 It's when only when they have handouts they say, you know, hand it up to you the one and they do like me and not eat. You're past the set of you getting your vitamins in there. Unless you do. It's such a thing. Yeah. You don't appear to be doing anything right. That's the way it is. I was trying to get to your book. Oh, listen, is that about the kids? Mr. Gage, you're getting to see the council person now. Is that? How are you? Congratulations. I put your signs on your portrait. I saw that. Thank you. A minute to spare. One of the problems here. What? What? I'm OK. Is it doing? Just use absence. Yeah, it's three or four. Yeah, but just. Are you planning on missing a few? Exactly. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. If you do have a death of a family member, just meeting that. One on one. They don't count it. They don't count it. Unless it's your own death, then you will be kicked off the account. The other person. All right. Thank you. I proved you were thoughtful for the time. Good afternoon. Welcome to the Durham Planning Commission. The members of the Durham Planning Commission have been appointed by the city council and the county board of commissioners as an advisory board to the elected officials. You should know that the elected officials have the final say on any issue that's before us this evening. If you wish to speak on an agenda item this evening, please go to the table over to my left. Sign up to speak. For those of you who do wish to speak when you come up to the microphone, please state your name and your address clearly when you come to the podium. And make sure you speak clearly into the microphone. If you have any audio or visuals that you want to put up, let us know as well. And we can help you put those up. Each side, those speaking in favor of an item and those speaking against in opposition will have 10 minutes to present for each side. And the time will be divided among all the persons wishing to speak. Finally, all motions are stated in the affirmative. So if a motion fails or ties, the recommendation is for denial. Thank you very much. May we have the roll call, please? Commissioner Alturk. Present. Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Johnson has requested an excused absence. Commissioner Ghosh. Present. Commissioner Brown. Present. Commissioner Satterfield. Present. Commissioner Harris. Present. Commissioner Busby. Present. Commissioner Hyman. Present. Commissioner Miller. Present. Commissioner Kinshin. Commissioner Hornbuckle. Present. Commissioner Van. Present. Commissioner Gibbs. Commissioner Freeman. Present. Great. Thank you very much. We will move on to the approval of the minutes and the consistency statement from our October 10, 2017 meeting. Commissioner Bryan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe I had the pleasure of meeting our clerk, Terry Elliott, at our October meeting. And so I think our name needs to be added to the list of staff present. So noted, Commissioner Bryan. Thank you. Any other additions or edits to the minutes of the consistency statement? I move approval as amended. Second. Great. Properly moved and seconded. All those in favor, please raise your right hand. None opposed? Motion carries. Staff. Good evening. Grace Smith with the Planning Department. I'm not aware of any adjustments to the agenda this evening. I would remind the chair and the commission that at the end of the meeting, we need to approve the 2018 meeting schedule. And what's coming next month will be emailed to you tomorrow. We have several cases on the agenda, and I need to make sure I have them correct before I send you the list. OK. Thank you. That sounds good. Thanks, Ms. Smith. Let me add for the record that all public hearings have been advertised in compliance with the state and local laws and affidavits for such our own file in the Planning Department. Great. Thank you very much. Accept a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. All those in favor, please raise your right hand. Great. That's unanimous. Thank you. We will move on to our public hearings. Our first public hearing is a comprehensive plan future land use map amendment with the concurrent zoning map changes. Again, if anyone wishes to sign up to speak, please go sign up on the table on my left. And we will call you up to speak. The first case is A170005 and Z1700012 for the Durham Rescue Mission. And we'll start with the staff report. Good evening, Jamie Sanyak with the Planning Department. You'll have to excuse me, I'm nursing a cold here. Thank you. This is for case A17005, Z170012, the Durham Rescue Mission. The applicant is Wendy Ramzen with Coulter, Jewel, Thames. The property is located within the city's jurisdiction. The applicant is requesting a flam request change from medium density residential commercial from medium high density residential. The zone request is from several different zoning districts on one site. Residential suburban multifamily, residential urban multifamily, commercial center, commercial neighborhood with a planned development plan, to residential urban multifamily with a development plan, RUMD. The property is 5.65 acres. And the applicant is proposing up to 78 one and two bedroom apartments with up to 140 surface and garage parking spaces. This is the aerial map, which shows the property highlighted in red. It is located within the urban development tier and within the Cape Fear River basin. Residential and commercial uses are found predominantly surrounding the site. An apartment building is located directly to the west. A garden apartment is located to the northeast. Single family and two family homes are located to the northwest and south. And commercial developments and retail uses are found to the east. This is the existing conditions map. The site is irregular in size and it fronts primarily on House Road as well as Lafayette Street and Shelton Street. The property is vacant with small areas of pavement encroaching into the development parcel from adjacent parcels located in the northwestern and northeastern property boundaries. There is also a sanitary sewer easement that runs through the property in a diagonal nature. An additional sanitary easement located along Shopper Street, which is a private road. There is also an offsite intermittent stream in portions of a 50-foot buffer and a 10-foot no-build area that extends onto the property. And there are portions of the site that contain steep slopes as well. The property is currently designated medium density residential, which is 6 to 12 units per acre, and commercial under the future land use map. And the applicant, which is shown on the left. And the applicant is proposing to change the site medium-high density, which is 8 to 20 units per acre, which would there be consistent with the rezoning request. The rezoning request, as I mentioned, the applicant is proposing to change this current zoning, which is shown in various multicolors there. You've got the RUM, the RSM, the CC, and the CN zones all currently on the site. And what the applicant is proposing to do is to put it in the RUM district, the Residential Urban Multifamily District, with a development plan. The staff has reviewed the request and found it to be consistent with the requirements of the unified development ordinance. The project meets the project and the property meet the RUM district requirements in terms of density, maximum building height, the development plan shows the open space requirements, the maximum pervious coverage, and the tree coverage areas are all being met. And this slide provides just a short summary of what the applicant is proposing and how it's consistent with the unified development code. This is the proposed conditions or the proposed development map. And in addition to providing some of those details that I described before, you also see various access points, project boundary buffers, tree preservation areas, the riparian areas, the various easements shown throughout the property. The areas where there are encroachments are also shown in easements. And the next slide provides a short summary of the commitments in terms of what the applicant has provided on the plan. There will be separate pedestrian access points throughout the projects. All of the encroachment areas will be shown in easements. There is a waterline extension in Merrimack Street as per city standards. There will be a minimum of eight bicycle parking spaces that will be covered. And there are other various graphic and design commitments shown on the plan. In terms of being consistent with the city's comprehensive plan and policies, staff found that it was not consistent with the medium density residential future land use map. And they're seeking an amendment of that to the medium high density. In terms of the zoning map change, the application is consistent with policy 2.1 3D. It is also contiguous with other residential development and compatible with surrounding uses. And in terms of an analysis of infrastructure, we have found it to be compatible and consistent with that, that sufficient infrastructure exists. Staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and applicable policies and ordinances. I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you very much. I'll note, before we open the public hearing, commissioners Kenshin and Gibbs have joined us. And at this point, we will open the public hearing. And if I could get the sign up, thank you. Thank you. We have one speaker signed up for the proposal, and it's Dan Jewel. You have 10 full minutes at your disposal. If I use those, I'm in trouble. So thank you, Brian. And good evening, commissioners. I am Dan Jewel, president of Culture Jewel TEMS. Our clients, Broadmoor Lakewood, have asked us to assist them with this proposal tonight, the rezoning and the land planning effort that goes with it. With me here this evening is our project manager in our office, landscape architect Wendy Ramston. And our local development team, Ken, Steve, Matt, and William are all here as well interested in the outcome and also happy to answer any questions that you might have. We'd like to set the record straight. I think we already got a clarification in the staff report, but this is not Durham Rescue Mission. They owned the property at the time that we submitted the application. But since then, our client has purchased it from them. So Rescue Mission has no involvement whatsoever in this project. This parcel was part of the original Lakewood shopping center and still is, other than the ownership now. If you look at Gary Keeber's excellent open Durham website, you will see photographs of this property being graded and cleared along with the rest of the shopping center. And it was left cleared and flat. Might have had some gravel on it at one time. We can only assume that at one point they assumed they were going to put some parking or maybe an out parcel on it. But they didn't. And it sat vacant for 55 years until today. So it's been nothing. It's got weeds and things like that on it. What the property is now is a mess. It's a mess from two standpoints. It's a mess from a physical standpoint as it is overgrown with weeds and brush if you visited the site out there. There's trash streaming about the site, blowing off from adjacent properties. And there are the numerous urban campers, as I call them, who occasionally will pitch tents out there and hang out on the site. And it also seems to be a popular dumping ground for shopping carts from the food line. People will drop them off here on their way to and from the other places that they live. But most importantly, as Jamie said, it's also a mess from a zoning and future land use map standpoint. There are currently two land use designations, commercial, medium density residential, and four, yes, four zoning designations on the site. So absent of rezoning, the hodge podge of rezoning districts would make it very challenging, if not impossible, to do anything on the site but leave it alone, as each zoning boundary actually requires a landscape buffer. So it would all be chopped up with that. We think that this has become much too important a site to leave alone. Many of you know that this neighborhood is becoming the next Durham do-it-yourself district. The properties around the shopping center are getting revitalized with commercial investments, restaurants. And we have the very exciting proposal by the Scrap Exchange to create the reuse arts district in the north end of the shopping center. And of course, they occupied the old Lakewood Theater many, many years ago, and that is now their home. So with restaurants, offices, other businesses, a grocery store, churches, and other services, all within close proximity to this property, we think a modestly-scaled multifamily development would be a very appropriate addition to the mix of other things that are going on. If any of you are familiar with the walk score website, bike score website, where you can actually go in and plug in your address, and it tells you what the walkability of that is, this has been increasing in walkability, and we think it will be much more high walkability when all of these other services are completed and added. So what we'd like to propose is a new multifamily community on the site, and the zoning and flume requests we have before you will allow this to happen. These will not be luxury apartments. This will not be one of those large 200 to 300 unit complexes that you're seeing being built up and down the 147 and West Main Street corridor. Rather, and what we represented to the neighbors at the neighborhood meeting, is that this will be in the spirit of the neighborhood, be modestly-scaled to provide a reasonable transition from the existing multifamily and single family to the north and west, to the existing commercial to the south and east. Remember, the bulk of the property is currently some sort of commercial. So even though the RUM zoning that we are requesting would allow up to 20 units to the acre, or roughly 112 units, we are committing to only about two thirds of that density, or seven units. We think that's all the property can comfortably support, given some of the physical challenges of it. As I said, we held a neighborhood meeting at the scrap exchange back in February, where eight neighbors attended. The main discussion points they brought up were traffic impacts, of course, cleaning up the trash and undergrowth on the property, and coordination with redevelopment and shopping center. So relative to traffic, if you review the staff report, you'll show that the projected traffic impact from the new zoning is about a fifth of what it is under the current zoning designation. Also keep in mind, if you've been out there, there are multiple ways to get out of here, quickly up to Moorhead, just a short block, a couple of ways over to Chapel Hill Road down through the shopping center, so there's good connectivity. The staff report also shows that Chapel Hill Road is currently under capacity on the average daily trips. And also to make it a tad easier, and again, to promote the idea of walkability and bikeability, we are committing to at least eight of those bike spaces that Jamie showed minimum being covered, so that folks will maybe think first about getting on their bike, rather than jumping in their car with all the services close by. We'll certainly be cleaning up the site. Keep in mind, there were no stormwater controls today. We will be installing all those that are currently required by the city. And yes, we have been communicating with the neighbors and the redevelopment of the shopping center. Our firm is actually now working with the Scrap Exchange on the next iteration of their due diligence and master planning, which is pretty exciting. We actually worked with the group of the entrance to the shopping center that's building the county fair, permanent food truck rodeo, as I call it. And I have some long history with this property. I worked on probably the last facelift that was done on the Lakewood Shopping Center in 1988. And I dare say I would suspect those owners haven't spent a dime on it since then. So it is time for, and they don't own it anymore. They sold it off in pieces. So in closing, we hope you can agree that this is a reasonable proposal for this neighborhood, that it creates an appropriate transition between the existing residential and the existing commercial that surrounds it. It's a more appropriate use than the commercial that takes up the bulk of the property zoning at the moment. And most appropriately, that is a very appropriate location for a little more residential density in order to add to the mix of the vibrant walkable, bikeable place that the old Lakewood Shopping Center district is becoming. The team and I are happy to answer any questions you might have. We would hope you could find it in yourselves to make a positive recognition to council. And as a postscript, most of you know me. You're noticing my mouth is a bit asymmetrical right now. It wasn't a stroke. I have something called Bell's palsy, which I've been told will go away in time. Treatment helps. So I'm doubling down with acupuncture and good old traditional Western drugs. So wish me well. Hopefully that'll work fast. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Drew. We always wish you well. Anyone else who would like to speak, no one else is signed up, but the public hearing is still open if anyone would like to speak on this issue. Seeing none, we will move to close the public hearing and I'd like to open up for discussion of the commissioners. Any commissioners who would like to speak on this issue, we will start with commissioner Miller and we'll move from there. Dan, I have questions for you. So this is a very peculiar site. And I am troubled by the idea that you might actually have an access off of Lafayette Street because that's a 25 foot straight drop down. Yes. Evidently when Ran created the site out there, you just kind of hill into it. How are you going to cope with that? So we're troubled by that as well. In fact, there's one point where it's a 40 foot drop. Yeah, I've actually measured that. That's in your tree save area. Yeah, that's in a tree save area, that's right. Where you have another connection, but I understand why you want to get out of that. Yeah, yeah. So this is very similar to the Village Hearth case we brought to you earlier this year where the staff, the UDO requires us to show that access as part of the rezoning. But we also learned on that case that we've got that cryptic little note on our development plan that allows us at the time of site plan approval to ask for it to go away because there are compelling reasons such as the other development, topographical issues, physical constraints. And in fact, that's what we will do. So as a realistic matter, you're really talking about the Merrimack Avenue access. Yes, sir. And because of this easement that's in here for utilities, I'm having a hard time understanding where the building's going to go and how the parking's going to be organized. Right, right. How might that work on this part? The development will not happen in the tiny little neck that goes down below the northern most shopping center building. That's just... Where it's currently paid. Yeah, where it's currently paid. So there's really not room in there to do anything other than maybe some amenities or open space or something of that nature. So the bulk of the development will happen in the fat part of the site. Structured parking? No, it won't be structured parking. No, a project like this wouldn't be able to afford to do that. But we will have to stay out of those. There may have to be a realignment of these utilities before it's all said and done. We understand that could become part of the project. Are you concerned about that slope that would be your, I guess your western boundary? I'm not sure I've got the thing oriented right. Our only concern from a standpoint is we're gonna have to take ownership and figure out how to stabilize it and maintain it. So that is what gives us concern. We will not be developing that slope. And so how tall will your buildings be to get all 78 units? We are not into the building design yet at all. Jamie said that the ordinance allows 55 feet. We didn't wanna commit to anything less just yet because we haven't designed it, but we'll see. I have a question for the staff if I can follow up. You may. With a commitment of 78 units in the development plan, if they discover they need fewer units, are they gonna be trapped in any way or is this an upwards limit? Jamie Sanyak Planning Department. As long as they are consistent with what the future land use designation allows for in terms of density, they should be fine. And so there's a cap at the, it's eight to 20, I believe. So they're asking for eight, so as long as they don't drop below eight units an acre. And they're asking for 15. Correct, they're currently just around 15. They're committing to no more than 15 is the better way to put it. So the only thing I can say is I'm trying to get my head around how that's going to happen back there and whether it's a good thing. I'm not sure I'm convinced. It's a difficult piece of property. It has lots of limitations. That seems like too many units to me. I'm happier with the current future land use designation and wonder whether or not the property could be developed within that. Which one? There's two future land use designations on the property. Well, the residential future land use, I would rather see it go to that rather than to create this pot of medium high. Noted. Yeah, noted. All right, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Miller. Commissioner Satterfield. Yes, also a question for you, sir. As a matter of interest, considering the changing demographic of that neighborhood, as you pointed out, I was just wondering what the price point for the apartments is gonna be considering I read in here that the target audience of the target market is workforce housing. I don't know yet. There's a definition of workforce housing that we pulled down and we told the neighbors that this is what we would be doing. It says workforce housing, teachers, firefighters, police officers, municipal employees, healthcare workers, other essential service workers, need safe housing options within a reasonable distance to their work. So I can't tell you what that price point is yet, but we told the neighbors that that's what we're gonna be working on and that's what we will tell the council as well. And I'm sure the council will have some questions about what exactly that means. So we have a little more homework to do on that. Thank you. Commissioner Brown. Thank you. I also have a question. Let me preface it with a comment. First of all, I agree with the basic premise. I think this would be a nice development if you can get it done because I have concerns about the topography as well. But I also have a concern about the entrance to Lafayette Street. I understand it's difficult looking at it with all the differences and depths and so forth. I just wanted to make a note that the shortest distance from the nearest fire department to this property comes down just the street to Lafayette. Interesting, I didn't know that. And now there are three ways they could get to it. They could go down Chapel Hill and come down a house that's twice as far or they could split the difference and go through the shopping center. But the most direct way to the property is down just as to Lafayette. So I would ask you to keep that in mind as you're planning it further. We will definitely look at that. I mean, more points of entry are obviously, but what we did talk to neighbors about, they reminded us and we know that there's some pedestrian connectivity through the site, both to the lower income apartments to the west. And Jamie mentioned where actually they have an encroachment that we're gonna respect. So they don't have to spend money redoing that. And possibly one or both of those road connections that we've shown could become pedestrian connections instead of road connections. Again, it's all in the spirit of walkability. So good comment, thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Alturk. Thank you, Chair. And thanks Dan for the presentation and wish you a good recovery. Thank you. I agree with you that this is a reasonable request and but there are a couple of things that have given me pause and I wanna follow up on Commissioner Satterfield's comment or question to you about workforce housing. It seems to me like that's a very vague term and there are lots of different answers to what that is. But the other thing you said in your presentation is that this is the next up and coming do-it-yourself neighborhood, I think you called it. And we know that that means that housing is no matter how modest you make the I guess development, it's going to be pretty expensive. And so I guess I'm a little worried that it's not going to end up being workforce housing and aside from actually requiring or committing I guess to some affordable housing units I'm wondering what you could do to make sure that those units are affordable for the long run. Right, right, right. Well, a couple of things we're doing or making sure of these are they're not big grandiose three bedroom units and big apartments they're gonna be more modestly scaled smaller. And I know that's hard to quantify right now and put in as a proffer. That's what we told the neighbors but I think as much as anything all I can say is just like any residential case that we brought before this group in the last two, three years the council will likely have some expectations on what that is having gone through those. Every council person has a different idea of what that expectation is. So if you would let us work with the council and figure out what's going to make them comfortable in terms of some sort of long-term workforce housing design or whatever that element might be then that's what we'd like to do. I can't stand up here tonight and say that X number of the units are gonna be at 80% AMI or 60% AMI or even 100% AMI which believe it or not in Chapel Hill and Carbureaux is becoming one of the more affordable benchmarks. But what I will say is we know the council will have expectations and we're going to work with them. Okay, I guess I'm on the fence on this because I guess we could kick it down the road but I, whatever expression do you use but I guess if you can't commit to something now I'm on the fence about it. I just wanted to let you know before I vote. We won't get to council until January, February and every one of the new council members ran on affordable housing so we're very aware of that. Thank you. You're welcome. Commissioner Gauch and sorry I skipped you earlier. Actually, I don't think I raised my hand the first time but I had a couple of comments, not necessarily questions. I don't know if all of you have had a chance to go out to the site but if you haven't the site is a mess. It doesn't look like a very easy site to develop and I think everyone can recognize that in its location it is an important site that probably ought to be developed. If you look at the zoning map, zoning on the site makes no sense and so I hope we could all agree that it does need to be re-zoned. And if we can then I think the question is whether this is an appropriate use for this parcel and the way I look at it is I think residential makes sense in this area particularly in multifamily. It does act in some ways as a transition. With the future land use map designation that's being requested, I mean this is in our urban tier I'm fully in support of it. We have to start getting more dense if we're gonna have any kind of affordability in Durham. So if we're in the urban tier I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be a medium high density residential. I will also note that they're not even at the top into that range of dwelling units per acre that's allowed in there. They're closer to 15 and that's because of the steep slopes if it was a flat site they'd be more like 13. As far as affordability I think there are some, just to note there are some aspects on the development plan that I think speak to affordability by design I think it's everyone will be more comfortable if there was some sort of proper but these notations at the different difficult connection points that through this UDO section they may try to not do those connections. If they were required to do those connections they would automatically make the site more expensive to develop and therefore it would make the units more expensive to rent. So things like that I think are important to note. I mean this is a difficult site no matter which way it's developed. And I think it has potential for example as a commercial site but I don't know that it makes it good sense for it to become commercial. So in that regard I think I'm generally in support of this they haven't maxed out the density which I think is respectable. Oftentimes we see developers try to cram as many units as they can on a site. I don't think that's what's going on here. I think they have done whatever feasibility study and they have come up with 78 units which just happens to be over the medium density residential. And I think that's probably the only reason they're looking for the flum designation. What the flum map looks like visually when you create a pocket of high density residential or whatever in the middle of commercial and medium density residential that's optics. It doesn't really mean anything at the end of the day this development plan would limit the number of units to a maximum of 78, one and two bedroom apartments. I mean I don't know what we might as well just not have the notation that the medium high density residential flum designation gives you up to 20 units per acre. That's not what they're asking for. I'm going to support this. I think it's important for the city of Durham and in particular this area I hope that it will become workforce housing. I know that term is not defined in any reasonable way but with the council that we have just elected I imagine that we will start to see a lot of movement on affordability issues whether it be a percentage of AMI or this idea of workforce housing. And so I'm confident that the city council will be able to, the new city council will be able to address some of the concerns that people are raising and I hope that you all can find a reason to support this one because I think this is an important case for Durham. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Hyman? Yes, my question is for Mr. Joel if you could I'm always pleased to hear that there've been interactions with the community and the individual seem to have given you quite a bit of feedback. You indicated that eight people attended one of the community meetings. I'm curious about how many more could have attended and the fact that they're not here indicates to me that they were pretty satisfied. Am I reading that correctly? Since none of them are here to object to the project. I think our notification list, good question was several hundred people. Okay. Now keep in mind that a good part of the capture zone was Maplewood Cemetery. Those people did not come to the neighborhood meeting but there's already a good mix of, there's a lot of apartments in this part of town. So we do think that only eight people showed up was just a sign that those are the folks who are interested in what's going on in their community. And it's like I said, nobody said go away, it's bad. They said here's what we'd like you to take care of an address and that's what we tried to do. So thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Commissioner Freeman. Thank you. I would be careful with that assumption. But I want to agree with Mr. Gouche, Commissioner Gouche and that I think that it is a great opportunity for that area. And I would err on the side of Commissioner Alturk and saying that I'm concerned based on what the details look like in this. And I mean, it's kind of it's, it's scary to think that, you know, you're on the edge of gentrification in that neighborhood and you see it very clearly. And then how you address it becomes the, the kind of next steps in that. And I know that there has to be some, a lot of details nailed down in order to do it on the side of council, not on the side of the developer. And so I wouldn't try to hold this against you and moving forward. Great. Thank you. Commissioner Gibbs. I'm stable skater this thing. I appreciate all the comments. And I, I'm sure the designers and the owners have thought of these things in their process. I really feel that this area could use some upgrade. It can be, I think it'll be done well. And when it's, when it is finished with the Lakewood, I'll call it the Lakewood Shopping Center and all the things that are going on around there. It will be a good mix of residences. This is a challenging site, but, and I'm gonna let my design self, former designer self come through. Sometimes a challenging site can yield some pretty interesting development. And I think I would prefer to leave it up to the designers, all of which are, I know, are very good for how they develop this site. It will not be a haphazard thing. And by the time it does get to the city council, they will have something. I think, Dan, you said you'd have something of a little more detail to present. Not so much elevations and all that, but at least a direction that this thing is going in. So I would support this because I think it's needed even though it is challenging. The answer could be very surprising for us. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Miller. I have a question for staff. Remind me how the affordable housing density bonus works. Is that available at time of site plan? It does not have to, Jamie Sanyak Planning Department, it does not have to be committed to at this point. It can be done at any time at the site plan time, it would be fun. But if you avail yourself of the affordable housing density bonus, you are committed then to providing at least a certain percentage of units as affordable housing. It would be accompanied with a commitment, moving forward. You couldn't get the bonus without a commitment, not necessarily in the development plan, but there is in order to get the bonus, you have to commit to some affordable units. That's how that works. All right, that's what I thought. And it doesn't have to be part of the development plan rezoning. We've had, if you recall, Rosewalk that came through last year. They said they may or may not use that when they got ready to develop and that they didn't commit to it on their development plan, but they held that out as an option. All right, thank you very much. So to my colleagues, I am concerned about, we've talked a lot about workforce housing and affordable housing, but there's no commitment. And so it's just talk. I would feel better if this application to adjust the comprehensive plan, the future land use map, was not present here. I mean, to medium high density. If it went to just what's already there, at least covering partial part of the property, six to 12, 12 units an acre for a 5.5 or 5.6 unit, excuse me, 5.6 acre site, would be 66 units. And I would support this whole thing if the request was to make the future land use map in the area stay consistent and not have this five acre change to higher density showing. You would still get 66 units on the property. And if we're going to put affordable units in here, you could avail yourself of the affordable housing density bonus, and then we get committed affordable units. I would like to see this request, both the future land use map change request and the zoning request changed and brought back to conform to that. A more modest request for changing the future land use map and a reworking of the rezoning with regard to the commitments and the number of units. And then I wouldn't insist in the development plan that there be a density, a commitment to affordable housing, but I would like to think in order to reach those extra units that they might be able to do that it would come in the form of the bonus with the bonus allow you to go over what the future land use map allowed. Or I'm sorry, I'm just not as practiced on this as I ought to be. Yeah, and we don't actually, that's applied at the time of site plan. So I'm gonna have to look at the ordinance because I know the basics of it, but I don't know. I know you're only looking at the ordinance to make me feel better and I appreciate it. So the applicability would be at time of site plan or subdivision. Right. So they would get reviewed at that time. There's a minimum, the current ordinance is a requirement of minimum of 15 dwelling units. And it says that the project must commit to providing affordable housing drilling units in the amount of at least 15% of the maximum number of units permitted with the base density. Right, but they could go over the base density. All right, thank you. I would feel much more comfortable if these requests, these companion requests were structured that way to take advantage of the bonus and the community would move forward with committed affordable units rather than conversation about affordable units. I'm becoming fatigued with conversation about affordable units. Thank you. Any other commissioners? Commissioner Gauch? Yeah, I mean, for what it's worth, I didn't take the applicant's comments to mean that they intended to make any, suggest that they were gonna provide affordable housing units in the manner that generally we think of through the conference plan. I think they were talking about workforce housing, which is at this point a very vague term, but I don't know that they were looking at, you know, something that's affordable to someone with 60% AMI or whatever. I just wanna make that, you know, I didn't know that that's what the applicant was. I didn't understand that that's what the applicant was intending on providing affordable housing. And I think they were looking at workforce housing for what it's worth. And I'd invite Mr. Drul if you'd like to make any, any additional comments that come to the microphone. Mr. Drul stands. Any other comments from the commissioners? Yes, Commissioner Bryant. Well, I think we've established that this is not gonna be an easy piece of property to develop. And I heard mentioned earlier that, you know, with regard to some sewer easements and stuff, I don't know whether there are any sewer lines in those easements, but there might have to be some rearranging done. So when you consider that, I think there may be some hidden costs connected with developing this piece of property. And when I think about that, I think it becomes very difficult to request a developer at this time to make commitments to something like affordable housing as much as I'd like to see it. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Bryant. Mr. Chairman. Yes, Mr. Gibbs. Commissioner Gibbs. Neither of these terms to me have not been established affordable housing, workforce housing. In fact, when we get to get right down to a place that's going to cater or be done for as affordable housing, got to determine what group is the target group for a certain affordable housing complex. But I just wanted to interject that. But also I wouldn't want to, as far as this project, it seems challenging enough without having to try to find some place for affordable housing as much as I, if they can find, but I wouldn't want to hamstring them in developing this at least for, and quote, affordable housing, workforce affordable. Again, whatever that means. But I just wanted to throw in there something to be thinking about for the future. How are we defining and how are we going to define each of these two terms? But I still would support giving this a go. If the developer comes up with a great answer for this, fine, if they flop, the city council will certainly catch it and then it'll be up to them to worry with. But for right now, it looks, I can see some potential, but it sure ain't gonna be cheap. But that's all. Thank you, sir. Great, thank you. We have Commissioner Outer and then Commissioner Miller and then I believe we'll be ready to call the question. Just wanted to follow up on Commissioner Miller's comment because I'm not sure that I got exactly what you were proposing, but at least for me, I plan on voting yes to the increase to the change in the future land use map because I think that increased density is generally a good thing for affordable housing. And I also think that it may give the developer some leeway to develop a number of fair market rate units and then also be able to provide affordable housing possibly. So that's at least that's my thinking on this. Great, thank you. Commissioner Miller, you may respond to Commissioner Outer and add your additional comments. Thank you very quickly. Can we show the map of the proposed future land use map change? So if you look at what's proposed, the orange area is medium density residential, which is for much of the residential area around this site. That is the kind of the standard in the area. The request is to make a five acre, five and a half acre exception for a higher density unit area, but then in the development plan and the rezoning to cut that down to less than 20, down to about 15 units an acre. What I would, I think is a more appropriate treatment for multifamily on this property is to change the future land use map for this property to orange like everything around it for residential. That would allow instead of 78 units an acre, 66 units an acre, market units, any kind of units. No, I'm not, and then have a rezoning that would develop the property consistent with that medium density designation, which I think this site can manage. The beauty of our code now is that we have a more realistic affordable housing density bonus. So if they wanted to go to 78 units or some number of units over the 66 unit maximum, they could, but those units, that additional thing over 66 would be committed affordable units for the next however many number of years. In my opinion, that is a better approach to affordability and we spent a lot of time talking about affordability, which isn't committed. I'm looking for giving this developer an option to develop this piece of property as multifamily at 66 units there for the five and a half acres and that if they want to do affordable units, they can take advantage of that density bonus at any time prior to getting their site plan approved. And then we will actually move forward. I do not like talking about affordable housing when there is no path forward for committed affordable housing. There comes a time when we quit talking about the future. Every time we wake up in the morning, it's the present and the present is the time to actually achieve some affordable housing. So I'm going to vote no on this. I would vote yes for a delay to give these developers a chance to change their request to something closer to what I've suggested. Thank you, Commissioner Miller. Yes. Yes, Grace Smith. Staff would like to share a matter of information with the commissioners. So in the current scheme of the commercial flummed property, if they were to develop the commercial area as residential, they could get up to 14 units per acre. So they could almost do what they're doing. There will be short a few because of the residential flum, but they could do that much in that portion of the property now without a change. Mr. Miller. So what you're saying is that with no change to the comprehensive plan at all, they could pretty much do what they wanted. Not exactly. They could get up to 14 units in the commercially flummed part and not the other part. So that would be more constipation of the design of the property because of that additional line running through it. Potentially. Yeah, I'm not a designer, but. It's just more obstacles in the way. I just wanted to share that though. So you would understand that what's allowed currently under the split flum because that is kind of a strange or situation that you're seeing on the flum. Right. So any rate, thank you for that information, but it doesn't change my position. I would support another rezoning and another future land use map change, but not this one and not on the terms that we've discussed here tonight. Thank you. Commissioner Freeman. I just had another question as well, the staff. And you might not know the answer, but I might want to pose it. What would the timeline look like to adjust the current affordable housing density bonus? I know that there are some things in the works to make some changes to the current, the way it currently reads, but I can't give you the timeline because we just, they're just, it's just now in the works. I mean, it could be several months out. Okay. Yeah, but I do know there are some things underway. And then just a quick question, Mr. Danjul, is Mr. Matt, is it Matt Springer here this evening? Is the Matt Springer here? The owner. And I just want to be clear because if it looks like you're talking about doing 78 units of workforce housing completely versus an additional 15 to the 66, I would much rather have the 78 units fully workforce housing and work with Mr. Matt Springer to figure out what that looks like in the future where, however, that might work. If we could get some conversations started now on that and move this forward so that the property is moved or so that the project is moving forward, that would be more beneficial to have the 78 rather than just the 15 units of additional affordability. So I just want to be clear as for the folks that are here. Mr. Drulany, response? Yes, first to Ms. Riemann's point. Yes, the intent is 78 workforce housing units. And that's a, if that's a, I'm on record, that's a commitment that we will make on this project. Also, I've appreciated all the conversation to Mr. Miller's point. Yes, I'm tired of beating around the bush on affordable housing. We've been doing this for four years. We need a policy that developers know is the, it's the standard that everybody needs to achieve instead of these one-off, what can we get out of these guys? They're trying to bring a product to market competitively to everybody else. And it's just, it takes up way too much of your time, the council's time, and our time. And if there's one priority that this new council should have, it is to go ahead and put the staff effort in place that's needed to get an enforceable policy out there. I have sat on steering committee after steering committee. I've spent a lot of time myself. And we need to do that, folks, because this is, none of us likes this. My final point is this though, if we're going to promote vibrant, walkable, bikeable places outside of downtown Durham, I can't think of a better place to do it than this because these people will shop at the food line, they'll go to the restaurants, they'll patronize the businesses, they will help the economic boost that helps make this shopping center, which let's face it has been dead for 20 years, viable, it'll give them a chance. So I'll leave you with that thought. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Joule. And certainly appreciate the verbal commitment for the 78 workforce housing units as well. With that, I would entertain a motion of... Mr. Chair. Mr. Harris. Wait, sorry. I have a question about that. So what does that mean? What does the commitment to the 78 workforce housing units mean? It's the verbal commitment. But what is that? What is 78 workforce housing units? Is that a question? Who would you like to direct the question to? Anyone in this chamber? Jamie Soniak Planning Department. There is no commitment to affordable housing or workforce housing. We don't have a definition for that. So while it's mentioned here at the meeting and hopefully enforceable going forward in terms of some sort of movement, should you guys recommend this and it go to council? We don't have anything in writing to be able to enforce that. Okay, thank you. And for the record, I plan to make a comment in my notes to the council that there was a verbal commitment. This was not a problem, but that it was stated on the record at a public event that the proponent has the intent of making that happen. Any additional? Thank you. Great. Commissioner Harris. Mr. Chair, I'd like to move forward case number A17. Triple zero, quad triple zero, quad triple zero five forward to city council with a favorable recommendation. Second. Second. Properly moved and seconded and moved by commissioner Harris, seconded by commissioner Brian, although it was close. I would ask for a roll call vote, please. Commissioner Alturk. Yes. Commissioner Ghosh. Yes. Commissioner Brian. Yes. Commissioner Siderfield. Yes. Commissioner Harris. Yes. Chair Busby. Yes. Commissioner Hyman. Yes. Commissioner Miller. No. Commissioner Kenchin. Yes. Commissioner Hornbuckle. Yes. Commissioner Van. Yes. Commissioner Gibbs. Yes. Commissioner Freeman. Yes. Motion carries 12 to one. Thank you. I'll also entertain a motion on the zoning request. Mr. Chair, I move case number Z17, triple zero, twy up forward to city council with a favorable recommendation. Second. Properly moved and seconded by commissioner Hyman. And we'll have a roll call vote as well. Commissioner Alturk. Yes. Commissioner Ghosh. Yes. Commissioner Brian. Yes. Commissioner Siderfield. Yes. Commissioner Harris. Yes. Chair Busby. Yes. Commissioner Hyman. Yes. Commissioner Miller. No. Commissioner Kenchin. Yes. Commissioner Hornbuckle. Yes. Commissioner Van. Yes. Commissioner Gibbs. Yes. Commissioner Freeman. No. Motion carries 10 to two. Great. Thank you very much. Sorry. 11 to two. My problem. 11 to two. We'll move to our next case. This is A17, triple zero, one, zero, and Z17, triple zero, two, two. This is the 5220 Wake Forest Highway. And we will start with the staff report. This is Sonjak. Good evening, Jamie Sonjak with the planning department. I will be presenting case number A17, zero, zero, zero, 10, Z17, zero, zero, zero, 22. This is 522 Wake Forest Highway. Before I start, I just wanted to mention in terms of the number of units. The applicant, while it's mentioned in the staff report and the plan, the applicant is proposing 79 units, residential units, not 80, references to the number of units within the report and the plans should be corrected. In addition to that, the applicant was inadvertently referred to as Ms. Hoffman on page one, and that should also be corrected. The applicant is Tim Cybers of Horvath Associates. The property is located within the city's jurisdiction. It's pending annexation. The form request is from low density residential to low-medium density residential. The zoning request is from rural residential to plan development residential 5.362. The site is 14.919 acres, and what is proposed is a multifamily development with 79 units. This is the aerial map, and the property is shown in red. It is located within the suburban tier and within the Neuse River Basin. Residential is the predominant use within the surrounding areas. The Ravenstone Residential Subdivision is located to the south, west, and east, single-family residential homes, about the property on either side, fronting Wake Forest Highway. Directly to the north is vacant agricultural land, and the Ravenstone Commons shopping center is less than a quarter mile to the west. This is the existing conditions map. The subject site fronts Wake Forest Highway, east of the Sharon Road intersection. As you can see, not clearly, but you can see it in the plan. There's a single-family home, barn, garage, and other accessory structures bound currently on the site, all of which are proposed to be removed at the time the development occurred or if the request is approved. The site contains a mix of mature hardwood fars and a wetland area, and there are no other environmental-sensitive features identified. This is the future land use map. On the left is the existing, and the property is designated as low-density residential shown in sort of the orange, light-orange yellowish color. And on the right, the applicant is proposing low-medium density, which would be then consistent with the rezoning request. The rezoning request is from rural residential, which is the yellowish color on the left to the bluish color on the right, which is the planned development residential at a density of four, I'm sorry, at a density of 5.362 units per acre. The property is located within the FJB overlay district. Staff has reviewed this request and found it to be consistent with the requirements of unified development ordinance. The property meets the PDR requirements in terms of density, the maximum impervious coverage, the tree coverage area, and the open space requirements, all of which are shown on this slide. This is the proposed conditions map or the development plan, in addition to what I've just mentioned on the prior slide. The development plan shows the access points, the building and parking envelopes, the tree preservation areas, and the project boundary buffer areas. In terms of a summary of commitments, the development would be proposed as multifamily. A bike lane will be provided along the south side of NC 98. There's improvements to 98 to become a three lane between the shopping center and Hillview Drive, additional transportation related improvements, and associated design and graphic commitments. Staff has found that the proposal in terms of the flam change and its current low density residential is inconsistent and they're seeking a plan amendment to low medium density residential. In terms of the rezoning request, it is consistent with policies 2.1, 3D, 2.2, 2B. It is contiguous with other residential developments and compatible with other surrounding uses. There is sufficient infrastructure in place to support the development. The applicant has offered and proffered several text commitments related to improving traffic conditions. The proposed development is consistent with 8.1, 4D since they're committing to additional asphalt to account for a future bicycle lane, and there is sufficient capacity to accommodate the school children generated from the development. Staff has determined that the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and the applicable policies and ordinances, and I will be happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you very much. At this point, we'd like to open the public hearing. We have three individuals who have signed up and we will start with the one individual who's signed up in favor, and that is Mr. Tim Cybers, and then we have two signed up against the proposal and we'll have those individuals come up next. Mr. Cybers, you have 10 minutes if you'd like to use that full amount of time. Thank you, hopefully that is not the case. Tim Cybers, Horvath Associates, 16 consultant place here in Durham. Thanks to Jamie and the staff members for their further report and working with us to this date. This request in front of you tonight does include a future land use map rezoning and as well as annexation of this parcel. We did hold a neighborhood meeting, the church that is just to the east of this site. May 5th, prior to this submittal, we had about 25 members of the community come out, so it was a pretty good turnout. To the previous question that was asked, I believe, Commissioner Hyman, I believe you asked that, we have found in the past that approximately about 10 to 15% of the neighbors typically come out of the letters. For this neighborhood, there was about 200 to 225 letters and we had about 25 people that attended, so that is one of, that's about typical. Since that, part of that neighborhood meeting I did ask for all email addresses of all the neighbors if they would like to and since then I've been providing updates to them, probably provided three or four emails to them, providing them updates on submittal dates and as well as providing them PDFs of the development plan throughout the development plan process and review that staff has completed. The site in front of you is one parcel, is just under 15 acres, it's located south, I'm sorry, located east of NC 98, the Sharon Road intersection. The site is surrounded by commercial and low density residential land uses and both water and sewer are available at the project limits. The future land use request is a change of the designation from low density residential, which is under four units an acre, to low medium density residential, which is four to eight units an acre. This will provide appropriate transition between the existing commercial and low density residential. It follows existing development patterns in the area, as well as meets multiple of the policies, including 2.3, 0.1A, providing continuous development, 231B, which provides services through annexation, as well as 242B, providing connectivity to existing developments. The rezoning request is to change RR to a PDR 5.3 with a maximum of 79 units. You may notice on the development plan it does indicate 80 units. Staff and I picked up on this within the last 24 hours that it was a calculating error of rounding. So that will be a change. It is a maximum of 79 units. This rezoning will be a complement to the surrounding commercial nodes, as well as the residential subdivision to the south. As staff reviewed some of the commitments include multifamily residential, construction of NC 98 for three lanes from the Hillview to the shopping center to the west. An eastbound right turn lane will be included in that, as well as a additional asphalt for bike lanes. Over the past few weeks, we've had a few conversations with not only some of the members of the board, but some staff members and some original conversations that were and concerns that were brought to us from the neighborhood meeting, one of them being the location of the town homes in retrospect to the, and if I can grab the cursor, in retrospect to the residential homes to the south in Ravenstone. So there's a couple commitments I would like to add tonight. I've reviewed these with staff and they are aware of these as well. One commitment is we'd like to provide, if you can look at the cursor along this area, the southern property lying along Ravenstone, we'd like to provide a 50 foot building setback in here. The rear setback for town homes is 20 feet. So we'd like to more than increase this by double to offset that area from the existing homes. That'll provide approximately 170 feet between any potential town home location to the back of the residential houses now. The backyards of these residential houses, also you can see there's a HOA land in here. So there is some landscape buffering through here. So along with the natural area that is offsite, in addition to this larger setback, believe that'll provide a better buffer and larger distance from house to house's dimension. The second and final commitment we'd like to provide tonight is an increase of this landscape buffer. adjacent to the vacant commercial land. We'd like to double that from a 0.2, seven and a half foot minimum to a 0.4, 20 foot minimum width. And again, that is a long cursor froze. Sorry, there it is. That is along the vacant commercial land along that parcel. As mentioned earlier, this application does also include annexation, the property to the south is, which is Ravenstone subdivision is in the city limits. So this will be an extension of the existing city limits. I'm available if you guys have any questions. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Savers. And just to confirm with staff, staff has indeed received those proffers and has reviewed those. Yes, Jamie Sanyak planning department, that is correct. Both proffers have been reviewed and are acceptable. Great, thank you very much. Again, we have two speakers who signed up to speak against you will have a total of 10 minutes. And if you can come up and give us your name and your address and we will start with Mr. Jonathan Talley. And then we have, I'm sorry, I can't read this. We'll carry Wauke. Wauke, okay. Jonathan Talley, 220 Hillview Drive. So before I get started, I'm no great orator. So bear with me as I read a statement. And hopefully I don't take too much time for the next person. Thank you for your time. And thank you for your service here for the city and the county and the other roles that you serve. I reside at 220 Hillview Drive. The property is noted as a number six on the development plan by Horvath. I've resided here with my family for eight years since 2009. In the past, I've served my community as a board member and in many committee functions for our homeowner's association. Our community of Ravi's Stone Boarders that proposed development, as was mentioned earlier, to the Southeast and West. I'm here today to suggest that we shouldn't move forward with this development at all. But especially not, it is proposed with such high density housing that isn't really contiguous with the other areas. First, Ravi's Stone was established just before the last recession and would become a three phase, 400 site, single family home community, zoned with about quarter acre lots, common areas, green space, clubhouse, those type of things. After the recession, those that remained in the community saw development return to our area with another 100 plus so housing community to the south, the Meadows of Ravenstone. Also planned with similar lot sizes, green space. This development was, this development as proposed would include higher density housing than those homes in my community and in the neighboring developments. Next, the impact of this development would have on our sewer infrastructure, hasn't really been determined and I think is underestimated. In initial meetings with the developer, he stated that there would be sewer upgrades in the new community to handle the new stress on infrastructure. I know that several times a year we already have overflowing manhole covers in our own community. Those drain into our streets, in the stormwater drains and into our creek. This new development would only hinder and hurt that condition. Furthermore, storm runoff also plays a significant role ecologically damaging to our community. Ravenstone has a BMP structure directly adjacent to the southwest border of the proposed development. In reality, it's downstream from that existing body of water in wetland that is slated to be paved over to connect to our community. Environmentally speaking, excuse me, financially this runoff could cause havoc in our community, common area and the pool that is near that BMP. Speaking from experience again, I know that our community has spent tens of thousands of dollars to maintain a function compliant environmentally friendly safe BMP structure. This included dredging tons of silt that accumulated in less than 10 years since community was built at that time. Regardless of the intensity of development at the proposed site, Ravenstone residents will be the ones that must deal with the water silt, wildlife impacts and financial costs downstream. The interest into this new development would be directly off of Highway 98, as was mentioned, and I'm just stepping off the script here. I would not ride a bike on that road now, so I'm fearful of the bike lane. To say that there are traffic issues on the highway would be a drastic understatement. Several hours in the morning and evening are congested from miles in each direction to Highway 70, 98 interchange, as well as almost a wake forced in the other direction. Taking Sharon Road towards Miami Boulevard into the park, RTP bears the same result. I currently drive back roads to my job in Raleigh, Leesville Road to 540 for my commute. This route will be soon overwhelmed with the thousands of homes that are being added from Carolina Arbors and expanding Ryder Creek developments making their way from the South. So what should we do with the proposed land? As has been done in other areas in Durham and is laid out in the city and county comprehensive plan, the ultimate and long-term needs of the community should be addressed, not the short-term concerns of today. If we continue to grow in our area adding higher density housing without the means to support it or with proper parks, transportation and infrastructure sewer roads, we will fail our long-term goals. Packing an additional housing on every plot of land and bottlenecking our transportation corridors will deny any future options for mass transit, greenways or city and county parks without impacting those homes that are already existing. Today in Raymond Stone Community, this is what I find pretty important, there are several tracks of land that are due to the Triangle Greenways Council. There are some of them on the map and some down to the south. They connect and snake their way through undeveloped areas in our community. When our community was initially developed, the intention was that eventually they would connect with other communities providing a similar network of trails and greenways as is found in other parts of Durham, Raleigh, Cary. The proposed development would further landlock these parcels, bottlenecking us in where we can't extend that land and finding some other use for it. So commissioners, I ask you to take a step back from the map, consider our long-term goals. What do we want to make a priority in the residential areas in East Durham? It seems today like early 2000s, we again find ourselves in a period of unprecedented growth, which is a good thing. Growth brings revenue and revenue provides services and recreations to our citizens. However, there must be land to build those future parks, greenways, and recreation fields. My community is quickly finding itself far away and a congested drive to those services in other parts of the city and county. Before recommending any additional higher density housing development on these smaller parcels, please consider reserving this land for future planned city and county services or keeping it rural residential. Thank you, respectfully. And one final comment, I've been to the planning meetings. We have, in my opinion, had quite a good turnout, 25 folks, and everyone that I spoke to has opposition to this. Some of them are here today. And that is all. Thank you, Mr. Talley. Ms. Woke, and apologies if I'm getting your, pronouncing your name wrong. Hi, my name is Carrie Woke. I live at 5602 Dude Ranch Road in Durham. And so I've lived in my house for almost 13 years and I've watched the development creep ever closer. Of course, I chose to live where I live because it was rural. And so I also work in Raleigh and I used to drive down mineral springs and there was meadows there and there were meadow larks. It's a species of bird that lives in meadows. I used to take my daughter to the pumpkin patch at the Ganyard Farm right here, where we're talking about. So with every forest that's destroyed and every farm that's bulldozed, we lose a little bit more of what's making, living in this part of Durham so special and so wonderful. So we have so little left. The developments are just closing in. So we're not only losing the trees and the wildlife in and of themselves, which is a terrible thing, but we're losing our connection to these things. We're becoming more and more distanced from the birds and the turtles and the foxes because we're running them over. They have nowhere to return from migration. So people living and growing up in these areas where nature was destroyed, they're not even gonna know what these animals were or that they used to live there. And that ignorance, with that ignorance comes apathy and with that apathy allows people to do more and more terrible things and things to happen in our world. So I'm against the proposed rezoning. I think that development should be smart and that we should set our wild lands aside for wildlife that we're so rapidly losing. I think we need to concentrate our building efforts closer to downtown and we need to build up, not out. I thought the first proposal was very interesting. I think we need to keep our low density farmland and our forests as they are. For once it's gone, we cannot get it back. So what will happen to our wildlife? It's gone forever. Our landscape is being altered. So we could tear down those houses where the meadowlarks where we could plant the grasses but those meadowlarks will not return. They're gone forever and ever. So let's think about the world that I want my daughter to grow up in. I want the world where there's some native biodiversity. I want her to see the different trees and birds and snakes and lizards and all the different animals that we have that I see it disappearing every single year. There's places on the East Coast that's just subdivision and strip mall and subdivision and strip mall and I don't wanna see this area turn into that. So this is a rural part of the county and I would really like to see it that way and I'd like to see this land be put to a better use than high density residential. So as was proposed, a park or open space, something that with the development that we have now, there's a place for people to go to have that connection to nature. So I really appreciate the opportunity to have my voice heard. So thank you. Thank you, Ms. Woken. For the record, I wish I lived on Dude Ranch Road as well. It is a great name. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak for the public hearing before we close the public hearing? Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing and I'll ask for commissioners with questions or comments. Great, Commissioner AlTurk will start with you. If the other commissioners don't mind keeping your hand up just for a moment. Thank you, Chair. I had a question for Tim or just I guess general comment about this proposal or this application. I mean, the staff report and I think the justification statement says this is a good transition. At least when I look at the map, it looks less like a transition and more like a donut in some ways, right? There is some commercial to the west and a little bit to the east, but there are some properties right around it that are still really low density or under four units an acre. And then to the north, it's all under two units an acre. So I guess I'm a little skeptical that this kind of would constitute contiguous development. And so on that note, I mean, if even if we accept that, you are committing to road improvements and the extra asphalt for the bike lane, but one of the comments that the pedestrian and bicycle and pedestrian advisory commission brought up their comment number two, suggested that you also consider sidewalk along 98 from the site to the shopping center. And again, kind of like the last case, we hear from developers a lot of times, we'll review that at the site plan. And I'm wondering, if you're committing to three lane section here and a bike lane, why not go ahead and commit? Are there reasons that you cannot commit now to also a sidewalk? I think this is not the most walkable part of town, obviously, but there is a shopping center right there. And you do hear a lot about 98 being a very dangerous road. And so I just wanted to bring that up. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, let me speak first on the transition and then I'll talk about the sidewalk along the right way. The transition is, if you think about NC 98 being that highly traveled corridor. North of NC 98, yes. There's a very limited sewer and water to the north of NC 98. And I think NC 98 is that border. Yes, there is the transition between the commercial uses on the end. There is that still that one piece that still has the lower designation. But a lot you've seen, and I can't remember, it's about a little further towards the city, city limit or downtown that there's, some of these recent developments have had residential back off of the NC 98 and more town homes towards it to the front. I believe, again, I can't think to recall the name of the, there's a family, I know there's either family dollar or dollar store or something, right? Along NC 98. What? Ganyard. Oh, it's, I think it's further out in Ganyard. Either way, that's really the transition is going from the lower residential to that higher real busy NC 98 order. I did live in that area, I don't live there anymore, but NC 98 is very well traveled. And to transition into your statement about the sidewalk, even Mr. Talley mentioned, you know, he doesn't want to go on NC 98 before biking. Yes, providing additional asphalt for the bike lane. There are a lot of bicyclists that use NC 98 to travel over to a model branch. But the connection on the side through here, if I was living in this neighborhood and I wanted to travel or walk or bike to the shopping center, as the resident himself said, I wouldn't go on NC 98, I would go through the subdivision around and over to Sharon Road, which connects into the shopping center itself. So between that and there would be additional right away that is needed along NC 98, depending on the design, whether it be a carbon gutter or ditch section along the edge. This, and if I can follow in, I believe this section right in here, there was also was approved for a, what was it, maybe a habitat restore or something like that, which is approved. So there is more sidewalk that's gonna be developed along there. That'll be a requirement of that parcel. But making that connection, I will definitely discuss that with the developers. There is a historic home that is adjacent to it. In the conversations I've had with that homeowner, they would prefer not to have that sidewalk developed, but I will definitely go back and discuss it with the developer and discuss it with that homeowner as well. Mr. Goves. Thank you, Chair Busby. I just wanted to touch on some of the things I heard from the neighbors. One of them was about the stormwater BMP and I understand that you guys have had some difficulty, there you are. I understand that you guys have had some difficulty in your subdivision. However, my understanding of what the stormwater requirements are in Durham is that they're very stringent and that they are among the most stringent in this area, meaning like in the triangle. And to the extent that this property currently contributes to the problems you all face in your stormwater BMP, which is just south of this property, I would expect that new development on the site would actually improve that. There are no stormwater measurements on this site. And so whatever's running off this site is not being treated at all before it gets to yours. And so I think that new development on the site actually has the potential to make that a better situation for you all. I'm sympathetic to a concern raised by you both, which is what can we, what kind of services can we provide to this part of town? And I think a park would be great in this area, but to suggest that this property owner should be the one on whose property where the park should go, I think is a little bit unfair. If someone said that your house ought to be a park instead of a house, I think maybe you could put yourself in that situation. At the end of the day, someone does on this piece of property and I don't know how long they've owned it or whatever, but you have to think about the property owners and the situation and really what their intent or what their situation is. And I don't know, this could be their way to retire or whatever, I don't know. But when you suggest that instead of a subdivision, the whole 15 acres should be a park. I think that can sometimes fall on deaf ears because I don't know that that's a reasonable request. I will note, and I was surprised that I didn't hear some concerns related to the connection. I mean, it's required by the UDO to make that connection into the adjacent subdivision, but I was fully expecting to get some comments on that, but I didn't. And I guess that probably means that everyone understands that it's a requirement rather than they're happy with it. But I did just want to touch on that. We'll say I thought that for this development, I thought there were a lot of road improvements that were being committed to you. So I commend the developer on that. As far as the density, it's, again, it's one of the situations they are asking for a flum amendment, but they're not looking for the top end of that next flum. They're just over the current flum. Kind of begs the question, maybe you could do less or the way I see it is, in my opinion, more density is better because only through density are we gonna be able to get any kind of affordable housing. Affordable housing on half acre lots, it's not possible. So we have to have some sort of density as we develop these vacant areas in the city. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Satterfield. I'll just pick up where he left off just by saying that it's a relatively small parcel and developing parcels like this at a higher density allow us to protect even larger tracks of open space and areas where there are much more significant natural resources. So while I can empathize as well, I just affirm what was just said about that. But my comment really had more to do with the sidewalk issue. I'm very concerned about connectivity with sidewalks and I don't wanna predict where somebody may or may not wanna walk along 98 or take another route to the shopping center. But I think it's short-sighted to plan a development where you're not going to provide connectivity with existing sidewalks along those other parts of the highway 98. So I would like to see a proffer to include a sidewalk along the frontage of 98 for this development. Can't do it off their property. Thank you, Commissioner Satterfield. Commissioner Miller. I have a couple of questions. So the staff report refers to multi-family but the commitments in the development plan talk about townhouses. Is this a townhouse committed development? Do you wanna speak to that? The current intent is a town-home development, yes. So my question is, is it gonna be townhouses or is it, I mean, are we committed to townhouses or could this be apartments? It's not clear to me what the word townhouses as it's used in the commitments actually means. And Jamie Sanyak planning department without the specification between townhomes or apartments, multi-family, and I'll check the definition, but multi-family could infer either. That was my thinking too. Are you committing to townhouses, Tim? Yes, we can commit to townhouses. This is not at all by any means planned to be an apartment complex. No, I would, like I said, I used to live out there in this, as one's mentioned earlier, this is, apartments would not fit here. It doesn't make sense to build apartments here. Yes. Is there some way that you can show the commission members and the people in the audience, the today's proffer of the 50-foot building set back along that southern boundary line? I would like for everybody to see that and take that visual image into consideration and how they decide the case. And while she's working on that, I wanted to point out that kind of in response to what my colleague, Mr. Goche said about what the neighbor's concern about stormwater BMPs and siltation. The current property currently has about, gosh, 4.5% impervious surface based upon my rough calculation. The proposed development will run that up to 50%, maximum 50% impervious surface. The current property does have a large pond, which I'm assuming collects a great deal of the runoff from this property, which has got a lot of topographical variation on it. And so I think it is a reasonable thing to be concerned about what will happen downstream when you jump from 4.5% impervious surface to 50% impervious surface. And then I will also point out too that we approve a great many projects where the impervious surface is much more than 50%. So I can't say that I'm terribly alarmed, but I do wanna say that I think it is premature to project that stormwater runoff conditions in this area will be improved by the development of this property. I certainly can't say that and I wouldn't without more information or more expertise than I currently possess. Can we see that map? So I wanted to ask Mr. Talley, who lives actually, whose house backs up to this development. If this extra 50 feet, which will function as a setback, not as a vegetative buffer, is that correct? It's a building setback. In other words, no building on the subject property will be built closer to the property line than the red line shown there. Does that offer you any solace at all, sir? And if you wanna speak, come to the mic. Yes, thank you. Jonathan Talley, 220 Hill v. Drive. So first off, again my home is the number six on the map and I have neighbors to the left and right of me that are much closer than 50 feet and I don't have a problem with a home being close to me, this setback, I'm not sure what it would look like. If it would be flat surface, if it would be a mound that you normally see on the side of a road with some sort of landscaping on it or if it would just be clear cut grass and weeds that would grow up. So the point of my question to Mr. Silvers is that's a setback, he's not guaranteed that in that area there will be plantings. There is no project boundary buffer in that area because of that area in your subdivision which is designated 15, I believe that's a tree-save area in your area, so with that land there and because his property doesn't actually back up to you, the back of your lot, he's not required to include a project boundary buffer that would have plantings to a certain opacity but he has added this building setback saying that it would be 50 feet on that side, it looks like it's about a light distance on your side for number five and perhaps 75 feet for your lot itself because of the way that that strip gets narrower and narrower. And I was wondering if that's interval in there made you feel a little bit better about at least some aspects of this project. Thank you, yeah, the distance is better than not having distance right now on the majority of that space, there's tree coverage, that's a, as you mentioned, a tree zone and from my experience areas between property lines that are not tree coverage areas but a kind of no man's land, don't get mowed, don't get attended to, there's trash that accumulates there that nobody owns and decides what to do with so if it was something that was woods, that would be better. Yeah, and so if I may, Mr. Chairman, one other kind of thing I've wanted to ask Mr. Sivers after visiting the property and looking between the houses over there, I actually peered up between your back, your side yard and your neighbors when I was on hill view, it looks like the land falls off for a distance and then rises again and the highest point would be that hill which is about elevation 384 which is kind of right in the southern center of your property but it drops down and up and I know that in order to develop this property you anticipate a lot of grading, will the property still, will you grade inside that building set back line? Do you anticipate? Yes, there will be some minor grading. There's, and Jamie, can you assist me with getting back to the existing conditions plan? So you can see some of the elevations that Commissioner Miller was talking about. Let me switch tasks here. Oh, these numbers are better. When I said, pardon me everybody, when I said 380, I meant 360, this is much clearer than the copy we had in our, I believe Mr. Talley said he was owner number six which is right here. So you can see the area behind him is very similar in topography and it falls off back here. So these houses here, for example, are about six to eight foot higher than the land along the property line. The same in this area, these houses actually are actually lower as there's a little bit of an area that comes down through here. So these houses here are about six to eight foot lower than this area and the main reason actually why we brought this additional prop for tonight was really for these houses. Although we're applying it to the entire Southern boundaries really for these houses that are sitting a little bit lower and that may be looking up at the townhomes behind them, even though there is a large natural area back here on parcel of their land and on HOA land, we wanted to push that building set back a little bit further. So these residents weren't looking up the hill at a town home, that is correct. Did you talk with your client about the possibility of extending the project boundary buffer which runs along that eastern limit down into this area we're discussing now? We have not discussed that yet, but I will write that down and discuss that with the developers. And then I have, you and I talked about this and I appreciate the time that you gave me and your responses. As you know, you and I talked about my concern over design functionality and good residential design. And you responded to me saying that your developer client proposes that most of the units will have single bay garage doors. Would you be willing to make a design commitment saying that the majority of the units will only have one bay garage doors? What is your definition of majority, sir? 50% plus one unit. 50% or more? Yeah, I think that's absolutely a commitment that we can provide today. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. You've been very patient. Just, Jamie Sanyak, just to be clear. So the language that you are agreeing to would be something like the majority. No less than 50% of the residential units will have. I would just say the majority. Well, we need some quantification. So majority would be 50 or more, I would assume. 50% plus one is customarily how you define a majority. 51% of the units will have at least one bay. I'm perfect, we'll have no more than a one bay garage door. No more. Nothing, no more garage doors than one bay or something. And just to be clear, Mr. Sivers, this statement, this is the proper year comfortable. Yes, 51% if I understand we do have to put a number on it, yes. And 51%, yeah, no more. At least 51% of the homes will have no more than a one car, one garage door, I guess a single, I believe. Single bay garage. Single bay garage. The terminology now, they don't, technology would only like to use a single car or a double car because of the different sizes of cars now. So we use, it's yes, so yes, that is fine. All right, Ms. Soniek, you've captured that and that's acceptable from staff's perspective for this evening. That's correct. Great, thank you. Thank you very much, Tim, and thank you, stat. Great, Commissioner Horne Buckle. I just have some comments, sir, is as far as like the sidewalk and bike lanes, I wouldn't ride a bike out on that part of Highway 98 if I had to, it's, I think that's just a recipe for a disaster. And I have concerns about the people off of Hillview. You've heard me say before, I was a deputy sheriff and I investigated numerous accidents at Highway 98 in Hillview, Highway 98 in Olive Branch, Highway, that whole section through there. And I just can't see any more, how it can support any more down in there. Even adding a lane down to the Minerals, Sharon, the Sharon Road intersection at the shopping center from six in the morning to, you know, 8.39 o'clock in the evenings up until 7.30, I just have a problem with the additional traffic that'll be created and I just don't think that's gonna be sufficient to handle additional traffic in there. Thank you. Great, thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Van. Okay, that's right. All right, well, first I wanna thank some of my colleagues who've already spoken, let me just note, you know, I've lived out in this area for about 13 years, I was still in Groove Park and know this area like the back of my hand. And I get the idea that, you know, this is among some of the last, what I call virgin territory in that area, I get that. But, you know, I always remind myself though, at the end of the day, you have to always look at what I call the impact, right? And so the impact is, you know, what's the impact on the neighborhood hoods that are adjacent to that property? The impact is certainly on the roads. And for me, like I said, you know, I'm smart enough to delay going to work because I don't wanna deal with traffic and delay leaving work to come home to cause a traffic. And so, you know, traffic to me is a big issue out there and I know among many of the neighbors out there. And so I'm glad, don't get me wrong, I'm glad that you addressed some of the commitments that are here and I'm glad you had about 25 folk at the meetings, but I'll be curious to know in terms of some of the responses that other neighbors had, 25 there and you said you've been emailing them, are there any concerns maybe that you've tried to address with them relative to what concerns that were raised such as ones that were breaking the state early? And if you had, you know, what did you offer? Yes, sir. I have had some email, once those emails have been sent out I've had some email responses from some of the neighbors and some of the issues that were brought up tonight have been made, we're aware of. Traffic is absolutely no matter where we go and Durham always one of the prime items. You've seen that the text commitments that we've provided for, you know, a 79 units now and not 80, but for 79 townhome units financially that is as it was mentioned earlier by the members of the board that is a large amount, it's a large financial commitment on 79 units. In addition, one item I've discussed with some of the neighbors is that I believe it's previously known as Doc Nichols in Sierra over off of Doc Nichols Road. The rezoning that is in there, that plan and that rezoning is required to put a traffic light up on at the out branch and NC 98. That will be a huge help to this area. The other item that I've sent to the neighbors and encourage them to go and make discussions and comment on is the NC 98 corridor plan. I sent the link to the neighbors and said, hey, go check out this plan and make your comments. There's conceptual plans right now for not only Mineral Springs and Sharon, but the NC 98 corridor plan goes from Durham all the way to Wake Forest, a 25, 30 mile stretch there that that NC 98 corridor plan is looking at. So I wanted to make sure that all the neighbors were aware of this and sent that link out to the neighbor in the email as well. I've had some general conversations about the sewer with the city. Recently, I believe it was about six weeks ago, six to eight weeks ago, city council did finally accept the streets. So I take that as the sewer issues have been resolved. The last conversation I had with the city was about probably 10, 12 weeks ago when they were preparing for that. So I will reach back out to the city engineering and discuss some of those items with them because obviously there are still some issues. So we'll discuss that with them as well. The stormwater absolutely will meet, you know, it'll meet UDO requirements, which will, which in my opinion, provide better stormwater relief across the property line. The existing pond that is shown on here is an item I did want to clarify. This pond was drained by the property owner. So this pond does not exist right now. It is a hole in the ground, if you will, before this development was started with us. The pond was drained again by the homeowner. So that itself is not holding any water right now. The water is just simply draining down to the BMP in the Ravenstone subdivision by us collecting all the impervious area that we will be adding to the site and providing a stormwater detention for it. It'll not only slow that water down to the adjacent properties to the south and to the west is where it will drain, but it will help treat those new drains as well. Okay, and thank you very much. And may I ask at least one of the residents who spoke, either of you, who may have an in response back to that, just to be sure. I mean, I know what you said, not the person. Thank you, Richard, Ron. The acceptance of the streets is a very a long discussion, but basically what was done as it happened right in front of my house was that they ripped up about this much pavement and dirt and then paved back over the top of it. So the infrastructure, the sewer, the stormwater drains weren't really touched. We just elevated the pavement so that the street was no longer a river that it drained into the stormwater drain. I had a few other comments if that's all right. So the sidewalk, going back to that, my view on the bike lane is a bit different than a sidewalk. Sidewalk put off of Highway 98 probably would help people in the community if we do go down the road of development. The historic home is pretty well offset from the road. So I'm not sure. I can't speak to that. I have a sidewalk 20 feet in front of my house. So that's my opinion on sidewalks. And then the wetland and there's actually a sewer, a underground sewer pipe, excuse me, not a sewer pipe, a underground stormwater pipe that is between these homes, four and five. So that also drains down and gets quite flooded during storms. You can note the elevation over here near the pond in the wetland. So really, whether the pond was drained or not, there's a lot of water that flows already down here. And then with the additional impervious surface, that's gonna increase that flow quite a bit. And if I can back up all the way to a comment on a park, I understand completely I wouldn't be distraught about someone telling me that I had to give up my home for a city park. I'm not talking about annexation for a park. I'm just trying to throw out other ideas for land use in this area. If you look around, there's no parks in our area. And if we do develop all the land, which I again have no problem, I moved into a suburb, it's partially my fault and everyone else's fault that homes like these are developed, no problem at all. But when you have a resource that is dwindling and we're really cramming in higher density housing into a small parcel of land, maybe not this one, but if we always say no, then there won't be any land left for parks and services for folks around me. So thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Van, any other questions or comments? Thank you very much. All right, thank you. Commissioner Gibbs. Could you come back up to the mic, Mr. Talbot? And I'd ask the commissioners to ask specific questions when you call people up and if the respondents can address those specific questions, that'd be great. Thank you. Well, I'm at least gonna start with you. I'm still a little vague as to how the stormwater runoff situation is in this whole neighborhood, surrounding this proposed new neighborhood, is your area of residence the only area that's experiencing, I'll say, stormwater runoff situations, intolerable situations, or is it pretty much generally, depending on the rainfall, I guess, but just generally a problem in this whole area. Thank you, Commissioner Gibbs. Generally speaking, a lot of the areas in our community have issues. They're separate and have various reasons. One of them was that the fact that the streets were not finished for the majority of the life of this community and stormwater flowed in the same place that cars drove and didn't go into these stormwater collection areas. So eventually we just overflow the curb and go into an area that was not meant to capture stormwater for 10 years. The second issue from my experience on the board, which is not current, but in the past, we spent around $40,000 to $50,000 to bring this BNP up to code, because again, many of you may be familiar with the failed communities in Durham. We had to spend a lot of money on this because it was not built properly or finished by a developer, so the residents paid for this. So that was a stormwater issue, another one that we were dealing with, and I'm not sure if I can scroll on this map, but to the south when I was mentioning the Meadows community, again, I was on the board for when that community came about and we had several homeowners that were saying, their building homes are grading all this silt, all this clay is coming off of where they're grading into our backyards. Personally, I didn't have that. I may in the future, but those are the concerns that I have about stormwater. Yeah, and this is something that I've thought about for four years. Everything that comes up, I think about what impact a development is having as far as stormwater. Of course, all the other infrastructure issues, but stormwater is something, no matter how hard we try to pipe and direct this stuff. Reality and people who live in situations usually tells a different story. Water has a way of finding its way, and in a situation like this, just as a general statement, I think an overall steady stormwater from the existing to and through the new and whatever mitigation can be accomplished, that's fine, but that's just a general statement. And an example of what I'm talking about is that the state has spent millions of dollars down mineral springs over to Valadiel Drive and it still floods. But anyway, that's sort of what I was getting at. I would feel much better if this, the density of this area could be more in keeping with what's there. So I'm gonna give it some thought between now and voting time. I think that's all the comments I have, but thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Gibbs. We've got a few more commissioners, so you have a little more time to honor your decision. We've got Commissioner Bryan and then Commissioner Gosh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll admit, I'm on the fence with this one. I think that the general area is suitable for residential development. I like the idea of a PDR because you can cluster homes and then maybe preserve more trees and some more open space and maybe you'll still have a few birds and foxes and other animals around. What bothers me is the density. I don't see it really as a buffer. I see it surrounded primarily by low density residential and I'd be much happier if it were low density residential. And I guess my question is, is there any way this could be done at the low density residential? Thank you for the question, sir. And financially at four units an acre, the project does not work. Between the open space requirements, the tree save, tree coverage requirements, stormwater quality, those items in particular take probably 30, 35% of the site, if not more, that may be on the conservative side. And the cost of those items in addition to the cost of the road improvements at this time, four units an acre would not financially work for this project. Part of this request is, as was mentioned, also is yes, we're requesting for the future land use to be four to eight, but we're not capping that out. We're trying not to pack these units in here. We're requesting 5.3 something, which is on the lower half of that four to eight units an acre. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Ghosh. Thank you. Two things. One, I want to say thanks. I had forgotten, I had written that down about the, you said there was a problem with the overflowing of the street in your neighborhood, but I think I understand what occurred. It sounds like they changed the grade of the road or sloped it a little bit more so that the water actually runs into the stormwater devices. And hopefully that helps. And I take your point, the streets are recently accepted by the city. So I imagine that is the fix that they worked out. I did have a question for staff the way to the sidewalk. Ciccio has come up a couple of times and I'm just, I mean, I guess you could commit to whatever you wanted to, but generally speaking, my understanding was that where sidewalks are required, the developer will be required to build them along the frontage of their property and that the city wouldn't have any other way to, I don't want to say force, but require a developer to build sidewalk beyond their property. I just want to verify if that's correct. And I think we heard also that there wasn't enough existing right of way along 98 in this section to do the road improvements and a sidewalk. I just want to verify those two things with staff. Jamie Sonyak planning department. I don't want to speak for Mr. Judge, but I sort of asked him the same question that you just asked whether or not with the widening of 98, whether or not sidewalks could be accounted for when they did that improvement. He felt that it's very possible. It depends on the width of the right of way there and it would have to be surveyed and figured out. We don't know what the width of the right of way there. Okay, that's fine. Is that, and here he comes. So he probably has something else to add. Bill Judge, transportation. Yeah, without knowing the exact width of the right of way that's difficult to answer. I have not seen a survey on that property, but in generally speaking, if the right of way is greater than 60 feet, I would think that there probably would be adequate room for three lanes on a sidewalk. Maybe need to do curb and gutter or some aspect of that nature in order to provide the drainage ditch. But the first part of your question, yes, sidewalks are required for the front edge of the site. They would have the option by right to do a payment in lieu along NC 98, assuming it's annexed by the city. I believe the request from the bike ped commission was for that offsite sidewalk section between the site and the shopping center, which would need to be a proffer. Yeah, okay. And do you know, happen to know what that right of way is? Staff was not aware and you guys have surveyed it. I believe it is over 60 feet. Along the front edge, we'll actually, we'll have, and let me just go out here so I can get to the proposed plan. Along the front edge with our right turn lane, we'll actually be four lanes because there'll be a eastbound and westbound lane. There'll be a westbound left turn lane and an eastbound right turn lane. So in this area right here, and not, and to mention tapers as well. So it's actually four, would be four lanes right along our front edge. I will have to go back and research this. If you don't know what the, that's fine. I thought I'd ask the question. I know it came up as an issue a couple of times, but okay, those are the questions I had, I think. Great, thank you. Commissioner Alturk and then I'll entertain a motion. So just, can I follow up on that? So for staff, I mean, is there any harm if the applicant wanted to commit to this? And then they find out that, okay, they can't do it because of right-of-way and four lanes and all that. I mean, there's no harm in proffering, right? Well, it's the same thing as if anything is on a development plan and something then cannot be accounted for at the time of development. They would then have to come back for the modification to the planning commission. Thank you. Great, I would entertain a motion, but I would ask that the motion do include noting the proffers that we've heard this evening as part of the proposal. Mr. Chairman, then, in conformity with your request, I move that we send, let's make sure I get my numbers right here, case A-17-0-0-0-1-0 forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation. And this is the plan amendments. So there are no proffers associated with that. Second. We've properly moved and seconded. And I would ask for a roll call vote, please. Commissioner Alturk. Yes. Commissioner Gouche. Yes. Commissioner Bryan. No. Commissioner Siderfield. Yes. Commissioner Harris. Yes. Chair Busby. No. Commissioner Hyman. Yes. Commissioner Miller. Yes. Commissioner Kenshin. Yes. Commissioner Hornbuckle. No. Commissioner Van. No. Commissioner Gibbs. No. Commissioner Freeman. Yes. Motion carries eight to five. If I may, Mr. Chairman, I move that we send case Z-17-0-0-0-2-2 forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation on condition that the rezoning requests include in the development plan, the proffers we heard tonight, which I will summarize briefly by saying is that the project will be limited to townhouses, that there will be a double width buffer along the western boundary of the property as it joins the shopping center to the west, that there will be a 50-foot building setback on the southern boundary of the property as it was shown to us on the map today. And that the fourth one would be no more than 50% of the units will have more than a single car garage door opening. And then I will also note that there is a correction that the maximum number of units on the site will be 79 and not 80. Properly moved. Do we have a second? Second. Second. Seconded by Commissioner Freeman. Thank you, Commissioner Miller, for the motion. We'll take a roll call vote. Commissioner Alturk. Yes. Commissioner Ghosh. Yes. Commissioner Bryan. No. Commissioner Siderfield. Yes. Commissioner Harris. Yes. Chair Busby. No. Commissioner Hyman. Yes. Commissioner Miller. Yes. Commissioner Kenchin. Yes. Commissioner Hornbuckle. No. Commissioner Van. No. Commissioner Gibbs. No. Commissioner Freeman. Yes. Motion carries eight to five. Great. Thank you very much. We will move to our final public hearing. This is a zoning map change this evening. This is case Z17-00016. And we will have the start with the staff report. He's good for a second. Thank you, Jacob Wiggins with the planning department. This item is for Copley Farm 2. This is a zoning map change request. The applicant is Robert Schunk. This is for property located within the city's jurisdiction. Mr. Schunk is requesting to change the zoning designation of the property from residential role to plan development resolution 3.997. This is a 30.9 acre site which would permit a potential maximum of 123 units. An aerial map highlighting the property in front of you. As you can see, it's highlighted in red. This site is located just to the north of Freeman Road. I mean, it's also located adjacent to the high school. The property is actually, there's actually two pieces. There's a by right component which the applicant has received approval for a subdivision along the street front each closer to Freeman Road. This portion here to the rear, which is highlighted, the applicant is requesting the PDR for that portion. Again, the existing conditions, noting the site. We'll note, you can see area B, maybe a little hard to see on this, excuse me. On this screen here, cursor, yeah, I'll circle the B there. Please note that is not included in this request that area is noted as a potential future right of way for Northern Durham Parkway. The future land use map for this area, the subject site is designated as low density residential which permits four units an acre or less. And that is the predominant future land use in this area. There is some very low density residential located north across Chucky Pie Creek. For the most part, this area is in the low density category. Context map, in regards to zoning as well. It's primarily a mix of RS10, RS20, and RR zoning in this area with a PDR to the north of the subject site. The applicant's request would result in a PDR designation that is contiguous to an adjacent PDR district. As I noted, the applicant is requesting a maximum of 123 units as part of this request with a maximum building height of 35 feet. No specific unit type has been committed to on this request. The proposed conditions. The applicant is requesting a designation of PDR 3.997. On this excerpt from the development plan, you can see the adjoining subdivision to the south that this request would tie into. And also on the sheet, you can see there is the, to the north of the Chucky Pie Creek bounds this property to the north and that future north northern Durham Parkway is located offsite to the west. Comprehensive plan policies reviewed as part of the zoning map change request. There were three key policies, the future land use map, continuous development and infrastructure capacity. Staff found that the request did meet those three policies, as well as all the relevant policies and ordinances and staff generally determines that it is consistent with the comprehensive plan. And I'm happy to answer any questions that the commission may have at this time regarding this request. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wiggins. At this point, we will open the public hearing. We have one speaker signed up to speak for Mr. Robert Schunk. You have 10 minutes if you'd like. Good evening. You just switched this around. Good evening, Chairman Busby and fellow commissioners. My name is Robert Schunk. I reside at 2627 University Drive Rockwood Community Durham. As Mr. Jacob mentioned, this PDR zoning request is part of a larger community that has, we started working on a couple of years ago. The zoning acres of what we're proposing is 31 acres. The original development plan request was for 100 acres. So while the density of what we're requesting is just under four units an acre, the aggregate density of all the development will be two and a half units per acre. As I mentioned, we started this project in about 2015. In the spring of 2016, we came before, I believe we came before you in council to request an annexation. We also had to rezone a little sliver of land on the Southern property. We since submitted a conservation subdivision for 143 single family units. Right now that majority of that property is under construction. Roads and infrastructure going in and homes are slated to go under construction around the first of the year. During the evolution of the design process, Lenar came to us and spoke to us about wanting to maybe build some townhomes on this property. Conservation subdivisions do not allow for townhomes to be constructed. Fortunately, the depth of the unit of the single family units worked well with the depth of the townhome units. So we were able to not have to modify the road layouts and we proposed to do the townhome. So the zoning request for here is to provide the townhomes within this overall community. As part of this community we've done, we've also had to extend, again, this is part of the conservation subdivision, extend 4,000 feet of sewer down through here to take off line of the city of Durham Pump Station. It's irradiated, again, the zoning is 43.9, overall density is 2.5. The zoning consists of single family homes as well, townhomes and a couple semi-attached units. In this layout, the townhomes are gonna be located central to the development in this area here. So there's good buffering along the eastern side to the existing RS-20 and RR homes to the north. Thanks to the Chunky Pipe Creek and then, of course, you've got the high school over here and then Freeman Road to the south. So the townhomes will be insulated to adjacent communities. To the north, one of the PDRs is to the north, that is 3.7 units an acre. There's a PDR just to the east, a few hundred feet where the sewer goes through, that has a PDR density of 2.8 units an acre. Again, so our project does comply with the flume as indicated in the staff report and I'm available for any questions. Thank you very much. Anyone else like to speak who has not signed up? Now we'll close the public comment period and we'll take it to the commissioners. Any commissioners who'd like to ask questions or make comments? Commissioner Freeman. I had a question for staff specific to the, I just wanted to know where we were with it and how far off if it were moving forward or not. What did she ask? So your question is related to the construction schedule for Northern Norm Parkway or the, yeah. So it is a unfunded currently. There's a small portion that is, that was previously constructed through Brightleaf at the Park, residential development and there's been some other right away reserved or dedicated. It is in our adopted long range transportation plan to be complete prior to 2045 currently but we are still trying to obtain state funding for it at this time. Thank you. Any further questions? No. Great, thank you. Commissioner Miller. I quit trolling her. Okay, Commissioner Gibbs. I just wanted to ask Bill, did you say the plan for construction as it stands now is 2045? Well, our long range plan that was just adopted by the MPO or is in the process of being adopted is for our 2045 plan and it calls for it to be constructed in that plan but they write the other than that we don't have any funding identified at this point. Okay, I was just wondering, I got no worries. Charlie, you come pick me up and we'll go for a drive on it. Commissioner Miller. So, as I understand it and I appreciate the time that you spent with me explaining how we were gonna put a PDR in the middle of a conservation subdivision but in this incident, which would give me some trouble as a general concept but as the way you explained it, essentially what you're doing is changing the zoning to provide for the ability to build townhomes instead of single family residential that the conservation subdivision contemplates. That's correct. And that if this rezoning goes through will there be a significant change in density in the overall, in the original conservation subdivision plan? The conservation subdivision was two units an acre. So we'd be going up to two and a half units an acre. For the entire 100 acre parcel. Correct. Is there a commitment in this that says that what you build in this PDR will either be single family homes or townhomes? Yes, the first text commitment does speak to being single family homes, townhomes and semi-attached and the reason semi-attached is there's a couple of units that are a few. And that commitment would let you build a mix of those three types or all of one of them if you chose to. That is correct. Can I ask you something we talked about? You were in the room when Mr. Sivers made a commitment with regard to garage doors. Would you make a similar commitment for the townhome portion of this if you build townhomes? Yes, we would be willing to commit that a major 51% or more of the townhomes would be single bay garage doors. And I'll work with staff and to confirm that the language meets that expectation. Okay, so thank you, those are my questions. I actually kind of like this project so I'm gonna be voting for it. Thank you, Commissioner Miller. Commissioner Goesch. Yeah, thank you. I just had a couple, well, one question. I think with the conservation subdivision you have some open space requirements that I just wanna make sure that with this change you would be meeting that same, not usurping the original open space requirement that would have been required. That's correct. So as part of the zoning application we provided staff a site plan that showed that the conservation subdivision still meets the requirements of open space. Okay, thank you. And yeah, I wanna say, I don't know how many of you were on the council when Becky Winder's was here but this project kind of reminds me of something that she would be really interested in. A mix of housing types which ultimately will lead to a mix of incomes living in the same neighborhood, accessing what I understand to be the same amenities, clubhouse or whatever they may be. And I think we need more of that in Durham and I think this is a good project. I'll be supporting it. Thank you. Yes, Commissioner Kenchin. I have a question I think for Mr. Judd. This proposed development is very close to Southern High School and I notice it's quite a few students up and down their road all the time. And I guess for the developer also, I wanna hear more about what kind of improvements are gonna be planned for that area considering that it's a pretty high traffic area around the school day for Southern High School students. Yes, good evening. So, and it'd be clear too when we did provide a traffic impact analysis for this project, we did provide it for the entirety of the development of the community. So it wasn't just focused on the zoning. We looked at the cumulative impacts. Our traffic engineer did provide a TIA. Recommendations for improvements were made, were provided for both intersections to the project. And then a three lane section would go through the next intersection to the right. Sort of off screen here. So there's a road called Valmet here. So we'll be doing a three lane widening here and then it tapers. That TIA was submitted to both the NC DOT and the city DOT and they, those both departments concurred with the recommendations by the traffic engineer. And has your question to staff? No, that was, I think that was, he answered it for Mr. Jett. Any other questions or comments? Commissioner Freeman? Just a question based on the comment that Commissioner Amir Kenchen made. Is it possible to have a proffer of an additional 500 per student for a contribution to Durham Public Schools? Yeah, can you repeat the question? I'm sorry. So it's currently set at 500 per student. Is there a possible to have it at 1,000 as opposed to the 500? I would probably like to reserve that for when we get to city council. Thank you. If there aren't any other questions or comments, I would entertain a motion. Mr. Chair, I'll entertain the motion that case Z170016 move to city council with a favorable recommendation. Second. Great, moved. I was a close one. Moved by Commissioner Hornbuckle, seconded by Commissioner Brine. And I would note that that would include the proffer that was accepted, offered and accepted as well. We will just, all those in favor, just please raise your right hand. Any opposed? Motion passes 13 to zero. Great, thank you very much. Thank you, good evening. We have one final piece of new business for this evening, Ms. Smith. Yes, if a staff would ask that you approve the 2018 meeting schedule as presented unless you have some reason to make adjustments. We can always make adjustments throughout the, during the year if we need to. But we did look at the schedule and we'd take into account holidays and other important days during the year that might be of conflict. And this keeps us on our regular schedule. It does. And I noticed that in February it will not be on Valentine's Day as it was this year. Oh, sure. We've had that before, I know. Yeah. Sorry. Any questions or comments? Do we have to vote on? Yeah. Can we also take some time to congratulate Ms. Freeman? Yes, we will do that next. All right, thank you. Do we need a motion to approve these? Yes, okay. So moved. Second. Moved by Commissioner Brine, seconded by Commissioner Miller. All those in favor, please raise your right hand. Excellent. I will say there was a point in this meeting I thought we'd be here until 2045 when the highway got built. But we started moving things forward. Before we do wrap up, I would like to congratulate and say best of luck to our commissioner Freeman who has been elected to city council. So when we see her next, she will be councilwoman Freeman. I did ask if she'd be willing to join us. She won't come back down here and see us. She said she will know how to get here. And she will join us so we can officially honor her with a proclamation at next month's meeting. I did want to open it up for any of my fellow commissioners to offer any statements. And Commissioner Freeman would certainly welcome you to have the microphone as well. You've been a joy to work with. We appreciate your passion, your commitment to Durham. You're a steadfast, raising the right questions. And I certainly hope you'll read our comments when we send them forward to city council. Congratulations and thank you for your service here on the planning commission. Thank you. I want to say that I will probably want a few who will read every comment because those comments are very valuable to keeping the amount of time I have to spend on a case. Pretty much economy of scales it shortens that timeframe. I also would like to thank you all for being very thoughtful in all these cases. And over time I've seen how, you know, the conversation has shifted and I appreciate that. It does give some credence to the work that lies ahead in trying to figure out how affordable housing will shape up in here in Durham. I'm excited about what lives next and how we move forward. And I want to acknowledge that I noted that in that one case around further East Durham there were five votes against it. And I think that says a lot because I know that there's some missing work or some work that lies ahead in trying to figure out how to plan for the rural areas that are becoming suburban and quickly moving towards urban because they're in city limits. I really hope that you all will be mindful of how the rural areas are transitioning over and keeping that in mind as we move forward. And I'd open the floor, Commissioner Miller. Yes, it's been a great joy to work with. I can call it Deidreana today in December. It'll be Ms. Freeman. But I'm so glad that for your service here and I look forward to having you being the council's zoning sensitive council member in the future. Thank you. Mr. Goche. Yeah, I want to extend my congratulations to you on a very well run campaign. Obviously overcoming the incumbent is no small feat. And so you should be very proud of yourself. I also want to thank you for your time not only on this commission, but just in terms generally, I know you've had a lot of supporters from all over the city. And I think that speaks volumes to the support you have from the city and the type of work that you'll be able to do on city council. And I wish you the best of luck in that endeavor. I think your time here on the council has been invaluable and hopefully you'll read our comments. Mr. Van. Yeah, I'll just say to Commissioner Freeman that I'm sure just as she has added fuel to the fire here in terms of the work that has to go on, I know I'm very confident she'll do the same on the city council. So we say congratulations to you again. Thank you. Yes, commissioner. I would just like to say that, so that commissioner Freeman has proved that she was on this body. One of the things that we neglected to do was to take a group picture. So I would certainly hope that before we leave this evening that we can gather as a group. So there is a photograph that includes commissioner Freeman. Look at Ms. Hyman trying to get a photo up with the council. Look, we were supposed to have a group. I think it was good. Well, we'll have a motion to approve purchase of a selfie stick in a moment. Mr. Harris. Staff has a city issued iPad. We can take care of the photo. Thank you. Thank you, commissioner. Mr. DeGrawna, I'd like to congratulate you. And I remember when you first came here and you came to the inter-neighbourhood council meetings with the lap baby and then the baby running around on the tables and everything. But you're steadfastness and you're willing to stick it out. I really appreciate you for being you. Thank you. Don't make me cry. And for our viewer or viewers, if I may be optimistic at home, that also means there will be an opening on the Durham Planning Commission. So we hope that you will consider applying. We always are looking for more thoughtful, committed citizens who are willing to be a part of this democratic process. So with that, I will adjourn. Oh. If I could just make a plug that we actually get some female applicants would be great as well. I know that we lost quite a few. That's true. Quite a matter of point. Mr. Chairman, before we adjourn, I actually have a proposal for a future, as a future agenda item. And this is not something that we've done while I have been on the Planning Commission is a commission initiated change to the Comprehensive Plan. I passed out to you and I will give the staff one too, since it's not an immediate item, a proposal that I have that's in response to conversation I've had with two developers in the last few months. And it's something I think is going to occur more frequently. But the developer that I spoke with just yesterday explained that there was a case that they're working on with a neighborhood. The property in question is substantially taken up by a jurisdictional stream. The buildable portion of the property is small. They feel constrained by the, not only the future land use map, but also by the text of the Comprehensive Plan to put a certain minimum number of units in there because of the designation that it makes everybody uncomfortable and unhappy. In other words, cramming, even though the property is a certain size, cramming all the minimum number of units that the Comprehensive Plan expects onto the buildable portion of the properties is essentially driving the developer and the neighborhood into a collision that isn't necessarily required. And I said, well, why don't you just change the future land use map? And they pointed out that you could change the future land use map, but they still have the table in the Comprehensive Plan that sets a floor at the lower unit limit. So I played around with that a little bit over the last couple of days and thought that perhaps a safety valve in the Comprehensive Plan policies that recognized that when we have these properties which have not been developed over time and have been whittled away so that all that's left is unbuildable land that we need to have some way of building the buildable parts without having to change the text of the Comprehensive Plan. So I don't know what the procedure would be for getting this on our agenda to discuss, but I thought the way to start was lay it before you today. So that's the first thing that I wanted to mention and would be advised by staff on that. And the second thing is I think it's also appropriate as we note that Commissioner Freeman is going to ascend to the lofty heights of the city council that we also have in the room with us today, a candidate for council on this last election, Mr. John Rooks, Jr. And if it's appropriate, Mr. Chairman, at least on my own part, I would like to thank him for his desire to serve the people of the city of Durham. It is appropriate. Thank you very much. Thank you. Commissioner Gibbs. Well, it's only appropriate that I get to say a word or two about my seatmate here. I appreciate the words and the sentiments from everybody and that goes for me too, Dutriana. And I do wish you the best. I know you'll be one of the hardest working members of the city council. You have proven that time and time again here. I really have enjoyed our conversations. I have learned a lot. And I told somebody near and dear to you today that we do need new blood. And I think I think we're on the right track now to all of us old fogies can leave it to in good hands. Don't leave it, you know, it's still needed. But that's all. Thank you so much, Dutriana. Great, thank you. And one final thing actually was pointed out that we never did officially vote for an excused absence for Commissioner Johnson. So let us do that before we adjourn for the evening. I move the excused absence. Second. Great, all those in favor, please raise your right hand as a unanimous vote. And with that, we will adjourn for photo time. Thank you, everybody.