 right before. 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 elected officials have the final say on any issue before us tonight. If you wish to speak on an agenda item tonight, please go to the table to my left and sign up to speak. For those of you who wish to speak, please state your name and your address clearly when you come to the podium. Please speak clearly and into the microphone. Each side, those speaking in favor of an item and those speaking in opposition to an item will have 10 minutes to present for each side. The time will be divided among all persons wishing to speak. Finally, all motions are stated in the affirmative. So if a motion fails or ties, the recommendation is for denial. I do want to also add that this is being broadcast on Spectrum, AT&T, Uverse, Frontier, Google Fiber. It is also streamed on the city's YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. Needless to say, we are live. Thank you. Roll call, please. Mr. Williams? Here. Commissioner Morgan is excused. Requesting excused. Mr. Johnson? Present. Mr. Brine? Here. Mr. Durkin? Here. Commissioner Alturk? Here. Vice Chair Busby? Here. Chair Hyman? Present. Commissioner Miller? Here. Commissioner Ketchum? Here. Mr. Santiago? Here. Commissioner Baker? Here. Commissioner Loe? Present. Commissioner MacGyver? Here. Thank you. Madam Chair? Yes. I move an excused absence for Commissioner Morgan. Second. Thank you. It has been moved and properly seconded that Commissioner Morgan be granted an excused absence motion by Commissioner Brine and seconded by Commissioner Johnson. All in favor of this action, let it be known by raising your right hand. The next item, the approval of the minutes and consistency statement for the October 15 minutes. I'd like to recognize Commissioner Brine. Madam Chair, I have a correction to the minutes on page three. The top of the page, this is the motion regarding the Olive Branch Road case. I think it should say recommend the approval of case Z1A0015 with two additional committed elements because applicant did offer us two committed elements during the public hearing. Thank you. Then I can, if those adjustments can be made, I'd like to request a motion to approve Commissioner Miller. Would you like to be recognized? Yes, please. Okay. So I'm a little confused about the Olive Branch Road motion action records in the minutes. So in the future land use amendment, it says Morgan, Durkin, Santiago, Baker, Loeb, and MacArthur voted no. I voted no. Are you, I'm sorry, are you speaking of Olive Branch or the flum, the four seals? Okay, I'm sorry. I am, I've got myself mixed up. Okay, so we're good on that? Okay. Everything's fine. Okay, thank you. Okay, I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes and consistency statement from October 15, 2019 with adjustments as presented. So moved. Second. Okay, motion by, motion by Commissioner Bryant and second by, okay, Commissioner Altur, it's like we'll get this together. All in favor of this motion, let it be known by raising your right hand, please. Adjustments to the agenda. Good evening, Grace Smith with the Planning Department. The staff would like to add one item under new business. It should only take a moment. We need to have the Commission review an amended meeting scheduled for 2020. We had a conflict for this room for the September date. So we need to push our meeting out one week. City Council is actually going to need this room, the date that we thought we would use this room. So we're not going to be bumping City Council out of their chambers. And so when the appropriate time later in the evening, I would like to review that and have that approved. Mr. Miller. I'm chair. Yes, since we've just discussed it, I move that we adjust our adopted meeting schedule for 2020 by moving the scheduled meeting date for the September meeting back to one week later to the Tuesday following the currently scheduled Tuesday. Thank you. Motion by Commissioner Miller. Second by Commissioner Brine. That means we make the appropriate adjustment as presented. All in favor of this action, let it be known by raising your right hand. Okay. So there's no need for us to add. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. One last thing. Staff would like to affirm for the record that all notice requirements were carried out in accordance with state and local law and those affidavits are all filed in the planning department. Thank you. Okay. So it looks like we have no adjustments to the agenda. So we can move to the next item, which is our public hearing. I don't have the signup sheets, please. Madam Chair, while we're getting the signup sheets, too, I'd just like to move approval of the agenda as presented. Thank you, Commissioner Brine. All motion by Commissioner Brine and second by Commissioner Altur that we then approve the agenda as presented. All in favor of this motion, let it be known by raising your right hand. All opposed. Okay. All right. Now we're ready for the staff report and the first item. Good evening. I'm like others for the planning department. I will now present case C19 0004 600 North Roxbro. The case summary should be showing up on the screen shortly. The applicant is Tim Syvers with Horvath Associates. This 0.707 acre site is located at 600 North Roxbro Street and is located within the city limits. The applicant proposes to change the zoning from residential urban multi-family to residential urban multi-family with a development plan in order to increase the allowable density. The proposed property is designated medium high density residential on the future land use map, which is consistent with the zoning request. The proposal consists of a maximum of 14 multi-family residential units using a permanent housing type. The aerial map here shows the site in red at the corner of North Roxbro Street and Mallard Avenue in the urban development tier. The property previously contained a one-story building and service parking used for place of worship. The structure has recently been demolished. A site plan has been recently approved for eight multi-family units using the apartment housing type. The site is adjacent to the downtown development tier to the south. The Cleveland Historic District to the west and Holloway Historic District to the east. The surrounding area includes a mix of single family houses, duplexes, triplexes, apartment buildings, and proposed townhouses. The site is presently zoned residential urban multi-family. The applicant proposes to keep this designation but add a development plan making it RUMD. Changing the zoning to allow the additional density is permitted by UDO section 641. The future land use map here shows that the property is designated medium high density on the future land use map which is consistent with the rezoning request. The development plan provides site access points, building and parking envelopes, project boundary buffers, and maximum impervious surface limits. Key commitments include a maximum of 14 multi-family units utilizing the apartment housing type, transit improvements as required at the time of site plan, and design commitments including brick ended sidewalks. The proposed RUMD zoning designation complies with the current medium high density residential designation on the future land use map and applicable policies. It is consistent with policy 212D, 231A, 232A, and 1111A. Staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other policies and ordinances and staff is available for any questions. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to go at this time open the public hearing. I do have two individuals who have signed up to speak. The first name is Tim Cybers followed by James Bradford. Thank you, Madam Chair. Tim Cybers with 4Vet Associates. Thank you Emily for your report and your work on this project. As Emily mentioned this request in front of you is for a rezoning from RUM which allows the 12 units per acre to RUMD for a maximum of 20 units per acre. Section 641 of the ordinance requires that in excess of the 12 units per acre a development plan is approved and that maximum is the 20 units per acre. The project area is just under three quarters of a site, 0.7 acres, allows eight units as it currently sits and this request is to increase it to a 14 units, a total of six units for the increase. We did hold a voluntary neighborhood meeting for this project. It was held on September 23rd at the Durham Convention Center. We did have two neighbors show up. There were a couple other neighbors that reached out to me that were not able to be in attendance. Both the neighbors that did show up that was a couple so it was one owner as well as the adjacent properties owners that reached out to me were all in a approval of the project. The development plan illustrates commitments to bus stops, architectural design elements, landscape buffers, building and parking setbacks, 70% impervious area, maximum of 14 units, as well as access points on both Roxborough and Mallard Avenue. The plan also commits to upgrading the sidewalks and constructing brick banding along portions of the sidewalk. In addition to these commitments that are on the development plan, I'd like to provide some additional commitments tonight and planning, I've sent these to planning and they have reviewed these as well. Prior to the issuance of a certificate of occupancy, providing one-time $1,500 contribution to the Durham Public Schools, second one would be prior to issuance of a CO, providing one-time $1,400 contribution to the Durham Affordable Housing Fund. I did have a chance to meet with a few of you and I appreciate the time that you took out of your schedule to meet with me. I'm sorry I couldn't get to all of you but if you guys do have any questions, I'm available for further questions as well as the developers here tonight too. Thank you. Mr. James Bradford. Good evening. James Bradford, 7616 Herndon Road. My partner and I, we own the project adjacent to this project. The townhomes, Elliott Square. We met the developer some months ago and would just like to support their project. Are there any other individuals who would like to speak on the 600 North Roxborough project? If not, I'm going to close the public hearing and give our commissioners an opportunity to ask questions. I'm going to start with Commissioner Baker would like to make a statement at this time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to let everyone know, disclosed that I live across the street but I am a renter and so I did not receive a letter and my landlord did and so I did check with staff and make sure that there aren't that there is no reason that I should be up here voting and they did confirm that I should be up here and should take a vote. Thank you. Thank you. It was determined that a recusal was not necessary for Commissioner Baker and we wanted to basically state that from the beginning. Transparency. Thank you. Now do I have commissioners who would like to speak to this issue? I'm going to start with Commissioner Brine and Commissioner Durkin. Thank you. This is a question for staff. There are commitments to not mass grade and to not clear cut which normally I'd be excited about except on this particular site. I'm not sure they have a whole lot of meaning but my understanding is that this enables the applicant to be exempt from the required tree coverage. Is that correct? That's correct. The required tree coverage does not apply provided that forceful means to verify those elements are provided and so they're doing that by way of the text commitment. Okay thank you. Just personally for the applicant I would defer to have seen the tree coverage. Another question and either staff or the applicant can answer this but could we have used the affordable housing density bonus on this? We're starting with 12 units do 15 percent you get 1.8 which I'm hoping we could round up to two you get 14 units but two of them would be affordable and to me having some affordable housing in this location so close to the downtown tier would be very desirable so what could have been used? The affordable housing density bonus is allowable in this area I can't speak to if the applicant intends on using that or not. Okay well then the question comes to the applicant. No so we're not going to use that density at that density of bonuses this time so that's why we came through the rezoning process to increase Okay well let me look at this from a different perspective as you'll say at the microphone how many dwelling units will be in each apartment building? So there's I'm not committing to a number of buildings there would be either one or two buildings a total of 14 units yeah right now we have a site plan as as staff said that has an approval for eight eight units in that building so we may increase that to a total of 12 units and provide another building with with larger units or we provide a second building that'll have a total of the six units that we're here for tonight request. Okay would you consider making any of the dwellings in these buildings affordable? Not at this time sir. Why not? It comes down to the the the goal that this client is trying to reach and the intended targets are these are going to be high-end condos so those those those locations of those should be down in the in the closer to the downtown tier I understand your request but right here we're directly adjacent to downtown tier but we're looking for the the higher-end condos in this area. Well you see we just passed a 95 million dollar bond and part of the reasoning behind that is the difference between Fair Market Dave and affordable housing was recognized so that that difference could be made up from some of this bond money once the city figures out how they're going to administer everything so it seems to me you're not going to lose any money if you put in a few units of affordable housing. I understand that sir but you hit the nail on the head there until the city figures that out it's not been not been fully figured out yet I will discuss this with my clients but for right now I'd like to proceed with as is thank you for to add on to commissioner Brian's questions I do have a question for staff related to this so if this rezoning was approved to allow for 14 dwelling units could they then also use affordable housing density bonus to further increase that number did you say that one more time so we're rezoning to 14 would they have the option of using the affordable housing density bonus and going above 14 yes so then going back to the applicant then that we would I personally would prefer that that was considered I think $1400 for an affordable housing program in lieu of adding actual affordable units is really it's not comparable and really not sufficient to a location that's so close to downtown if you wanted to respond to that with the option of increasing the units then be happy to hear what you have to say I want to clarify I think it is what you asked but I think I just want to clarify it so it's it's clear to the audience as well that the affordable housing density bonus can be added on following the rezoning so it's done by right they can do it on top of what is permitted by this proposed rezoning okay great thank you yes Tim cybers again Horvath associates we'll look at that I had a 30 second conversation if that along with the client we'll take a look at that as a as an addition to the 14 units tonight is for an increase in the 14 but but we'll take take a look at if that density is approved or is requested to go above the 14 we'll take a look at see if the affordable housing is possible okay I mean for me right now given your response to the prior questions I'm I know until that answer is resolved because just having that as an open thing doesn't you're not committing to anything which I understand yes thank you are the other commissioners from our right commissioner johnson thank you chair commissioner okay question for the applicant thank you you mentioned that these are intended to be high high and um residents do you have a price point that you're uh targeting for these these townhomes they'll be similar to the lh square across the street which has been approved now which is in the 300 range 300 000 has so the lh square are you familiar with so it's it's been programmed I was on the impression that that price point was actually higher than 300 000 dollars I I'm not involved with that project it may be higher than that but it'll be it'll be equivalent to that project right right okay per square foot right so it's okay so it's going to be some price right yes okay commissioner al turk yes thank you chair I'll just echo what commissioner brine and commissioner dirken and said I think this is a parcel that is adjacent to a national historic district a local historic district and in an area that's you know already gentrified already seen skyrocket housing prices and I and I think you know adding six units or adding 14 units total is not enough to to it's not the kind of supply that we need to really reduce the long-term kind of affordability issue that we have in Durham and I think a real commitment would be the way to go so I'm also you know leaning toward voting no unless I hear you know from my other commissioners on something convincing to sway me another way so thank you thank you commissioner miller so I have a question for staff visiting again the availability of the affordable housing density bonus if this rezoning is passed this is a fairly small site it's only uh recorders of an acre uh we're putting 14 units on it I'm assuming that to do that we're going to build a probably four or five story building it's going to sit on half podium parking doesn't have to but I'm assuming that that's with in order to get all those units in there there's a volume that is associated with rum and I'm assuming that to get these 14 units in there on so small site we're going to use up all the available volume assuming that that's what's going to happen will that constrain the ability of the applicant to add affordable units even if the density bonus would allow it in other words with the density bonus are there is there relief from the dimension requirements that would be imposed without affordable units they would still need to meet the dimensional standards uh regardless so they wouldn't be able to go up a floor and add in order to add affordable units if they were already at the maximum height uh they are allowed to sorry I think I let me check the ordinance before I speak next time uh let's see looking at the height here it says when the affordable housing density bonus is utilized an additional 15 feet of height shall be allowed so they would get essentially one residential level correct all right very good that helps a lot um my concern with the project quite frankly has to do with its design and I've discussed this with the developer it's been very patient with me one way to build these this building or buildings is to and I believe the most likely way is to locate the residential dwelling units uh up one level uh on top of the parking podium which means that the Roxburgh Street facade of the building would essentially be parking and I don't want to have a major corridor lined with buildings not that this is necessarily going to represent a trend but let's face it these buildings just like this one are growing up all I can't even keep track of the first one or two or novelties now they're springing up everywhere I can I I'm beginning to lose my my mental image of what this part of town looks like because of the changes um so I would like for there to be some sort of human scale architectural feature at the ground level on facing Roxburgh Street um so that people who are either used to building drive past the building walk past the building have something that indicates that this is uh that this is people's space um that isn't all located above um and I think that some of the buildings uh like the building I anticipate will be built here don't really advertise their scale that without a tree or a person standing next to them you don't know whether they're two stories or ten stories and I think that's bad design and bad architecture and I think in the development plan process that we have with this rezoning we can if the developer is willing to commit to it introduce some sort of human scale architectural features at the street level and so I'm going to ask uh publicly the the developer if they would be willing to work with staff between now and the time the council comes along to add a committed element that um that and the one I'm thinking about is is that a prominent entryway one that would be framed uh located on Roxburgh Street at least one for each building um be there so that the people who walk past on the sidewalk will realize that this is a building for people and and it's they're not all located above um and I think that will I think it's too much to expect them to you know to put their windows and all those kind of things but um but something like that to say this is the scale of the building it's a human occupied building and it and it engages the street we're not we're not putting people up above the street um even though that's probably what will happen on the inside and I was wondering if you would be willing to work with the staff to include something like that um for this project Tim Sifers from our association yes absolutely um we can uh and you did hand me this I think this is fine I'd like to go review this from the architect who's not here tonight but yeah absolutely I think you know the human scale uh something on the human scale to bring that down to on the first floor of both building well I'm assuming you're going to have doors anyway that's exactly correct there's going to be doors of dressing those doors up a little bit so that they they show that they're not hidden that's thank you um and if I imagine staff will have some comments on that and then I'd also like to follow back on the affordable housing comment at if possible yeah because it's a fairly small request if you're willing to do it I don't see any reason to delay the project if your your assurance is sufficient for me and so with that I'm going to vote in favor of this one however I have to say it would be lovely to have a couple of affordable units for a project this small I'm not going to the system uh I'm going to recognize the staff at this time thank you I just wanted to confirm that staff is comfortable working with the applicant um on that text comment you've um indicated thank you thank you uh commissioner vaker I wanted to echo my fellow commissioners uh in particular the commissioners that are concerned about affordable housing and how important that is and uh wanting to promote that in this project and in other projects um I also commend the applicant just now for making a commitment uh to uh foster a human scale on the ground floor that's incredibly important um and if there were to be only parking or only a brick wall on the frontage um that would be very concerning um I also had one quick question actually for transportation and this is uh this relates to this project but it's a little bit higher level as well um I've um had the privilege of uh of meeting with the applicant and going over some of the site plan uh and you mentioned that um North Carolina Department transportation transportation makes it very difficult or impossible to put street trees in the right way is that is that true or is it difficult is it does ncdot not allow street trees in the right of way early thomas transportation um can speak directly to what their policy is um I do know I will say that it becomes a maintenance issue for them so it just depends on what what those plantings um and types of things are proposed do we tend to ask for street trees uh with the ncdot um I know our ordinance requires it like in the downtown areas and the dot has allowed those things um outside of that I'm not certain what their policy is okay thank you that's all okay commissioner baker um uh ministers cybers wanted to respond to your affordable housing uh comments so I'm going to let him speak at this time thank you chair um after discussion we'll further with the applicant we would like to provide uh if we do go for the affordable housing uh density bonus those would be affordable housing units so anything um above that 14 would then be an affordable housing unit is that if that we have to review that with staff from final text commitment but um we would have to work with um the applicant between down to the council to exactly get that wording nailed down and make sure it's legal and enforceable I'm not exactly sure what your proposing so if we're going to work with you on the architectural design commitment it's better I'd rather you not profit those things tonight um and try us to work those out at the mic because we would ask for continuance here but we do have time between now and council to go back and try to meet with the applicant to do that between now and council but we would not be able to work that out tonight I don't believe okay which is fine the chair recognizes thank you the chair recognizes commissioner Durkin and then commissioner um Miller and then commissioner buzzway just going back to what the applicant just said at my concern is not an if because based on the number if we're permitting 14 anything above 14 would have to be affordable because you'd have to comply with the density bonus if you're going above 14 so an if doesn't really get us where I would like us to go because I would like a commitment not just a just an if and then one point of clarification in the staff report it refers to apartment units which to me means rental but in the response to the question about price you mentioned for sale prices so can you clarify whether this is a rental project or a for sale condo project this is a for sale project okay sorry I don't know if I was for sale project is the ultimate design staff may want to follow up answer that concerning the apartment company apartment designation okay it doesn't impact my stance and the affordable housing point but it is I was confused I to me apartment as a rental sure it's definitely clarification worth noting um we relying on the housing types outlined in our ordinance there's not a condo type it's broken down by form as opposed to how it's okay it's broken down by form so the apartment housing type is your multiple units okay potentially I can just ask for clarification on the next sure it's certainly a confusing element I agree commissioner Miller so two points if I understand it correctly if this rezoning goes through as it's been requested without any further commitments with regard to affordability the affordable housing density bonus is available and so um and right now what would that bonus be for this property situated where it is in this zone what would what would be the maximum bonus I would have to run that math which I have not done what's the ratio pulling that up right now one second here um so in the urban tier a minimum of at least 15 percent of the maximum number of units permitted within the base density are required to use the affordable housing dwelling bonus um and then from there for each affordable housing dwelling unit that is constructed a bonus of two additional dwelling units can be constructed it's a two to one ratio but you have to achieve to get any bonus at all it's got to be 15 percent or more of the units correct right very good so I'm just thinking through the the concept that Mr. Savers presented in terms of units more than 14 might be affordable it actually seems to me that since the density bonus is by right and that the bonus allows them to have an extra level for each building that they're better off without any kind of commitment since it was a conditional commitment just to go with the bonus just like it is if they added two units uh they uh that were affordable uh is it 15 percent of the total or is it 15 percent of the base 15 percent of the maximum number of units permitted with the base density base density with the base so two would then run them over the well even one would run them over the 15 percent and they could get two additional units um and if they kept going that way until they filled up that extra level that extra 15 feet they get it doesn't it seems to me that uh I don't see how a commitment could actually improve their situation over what the big density bonus would allow anyway so I throw that observation out um and I forgot what one other one was so I'll leave it at that thank you commissioner buzzley thank you madam chair so mr. Savers I know you're wearing a path up here but most I had a similar analysis to commissioner miller so I just wanted to check with you to make sure do you mind repeating your commitment and then I just want to make sure I understand the intent of your commitment because I think you're intending to make a commitment to us tonight but it sounds like it I heard it as a commitment that is basically you're already allowed to do that by right so I wanted to hear what you were offering us just to make sure I understood it that's that's correct and I apologize for that confusion so what we'd be saying is the the by right situation okay great thank you and we'll work that out with staff but obviously it's not a text commitment but it's something that we can discuss with staff as well right so so just to make sure I'm understanding it and for the other commissioners you're you're saying you're willing to explore what is already available to you as opposed to anything that's above and beyond what is already an available option that's correct okay thank you and I'll just add that I I appreciate the design commitments I I like this project but I share the same concerns on affordability commissioner Johnson thank you so I just I just wanted to run some quick map because we're talking about affordable uh the affordable affordable affordability issue I'm sorry and so the the applicant stated that the anticipated cost uh is around 300 dollars per square feet and so for like a 1500 square feet unit it's 450 thousand dollars for 2000 square foot unit it's like 600 thousand dollars and so even when we're talking about we just pass the bond I think the question is is that the best use of limited resources to make something affordable that how do you make a 600 600 thousand dollar unit afford even if you subsidize it you know and when we're thinking about what we're trying to do here in Durham and like affordability is about how do you incentive out and encourage like interlevel home ownership you know the first wrong of economic empowerment etc etc this is not the model for how we accomplish that and so I think that trying to make this project as it is somehow affordable is wishful thinking in the sense that it's not really accomplishing what we say we want to do so I just wanted to point that out thank you um I'm gonna try to recognize some other individuals who've not had an opportunity to speak I think we are commissioner all right then commissioner dorkin just to go off of what commissioner john said I would say not doing anything is is also not achieving our goal and so using the affordable housing density bonus is one of the tools we have and it should be actually utilized thank you commissioner miller I remembered my other point and it was simply that we talked about the kind of units that would be here whether they would be rental or purchase units there's a as I read the development plan there was nothing in there that committed the the developer to any particular type of unit it could be for sale or for rental we don't normally have commitments that for rental or for sale so I just want to make sure that people didn't vote expecting this to be one way or the other one in fact it can be either way and we can't constrain are the other questions other commissioners who would like to speak if not I think I will entertain a motion madam chair I'd like to move that we send case z19 0004 concerning 600 north rocks for a road forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation second do I have a question yes there's some unreadiness so commissioner brian at the beginning of the public hearing the applicant told us that he had made two new commitments both concerning payments with one to the public schools and one to affordable housing and question are those commitments acceptable to staff i grace i'm closest to the mic so i'll answer that yes they were vetted ahead of time and approved okay so i'll my motion the motion leads to the three proffers that were made tonight the two firm ones and the one uh lucy goosey went on architecture two those are included in my motion well there's a fourth one out there that seems lucy goosey to me too and that's about whether or not there's actually going to be any affordable housing or not let's clarify the applicant has only proffered the two that were approved and vetted ahead of time and then the others would they weren't actually proffer tonight because we had not vetted those and they've not been checked for legal and legality and enforceability so the motion should be with the two that were proffered and vetted ahead of time and then we can work out the others without looking at which we now that's variable with the planning commission that's why i would have to handle that that's what i meant my motion okay so the motion does include did i get a second commissioner alters did provide a second we went back and forth so i wasn't sure i have a motion and a second that we send item number uh z 019 00004 600 north rocks forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation all in favor of this motion i'm going to ask for a roll call please please yes commissioner johnson yes mr brine no mr dirkin no commissioner alter no vice chair busby yes chair hyman yes mr miller yes yes commissioner ketchum yes commissioner santiago no commissioner baker yes commissioner low yes and commissioner macgyver yes motion passes nine to four thank you let's move to the next item on our agenda uh staff report for hebron village please good evening i'm least others again with the planning department i will now be presenting case z19 00016 hebron village the applicant is tim cybers this 31.267 acre site is located at 24 sorry 4728 denfield street this site is located within the city limits the applicant proposes to change the zoning from residential suburban 20 rs 20 and residential suburban 10 rs 10 to plan development residential pdr 5.117 the property is designated low medium residential on the future land use map which is consistent with the zoning request the proposal contained consists of a maximum of 160 units per the current tax commitment the units may be single family townhouse or combination none to exceed 149 peak hour trips the applicant has spoken with staff about a potential change to the housing type commitment i will let the applicant speak to that later this aerial map shows the site in red located off of denfield street and hebron road in the suburban development here property contains forests a small area of wetlands and a few existing buildings the site is adjacent to a mix of housing types including single family detached and attached townhouses and apartments there are also a couple of places of worship adjacent to the site the site is presently zoned rs 20 and rs 10 the applicant proposes to change this designation to pdr 5.117 this site is located within both the eno river district b and fold jordan district the watershed protection overlays the property is designated low medium residential on the future land use map which is consistent with the rezoning request development plan provides site access points building and parking envelopes project building boundary buffers and maximum impervious surface key commitments include a maximum of 160 residential units of single family townhouse or combination of those housing types a minimum of 20 percent tree preservation area transportation improvements including dedicated right of way left turn lanes and additional asphalt to allow for future bicycle lanes site access points location and building and parking envelopes tree preservation areas project boundary buffer areas and a maximum of 50 percent impervious surface are shown graphically design commitments related to building material roofs and distinctive architectural features are included the proposed pdr 5.117 zoning designation implies with the current low medium designation on the future land use map and applicable policies it is consistent with policy 2.12c 2.31a 2.32a and 11.1.1a staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other policies and ordinances and staff is available for any questions thank you thank you i do have two individuals who have signed up to speak for and three against i'm going to call the first two individuals tim cybers cybers and frank bullock good evening chair again tim cybers for vat associates 16 console place again thanks staff for the report on this project this project is a rezoning request from rs 10 and rs 20 to a pdr 5.117 the project area is a little over 31 acres and the pdr 5.117 will allow 160 units the pdr 5.117 is also within the current future land use map that the city has set aside for the development of between four to eight units we did hold another voluntary meeting voluntary neighborhood meeting for this project was held at duke's chapel united methodist church we did have about 20 neighbors come out to this so it was a pretty good showing and at that neighborhood meeting there was two primary concerns that were brought brought up first was access into the existing subdivision to the east and the second one was landscape buffering to the adjacent properties to the adjacent existing homes excuse me i did discuss the neighbors and i'm trying to explain to them that the street stub to the existing subdivision was a requirement of transportation and the city ordinance and i also explained to them that the pdr the adjacent property to the east and northeast is a pdr development approximately off the top of head i believe it's about 4.7 units that does not require a buffer between our proposed pdr and the adjacent pdr however we worked with the adjacent property owners there and on our development plan have committed graphically committed to a 20-foot buffer along those adjacent properties that back up against those existing homes and again that is shown on our development plan that's in front of you tonight as a graphic commitment since we did hold that held that meeting back in july i did did send an email out of times informing the neighbors of the process of the progress through the project i also wanted to make sure that all those neighbors have signed up and gave me their email address was aware of the meeting tonight so i informed them of that just in case they didn't get the meeting from the city the development plan does illustrate commitments to the right away dedication landscape buffers as we've discussed 20 three preservation area 50 percent of previous area as a maximum maximum of 160 units as well as access points on hebron and summer field excuse me summer breeze drive an optional access point is also shown on denfield uh road improvements will be constructed on hebron to provide left turn lanes in both eastbound and westbound movement as well as providing the bike lanes in addition to these commitments once again i'd like to provide the following additional and revised commitments as staff mentioned these i provided these to planning us weeks so they've reviewed these as well a revision to text commitment number one as emily mentioned earlier the proposed development shall be a maximum of 160 units the units may be townhouse or a combination of single family and townhouse not to exceed 149 peak hour trips so the key item there that we've changed is we have removed the ability for this to be a 100 single family development it will not be 100 single family and we're committed to that prior to the issuance of a co provide a one-time $11,000 contribution to the Durham public schools and prior to the issuance of a co provide a one-time $16,000 contribution to the city of Durham affordable housing fund i did have the ability to meet with some of you again so if there are any other further questions i'm available thank you for your time thank you thank you everyone my name is frank bullock i am an attorney with the law firm haywood denny and miller located here in Durham north calana i also represent george miller who's the public administrator of Durham county we have a property that would be affected by the zoning change is forward to hebron uh road and it is part of the estate of saty b loy with regard to the zoning change the office of the public administrator has no objections thank you thank you i have three other individuals who signed up to speak against julius bartel diane bartel i'm julius bartel my wife diane bartel we live at 49 11 dentville street and when y'all done summer meadows my property was not flood since y'all done summer meadows my property floods and with this property here doing it'll you uh i'm gonna lose three fourths of my property right now i'm gonna lost over half of it the retention pond that they plan on building will not hold the water back i'll let it out we checked with this uh storm water run off of Durham they said nothing they can do about it it's the only thing that works coming off their property they're concerned with you're not concerned about the water it's running off it goes on somebody else's property eno river i've got trenches backed by eno river that i can walk through that was never there before uh the church next to me had been flooded out they've had to aggregate unit replaced twice because it's been under water three times luckily i haven't had that much water in my house but my property is and the traffic problem on hebron road with the new northern's high school that you're going to build across the street between dentville and rocksville road there's going to increase traffic tremendously you cannot get out at uh duke street and rocks for a road on on hebron without waiting four or five lights because all the traffic is trying to go straight down hebron off of rocks for a road you're going to need traffic lights at hebron road and dan use road you'll need traffic lights at dentville street and hebron muck road you're going to need traffic lights muck road and uh rocks for a road you're going to need traffic lights you know and the traffic is going to be tremendous for people that live there thank you all over to my wife next it's diane bartel okay my name's diane bartel i learned at 49 11 dentville street and we're not used to the equipment just hold there with us please okay hazen and sawyer did a thing about the raw water storage for the whole city of Durham and i don't think that should be have a whole lot of excess water because the intakes that they're wanting to do at a later date from the eno river they're wanting to pump into the quarry and where this property he's wanting to do plus where the school at northern high comes in it goes across onto behind our property and straight down and within before the intake to even take it from the eno so you're going to have a whole lot of contaminants rolling off of parking lots from schools from his 160 houses on the other side and they're going to be contaminating being pulling into the quarry that's going to have to be tended to and this is for the whole city of Durham for when we start running out of water in a few years so hazen and sawyer you can look at this is some more information up here with hazen and sawyer about storage development about the level will if they do 265 foot elevation on the rock quarry for the city of Durham i don't want bad water going to my people around here you know okay i got this map from the city planning board in Durham a few weeks ago and it shows hebron village in the very center now they're doing a retention pond on the corner by summer meta close to the church and there's already a retention pond right that would be right across from it from summer meta where they've already got a big one that they have actually had breakthrough several times that's how the church kept getting flooded and then if you look on the left side where northern high school is there won't to do the retention pond actually backs up to our property on the backside of our property it's going to be much more massive than the one at summer meta or the one they're playing and you're going to have all this if these retention ponds is holding all these chemicals bust it's going to go right before the intake for the city of Durham drinking water and it's northern high they're planning there so y'all can check with the city and counting and all that okay can you go smaller on it smaller I mean not the other way okay all right it has my number on it to contact me if you need to discuss anything on it it also mentions about the lights we need one on denfield and hebron Monk and Roxbury we need turn light a special protective turn lights where it comes up to Captain D's on denfield and Roxbury street because there's no turn light even the cops I've seen go two cars blocking that intersection if they got to go turn left to go to the hospital for the city of Durham because they know that they would never go on certain times of day which when if the school got developed out there too there needs to be turn lanes and they've already told us they can't even do turn lanes because there's not enough room without taking massive buildings like Captain D's and the advanced auto store so we're in a quandary on that so and then this is also what I said you know like the lights needed this piece of paper actually lists all the different lights except it doesn't mention the light that's needed at danube and hebron also of all the buildings and stuff and see when they built the car with street extension through there what you don't know and less you've checked recently there's several new developers looking to buy massive amounts of land some have already bought and from a neighbor on the oxford road side says there's going to be 1500 homes or more through that extension where they buy that vacant land that was in between that it freed up that's going to be like four blocks away from where his development is so and even on denfield we need speed bumps we need them before weeping willow because they come out of that subdivision already where they come two or three cars at a time and they don't even stop to look to see dump truck traffic let alone us there's actually dump trucks out of hit cars coming through there already at several occasions plus other types of wrecks also needs speed bump on that sharp curve just at the top of the hill on denfield right around where the school would be and his subdivision that he wants to build so we are inundated with being flooded so many cars on the road so many much dangerous traffic with dump trucks it's really a bad bad mix so i want y'all to you know look at all this information if they will allow we'll give you you know have copies made for everybody on here and the city council i'll be fine with that everyone needs to see and study this thank you thank you i have one other individual who has signed up kassandra i apologize for not being able to make out the last name is it if you could help me with the salamon kassandra salamon okay salamon on behalf of my community my neighborhood i live on monk please state your address your name and address and then um my kassandra salamon i'm at 200 monk road and um on behalf of my neighbors in my community i'm asking the planning committee could they look at a spotlight to be put on monk and um rocks pearl because within the last week there has been at least four accidents and it's a it's an accident prone area anyway so um it will be safe and better if if um they will put a stoplight at that location and um also due to the heavy development that they are doing in around the uh monk road area the hebron um and denfield is that's that's what's causing a lot of the um traffic so um if they would look at um on behalf of me as a property owner and other neighbors around um we would like for the planning community to look at that to put a stoplight at the corner and rocks pearl road thank you thank you do i have other individuals who would like to speak to i do not have any others who have signed up do i have other individuals who would like to speak to the hebron village case before i close the public hearing um i will need you to come forward and then state your name and address and then sign your name on our listing hi my name is yolanda williams i live at 406 summer breeze drive i live in uh summer meadow subdivision and i just wanted to reiterate um what everyone else had said we do have a lot of concerns with the traffic we will need traffic lights um i did attend the meeting in july held at the church uh with mr severs um the majority of my neighbors do have a lot of concerns with that subdivision one issue was the barrier um if that would be taken care of but the major concerns is that one of the main entrances or the main entrance will come through my subdivision it will literally come right down my street past my house which currently is a um it is a barrier itself it is just a wall um and in speaking with the flooding i don't know exactly uh with this lady and her husband live but i can attest to some of the flooding i have a neighbor that lives at that end who is currently selling her home she had to take her own money and build rocks next to her property to combat some of the flooding coming down in our backyards um so i just want you to you know take that into consideration when it comes to this new development thank you thank you if there are no other individuals who would like to speak i'm going to close the public hearing and give out yes please come to the uh please come to the the microphone there's one more situation that he hasn't mentioned about that property they want to develop it's about a 40 degree angle for about 600 feet coming down to where they would want to do the retention pot the force of that water if it was heavy rain like we're getting more and more of could really bust through the dam and it could go flooding everywhere thank you those are additional comments from this diane bartel um if there are no other individuals who would like to speak i'm going to close the public hearing and give commissioners an opportunity to ask questions um i'm going to start with commissioner busby and commissioner bryan thank you madam chair the i think my first question i'll start with staff and this is my only question to start but it was mentioned the the connection on carver road and i've heard this elsewhere as well that this this will likely lead to a series of development proposals and i'm just can the staff share are there any other proposals coming in this area to help give us a picture of what to expect because we're we're just looking at this by itself but i understand there's a lot more coming in the pipeline and while we wait i was going to ask mr syvers if if he could share anything as well so i was hoping to have the staff go first if if they have a response good evening jamie sonyak with the planning department so um carver street is not shown on your area also it's hard to give you some context but there is an application that is under review it's carver street assemblage um it is i don't want to misquote the number of units but it's in the 500 600 range mix of single family and apartments i believe the applicant uh tim syvers is here so he can speak as well but that is a case that is under review um there are a adjacent to that there's a another case that just was recently um submitted uh also for residential adjacent to the carver street assemblage site great thank you mr syvers if you could expand on that or offer any additional so yes the area i believe you're asking about is along carver street extension so the road that's just been reopened or newly opened within the last 30 to 45 days i am i am the applicant for a project that has been submitted in that area it's on both the north and south side of carver street extension it includes townhome single and apartments for rent in the 650 unit range i'm also aware of another development near the intersection of carver oxford hamlin that's also residential that is a townhome and single family mix i'm not the applicant on that however i'm i'm familiar with the project i'm also working on two other developments that are at that same intersection for commercial developments okay that's great thank you that's all for now i just wanted to make sure we had a sense of what we're expecting to see in this area especially given the the input that the neighbors have raised and i know we don't get all that here and i know that's a critique many of us have but i know i'm certainly trying to keep that in mind as we deliberate on this item in front of us tonight but that's it for the moment thank you commissioner bryan thank you um i want to start with question for staff by my count we have three new committed elements uh the eleven thousand dollar payment to the public schools sixteen thousand dollar payment to affordable housing and then if i understood correctly a slight change in the housing will have up to 160 units but the new commitment would be or the revised commitment would be it would be a combination of single family and townhomes my understanding is that it would be townhomes townhomes or a combination of townhomes and single family okay please clarify if you would sir yes uh the staff is correct it's either townhomes or a combination of townhomes and single family okay and while you're at the microphone uh there was a limitation that whatever's out there you're not going to exceed 149 peak hour trips and i'm just curious where did that come from so there's a couple a couple items where that came from and uh transportation may be able to be able to assist with me on that but the 149 peak hour trips comes from really two items in this case uh one it eliminates the need for a traffic study for this project however i'll iterate that 160 160 units as a quick calculation of if it was all townhomes would be approximately 80 to 90 trips so we're well under that 149 peak hour trips so i don't want that to be misconstrued as we did 149 to get out of a traffic study the number of units that would be able to be put on the site would not even be close to that peak hour trips why that's included is because it was a common correlation with with transportation that they asked we include that for clear okay fine uh while you're there i have a few more questions when was the last time you went down summer breeze drive um i drove that area through that neighborhood uh during when i went up for the neighborhood meeting um whenever that date was okay uh July 30th was okay and i'm sure you noticed that there's about a 10 to 12 foot elevation difference yes sir yes 13 okay uh so it's gonna to make that connection it seems like there's gonna have to be a lot of dirt moved um considering the topology of that site it seemed to me that it's most likely to be a clear cut and masqueraded is that a fair assumption most likely yes sir so you're gonna provide 20 tree coverage but considering that it's a heavily wooded site the other side of that coin would be 80 tree loss tree coverage loss which you will not i know you'll have to replant some trees but i don't think you're going to make up for the 80% loss text commitment number eight i had a question about that this was in response to a bike pad a request about having bike lanes on uh denfield and the way the text commitment reads is if access point number three is constructed then you'll provide the additional asphalt that's correct my question is will you provide bike lanes along denfield irrespective of that third access point no i'd like to keep that commitment as is for now if primarily because of the necessary road improvements for that if they're if we make that access to denfield will be will be improvements to potentially be improvements to denfield for the access which would then include the bike lanes okay um from my perspective that third access point would seem to be one that's needed because if you don't have that third access point you have two access points but one of them comes through already developed neighborhood and if something happens to the access point off a hebron road and you have an emergency out there you know emergency vehicles are going to be coming through an adjacent neighborhood i think coming down denfield would have an access point off a denfield would be very good and would help provide access to the people up in the northwest point part of the development and it also looks to me like an access point there would be easier to construct because the level of the road and the level of your site are pretty much even right which is exactly why we showed it as an optional so in this case we're actually working for the property owner who's trying to sell the property um it's java group they they own a lot of property throughout uh throughout durham we're working with them on this and then uh because there's not a developer set in place for this we wanted to provide that as an option but didn't want to provide it as a commitment um as a as a full requirement to provide the developer whoever that is in the future an option to make that connection okay the main the main access is is on hebron um the yes the the connection to summer breeze is a requirement because of the existing subdivision subdivision made that street stub um and yes unfortunately there is a a large topography difference between right at the back of those homes uh which is also why um during the neighborhood meeting we were actually some of the neighbors spoke up and said our realtor told us we were going to have a buffer back there well i'm sorry the ordinance doesn't actually require that which is why we wanted to work with these neighbors and say hey we'll provide the buffer i'm sorry that wasn't the case but we'll go ahead and step up and provide that buffer for you um so but the so so yes that's an access point um but the the primary access point will be on hebron where we're providing the road improvements for and assuming from the way hebron is curved on the development plan i'm assuming that you guys will be constructing the realign portion that's on your property that should eventually be extended over to roxboro so that school site that is a right-of-way dedication um we're not committing to construct that portion um in the future uh yes the school site and there'll be a connection over to um over to roxboro but we're providing uh we're giving giving that right away giving that land for the future connection for the future construction um so we're we're committing to the right-of-way dedication but not the construction okay okay thank you for that clarification and one final question do you have any idea what sort of amenities would be provided for the residents of this year again because there's not a developer involved involved i don't um the ordinance does require active open space and open space amenities um because of the density will be i believe it's either 15 or 16 percent of the site has to remain in open space and a third of that has to be active meaning soccer fields taught lots something to that effect so um something like that will be included as it is a requirement so it's not something i can commit to tonight because it is a udo requirement okay thank you very much you're welcome thank you commission or durkin followed by commissioner johnson since there's not a developer i will refrain from asking my affordable housing density bonus question but i do have a question for staff so you're off the hook thanks um um for the concerns about the retainage pond and the kind of environmental concerns where was there an eis that was required or at what point would that be required if it hasn't been done yet so um stormwater reviewed the development plan at the development plan stage there's very little information related to stormwater information that's primarily reviewed during site plan um so the details of what would be needed to um treat uh or manage stormwater would be fleshed out at the site plan level okay commission or johnson thank you so um so i maybe staff can help me clarify this so i heard the applicant state and commissioner brian state that the maximum units of 160 but when i'm looking at say um the transportation impact and the maximum impact use um you have 135 single family residences and 19 townhouses so that's 154 units so is there a reason for that discrepancy or is it 160 or 154 i'm going to consult with transportation but my understanding is that's tied to the maximum peak hour trips but i want to verify with them though berlin thomas transportation um i believe that was tied to the original mix of units that the applicant was considering to get the determination of whether or not a tia was needed but at that time there was not a commitment to a unit mix which is why we require the statement regarding the limiting limited to 149 peak hour trips but the applicant has revised the text commitment to say that there will be a unit mix um and that could vary um but cannot exceed that 149 peak hour trips what's the peak hour trips that are that's basically driving the final number correct correct and so um to the applicant uh in acknowledging the concerns particularly the um the the uh when it rains and the all the water that that collects on the roads and stuff is i'm sure am i correct in that in assuming that this was brought up when you met with the community and presented whatnot what is your response to the current reality and then the project that you are you're presenting tonight which is basically it's cutting and mass grading and the pipeline projects that you mentioned that will likely entail more mass grading when you're cutting down trees and so what's your response to the reality now and the potential impact of this project in particular on possibly contributing more to the negative impact that the existing community is experiencing and if if it's a case of your retention system that your program in the site is viable and relevant enough to address it like how can you assure that the community surrounding community that that in fact is the case okay um a couple questions and a couple answers there first i do want to clarify it is the 160 units so i know i i know the report did fall with the maximum of the um says the 154 there for the 135 and 19 but our proposal does have the 160 okay um as for the storm water thank you for asking that i was hoping that question would come up so i have the ability to uh to speak to the concerns of the neighbors um i would like to know um that the the neighbors i apologize your name was martel the martel family um they are uh located um and correct me if i'm wrong i believe in the upper uh let's see northwest corner of our property um on the other side of denfield almost across from weeping hill right up in here yeah okay that's the uh church this is off for me go on here okay um and speaking with with the neighbor here the church is directly across from weeping hill um they are directly to the north is where their property is uh and if you if you notice on the um existing conditions plan the topography in that area yes the existing there's exist existing low area that drains to that northwest corner um almost pointed directly at their home uh this our site will be regraded there is a good good amount of topography changes on this so our our site will be regraded and whether there's a storm water facility in that location um or if that area is brought to a different location and treated i'm not sure at this time those details haven't haven't been uh designed yet because there's not a developer involved however i would like to point out that the storm water ordinance does require that um whatever's flowing off site now we cannot increase that so um there's a for example if you think of a peak hour there's amount of water in a rainstorm that flows off of the existing property now we will not be able to increase that we actually have to hold that water and slow that down and over a three to five day period release that back down the down to the existing channel um so um their their property yes does there is some existing uh storm water that runs from this property to that and if that does contain it will not be increased um as for existing flooding issues i'm i'm they live there they're the ones that are aware of this i haven't been made aware it was discussed at the neighborhood meeting i should say um but as for um uh the project the existing development to the uh to the right or to the east the same applies there we'll have a storm water facility that will not only treat but it will hold that water back and help treat that water and hold that water to slow the release of it downstream so just so if i heard you correctly what you've articulated to me and reflect it back to the concerned neighbors is that your responsibility per west required when you get to site planning with is that you they can only they should only expect their bad situation to remain bad you won't make their bad situation worse that's correct based based off of city and state regulations thank you are the other commissioners who would like to speak uh commissioner baker and then commissioner miller i'd like to um ask my commissioners to uh look at the aerial of the site because um it's an awkward site it's bordered on the south and on the west um by denfield and hebron and on the east and on the north um by other residential development uh to the north to the east there's only one connection that can be made to the north there are no connections that can be made we did that we continue to do that that is the dna that we have in place to build the city is disconnected low density residential subdivisions we will continue to be doing that they're currently developing that way whether it comes before us or not and so we need to be demanding better from uh developers and from ourselves um i'm not going to be voting for this this is an easy no for me there are a lot of things that would need to change for me to be able to support that i i don't think that the developer would be willing to make the number of commitments that i would request one of those commitments being to follow the comprehensive plan policy uh 222d suburban tier mix use which uh require which encourages elements of traditional neighborhood design including pedestrian or infocal node of activity appropriate mix of land uses that are physically and functionally integrated development patterns and intensities that are supportive of a wide range of housing options employment opportunities community functions transportation choices uh these are things that need to be incorporated in new developments it's in the comprehensive plans very clear policy 421 g sustainability incorporating best practice sustainable features 425 d increasing use of solar power wind power you've heard me say these things before and then for 422 a varied housing new development having a variety of housing types uh we heard uh a laudable commitment to potentially have two options for housing but most likely have one and i don't think that that's good enough for us to um be recommending approval of uh important features and best practices that i think need to be incorporated not it not just into this development but into developments that come for us you've heard me say these before again compact dense integrated variety of housing types connected streets with short walkable blocks we've talked about what those blocks actually might look like in practice having sidewalks and street trees between the sidewalk and the curb having a variety of accessible and appropriate uses for employment and services having centralized public civic and open spaces and uses housing houses that front onto that open space and create civic places protection of and access to green space and small-scale agriculture uh anticipating potential future bus transit i could go on and on with with the list and these are uh these are definitely encouraged in the comprehensive plan they're also consistent with best practices it's of course our job up here this is a discretionary decision it's our job up here to determine if development proposal promotes health safety and welfare uh for Durham if it makes Durham a better place uh commissioner brian pointed out will be that this could uh lead to 80 reduction of trees um i would argue that we should be concerned about that and that if we're going to do that i'm not saying that we shouldn't do that if we're going to do that then it better be good and it better make Durham a better place so i will not be supporting this i will be voting uh to um i will be voting to recommend denial um to city council on this thank you commissioner miller so thank you madam chairman i wanted to ask miss bartel if she'd come back up to the microphone just to make sure i understand and i and i believe um the staff cut off the overhead can we cut that back on again because you had a map that i think was more instructive than the one we have there you go you had a map showing where the the school proposal and i'm not interested in it so much for the school proposal um but because it it demonstrates uh one if you could put your finger on your property just to make sure all right it's that one so if if i'm driving north on denfield there i i've just passed uh right so i pass weeping willow and then yours is going to be the next one on the left and kind of a triangle shape right right it's seven acres and you've got the that church that's right there opposite weeping willow that's immediately to your south and so i was just looking at the topo in the existing conditions map that mr cybers directed us to and this is in our packet uh the site has two high spots uh one is and it's got this interesting watershed division line in it so one of the high spots is where summer breeze drive yeah uh that's a great big jump and presumably that's the way that the developer of that subdivision graded that out created that uh that kind of wall there and the other one is the hill that's down kind of in the lower center and then the property goes then there's a ridge that runs over towards weeping willow and you've got kind of a shoot of water that runs right up towards the bartels property and then there's another shoot that runs the other direction on the other side of the ridge line uh and i'm just looking from the top of that hill which looks like it's at about 396 down to what i am guessing the topo is when it hits your property which is somewhere around 340 something that's a 50 foot drop uh you'd have to do a lot of grading to change the way the water would flow in that area and and it's a lot bigger than any of the other two that they're scheduling or some amount of has put together that's even bigger so and then there there is uh so i'm just i wanted to make sure i understood what you were telling us about where the water goes and i was have i got it right all right and we do have a concern we asked the developer on uh when he was at Duke's chapel with us what like inch how many inches of rain per hour the retention pond would hold and no one has ever got back with us on that and really with this all this global warming and stuff the whole city and county of Durham needs to rethink how much retention water you know inches per hour because we need to increase that so other neighborhoods being developed later won't be flooded out it needs to be increased you're talking over six million gallons of water uh just from this subdivision coming down coming down my property 40 degree drop thank you thank you very much i just want to make sure that i was getting the picture um and so i thought about this project and and to each meeting mr. Baker persuades me more and more that we need to expect more and more of suburban development um because it is where the people are going to go uh we're not going to shoehorn them back into the urban tier uh we are when they come we're going to put them in the suburban tier and we need to be more deliberate about what we approve in the suburban tier and we might fight on this project or that project about mix of units and number of units and densities and all of that but i do think that we need to be more deliberate and i know that we have a pattern up here of when the when the real developer of a piece of property is standing at the microphone then we ask for all kinds of commitments but when somebody who is seeking to rezone a piece of property uh is not the real developer but wants to put the property up for sale will you use a different standard saying no they can't commit so we won't ask for commitments i think that's inverted uh if anything since it's our last shot at trying to influence development towards the good uh we should expect more uh so i'm going to try to be more deliberate in the time i have left on the commission about evaluating um suburban developments of size and 30 acres is a big one still now these days um and also be less likely to give the the speculative applicant a pass that i would never give to the actual builder developer uh and so based on that and because i do think i think this property should be developed i think it should be developed correctly and sensitively and i think it needs the the development plan that's the great thing about a pdr it has to have a development plan it's our chance to use the udo to get the things that the comprehensive plan says we want we have one shot at it and so i want this piece of property to be developed a mix of the right mix of single family homes and townhouses could sell me but i don't know if this is the right mix because we don't have the the development commitments that would make me feel good about it um uh it could be 156 single family homes and four townhouses it's unlikely but townhouses have to come in blocks of four so if they have if there has to be a mix that's not a real mix and i don't think that that any developer would develop it that way but uh i'd like to have a better expression of mix and there is a way to do that that is gives still gives plenty of flexibility i like this idea of of integrating housing types for for variety something that our comprehensive plan has anticipated since we adopted it in 2006 and i've hardly ever seen it maybe it's time to and so i think because we don't see it we don't take it seriously maybe it's time to start taking it seriously so i'm going to join mr baker and a no vote on this one but it's not because i don't think this property shouldn't have 160 dwelling units uh and with the right pdr proposal with good development plan commitments uh from somebody who's ready to follow through with them and one of those development commitments i'd like to see although we have pushed it to site plan review i'd like to see a commitment to something better than the standards stormwater catchment retention that is possible to put in a development plan and i don't know why we shouldn't expect it more frequently so i'll be joining mr baker and a no vote on this one thank you commissioner miller commissioner low yes this question is for the applicant um i believe i heard you say that the the project would not increase the runoff to the artel property or would not make it worse i believe i understand you to say that that is correct um what assurance could you give them that it would not be made worse is that there's no 100 guarantee i guess is there like 80 sure it would not make it worse or well that that is that um that statement is based off the stormwater regulations that are put in place by the city and the state um at the time of site plan we have to follow those regulations um so as a percentage of a guarantee um you know everyone's opinion of worse and everyone's opinion of a uh you know flooding is different different definitions um but as the law states the regulations that we have to follow are a full requirement and that requires that at the property line we cannot increase the flow that crosses that property line okay thank you thank you are there any uh commissioner alterk thank you chairwoman um have a couple of questions for staff i'll start with transportation um so currently the assumptions um are 135 single-family lots of 19 townhomes but let's say that it is 160 townhomes which is a possibility now right would that be fewer uh would that be less traffic or more traffic be less right i would have to run the numbers to say what um with certainty what the amount would be but in general townhomes generate less trips than single-family homes so you would expect it to be less if it were more townhomes and less single-family thank you um on the development plan um you know there is uh commissioner brian mentioned optional access point number three and it says on there is contingent on ncdot approval so what is that approval for or um generally i mean any connection to the state um highway system would have to be approved by dot and um subsequent improvements made if required such as turn lanes um however the access point is up to the applicant whether or not it's implemented it's not required by ordinance okay thank you um i have a couple of questions for um emily i guess our staff more generally so we you know we we often talk about the impacts on stormwater um and traffic and sometimes we talk about impacts on schools uh but you know when we talk about schools it kind of gets papered over because typically or always in our staff report we say that the school system has the capacity to absorb however many students but that is based on a system wide those are based on system wide numbers now when i was first on when i got on the commission about three over three years ago there used to be from what i remember our numbers of the local the schools that are nearby is there a reason that we don't have any you know we can't assess the impact on local schools of development this is just a general comment to my understanding is that the school system has requested that we look at it and in whole i will uh check with my supervisor the evening i'm scott white with the planning department so the reason why we use the system wide is that's what the comprehensive plan policy uh references and there's a lot of reasons for that it's not i want to contradict my colleague but it's not because that's what the school system prefers but it's because you know during public schools we have a lot of magnet programs um the closest school to this site is a magnet uh the closest elementary school we have overlapping year-round schools uh so it is really hard to determine that one student who is living in one of these townhouses is going to go to which school so but we could probably use some historical data to kind of give some estimate of where or the distribution right or no couldn't do that it's probably some data out there that might help okay close but it's really hard to do yeah it just it just seems to me that you know talking about impact on traffic we don't talk about traffic at the county level we talk about local traffic so i would just uh i don't know talk to maybe the school system and and try to reassess that i it seems to me to make more sense but i take your point so i appreciate that one last question i guess for staff um you know commissioner baker mentioned a number of comprehensive plan policies that he does not think that this this development is is uh it's consistent with um so why why i guess you know why pick you know we we often get these particular policies in attachment six you know policy it's suburban tier defined contiguous development enough capacity but there are a lot of policies in the comprehensive plan that we don't you know get to see and whether and we don't see whether they're consistent with those policies or not i i'm increasingly convinced uh by commissioner baker that there are a number of policies in the comprehensive plan that these developments are not consistent with is you know i i would like to see a little bit more i guess uh on those policies that he's that he has highlighted in the last few months um in in staff report and whether and i would like your opinion on whether he you know he's correct of whether they're consistent or not with those with those policies um yeah thank you good evening sarah young with the planning department i wanted to remind the commission that a lot of the policies in the comprehensive plan including many of the ones that commissioner baker um often refers to start with the phrase through the udo and that means that that is a homework assignment for the staff to develop either a set of regulations or a plan or um some development guidance to put in place those were never intended and are not to be applied to development projects as they come through the pipeline and this is a topic that we've touched on i believe repeatedly in various sessions um so i just want to put that out there to not confuse folks that any time a policy starts with that that is essentially a project for planning staff or some other departmental staff to work on and those policies are not to be applied to individual development projects okay that is helpful thank you uh thank you chair thank you are there any other questions commissioner busby i said i'd be back here i do have just two questions one is for staff and i just hadn't been thinking of this beforehand knowing that this is adjacent to the likely future site of northern high school are there any additional standards that need to be met and because i'm thinking this development will be in the walk zone for the new high school at some point so are there any additional standards that we need to meet because of that we know that in advance i don't believe there are any other policies related to that um or ordinance requirements specific to the school location okay thank you i would submit i would hope that we would think about that from the development standpoint as we move forward i'm of a similar mind to commissioner miller i think this is an appropriate site to develop given that derm is growing and where it's located uh but i do have concerns about some of the issues in in this particular proposal this evening my second question was for mr cybers if you would entertain us one last time i i know you had made the additional commitment on the the townhouses as a committed element potentially with single family and it will be 160 total units not to exceed the 149 peak hour trips are you willing to make additional commitments on numbers this evening and i'll say i i'm glad to see the commitment to the mix the mix of townhomes and single family but it's still a pretty wide range that we're looking at and are there numbers that you're comfortable making a commitment in terms of the level of certainty for the for the neighbors and for the community um tim cybers uh our vast associates um yeah so the revised text commitment uh took out the ability to have a complete single family development right we still include and for clarity we do still include the ability to uh construct a complete townhome development right which would be less traffic um as as transportation stated um if if this would suffice and and staff would be willing to uh work with us i would be willing to commit to a minimum townhome uh number but i don't know if that quite gets you to where you're looking what you're looking for um some of the some of the developer this has been put out some of the developers that are looking at this are looking for a mix some others are looking for a townhome development um so the ability for the my client to be able to sell this i i don't feel comfortable committing to an absolute um combination of both right but i would be willing to commit to a certain percentage of townhomes but i don't know if that quite gets you what you're looking for i'm i'm not sure it does mostly i'm i'm interested in just the most clarity possible that you're willing to commit in writing at this point and so there's not a number that i have in mind i i actually prefer having some mix personally but i just wanted to get a sense of how far you were willing to to make a commitment this evening so i'm not expecting anything okay thank you all right thanks thank you are the other commissioners who would like to speak to this issue if not i will entertain emotional madam chairman i move in case z19 00016 concerning development of hebron village uh that the planning commission send that forward to the uh city council with a favorable recommendation also including the additional uh commitments that were proffered tonight which i believe relate to schools uh affordable uh a contribution to the affordable housing fund and also uh a commitment that there will be uh a mix of townhouses single family residences second just for clarification it wasn't but still it was not a commitment from next it was a commitment that it would be townhomes or a mix of single family oh pardon me that's correct that it would be it would not be all single family that it would either be all townhomes or a mix okay forgive me that's my bad okay i just need to be clear that the staff is clear on the commitments that were made and included that was meant to be comprehensive even if it wasn't yes uh staff has reviewed the proposed commitments and is comfortable with the moving forward thank you uh motion by commissioner miller and second by commissioner alter that we move item number z19 00016 hebron village forward to the city council with favorable recommendations including commitments uh proffered commitments that have been recorded um i'm going to call for a roll call vote please commissioner williams no mr johnson no mr brine no commissioner durkin no commissioner alterk no vice chair busby no bear hyman no commissioner miller no mr ketchum no mr santiago no mr baker no commissioner low no and commissioner macgyver no no motion fails uh 13 to zero thank you 13 we're ready to move to the next public hearing glenn road townhomes we're ready for the staff report please let me give the yes thank you good evening i'm jamie sonyak with the planning department i will be presenting case number z19 00018 glenn road townhomes the applicant is charlie yorkley from mcadams the property is located at 3516 glenn road it is um currently located within the county jurisdiction pending annexation application the site is approximately 52 acres the request is to rezone the property from rural residential to planned development residential with a density of 7.046 the future land use designation is currently medium density residential and there's no change to that the applicant is proposing up to 279 townhouse units this slide shows the property highlighted in red it is located within the suburban tier the noose river basin and the falls jordan watershed protection overlay district um over half of the property is located within the major transportation core overlay i 85 the property is currently undeveloped and heavily wooded there's an existing pond several areas of wetlands and riparian features located on the site single family residential development about the property to the north south and west additional lands to the east and west are undeveloped interstate one um interstate 85 commercial shopping and transit services are located less than one half mile along glenn school road this slide shows the existing and proposed zoning on the left the property is um is shown in yellow which is rural residential and again the property um the applicant proposes to change the zoning to a planned development residential district with a density of 7.046 future land use map as mentioned before it is medium density residential which is consistent with the zoning request as shown on this map this location serves as a buffer between the low density residential future land use designation to the north that's in yellow the office future land use designation to the west and the industrial future land use designation to the south and east and the um red area is the commercial future land use designation um that is to the south and east as well the development plan shown here provides site access points project boundary buffers riparian buffers and crossings the 10 foot no build zones the building and parking envelope free coverage areas and the maximum impervious coverage key commitments on the development plan include limiting the development to townhouse units limiting the number of units up to 279 including additional asphalt for the construction of a future bicycle lane and dedicated right away in addition um the development plan shows the graphic commitments um for various roof types building materials and architectural features in terms of consistency with the comprehensive plan and its policies the proposal if approved would increase the density and commit to residential while still remaining consistent with the future land use designation of medium density residential in terms of policy 212c the proposed development plan would allow for um a more units um and generally a more affordable unit type uh multifamily as opposed to single family um accommodating additional growth within the suburban tier and as mentioned the property is less than a half mile from uh interstate 85 an existing bus route along glenn school road and retail shopping the proposal supports orderly development patterns in the in that it would expand upon the existing development patterns and to the north south and west the townhouse development does create an appropriate buffer and transition between those single family neighborhoods the office and industrial future land use designation uh then it nearby highway shopping and the and the commercial future land use map designation existing infrastructure such as roads water and sewer capacity are uh sufficient to accommodate the potential impacts and um the proposed development plan is consistent with policy 11 sorry there's some typos on this slide so just follow along with what i'm saying um the proposed development plan is consistent with the policies related to schools as their sufficient capacity within the school system to upon accommodate the additional growth and that's policy 11 1 1 b staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other policies and ordinances and i'll be happy to answer any questions that you have thank you i have three people who have signed up to speak for and to against uh i'm going to open the public hearing and start um the names i have listed are charlie yokely uh bob michelor and bahati matizia are you okay okay thank you just state your name and address when you come forward good evening madam chair and members of the commission my name is bahati matizia with parker po adams and Bernstein at 301 fable street raleigh north carolina i'm the land use attorney for this rezoning and with me um is the the developer builder ashton woods and with the representative of heavens mr bob michelor um and also with us is charlie yokely with macadams um thank you jamie for a wonderful summary of our request i'd like to just add some additional information that i think would be helpful for the commission so as jamie mentioned we are requesting a rezoning of 52.5 acres on glenn road from rural residential to a pdr maximum density of 7.046 units per acre for a 279 unit town home development on this slide i just wanted to point out we think that this location is a great location for this type of development given that it is its proximity to the i-85 corridor and which would give the future residents access to jobs and other services in Durham additionally there's a commercial node just to the south of the of the site um and it will provide a nice buffer between the residential developments to the north and that i-85 corridor and commercial node to the south i'm looking at the land use pattern existing zoning map the site is currently zoned rr but as i mentioned the there's a commercial node to the south and the homes that are to the north of the site are zoned rr as well mostly single family by providing town homes here would be adding variety to the area and again providing a nice transition between those homes to the north and that commercial node and that i-85 to the south jamie also mentioned that the designation for the site is moderate density residential that allows six to 12 units per acre and so we wanted to make sure that we stayed within that designation we initially were considering single family homes for this development but with the pond that's on the site and the other riparian features on the site there are some site constraints and the single family plan that we initially came up with was not allowing us to get to that higher density to be within the six to 12 units that we wanted to be consistent with for the flume so that's where we ended up going to a full town homes development which keeps us within that that range and keeps us consistent with the future land use map and also allows us to provide additional units to meet Durham's growing housing demand um jamie also mentioned what our key tax commitments are um maximizing the the number of units to 279 and making sure and committing them to them being town homes the maximum pervious surface area we will not exceed 70 percent we are going to be dedicating additional right of way to the realignment of glenn school road which is in the image on the screen it's going to be the sub the lower right hand corner of the site so that extension is going to come come through the site there and we're going to dedicate right away for that to help with making transportation in the area a little bit easier we're also going to include an eastbound left turn lane along glenn school road at that access point that will also help with some of the traffic congestion so that we have people exclusively in that turn lane getting out of the lane so that we don't have a lot of traffic backed up there and then we're also going to offer a minimum of five feet of additional asphalt for a bike lane so we're going to be exceeding the udo requirements there um actually i want to go back but using this image i also wanted to point out that we have multiple access points on the site to help with access and and connectivity in the area the two access points that are along the which which is actually the eastern boundary line of the site but is the what it looked like to be the northern boundary line on this image um those are likely going to be planned to be stubs that could be built out to be full connection connecting points so if something is developed on the eastern side of the property um we could have connections there um as as jamie mentioned we do have a pond on the site and some repairing features we want to maintain the pond there um and clean up some of the vegetation around it so it can be somewhat of an amenity on the site for the for the residents there um so we also will be meeting the 20 percent tca requirement and the 17 percent open space requirement so about 37 percent of the site will be either open space or tca um and generally speaking we we aim to keep the lot sizes relatively small um on the on the on the development so that would hopefully keep the price point relatively low um we were looking at a price point between 200 to 300 000 but we're trying to keep it to the lower 200 and um for affordability reasons um and in terms of design we're also looking at a variety of design styles which would include craftsman like style traditional colonial neo classical style buildings and those particular words that I just mentioned are design commitments and the goal with having the various styles for the units is to make sure that we don't have a monotonous um town home development but there's some variety in the in the look of the of the homes and we had a neighborhood meeting on august 21st it was a voluntary neighborhood meeting we were not required to do one because we're not amending the flume um one of the main comments that were mentioned at the meeting was the the neighbors would like to see lower density single family homes um but we explained to them the same thing I just mentioned about the desire of wanting to stay within that moderate density residential six to twelve unit per acre density to meet the growing housing demand in Durham um and they also mentioned that they were concerned about traffic but as mentioned by staff earlier by transportation earlier single family homes yield more traffic trips than um than town homes do um we mentioned we talked to them about where the access points are um they raise can raise questions about what type of stormwater mechanisms we would have on the site and we mentioned that we'll um do the proper studies to make sure that we are not increasing stormwater are making adverse impacts on surrounding developments we explained to them that we will have open space on um on the on the site as well as tca and we also mentioned that we will be preserving the pond um I spoke with the neighbor who mentioned that that was um a feeding ground for our animal neighbors and so we want to make make sure that she knew that we were going to be preserving that area um and of course we also discussed the price point um so the criteria that's before the planning commission today we think we meet all four of these um bullet points here um compatible with the nearby property there's other residential in the area we'd be adding um a variety of a product type to the area but of course it is in a good location for residential given this proximity to i-85 and the commercial node um it is a site that is suitable for residential use um as stated in the staff report it doesn't meet a specific demand the housing demand that is in Durham um and of course a staff report also mentions that the infrastructure is available and sufficient to support this use on this site um and we wanted to also just highlight the other comprehensive plan policies that staff mentioned in um in the staff report within the suburban tier higher density is is is is is is appropriate and so that's why we're aiming to put higher density here affordability is also something that we've heard the commission speak about and it is an important issue as I mentioned before we're aiming to keep the lot sizes relatively small to keep the price point relatively low um but also we will be making a contribution to the affordable housing fund of forty one thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars um with regard to the contiguous and whether how it fits into the area um again being near the i-85 corridor um providing that transition between the homes homes to the north and the commercial node and having those two stubs that could be built out to be connected to other development that may be built on the eastern side of the property um infrastructure and capacity and school capacity um the staff report indicates that the site does have sufficient infrastructure um and that we are um the yield the student yield for this development is nine students but we will be making a contribution to um the school fund of four thousand five hundred dollars um for that to to contribute to that um cause and um we had the opportunity to meet with several members of the commission and we thank you for your time and for those that we did not get a chance to meet with um unfortunately we didn't have time to meet with everybody um we heard a lot of wonderful comments that we agree with um and we are working on trying to figure out how we can get the right language um for additional commitments and we're going to work with staff for that um but we're not able to um commit specifically to the development those to those commitments tonight but we did take your comments into consideration and we're working on that language and I'm sure you might have questions that will bring those up and we can discuss those at the time if you like. Thank you. You have left very little time for your colleagues but they are welcome to use the next minute. Do you have additional? Will you they will your their time we're good on that. All right thank you so those are the individuals that I have listed to speak for that would be now I have two individuals who have signed up to speak against uh William um Hernandez and Alina Hernandez. My name is William Hernandez uh 3724 Glen Roe uh like my wife is speaking in kids. Thank you. Since we're all much running out of time is there a way we can do this? Well you your time is different because those were individuals who were speaking for now you have uh 10 minutes. Okay all right so my name is Nina Hernandez my address is 3724 Glen Road Durham North Carolina. It is actually the property that is right connected beside to this property that they are trying to put on um if you go down Glen Road from the stop sign I'm the very first property that you hit before this big piece of land um I've got several concerns one of them is a traffic on that road I know they're talking about turning lanes and everything but even though their timeout is connected to 85 you've got to thank you for all the traffic that's coming down cold mill road also to get to that development. There's an extremely sharp term down there that even with the minimum traffic that we have now there has been very close calls because it's such a sharp term coming down the opposite way. The other concern is I know they spoke about the school systems being able to manage all the school and students coming in. Our district is northern high school they are building a new high school due to overload of the students and then you're bringing in more developments for that high school and then I'm hearing even tonight there's more developments at other properties also close to northern high school the new one that's going to also be additional students to the new high school they're about to build. So that's a little concern that I'm listening that I'm getting from tonight. Let's see what else. I know they stated that having the town homes would also be a buffer from a residential to the commercials but as I've sat here tonight I've listened that y'all have spoken about combination of town homes and single homes. I prefer to have single homes beside of me since we're all of a community of single homes but is there any way they would even consider having a mix of single homes in town homes just to make it more of a community fluent from all the single homes that we do have in this area. I know they spoke about the runoff from and them trying to keep all the runoff at a minimum due to the regulations. My one concern is we have already a lot of development across from the road back in the back that a lot of that drain storms comes down on the side of my property where there is an actual like stream that runs right at the back of my property that all that rainwater runs into which is a concern because once you got more of the concrete more of the development that just means there's coming more into that stream and if there's more there it's going to back up into my property eventually. Let me see. I know there's a question about the traffic also. My property is right beside of that thing that building that they're about to build. I've had multiple cars flipped in my yard because we are county and they're going to try to become city. The other night we waited almost two hours for the sheriff to come out for us to be able to get the car out of my yard that had flipped because that's how the speed limit is through that area so that speed limit from Coal Mill Road all the way down will have to be at least decreased from 45 miles an hour to 35 to be able to compromise for all the traffic that's going to come in and out of that complex that they're about to build. Sorry, this first time I've done this I'm trying to get all my thoughts together. Please take your time. You still have some additional time left. There's also a question. There's only a stop sign right there at Glen School Road into Glen Road. There is no light there. There has been very close calls right there with the traffic that we do have coming from the developments further down Glen Road. There would, I'm questioning is there going to be a stoplight there because even coming back from Gear Road as you're coming down as you come down Glen Road that traffic can speed up quickly and there's no stoplight there and there's just a stop sign with all that traffic coming in it's going to cause another point of accidents also. That's all of that right now. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other individuals who would like to speak? Well at this point against this issue because we've have very little time left on the other side. If not I'm going to close the public hearing and give the commissioners an opportunity to ask questions. I'll start to my right. Commissioner Brian and then Commissioner Durkin. Commissioner Johnson did you also have your hand up? Okay thank you so we'll start with and I'm pronouncing the name so that the audio is able to follow you visually so if I start saying your name it is because the camera is going to be focused on you. Thank you. Thank you Madam Chair. First a question for staff just to make sure that I heard things right. I heard two additional committed elements offered 41,000 to affordable housing and 4,500 to school. Am I correct in that? Oh 850 thank you. Jamie Sanyak with the planning department. I'm sorry I only heard one of the proffers and I was going to ask the applicant to clarify that so maybe. Okay. Bahati can come back up but what I heard was 41,850 towards the affordable housing fund and I didn't hear the second one. Yes hi Bahati Matissia yes 41,850 to the affordable housing fund and 4,500 to the public schools. Okay okay and those are additional. All right thank you. And it's part of me and so staff typically when we see these proffers and commitments to the affordable housing fund and school fund we also need to put in a timing commitment for that so the staff would only suggest language including that the contributions would be required prior to the first CEO. And we will we will have to confer with with my client and then we'll work on that language with you to make sure that we get that clarified before. So if you're proffering those commitments tonight we'll need to know if that's acceptable otherwise if you're not then then we can work with you on the language but that's my understanding is you're proffering it tonight. We'll work with you on the language. Okay so then not additional proffers tonight we'll work with staff on the language and have to proffer them before council. Okay while you're at the microphone yes or staff may also need to come in on that but um I had a question about something the bike pad raised about the text commitment to dedicated trail easement for a paved greenway trail and the transportation response was the applicant has already included a pro offer for right away dedication. I didn't see that on the development plan so I admit I'm old and my eyes are not as good but. Erlene Thomas transportation um I don't know if all of the response um was included in the report but the the trail actually follows the right-of-way alignment for the proposed roadway the northern Durham Parkway so that right-of-way is included with what's being dedicated okay in fact they are actually offering a bit more right a little bit more okay in that corner and while you're at the microphone uh there is going to be a future glenn school road realignment at some time that is a part of the future northern Durham Parkway oh okay okay thank you for that um I noticed that you have two entrances I think the number four number five off of glenn road itself but you have no current lanes for those entrances I don't I don't believe that was um required by our conversation with transportation staff because you want to that was not required when we spoke with transportation but if you want to add any more okay well I personally have a problem with that because as it stands now the traffic estimation you're going to be generating uh 1400 more trips per day and if you have three million entrances that are going to be used right away uh I would say maybe two-thirds of that's going to come into glenn road so that's adding over 900 trips a day to glenn road and you've already heard concerns about traffic on glenn road uh so I think the fact that if you don't have any turn lanes there you may be able to get by for a little bit but I think it's going to be a big problem in the future if this does go forward so uh and I also believe that if you want to facilitate people getting around the bicycle lane along glenn road would be useful um and I noticed that you had on the development plan a site access point number six I think it was which looks to me like it's centered right on the Hernandez property oh that's going to be moved sorry you're going to be removing that we're living it yes east okay so becoming off of that rsm yes okay all right all right I apologize for not mentioning that earlier and there you had an interesting uh context statement on your development plan which the last two sentences the proposed medium density development will continue the existing development pattern in this area the two and our three-story building heights will be similar to adjacent residential development and I respectfully disagree with that statement because when I drove around in the existing residential development I saw only two two-story houses everything else was single story and I can't see how two and three story buildings are really going to be that compatible with the adjacent residential development especially where the adjacent residential development abuts the development so I don't know if you want to comment on that or not but uh well I'll say that um the exact height of the town homes is not determined at this time but I believe um and I may have to check with staff on this about whether the zoning for those homes is allows two to three stories I think that intention so the the maximum building height unless you're identifying it on the development plan would be 35 feet currently so you're you're held to that right right I'm saying for the zoning for the single family homes to the north if they're allowed to be two to three stories in that within that zone yeah I'll double check but I the building height would be 35 okay okay it goes by feet not stories okay um I'm sure that's all I have at the moment but I may ask to speak again all right thank you commissioner Durkin I just had a question for the applicant about whether you thought about utilizing the affordable housing density bonus from this project we we did not my understanding is that the goal for making the development more affordable was to limit the lot size having smaller lot sizes to keep the price point lower and so that was the goal that we were going into with this development is there but no consideration for actually taking advantage of the bonus which would then and require that you commit certain number to be defined as affordable yeah and and at this time we're not able to commit to something like that at this time but we will among other things that we're considering we'll consider that but I don't think we're able to do that at this time okay commission of us we chair can yes staff had a couple of clarifications we wanted to make real quick if you didn't mind yes go right ahead thank you early in Thomas transportation I just wanted to respond to commissioner Brian's question regarding the turn lane requirements on Glen Road so this is a state maintained road they ncdot did not require the turn lanes at the time of the development plan however they reserve the right to make additional requirements at the time of site plan depending upon spacing and internal site layout so I just wanted to point that out thank you very much for that it doesn't change my opinion that I think they're needed and staff heard mention of shifting site access number six so we just wanted some additional clarification exactly what that means yeah this actually came out of the neighborhood meeting it's pointed directly at the Hernandez's house which we think is a pretty bad idea so it just be shifting east enough so that it's not pointed at their house I mean just we weren't able to get that in with the schedule we were on to get to this hearing tonight but it is our intention to shift that to the east it's not a big shift just so it's not pointed at their house so uh staff just suggests or um requires that you work with us on trying to identify where that is we'll be talking a lot after this meeting thank you yeah commissioner al turk and then commissioner miller that was you recognize me oh i'm sorry that's okay i don't mind about sir goes first though go ahead all right i resemble great thank you ma'am chair thank you one just quick question for staff so on the first page this says that this is currently count in the county and that it's proposed to go into the city so i didn't see it in the report i assume there'll be a concurrent annexation oh yes for going to city council correct okay there is an associated annexation case um tied to this so it will be consolidated to city council great thank you and then uh i'll just say that uh miss hernandez raised this and i think it's a good point of just considering a mix of housing is always something that i think is is appropriate i personally like that we're gonna see a fair amount of townhouses but that's something that i i think would be worth considering as as we look at the proposal and then i did just want to make sure i understood it correctly that the proffers that were made earlier have been taken off the table this evening is that is that correct that's what i make sure i understood so i couldn't tell if you're saying you're willing to work with the staff tonight or if you're saying you're work willing to work with the staff moving forward but not this evening i've been hot to insist yes moving forward staff to make sure we get the language correct i don't know if we'll be able to get that tonight um so are you just have one second sure i just got clarification so we are fine with the timing of um the proffers that we made having it be at the time of the first ceo so we can keep those if staff is comfortable with that language then we can put those on the table tonight and we can leave them on the table tonight that's great thank you for the clarification uh and then my final question and and i even with that clarity which i think is really helpful and i appreciate that i'm not convinced we're ready i'm not ready to vote on this tonight and i think the the back and forth we just had about the site access number six is is a good example of the work that i think needs to happen and i just want to hear from you uh that often leads to us deferring a proposal for one or two cycles you know one month or two months tell us about your timing constraints because i if i had to vote on this tonight just given the level of uncertainty i'm likely going to vote no but i would like to give this the time so that when i do vote i have more certainty about what's on the site plan some of the details that that you've talked to myself and others about i'm just not comfortable to vote and send it forward and find out later well some of it worked and some of it didn't so what tell us about your timing constraints thank you for that consideration um and and given we do have some timing constraints we're under contract and pushing it back 30 or 60 days um would really hurt uh the process at this time so we would not be comfortable with any type of continuance tonight okay so that that means i'm going to vote no but just so you know that that's how this is going to work thank you okay and i do want to clarify but i believe earlier i mentioned that lot sizes would be smaller it's the unit sizes that would be smaller not necessarily the lot sizes but we are looking at keeping the unit sizes smaller in order to keep the price points low thank you then commissioner antler and commissioner durkin thank you chair um you know a lot of ways this application is not very different from the last one and and we voted unanimously against it so i um just throwing that out there but i but i do think because i've i've spoken with the applicant that there are and you have mentioned in your report to us or your yeah your report to us that you're thinking about a lot of different things in terms of housing types in terms of keeping the townhomes affordable and and then we have some issues that uh commissioner um busby has mentioned and i so i'm with him that i would like to see i mean if it was up to me i would also vote no but i i i would like to see something you know something go here and i i think you all have proposed a number of things in private that i i would like to see be commitments um in the past i think we have said well let's we'll we'll pass it and we'll see what city council says or we'll you know we'll um we'll cast we'll pass it contingent on the developer doing something uh i think that we're starting to do that less so on the commission and i i like that we're doing that less so i think it's nice for us to have commitments from commitments so i'm i'm with uh commissioner busby i would i would like to see something here i think it has potential it's two months i'd like you to think about that i know you've said that you don't you don't want the continuance but um i think some changes here and there would would be beneficial uh that's all i'd say thank you thank you commissioner baker probably don't even need to say this but i agree with my fellow commissioners and the things that they've said and um wanting to see this commitments tonight and otherwise voting no um the inconsistencies with multiple policies uh also i think that this is inconsistent with 231a contiguous development which is to support orderly development patterns that take advantage of existing urban services and this is not actually contiguous with the city limits so um that would also sort of play into my thinking on this that's all thank you i are the other commissioners who would like to speak if not and thank you not um commissioner johnson so um to the applicant okay what is the likelihood that if you were to go back even though you express a desire not to that you would there's a possibility that you could come back with say a programming of the site that included single family and townhouses i don't understand you said that the density issue was uh a concern and when we met you all highlighted this but just hearing the some of the feedback and from both the side and and the audience members is is that essentially a not a viable programming based on what you've tried to do with this site thus far that's so that's accurate we've looked at um as i mentioned we started looking at single family all single family we didn't look at a mix of single family and townhomes and then we ultimately ended up going with all townhomes in order to meet that density um but in order to consider it being not a completely monotonous development we did look at the design commitments of having some varied design styles it's worth to to go to that point um but we are considering other other i want to just highlight some of the other things that we're considering um making some of them alley loaded so that's that will also add some variety and and also have the possibility of having some ad use given that there will be some alleys in there we just can't commit to the specific percentage at that point at this point um it's likely maybe around 20 but again i i would have to get the language straight um with staff for us so so we can't make that profit tonight but we are considering having some alley loaded development um or some of the homes being alley loaded um and and when i mentioned the square footage of the of the actual units they a good number of them will likely not exceed 1600 um square feet which would also help with the affordability um we're looking at making the block lengths a maximum of 700 feet that will help with the walkability um and making it you know accessible and livable for people of all ages but again we have to work on the language and so that's the only reason why we're not able to make those profits tonight so um but but in terms of the actual mix we've looked at that and what we've our team has come back with is that it would have to be all townhomes and so uh just for the sake of of clarity is so when i met with uh you your team i was pretty more inclined to to support a project like this but then i went and drove the site so i read we read the application i drove the site and so it was i think it was commissioner bryan or someone said that you went and drove it and and it it's not a contiguous like flow of the existing neighborhoods which is true and one could possibly make the argument that it could be a transition development but it would be something new or or slightly different and so when thinking about bringing something like that to an existing neighborhood i think clarity more than grayish is more preferable so that not only commissioners and me but the neighbors can have a better understanding of what they will see and i know that you stated when i met with you that you were that the developer is able to design a product to meet what you're trying to achieve with that particular site and so it's a moral defense now in the sense that i too agree with the notion of maybe taking a continuance which i know you all you also stated that it's not a desire but in the sense that i think that you don't there's not enough support from this side to feel comfortable about what will actually be the final component and you may want to take your chances and send it on to the council but i think for the sake of all the stakeholders that it may be a good thing to consider maybe a continuance so that there could be greater clarity and less grayish areas that may be barriers that could come up beyond this panel here so that's just my comments thank you commissioner johnson are the other commissioners who would like to speak not um commissioner brian um one of the things that really strikes me about this is that you have rural residential zoning in the area right now and you're gonna put a pdr seven plus next to it in in some cases and to me that's a very big jump in density and i think it doesn't fit well with what's out there now having density and even having townhomes on this site that i can live with but i think you're too dense for the area that's my big concern and there's a big piece of undeveloped land sort of on the southwest side of that and if you put something this dense on this site then i predict that these other pieces on the west side of glenn road will probably develop at a much higher density than rural residential and that again puts pressure on the existing rural residential development that's already on the ground and i know that you're trying you're stuck with what the flume says and to me the flume in this area is bad but you know you can't do anything about that right now unless you want to ask for a change in the flume but i just i think something this dense doesn't fit and that's going to be my main reason for voting against it thank you commissioner brine are the other commissioners who would like to speak if not i'd like to entertain a motion madam chairman with regard to z19 00018 glenn road townhomes i move that we send this forward to the city council pardon me with a favorable recommendation and that and you'll have all have to help me with this that would include the proffers that we heard tonight about affordable housing fund and school fund but realizing that there are other commitments in the express one that i will name is moving the access point number six east that those will be unresolved and the developer will work with staff between now and the time this goes to council there's some unreadiness i think the applicant has a question um i know this is not usual but i think she may have a question for you well she's we do have a question okay um with regard to the continuance option um is it possible to request a continuance of 30 days instead of the 60 is that a possibility absolutely i mean as far as the staff it's up to the staff we don't have a concern that 30 days will be appropriate but we need to um probably dispose of the motion on the right well it wasn't seconded yeah that oh it wasn't your right so yeah or you can amend it to so the maker of the motion well i'm willing to withdraw the motion but uh before i before i vote in favor of a delay i'd like to know it was four okay well what are we going to be doing in the 30 days and i think it might just be useful for staff to understand it too i hope it's you know if it's just for access six i trust you guys to work that out if it's for other things i want to know what they are correct and i agree with uh commissioner miller however there were several things that were discussed and the few things that i heard earlier 30 days would be appropriate but we would like to hear a summary of what they're thinking so thank you commissioner miller thank you very much so and within the 30 days we would like to clarify the language and hopefully um work on adding commitments that would be related to um adding alley loaded um what percentage of the homes would be alley loaded um what percentage of the homes would be under a certain square footage um we're again we're making sure we have the correct language regarding the maximum block length so that it's more um walkable livable space um we also want to considering adding some commitments regarding the setbacks um to make that the the frontage of the of the homes more walkable um but we need to work on the language for that as well um in addition to that we will work on moving the access point um and i believe that summarizes the the different the the the areas that we would be working on trying to add commitments for thank you i'll be interested to hear how staff responds to their time needs on that because it's a it's a pretty short cycle and we wouldn't it wouldn't be 30 days it would be to the december meeting which may be 30 days it's in uh just over three weeks so i just want to clarify for the record um in 30 days is is um achievable however we really only have about 10 working days right to to work all this out before we have to package it back up to come back next month so i just want to make sure the applicant understands that yes and we and we think we can make that i mean we're willing to try to work with you but 10 days is aggressive and just wanted to make sure you knew that so commission miller is the floor but i was just looking to be recognized when he was finished well i was going to make a motion but if you okay you still have an additional question i don't have a question i i appreciate that i think that's i will vote for the 30-day continuance um i mean to be clear i i heard a lot of good things in there i'm not sure if it's enough but i think it's always better to take the time to get the details in writing and to then give us an opportunity to look at at your most deliberate full opportunity to put something in front of us so i really appreciate that i think that was a very helpful offer so i will vote for the 30-day continuance when the motion is made let me ask one additional question of the applicant i want to be sure that one of the things that's not being considered is townhomes and single-family homes so it's still strictly townhomes thank you the chair recognizes commissioner johnson for uh commissioner miller makes his motion uh in the event that the applicant tries to make this next turn cycle turn around but they can't does what happens if they can't meet the next um the the commission hypothetically would continue this 30 days if you vote um to do that and it passes to continue for 30 days that's a date specific we have to come back because that's a date specific hearing we have to open the hearing back up um and then at that point the applicant would have to explain what they did accomplish or did not accomplish at that time and it could be continued again because we'd still would be within the 90 days exactly but we would have to we would have to open it up regardless of what what they've accomplished thank you okay and if i could ask a question yes sorry is it is it continuing for 30 days there's a continuing just to the next date to the next regular meeting we have to do a date specific second second tuesday second tuesday and december December 10th so madam chair shall i make the motion we're waiting for our applicant to let us know that you're done thank you thank you then i will entertain a motion madam chair i move that we uh continue this case until the commission's regularly scheduled meeting in december which i believe will be the second uh tuesday of december and can grace can you tell me what the actual date is the 10th the 10th day of december um and having made that motion and before anybody seconds it i will say that i want to give these applicants every opportunity to convince the commission members that the project is something we should vote for however i have to agree with mr busby there some things especially about unit mix uh that i would like to see and and might be disappointed if it's not included in the package okay motion by commissioner miller do i have a second second by commissioner brine that we have a one cycle continuance until the next meeting scheduled for december 10 on the glenn road townhouse um townhomes project all in favor of this motion let's have a roll call please commissioner williams no commissioner morgan oh commissioner morgan excuse me is absent commissioner johnson yes mr brine no commissioner darkin i have to admit i need clarity and am i voting for the continuance yes i'm voting yes for the continuing thank you commissioner al-tark yes commissioner um over vice chair busby yes chair hyman yes mr miller yes commissioner canchan yes commissioner santiago yes commissioner baker yes commissioner low yes commissioner mckyver yes eight passes 11 to 2 thank you thank you the next item we have public hearing uh text amendments outdoor lighting staff report please thank you hello my name is uh carl clausna this is my first time here with the planning department please be nice or we promise to be nice great jccpc did this the same thing for me thank you um so this is a text amendment a text amendment tc 19 00002 this is a privately initiated text amendment to um amend unified development ordinance so article 7.4 uh 0.2 p 0.2 of the unified development ordinance controls the applicability of the outdoor lighting section and article 7.4 in general is what regulates outdoor lighting so it does so by setting standards for height that lights can be and also foot candle limitations at certain parts of the site um so what currently with the ordinance article 7.4 0.2 b 0.2 outdoor lighting that is used exclusively for recreational activities is at least 100 feet from residential uses and is not illuminated during late hours and late hours are defined as 1 a.m to 8 a.m on friday and saturday and midnight to 8 a.m on all other days um if it meets those criteria it is exempt from the lighting standards set place in the rest of 7.4 so what this amendment would do where it passed would allow lighting that operates during those late hours that i mentioned to maintain exception it would also have to keep the 100 foot separation and the exclusively recreational use um but it would allow it would be allowed to be exempted from those hours of operation provided that a minor special use permit was issued and the per the text of the language that's been provided to us by the applicant the review criteria related to that uh minor special use permit includes the the review criteria for looking at lighting so um uh that's basically the uh amendment i think in a in a short nutshell this went to jccpc on october 2nd um there were no major comments for it then and uh staff recommends approval of this text amendment and i'm here for questions and i believe the applicant is here as well and we'll have comment thank you since this is a public hearing has anyone signed up to speak apparently there is sorry that's the part where i don't know what's going on yet thank you i do have three people who have signed up to speak um tod waldo uh eric jackson and keith burns can come to impact these state your name and your address certainly madam chair i'm keith burns okay and i'm a long time durham resident and a member of the durham bar but unfortunately office in raleigh with the next improved law firm thank you all for having us tonight uh thanks carl and and welcome to your first meeting um we we've worked hard with staff to get to something that that we all could live with this started out as a text amendment that requested a blanket exemption to allow for late hour lighting in industrial zone staff concluded that that was too broad and came back to us for the request that we modify that so we submitted a modification that that really seeks just the opportunity to apply through a special use permit process for late hour lighting so long as it relates to um sporting and and other outdoor activities so i'm really am here as the attorney to answer questions about the text of this i know that you're all wondering why we would be asking for this and i know that that's probably not something we want to get too far into because this really is about the applicant the ability to come back and ask for permission later uh through that special use permit but we are going to answer the question why at the risk of going down a rabbit hole so eric will come up eric is the developer for a site that is at the intersection of page road and i-40 so out more in the park area and certainly has the buffers in place not much residential anywhere around it and he'll speak very briefly to that and then Todd will come up Todd is the major user who has the need for outdoor lighting and he'll speak to the reason that we need late hour outdoor lighting so with that eric my name is eric jackson i'm with realty link i represent the developer for the property really here more for moral support we have one of our tenants Todd who will speak here in a little bit but as Keith alluded to the property is located at uh i-40 page road bounded by the new shriver and the interstate so a lot of residential around um yep i mean that's that's pretty much where we stand on let Todd come up and speak more to the specifics of uh what we're asking for good evening madam chair members of the commission uh Todd Waldo with top golf 8750 north central expressway dallas texas we're very excited about the opportunity to bring the first top golf to the research triangle and more importantly to the city of Durham i don't know if everyone's familiar with top golf but it's a premier golf entertainment venue with a best in class operation we are proposing to bring a new concept to to Durham more of a family friendly concept complete with a full service restaurant and bar a golf driving range miniature golf and other outdoor gaming activities this text amendment is critical to us based on the late hours of the operation so they would more coincide with the gaming options available at the venue and also the maintenance operations that would occur after hours at the venue as well this is about a 64-acre mixed use development we've been looking in Durham for quite some time and feel this is the best fit for us the site has a lot of challenges a lot of constraints very very much an engineering exercise that we're going through you know right now with trying to design the the the site to effectively accommodate not only the top golf venue but the other you know tenants and users that be part of this so very critical to you know to the success of the project and hoping that for your favorable support tonight and open any questions you may have thank you they still have one other so that's all three you got all three okay all right thank you madam chair if I could just one or two things in conclusion on that top golf operates into the evening like so many many entertainment venues and after those regular evening hours are concluded at midnight 2 a.m. they then have to send their maintenance facilities out into the field to perform maintenance operations so they're ready to operate the next day and it's that maintenance operation that really dictates that there be an ability to keep lighting on there to clean up and to prepare after the end of it so it's it's critically important to top golf golf operations they have these additional hours and the other thing that I just would stress again is that we're not asking for approval for any particular use or any particular site tonight we're merely asking for a text amendment that would allow us to come back and prove in connection with a special use permit that this really is a good idea for these hours at this site so again it's just tonight it's about the ability to come back in and make a formal request later okay thank you are the other individuals who would like to speak to this issue during the public hearing if not I'm going to close the public hearing and give our commissioners an opportunity to ask questions I'll start to my left this time are the any commissioners who would like to um ask questions then the chair recognizes Tom Miller thank you so um if I can uh ask Mr. Walder to come back up when we talk about extra hours how many extra hours yes so the typical hours of operation for top golf venue is sunday through thursday eight a.m to midnight we have extended hours on the weekend friday and saturdays extends two a.m and after the close of business there are some maintenance operations that occur within the outfield area the playing surface that are associated with collecting the golf balls from the day repairing some of the electronics within the outfield how much times two to three hours or so so if you closed it too you'd want to be open till four uh close that too we want the lights to stay on an extra two to three hours after after close until sun comes up the next day unlike uh you know this time of year obviously it you know gets dark earlier and and uh the hours are a little bit different daylight savings time in so yes uh lights you know our orientation of this building would face away from any residential we're pretty isolated in this area with a lot of vegetation that would remain around the perimeter so we feel there is little to no impact to any offsite uh users or roadways or things of that sort thank you so i have a couple of problems first with the way this is drafted um one i noticed that and this is a problem that exists today with the existing thing so i'm looking at the draft here it's we have substantive rules in a section that's identified as applicability normally when it's just a matter of code writing when you identify a section as applicability you can find what's in it to to the scope of applicability and don't put the substantive rules in there we already have substantive rules in there because we limit the hours of operation um what i don't understand is so we have here's the rule and here are the exceptions and the exceptions are in the uc uc 2 or downtown tear and then with the the additional language and as authorized by a minor special use permit and then we talk about what the standards would be for the minor special use permit um i wish there was a way to recodify the whole section one that cured the applicability issue and also uh structured the thing more clearly is the base rule the exceptions and then the use permit uh rather than to run it all together in a particularly long sentence so that would be one thing but my other problem with it is is a use permit has to have some sort of outward ceiling in it a use permit that is wide open in other words unlimited hours that's not a use permit that's not what the statute has in mind for use permits in other words the way a use permit works is here's the base zoning in this zone you can do abc and d and with a use permit if you can satisfy these standards you can have e too uh the problem here is is that e is open-ended and so it's not an e it's more like a variance um and that's a different process with different standards and i think that we're mixing the variance approach with the use standard a use permit the use permit needs to have a cap on it a couple of extra hours or three extra hours or something like that and then it's got to be got to have a hard ceiling on it if it doesn't have a hard ceiling then in my opinion it's it's not competent under north carolina statutes so those are my technical objections to the thing but i will say that i have a policy objection and that's changing the whole udo for everybody for one particular use on one particular piece of property and that's what we're being asked to do now um the uh applicants legal counsel said yes we're asking to change it generally and that's true but the applicant sees it as this one piece of property and i don't like changing the zoning for everybody in order to accommodate a particular use uh and i don't have anything against top golf or any of those other or any of the things that it does but i do not like to change the rules from from rougemont all the way down to chatham county so that the 164 acre parcel can be used by one tenant of one landlord in a particular way just if we are going to make if we're going to rent the zoning ordinance to let somebody through then i want it to be the smallest possible tear so i'm going to vote no against this on the broad policy issue even if we were to fix what i think considered to be uh technical problems thank you commissioner miller are the other commissioners who would like to speak commissioner brine and then commissioner al turk well commissioner miller has already touched on my concern and he expressed it far better than i probably could but it seems to me that what we're trying to do here is specifically for one piece of property but by making this change we affect or make it possible to affect multiple locations elsewhere and i'm i agree with commissioner miller i don't particularly like doing that mission al turk thank you chair um this is a question to commissioner miller if you if you will so you say on a you know from a policy perspective you don't like this so what what what is a different approach i guess if you could if you don't i'm not sure there is a different approach and this particular application that i would approve of we're going through a process now that has not been notified but we're we're creating an exception for all kinds of recreational uses that are could be applied everywhere in the county there are people out there who want to sleep at night in their homes who don't know that we're talking about this they didn't get a notice but their neighbors who might want to set up light poles and stay up run lights late at night for for recreational purpose will have a process available to them that as a result of this in other words the process that we're creating isn't going to to just help top golf it's going to be everybody else and i know that we've got things built in the code but they're not particularly in my opinion if you live if you had a house next door to a recreational facility that had a light pole 100 feet away i would want the damn lights to be off between at least between 12 and 8 100 feet my lot is 110 feet wide it's it's no distance at all um and i think we even if we were going to consider this i would like to have a more robust process it went to jccpc i'm sure all the proper uh notices were published in in the paper and now it's to the planning commission and then it's going to go off to the city council and board of county commissioners uh and the people who are going to be most impacted by this have no idea that this is even being talked about um i just don't think this is the right way of doing it if you could come to us and demonstrate that our current standards for lighting for recreational purposes we're creating problems all over the place for high school and middle school football games and those kinds of things then we need to look at the rules but that's not what's happening here the rules have been in place for a long time now we have one user who is a tenant of an owner um 164 acre piece of property which as they pointed out that one may be a long way away from any residential from what from what i would think would be the the the ostensible other side of this question but that's not what we're being asked to do we're not looking at one parcel we're looking at the whole county um so i just i just don't think this is the way to go um i mean and i there might be another way to go but i can't craft it sitting here um there might be a way to fix this so that these folks uh if you i think you could solve the technical problem by saying that you could add two extra hours to the to the limited hours here but it may not satisfy top golf because they need they may need three out first of all they need an extra hour to be open on saturday night which is beyond the because they want to go to two when we stop at one and then they want two to three hours after that uh i mean is there a way to fix this that i might vote for it yeah that a clever person can probably do that i'm not that person tonight thank you that's helpful uh commissioner johnson thank you as i saw of course i was hoping that this this conversation played out because i was trying to get clarity on what what should i really be focusing on so i think the one thing that came to mind based off of commissioners miller's comments is that what's being what would be allowed with this what's being asked is that someone could come near or in your community with something that has not been there before and that someone who wants to go to sleep at midnight with no lights coming on all of a sudden they have any enterprise or individual it says recreational activities it didn't say something zoned as recreational and so this comes to their community neighborhood or whatnot and they they're like oh how did this happen and we've already said that this is now the new standard and they had no input into recognizing what the implications is so i agree with uh commissioner miller's logic and thinking like well this has broader ramifications i was curious when i was rereading this it was like what did you consider the applicant taking the approach of just trying to get the existing language just to add another at hours that stand the hours within how is situated now versus this more what is essentially a broader application of the change thank you and is that even allowed just to be clear this standard would allow them to seek a special use permit that would increase those hours which would require a public hearing for each case so if this were approved uh they could request that at a public hearing it would not allow everyone in the county to increase the the time their lighting is on by right thank you all right well commissioner santiago had to stand up yeah i just thank you madam chair i just wanted to clarify this text amendment is this the absolute only way for this applicant to achieve what they want to do long term or is there any other process there's probably lots of different ways that it could happen um but i will agree with commissioner miller that don't know what that is at this particular off the top of my head thank you uh commissioner dorkin so for clarification if if we if this was enacted and they sought a minor special use permit then their neighbors would be noticed and have the opportunity to come out and speak against it or what can you elaborate on the process because i'm probably not the only one that doesn't know that process so the a minor special use permit is a quasi-judicial hearing where evidence is required to be submitted by the applicant and any opponents uh it would be the minor a minor special use permit is heard by the board of adjustment which is a citizen body much like the one they use it on and there there are they do all their hearings or public hearings and there's notice provided and it's typically 300 feet i think and so for each case where the lighting the applicant was requesting this extended lighting time there would be a public hearing held so we actually have a member of our commission who should know this process very well i don't know if commissioner low because you are on the board of adjustments right if you do you have anything that to add that we shall know sorry to put you on the spot but i know that you were on that board before no that's quite all right uh but no i do not have anything to add because what he said a minute ago is accurate uh we we have that quasi-judicial board of adjustments committed and must go there and be voted upon and do you find that the public comes to those meetings in the same rate that they come to ours absolutely after the public shows up at those meetings that's helpful yeah absolutely thank you commissioner miller but i do want to point out it's different this is a legislative you can come and give your opinion because we're talking about changing the law uh everything that we do here the board of adjustment is such as a judicial body first of all not anybody can come speak you have to have standing the standing rules in north carolina are constantly shifting as court decisions come down and it can be difficult and i've heard people complain even recently they have been shut out by applicants attorneys by saying people don't have standing then you have to present evidence you can't give an opinion you have to give evidence relating to the standards this is sometimes harder for people to do than just coming to the mic and saying i live next door and i don't want these lights to be on i'm not saying it was a the best alternative so i'm just asking questions no but it it is the way that that this would be done and and there are plenty of plenty of times when i think a special use permit is a great way to manage special situations and still have public involvement meaningful public involvement and so i'm not i'm not criticizing the special use approach i do think that this the the way the language is written needs to be different even to accomplish it that uh let's let's don't like it here because it's kind of a big change for for one person commissioner al-tuk um i just wanted to clarify the process again so so um if someone asked for a minor special use permit everyone within 300 feet of this property would get a notice that there's going to be a board of adjustments meeting right that's great and they could come but as commission miller is pointing out they they don't all they don't all have the opportunity to speak is that correct i think they all have the opportunity to speak the whether or not you have standing um if the if we're challenging court is uh right a more complicated issue where for example at the planning commission anyone who signs up to speak has standing to give you their opinion right and we have a major special use permit process we do have a major special use permit process it's the same process with the same findings it just goes to the governing body instead of the uh the board of city council sitting is the board of adjustment and is there a reason that in this particular case you went with the minor rather than the major just yeah just typically reserve only the uh the for the lack of a better term the juiciest very big very big stuff for major special use permits okay thank you said it said a legal term commission miller yes it is okay commissioner brian um i have a question for the applicant um does the development that you're talking about still have to go through a rezoning council member brian that there is no rezoning required there but there will be a special use permit application process and so there's a substantial amount of entitlement work to be done on the development as a whole okay uh well you've answered my question you don't need any rezoning that's all certainly and and just to one of the points that uh mr miller raised we're happy to accept a three-hour cap on the extension that might be granted through a quasi judicial uh process as as an amendment to the text that we've proposed um and the other point that i would make while i've got the mic for a second is that at the quasi judicial hearing the burden is on the applicant to prove that that in fact this is an an appropriate use of the property and that the extended hours would be appropriate in on that site thank you if i may just add that of the chair recognizes commissioner low thank you i'm stuck on the uh board of adjustments and the question came up with they wouldn't be allowed to speak on the board of adjustments they are i just want to make that clear just kind of make that clear there they would sign up just like we do here and uh their name is on the roster and uh the chair would allow them to speak everyone that signs to speak thank you are there any other commissioners who would like to speak uh commissioner busby i would just like to say i appreciate the proffer for the three hours i don't even know if that's a proffer necessarily but i i the comfort with the three hours i'm planning to vote for it regardless i understand the arguments and i understand the discomfort but also no one is given a better alternative so i do plan to vote for it as is i do hope that as it moves forward the the three hour language could be worked in i think that makes it better and it does give some clarity certainty guardrails as we move forward but i'm i'm not thinking we need to make a motion tonight to include that because i think the staff needs a little time to work with the applicant as it moves forward that's my thinking okay commissioner bryne a question for staff um would it be feasible for the applicant to seek a variance that would be specific to his site they certainly could seek a variance the standards for the variance for variances are typically harder to meet than a special use permit and in particular they'd have to show there was some sort of hardship based on the land and i have a hard time imagining how you'd prove that not having your lights on till five a.m is a hardship right thank you thank you are there any other questions yes commissioner santiago thank you madam chair i just wanted to ask real quick um in terms of the process and writing a text amendment is there any way to maybe draw up some design standards in terms of something like this because you know i've been to multiple top qualifications those lights are very tall so i wonder if there's any way to design the site itself in a way to limit the distance that the light affects the surrounding properties even if the hundred foot buffer is there if i could respond to that the process on this was we started with an initial conversation with staff about the issue that we faced and the problem we've solved we discussed the variance option and concluded that was not a good option we proffered texts that would allow for after hours lighting in every industrial zone and and staff said gee i really think that's too broad and we said okay well let's talk about what another alternative might be and we and staff after looking at this for some amount of time settled settled on the special use permit as the best alternative to achieve what the applicants trying to achieve at this site while protecting the city and the county interest in not creating something that applied indiscriminately across the entire county and to your question about standards those standards are a part of the special use process so the special use process requires us to appear and prove that it's not going to have an adverse impact on surrounding properties and there are a whole list of things there they are the things that i think that you would would expect to be there and would want to be there and the comfort that i would would hope that you would draw from the way we're trying to approach this is to understand that when this comes back to the board of adjustments they will be looking for us to prove that we've met those standards and that the people in the area are protected thank you not commission of error how is the property that your client uh has now currently zoned industrial or industrial or industrial light industrial light i think zoning district industrial zoning district oh it's planned industry so an extra layer of limitation that could be put here so their approach was let's approach it by zone and change the standards the staff's response to too broad i agree let's do it by use permit we could combine both approaches and and say in certain zones with a use permit with specialized standards like this one does like this one has and that cap you could get a lot closer to something i might vote for but i would still want to study the map a little bit to see what we were getting people in for are the additional question okay oh great okay well then commissioner al turk i move that we send case tc 19 0002 to the city council and the county commissioners with a favorable recommendation second it has moved by commissioner al turk and second by commissioner busby that we send item number um tc 19 000 0002 outdoor lighting forward to the city council with a favorable recognition uh recommendation all in favor of this motion let us have a roll call please mr williams no mr johnson no mr brine no commissioner dirkin yes commissioner al turk yes vice chair busby yes sir hyman yes mr miller no mr ketchum yes mr santiago yes mr low yes mr baker yes and commissioner macgyver yes ocean passes thank you nine to four thank you we're ready for the next item uh text amendment affordable housing dwelling unit definition thank you michael stock with the planning department um text amendment tc 1905 would amend the current definition of an affordable housing dwelling unit not in section 17.3 of the unified development ordinance uh the purpose of the amendment is to reflect differences between rental and for sale units um allow flexibility for residents to remain in units as their income increases to a certain extent and to also uh be consistent with um new policies and procedures being established by the community development department as they develop those procedures for tracking affordable housing units built uh pursuant to any of the uh incentives allowed through the udo the affordable housing density bonus any parking allowances and such um this was developed in conjunction with the community development department and through the city attorney's office also reviewed this it was also uh sent out to a number of uh nonprofits um and also a market rate uh uh providers to get input and feedback on um and it was also sent to the collision for affordable housing and transit transit to get their uh feedback on um the the amendment would remain consistent with uh the charter provisions of the city that allows for the uh affordable housing density bonus and that the uh low that it remains a low income uh incentive definition as established by HUD um so the definition that is provided will meet that requirement um as does the current definition um and I'll be happy to answer any questions we do have Karen Lotto with the community development department that has a lot more uh knowledge and background about affordable housing than I do and is here to answer any questions so long as so as do I thank you very much thank you um I do have two individuals who have signed up to speak they did not indicate for or against so I'm going to start with these four okay this may be against okay we'll start with dick hails good evening members of the commission thank you for your service um I am an active member of the coalition on affordable housing and transit and uh back when we were uh we try and advocate for three main things uh reserving publicly owned land for affordable housing uh putting more money into affordable housing which certainly has had a big boost lately and also trying to figure out ways of encouraging more added housing staff such as through the expanded housing choices initiative while that was going on and we along with you all we're active in trying to sift our way through that um it was brought to our attention that several of the major nonprofit affordable housing providers in town said by the way we also need to amend this definition of low and moderate income affordable housing to be more workable um and and the concern was particularly on the side of affordable housing for sale um at that time it was it was during the closing stages of the the EHC and there was not an actual draft that habitat and the land trust and others had had put together and reviewed and so um we endorsed at that time trying to make this a priority to come back because they felt like it was a specific problem they have in trying to make full use of the uh hopefully approval of the bond funds and other things to produce more affordable housing in town so we're um so i'm speaking uh in advocacy for the nonprofits that requested this change and we think it's one small thing that can be beneficial in helping to produce more affordable housing in town thanks thank you um the next individual i have is listed as uh julius barthel i'm not forward again i just oh all right my definition of affordable housing is somebody that's thinking six hundred dollars a month on social security as a place to rent but housings around here now are not period but they can be mobile travel trailers i live five years in a travel trailer to get on my feet when my wife and i first got married from that on property in south carolina on property here in north carolina's mundurl but that trailer gave me a chance to get on my feet as a as a man i was a 20 years old my wife was 20 years old you know if you had a mobile home park which trailers run anywhere from eight to 23 thousand dollars to put people in it homeless people you can charge them a hundred dollars a month rent they'll help pay for the trailers and after get done with the trailers you can sell the trailers back to people that won't travel trailers go on trips with this that another or they might even want to buy them but i suggest travel trailers to help with this with the homeless problem we have as well as affordable housing because you can buy a trailer for 20 thousand dollars or you can build and these concrete we have furnished with couches beds refrigerators stoves heaters sinks commodes you build a house for 70 thousand dollars you still got to put another 20 thousand dollars into it and then after that you know but awesome it's be hard to travel trailers about things with help without the situation an immediate firm you can take nine months to build a house or you can take 30 days to put in water and sewer and a lot and pull the trailers in there and park them and put people that need to be put in thank you thank you i do not have any other individuals who have signed up to speak so i'm going to close the public hearing and give commissioners an opportunity to ask questions uh commissioner durkin i have a question for staff and it might be better suited for karen no offense michael the evening karen lotto community development i had a question about how this the rents for these units and the income levels tie together because my concern is that the definition doesn't include a rental requirement so typically an affordable you know it would be 30 percent of the applicable ami and so you could put anybody who's at 60 percent in a unit but the rent it doesn't mean that the rent is affordable so it doesn't make it an affordable unit so that that's a very good question and um going along with this udo definition there is actually a set of um program regulations that the community development department and planning have been working together for right now the only because right now this definition applies to the density bonus um that is the the one kind of udo affordable housing program um we are going to be bringing forward a set of regulations um for the density bonus to city council to to to this body um wait what's the process i don't generally go to planning commission so i'm not totally sure what the process is are we going straight to council are we for the regulations for your regulation yes straight to council so my apologies you don't get to see them but we are actually going to have a whole um detailed set of regulations that will lay out all of these how is how is income calculated how is rent calculated what is maximum rent um similarly on the for sale side how is you know how is the for sale price what is the maximum for sale price that will all be laid out in the in the regulations that we will ask council to approve so how but how do we make it clear that those regulations i mean it says we'll follow the policies and procedures of the department that's that's the reference right there so that this will be the policies and procedures of the of the department of community development i guess my concern really is just that they're not tied in the definition and so it does not make having a 60 percent am i tenant in a unit where they're paying 70 percent of their income towards rent is in zero way of an affordable but there are hope there are a whole lot of other things that you can only put so much into the definition right and and so that's why there has to be a much more we you know we have 15 20 pages of regulations yeah go with how this actually rolls out and and that will all be laid out in the in the regulations how all this is calculated without having those regulations this definition doesn't mean anything to me and i i can't vote for it as it's written without having the bigger context and and we you could have a definition that ties the rent to it and it be concise and make sense and the regulatory agreements are full of what it means to have an affordable rent and just adding that fact that it i mean i hear what you're saying but without having the larger context it the definition doesn't really do a lot well this is the this is the definition that's that's in the udo i mean this is a refinement of the definition that's in the udo now right i i don't think that definition works well and and but i think the important thing to to um you define here is this is not the definition for affordable housing for the city of durham as a whole um the this is the definition of affordable housing for programs using um affordable provisions within the udo and those programs have policies and procedures associated with them so it's not you you could not go and use the um use the density bonus and just say well i'm going to provide you insist 60 percent of am i but people have to spend 70 percent of their income for housing because that's not how the program is set up you actually have to negotiate a contract with the city you have to um and that contract will specify the affordability levels of your units where how they are distributed what the rents can be how you'll calculate calculate your calculate income what documents you're expected to have in the tenant file um how the city how the community development department will um monitor those units what reporting will be required you know etc etc etc um so there isn't an option right now where you can go and just do what you want and say that it meets the density bonus because in order to do that you have to be in compliance with our regulations so there are regulations in place for the density that's that's what that's what we're taking through council as we're going to be taking through council in the coming weeks okay i guess it just seems like a backward way to do it done if they're well we can't actually take regulations for that say that um 80 percent AMI is the fore sale um rule if it's not in the um definition of the UDO right now so as Karen was alluding to we wanted to run these concurrently so council is going to see those regulations and procedures that Karen's department is developing at the same time they're going to see the text amendment so it's going to run together so we're just blind to the larger context unfortunately yeah we needed to explain that a little bit better for you okay i don't like that thank you uh commissioner miller so i have a problem but mine is is a legal drafting problem you are incorporating by reference standards to be made or policies to be adopted i mean the word is policies by a city agency that can be changed by the city agency which will in effect change the applicability of the ordinance because you'll be changing the rules you can't do that the city may incorporate by reference an existing standard from an outside agency by identifying it but you cannot incorporate by reference standards that might be made or changed in the future by an agency of city government that is a delegation of the legislative function to a city department or official you can't do that the general assembly is delegated the legislative function to the city and it has to follow the rules and the city council has to has to adopt ordinances the city council cannot in turn say this is the big rule but all the details will be handled by our staff and changeable by them in the form of policies you just can't do it that way not lawful and so because i also don't understand what these are but also because i don't believe it's a competent way of adopting law i have to vote against this too and i really don't want to because when we were talking about the hc and and dick and folks came to us and said we have a definition of affordable housing that doesn't work for Durham i was all about that but we need to have and i agree with karen you don't necessarily want to put the whole damn thing in the ordinance you can you can incorporate by reference and we do we incorporate things by reference in other places uh uh and we can do that here but it's got to be already existing it's got to have a date and when that when we need to change that then we have to come back and change the ordinance by the date that's the way it's done at the municipal level the only exceptions that are allowed in in places there are places where federal law specifically say you can like future changes to the irs code um and and those those have been held competent at the state level but not when you're essentially delegating to a city agency the ability to make the details of the rules um you you can't do it uh i mean you can do it but you can't do it this way you can't say you can't incorporate future changes and so i would like to see that change um do we know i mean will we're creating these regulations and when we have them done we'll adopt them somehow and then in my opinion so you create the regulations first and then you change this by a specific reference to the regulations adopted by the um community development department and dated blah blah blah or adopted by council and then then it's competent then you can do it uh and i would support that but i would also like miss durkin like to see it first yeah i and i would like to hear her explain why it's good or not good because this is her area not mine it is my area uh and i value i but i would love i would love to have that all coming together and have the incorporation by reference to be an appropriate and correct one um and then i have another question just to make sure i understand we have a charter provision that expressly contemplates uh incentives for affordable housing and i believe because we've seen other communities try to kind of mess around with their codes and their processes to twist developers arms into promises to build affordable housing and now we're seeing north carolina courts letting developers out of those promises uh durham has something that the other communities don't have we have a charter provision that expressly says in durham the city can with a with a an affordable housing density bonus or other incentives we could even have other incentives um uh take a developer's promise uh and in my opinion because we have that in the in the charter we have something if somebody takes us to court we've got law the state law at the state level because the charter is the state law um that the others don't have and we'll win but i want to make sure that if we change the definition away from 60 percent AMI that and we get a developer who promises affordable housing units at 80 percent AMI purchase units at 80 percent AMI that that that will still be the kind of affordability that is contemplated as a minimum in the charter um does the charter tie us to a 60 percent 15 year standard or can we make the standard tougher in places like going to 30 years and relax it in places like going to 80 percent AMI for purchase units i just want to be confident about that what does the charter say so in the uh microsoft thanks requirement um the charter provision discusses low and moderate income meaning regulations established uh by hud um and if they haven't established it then the city can go ahead and establish what it wants right um the 80 percent is considered low income uh AMI through hud um 60 percent and Karen can get into a little bit more detail is a specialized program the home program within hud so the current definition meets it the proposed definition also meets it because it's contemplated by hud we're golden under the charter thank you and then one if i may okay one last thing so in the text we talk about a dwelling unit committed for a 30 year term it's affordable through covenants or restrictions i know what a covenant is and i know what the word restrictions is when it's used in connection with a term of art covenants restrictions i'm worried that we really want to be bigger than that is it possible that we could have a development agreement with a developer that includes affordable housing units with an incentive that is negotiated through a city department that isn't run through as a development plan commitment or something like that i would rather see restrictions taken out in the word agreements put in because i see the city making agreements with people that don't for affordable housing that don't necessarily have to be the result of a rezoning in other words if if i already have the zoning i need for my land but i want to put affordable housing on there the city wants it to be affordable well there's not going to necessarily be a commitment or anything like that coming through i would like to see the the word restriction does not convey meaning to me the word agreements as an alternative to covenants or commitments does i'm speaking with karen she said that normally they look at restrictive covenants or deed restrictions um we have no problem adding the term agreements to that as an additional avenue all right i'm cool okay so if we could i would back to to what mr. kin was saying i agree i would like to see that fixed before i vote yes on this because i really want to vote yes on this okay commission on busby thank you madam chair and and i hear my fellow commissioners concerns i want to move this forward i think we put good work into it there is a trust fall here but this is when we just voted on it last week affordable housing is a core value of this community 74 percent of our community if i think i got the number right voted for the affordable housing bond i trust that the staff who is very credible on this issue will get the policy right and i trust that the city council will look at both of these together normally i would understand the concerns that my fellow commissioners are raising but this is our community's number one priority i do not want us to hold it up i would encourage the staff to consider some of commissioner durkin and miller's concerns just to if there are things we can do to make this the best possible policy that can strengthen it that can address some of those issues i encourage you to do that as it moves forward but i'm i'm ready to vote for this this evening thank you the other um commissioner al-Turk thank you chair i have a question about the last sentence in the paragraph on rental units this is probably to Karen um so it says if tenant income after initial occupancy rises above 80 percent then the unit will no longer qualify as so can you explain that a little bit more so the unit then just or what happens to the tenant at that point and that that speaks to the um to the larger regulations that how how large regulations are going as well so typically the way we handle this in an affordable housing project is um you must initially be eligible at whatever the income level is 60 percent of area median income in this particular threshold your income can rise up until 80 percent at which you're no longer considered eligible for an affordable unit at that point you have the option you can negotiate with the landlord with the owner of the property directly to stay in the property as a market rate tenant but that unit no longer counts as an affordable unit and the developer has to bring in so the owner of the property at that point is required to lease if you this is now not in the definition but in the rules the owner of that property is now required to lease the next available comparable unit to uh an income eligible tenant okay so because the way the regulations require you're required to maintain 15 percent of the of the of the units affordable and the idea behind this is we didn't want people to their income is all of a sudden 61 percent of AMI you have to leave you no longer qualify or for the unit we wanted to allow people's income to rise to a place where they were more competitive in the market right so the stock staying stays the same and then and the tenant has stock stays saying the tenant basically negotiates with the landlord but we still maintain our 15 percent that's a thank you for that explanation thank you that was great I guess this is somewhat of a follow-up question but when we talk about the home ownership you have to meet a certain level at the time of closing but then there are no limits on increases in income after closing as long as the unit remains the household's principal residence so if if I went into a house uh at say a little below 80 percent and got a better job or won the lottery or something and suddenly had a whole lot more income is the unit I am still considered affordable so it is affordable you have you have purchased the unit at that point um what happens to you and so long as you were income eligible at the time you purchased okay then our concern is not what happens you know our hope is actually that you're going to go out and because your your housing cost is reasonable you're going to go out and invest in other things and your income will rise it is only at the point that you go to sell the home if it's within the 30 year period that the issue is you have to sell to an income eligible household um and and it will further indicate in the policy procedures you have to sell at um a price at or below the maximum price that the city establishes in that year for a for sale product and that and that maximum price will be calculated every year based on mortgage rates and other factors in the market um but but no you're as a homeowner at that point the only thing we would be monitoring as community development is do you still live in the home okay thank you I will echo commissioners my fellow commissioners and it would be helpful I think at least for me to see the rules that we're talking about yeah I feel like I'm sort of thinking in a void okay are the other questions are the commissioners have commissioner durkin just as a I can't not vote for this it just is it I feel like I'm in a really uh conflicting uh place here being the one who always asks about affordable housing but I do think in my comments uh I I agree with commissioner busby that we it is a kind of a trust fall and in my comments that I'll be expanding on what my concerns are but I will be voting for it but with a lot of reservations in my comments thank you any other unreadiness if not I am ready for a motion madam chair I move tc 19 0005 affordable housing dwelling unit definition uh forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation second uh motion by commissioner miller second by commissioner al turk that we move item number tc 19 0005 affordable housing dwelling unit definition forward uh to the city council with a favorable rec recommendation uh was it also go to the course of the board of commissioners to write it well yes yes to both to both elected bodies okay to both elected bodies amending our motion to ensure that it's both um all in favor of this motion uh a roll call please mr williams yes mr johnson yes mr brine yes mr durkin yes mr al turk yes vice chair busby yes chair hyman yes commissioner miller no commissioner ketchan yes commissioner santiago yes commissioner baker yes commissioner low yes and commissioner macgyver yes motion passes 12 to 1 thank you we have one thank you we have one other item under new business steer presentation your quarry eno intake presentation hello again uh tonight uh we're going to present to you about something that's very important but uh it doesn't get seen because mostly it's underground um i would like to introduce my colleague sid miller from who's the senior water resources manager something like that at the water management department um we we as the city of durham are posing a new intake along the eno river which has implications for the delivery of uh clean water to the people who live in durham and will also have some implications to the watershed protection overlay district that exists along the eno river so um sid will give a presentation first about the intake itself and then i'll talk about the eno watershed protection overlay thank you good evening commissioners i'm not used to i'm not usually in this room i'm usually in the committee room so this is all a little different for me um i should also warn you that i get up at five o'clock in the morning and we're already approaching my bed time ours as well but you don't need a special use permit to stay up i can't say so uh i'm going to talk about sort of the first three items here about our water supply in general for the city to provide a little context we're going to talk about tear quarry itself and then what we're uh what we're seeking which is a new intake along the eno river and i'll explain why and then scott we'll talk about everything else so we have lake mickey which is one of our primary um whoop we have lake mickey which is um one of our main reservoirs for the city um which was built quite some time ago and then we also have a little river reservoir so both of those two supplies are i mean that's mainly our that those are our main sources of supply we recently increased our allocation out of jordan lake at this point we don't have an intake ourselves on jordan lake i'll explain more about that so these are our water supplies that we have um sort of a brief description of them for jordan lake you see i've crossed that off and that's basically because we do not have an intake in jordan lake at this time one of our water treatment plants when you say an intake you mean like a straw into the water exactly thank you there is an intake in jordan lake it's owned by the carry and apex jointly this is one of our water treatment plants which i know some of you are quite familiar with right 1917 this is the other the wade g brown water treatment plant currently undergoing an expansion this is just a brief about the two and then this is where our water supply system interfaces with your work this is our distribution system this is where the land use choices you all make have an impact on the water that we deliver and are limited by our abilities to deliver that water to any specific location within the city so the western intake partnership is something that we actually just recently formed includes the city of durham the orange water and sewer authority the town of pit spore and chetum county the purpose of the western intake partnership is to develop a new facility on the western side of jordan lake which will include an intake a large treatment facility and then regional pump station to send treated water to each of the partners this is our current projection of water supply needs the dotted green line is the average day demand which is sort of how we plan for the quantity of water that we have in supply and then that dashed red line is maximum day demand which is how we plan the water treatment facilities that we need so i've i've shown where our current level of water supply is with that solid green line um that is what we currently have and as you can see we're already late in getting jordan lake online now we have interconnections with the town of carry which is how we're able to transfer treated water as we need and that's how we currently access our jordan lake water supply storage allocation but we're limited in how much water we can transfer from the town of carry so this is where tear quarry comes in that's a actually a nice picture of tear quarry that's where it's located which um once dentley is on denfield road denfield so uh tear quarry is essential um we need to bring it online as a raw water storage facility the thing about tear quarry is that it's essentially only filled by rainwater so it was last used in 2007 during a severe drought we installed a temporary intake and temporary pumps and pumped water from tear quarry into a raw water line that's adjacent to the quarry and sent it down to the williams water treatment plant so we need to be able to fill tear quarry from either the eno river or from lake mickey and when i say either we need to be able to fill it from both we need to be able to choose what we fill it from when we when we need to fill it so going back to here you can see our existing eno river intake we have enough we have one which is downstream of the quarry um and i don't really have a way of pointing um so it's the one to the east western most pin on the map the eastern most pin eastern most pin on that's our existing intake okay so we have one but it's not near the quarry no it's not the one that we would like is the western moor pin which is closest to the quarry that's advantageous because well for two reasons one it's much closer to the quarry and two it's at a higher elevation so if we have an intake there we can bore a tunnel from the river to the quarry which will allow us to fill a quarry about 60 well more like 55 full just by gravity the rest of the storage of the quarry will have to be pumped but for the most part we'll be able to fill it by gravity the way we're going to operate the quarry the intakes is that we will only withdraw water from the eno river when it is flooding so there are approximately 12 days during an average year when we would skim water from the eno river we would take between 10 and 20 of the flow and pump it or send it by gravity into the quarry we would also pump water from lake mickey again when lake mickey is full we would pump water from lake mickey to the quarry there's a raw water line that's just to the east of the quarry so in order to build a new intake on the eno river that section of the eno river needs to be classified as a water supply by the state once it's classified as a water supply then there are land use implications and that's where you come in so if something is classified as water supply by the state there are local governments are required to enact watershed protection overlay zoning districts in order to protect the quality of that water uh we currently Durham currently has water supply watershed overlays for falls lake and jordan lake for lake mickey for little river and for the eno not for this there is one for the eno yeah but not for the quarry not for the quarry there is one for the uh at good point yeah there's one for the existing emergency intake the one that's further to the east there i don't know a lot of the details but there are the state has classifications ws one through four based on the existing development patterns how developed it is which have different requirements for impervious surface limits water treatment those sorts of things the eno is a ws four which is the most developed type which has the least amount of restrictions on new development there's a before any of this happens there's not only the land use implications i'm going to talk about but there's also a lot of other approvals that need to happen through the state this will also affect the a river based water supply has a protected area of 10 miles from wherever the intake is so this the current eno overlay affects the city of Durham county of Durham in orange county um extending it would also affect a small bit of the town of hillsborough so cid has his work cut out for him to work with the state and some of our neighbors to the west so this kind of visualizes what i just talked about this over here on the east is the part of Durham where the intake is it goes all the way down the eno over here to the town of hillsborough and this shows the areas in orange county in hillsborough that would be affected there's more orange than there's in Durham it's true so this is the so uh one step back so it's part of the watershed overlay there is a state mandated a critical area where the strictest restrictions apply and then there's the protected area which have less restrictions the minimum the state requires is a half mile critical area there is an option to for local governments to select a one mile critical area for all of Durham's watersheds we have selected a one mile critical area so this is the existing you know critical area the the old emergency intake is over here at the eastern end the darker areas in the city the lighter areas are in the county so if the intake removed the critical area would need to move as well the small half circle here where the hatching would indicates what a half mile critical area would look like the larger blue semi circle is what a mile would look like so the restrictions in the udo for the e the ea is the abbreviation for the critical area eb is the abbreviation for the protected area so in the ea industrial uses and fuel sales are prohibited there's a 24 impervious surface limit with no exceptions there's a stream buffers of 150 feet perennial and 50 feet for intermittent and there's a minimum 20 000 square foot lot size in the eb there's no use restrictions there's a 24 percent low density option 70 percent high density option where additional water quality controls allow you to put more impervious surface there's a slightly smaller buffer for perennial streams and there's no additional standards for lot size or things like that we discussed this at the joint city county planning committee at their june meeting some of the things we discussed is that the because of the nature of this area adding the more restrictive one mile critical area does not give us that much in the benefit for benefit of water quality because it's primarily developed um so it also it also would affect a lot more properties if we used a one mile critical area it goes takes in a lot of the property along roxford road it would effectively prohibit a lot of redevelopment along that area it would cause existing fuel sales would no longer be emitted uh so a kind of compromise solution we talked about with the joint city county planning committee was that we would keep the existing one mile critical area for the existing emergency intake and then establish a half mile critical area for the the new intake the protected area would still be 10 miles downstream and there's no option in the middle we couldn't draw it's one it's half or one yeah so well yeah two choices so the process going forward uh sit and water management have the work they need to do to get this permitted and get agreements from our other localities once we know that it's getting close to a go we plan on bringing a udo text amendment and a zoning map change for this uh we've talked it over with our attorney and they're comfortable with us having it go forward before the state actually approves it and having the effective date of the ordinance the uh at the time the state approves it that way the councils uh and commissioners hands are tied to having to approve a zoning change based on the inaction of the state so that we'd be happy to answer any questions by all means commissioner um miller commissioner elder i thought we would uh commissioner baker yeah okay so your answer my question is about development impact if we draw water from the eno river will we have treatment impacts in other words right now we have treatment facilities that are set up to treat what we expect to get out of the water sources that they draw from if we add the eno river which was Durham's original water source many years ago uh and not a very good one uh because there's a lot of discharge upstream uh it's a dirtier source than the others uh will we have to change our treatment at Williams i guess that's where this water would go um so the short answer is i'm not certain but more complete answer is that um so you're you're right that the the water within the eno river is likely different from the water that's in Lake Mickey or Little River reservoir um what's actually more different is the water that's already now in the quarry but before we do any of this work we'll be doing water quality studies and treatability studies so if there are any required changes in treatment or if there is pre-treatment that's required all that'll be figured out before anything is pumped and so and will there be based upon the regulatory changes and also the business of constructing these facilities and operating them changes uh in how impacts on the recreation quality of our eno river based parks and is there a wildlife impact which you don't normally hear me ask about but i'm more worried about it this time no so the operating rules that we've come up with we worked on that in in um collaboration with the division of water resources the wildlife resources commission and us fish and wildlife service everybody is good with what we've proposed and how we've proposed it well the eno river association i've um attended the eno river users group uh two months ago uh the eno river um there were a number of organizations there and we talked about what we have proposed doing and everyone was okay with it all right that's good that's that's what i had thank you commission director yeah alter and thank you um i um i'm not sure if this is related to what commission miller just asked but on that last slide it sounds like you're gonna propose a half mile critical right from the critical area from the proposed intake is that correct yes that's correct yeah so so has that been discussed with some of the groups that typically you know like the eno river association and others another environmental group it's not been discussed with them yet okay it's still uh pretty early infancy but yeah before we move okay so you plan on doing that before you start writing the text movement or kind of between that and the time that we see it because i think it'd be nice to have them kind of early or have some provide some feedback early on yeah certainly that's yeah good idea yeah thank you commissioner baker yeah i was going to ask if a green roof counts as impervious surface area so technically that's a stormwater question which is a whole other department and division my my understanding is green roofs i i don't know how exactly they're treated in terms of credit that's allowed and typically this has to do with nutrients um as far as impervious surface area i'm going to guess that for the purposes of this it's impervious okay uh is it possible to transfer impervious surface area credits from one parcel to another parcel it is it has to be within the same watershed classification so would have to be within the ea to the ea or the eb to the eb okay and we do you think that there could be some sort of uh similar um something similar with the square foot minimum lot size if you did something like that you think that it was possible yeah and i will say there are a few things that are not state mandated that are in this and that minimum lot size is one of them the fuel sale prohibition is another so there are probably options um don't know what they are standing here at this very moment but um this is certainly reflecting of a older time sure sure yeah i was just i'm curious because it'd be interesting to explore some standards that we'll say to the side the the eno is a even when this was established 25 years ago it was already pretty well developed um we're in our other watersheds which are much bigger and have uh are on the fringe where there's a lot less development we we actually get more um impervious surface transfers in those areas there's just fewer opportunities in this one any additional questions thank you both for an excellent and very informative presentation something new and different something new and different and that's our last item uh motion to adjourn happy thanks