street area we have one that will not be mapped which is a gateway design overlay it and that provides us a tool as we do gateway planning to apply regulations that may come out of those areas all right so i'm going to stop sharing my screen for one minute and bring up another one i'm going to show you all just how to navigate that draft zoning map all right so we have our draft zoning map here a little zoom screen is blocking some of this um so a couple of things to keep in mind when navigating newly annex properties really probably properties annex within the last six to nine months are not on this proposed map but we do have a list of those and we have given them proposed districts so if you're going through here and you have specific annex properties that you have questions about feel free to reach out to staff same goes if you're going around and navigating and you see that a parcel has nothing on it so it's just a blank parcel that means that it is most likely split zone um we were not able to map split zoned on this draft map so we have separate pdfs in house so if you have questions about a potential split zone property we can send that information to you as well so um you have the layers list over here street and ownership you can either turn that on or off it to show you if it's city or dot zoning district and pictometry you want to make sure both of those are on you can have the proposed zoning district or the current i suggest you have both on so and i will give you all an example here i'll just look up our city offices the 1136 washington street takes you there so it shows you c5 which is the current zoning as well as the dac which is the downtown activity center corridor that is the proposed zoning if you click on it you can toggle back and forth between so you see the current and the proposed if you click on the proposed district it opens up for you that has the summary of the proposed zoning district so it has the purpose of the district as well as intensity and dimensional standards that gives you an example of those dimensional standards here as well as code sections that are applicable you can also click and leave a comment if you're going through there and you have a question you can submit it through us to us through this portal or you can just email it to us either way so i will also drive along here to show you some of our residential areas so that you can see how those are laid out i have the spinning circle of death there we go so you can see over here we definitely try to keep residential as close to what it was now so if it was single family before it is most likely single family now same with if it was rg before it is most likely rm now so you can see the division here we also cleaned up the single family districts based on the sizing of the lots to make sure that they fit into the large lot medium or small lot but just to give you all that rundown and as you're navigating through there if you have questions please don't hesitate to reach out to us we also have the email address zoning map at columbiase.gov which is specific for our draft zoning map questions and we also are going through our one-on-one meetings we have a couple days left of those on the seventh and the eighth we had a few on the 30th first and second where people are able to set appointments either via jot form or giving us a call to have 15 20 minute sessions with us to talk about their specific properties so when you all are welcome to do that too you can sign up via the weplantogether.org site right we wanted to we wanted to make sure that people had an opportunity to ask about specific properties which when you're in a large meeting is not always the most effective way to do that so that's why we've had these and if we get people who are asking questions further down the line we'll we'll go ahead and set up some additional dates for those as well. Would you all have any questions for us? I have a quick question so I think it's awesome that y'all are doing the one-on-ones how many of them have you done and how's the feedback been in those meetings what's kind of the tone of it etc. Have we done about six or seven Krista? Yeah I would say so. Sure and they've been good I mean sometimes people are more wanting to talk about the adopted text itself but we're happy to answer those questions too and how it ties into the proposed districts for properties but people have had very good questions I think they've walked away with more information and we were able to answer those questions for them and make them feel a little bit more comfortable with everything just so we'll just get nervous with change. Yeah I'm just gonna ask you are you getting has anybody tried to my word negotiate with the city on on what their new classification is or is it not just been the case? I haven't had any of that yet so I mean people definitely have ideas so Krista go ahead sorry. A couple who who had some some good ideas about a couple areas that that we agree should be changed more than likely so what we do is we're taking those recommendations and then we're meeting as a staff to discuss them and weigh them but generally it's not an individual property that would give someone more rights necessarily it's really something that would be more compatible so I think it's been very positive thus far. Good that's great and I do want to emphasize in whatever form is necessary for the planning commissioners to feel comfortable we are bringing this map to you in November for your recommendation to the city council to go forward for public hearing in January so between now and then if you have any questions any information you need to help you make that decision please let us know. I don't think I heard you say this in the presentation but I just I just went on the we plan together website um where's Richland County where because I know we've for a long time arrived parallel with them are they doing the same effort on the county side or is this just only the city? They are but they are currently at the end of the code process if I'm not mistaken so they're a little bit behind us that they are they're working on their public input for that and then they'll be going through the mapping and I thank you for bringing it up Dale for those of you who aren't aware you know we did start this off and that's why we have the weplantogether.org website because it has both the county and the city's processes and information and it was the same consultant and so why while the code is not identical you know it speaks to one another so that's a great positive of this project if there's anybody from the public who wanted to speak or to submit an email comment you can do so at COC board meeting at columbiasc.gov or you can call 803-545-3425 while the planning commissioners are still considering this. Chris could you repeat that phone number for the citizens that might have questions where they could call into? Sure and that it's just for this meeting right now it's not for the we it's 803-545-3425. Thank you and that's for property owners that might have questions regarding the you know the the plan itself not specific to the meeting correct? To the code itself? Yes yes you can certainly call that as well also the Rachel you'll the main zoning line is 803-545-3333 which may be a better number because that one is staffed during the day the entire time so the 545-3425 was intended for this this time. Oh okay I got you. Yeah we didn't we didn't have a public input number created specific for this work session so we're just giving that out if people had questions specific to the work session but yes if they have questions about the map they're welcome to call us at 545-3333 during business hours and we will happily assist they can also email zoning map at columbiasc.gov. Yeah we've received quite a few comments and questions on the zoning map email so that's that's also a good one that goes to a number of us and staff has been really good about responding to those. And Chris, while we're waiting I've just got something that I'm curious about more than anything of course I think everybody's probably on this map looking at it right now. Has there always been a PUD in the center of Rosewood? Well we'll have the intersection of Huron and looks like Holly and then that is no not RS2 that's going or it's going to like a residential mix from that it's kind of a random question but it just will come I've never seen that before. One thing you'll find Dale is that there were many many PUDs very small ones all over the city and I mean we've had we have single lot residential parcels that are that were zoned PUD and as we've discussed over the years those do not meet the requirements of the statute. Right. So we are looking to make take them into a classification that is most analogous to the use and compatible to the adjacent uses. Yeah you can see it right there it's very odd to me. I'm sure there was good reason at some point but now it's being uh reclassified to residential mix use mix. Yes I mean some of the logic behind a lot of those PUDs was something as simple as they just wanted to set their own setbacks. It was little things like that and they would become a PUD. It's fascinating. I haven't seen any emails come in I guess the phone's not ringing either but. Well planning commissioners do you all have anything else to. I don't have any questions I I appreciate the presentation it's always helpful to get the update. Thank you. Yep thank you. You all have been terrific during this process it's been a long time coming we're really excited about it um so if again don't hesitate between now and November if if anything comes up to just give give us a call. Rachel anything else for me? No just thank you all so and yeah as Christa said please feel free reach out I'm always happy to answer questions. Okay thank you. Thank you all. If we don't have any further uh if we don't have any emails and no phone calls uh I'll I'll take a motion to adjourn. Mr. Chairman I would like to make a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right the meeting is adjourned thank you. Thank you.