Plannng Board

City of Trenton Planning Board Conference and Public Hearing Thursday, September 28, 2023 Via Microsoft Teams or phone: 609-436-9298 The Conference ID is 412 046 968# Members in Attendance: Charles Romanow, Chair Jonathan Conner Caty Dominguez Jeff Halpern Joseph Harrison Anthony Santora Members Not in Attendance: Randy Baum, Vice Chair Patricia Ni’ma-Mohammed Markus Green Wanda Swiggett Staff in Attendance: Michael Kolber, Senior Planner Thomas Hall, Planning Board Attorney Cherry Oakley, Planning Board Secretary PUBLIC HEARING Current Planning Board Membership (as of 9/28/23) Class Term Ending Date Board Member I (Mayor’s Representative) Mayor’s Term Markus Green II (City Employee) 12/31/23 Anthony Santora III (City Council 12/31/23 Joseph Harrison Representative) IV (City Resident) 12/31/26 Patricia Ni’ma- Mohammed IV (City Resident) 12/31/23 Randy Baum IV (City Resident) 12/31/25 Jeff Halpern IV (City Resident) 12/31/23 VACANT IV (City Resident) 12/31/25 Jonathan Connor IV (City Resident) 12/31/26 Charles Romanow ALTERNATES IV (City Resident) 12/31/23 Wanda Swiggett IV (City Resident) 12/31/24 VACANT 1 The meeting was called to order at 7:13pm by Mr. Romanow. He read the Open Public Meetings Act and a quorum was verified. Mr. Kolber announced that the Climate Resilience Plan will be presented at the November 9th Planning Board hearing. He also noted that the plan presented tonight is open for public comment and those comments can be emailed to him at the City. Item #1 Public Hearing: Trenton Cannabis Ordinance The City of Trenton is in the process of amending its adopted Cannabis Ordinance. This update will include amendments to the Trenton Land Development Ordinance, as well as the Coalport, Marine Terminal, Pennington Avenue, Route One Industrial, Roebling Complex, Train Station, and New York Avenue Redevelopment Area Plans. Mr. Chuck Latini, City’s consultant and planner for the Cannabis Ordinance, was sworn in. He noted that the advice this Board provided to the former City Council has come full circle. The Council at that time wanted to take a more conservative approach so the recommendations from this Board were reconsidered. For this round of evaluation, he began with the original recommendations of this Board and then looked at the Zoning Ordinances and inserted additional regulated products. The Mayor has been working on the public strategy for the fee aspect for residents of Trenton. Alternative Treatment Centers will eventually want to convert to a dual purpose so definitions for those conversions and how they apply to what would be needed to pursue Site Plan approval, parking requirements, etc. is being analyzed. What might differ from their original approvals is what will be evaluated. He reviewed the other discounts that could be offered and the existing distance between locations for public access in order to avoid creating a ‘Cannabis Row’ in any sections of Trenton. The buffers that faith-based communities wanted to be considered were also evaluated and determined that buffers related to the church building instead of all church-owned properties would be the standard. He described that there planned to be between 10- 20 operators per category, depending on the category, allowed to operate within the City. He described the vetting process that someone who may be considering purchasing a property for a cannabis purpose would be able to use in order to have advanced warning if what they wanted to use a property for would not be allowed. 2 There will be an overlay map created to use for developers to easily understand where the cannabis ordinance may affect a specific zone. Significant ownership interest in the State statute is defined as 5% or more. Mr. Latini described that an Advisory Committee is not allowed to be an independent group, so the process, with the support of the City’s law office, will be a committee underneath City Council. In the Cannabis Community, there is a belief that people use it for medicinal purposes. The Advisory Committee is interested in getting to know the operator and understand their ethos and beliefs in order to develop programming with the operator and support them to be a good business citizen. This can be done with the language in the ordinance that encourages such familiarity. The revenue generation that will result from the updated ordinance recommendations will go to support more than just cannabis training and education. Mr. Romanow asked if there was anyone in the gallery who wanted to speak for or against this presentation. With no answer from the gallery the following vote was set forth: Provide a Resolution to the City Council that the Planning Board finds the ordinance is consistent with the Trenton250 Master Plan Member Aye Nay Ab- Motioned Seconded stain Charles Romanow, Chair X Jonathan Conner X X Cathy Dominguez X Jeff Halpern X X Joseph Harrison X Anthony Santora X Presentation began at 7:44PM Item #2 Board will review the proposed ordinance for consistency with the Trenton250 Master Plan. The public will have an opportunity to ask questions and provide comments on the Presentation: Trenton Transit-Oriented Development Redevelopment Area Plans The City of Trenton received a Transit and Community Development Initiative Grant from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission to update seven redevelopment area plans around the Trenton train and light rail stations. This update proposes to align them 3 with the Trenton250 Master Plan, the Transit-Oriented Development Strategic Plan, and the ongoing update to the City’s Land Development Ordinance. The presentation will review the first draft of the Redevelopment Area Plans. The public will have the opportunity to ask questions and provide comments. The public comment period for the draft Ordinances will go to October 13, 2023. The plans are available for review at https://www.trentonnj.org/743/Trenton-Transit-District-Plans, along with additional relevant information. Ms. Nancy O’Neil and Ms. Beatrice Vegara-Alleer of the Philadelphia firm WRT presented the updates to the 7 Redevelopment Plans. Referencing a presentation projected on a monitor, Ms. O’Neil described the benefits of this process and the resulting updates. She described the process they used to develop the updates and the timeline. She noted that the overall plan has sections that can be pulled out specific to a particular geographic area attributed to a Redevelopment Area for ease of use. Additionally, she reviewed the District Strategies for each Redevelopment Area. Also referencing the presentation projected on the monitor, Ms. Vegara-Alleer went through the proposed improvements for each of the Redevelopment Area Plans that were considered catalysts for development. Ms. O’Neil reviewed the ideas they had around Implementation Measures and indicated that there is still room for the Board to provide prioritization of those measures. Mr. Kolber indicated that there is a plan to defer to the Land Development Ordinance while the Redevelopment Plans provide the nuanced differences that can occur in an area rather than having it be confusing to have more overarching changes driven by the Redevelopment Plans. There is planned a single page that will detail all of the differences in an area that will allow deviation from the LDO. He reviewed the process for the adoption of Ordinances. There is an intention to have Trenton be a public arts catalyst. Ms. O’Neil indicated that more public arts recommendations could be added to this draft. The printed version of the presentation can be exported as pages instead of spreads for ease of reading. There are draft recommendations crafted for inclusion in the documents that will have the language of ‘may happen’ instead of ‘must happen’ or ‘shall happen’ for flexibility purposes. The Board suggested that inserting the sense of scale for the impact on parking be added. The review of crash data specific to intersections has been considered in the development of recommendations through a different mechanism. Clarifying who will lead the effort on the Implementation Measures was advised. 4 Mr. Bernard McMullen, representing the Mercer Cemetery, which has opened up for the month of September, noted that they are in support of this project as it will help them to access grants and do programming that would not be possible if the area does not improve and develop. He is also representing the Trenton Cycling Revolution, which also supports this plan as it mentions biking “…no less than 115 times”. He asked how we can change the culture and the spirit of the people who are coming into Trenton and moving around Trenton. He noted without changing this culture no plan implementation will be successful. Mr. Paul Soltis shared that he also supports this project but asked if there will be a focus on providing hotels within the City. Mr. Kolber indicated that additional hotel space is not anticipated for the City but instead a rehabilitation of the Marriott is under consideration. Mr. Jason Banks was speaking on behalf of small businesses. He indicated that there is no way for small businesses to thrive that are the size of a cart. The ordinances seem to only allow storefront-scale small businesses, and he asked if cart-scale businesses can be included in the changes in ordinances. Mr. Kolber indicated that Zoning isn’t the issue with small cart businesses but instead Health Code requirements end up limiting those businesses. He stated that the Ordinance updates are considering food trucks as long as they do not go into the public right of way. Additionally, the changes encourage allowing smaller businesses that serve the residents in Residential Zones. Adjourned 8:47PM Respectfully submitted Cherry Oakley, Planning Board Secretary 5