Planning Commission

MINUTES PLANNING COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING FEBRUARY 18, 2013 – 5:00 P.M. CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS PRESENT: Chairman Sookram, Members, Barton, Emanuel, Fooken, Ridder, Sassaman, Sawyer and Winter, Planning Director Rian Harkins, Chief Building Inspector Don Simons and Secretary Deb Pruss ABSENT: None Chairman Sookram called the meeting to order. Roll Call Vote was taken – all 9 present. Chairman Sookram read a statement that this meeting was preceded by publicized notice in the Fremont Tribune and the agenda displayed in the lobby of the Municipal Building and posted online at www.fremontne.gov; and distributed to the Planning Commission, Mayor and City Council on February 13, 2013 and is open to the public. Chairman Sookram also stated a copy of the agenda was kept continually current and available to the public at 400 East Military, 3rd floor and a copy of the open meeting law is posted continually for public inspection located near the Council Chambers entrance door by the agendas. It was moved by Fooken, seconded by Sawyer, to dispense with the reading of the Minutes of the January 21, 2013 Regular Meeting and approve as received. Roll Call Vote showed all members present voting aye – 9 ayes. Motion Carried. Chairman Sookram stated the general public is invited to address the Planning Commission regarding any item on this agenda at this time or wait until discussion of their request is taking place. No public comments were received. Planning Director Harkins stated staff is requesting the first item on the agenda (the study session item) be moved to the bottom of the agenda to allow for actual timing to work out with the consultants for that item.  Consider request of Connie Lynn Barron and Paul F. Barron and Lu Ann Ehmcke and Gary E. Ehmcke to subdivide part of the NW ¼ of Section 19, Township 17 North, Range 9 East of the 6th P.M., Dodge County, Nebraska lying south of Military Avenue, excepting the South 380.00 feet and excepting Tax Lot 13. Planning Director Harkins stated this is a lot split going from one large tract to a large and a small one with just over two and a half acres. There are two parcels. Parcel A is the roughly 2.67 as their agent, Mr. Dodd, indicated. The areas are generally just open pasture ground and a transmitter site for a radio station. The radio station is working to actually split the property so that they can move not only one radio station’s facilities but all of their facilities to this site and actually under one building do their broadcast facilities. There would not be a lot of traffic associated with this primarily other than staff coming to and from the building their staff would be leaving either to go home or to go out and do sales calls. There would not be a lot of traffic generated with the facility. Staff has recommended approval of the lot split. Harkins stated some of the Planning Commission was asking about annexation. That is something that as a condition of the lot split can be requested and that would be subject to approval by the City Council obviously. 1 Chairman Sookram asked if anyone from the radio station had any questions or comments. Steve Dodd stated the applicant is not actually the radio station. He stated the applicant is the Ehmcke’s and the Barron’s and they are totally unaware of annexation being considered as part of this request. Mr. Dodd stated the Ehmcke’s were on vacation and it is something that was not thought about or considered when they made the agreement with the radio station so he was not sure what would happen if the Planning Commission made it a condition that they rezone the whole 60 acres plus the small site of the radio station. Planning Director Harkins stated he didn’t think the Planning Commission was talking about rezoning the entire area. He thinks the Planning Commission is just talking about either requesting Parcel A or both parcels agree to be annexed as part of the approval of the lot split. Mr. Dodd asked if they would be annexed when the time comes or annex now. Mr. Harkins stated annex now. Mr. Dodd stated he didn’t know about Parcel B, which would be the Ehmcke’s property. He stated they totally hadn’t considered this. Rather than take the chance of blowing a deal, he would like to see the Planning Commission approve it without the annexation of at least the lower tract. Moved by Sawyer to recommend approval as requested. Seconded by Emanuel. Roll Call Vote showed all members present voting aye – 9 ayes. Motion Carried.  Consider request of Connie Lynn Barron and Paul F. Barron and Lu Ann Ehmcke and Gary E. Ehmcke to rezone a parcel in the SE ¼ NW ¼ and the NE ¼ NW ¼ of Section 19, Township 17 North, Range 9 East of the 6th P.M., Dodge County, Nebraska from RR – Rural Residential to GC – General Commercial. Planning Director Harkins stated this request involves the rezoning of Parcel A from the previous agenda item. It is the same general area. This is basically off of Johnson Drive and Military so First Lutheran would be across the street There is single family residence immediately east and then open farm ground. First Lutheran would be across the road and then Johnson Road as it has been realigned and then you have the campus settings for the Johnson Development. The proposal is to take this tract that is shaded and go from RR – Rural Residential to GC – General Commercial. That allows for communication services which radio stations are a part of to locate their broadcast facilities on this site. The transmitter for the radio station is on this site already and so the owners are looking at taking this parcel as part of this development proposal, selling it in allowing so that the radio station can put their broadcast facilities here in one location. As just mentioned, there would be, after visiting with the owner of the radio station, the only traffic would really be staff coming to and from either to do their shift or to go make sales calls out in the broadcast area. There would be limited traffic impacts as this is pretty much a dead end street. Aside from the single family residence here, the only users right now would be the people coming to and from the radio station. This area is not developing right now and staff has had no conversations with anyone about developing the remaining acreage at this time nor have we in the time he has been here. Right now the only presence you would see in this area would be again the house and the radio station. Staff recommended approval with the condition that the mixed use overlay be extended to include this property for a couple of reasons (1) to avoid the issue of spot issue. If you just take GC and apply it to this spot, there is nothing even commercially very close so that would get us into a potentially bad situation legally. Extending the mixed use overlay over avoids that but it also goes to the second reason (2) to provide some additional controls in terms of what we can and can’t do. So the mixed use overlay proposal for the Johnson Park area is more of a campus setting, has a lot of landscaping, has a lot of actual design element to it in terms of a campus institutional look so anything that would be coming in if they were to leave the site would have to match those standards. The City would then have a little bit more leverage about what can and can’t go in and also how it is done. That would help prevent the idea that some fear of a convenient store going in at this location. Member Fooken asked how much area is the mixed use overlay going to cover? Harkins 2 stated that would cover basically just the shaded area, about 2.67 acres. So that Parcel A that the Planning Commission just split off would be what is included. Harkins stated would it make more sense to take both this house and the tract and include them, yes, that is a choice the Planning Commission can make too if they feel it is the proper zoning. Harkins stated there is really no commercial anywhere close so to help avoid again that issue of spot zoning, staff made the recommendation that they did. Fooken stated he was just wondering how they were leapfrogging the house. Harkins stated you aren’t leapfrogging but more encompassing because you’ve got a corner touching here so the mixed use would wrap around the house in this way. Fooken stated the mixed use right now goes to the city limit line. Harkins stated that was correct. Harkins stated this would be more compatible and more congruent. Alan Fanning of 502 Johnson Drive was present. He stated he is the person who occupies Plat No. 2. Mr. Fanning stated as far as traffic impact goes. If you have been there at 3:30 in the afternoon, you realize Johnson Drive is highly used by people picking up and dropping off their kids and so he knows it is a fairly short amount of time but traffic is an issue. Fanning stated if you don’t believe him, just go out there and just watch it because it is an issue. A lot of kids walk down Johnson Drive and there are no sidewalks or anything and so there are some issues there with traffic. The big problem he has with any of this is that he can understand what the radio station wants to do; he doesn’t think that will interfere with his quality of life particularly. He doesn’t like the idea of having that little parcel being general commercial for the reasons Mr. Harkins said. If it’s just zoned general commercial, five years from now there could be a Kwik Shop there. Frankly that would be totally out of character and be really bad news. There was some talk a while back about putting a Kwik Shop out here and the school district was adamantly opposed to it. There were so many problems with a convenience store and the middle school when they were downtown so you would just be going back to that. Like Mr. Harkins said, Mr. Fanning thinks it’s an open kind of campus atmosphere out there as you have both schools, you have First Lutheran Church, you have the water park, a lot of open ground, a lot of recreational kinds of things. His house sits on parcel 2 and it’s single family. Mr. Fanning stated he has no plans to do anything except live there. He stated he didn’t consider about the overlay taking his property as well and he doesn’t know how to address that as he doesn’t know what the effects of that would be on him and what he wants to do and how he wants to go about it. Right now he can’t think of doing anything to his property except living there but he is very much concerned about what may happen down the road and the radio station has been here for as long as he can remember and they are probably a viable business and he doesn’t want to wish them any ill will or anything at all but we don’t know what will happen in the future. He just is really afraid that if it is zoned general commercial what could happen five years from now, what could happen ten years from now. Having something like that out there would be totally inappropriate. He thinks you have to do something to make it more difficult for a gas station, a Kwik Shop, something like that to be put in there or some sort of retail. Any kind of retail would generate a lot of traffic that would be really bad news for that area. Like you said the spot zoning idea is not a good one and so he would be really against that. Mr. Harkins explained to him earlier in the week about the overlay being pushed back and it seems to him from where he lives if the overlay goes back that would prevent future use from being detrimental. It would allow the radio station to achieve what they want to achieve and a small office building with just their staff coming and going he doesn’t think will present a real serious issue for him as a resident there but he is really concerned about what he will have in the future and he really would hate to see just spot zoning that without doing anything to protect it in the future. He just thinks that is bad policy. What is zoning for if you are just going to let it be a hodge podge anyway. He stated we need to think about the future and what we are going to do down the road. Chairman Sookram stated we have a consideration to extend the overlay. Planning Director Harkins stated that was staff’s recommendation at least to the shaded parcel. Mr. Dodd, agent for the applicants came forward. He stated Mr. Harkins eluded earlier on as Fremont grows and there gets to be more and more traffic and so forth down Military Avenue 3 there is going to be pressure for commercial development. He can understand exactly what Mr. Fanning is saying but there is another point of view. What if the radio station does go away and there does get to be commercial pressure. Maybe a small office building on that site with the radio station (1) it will be good for the radio station and it might help them stay. If they can’t build there, maybe they will just go somewhere else. I don’t know what the alternatives are here but you could get something worse than a nice little office building on that tract of ground. Mr. Fanning stated that is what he is trying to avoid. His understanding of what Mr. Harkins said was putting the overlay on it would make that much more difficult to happen. Mr. Dodd stated that was right. Mr. Fanning stated his position is if you are going to change the zoning, to be honest he wouldn’t want them to change the zoning if he had everything he wanted but the best bet for him looks like put the overlay over it and that will give him his protection and it will let the radio station do what they want to do too. He asked Mr. Harkins if that was correct. Mr. Harkins stated that would be the safest option. He knows the question was asked if it was extended to include Mr. Fanning’s property would that cause Mr. Fanning any harm. With just maintaining a single family residence…..no. If Mr. Fanning left the use as is, it would not. Mr. Fanning asked if it would do anything to his property as it is a big lot as it is 4 ½ acres if he wanted to subdivide and put another house up would that be a problem. Mr. Harkins stated it might but we would just have to approach that when we got there. Harkins stated there are a lot of trees on his lot so that would play a role in it as well but this would give the applicant and the radio station what they need to do what they want to do. Mr. Fanning stated just a lay person looking at it, he supposes there are people in this town with some money who are licking their chops looking at that section of Military out there but honestly with the two churches, the middle school, water park, his little house and what the applicant is doing and all of the housing out there, he feels residential is the obvious thing that you want to build out there in that 60 acre tract that the Barron’s and the Ehmcke’s own. He had thought for a long time that Carson Day owned it and it would become part of Day Acres at some point and become residential. He thinks it is much more logical to think of it in terms of residential, park, school, church and that sort of thing than any kind of commercial thing. He would have liked the idea of the overlay going on there and making it difficult for anybody to put up any big time commercial retail kind of facility. Mr. Fanning stated he thinks the radio station has been very honest about this. They aren’t buying this for an investment to turn around and sell in a couple of years and make some money. The owner of the radio station wants to build their operation out there and he feels it is a worthy thing to do. Moved by Fooken to recommend approving the zoning change to General Commercial with the Mixed Use Overlay that abuts the property. Motion was seconded by Ridder. Roll Call Vote showed all members present voting aye – 9 ayes. Motion Carried. Meeting adjourned at 5:25 p.m.  Progress review of unified development code (study session item). Unified Development Code was discussed via webinar. 4