Planning and Zoning Commission

Jim Liesen, Chairman Lake Havasu City Jim Harris, Vice Chairman Donald Bergen Lake Havasu City Police Facility 2360 McCulloch Blvd North Lucas Still Mychal Gorden Regular Meeting Minutes - Final Lake Havasu City, Arizona 86403 www.lhcaz.gov Neil Ott Chad Nelson, Alternate Planning and Zoning Commission Daniel McGowan, Alternate Wednesday, May 7, 2014 9:00 AM Regular Meeting 1. CALL TO ORDER The May 7, 2014, Planning Commission regular meeting was called to order by Chairman Liesen at 9:00 a.m. 3. ROLL CALL Mr. Kendig took the vacant seat. Present: 8- Donald Bergen, Neil Ott, Jim Harris, Jim Liesen, Chad Nelson, Lucas Still, Dan McGowan and John Kendig Absent: 1- Mychal Gorden 4. MINUTES Mr. Ott made a motion to approve the minutes of the March 19, 2014, meeting as written. The motion was seconded by Mr. Harris and carried on a unanimous roll call vote. Aye: 7 - Bergen, Ott, Harris, Liesen, Still, McGowan and Kendig Excused: 1 - Nelson Absent: 1 - Gorden 5. CORRESPONDENCE AND ANNOUNCEMENTS Mr. Schmeling said he would first like to introduce and welcome the newest member of the Commission, Christy Cunningham. Second, you may not have all heard that the chicken legislation did not pass at the State level, so therefore, it does not require any further action by the Commission. And last, as anticipated, the City Council adopted the ordinance amending the pool Lake Havasu City Page 1 Printed on 6/4/2014 Planning and Zoning Commission Regular Meeting Minutes - May 7, 2014 Final alarm section of the code. 6. PUBLIC HEARING 7. CALL TO PUBLIC ID 14-0204 A request for a major amendment to PD 97-001 rezoning the property from C-1/R-4/PD to C-1/R-4/CR/PD to allow a bridal honeymoon suite (motel room) within the existing commercial building as a permitted use. Mr. Liesen said he is not sure if the item number is ID-14-0204 or 14-00200002. Mr. Schmeling said we should go with the ID numbers. Mr. Schmeling stated that this property is located at 1425 McCulloch Blvd and most of the commissioners are familiar with the property. It is located just on the north side of the bridge on the Island. The Island Fashion Mall PD which was approved in 1997 included the entire area and encompassed the residential area as well as the recreational elements. Today's amendment focuses on the lower level of the mall. There are residential and commercial components and some recreational as well and the request is, quite simply, just to allow the conversion of one of the commercial units into a motel room, essentially. He showed a picture of the unit from the bridge area and said this unit is described as Unit N. Mr. Ken Selby said what we are trying to do might have been misconstrued. We are spending a lot of money just to do one unit. What we are trying to do with that unit is to offer a bridal package so that they can use this room along with the ramp which comes down to the gazebo area which is below. We use that area already for weddings along with the grassy area for pictures and such and then go right into the banquet room. We want to offer this as a whole package. That unit has been empty for a year and a half; it was the Wimbledon Jewelry store. This idea is to basically try to implement this into the whole Shugrue's system. We are going to re-do the whole unit to make it watertight and fire safe to comply with planning, building and fire requirements. It does have its own private entrance and it is the furthest unit from all the residential units that are located in those areas. We did approach all of the condo owners including The Heat and the condos directly across and behind us and all of the ones that are along the waterway. All of them were given a complete list of what we are trying to do. We had a meeting at our property and no one showed up for the meeting. We just want to see if we can continue with these plans and try to get this passed. Mr. Kendig asked if this is for the exclusive use of someone who is using other parts of your facility or can anyone who is getting married use it? Mr. Selby said we are hoping to use it for any instances even if they are not getting married at our place. They could rent it; we are offering it as a package and that is what we want to put together. Lake Havasu City Page 2 Printed on 6/4/2014 Planning and Zoning Commission Regular Meeting Minutes - May 7, 2014 Final If someone walks up and it is in the middle of August when it is too hot to be outside in the gazebo and asked if it is a rental unit, we might not go that far, but we might because it would be dead for the summer months. We are going to make it a two-bedroom suite, but if someone asked to rent it without doing a wedding package, yes we would. Mr. Ott asked will this unit be ADA compliant? Mr. Selby said yes, it will have to be and it does have ramps that lead to the unit itself with railings. That is already ADA compliant. The unit has a 60-68 door and we will have to make the restrooms compliant. That will be part of converting the unit to ADA. Mr. McGowan asked if all of the tenants in the building are aware of this? Because, as we know, most parts of the year, that parking lot is pretty full. I don't know how much you are going to get involved in weddings, but if they become a daily or three, four or five times a week event which I am sure you are hoping for in spending money, is there going to be parking issue with the rest of your tenants? Mr. Selby said it would be one or two parking spaces and I don't think that would inhibit any of our tenants. Mr. McGowan said he is talking about all of the people coming to the wedding. Mr. Selby said the banquet room is already established for 145 people, so it is only one more spot, but the participant would be parking there anyway because they are involved in the wedding. Mr. McGowan said then, the other tenants are aware of the fact that there could be more traffic on more occasions? Mr. Selby said, yes, we did tell everybody and gave them an idea of what we wanted to do. I don't think there will be more traffic because if it is going to be rented to somebody,and they would be in the banquet room in the first place. Even if we rent the unit out to people, it would still be only one spot and that would not affect anyone. They have already been told what we are going to do. He said Mr. Schmeling has set out all the zoning requirements and we held the meeting with all of our tenants and gave them an opportunity to question us about that and apparently they understood this would not take up their parking places. Mr. Liesen said, as a small point of clarification, the parking plan for this property already includes the retail parking requirement for what was the retail establishment, so there are probably already two or three designated spaces for that and somebody in a motel use would be using a similar number. Is that about right? Lake Havasu City Page 3 Printed on 6/4/2014 Planning and Zoning Commission Regular Meeting Minutes - May 7, 2014 Final Mr. Schmeling said that is correct. Mr. Liesen opened the meeting to the public. No one spoke. Mr. Schmeling stataed that staff finds that Section 14.44.070(G) of the Lake Havasu City Development Code requires that eight findings be met before a planned development amendment can be approved. Staff finds that this request meets all of those requirements necessary to approve the request. Therefore, based on those findings, staff recommends that 14-00200002 be forwarded to the City Council with a recommendation of approval with the following conditions: 1. Only the unit specified in this request, Unit N, shall be converted into a bridal suite. Any other requests for conversion to motel units will require another planned development amendment with additional review. 2. There shall be no reservation of parking spaces for the proposed unit. 3. The applicant shall be responsible to obtain all necessary building/fire permits for the occupancy change of use. Mr. Liesen asked if the applicant understands these conditions. Mr. Selby said the only one in question is that we are paying $2,500 trying to get this proposal approved. Would the money have to paid again if this is something that is prosperous and we wanted to convert one more unit? Mr. Schmeling said yes, another fee would be required. Mr. Selby asked if there is a way to amend it right now to avoid paying again? Even if we do take another unit, we are still taking into the fact that if it is in regards to parking, those suites would already have their parking places. We are not taking anything from the actual parking lot. We are not trying to change the whole property to a hotel, but we don't want to be spending another $2,500 to make one more unit amendment. We probably didn't think the process through because I thought it would include the whole building. Mr. Liesen said that Mr. Schmeling can explain this better, but a planned development is a legal document with all the things divided up with uses which is why you had to go through this process. The Commission is not in control of the process. Mr. Schmeling said that our review and analysis was done based on the application as it was submitted, which was the conversion of one unit, so all of the impacts and all of the conclusions that were drawn by staff were based on the one unit which we felt was minimal. When you start converting the whole building over to a hotel, not that that would happen, but in the event it did, the impacts change and obviously the whole dynamics of the properrty change, including parking and whatever else. The Commission has the ability to change that condition, but the reason that Lake Havasu City Page 4 Printed on 6/4/2014 Planning and Zoning Commission Regular Meeting Minutes - May 7, 2014 Final condition was put in there is because once you start adding those motel units, you change the dynamics of the entire site and at some point, we have to be able to look at that again in its totality and determine if there are any negative impacts and if so, how to deal with those. Mr. Liesen said, that said, if the applicant wanted to postpone, for example, and go back and restructure his application, could we keep this application alive or would it be such a substantial change that he would have to do it all over. Mr. Schmeling said I think you could postpone this and we could review it, but the Planning Commission has the ability to change that. If you feel, for example, that three units provide the same assessment and don't have any additional impact, you can limit it to no more than three units if you feel you can make that judgement at this point. Mrs. Garry said she would suggest that if the applicant is indicating that he wants to go back and amend his request, the Commission can allow him to do that. Let the applicant define exactly what he wants to do, let staff analyze it and bring it back. I don't want to guess and I don't want you to rush right now trying to decide what might be done in the future. The applicant is going to want to sit down and really analyze what the possibilities are and submit that to staff. That may change what the outcome may be, so you might want to work with staff on exactly what you want to request. Mr. Selby said we will stay with this right now because we have already waited four months to get to this point. Mr. Liesen said we could postpone this to the next meeting, but the reason I am suggesting that might be a possibility is that would allow you to continue with this process since you have already paid for it as opposed to applying six months in the future and paying all over again. Mr. Selby repeated that we will continue this as it is. We just overlooked this. Mr. Kendig asked what is the potential to expand this; are you looking at three or six or five? How many units could you actually do? Mr. Selby said just one with the potential of one more. That is why I asked about doing another one in the future. Right now we have the Harley shop there and they are really big and prosperous there and we made the little banquet room that is right next to it. That is the only one that we could possibly ever change, but it is a prosperous business right now, so we wouldn't even think of it. It would have been kind of foolish of us not to ask the question if this could be amended to have two units instead of one. We couldn't go any further than that anyway because the ones upstairs are all exposed units anyway. There is no seclusion there so we would never be able to touch that. The Lake Havasu City Page 5 Printed on 6/4/2014 Planning and Zoning Commission Regular Meeting Minutes - May 7, 2014 Final rest of the units are thriving businesses. Mr. McGowan said he has a question so he can get this clear. I am pretty familiar with the area. What you are saying to me is that you are going to convert the old jewelry store unit. Then you have the gift shop and then Makai's and the Harley-Davidson. Therefore, one is all you could do now even if you wanted to do ten. But you want this to be left open because if any of those people leave, you could convert them at that time. Mr. Selby said basically that is what it is. We would just like that option. He said that everything that is there is going to stay. Mr. McGowan said then right now we would be approving something that might not happen for five years or more and I would not be comfortable with doing that. Mr. Harris said I do not see a problem with this request. I don't know why anybody would want to stay there amongst all that commercial activity, but I can see the occasion for a bride and her party getting ready or that sort of thing. So, keeping that in mind and with the applicant's insistence on going forward, I would like to make a motion to approve item number ID 14-0204 with staff's conditions. The motion was seconded by Mr. Still. The motion carried on a unanimous voice vote. A motion was made by Harris, seconded by Still, that this Planning Item be approved. The motion carried by the following vote: Aye: 7 - Bergen, Ott, Harris, Liesen, Still, McGowan and Kendig Excused: 1 - Nelson Absent: 1 - Gorden 8. FUTURE MEETING Mr. Schmeling said there are no agenda items for the May 21, 2014, meeting, so the next meeting will be on June 4, 2014. 9. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 9:27 a.m. ______________________________________________________ Jim Liesen, Chairman _____________________________________________________ Jean Vinson, Recording Secretary Lake Havasu City Page 6 Printed on 6/4/2014 Planning and Zoning Commission Regular Meeting Minutes - May 7, 2014 Final Lake Havasu City Page 7 Printed on 6/4/2014