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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2005-05-12 - MinutesMINUTES OF A MEETING OF THE SUBDIVISION COMMITTEE A regular meeting of the Subdivision Committee was held on May 12, 2005 at 8:30 a.m. in room 219 of the City Administration Building, 113 W. Mountain, Fayetteville, Arkansas. ITEMS CONSIDERED ACTION TAKEN CCP 05-1492: (TRINITY PLACE, 399) Forwarded Page 2 LSD 05-1468: (TGI FRIDAY'S, 173) Forwarded Page 5 MEMBERS PRESENT MEMBERS ABSENT Christine Myres James Graves Candy Clark STAFF PRESENT STAFF ABSENT Suzanne Morgan Jeremy Pate Brent O'Neal Subdivision Committee May 12, 2005 Page 2 CCP 05-1492: Concurrent Plat (TRINITY PLACE, 399): Submitted by CHARLES SLOAN for property located at FRANCISCAN TRAIL. The property is zoned RT -12, RESIDENTIAL TWO AND THREE FAMILY, and contains approximately 2.355 acres. The request is to approve a concurrent plat for a residential subdivision with 6 lots to be developed for three-family dwelling units. Clark: Welcome to Thursday, May 12, 2005 meeting of the Subdivision Committee of the Planning Commission. We have two items on our agenda this morning. We will start with CCP 05-1493 for Trinity Place. Morgan: The subject property contains 2.355 acres less the right of way already dedicated. It is located north of Franciscan Trail which is north of Wedington Drive near 46`h Avenue in west Fayetteville. The property is zoned RT -12 which allows for two and three family homes. On January 27, 2003 the Planning Commission approved a Large Scale Development for construction of six two family homes on this property. At the time it came through as a Large Scale Development, they got approval to build these structures and at the time they required dedication of right of way for Trinity Place which would allow in the future these individual units to be subdivided with frontage on Trinity Place. This LSD was approved and since that time we have issued building permits for all six triplexes, an easement plat was filed as part of those building permits which dedicated a right of way for Trinity Place and Franciscan Trail, dedicated utility easements, drainage easements and access easements where the parking is located between the structures. At this time the applicant would like to subdivide the property into six lots to be sold individually. This would allow for the three triplexes which are currently constructed to be sold and the lots which have not yet been developed to be sold individually. They are requesting that this subdivision be done by a Concurrent Plat. The Code states that when a property owner wishes to transfer one or more parcels, each of which contains more than five acres or wishes to transfer parts of recorded lots that do not require replatting, dedications, vacations, reservations, etc., nor the extension of utilities, the Planning Commission may waive the Preliminary Plat and approve the Final Plat or Concurrent Plat for filing. Since we have right of way dedicated and all utilities have been extended, the applicant at this time is just wishing for a Concurrent Plat approval in order to subdivide this property. Water and sewer lines have been extended, right of way has been dedicated, Parks fees have been paid as part of the Large Scale Development approval. There are certain improvements which still need to be installed on the property and we will just need to verify that those improvements such as sidewalks and street lights have been guaranteed prior to filing this Concurrent Plat. Staff is recommending that this Concurrent Plat be forwarded to the Planning Commission with a total of 14 conditions of approval. The first two refer to modifications to the plat based on Tech. Plat comments. We have a red lined drawing of the plat here that we can give to Mr. Sloan in order to Subdivision Committee May 12, 2005 Page 3 make those changes on the plat. Condition three states that any required improvements adjacent to each lot shall be completed prior to issuance of a final C of 0 for the structure on that lot. Condition four, Lot 7 shall be an unbuildable lot utilized for the purpose of storm water detention and maintained by the POA as indicated on the notes on the plat. Condition five is a standard condition regarding subdivision area signage which if at anytime were requested, would need to be permitted in accordance with our ordinances. Conditions seven through ten refer to tree preservation requirements. Clark: Does Engineering have anything? O'Neal: No comment. Sloan: I'm Charlie Sloan representing S & T Enterprises, which my family owns. This is what we requested to do originally. After many drawings with Mr. Conklin's approval this is the best that we could do. We put a street, Trinity Drive, in which is a full street. This was intended from the beginning of our first approval to make these six individual lots. I guess we will never go through this situation again but we were setting it up through Large Scale so we could build it prior to putting the streets in. That is why this is a little bit convoluted having to come back for this. What we thought the minutes read, we would just file a Final Plat and go through like a normal subdivision, we didn't realize we would have to go back through the steps of creating a subdivision again even though we built what was approved. We are just asking for your permission to go ahead and do it. We have got the streets in, the first three buildings are built. The other three we will probably start on in a manner of a few months. Right now we do have buyers for the first ones and are ready to go ahead and proceed forward. We did request a Large Scale to allow us to guarantee landscaping per building rather than putting all the trees in and run the risk of killing the trees for the last three lots. We have bonded everything. We just told the bank to renew the Letters of Credit again. Even though the first three are out we will keep the same amount rather than having to recalculate. Clark: This is the first time I have ever seen one of these. Commissioners? Myres: It seems rather straight forward. They are not asking for anything extraordinary. I would like to recommend that we forward it. Graves: I agree that they just built what was approved in 2003. Myres: I will state that in the form of a motion. I move to forward this request, CCP 05-1496 to the full Planning Commission. Subdivision Committee May 12, 2005 Page 4 Graves: I second it. Clark: I will concur. Pate: Charlie, if you could look over condition number seven sometime before now and the full Planning Commission. The original trees approved at not the ones shown on the most recently submitted plans. Sloan: We are going with the ones that are on the original set of prints. My landscape guy went and bought those. Pate: Take a look at this because Kim Hesse originally reviewed this and denied the trees on the original plan and the mitigation plan actually signed by her included soft tooth oak, pin oaks and red maple. The red cherry, dogwood and something else is what you have on here. Sloan: I will check with him today. Trees are already planted. Morgan: This is the red lined plan, if you could have them return those with the revisions. Subdivision Committee May 12, 2005 Page 5 LSD 05-1468: Large Scale Development (TGI FRIDAY'S, 173): Submitted by MCCLELLAND CONSULTING ENGINEERS for property located at LOT 16B, CMN II, 463 E VAN ASCHE DRIVE. The property is zoned C-2, THOROUGHFARE COMMERCIAL and contains approximately 2.10 acres. The request is to approve the development of a restaurant with approximately 5,914 s.f. and 117 parking spaces proposed. Clark: The final item on our agenda is LSD 05-1468 for TGI Fridays. Pate: This is a Large Scale Development for a restaurant, TGI Fridays, located north of Logan's, south of Fuddrucker's, west of Olive Garden. The property was split out back in February, 2004 when the Logan's Large Scale was approved. This is Lot 16B. It is approximately 2.10 acres. The request is to approve the development of a restaurant with approximately 5,900 sq.ft. and 116 parking spaces. There are some questions right now about the actual square footage of the structure and how many parking spaces are required. The property is located within the Design Overlay District at the southeast comer of Mall and Van Asche. Part of the approval for the Lot Split for this particular lot is that shared access off of Mall would be made. There is an existing access easement for that particular piece of property. Additionally, the applicant has supplied an agreement from Logan's in their materials which allows for a second means of access in our packet. It is essentially an access easement that does allow for a second access. You will notice here on the west side with the Logan's approval there were two parking spots there in the southwest corner. Access to this property is proposed in three different points, one from Van Asche Drive and then two from the Logan's lot. One to the east was planned for, the one to the west over here currently houses a couple of parking spaces but they have worked out with Logan's to have another access point, which will help the circulation of traffic considerably. For this particular piece of property, it is in the Design Overlay District, there is a requirement for 250' of separation between the entrance driveway and the intersection. I believe that is being complied with. Additionally, we are recommending that this request be forwarded to the full Planning Commission because there is a Conditional Use attached to it for excess parking. We have seen those quite often in this particular area. The number of parking spaces based on the square footage we calculated, which is 5,914 sq.ft., at one per 100 sq.ft. allows for 59 parking spaces. Our ordinances do allow for a 30% increase by right. That goes up to 77 as shown there on page two of your staff report. Proposed is 116 or 117. That is about 51% over what we do permit. Staff has been in contact with the applicant over the time that this has been in the process. While we are generally supportive of this type of application and the reason why is because there are a number of uses that are the exact same uses out here and therefore, have the same peak parking demand times and shared parking doesn't become an option when everyone has the same parking Subdivision Committee May 12, 2005 Page 6 issues at the same time. The O'Charley's restaurant which is west of this can share parking with Target or Kohl's and they did not request an increase in parking because they do have the ability to share. In this particular case there is just not that ability and we generally support that case. In this particular instance, that 51% is a little higher than what we have normally seen. On average we see 36%. For the Conditional Use at the Planning Commission meeting we will put together a chart for you showing all the restaurants in the area and the numbers we have permitted over that so you can prepare. We have permitted one restaurant at 52% over what they were required. That is the highest in the city I'm aware of. I think that was Red Robin. Most of the others have been anywhere from 22% to 36%. Fuddrucker's was 33%, Smokey Bones was 22%, Red Robin was 52% and Ruby Tuesday, on the other side of town, was 37%. That kind of gives you an idea of what the range of parking over is. That is not a decision that you have to make today but it would be prudent to give some sort of guidance. With that, we believe that most of the requirements for the Overlay District are being complied with. There is one change that does need to be made to the monument sign. Right now they are showing 8' tall with 80 sq.ft., that needs to be a maximum of 6' tall with 75 sq.ft. Two wall signs will be allowed for this particular site because they do have two frontages. The other issue or Planning Commission determination, is commercial design standards. Condition number one talks about that. Staff finds that the northeast elevation and material samples do meet those design standards, also, the Overlay District standards. The south elevation though, we feel is largely blank and unarticulated. Staff is satisfied with the north elevation. We feel that the east elevation meets our standards. The south elevation in particular is something that we are worried about. We feel it needs either changes in materials, other elements or things that we have seen in the past with these restaurants. With almost all of these corporate restaurants they have a prototype and we have to meet in the middle of how we can fit this community and meet our design standards. It is not Atypical to work with these to meet our design standards. Clark: On our elevations we have signs on every facade, does your board supercede this? Pate: Yes. These are the revisions for this meeting. We do have a materials sample board here as well. Clark: You are still showing three signs. Pate: One of those will need to be removed. The west elevation, we feel that with changes here, this portion could be a little more articulated as well. The majority of the wall is unarticulated. These scoring lines, I'm not sure what those are but I know we have talked about scoring lines and how Subdivision Committee May 12, 2005 Page 7 well they articulate. Sometimes they do create a shadow line, sometimes they don't. We feel it is more appropriate to utilize a different type of material or different color and somehow tie that in with the elevation. I think this is very well articulated and something of that nature wrapped around on the south side. We discuss all the time what is visible and what's not visible. All of these sites in this particular area are extremely visible. You can see all four sides. It is just the nature of that particular piece of property that you can see all four sides from the rights of way and so, because they are in the Design Overlay District, we are held to a higher standard. We feel that this elevation needs to be addressed as well as portions of this elevation. Probably not as much because they do have elements there that meet our standards. Myres: There are some very definite changes in the projection of the individual parts which create shadows. I would be real happy to have that rear elevation embellished slightly, to bring it more in congruence with the rest of the building. Pate: This portion here is what you see here. The wall face is all the same material and I think that is one of the big things. It does allow for some movement, this is where the coolers are. Something I noticed here is that these coolers need to be entirely enclosed and not be visible from those walls. All utilities, including refrigeration utilities, need to be planned for in the architecture of the building. Most of these have been successful in that area. The property to the north was not as successful. Fuddrucker's ended up putting larger rooftop units than they originally anticipated and so when they were trying to get open it was delayed for screening so I want your architects to know that up front, parapets to hide those utilities, freezers and coolers need to be screened. Other conditions we would request that in your submittal for the Planning Commission, we just need two full size sets, the rest can be 11x17, that will save you on paper and money and that will save the Commissioners on large plans. As we noted, we need to nail down the number of square feet on this plan. It is 6,654 and on others it is about 5,900 so we need to nail down that number so we can determine the percentage of the parking. I think that is all I have. Signage will need to comply with the Overlay District requirements. On the Landscape Plan the shrubs that are shown to screen parking I think need to be embellished somewhat so that the parking areas are all screened, especially in the blank areas here. We can work that out at the time of building permit. I think that's it. Clark: Engineering? O'Neal: I just want to confirm that I'm getting one of those full size sets. I do have two comments. The first one is we need to show the sidewalk along Van Asche through the access drive there continuous through the drive. On the Subdivision Committee May 12, 2005 Page 8 Clark: Morgan: water we need to add a 2" valve before the meter. That way we can isolate all three of those lines, the fire hydrant, the domestic service or the fire service. That is all I have. Please introduce yourself and tell us about your project. My name is Mike Morgan, I'm with McClelland Engineering representing TGI Fridays here in Fayetteville. TGI Fridays is very anxious to do business in Fayetteville and certainly appreciate the city's cooperation in getting out site plans approved. Especially since we are in the Design Overlay District there are a number of challenges that it looks like we are very close to meeting here. I do want to address, it seems like most of these comments are fairly simple to address, just a little more articulation on the building and a little higher wall on the back, some landscaping and engineering comments. I would like to go over very briefly about what I've seen with the neighbor's calculations for their Conditional Use applications. Currently we are surrounded by uses that are very similar to ours. We are surrounded by approximately 5 restaurants, about to be 6 restaurants. What I would like to nail down is are we looking at gross building area, gross floor area or net floor area for these calculations? What I have found, it kind of started with this letter itself, the Logan's restaurant is proposing a 8,060 sq.ft. restaurant, this is a gross building area number taking into account the external sides of the building, the rock face of the building. That area would be the 8,060 sq.ft. I understand that to be gross building area or slab area. I understand gross floor area to mean the area within those walls instead of the perimeter. If you start taking away mechanical room, utility room, then that becomes net floor area. The ordinance reads gross floor area, which would then be the interior of the wall of the entire building and everything that is connected to that building directly with no external material yard or external dumpsters or anything like that. That is the way we saw it. The records that I could find real quick, the Smokey Bones building is labeled 7,567 sq.ft. which as you scale that, that same 7,567 sq.ft. is what was used to calculate their allowed parking spaces plus 30% allowed by ordinance and then the amount over that is what the Conditional Use has been applied for. That same number shows up as what their initial allowance was to be for parking. To me that seems like a gross building area which would give them an inflated number over gross floor area and certainly inflated over net floor area. Red Robin's is the same way. I had the advantage of having an electronic copy of this and I did a perimeter around the Red Robin and again, this building area of 6,256 sq.ft. is what was used for the calculation, which then gave us our numbers for the Conditional Use. I just want to use the same numbers for the TGI Fridays. We are a small establishment. We are the second smallest in this list. We are around 6,000 sq.ft. with the latest footprint. We are also the second smallest in our request of 116 spaces. 116 spaces is not a lot when you have 210 seats Subdivision Committee May 12, 2005 Page 9 available inside your restaurant. The restaurant uses 210 seats available for calculating the number of parking that they need. The city uses square footage of the building so that is what we are deferring to of course. I think our allowance of square footage being that we have to take out coolers and mechanical rooms may be more of a net square footage which would be below the gross square footage. I believe our neighbors are using a gross building area which again, puts us at a disadvantage on paper when we are asking for a percentage that is a little bit lower than 51%. Clark: Ok, Jeremy, where does the 5,914 come from? Pate: That was the original submittal that we got from McClelland. This one shows 6,654, I'm not sure if the building prototype changed. Morgan: We added the coolers to the back of the store so again, that number that is represented both here and here is a gross building number. It is basically a slab area number. Clark: I am assuming you all are going to get together before Planning Commission and come up with new numbers? Pate: I would hope so. This has never come up before. The only thing that matters about it is percentage really. They are requesting a Conditional Use for above. Graves: What is the number that we are supposed to be using when we calculate? Pate: A gross floor area. We can go back and look at these other restaurants and see when they actually submitted a building permit what they actually wrote down in their building permit. That would include what's within the walls. We do calculate the usable outdoor area of patio space as well because that is used by customers dining. In this particular instance we didn't feel that where the coolers were was served by any persons utilizing parking spaces, although employees utilize that as part of the obvious operational parts of this building. Graves: I would like us to start using whatever we are supposed to be using. It looks like some people maybe have slipped through the cracks. I just want to be sure that we are using what we are supposed to using. Nobody is entitled to get an overage over this 30% so regardless of what has happened with other people and whether it was enforced or not, I would like to see that we are doing it the right way, the way that the ordinance reads. That may unfortunately mean that you are the first one that uses the right number but now that I'm aware of this, I will certainly ask that question every time. I never even thought about the different types of area that you could use to calculate this number. It always seemed pretty easy Subdivision Committee May 12, 2005 Page 10 Clark: to me and now I see that, as with most things, it is a little more complicated than at first look. You guys can work on this and come back to full Planning with something. A comparison is very useful I think. Seeing no one in the audience, Commissioners, we will now talk about Design Overlay. Myres: I have seen a number of TGI Fridays, they are all over the place and actually like the changes that you have made compared to the original. It is simplified a little bit. Unlike some of my fellow Commissioners, I don't have any problem with red and white striped awnings. I think because it is in the Design Overlay District those areas that Jeremy mentioned do need to be addressed. Even though, normally the rear of the building would not be an issue, because this is a 360° visual field, and it is not something that would normally be a concern, you are approaching it through Logan's parking lot so it is very visible from that parking lot as well. Clark: Could they request a Conditional Use to get another wall sign because of the visibility? Pate: Because it is in the DOD they could request that the Planning Commission look at that. It would not be a Conditional Use. I would have to go look back at the ordinance to see what rights the Planning Commission has. I think there is a variance request procedure to go before the Planning Commission if they chose to do that. Clark: Pate: I think they would have a legitimate argument that they are visible on all four sides. I am afraid if you lose one of the signs you are going to lose a little bit of articulation and then you are going to have two blank walls on each end of the building. That is the only thing that concerns me. I think the changes that you have made are much better than our original renderings. Since this is going onto the Planning Commission we do not have to find a fact on number two do we? No, not really. It is just more for your information and to give this applicant an idea on Commercial Design Standards what they need to revise before they get to you so they are not stuck at the Planning Commission either being tabled or coming back in two weeks. The same thing as for the parking. Clark: As far as I can see the parking and the elevations would be the only issues I would have. It looks like something I would be happy to forward. Graves: I would agree. Just for the purpose of letting you know how I would feel at Planning Commission level, that we should be using the right number regardless of what happened in the past and then we will do that going Subdivision Committee May 12, 2005 Page 11 Clark: MOTION: forward as well with other projects. I agree with the comments about the south elevation that it needs something breaking it up like the other sides have and I would be supportive of the idea of having some type of additional signage over what might normally be allowed because you will have traffic coming from all sides. I would think TGIF would want something on that elevation because of your exposure. You are everywhere and you have done so much on the other side. Graves: I will move that we forward LSD 05-1468 to the full Planning Commission with the conditions stated by the Planning Staff including the determinations that have been made by the Planning Staff. Myres: I will second. Clark: I will concur. We stand adjourned.