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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2002-03-25 MinutesPLANNING COMMISSION A regular meeting of the Fayetteville Planning Commission was held on Monday, March 25, 2002 at 5:30 p.m. in Room 219 of the City Administration Building, 113 W. Mountain, Fayetteville, Arkansas. ITEMS CONSIDERED ACTION TAKEN FPL 02-3.00: Final Plat (Copper Creek, pp 99/100) Approved Page 4 LSD 01-42.00: Large Scale Development (Karstetter & Glass, pp 402) Page 5 LSD 02-4.00: Large Scale Development (Danaher, pp 681) Page 12 Approved Approved RZN 02-7.00: Rezoning (Lindsey Properties, pp 402) Forwarded to City Council Page 15 ADM 01-19.00 Administrative Item (Shared Parking Ordinance) Page 22 Tabled LSP 02-12.00: Lot Split (Wilson, pp 482) Approved Page 23 PPL 02-7.00: Preliminary Plat (Legacy Pointe, pp 435/474) Page 46 LSD 02-7.00: Large Scale Development (Dandy/Schmitt, pp 524) Page 50 CUP 02-11.00: Conditional Use (Dandy/Schmitt, pp 524) Page VAC 02-1.00: Vacation (Maryin, pp 560) Page 76 Report from the Nominating Committee Page 78 Approved Denied Not Heard Forwarded to City Council Nominated Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 2 MEMBERS PRESENT MEMBERSABSENT Loren Shackelford Bob Estes Lee Ward Nancy Allen Donald Bunch Loren Shackelford Sharon Hoover Don Marr Lorel Hoffman STAFF PRESENT STAFF ABSENT Kit Williams Tim Conklin Dawn Warrick Hugh Earnest Renee Thomas Ron Petrie Chuck Rutherford Kim Hesse Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 3 Estes: Welcome to the Monday evening, March 25, 2002 meeting of your Fayetteville Planning Commission. The first item of business will be the roll call. Renee, would you call the roll please? Roll Call: Upon the completion of roll call there were nine Commissioners present. Estes: Marr: A quorum being present, the next order of business will be approval of the minutes from the March 11, 2002 meeting. Are there any changes, additions, modifications to the minutes of the March 11, 2002 meeting minutes? There is one change that I would like to bring your attention to. On page 15 of the minutes, there is a reference in the motion by Commissioner Marr to conditional use permit 02-7.00, that was conditional use permit 02-9.00 and that clerical misprision is carried forward through the motion discussion of the minutes. Do I have a motion to amend that portion of the minutes, the reference to conditional use permit 02-7.00 being be 02-9.00. So moved. Shackelford: Second. Estes: The minutes are amended as stated. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 4 FPL 02-3.00: Final Plat (Copper Creek, pp 99/100) was submitted by Brian Moore on behalf of Gary Brandon Enterprises, Inc. for property located east of Stonebridge Subdivision and north of Zion Road. The property is zoned R-1, Low Density Residential and contains approximately 34.34 acres with 81 lots proposed. Estes: The next item to come before your Commission is the consent agenda, the first item and the only item on the consent agenda is a final plat for Copper Creek submitted by Brian Moore on behalf of Gary Brandon Enterprises, Inc. for property located east of Stonebridge Subdivision and north of Zion Road. The property is zoned R-1, Low Density Residential and contains approximately 34.34 acres with 81 lots proposed. Is there any member from the Commission who would like to remove this item from the consent agenda? Is there any member of the audience who would desire to remove this item from the consent agenda? Seeing none, Renee, would you call the roll please? Roll Call: Upon the completion of roll call the Commission approved FPL 02-3.00 by a vote of 9-0-0. Estes: The consent agenda is approved by a unanimous vote. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 5 LSD 01-42.00: Large Scale Development (Karstetter & Glass, pp 402) was submitted by Steve Clark on behalf of Doris Ann Glass for property located at 2530 Wedington Drive. The property is zoned C-2, Thoroughfare Commercial and contains approximately 1.76 acres with a 1,240 sq.ft. shop expansion proposed. Estes: The next item of business on the agenda is item number two. This is an item of old business. This is a large scale development submitted by Steve Clark on behalf of Doris Ann Glass for property located at 2530 Wedington Drive. The property is zoned C-2, Thoroughfare Commercial and contains approximately 1.76 acres with a 1,240 sq.ft. shop expansion proposed. This item was before the Planning Commission at a previous meeting. The applicant has revised the site plan to include landscaping along Wedington. The elevations have also been changed to include columns. Staff recommends approval of this large scale development subject to certain conditions of approval. Mr. Conklin, do we have signed conditions of approval? Conklin: We do not have signed conditions of approval. I would like to offer some additional information on this item. With regard to the question of the dumpster location, our Solid Waste Division did indicate that the dumpster could be relocated and actually put back behind the fence and that they would be willing to coordinate with Karstetter & Glass to pick up the trash. That is the additional information that I have. Estes: Thank you Mr. Conklin. The conditions of approval are 1) A fire hydrant shall be installed within 500 feet of the building addition pursuant to fire code. 2)Planning Commission determination of compliance with Commercial Design Standards and Design Overlay District Regulations. The applicant is requesting several waivers from these regulations as listed below. Those waiver are: Applicant is requesting a waiver of §161.21(D)(6) which requires that curb cuts be a minimum of 200 feet apart. The proposal is for two driveways which are 39 feet apart. B) Applicant is requesting a waiver of §161.21(D)(2) which requires that 25 feet of landscaped area be provided along all public rights-of-way with one tree planted every thirty feet. The proposal is for no landscaped area along the front property line. C)Applicant is requesting a waiver of §161.21(D)(10) which states that buildings shall be constructed of wood, masonry, or natural looking materials. No structures shall be allowed that have metal side walls UNLESS such metal siding is similar in appearance to wood, masonry or natural looking material. The applicant is proposing metal side walls with brick columns. Condition of approval 3) Planning Commission determination of the requested waiver of §172.01(C)(5) which requires that parking lot entrances and aisles not exceed 24 feet in width. The applicant is requesting aisles widths from 21 to 23 feet, a reduction from 1 to 3 feet. Condition 4)Planning Commission determination of the requested waiver of required right-of-way dedication Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 6 along Wedington and Futrall. The requirement along Wedington is 55 feet from centerline. Currently, a varying amount of right-of-way exists varying from 40.53 to 44.31 feet. The requirement along Futrall is 25 feet from centerline. Currently, 15 feet from centerline exists. Staff is in support of the request for the right-of-way reduction along Wedington Drive only. This request would require City Council approval. 5) Applicant shall obtain approval from the Board of Adjustment for the non- conforming building with regard to setbacks. 6) The dumpster shall be screened from view of Wedington Drive. 7) Plat Review and Subdivision comments (to include written staff comments provided to the applicant or his representative, and all comments from utility representatives. 8) Staff approval of final detailed plans, specifications and calculations (where applicable) for grading, drainage, water, sewer, fire protection, streets (public and private), sidewalks, parking lot(s) and tree preservation. The information submitted for the plat review process was reviewed for general concept only. All public improvements are subject to additional review and approval. All improvements shall comply with City.s current requirements. 9) Large Scale Development approval to be valid for one calendar year. 10) Prior to the issuance of a building permit the following is required: a. Grading and drainage permits b. Separate easement plat for this project c. Project Disk with all final revisions d. Completion of all required improvements or the placement of a surety with the City (letter of credit, bond, escrow) as required by .158.01. Is the applicant or the applicant's representative present? Clark: Yes Sir. Estes: Do you have a presentation that you would like to make at this time? Clark: Just very briefly. Going through the list of items that we are requesting... Estes: Please state your name. Clark: My name is Steve Clark with Clark Consulting. Item 2b, it said that we are proposing no landscaping along the street frontage and actually we have revised our drawings now to include some landscaping along there. We are showing one tree which is all that I feel is safe for us to plant with the proximity it would be to the right-of-way or to the street but we are planting shrubs and landscaping where it currently has concrete. We would also request, I know that the staff opposes it, we would reiterate our request that the right-of-way dedication along Futrall be waived at least until future development occurs. Right now the west side of this property is used by Mrs. Glass as her residence. She is opposed to dedicating any right-of-way. She feels that it will decrease the value when she does try to sell her property in the future and she requests that we not dedicate any right-of-way at this time and postpone that until a future date when the Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 7 Estes: Marr: entire tract goes to development. Other than that, I have no other comments. Thank you Mr. Clark. Is there any member who wishes to comment on this proposed large scale development, 02-42.00? Seeing none, I will bring it back to the Commission for discussion, questions of the applicant, comments and motions. Earlier we heard Mr. Clark that Tim talked about Solid Waste would work with you to relocate the dumpster from the front of the building to the rear. Currently we have it shown on this plan as being screened in the front of the building. Are there any concerns that you have if we actually make that requirement for it to be relocated? Clark: If the trash people believe they can get into the back and get turned around and maneuver their vehicles we will move it in behind the fence. Marr: Ok, so you don't have any issue with that? Clark: The person that runs the shop and is operating the business there prefers it out front. They feel like it is easier access for the trucks and it doesn't run them across their parking lot with the potential damage that will occur. If it is the Planning Commission's desire that we move it to the back then we will move it to the back. Marr: The reason I ask you is I think it is important, at least for me, we are making several exceptions because of the long history on this project and I certainly would much rather have the dumpster not in the front of the building in our overlay area. Clark: If we need to move it to the back to get Planning Commission approval then we will move it to the back. Marr: Ok. The second question I had is your landscaped area in the front. I think in the Subdivision Committee meeting, there were some discussions or concerns about this newly proposed landscape area being driven over as a result of where it is located. Was there any consideration to actually building those berms up so that it is a visual barrier as opposed to being a flat planted area? Clark: We had anticipated putting curbs in so that it would be raised by at least 6". Again, I am not opposed to berming that up. The potential area that we are going to get into is that if we berm it up by more than 6", lets say we go 18" to 24" in height, then you put another 24" to 30" of height for a shrub, now you have a shrub that is sitting 4' to 5' above ground and not it is creating an obstacle for sight distance when vehicles are trying to get in Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 8 and out of those driveways. I have a bit of a concern about berming it more than a minimal amount. You may not have the same concern with sight distance. Again, we will do what the Planning Commission wishes us to do. Marr: I am concerned with the safety of full visual view. I also want it to be there five years from now and not be a mudded tract. Clark: I can appreciate that also. Estes: Thank you Commissioner Man. Are there any other questions or any other comments? Hoffman: Mr. Chair, I think the berm might be a good idea. I think that we have a standard for height of fences at intersections not being more than 4' for sight distance? Conklin: We don't allow anything over 30". Hoffman- I was just off by a few inches. Could we add in item B that we could provide a 30" berm from street level? Clark: Again, the berm itself at 30" would not allow any vegetation, any shrubs to be planted on top of that because those would be in addition to the 30". In most cases we try to keep shrubs, fences, everything, no more than 30" in height. Hoffman- I understand that but I think that intermittent spacing or something like that could be worked out with the Landscape Administrator and setback somewhat so that you would have room to pull it up. Staff is really good about working with you on these kinds of ideas. Clark: I absolutely don't have a problem with putting the berms in other than the sight issues. If we can get something that works out with staff and if you would give them some flexibility there then I would be willing to work with them. Hoffman: Ok, thanks. The second question I have also concerns landscaping and when I drove by the site I know that you are going to be adding cedar boards to create a privacy fence to screen the back lot. The view from the bypass, since we have an existing non -conforming condition that we are trying to work with, is I think important to consider. I have always been a proponent of adding landscaping as a visual buffer that is cost effective to you and there are some fast growing pine trees that might be available at a reasonable cost to put on the west side of the fence. I had originally thought that it would be between the house and Futrall but as I looked at Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 9 Clark: the site I thought maybe a few pine trees spaced along in there particularly where the back of the addition is would screen that metal building. What do you think about that? Mrs. Glass has been pretty adamant in the past that she did not want any more shrubs or trees or anything on her side of the fence because she doesn't want to have to mow around them. Again, to refresh your memory on this, we are really dealing with two parties here. One is the property owner, Mrs. Glass, who owns the residence and the building and then the party who is actually running the business is the one that is building the building and is trying to get these improvements and large scale approved. Hoffman: I understand that. To take this further, I am in favor of the waiver of the right-of-way that she has requested. I think that planting a few trees would not be an undue hardship and would help us in getting this finally approved and getting you on your way. Clark: Marr: Again, my instructions are that we will do what the Planning Commission requires us or requests us to do. If trees are part of the requirements then we will do it. The staff recommended denying the variance waiver on Futrall. They were ok with the variance on Wedington but not on Futrall. Could you just speak to that, why you took that position. Conklin: Because when the property is developed, the right-of-way will be needed and it is easier to get the right-of-way now than in the future. That will allow for sidewalks to go in and allow for the greenspace between the curb and the sidewalk. Petrie: I think one big consideration was location of that right-of-way to the actual street and back of curb. The way it is now it would be impossible to provide any maintenance to that street. That was my major consideration. There is only about a foot or two from back of curb to the right-of-way. Marr: Thank you. Hoffman: This isn't something that we could look at when future development came in on that side of the lot? Wouldn't it be likely to resubdivide it or something like that? Conklin- I believe this property will be redeveloped in the future considering its location, existing use of the single family home and this area. I think there will be an opportunity to get it in the future. However, we have had some Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 10 situations in the past where people did not understand that additional right- of-way would be required and they purchased the property and something that is on our Master Street Plan and allows us by ordinance, to require it at this time. Hoffman: Ok, thanks. Estes: Are there any other comments, discussion or motions? Hoover: I was reading here on the Design Overlay District requirements and site coverage, 25% of the site shall be left open space, does this have 25% open space? Conklin: This also includes the single family home and the front yard on Futrall in the front so yes, I believe it does contain 25% open space. Petrie: I would like to make one correction on condition number one. We actually have a stricter engineering requirement on fire hydrant spacing. It really should be 300' from the building instead of 500'. Estes: Thank you Mr. Petrie. Is there any other discussion or motions? Motion: Hoffman: I would like to make a motion to approve LSD 01-42.00 subject to all staff comments with the following revisions to those comments: 1) That the fire hydrant shall be installed within 300'. 2a) That the driveway waiver is approved. 2b) That a 30" berm with intermittent landscaping, as to be determined by staff, is provided in the front island. That additional pine trees be planted along the west fence line, also size and spacing to be determined between staff and the applicant. That item 2c) is approved as shown on our elevation drawings for the appearance of the metal sidewalls with the masonry columns. Item number 6) That the dumpster shall be located behind the building. I believe that is it. Estes: Ward: Estes: Marr: We have a motion by Commissioner Hoffman to approve LSD 01-42.00 with the stated amendments to the conditions of approval. Is there a second? I will second. We have a second by Commissioner Ward. Is there any discussion? I just want to make sure I understand. Is the motion then leading the denial of the Futrall right-of-way? Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 11 Hoffman. Yes, I had misread the paper. I am sorry about that. It did misstate that but it is supporting the right-of-way reduction along Wedington only. Ward: This has been in front of Subdivision Committee several times I guess and we have tabled it or sent it back two or three times and the metal shop building that they started several years ago really didn't meet our standards and they have come back and put columns and colors to contrast the side of the building where it looks much better than all of the first attempts. I guess this property has been out there 40-50 years as Karstetter & Glass. What we have before us I think is much, much better than anything in the past. It is still an old building that we are working with. The state has taken so much land in the front the building is almost out on the road. It is really hard to work with as far as doing a lot of greenspace and landscaping and so on on the property as it is. Estes: We have a motion by Commissioner Hoffman and a second by Commissioner Ward to approve LSD 01-42.00, is there any other discussion or any further comments? Renee, would you call the roll please? Roll Call: Upon the completion of roll call the motion to approve LSD 01-42.00 was approved by a vote of 8-1-0 with Commissioner Hoover voting no. Estes: The motion passes by a vote of eight to one. Clark: Thank you. Estes: Thank you Mr. Clark. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 12 LSD 02-4.00: Large Scale Development (Danaher, pp 681) was submitted by Ken Parker on behalf of Danaher Tool Group for property located at 2900 S. City Lake Road. The property is zoned 1-2, General Industrial and contains approximately 38.06 acres with a 15,000 sq.ft. warehouse proposed. Estes: The next item of business on the agenda is item number three under old business. This is LSD 02-4.00. It is submitted by Mr. Ken Parker on behalf of Danaher Tool Group for property located at 2900 S. City Lake Road. The property is zoned I-2, General Industrial and contains approximately 38.06 acres with a 15,000 sq.ft. warehouse proposed. Staff recommends approval subject to the conditions of approval. Mr. Conklin, do we have signed conditions of approval? Conklin- Yes we do. Marr: Estes: Having previously been the Chief Operating Officer of Staffmark, a company that services Danaher historically, I am going to recuse on this item. Thank you Commissioner Marr. The conditions of approval are 1) A minimum of five trees shall be planted along City Lake Road to meet the parking lot landscaping requirements. Pursuant to Section 172.H.2. of the Unified Development Ordinance nonconforming parking lots are required to be brought into compliance beginning with an expansion of 10%. The expansion of 10% requires 10% of the parking lot to be brought into compliance. This increases with an increased percent of expansion. With the proposed addition, a 16% expansion in square footage is occurring. Therefore, the requirement to bring 16% of the parking lot into compliance is for two landscaped islands with two trees. Staff is recommending that five trees be planted along City Lake Road in place of the two islands in the existing parking lot. These trees shall be a minimum 2 inch caliper hardwood species and shall be placed outside of the right -of -way on private property. Maintenance will be the responsibility of the property owner. 2) The legal description on the plat shall be revised to include the correct acreage. The current legal description reflects property that was sold to the City. The City Engineering Department has written a correct legal for this property to be used by the applicant. 3) Sidewalk construction to include a minimum six foot sidewalk along City Lake Road. 4) Plat Review and Subdivision comments (to include written staff comments provided to the applicant or his representative, and all comments from utility representatives. 5) Staff approval of final detailed plans, specifications and calculations (where applicable) for grading, drainage, water, sewer, fire protection, streets (public and private), sidewalks, parking lot(s) and tree preservation. The information submitted for the plat review process was reviewed for general concept only. All Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 13 public improvements are subject to additional review and approval. All improvements shall comply with Cityas current requirements. 6) Large scale development shall be valid for one calendar year. 7) Prior to the issuance of a building permit the following is required: Grading and drainage permits; Separate easement plat for this project; Project Disk with all final revisions; Completion of all required improvements or the placement of a surety with the City (letter of credit, bond, escrow) as required by .158.01. Is the applicant present? Do you have a presentation that you would like to make at this time? Parker: No Sir, I have no presentation. Estes: Ward: Is there any member of the audience who would like to comment on this LSD 02-4.00? Seeing none, I will bring it back to the Commission for discussion, questions of the applicant's representative or motions. I would like to hear from our City Attorney, some brief comments about the Sidewalk Ordinance and what we can do and not do as far as this particular situation. Williams: I think at this point, correct me if I am wrong Mr. Earnest, but I think that they are in agreement at this point that there is going to be some work done not only by the City but hopefully in obtaining some state funds to help build the sidewalk. I think it is understood that the sidewalk will be built. Ward: Estes: Motion: Ward: Ok. Is there any other discussion? With that, I would like to make a motion that we approve LSD 02-4.00 for the large scale development of Danaher Tools at this time. Estes: We have a motion by Commissioner Ward to approve LSD 02-4.00, is there a second? Shackelford: I will second. Estes: We have a second by Commissioner Shackelford. Is there any discussion? We have a motion by Commissioner Ward and a second by Commissioner Shackelford to approve LSD 02-4.00. Renee, would you call the roll please? Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 14 Roll Call: Upon the completion of roll call the motion to approve LSD 02-4.00 was approved by a vote of 8-0-1 with Commissioner Marr abstaining. Estes: The motion passes by a vote of eight with one abstention. Thank you. Parker: Thank you. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 15 RZN 02-7.00: Rezoning (Lindsey Properties, pp 402) was submitted by Dave Jorgensen of Jorgensen & Associates on behalf of Lindsey Properties for property owned by the estate of Marie Frankie Hughes, Pauline Millsap, Administrator. The subject tract is located west of Porter Road and north of Valley Drive. The property is zoned R-1, Low Density Residential and contains approximately 11.94 acres. The request is to rezone to RMF -12, Moderate Density Multi -Family Residential. Estes: The next item on the agenda is item number four. This is the first item of new business. This is RZN 02-7.00, submitted by Dave Jorgensen of Jorgensen & Associates on behalf of Lindsey Properties for property owned by the estate of Marie Frankie Hughes, Pauline Millsap, Administrator. The subject tract is located west of Porter Road and north of Valley Drive. The property is zoned R-1, Low Density Residential and contains approximately 11.94 acres. The request is to rezone to RMF -12, Moderate Density Multi -Family Residential. Staff recommends approval of the requested rezoning with the Bill of Assurance offered by the perspective developer based on the findings that are included as a part of your materials. Is the applicant or the applicant's representative present? Do you have a presentation that you would like to make at this time? Lindsey: I am Lindy Lyndsey. Mr. Chair and fellow Commissioners, we've got Cornerstone Properties, which is just west of this sixteen acres and we are wanting to put 108 units of apartments and 9-10 single family dwelling units. When I first talked to Tim Conklin about this he advised me to contact Mr. Richard Maynard, who is the president of the Asbell Neighborhood Association and at that time he helped us out and we had several meetings with the neighbors. We put this, I want to say a special thank you to Richard for all the work that he has done with us. He stayed neutral in his stance, he got us a meeting. He hand delivered all kinds of stuff to the neighbors and really did a good job for us. We had a meeting with the neighbors and it went really well. We covered a lot of items and are just bringing that forward to you all. Estes: Thank you Mr. Lindsey. Is there any member of the audience who would like to comment on this rezoning request, 02-7.00? If so, would you please come forward, state your name and provide us with the benefit of your comments? Maynard: My name is Richard Maynard. I live at 1717 Sang Ave. I am here on behalf of the Asbell Neighborhood Association, the other partner in this. We certainly appreciate being appreciated and Mr. Lindsey's remarks. I just want to explain something about this meeting that we had on February 7th and I think the uniqueness of it. To the best of my knowledge, this kind of meeting has never happened before it went to city planning or before it went to this board. What did happen was Mr. Conklin had Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 16 advised Mr. Lindsey that it might be a good idea to talk to the neighborhood. He called me and I said I think the best thing to do would be having the neighborhood meeting. He said good, how do we go about that, what do I need to do? I basically told him he didn't need to do anything but show up. That is basically what we do here as a Neighborhood Association, we do provide that dialogue between the city, tthe neighbors, the developer. They came on February 7`h, presented to us what they wanted to do. There was time for questions, there were a lot of good questions asked, the right questions were asked. After they left we took a straw vote, we even talked about maybe having a follow-up meeting, if people needed to talk about it more. The neighbors said they didn't think that was necessary. We took a straw vote, it was overwhelmingly in favor of this development and afterwards, not to just go on that, there was a task that I thought I could do in an afternoon of calling 90 people and seeing how they felt about this. The problem I had with it is it took hours and hours. What was interesting about this is that everybody was very charged. People didn't just want to say yes or say no, they wanted to say why they were saying yes or saying no to this, what their reasons were. They were excited about being involved in this process. I hope it is a process that we keep encouraging but not really demanding. I do have a copy of this and I want to say something about this vote. I asked Mr. Estes if I could and he said I could. This is about the roll of Neighborhood Associations in these meetings. We took a vote, we absolutely understand that this is not a binding vote, we are not regulatory bodies, we have no statutory authority, all this is is just to get a measure of the will of the neighborhood on how they feel about something going on in their neighborhood. If I may Mr. Chairman, I do have a result of that, copies for you, can I bring those up? Estes: Yes, please pass them to the clerk. Maynard: Just a couple more things. I know you have a heavy agenda tonight. The first line there is the total number of people at that meeting, 57. How many voted for and against. If you belong to the neighborhood association you have the right to vote whether you attend the meeting or not so that is the total vote and then these at the bottom, just for your information, incase you are interested, how it broke down street by street to those streets that would be most effected such as Megan Drive or Stable and Arthur Hart. I would like to say one thing about why I think this had such overwhelming support. I guess particularly since we raised such a stink 2 % years ago about other apartments that were going in our neighborhood. In fact, one person, a member of our board, voted against it for the very reason that she said I know this is going to come back to bite us. I said she was right, the attempt would come back to bite us. Why would we not want to give up R-1 property two years ago, but this time we Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 17 do. I think you folks know as well as we do, every development is different. Every proposal is different. There is nothing similar between those two developments outside the fact that they were apartments. Almost everything else was different. The consensus of those present, or members of the ANA in general, was that of course we would like to see more single family residences in the neighborhood but we don't believe that will happen in this particular 16 acres. Primarily given the amount of fill it would take to lift the and above the floodplain. It just wouldn't be cost effective. Our Vice President, who is here, is a builder himself. He looked at that land at one time possibly to do duplexes and he absolutely passed on it, he just didn't think he could make it work. We figure something is going to go in there, it probably will be apartments, if it is going to be apartments, we would rather it be a Lindsey development. At least we know what we are getting. Especially since this is basically an extension of their Cornerstone apartments directly to the west and it will certainly look better than what is there now, which looks more like a junkyard if you have ever seen that property. That is not my opinion. That is what I heard from the people who I talked to after the meeting. I would also like to add that this is an agreement, whether this means anything to you or not is another thing. It means a lot to us. This is an agreement between Lindsey & Associates and this neighborhood. Had it been another developer, had the example that we had been what was going to go in there for example what is sitting on the corner now at Dean and Porter I could almost guarantee you that the vote would have gone almost four to one the other way. The neighborhood is basically saying that we trust this developer and we appreciate the fact that they showed us the common courtesy and respect to us as property owners and residence to consult with us first about the change they are proposing for our neighborhood, which any zoning definitely is. It wasn't just their coming to talk to us that got the support of 80% of the neighborhood. The neighbors that thought this was not a good development for the neighborhood, they would have thanked the Lindseys but said no thanks. The Lindseys would have been well within their rights, as you know, to present their plans to the board. At least then everyone would know what we were talking about instead of what has happened so often in the past. It certainly happened with me in the past, you've come to oppose something that you are not quite sure what you are opposing. That certainly wasn't the case here. Just a couple of other points I want to make on this. That is basically just how we felt. Just some things that I have heard through the grapevine around the city about what the roll of Neighborhood Associations in these development plans. I certainly do not pretend to speak for my neighborhood. I only speak for the Neighborhood Association, I think that is an important distinction and I certainly pretend to speak for another Neighborhood Association but how we, in the Asbell Neighborhood Association, see ourselves as simply offering the forum for Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 18 a developer or the city to come and talk directly to the neighbors. Our role in this doesn't change anything else in place. We could be 100% behind the development and you might find for whatever reason that you don't want to approve it or vice versa, we recognize that. We respect that fact, we are not trying to replace anything. I think if more and more of these meetings happen however, you are going to find less and less of these contentious arguments being played out here before you and the City Council and you having to be forced to be judge and jury and always knowing you are going to make somebody unhappy. This is simply allowing neighbors and what I call potential neighbors to get together and talk and we did it without government help, without the help of lawyers or without their interference. We did it on our own to try to work out our problems instead of running to government anytime you have one. That is how we see our role in this, it is certainly not to replace any other public forum. As I said, it was 80% in favor. That means there were 20% against this and pretty vocally against this. They may have something to say here and they certainly should be listened to. Just a couple of things I want to say about the Bill of Assurance. All of these items, except for one were offered to us by the Lindseys. This was nothing that we had to negotiate and certainly we were not positioning ourselves as negotiators. Again, we were just providing the forum. I think the only thing we ask is that the homes that they offer, that they do be built, that is item F and item A, that the property shall revert back to R-1 zoning in the event the petitioner elects not to develop the property for multi -family use. I understand at least, Mr. Williams can correct me if I am wrong. Should that happen, I think that is an off chance but if they decide not to go through with this, we understand for that zoning to go back to R-1, that would have to go through this board and probably back to the City Council, is that correct? It couldn't just automatically revert? Williams: I think that is probably correct. It s a legislative action so it would probably have to go back to the City Council. Maynard: The reason that I brought it up is I just wanted to mention that is, again, what they suggested to us. That is an agreement between Lindsey & Associates and the Asbell Neighborhood Association and we hope if that should happen, I doubt that it will, but if that should happen that you would respect that agreement. One big concern here is of course, traffic. Mr. Lindsey said they are going to do what they can to work with us to help mitigate that. Certainly there will be more traffic on Porter Road. As Mr. Lindsey said, you are just going to have to reconcile that fact. Most people, in large, did reconcile that fact. The one thing we will not reconcile and we should not have to reconcile of course is the drainage. I have said this to Mr. Lindsey, I've said this to Tim Conklin, I have said it to Greg Boettcher, I've said it to the Mayor and I am going to say it to you Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 19 Estes: Petrie: Estes: Shackelford: Conklin: Shackelford: Conklin: Shackelford: folks. The drainage is a big worry, it is a huge worry for us and I think it is for this neighborhood. The neighborhood feels, from past experience, that there is just a high degree of skepticism with the city that it won't be done right, given what happened when Wedington Road was widened. And given what happened when that big dam that we call I-540 was built with not enough culverts under it. It created tremendous drainage problems for people in that neighborhood. I am not implying that the Lindseys would do anything or cut any corners. I don't know what else to do other than ask you, plead with you, please, please, please make sure that this is done right in terms of the drainage. If this were to go wrong and people were starting to bail themselves out, I'm not talking about a repeat of the 1980 flood where we will all be on our roofs. This just has to be done right and it should be done right. The fact that it hasn't been done right in the past, and I hope you can appreciate that people are very skeptical but willing to trust once again. Given our meeting, given the will of the neighborhood, we support this development and we hope you approve it Thank you for your time. Thank you Richard. Is there any other member of the audience who would like to comment on this requested rezoning? Seeing none, I will bring the matter back to the Commission for discussions, motions or comments. Mr. Petrie, would you please comment on the drainage issue, in particular, what requirements are there regarding predevelopment flows and post development flows? When we do have a large scale development presented, the one item the Engineering Division will be checking is to ensure that the post development flows will equal the predevelopment flows. That is the ordinance requirements and that is what we enforce. Thank you Mr. Petrie. Are there any other comments? A question for staff. The Bill of Assurance form that we've been given, is that a form that the city provides to the applicant? That is a form that the City does provide if a Bill of Assurance is going to be offered to us. Ok, I was questioning number three, specific activities will not be allowed upon petitioner's property to include and that is blank. Is that filled in at a later time? They are not offering anything for number three. Ok, I just wanted to make sure I was reading that correctly. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 20 Williams: Loren, I created this draft Bill of Assurance because in the past there were a number of Bills of Assurances offered by different developers. They didn't include rights of the city to enforce the Bill of Assurance or other problems so I felt like if we had a draft Bill of Assurance that I felt was enforceable then I would be able to tell you or the City Council that we in fact, did have a Bill of Assurance and therefore, I did draft up something. I simply had number three there where it says specific activities will not be allowed to include; because there might be certain times that that would be applicable but because it is not filled out now it just means that this was not one of those times. Shackelford: Ok, by the fact that it is blank, we just read that to mean that there are no restrictions in that area. Williams: That is correct. Estes: Thank you Mr. Williams. Is there any discussion or any motions? Motion: Marr: I will move for approval and recommendation to the City Council, the rezoning 02-7.00 based on our staff report and the attached Bill of Assurance that goes with this item. Estes: We have a motion by Commissioner Marr to approve RZN 02-7.00, is there a second? Shackelford: I will second. Estes: We have a second by Commissioner Shackelford. Is there any discussion? Hoffman: I just want to commend both parties for doing their homework ahead of time. It really indeed does make our job much easier and I would like that those of you in the audience who might be here on other contentious projects and those of you that may be watching tonight, take due note of this. It really does do wonders to be able to sit down across the table from each other and work things out. Thank you both. Estes: Thank you Commissioner Hoffman. We have a motion by Commissioner Marr and a second by Commissioner Shackelford for approval of RZN 02- 7.00, is there any other discussion? Renee, would you call the roll please? Roll Call: Upon the completion of roll call the motion to recommend approval of RZN 02-7.00 to the City Council was approved by a vote of 9-0-0. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 21 Estes: The motion to passes unanimously. RZN 02-7.00 will be forwarded to the Fayetteville City Council with a do pass recommendation by the Planning Commission. Thank you Mr. Lindsey. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 22 ADM 01-19.00 Administrative Item (Shared Parking Ordinance) to revise Section 172.01 Off -Street Parking Lot Design Requirements of the City of Fayetteville Unified Development Ordinance to provide a method for reducing off-street parking requirements for properties that share a common parking facility. Estes: Kelly: Estes: The next item on the agenda is item number five, this item has been pulled from the agenda for dispositive action. The reason I did not announce that at the beginning of the meeting is in the event that there is anyone here who wishes to provide public comment on this item. This ADM 01-19.00, the Shared Parking Ordinance, has been pulled for further study, evaluation, review and drafting. With that said, is there any member of the audience who would wish to provide comment on this administrative item? If you will please come forward, state your name and provide us with the benefit of your comments. I just wanted to say I am Laura Kelly and I will be at the next meeting when it is on the agenda. Alright, thank you. Is there any other comment? Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 23 LSP 02-12.00: Lot Split (Wilson, pp 482) was submitted by Alan Reid on behalf of Troy Wilson for property located at the SE corner of Hotz Drive & Palmer Avenue. The property is zoned R-1, Low Density Residential and contains approximately 0.38 acres. The request is to split into two tracts of 0.19 acres and 0.19 acres. Estes: The next item on the agenda is item number six, a lot split submitted by Alan Reid on behalf of Troy Wilson for property located at the SE corner of Hotz Drive & Palmer Avenue. The property is zoned R-1, Low Density Residential and contains approximately 0.38 acres. The request is to split into two tracts of 0.19 acres and 0.19 acres. Staff recommends approval subject to certain conditions of approval. Mr. Conklin, do we have signed conditions of approval? Conklin- No we don't. Estes: Those conditions of approval are number one, payment of parks fees in the amount of $470 to be paid at the time of the building permit for tract B. One additional lot at $470 per lot. Condition number two, a 4' sidewalk with a minimum of 6' greenspace will be required along both Palmer Ave. and Hotz Drive when each tract is developed. 3) Plat Review and Subdivision comments (to include written staff comments provided to the applicant or his representative, and all comments from utility representatives 4) Staff approval of final detailed plans, specifications and calculations (where applicable) for grading, drainage, water, sewer, fire protection, streets (public and private), sidewalks, parking lot(s) and tree preservation. The information submitted for the plat review process was reviewed for general concept only. Is the applicant or applicant's representative present? Wilson: I am Troy Wilson, I live at 20 N. Garvin. I am the applicant. Estes: Mr. Wilson, do you have a presentation that you would like to make at this time? Wilson: I do. Estes: Would you please proceed. Wilson: Yes Sir. I would like to say that I know that there are going to be a lot of people to speak to this tonight and I know this meeting is going to be long so I am going to try to keep it brief. I would like an opportunity to speak before you close comment to the public. Just a brief history about this. I have lived in this neighborhood for eleven years. I came up here to go to school, or finish school in 1991 and I moved into this neighborhood. I thought I was going to be there for a couple of years and it is now eleven Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 24 Estes: years later. I bought a piece of property in my neighborhood that contains a house that burned and apparently this house is on a piece of property that is large enough for me to build two structures on. Basically it boils down to two things. Do I build two structures on this piece of property and sell it to an investor that doesn't live in our neighborhood and maintains this property and manages it or do I try to build two single family residences on this property. That is the option that I am opting for. That is what I am hoping my neighbors will support me on. There has been a petition circulated against the lot split. The people who circulated the petition never contacted me. When the city put up the sign announcing the lot split I put business cards on the sign to make the neighbors aware of who owned the property so that I could answer any questions. I received one phone call from the neighbors about it. I polled the neighbors before we put the lot split sign up. I talked to many neighbors after we put the sign up. I talked to the University Heights Neighborhood Association, which I helped start. The President of that Neighborhood Association isn't here this week. The Neighborhood Association, as an Association, doesn't oppose this project. There are neighbors in the neighborhood that do. I am going to leave it at that and I would like an opportunity to speak again before you close comments to the public. Thank you Mr. Wilson. Is there any member of the audience who would like to speak regarding this proposed lot split? If so, would you please come forward, state your name and provide us with the benefit of your comments. Williams: My name is John Williams. I now live at 140 N. Sang. The reason that I am here is because I have a personal connection to this old house. My wife and I built this house back in the middle 50s. It was a part of the Hotz Addition, which consisted of a number of lots which were 1/3 to 1/2 acre and they were zoned as single-family residences and so the neighborhood developed in that way. I believe that all of the other lots on Hotz and Palmer are 1/3 to % acre and have single-family residences on them. In the middle 1960s, someone bought property adjoining this although the property does not open onto Hotz Drive or onto Palmer Street. This person bought a large number of abandoned CCC projects that had been used under very critical housing shortages at the University of Arkansas and then were declared to be used as residential. He moved those in adjoining our property, although it was to the back of the property on Hotz Drive and on Palmer. He had those buildings moved in conflict with the state and city ordinances which require a moving permit to move any kind of buildings. It was hardly recognizable that those shacks were buildings at that time but he got his permits with minimal lot requirements and moved the buildings in and set them on concrete blocks. I was the first person here to teach architecture, I came in 1946. I thought building Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 25 codes and I was aware that several requirements of the city ordinances and building codes were violated. The neighbors joined me and we sued this person who was bringing in these buildings to make them duplexes. The fact that he was sued actually, we lost the suit in a way but we gained a great deal in a way for the people who were later to live in those little houses. I must say that the trial was delayed for a year and a half and he had to go ahead with them and he built them a lot better than they might have been built. The reason that I am saying that is that I decided to move from the neighborhood because of this group of little houses, duplexes, which were crowding the neighborhood although it was crowding, as I say, on the backs of our lots. The neighborhood remained essentially as it has been for fifty years, single family houses for families on these lots. I am opposed for several reasons. I am opposed to the possibility of this lot split which will change the size of the lots in that neighborhood, reduce them by half. I think that what is going to happen is that it will change the character and the quality of that neighborhood for all those people that live there I think that would be a mistake not only for the people who live in the neighborhood but in the long range plan for Fayetteville. I don't want to take too much time but I want to be sure that I am trying to get this across. In August of 1996, almost six years ago, I wrote this letter as a part of a request to write letters for the 2020 plan. I listed five concerns that I had for the future of Fayetteville and for trying to anticipate some of the problems that Fayetteville was going to face. Number four is the question that many of use see as very important to most of the residents of Fayetteville. Many of us have chosen to move to Fayetteville and continue to live here because we deeply value and appreciate the quality of life, the city, the neighborhoods and the area provide. There are many special tangible elements which are benefits of living in Fayetteville but there are also intangible elements and one of these elements is the visual beauty of the city, its neighborhoods and the natural beauty of its setting. Many of us believe that this quality is perhaps Fayetteville's most valuable asset. I guess I am not talking about money alone. I am talking about what a lot of people enjoy and cherish who live in Fayetteville. That is one of the reasons that I am here tonight. Still from the letter written six years ago, many of us have an uneasy concern that this valuable asset is being threatened and destroyed. How does the 2020 plan protect this special quality? What elements and principals of design and city planning have been identified and carefully followed to assure we may continue to enjoy this valuable asset? This was written for the 2020 plan but specifically I think that the particular paragraph I read is extremely important to Fayetteville. I think we are losing it and I think that a lot of us are not treated fairly as is stated on the board out here as you come in. The statement for the policy of Fayetteville. I think that Fayetteville has lost some of the citizens and especially some of the senior citizens in neighborhoods such as these have lost. That is the reason that I appeal to Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 26 you not to approve this lot split but to allow it to continue as a lot the same size of the other lots so that it may accommodate a house the same size as the houses in the rest of that neighborhood. Thank you. Estes: Thank you Dr. Williams Is there any other member of the audience who would like to provide public comment on this lot split request? Weiss: Mr. Chairman, fellow Commissioners, my name is George Weiss. I live at 1614 Sawyer Lane. First I would like to agree with Mr. Troy Wilson. We were the one party that did phone him. He did come right over to our house and we did have a congenial meeting. We didn't agree but we still had a nice meeting. The other thing is University Heights Neighborhood Association did not oppose this nor did they approve it. We just need to have that on the record. The third thing I agree with him is that he did make this threat that if he did not develop it he would probably try to sell this to someone, an outside developer, who would. I have something that I need to get cleared up. I wonder Mr. Chairman if you can help me on this. On these conditions of approval, if the lot split is not granted, is the applicant, does he have to pay for all these things anyway? Estes: I will defer to Mr. Conklin to correct me or to edify me or to add anything to what I may say. It is my understanding that first of all Mr. Wilson may build a second structure on this lot irregardless of whether the lot split is granted or not. If he does choose to build an additional structure, and that right is afforded to him under our Unified Development Ordinance, under § 164.03, then he is not required to meet the four conditions of approval of this lot split. Is that a correct statement Mr. Conklin Conklin: With regard to the four conditions, the sidewalk, under our current ordinance, with an additional new home they would have to build a sidewalk. I pause to say that because we have been debating and discussing the sidewalk ordinance, but I am fairly confident under the current ordinance that we have there would be a sidewalk. Weiss: Alright, so what I am understanding is that if the lot split were denied and he still put two buildings up, which he is allowed to do, he would save some money but not all of the money. On the other hand, if this is correct and if he put just one building up, he would save still more money because he would not have to do all of these things? Conklin: He would still have to have a sidewalk. Weiss: If he had just rebuilt the building? Conklin: He is building a new single family home. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 27 Weiss: If he repaired the building? Conklin: I don't have the ordinance in front of me Mr. Weis so before I answer that, I am not sure how much he is repairing. Weiss: Troy Wilson might want to know the answer to that question too I would think. Let me begin. There is no way I can place this that everybody can see it but this is sort of a blow up of the map that you have in front of you. I have two comments on this. One sort of follows up on what John Williams just said. When we purchased a home and we live on the corner across from Hotz Park, and the red area is the place in question. In general, when we bought homes in the past, this was no exception, we looked for an existing neighborhood, which this was an old established neighborhood. The thing that we liked about it was there were homes, long lots, long lots, all the way down the line. On the south side of Hotz, that is also true on the north side of Hotz and that was also true as you get up on Markham, which is off this map and further to the west up Hotz and further to the south on Palmer. All of those are larger lots with a single home on them. As soon as you cut this one in half, if you allow the lot split, you are in my opinion starting the degradation of the neighborhood. Last night something else occurred to me and I am sorry it hadn't occurred to me before because I didn't mention this at the Subdivision Committee meeting. As we were coming home we noticed on Hotz Drive, up closer to Razorback, we saw a van parked there. Hotz Drive has no parking signs on both sides of the Road. Thomas has no parking on both sides of the road. Palmer to the north side of Hotz has no parking on both sides. Palmer on the Hotz Park side, has no parking on the west side, the Hotz Park side, but there is parking allowed right now on the part along Mr. Wilson's property. The reason this is a very serious concern to me is because Hotz Drive is about 19' wide, I have measured a couple of places. Palmer is about 18' wide. When you park a van there, that was about 7' but a car would be about 6' wide typically, that leaves you 13'. According to the Fire Department, they can not get a fire truck through. They need 15' to get the large fire truck through. You need 12' for an ambulance. If a car parks just a little bit out from one of those other properties you would not be able to get even an ambulance through. There are three properties that have problems with cars not parking in their yard when they park some and then others park elsewhere. The elsewhere on those two little pieces up here, they are the one that have problems as far as cars and not always parking in their yard. The one on Thomas, they have an alley way behind them so they do park their cars there. I am not sure that is legal but they do park them there. The other two tend to park cars when there is a no parking zone in front. You will notice the one common thing that between those three properties which are causing problems with Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 28 respect to parking is the lot size. As soon as you get to a smaller lot the tendency is we don't have enough room to put in our three cars and they start parking them out in the road. If you do this on Hotz, I am afraid we are going to have the same kind of problem. Even though there are no parking signs. Last evening as I said, I went and saw this van parked there. I grabbed my digital camera to take a picture and by the time I went back there with the camera, there was a second car parked but by the time I got back there in the evening there were two more cars parked there. I would like to just show you these if I might. Estes: Pass those to the clerk George and she will pass them around. Weiss: Estes: What I am saying is that even though you may have no parking signs that makes it illegal for people to park there, that doesn't prevent them from parking there. The only way to prevent them from parking there when we have this problem at Palmer and Hotz is to deny the lot split. Thank you very much. Thank you George. Is there any other member of the audience who would like to provide public comment on this requested lot split? After Dr. Williams' excellent presentation and Mr. Weiss' excellent presentation, if you would please not be redundant but provide us with new information it would be appreciated. Eichmann: Thank you Mr. Chair. My name is Justin Eichmann and my wife Sara and I live at 1527 Hotz Drive which is the adjacent property along side this lot. I will try to be very brief but I would like to echo what Mr. Williams and Mr. Weis has said I am going to include those with my thoughts as well. Real fast, before I begin I would like to say that I have met with Mr. Wilson. He came to my home a couple of days before the Subdivision Committee meeting. I believe that was after talking to Mr. and Mrs. Weis. I basically let him in my home and let him speak his peace on this issue. In cases like this when someone is requesting a lot split that is incumbent for the person that wants to change to ask for these things and consult the neighbors. I really have three reasons why my wife and I are opposed to this requested lot split. First of all, we believe it would be a change in the character of the neighborhood. This is an R-1 zoned neighborhood as was said earlier. Narrow streets, tree lines, with single family homes that are of the typical lot size that my wife and I live on and others in the neighborhood or larger. We believe that a split that is being requested here today would be a deviation from that standard. We believe that Hotz Street is really in danger of being changed and the character of the neighborhood is in danger of changing to a neighborhood of small lot sizes. You might note that the closer you get to Razorback Road, I'm sorry I pointed to the wrong house. I live at this house. As you get closer Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 29 to Razorback Road, those houses are rentals on smaller lots and of course, to the south of us is Walton Avenue which is small lot rentals, basically student housing. On the southwest corner of our property is a small lot rental as well. If this lot split goes through we are going to have four small lot rentals along side our property to the south and to the west of our property. A person can have all the best intentions of the world on what is going to happen or what he or she might do with the property but the fact is that that is no assurance to the adjacent neighbors. If I go out my back deck right now I can see, especially since it is Winter time still, I can see Walton Ave. in my backyard. I can see the current existing small lot rentals that we adjoin along with that. We sort of deal with those issues everyday with traffic and parking, noise and parties. We are right on the cusp. Hotz Ave. where we live is right on the cusp of that and we feel that a change of this lot into two small lots in which rentals or whatever could happen to it would be a change from that characteristic that it is of a single family residence. I might also point out that there is a petition I believe that was given to Mr. Conklin I believe now it is over fifty signatures of members of the University Heights Neighborhood Association, that oppose this lot split. If I can say one thing on their behalf, I believe that the people that signed this petition are concerned that this is a change in the characteristic of the neighborhood. I believe that we in the neighborhood know what a change in the characteristic of the neighborhood is. The second point is safety and parking. I don't really want to echo what everybody else has said but just to note that Palmer is a narrow street, Hotz is a narrow street. On one side of Palmer by Hotz Park is a creek that runs along side the road. On the other side, on the side of the lot in question, there is a T bar ditch. It is a deep ditch. You have an 18' or 19' road with ditches on either side. It is very narrow. As you can see, that intersection there is basically five roads with a stop sign. My wife and I living right next to that intersection, we see stuff everyday that we definitely see as dangerous. People play in the park, use the park as they should. There are small children in the neighborhood, there are people walking their dogs, they walk with small children, there are elderly in the neighborhood. There has been a very serious accident in this neighborhood and a lot of that is the proximity of the University and to the neighborhoods of Walton and Center Street closer to Razorback, which are small lots that cater to university students. We see these problems everyday. They do add traffic, they do cause parking problems and they do increase density in this area. We don't think that is a good idea and we are quite concerned about it especially with the parking in that area. We are all very concerned about it. The last point is on property values. I know Mr. Wilson had mentioned to me that it was his belief that his proposal here would increase property values. I respectfully disagree with that. Right now it is a burned out house which doesn't help our property values any right now but I think that splitting a standard size residential lot Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 30 which is the basic conformity of the neighborhood into two small lots that have the possibility of being rentals, would be very adverse to others in the neighborhood, especially us seeing that we have a long property line with them. I guess some of this runs into the changing characteristics of the neighborhood but I am very concerned with owning and investing in property, in my house, of one day in the near future looking out and having four small lot rentals along my south and my west border. I don't believe that is for the long term good of the neighborhood. I believe it will have adverse effects on our property values. Since purchasing our house on Hotz, which we did three or four years ago, we have put a tremendous amount of money in renovating a house that used to be a student rental and had lots of problems. We spent a tremendous amount of money, basically money that we don't have since I am a college student myself, and we have additional money so that we can stay there and build a home. Now we have very serious concerns about that. I have very serious concerns about pouring more money into a house which I believe that the property values aren't going to be there, I believe that the characteristic of the neighborhood is going to change. I think this is a very big concern and I think Mr. Williams variably expressed those concerns. I would just like the Commission to know that that is a strong concern of my wife and I. My very last point is that just on property values, there have been some recent developments that happened in our University Heights Neighborhood District. I know two of them on Oliver Street, one of them I know very well because they are my parents, recently renovated a house on Oliver Street. I believe they are making them very beautiful properties and very desirable and increasing the value of the neighborhood. I have also noted that there have been two houses recently built on Halsell Street, single family residences on standard size lots. I believe that kind of development is in tune with what is going on in the neighborhood. I think that back at the Subdivision Committee meeting there was a person that spoke in favor of this lot split. He mentioned that the recent developments on Oliver Street, he felt that those developments or renovations enhanced the property. I echo that. I believe that those developments did enhance the property because they stuck with the standard that is out there for the neighborhood. I know Mr. Wilson said he had two options if this didn't go through. One was to build another house on the lot anyway or to sell it to another person. I would recommend to him a third option. That would be stick with the standards in the community, build the house. He would have my full support, he would have the support of the neighborhood if he rebuilt the existing house that is there. I believe that would be a good investment, I believe it would help property values. I believe it would be advantageous for safety so for these reasons and for other reasons that you will hear and have heard, my wife Sara and I oppose this request. We believe that the Planning Commission can use its discretion in this matter and rationally come to a conclusion that this request is not conforming Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 31 Estes: Weiss: with the neighborhood, that will have adverse property value effects and will be a detriment to public safety. I thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you Justin. Is there any other member of the audience that would like to provide public comment on this requested lot split? If so, would you please come forward, state your name. Lou Weiss, 1614 Sawyer Lane. I would just like to add to what my husband said. We have 90 year old neighbors next to us that we kind of look after. The ambulance has been there about four times for them. The man is on dialysis and they need a lot of care and that makes it rather unsafe at times with these cars parking. The other quick thing I want to say is that Hotz Park is a unique little place and there are little children playing there. I walk my little dog there and I am going to have to worry about, they may have three cars at this place, so I am going to have to be more careful. That doesn't mean that I'm not careful now but it is going to be more of a stress for me walking my dog around the park. We also have a mature aged lady here this evening and would be backing straight across the street. It just adds to the safety. In that sense, I would like to oppose this lot split. Thank you. Estes: Thank you Mrs. Weiss. Is there any other member of the audience who would like to provide comment? Mertins: Mr. Chairman, my name is William Mertins. I live at 24 S. Hartman, about a block or two away from this. I am going to turn this map here so I can understand it a little better. I oppose this lot split here on Hotz and Palmer for the reasons that have already been stated. Also, I acknowledge that if you look just to the zoning ordinances this lot split could be approved. I think it does meet the setback requirements, I think it meets the square footage requirements. I think the Commission doesn't have to simply rubber stamp every application that meets those requirements. I do think you have discretion to look at the big picture here. I think the big picture is that this is a unique neighborhood, it is close to the University. There are some problems in the neighborhood that I think would be compounded by having smaller houses and smaller lots. More importantly what we have got here is I think a chance to do something really good for the city. The city has posted its guiding policies and its neighborhood zoning study, I am sure all of you are familiar with this. One of those, in the Parks and Recreation, says that the city's guiding policies are to increase park safety and accessibility, to upgrade existing and to provide additional community and neighborhood parks and to preserve open spaces. This lot split if you approve it, is going directly against all of your stated policies. With regard to the park, first of all we have got a funny intersection here, we've got a five way intersection. We've got Palmer, Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 32 we've got Hotz makes a funny jog right here. We've got Sawyer and Palmer right here, this is an interesting intersection to say the least. I don't know if any of you are familiar with it. There is a five lane intersection there, there is no parking on both sides of Sawyer, both side of Hotz here and here and Palmer, once you get past Hotz, the park right here and then Palmer on this side. On the vast majority of the streets along through there you have got no parking. The sole exception is the east side of Palmer to the south of Hotz and then the west side of Palmer for the duration of Hotz Park. There are really only about six, at best, parking spots for Hotz Park right now. If the city truly wants people to have this open park space and to have a safe and accessible park space, I think if you do anything to allow additional street side parking or create additional parking problems at this intersection, which is a confusing and dangerous intersection to say the least, I think you are going to be interfering with the public's ability to use this park. Right now this is not going to be a tandem lot split because it is on the corner. You are going to have three 25' setbacks and the standard side setbacks. Mr. Wilson proposes accessing this back lot here off of Palmer Street. There may be a culvert or something to cross a ditch here. We've got a real bad parking problem in this neighborhood and Mr. Conklin can tell you about some of the things that the neighborhood association and some of us neighbors have done to combat it. We've got a lot of people who are renting out their houses to college kids which, is what I did when I was in college. We've got people parking in their yards, we've got people parking, as Mr. Weis has said, in the streets in violation of the no parking signs. I think that anything that increases the parking and the traffic along this street is simply not going to be in the best interest of the city. Mr. Conklin, do you have a copy of that petition that we circulated? Conklin: The petition is in their packet and just for the Commission's information, we did receive four more signatures this afternoon. Mertins: So there was a total of 59 signatures, is that correct? Conklin: I didn't count them but we did receive four more this afternoon. Mertins: It is my understanding that there are about 59 signatures of people who live in the neighborhood who are opposed to this. I don't know of anyone other than Mr. Wilson or those related to Mr. Wilson, who are in favor of this who I have spoken to. I would ask the city to exercise its discretion and look at the big picture here. Look at the traffic issues, look at the width of that street, look at the complexity of the intersection, look at the parking problems, look at the character of the neighborhood and make a decision not just on the technical requirements of the lot split but on the big picture of what is best for the city. Thank you. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 33 Estes: Schaeffer: Thank you Mr. Mertins. Is there any other member of the audience who would like to make a comment? Please do not be redundant. Just quickly. Len Schaeffer from 1940 Pratt Drive. I am up the hill from this development and I am far enough away that I can't be considered a NIMBY because I wouldn't have to deal with this everyday other than to drive by but I do recall back when I was on city council that one of the burning issues that would come before us from time to time was this issue of neighborhood integrity, particularly when dealing with attempts to place higher density housing in neighborhoods that had developed at a particular density, whatever density that might be. In this case it is a very similar 3/8 of an acre lot that we have seen along Hotz. That was the way it was developed in the 1950's as John Williams said. Yes it is technically possible to shoe horn two 8,000 sq.ft. lots in here but the motivation is strictly to make money I am afraid. It has nothing to do with improving the neighborhood and nothing to do with neighborhood integrity. Mr. Wilson bought this property after the fire and would like to, as he said at a meeting on Saturday with some of us in the neighborhood, he said he wants to generate a good profit out of this piece of property. I asked him why not just rebuild a single-family house, you can rent it out, you can resale it. He said it wasn't economically feasible. I hear from people all the time saying are there any lots available in your neighborhood? I know that the going price of this lot was somewhere around $32,000 and that is pretty cheap for a lot in this neighborhood. Even though you would have to remove the house that is there, I think it is certainly economically viable to build another single family house on this lot if indeed the house that John Williams bought way back then is beyond repair. I am not totally sure that it is. Certainly, a viable option for this property is as a single family lot as all the other ones are around it. Do you have to pass a lot split? No, you don't have to pass a lot split. Just as for everyone that comes before you, you don't have to rezone every piece of property C-2, that would give everybody the most profit for their property but it is certainly not in the public interest to do that. I believe the same thing is true here. Mr. Wilson could probably make more profit out of this property with a lot split, with putting on the two 1,200 sq.ft. single family houses that he has told us that he wanted to put on this lot and renting them out as he said he would like to do and perhaps selling them in a couple of years. He has made the point that since he lives in the neighborhood and he would be the landlord, we know where he lives and if there are any complaints we can come to him. That is certainly true but if he sales his property then we don't know who he would sell them to. The point is it is using this property just to make money. This is a project to make money and I don't think that there is anything in our ordinances that require that we ensure a developer makes the maximum amount of Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 34 money he possibly can on the given project to what everyone in the neighborhood that I have talked to thinks would be the detriment of that neighborhood. Please consider that when you look at this issue and consider this issue of neighborhood integrity and the right of the land owner to make a reasonable profit but not necessarily the most profit that he might make if you grant this lot split. Estes: Thank you Len. Bohannon: My name is Tom Bohannon. I live on South Palmer. One thing that has been overlooked in all the discussion, even though sidewalks are built on this property, there are no adjacent sidewalks anywhere in that area so that is going to be isolated sidewalks. The reason that is important is that the people that have lived here a while would think back that there was a lady killed nearly in front of her house while jogging along that street. I am going to try to make this brief, but those streets are narrow and this thing needs to be addressed that there are no other sidewalks in that area Thank you. Estes: Thank you Mr. Bohannon. Lord: Hello I am Bill Lord. I live in the neighborhood on Garvin Drive. I have been there about twelve years and drive by this house all the time. I am probably different than everybody. I support Troy on this. I think it is a viable move for the neighborhood. I have been there twelve years and have watched a lot of houses go to multiple people living in one house next to me I have a nice house that has five guys going to the University in it. Next to me on the other side I have a duplex so I think the neighborhood is changing. I don't think we should avoid the change. A couple of things that were addressed, what Mr. Wilson was talking about, he doesn't plan to park on the street. He is planning to have parking on the premises, in garages so there won't be any additional cars on the street. Also, I believe him in saying that he is going to build nice houses. I don't think it is going to lower the value of the neighborhood at all. In fact, two new houses will raise the value of all these older houses on the street. One thing I would like to talk about, just slightly off of that. On this five way intersection that they are talking about, it is a dangerous intersection and I have talked to the city before about trying to get a stop sign put there for all areas. I have about hit two or three people there without any houses. That is an issue to look at regardless of what takes place on approving this lot split. Thank you. Estes: Thank you Bill. Is there any other member of the audience who would like to comment on this requested lot split? Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 35 Eichmann, L: My name is Linda Eichmann and I live at 629 N. Oliver and we did renovate a house there last year. I use Hotz Park quite often. I take my two year old grandson there and my husband goes also. Parking is a problem and if there are six parking spaces there I haven't found them because often I can't park there. I park at my son's house and walk over. I know no one plans to park on the street but if you live west of the U of A that is a fact of life that we deal with and I think parking will be a problem. It will be difficult to use the park and it will not be safe Thank you. Estes: Thank you Linda. Does anyone else wish to provide public comment? Yes Sir. Lefler: My name is Charles Leffler, I live at 1717 W. Center Street. I haven't talked with a lot of my neighbors about this. One of the things that does concern me about that neighborhood, which is the neighborhood I grew up in is students running in or not necessarily students but people who will have a high concentration in an old house. I do not think that will be the case with Troy's project. I think it will be something that will enhance the neighborhood by perhaps bringing in young families and kids so I am in favor of it. Estes: Thank you Mr. Leffler. Is there any other member of the audience who would like to provide public comment on this requested lot split? Seeing none, I will bring the matter back to Mr. Wilson for response, rebuttal and comments. Wilson: They made a lot of parking and it does seem to come up recurring. Let me just say something about parking. We manage to park 80,000 people for the University football games in our neighborhood. We park all kinds of people over there. We park 20,000 people in our neighborhood for the basketball games. I am not parking cars on the streets with these developments. I am parking them in the yards. I got out of my meeting with the neighbors was three things. They wanted two structures that looked dissimilar so they didn't look like one development and that is something we can do. They wanted me to provide adequate parking so we don't have people parking on the street. That is something I can do. Let me just say one thing about this. I find it interesting that people get here who push the city in directions of anti -sprawl development, they talk about infill and they talk about building cells in a community where you are able to walk to work and use the city services that are already there. That is the exact opportunity that we have here. Exactly. How many times do you have an opportunity to build a house directly across the street from a city park? Hardly ever. This, I tell you, I went to the court house today and looked at the property values for the sizes of these houses. We are going Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 36 to put a beautiful house on Hotz and it is going to enhance property values. Right now houses in that area are selling for $60 to $65 a square foot. I think we can build something there that sells for close to $90. That is not going to hurt anybody's property value. As a matter of fact, the house will be similar in size to the houses on that street and these people that have stood up and said that they are struggling and they are college students trying to fix up their houses, that is going to make funds available to them from the bank that they can comp a house on their street that sold for nearly $90 a square foot and that is going to make funds available to them so they can improve their house. I intend on living in this area for another 10-11 years. I didn't come up with this plan willy nilly. I made two trips to Austin Texas and toured the areas around the University of Texas down there and their neighborhoods because I am concerned about my neighborhood. I wanted a good plan for this. That is something I told the neighbors. Our neighborhood is changing and we have to be proactive. We have to be proactive and take this change in our own hands and do something for the positive. When I was touring down there what I noticed is the property values around the University of Texas are very high. It was composed of three people primarily, University Professors, Professionals and college students. They all coexisted and the neighborhoods were very clean and very well maintained. I think this is a step in that direction. I am going to build a structure that faces Hotz, a structure that faces Palmer, that is not changing the character of the neighborhood. That is not putting two houses close together so when you are standing on Hotz you see two structures or standing on Palmer you see two structures backed up against each other. You are going to see where a burned out house was, a beautiful house and on Palmer you are going to see a beautiful house. You guys are on the Planning Commission, plan is in that word. I think I have a plan for my neighborhood. I have lived in this neighborhood for a long time. I think it says a lot that the University Heights Neighborhood Association is not here in opposition to this and you guys do what you think is best. I am here to answer any questions. Estes: Thank you. I will now bring the matter back to the Commission for discussion, comments and motions. Commissioners? Marr: I have a question for Mr. Wilson. The fact that the current R-1 zoning allows you to have two houses on the property without splitting the lot, did you consider that as an option and if so and you chose not to do that then why? Wilson: I did and I hope you guys don't force me to do that. Here is why. I would like to see our neighborhood continue to grow towards single family owner occupied housing. If you force me to put two structures on that lot, which I can not economically redo that structure or build a single family Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 37 Marr: home on that lot, if you force me to put two structures on that lot and I sell them they are going to be sold to an investor. A single family, a small family is not going to come in there and buy two structures on one lot. It is going to be rental and it is always going to be rental. This way we have an opportunity to reach for something better than what we have and that is what I am trying to do with the lot split. It gives me a lot more flexibility. I am very conservative in my approach to these things and I am not going to jump out of the ground with two houses right away. What I intend on doing is removing the burned out house immediately and starting a house there. We will see how that goes, we may sell it or we may hang on to it. After we see how that project goes then we will start the other project. One more question. You made the statement when you ended that the Neighborhood Association was not opposing this. Sitting here as a Planning Commissioner seeing 59 signatures opposing this, I understand we can look at this from a very technical perspective or we can do what one of the citizens asked us to do is look at it broader than that. How would you as a Planning Commissioner look at it with 59 people opposing it? Wilson: I have thought about that a lot actually and the thing that bothers me about the 59 signatures is the people who circulated the petition never contacted me, not once. I think that I am not sure if they were mislead or misinformed. I think that if you had to poll everybody on that petition and ask "Do you want two structures on this property to always be rentals?" They are going to say they don't want that. I feel like if you would have asked them "Do you want two really nice single family homes in that area instead?" I think they would've all said they would want that instead. That is the only point that I can make about the petition. I feel like the petition is a little unfair in that I feel like I should have been contacted and discussed it before I was opposed. I was opposed and they don't know what they are opposing. Hoffman: I have some observations and I guess a couple of comments to make. In the broadest perspective as a Planning Commissioner I think it is our responsibility to consider many different kinds of development. Some development occurs in neighborhoods and neighborhoods are increasingly important I think to the citizens. They are beginning to have a self awareness and a pride and a sense of place in their environment and then we have to look at commercial development which is another deal. We have to try to attract quality, I think there has been a lot of talk lately about enhancing our economic viability and so forth. I see commercial development and infill development in neighborhoods as two completely different issues. Then when I try to make a fair and informed decision about what to do in an infill development in a residential area and look at Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 38 the 2020 plan, in §6.3 it says in part that "...in a policy shift consistent with the general plan 2010 principals this land use plan establishes a policy for residential areas to be planned as traditional neighborhoods containing a mix of different densities, housing types and like wises." It goes on and has other guiding policies. The ones that seem to me to apply to this particular proposal is that we are to utilize principals of traditional residential urban design to create compatible, livable and accessible neighborhoods. We are to minimize through traffic on minor residential streets where appropriate and encourage mixed uses in new developments to promote better community design, maintain human scale and enhance pedestrian activity. That says several different things to me. From the discussion that you have provided us, you said that if you are granted the lot split that you would like to sell these as single family dwellings yet there is no guarantee to the neighbors that that would occur. I don't know if you have shown them any elevations. Wilson: I have. Hoffman: Ok, you have done that. With the 59 oppositions and the number of people who have come here to oppose this development I just wonder if it isn't possible to go back to the drawing board one more time and see if you can come up with an agreement. Wilson: I offered at the meeting to give the UHNA Board the option to review the plans of the structures we intend on putting on that lot and that wasn't received very well. I still make that offer. I made that offer from the beginning. I am not trying to force something down my neighbor's throats but like I said, they basically circulated the petition without ever contacting me on what my intent with this project was. I feel like this is a community revitalization project, not changing the character of the community. If you had somebody come in and build a house that was $30 to $35 more a square foot than the house you are living in, would you be opposed to that? Hoffman: It depends. I too live in a transitional neighborhood that is going from owner occupied to renter occupied and I find that owner verses renter bas really had a detrimental effect personally that I have encountered. I do not, at all, take that. I am just saying that as personal experience. I am not at all equating it to your situation. I think that the idea of trying to mitigate this somehow. I mean if we don't approve the lot split and you build the houses anyway it seems to me to be a cross purposes. Then if you came back with a lot split that had a nice sidewalk adjacent to the park that showed the off-street parking that you propose was available and the city got the park fees on the lot split. With the current proposal I think you are at odds with some of these guiding policies. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 39 Wilson: The city will get their funds for the lot split as soon as we do the lot split, if we do it. Hoffman: I know but I am saying if we don't approve it then the city doesn't. Wilson: Here is the thing. Economically I cannot tear down that house and build a single house. I can't do that. I would like to do that but I can't. It is just not economically possible. Nobody is going to come in tat neighborhood and buy a $200,000 house next door to a house that is much, much less than that. What I can do is be very conservative and build one house but a really pretty house and then at some later date build a house behind it. I can do that. This is a tough situation for me too because I live in the neighborhood and I like everybody that got up here and spoke. I know most of them. My hands are tied on this. If you force me to do one structure, it is not going to be very nice. It is not going to be a very good project for the neighborhood, I don't want that. Marr: A question for our City Attorney. When you look at the, for lack of a better word, the findings of facts on a lot split. Those seem to be pretty much from a technical perspective, 70' of street frontage and a minimum of 8,000 sq.ft. I think is how I am reading this report. Are there any other legitimate allowances that as a Commission we would look at to not grant a lot split other than those two technical requirements from your opinion? Williams: Well, the official interpreter of course of our Unified Development Ordinance is our City Planner and not the City Attorney. I have spoken with Mr. Conklin about this but he is the one that really should give an opinion about what the ordinances require and what your powers are underneath these particular ordinances. Conklin: Mr. Chairman and members of the Commission, § 166.08 design standards of our development regulations. I will just read you these sections, I don't believe this is in your report. I have my code book here this evening. § 166.08 (F) Residential Lots, "The use and design of lots shall conform to the provisions of the zoning where zoning is in affect." Further along in that section under §166.08 (F)(1)(b) Size, "The size and shape of lots shall not be required to conform to any stipulated pattern but in so far as practicable side or lot lines shall be at right angles to straight street lines or radial to curved street lines. When a tract of land is subdivided into larger than normal lots such lots shall be so arranged as to permit the logical location and openings of future streets and appropriate resubdivision of the lots with provisions for adequate utility connections for such resubdivision." That is what I found in our Unified Development Ordinance under our Development Regulations. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 40 Williams: The only other thing I can point to, the lot split did come to Planning Commission for approval. I think the normal procedure is it is approved at a different level, is that right or does it always come here Tim? Conklin: Williams: We have approved these at Subdivision Committee level. However, if it comes for your approval there must be, you must have some discretion I would think. I have not seen it in our ordinances. The only thing I can point to in the ordinance beyond what our City Planner has said is the very, very first of our ordinances which is the purpose of the Unified Development Ordinance. There it states "The Unified Development Ordinance is adopted for the purpose of implementing the General Plan and any plans or policies adopted or amended by the City Council in a manner that furthers the health, safety and general welfare of the people of the community..." Further down it says "The Unified Development Ordinance provides for but is not limited to development of land uses which protect established neighborhoods and commercial and industrial districts, allows compatible infill of established areas." This is the purpose part of the ordinance. There is nothing else within the ordinance that the City Planner or I could find that says specifically that you have discretion or this is the test you should apply to a lot split. I think this very thing that has happened tonight shows that maybe there needs to be something in the Unified Development Ordinance that specifically gives the Planning Commission some direction and authority here. I didn't find anything in the Unified Development Ordinance to effectuate the purpose that I read to you. Hoffman: It references adopted plans, general plans and so forth. Williams: Yes, that is correct. Conklin: I just want to make sure that the Commission and the public understand the difference between a rezoning and a subdivision or large scale development approval. We set our development regulations and our job is to make sure that development complies with our regulations. It is not a legislative act. We are not deciding as a policy decision whether or not it should be single family, multi -family, industrial. What we are doing is establishing what you have to comply with to develop a piece of property and we set our development regulations. The decisions are different. You are not making a recommendation with regard to whether or not this is going to be multi -family in this neighborhood. The land use decision has already been made. It is zoned R-1, Single Family. What we use in our office to make sure it complies with our development regulations and the City Attorney probably can give you more information about what is Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 41 required with regard to development regulations but our job is to make sure that developers understand and we tell them what they have to meet with regard to our development regulations. I don't know if you would like to add anymore to that Kit. Wilson: I would like to say that on this street there is R-1.5 about half way down this street it is R-1.5. I would also like to say that this property backs up to R-2. What is going in here doesn't change the density. If the density is defined as R-1, R-2, whatever. We are leaving the density R-1. Estes: In making a determination for a lot split there are two findings of fact that we must make. One is that each of the new lots meets 1) the zoning regulations and 2) the subdivision regulations. Staff reports to us that this lot split does satisfy these findings of fact. In the alternative, it is permissible to build two structures on this piece of ground. That is a matter of right and is provided in § 164.03 of our Unified Development Ordinance. Pragmatically there are only two reasons for this lot split request. One is financing and two if marketability. Our plan 2020 in the general policy statement directs that we maintain and enhance the residential environment of the neighborhoods as an important community goal and number two, existing zoning districts should be considered. These would be two separate R-1 lots but yet within this same neighborhood there are R-1.5 and R-2. It is for these reasons that I will vote for this lot split request. I think to do otherwise is to ignore specific findings of fact that we have been directed to by staff and does not comport with common sense because this applicant, as a matter of right it is permissible to build two structures on this dirt. If he does so it is going to defeat 1) the ability to obtain financing and 2) the ability to market. That means that when he resells it is going to be resold as one piece of dirt with two structures on it and although it is possible, it is not probable that a person would be interested in such a piece of property. I can see where a family would want to buy that piece of property and maybe live in one house and maybe have a mother-in-law or a grandmother live in the other house but that is not likely. It is much more likely that this would be sold to someone who would treat it as rental property which I think defeats the very purpose of what we are mandated to do under the General Plan 2020. Shackelford: I just wanted to state that I concur with your statements. As somebody who is involved in the mortgage process, I too agree that this would limit financing possibilities on this property if it is considered one legal description, one piece of dirt, then there is not ever going to be the opportunity for a family or individual to buy one piece the two buildings, get financing on that property and live in it as an owner occupied residence. By not allowing a lot split I feel as though we are basically sealing the destiny of this property and that it will be rental property going Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 42 forward. You can't obtain a mortgage on property that there is another structure on that you don't own. I wanted to make sure that everybody was aware of that. I also had a question for staff if I may. If you look at page 6.10, the area map that we are talking about here. We are talking about splitting standardized residential lots and effect the integrity of the neighborhood. As I looked at this property I noticed that there were two other standardized lots that had two structures on them. They are located north and east of the property. One is at the northwest corner of Thomas Ave. and Hotz Dr., one is at the northwest corner of that same intersection. Were lot splits granted in that case Tim? I know that the map that the neighborhood has provided shows that they are separate legal descriptions and I was wondering if those in fact went through the process. Conklin- I don't know the answer to that this evening. Wilson: Mr. Chair, I can answer that. I know for a fact that one was because I owned the house that was directly in front of it. I didn't do that one but the people that bought the house from me did. It was at 1500 Hotz. Shackelford: So we could very easily have a situation where there has been two exact lot splits of this time granted within just a few hundred yards of this location as well. I just wanted to make that point. I noticed that as I looked at this property as well. Thank you. Estes: Is there any further discussion? Motion: Ward: This came to Subdivision Committee and we had the right there to make a motion and approve it at Subdivision Committee. I think that the Committee decided that since there was so much neighbor input that we would like to bring it to the full Planning Commission so that the neighbors could let their ideas and facts be known as far as public input which I think is very important. I feel like with the regulations that we work under that this is something that we should approve. I am going to make a motion that we approve LSP 02-12.00 for property located at the southeast corner of Hotz and Palmer Ave. Estes: We have a motion by Commissioner Ward to approve LSP 02-12.00 is there a second? Shackelford: I will second. Estes: We have a second by Commissioner Shackelford. We have a motion to approve LSP 02-12.00 by Commissioner Ward and a second by Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 43 Commissioner Shackelford. Bunch: At the Subdivision Committee meeting it was rather disheartening that there had not been much dialogue between the applicant and the neighborhood and one of the reasons that the Subdivision Committee forwarded it to the full Planning Commission was to provide time for the neighborhood and the applicant to get together knowing full well that we could have approved it at that level. The request was also made at that time and again at agenda session to hopefully have this process of neighborhoods talking with people that are doing things in the neighborhood so that the people could understand what is going on rather than petition first and ask questions later. It is rather disheartening to see that this process did not prevail in this instance. Earlier this evening we had an instance where a neighborhood made themselves available to the developer, the developer made theirselves available to the neighborhood and they got together and talked. That apparently has not happened significantly in this instance or if it has it has been very little very late. I haven't heard much from the discussion tonight other than maybe two or three people that said that they have talked with the applicant. Mr. Wilson, have there been any other people? Wilson: We had a public meeting on Saturday and I believe eight people showed up for it. That is when I offered to let them have input on the design of the structures we were putting on the property. Marr: I sit here and I listen to this and I think about what we are trying to accomplish with our 2020 plan and our Mayor's goal of neighborhood associations and their cooperation with development. I think is probably a little stretched since we are talking about one property owner. I also certainly support a property owner's right by use and their property rights as a result of owning something. I can't get out of my head though that even though there are technical findings that we find on size and lot that there shouldn't be some ability to protect integrity of neighborhoods and maybe that is a differing of opinion on what is protecting it or not. Mr. Wilson I think probably feels he is protecting it and I certainly heard a representation of 59 people talking about representing their protection of their neighborhood. I am going to vote against it but I want to make it clear that I understand that the requirement is these two items and I understand that this meets it and I want to be supportive of the staff and their staff report because I certainly try to weigh that very heavily. I think that there ought to be a message sent also that the Planning Commission needs some flexibility in looking at these types of issues and that if it were as black and white as we try to make this be then there would be no reason for us to be sitting here. I also believe that when 59 people out of, I'm counting homes in this area, that is a pretty substantial area that I wish we Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 44 would have had more collaboration about. I wish you luck in your project and I understand your rights as a property owner but I think it is important as a Commission that we don't have people feel like this process has no weight. Shackelford: I just want to quantify why I will be voting in favor of the motion because I hear what Commissioner Marr is saying and I too understand that it is hard to vote in favor of something that this many people are contesting. I guess my comments would be that this doesn't affect the protection of the neighborhood. It doesn't affect the outcome whatsoever. Use by right, the land owner has the ability and will more than likely build two structures on this property. Whether we grant or don't grant this lot split he still has that right and will still probably build those two structures. The reason that I am voting for allowing the lot split is that by allowing the lot split we are simply remaining open to the option that an individual may buy this house and get a mortgage loan as an owner occupied piece of property. I know that if it was in my neighborhood I would like for that option to at least be open so that two people could come in and buy these houses, operate them, keep them as their homes. I would rather see that than another couple of rentals just down the street from me. That is the reason that I am supporting this going forward. Thank you. Estes: Commissioner Shackelford, I concur with your remarks and those are also some of the reasons that I will be voting for the requested lot split. Is there any other discussion? Hoffman: Just a couple of questions. If for some reason we split on our vote and it fails to pass or something, what is the method for appeal? Does it go to City Council after that? Conklin: We have taken these to City Council. Hoffman: I am just reiterating in my mind that everybody is free to purchase property and I don't see it as much of a given that it would be definitely a homeowner resident would buy it even if it were two parcels. I guess I am maybe being a bit naive with that but I see buying rental properties right and left. I don't really see the guarantee in that. I suppose reluctantly I am going to not support it. I really like to try to get things worked out and get things done but I am not completely persuaded. That is all I have. Estes: We have a motion by Commissioner Ward and a second by Commissioner Shackelford to approve LSP 02-12.00, is there any further discussion? Are there any further comments? Renee, call the roll please. Roll Call: Upon completion of roll call the motion to approve LSP 02-12.00 was Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 45 approved by vote of 7-2-0. Estes: The motion passes by a vote of seven to two. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 46 PPL 02-7.00: Preliminary Plat (Legacy Pointe, pp 435/474) was submitted by Dave Jorgensen of Jorgensen & Associates on behalf of Charles Sloan of Sloan Properties, Inc. for property located east of Double Springs Road and south of Owl Creek. The property is zoned R-1, Low Density Residential and RMF -6, Low Density Multi -family Residential and contains approximately 49.80 acres with132 lots proposed. Estes: The next item on the agenda is item number seven, this is PPL 02-7.00 submitted by Dave Jorgensen of Jorgensen & Associates on behalf of Charles Sloan of Sloan Properties, Inc. for property located east of Double Springs Road and south of Owl Creek. The property is zoned R-1, Low Density Residential and RMF -6, Low Density Multi -family Residential and contains approximately 49.80 acres with 132 lots proposed. It will be necessary that I recuse from voting on this item. However, I will chair the item if there are no objections from the Commission or no objections from any member of the audience. Seeing none, I will continue to chair. Staff recommends approval of this preliminary plat subject to certain conditions of approval. Mr. Conklin, do we have signed conditions of approval? Conklin: Yes. Estes: Those conditions of approval are 1) Planning Commission approval of the tree preservation plan. The applicant is proposing to preserve 1.61% and to remove 3.68% of the existing tree canopy. Pursuant to § 167.04.F.1 and 167.04.J.4.a the requirement in a residential subdivision for tree removal below the minimum canopy requirement is contribution to the tree escrow account. The removal of 3.68% equates to a $41,650 contribution. This payment is required prior to acceptance of final plat. The applicant would like to reserve the right to request another mitigation option should another option become available, or to request a variance at the time of final plat approval. 2) Planning Commission determination of improvements to Double Springs Road. Staff recommends that Double Springs Road adjacent to this site be widened to meet Local Street Standards (14' from centerline) with curb & gutter and underground drainage. 3) No lots will be allowed to access Double Springs Road. 4) A variance for the rear setback for the existing house on lot 76 is required to be approved by the Board of Adjustment prior to the acceptance of the final plat. 5) Approval shall be subject to City Council acceptance of money in lieu of parkland dedication. The applicant is requesting payment of parks fees in the amount of $4,039.16 and dedication of 3.42 acres as public park land. Plat shall be changed to reflect the correct acreage. 6) Sidewalk construction in accordance with current standards to include a four foot sidewalk with a minimum six foot greenspace for Grays Gap Road, Greens Chapel Road, Monroe Station, Millikens Bend, Brandy Station, and Rocky Crossing. A six foot sidewalk with a minimum 10' of greenspace is required for Double Springs Road and Persimmon Street. 7) Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 47 Plat Review and Subdivision comments (to include written staff comments provided to the applicant or his representative, and all comments from utility representatives . 8) Staff approval of final detailed plans, specifications and calculations (where applicable) for grading, drainage, water, sewer, fire protection, streets (public and private), sidewalks, parking lot(s) and tree preservation. The information submitted for the plat review process was reviewed for general concept only. All public improvements are subject to additional review and approval. All improvements shall comply with Cityas current requirements. 9) All open swales, ditches, channels, and detention ponds located outside of the street right-of-way shall be owned and maintained by the Property Owners Association or private property owner. 10) Preliminary Plat approval shall be valid for one calendar year. Is the applicant or applicant's representative present? Brackett: Yes Sir. Estes: Do you have a presentation that you would like to make at this time? Brackett: Yes. My name is Chris Brackett, I am with Jorgensen & Associates Engineers. I am representing the owner tonight. As you can see, there are 108 single family lots. There are 24 duplex lots. The original design for those duplex lots were on the southern edge of this property. As per staff comments, we redesigned it and fit the duplex lots within the subdivision so it is a better design. The other issue I could address is the contribution to the tree fund. We would like to reserve the right that if, with all ordinances, there are some changes after they are first enacted. If there is a change to that then we would be able before the final plat is approved to benefit from those changes. I would be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Estes: Motion: Marr: Thank you Chris. Is there any member of the audience that would have a comment that they would like to share with us regarding this proposed preliminary plat? Seeing none, I will bring it back to the Commission for motions, discussions and comments. Commissioners? I will move for approval of PPL 02-7.00 with the ten conditions as listed in the staff report with the variance of the rear setback for the existing house on lot 76 and the staff recommendation that Double Springs Road adjacent to the site be widened to meet local street standards. Estes: We have a motion by Commissioner Marr to approve PPL 02-7.00, is there a second? Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 48 Hoffman: I will second. Estes: We have a second by Commissioner Hoffman. Do we have any discussion? Bunch: Just a question for staff concerning condition number two. Could you elaborate on that a little bit since there is currently some bridge work going on. Is that City or County or State Highway Department that is doing the bridgework? Petrie: It is a cost share with the city and the state. I don't know the percentage off the top of my head but the city is paying approximately 25% and the state the remainder. That is a fund that the state set up to help improve bridges in the various municipalities. Bunch: How does that impact condition number two? Petrie: What is proposed to be built by the state would be to widen the street from what was out there. It does not include curb and gutter. It doesn't include underground drainage so it would have open ditches when they are completed. I believe this widening is approximately 2' to 3' and that is really all that is being recommended for approval. Bunch: When you say this widening are you talking about the widening in number two or what the state is currently doing? Petrie: This is in addition to what the state is doing. I don't know how much the state is widening because I don't know the exact width of the existing street before they started. They have torn up quite a stretch through there. Bunch: Since this is a Preliminary Plat, it does say Planning Commission determination of improvements to Double Springs Road. That is what I am trying to nail down. How far down Double Springs Road, is it both sides of Double Springs Road, is it one side? Petrie: I can answer that question. What we are recommending is only on the side adjacent to the subdivision along the frontage of the subdivision just from the north side to the south side, no more and no less. Certainly the Planning Commission can make a finding to increase that. That is your choice. Bunch: I would like to ask the applicant if this is what you understood on the conditions of approval and is that what you have agreed to? Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 49 Brackett: Yes, we've agreed to that. What it is is after the state has widened their part of the road we will come in, hopefully before they put the shoulder on, we'll put the curb in and put underground drainage so instead of having a bar ditch there will be a curb with underground drainage. That is our understanding of what the improvements would be. Bunch: Thank you. Do the motioners accept that as an explanation for the motion? Man: Hesse: I am comfortable with that. I think Mr. Ward asked this at the agenda session and I think it was helpful but for the public tonight, can we have Kim Hesse review for us the tree preservation plan, how we went about that under the new ordinance for this particular development? Early on in the project I was brought out by the Engineer to review the site and was involved in the conceptual design, which is a requirement of the ordinance. Throughout the process we have been working to try to save additional trees. There are a few trees that we show preserved along rights-of-way that we will work with the utility easements as far as utilities for water and sewer, we are moving those around in order to preserve those trees. We show trees preserved in some of the building lots and along the property lines between the building lots. Unfortunately, we couldn't save them all and that is where the mitigation has kicked into affect. Per the ordinance on a residential subdivision, any of the mitigation goes directly into a tree fund where the city comes in after the homes are built in residential subdivisions and we plant trees in the rights of way of that subdivision and maintain them for three years. That is the only possible change that the applicant is looking into a variance to, is to possibly have the ability to do that planting themselves. At this point our ordinance doesn't appear to provide for that but we have until the final plat to make that decision. It is at the final plat stage that we collect the tree fund amount. We are working with the applicant and the City Attorney's office is working with the applicant to determine possibilities. Marr: Thank you. Estes: We have a motion by Commissioner Marr and a second by Commissioner Hoffman to approve PPL 02-7.00, is there any other discussion, comments or questions? Renee, would you call the roll please? Roll Call: Upon the completion of roll call the motion to approve PPL 02-7.00 was approved by a vote of 8-0-1 with Commissioner Estes abstaining. Estes: The motion passes by a vote of eight with one abstention. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 50 LSD 02-7.00: Large Scale Development (Dandy/Schmitt, pp 524) was submitted by Glenn Carter of Carter & Associates on behalf of Brian Dandy and Robert Schmitt for property located at the southwest corner of Fletcher Avenue & Rodgers Drive. The property is zoned R-2, Medium Density Residential and contains approximately 1.01 acres with 9 units proposed. Estes: The next item on the agenda is item number eight. This is a large scale development, LSD 02-7.00 submitted by Glenn Carter of Carter & Associates on behalf of Brian Dandy and Robert Schmitt for property located at the southwest corner of Fletcher Ave. and Rodgers Drive. The property is zoned R-2, Medium Density Residential and contains approximately 1.01 acres with nine units proposed. Staff recommends approval subject to certain conditions of approval. Mr. Conklin, do we have signed conditions of approval? Conklin: No. Estes: Those conditions of approval are 1) In the event that the large scale development plan with the 35 parking spaces is approved, approval shall be subject to the approval of a conditional use for three additional spaces. 2) Planning Commission determination of offsite improvements. Staff is recommending that the applicant be assessed in the amount of $5,722.40 for widening the street adjacent to this property. See attached memo from Ron Petrie, Staff Engineer. 3) Payment of parks fees in the amount of $3,375.00 (9 units @ 375 each) 4) Parking spaces provided shall be changed on plat to read 35 spaces. 5) Sidewalk construction in accordance with current standards to include a minimum six foot sidewalk with a minimum six foot greenspace. 6) Plat Review and Subdivision comments (to include written staff comments provided to the applicant or his representative, and all comments from utility representatives. 7) Staff approval of final detailed plans, specifications and calculations (where applicable) for grading, drainage, water, sewer, fire protection, streets (public and private), sidewalks, parking lot(s) and tree preservation. The information submitted for the plat review process was reviewed for general concept only. 8)Large scale development shall be valid for one calendar year. 9) Prior to the issuance of a building permit the following is required: Grading and drainage permits; Separate easement plat for this project; Project Disk with all final revisions, Completion of all required improvements or the placement of a surety with the City as required by .158.01 aGuarantees in Lieu of Installed Improvements. Park fees paid and/or deed recorded and building elevations submitted in order to check eave/overhang height in relation to setback. Is the applicant or the applicant's representative present? Osborne: Yes Sir. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 51 Estes: Mr. Osborne, do you have a presentation that you would like to make at this time? Osborne: Yes. I am going to try to be brief. I know most of you are familiar with this. I am going to put these two pictures of the proposed structures. Down below is a plat. The project has been reduced from the originally proposed 24 units down to nine units and they are going to be setup where they can be sold individually under something called the horizontal property regime, which is the same as condos, you all are familiar with that. There is a whole lot less pavement than originally, way less and there is a whole lot more greenspace. Of course the drainage plan, you all are fully aware that we are going to have to comply with city ordinances on that. The book that I have handed you. Actually, the cover and the first three pages primarily deal with this project and on the very last section is the Bill of Assurance that Bob and Brian are offering. The rest of it Bob has put in here. Bob has been sort of attacked by innuendo, indicted by innuendo at several previous meetings and I wanted you, and Bob wanted you to see some of the other work he has done in this community. He is not the ogre that he has been alleged to be. He does quality construction in the area. I think he has shown a willingness to work with the neighbors by reducing it from 24 down to 9 units, that is a pretty significant reduction. As you can see, it is a quality structure. If you will read the Bill of Assurance there in the last section of the book, it addresses the quality of construction that he proposes. Rather than belabor all of this since you are all familiar with this, I will sit down and let the others speak. I will offer some rebuttal if appropriate. Thank you. Hoffman: Thank you Mr. Osborne. I will go ahead and open the floor up to public comment. If you wish to speak on this project could you raise your hand to get an idea of how much time this is going to take? Thank you very much. We will go ahead and start with public comment now. I would advise you though to try to avoid the repetition so we can expedite this meeting but everyone will be heard. If you would like to speak please come forward. Gonn: Good evening, I know you are tired, it has been a long meeting. I am Lyle Gonn, I live at 1055 Rodgers Drive. We greatly appreciate the work that you as Commissioners have done in the past on this project and the concern that you have shown for it. I think in your packet you have a petition from the neighbors that was circulated in about three days and collected over sixty signatures. The last petition that we submitted collected over a hundred signatures. We had a longer period of time to circulate that petition and to get our neighbors to sign it. I guess first of all a number of the neighbors are here and I hope that they will and I know Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 52 that they plan to address a number of the issues that are in the petition that is a part of your packet. Some of the issues that are in this petition are very similar to what were in the previous petition and in our opinion, have not been addressed by the developer. I guess the question that we would probably raise would be if you are concerned about safety and traffic issues, the corner that this development is going to be built on is a very dangerous corner. It is a street that is only 16' in width at the point of their development with ditches on each side. If you are concerned about parking, the developer has planned for, as we understand, nine units, three bedrooms, twenty-seven beds. As you know, four unrelated people can live in each of those units so potentially there are at least 36 residents living in those units. The parking plan is not designed for that and the parking plan, at least what we saw previously, is very poorly designed with parking backed up behind each other. If you are concerned about appearance, as we mentioned, there are nine three bedroom units on an acre lot. You heard just previously with the Hotz project, two units on about a fourth of a 1/10 of a lot and the residents were concerned about that. Here we are talking about nine three-bedroom units on approximately one acre. If you are concerned about appearance and design look at some of the previous projects that these builders have built and look at the condition of those projects after a year or two. There is very little maintenance and problems that are developing immediately. What will they be like in five years? What will those projects be like in our neighborhood, our residential neighborhoods. If you are concerned about community relations, ask the developers if they have ever attempted to contact the neighborhood. You, as Commissioners, directed them to do that back in December. There has never been one attempt and they were invited to our neighborhood meeting. If you are concerned about clarification and commitment. Just who owns these units? How will they be used? At the Subdivision Committee meeting it was very confusing. If you are concerned about the long range city planning, think about how this is going to change our neighborhood. Thank you. Estes: Thank you Lyle. Is there anyone else who would like to provide public comment on this requested large scale development? Havens: My name is Jerry Havens. I live at 809 Lighton Trail in Fayetteville. In order to try to expedite this, I have written my remarks and I will just read them to you. Members of the Commission, I am here again along with my neighbors in response to the latest notice of public hearing regarding this project. I have signed the petition, which is being presented to you and I hope that my presence helps to demonstrate our community's concerns. I oppose this development because I think it will hasten the destruction of unique characteristics of the Mount Sequoyah area that our city should value highly. I understand that regulations addressing detail such as tree Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 53 canopy space, sidewalk placement provides some protection but my purpose here is to ask you to consider what I believe to be more important concerns. 1) Our Community has been treated without the slightest regard by the parties which bulldozed, by surprise, the trees on the property. It appears to me that they anticipated a slap on the hand by your members. Thus is making a decision that we were powerless to reverse but in which we had the greatest interest. I recall one of your members, upon hearing my objections to this action, asking the developer why they made the move in this manner. The attorney in representation just said "I don't know, we just cut them." In my opinion the system is not working in the community's interest when assumptive response coupled with a hand slap suffices to enable the continuation of the process. 2) It has been repeatedly pointed out that the infrastructure requirements for this project, although they may be provided for to the letter of the law, are subjects for serious concern and I have two that I would like to share with you first. I have not had time to review the traffic studies which have been done. Although I am an engineer, I don't need to be to understand that the additional cars moving on the Fletcher access to the development will create significant safety hazards. I understand that this development could legally be populated by as many as four unrelated individuals in each of the proposed units and I assume that no prohibition will be made of individual ownership of cars. In my opinion, the system is not working when such a number study, however systematically done, can be used to support a decision process that doesn't even make common sense. Nor have I had time to study the city's response to my questions about the adequacy of the sewage handling requirements. I have been too busy getting my own sewer system fixed after more than a year long effort, I recently determined the source of very objectionable sewage odors which I had observed almost daily in my yard and in my home. Numerous attempts to find the problem had always come up empty, as had several attempts by city personnel. It turned out that the sewer line traversing my yard from a lift station on the adjacent property had been damaged. More important to our discussion here, I visited the City Engineer's office in an attempt to locate the position of the sewer lines in my area. That office was helpful but I learned that the location of the sewer lines in the area are in many cases either imprecise or in gross error. I don't need to be a plumber to observe that the sewage collection system on Mount Sequoyah frequently is subject to leaks and overflow conditions. The large number of lift stations, one of which I provide, are so the city tells me, partly responsible for our continuing problem. I had requested at a previous public meeting addressing this project the city's appraisal of the adequacy of the sewage handling system in our area and he expected impact of the proposed development. I understand some attention was given to my question but I do not consider it sufficient. Again, in my opinion, the system is not working when a number study can be used to support a Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 54 decision process that doesn't satisfy common sense appraisal. I believe that you have the responsibility, if not an opportunity, to guide the processes under consideration so as to avoid the extreme concerns that are being voiced throughout the country in areas which have been living longer with fast development than we have in Fayetteville I thank you for your consideration. Estes: Thank you Mr. Havens. Does anyone else wish to provide comment? Lawler: I am Nan Lawler, 68 S. Cantrell Drive in Fayetteville. I just wanted to point out less anyone suggest that 60 of us plus signed the letter by accident not knowing what was going on, we did make an effort to contact the developers. Catherine Lux and I just recently organized the Neighborhood Association and lets face it, one of the reasons it was real easy to organize was everybody is concerned about this development. When you organize a Neighborhood Association, you should invite everyone to participate. Residents, whether they are home owners or renters and property owners, whether they live on the premises or not. We made an effort to get a hold of property owners in our neighborhood. In particular, because of this development, I made a special effort to get a hold of them. I called Tim Conklin's office as a matter of fact. I figured his office would have addresses for them. I got addresses for both of them. As a matter of fact, the address for one of them, the woman who gave me the address said that she thought it might be better to send it in care of Glenn Carter because they had sent several letters to the address given and they had come back. When we were sending out flyers, distributing flyers for our Neighborhood Association, I personally sent flyers to both Schmitt and Dandy. I don't want there to be any suggestion that we have not tried to get in touch with them. They have not been interested in getting a hold of us. Incidentally, in terms of the number of parking spaces, when I was in college I had three cars. I bad three cars out in a student housing where a bunch of us were living in one house. If you think one parking space per bedroom will suffice, dream on! Thank you. Estes: Thank you Nan. We have had the benefit of three very fine presentations. We are very familiar with the history of this project. I would ask that if you have a comment that it be comment that edifies us and helps us in our decision making process. Please keep your comments brief, to the point, relevant to the agenda item at hand and we would appreciate that. Davison: Thank you Sir. I appreciate you listening. I have also written my comments because I am an emotional person and it seems to be I am dismissed when I am emotional. In writing I think I can improve that. My name is Sharon Davison Sir. Here we go. I have been dealing with this for over a year. It has been quite an amazing process. I am sort of Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 55 concerned as to why we are all spending this time here when it is all about ordinances. There is no power here. I am confused. Are you here as a board only to prevent corruption in our Planning Department? Otherwise, why would we not just hire people to say this ordinance needs to be met for this or that. I am not sure why we use your time here when you cannot affect positive change. Here we go. I live in Fayetteville and as I always say, I speak only for myself. I am here tonight to represent unrepresented people in this room. They are the people who matter the most to me personally, professionally. They come before money, they come before individual property rights. They come before what this one guy should be able to do to us. You know who that is? That is children. I am here speaking about my child's safety. Not this young man, Bobby Schmitt Mr. Neil Schmitt's son who lives here and has grown up to think this is ok. There are children that are growing up here right now. My son is an eleven year old. He has to walk, no choice, to school to catch the bus. He can't get to school without walking to the bus. He has to go down this very dangerous stretch of road, right in front of, as you will see later with my picture presentation of this project, of all of his projects that I am aware of, only the ones that I am aware of. He has to walk right down there, no sidewalks, and he has to go to the bus and he has to walk that way twice a day. The reason why is because it is too dangerous for the bus to come up to our street in the winter. His whole school year he has to go down and go this long way to catch the bus because a big part of the school year it is not safe for the school bus to come get him. I am talking about my child, not everyone in the neighborhood can drive their child, so he is walking on roads without sidewalks to his bus. I have one picture here that shows the most recent wreck in front of this property. It is a wreck, it is not even in a ditch. Here we go on that particular incident, it is directly in front of the very piece of property we are speaking about. It had a severe impact with a tree and was towed. On that particular icy day while my son and other children played in the park, again, directly across from this. A steep incline, a park that was developed for children. There were a minimum of three vehicles in those ditches on that particular day that couldn't make it past that curve down the mountain, right there in front of the Schmitt/Dandy residence. In fact, you can check the police report because there was a police incident because of one of those cars on that day. Here is my concern, I keep hearing it is R-2, it's R-2. Right or wrong there is nothing we can do about it. Planning says staff suggests. Staff recommends, excuse me, if you really want to care about what staff is telling you, staff is telling you they have met these requirements, we have to say ok. They turn it over to you hoping that you might do the right thing. These men get to manipulate that information and say staff approves. I bet you I could ask Mr. Tim Conklin right now if he were allowed to give his professional opinion, I doubt that he would say staff backs this. He would have to say staff can't do this, staff can't do that. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 56 Unlike our problem with Markham Hill and your inability to protect them because that man wasn't asking for any "favors, waivers, favors, waivers" we have that here. You can do the right thing here. Back to Excuse me! I am suppose to be so grateful when I look at this whole area that is inappropriately zoned. Again, that was brought up in 1970 after most of these single-family homes were already in there. It was brought up to be changed. The reason why we don't have the maximum allowable units is not because they are so nice. It is not because my neighbors have complained so much, it is because it doesn't work. It will not fit. Here we go! They are still trying to over maximize this property. Your opportunity to fix this is coming up next as far as the parking. Ok, they are still trying to do this to us. It is not compatible with our neighborhood. Not only is our neighborhood primarily a family and home owner's neighborhood, it has scattered rentals, a lot of those rentals are actually families. Guess what the key is here. None of them are more than duplexes. You look on Fletcher and there are several examples of good duplexes that have plenty of parking, have not overbuilt on lots. Ok-he switched from apartments to these to everything imaginable. The only thing suitable in our neighborhood would be duplexes. Here is the deal. I figured out that he went in and he is looking for rental. We understand that rental is a problem. We have said ok to the Lindsey Broyles mega complex. We are in the process of approving our plan for housing all of these students. Are we going to allow our whole town and our neighborhood and our family structures to be destroyed in term of waiting for the appropriate housing for students in that corridor or are we going to do something about it? Here is my problem with what these guys are up to. I believe it is more than just this development. As you will see, I have examples of the four proposed developments of his there is something wrong with everyone of them. He has a bad history in every neighborhood he has developed. Ok- I don't think this is that funny. We all used to joke about the law school here and how it turned out that all of the lawyers are here in Fayetteville. I am getting concerned when I am seeing what is going on here that our B school is turning out a lot of B school guys that have figured out the rental market and they would like to stay here. Estes: Sharon, would you, if you have something to say that would help us in the decision making process, please provide us with that information. Davison: Ok. Well one quote here Sir would be from one of Mr. Osborne's last meetings and his closing remark was "We're not looking for loopholes." Estes: Sharon, you are not helping us. We know the historic record of this applicant. If you would please provide us with comments that will help us in the decision making process and please keep your comments limited to Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 57 the agenda item before us, which is this large scale development. Do you have anything that you can share with us that will help us in the decision making process? Davison: I would like to ask the question, has the fire protection issue been addressed? Estes: Mr. Conklin, can you respond to that? Conklin: The Fire Department has looked at this and they have stated that they can drive their truck in and have the hose released and drive back out. Yes, it has been addressed. Estes: Do you have another question? Davison: I would like to know, I guess, to tie this up and since you are not happy with me trying to address the issues of safety, of appropriate and compatible buildings, the fact that this is detrimental to our neighborhoods, the fact of the impact that it will have on the cemeteries below, on the houses below. The fact that there are no apartments closer to this than the projects in the holler and that the only thing around this neighborhood is duplexes and that would be the only thing appropriate. This was a single family lot that was three lots originally. It had one house on it. If they wanted to split it and do a neighborhood appropriate, where the max that we could handle would be two duplexes, each one. You can do those neighbors. I did have some more to say and could've followed up on a lot of inconsistencies. I have lots of material where all their facts change all the time. Sir, when you are looking to a person I think it is relevant as to the history, the facts and the things that don't add up. My last thing in closing before I allow other people who might be more eloquent and composed than myself is to ask is everyone planning on voting on this particular item? Estes: It is not appropriate to respond to that at this time. Each individual Commissioner will vote as they see appropriate. Do you have anything else for us? Davison: I would like to address that issue if it comes up later. Estes: What issue is that? Davison: I believe there is a conflict of interest on your board beyond the fact that it is outweighed by banker business interests, realtors, etc. Estes: Well, you know what I am going to do Sharon? I am going to give you an Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 58 opportunity to articulate that perceived conflict and perhaps the individual Commissioner that you are speaking to can respond. I don't want anybody to vote on this issue that any citizen feels like should be conflicted out and should recuse. Would you address each one of those individual Commissioners that you feel should recuse, stating the reason you feel that they should recuse and giving them an opportunity to respond? Davison: Yes Sir. There is one Commissioner... Estes: No, state by name Davison: Of course. There is one Commissioner Sir, his name is Lee Ward. My problem with it is that Mr. Osborne is representing numerous people, a group of people, I bet you they are connected Sir, that are trying to do similar projects like this. He is doing more than one of those. These are high impact very, very important developments. I don't believe someone who has business interests with someone representing a client should vote and this man has outspoken, been positively "Oh! No traffic problem up there, that intersection is no worse than anywhere else." This is what I have been hearing from this person every meeting I've attended. To me that statement, that set off bells and I wanted to know was he more than just a realtor. I understand. Estes: I appreciate your comments and Mr. Ward can respond at whatever time he feels is appropriate if he feels necessary to respond. Now is there any other Commissioner that you feel should recuse from voting on this item? Davison: I have no idea about anything else besides that Sir. If you just all would look at this it will verify the facts that landscaping is not done after these projects, there is severe runoff, there is crumbling. There are the trees. Please look at these pictures. It will show conclusively what this man's developments are. Estes: Weis: Thank you Sharon. Is there any other member of the audience who would like to provide public comment on this requested large scale development? George, if you would say your name for the recorded record please and provide us with the benefit of your comments. My name is George Weis and I live at 1614 Sawyer Lane. I was watching the November 12` Planning Commission meeting at which Commissioner Don Bunch mentioned that the applicant, Mr. Bob Schmitt asked you, the Commissioners to examine his record. Would you Mr. Chairman, want me to examine a little bit of his record if I took about three minutes of time in a different part of the city? Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 59 Estes: Weis: Estes: George, I think each member of this Commission is eminently familiar with this applicant and with the history of this project. We have seen this over the past year. I think the first time that we saw this was when it was before us on April 23`d of last year. The same sitting members sit before you this evening. I know that I am very familiar with the history. I have viewed all of the photographs that have been presented. I have toured projects and I would suggest to you that I am not the Lone Ranger. I just wanted to know if you wanted me to take three minutes to expand upon what I did send you in a letter because there is additional information that was not in that letter which I did not have at that time. George, I don't think that is relevant to this large scale development which is before us and regarding the history of this applicant and this project, again, we are most familiar with it. Weis: Alright, I appreciate it. Thank you. Estes: Thank you George. Is there any other member of the audience who would like to provide public comment on this issue? Jansen: My name is Jerry Jansen. My wife Harriett and I live at 900 Lighton Trail. We are very close neighbors to this proposed development. I have just a few brief points that I would like to make. If this development is approved with nine three-bedroom units it will be the highest density residential development in our neighborhood by a wide margin. It will be a very, very abrupt change from the nature of the residences that are there now. The second thing I would like to submit to you is that it is one acre of land, it is going to contain nine three-bedroom units, 35 parking spaces, a driveway, 6' of paved sidewalk, space for solid waste containers and other necessary infrastructure elements that have to go with developments of this type, a large scale development. I think it is going to be a very, very dense, very crowded, very industrial looking development unlike anything else in our neighborhood. My third point is that if you do see fit to approve this I urge you with the strongest power that you have to support the Planning Commission and the City Staff in making sure that all the elements of landscaping and other amenities that should be provided with large scale development are met and that that is a continuing process so that after the first year or two when the trees that have been planted die as they often do in our hot summers, that they are replanted and the development keeps the appearance that is suitable for the nature of our area. Thank you very much. Estes: Thank you Jerry. Is there any other member of the audience who would Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 60 like to provide public comment? Yes Ma'am. Chaddick: My name is Susan Chaddick and I live at the corner of Spring Street and Olive on Mount Sequoyah, or East Mountain as it is known for those of us that have been here for a long while. I have been here a long while. I was raised on that mountain and came back s a grandmother. I would simply ask that you be very cautious and aware that the infrastructure from a novas view point simply is not there to support what I think will be a floodgate of activity in building on the mountain. I just ask that you be very cautious about decisions made. Thank you. Estes: Thank you Susan. Does anyone else wish to provide public comment? If you would come forward please. Green: Good evening, I am Michael Green. I live on Texas Way. My driveway actually connects to Lighton Trail so I am only about '/z block from this proposed development. I have witnessed first hand numerous car accidents as a result of this very complicated intersection. I don't want to try to repeat things that have already been said tonight. It is getting late and I certainly appreciate your patience with this entire process. What I would like to emphasize is that this intersection is not a strict congeal connection of four streets. It is a very complicated geometric connection of the four streets and it is a three dimensional connection because of the elevation changes there. I doubt if there are any of the street engineering tables that can account for all of the variables that we see at this very complicated intersection. The only real point I want to make is that this is a very special situation safety wise and traffic wise and whatever development is allowed there I certainly hope that you are very forceful in making sure that all of the paths of egress and traffic flow and parking and how the driveway is allowed to connect to Lighton Trail is handled in a manner that will really address these very complicated safety issues. Personally I don't think that this property is as suitable for an R-2 just by the way that this area has developed. It is a neighborhood of mostly R-1 since thirty years ago that it was zoned, it has developed as mostly R-1 and not only R-1 but most of these places in our neighborhood are owner occupied which gives us a little bit more of a vested interest in our neighborhood. That is really the only points that I want to make other than what has already been made. I certainly appreciate your consideration to deny this request in its present form. Thank you. Estes: Thank you Mr. Green. Is there anyone else who would like to make a comment on this requested large scale development? McKinney: Good evening, my name is Rick McKinney, I live at 609 Olive Street. I too grew up when there was a water treatment plant operating on the top Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 61 Estes: Belt: of that hill. What you are about to do tonight is going to set precedence one way or another. If you approve this you are approving the type of development that has not been approved on that part of that mountain before in this neighborhood. If you deny it that will set precedence too. It will send a message that perhaps this is the wrong place for this type of development. I feel the land is wrong. It is almost an over density in that area. Someone please remind me the thirty-five parking spaces, where are the guests going to park? We still have a problem with guest parking. If each one of those residents has one guest there is not going to be room to drive up Fletcher to Rodgers because they are going to be parking on the street. There is not going to be room in the parking lot. After your last vote I urge you to think about this please. Because the regulations allow it does not necessitate that you must approve it. You up here with discretion, you are up here with discretion to reinforce the regulations for the applications in front of you but you also have the authority to deny them and I ask that you deny this. Thank you. Thank you Mr. McKinney. Does anyone else wish to provide public comment? I am Rick Belt, I live at 904 E. Rodgers and yes, I am Sharon Davison's husband. I guess I am a little bit simple minded and I am one of these people that did buy a house that does have a second structure that is zoned for an apartment on the lot. I guess I am a little different than your average real estate consumer. I just have trouble understanding why we are required to pass all these waivers and exceptions and what have you. This place didn't really even have street access to begin with. It looks to me like purchasing it was a bit of a gamble that some sort of a development would fly to begin with. As I read through some of the regulations, one issue that has been eluded to that does allow some discretion by Planning Commission members is topography. Eyeballing this lot and seeing the example on Olive Street, it looks like that is about '/2 acre, I'm not sure exactly. There are four little units in it and there doesn't look like much room for parking and in fact there is a truck parked on the street all the time there now, at least a good bit of the time. We have to be concerned here, if it is icy on the main street it will be icy on that drive coming out and there will be runoff. Just the eyeball assessment, I think three or possibly the maximum of four duplexes would be alright but I can't even visualize thirty-five parking spaces there with much of any kind of structure. Please, it is in your regulations that topography can be used as a considering factor. Please consider this, I think this is just too dense for our area. Thank you. Estes: Thank you Mr. Belt. Does anyone else wish to provide public comment on this requested large scale development? Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 62 Zandine: Hello, my name is John Zandine, I live at 1124 E. Rodgers. Roughly a year ago I lived at 922 E. Lighton Trail. We elected to build a house over on East Rodgers because we love the neighborhood. It is a great walking neighborhood. Also, with the city tearing down the water storage tanks there and converting that into a park I thought it was a great opportunity for our kids to enjoy a neighborhood park. However, you need to come up there at any time during the week or on the weekend and try to walk up to that park. I find myself now loading the kids up in the car and safely driving to the park because of the dangerous intersection there where this proposed development is going in. Numerous accidents, not just on icy winter days up there on the hills. We have had accidents where kids come flying down the hill and slide down the ditch right where this development is going to be. Safety is my number one concern in this area. This Lighton Trail that connects to Rodgers Ave. there, there are a lot of blind spots, people come flying down and go through the stop signs. It is just a horrible intersection. The other thing I want to bring up is I had the displeasure of living across the street from Bobby Schmitt's development on Lighton Trail. For a year I watched this development go up. Numerous times I tried to call Bob Schmitt with Hometown Properties. I left him about a dozen messages. The project that was built there was built at all hours through the weekend, all hours during the night. I had a wife in bed that was pregnant that was bed ridden and he had construction workers working around the clock to put in his so called apartment complex, or single apartment. It was a real problem. I got no response from this gentleman. If you want to look in the city files I submitted numerous complaints to the city about this development. I had problems with debris dumped in my yard. I had problems with just no response and that is the problem that I have. This guy is coming again into our neighborhood to develop a project. He is not talking to the neighbors and I guarantee that he won't respond to any of our concerns if this project goes through. That should also be considered in this please. Thank you. Estes: Thank you John for your comments. Does anyone else wish to provide public comment? Ball: Hi, I am Kathy Ball and I live at 1148 Rodgers Drive. I have lived there for eighteen years. I have seen a lot of changes up on the mountain. The only thing that really has not changed is the condition of those streets. I would ask you if you pass this development, I do not see how you can not ask that developer to improve that section of the street. Not just in front of the development but around the whole corner. Safety is my main concern too. Thank you. Estes: Thank you Kathy. Does anyone else wish to provide public comment on Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 63 Peters: this requested large scale development? Hi, I am Dede Peters, 306 Baxter. I was just handed this information by someone that has already left. In 1993 the City of Fayetteville Planning Commission reversed a decision that they made to grant a lot split on being presented information from the neighborhoods opposing what was going on in their neighborhood. The developer of that protested the reversal of the decision but the reversal was upheld in the appellate court and that is Case 1997 WL 177.825 TRD Inc. v. City of Fayetteville This is not allowed for public reproduction that is why you guys would not be able to see it but it was that the Rosewood Subdivision was zoned a low density residential area with large building area lots and to allow the lot line adjustment in this case would thwart that purpose or scheme because more houses would be constructed in the area than originally planned. I think this goes back to the fact that that lot is incorrectly zoned and goes against the planning for the neighborhood, with residential neighbors and not a large scale apartment complex with lots and lots of cars. Thank you. Estes: Thank you Dede. Does anyone else wish to provide public comment on this requested large scale development? Crisp: I am Connie Crisp, 1040 Rodgers and I just wanted to say that I walk by that everyday when I am walking my dog. I go by that intersection and I get as quickly as I can up to Lighton Trail because it is a problem now and it is a concern for safety and I just wanted to reemphasize that to you all. Thank you. Estes: Thank you Connie. Does anyone else wish to provide public comment on this requested large scale development? Wagoner: My name is Kale Wagoner and I have a slightly different perspective than most people. I am a renter and I have lived at two different locations in this neighborhood. I have lived 213 Summit Ave. and I have been living for the last couple of months at 986 Rodgers Drive. I am not from around here and when I first started living on this street there wasn't any other place in Fayetteville that I would want to live. It is the most beautiful, it is a very special place. I will quickly get on with my point. There are so many people in this area that walk dogs, that have children, that ride bikes. Anymore people on this mountain and you are going to inevitably have somebody die and I am very scared, I am very concerned about the safety issue. I walk my dog, I ride a bike and there are people everyday in this area doing that. Any more people and I am afraid of what might happen. Thanks. Estes: Thank you Mr. Wagoner. Is there anyone else who wishes to provide Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 64 comment on this requested large scale development? Has everyone spoken who desires to speak regarding this proposed large scale development, 02-7.00? Seeing that no one else wishes to speak I will bring it back to Mr. Osborne for comments, rebuttal and response. Osborne: The predominant thing from my perspective was that most of the opposition is of traffic and safety. Mr. Schmitt commissioned a traffic study done at the request of the Planning Commission, or the planning staff, one or the other. It has been provided to the city. The study says that the roads are adequate. I am not a traffic engineer. I have no clue about that sort of thing, we have to go by the study that was provided. As for the sewer service, your city sewer department says it is adequate. We have to comply as the thing is constructed and put in. That will be adequate or it won't be constructed. The number of parking spaces, the next item on your agenda is a request for three additional spaces and that is to accommodate guests. They may be right about that. That is why we are requesting three additional spaces for the overall project. As for the notice of the meeting, we received it the day of the meeting, late in the day. You can hardly consider it adequate notice or Mr. Schmitt and Mr. Dandy would have gone. Addressing the number of units, as a matter of right by law Bob and Brian can build a city street and put twenty-four units on that property. They don't want to do that. This is a much nicer development, nicer for the city, nicer for the neighborhood. It s better for all concerned. They are really working hard. They have complied, with I believe, everything that they have been asked to do by the city and by some of the neighbors, the reasonable requests. We have been here several times and we have tried to meet every reasonable request we can. The driveway connection, clearly the city is going to have something to say about that and we will comply with whatever they think is best. As far as precedent setting, you know it is not precedent setting by law. Every decision you make is an individual decision and stands on its own. As for dog walking, I lost my dog about six months ago on Rockwood Trail. He was dumb enough to lay in the middle of Rockwood Trail and there is not much you can do about that. Dog walking and people is a problem all over town. I live on Sequoyah Mountain myself, the other end of the mountain from this development but people are walking all over Fayetteville and I am glad they are. I am not quite sure how to address that problem. I don't want people to quit walking and I certainly don't want them to quit walking their dogs but I don't know that there is anything that Bobby Schmitt or Brian Dandy or you members of the Commission can do about that. If you have any questions Mr. Carter the engineer is here, Mr. Dandy is here and Mr. Schmitt is here. We would be glad to address any questions you have. Estes: Thank you Mr. Osborne. I will now bring the matter back to the Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 65 Allen: Schmitt: Allen: Schmitt: Shackelford: Williams: Commission for discussion, motions and comments. I would like to ask Mr. Schmitt why he has not been available to the neighbors. Good evening, I am Robert Schmitt. The first notification I had was, as she said, she sent that letter to Glenn Carter, I got it the day of at about 3:00 and the meeting was at 5:00. I had a previous commitment that I couldn't break. I don't know specifically when Mr. Dandy got his but they were fairly close to the meeting and we weren't able to make it. Mr. Osborne said that we probably would have gone had we got the notices. I don't know for sure that I would have. Given the nature of the attacks on my character and my previous history I don't know that I would've wanted to have gone and been beat up. On this project we have tried to address many of the issues that you guys have raised through the past year. We have heard from the neighbors. We had six units, we had some extra infrastructure requirements. We raised the number of units and they asked us to take them down. As a matter of fact, the last plan that we had had twenty-four units and we had actually found a way to meet all of the requirements that you guys had as a city and meet all of the ordinances and we decided not to bring that back. We decided to bring this back. It is something that we can be proud of and hopefully the neighbors once we get it built, will be able to see that it can be a good addition to the neighborhood. Does anyone else have any questions? As a follow-up on that question. You and Mr. Osborne have both talked about a reasonable request. It seems reasonable to me that you would have time during the duration of this project to meet with the neighbors. Ok, I would be glad to do it. I just want to make a quick point. The issue of recusal was brought up through public comment. I want to get on public record that Mr. Schmitt and I have had business dealings in the past. To the best of my knowledge, he and I have not had any direct business dealings in over two years. Neither myself nor my employer is involved in this specific project and based on those facts I have not recused myself from this vote at this point. I would like to defer to the City Attorney Mr. Williams for his opinion of whether or not that recusal should be required at this time. I don't think it would be required. Obviously a recusal would be required if there was a direct financial interest that any Commissioner would have with the applicant or even with someone opposing it also. Beyond that it is a matter of judgment. You say it has been two years so I certainly wouldn't question your judgment on that. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 66 Shackelford: With that I guess I would ask you as Chairman and any other Commissioners if you feel that there is a conflict of interest and ask that I recuse I would be willing to do so at this point. Estes: Commissioner Shackelford, I see no conflict of interest. Shackelford: Thank you Sir. Church: Do we have any recent information about how many accidents have occurred at this intersection where this development is going in? It seems like I remember something about it in our previous report and I am just wondering if that has been looked at recently. Conklin: Hoffman: We have not looked at the recent reports. I have a question for the applicant. A lot of the neighbors seem to be concerned that this is going to be student housing. This doesn't look to me like student housing. I think Mr. Osborne mentioned that it was going to be that the individual units were going to be sold as condominiums, what type of client are you marketing this to? Schmitt: We don't intend to sell them at this point but we are trying to set them up so that they can be sold. For us to take the density down to this number we have quite a bit more money for each unit. The rents that we are going to need for these are between $1,400 and $1,500 a unit. I think that precludes quite a few of the students from being able to rent these. Hopefully the type of tenants will be more of the single family nature and will be something that the neighborhood will be glad to have in the area. I do think that you will have some graduate students in there. I know that as I got older and was finishing school I wanted to get out of the normal high density areas and wanted something a little bit nicer that I could rent. If it comes that we can't get the rents that we need for these to make this project work at this density then we will put these up for sale and that is why we set them up this way. These units appraised close to $170,000 per unit and so they are very nice units. Hoffman: Thank you. Could you comment on your perception of the traffic problems on the adjacent streets and the safety issues? Schmitt: I would think that that would be a tough issue for anybody to decide. The majority of the streets up there, including Rodgers and Lighton and Texas Way that comes down and Fletcher Street are all narrow. They were built many years ago. I don't know what the design standards were at that time. I do think that the city has asked us to provide a certain amount of money Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 67 Ward: so that they can come in and at some point in the future widen these roads. I don't know what the calculations are but they seem to be a fairly significant number to me. I don't remember if it was $5,000 or $8,000 or whatever it cost but we are gladly paying our share to make sure these roads are safe. While you are there Mr. Schmitt what I would like you to do is you are offering up a Bill of Assurance. Maybe what you should do is go over that Bill of Assurance as it pertains to these units and talk about how they are being built, what the materials are being made of and that type of thing. Schmitt: I would be glad to. What we are offering or proposing to submit on a Bill of Assurance regards the interior and exterior amenities and the types of materials that will be on the outside of the structures I think you have a list of them but I will be glad to numerate them for you. We are guaranteeing that we will do full masonry on at least 50% of each unit. Rock will be used on half of the proposed units. Let me be specific there, we may use the petra stone which has been used extensively in a lot of the different subdivisions in town. It looks a lot like rock but it is a little bit cheaper of an alternative. There will be architectural shingles on each unit. There will be no vinyl siding on any structure in this project. The elevations shown will be used on the units indicated. Privacy fencing along adjoining residential lots will be provided. There is only one lot on the west side of this project that has a house on it. The property to the south is a large undeveloped tract, the property to the east is the city's old water tanks and the property to the north is the city park. The units will be set up so that they can be sold individually under the horizontal property regime. Property owners Mr. Dandy and myself will join the Neighborhood Association. A P.O.A. will control all of the landscape maintenance. The yards will be fully sodded. The interiors will have tile, wood and carpeting, no linoleum. The interiors will all have fire places, tile counter tops, 2" wood blinds and at this point that is what we are willing to commit to. Estes: Mr. Schmitt, I have a question. This was first before us on April 23, 2001 with a request not to provide the required street frontage for lots in an R-2 zone. This waiver was approved, I voted for that waiver and it was subject to the project being processed as a large scale development and limited to six units. Schmitt: That is correct. Estes: At that time when I voted for that I considered density, housing type, lot size, frontage requirements and parking. You are now before us with a proposal for nine units. Why have we never seen a proposal of six units? Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 68 Can you edify me in some way or another? Why have you never come back to us with the six units? Schmitt: It goes back to the history of the project. Estes: You know I am not going to vote for this the way it is. Schmitt Ok. Estes: Explain to me why you have never come to us with a large scale development with six units. Schmitt: I have to go back to how we procured the property. I bought a single piece of property owned by Gary Goodwin I think. He had a trailer that he was using and it had his septic system running or a septic wire coming out and running to a previous septic tank where a house had burned down. I bought the property from him, I found out there were some adjacent lots. I could not afford to buy those lots, I told a friend about them, Mr. Dandy, and he purchased those lots with the idea of coming in there and doing something appropriate with the R-2 zoning. At the time we had no idea that there was a street frontage issue. It was not brought up through any title search and we didn't realize that anything was going to be required of us other than when we turned in a building permit plan. We met with Mr. Conklin on a Tuesday I think, I don't know for sure, don't pin me down on that, but he let us know when he approved our property line adjustment, and Mr. Williams was there, that there was an issue of street frontage and that it would have to be addressed in the form of a waiver as opposed to us building the street. As I understand it, our property rights are either we can build a street to access our property or get a waiver from you guys. We decided that we thought it was a dangerous intersection already and we don't want to add another street to it. We can approach you guys with the... Estes: 1 think you are going underwater and 1 think your lawyer would like to step up and say something. Osborne: The six units was on just his side. Schmitt: That's right. Osborne: We've gone from six units down to four and a half. There are four units on Bob's side now and five on Brian's side if I am looking at this correctly. Schmitt: That's correct. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 69 Osborne: We are down from twelve units, six on each side to five and four. Schmitt: What you originally approved was six units and I am proposing four on my side. Let me get back to the situation. The reason that you saw six units was because in the space of a week Sara Edwards called me and said "We have to know for Planning Commission what you are putting on this." I said, "They have to know exactly what I am going to do to approve a waiver?" She said "Yes." So over the weekend I did a hand drawn sketch to scale of what I was intending to put on there. I had to decide a little bit faster than I was prepared. You approved it based on that design. Since then we have been in the committee process for a year. In that committee process you guys have continued to give us different hurdles I would say to make sure this complies with all of the ordinances. We have continued to do that. Sometimes those infrastructure requirements require changes in density and structure because everything does have to work financially. We are where we are now. Are there any more questions? Estes: No Sir. Bunch: A question for staff concerning the parking. One of the problems that have been discussed and has been somewhat alleviated has to do with the stacking of parking. If we look at parking and loading Chapter 172 of our Unified Development Ordinance under section 172.01(C) Parking Lot Design Standards, under maneuvering, is this applicable to this project? Particularly when we are looking at the situation where this might be one big project or while later it might be sold off as condominiums but it has to do with the maneuvering of vehicles in and out of parking and how to design parking lots. Conklin: It is fairly unique because we have an applicant providing garages. Typically you don't have covered garage parking in a multi -family development. You are looking at something that typically isn't done with garages being developed. In other developments we have approved where we have garages to count the spaces in front of the garage. That is a very good question because we are not looking at a typical parking lot because they have garages. Bunch: This is one of the reasons that at Subdivision Committee we requested them to look at providing a little more parking because of the three units, 7-9, did not have the same parking setup that 1-6 did and 1-6 were using up the allowed overage and 7-9 were being shorted and it was going to create a situation. I just wanted to be clear about how we are dividing this up. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 70 Schmitt Do you feel we adequately addressed that? Bunch: As far as what we requested, yes. Schmitt: Ok, thank you. Bunch: I just wanted to make sure that we weren't doing this other. Also, on the elevations, on your Bill of Assurance elevations are for 1-6, do you have any plans for 7, 8 and 9. Schmitt: The person that did those for us wasn't able to get those finished before tonight. They will be similar in nature. Bunch: As the developer, would they fall under the same Bill of Assurance as far as materials? Schmitt: The Bill of Assurance would be applied to all of them, yes Sir. If we need to change the wording on that we would be glad to. Bunch: That is all the questions I have at this time. Estes: Is there any other discussion? Osborne: In light of your remarks Mr. Chairman, I want to be sure I've made myself clear. We have reduced the number of units from what was originally discussed a year ago. It was six for each side, a total of twelve and now we are down to five and four so I hope you will reconsider your opposition. Estes: Well, what I am struggling with Mr. Osborne is when we first saw this and it was before us for a request not to provide the required street frontage. The waiver was approved and I voted for that and that was subject to the project being processed as a large scale development and limited to six units and I considered density, housing type, lot size, frontage requirement, parking. I don't want to dwell on the history too much but my perception is that there was some discussion about what was going to come in, how many units were going to come in, there was some discussion about where part of the infrastructure was going to be placed. When I voted for that what I was voting for was a large scale development with six units. Osborne: Brian Dandy just started his a couple of months ago. Estes: There were add ons and the second lot was brought in... Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 71 Osborne: The second lot was brought in a couple of months ago, it wasn't here a year ago. Brian Dandy's wasn't even on the paper then. Estes: Yes, that is what I am saying. The second lot was brought in and when I was thinking about things like density, housing type, lot size, frontage requirement, parking, I was thinking six units. Schmitt: On 1/2 acre. Estes: No, I was thinking six units. I was thinking about a large scale development with six units. Conklin- Just looking at our files and what was approved. What was approved was six units on each lot, each lot being a half acre, a total of twelve units. What they have attempted to do, and we went through this whole argument debate about whether or not these were two separate projects and if they are that I didn't want anything combined, grading setbacks, detention ponds, access. We got to that point and there was a lot of concern about having two driveways and not having it planned together. Mr. Schmitt and Mr. Dandy asked if they could process this together as one large scale to help address some of the concerns with two driveways and create some additional open space and greenspace. I just want to take this time to explain why you are seeing this together is because they asked if they could bring it together to address some of the concerns from the neighborhood and reduce the density. Just so you, as a Commission, understand why these two projects are together it is because they were trying to address some of the concern with the number of units and access. Estes: Thank you Mr. Conklin. Osborne: I will conclude by saying these guys have bent over backwards to make this thing acceptable. I hope you will give it favorable consideration. Estes: Thank you Mr. Osborne. Marr: A question for Ron or Tim. The $5,700 charge or whatever we want to call it, that goes to improvements on adjacent streets that has a total cost of $58,000 if I understand this right and the calculation. Will that improvement actually be made in coordination with this development or is that purely a collection for future road improvement. If not, is there any time frame we anticipate that this road improvement would happen? Petrie: It will be a collection of several different assessments. That is the way it is set up. By ordinance they have five years. They can come back and Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 72 Marr: request the Planning Commission to refund that money and the Planning Commission has several different options if that is the case. At the moment there are no plans to widen these streets. Nothing on our capital improvement program list and that does concern me. Did I answer your question? Yes you did. At the risk of being pegged as some bleeding heart I guess. When I think about this entire project I don't look at the things that we've asked for as hurdles that we've thrown up to keep this from going. I look at it as requirements that we have been asked to look at. Safety, fire response, traffic impact, safety and the risk of the people in the area, not only those that will reside in this development but those that are already in this area. Quite honestly I don't think that my biggest issue when we talk about what is important to me throwing all else aside is that I don't think that the density requirement that it is currently zoned is appropriate. I struggle with the fact that you have that land with that zoning and I keep coming back to does another wrong make a right? How I try to get to that is that the issues that come with density get taken care of, that there is going to be the appropriate safety for these nine or twelve units. I still struggle with the fact that we have a road charge without a road improvement and I don't think that improves safety. I appreciate the work that you have done to change this from the maximum density because quite honestly I think that goes back to the spirit to what is a lot of the problem in the area in general. I do recognize that movement but I don't recognize that that movement has resolved all of the issues that come with whatever is built on this lot. I am not going to support it because I don't see anything in our capital improvement plan. I don't see this road as being built and quite honestly I didn't vote for the road variance because I would rather see the road get built and know it is going to be safe where this development is than to be in the situation that we are in today where we are going to have it there not taking care of anything that started out as the original issue. I wanted you to understand that and I am not trying to be difficult to you personally. My issues are, have been, and will be, that this density brings with it issues and one of those issues is safety in my opinion. That is all I have. Estes: Are there any other comments, motions or discussion? Let me call three times for a motion. Motion: Ward: I will go ahead and make a motion. In order to get this thing on record at least I think that at least we should vote on it and go from there. The project is much better than it was from the very first day. The property is zoned R-2, I live in this neighborhood on a very busy street. Traffic has Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 73 Estes: Shackelford: Estes: Shackelford: Conklin: Shackelford: Estes: Hoffman: always been a problem and will continue to be a problem. I live on the corner of Assembly, which is a state highway and Dogwood, you get a lot of traffic. That is part of living on the mountain I guess. I feel that this project meets what is required in R-2 and I think it is our obligation to either vote for it or make recommendations of why we cannot vote for it. I will go ahead and move for approval of this LSD 02-7.00. We have a motion by Commissioner Ward to approve LSD 02-7.00, is there a second? Is there a second? I will second. We have a second by Commissioner Shackelford. I would like to ask City staff a question if I could. If the large scale development is declined tonight what is the appeal process, what is the next step available on this situation? Can it be appealed to City Council? It can be appealed to City Council. Ok. I too agree with Commissioner Ward that we have to look at the fact that this is zoned R-2, rightly or wrongly it is R-2 zone and there is some use by right with that zoning. I feel that we need to bring this thing to a vote so we can get off high center and go one direction or the other. I second it for that reason. We have a motion by Commissioner Ward and a second by Commissioner Shackelford to approve LSD 02-7.00 is there any discussion or any comments? As much as I don't like to vote against things, I realize that we do need to give our explanations about why we vote how we do. I guess I am hung up on the density issue as well. I want to say that I really do not like to vote against a project, particularly one that has been worked on as hard as this. I think that a lot of folks that are on both sides of this aisle, I think that you've done quite a bit of work so up or down if this project does go through you are going to end up with a much better project than what was originally proposed. However, I guess I am going to go back to the 2020 Plan and give my reason as being I am familiar with the area, I do believe that it is out of character because of the number of units still. I do think that duplexes or other arrangements with fewer units would have been more sellable. If it comes back, I don't think it will but I don't know. I just think that I have to really take big consideration to the character of that Mount Sequoyah neighborhood and it is very collected, very diverse. It has ranges of all types of houses from your very expensive to your very Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 74 affordable. I think these are attractive but I think there are more of them on one lot than you see in the rest of the area. That is why I won't support this project and I am really sorry to say it. Conklin- Mr. Chair, I just want for the record and you articulate if you vote to approve or deny this large scale development, here is what the ordinance states. The Subdivision Committee or Planning Commission may refuse to approve a large scale development for any of the following reasons. The development plan is not submitted in accordance with the requirements of the section. 2) The proposed development would violate a city ordinance, a state statute or federal statute. 3) The developer refuses to dedicate the street right-of-way, utility easements or drainage easements required by this chapter. 4) The proposed development would create or compound a dangerous traffic condition. For the purpose of the section, a dangerous traffic condition shall be construed to mean a traffic condition in which the risk of accidents involving motor vehicles is significant due to factors such as but not limited to, high traffic volume, topography or the nature of the traffic pattern. 5) City water and sewer is not readily available to the property within the large scale development and the developer has made no provision for extending such service to the development. 6) The developer refuses to comply with the subsection 7(b) and (c) pertaining to the required onsite and offsite improvements. I just wanted to make sure that you are aware that the ordinance does outline the reasons for denial of a large scale development. Estes: Thank you Mr. Conklin. Hoover: I have a question for staff. Just help me with my memory here. I know that there are duplexes just north of this, north and west? Conklin: Greg House does have some, I'm not sure if they are duplexes. Hoover: What are those? Petrie: Townhouses. Conklin: Townhouses, attached. Hoover: How many acres are those, how does that compare to this? Conklin: When you look at Mr. House's development and he is not here to defend himself, but I will just share with you that he has approached the city with regard to further development on that site and I have been approached by another property owner with R-2 property about further development. When you look at Mr. House's project, he bas more future plans and more Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 75 development than just what you see right there for the property he owns. I can't answer your question with regard to density. Estes: We have a motion by Commissioner Ward and a second by Commissioner Shackelford to approve LSD 02-7.00, is there any other discussion? Hoffman: I suppose in light of Mr. Conklin's statements that I should go ahead and extrapolate that density equals greater traffic so to keep me out of trouble, that would follow and I would say that the density for the size of that street is my main issue. If there were on a wider street, on a flatter piece or anything like that I would feel much more comfortable with it. Marr: Obviously I didn't accurately articulate but I certainly think the topography of this area and the facts that our improvements won't be happening aren't in a plan without five years certainly don't help us deal with traffic issues we currently have. I think this will increase traffic. I think the study that we saw, saw that it would increase traffic when it was a higher density but I don't think that those traffic concerns have been resolved. I am not voting for it based on the width associated with the road on a steep piece of land and the number of additional traffic trips. Shackelford: Mr. Chair, as long as we are extrapolating on our reasons. I just wanted to state that I understand that there are some safety issues that still need to be addressed on this property. The reason that I seconded the motion to bring this to a vote was that I do feel there is some landowner use by right with it being zoned R-2. I think we need to bring this thing to a conclusion to give the applicant the answer and allow them the appeal process going forward. Thank you. Estes: Thank you Commissioner Shackelford. We have a motion by Commissioner Ward and a second by Commissioner Shackelford to approve LSD 02-7.00, is there any further discussion? Are there any comments? Shall the motion pass? Renee, would you call the roll please? Roll Call: Upon the completion of roll call the motion to approve LSD 02-7.00 failed by a vote of 4-5-0 with Commissioners Estes, Hoffinan, Hoover, Allen and Marr voting no. Estes: The motion fails by a vote of four to five. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 76 Estes: The next item on the agenda is item number eight, this was a conditional use request submitted by Robert Schmitt on behalf of Brian Dandy for property located at the southwest corner of Fletcher Ave. and Rodgers Dr. this item was to be heard only if item number eight on the agenda, the large scale development was approved. Because the motion to approve the LSD failed by a vote of five to four, item number nine is removed from the agenda. VAC 02-1.00: Vacation (Marvin, pp 560) was submitted by Ken and Kathie Marvin for property located east of Rose and south of Rochier. The property is zoned R-2, Medium Density Residential and contains approximately 0.05 acres. The request is to vacate the alley between lots 8,9 10 and 11 of Block 5 of Rochier Heights. Estes: Item number ten on the agenda is a vacation request. This is VAC -2-1.00, alley vacation submitted by Ken Marvin for property located at 828 and 830 S. Rose Ave., lots 8-11, block 5, Rochier Heights addition. The request is to vacate a 20' wide unimproved alley located to the south of lots eight and nine and to the north of lots 10 and 11 in the above-described subdivision. The recommendation is that the proposed alley vacation be forwarded to the City Council with recommendation for approval. Is the applicant or applicant's representative present? Yes Sir, do you have a presentation that you would like to make? If so, please state your name and provide us with the benefit of your presentation. Marvin: I am Ken Marvin and I am going to make it real short. I have a four -pled on Rochier, I have an alley way behind my four-plex which I want to vacate so I can put another four-plex above it. That is short. Estes: Thank you Mr. Marvin. Is there any member of the audience who would like to provide public comment on this requested alley vacation? Seeing none, I will bring it back to the Commission for discussions, motions. Commissioners? Hoffman: At the risk of being run out of the Commission on a rail, I do have a question. I was up driving and talking to Tim on the cell phone trying to find this today and this is indeed a paper subdivision and there is nothing else there. My only question is are we going to block access to anybody else's property that doesn't have a road built to it by vacating this alley? Which I think I actually found. Conklin: No. Hoffman: We are not going to create land locking? Conklin: The only way to get to the alley is on a paper street which doesn't exist so Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 77 by vacating the alley you are not vacating any current access on this entire hilltop. Hoffman: When you look at a plat and you vacate the alley, if any of this was built, because that was all somebody's idea or dream at one time. Would you land lock any property where we are going to come back and have a problem? Conklin. No, if you look at page 10.7a, those bigger lines are street right-of-way. These are all lots up there on paper street right-of-way. It is not going to block any individual parcels. Hoffman: That is all I wanted to know. Thank you very much. Marvin: I have a survey if you want to see it. Hoffman: I don't need it, thank you. Conklin: I just do want to make you aware, we did receive one letter concerned about this question that Commissioner Hoffman asked, it blocking access to their property. That is on page 10.4. Once again, I don't understand how it would block access when we have all this paper street right-of-way on this entire hillside. I did want to make you aware of that. Estes: Thank you Mr. Conklin. Is there any other discussion? Any motions? Motion: Hoffman: I make a motion to approve this alley vacation 02-1.00. Estes: We have a motion by Commissioner Hoffman to approve VAC 02-1.00, is there a second? Ward: Second. Estes: We have a second by Commissioner Ward. Is there any discussion? We have a motion by Commissioner Hoffman and a second by Commissioner Ward to approve VAC 02-1.00. Will the motion the pass? Renee, would you call the roll please? Roll Call: Upon the completion of roll call the motion to recommend approval of VAC 02-1.00 to the City Council was approved by a vote of 9-0-0. Estes: The motion passes by a unanimous vote. This will be forwarded to the Fayetteville City Council with recommendation for approval of the alley vacation request. Thank you Mr. Marvin. Planning Commission March 25, 2002 Page 78 Estes: The remaining item on the agenda is a report from the Nominating Committee regarding a slate of officers for the 2002-2003 Planning Commission. Commissioner Marr, it is my understanding that you are the Chair of that Committee. Do you have a report to make at this time? Marr: Yes Mr. Chairman. Thanks to your appointment I am happy to give to the Commission a slate of our officers for the next year. We are proposing that our Chairwoman be Lorel Hoffman, our Vice Chair be Chairman Estes and our Secretary be Commissioner Ward. Estes: Thank you Commissioner Marr. The election of officers will be conducted at the start of business during the April 8, 2002 Planning Commission meeting. Is there any other business to come before the Planning Commission? Conklin- There is no other business. Estes: We will stand adjourned. Meeting adjourned: 9:20 p.m.