Planning Commission

Russellville Planning Commission Minutes June 22, 2015 @ 5:30 p.m. The Russellville Planning Commission held its regular meeting on Monday, June 22, 2015 at 5:30 p.m. in the Russellville City Hall Council Chambers. Members Present Chairman Dennis Boyd Jimmy Sims Vice-Chair Doug Skelton Wendell Miller Secretary Eric Westcott Peggy Stratton Herschell Hargus Council Liaison Bill Eaton Members Absent Mike Wilkins Todd Meimerstorf Also present: Mayor Horton, City Planner Harris, City Attorney Smith, City Engineer Kurt Jones, City Inspector Brian Holstein, Fire Marshal Richard Setian, Jim Lynch/City Corp, Planning Assistant Lequitta Jones, Dave Garza/Barrett & Associate, Dr. & Mrs. Chris Horan. Welcome First Order of Business was review and approval of the May 18, 2015 minutes. Commissioner Skelton made the motion to approve the minutes as written. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Miller and passed unanimously. Second Order of Business was a Public Hearing requesting review and recommendation of Special Use approval to City Council to allow a mini-storage facility on property in the 3800 Block of East Main/Hwy 64 East. Submitted by Richard Van Ohlen. (SP.15.06.132) City Planner Harris stated that this proposal seemed a good match of use and location. Many of the uses along that stretch of East Main are roughly similar. Mr. Harris recommended requiring compliance with Commercial Building Design standards for the buildings that are perpendicular to the highway. Past practice has allowed flexibility on the buildings parallel to the street since their facades are mostly comprised of doors rather than walls. The applicants are requesting to pave the driveway and a certain amount of parking area. They would like to do compacted gravel back in the rear part of the storage area. They do not intend to have an office and there will be no staff on site, so they are asking to be approved with a reasonable amount of paving that will be in compliance with the Zoning Code, but will not require them to pave the whole lot. They will install a decorative fence across the front. The commission is empowered to direct the applicants to do reasonable things like that as a condition of their approval. Mr. Daniel Davis handed out a drawing showing the proposed building elevations and the wrought iron fence that will be built across the front of the mini-storage facility. He stated that all walls facing Hwy 64 will have brick façades. Council Liaison Eaton questioned why the commission was given a Phase I and Phase II outline. Mr. Davis said they were not able to spend a million dollars to build all the proposed buildings right now. They would like to build about three buildings to make sure that it’s going to pan out and then continue with Phase II. Commissioner Sims asked if fences were planned for the back and side property lines. Mr. Davis said the front will be a six-foot wrought iron fence, while along the sides and back they plan to install a six-foot chain-link fence with barbed wire along the top. Chairman Boyd asked Mr. Davis if the long parking spaces adjacent to Hwy 64 were intended for RV/boat storage. Mr. Davis said there is an RV repair facility next door. The owner says he sometimes needs overflow parking because there are so many RVs. We are going to make our spaces long enough to allow RVs or boats. Liaison Eaton asked Mr. Davis if this was intended for storage only of RVs rather than a place to set them up and live out of them. Mr. Davis said it was for storage only. Commissioner Hargus made the motion to approve. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Skelton and passed unanimously. Third Order of Business was a Public Hearing requesting review and recommendation of approval to rezone property located on Marina Road at Jennifer Drive from R-1 Single-family to PUD Planned Unit Development. Submitted by Dave Garza of Barrett & Associates on behalf of Ron Hughes. (ZO.15.01.181) City Planner Harris said the Zoning Code includes two sets of criteria regarding PUD review. First is a set of five which establishes a threshold for a proposal to be considered as a PUD. The proposal must comply with at least one of the five for you to review the proposal as a PUD. The first thing the commission must decide is whether this proposal meets one of the five threshold criteria. If your determination is that the proposal meets one of those criteria, then you are directed by the Zoning Code to determine if the proposal meets all six of the criteria comprising the other set. My concern continues to be whether the applicants have adequately addressed the open space requirements that are fundamental to the PUD concept. Chairman Boyd asked Mr. Garza to address the first question in regard to which threshold criterion the applicants felt the proposal satisfied in order to be reviewed as a PUD. Mr. Garza said we put it in the submitted letter. One thing I would like to say before we start is that we are still working with staff on their comments and so are not looking for approval tonight. We are asking you to table it. However, because we probably have a 2 couple of neighbors here for the Public Hearing, I ask that you go ahead and allow them to ask their questions and maybe we can do a question and answer. Chairman Boyd asked City Attorney Trey Smith if it would be okay to conduct the Public Hearing and associated discussion tonight and then table the request. Mr. Smith said “yes.” Dr. Chris Horan, who resides at the end of Jennifer Lane, spoke first. He stated that the proposed development is in their backyard. Dr. Horan said he did not fully understand how the PUD zoning worked. If during the process the development appears to be detrimental to surrounding property values, would it be disqualified? I’m hoping that’s the primary consideration. Is that true about changing the zoning? Chairman Boyd said that one of the six criteria the Planning Commission and City Council are charged with reviewing is to ensure that whatever is done is not detrimental to the value of adjoining properties. The City Council has the statutory authority in that regard. Chairman Boyd said there aren’t any specific criteria that say 'this is what constitutes diminished property value.' He said that is a judgment call. Dr. Horan asked if there is any place in Russellville where 20 houses are sited on just four acres. I am having a hard time getting my mind around that. He asked if we have done that before in Russellville. Mr. Gaza said, "if you’re asking about 4 acres in an R-1 zone, including the 25 foot right-of-way in the front, in an R-1 (Single-family only) you have to have 75 foot frontage. In an R-1 you could put 16 units on a 4.13 acre tract. In an R-2 you could put 20.7 units on a 4.13 acre tract. In an R-3 zone tract you could put 24.3 units on a 4.13 acre tract. City Planner Harris said that he wasn’t in complete agreement with that. The Zoning Code stipulates a minimum per lot area per unit in residential zones. There is an assumption that streets and right-of-ways (ROWs) are going to be subtracted from the gross site area. All the property around this is zoned R-1. The minimum lot area in R-1 is 9,600 square feet, which would be about four lots per acre. If you figure in taking out the ROW areas, you may not get quite four units per acre in an R-1. In the R-2 and R-3 those maximums really are based on multi-family units. To get anywhere around 24 units per acre, you would have to be doing multi-family. I don’t know that in an R-1 you would ever quite get four units per acre. Mr. Garza said he was using 11,475 sf, to include that 25' by 75' ROW strip. Mr. Harris said the Zoning Code area requirements are somewhat theoretical in that, until you have a specific piece of property, you don’t know how many lots may 'fit.' Dr. Horan said he was looking for something more concrete. Is there a neighborhood that I can visit to see what it looks like to put this many homes on this much area? If we have never done that here, then there are a lot of questions regardless of how we zone it. Mr. Garza said this is the first time for garden homes in Russellville. 3 Dr. Horan raised the issue of drainage and cited Mr. Garza's letter to the commission. It says, “…drainage continues to flow to the lake and will not have an impact on neighboring property.” I disagree with that. It may flow as it has before, but it is the volume of flow that I am concerned about. It is already a problem. The lot use to be wooded. When Mr. Hughes took the trees down one effect was increased flow down the hill, which is where my home is. I hope drainage is looked into before this project is allowed to proceed. Dr. Horan said part of the justification in Item C in the letter and some of Item E is compatibility with the buildings and uses already in the area. There is a lot of comparison to Marina Shores. I think it is a fair comparison. I want you to understand since this is in my back yard, I want to make sure you are careful with the comparison. I live on a point so I have lots of lake-frontage. I actually have lakeside living. I bring this up because Marina Shores is also on a point. That development offered lots of green space and lots of lakeside exposure. As far as the geography goes, the comparison between that development and this one stops there. This lot is a funnel that is wide at the top near Marina Road, and shrinks down to about 50 feet of true lakeside. There is probably another 60 feet that is sideways. It would have made a nice one or two home lot at the most. I think the comparison is fair if they can offer the same quality as the condominiums at Marina Shores. The quality is high; the interiors are nice; there are sidewalks around them; nice streetlamp standards; and nice curb appeal. I think that is consistent with what we want to see on Marina Road, which is the most tourist-traveled road in our City. Mr. Garza wrote that the traffic volume is low. It is not low anymore. Lakeside living is awesome, but these people will not have lakeside living. They will not be able to walk out on their porch and see the lake. They do have access to a boat dock. The condominiums work because they are very nice and high quality. If you put Marina Shores in my back yard, I’m fine. I’m not opposing the development. I’m opposing a low quality development. There is not much green space. It is in my back yard and I can tell you the green space they show might be the size of this room, which is not much for 20 families. I don’t see any sidewalks, or lampposts, or the things that you see from the road that make Marina Shores appealing. It looks like the back side of three homes will face Marina Road. I’ve never seen the back of a house facing a main thoroughfare like that. I think that needs to be looked at. Dr. Horan said he has a drainage problem now and this development will make it worse. Mr. Garza said we can handle the drainage. It is a small area and we will direct runoff to the lake. It is easy to do because it is on the bottom of the park area. If you took the units and put them together and made tri-plexes like Marina Shores, it would look a whole lot different. It would look less dense, but that is not what we are trying to do. We want individual units because there is no place in Russellville that sells patio-homes. That is the reason they are spread out. It looks worse than if I were to take three of those houses and put them together and make common walls like at Tula Square or the development behind Regions Bank. When you look at it from that standpoint, it’s really not as crowded as it appears. The smaller homes (1432 sf heated & cooled) are comped at $160,000 with the (1768 sf) units at $220,000. If you were to take the Marina Shores Condominiums apart, this is what it would look like. Mr. Garza said the units have two- car garages. 4 Commissioner Stratton asked Mr. Garza why they didn’t do a patio-home concept instead of this. Mr. Garza said it is kind of a patio/garden home. Commissioner Stratton said they are not as close as (William) Thornberry’s are. Mr. Garza said they are about the same. They are about as close as some we did in Danville. People don’t want to mow. They want to live in a nice home near something like the golf course at Chamberlyne Country Club. In this case, you would want to come home and maybe go down to the lake to the little park picnic area down there. You find more and more retirees that love Russellville. They are selling their homes in town and looking to downsize, but they still want privacy. They don’t like the common walls in duplexes and triplexes. There are young couples that are coming to town to work for the larger industries. They like the little starter houses. It works well for them. There is no place in Russellville that I know of that offers this type of development. Chairman Boyd asked Mr. Garza to confirm that these spec-homes will be high quality. Mr. Garza said these are high quality and only four variants are available. Commissioner Hargus asked which of the five criteria this project meets to qualify for review as a PUD. Chairman Boyd pointed out that the three items that Mr. Garza included in his letter really had to do with the approval of the proposal once it had met the PUD threshold. We must first determine whether or not you meet one of the threshold criteria. Mr. Garza said item C, E, and F were part of those threshold criteria. Chairman Boyd noted there are two sets of criteria. The first set I’ll call the qualifying criteria. Before we can review your proposal as a PUD, you have to satisfy at least one of the five. Then once we agree that your development meets the threshold to be reviewed as a PUD, we go to the other set of six criteria and evaluate those. In response, Mr. Garza addressed each of the five qualifying criteria: 1) The PUD will allow the development of an infill parcel in the developed portion of the city that could not be made productive under normal zoning regulation. He said this one will not qualify. 2) The PUD could further the city’s goal of providing housing for all economic segments of the city and its Planning Area Boundary. This is the housing segment that is not being addressed in Russellville. Our development will provide for citizens who want their own small home and in area managed by a Property Owners Association (POA) that takes care of everything. We do not have the garden home/patio home concept locally. This does qualify. 3) The PUD involves a large parcel of land for which flexibility would allow high quality or innovative urban design. Dr. Horan stated that he knows the property well, and that it is funnel-shaped. That creates problems in designing a typical subdivision. We felt the PUD would work well because it offers flexibility. You couldn’t develop the bottom part conventionally because of the parcel's shape. This would qualify. 5 4) The PUD would aid in the elimination of slums and blight within the city and its Planning Area Boundary. It does not qualify regarding blight removal. 5) The PUD design results in a minimum of 30 percent of the total development’s being served as permanent open space. I view open space as everything that is outside of under roof. Liaison Eaton said you are saying that the airport would be open space. That people could go onto the airport and fool around. That people could fool around on Main Street. Mr. Garza said this is private property, so that is not what I am saying. Mr. Eaton says your description of open space is anything that is not under roof. Mr. Eaton said "good luck on that." Chairman Boyd said the Zoning Code addresses it further. I believe the intent is for residents there to be able to use a common area. I don’t think the intent is for the neighborhood children to have the freedom to use a neighbor’s flowerbed to build toy roads. Mr. Garza said he was present when they wrote the covenants. Mr. Garza said they were concerned about a PUD downtown. We didn’t want an area to be engulfed by buildings, so we went with 30% open space to leave open areas for trees or congregating and stuff like that. I think we just miswrote it and gave people the impression that we also meant it to be common space. In the regulations it does differentiate the two. It says open space, and then it has another section for common space. Commissioner Hargus asked which criterion fit the development. Mr. Garza said two and three. That was brought up during the Technical Review meeting. Commissioner Hargus said as to serving economic segments, it seems all these units would be around the same price range. Mr. Garza said we are not providing housing for a particular group, but the ones that want to have their own little garden home in a POA that will take care of everything else. Russellville doesn’t have that that I know of. Chairman Boyd said he does agree that #2 would probably fit here. Mr. Garza said he thought there was 40% open space and 60% under-roof. Commissioner Hargus said the review process directs us to look at those six criteria, and number three says The PUD shall be compatible with surrounding developments. Number five says The PUD shall not endanger the public health, welfare or safety, nor shall it substantially diminish or impair property values in the neighborhood in which it is located. Mr. Garza said I think Marina Shores has proven that developments like this do not harm property values. Marina Shores did not have any substantial detriment to the area and it is only 300 yards down the street. Commissioner Hargus said one of the major comments was regarding a desire for the development to be upscale, and therefore when residents walk around, they should be walking on sidewalks. The plan shows no sidewalks. I can’t see how that is upscale. 6 Chairman Boyd asked about the rationale for not providing sidewalks. He pointed out that the Zoning Code says a PUD is supposed to comply with all provisions of the Land Subdivision and Development Code, which requires sidewalks. Mr. Garza said sidewalks are to move people safely back and forth in an area where you have traffic that is going to flow, and could potentially flow, at a high rate of speed. In this case, it is short, gated roads where you have to stop before you even come into the development. Streets are posted 15 mph and are just 26' wide. All of this leads to a slower speed and safer area. With the flexibility of the PUD, we chose to eliminate sidewalks to get more green space. As you all know, concrete creates heat, and I would rather have green space. That is how I am looking at it. I don’t see what the sidewalks are meant to do. I don’t see that it really applies. Are sidewalks going to be effective here in this situation? They are going to buckle when it gets really hot. Chairman Boyd said the City Engineer had 21 comments and I believe you guys have been talking back and forth on those. Mr. Boyd asked City Engineer Jones if he had received answers to his questions. Mr. Garza said Mr. Jones hasn’t gotten his responses back yet because we are still working on them. City Engineer Jones said he didn’t have any comments other than the comments that you all have in your review packets. Commissioner Skelton asked the applicants to identify which threshold criteria that you are going to claim that this meets. Mr. Garza said number two and three. Commissioner Hargus asked what differentiates the project from anybody else going in there to make a conventional development. Mr. Garza said there is nothing like it. It is brand new and is a needed thing. We are changing and we are doing new things all the time. We are looking for new ways to bring availability to people who are searching for things they like and yet this is one area that Russellville is lacking. City Planner Harris said I still have the same concern and it’s based on my knowledge of how the PUD concept has been applied in other cities. In the PUDs I am familiar with, there was significant obvious and declared and usable open space. The PUD was not just a means to wind up with a higher building count or density. The PUDs I recall had about the same number of units that would have been allowed if the property had been developed conventionally. What was different was not so much the density, as it was the character of the development. Instead of having units conventionally sited along a standard street network, you clustered the houses so that significant open space was available for common use. City Planner Harris added that he would like for the commissioners to use the decision framework provided by the Zoning Code for PUD review and to specify which criteria they felt qualified this project to be considered as a PUD. Chairman Boyd said that he liked the concept and shared the nearby property owners' concerns that the development be built in high-end manner. It should add to property values, not detract from them. I was disappointed in the landscaping plan you provided, 7 which seemed minimal at best. I also believe there should be sidewalks to let kids walk safely down to that common open area. I have confidence that our City Engineer will ensure everything is engineered properly. Your drainage issues will be addressed, I can assure you. I like the idea of period street lights. Mr. Garza said they could consider that and add more landscaping. He said I’m sure there’s going to be some shrubbery around the front between the sidewalk and porch area and smaller stuff that doesn’t grow to great height. Chairman Boyd said an attractive entryway off of Marina Road is going to be an important element for those adjoining property owners. Ms. Jan Moran said she was not clear what garden homes are and also asked why there had to be 20 units. Mr. Garza said the cost of the development was high, so you have to make sure that you will be able to have a return on investment. It takes 20 units to do that. That is what the appraiser came up with when they looked at the costs. Commissioner Stratton said that she liked the concept. I’m in my 60’s and I may not want to live in a house as large as the one I have now. I have two acres that I can’t take care of. I would like to live in a smaller house at some point, but I don’t want to live in some of the neighborhoods of our city where there are smaller homes. The condos down the street are out of my price range. I would even be happier with one of these, but I would want more open space. I would like to have a bigger area and I would like to have a covenant prohibiting more than two cars per unit. I don’t want it to look like some of our starter home neighborhoods in our community. I’m really concerned about that. It is attractive to me and I would be interested, but I just want to make sure that they are of good quality and look good. I don’t want any drainage problems either. Fire Marshal Setian was asked if he had any comments that he would like to offer. He said you should have my comments (in the commission packets). Mr. Lynch from City Corp said they have some possible changes; however, we’ll wait until this body approves before they bring anything to us. Mr. Garza said we are talking about moving a fire hydrant. Commissioner Sims asked what width roads would be constructed. Mr. Garza said 26' rather than the usual 27'. It will give a little more green space. Commissioner Skelton made the motion to table until next month. The motion was seconded by Commissioner Sims and passed unanimously. Meeting Adjourned. ___________________________________________________ Chairman Dennis Boyd 8