for the City of Denton. It is five o'clock. This meeting
has been duly
posted and we do have a quorum present and our first item
of business in our
work session is going to be clarification of agenda items.
Thank you Chairperson
Strange. If the Commission has any questions regarding the
plots we can go
over this. Over those else we can dive straight into the
other two public
hearing items that we have. I just wanted to get a feel if
we were comfortable
with the plants. Question on plants. One of the plants we
're looking at is that
where caliber collision is asking okay my I had a question
about. Let me
recognize you Commissioner Beck. Thank you Chair. No I'm
thinking of the one where they're going to do
cavenders. That's not a plant issue is it? Okay. Super.
Anybody else on the question on plant or we're going to
move on to something else?
In that case we'll go ahead and move on to our public
hearing items that will be
heard at the public hearing. The first one is regarding an
amendment to the
Fry Street overlay district. I'm going to ask Sophie Humer
to make that
presentation for us. Good evening Commissioners. Sophie Hum
er, Assistant
Planner. I'll be presenting to you Z1529 the Fry Street
overlay district
amendment. The request before you is to hold a public
hearing and consider
making a recommendation to City Council regarding amending
subchapter 3575
Fry Street overlay district to create a new sub district in
development
standards for a mixed-use building on approximately 1.7
acres. The proposed
development is located on West Oak and West Hickory Street.
It has frontage on
both of those roads. It's also located between Fry Street
and Avenue B. However
it does not have frontage on either of those roads. The
zoning for the property
is downtown commercial general but it's located within the
Fry Street overlay district and in a couple slides I'll get
into what exactly
that means. It's also important to remember that multif
amily and retail are
permitted by right in the district. So the Fry Street
overlay district was
created in 2000 to preserve the unique history and
character of the area. Under
sub area A at this time and as it stands in the ordinance
today, in sub area A you
can have a building of 45 feet in height maximum of three
stories and the
density of multifamily units is based on a minimum unit
size. So for example
efficiency apartments are approximately 1,000 square feet
and so on. In 2010 the
Fry Street overlay district was further amended to
accommodate a
mixed-use development. Again multifamily and retail on the
bottom and in this
sub area the height of the building went to 55 feet, a
total of four stories and
the density was set at 72.5 units per acre. What remains in
this green area is
still sub area A. Commissioner Beck. Units are what? Bed
rooms or the entire
part? Are we counting kitchens? Sure one bedroom is equal
to one half of a unit
and so all of the measurements you'll see are based on that
. They're
essentially calibrated to that density. So two bedroom
apartment is a unit? Unit. Okay thank you.
So the applicant EDR is proposing to further amend the Fry
Street overlay
district creating sub area B1 to accommodate multifamily
and retail. In
this sub district or sub area the height would be 58 feet,
a total of five stories
and the density would be 88.2 units per acre. The applicant
is also
requesting amendments to the multifamily parking
regulations. Sub area
A and B only require one space for multi-family units with
two or
more bedrooms. Sub area B1 is asking for units with two or
more bedrooms to only
require 0.75 spaces per bedroom. No other amendments are
going to be made to the
parking ratios of the Fry Street overlay district in this
proposal. This is just
a summary slide and we can come back to this at the end of
the presentation of
the current sub areas and then the proposed sub area B1. So
now I want to
delve a little bit into the neighborhood university
compatibility
future land use designation and what that means to the area
. So the subject
property is located in this neighborhood university
compatibility area. UNT is to
the south and it's flanked on the east and west by low
residential future land
use designations and to the north is a neighborhood mixed
use designation. Some
of the goals of the neighborhood university land use
chapter and this is
direct from the Denton plan 2030 is that the area should
provide a gradual
transition in scale use and character between the
universities and the
surrounding neighborhoods. Development should also
encourage uses that are in
close proximity to one another and encourage walking and
bicycling. Character
of the area should also be maintained to ensure that new
development is sensitive
to the surrounding and surrounding built and natural
environment in terms of
scale and form. The development should also adequately
address parking needs to
mitigate the impact to adjacent neighborhoods. So now
moving into the
considerations the purpose of the Fry Street overlay
district originally was
to maintain the character of the area. It's traditionally
commercial area. Proposed
amendment would allow for one of the highest densities that
we've seen in the
area and while the use is permitted the original intent
again of the overlay was
to maintain cohesive development and maintain the character
of the area.
There's also a deficit between what is required by the
overlay district and what
the proposed amendment would do to that parking requirement
for this development
essentially there would be a 110 space deficit in the
parking and reductions on
this site-by-site basis aren't a comprehensive approach to
analyzing the
impact of parking reductions in the greater Fry Street area
. These are some
departmental considerations. The scoping for the traffic
impact analysis has been
initiated however the TIA has not been submitted for review
and also from the
fire department the applicant has not yet been able to
verify the aerial
apparatus access to the building with the site plans that
we've provided in
your backup. Commissioner Taylor. Just to clarify what is
that last phrase about
aerial apparatus access? Sure they you know in addition to
the minimum or sorry
in addition to the sprinkler system inside the building the
fire truck also
has to be able to air aerially access the building. They
need I believe 15 feet
off of the building and then a 26 foot wide fire lane.
Currently based on the
site plan they only have 10 feet. The Sterling Fry
development went through a
council initiated process. The developer initiated it it
had to go to council
where they eliminated parking on Fry and Welch. I believe
that is something that
the applicant is still pursuing however staff has not been
able to review
anything yet. So there isn't a question of having the
equipment it's just having
enough access for the equipment to reach. Correct. Okay
thank you. Commissioner Beck.
Do we have reasons why both of these are not available now?
Why they've been delayed?
It's timing. In the backup we provided a project timeline.
The full
submittal was done in December and it went through its
first review process.
Technically its status is currently returned for review
which means that
fire engineering planning still have some outstanding
concerns. However it is
the full right of the applicant to move it forward to PNZ.
Some of these will
affect the site plan. There are there is a minor amendment
procedure already in
the Fry Street overlay district so some of these could come
back and be minor
amendments if they hit that threshold. Okay thanks. And
just to clarify if I may
the applicant if the request from the applicant is request
for approval of the
amendments that are proposed in front of you so as it
relates to the site plan
and as it relates to if this were approved and they're
building permit
approval would be contingent on ensuring the TIA was
addressed, accurately
reviewed and addressed and all the comments associated with
that as well as
all health and safety requirements associated with the fire
department.
Just a question. I don't recall us having projects come
before us since most things
haven't been done correctly or I don't say correctly yet
before it's presented
to us. Is there some sort of reason why there's a fast
track as to why they're
have a deadline or something they're trying to meet and we
should even
consider moving this on to council and let them take care
of this before it gets
to council? When the applicant turned in their submittal
when they
intimated that they were wanting to proceed with this
program their primary
intent was to determine if they would actually secure
approval of these
amendments. In order to review the amendments they did give
a concept plan
that showed the massing of the building and through that
review these elements
were identified. As part of a zoning change request they
can't anybody can
come in and request a zoning change or amendment to a
zoning document or an
overlay district and then it is the responsibility of the
planning staff to
do a slide use analysis to determine the appropriateness of
the request and of
course the Commission then can recommend favorably table
the item add
considerations or conditions to it and move it on to City
Council or deny the
request and move it on to City Council. Okay thank you. So
in analysis of the
development in its kind of cohesiveness with the Denton
plan 2030 we recognize
that the development would increase the stock of student
housing which is an
important component of the Denton plan 2030. However there
are some associated
development conditions that aren't consistent with the Dent
on plan and these
are very important considerations to staff and also to the
neighborhood. One
is that it doesn't adequately address the parking needs for
the project and
doesn't mitigate spillover to the surrounding area. There's
also a
potential impact on surrounding infrastructure and there's
an
inconsistency in urban form and scale specifically related
to the height. Staff
also has concerns about the continuous amendments to the
Fry Street overlay
district standards without fully understanding the impact
of higher
density and intensity projects on infrastructure,
transportation and
parking network, neighborhood compatibility. However we do
see
development pressure in this area and we want to make sure
that those things are
taken care of so the developer can come in request these
changes and have them
fully compatible with the neighborhood. So staff has taken
a look at doing a
revised Fry Street area small area plan that was presented
to Council yesterday
to favorable reception so I just wanted to throw that in as
a FYI.
Staff presented just a draft work plan to City Council
during work
session about a Fry Street small area plan and it would try
to
address these needs so that developers could come in and
see that there are
things that we're working on and trying to get just take a
look at. Commissioner
Taylor. Thank you chair. What specific infrastructure is
concerning? Sure,
there I believe sewer. There are some outstanding issues on
the sewer whether
an upsize is needed to align. I believe it's on Hickory. I
think Earl can correct
me if I'm wrong. Okay. This also this area there's old
infrastructure and there
are some CIP projects in this area and it just needs a
comprehensive look to
see what these intensity projects do to this area. Thank
you. I'll chime in on
that question. Is it a capacity issue or the age of the
infrastructure? I would
ask Earl to answer that question.
Good evening. It's more of a capacity issue given the
intensity of the uses
coming in and the size of the infrastructure that's along H
ickory.
Okay I just want to make sure it's a capacity that they
would be responsible
for that versus. No if it's the age of the infrastructure
it'd be more of a
maintenance. Correct. Okay. So is this just to follow up.
Commissioner Taylor. Thank you.
Is the the capacity is it a localized issue or is it from
Fry Street to
Mayhill needs to be upgraded? It would be more of a
localized issue we just haven't
really gone into evaluation without any demand information.
Commissioner Roselle. Thank you Chair. Obviously I wasn't
around in 2010 to
understand the sub area B. It seems as though that the two
main differences are
the height and the parking considerations. If anyone knows
can
someone walk me through. Is there any differences I'm
missing because it's a
three foot higher building and there's the parking which is
I think substantial.
Is there anything else significant about the two? I'm
wondering why these other
issues were they addressed and the other sub area B and how
did that get passed?
Maybe some history of that would be helpful. Sure in 2010
the application
came forward it was very I believe it was very similar to
this one
multifamily use project mixed use. That project the Ster
ling Fry located a
little bit further east of this project. They were able to
meet their parking
requirements. They were able to do one-for-one parking once
they got the
alleviation on Fry Street and Welch. The size I believe was
also a consideration.
Based on our neighborhood meetings that we've held recently
a lot of the
neighbors aren't happy with the way that parking is in the
neighborhood. They're
also concerned about buildings being brought up to the
street line. Landscape
was also brought up during those neighborhood meetings and
just a couple
other kind of public realm issues. So I wasn't here in 2010
. And if I can chime
in from a staff perspective or from a planning discipline
perspective one of
the criteria that we have to strongly understand and
analyze is are we further
compromising an overlay district that was established to
meet a specific goal
or some specific criteria or goals. In this instance then
the question arises
are we going to continue to amend this overlay district or
to accommodate
development or do we need to look at the bigger picture and
revisit that corridor
or the Fry Street overlay district and come up with
criteria that are actually
more attractive and can sustain and attract development.
And that's the bigger
picture that we have to analyze at this point as well.
So to follow up with that. Commissioner Rosale. Thank you.
By rights if this met
parking and height requirements they wouldn't need the new
overlay? Correct. So
if they if they complied with the existing conditions
specified in sub
area B, A I'm sorry in sub area A and they met all those
requirements which is
parking and building height they would go straight from
building permits at
the moment. Thank you. Before we move on you mentioned
there was a they just
passed a slide the Fry Street small area plan. Would it be
appropriate to
share or not at this time the direction and the favorable
response from council
to give us a little better idea of where we're going with
this or is that
premature to get into that? We can discuss what was
presented at the City
Council work session yesterday. Two things that we need to
preface this
discussion or conversation with is one we adopted the
comprehensive plan just
recently. One of the major goals primary short-term goals
of this comprehensive
plan Denton plan 2030 is to revisit our small area plans
and it specifically
highlights or addresses this area as well. That being said
we started
evaluating and understanding what small areas do we need to
start looking at.
We've received a lot of queries regarding this area and we
strongly feel
that we need to have parameters in place that would
accommodate that. We also know
that the neighborhood is extremely involved and active in
improving their
community and their neighborhood. That being said we also
presented to the City
Council yesterday in a work session saying we would like to
initiate a small
area plan and through that address the Fry Street small
area plan. Do that as a
subset. Create a small Fry Street small area plan and
address overlay
conditions on a parallel track once the small area plan is
initiated. We received
a lot of questions from our City Council and we feel we
sufficiently addressed
those, succinctly addressed those as well and we will now
proceed to the next
steps which is to hopefully establish a committee through
nomination by City
Council. So we have a ways to go then? Yes. Okay. Thanks.
So just to expand on
those neighborhood meetings, two of them were held.
Neighborhood expressed the
level of comfort with sub area A of the Fry Street overlay
district as it was
written. Concerns were raised by attendance of the meeting
that included
increased traffic along Oak and Hickory, pedestrian and veh
icular traffic as well
as bike traffic, increased parking in single-family
neighborhoods adjacent to
the project, that parking spillover, and also the lack of a
shade study to study
for the height of the building. Per section 3573 of the
Denton Development
Code, special purpose overlay districts are established to
protect and enhance
specific neighborhoods, groupings of buildings. These
buildings have
characteristics or these areas have characteristics which
are distinct from
lands and structures outside of those districts. Changes to
the overlay
district must enhance or conform to the purpose of the
overlay district's goals
and objectives. As submitted, the proposed development only
further amends the
district to conform to specific development proposal
without comprehensive
analysis of the impact to adjacent neighborhoods.
That notification date is wrong. Public notifications were
sent out earlier this
year. 27 were sent out. 27 200 foot public notices were
sent out. 500
courtesy notices were sent out via regular mail and I can
get that date for
you in regular session.
-Sophie? -Yes. -Pardon me. Can you go back to that last
slide? -Commissioner Bruegel. -Thank you, Chair.
So I know that there's been neighborhood meetings about
this and I've been
hearing from people who live in this neighborhood. Have any
notifications
come in since? I mean, I would think that there would be
something highlighted
in this 200 and 500 foot buffer? Did I get lost in the mail
? Where are they? -A lot of these, if
you look at the land use around this, they're mostly
businesses, multi-family,
they're not owner occupied. That is the limitation of the
200 and the 500 foot
notice that's required by state law. Of course we take it
head to head when we
consider the input from those neighborhood meetings. I
think I
provided additional information in the staff report as well
. But no, even by
phone I have not heard. We also provide our emails on those
notification letters,
phone numbers, all of that. -Okay. Yeah, thanks. -No
problem. -Commissioner Beck. -That does seem odd.
I made the public aware of just literally what we're gonna
do at the
workshop today and that was all I pointed out. And there
were several people that
acted like they weren't aware of this at all. And one was a
business owner, Kim,
sorry, I can't remember the last name. So I'm wondering if,
you know, we did make
contact well enough. I know the attempt was, okay, nothing
ain't there, but there's
probably more opposition to this than this indicates here.
So how do we go
about revisiting this, I guess, based on what I'm seeing in
here? -If I can cut in. -Commissioner Bruegel. -Thank you,
Chair. I'm glad that we have the public
hearing process because if we're only contacting the owners
of the properties
who may not, I don't know if they live in the area or not,
I'm glad that the
there is that public hearing process so we will have an
opportunity to hear from
the public and that, you know, there have been neighborhood
meetings on this
because I'm really curious to hear what the people who
actually live in that
area have to say about that because this map is not, it
doesn't help, it doesn't
give me a good sense of where the neighborhood's at so I'm
glad we have
this this evening. -We're doing the public hearing today,
right? -Commissioner Peck, I think I'll throw in maybe
where you're going. I mean, obviously the
knows that the center's certified so they definitely get
them. Where these come back
into play and you have people outside have an opinion but
this comes into play
in far as our vote the percentage of responses that we get
that would be
opposed affects the majority that we have to have or voting
wise on this board
so at this time based on this map we don't have to have a
super majority it
would just be a simple majority vote based on what the no
opposition for that
within the 200 foot buffer is. -Okay, so if we get into the
public here and we do
have somebody that is in this area and states their
opposition to it then
that'll fall into place at that time like the super
majority requirement. -Actually
it's a the Ditten code when I did further research does not
require super
majority for this board so we're only going to do it for
council so that we
are able to have written objection all the way up to the
actual public hearing
date for council. -Thank you for the correction.
-So staff is recommending denial of Z1529 based on the
considerations
presented and as the request the requested amendment
further compromises
the Fry Street overlay district standards. That's the end
of my
presentation. Commissioner Bruegel. -Thank you chair. So I
guess I have more of a
comment for staff than a question and this has come up in
in other amendments
and ordinances that I've reviewed. Specifically on now this
is the draft so
I wish that this would have gotten fixed before it came to
us but on page 11 on
page 11 twice it mentions hold on I want to find exactly
the words here. Sorry
thank you okay and this is in the draft so I wish it would
have gotten fixed
before it came to us. -Of the overlay. -Yeah yeah yeah no
my point my point is
just kind of a general one not really specific to this plan
but in general on
page 11 twice it mentions the director of planning and
development or quote his
designee and I mean we are an inclusive city and I would
very much like if the
language that we have in these ordinances and amendments
could be more
inclusive as well so that's my that's my comment in general
to staff is like when
we get red line stuff like let's just take care of that
yeah. -Commissioner Bruegel
that will be addressed. -Thank you. -I'm sensitive to that
too so we will start
saying their designee. -Thank you thank you ladies
appreciate it.
-Commissioner Beck. -Thank you chair. Let's see you
indicate that while this parking
does align with the goals of creating more walkable and
pedestrian mine
environment reductions in the requirement on a site-by-site
occurrence
is not a comprehensive approach to analyzing the impact of
parking reduction
and correct you know so let me see if I understand what we
're talking about here
the idea here with creating additions where there's fewer
parking spaces is
automatically going to enhance more walking is that the
idea behind what
they're thinking is? -There's well-established literature
on parking
minimums essentially create induced parking demand if there
are parking
spaces people are going to be encouraged to drive and of
course we want there to
be adequate parking in our neighborhood districts in our
downtown for people to
come and visit but for people that live in that area that
may want to walk and
do that sort of thing parking minimums are best adopted at
a more macro level
rather on a site-by-site basis where they're hard to track
and it's hard to
track the impact of those on those developments. -And
Sophie if you could talk
a little bit about let's talk about the overlay district
itself the existing
conditions the existing environment the existing land uses
and then the fact
that we also have a campus adjacent to that overlay
district we also have an
off-street parking requirement we have a CIP program how is
that off-street going
to work UNT is looking at their parking program as well
right now and that
obviously dominos into any development that occurs with
this within this area
so we don't want to compromise accessibility parking
requirements to an
extent where it becomes impossible to utilize the site
either or surrounding
properties to be able to be accessed.
-Anybody else?
Okay thank you Sophie.
Our next item Ross Cobbiston will be presenting then our
senior planner and
he's going to discuss a change in zoning from industrial
center employment to
RCCD. Thank you Ross. -Thank you Chair Maddahl. This is Z15
31, Cavendish boot city.
As a request as Maddahl said to recommend to City Council
regarding a rezoning from
industrial center employment ICE district to a regional
center commercial
downtown district RCCD on approximately 2.9 acres. Subject
property is located
on the west side of the I-35 frontage road approximately a
thousand feet south
of West University Drive. When we look at the zoning the
intact zoning on the
property is ICE which was established with the 2002 city
rezoning for light
industrial uses within the area and it was anticipated to
help support
use anticipated support uses such as office warehouse and
hotels to support
the larger ICG district which is industrial commercial
general over to
the west which is located more towards the Denton
Enterprise Airport and
parcels in between this section and the airport. The ICE
district does not permit
retail activity and has a general retail activity and
limits retail activity to
only gas station uses by limitation L18 and caps the square
footage for retail
as 10,000 square feet only in conjunction to gas station
uses. RCCD on
the other hand being proposed in the purple permits retail
and regional
activity commercial activity generally throughout the
district. When we look at
RCCD zoning the intent of this is to promote mixed-use
development with urban
character. It permits a wide array of commercial and retail
uses and it's
typically been used as a zoning category for regional
commercial centers along I-35E.
Your staff report indicates kind of those series of
developments along the
I-35 corridor where our CCD zoning has allowed large retail
activity. Looking at
some adjacent uses we do have a gas station on the hard
corner on the
southwest corner of 380 and 35. We have permits in for a
future vehicle repair
use kind of in between the vacant area. There's a existing
commercial and
warehouse storage units existing on site where the north of
the proposed
Cavendish site and then down a little bit further is a
professional office building
and light manufacturing a little bit further south than
that. As you can see
there's the main retail portions with razor-anched to the
east. Just some
dividing lines here the railroad line as mentioned in your
staff report is an
appropriate divider between industrial uses and commercial
uses and as the
sections grow within this area on the I-35 frontage it
would be better served
to be rezoned for future retail uses with I under RCCD
zoning even though at
this point I can't get to the pointer but this area will
maintain be
maintained as ICE until further rezoning occurs. Future
land use the future land
use map for the comprehensive plan indicates regional mixed
use and then
the dividing line of the railroad shows that industrial
commerce is a land use
category on the west side and that rezoning to RCCD is
consistent with the
future land use plan. So under the considerations for their
request RCCD
would permit commercial and retail uses without zoning
limitations. RCCD has
been used to zone regional commercial areas along I-35. The
rail line is an
appropriate divider between industrial land uses and
commercial land uses and
it's more reasonable that reason that development and
economic patterns would
suggest using the I-35 frontage for commercial activity
instead of
industrial support surfaces so and it is consistent with
the future land use map.
So under the criteria for approval points one and two staff
has evaluated and
confers that we are in support of the zoning for those for
those points.
Public notifications were made to property owners 200 and
500 and we only
have one in response which is the major property owner and
again we recommend
approval and I can stand for any questions. Commissioner
Beck.
Correct. Correct. We'll just keep it to that level. Thank
you chair. Commissioner
Taylor. So you showed that there was going to be a slice to
the south
potentially rezoned RCCD this is that a request coming? No
that was it's stated
in your report that we did ask the developer to consider
that he is a major
property owner for the entire area and he was not willing
to help to codify
that at this point and just allows options to be open until
but we did
state that you know there is the potentiality of putting
industrial uses
as that's the zoning on the ground now. And the site
immediately to the north
of this one? Yes. Storage and warehouse? Yes. That front
building has several
retails basis is that correct? Correct. Is that a conform
ing use? Yes it is. It's
retail in conformance to a the warehouse product warehouses
to the back so they're
kind of symbiotic. So that's considered like a just lost a
office warehouse
district or something. Okay so and so what's the so the
limitation on retail
is less than 10,000 square feet? Correct. And I see okay
yeah I just look at
this and you know we we are planning to do some other work
in this area so I
was I agree that the railroad track is a natural barrier
and this area facing an
interstate and a US highway gets a ton of traffic could be
a really good retail
location so I I was wondering again why we what why we aren
't looking at both
the area to the north and the area to the south for a more
appropriate kind of
retail oriented use while not excluding the warehouse
aspect perhaps but but
allowing greater retail use. Any other questions for Ross?
Thank you.
I think what I'm going to do at this time it's almost 540
we've got food and
I think we've got some pretty long presentations according
to staff so I
think we'll take a five minute recess if I get food and
then we'll start our
time our next round of presentations. At 548 I think the
next item we have on
here is to receive a report regarding the bicycle and
pedestrian accommodations.
Thank you Chairperson Strange I'll invite Julie Anderson to
make this
presentation for us tonight. Good afternoon Commissioners
good afternoon
it's evening close enough. I am Julie Anderson I am the
bike and ped
coordinator for the city I've been here for a year
yesterday was my year
anniversary date. I think up some past meetings there are
just some questions
by the Commissioners of how we actually implement the bike
plan what's the P&Z
role in that where are we at so I'm here to just provide
you with a very nice
status update of our bike plan and where we are so just
what we're going to cover
today what is this actually an update to I'm going to go
through that part very
briefly to get to the real meat of it which is how we
implement our bike plan
I'm going to go over some of our upcoming and completed
projects and then
do an overview I'm going to switch gears and do an overview
of our 2015 bike ped
counts that we did in September and I actually forgot to
include the bike ped
report count report in your backup so I printed it off
today and handed it to
you so you all have that and I will discuss that at the end
so first of all
so we're all on the same page of where actually the bike
ped plan fits in the
overall grand context of the city so this is our it's
officially called the
pedestrian and bicycle linkage component of the Denton
mobility plan which means
it's a part of our mobility plan which you guys have heard
a lot about recently
so we have the bike ped component we have the roadway
component and I think
there's also a trucking freight component and these are all
part of our
Denton plan 2030 our comprehensive plan so that's where it
falls in the grand
scheme of things and in case you're wondering what exactly
is it an update to
why do we call it the update to well in April of 2001 they
passed an ordinance
of the bike ped the ped bike linkage component map and this
was just an
ordinance with some talking points about why we plan for
pedestrians and
bicyclists three highlights sidewalks should be given
priority in funding
talked about bike and ped trails that were eight feet in
width since then
Ashtos upgraded their minimum to 10 and then I talked about
bike routes how we
generally put them on collector streets and those that are
less than 40 miles an
hour but to also consider bike routes on streets that
parallel major materials
this is what the map looks like sorry it's a really awful
looking map nobody
seemed to have an original digital copy of it so this is a
scanned image and
this is what it was it was just a map so this was in 2001
we did some work to
implement that but we decided in 2010 about that time we
needed to update it
have kind of a little bit more than just a map so they had
to start it off with
two public meetings one was in March one was in April you
might think those
dates are really far apart from each other but in between
those they had four
focus group meetings focus group included local cyclists
park staff other
people who are in just I think Commissioner Briegel was
actually on
future commissioners you know yeah so those this group of
people were the core
group who took feedback and talked with the consultants and
city staff on what
to include in the bike plan what routes to choose all those
things so after we
had they had those meetings we presented all of it to the
Commission's you can see
it came to PNZ three different times two work sessions and
then the public
hearing and then finally in February of 2012 it was adopted
by City Council so
this is our bike plan it's no more just a map it's actually
a document now with
a map that has lots of information and that's what I'm
gonna go over so the
plan it does talk about facilities we're gonna have in our
city so shared routes
a wide curb lane bike lane a side path it also gives a
brief it like images
can't think of the correct word sorry images of what the
infrastructure would
look like if you were to implement it on our roadway it
gives a very simple cost
estimates we were finding that their cost estimates are
actually higher than
what they have in here because the bike plan their
estimates they provide don't
include right of way acquisition reconstruction restriping
or signs and
signals so it's a very base number that they provide in
here and we don't really
use the provided numbers very much also what we got out of
the plan is when they
did the public meeting avoided people actually want if you
had a million
dollars what would you do with a million dollars and we
could actually do a whole
lot with a million dollars for bike and pet projects it's
only a drop in the
bucket if you're doing your street you know reconstruction
but a million can
get you really far with bike infrastructure and the number
one thing
people wanted 31% said they want to designate more lanes on
streets and so
that is what we're talking about today is how do we get
those lanes on the
street how do we implement what the bike plan has said and
there's actually two
paths we can go down there's the city of dentin path where
they pay for it we pay
for it or what I call coming soon it's the development that
's where P&Z comes
in they do have a development has a small and sometimes
significant role in
how we implement the bike plan so the city of dentin path
there's essentially
three different ways there's our CIP projects our big bond
projects like
bonnie bray mayhill East Hickory those are paid through our
bond project our
bond funding which we did a bond election in 2014 and then
I want to say
is also in 2011 or 2012 streets and engineering and
drainage also have other
projects they're working on Hinkle is a drainage project
that's underway it's
not underway it's in design right now we have a bike
accommodation on that roadway
so we piggyback on that Montecito was a street
reconstruction project it was
also a route on our bike plan and so when they redid it we
added charrows to
that road and then Highland was a street reconstruction as
well as a big street
project and we came in and also striped as a contraflow
bike lane and that
wasn't a complete street project I mean it was a completely
paid for by streets
part of that came out the bike fund which the third way we
implement is the
bike fund that's dedicated funding each year it's two
hundred thousand dollars
and I work with our transportation engineer Noreen house
right on
implementing and spending that money so we put charrows on
Alice this year we
did Oakland Windsor Drive was also a bike fun project that
was a road diet we
went from two lanes each direction to one lane each
direction with the
continuous turn lane and then bike lanes on either side so
you might think great
we have all these plans to pay for them but how do you
actually make sure that
all gets implemented with a bike plan so that's my job bike
ped coordinator I
attend lots of meetings to coordinate with people so there
's a monthly
utility and CIP coordination meeting that's where all the
different
departments who work within our right of way so we have
water wastewater
streets our traffic ops people we meet monthly to talk
about our projects and
that's actually been very beneficial because previously we
weren't doing that
so there were a few projects that this year that had to get
delayed because we
weren't aware that there was a utility project going on I
also meet with our
transportation engineer every month sometimes it's more
than that but we do
meet at least once a month to talk about our upcoming
projects that we've put on
our bike fund this is the most common way that our projects
are funded because
it's usually big projects or it's our money and we're
controlling it so much
simpler for us to do and these are just photos of just in
case you were curious
that's Hickory Street our Sharos the middle one is our
contraflow bike lane
on Highland and then the end one is Sharos on Old North
Julie
Commissioner Bruegel thank you chair so the City Council
allocates $200,000 a
year for the bike plan correct I think the overall
projected cost was like 1.6
million or something so it's gonna be like over a 10-year
project 1.6 not for
the entire plan okay you can maybe 1.5 million could get
you I think what the
plan says is you could do 1.5 million for the it's broken
into immediate short
range and then long range so yeah so my question is how
much money has City
Council set aside to date and how much money has been spent
from the bike plan
I have a slide for that oh awesome okay continue thank you
yes so and this yeah I said this is the most common way
that we get things paid
for it because they're large projects that cover a large
length of roadway
there's a development path this is where P&Z comes in as
you know you guys deal
with new development coming in so I attend our development
review committee
each week I also attend some pre development review
committee meetings
with engineering and transportation which has been very
beneficial I work
with each of the planning and engineering groups within the
development
review and then this is also where you notice other items
like we should
probably put bike racks in here you know I advocate for
bike racks whenever I
tend to meeting oh this development needs to have a bike
rack and people will
say oh well who's riding their bike there I don't know
maybe the employees
you know employees ride their bikes too so we talk about
sidewalks and access
pathways this is where new development pays for the
improvements so that's a
bike rack at Target I imagine we had to ask Target to put
in bike racks with
their development it's not required so they generally don't
just do it on their
own but bike racks are super cheap when you compare it to
the cost of a large
project you can get the simplest one for 200 if you're
gonna go really fancy
maybe a thousand dollars so this mixture is a unicorn lake
correct we just the code I think just recommends it but
nothing is required
yeah
well it's hard to encourage development that's already
built we can't force
anybody that's already built but we can ask new development
to put it in or we
could actually put in our code where it was a requirement
and I've had
preliminary discussions with the planning department about
making that
happen Commissioner Dudowitz one suggestion to piggyback on
that is had
the city pay for it and asked the owner of that property if
you wouldn't mind
that putting it in that would might solve that problem
because if somebody
came to my property and said hey we're willing to do this
okay why not right
we and we've discussed that as well too do we have a
program of repurchase bike
racks and we offer them to the public there's been some
legal questions but I
mean that's definitely an option that we've talked about
what's the legal do
we own it do we do we install it yeah yeah nothing it's not
an option
and we've definitely discussed it yeah I'm just making sure
that you know Larry
there is some options out there that you know may not be a
big issue other than
going that direction Commissioner Roselle speaking back on
both you
because you know it's your property owner what what would
the city be able
to do to encourage you to incur that cost to put it in
nothing okay thank you
I'm serious I mean that we have cars come up to my facility
mission that was bicycle
we now we have employees that do ride bicycles and there's
a there's a way for
them to secure their bicycles and we make sure of that but
it's not a for the
public because the public is not coming to my facility and
bicycles to get
service they're coming with their cars I'm sorry but but I
'm you know I'm be
honest with you yeah what's your business we service motor
vehicles
trucks light trucks heavy-duty trucks yeah I just want to
give you opportunity
Commissioner Briegel if I can just chime in real quick
Commissioner Beck over the
summer I met with them a group of cyclists and they had
mentioned this
they're like well why don't we require that in the in the
parking requirements
I'm like that's a good idea and so ever since then whenever
we see the
Commission has seen whenever we see a new development I'm
like hey we're the
bike racks now like oh yeah we can do that so you know I'm
just good we can
just keep bringing it up and we can't require it but they
that they seem
perfectly amenable in those cases to add them and you may
notice even on some
plats and site plans and stuff or not class but some of the
site plans we're
starting to see not only bike racks but like they're
pointing about hey here's a
bike rack so I think we can stay on top of it and I'm it's
nice to know that
you're in conversation with you know that this might be
something as we when
we relook at our parking requirements as a city that that
could be something at
that point that possibly could be written into the code I
want to chime in
on that I know we've had some discussions before when
projects come and
ask about bike racks I think if it's not a part of our code
I don't know that
it's correct for us commissioners when we're getting ready
to take a vote to
ask them they want to put one of those in there I think it
's voluntary if they
feel like it's okay to do that with their business they
should do it I don't
think it's appropriate for us or at least for me to say you
know I'd like to
see you put a bike rack in there right before take a vote
and I certainly and I
certainly hope that my language in the past has not made it
seem like I'm
twisting their arm to put that in there but I do think
sometimes it is an
oversight that people just if just remind them you know hey
this is a
multifamily complex not everyone's gonna have a car sure so
I think it's worth
mentioning Commissioner Taylor what's next thank you chair
I do believe that
this Commission has the power to recommend changes to the D
DC so it might
be appropriate especially in high density and mixed use
zoning categories
that are designed for downtown and urban type areas to
begin requiring some
basic you know bike parking standard or perhaps in the case
of multifamily you
might get pushback trying to require it just everywhere but
I think that could
be something that we can look at is I don't do we we have a
process where once
per year we recommend changes don't we I'm going to I'm not
aware of that once
per year requirement but shoot the Commission is more than
welcome to
initiate this and ask staff to come forward with a DDC
amendment draft to
discuss in a workshop session and then proceed on from
there to public hearing
Commissioner Dudowitz thank you on that issue is it
appropriate for staffed in
working with developers and mixed use and other retail
projects to recommend
in the development stage or in the discussion or the
consultant stage to
say excuse me but the PZ Commission would encourage would
like you encourage
bicycle racks were appropriate and considerate and as miss
Briegel brought
up it's we've seen it and more and more projects coming
forward so I'm assuming
someone's making that observation and suggestion and I know
that in one
particular project I met with a developer and suggested it
ahead of time
so they wouldn't be caught on it in another appropriate
inappropriate
situation Commissioner Dudowitz I'm really happy you
brought that up because
we do encourage development proposals that come in and
encourage them to
provide these facilities and we have also mentioned that it
is a recommended
from the PNC that this they would favor that not that their
recommendation would
change but it is something they would never do it however
if we also look at
the zoning and try and encourage it to looking at is this a
multifamily
development complex and it does warrant that so we
encourage that those be
installed early on and so that it doesn't come in as a
recommendation type
component as they move forward but try and get it in on the
onset unless that
Commissioner back the chair do we spend or can we spend
some of that money we
have there to educate these businesses like that say we go
to these businesses
where there's no bike red you know I'm opposed to you know
imposing our will on
to but you've got a lot of useful information here I think
it's part of our
didn't plan 2032 progresses long and just make them
business owners aware that
this kind of travel is expanding and how beneficial it
would be to their business
so can we spend some of that money on educating the
businesses I'm sorry what
what money the 200,000 part of that no the 200,000 is just
for infrastructure
I do have a separate money I have $20,000 for the bike head
program to do
safety education outreach and that could be something I use
it towards as of yet
no yes I would I have provided to the Planning Department a
guideline of bike
racks to them so that when they do tell a developer we want
we think you should
provide a bike rack they have standards and some guides
that they can look at so
it's not just the wave rack honestly the wave rack is not
the best rack so we're
trying to get away from using the wave rack also lots of
other cities have bike
parking requirements we would not be the only one you can
do it either just a
blanket statement all development that's not industrial has
to have or single
family has to have five percent or you can do it by zoning
so only certain
classification to it there's also different ways you can do
it but again
we're not the only city to do it so it's definitely a good
thing to do also if
we're making this try to be a bike friendly city having
bike parking is a
big part of making you want to ride your bike if you ride
your bike somewhere and
you can't park it there you're not going to want to ride it
it legitimizes that
your form of transportation is by providing you a place to
park it that's
not to a sign post or railing
okay so we have these different ways that we do but we also
know okay we're
having these meetings to plan for bikes and peds how do we
actually do that well
we have design manuals and we have guidance so we have our
denton
development code which are probably all familiar with
chapter 20 is the one that
talks about transportation and it does have three different
facilities that it
talks about sidewalks which are required on all
neighborhood and arterial streets
an on-road bicycle path which we would consider a bike lane
or a share own these
are required on arterials and in accordance with the bike
ped plan and an
off-road combo bike ped path that's required on collectors
freeways and in
accordance with our bike ped plan so currently we build
eight foot sidewalks
on all of our collector streets eight foot's really good
for pedestrians but I
wouldn't quite consider eight foot sidewalk a bicycle
accommodation it can
be useful in some instances so all of these if so the sorry
the development
code classifies what our streets are and sort of defines
them but they all need
to be in accordance with our transportation criteria manual
which as
you can see was last updated in July of 2013 so section 2
talks about pedestrian
bicycle facility design that's where it says bicycle
parking is recommended and
then it says that all the alignments can be found in the
appendix a of cross
sections so the code defines it and then the criteria
manual actually gives you
that what the cross-section is we have the denton the
downtown development
into implementation plan the D tip they have cross sections
in there for the
downtown section and that actually was included in this
update to the criteria
manual so the downtown streets that are in the D tip do
have cross sections for
bike accommodations I could not find our cross sections for
streets online I
wasn't able to get my hands on to them before this meeting
but our bike plan
does have some of them in the back so you can see up top is
the current
accommodation what you would do for a mixed-use collector
Street essentially
it's just a wide outside lane or you could have the side
path on either side
but the bike plans suggest different alternatives we can
add a share you can
add bike lanes you can add the wide curb lane which I would
recommend we I would
hardly ever recommend to do just a wide outside lane it
also has cross sections
for Julie yes I know we've got two other items to go before
630 I'm told we've
got to cover at least one of them do you know how many more
and we may just have
to stop at 630 we may have to come back after P&Z to do
these other two yeah I
think I'm almost done with that's what we would prefer
design manuals yeah I
can go through these real quick and we can stop if you want
when we get to bike
counts because that is kind of a separate topic okay we
have various
design manuals that we use to implement it we have our asht
ow guide the urban
bikeway design guide this is not adopted this is for sort
of urban streets as
opposed to large highways text I also had memorandum back
in 2011 that all
text our roads will accommodate peds and bikes there's
different levels of what
they do based on if they're reconstructing it or just
working within
the present right of way and that's my question sorry I
know that we're short
on time Commissioner Bribble thank you chair so we I know
in our debt in 2030
plan we had emphasized designing our roads as per NACTO
standards which have
a more of a complete streets design right than ashtow so I
'm curious and I
know our our bike plan was written with ashtow standards in
mind and I assume
that our transportation manual guidelines are also I'm
assuming I wasn't
here in 2013 so I'm just wondering is I guess maybe this
would be a question for
a different work session but as we're and I'm trying to
keep this as brief as
possible because I know we're short on time how are we
implementing our vision
for NACTO designed roads if if all of our old documents
have ashtow
requirements so ash toe is the standard that's what we've
adopted it has been
updated in 2012 so our bike plan is not current with what
the most current ashtow
is NACTO is more of a guideline as opposed to they're a
little bit
different this we can adopt it some cities have adopted it
as a design
manual I know that when I go to meetings when I'm
advocating for our bike
infrastructure I definitely reference NACTO our
transportation engineer Noreen
is aware of it so it's really just having the conversation
at the stage of
where we have the conversation and we're at the very
beginning is this and is that
I mean is that working so far do we have do you think we
might have to update
our it's working there are some things that I haven't been
able to get because
it's not in our design manual right so that might be
something that the PNC
Commission might have to push forward if it's in our 2030
plan but it's not in
any of our I guess design criteria manuals right there's a
disconnect it
does get a little difficult to implement with other
departments occasionally when
well it's not our design manual okay it's a goal but it's
not required okay
thank you Commissioner Taylor was first thank you
chair to follow up on on those that line of questions you
stated that the
transportation criteria manual was updated in 2013 but yeah
but none of the
none of the non downtown implementation plan streets street
profiles were
updated so our current transportation manual does not
indicate bike lanes on
arterials for example I do not think it does I couldn't
find them and I get it
back in time yeah and so but our ordinance requires it does
does didn't
development code trump the transportation criteria manual
or do our
streets get built to a criteria manual as opposed to our
ordinance I'm not sure
which one trumps which code trumps the manual and the code
does say that we
have to require bike lane on road bike lanes on arterials
okay and so whenever
is what would it take to get our our criteria manual to
match the ordinance
that was written in 2001 it would require an update and I'm
not quite sure
of that process I imagine it has to go through many
engineering streets
drainage all those people I don't know if that's staff
initiated I imagine it
is so and it's a large undertaking I imagine so and is
there any review where
if a street is designed to the current the criteria manual
but not to the
ordinance where it would be reviewed and seen before it's
built reviewed by staff
or public reviewed by somebody who would notice that it's
not built to the
ordinance staff I feel like staff is fairly confident of
what the manual say
and Ron could possibly speak better to it thanks Ron as you
all know PSR brought
to you all a process to amend the criteria manuals some
time ago and it's
as Julie mentioned a staff-initiated exercise that we can
do certainly
something that we are looking at doing is amending the
criteria manual and we
are able to do that it does not need necessarily to need to
go through this
body or City Council it can be done primarily in-house and
so that's to
that's to change the criteria manuals I was specifically
talking about if there
is a design that doesn't meet ordinance does it get built
anyway if it does not
meet the development code a development code that's correct
if it meets if it's
built to the criteria manual which conflicts with debt and
development code
right are we building streets that meet the criteria manual
but are violating the
debt and development code well well we're certainly gonna
try to make sure
that whatever is built meets the development code a
criterion manual
should follow and something that we would have to look into
I can't answer
that question I'm assuming that if they follow the
development code and that's
the that's how they're constructed but again I can't
confirm or deny thank you
Commissioner dead always Julie couple questions just for
clarification are you
a department or a person or both I guess I'm a department
slash person I fall
under the Department of Transportation and I'm the only
person in the bike
pedicure report into which group Department of
Transportation Mark Nelson
is my boss okay when your group decides to put a bike lane
in let's say Montecito
per case or shared lane okay who's who approved that that
you could do that
well it's on their bike plan so we're what person or
department said that's
okay to put it there are my boss and engineering okay okay
so all right so
I'm saying did anybody talk to the residents on that street
yes they did
okay so there is some process where we have some citizens
being having some
review is saying hey that's a good idea or a bad idea for
whatever reason yes
okay okay so just very quickly is an overview of our
upcoming projects and
the projects we've done up to date by end of 16 will have
nine miles of bike
lanes and 24 miles of shared routes we have upcoming
projects on Eagle Drive
Congress Paisley and Parkside and Amherst which you can see
in orange
here's just another overview of our projects this year and
our funding and
what we estimated our cost to be and then this is how much
we have spent on
the bike plan or allocated so just shy of over 1 million
has been allocated to
us we've spent our allocated 800,000 and we have 200,000 to
work with 281,000 to
work with this year and some of that's already been set
aside for the Eagle
Drive project so that's what we have spent the money on I
think my next slide
is bike counts yes so Julie could we Julie I think because
of what I've been
told we've got a full house out there that we need to start
right on 630 would
this be a good place to pause an excellent place to come
back to us okay
before we close the work session we have an item it's item
C in our work session
it's the DCA 15 and we're going to come back just as
Commissioner so nobody
leave after our meeting out in public we're going to come
back in here to work
session and reopen work session to hear that item before we
head out tonight
so we have to do that when we run along on another other
thing so and be and but
due to the time that B is going to take staff has asked
that we just postpone
that completely and they come back because that's about
another 40 minutes
so sorry guys for showing up tonight I'm sorry we run long
but thanks for being
willing to come back so Commissioner have any question
about our what our
schedule is going to be for our closed work session and we
reconvene right at
630 so Commissioner Dudowitz I'm gonna be
postponed to another date yes completely okay with that it
is 621 and we're going
to close this we're gonna know we're gonna close it or how
should we do that
for coming back close it and then reopen another one okay 6
21 we're going to
close the work session and we'll reconvene in chambers at 6
30 good
evening and welcome to the planning and zoning Commission
meeting it is 630 and
our meeting has been duly posted and we have a quorum
present so I'll call our
meeting to order and our first order of business is going
to be to rise and say
the pledge the US and the Texas flags
Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state,
under God, one indivisible.
The next item on our agenda is going to be the minutes do
we have a motion?
Commissioner Bruegel I move approval of the minutes. Is
there a second? Second.
Commissioner Taven thank you. Call for a vote on the board.
Motion carries 6-0
with one recusal. Next item is our consent agenda. Chair,
Commissioner Taylor.
I move approval of our consent agenda. Commissioner Det
owitz. I second the
motion. The first and a second I'll call for a vote on the
board. Motion carries
7-0. Our next item will be our public hearings. The first
item we're going to
have is going to be item Z15-002 and I will open the public
hearing now and ask
for from all to call on presentation. Just for the record
that Z15-0029. Thank you.
Thank you Chairperson. I'm going to ask Sophie Humer,
Associate Planner to make
this presentation. Good evening Commissioners. I'm here
presenting Z15-0029
Freistree overlay district amendment. The request before
you is to hold a public
hearing and consider making a recommendation to City
Council regarding
amending sub chapter 3575 the Freistree overlay district to
create a new
sub district and development standards for a mixed-use
building on approximately
1.7 acres. Subject property has approximately 220 feet of
frontage on
West Oak and approximately 280 feet of frontage on West H
ickory Street. It's
also located between Freistree and Avenue B however it does
not have frontage on
either of those roads. Subject the proposed sub district is
also located in
a downtown commercial general zoning district but it's
further located within
the Freistree overlay district. I'll get into those
regulations later in the
presentation. It's also important to remember that multif
amily and retail are
also permitted by right in the zoning district and in the
overlay district. So
the Freistree overlay district was created in 2000 to
preserve the unique
history and character of the area. In that sub area the
building height was
limited to 45 feet and three stories and the density was
based on a minimum unit
size. For example efficiency apartments were limited to
units that were no less
than a thousand square feet. In 2010 this Freistree overlay
district was further
amended to accommodate a mixed-use development known as sub
area B. Here the
height was permitted to be 55 feet no taller than four
stories and the density
is at 72.5 units an acre. The amendment before you tonight
the applicant is
proposing to further amend the Freistree overlay district
creating sub area B1 to
accommodate multifamily and retail. It's the yellow sub
district located on the
screen in red. The proposed sub area B1 the permitted
height would be 58 feet
capped at five stories and the density here would be 88.2
units an acre.
The applicant is also requesting changes to the multifamily
parking regulations
in the Freistree overlay district. Sub area A and B for
multifamily units
require one space for units with two or more bedrooms. Sub
area B1 is
asking for units with two or more bedrooms to require only
0.75 spaces. No
other amendments are going to be made to the other parking
ratios within that
district. This is just a summary of the changes and as you
move through your
discussion we can refer back to this slide. I want to talk
a little bit about
the neighborhood university compatibility future land use
designation
and its importance to this area. Debt and Plan 2030 calls
out some very specific
goals for this area. The neighborhood university
compatibility area should
provide a gradual transition and scale using character as
well as intensity
between the universities and the surrounding neighborhoods.
Development
should encourage uses that are in close proximity to one
another and encourage
walking and biking. Character of the area should be
maintained by ensuring that
any new development is sensitive to the surrounding built
and natural environment
in context of scale and form. And development should also
adequately
address parking needs and mitigate impact to adjacent
neighborhoods. So the
purpose of the original Freistree overlay district was to
maintain the
character of the area. The proposed amendment would allow
for the highest
density in the area and while that use is permitted the
original intent of the
overlay was to have cohesive development and maintain
character of the area.
With a consideration for the parking requirement the
deficit between the
required parking per the overlay district as it's currently
written and
then the proposed amendment to the overlay district there's
a deficit of
110 spaces. Reductions in the requirement to parking on a
site-by-site basis is
not a comprehensive approach to analyzing the impact of
parking reductions on the
greater Freistree area. These are two considerations from
other departments on
the project. The scoping for the traffic impact analysis
has been initiated
however a formal traffic impact analysis has not been
submitted for review. Also
from the fire department the applicant has not been able to
verify on the site
plans provided in your backup the aerial apparatus access
to the building.
So while the development does increase the stock of student
housing which is an
important goal in the debt and plan 2030 the proposed
amendment and associated
development conditions are not consistent with the debt and
plan 2030 in
some other ways. First it doesn't adequately address the
parking needs of
the project and it does not mitigate spillover into the
surrounding neighborhood. The potential impact on the
surrounding infrastructure
particularly to the sewer and inconsistency in urban form
and scale.
Staff has concerns about these continuous amendments to the
Freistree
overlay district standards without fully understanding the
impact of these higher
density and intensity projects on infrastructure the
transportation and
parking network and neighborhood compatibility. And just as
an aside note
we know the planning department understands that these are
hurdles for
the development community and a Freistree small area plan
the work draft
plan was presented to City Council yesterday during work
session. Small area
plans allow for the planning department to go back with
other departments and
look at this area at a more macro level to understand what
the community vision
is and also what the debt and plan 2030s vision is. Two
neighborhood meetings were
held the neighborhood expressed a level of comfort with sub
area A of the Freistree
overlay district is written but concerns were raised by
attendance of the meetings
those included increased traffic along Oak and Hickory
increased parking in
Semigul family neighborhoods adjacent to the project and
lack of a shade study
for height of the building. Per section 3573 of the Denton
development code
special purpose overlay districts are established to
protect and enhance
specific lands which just by the virtue of their type and
location have
characteristics which are distinct from lands and
structures outside of such
special districts. Changes to the overlay district must
enhance or conform to the
purpose of the overlay districts goals and objectives and
the current the
proposed amendments as submitted are a continuous amendment
to the Freistree
overlay district and they are a comprehensive analysis of
their impact
to the adjacent neighborhoods. Public notifications were
sent out on January
13th 2016 27 were sent within 200 feet 71 within 500 feet
and we have not had
any 200 foot response returned. Staff recommends denial of
Z 1529 based on the
considerations presented as requested the amendment further
compromises the
Freistree overlay district standards and I will stand for
any questions.
Commissioner Taylor. Thank you chair. I was just trying to
understand some
some procedural options here. If if there were a project to
come forward in an
overlay district and they wanted a variance on just just on
number of
parking lots or parking spaces in their parking lot do
would they have to amend
the overlay or could they come in for like a variance or an
ADP is there is
there any other process that they can use other than am
ending the overlay? Less
spots would be through the variance procedure I believe. So
if this just to
clarify if the overlay district standards specify a parking
ratio and
there is a the African is if it says you must have a
minimum of X spaces or you
must have no more than so many spaces where that ratio is
specified and that
ratio is being changed then it would warrant an amendment
to the overlay
district because that specification is in the overlay
district. And there's no so
a variance is not an option and ADP is not an option there
's no other option
except for to amend the overlay. Okay thank you.
Commissioner Bruegel. Thank you
chair. I'm Sophie in one of your slides you said that there
was going to be a
deficit of about 110 parking spaces how many dwelling units
are proposed in this?
I believe it comes out to total number of bedrooms was
sorry
The bed count is 308 I believe. 300 on the nose. There's
300 bedrooms with a potential of 300
residents. I mean could two or more people share a bedroom
in that in this
situation I mean. The breakout there are one two sorry
there are two three and
four bedroom units. Right so this 300 so my I guess my
question is how many
people are projected to live there is it 300 because there
's 300 bedrooms or is it
500 because someone might have a roommate in there? To my
knowledge they
are rented by the room so that would be 300 students and
the applicant can
correct me if I'm wrong. Thank you I appreciate that thank
you.
Commissioner Roselle. Thank you chair. Can staff speak to
this I'm not sure if
this question can be answered but sub area B the original
sub area that had
the one-to-one parking do we know if that was adequate
parking is there a lot
completely full or do they have extra spaces in the other
parking is a one-for-one
a good standard to have do we know? As it's written in sub
area B the
requirement is one-for-one. As for the current parking in
the Fry Street
overlay district during the neighborhood meetings there was
very vocal there is a
large portion of that community that felt like parking wasn
't addressed in
that one-to-one ratio. I've also heard that it's not
completely parked all the
time so there's some conflicting information there's a lot
of literature
that says the parking minimums induce extra parking however
we have to look at
this area and realize that if we allow site-by-site
reductions of parking we're
not able to take it from a macro level and understand what
the true parking
problems are in that district and until we do that it's
hard to reconcile those
into an amendment to the overlay district. So from the
feedback you've
been provided although all the parking spots might not be
used there is some
spillage happening on the side streets? Okay thank you.
Commissioner Beck. Thank
you chair. Excuse me just for some clarification now these
aren't or are
they true one-bedroom two-bedroom apartments are they what
I guess we call
shared apartments where there's maybe one two or three
bedrooms but they share
a common area and a kitchen? Based on the first floor site
plan that the building
layout that I have yes that's the that the there are two
three and four bedroom
units and they share common space the applicant is here and
can speak more to
that product. Okay thank you. Commissioner Dadowitz.
Further clarification
please I understand there's gonna be retail businesses on
the bottom floor
yes sir and I suspect there's gonna be need for parking for
those people that's
gonna visit those retail establishments yes sir how is that
provided for?
Currently those parking numbers are in the provided parking
there's 220 spaces
provided so based on their ratio they've provided for both
the multi-family
component and for the retail component and yet you still
say they're 120 plus
short? Yes they are. Now you mentioned something about
remote parking in
off-street parking to serve that a building is that
considered in part of
that count also? Sure in the Fry Street Overlay District
when you come in for a
see-over property if you don't have the parking maybe on-
site as we know a lot
of those don't you can provide a shared parking agreement
that's recorded
through the county and that can be within a thousand feet
of that building
I believe in the DDC and other areas of the city that's
limited to 300 feet. Thank
you. So if I have one question on our code our code states
that one bedroom is
counts for a half a unit correct? Yes sir. So two bedrooms
and makes one unit. Yes
sir. Okay thank you. Commissioner Tyler. Thank you chair so
one more question I
couldn't I couldn't locate it in the overlay is there a
requirement in the
overlay district for a mixed-use nature on these larger
projects does it
specify a ratio of residential to retail square footage? No
there's no
requirement for that ratio no. Thank you.
Commissioner Bruegel. Sorry thank you circling back to
piggybacking off of you
so two bedrooms would be considered one unit so how many
parking spaces are
provided there's a hundred and ten parking space deficit.
There if they
followed sub area B or sorry sub area A requirements they
would be required to
have 330 parking spaces what they've provided is 220
parking spaces which
complies with their proposed amendment. I see thank you.
Any other questions for
staff? Thank you Sophie. This is a public hearing and we've
got a number of cards
I'm going to start we have one group card and then we'll
move to individuals
the group card I have is from looks like Rob Baldwin
applicant please
this is Rodney I'm Rob. I'm technically the applicant but
Rodney's the developer so if it's okay I'd like for him to
go first and then
Ten minutes. Good evening Mr. Chair good evening commission
ers my name is Rodney King this is the
conceptual housing plan for the fresh street project that
we want to do. I'm
vice president of real estate development with EDR before
we go into the project I
want to give you guys just an overview of what EDR is and
what EDR does. We're
based in Memphis Tennessee where the nation's second
largest student housing
REIT with 52 years old and this is an important important
point that I want to
make we own and manage all of our projects we don't sub out
our management
group to anybody else so we wouldn't build a project that
would not be
financially feasible. We have six other properties here in
Texas. This just shows
you a brief map of our Texas properties. We have one
property that is very close
to here and that serves Texas Christian University over in
Fort Worth so I
encourage all the commissioners and members of the public
to actually go see
their property you can see the quality of development that
we develop. Here are just a
few projects that we have in the area this Arizona State
University that's a
picture of the Texas TCU property. Minnesota and Texas Tech
University of
Connecticut and UT Austin. One important point on all those
properties that I
just showed you none of those properties are parked one-to-
one. Good sound
good sound planning practices does not encourage one-to-one
parking in any
urban intense development. This development has been we've
been in the
community for quite a while we've started thinking about
this development
about this time last year and we started making our public
outreach. We've had
several public meetings informal informal with several
members of the
community starting back till early September. We met with
the historic the
leaders of the historic neighborhoods we met with the
University of North Texas
we've had two public meetings and an additional follow-up
meeting with the
University of North Texas and one important point with the
public meetings
we initially proposed a plan that had 374 beds and there
was about 60% parked.
During that public meeting we heard some opposition so we
went back to the
drawing table reduce the bed count and increase the parking
ratio to where we
are today. I'm gonna let Rob talk a little bit about the D
IN plan 2030 and how
this project supports that. Thank you very much my name is
Rob Baldwin
office at 3904 Elm Street Suite B in Dallas and I'm an
urban planner and a
planning consultant and I'm helping EDR with this. The DIN
plan 2030 it's big
there's a lot that it says but there's a couple of things
that I think is
important here. One it promotes mixed-use development
especially mixed-use
development next to the University and it states that the
mixed-use
development you should take a look at the parking
requirements make sure
they're adequate and there's actually a provision in the
urban design standards
that says if you're a mixed-use project with the University
you shouldn't even
have to provide off-street parking. I think that's a little
extreme and I don't
think that that we're asking for that but I think it does
recognize that maybe
since we're proximity to a large generator of where people
are going and
we have students right across the street from where they're
going to be going
maybe a relaxation the parking standards make sense. In
fact the city's land
development code says that parking should be looked at an
individual basis
if it doesn't there it's warranted to take a look at
specific projects that
may the one-to-one parking may not make sense and the great
way to bring it
forward is this to the planning Commission and zoning
Commission to take
a look at it. So the 2030 plan says that this type of this
area should serve as a
buffer between the University and the residential to the
north and I think this
does it. This project is very similar to the Frye Street
Center project in fact
it's the same architect the difference is it's smaller it's
not as it's not as
doesn't take up a full block it is actually shorter by
three feet or two
feet then than that the parking garage and that existing
project can go up to
60 feet where the buildings can go to 55 feet we're
proposing 58 feet the
difference is all of our parking is internal.
This is consistent with the plans recommendation that the
goal
provided multi-mode transportation near the University this
is interesting that
we have zip car if I don't know familiar with zip car where
cars are on site so
if someone needs a car they can rent it for the day they
can rent it for the
hour. EDR is a partner with uber when people come in they
get to rent there
they get uber coupons we're right on transit line it's they
have a bicycle
sharing program and they have a large bicycle storage area
in the garage so
this is truly a multi-modal project right across from the
University which
seems from a plan standpoint in my mind to make sense and
this project also
furthers the urban design guidelines there the urban design
guidance want to
have a good presence along the street and this doesn't it's
going to look very
similar to the project down the street where we have a nice
street wall a lot
of landscaping a lot of pedestrian amenities so I think we
are consistent
with the plan again it's a big plan there's a lot of places
where you can
pick and choose I think the overall thrust is let's use
some planning and
some common sense when you have a use a mixed use next to
the University and I
think that we're doing that and I'm gonna turn it back over
to Rodney and
then I'll be here to answer any questions you may have
after Rodney's
done I see the timer ticking on me may I ask for additional
time because we want
to address clarification of staff each of you get 10
minutes for a total of 20
so okay no problem just to clarify some of the project
information is 300 bits
83 units 222 parking spaces that equates to 74 percent part
and as you know this
project is adjacent to the University of North Texas on a
more macro level to
compare this project to the previously approved projects at
this council and
this commission this and the council has passed this is
very similar to both of
those projects with one major difference between the youth
center at fresh
dress fresh street project that project is a hundred
percent part and based on
our market study from the management company who operates
that property they
only utilize about 70 to 75 percent of their parking they
can't even charge for
parking because they don't have the demand for it here's a
more architectural
comparison of that property we're about three feet higher
than the building but
two feet shorter than the garage you guys have hard copies
of this packet in
your it your desk this property is most similar to the
property that we're
requesting this property is actually about 70 78 percent
part 427 days 348
parking spaces and 275 of those spaces are occupied which
equates to 56 to 64
percent utilization utilization rate and this is from the
directly from the
management company so we don't necessarily believe that the
demand for
100 percent parking is there I'm going to have Adam and Don
talk about the
preliminary results of the traffic study you can take that
off of my time
good evening my name is Don says name the director of
traffic engineering
services with Dunaway Associates and just to give you a
little bit of
background I'm gonna actually go to the next slide before I
go to this one we
basically did a traffic study our preliminary the traffic
study is in
progress and the reason why it's in progress there's two
fold we we had to
wait for the students to get back in campus in order to
collect some
additional traffic count data the bulk of the data was
collected last semester
just before finals week and there were there are a couple
more intersections
that that they wanted counted so we had to wait for the
students get back in
session second of all we we asked for city approval of our
proposed scope and
we got those comments back late Friday afternoon so it's it
's work in progress
as far as the traffic study goes just to summarize some of
the findings here the
vehicular trips during the peak hours the a.m. and p.m. as
you can see in the
morning we're expecting 30 additional vehicles and in the
evening we're
expecting 41 additional vehicles bulk of the traffic will
be pedestrian trips in
the a.m. we anticipate 67 pedestrians and in the p.m. 94
pedestrians to
summarize the intersection operations all the intersections
now that all the
intersections were from Welch along Oak and Hickory all the
way down to Bonnie
Bray and then we also looked at the Bonnie Bray and
scripture intersection
all the intersections are expected to operate in level
service here better
except for Oak and Welch which is currently un-signalized
and it's
currently operating at level service D the problem movement
there is the north
bound left turn with site traffic it's going to decrease to
level service E and
when I talk about level service it's synonymous with grades
in school they go
from a to F a being good F being bad and then Bonnie Bray
and scripture is
currently operating at level service D and from my
understanding it's soon to
be signalized and once it's signalized it will improve the
level service A so
getting back to the pedestrians this here is what I'm
calling potential
pedestrian paths the blue dots within the red area are the
residential access
points these could be elevators I think the one in within
the garage is an
elevator and then the two on the outer outer boundaries are
stairwells the green
dot is the retail front door so looking at potential paths
for the
pedestrians the different lines that are indicate potential
pedestrian paths now
ideally we'd like all the pedestrians to cross at the
signalized intersections
but will that happen so one of the things we might consider
is how do how
do we address that pedestrian movement it could be a mid-
block crossing it
could be some additional enhancements at the the the
intersection to the
southwest there having to be so in summary I think the
there's not going to
be a vehicular issue with this with this project but
pedestrians is definitely
something that needs to be addressed I'll turn back over to
Rodney thank you I
think Rob touched on this area earlier just some of the
amenities in this
project that will actually reduce vehicular traffic is zip
car we have a
service called gotcha bike where it's a community bike
program any resident can
use a bike for a specific amount of time they just have to
rent it out and bring
it back it's very similar to a city bike in Dallas and uber
I'm gonna let Adam or
Randall with Don away as an associate to talk about site
capacities and site
infrastructure how this project will have a positive or
negative impact on
that good evening commissioners Adam Reeves Don away
associates 170 North
Preston Prosper Texas Don and I work together he's the
expert on the traffic
that's why he spoke before I'll try and give an overview of
the remainder of
the engineering questions you may have in terms of site
capacity the utilities
around the site obviously Hickory and Oak have been around
for many many years
there is full infrastructure both on each one of those
roads that we would
connect into through pre-development meetings we've had
with the city staff
gone back and forth with the engineering department several
times
there are waterline connections sewer line connections on
both of those roadways
which we would propose tying into early studies that the
city has done has told
us from a sewer capacity standpoint essentially we would
just split our
building flow north and south to each one of those roads in
that split into
those two systems would provide the capacity we need for
the hotels the room
or excuse me the rooms that we're going to have on the site
from a waterline
standpoint water pressure we believe everything is fine for
the system if it
comes down to it when we get to the engineering if anything
just do the
height of the building potential look at fire pumps or
something in that
situation to make sure the pressure inside the building is
adequate when we
get that extra elevation from a storm drainage standpoint
that site is
essentially developed to a fully impervious condition at
today well with
the sidewalks along both streets the parking lot and the
buildings taking up
almost the entire lot that we're going to take so
essentially it would just be
almost a one-for-one condition however that drainage is
today it would be the
same amount of runoff that you would see in the ultimate
condition and just over
the course of not the zoning separate but during the zoning
is approved during
our construction plan process for those plans we would make
sure that we're
proving each one of those conditions out and coordinating
with your engineering
staff to make sure they're satisfied with what we're
proposing I'll be around
if there's more questions as well just to refute a comment
that was made in the
earlier work session based on our talks with the city
engineering staff the
site does have enough capacity for this project and just
some of the advantages
and requests that we're actually making from project as you
all know this
project is within steps of the University of North Texas so
we truly
believe and we have evidence throughout our 60 properties
that we operate across
the country that students will not take their cars from
this project to the
University of Texas so we believe this project will
actually help in the traffic
congestion problem that's around Fry, Hickory and Oak
Street and also this
project is walkable to entertainment venues that should
help on the late
night traffic as you hear it done say we believe the
majority of our traffic
exiting this building will be actually pedestrians they're
not necessarily
vehicle traffic and the two key requests that we're making
is increase
the height limitation from 45 feet to 58 feet which is
three feet higher a
yardstick higher than the existing building at U Center Fry
Street and two
feet smaller shorter than the garage and reduce the parking
ratio from one to one
to 0.7 to one. Rob did you just sum it up sure I think this
is a great example
of mixed-use development in an appropriate location and we
think that
with EDR's experience in doing this they wouldn't propose
something they couldn't
finance operate or maintain they do not sell their products
so they're not
they're not going to go forward to do something that's
going to cause them a
headache later. We're here to answer any questions you may
have and we hope you
can be supportive of what we're asking for thank you.
Commissioner Beck.
Thank you chair. For anyone here these are going to be
apartments for students
correct? Correct. Okay. We believe the intended uses for
students obviously via
fair housing laws we can't restrict a residency from the
open general
public okay but been across the street from the University
of North Texas we
believe 99% of our tenants will be students of North Texas.
Okay and I don't
disagree with your argument that once these students are
there they're not
going to use their vehicles a lot right they're going to do
a lot of walking and
biking but my question is to you how do they get to this
dwelling in the first
place they're coming from out of town or maybe the other
side of town they're not
necessarily going to walk or drive so where do they put
their car when we run
out of parking spaces in your facility in the garage I
guess where you're going
to be putting below the surface is that correct? Well no
the parking spaces I
don't know if you guys have the exact site plan the parking
garage is interior
building so there is a 222 space parking garage that's
concealed by the housing
development. Okay gotcha you're right so where when these
students get here
where they gonna put their cars if there's no place in that
facility put it
they're gonna put them on the streets and that's I think
what a lot of people
are concerned about is the overflow how that'll affect?
Based on the two direct
most comparable properties in the market we don't
necessarily believe that we
will have a hundred percent a hundred percent of our
tenants will not have
cars. Okay how do they get there though how does that how
does that work out I
mean what is that based on do their parents come and drop
them off and then
come get them when they go home? A lot of college students
don't necessarily own or
have cars so typically however they got to school they
would just live in our
apartment and utilize the pedestrian access points that we
will construct to
go to class. Okay again I'm not sure maybe I'm not making
clear I'm not sure
you're answering my question they've got to get there by
some mode of
transportation I would suspect that very few of them are
going to walk or bike if
they live in those apartments they're probably okay sure. I
have a daughter in
college and she's in a suburban college location and you
would expect a lot of
people to have cars it's in California you know where it's
a California car
culture there's probably 20 to 30 percent of her class she
's a sophomore
that own cars the rest of people they they drive their
parents drive them and
drop them off. Okay so that's pretty much what your base in
your estimates on
then is that? Well in their experience they have how many
projects in
Texas? We have six properties in Texas we own or manage
around 40,000 bids across
the country so as Rob alluded to earlier we would not build
a project that would
not be successful. We are a nationally recognized company
and we don't sell our
projects we're actually penalized if we develop something
and sell it because
we're a real estate investment trust traded on the New York
Stock has changed
the stock ticker EDR. Okay one last question then I'll turn
it over these
Texas sites that you have how long have they been in
existence where if we did
want to go view them have they been around? The most yes
they've been around the
the one that was the most recently developed was delivered
in 2013 in
Austin Texas we have a site under construction now in San
Marcos Texas
that is 69% parked. What about the TCU? TCU has been around
since 2005 but don't
quote me on that and I would encourage you to go look at
that site and you look
at the utilization of our parking garage. Okay thank you.
Commissioner Bruegel. Thank you chair. Mr. King I
acknowledge that you you have
made some accommodations after meeting with the
neighborhood you scaled back
the size of the or the number of dwelling bedrooms and
increased parking
spaces I'm wondering were there other accommodations that
were made when you
met with the neighborhood? Well those were the two items of
note we've made
some some additional architectural changes to actually let
the space on the
first floor be subdivided for future use if smaller tenants
want to come in but
that wasn't necessarily an issue with the neighborhood the
primary point of
focus with the neighborhood meetings was the parking. And
what about the height of
the building did anyone mention that to you in their
neighborhood meetings?
Believe it or not we thought height would be a big issue
but when you look at
the height on the raw terms it's pretty comparable as I
said earlier it's a yard
stick taller than the building that's down the street and
most neighbors have
it hasn't that issue hasn't arose again since we provide
the data. Okay thank you.
Commissioner Hutsmith. So I have two questions. One I'm
curious if you have any
documentation so you've you've alluded to the numbers for
your site your other
sites and and so and the the document you alluded to the
numbers of the sites
on that same in that same area but there's there's no I'm
assuming from your
the properties you could have easily or have gotten that
written down that says
here's our current usage here's our current there's nothing
that that that
documents other than you representing it so. Well I can
definitely get that
information but we didn't think that information was
relevant we thought the
two properties that are in the market are the most relevant
comps. So sure and
I agree and you've had a conversation with them and so I'm
assuming at some
level they would write that. Well you got to remember their
competitors so they're
not looking for a competitor to come into the market so I
wouldn't want to
put my fate in their hands. Okay my only my only point to
that is if they're
discussing it with you then obviously they're revealing
something behind
some closed order that you know they've gone a step if I
want to keep something
secret I won't even discuss it with you so the fact that
they've discussed it
with you means there's some level of in my opinion and I
could be wrong I could
just be ignorant to that but I don't I'll tell you where I
struggle with I
have your word correct and nothing in documenting those
those facts. Well to
your point there are two properties they're owned by two
different groups
one group is owned by ACC which is out of Austin Texas
which is our chief
competitor and we have a friendly arrangement that we share
information
back and forth we did get objective information on the
Eagle Street property
that property was on the market to be sold so we do have
the due diligence
materials there they're typically out open to the public so
that information
has been verified through the marketing of the property.
Okay and then if I may
the other question I had is so I've you've highlighted the
similarities
correct what's the difference what is that what is the and
give me give me
just the the top one or two what what what value add do you
bring to that to
that area? The differences in this project is actually
smaller than both of
those projects that are on Hick on Fry Street and the Eagle
Drive project so
we're not looking for a massive intensive use like the
youth center at
Fry Street project and also one of the differences is it
may not necessarily
answer your question but the University of North Texas is
growing and they have
an aggressive growth plan and they're going there is a need
for this type of
housing the entire market here in Den Texas is 99% occupied
. One other thing I
think they bring is that they own and operate their own
facilities they're not
merchant builders they don't build it and then sell it so
they're they're
going to be around to make sure it's maintained for their
investors. If I may.
Continue you have the floor. So a but really I'm looking
for a tangible I guess
that's my point I understand the need for apartments and
housing for the
students I understand that due to that need someone's going
to build an
apartment but what I'm specifically saying what tangible I
could I for
example there's grocery stores and needed what what what
value add what
tangible if I'm talking to a student a resident in that
area that's going to be
against your proposal there's got to be do you have
something that says here's
why this is a good project for not only the students that
it's walkable that
sort of thing but for the area. I think you just hit on it
there are about 13
purpose-built student properties here and then two of them
only two out of 13
of pedestrian to campus so the value we bring to this
project is the location
and the proximity to the University of North Texas. Okay
thank you. Correct and
that is one important point that Rob just brought up I don
't know if you guys
can see it in the conceptual plan but Vortmans right now
occupies that site
Vortmans will be going back into the building on the first
floor and they
will own their space. Commissioner Roselle. Thank you sir.
I have a question
about the renting of the apartments if it's a two-bedroom
is it rented as a
two-bedroom for one name lease or is it two different
people in the lease? We
rent per bedroom so a two-bedroom apartment can have two
tenants in it
they cannot share or double up in the bedroom so we have
300 beds we intend to
have 300 residents hopefully if we're successful in this
development. So if if
me and a friend go in and rent two bedrooms and he decides
that he wants
out, breaks the lease and leaves are you free to rent that
room out to any
applicant? Correct that's the beauty of the purpose-built
student housing. Parents
really like the concept because you're not liable for your
roommates rent
you're only liable for the lease you signed so if your
friend you know
prunex on his lease we can rent that we can relit that
space to another tenant.
But that other tenant could be a non-student? Technically
it could be but
with the proximity and use we own or manage 40,000 beds
across the country
about 99% of our residents are students. Sure I understand
that I'd still have a
concern about bringing in an older individual who can just
room with with
any student on campus. And that's one of the points we have
our own management
partner if there is a roommate conflict we offer services
to deal with that we
typically interface with the university on a monthly basis
so if there's a grave
or you know concern about your roommate we'll do our best
to relocate that
roommate to make sure they're comfortable. Thank you.
Commissioner Dudowitz. Thank
you chair just to get some more clarification what's the
cost to a
student or a resident per bed and how is it allocated per
month or quarter per
semester? They pay monthly rent the cost would be very
similar to the youth
center and frasteries starting about 650 for a four-bedroom
I think a three
bedroom goes all the way up to about 900 bucks. So between
650 to 900 per
month? Correct. What happens during the summer when classes
are out? There are 12
month leases. There are 12 month lease. Are they allowed to
sublease? No. Okay again
that's another question. Parking how is one access to the
parking lot is it a
gate? I don't know if you can see the conceptual plan and
this may be a little
bit confusing what you're looking at now that private drive
is not there now with
the construction of this building we will create a private
drive so if you
see that opening in the conceptual painting right with a
car that's where
the garage is. That's a good point I want to make that no
traffic or car
stacking will occur on Hickory or Oak Street it will all
occur on the private
drive. Okay now is there a metered gate? Correct there is
secured access to the garage.
But not for the retail parking. Excuse me? There's secured
access to the parking garage for the residents not for the
retail parking
spaces. Okay so that's right okay so the gate is further up
so retail can come in
and park on the ground level and how many parking spaces
have you allocated
to that? We haven't detailed that out yet we're still in
negotiations with the
city to see we got to kind of get some bookmarks to see
what the usage but we
believe the retail the allotted square footage that we have
now per code
requires 18 spaces for the retail we believe have more than
enough to
accommodate that. Further to the owner of the space may
want more. Okay further to
the retail besides Vortmans how many other storefronts are
planned? I'm sorry
besides Vortmans how many retail storefronts? We have two
we have Vortmans
and the Subway restaurant is expressed in the interest of
going back in. So you
only have two retail? That's all of the space though we
have two named tenants
which will occupy 100% of the square footage. So it's not
four or five six it's just
two two residents and that's the extent of retail. Correct
and the both of those
the extent of retail is about 15,000 square feet which will
occupy the entire
Hickory Street frontage. But Subway and Vortmans? Correct.
Which were displaced
or will be displaced but coming back in so they're so they
're already there.
Correct. And the business and traffic they have there now
will just come right
back. Is that your? I believe so. Okay so it's not adding
anything more or less in
your opinion as we discussed? Okay thank you.
Commissioner Beck. Thank you Chair. Mr. King kind of
staying with Commissioner
Hudspeth's concerns about your data regarding based on
similar apartment
units and their need for parking. You mentioned that the
Eagle Street
apartment I can't think of the name of but you know what I
'm talking about.
33 degrees. Right right you mentioned that you got your
data from the
due diligence made from the sale of the property is that
correct? Well we got our
data made we got our initial data from that packet and we
confirmed with the
management company on January 6th of this month. Okay so
there was two time
periods there. What was the difference between time periods
a month? Well the due
diligence packet went out late last year when the property
was on the market. Yeah.
So we confirmed we reconfirmed that information earlier
this month. Okay and
I'm gonna get into near you may or may not know it but they
were selling their
property is it because they were unable to keep enough
occupancy to make any
money do you know? That property is a hundred percent
occupied they were
selling the property because Rob alluded to this earlier. A
typical developers
build develop a property and then about two years of
operation they sell it to
maximize their profit and go on to the next development. We
don't do that we
will develop this property on and operate it in perpetuity.
Okay so as far
as you know they sold their property to somebody else to
keep it running is that
correct? I'm sorry. The people at the Eagle Street
Department they were selling it not because business was
bad. No they were
selling because business is great. Okay okay thanks.
Commissioner Taylor. Thank you Jim I might be the last one
up here to ask you
a question before we move into the public hearing. So could
you explain a
little bit more in this this concept plan I think I
understand it now but you
show a lot of green space and a corner on a street that
doesn't currently exist
could you just walk us through and lay us out where this is
? Okay well right now
this site I wish I had a site map but I don't this site is
right now where it's
currently occupying the Bortman's lot and if you look at
this car here that's
where the coffee shop is right right off the map so this
private drive will be
will intersect Oak and Hickory. Actually let me let the
architect explain it a little bit better than me.
There was a site plan. I'm sorry yeah. I wanted to explain
their pretty picture. Staff we have a site plan in your
module that I think might suffice that it's not in their
deck. Okay. That the public can see.
Is that a mouse? Yeah there's a mouse here.
[Silence]
138 139 and 143.
Okay my name is Yao Yu from Humphrey's and Partners
Architects. I live in 2529
Scenic Drive Plano, Texas. So on this let me just explain
how this works. You can
see my mouse? Yeah. So you know this this is Hickory Street
and then that's on the
south and Oak Street on the north. So we have a private
drive that basically
connects those two streets and that also act as a service
drive. So basically if
you're a student or a retail user you come through that and
then and then in
the middle that's where you enter the gate. Not the gated
garage. So this is how
you enter it through the service drive. So off that then
you can enter the
garage. So you know probably this is the portion that's for
the retails and then
you get up the ramp which where we will have a probably a
gate somewhere here to
segregate the retail parking versus the residential parking
. The retails are all
rated basically on Hickory Street. That's where it is. And
then on the elevation
that you see. So the side is not flat. It has about a feet
of drop. So that's why
you can see that the side basically goes up. So the corner
of southeast is really
the lowest point. That's where we have all the retail
entries. Basically the
bookstore and subways. And the so then that other area that
's that kind of
becomes a basement heads back into the hills. That's a
warehouse area for the
bookstore. Yes that's what we are planning at this moment.
It's not a
warehouse area. It's usable, runnable space for the
bookstore. Right but it's
not it's not street accessible. It's not like a storefront.
It's going to be the back of the
store or something like that. And so this is 17,000 square
feet of retail. Is that
something like that? I think it's about 15. 15. And how
much is existing on the site now? Right now
Wortmans occupies about 24,000 square feet. Correct. Wort
mans occupies about 24,000 square feet. They're reducing
their footprint to about 11. A subway occupies about 1500.
So they'll roughly be about the same amount. And are there
any other current existing retail occupants? No. But the
Vertman store does have the ability to further
reduce its space and attract additional retailers. We've
designed the site in such
a way that it can be subdivided in the future. And a final
question. Did you
consider building a 35 foot high building and just removing
the upper floor? We did. But in order for
development to be financially feasible, you have to have a
certain amount of
scale. And with land prices in the area, that's what's dict
ating the height of
the building. Thank you. I've got a couple questions. You
just mentioned that you've
got an eight feet rise on the property. Correct. So I guess
the west end of the
building essentially on your measurements can be eight feet
shorter
than your tallest portion. Correct. Correct. Correct.
Correct. Correct. Correct. We don't have any details as far
as your concept plan. So this is the first ones that we've
got an opportunity to see. Is the tallest part here on the
corner and then the other parts of the building are
stepping down because we
don't have any of those details to review? Correct. The
tallest part is at the
southeast corner. The entry, the retail entry of the
building. Okay. And what
about the west end of the building? The west end of the
building? Yes, sir. Up the street? Yes, sir. It's about
eight foot shorter. But it is a continuous, it's 58 feet,
it's 58 across the...
Well, from the point of the base is 50 feet, but the ground
rises eight feet. So the
building is 50 feet tall on the west side and it grows to
58 as you come down the street. You just did it in reverse.
You're going from the west going east and I'm going east
going west. Okay.
What you see in the corner is the highest corner, basically
. Gotcha. And then the second question, I think one of the
main elements that was missing is what's the issue with
the fire apparatus? Right now we know there's an issue and
we're working with
the city to address that issue. Adam, yeah, you can speak
to the actual
technicalities of the fire apparatus issue. But if we don't
solve that issue, we cannot
develop this property. Yeah, basically we were proposing
either the
Hickory Street or the Oak Street as a fire apparatus road.
And the width and the
distance from basically require a 26 foot wide fire lane.
And then from that edge of
that fire lane to the building, there's a minimum
requirement of 15 feet and a
maximum requirement of 30 feet. So we meet all that.
However, the fire marshal right
now thinks there's going to be street parking on that to
maybe blocking some
of the parking, fire truck parking. So she is having some
reservation on that. But
to the letter of the fire code, we meet it. There's a small
sentence at the end that says that the local fire marshal's
discretion. So that's the part we're working through.
Okay, so you can't meet it with your private drive area
then? No. Okay. We've widened the
private drive 26 feet, but from the edge of the private
drive to the building is
10 feet instead of 15. So we're working through that. Okay.
Looks like I've spoken. We've got some more questions now.
Commissioner Hodgepitt. Thank you. I just, quick question.
The
private drive, is that two-way? Yes. And give me a, help me
see that. Is that just a,
is it an alleyway cement on either side? Obviously the
building's on one side.
What's on that, what's on the side of the coffee shop there
? Yeah, landscaping.
Yes, that's what's shown right now. It's on the landscaping
plan here. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Commissioner Begg. Thank
you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. Hopefully this will be the
last question to
help from us. But, and this is totally unrelated to the
type of question we've been having, but it is related to
something that concerns the city with our renewable
energy. Okay. I didn't plan. What green construction
practices are y'all planning on utilizing? We typically
utilize all the LEED practices. Y'all can speak to more of
that. We won't be commissioning the building for any sort
of LEED certification, but we do believe it's good
operational and maintenance practices to design a renewable
and energy sustainable building. Okay. Because we will
operate it in its perpetuity. Using the LEED standards?
Using LEED standards. Right. L-E-D. Right.
Got it. Okay. Thanks. Any other questions? Thank you,
gentlemen. Thank you, guys. Again, this is a public hearing
. I have a number of cards. I'm going to start. I'm going to
change the order. We have cards, blue cards to speak, and
we have white cards that do not wish to speak. So I'm going
to read those into the record first. So if those people are
here and want to leave, they at least know their comments
have been
brought into the record. And I want to remind the audience,
as a reminder from staff to me, is that we have two items
as a commission that we're able to consider on this project
. One is the height of the building, and the second item is
in regards to the ratio on the parking. Other than that,
this project does meet the zoning requirements for this
area. It can be built there if it was shorter. If the
parking requirements were met, they could build a project.
So the two items that we have to, again,
to consider is the building height and the parking. And
with that clarification, I'm going to start with, I have
Bridget Corbett. Okay. These are the ones that aren't. She
did not wish to speak. She was in opposition to the project
, and there's no comment as to why. Then there is Penny Coo
ley.
She is in opposition, does not wish to speak, and there is
no additional comment on that. And then there is B. Elaine
Davis. She does not wish to speak, and she is in opposition
with no particular comment.
I think there's one other item is the density. Is that
correct? So three items instead of two. Okay. My apologies.
And we have our blue cards. These are individuals that do
wish to speak. Again, this is a public hearing, so as I
call you forward, I'm going to go ahead because of the
number.
I will give the next person to speak if you'll get ready.
When you come up, if you will state your name and address
for the record, you'll have three minutes to speak. Our
first card will be Darlene Mullenweg at 711 West Oak,
followed by Mary Anderson.
Before my time starts, how long do I have? Three minutes.
All right. Darlene Mullenweg, 711 West Oak Street. I live
about one and a half blocks from this project. I do not
have any doubt this will be a very successful housing
project.
And they are very liquid, a very good company. I've checked
them out. I do have a problem with their asking for a
variance on parking. Their impact study, which the city has
not done, they left it to the developer to do that, was
done when they said our peak times at Welch and I believe
Avenue B.
I came down there about three weeks ago after school had
started going east on Hickory, leaving CVS out their back
way, got the light at B. There was a bus that stops south
there.
He turned the corner in front of me. He goes down and stops
at Fry Street. There's two lanes of traffic that cannot get
through. I waited for three lights at Fry Street. And we
don't even have this.
So my problem is not with their project. It's with the
traffic that it is going to cause. And he said they're
going to have bicycles. There are no bicycle lanes on Oak
and Hickory Street. They don't even start until you get
west of Avenue B.
And even if they had bicycle lanes like they do on Alice
when I went down today and they were using the full lane
because they're allowed to use the full lane, you can't go
anywhere.
So there is a real problem because high schoolers have
their own cars. So definitely college kids have their own
cars.
And maybe their study has shows that in the Austin area,
because there are a lot of people from around Austin, they
can take the bus from their little suburbs into the area.
People here are commuting in. It's too far for them not to
have a car. So I really object to that. I don't think a
variant should be allowed for this.
And I think until we get this complete overlay for Fry
Street, complete and know what we really need there and a
traffic impact study, that this cannot go forward.
And I have nothing against these people. I mean, there's a
quality company. But I just truly object because of the
traffic.
Before you go, we have a question for you. Commissioner
Beck.
Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Darlene, for coming down and
speaking on this. And I appreciate your insights on the
traffic condition you experienced that day.
Let me ask you, this traffic is a big concern, but parking
too. What were parking conditions like that day on Hickory
and Oak?
Well, they were parked, you know, in every metered parking
there was a car.
I live on Oak Street, which only allows parking on the
south side of the street. And they say this will have a
private drive.
I have a private drive. I can't get out of my private drive
.
The other morning, I waited for 16 cars to go past my
private drive to back out.
So I can't see that additional traffic is going to improve.
That's the other thing.
This is supposed to be a compatible university neighborhood
overlay. And I don't see this being compatible.
I don't think there's enough green space in that area. We
're we're creating the Grand Canyon down there with cars
instead of watercraft.
OK, one earth question. Commissioner Roseau. Thank you,
Chair. Thank you for being here and giving testimony.
I have a question. You live to the east of campus, correct?
I do. So you have all the traffic going to the campus.
All the traffic. In terms of. Not only. Go ahead. Vehicle.
We have lots of pedestrian traffic. Sure. Sure. Yeah.
My question is in terms of the staff mentioned it
previously, the parking induces cars if there's 200 spots,
then 200 cars.
No, they can have a parking spot. If you increase that to
300 cars, do you not see an additional 100 cars then more
on Oak?
Or how do you can provide insight to that? Double deck them
. I don't know where they're going to go.
Not in terms of parking time, but would would increasing
the number of parking spots increase traffic on your street
?
Of course. But you're in favor of adding parking spots. I'm
just trying to understand the impact to you personally on
that.
Add 300 residents to that one point seven acres. I have an
80 acre farm. I know how big one point seven acres is.
It's not big. That is an incredible amount of my pads and
vehicles for one point seven acres. Sure.
You know, this this project should be in a high traffic
urban area. And it's not.
It is because university is across the street from Hickory,
but across the street from Oak, it's a residential area,
folks.
So this isn't to me compatible, you know, with with the
size of the project.
And I know they reduced it. I was here before. And I think
they did a fairly good job.
But I'm a tell the city figures out how we can manage the
vehicles that we have in the parking in this city and do a
really in depth study and do a traffic impact study.
I think you would be floored at the amount of traffic that
's on that street. Sure. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am.
Have Mary Anderson to be followed by Jeff Paula.
So only three minutes they get to all right. Mary Anderson,
nine twenty four West Oak.
I am against this because of density and parking and
traffic. They can build a building that is higher than
anything else now in the area.
Absolutely the highest thing that will be there because it
's above what's given.
But the parking is horrible. I also live on. I live even
closer than Darlene.
And it's often that I sit and wait and wait and I can't get
out.
And the bicycles do hog the road along with the buses and
everything else just because you believe they won't park
there.
This isn't Austin. Keep calling us UT. It's UNT. I work at
a university. I won't specify.
But students like their cars. They need to get to work so
they can pay the bills.
So not only they go to class, they're not always partying.
Believe it or not, they actually work to pay.
So they need a car to get to work and a car to get home.
And the girlfriends and the boyfriends come over and there
's no accounting that they only rent to one bed.
But I, you know, it could be a double bed, right? So there
could be even more people there. Six hundred people there.
That's a lot of cars. There are many times I can't get out
of my house very easily.
We need to have better than I think or I believe. I want to
thank you, Mr. Hudsworth, for asking for data.
I really appreciate that because I'm tired of I believe. I
'm a scientist. I must show data or I'm left out of here.
I can believe the moon is made of green cheese, but they
would laugh me out of science.
I am laughing at their data because they're not showing it
proprietary. But believe me, trust me, I've heard that
before.
They say that on 33 North Apartments that on January 6th,
they weren't full. School didn't start till the 21st. I
know. I teach.
So that's a joke. They can fill those spaces. They're
picking their data. It's a phony data set.
Please have an independent study of traffic, not on the
summers, not during exam week when the students are home
studying and only a few come into campus to take things.
You know, ask some people in the university. They cite the
university.
Has there been a piece of paper that says the university
needs this? The university is in the business of running
their own housing.
This is a nice profit making thing. I have no problem. But
they don't live here. They don't see the traffic I deal
with.
They don't see all of that. And there's going to be more
traffic. I don't care whether you cut down the number of
parking spaces.
Just means I'm going to call a tow truck more often so I
can get out of my driveway.
And, you know, it's supposed to be an overlay that enhances
. It's supposed to be a gradual transition. This project is
neither one.
Make it smaller. Provide parking. Don't be a burden to your
neighbors. You can still make a profit. It may not be 200
percent a year.
It might only be 20 percent a year, but I'd be pretty happy
with that.
And please don't fear that they'll go away. They won't go
away. They'll come back.
Somebody else will buy this and put up something else and
we'll be going through this again. Get it right. Wait until
we have a decent overlay.
There is no rush. You know, we don't live in the heart of
Austin where everything is rush, rush, rush. This is debt.
Thank you.
Thank you. Questions? No questions. Thank you, ma'am.
Jeff Paula to be followed by looks like Kerry McKibbin.
Jeff Pala from 716 West Oak Street. Thank you all for your
time being here tonight. This is a really important topic
for me.
I am my wife and I are raising our two young children on an
already busy Oak Street, a highly traveled Oak Street, high
density of cars, frequent travel.
I have a hard time getting out of my driveway as well. The
density of this project is what concerns me most.
The three hundred and thirty beds and the lack of parking.
If you live here as you do, if you travel down to that area
and you try to park, you can't find parking.
There's no adequate parking and there's no way to say the
college kids are not going to bring their cars and they're
going to bike and they're going to Uber.
That's just not reality. This is just not reality. You know
, the height of the building. Fine. Looks OK.
It does have a large lack of green space. I mean, it is it
is it is concrete jungle, which is not really a good
transition from the Oak Hickory neighborhood to the
facility.
I think many things have already been said, but the density
is is is disturbing.
The density is too much and the lack of parking is is laugh
able. It's inadequate. Thank you.
No questions. Thank you, sir. Carrie McKibbin, followed by
Brent at thirteen, fourteen Hickory.
Can't read your last name there. So Brent will be next.
Carrie, I'm Kim. I'm Kim McKibbin. And other than Brent, I
probably have more invested in this anything because I own
the building in the business at thirteen oh six.
Wex history. It's pretty interesting how the statistics
have been presented when the studies have been done.
Yes, there were lots of concerns about height because they
'll put my building in the dark most of the time,
particularly in the winter when it snows real hard. You
know, that driveway that they're talking about that's two
lanes wide.
That's going to be an issue if all I can address is the
density, the parking and the height.
Is that basically what we're basically can address whatever
you like? Those are the things that we can.
I have spoken to the city council. I came and asked them to
grant no variances to the five street overlay for any new
construction in the area for all the reasons that you've
heard tonight.
And if you look at the original thing, the purpose and
intent of the overlay district is to promote the public's
peace, safety, cleanliness and general welfare for
community members and patrons of the five street district
for providing for regulations on off street and remote
parking.
The location of solid waste containers and the regulation
of signs sets back and residential and commercial density.
This apartment building is going to be denser than just
about anything we've got out there.
I'm pleased to know that he has reduced their prices from
seven hundred ninety nine dollars a month per bedroom to
what he's saying now was six hundred and fifty.
I think the initial contact that we had, that was what the
price was, was seven ninety nine a month.
And so they've changed their mind on that. That's nice for
the students.
Also, the beautiful outlay that you're seeing does not
include the area buildings when they compare to the five
street or the sterling complex.
They have to realize that that was built on an empty block.
They're wanting to build this building taller than any
other building that's out there, not on a block by itself,
but in a block that contains my building, my tenants, our
neighbors, a house that set up into apartments, a church.
These are all on that side of the thing.
So they are not developing by themselves in isolation.
The impact they're going to have is phenomenal for parking.
What they're not telling you is that currently there is
approximately sixty one parking spaces in the Vortman lot,
in the subway lot and in the adjacent place that used to be
a sushi place.
Sixty one spots.
Now, if they if you take out the additional six public
places that are going to be in front of the retail entrance
thing so they can get the cars in and out.
Plus, then the other six free spots on Oak Street, you've
got a fairly high number of public parking spaces you're
going to leave.
I also have some problems with someone's math here.
The scale shows twelve thousand seven hundred square feet
and the current overlay says that for every four hundred
square feet you have to have one space for commercial.
That means they're missing thirty one point seventy five
spaces in addition to what they've already told you.
Ask me questions.
I've been here every meeting.
No questions.
Thank you, ma'am.
Thank you.
Brent, followed by Helen Dewey.
My name is Brent Erskine.
I am the owner of Burtman's thirteen fourteen West Hickory.
I do understand that there is a parking issue.
I'm partners in eight other stores across the country and I
can assure you there is a parking issue at every single one
of those being next to a university of that size.
That is what comes with the territory and living that close
to a university.
I will say, though, at six a.m.
when I get to work in the mornings and you go down Oak,
there are no cars parked along the street with the
exception of some of the small houses that have been
chopped up by some of their neighbors and turns into
apartment complexes.
That's the only place that you'll see cars parked along the
street.
So the students that are living in the youth center that
live in the youth center are not parking along the street
when they're in their beds at six a.m.
because we all know kids are in their beds at six a.m.
They're not getting up early.
I will also say that as an employer of over one hundred
students, there are many of those students that do not have
cars.
I know that it's hard to fathom coming from many of us that
are probably middle class that most kids have cars, but we
do have several employees that don't have vehicles that
they carpool with their friends and they do live in student
student housing complexes even farther away from youth
center or thirty three degrees north.
They carpool from some of the ones out by Chuck E. Cheese.
So that is not maybe as uncommon coming from the middle
class family that every kid has a car as UNT is not the
most expensive place to go to school.
And there are other kids of other demographics going to
school.
Those are the comments that I had a question before you go.
Commissioner Beck.
Thank you, Chair.
These people that work for you, though, they live in them,
right?
So their parents do not live in didn't know.
Okay, they live in didn't because they go to school and
didn't.
Okay, but they do not live in didn't with their parents.
They live in some of these student apartment complexes.
Gotcha.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
No other further questions.
This is a I'm sorry.
I've got a couple more that just popped up.
Apologize.
Commissioner Hudge.
Yeah, so unique perspective, right?
So for you, how like what do you look?
What are the changes?
How do the changes affect your business?
What what do you look forward to?
What what impact do you see coming if this is allowed or if
it's built?
I think it cleans up the area as the owner of the property.
I think it could be enhanced.
We're at a crossing point to where we either try and sell
it to somebody that can bring more traffic to the
businesses in the area by adding beds.
If I could buy into Mike's coffee, I would definitely love
to do that.
And she's going to have 300 new customers sitting right
next to her.
I'm sure that their business flow will come up.
So as a business owner myself, I would be loved to have 300
new customers right above my business.
It cleans up the area.
It makes it look nicer with the newer building, not a
building that I
know some people want to say that it's historic, but it's
actually been added on to six different times.
And it has it's there's nothing historic about it besides
the name itself, which is which we want to preserve as
times change.
And we are not what Mr.
Verman had it with all of the fine gifts in China that he
used to have in there.
The times have changed.
We have to condense down in order to make sure that we
ensure viability.
Big boxes out.
I look at what Walmart you can go across the board.
They're getting smaller.
We have to do the same thing to make sure that we maintain
our business and the vermin's name continues on.
If I may continue and how are your sales?
Great. They're down.
We took it over and we took it over in 2013 and our sales
have done nothing but grown every year since we've taken it
over.
And you attribute that to more students more.
It's it's easily accessible that that sort of thing that it
's always it's been in the same location.
So location doesn't have anything to do with it.
I'd like you to think that it was myself and my staff was
what I'd like to think.
And having an owner actually on site and giving a personal
customer experience is what we like to hope.
Even some of the folks that are opposing, I think they'd
say that we're friendly neighbors.
OK. And one last thing.
Sure. So the parking in back that that's a valid point.
What is give me a day in the life of your parking lot.
Sure. It's it's it's during the first week of school, we
actually pay people to sit out in the parking lot to keep
customers from parking there.
It's definitely not you send our custom people parking in
our lot.
It's commuters that are parking in our lot.
So we definitely that is a problem.
There's no doubt about that.
But I don't know that this is going to add to the problem.
They say that it adds to it.
But there's nowhere else to park on the street.
There's nowhere else that can't get any worse than what it
is.
There's already parking on every single space.
During school hours outside of school hours, you're not it
's like I said, 6 a.m.
I have a video on my phone at 6 a.m.
I drove down there, took video, probably shouldn't have
been doing it.
But there's there's nothing there's no cars parked there
except that these chopped up apartments.
So is it bad?
Yes. But it's the commuters coming into town to go to class
there, not the people who live in the area.
Thank you. Another question for you.
And we didn't get for the record.
Were you in favor or opposed?
In favor. In favor.
Thank you. Commissioner Dudowitz.
Some more clarification, please.
Your business is existing today.
Do you own the property?
Yes, sir.
And you're in favor of selling it to the developer?
Yes, sir. We will sell it.
We will sell the property to the developer.
We will move off.
We will move to a temporary location, much like the
university bookstore did recently with their renovations.
We will then move back into the new location where we will
own our space in that building.
Lease it or own it?
Own it.
OK. So you'll cut it out and you'll own the space.
Yes, sir. So the nearly 12,000 square feet on that bottom
floor, we will continue to own that space.
And just as an aside, I drive these streets here just to
avoid the backup on university that's going on in this town
.
But I've been there early in the morning and late at night.
There is some traffic, but it's not like it is during the
day.
I admit it's kind of crazy there.
But you are testifying, though, that it's commuter traffic
more so than the residential traffic.
That's kind of what I want to make sure that I'm seeing and
hearing because the residents obviously are impacted by
commuter traffic, parking in their driveways and whatnot.
But that exists now even without this.
And it has been for how long have you been there?
I opened up a small spot called Campus Bookstore right next
to back in the day at Point Bank back in November 2007.
So I've been in that community parking on that street,
especially when we were there because we had no parking at
that location.
There was zero parking for our space.
And I would park along that street.
And in the mornings, there's plenty of parking there in the
mornings at 6, 7 a.m.
And I understand with 300 more potential customers, that's
a good thing.
That's never a bad thing for business.
If you have a business, you would like to have more
customers, obviously.
There's no question.
And I think that several of the business owners down there
have said the same thing.
I'm sorry?
Yes.
Businesses would prefer to have more customers.
Thank you.
No further questions.
Thank you, sir.
Helen Dewey, followed by Michelle Lin, and then I have two
more cards.
This is a public hearing.
So if you would like to speak, please fill out a card and
bring that down.
Or if you want to come speak afterwards, you'll need to
make sure and fill out a card before you leave.
Thank you, Helen.
My name is Helen Dewey Rykovsky.
I reside at 73 West Oak Street.
I do work at that named university at UNT, but I also work
in Dallas and I also work at First United Methodist Church.
So I'm very typical of a lot of people at UNT where we live
.
I walk to the university when I don't have to go to one of
my other jobs.
When I have to go to one of my other jobs, then I need to
have my parking space on campus.
And then I drive to that one and then I drive to that one
and then I drive home again.
So one of the things that I'm speaking against on this
proposal is because not only the density and the parking,
I really appreciated the question, Mr. Rosell, about if we
're opposed to how much traffic problem there is
and how much parking problem there is, why would we want to
say, please don't have any variances if there are 300 beds,
then why have 300 vehicles parked?
But what we need is a place for everything and everything
in its place.
If we have more people living in that area, we will have
more cars, whether they're owned or whether they're the
visitors.
And if we don't have a spot for each one of those cars, yes
, we'll have more traffic,
but then that traffic will be congested and not know where
to go.
So we hope that you will not change.
We will not have any variances.
We appreciate the changes that the company has made by
listening to the neighbors.
And perhaps more changes could be made because these sound
like they would be very good neighbors.
We do want development, but as has been said, this is
development for students at the university.
But that is only one of the four sides of this development.
And we neighbors on the east side, the more traffic that
comes down Oak Street and back through Hickory Street,
those streets are not built for that.
The city had a survey for parking in 1999.
Yes, 1999.
And the city survey at that time found there were 21,000
trips down Oak Street and back Hickory Street.
The I'm looking for the actual statistics because Mr. Hudsb
eth will want to know exactly which is exactly right.
What it says here.
So the the city decides that engineering standards used by
the city rate,
the maximum level of service for four lane divided couplet
at about 21,000 trips per day.
So as you can see in 1999, we were already at the maximum
amount of traffic that we could tolerate properly going up
and down that street.
It's only grown since then.
So the density of the project is a difficulty for us.
It adds the parking and the and the traffic itself is a
difficulty.
Perhaps some of the changes that could be looked at from
this point on, maybe with the proper one to one ratio of
parking,
maybe there would be more revenue for the business to go
ahead and sell that parking to commuters or to others that
are busy on our our neighborhood streets.
Do you have any questions?
Do you have a question for you?
Commissioner Oselle.
Thank you, sir.
I appreciate your insight to what's going on here.
I have a question. You speak about traffic, but if I
understood you correctly, you're OK with the increased
traffic or that's amenable as long as they have some place
to park.
I would not say it that way.
If I might restate it.
Sure.
We are troubled by the amount of traffic, but the amount of
traffic will only be worsened if there are not parking
spaces for every car that's legal to be living in the
neighborhood.
And that I know not everyone owns a car, but the students
that I teach at University of North Texas, they drive
everywhere for employment.
And so the students that I know from from full scholarship
students to whomever, whether they're middle class or not,
there are cars.
And so those cars need to have a place.
So the traffic is difficult and it would behoove the city
to look at on the west side how we can have more access to
the university because it's growing.
And that's a good thing.
But from the east, that's that's our neighborhood.
And it has as much traffic as it can handle.
And if you don't have parking spaces for the other cars
that will make because they're parking in front of our
houses every day.
And it's before eight in the morning.
And those are the people that can't put the money in the
meter on Hickory Street or don't have the parking permit on
the campus.
Sure. Thank you.
One other question.
Commissioner Hatchbuth.
Thank you. So just real quick question.
So when you're what what are your times that you're
normally driving to Dallas or what have you observed during
those times that you're driving?
My day job is in the College of Music.
My night job is at the Dallas Opera.
And so I'm often leaving the UNT area about five thirty.
Well often six o'clock until we get into further rehearsals
at five thirty.
The traffic coming north is amazing to see from Dallas.
So there is traffic in surges moving in and out of our
community.
It's like the people who do morning classes the people who
do afternoon classes the commuters who come up in the
evening and then go back or stay with friends.
Because sometimes they stay a few days and then they go
back.
So but you're leaving the Frost Street area around five or
so is that.
Did I get that right.
Five five five thirty very often.
And what is the traffic like then.
It's awful.
So give me it.
So you're traveling on Hickory.
Yes.
And so Hickory do you hit the Frost Street light.
How many times do you have to wait or give me give me a day
in the life of.
Drive anywhere.
Lunchtime.
You'll wait at least three lights.
OK.
Thank.
I'm just my comment.
Commissioner.
That is that anywhere in Denton from four thirty to six
thirty is a nightmare.
I mean even loop 288 takes forever to get around.
It's what's happening here.
I mean price is unusual with that.
But so where are the other place.
We have a lot of pedestrians too as you know we have a very
nice neighborhood to walk through and to get to the square.
And it's lovely to see that amount of traffic.
And so the density of this having more cars more people
there that'd be great if more people are walking downtown
and back again.
But more cars parked on the street even later at night
because if there are not enough spots in the indoor parking
garage then those residents are going to be parking on the
streets when the students don't need to the commuter
students don't need to.
And again that's more cars on the street.
It's a little bit more danger for the pedestrians.
You know you're crossing streets and you're walking
downtown and it's when we try to back out or pull out of
our driveways on Oak Street or on Hickory Street it's
really scary because you have to look past the parked cars
wait for the gap in the red light.
And then you know so we'll just have more and more of that
if we don't have those parked cars off the street.
I see no further questions. Thank you.
Michelle Lin followed by I can't read the first name last
name Hall.
Good evening everyone I'm Michelle Lin I'm at 1401 Egan
Street in Denton and I'm here tonight because our town is
growing and this is a good thing.
I support this project in certain ways. I'm glad someone is
interested in a strong new high quality development and I
like mixed use.
But your job as commissioners is your highest goal is going
to be to bring smart growth to our town.
The difference between being open for business and welcome
for growth and allowing developers to rewrite our city's
comprehensive plan.
To their own desires that 2030 plan I look at the names in
this commission and I see Hutzpeth and Roselle and strange
and Briggle and these are all families who were involved
with this plan at one point.
Our city decided after more than a year of really intense
collaboration from people in every part of the city that
this is going to be our comprehensive plan.
I urge you to think about potential parking problems and
neighborhood compatibility.
I am not against this building. I'm against making the
parking situation even worse.
I'm against something that is going to detract
significantly from the quality of life for the homeowners
in the university compatibility area.
Mr. Beck commented about tenants and where they will put
their cars and I'm pretty sure that 18 retail spots would
be used up by the people who are working in these stores
let alone the customers.
Personally I'm very vested in this area. I live a couple
blocks north of it in the university compatibility area.
My homestead is there. I own several rental properties in
the area and I will say that every single tenant I have
ever had has had a car and parked there.
And when there are more than two people or three people in
the house there's two or three cars.
So this is a pretty serious concern to me.
I would be happy with this project if it did follow the
2030 comprehensive city plan.
Thank you.
Next speaker, I can't read the name. Last name is Hall
followed by Jay West.
Again this is a public hearing. I've got two cards left so
if you would like to speak please fill out a card, the blue
card or if you'd like to speak a white card as if you just
would like to record your opposition or support for the
record and not speak.
Thank you Mr. Hall.
Hello ladies and gentlemen of the commission.
Lucas Hall, 815 Cresto Place in Denton.
And I come as a citizen and voter of Denton who lives
several miles from the Fry Street area and frankly I rarely
ever drive by.
But I'm here to object to this proposal as written and I
would object to any version of the proposal that exceeds or
requires relaxation of the Fry Street overlay as currently
written.
This might sound a little philosophical or not necessarily
practical but I think as a matter of policy making that
before a governing body agrees to amend the code,
especially in this case it's my understanding that the Fry
Street overlay specifically is the product of a lot of
community wide collaboration that came about when the other
developer was here.
But that code is the product of broad debate, negotiation,
revision and finally a community, a broad swath of the
community came to identify that and identify that code as
law.
And so it's my suggestion that before you decide to
recommend to amend the code, whether it's this section or
any part of the code, to ask yourself, am I satisfying an
urgent substantial need of the community?
And I posit that in this case the answer is easily no. It
will be advantageous for a couple of parties but as the
nearby residents in the neighborhood have spoken more
intelligently to the parking density and congestion issues
than I could, this is not going to satisfy a substantial
need of the community.
And so, and this is frankly I just became aware today that
there's the possibility of this small area plan that I get
the impression this will be another community based
discussion, whereby we will perhaps decide as a community
and not just as a small group of selected interested
parties how we want to design and organize our physical
spaces.
In this case where we live and work. And so just to
reiterate, I reject this on the basis of it being requiring
relaxation of the code as written and if the community, the
greater community later on decides to amend the code in the
small plan, then so be it. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> I see no questions. Thank you for your comments.
>> Next item is for Jay West. Again, this is a public
hearing and anyone is invited to speak but we will need a
card filled out.
>> Evening commissioners. I'm Jay West. I'm a commercial
real estate broker. I live in Dallas, Texas, 2606 Shelby
Avenue and I've been involved in the student housing
business.
For the last 20 years and I've sold land to developers in
the Denton area for various projects and I actually worked
on the U-Center Fry Street land but the developer I had it
lined up was unable to complete the task so it got done a
little later.
And I'll just mention a couple of points because I've been
watching this market for 15 years, got a little bit of
historical perspective. Denton has grown and gotten nicer
and gotten better like crazy over the last 15 years.
So I commend the city for the good things that it's
accomplished. Downtown is great, traffic's got the new loop
288, doing a lot of good things. University of North Texas,
when I started coming here 15 years ago I had 20,000
students.
It's got 36,000 students today and they're attracting a
higher quality of student. It's only in the last two or
three years that there has been adequate rental rates to
justify the kind of construction that you see happening
just in the last few years.
And the two projects I'm referring to are U-Center Fry
Street, originally called Sterling and Fry Street, takes up
an entire city block with the exception of the little cut
out for Cool Beans restaurant and imbibing facility.
And it has 600 beds, it's like four acres I believe. By
comparison, the proposed project on Hicker Street is on
less than half the amount of land and it has half the
number of beds.
Now density, where is that? Just the density has been
mentioned here this evening as a concern. The density on
units per acre of the existing Fry Street project is 44
units per acre and the proposed project is 49 units per
acre.
The density is very slightly different. So I guess I would
make the point that the density is not really the big thing
. They're bringing a smaller project. I think it's
responsive to the needs of the community.
I would echo what the owner of Virtman said that you've got
some old, tired buildings today and these gentlemen are
proposing to come to your community and build a beautiful
new facility that I think people will like.
Students will love it, I can assure you. They love it on
every campus that I've visited. And I've visited, since it
's my business, I've visited University of Texas, I've
visited Texas State, I've visited TCU.
My son attended TCU, graduated in 2010 and I'm familiar
with the project that was in the slide that this community,
this developer built there and it's a fantastic project.
My understanding is that project is 80% parked, but the
students only use about half the spaces. So they have a lot
of empty spaces.
And so going back to the, and I apologize, if I can run it
over, okay.
The Youth Center, Fry Street project is 70-75% parked and
we know that because we visited the project.
If you look at the retail, they have some retail parking.
It's empty. I mean, it's like people don't know where it is
.
And rarely is there any cars on the top level. So that's
where we, it's pretty reliable to estimate that only, they
're only using 75% of spaces.
The other project where we had data cited as January 6th,
that wasn't point data. That's the parking for the entire
term, spring and fall.
That's how many students leave parking spaces. So it was 56
to 64%. So just a point of clarification.
Thank you. Thank you for your comments. I have one question
that's just popped up. Commissioner back.
Mr. West, you mentioned that the information you have on
parking has been based on what you currently see.
Right. Have you made any evaluations that project what's
going to be in the future?
Is any of your assessments based on what's going to
eventually happen?
Well, I mean, I just say anecdotally, you know, as
universities get more dense, fewer students use cars
because they don't need them.
And because it's harder to get around, so it's just easier
to leave the car at home or leave it in the garage and walk
to class and take the shuttle bus.
And, you know, when you've got students that live a mile or
two from campus, they're going to use their cars to commute
to campus.
And they're going to leave them in the campus parking lot.
Unfortunately, I think what a lot of University of North
Texas students do, the university has a garage and it never
fills up because it costs a little bit of money.
The students would rather park for free, unfortunately, on
these people's streets.
And, you know, I don't think this project is going to
change that. I don't think it's going to make it worse.
It's not going to make it better, though.
So I would say maybe there are some other ideas that could
be put forth where the city could figure out a way to help
these people who can't get out of their driveways on Oak
Street.
Because that would bother me. That would bother me.
And I don't know what the solution is, but I'd say maybe
somebody can get their thinking cap on and figure that one
out.
I think the trend is, you know, as a society, we're moving
away from vehicles.
More mass transit and Denton is on the leading edge.
You know, you've got a rapid transit thing that connects to
Dart in Dallas.
That's a, you know, that's pretty leading edge for a
community of this size to have a transit facility
connecting to Dallas rapid transit.
I mean, I applaud you.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
No further questions.
Thank you.
I've received one other card.
This is from Jennifer Meyer.
She does not wish to speak and she is in opposition and she
does have some comments on the back.
Why are we considering variances to the already fleshed out
plan for the area?
And then what is the plan for handling such growing density
down the road?
And then Oak and Hickory Streets cannot be widened.
What is your long term plan?
So those are her comments.
That's the final card that I have.
This is a public hearing.
It's open to the public so anyone who would like to speak
is welcome to speak.
If you would like, approach the mic and give your name and
address and when you've made your comments, please fill out
a card for us.
My name is Brigid Corbett and I did fill out a white card.
I just, I didn't have any comments at the time.
I live at 1220 Ector Street.
I live in the neighborhood.
That is to the north of the university, very close to
University Drive.
And I came tonight because I'm concerned about development
on the outside of this kind of larger neighborhood that's
bordered by UNT to the south and University Drive to the
north.
And I do object to this project because I think it's too
many people and too small of a space and it's not, it doesn
't make a good transition.
But the reason I got up to speak was because in all this
discussion about the parking, and I'm not saying this to
try to make this project be approved and go forward,
but it strikes me that it's been put forth that all of
these types of housing have unused parking spaces.
And then there are people nearby who have problems with
cars that are parking too much on their streets.
And I wonder if the developers of these kinds of things
could make available parking for people other than the
residents.
And that might ease some of the issues that the surrounding
neighborhoods have.
And that was the only comment I had to add.
Thank you.
I don't see any questions.
Thank you.
Again, public hearing or open to the public to speak.
Hi, my name is Esther Rodriguez Phelps.
I live at 606 Adley Street.
I've been a resident of Denton, Texas for over 30 years.
I'm very familiar with the area of the Fry Street area and
where this Burtman's area is.
I keep going back to the very beginning of this meeting
where our own city staff members said to deny this.
They said it at the very beginning.
Their proposal was to deny this development based upon the
variances for the overlays that were already
difficultly and with much gnashing of teeth agreed upon
many years ago.
And for an outsider, yes, we want Denton to grow.
I am in, I'm a real estate appraiser.
Yes, it's growing left and right.
But this is still Denton.
And we need to take into consideration what this town is
about, what our culture is about,
what our livability is about, and how we can communicate
and coordinate all of that is wonderful.
I'm sure Mr. The owner of Burtman's was very much
interested in selling his property and being able to
have his own unit within this development.
But that enhances him.
It doesn't necessarily enhance everybody else within the
neighborhood.
And the developers who come to Denton need to be good
neighbors.
Thank you very much.
Would you please fill out a blue card for us, ma'am?
Thank you.
Again, it's a public hearing.
Anyone who would like to speak on this item, please come
forward at this time.
You can make your comments and then please fill out a card
afterwards.
Again, anyone else that would like to speak on this item?
No, no, sir, I'm sorry.
Seeing no further comments or people wishing to speak, I'm
going to close the public hearing at this time
and open it for discussion.
Commissioner Taylor.
Thank you, Chair.
So I have a wide variety of views on this project and in
this area.
So I'd like to give a little context and then I think I'm
going to move forward with a motion.
I grew up in the Denton area.
I lived at 302 Fry Street for a time and I did not own a
car.
And I walked to campus.
I walked to my job.
And I walked to the entertainment area and it was all about
six, eight blocks away.
I've also lived at 1513 West Oak, which was an apartment
building, apartment building in quotes,
built in about 1930.
So it was older than most of the development in the Fry
Street area.
There's some parts of the old Fry Street commercial area
that was built in the '20s,
so it's comparable in age.
And I've also lived far off of campus in neighborhoods in
North Denton.
And I was a commuter to UNT and I was too cheap to buy a
parking pass
and I would park in the neighborhoods and troll around to
find a spot.
And I can tell you that it's not the apartment dwellers
right next to campus
that are the traffic problem or the parking problem.
It's the starving commuters that do troll for spots and swo
op in at the meters
or the little not quite marked but not unmarked, not orange
-curved spots.
So just for that perspective, I'm sure a lot of you already
know that.
I am also a huge fan of density.
I've lived in a lot of cities across the country.
Density brings all of the amenities that people talk about
that they want.
They want a walkable neighborhood.
They want to be able to walk to a coffee shop a lot of
times.
They want to be able to have a lot of storefronts in their
commercial areas
like in their walkable commercial areas
so that you don't just have one store for 10 blocks of
traffic
or 10 blocks of neighborhood.
You have strips with a lot of options.
That requires enough customers within walking distance.
So that doesn't come unless we get density.
This also, the trends in universities and university
students is fewer
and fewer millennials and younger people are owning cars.
Whenever I turned 16 and everybody I knew,
we rushed out to get our driver's license in our car.
My nephew who is turning 18 in a month,
waited a year and a half after finishing his driver's ed to
go take his test
because he didn't care about driving.
That's a single example,
but the overall trend is 95% of 16-year-olds had a car in
1990.
It's about 80% to 75% today.
These trends do lead to a need for walkable development.
So I really like the density,
but I have a problem with the process here.
The Fry Street overlay was a long fought process
and it's only about 12 pages long,
which is remarkably short for an overlay.
Our Razor Ranch overlay I think is about 600 pages.
The airport overlay, which really just deals with
you can't build a building that blocks the lights or the
airplanes,
is I believe 40 or 50 pages.
And then this one manages to come in at 12.
That's probably because that's all the varied neighborhoods
in the area could agree upon.
So you have the historic district built at the turn of the
last century.
The university has been there since about 1910.
The student housing that I lived in on Oak Street
that had been built in 1930 or so.
These are all competing interests,
all coming to a point at Fry Street.
And so that overlay, as lacking as it may be
and as kind of as unfilled out as it is,
was the culmination of a large community
with a lot of different views.
So for us to just basically take a third of the property
out of section A
or area A or whatever the term is,
to meet one project, I think that I have a problem with it
on the process side.
I think if this project had been proposed on the south side
of campus across Eagle,
there isn't a cohesive neighborhood.
There aren't three or four competing areas closing in
together
that create a lot of friction and a lot of different
demands.
It would be great.
The only other aside I would have on the density is
I think this project lacks retail.
As we bring more and more customers down,
we're going from 30,000 to 15,000 square feet.
I know that apartment developers are in the business of
building apartment buildings
and so they don't really want to deal with a lot of retail.
But I think that's what this area needs as it gets more
dense.
But because of the small area, Fry Street plan,
that's moving forward now,
which is another community input process,
to come up with not just this three block area,
but a greater probably five by five block roughly zone in
this neighborhood.
And because this is really cutting out a good chunk of the
overlay standard
for a single project, I move that we deny this application.
We've got discussion.
The Chair is going to, at this time I have a whole bank of
people who would like to speak.
Would you be okay to hold your motion and give everybody an
opportunity to speak
and then we'll come back for a second.
I'll withdraw my motion.
Okay.
Let me know when you'd like to bring it back.
Commissioner Beck.
Thank you, Chair.
And thank you everyone of you all for coming out and
speaking your mind.
I really appreciate it and it was important that you did
this.
When I first came to live in Denton and go to what was then
North Texas State University
back in the early '70s, the city layout then was kind of a
patchwork quilt design.
There seemed to be no rhyme or reason where some buildings
were,
why they were there and how streets just ended abruptly.
There simply didn't seem to be any apparent concept of
future growth then.
But over the last 30 years or so, new leadership began to
focus on this problem
and it has led to a vision that I think we can all be proud
of.
Its most current manifestation has been mentioned here.
It's the Denton Plan 2030 that allows us for a while longer
to keep the small town flavor
that we're all fond of.
So I'd just like to echo here many of the thoughts that
people, all of you have expressed,
how this dwelling will diminish the goals set out in the
Denton Plan 2030
in regards to the way we want it to sustain the character
of the neighborhood.
And though I plan on speaking a lot to the size of this
thing,
that's not something we're going to vote on, but so I'll
bypass that.
If we honor this zone change though, to me I think it
attempts to stretch our codes
for the Fry Street area beyond what some of us feel is
already a bit much
and crowd even more people in the small area.
And as Commissioner Taylor said, it took us a while to get
this overlay set
and here we go changing it.
And it kind of sets a precedent to, you know,
it just kind of inches us towards something bigger and more
congested.
We need more student housing and the city is willing to
work with UNT and TWU to do this,
but we have to do so in a fashion that sustains our
treasured areas around the campuses
or we'll lose that which gives our community value,
which I think is an appealing display between what the
campus needs are
and with the surrounding homes and businesses.
Thinking that we can minimize parking by inhibiting the
numbers of cars
of those who will occupy this dwelling seems a little
unrealistic to me.
In an age where the individual and the automobile are still
pretty much inseparable,
though I'm sure, again, Commissioner Taylor's statistics
show that that's changing.
But I think this thinking drifts into wishful thinking
and lays the groundwork for problems down the road when too
many cars and people
put too great a stress on our infrastructure and our
emergency services of fire and police.
I would encourage EDR to go back to the drawing board
and design units that accommodate our current codes for Fry
Street District.
We'd love to have you as part of the dent in future,
but it must be on a scale that doesn't overwhelm what we're
trying to preserve here.
So until then, I'll stand with the PNZ staff's decision to
deny the request on the amendment.
Thank you.
Commissioner Bruegel.
Thank you, Chair.
I know some of the people who came out from the
neighborhood
and thank you all for staying late on a school night.
Some of you did speak favorably about parts of this
development
and it sounds like you all would be very good neighbors.
You know, you've got a good business plan.
This meets a need for more student housing in town.
But I think there's pieces that are missing still.
We're missing the traffic impact analysis.
The fire department hasn't had all their questions answered
.
There is a small area plan that's soon to be in the works.
We have an overlay that took a long time to come in
agreement for that.
I would rather see, rather than this being denied,
rather than you all go back and speak again with the
neighborhood,
any changes to the overlay must enhance the neighborhood.
And I'm not sure that this enhances the neighborhood to the
degree
that rewriting or overwriting the overlay would...
I'm not sure that...
Sorry, excuse me.
It is a school night and it is a bit late.
So I'm not sure that the changes that we would be making
would actually enhance the overlay.
I'm concerned also, and I hear Commissioner Taylor,
you know, we agree about a lot of things.
I'm also a fan of density and I understand that the trend
is for fewer cars.
In fact, we just had a presentation in our work session
about bikes.
You know, we want to be a bikeable community.
So I get that maybe not all the residents will have cars,
but I'm still...
I would like for the developer to show their math
and I think Ms Anderson spoke about that.
Show your math.
Where's your data coming from?
I would like to see, you know, what is the parking that
will be needed,
especially because these students are going to be driving
to work.
And also we've created with the loss of Sack and Safe,
we now have a food desert in this neighborhood.
So how are they going to get to the grocery store?
I know I'm not going to want to Uber my ride up to Kroger
and back.
So I see some value in this project.
I sincerely do, but not to the point where I'm ready to
approve it.
And yet I don't want to outright deny it either
because I think there is...
It does fit a need in the community.
So I would be more in favor of postponing it until we can
get more data.
Go back to the neighborhood.
Let's hear about the small area plan.
Let's talk more about this overlay and how can we move
forward?
Because it's a good project,
but just it's all about smart growth in this town.
Just because we can build it, we're a growing town.
Just because we can build it doesn't make it right for
right now either.
Does that make sense?
So I'd be more in favor of postponing this until we get a
little more data
and speak with the neighborhood again.
Commissioner Hudspeth.
Thank you, Chair.
So and I agree with Commissioner Bruegel
that I would like to ultimately have the two parties, if
you will, go back and talk.
And for this reason, I think it is a great project.
I'm very practical in my approach to things.
And here's the realistic thing is,
anywhere else in Denton, if there's a traffic jam or
traffic backup,
I can circumnavigate that and go a different way.
Well, the problem with this particular area is, to the
right,
everything for as far as you can see is 20 miles per hour.
That's just not appeasing at all.
I mean, at minimum, I'm going 40 everywhere.
So I mean, that doesn't work.
And then it also ignores the fact that you can have all the
parking on the planet,
but you still have to drive in a circle to get up there.
And if I'm running late, I'm not going to drive in a circle
to get up there.
I'm going to absolutely park right on the edge of someone's
house on Oak and hustle to class.
And so I think there is some value,
but I think it needs a practical application to, hey,
really, that's a no-brainer.
I don't want to drive in that circle.
Even if I have the best parking spot on the roof,
that's three trips behind someone that drives super slow.
I'm still doing less than 40, and it's just not appeasing.
So I think there is an opportunity.
But I will tell you this.
I am encouraged by the retail, kind of contrary to what you
pointed out,
in that if you look down the street,
there was four places that they said were going to be just
inundated with business
because the apartments up there had been 30 different
restaurants.
It was a mac and cheese place.
I don't even know what's there now anymore.
And it doesn't -- and it's just getting decimated.
So to have someone that's been there that I know is going
to be there
and Subway is going to be there, and you keep it concise, I
'm all for that.
I think that is outstanding.
That's a plus for me versus the alternative,
which is just a revolving door of whoever and whenever.
So I think the two things I would like to see is one,
it's overwhelming the people that came and spoke that live
in the --
that came in the neighborhood are against it.
So why?
Let's go talk and let's go hash that out.
And then secondly, just come up with a pedestrian plan that
fits the area,
because I think that too would be, as the kids are walking
back and forth,
let's deal with that sooner than later.
Thank you.
Commissioner Rosell.
Thank you, sir.
I want to reiterate everyone -- what everyone else has said
in terms of
thanking everyone for coming out and voicing their concerns
.
It's very helpful for us to cultivate discussion
and try to hash out the thoughts of not just us, but the
city at large.
So I thank you for that.
I personally kind of align with Commissioner Taylor in
terms of me being torn.
In my estimation, and this is obviously just anecdotal for
me,
I certainly see a lesser car ownership happening pervas
ively,
especially through college students.
I have a college friend who lives in the Rawlings dorm.
It's the honors dorm on campus.
And I was speaking with him, he said that maybe 60% of that
dorm
owns cars and has them on campus.
So I think the numbers that Mr. King and his team provided
tonight,
they resonate with me.
I believe it.
It's not just a matter of like take their word for it.
I have my own intuition and knowledge of the people I know.
I know currently not a whole lot of college freshmen,
but of four of them that I do know, one owns a car.
And so I can extrapolate and kind of understand how TCU
might be at 60%
or the one on Eagle could be at 60%.
That can make sense in my mind.
And so I'm wondering if there needs to be a one-for-one
parking requirement
in this overlay.
And I'm in favor, in the presentation that you provided,
I thought was spot on, and I think it would be a great
development.
And I think the reason why Warren and Commissioner Taylor
brought this up
is a lot of work and sweat went in before I became a
commissioner
on making this overlay exist.
And so I feel kind of short-sighted to come in here tonight
and this week and look over this and think that what I've
heard tonight
should circumvent the work done previously
and bifurcate an overlay that's already there.
And so again, Commissioner Taylor's point,
and that's where I think my decision ultimately lies,
is there was work previously done
and I feel like we probably need to honor that work
and maybe the small area plan can help us maneuver this.
I would love to see an EDR property on that site.
I think you would be good neighbors.
Tonight, though, I don't know if it's a postpone
or if it's an outright denial,
but because of what has to happen to a sub-district,
I couldn't support that.
Commissioner Duttlewitz.
Thank you, Chair.
It's sort of an unwritten procedure of this commission
for all of us to express our concerns
or vote for or vote against.
So you've heard a lot of comments from the current
commissioners
and I guess I'm the last one to comment.
Gosh, this project is obviously needed.
It does bring some quality to the housing units that we see
and then that are provided for students.
But without going through all the other comments,
it's really the issue of amending,
not changing the zoning, it's amending an overlay.
And I believe that overlay was put in by the citizens
for a purpose.
And I'm in agreement that we don't amend it,
leave the overlay as is,
and let the developers work within the confines
of that overlay.
I think everybody would be happy with that.
So for the purposes of postponing any more discussion,
I think we're going to come back to, it's an overlay,
here's what the overlay says,
let's build our developments within that
and everything will be fine.
And I think the residents will be happy with that.
I know that the board will be happy with that.
It may be a consternation for the developers,
but that's what the overlay is.
And you've always heard Commissioner Taylor say
that if this was located in another area,
a zoning issue or something,
we might be able to work with,
but not to oversee or turn over an overlay
that's already been put in place and been working.
And as much as I would love to have this project
and see it come to fruition,
I can't support turning down an overlay
that's already in place.
Commissioner Taylor.
Thank you, Chair.
I have a question, perhaps,
for our Deputy Director or legal.
The process of amending an overlay,
like on an SUP, you can't reapply for a year
if your SUP is denied.
In this case, would a denial now preclude any changes
three months from now, six months from now?
The SUP process is the only one that I know of
currently in the DDC that requires a year wait period.
It says it's zoning too.
Okay.
I can get back to you on that,
but I think that if there is a wait period,
then it would typically be 12 months
from the date of the denial.
So what I'm thinking is that because this is a code change,
you know, we could initiate another code change
as opposed to like a zoning change on a property.
But I would like to clarify this
because I don't want to prevent a change
that's negotiated by the neighborhood
and the developer from moving forth.
But I do not think this current amendment is viable.
You've hit the exact problem that I'm struggling with here
because it's not only a DDC amendment,
but it's an actual overlay amendment,
which is a zoning document.
So whether or not the 12 months comes into play
is something that I'm going to have to look at.
But the DDC typically does not have,
of course, a waiting period.
You can bring that any time.
Okay.
And I guess one final question.
Since we are recommending to city council,
if it doesn't get to city council
and a new proposal is brought forth,
that wouldn't have a 12-month time around, would it?
No, as long as it's substantially different.
So hearing that,
I would like to move forward with my original motion
to move to recommend denial to city council
of the amendment to the overlay.
Commissioner Dudowitz, please.
You were speaking that direction,
so I didn't hear all of your comment,
but can you explain what you were looking at doing?
So I just wanted to make sure with staff and legal
that if we recommend denial tonight,
that if a new plan is--
a new amendment is negotiated between the neighborhood
and the developer,
that they could choose not to move forward
with this amendment
and they could bring another amendment to us
without waiting a year or some amount of time.
Okay, thank you.
Manon, please.
I'd like to clarify a couple of points.
The first thing is if the Planning and Zoning Commission
recommendation is that of denial,
then the applicant can choose to withdraw their application
.
However, their other option is to proceed to city council
and seek their final decision or determination.
The issue that you have raised earlier
was when does that clock start ticking
should the city-- does it start ticking at city council?
Absolutely it does.
So the 12-year timeframe would kick in at that time,
not at P&Z denial.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Manon.
Okay, so we have a motion on the floor
and we're looking for a second.
I heard it up there.
I thought--
Well, I think he withdrew his motion
technically and so--
We need to clear the board.
Okay, I apologize.
We have a second from Commissioner Beck.
I second Commissioner Taylor's vote.
Thank you.
If we have a first and a second,
do we have any further discussion?
Commissioner Bruegel.
Thank you, Chair.
Commissioner Taylor, I hear your strategy with this.
Yeah.
And I am going to vote for denial,
but I don't want to scare EDR off either.
I think this is-- it's promising.
It's very promising
and I'd like to see you guys come back again,
but there are some major--
There are some edits that need to be made to your project,
I think, before I would be voting in favor of this.
So I want you to know I don't want to scare you off, yeah,
but I am going to vote for denial for this.
Thank you.
Any other discussion?
Seeing none, I'll call for a vote on the board.
The clarification, a vote for is to deny.
Correct.
Motion carries 6-1.
The next item we have on our agenda tonight
is going to be item Z15-0031,
and I'm going to open the public hearing at this time.
847.
At 847.
Thank you, Chairperson Strange.
I'm going to ask Ross Colbittson, our senior planner,
to make this presentation.
[inaudible]
Gotcha.
Thank you.
Good evening, commissioners.
The room's cleared out,
and I want to thank the applicants of this project
for holding on for tonight's presentation here.
This is Z15-31, Cavender's Boot City.
A request before you is to hold a public hearing
with the recommended city council
regarding a rezoning request
from an industrial center employment ICE district
to a regional center commercial downtown RCCD district
on approximately 2.9 acres.
The subject for the rezoning is located on the west side
of the I-35 frontage road
approximately 1,000 feet south of West University,
which is Highway 380.
If you want to look at the existing conditions,
the property is zoned ICE,
which was established with the 2002 rezoning for the city
and incorporated the light industrial uses
on the property.
It also anticipated service uses such as office, warehouse,
and hotel to support the larger ICG,
which is Industrial Commercial General Zoning District,
which is over to the west near the Denton Enterprise
Airport
and properties in between this and the airport.
When we look at ICE,
it does not permit general retail activity
as general service use,
but does permit retail as a limitation, L18,
with our Denton Development Code,
which limits retail to gas station uses only
and even caps the square footage of retail
to 10,000 square feet within those uses.
However, RCCD,
which is contrasted from the light blue of ICE
to RCCD in the purple,
permits retail and regional commercial uses by right.
RCCD in its analysis
is a zoning district
that promotes mixed-use development with urban character,
permits wide array of commercial and retail uses,
and is used typically within the city of Denton
as a zoning classification
for regional commercial centers along the I-35E corridor.
And in your staff report,
I itemize kind of the sequence of regional retail activity,
likely starting with the Razor Ranch areas
going all the way down to the Denton Regional Hospital.
When we look at adjacent uses to the proposed site,
there is a gas station
on the southeast southwest corner of 380 and University,
380 and 35.
We are processing building permits
for a future vehicle repair
just north, just south of the gas station.
Next in line is a commercial warehouse storage area
that has some retail activity to it
in conjunction to the warehouse retail storage use.
Below that is the anticipated proposed Cavender site.
Professional office,
there's a small little office complex,
one-story office building further south,
and then even further south of that is Light Manufacturing,
which is off the spur of the railroad track,
which kind of divides the site.
When we look at that division,
we can see that the railroad line is an appropriate divider
between industrial land uses and commercial land uses.
The rezoning is only for the 2.9 acres
for the Cavender's retail store,
adjacent uses to the south
or property to the south is still currently zoned ICE,
but I wanted to highlight that the city anticipates
future retail activity in this area,
and we would consider RCC an appropriate zoning district
when such uses come into play.
But as of now, the majority owner of this land
wishes to maximize the availability of land and zoning
to his benefit by not rezoning at this time.
Land use per the didn't plan 2030
indicates that this is a regional mixed use on this side
on the east side of the railroad tracks,
which is that dash dotted line.
In west of the rail line is a category called
Industrial Commerce,
which meets the industrial uses on that side.
So rezoning to RCCD is consistent
with regional mixed use,
and that's a very important future land use category.
The considerations for the rezoning submitted to you
that RCCD would permit commercial
and retail uses without zoning limitations.
RCCD zoning has been used
as the predominant rezoning classification
for regional commercial areas along I-35.
The railroad line is an appropriate divider
between industrial land uses
and the commercial land uses
with the frontage on I-35.
And thus, reasonable development
and economic pattern suggest using the I-35 frontage
for commercial activity
instead of industrial support services,
and it is consistent with the future land use map.
Staff uses the criteria for approval
within the DIN development code 3534B2,
which lists the two points there,
and the staff finds that this request
meets those criteria for approval.
We did do public notifications,
where as you can see,
there was kind of limited properties.
Most of them were just commercial viable properties.
Four notices within 200 feet
and five notices within 500 feet,
and the one in favor was the majority property owner.
So based on the considerations
of the DIN development code,
staff recommends approval,
and I can stand for any questions you may have.
Questions for staff?
Thank you, Ross.
Thank you.
This is a public hearing.
I do not have any cards on this item.
If there's anyone that would like to speak,
applicant or anyone else
that would like to speak for or against this project,
please approach the podium.
Give your name and address,
and if you do speak,
please fill out a card for us.
Thank you.
Good evening, commissioners.
My name is Juan Vasquez.
The Vasquez Engineering,
1919 South Shiloh Road,
Suite 440, Garland, Texas.
I'm a civil engineer for Cavenders Boots City.
Cavenders is vested in the property
as they own the property,
and so they're committed to the site,
and they've committed to myself,
and to the project architect.
They want a store open this year.
We work closely with staff.
We also work with the property owner
who sold the property to Cavenders,
and so they're in favor of our rezoning proposal.
They're not ready to come in with us at this time
because we're such in a hurry to get started,
and we want to get the store open this year.
If you have any questions you might have,
also the project architect for Cavenders
is also here with us today.
Any questions for the applicant?
No?
Thank you, sir.
Again, this is a public hearing.
Anyone who would like to speak on this item,
please come forward at this time.
Seeing none, I will close the public hearing
at 855 and open the floor for a motion or discussion.
Commissioner Dudowitz.
I move we approve the recommendation
for the rezoning as submitted.
Thank you.
Commissioner Bribble.
I'll second that.
It seems like a smart location to put something like that
right on the front engine next to Razor Ranch,
so I'm in full support.
I have a first and a second.
Is there any further discussion?
Seeing none, I call for a vote on the board.
Motion carries 7-0.
Congratulations.
Hurry up and build it.
Sorry we didn't change the order.
Apologies.
We're not done yet.
All right.
Moves us to our concluding items for this evening.
Before we get to that, just as a point of order,
I want to address something that we discussed on item 4A,
and Commissioner Taylor's question.
It looks like in 35.3.4.C.6 of the Denton Development Code,
it would be a wait period,
even though it's considered both the DDC amendment
and the zoning document,
they're all under the zoning amendment procedure,
and that requires 12-month wait period after denial.
Does that--that's after denial by city council?
By city council, not PNZ.
So they still are not in a position
where they, like, tomorrow would have to wait 12 months
to come up back with an adapted plan?
Correct.
They could actually withdraw their application at this time
and avoid that.
Okay.
But if they would have council
with their current plan and council denied it,
then they'd have to wait 12 months
before they could come back.
And could they modify their plan as it goes to--
Substantially.
It has to be substantially modified.
Could they modify their proposal
before it goes to council?
We would have to--
I'm gonna bring it back here.
--renotify that if there were any discrepancies
or changes to what we've already noted.
They would have to withdraw it and resubmit.
Okay. All right.
Commissioner Donovan.
If I heard correctly, if they withdraw from--
then they can start all over again?
No timetable.
Correct.
Okay.
Before council.
Before.
Right.
They have to withdraw before council.
Right.
Because we're only recommending denial.
So once it's officially denied, it's too late,
they're gonna have to abide by the waiting period.
Thank you.
And just for future reference, this is--
Mr. Tyler.
Thank you, Chair.
This is for any-- basically any zoning-related change.
Any zoning-related change.
Okay. Thank you.
Or DDC amendment.
Okay.
[laughter]
Okay. Back to concluding items featured in the--
Commissioner Tyler.
Thank you, Chair.
As we discussed in work session,
I'd like to see if staff could get--
put together a proposal to amend the DDC parking standards
for bike parking as appropriate.
Commissioner Tyler, we will go ahead
and revisit the parking standards
to accommodate bike parking.
I do want to apprise the commission
that we are in the process of revising our scope of
services
to potentially-- again, this is still in discussion,
so to potentially rework or revisit the amendment
to the Denton Development Code.
If this is an item that is of immediate urgency,
we can go ahead and do that.
But we do anticipate within the next few months
or within another quarter to actually initiate that program
.
So if you would give staff the liberty to,
one, revisit the matrix that's already established
to see priority, and then with this,
we can go ahead and start looking at this
and inserting this as an immediate DDC amendment
if that is the wish of the commission.
All right.
Do you have a wish now?
Yes, please.
[laughter]
Well, it would be my wish that this be a small few
sentences
that can be quickly inserted.
Noted.
[laughter]
Well done.
[laughter]
Commissioner Rossell.
Thank you, Chair.
Maybe Commissioner Taylor could provide an update to this.
But this last project that came across,
this ICE rezoning that's stripped to the west,
seems like a perfect opportunity for the subcommittee
that was formed to proactively get that rezoned.
So I'd love to raise the priority
of that subcommittee meeting
so we can start getting stuff like this knocked out.
I think it seemed like that's a low-hanging fruit
that maybe we can attack.
In fact, staff completely concurs.
That is what we were talking about.
And we're going to start scheduling a meeting
and get this process going and initiate
with one of these programs,
this project that came forward.
Not this project, but the surrounding project.
Perfect.
Thank you.
Commissioner Burrell.
Thank you, Chair.
I found Julie Anderson's presentation riveting.
I have waited five years to hear from a bike
and pedestrian coordinator.
So I would really like for her to come back sooner
rather than later and for us to devote some time.
I mean, for the other commissioners,
you may have found a two or three page printed up handout
that was--I compiled that after a meeting
with two dozen or more cyclists of all abilities
just last night.
So there is clear community interest in this.
So please, Julie Anderson, come back and talk to us
because it's really important.
Thank you.
Commissioner Dudowitz.
Manala, you indicated something you're working on.
Does that include the commission's powers and duties
that I raised the question about
that you were going to find?
We have researched that.
In fact, a memo will be forthcoming
to the Planning and Zoning Commission
at the next meeting.
Okay.
But the current code says that we have certain duties.
Does it--
Yes.
Okay.
And it outlines what those duties are
that it concurs with those duties
in addition to what the next steps are.
So it outlines the process.
Okay.
But there was another committee
or somebody that was also looking at it?
The Health and Building Standards Commission
is a commission that is appointed by the City Council
that if a building has been deemed hazardous or unsafe
that through a process of revitalization,
it is either fixed or it is demoed.
But that's a separate--
But you'll fill us in on that.
Absolutely.
And it's outlined in the memo
that will come to you in--
Thank you.
--in the first meeting in February.
Commissioner Beck.
I mentioned in the workshop
that I'm interested in getting Julie Anderson
to spend some of her money on educating commercial interest
to hit by--
Would this be the--
Commissioner Beck,
can you make sure your microphone's on?
Can you hear me?
We have a problem with that chair.
I think you need to get it to the microphone.
I know.
[laughter]
It's always that chair.
Anyway, let me restate.
I say in the workshop,
an interest in getting Julie Anderson
to spend some of her money on educating--
getting print literature made up
to educate commercial interest
in getting bike racks.
Would this be the forum
where we could set something like that in motion?
Is she going to handle that on her own?
She can make that part of her next presentation.
Great.
We could advise her of the, you know--
Okay.
--reminder of the discussion
that occurred at the work session
and see if she can incorporate that
in her discussion,
her second part of her discussion.
Good.
Just want to keep the fire burning on it.
Thank you.
Seeing no other concluding items,
we'll close the meeting at 9.05.
Thank you.
[inaudible]
Yep.
[no audio]
It's 9.13
and I'm going to call our work session back in order.
Do we need a notice about--
notice publicly in a quorum again?
Or since we're--
No, just work session.
Just call our work session back in order at 9.13.
And I think we have one other item
that we're going to go through this evening,
receive a report on item C.
Right.
If you recall, on December 9th,
we kind of came forward to you
and told you that this type of update was coming.
The intent of Brent's presentation,
that was item 2B,
was he was going to kind of set the stage
and tell you where we've been
since the DME first came to you in 2013,
for those of you that were here,
and explain why all these substations
are going to come forward.
We've had quite a bit.
We're not going to go into that.
But this has really come out of that whole process.
Council has asked us to look into this process
of kind of bringing some requirements
specific to substations.
Just kind of go over this quickly.
We're going to talk about existing requirements,
what we've done.
We're going to go into what that process means
and what the new process is going to look like
and that kind of framework.
What that means to requirements of the DDC
and lastly we'll get into the details
of what these documents are
that you received prior to the meeting.
Currently substations are permitted
only in the rural districts,
employment districts, or industrial centers.
It requires an SUP everywhere else,
the neighborhood mixed use centers
and the downtown university core.
So most of the substations that we've all seen
are in those districts.
There are six, how can I write,
seven that have been approved through an SUP already.
And there are several more that were permitted
in employment centers that you ought to never get to see.
But we've done a lot of these SUPs.
We've had consistent conditions throughout all of them
and it's always been a 10 foot masonry wall
on every substation.
And then these weren't specific conditions of the SUP
but with the site plans that were approved
we saw consistent buffers to residential zones,
comply with tree canopy coverage,
their driveways were DDC requirements
for some special considerations
and they always provided sidewalks.
So we're going to codify that to some degree.
This is the existing process
where that SUP falls into a VME process.
The first thing they do is they develop several options
for the site, typically three or four.
They'll take all those options to a neighborhood meeting,
a public open house,
and they'll notice everybody in the ranges of those sites.
Once they've kind of come up with taking that public input
as well as their cost analysis,
they'll take that to public hearings
of the public utility board and city council.
They pick a preferred site out of those three or four.
They then give VME the power to go forward
and negotiate a sales price.
If they agree to a sale price
where they ultimately have to come back for eminent domain,
they have to go back to public utility board
and city council for those purposes.
Those are two public hearings.
They go in, they purchase the site, they own it,
they do the final site design,
and then they come back to this board for an SUP,
re-notice all the neighborhoods.
And sometimes that could be years apart,
and so at that time the neighborhoods
forgot what's going on.
It seemed to come back up that this SUP
is whether this substation is going to go here or not,
and it's really not in question anymore.
It's really about the site design.
And if they get the SUP, the site's constructed.
So what we want to do with this process
is kind of flip these around
so that we're putting that notification
that's equivalent to what they would do with an SUP
prior to city council giving approval to purchase the site.
And if they do that, then they no longer have to do an SUP
but instead a site plan
with some criteria that we're going to establish here.
Can you go back to that, please?
I'm sorry.
Sure.
So the top line is over here.
Commissioner Dudowitz.
Yes, the top line is what we're doing now.
And then it comes down to the second line.
This is what we're proposing.
And I don't see P and Z in that process.
Right.
You'll have P and Z in terms of a site plan potentially.
We'll get into that in a bit.
But we're going to codify all these conditions
that we've done through the seven SUPs
so that hopefully we can take that out.
But really the important factor
is we're putting the public hearing process
and all that notification input
before the site's even purchased
where it makes more logical sense.
That's really what we're trying to do.
So to do that, we're going to add a new use.
We're going to pull it.
Right now it's a basic utility.
Everything, gas, water, electric,
is a basic utility.
We're going to pull it out
and make a new use onto itself
for substations and switch stations.
We're going to add specific standards
for screening, buffering, access.
We'll get into all that.
And we're going to create a site plan process.
And then what we're adding is a new limitation
in the zoning.
So where it currently says an SUP is required,
we're going to say an SUP is required
unless you're part of a CIP master plan,
unless you've done the public notification,
and you have to have a site plan approved by P&Z.
If you can't do all that,
the SUP is still required.
This is just what that limitation looks like.
Again, the notice is the same thing as an SUP.
200, 500 foot notices,
a sign on the property,
and actually neighborhood meetings required
in this case too.
So that's the A, B, and C.
That's all in your backup that you were given
if you want to look in more detail.
How that looks visually, start here.
If you've done the public notification,
if you have not,
you go to an SUP.
Once that SUP is approved,
then you get a billing permit through staff.
If you did do all the notification,
the 200, 500 neighborhood meeting,
then you go to this box,
and that's all the site design criteria
that we're going to get to here in just a minute.
If you meet all that,
then the site plan can be approved by staff.
If for some reason you cannot meet this criteria,
then it has to come before you all for consideration,
similar to an alternative development plan.
It's kind of the same process.
What this means is that the top process,
because the notification has to be part of a CIP
approved by council,
because it has to be noticed
that only DME can really do that top process.
All the other private utilities like COSERV,
they have to go the SUP route.
Everybody tracking so far?
Good.
Commissioner Bruegel.
Thank you, Chair.
Public notification,
are you talking about just the mailers?
People, are we talking about a public hearing?
It is notification that the public hearing
is happening at PUB and City Council
for the purchase of the site
for specifically a substation.
I see.
Right.
We're saying, everybody listen,
we're buying the site.
We want to put a substation here.
Come out and tell us
whether you think a substation is good or not
before we even buy it.
That's a great idea.
The public hearing is going to happen now
with the PUB and City Council
and not through...
wouldn't necessarily be looking for...
on the top line,
they wouldn't be looking for an SUP
through planning and zoning.
Correct.
Okay.
Thank you.
And the reason for that is,
I'm sorry,
the reason for that is
because in their current process
they already do that.
So once they've had their...
they've vetted the property,
they've met with the neighborhood,
then they go back to the City Council...
the PUB and the City Council
saying this is the property
we're going to purchase for the substation
and then we've got an extra added step
and then it says, okay,
all that's done.
City Council has agreed.
PUB has agreed.
The community neighborhood
has been informed.
Discussion has occurred.
And then they come back in for an SUP
which is another added public hearing step.
And in this instance,
because all that occurs,
the public notification criteria
are addressed and met beforehand.
Does it really warrant...
the statement we're making is
does it really warrant to have
the SUP specific use permit process
occur at that point
through another public hearing process?
So the public has two opportunities
two separate public hearings,
one at PUB, one at City Council.
If that moves forward,
then the City will purchase the land
and not before that public hearing process.
Am I understanding that correctly?
Yes.
Okay. Thank you.
A couple questions.
Commissioner Rossell.
Thank you.
Can you go back one slide?
Sure.
So you're going to place a signed
advertising public hearing
on the property you haven't purchased yet?
Yes.
Is that legal?
Same with the zoning case
or...
D&E already does this, right?
So they go out and put signs
on the property they're going to
do negotiations with
or looking to buy.
Does this hinder the negotiation
to say, "We're going to buy it."
I mean, if I was the property owner
and I knew all this has already happened
and you have to buy it,
I'm going to put a premium on that property.
Are we losing some economic value here
by identifying the site so explicitly?
Let's take it back
because there's another step
before all that.
The preferred site selection
is right here.
So we've got four or five options.
We haven't agreed to a price.
We haven't agreed to anything.
We just say, "This is the one we want."
Go and negotiate.
They do negotiations
before they notice it in public.
So chances are they come back
to counsel in a closed session
and say, "Is this price okay?
Do you want it?
Can we move forward on it?"
That's a closed session.
Then they have to do a public hearing
to the public to say,
"We're agreeing to purchase this site
for this price."
The negotiations already happened.
So before that sign goes
in the yard of that property,
that owner already has that deal?
They've already negotiated
and they've already domain it.
That's helpful.
Thank you.
Commissioner Beck.
Thank you, Chair.
I'll put it back up to one more.
Other way?
Well, anyway,
the initial public notification
is met through just mayors.
Right.
Exactly like it's done through an SUP.
Certified mail, 200 feet to property owners,
500 feet, non-certified
to fiscal addresses.
It goes in public publications.
Well, this isn't required in the newspaper,
but every public hearing
for city council requires a newspaper.
It's still being handled.
Okay.
So it's not specifically called out
in this one.
So we can attract the idea
of what we're trying to do,
bring it all to the forefront.
Okay.
Now, I think this right here
is going to be key
because we've done this six times,
so hopefully we've got to get a handle
on what's been, what's approvable.
Okay, so here's kind of the meat
and bones of it.
Here's the regulations.
We're going to add these
to SUP Chapter 24,
which already exists
for utility standards.
We're going to add these sections
and I'll kind of go through them
one at a time.
It's late, so it's the purpose.
I won't get into all that detail,
but if you have any questions
about it, feel free to let me know.
It's really just to add these standards
and adopt some of the federal standards
that were already in the code.
Definitions.
We're going to define a substation
as basically any structure
as part of a transmission system
that routes voltage down
for distribution
into a local or regional area
or conversion
of two transmission lines.
A switch station is basically
the same thing.
It just doesn't have
any transformers to route the power.
It's one voltage
all the way through the station
in case that wasn't clear.
We're going to have
some general regulations.
This is really where
the federal standards
are going to get put in.
NERC and NESC,
the National Electric Safety Council,
they're rules that DME
is already following.
We're just inserting them
in this section.
Then we're going to add
the transmission line
clearance easements
for 69 kV and 138 kV.
Part of this,
I wish Brent had given
the presentation before
because he would have explained
all this,
but they're moving
from a 68 kV system
to a 138 kV system.
That's the reason we're doing
all these substations.
They have higher voltage,
therefore they require
higher clearance zones.
We're codifying those
clearance zones
that we're already enforcing today.
What we're also doing
is instead of preliminary
final plan through subchapter B
of the government code,
we can do development plots
at a staff level.
We're going to make those plots
for those substations,
just a development plot.
Going really fast.
Are we still good?
Okay.
All right.
Moving into screening,
like with every condition
of every SCP,
we're going to require
a minimum 10-foot
masonry screening wall
around the perimeter of the site.
Outside of that screening wall,
you have to have
a 10-foot landscape area
that includes ornamental trees
and shrubs every 30 feet.
We're going to require a gate
that opaquely screens
the interior of the site,
and we're specifically
prohibiting chain link
as that fence material.
You may have noticed
that DME has chain link
on their fences now.
They're currently in the process
of upgrading all those fences.
We're going to require
that they comply
with all the federal standards,
however, anywhere where
the DDC is stricter,
the DDC applies,
not the federal standard.
And if there's any
special circumstances
that exist,
the Director of Development
Services and his or her
designated May Grant
alternative screening measures.
So in this case,
it's going to be something like
you haven't seen it yet,
Hickory Substation.
It's right next to a
historic district.
They met with the neighborhood.
They agreed to this
really elaborate wall
that doesn't necessarily
comply with what we've done here,
but it was done through
a lot of neighborhood input,
so we're allowing the director
in that case to approve
what the neighborhood's
already done
at his or her discretion.
Moving on,
we've got the buffer requirements.
Except when you're next
to an industrial zone,
a 20-foot buffer is required.
The common includes
five trees and 30 shrubs
per 100 linear feet.
That's kind of somewhere
between a type C and a type D
that you all are familiar with
that's kind of in between.
And then again,
where special circumstances exist,
the Director of Development
may grant this
alternative buffering.
An example of this
where the director might
approve of it is when
you're next to a flood plan,
you've got a giant tree
landscaped area already.
There's no need to add
an additional 20-foot
to buffer the flood plan.
Trees, again,
these are already
in the DDC.
The street trees are required
in accordance with
Subject 13,
which is where our SAC design
criteria for standard
development is.
But street lights
may be used in lieu of
street trees provided
at the same number
and spacing.
And these are not your big
street lights.
These are the ornamental
pedestrian-sized lights.
They are exempt from the tree
code as they currently are.
And we're looking into this.
The tree code update
is coming forward.
So we're kind of looking
at these to make sure
they blend and match
and are consistent.
So that may be tweaked
just a little bit.
And then lastly,
as required now,
you have to comply
with the tree canopy coverage
per the zoning district.
Access and transportation.
The first rule is driveways
can't be located across
from the front yards
of residential uses
or districts,
unless approved
by the director.
Primary access is limited
to the lowest
classification street.
So if you have an arterial
in a collector,
you take it off the collector
and take it off the arterial.
No more than two driveways
per each perimeter street.
Your separation is per
the transportation
criteria manual.
Driveways must be concrete
from the back of the curb
to the entrance of the site.
No gravel driveways
where the public can see it.
And sidewalks are required
with the development.
Again, all this is already
in place,
just codifying it
in this chapter.
This is kind of a new one.
This is kind of one
of the federal standards
from the NESC
that you have to have
a 20-foot clearance zone
to go climbing aids
for the security
and safety of the site.
We're going to mandate this
for our code.
You have to have a 20-foot site
and you can't have landscape
in it so long as
it's properly maintained
doesn't grow to a height
that you could climb
or scale the wall.
Commissioner Hatchbuth.
Thank you.
Sidewalks.
So generally they're going
to be further out.
I'm assuming the areas
you're going to try to select
are, but should there
be some parameters there?
It shouldn't just be a sidewalk
in the middle of nowhere,
right?
For example, let's use
the one on McKinney.
The substation just finished.
There's no sidewalk there.
What would you envision
that saying?
What does that mean,
sidewalk?
Where would you put a sidewalk?
How far does it have to go?
Does it have to connect?
All that is kind of already
outlined in our
Transportation Criteria Manual.
So even if there are nothing
to connect to,
at some point those sites
are going to develop.
So McKinney is a great site.
We've got the substation
going in first,
and now we've got two
apartments going in
the other side.
And now we are having
a long connection.
So the plan is as all
these sites develop
we will get that connection.
And the size,
the placement location
is all outlined
in our street sections
per street classification.
So stand with McKinney.
There just be a sidewalk
that connects to nothing
until everything else builds?
That's correct.
That's what we do.
Have you seen the sidewalks
from nowhere?
And then no sidewalk,
and then everything builds in
and there's a gap
because they didn't
build the sidewalk
ten years ago.
Are you sure?
Because cement shifts, right?
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong,
but it shifts.
It doesn't play well
with each other.
It needs to be,
you know what I mean?
It doesn't work.
I mean, I've learned trial and error.
I'm not a builder.
I've just seen it.
They put what's called
expansion joints in there.
But it just,
am I wrong?
I mean,
I want to make sure
that it doesn't play well
with each other.
Sure, it sounds like you're sitting
in one of our Thursday meetings
with applicants.
We hear that all the time.
It's true,
but you do have to start somewhere.
I jacked up my house
by putting a porch
and they don't play well
with each other.
I mean, and I'm like,
what's happening?
It's cement.
It's a fair point.
We deal with that all the time.
We do have to start somewhere.
We typically are pretty standard
about making them put it in.
But there are cases where,
like say you're building
a single-family house
in an established neighborhood
that has no sidewalks.
The engineering department
will take a payment
and move the building
in that sidewalk.
So that at some point in the future
we may come in
and put it in ourself.
Well, and so that would be
my question.
Is there not a better work around
to say, hey, look,
we're going to allocate
this budget hard and fast
for this sidewalk
once everything,
once there's three quarters
or whatever,
such that it can connect
to something,
but a sidewalk
in the middle of nowhere
that you're then going
to connect other sidewalks
to and they're going to fight
doesn't,
it doesn't seem like
a good use of resource.
For example,
I mean, there's no one
walking right there
on McKinney right now.
So you'd have this one patch
where there's nothing going on.
That is,
that's like
throwing money out the window to me.
I'm just,
I don't know.
There's got to be a better way.
Mr. Gerrard.
Commissioner Dudowitz.
I built the property
in 2005
on University Drive East.
I had to put a sidewalk in.
Properties on both sides
don't have any.
Not only that,
but I had to put in a
frontage entrance exit.
So in case we wanted,
they wanted to route traffic.
So in my property,
I have a street in front of me
with parking,
one of those blocks or whatever.
And it looks like
a road that would go,
but it doesn't.
And I have a sidewalk
in front of me.
Nobody on the other side of me has.
And I had to put those in.
Yeah, no, I mean,
I would just,
I mean, again,
if I have any say so in it,
I would urge
that I would put a sidewalk
in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
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put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
I mean, I would just
put a sidewalk in front of me.
>> Okay.
Great.
We have nothing else in work session so I'm going to close
our work session at 940.
Thank you everyone.