Good afternoon. We would like to call this regular meeting of the city plan commission to order. Today is Tuesday, August 20. It is 04:52PM. Start out with a roll call.
Here. Dave Caldwell. Dave Caldwell here. Charlotte Lipschitz.
Miguel Casado. Chojan, manager card, DPD
staff. Bob Azar, DPD staff.
Sherry Garner, legal counsel. And
I am Michael Gazzako, chair. We have minutes from July 16 that were circulated, by Choi Young last week. Hope you all had a chance to review them. You have any edits? Please say so now.
If not, we'll accept a motion to approve the minutes as drafted.
We have a second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions?
The minutes are approved. Next up, we, we have a position, that is currently vacant. As most of you know, Nicole has resigned from the city planning commission, so we need to elect a vice chair. And I would like to nominate Charlotte as the vice chair in her short period of time on the commission. I think she's shown leadership and has a a unique skill set that will benefit us going forward.
Second. Alright. All in favor of Charlotte as the vice chair, say hi. Hi. Hi.
You can't you're allowed to vote for yourself. Just just like a ballot box, you're allowed to vote for yourself. Any opposition? Any abstention? Alright.
Congratulations, and thank you.
Director's report. Okay. The only thing I wanted to mention today was that, the comprehensive plan, has been forwarded on to the city council, as you know. We had a discussion with the council president and the chair of the ordinance committee about the schedule going forward. And, the plan that we've put in place is that the comprehensive plan will be, heard by the ordinance committee, starting on September 16 at 05:30.
That's gonna be in the city council chamber where the ordinance committee traditionally meets. There's a good chance that there will be more than one session of public hearing. We have blocked out September 30 for the second session. So for those in the public who are interested in testifying, you might wanna save those dates, September 16 and September 30.
K. Thank you, Bob. No other business. We'll roll right into the first agenda item, which is a city council referral. It's referral number 3583.
It's the amendment of a ordinance to allow for expansion of self storage facilities, and the petitioner is, attorney John Garaheed.
Sure, commissioners. And just a quick introduction before the applicant is on. So this is a request to amend section 20 o one of the zoning ordinance, which pertains to nonconforming uses. And the applicant wants to add subsection h, which would allow for self storage facilities that were in operation before they were declared nonconforming to be allowed to expand, intensify, and relocate within the within the lots where they operate. So here's the applicants here, and they can elaborate.
Attorney Geary? Mister chairman, members
of the commission, John Geary. I represent Patriot State Storage located at 204 Hartford Avenue. Couple of points about seeing me. We were here probably two years ago now seeking a zone change for 204 Oxford Avenue from to M 1 to allow for the expansion of their self storage facility in the back of the property. That that zone change was made, and our client was in the process of of expanding.
He also had additional space within the building at 204, which was an old manufacturing building, which he adaptively reused to a self storage facility rather than tearing that down. So we were here about two years ago. I was here about a year ago when the prohibition on self storage facilities came up. And to my surprise, I didn't know it was coming. I came before you and said, please be careful because when you abandon when you prohibit the use, you then prohibit the expansion, in any way of those facilities from doing very much at all.
And I've run into this with several other clients who've had property, changed, some without their knowledge, and essentially their property becomes nonconforming and to either change it to another use or to expand it is next to impossible. In this case, I think the intention of the prohibition was to was, I don't wanna put words in people's mouth, but I think there was a concern that a lot of open space was being used for self storage and that housing could not be used in that facility. Many of those properties and self storage was only allowed in the m one zone, So, it it couldn't be used for residential uses anyway. In any event, it it really, threw a wrench, and particularly my client's plans to expand, and develop his property as he intended to do. And I and I and I don't think that was the original intent.
It was to prohibit the the expansion of self storage facilities on open space. And I don't think the intention was to kind of prevent them from expanding within their facility, and in my client's case, expanding to the rear of his facility. Now I've seen some of the comments from the staff, and I wanna go into them in a moment with respect to relocation or expansion in
But the intention of this is to again, I don't think the original intention of the prohibition was to prohibit people from expanding or operating within their facilities, allowing them to expand within the footprint of the building, which is the case here. My client, for example, has self storage on the first floor. He wants to move it to the 2nd Floor. And and under the present situation, he's not able to do that. It you know, when you get a nonconforming use, it becomes very, very restrict very restrictive with respect to expansion or intensification.
So, again, I don't think that was the intention. My client's here. He's gonna talk to you about the other facilities. He's done some research and indicating that most of the other facilities that are built are fully built out. There's sort of five zero six, I think, presently in the in the city of Providence, and they're fully filled out.
In any event, the intention of this bringing this forward is to allow for the the expansion of that use within the existing facilities. Now his facility also has some room in the back, which is an m one, which is a very difficult piece of property from an elevation point of view. It's hidden from neighborhoods and down into a gully, etcetera. And he would his intention was to expand units in the back of his facility, off of Manhattan Avenue, and you can't see them from the back. The relocation of the lot, which staff has recommended against, would prohibit him from doing that.
So we would suggest that if you if you're interested in doing that, there's some comment from the staff that, well, it may not be consistent with the neighborhood. And I guess I would suggest to you that if it's in an m one zone already, which allows for industrial uses, that it should be allowed to be relocated on the property as long as it's not, in a in a either c or or an r zone. So that would be our that would be our recommendation and the reason why we are presenting it. As I indicated, my client, mister Nedelman, is here, and he'll I think, what I talked about.
Thank you. Commissioners, do you have questions of the applicant?
Thank you very much. Thank you. And
We can hear the, the staff report. Sure. Thanks, commissioners. Do you wanna pull your do you wanna have your witness call? Absolutely.
That's probably Absolutely.
Yes. I thought you were done.
were getting walked away.
But he wants to do that. Okay.
Good evening, counsel. Good evening. So to piggyback on what John had mentioned, the recent who you are. Sorry. My name is Eric Nadelman.
I am one of the owners local owner and operator for the only currently, self storage facility in Providence that is owned by a local person in the state of Rhode Island. All the other five are owned by corporations, big REITs, big investors that don't necessarily have the same affinity towards the community that that I do providing the service that I do and work very hard to do, for the constituents in our neighborhood. That being said, this project has been a vision that's happened over time. Unfortunately, I'm not a big corporation. I don't have shareholders.
I've got myself and two other individuals who, you know, used our lawnmower money to put this project together and had to do it over time, due to due to financial constraints and proving out that the business would work. In that process, we listen to the community and figure out what it is that they need. Right? Because we have to support them. They support us.
It's a relationship that we all carry. We're not in this just to to, you know, build a building to sell it two years later for them to sell it again over and over again. That's that's not our goal here. But what has happened over the last few years, as John had mentioned, we've made efforts to try to expand as we could. And during that time, now the zoning laws have changed prohibiting us from doing just that.
In the last three years, I think we can all agree too that the prices of everything have increased dramatically. I don't need to ask each person how much they've increased, but I can share with you just some top, you know, important numbers for us. 300% was what our property taxes increased by. So that gives us the option to either increase our prices to our customer, and we service right now a pretty low income area. So doing that would be unsustainable.
So in that process, you know, we don't produce widgets. We can't just make more widgets. We have a limited number of spaces. And in order to try to meet those demands that had been imposed upon us by the city for taxes, we have to offer more places to rent. Another important number is a 118.
I've had a 118 requests for drive up storage for someone that doesn't have a garage that lives in a a three family house, that is a contractor, in the community for some type of space to be able to pull their vehicle up, to put bikes or tools, whatever it might be, kayaks, into that secured space for them. Right now, we can't service that, with the current pause. And what we're really looking for is just to to work, you know, within the boundaries. We understand the need. I respect the need for more housing.
If I was a house developer, I would be developing houses right now, but I'm in the storage business, currently. And for us to continue that business, especially as the only local owner and operator, we need, some help from the city to be able to change or amend, because right now, that those laws from last year passed only impact one facility. Now it impacts the ones that haven't entered the city, which we understand. But currently, as it stands today, we are the only one that hasn't developed our entire lot. So the only person this hurts is us right now.
So I'm just asking for your understanding of that and to work with you to be able to see kind of the forest through the trees. And that's about it. Thank you. Thank you.
Commissioners, do you have, questions for either attorney Gary or the individual who, testified before us? Okay. Thank you. Troy, let's hear the, the staff report.
Sure. Commissioners, and when this was before you, part of your recommendation was to recommend to the council that storage spaces not be prohibited mainly because you did find that they had an adverse impact on health, safety, and welfare, and their land use was inefficient as it related to things like propagation of housing and other uses. So based on this, we do find that it would be reasonable to allow for intensification within an existing structure. However, we feel that additions to existing space as well as as well as relocation to different parts of a lot could have a negative effect on the entire city just based on whatever activity could occur around storage spaces. So based on that, we would recommend that you recommend to the council that the language pertaining to exemption from restrictions on expansion and relocation should be struck, and we feel that it would be appropriate to specify that the amendment only allow for expansion within an existing building.
Thank you, Joanne. This is a public meeting. So at this time, we would like to open it up to public comment. If there's anyone here in the physical audience, please come up. Is there anyone on the assignment?
There's one that I believe was the chat Oh, okay. And if you're joining us virtually, please raise your virtual hand, which is the middle bottom section of your screen, or press 9 if you're calling in.
And we did send you a a letter that was received earlier today.
