Providence City Plan Commission, July 19, 2022 meeting
Call to Order, Roll Call, and Approval of Minutes
The meeting was called to order, roll call was taken, and the minutes from the June 21 meeting were approved. There was no director's report presented for the month.
City Council Referral 3524: Zoning Ordinance Amendment
The commission discussed a proposed zoning ordinance amendment regarding technical changes, housing policies, and cannabis regulations. After public comments and commissioner discussion, the commission voted to recommend approval of the amendment with specific revisions to height limits and cannabis provisions.
Public Hearing Case No. 21-035MA: 659-663 Admiral Street and 22 Gloucester Street
The applicant requested a continuance for the public hearing regarding 659-663 Admiral Street and 22 Gloucester Street. The commission voted to grant the continuance to the August 16 meeting, after which a brief recess was taken.
Major Land Development Project Case No. 22-033MA: 116 Waterman Street and 382 Brook Street
The commission reviewed a master plan proposal for a five-story mixed-use building at 116 Waterman Street and 382 Brook Street. After hearing testimony from the applicant, staff, and members of the public, the commission approved the master plan with conditions regarding community meetings, design waivers, and dimensional adjustments.
Adjournment
A motion was made and seconded to adjourn the meeting. The meeting was officially adjourned.
Speaker 0
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Yeah. It's been a while.
Speaker 1
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Folks, we're just waiting, for one more commission member. We'll get started shortly. We turn our microphones on.
Speaker 2
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Alright. Yes. Let's turn on our microphones. We will call this meeting of the city plan commission, a regular meeting on Tuesday, July 19 at 05:00 to order. Let's take a roll call.
Speaker 2
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We'll start. Noel Sanchez. Harry Villadelle. Chris.
Speaker 3
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Oh, Potter.
Speaker 4
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Shoyan Ganjour, deputy staff.
Speaker 5
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Alexis Thompson, DIS staff.
Speaker 6
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Lisa Ginerman, senior assistant, city solicitor, council.
Speaker 2
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Robert Azar, DPD staff. And I'm Michael Gazdako, the chair. We will look to, approval of the minutes from the June 21, the June and
Speaker 7
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the June 28
Speaker 2
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meetings we received.
Speaker 4
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Yeah. So, commissioners, you did receive the the minutes for the June 21 meeting, and I think we're gonna need some
Speaker 0
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more time for the June 28.
Speaker 2
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I was going to say we I don't think I saw two. But so the June 21 meetings minutes were circulated. I hope you had a chance to review them. If there are any notes, edits, they can be put forward now. If not, we'll move to
Speaker 8
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approve the minutes. Have a motion to approve the minutes of 06/21/2022. Thank you. Do
Speaker 3
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we Second.
Speaker 2
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We have Christian as a second. All in favor of approving the minutes from June 21, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? Abstentions?
Speaker 2
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The, minutes are approved. Bob, do you have a director's report this month?
Speaker 1
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Nothing this month. Good.
Speaker 2
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Then we will be moved right into the first agenda item, which is a city council referral, referral number 3524. This is a a zoning ordinance amendment that we started talking about, a few meetings back, and, I believe Bob and and, Alexis are going to, help us through this.
Speaker 1
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That's right. Thank you, mister chair and members of the committee. I'm here, with zoning official Alexis Thompson to run through the series of amendments that we are proposing. This is coming out of, jointly out of the departments of planning and development and inspection and standards. And these amendments are intended primarily to deal with issues that have come up over the past couple of years as we've been administering the zoning ordinance.
Speaker 1
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As you all know, it's technical and complicated, and there are times when things are are come to our attention that indicate that there are gaps in how the regulation works, things that aren't as clear as they could be. There are some, technical changes that we think will will make the ordinance function better and and better align with the comprehensive plan. And then there are a couple of, policy changes, mainly related to housing issues and one specifically related to cannabis based on the recent changes in state law. So I'm gonna turn it over to Alexis to kind of walk through some of these changes, not all of them. A lot of them are are gonna be self explanatory.
Speaker 1
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For those of you who are online, these changes are accessible on our website. There are a couple of minor things that are different from the version that's on the website and the and the version that we're gonna be working off of, but nothing really substantive. There are some copies of the ordinance and a table that that walks through them on on the table here, as well for folks in in the audience. So, Alexis, why don't you go ahead with your presentation?
Speaker 5
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Great. Good evening, everybody. Thank you for having me. So as Bob noted, we're not gonna touch on all of the, changes that are in this proposed ordinance, but I'm gonna run through a handful of the, what we've designated as technical changes, and then I'm gonna toss it back to Bob to talk about the larger policy items that are within this this document. So starting with actually, not nothing technical as deemed by us happens until we get to page three, which is in article 12, the use article regarding uses.
Speaker 5
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And I will begin with the use table, which is twelve one, the use matrix. And the first item is the addition of animal care facility as a permitted use in the M 1 zone. And I'll I'll just note that we've seen a few inquiries regarding animal care facilities in an m one zone. We understand that the use often requires large spaces and that happen to be a characteristic of structures that we find in the m 1. So that that's the impetus is that we've we've had a lot of requests or a handful of requests for this use.
Speaker 5
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And Bob feels that it is in line with comprehensive plan to make that change. The second change to the use table that I'm gonna talk about is the addition of warehouse as a permitted use in the MMU zone, the mixed use zone. In this edition of the permitted use is really trying to be consistent because we allow wholesale in MMU zones and inherently a ware there's a warehouse component to most wholesale uses. So it's it's an effort to to be more consistent across the use definitions in the use table. The next change that we're looking to make is to 12 o two in the principal use standards.
Speaker 5
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H is contractor storage yard and outdoor storage yard. The change here is that we we require specific screening around our outdoor storage yards, but this this regulation requires a 10 foot setback of of this screening. And and we found that that is a pretty it it significantly takes away from square footage from lots where the entire use is outdoors. There's no building component such that the screening will be set back from the base of the building, for example. So and and the screening and landscaping required can fit into a smaller setback.
Speaker 5
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So in in effort to give back some of the square footage of a piece of property to be used where that use is permitted, we're looking to change that setback from 10 feet to three feet and it and with a shrubbery component that we we feel can fit within that three feet. I'll save I'm gonna run through these pretty quickly. But if there are any questions as I'm going, please feel free to to pipe up. And, yeah, obviously, we'll take questions to follow. Next is related to the change to outdoor storage yard, and it's it's to add a use standard to materials processing.
Speaker 5
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Currently, materials processing in this in this section of the ordinance just kicks to it a required development final piece. That will not change. We're just adding language that's very similar to the outdoor storage yard language regarding screening requirements. So, again, it's adding the standard that there is a screening requirement and keeping it consistent with what we've just talked about for outdoor storage yards. Again, materials processing has an outdoor storage element by nature, so we've linked these in that way and are trying to be consistent across the the ordinance.
Speaker 5
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Jumping to parking, I believe we're going to 12 o two v. So this is this is an interesting one, and we we see it as a as a sort of fixing something or clarifying something fill it filling in a gap, we'll say. Parking lots principal use parking lots in our zones require a special use permit. So applicants who would like to create a principal use parking lot in an r two or r three zone have to come to the the zoning board and meet a series a set of criteria as decided on by the zoning board. However, there is a we we don't have regulations for well, we have regulations for lot coverage in in residential zones.
Speaker 5
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As you know, you build a house, you have to meet certain coverage maximums for your building and you're impervious. But when it's a parking lot and not a house, these are kinda thrown a little bit of skewed. You do you use the same standards? Don't you? And so there's a gray area there.
Speaker 5
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So we've decided to clarify by adding a coverage maximum at 75%, which is allows for a fair amount of paved, you know, impervious surface, but also builds upon what might be required for permeable buffer from neighboring lots in order to achieve that 75% maximum. So if there are questions about that moving forward, I'm happy to to talk more about it, but I'll leave it there for the moment. Let's see. We are moving to 12:02 f f, which is for utility. Again, there there are currently no use standards for utility, and it's in in an effort to be consistent with other outdoor uses that require pretty significant fencing and screening, such as a storage yard or materials processing.
Speaker 5
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We've added language that is a standard for fencing and landscaping. And and I'll add to this that we've allowed fencing for utility to be eight feet, which is greater than the typical six foot maximum for fences in most areas of the city. This is born out of a number of variance requests from utility companies that for an eight foot fence that the board the zoning board has found in favor of as seemed to be necessary for security and safety of the public, you know, protecting them from what's inside and and keeping people out both to to protect assets, but also to protect people. So that's that's the background for that change. Let's see.
Speaker 5
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On this page four, I will lastly hit 12 o three c, which is about temporary mobile food sales. This is a pretty basic one. This has said generally that the the term for a temporary use permit for temporary mobile food sales was going to be determined as part of the use permit. We've codified it by saying it's a year. It's a pretty standard term, so it just kinda takes the guesswork out of it for anyone approving those permits.
Speaker 5
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Anybody have any questions so far? Well,
Speaker 8
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do the screening rules that you mentioned, are they gonna apply also to the utilities?
Speaker 5
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Yes. The utility does require screening. Same one shrub, with a minimum of three feet in height planted every three feet on center along a fence. Yeah. Again, we're really trying to be consistent with types of uses.
Speaker 5
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There might be there might be some differences, but as far as the category goes. Okay. I'm gonna jump to article 13 now, which is a site development category, which also handles garages accessory structures rather, and the garage is one of them. So 12 o 13 o two, excuse me, j two talks about a detached garage. We we're also seeing this as a as a change that fills in a gap.
Speaker 5
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The way the language is written now, we do we allow part of garages or or an area of a garage, I should say, to be a rec room or an office. But the way the language is written, it it it it it may have been interpreted that you needed to be able to park a car there as a garage in order to be able to use another part of it as one of those alternate office or rec room uses. So we're clarifying that you can use a whole garage as your rec room or your office. You don't have to have it doesn't need to be qualified by having a car parking space in there. Let's see.
Speaker 5
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I'm gonna jump down to article 14, in table fourteen one, which is vehicle, parking space requirements. This again touches on the animal care facility. And I think, you all might be somewhat familiar with this. There's been conversation and recent experience before this commission that talks about the the one parking space per 500 square feet for an air animal care facility as being ending up in a in a pretty large overage from what is required for these types of facilities. I think you've heard a fair bit of testimony that that is unnecessary in terms of number of spaces.
Speaker 5
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Again, these facilities tend to be in very large buildings, so there's a lot of square footage, and and that doesn't necessarily correlate directly to number of cars needing to access the facility. I'm gonna move to 14 O six B, which is the design of off street loading spaces. This is another one that I think that this commission has has heard a lot about of late. What I'll say is that currently loading space is our size per the specs for, like, a big mac delivery truck. Think of a giant grocery truck.
Speaker 5
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And we feel that that this is not necessary and that the more typical delivery vehicle for residential apartment buildings is the is the standard size of an Amazon delivery van, which also correlates to, in the code of ordinances, the the size of what we classify as a commercial vehicle above a standard passenger vehicle. So that that's the reason for the change in size, the 14 o six b. Last page of sticky notes, I promise, for me. Jumping to article 16, which is the article dealing with signage in the zoning ordinance, and 16 o seven d, which talks about electric message signs. So the the first change that we're proposing is allowing menu boards for drive through facilities and and the gas prices part of of signs at a gas station to be electronic.
Speaker 5
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And this change is really just codifying something that is standard based on the modernization of menu boards and and gas signs. I'm not sure anyone has seen someone out there with the poll changing gas prices in a while. So so we're we're trying to just bring that into the modern era. And sixteen o seven m discusses scoreboards. So the first thing is that we've moved scoreboards into sixteen o seven, which is science requiring a permit.
Speaker 5
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It had been in sixteen o six, and that we feel was an in a in error because the science scoreboards need they have foundations. They have electrical connections. They they they do require a permit to be installed safely. So we've moved it from sixteen o six to sixteen o seven. And then what we've done is what currently, only the the way the current ordinance is written, only
Speaker 2
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the
Speaker 5
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score part of a scoreboard can be an electronic message. So if you think about kind of an old school scoreboard, there's a bunch of fixed signage, and there is a area where there's, you know, time and score, there's a grid of old light bulbs, that's the the part that can be electronic message electronic. We understand that modern scoreboards are fully digital or electronic, and they thus have the ability to convey video. So we're we're trying to, again, bring the language into a modern era with respect to how scoreboards exist these days. We we and there's some specificity to that.
Speaker 5
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We've we've in addition to to allowing them to have more electronic message because they are one giant screen for all intents and purposes, We're also indicating that we're adding some language about them being oriented toward the field of play such that they're that we understand what their purpose is. And I think, Bob, I'm gonna kick it over to you. Is that
Speaker 3
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Yep.
Speaker 5
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Does anybody have any questions before I let let Bob go?
Speaker 8
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I do. With regard to 13 o two j, what what now constitutes a law? It's saying it doesn't have to have a car. Does it need garage doors? I mean, what?