Jan 25, 2017 Planning and Zoning Commission on 2017-01-25 4:00 PM

meeting for January 25th 2017. This meeting has been duly posted and we do have a quorum present and I'm going to call our meeting to order at 11 after 4. This will be our work session and we will begin with clarification of agenda items and I will turn it over to Shandria for presentation. Good evening. The first item is the approval of the PNZ meetings from meeting minutes from January 11th. If anybody has any discussion on that we'll open it up. Okay. Do we want to have a clarification about the item that's going to come later just so everybody else has an idea on 4A or just handle that at that time? Okay. We'll leave that alone then. Anybody have any questions on the minutes? No changes? Okay . Okay. On the consent agenda we have two plats both are for the razor-wrench phase three and I'll invite Mike Bell up to do a presentation if you guys have any questions. Does anybody have questions? Okay. For the for the final plan I did pass out an updated version. Two minor tweaks, the labeling of the lots , they went from block one to block A and there's a corner clip designation at Panhandle in 35. So those are the two changes from what you got from your previous backup. And under individual considerations we have two items. The first item for A, this is the one that chair was referring to, we are going to have to postpone the action on that item until we can repost it to actually set up the committee. So we have to set up the committee first and then we can nom inate commissioners. All right. And then 4B is a site is a request for approval of a site plan in the razor-wrench overlay district and if anybody has questions, well Mike will do a presentation on that. So this project would be SP 16-3, it's a retail building, 143,000 square foot retail development in the RR 1 area of the razor-wrench overlay district. As normal it has to comply with the site plan landscape plan and elevations have to comply with the exhibits of the ordinance. To show you kind of where this project is in relation to the overall town center, this is 380 on the north side and 35 and the subject property is this area here. So it forms a major anchor of the town center just south of the in-and-out and the chiles that have been built. And to the right is just a blow-up how that site will work. This is the northern half of that lot, the landscape plan, see plantings meet code requirements for landscape islands and screening. The same for the south half. And then this exhibit is the hardscape plan, plaza space is required with the razor ordinance. They have met their plaza space requirements at the entrances, they provided seating and as well as a substantial amount of landscaping around the building. And in addition there will be this kind of courtyard as from the entrance to this door into the town center area. So at some point there will be some additional plaza space there. And I've shown two elevations here that represent the four sides. So the top view is what you'd see from I-35 and then this would be what you'd see from the north or the south. They're very similar elevations. I've outlined the criteria for approval in the backup. I'm happy to go through that and we will be recommending approval. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you Mike. The first item under public hearing is a request for regarding the historic landmark designation and I'll invite Roman Mc Allen up for a presentation. Hello. This item is historic landmark designation for property at 2106 North Bell. The request is to hold this public meeting and consider making a recommendation to City Council regarding an application for historic landmark designation of 2106 North Bell Avenue which is on the southeast corner of Bell Avenue and Sherman Drive. The home was surveyed in 1996 as part of the city wide historic resources survey and at that time it was labeled as a high priority structure in the in the Tudor revival style. This is an image from that survey. A summary of why this these items come before you is that the historic landmark is from per the code the historic landmark Commission makes a recommendation to the planning and zoning Commission which then considers it and makes a recommendation to the City Council who makes the final ordinance decision. Doing this designating historic resources has to do with the comprehensive plan in various ways and one of them is that element 4 of that plan calls for the preservation maintenance and creation of character areas within the city and then element 7 calls us for the city to be proactive in neighborhood conservation and using historic designations as a defense mechanism to some some development in those areas where there are historic properties. So then there are 13 criteria you only need one to be a designated historic landmark and I just chose three the applicant had submitted also several others. One in this case is that is one is it says character the home or the property has character interest or value as part of the development heritage or cultural characteristics of our city. So this one meets that in in a couple of ways it's very prominently located on Sherman and North Bell so whether you're coming from the north down south you know you're sort of entering the historic core of the city and if you 're going north you you experience that same knowledge because this is a really prominent home. When it started out it was a little smaller two-story is represented here in the early 30s and then it was added on to and the chimney was shifted to the south and the property was picked up and so it sits really prominent at that intersection. And then with respect to that style I just want to point out the Tudor style is represented in many ways throughout Denton it's like the second most popular home style that you think of in the United States after in the in the early 20th century. Here are two other ones in the Oak Hickory historic district these are brick versions and this is a more typical Tudor style with the brick or the masonry work and then sort of the half timbering that you see in those two gables the gable on the house on your left over the door it's kind of stucco and that it's called half timbering. And another version this property just recently got historic property of the month and surveyors back then also called this a Tudor style although here it's not half timbering those are actually pretty massive structural timbers that hold up the front porch. Another so I talked about that another is the specimen that so is this a good specimen and the home is a great specimen now the current owners have fully restored I believe they removed a synthetic form of siding or something that had been on it when they acquired it and they may be here this evening. They even went that's their notes on the lower right they went so far as to find the redwood and have the redwood milled into the right siding for any repair work that they did. Then finally another criteria meets is association with a significant person in or civic person to the city or to the state and I just threw a couple this home is stately enough that who knows this is a neighborhood probably birthday party on the left and a lot of faces that were part of the city. On the right I believe this is probably the judge although the owners will be here later the Judge Boyd and I saved this image just having a little fun the child the children there you won't see this too often they're pretty rug in front you turn that rug around and something you're not going to see much more these days is a big polar bear rug on that carpet. So the judge coming back to the judge and who that was Judge Ben Boyd and Ida Boyd owned the house in from 48 to 63 they were distinguished members of Denton Society. He was an associate justice of the Second Court of Civil Appeals in Fort Worth for ten years and then held some district county judgeships as well. He here's just an he gave an address here at the 1940 in 1946 at the UNT. Here's a couple newspaper articles the one on the left just about a case a prominent case that the judge handled and on the right is some information about Mrs. Boyd's position with the Texas Women's Federation. So we've sent out notices to the neighborhood we've gotten just a couple of notices back and they were favorable and we would not recommend approval for this property. I'll take any questions. Commissioner Rosell. Thank you I actually have several questions. First just my own notification every time I hear Tudor style I think brick, half timbers, what outside of that can you go over that how do you define the Tudor outside of that is it 's a steep pitch roof or the steep pitch and I think often they talk about the facade having you're looking at the gable and so it's it's not a side g able house typically you're looking at how do you refer it's not a hip roof so you're looking at the gable in the facade and here you got actually three if we go back we've got kind of three gables that we're looking at and I would say the pitch roof the gabling is really what's going to get you there and you're it is unusual that it's not stone that sort of the Bible on this topic McAll ister's book he almost every examples brick or masonry but you can't deny when you hold this up to the others it just does that so this one these on these so you see the pitch roof on the left is right this one's a little bit long this house on the right looks a little like a Swiss chalet I mean you can try to figure out what's going on but again same same thing both of them have the curve entries and you know it is a highly subjective feel and the sort of eclectic versions of them but I think in a way this is sort of an eclectic version of it the other thing that's unusual in this house or above that front door the three square windows normally the front facade of a Tudor will have elongated windows almost all the way across some sort of rectangular elongated when the other thing is a very substantial fireplace is the norm to kind of anchoring one side the other question has is you mentioned element seven says to pro actively the city's charged to proactively look into these can you tell me how does that manifest itself how's the city practically doing that is there applications that are streamlined for this or how can citizens do how can we do more of this in terms of proactivity that's a really good question I'm glad you asked it well one way and I've there's been a citizen led movement on this for some time is there's a fee associated with with this is two fees the fee for the application is I want to say it's $60 where they combine fees end up at 265 with the paying for the mailing is allegedly the other reason I personally think we should waive be waiving those fees it's such a minimal part to the city's budget but it's at least one little incentive that we're offering to someone work we're honoring their home and that place and and people are really proud of it in this case this home is owned by the the the second chair or someone on the historic Landmark Commission but the the other way we do it for example is we just did a historic property the month was just something we just came up with just to have public relations and as I do that almost every time someone says well I want my home to be designated and so I had a guy walk in this week and he's already submitted the application so I think it's a matter of just getting out in the community and talking to people and the dent and television doing a little promotion of the property the month helps and people make people aware of it we also of course can designate whole neighborhoods and that's fine too either one either you know when the community does that but I would say that's the main thing one we probably ought to be looking at that fee and even if we do decide to remove that just publicizing that because a lot of people would like that but that's a pretty big thing the other thing is then once you're designated you do qualify for a tax credit if you've spent ten thousand dollars and within two years of that designation then you can receive half off of your city property taxes I could I'm probably leaving out another way we could really promote that but they seem to be coming in a good stream now I think there are two files on my desk of people who didn't want to pay the fee and that was before I arrived here and then I have at least two pending I think that property the month on Egan is interested as well thank you very much the last question I have is more from a commission standpoint there's some items that come to us that we kind of rubber stamp through like consent not a consent but the final class and stuff what would cause what should I be looking forward to deny this if it's I mean if it's coming towards from us from their review I want to know I'm filtering this decision properly because I don 't want to question their work it seems like we're good to go I didn't know if that's kind of what we should do or if there should be things we're looking at you're absolutely right when you look at this you're looking at a dual public hearing process associated with this the historic landmark Commission provides their recommendation to you to the planning and zoning Commission to then forward your recommendation to the City Council and sometimes it looks like an extra step or an extremist step however the advantage to that is that the planning and zoning Commission basically has the opportunity to provide more insight or more input and typically the planning and zoning Commission is the recommending body to the City Council on zoning matters because the historic districts are in the Denton Development Code the DDC and their special purpose district or overlay district the special purpose districts any changes or amendments or additions to that warrant than the public hearing process because we also have an H designation with historic landmark design ations and that's why although sometimes it does seem like an extr aneous step it actually just follows the critical path so to speak without the criticalness associated with it when it comes to an approval so it would be a bit of a yeah that makes perfect sense so this is actually a zoning overlay change to that specific process or the property so because we have the overlay district or the historic districts already established when we or when there is a request to the city to secure a historic landmark designation that historic landmark designation with the eight simple symbol is placed on that property and as a result in order to follow the notification process and transparency those elements then go through the public hearing process it's a public hearing not necessarily a change in zoning it's just follows the dual public door public like a zoning case but it's not a zoning case by law so you do have discretion there's no ministerial type authority it's a current discretionary okay as to whether or not it meets the designation requirements that are laid out in your AIS and that's why Roman explained those factors or those criteria associated with it and what fit this category perfect thank you sure okay thank you and the next item is we're actually going to take item C before item B and I will invite Haley's deGrasse up to present good afternoon so this is case DCA 17 one it is a code amendment proposal for the development codes compatibility buffer requirements so the request before you is to hold a public hearing and consider a proposed revision of the development code specifically to amend the requirements in subchapter 13 that pertain to compatibility buffers a little bit of background on this last April the development review committee and members of the lean government team had a process improvement event and as part of that event they developed several recommendations for areas within sub chapters 13 and 14 the design criteria and the development code that we could improve primarily to eliminate routine waiver requests that come before us and before you all and time did not permit them to further flesh out those code amendments and what they should be so we're doing that now so this proposal for the buffer code amendments was formulated based on their those recommendations as well as a benchmark survey of several comparable cities requirements so just to clarify landscape buffers or compatibility buffers are required to minimize nuisances such as noise light glare you know that things generated by parking and general activity at a site and provide a physical separate separation between potentially incompatible uses so these photos are just a couple of examples in the one on the left you can see there's some commercial developments that backs up to a neighborhood so there's a little bit of a buffer there comprised looks like of a fence and some trees and things like that that just provides a separation between those and then the same thing on the right you can see a single-family property adjoining a multi-family so there's a bit of a buffer between them to help minimize you know nuisances that could be generated on the more intensive side just a couple more examples here this is an industrial use adjoining a single-family use so you see a bit more width there in the buffer those are fairly new plantings in the aerial photo so they haven't you know reached their full capacity yet to buffer between there and then that's just a head-on photo to let you see you know how that physical separation looks so our existing code requirements specify what type of buffers are required in situations where your uses adjoin each other but it does not specify who's responsible for installing the buffer so this is our existing buffer matrix you can see if you have a single-family use adjoining a commercial use a type C buffer would be required but it doesn't specify which one of those parties has to install that buffer and then once you've determined what type of buffer is required between your two properties those four types are further defined in our requirements so type a and you can see these in the diagram on the right there type a is a six foot high opaque fence of approved material type B is a little bit a little bit wider there a 10 foot planting area is required with a combination of five evergreen and deciduous trees and 30 shrubs for every 100 feet type C is then a 15 foot area with six trees and 25 shrubs and type D is the most intensive buffer and that's a 30 foot planting area with eight trees and 20 shrubs so the intent of this amendment is to help further streamline the development review process by eliminating the need for frequent waivers that we get to these buffer requirements some examples of that would be people that were you know want to use a fence or a wall on their site in place of some of those planting materials or often in the downtown area we get requests to wave the buffer entirely because lots are so small and cr amped and there just isn't room on a site for you know say a 15 foot planting area on the side of your property and currently in the code an alternative buffer can be approved by the director of development services and or often if there are other waivers needed we roll it as part of an ADP that comes to you all so our existing buffer width and composition requirements through the benchmark analysis showed to be generally similar to what other nearby cities require however since we do receive these routine waivers we feel that that demonstrates a need for greater flexibility in our requirements so the main components of the proposed amendment that you have in your backup are to clarify the party responsible for installing the buffer maintain the existing width requirement since they were found to be comparable however we want to allow more flexibility in how buffers are designed and to do that we've introduced a point system that I'll discuss in a little more detail and then we also want to continue to promote infill and redevelopment by maintaining the current waiver for buffers within the infill special purpose district and extending that to waive the need for buffers within the entire downtown University core zoning district so to show you what that looks like the areas in green there are the downtown University core so that's dr1 dr2 DCN and DCG districts and then you can see on the red boundary there would be the infill boundary so there is a lot of overlap between them but we just want to you know make sure all of the downtown area is covered so I mentioned a point system so within the proposed amendment once the use is assigned a width based on you know the 10 15 30 foot rules that we discussed earlier and within that buffer yard width a property has to earn a designated number of points so you can see here single- family and agricultural require 10 points multifamily would be 20 30 for commercial commercial and institutional uses and then 50 for industrial to acquire those points there is a second table that provides different options for buffer elements and different point values assigned to them so the more intensive elements would obtain you more points there's options for fencing masonry walls providing additional buffer width and then several options for providing combinations of shrubs and trees and there is a provision that if a buffer requires two or more elements if it's doing plantings we need to see a combination of trees and shrubs to provide variations in canopy height so to give you an example of how this would work if we have a commercial use that's developing adjoining a single-family use and say they have 200 feet of shared property line under the existing code they would be assigned a type C buffer requirement so they would provide a 15 foot wide area with a combination of six trees and 25 shrubs and that would equate to of course 12 trees and 50 shrubs total for the width or for the length under this proposal they would we maintain that 15 foot width requirement but they would have multiple options for how they can pose that buffer to obtain the 30 points that would be required and so there are several potential combinations I've listed three of them here that would be possibilities for them so you can see it gives a little more flexibility and what they put in that if a wall better suits their site versus you know a large combination of trees and shrubs they could do that or it could be all planting materials and would just provide variations in canopy height to provide full coverage and so just to give you an example of what these elements look like all put together just this diagram shows you know how a fencing and variations and planting heights could provide an effective buffer between two uses so that photo kind of shows the same thing as the diagram there just to give you an idea of what all of that could look like together and we did send up public notification about these through the newspaper earlier this month and at this point I will say we recommend approval of this and answer any questions you might have. Commissioner Ellis. Thank you Chair. Hi Haley. How with the point system do they have to be approved with how they put that together or are we just letting them put that together and come up with their own points? During their site plan they would submit what they're proposing to meet those points requirements and then the planners would review that with the landscape administrator and make sure that it seems like a workable combination of things that they've put together there. So it's part of this the site plan approval at that point? Okay. I think I had another I made several notes as I was reading this. Biggest one is is the last state the last statement on page four of the proposed rewrite seems really confusing to me that paragraph. I you know we're set to clarify these buffers and then we put in this paragraph that says but if you want to circumvent this here's an option for you. I was can you tell me how that came to be written in there? Yeah so that is a provision that's in something very similar to that statement is in the current code and so all that would be an instance is where you know if the width couldn't be met or something like that an alternative could still be proposed you know say if they can meet the point requirements but they can't give us the full 30 foot of width or something like that it provides a provision for us to be able to approve some alternative so long as it meets the intensity that we're seeking with this . Does that make sense? It makes sense it just it's just well it's set up for yeah to circumvent the whole thing I think the way it's written. Yeah we can take another look at that but that that is a statement that we currently have in the code and that's how alternative buffers are proposed is by bringing in their best effort to meet the code and if they can't do that then we'll take a closer look and you know the director can approve some alternative. Yes yes member Ellis could you tell me again for the record what page that was on? It 's on the proposed copy in our material so it's on on page 4 of that PDF and it's item 4. Yeah because on the screen it's different from what's in I believe online for people to look at at home. I can read that out if that would be helpful. Yeah that would be great. Okay so it's would be item 35 13 8 e 4 it says for developments with required buffers an alternative buffer may be provided with the authorization of the director of development services or designee if the proposed width and combination of elephant elements meet the intent of mitigating or minimizing potential nuisances as described in the purpose statement in this section. Commissioner Roselle. Two questions you mentioned that it seemed like our current structure is is in line with what other cities use is that correct? Yes generally the the requirements we have for width and the items that go in a buffer are generally consistent there's a lot of variation across cities but in general you know ours fell in range with what other cities were doing. Are any other cities doing a point system? Yeah this was formulated based on Austin and Fort Worth both have very similar systems and so we devised a variation of that that we thought would work here in Denton. And then if I understood the current is a matrix so if it's a residential to industrial that's a A, B, or C, A, B, C, or D the new one doesn't have a matrix. Is that correct? No it designates just based on the type of use what style of buffer would be required. But it only you only do that if the adjacent zoning was different correct? Yes. So if someone is building an industrial property regardless of the different zoning around it it requires 50 points period. Yes yeah that's that's what we're proposing it would be a commercial next to single-family multi-family or you know a different type of use category. Can you show the grid what would an industrial to commercial be right now is that a type D? So in that situation they're having to double the requirement? The width yes would double and that would be a case where we can consider an alternative if they if they chose to go that route. So that brings up a maybe a concern I have is we have a matrix that seems pretty sufficient for different uses because it makes sense to me if industrial is going to get single-family D but industrial to commercial being B also seems to make sense to me because it's it's not a single-family property but now under the current system it's not gonna be that way and it almost sounds like it's built in well previously we could do a B so we'll just go ahead and do an alternative and Commissioner Ellis's point it's kind of built in we can we can go ahead and downgrade those and if we're already thinking about or if I just brought up and the thought is now being talked about that in that situation we can go ahead and downgrade to a B then I have some concerns about not continuing the matrix it seems like I just lost it there is five different point rows that it's not loading yeah there's five or point rows now and there was four different types it seems like maybe we should have five types and continue with with a matrix and have well even two of those are ten points so it seems like we can send you with an ABCD okay matrix and if it's a it's ten points B it's 20 points and so forth rather than already kind of having this built in well if it's industrial versus commercial 50 seems it is seemed like a lot that seems counterintuitive to streamline in this process certainly we can we can consider that Commissioner Sullivan thank you looking at the applic ability and number one where says the mode the more intensive use category must provide the buffer when two or more go back to the first of the sentence with two or more non-residential uses from different categories a joy and the more intensive use category must provide the buffer so that would seem if a less intensive business category wants to come in and develop property with a category that's already there that's going to require the people the people already there provide the buffer no the the existing property wouldn't be required to provide a buffer retroactively but that's not what it says is there am I reading it wrong are you looking at just to make sure on the same page a one is that the correct item a one yes yes the last sentence seems to reflect that the most intensive of the two are going to be required to put the buffer in it yes that would be the case yeah and that would be if a property is vacant so this is for developing properties not you know we wouldn't be retroactive to existing developments this would be if say an industrial use is coming in and the adjoining property is vacant and zone commercial then the industrial use would provide it rather than waiting for the other property to develop I'm confused if I mean so we already know what the category is going to be whenever a business comes in or can they come in with the opportunity to change that category well it's based on the zoning designations would be at like an industrial zoning next to a commercial zoning is what the use is based on so let me jump in so for example if you have two vacant pieces of property and you want to develop one industrial and one commercial the if say and you're doing the industrial first they would put the buffer in to buffer for the commercial development but say you have an already established multifamily unit and then a single-family residence wants to come in next to it then the single family would put the put the wall in because they came in later does that make sense so the okay I just want to make sure the existing business or structure is not required to do something just because somebody decides to move in and build something next to them correct okay I just it just seemed like that wasn't what that said so if that's what it says okay all right thank you and run sure I think Commissioner Tyler was next thank you chair so I wanted to echo some of the concerns that Commissioner was all pointed out I am this this point system doesn't allow it requires the same buffer industrial a single family as industrial a commercial and a lot of times commercial can be very close to industrial and we probably don't need a very large vegetative barrier with fences and walls and so forth so so I do think a matrix of points or you take your points and you subtract the points of the thing next to you and so industrial a commercial equals 20 points or something I don't know I don't know how complex you want to make it or if you just want to stick in a little a little grid just to kind of keep the fairness to not require because industrial the single family is very different from industrial to a commercial use that could be pretty close to industrial certainly we can we can look at a way to use the current matrix and modify it to meet the system yeah and I wanted to just clarify that that last clause that the waiver clause the exempt the exemption clause right now you said that's being used pretty frequently because a development might not be able to build a class C and so they have if they're five feet too narrow they have to apply to the waiver to the yes sir and do you have an idea of about how many cases a month or year right now they're processed kind of you know just as a part of the site plan or something like that so we don't have a way of tracking those because they're not a specific type of application that we could you know pull a report for so I wasn't able to pull that data but just anecdotally we have you know discussing it with other planners and people that have been in the department for a while it is a frequent issue that arises and so this is like you're going through your site plan approval it's impossible to meet your required class C buffer and so now you have to do it write a separate letter basically to the head of development services and say here 's why can I please have a waiver yes and that gets approved so kind of puts you back a couple weeks it does yeah because it takes a while you know they they bring us their best effort and you know if it can't work sometimes they do they write up a letter or send in some sort of proposal to us and we have to take it to the director and get that approved or it gets rolled in with an ADP if they're requesting other waivers so this isn't going to be any different than that like it just hopefully they'll have a menu to pick from and they'll run into the problem less often that's our goal is providing more options would lessen those requests and one final question on the the trees for example on this on industrial buffers that require lots of points could they do something like two lines of large trees in their 30-foot buffer and get ten points for this one and ten points for that one yes they could you know kind of mix and match that as they need to and we would just have our landscape administrator you know look at that and make sure it seems like those could both grow to their full potential and have enough room there if that's what they chose to do okay thank you Commissioner Roselle thank you chair I just wanted to circle back to Commissioner Sullivan's questions I don't make sure I understand this currently if the property is being built and there is a vacant lot next to it with a different category is that development required to put in a buffer at construction is that currently procedure they put a buffer onto a vacant lot or between their property in a vacant lot we require a buffer at that time yes the current code says when an abutting property is vacant the land use category designation of the vacant abutting property will determine the type of buffer required on that side of the property at the time of development it's the current clause and that is under a four in the red line version okay I just want to make sure that's currently happening so we don't get into a situation which a less intensive unit comes in and the more intensive property is being retroactively required to put in the buffer but that's our new code that 's perfect any other questions then we've had a lot of questions we might have to have some more around this let's get some this cleared out but anyway thank you for your presentation so we're back on item 5B and I'll invite Julie White to talk about parking all right I'm Julie Wyatt senior planner with the city and I am presenting to you some proposed code amendments that relate to parking so the request is to consider a proposed revision of the DDC to specifically amend sub chapters 13 and 14 as they pertain to the parking requirements so during that same process improvement event some some issues with the parking regulations came up and at this time we're now working through those so just a little bit of background about how the DDC works parking is addressed in sub chapters 13 and 14 sub chapter 13 mostly deals with the design requirements of parking lots the landscaping and that sort of those sort of issues and then sub chapter 14 discusses the parking ratios the the location some of the location of the parking and then how the specific parking is is put together so so it's spread out over two chapters sub chapters and then further more in sub chapter 13 parking requirements are kind of sprinkled throughout the sub chapter so they're there in site design and then they're in some some access areas so it's kind of sprinkled throughout sub chapter 13 the intent of these amendments is to provide clarity to critical portions of the DDC that are subject to routine variance requests and you're probably familiar with those those are those are those alternative development plans that give the Planning and Zoning Commission discretion on some of the design considerations in sub chapter 13 the intent is also to improve the process by allowing some structured administrative approvals so thereby reducing the time for development so putting into some of the design considerations elements from those ADPs that we see so that it allows staff to approve those and so they can move forward more quickly we formulated these based upon some benchmark analysis of similar cities and evaluation of the current review process and then an examination of what kind of ADPs we see so we're going to go over a summary of what's what's before you so when we're in terms of sub chapter 13 where the proposal is first for flexibility for parking in front of commercial buildings in suburban areas and that includes the parking lot screening to require storm water runoff treatment through ice swim techniques on all new parking lots and expanded parking lots to modify the parking lot landscaping requirements to be less vague a little more certainty and where we want the plantings and and and what they should look like and then to make sub chapter 13 function a little better by relocating all of those general parking lot design requirements to one sort of central location within sub chapter 13 in sub chapter 14 we're proposing to clarify the CBD parking exemption also add some specificity to the parking requirements for residential development in the CBD to remove the maximum parking provision while addressing those concerns that so often come before you and then increase the permitted distance between development and off-site parking from 300 feet to a thousand feet and then require bicycle parking for all new development so we're going to talk about our considerations we're going to talk about and then I'm going to try to show you what what that means I know the red lines sort of make everyone's eyes go crossed so we're going to work through it together and if you have any questions we'll we'll address those so here we go so the variances to address sub chapter 13 requirements and and for front parking are routinely approved by the PNZ and the analysis points that we look at when we when we 're when we're going through the review process of those is first of all environmental concerns and then second of all the visual impacts when we look at an alternative development plan we try to look at the intent of why those code requirements are there why is the parking maximum there why are with why is there a prohibition against front parking and and those are the two the two elements we look at most often when we're talking about parking maximums we're looking at pollutants within the storm water that are created by the excess parking and then for visual impacts large parking areas do have visual impacts particularly when they're adjacent to the right-of-way so so those are the two elements we typically look at with the ADPs this proposal just goes ahead and codifies those common conditions that we put on those ADP approvals so we have these issues that we want the code to address we're just going to go ahead and and put in the code what we want to address those issues so so how we're proposing to do that is to go ahead and require iSWIM be be implemented in all new parking areas and their parking areas that are subject to subject to the expansion applicability table and that that includes treating the first endeavor of may correct me the first one and a half inches of water quality volume during a rain event so we didn't specify what those iSWIM what what technique they should use land development and each parcel is somewhat different and we don't necessarily know what iSWIM technique would work for which parcel so we've kind of left that up to the developer of how they want to treat that water quality volume but we do require that it be treated and they'd be maintained in accordance with the industry standards and the best practices and then we're also proposing that they ensure adequate landscaping to mute those visual impacts of the of the parking areas so let's just take a look at iSWIM these are some of the things that could be implemented as part of the iSWIM as part of the stormwater treatment y'all may have heard us talk about gray and green solutions with iSWIM green being the plantings and the way the site is designed in order to for the the landscape areas to filter the water so those are the green solutions and and for that we see areas bioswales we see we see sawtooth cuts in the curbs where the water can drain to the landscape areas and provide filtrate natural filtration for the stormwater and then we also see gray solutions we see technological solutions to these recently you saw QT add the inlet filters the buckets that filter the water we've seen other developments use other types of technological solutions so that would be up to the development and that would be reviewed at the site plan process as a corollary to the to the the landscaping that we want to mute the visual effects of parking we want to make sure that we are clear about what kind of landscaping we want and where we want it our current code states that seven percent of the parking area has to be landscaped and 15 percent has to be under tree canopy but and it says it's got to be distributed evenly throughout the parking area but that's that's kind of vague and it's you know where's the where's that dividing line between parking lot landscaping and other types of landscaping so it's it can make it difficult can create additional reviews for for site plan process or building permit it can just provide uncertainty for the developer so we wanted to be more specific and in that case we're looking at propose we're proposing parking lot landscaping islands every seven parking spaces that are sufficiently sized in order to accommodate two trees and we've determined that as kind of a short hand two parking spaces so the landscape island needs to be the size of two parking spaces and that it's got to be planted with two trees and you can see here this is actually in the proposed amendment that they can they can configure those parking spaces what works best for their site they can either do them long ways or wide but that would a permit permit them to plant the large canopy trees so we can get sufficient tree canopy in the parking areas while providing where we actually want it also within the proposed amendment so here would be a depiction of what those parking lot landscape islands would look like there's also a provision in your backup and the red line that they could instead of the parking lot islands provide a landscape median and that median would be eight feet wide once again to provide sufficient room for those trees to grow to their potential it would need to be a permeable surface so rainwater could get through it and it would be considered a landscape area and then they would need to plant a large canopy tree every 30 feet in order to provide sufficient canopy for that parking lot area in addition to those just like the current code now in caps would be required in order to control the access throughout the development if they do want to count those in caps as landscape islands there would need to be sufficient area within those in caps in order to support the trees and what does that look like so what what's what are we wanting to accomplish here and these are these are parking lots that do have parking lot can it or a tree canopy and landscape that is kind of what we'd like to see and here's another here's a a development that has the landscape islands you can see there the they're the dual like we're proposing they have two trees and then here is here's one that doesn't so you can see the visual difference and and what we want to see and then you know how it could develop if you don't have specificity on where you want the parking lot islands to go and I should I should I should just state the current code does require parking lot islands every 10 parking spaces if you have front parking but if you have side parking or rear parking there is no requirement for landscape islands so we want to make that a requirement for all parking areas another proposed amendment that we're putting forward is currently we if if a development does want to install parking in front of a building they have to screen that parking with a 15-foot landscape area when when the development is on a text dot right-of-way that has to be located outside of the public utility easement we have a lot of text dot roads within the city of Denton and our our requirements is that our requirement our code requires a 20 foot PUE outside of the right-of-way on a text dot road so you would have the right-of-way line you would have a 20 foot public utility easement and from there you would start your 15 foot landscape area so that takes 35 feet out of developable area and it pushes it pushes the development back away from the street and really what we want is the development to come forward and define that street edge that's the kind of good design we want to see but this requirement is kind of pushing it further back so we're proposing to to remove that minimum landscape area and more in favor of a like the buffer system like the buffers that are proposed a point system where we get the screening we get the the the planting material we want that defines the street that screens the parking but they can do it in a in an area that is sufficient for that planting and not necessarily on a specific amount of property so let's just take a look and see how that functions so here's a property within the city of Denton if they did want to develop it is on I-35 so that's a text dot road and it would require a 20 foot PUE in front of it and then from there they would have to have the 15 foot landscape area so all this area in pink would be dedicated to that and could not be developed so it would it would inhibit the ability for this smaller parcel to to develop in a way that would that would make sense for them so what we're proposing is for for properties is to take away that 15 feet and have the screening elements that each property when they develop they have to get 20 points out of the screening elements in order to appropriately screen the property parking lot these are the same things that are currently included in that 15 foot area within the DDC they're modified a little bit and I can point those out to you but they're they're really the same things they're just they can compact them a little bit reclaim a little more a bit of their property you still get you can still get something like this where it defines the street edge it looks great and it screens the parking area but they can do it in a little more compact way those screening elements include a landscape berm large canopy tree planted every 40 linear feet and this can also count toward their street tree requirements of three small accent trees clustered every 30 feet a three foot high hedge of evergreen shrubs this is one one change right now it could be it could be a monoculture it could be all the same head shrubs we're proposing that only 50% can be of the same species and so they would need to to to change that up a little bit and then or they could put in a wall a three foot high wall either of wrought iron masonry or stone if it is wrought iron the current code today as well as what we're proposing requires that vines be planted on that so you actually get that opaque so you actually get the screening effect and then proposed amendments to sub chapter 14 right now there is within sub chapter 14 an exemption for parking for commercial development in the CBD it has a word additional on there and that that has created a bit of confusion so staff is recommending removing that word additional in order to clarify that CBD parking addition we are also clarifying that residential parking requirement within the CBD right now it states that any residential development that has more than 10 dwelling units has to provide parking we kind of felt like we wanted to be a little more specific and have it relate to to what our parking requirements are so we we had maxed it at 20 bedrooms because you could have a 10 dwelling unit apartment complex and each dwelling unit has four bedrooms and that's a lot of people and we want to make sure that there is adequate parking for the residential development downtown so we've actually moved it to that bedroom requirement instead of dwelling unit requirement we've increased the allowable distance between a primary use and a shared parking site from 300 feet to a thousand feet and then we've we've added in a requirement for bicycle part parking so it will can we can accommodate in our development multiple modes of transportation right now we have a parking sub chapter 14 includes bicycle parking but it's not a requirement so we 're actually modifying that in order to require the bicycle parking and let's talk about that just for a minute so here's a map this red line is the CBD boundary and that is the area that has that parking exemption all of the area in green not all of the area it's it's pretty close it's there there's a couple of areas around the courthouse that it's actually in the green and it shouldn't be but but most of the area in the green is is actually parking within the CBD which is about 30% of our land area within our CBD is parking is dedicated to parking lots and so so we looked at that when we analyzed this proposal and and to make sure that there was adequate parking downtown we also kind of looked at well can you walk to all those parking because we want to make sure that you know if there is adequate parking that everybody can get to it and you can see this blue dot right here this is actually about a 10 to 15 minute walk from the courthouse so there's a lot of parking within our CBD that is actually within a walking distance from all of those areas that people like to go and then we also when we looked at this proposal we looked at other some benchmark cities around us to see you know how they address parking in their core areas and most of the areas around us and McKinney being one of them and their their square they don't require any parking within their within their square their their core so this is really in line with what other areas are doing it really is just a clarification of what's existing in the code I'm in the bike parking our dent plan 2030 you know has a goal of multimodal transportation and sustainability we have a bike plan within the city of Denton and so we really want our new developments to to engage in the biking and provide parking for for our bikes and so so that's a part of the code amendment to require bike parking one space one bike parking space for every 5% of of the required parking so when you figure a hundred if you if you're building something that requires a hundred parking spaces you're really looking at five bike parking so it's it's you know it's it's a step in the right direction of providing for multimodal transportation and we also did a benchmark on this or bike peg coordinator did and and you know there's a lot of once again the benchmark cities around us require bike parking bike parking just as a course of development Dallas for instance requires bike parking so so it's really in line with what other communities are doing a public notification was sent out staff does recommend approval and I will stand for any questions what I do Commissioner Sullivan thank you store the last first I've gone how many do you have me bicycle racks parking there is at the square I don 't our bike peg coordinator should be here later and so she may be able to answer that but I am not sure how many are on the square it is the square our downtown area is actually exempt from the bike parking requirement which might seem counterintuitive but a lot of those a lot of those buildings are pulled right up to the right-of-way so they may not have space on their property to actually provide for the bike parking so I know they're on every corner and there and there are some in public areas as well the point I'm making is that and I've come downtown various times of the day various days of the week and I have made a point to see how many were ever in use I've never seen a time when every back right back rack was in use ever and most of the time it's maybe at the most half used it's I'm just curious why this attachment to bicycle parking when I don't think I see very many people you know with the bag of groceries riding anywhere any distance at all I'm just curious this fetish about bicycles well it is a part of our comprehensive plan that we do provide for these other modes of transportation it's a good question Julie is supposed to be here later on this evening and so she might be able to provide more statistics for you as far as what kind of ridership we're seeing within the city but it is something that is a part of the plans that we've adopted and so we're trying to incorporate that within the code I see a lot more bicycl ists out on the highways you know taking up land the traffic do you know coming down to the square I'm just you know my observation sure sure I'll follow up on that is there any point system or credits that you get for doing bike things like you do with the other landscape well there is and I've got these in here but I didn't just on the slide just beat y'all up so well so our our bicycle parking proposal there's not a credit there is there is a proposal within this that if you provide bike parking in excess of what's required you can reduce your your vehicle parking by 5% so if you did add additional parking bike parking you could reduce your your surface parking but as far as credits for just providing it we're proposing that it just be a requirement for all development to go ahead and provide I'll make it optional but if you want to buy cracks at your business you can put them in and you get credits against other things versus they're required and there's no credit currently it is optional so that's that's what we have currently we we see it a lot it was specifically like with ADP's where we say hey add bike parking in you know it's a college town there's a lot of kids on bikes let's go ahead and add that in so we felt like this was something that we could just codify it would be something that you know all developments would require it's something that you know I sat in a in a development meeting with a developer and I said if you want you could add bike parking said okay well Dallas requires it I'm like we're not that so so it is something that you know it you know we feel that it would would encourage that type of you know multimodal behavior so well I'm gonna get off topic I've listened to the both the presentation before here and I'm as a developer and the only one on this Commission I wonder who pays for all this and these are all some of these are great ideas and they sound good and somebody came up with them but somebody has to pay for all this stuff and when you change parking spaces from 10 to 7 on the islands it's just more cost and all these things are more more more and I'm gonna echo Commissioner Sullivan I know sometimes these are ideas that people would like but the practicality of some of them and who's gonna pay for it and how much it costs I wonder if there's discussions with staff to go okay when we're gonna change all this on a typical site that's ten thousand dollars fifty thousand dollars is there any number crunching that goes into what are the cost impacts for these things we don't have the information to do that the number crunching but part of this part of the the impetus for this is because so often our developments that the site plan approval process or the review can take quite a few reviews and quite a few quite quite a long time and we also know time is money so we're trying to we're trying to standardize some of the things that that come up over and over again particularly with that front parking with the 15-foot landscape area that takes a lot of property out of development and we think it 's probably a little much and so so you know although we don't have the information necessarily to crunch the numbers I think we are cognizant of of the of the effects on the development community and we want to make sure that we we are specific in in what in what the requirements are and that so we can try to shorten that review time and and and allow them to develop as much of the site as possible so I'm a follow-up on your you know I don't want to dominate the conversation here but so how many meetings have you had with the development community to review all these to get their feedback on cost and so forth on this we have not met with the development community regarding this we felt like these were were kind of more administrative fixes things that we could move forward you know quickly so we haven't met with them well to that to my point we're talking about going from islands from 10 to 7 so that means essentially 50% for every essential 20 spaces you've now got to have another island we're requiring I swim now on the projects we haven't done that in the past your example with I think the QTO there on the corner of Carroll and Eagle that was something the city required of them they didn't offer to do that in regards to get there I think their SUP for their extra parking spaces in the back I don't know if there's any studies that have been done that the ice swims are more effective in parking lots versus out in the roadways themselves where we've got 15,000 cars a day going up and forth and they're sitting at traffic lights maybe it's more effective that the city put in ice swims in those areas versus businesses putting them in parking lots so I'm just curious and we put all these ideas up and say my question is how much time is put into addressing really what the issues are and then who's going to pay for it and whether it's public people that are going to pay for it or private developers that have to pay for all these things I'm concerned about as long as I've been on planning and zoning the long list of additional costs cost cost cost and at some point that becomes a big concern I think for business owners and people that want to do business in our community Dallas may have requirements for a bicycle we're way different than Dallas in our community much different on trying to take bikes out Luke 288 go grocery shopping and all these types of things where as these things come into play I don't know how practical they are to be used every day versus they look good on paper and somebody paid to put them in so I'm going to open the floor for some other questions I think I'm going to go Commissioner Rozelle and we'll come back over here thank you chair some of the things I have might be redundant but I feel go ahead and speak them but I wanted to start back at bikes real fast because that's where my notes start to Commissioner Sullivan's point I work downtown my brother owns a business downtown the bike stands are on the interior a lot of times with a square not next necessarily the businesses so if you go like during morning coffee and check out Jupiter house or West Oak bikes are littered but they're not going to the corner to lock their bike up and then going back to the businesses so it might be a placement issue not necessarily use issue which is an issue nonetheless but I think there are a lot of bike traffic on the square it's just the placement of those is not necessarily most convenient to like an interior shop like Beth Marie's or West Oak where they're not near the corner staying with bikes we have a bike plan as you mentioned and it seems like the bike plan is to encourage certain bike traffic through town and so I would like to see it's a the Commissioner's point earlier if we know where bikes where we want bikes to be then maybe we should incentivize those businesses to have the bike stands more prevalent than others so a new Home Depot out on the loop or something may not require we don't maybe not get bikes they 're not hauling lumber home with that however if we know they're traveling we know that we travel on Sherman because we're making that a new thoroughfare then maybe we should incentivize more strongly bikes there so that in tandem with where we're wanting to put bike paths and bike traffic we can leverage businesses to help incentivize that bicycle growth and to the chairs point in that situation if they're on the path then I think a credit should be given to parking to further incentivize the use of bikes it doesn't seem like there's a necessarily a tandem credit system with running bikes but it seems like we I guess we can reduce parking by 5% but it's still a requirement so I have some maybe some issues about that in regards to the parking if I'm understanding this correctly the increase to parking islands does not decrease the required overall parking spots for the property is that correct correct okay so their real estate is now being more used by parking spaces if they want a hundred spots and they're not to use more property to get those hundred spots now yes they would the size of their of their parking area would be larger but there's there would be more pervious material within the parking lot so yes it would take up more space just as a whole yeah so with encouraging bike traffic and then I am so sorry Commissioner Beck's not here because he's done the research about the necessity for even more parking because to Commissioner Sullivan's point if you drive around Denton count the number of empty parking spots at any given time in any business yet we have a requirement to have parking there and those are not being used if you go to Medical City Denton it's it's just a concrete jungle out there so I'm saddened to see that we're increasing the developers number of islands but not decreasing the parking requirements so now to chairs point they're having to leverage more of the property for parking that most likely will not be used for this and then I guess lastly it's surprising to me that we did consult I think on two different occasions the I don't know their name the downtown development group about trees they've been very involved in tree canopy processing but they weren't involved in what I think is significantly going to change a lot developments in town so I would encourage that conversation to take place that we can get feedback about the actual legitimate impact that these changes are going to have because I personally don't think it's just administrative it seems a little more invasive than that it 's all I got Commissioner Ellis thank you chair I guess my question is we're planning to rewrite the DDC correct yes ma'am so are we planning to address this chapter which I would think would be yes it will all be then if if this moves forward it would all be then incorporated in with the the DDC rewrite well because it sounds like with a lot of concerns we have we need more discussion on it so it would seem like a lot of this should wait in my opinion until the sub committee and the rewrite of the DDC is moving forward I don't understand you know taking the time to rewrite this when there are things left open on the table to discuss with entities in the business that it directly affects to consider I'm not sure why we would want to do something like this now when we have that looming before us and we discussed that internally and we felt like some of these issues particularly the front parking screening particularly the parking maximums that those things were so so part of just every development review that we felt like this was something that needed to go forward more quickly so that so that the development community you know we can we can remove that ADP that extra layer that extra step of process for them as quickly as possible so that's why why we went forward with these that they were just just something that tends to over and over affect development within within the city and and we were trying to minimize the the pain of some of those processes so that that that's why it went forward before just as a point of order if at the time that this item comes up during the regular session the Commission feels like they want to go ahead and delay it until they have more information and more opportunity to review the item then we would just need such a motion to put the postpone it and it can be indefin ite or it could be to date certain and so long as that second it and voted on we can go ahead and and not make decisions tonight did you have a follow-up to that to your point well Mr. Ellis thank you chair well now I have a follow-up to that so do we have to vote on this tonight as it's written as it's proposed is that well it's an independent I'm sorry an individual consideration item so it is ripe for a vote but if you feel like you need to move it you can so that would be your motion okay well I do have a follow-up to Julie I have a specific question to one of the proposals on here if you have the floor and I'll come to Commissioner Sullivan next thank you okay so it is chapter 14 okay 14 for a one and the way I'm reading this I'm just very confused with relation to parking spaces for residential uses and the line the number of spaces for single-family duplex attached single-family dwellings must not exceed the required number of spaces which is two so what happens if somebody wants a three-car garage the garage would be different than the outside so okay so the required spaces for a single family can you describe that to me what what we require for single-family is to parking spaces not in the garage it has to be on a parking pad right now the code requires additional spaces for duplexes for that have that more than three bedrooms those tend to get then we want to make sure that we minimize the maybe the the amount of parking that is associated with that residential use so we wanted to keep the parking maximum for residential right now we have a parking maximum for everything and so we maintain the parking maximum for residential so that those parking lot lot areas for residential didn't get enormous but removed it for the commercial and industrial are you talking you're talking carports then would be part of this no I mean a car port would be an accessory structure so that that's a little different okay thank you for the clarification sure I want to follow up on your clear faith so the maximum is so if you have a three-car garage you can only have two spaces outside you can't have three and if that's something that y'all wanted to that wasn't something that you wanted to move forward with the proposal you could certainly I don't know how you have access to the third garage then I'm just trying to draw a visual picture of a site plan in my mind of how you do that who determines whether it's a parking space or a drive space what would you say Shandrine I'm sorry I don't think that that was the intent so we would have to revisit the requirement if you wanted to allow three spaces per unit then we may need to increase it to three spaces for a lot thank you for your patience Commissioner Sullivan yes on the the front screening of the front parking screening yes if I understand you correctly at the curb since we're gonna take away the requirement past the utility easement is that what we're talking about so that the screening is gonna be closer to the curb it won't on text dot roads it won't be closer to the curb you'll still have that 20-foot PUE what we want to do is minimize that landscape that 15-foot landscape area because it's rather large and to require the the same amount of vegetation the same amount of screening we know we want that to be screen ed but just to allow them to shrink that space if they can or if they want to to accommodate their development so it still would be moved back because of the PUE and if it's not text doc road is the front screening still going to be required yes sir and how far from the curb would that be it would just it would have to be out of the right-of-way so wherever the right-of-way line is we're on when that lots of my concern is when you I've been a lot in a lot of shopping centers and you pull out and you can't see because the shrubbery there there would be visibility clips that they would have to meet they couldn't they couldn't okay so somebody's gonna regulate shrubbery yes sir it couldn't it would and that's something that we have to look at now because you're right you don't want someone to have an accident because of a shrub or maybe just not have shrubs a certain distance from the driveway make them trees so that you don't have that issue that somebody's not driving around checking the yard stick whether or not it's sure in the line of sight sure yes sir we already include the street the site visibility triangle for street design so they the plannings would have to stay out of that area that we designate for that okay Commissioner Rozelle this last thing can you give an example of the benefit or situation in which parking would be moved from 300 to a thousand feet I'm just trying to figure out the use case for that absolutely okay so I have I have a specific all right so we have a we have a business so you can see the boundary of the CBD it really doesn't include what all we think of as downtown right because you're kind of here's Hickory right here and it's leaving off substantial blocks so it really doesn't doesn't conform to what we think of as downtown so these buildings right here don't have that parking exemption but yet they don't have any parking so what they have to do is they have to they have to demonstrate that they can meet their parking requirements and what they do is they a nearby landowner somebody who has excess parking they communicate with them and see if they can lease spaces or how they you know how they or rent whatever they have to do and 300 feet that 300 feet is measured leaving the door of that business and walking in a pedestrian way to that first parking space and 300 feet when you think about walking down the sidewalk and finding a crosswalk and going is a pretty short distance so the 1,000 feet allows them to go a little further to find the necessary parking in order to meet their parking needs you know if they can meet their parking needs without having to pour another you know tear down a building to pour another parking lot then that that just makes sense and so it just allows them to meet their parking needs a little more easily. Thank you . Commissioner Sullivan. So would it be possible for say in the area that you just represented there that there may be three businesses that all are counting the same parking lot as their off-site parking and so how would that be the square footage and how many spaces available? That actually because our code is somewhat vague on that it really does it says they have to be evidenced by deed or some other similar instrument but it's not really clear and it's not really clear that the that the the giving spaces have the capacity to give them so what we have put into into the proposal is saying adding a sentence that those that giving parking lot has to have excess capacity and it has to be evidenced by that deed or some other similar written instrument and recorded with Denton County so that it is a public record who you know what spaces are being used for whom and it has to be for the duration of the use that's using those parking spaces so right now we really don't have something that that would that would allow us to have a good record keeping of who's keeping who's using what and and we're we're we're trying to correct that by adding a little more specificity within there. Does the parking lot that they are using as the off-site parking do they need do they get permission from that business owner or it would have to be it would have to be who owns that parking lot and who does use it as their CEO and once again they would have to provide evidence that they meet the parking requirements in the DDC and that if they have any additional spaces that they could then sell. Yes. Rent. Okay thank you. Commissioner Taylor. Thank you Chair. So overall I was pretty impressed by this the parking standards have always been hard to follow. I'm sad to see two things go but I understand why the maximum parking hard cap I always thought that was a good way to prevent over parking which if you drive down University Drive you know Denton Center just a lot of places around just always have see a sea of empty parking lot and it's it's it makes the entire development less attractive makes you not want to shop there it's a good place to do donuts when you're in high school you know it can go about 45 miles an hour across that parking lot it's so much is good whenever universities under construction because there's a nice straight path from from Hinkle all the way to to Carroll you know with all you have to do is cont end with Kroger at the very end so the the removal of the maximum maximum parking like I said I understand why why that's been done but I as kind of sad to see that one go and the permeable parking which nobody ever builds but I always liked that we had that in as as the requirement for over parking if you want to over park you need to put in permeable parking but I swim now kind of replaces that and I was I was curious if you know or if maybe engineering knows how many cities now in the DFW area use ice swim standards well Deborah is here and she can tell you about she has a presentation I'm going straight to this line right now I believe there these are all the cities that are ice swim city right now and two four that one's right there six eight ten twelve fourteen fifteen cities and those are the one who actually have applied to be called ice swim cities just keep in mind that I should have three components of it and many of the cities have already adopted some portion of it but those are the one who have adopted most of the ice wing components which is blood control stream bank protection and water control and water quality control and I do I do think that it would it would be unfair to require developers to meet these standards whenever the city itself does not but I hope this is the first step in the city moving from an old-fashioned pave over everything stream solution to to using you know environmental solutions for drainage and flood water and stream banks and so forth so I understand there might be added costs for developers and I I do hope that city engineering follows very soon and all of our streets are built to these standards as well and my my last comment is on the bike parking requirements today you can go to Kroger and there are probably two or three bikes chained to trees because there's no bike parking on Kroger on University and here are the Walmart on University and there are always several bikes parked there if you go over to where the freebirds and the yogurt places there's always a bike or two chained to a trash can or a bench or a tree and those very well might be employees that work at the nail salon or at the little you know freebirds burrito place or whatever but there is nowhere to park there because nobody thought about it and it wasn't required and so it didn't get put in the cost of a bicycle staple rack which is the little one that comes up and goes down it's pretty stylish they're about $189 plus a little concrete plus about 10 square feet of you know landscape area so the cost on bike parking is minimal compared to you know potentially these other costs and landscaping and so forth but there's already already definitely demand you know I have ridden to 288 my bicycle and gone to Target and gone shopping and I have gone to Home Depot and with a backpack or peneers you can you know I'm buying a five pound box of drywall screws is not a problem you might not be going home with you know a back yeah enough to build a back deck or something but there there is some traffic in those ways and Denton does have if I remember correctly before the bike plan was implemented we were at like a three and a half percent mode share of bicycles which is really high especially for Texas and that was whenever we had one and a half miles of bike lanes in the entire city so encouraging this especially you know apartments downtown and apartments even out on 288 that might be a student that rides the rail trail up to class or to downtown you know five percent they're really cheap to put in take up very little space I think it's a really great idea that we're and the bus but you can take your bike on the bus in the city of Denton too so you could if you have barriers to riding your bike like on if you're I would not ride my bike on loop 288 because I'm a chicken but but you could you could put it on a bus and and get over that barrier to biking just to speak to your parking maximum I kind of I kind of like you know I kind of held on to it pretty tight because as planners we like to see the the right parking in the right spot you know that's that's what we like to see and and and the parking maximum has an effect on that but but when we looked at it and we looked at just how often people were coming to us for additional parking and and particularly in our in our maybe our highway development or more regional center development and then what we asked for you know parking lots can have all kinds of effects heat island or pollutants are all and and by introducing the ice swim and the tree canopy it would mitigate some of those elements with the the parking lots and so it was kind of it was kind of a give-and-take regarding that so it doesn't always increase the cost to do your development because if you properly design integrate the low-impact design techniques it can help to treat your water and meet the needs that you have engineering wise and be cost effective so it's I think what we have to do a better job of is educating our development community on how to use that and how to integrate it into their projects so that it's not so it's not a difficult concept to grasp and it's not so difficult to implement so I think there may be a little bit of the hesitancy that we've seen but overall we've already have projects around the city that's doing it that is integrated into razor wrench the new fire station will have elements of low-impact design and you'll see it more and more around the city so it's not completely new to them I'm chiming on that this is upper I'm open to those things I get concerned when we put all this stuff out and nobody can say if we vote on this tonight it moves forward and we can't get a question answered as it costs $5,000 or $10,000 as anybody even asks the question that's a concern to me that I'm a businessman and so that that's just the language that I speak when we start talking about changing all these things well how much does it cost if we're gonna do a building for a client and they call it me up and say hey I'm thinking about buying this piece of property tell me what these things cost that's the first question that's asked and need to know the answers to those things and so it concerns me as as a commissioner and as a city as a typical business thing that those things are not even in the discussion when these things come before us versus we've had meetings we've talked about it we've done several different designs it doesn't create any additional cost it 's $20,000 that to me just is sound business principles that may just be my way of looking at things and it's not the way the rest of the Commission or the rest of this body does but that that's how I look at it and that's why I'm concerned when I hear all these things and yet there's there's no backup to come and be put before us of what the cost is to do all this if it's nothing that's a great piece of background information to say we've looked at this and we don't think there's a cost impact or we've looked at it and we think it is so much per acre or per thousand square feet some quantifiable thing to come so when people ask us how you voted for that and it's going to cost $25,000 on my project well you know it's nice to know that on the front end when we're going to vote on these matters what is the impact or not and so same thing to follow up like on the ice when I don't know whether that's a $5,000 deal not only how much is it cost to put it in but it's got to be monitored and you got to submit the reports whatever it is three times a year so what is the cost impact of that for a ten-year period do you have to replace it after two years or five years or six months and what does it cost so to me if we're going to continue this this would be the vote the voice of the Commission but when it if it is continued and we are going to hear it again I'd like to have those kinds of items added to the presentation to come back and say we would like these things to be implemented and this is what we see is a cost factor of those things and that's just my my perspective on this coming back so does anybody else have question Commissioner Hesbeth. Thank You Chair just one and I think it may go legal but are we at all contractually tied any time requirement with I swim are we is it just we can start stop there's no connection with them as far as being ice when certified or as far as using their product or recommend a product for any time or okay thank you thank you so the other two items have been withdrawn and just for clarification item E is a proposed with a proposed amendment related to building materials it was noticed incorrectly so we're going to pull that for now okay with that I'm going to close our work session at 545 and we will reconvene in council chambers at 630 good evening and welcome to the city of Denton planning and zoning Commission meeting for January the 25th 2017 this meeting has been du ly posted and we have a quorum present and I'll call our meeting to order at 634 our first order of business will be to stand to give the pledge the US and the Texas flag stands next item of business will be to consider approval of the planning is only Commission meeting minutes for January the 11th Commissioner Ellis thank you chair I will make a motion to approve the minutes Commissioner Sullivan okay we have a first and a second for approval any discussion seeing none will call for a vote on the board motion carries five zero with one recuse I move us to our item three which will be our consent agenda Commissioner Taylor I move we approve our consent agenda Commissioner Roselle I second the motion okay we have a first and a second for approval any discussion seeing none will call for a vote on the board motion carries six to zero that will move us to our items four which will be individual consideration on our item a which is PZ 17 - 024 we have a clerical error on that it was not noticed correctly so we will not be hearing that tonight and it will be renoticed and come back before this Commission with that we will move on to item B we'll call on Mike Bell for presentation thank you chair members of the Commission this project is SP 16 3 it's for a retail building at razor ranch town center the request is for a hundred and forty three thousand square foot retail development it 's located in the RR 1 sub area of the razor ranch overlay district like all razor projects it's required to comply with the design guidelines of the ordinance and requires a site plan landscape plan and elevations to be approved by the planning and zoning Commission on the left you'll see the overall site plan for the the town center area of razor ranch south of University Drive there's an University Drive to the north I-35 here on the west the subject property is located in this area here and on the right is the is a blow -up it is located just south of the in-and-out and the chilies on University Drive and will be there will be three entrances to the side or four inches excuse me on all four sides as well as an entrance into the what will be the town formal town center in the center of the project this plan shows the northern half of the side and the landscape plantings that comply with the code requirements in the exhibit this is the southern half of the landscape plan these two exhibits show the hardscape plan requirements for razor ranch and notice that there are plaza areas at the entrances as well as some seating areas and significant amount of landscaping around the perimeter of the building these are two elevations for the property this top one is with the view from I-35 and the south is this one on the bottom would be similar to the north and the south sides they're very similar this is the north elevation the criteria for approval are listed here outline them in your backup I'd be happy to go through that if you wish based on this criteria staff will recommend approval of the site plan and I will stand for any questions any questions for staff thank you Mike do you have one card in on this item to speak looks like Dustin Gibbs please come forward and state your name and address Dustin Gibbs my address is 300 Washington Street suite 400 Monroe Louisiana and I'm with architecture plus for the architects for Dillard's and we weren't really wanting to speak but just answer any questions that come up about the building elev ations or design okay when to have any questions thank you thank you for your card and support appreciate it again this is an individual consideration item it's not a public hearing but if there's anyone else that wants to speak on this item you may certainly do so otherwise we will move forward this time seeing no one else Commissioner Taylor thank you chair I did have a question of staff mr. Belfort come back I'm trying to remember the there there's some limit about the the amount of kind of flat wall that can face you know a parking lot or publicly viewed area in razor ranch and does this does that apply to this building and how does like what what mitigating features are there that break up the front of the building there are that requirement however there's also provision that you can use trees in place of that and there's a significant amount of trees along the front to meet that requirement okay so that's and that's why it's it's it's a fairly flat facade because of because of the landsca ping thank you Commissioner Tyler I move that we approve this site plan Commissioner Ellis thank you chair I'll second that okay first and a second for approval any discussion seeing none we'll call for a vote on the board motion is going to carry six to zero that will move us to our public hearing section tonight at this time I'm going to open the public hearing for item a HL 16 - 0 0 0 6 and I will call on Roman McEllen for presentation good evening everyone this was a request for a designating his local historic landmark and specifically the property at 2106 North Bell Avenue the owners are here this evening and today we want to hold a public hearing and consider making a recommendation to the City Council regarding this application and the properties on the southeast corner of North Bell Avenue and Sherman Drive and I'll answer any questions yeah questions for staff did a good presentation work session thank you Roman thank you do you have a card that wishes to to speak in support be Gary Hayden at 2106 North Bell Avenue please give your name and address when you come the mic and you'll have four minutes hi thanks for hearing me okay yes Gary Hayden 2106 North Bell Ave Denton Texas okay you'd like to hear a little bit about the history but I'm gonna keep it short the land around there seem to have come from Governor Reynolds and a land grant he was one of the governors between Texas Republic and the CSA Mr. Albert Woodrum is the fellow who built the house and I was told he was a self-made man it seems that he was an early service stations around here and he added on to the house about six or seven years after he built it and we have some indication that he might have been prosperous because we have a photo family photo of a bear rug in front of the fireplace and it's a polar bear rug so he we think he did okay Judge Boyd moved in next he was very well respected he was in the house about 20 years his wife was very active in women's federations around Texas and so my home was a hotbed of I don't know tea parties and garden parties and things like that okay we know the house was used for Sunday school Denton precinct meetings Democratic precinct meetings dr. Weathers lived there for a little while about 20 years we had some other folks in there one of the things that when Deb and I moved in her wife Deb Conti is here the other owner when we moved in it wasn't long after that Peggy Caps and the city Main Street came to us and said gee wouldn't be nice to have an historical district here and so the first meeting for the Bell Avenue Conservation District was held in our house and the neighbors got together and that's now reality so unless you have any other questions about the history I thank you very much just make a comment we saw pictures in the work session of your home and it's a beautiful home so congratulations and I've done my hard work on it thank you very much you got and this is a public hearing anyone else who would like to speak on this item please come forward at this time seeing none close the public hearing and open the floor for discussion or emotion Commissioner Rizel thank you chair I just wanted to say thank you for the hard work you put into the house and providing us the history it's always at least for me on the Commission fund to see those come through and it's a joy to to be able to put those forth to the council for approval and so thank you for being here and thank you for your home and Denton with that I motion to approve this agenda item Commissioner Ellis and I will second that and also would like to say I'm thrilled to support this this home has caught my eye every it does every time I'm at the intersection so it's always made me smile and it will make me smile even more now with the designation we have a first and a second for approval any discussion seeing none we'll call for a vote on the board motion carries six to zero congratulations that will move us to item B and I've read a question okay under item B and C we had quite a bit of discussion in our work session so before I open those public hearings I don't know if there was a commissioner that wants to make a motion before we open these for continuance Commissioner R izel as you said thank you chair because of the discussion I would motion I'm not sure if these need two separate motions so I just motion for clarification from legal separate or one together they were both have the same I would go ahead and make them separate motions separate okay another motion item DCA 17 3 to be continued to a date uncertain that would be postponed inde finitely until it comes back onto your agenda then I motion for it to be postponed indefinitely Commissioner Ellis I will second them second that okay have a first and a second to postpone indefinitely any discussion Commissioner Taylor thank you chair so I don't know if anybody in the audience is following this issue the this was a cleanup of our parking standards but it also included several nuanced changes to parking islands landscape coverage etc I personally feel like this this proposal is moving in the right direction it 's going to make parking lots nicer in Denton it provides for bike parking it removes a few of the old kind of restrictions we had that led to a lot of ADPs for rather minor requests like a maximum parking that we used to have in the old code is being removed so now there isn't a maximum parking requirement for pervious paving that in my time here I think I've seen just maybe two or three projects in the last five and a half years that did the previous paving and everybody else came in and asked for a variance to not do previous paving so as much as I'd like to see previous paving it obviously wasn't feasible and so we do have some questions about cost and some details of implementation but I do think this is a step in the right direction Commissioner Roselle thank you chair I just mostly probably want to echo Commissioner Taylor's points I think this is moving in the right direction what I'd like to see when it comes back is more information about the real costs as well as I brought up in work session thoughts about aligning bike stand incentives with the bike plan that we have in place to maybe join those together to further incentivize bike traffic where the city has already kind of thought through where bikes would be so hopefully when it comes back those two things as well as some discussion from the Dinton development group would be helpful to getting even more context to the impact of these changes have Commissioner Hussbeth thank you chair so I want to make sure kind of a note for staff that I do like the provision for the bike racks only in that we have quite the active community in that segment of our community and I think it's important for us to be sensitive to to their thoughts and and desires and so I think there's a there's a meeting of the minds to be had but I do want to see that provision stay in some capacity because I I agree the cost is is not that significant and it's going to be asked of every project anyway so we should probably be on the front end of that and then I think the other thing that jumps out at me is that I think there were some fair questions about the clarity of how to read the charts the graphs that type thing I'd like to see some some different options as far as how to combine those matrices to to make sure that that's user-friendly and then lastly if we could just as I said before in the development code I do want to meet with the building community but I want to hold their feet to the fire so I would encourage staff to have specific notes because if there is if there are developers that just continue to vacillate and won't give a number and won't lock in then then I think the record should reflect that going forward so that we can we can lend proper weight to those individuals and those that are willing to come to the table and negotiate in earnest then that carries a different weight in my eyes but I want to have transcripts that then kind of clearly line out those individuals that just refuse to to lock in and those that just will perpetually vacillate so that we can we can I personally can account for that so thank you I've got some comments as well I had a number of questions in work session along with Commissioner Taylor I know there are some things in this cleanup that are probably overdue I did have some concerns and brought those up in work session about some of the costs and the changes that were made and my concerns really stem from standpoint of not having impact from the stakeholders and the people that will be asked to make these changes and comply with these new regulations I think once those answers are provided and some of the costs associated I think we can have a productive discussion in our next work session and have this item back hopefully fairly soon Commissioner Ellis thank you chair and one thing I just wanted to add when this does come back before us is maybe we can have you know a workshop session in our work session then you could take a lot of our suggestions maybe and hear them and then maybe implement them and then bring it back to us I think that would that would help since since many of us had concern on clarity and and and questions and needed more than was given to us today I think that would be appreciative when it does come back any other comments okay with that we have a first and a second for continuance to date certain and we'll call for a vote on the board do we not have a second just for my clarity do we have a first and a second on this item okay great okay with that a first and a second call for a vote on the board motion carries six zero to continue indefinitely I will record on this item it was a public hearing since we've continued it prior to opening the public hearing whenever it's put on the agenda in the future we would have to re-notice it just so that the public is aware and if anybody came to speak on that item today obviously we won't have those speeches today okay that will move us to our item C we had some similar discussion in our work session and so prior to opening the work session I'm going to open the floor here to see if Commissioner would like to offer a motion to continue this item as well Commissioner Tyler again this is this is kind of similar to the last one where in general the I think the code is good we I had a concern about the fixed rate of points needed per type as opposed to kind of the old matrix style where industrial next to commercial needs less buffer than industrial next to residential and I would I would prefer it go back to the the older style matrix and I do really like the point system and it makes it a little more complex and somebody's got to work a little bit harder to maybe to it isn't just as clean read of here's a type a buffer you shall have a tree every 20 feet and a shrub every 16 feet or whatever it is but it does give a lot more flexibility and I think in general this is good but because of the changes and other concerns I believe the Commission has I move to postpone this item indefinitely Commissioner Ozel thank you chair as I mentioned the work session I would like to see a merge between the current grid system for buffers with the ABCD and the new point system I do think the point system is a step forward but as I brought up in work session there seems to be some built-in loopholes already there so I'd love to see those point systems 10 20 30 50 I think up to 50 correlated back to an ABCD type matrix or whatever the solution might be with that though I second this motion to postpone inde finitely okay I have a first and a second to propose to continue this item indefinitely any other discussion or questions I can't speak seeing none I'll call for a vote on the board the motion to continue indefinitely passes six to zero that will move us to item D and I believe on a clarification from legal we're gonna open this and then continue it rather than continue it's gonna same motion okay on item D I'm going to open the public hearing for Z 16 - zero zero one and this item has been requested to be postponed so the chair would entertain a motion for it to be continued to February the 8th Commissioner Roselle I motion for this item to be postponed to the February 8th planning zoning meeting okay Commissioner Hussman second okay we have a first and a second any discussion seeing none we'll call for a vote on the board motion carries six to zero and I want to make an announcement on this item the clarification from legal that says this item has been opened and continued that anyone who's posted a card at this time will be able to come and speak we don't have any cards on this item I'm sorry but if if when this item comes back it will be a public hearing and anyone would that would like to speak may come forward at that time and then that will move us to item E and we have a clarification on that this was noticed as building materials and it has been postponed indefinitely these are the same items in regards to the didn't development code and the building materials notice it was posted didn't record Chronicle just will make that clarification for the record and it has been postponed indefinitely and we'll be taking no action on that tonight this will move us to our project matrix and concluding items and first item I have as a note here is that Mike Bell is going to be leaving the city of Denton and we wish him well in his endeavors and want to thank him for his service here at the city has always been a great person to go to for questions and very knowledgeable and you will be missed so congratulations and good luck on your new opportunity and plan will miss you and with that we'll open the floor for items to be put on our agenda for in the future are there any items to be added to the future agenda's matrix yeah I have something to bring up by it and Rowan McAllen's talk today we asked him about proactive ways to incentivize or to help with the fitzl its facilitation of the stork applications what process needs to happen in order to look into those fees that he talked about specifically is it in our purview to bring up the discussion about waiving that $265 I don't think it's be added to the matrix or followed up offline but I'd love to see what we can do to if he has two applications that are not happening because of $265 I'd like to see how we can help out that process Commissioner Ellis thank you chair I don't know if this is for the matrix certainly a concern and and you can tell me where it needs to go we had some confusion last meeting about discussion at work session and what should be discussed at work session and what should hold off till the meeting in chambers I'm thinking can we have maybe discussion on that I feel like sometimes yeah at work session I do feel like sometimes the public is left out because we if they don't watch the work session I know it's being recorded so it is available certainly but sometimes when we get to this point I guess yeah if we could discuss that further that would be appreciated okay I guess the only item nobody has anything else is I appreciate it getting the handout last meeting about Ryan Road I didn't see anything on Mayhill and I've actually had now a call from somebody wanting to have an update on that and wanting to know what I know about it so is that plan to come before us or we're just going to get a handout on that I know we've been brought up now I think three or four meetings so the actual the memo for may he'll was prepared in October it came as an email to the PNC so we can be send that if we need to I missed it okay we'll we'll rescind that okay thank you I wouldn't have kept asking about it if you just said hey you just gotta check your email thank you anybody else okay with that I will close our meeting this evening at 7 o 5 thank you everyone and thanks to the public