Alright. Alright. Good afternoon. We will call this regular meeting of the city plan commission to order. Today is Tuesday, May 20.
It is 04:45PM. Let's start by going around the room with a with a roll call. Introduce yourself. Noel Sanchez. All well.
Cheyenne, manager card, DPD staff.
Sharon Gardner, legal counsel.
We also have, Bob Azar, and, we wanna Michael Ganzdako, I am chair. We wanna welcome, Rachel, who's, new to this commission, not new to serving on boards and commissions within the city, though. She comes to us from the historic district commission. Correct? Okay.
And the DEAers. Oh, well. So you have plenty of experience, and I think you'll enjoy serving on this one. With that, we will go right to the minutes of the 04/15/2025 meeting. You all should have received them and had a chance to review them before today, hopefully.
There are motion to approve.
They have a motion to approve. Do we have a second? Second. Alright. Is your mic working?
way down. You gotta turn the volume. There we go. Second.
Turn the volume to maybe So, like, mid two thirds. Yeah.
Mid mid May or two thirds. Yeah. Two thirty. Got it. Alright.
Good. Good. We have a motion. We have a second. We'll, all in favor, say aye.
Aye. All opposed? Any abstentions? Alright. The minutes carry.
Next up is director's report.
Okay. Just, very briefly, we've been continuing to work on zoning changes in response to the comprehensive plan. For Rachel's benefit, we have been, we we got a first round of zoning changes that were approved earlier this year. And since then, there are some other, things that we're working on in what we call phase two. And most recently, we've been working on, putting together a group to help us, with design standards.
So we actually, have, sent out some invitations, and, we'll be convening that group in the coming weeks, with the idea of evaluating the design standards that we have in place today for for, new construction and, seeing what we can change to try to improve them. So that'll be playing out over the next couple
of months. Will there be anyone from this commission on that?
Yeah. We've asked, Charlotte Wilfreds to take part in that.
That's who I was going to recommend represent us. Thank you. Alright. With that, we will write it right we will roll right into the first agenda item. We'll start off with the city council referral.
It's referral number three five nine four, amendment of section 19 o four. Okay.
As you know, the city plan commission has the authority to grant dimensional adjustments as part of land development projects and subdivisions. This is this is, something that's established in state zoning law and that we have translated into our local zoning ordinance. We have had the disability, in place since, 2009, and it allows for you to to reduce setbacks, to increase dwelling unit density, and to increase building height. And you have done this countless times since 2009. It's been, in my opinion, a very effective tool to try to encourage certain things.
These are not variances granted by a zoning board based on a showing of hardship. They're dimensional adjustments when applicants provide something that that is considered to be in the public interest, such as mixed use, a ground a building a residential building with ground floor retail would qualify for a dimensional adjustment, structured parking, affordable housing, these sorts of things. And we've talked more about this in the comprehensive plan. And as part of our review of design regulations, we're gonna be looking at these incentives and proposing changes to the the sorts of amenities that would that would allow someone to ask for a dimensional adjustment. So this brings us to this particular amendment.
What what happened recently, the city plan commission granted an additional story for a land development project at 128 Wayland Avenue.
I'm sorry. Mark Mark, would
you mind turning down the volume on that? Yeah. Thank you. So the the commission granted an extra story for a mixed use building at 128 Wayland. It was appealed by a neighbor.
It went to a superior court, and the superior court judge issued a decision that said that the way that our zoning ordinance was written made it such that the city plan commission could grant additional height in feet or extra stories, but not both, which to what's us was perplexing. It's not the way we have interpreted it. It's in some cases, it would seem impossible to grant extra stories without granting extra numerical height. Nevertheless, this was the the judge's decision. So we we we had we had some choices to make, And one is to try to to get the judge to reconsider.
One is to try to get the Supreme Court to take this up. But in our opinion, probably the most expedient way to do this is to make an amendment to the ordinance to remove any possible ambiguity from this section
ordinance. So we have you see the amendment. It's very simple. The way the ordinance is written today for residential zones, it says building height plus 12 feet or one story. The way we propose to write this would say plus 12 feet not to exceed one extra story.
And then likewise, in nonresidential zones, plus 24 feet not to exceed two extra stories. This is the the we're using the same sort of wording that we use for, the dimensional standards for commercial zones where we say that a building can be 50 feet tall, not to exceed four stories. So I think the way we're structuring this is a way to make this absolutely unambiguous. We thought it was unambiguous before, but if if, if that's not the case, then we think this this does that. So we're not asking you to actually change anything.
We're not actually asking you to change the way you do business. We're just asking you and the city council to preserve what we have always held to be the status quo. And, you know, we thought for a moment about maybe maybe trying to accelerate the discussion of of dimensional adjustments in general, but we didn't wanna rush that process. We've got we've got we're just starting that process that that will take place over the summer. So for the moment, we simply wanna preserve the status quo.
So that's all this is this is about. So this would be this this is because it's it's a change to the zoning ordinance. The city plan commission's action in this is advisory to the city council. So we ask asking for your your recommendation to the city council.
Commissioners, do you have any questions other than why are we actually sitting here doing this, which we all know it's kind of absurd. But if yes. Any any any discussion? Any
Just for my own edification. So a story, that's the the the spaces that you know, sometimes buildings have things on top. Like, if a story exceeds the 12 feet, like, which comes first? Chicken or the egg? I guess that's
So it it's 12 feet not to exceed one extra story. It can't be 13 foot story, or it can exceed the height in that zone by more than that. So the story can be if you have if it's allowed 50 feet and you're giving a 12 foot adjustment, you can't have the the math has all equate, and the stories has to have to equate. Okay. Got it.
So if you you can fit it in less, you can fit it in you can fit you can have stories be as wide, 25 feet, 25 feet, and then a 12 foot story. They're all still stories because stories are defined in the zoning ordinance as well. Okay.
That's right. So so let's say we're in a commercial zone. The regulation says the building can't be taller than 50 feet, and it can't be more than four stories. Okay? And with the dimensional adjustment, you could add up to 24 feet of height, and you can add up to two extra stories.
So the absolute maximum height that the building could be with this dimensional adjustment would be six stories and 74 feet. And and what we're
doing here is we're cleaning up the the zoning ordinance that allows us to do our work as a commission. We don't just because we're allowed to give 24 feet or two stories in a nonresidential doesn't mean that every project will qualify for it. That's our discretion. This just cleans up the verbiage so that someone in the future can appeal and say it's one or the other. Right?
That's right. K. This is a any any other commissioners? Okay. This is public meeting.
Any members from the public who would like to comment on this, we will we will open the public comment portion of this agenda item at this time. If you're joining us remotely from the the remote room wherever that may be, you may raise your virtual hand in the bottom middle of your screen or press 9 if you are calling in. Lev, do we have anyone on the sign up sheet for this one? Correct. K.
entering. Online, I'm not seeing anybody. Okay. Then we will close the public comment portion of this agenda item. And, I think at
this point, we are ready for a motion for a positive recommendation to the city council to approve this proposed zoning change.
