Planning Commission

FAIRMONT PLANNING COMMISSION The regular meeting of the Fairmont Planning Commission was held on April 15, 2015 at 7:00 p.m. at the Your Neighborhood, Your Future Studio located at 305 Tenth Street. President Oliver called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. and asked for a roll call of members. ROLL CALL OF MEMBERS MEMBERS PRESENT: MEMBERS ABSENT: President Oliver Commissioner Majic Commissioner Richardson Commissioner Parker Commissioner Weber Commissioner Greene Commissioner Miller Commissioner Straight Commissioner Pitman CITY STAFF: Director of Planning and Development – Kathy Wyrosdick Recording Secretary – Maria Cipolla PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE APPROVAL OF MINUTES FROM MARCH 18, 2015 President Oliver asked for a motion to approve the minutes. Commissioner Greene motioned to approve minutes. Commissioner Straight seconded. Vote was 7‐0 in favor. PUBLIC HEARINGS TO SET FOR APRIL 15, 2015 None PUBLIC HEARINGS TO SET FOR May 20, 2015 None NEW BUSINESS 1. Presentation from the Your Neighborhood, Your Future Storefront project. The WVU students, who are Strategic Communication Majors and in the Architect and Landscape Architect classes, presented their projects they had been working hard on during this semester at the new storefront studio. 1 City Planner, Kathy Wyrosdick thanked the professors and their students for all their hard work. She also pointed out this is a pilot project for the City of Fairmont, WVU, and different classes at WVU and how they can all work together. She encouraged everyone to come back on Saturday for the fair and to have a chance to speak to all the students and learn more about their projects. Commissioner Weber commented, the students’ projects were very artist and done well. He then wished all of them good luck. 2. Resolution of support for the Local Redevelopment Plan for the Reserves of Fairmont. City Planner, Kathy Wyrosdick introduced Mike Dektas and Josh Hughes from the Miller Valentine Group. They are proposing a housing development project off Maple Avenue. It is a single family development project. They will be applying for lower income housing tax credit funding. It helps support the project, if there is a locally adopted redevelopment plan. Mike has prepared a unique way of addressing that requirement by submitting a redevelopment plan and asking the city to formally approve and adopt it. After talking to Mike, we decided to it bring before the Planning Commission and have them act as a planning consultant for the City. It will then go before City Council. It is in compliance with the zoning and the Comprehensive Plan. This area is zoned for general residential. We are simply supporting their application for this project by adopting their redevelopment plan. Mike Dektas, Director of Development and Acquisitions for the Miller Valentine Group, stated, we are based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. We own and manage about 12,000 apartment units in sixteen states. We do commercial and residential construction. We self‐manage everything. There is always an on‐site manager and maintenance. We own our properties long term. We have been in West Virginia for two years. Our first project is under way. This is a 35 unit senior center facility in Parkersburg. We are also breaking ground in May on townhomes in Clarksburg. This will have 32 units. We are trying to expand around here. It makes sense for us to come from Ohio, to Parkersburg, and work our way towards Pittsburg, PA. We have been in business since 1963. We are looking to building roughly 30 single‐family homes. One thing we are looking at on this site, that RJ owns, it is challenging. With single family homes and fitting the zoning compliance, we can only fit about 12 to 15 units. This is not really feasible to give the attention and have an on‐ site manager. We need to be able to build about 30‐35 houses for it to be feasible. So we started looking at where we can add some property. There is a burnt down church here. We had a meeting today with the church board. It sounds like they really want to rebuild their church. It wasn’t a money negotiation. It was more like, “Can we figure out a way to rebuild the church and still fit what we want to fit?” I think we might be able to do it. I don’t know for sure. That is where we are going to try and go with this. We are also talking to the cemetery. They had closed off a portion of the cemetery. There is a good parcel they are talking about and this would allow us to do our project. The amendment Kathy is talking about would basically be to pull this church parcel into the plan. It does not change what is allowed to happen. It doesn’t change setbacks. Everything stays the same. It is viewed as a support letter. The tax‐payer program allows us to build affordable housing. This is viewed as work‐force housing. You are looking at rents in the $700.00 range for a 3‐4 bedroom house. You get a pretty good bang for your buck. They accept proposals once a year statewide. Rank all of them against each other and the highest score wins. They get about 30 proposals and fund 6 or 7 deals. So it is very competitive. The one thing that will helps us is having the local community support by having a Local Community Revitalization Plan. That is what I am here asking effectively for a recommendation and adoption of. This supports the development and the project but doesn’t change your land use. Here are some preliminary market highlights from a study for you. In the City of Fairmont, you have 58.5% of rental units build before 1960. Statewide, that average is 35.4%. That was another thing that brought us here as well. It is an up‐dative and aging‐housing stock. Another highlight that came out of the study was 52% of renters are paying over 30% of their income which is considered rent overburdened. Statewide, 39.1 of renters are being overburdened. These are the items that jumped off the board to us. The overall project is roughly a 7 million dollar project. We haven’t finalized the budget because we haven’t finalized our site plans. We serve as the general contractor but we hire local subcontractors for everything. So we have to bid things out locally. The construction period is about a year and about 75 jobs during that time. President Oliver asked if it was one year to do all of that or just the main building part of it. 2 Mike Dektas said it is one year to do the whole project. We submit in May for the funding. We will know if we have financing in August. Between May and August we just wait to see if we have the credits. When we have the credits, we know we are good to go at that point. We have 12,000 units, so we have investors. Then we launch it into development. There are some challenges here. RJ’s property was grouted but we don’t think the church was grouted. So we will have to deal with that. The lift station may be an issue if we don’t get the church property. These are just land issues. We will deal with that in August. We will be starting construction around April of next year. The way the credits work, you get credits each year. You get 10 years’ worth of credits. We package all those ten years and sell them to an investor day one. That brings the cash into do your work day one. Then we deliver their credits to them every year over the next ten years. You have to deliver the full scope to get the full credits. In fairness, if we are told no in August from the housing fund for the credits, it is shut down. If we get it, we move heaven and earth to get to the closing table because it is so hard to get it. We do 250 million dollars a year in construction. President Oliver asked what if a neighbor down the road would have a problem with the street being all torn up. Mike Dektas stated that no way will that happens. We have too much financial exposure to the credit delivery that any other problems we end up just eating it to make sure we can deliver the credits. It is an all go or all not. After August, the only surprises come in the form of land development. President Oliver asked Mike if he had any renderings. Mike Dektas said we do. They are in your packet. The one that says Roosevelt homes. That is exactly the same things we are building. There are some other ones in there. Josh Hughes, from the Miller Valentine Group added, in Dayton, Ohio, we have been going into one of the rougher neighborhoods and have been repeatedly going in over the past 5 or 6 years and doing 20 units here and 40 units there. They are scattered sites. We are taking some plighted properties and vacant problem areas and redoing them. Not so much one big deal but the concept was to seed the neighborhood so it flows out. It has been working pretty well. Mike Dektas states this creates homeownership. You have to rent for 15 years before we sell them. The residents do get credit every year towards the purchase of the home. It is our absolute goal to create homeownership and sell these. For 15 years, we can’t and we will manage it but then work off from there. It is a great program to clean up plight. President Oliver asked if he had a motion to adopt the resolution. Vote was 7‐0 in favor. CITIZENS PETITION None. OTHER BUSINESS Commissioner’s Comments: Commissioner Richardson on a grand scale, these projects are great. I hope I am around when they are all done. I hope it works. Commissioner Weber extended congratulations to all the students and professors for their hard work. I know what it is like to do a senior project. I hope everything works out for you in the future as you move on in your lives as architects. The presentation was very, very good. I look forward to it coming to provision in the future. Thank you very much. 3 Commissioner Greene seconded everything Commissioner Weber said. Commissioner Miller added he would like to see all this happen too. Commissioner Straight agreed with Commissioner Richardson. Everything is great. I commend the student for all their hard work. I’d like to see all this happen before I am is out of this great world. Job well done! President Oliver seconded what Commissioner Straight and thanked everyone for coming tonight, for coming to the City of Fairmont, and their great work. We really appreciate it. A lot of time and effort went into all of this. Staff Updates: City Planner, Kathy Wyrosdick said, we have been using this storefront to host community meetings. The Urban Renewal Authority meets here on a regular basis as well as the BAD Buildings Team and Main Street Fairmont’s 6:00 p.m. meetings. As other opportunities arise, we try to use this space to help encourage residents to participate in those groups. A. April 13th 6PM ‐ Neighbors in Action Meeting – Learn about how to start a Neighborhood Association (305 10th Street) Marti Shaumberger, Deputy Mayor of Morgantown, spoke to 15 people on how to start a neighborhood association. How they can take ownership of plans like this. So they are helping to realize plans like this and not just leaving it to their city leaders to try and adopt. This is engaging residents to see the potential of the area where they live. Marti Shaumberger started an association back in the 90’s and they now have 10 associations in Morgantown. They meet monthly with the City Manager and others to get updates on what’s happening in the city, get police reports, and helps them promote their neighborhood. That discussion will continue tomorrow night at 6:00 p.m. Those interested in starting an association are encouraged to attend the meeting. Main Street Fairmont is moving their 12:30 meetings to 6:00 p.m. every Thursday. They will be held here at the studio. B. April 18th, Make It Shine 8:30 until noon – BAD Buildings team will help clean up areas around Windmill Park and the Beltline neighborhood. Our BAD buildings team is hosting two clean ups. Dan Weber is the director of the Windmill clean up. The other clean up in the Beltline will start here at the storefront. C. April 18th – Community Fair at the Storefront – Noon until 4 PM you can visit with the business owners that agreed to participate. You can talk to the student, the residents and their issues. There will be activities and live music. D. Clearzoning approval schedule – City Council Hearing April 28th. If this passes, it will be effective May 28, 2015 E. DRC – Communications Tower – State Police at the High Tech The communication tower is on the agenda for the next BZA meeting for a variance. This will allow the state police to move out to the High Tech Park. We also met with a developer today that is proposing townhomes on Locust Avenue. ADJOURNMENT President Oliver asked for a motion to adjourn. Commissioner Straight motions to adorn Commissioner Pitman seconded it. 4