>> Good afternoon and welcome to the City of Denton's Planning and Zoning Commission
meeting for Wednesday, January 11th, 2023.
This is our work session and with the quorum present I will call us to order at 5 o'clock
p.m.
First item on our work session is citizen comment on consent agenda.
I don't have anyone here wishing to speak there, so I will move on to clarification
of agenda items on tonight's agenda for our regular meeting.
First is the minutes.
There was a slight correction emailed to everyone.
It just had to do with location of where we held that meeting.
Any questions on either of the minutes for CIAC or PNZ?
Okay.
How about on consent agenda?
We have two items there for tonight.
With individual consideration items, we are going to elect a chair and vice chair because
it's January, so I guess -- what do we want to do, Hillary?
Well, that's on our -- we do need to do it at our regular meeting because it is on a
regular agenda, so okay, keep that in mind.
All right.
Okay.
4B, we just got an email on that.
It has been withdrawn, so we will not take action on 4B today.
Public hearings for tonight, 5A.
Let's see.
Ashley, do you want to just give us a quick rundown of what that is and then we can see
if anybody has got any questions.
Ashley Hickok, assistant planner.
This is Z220015, and this is a request to rezone approximately 4.18 acres from rural
residential to residential one.
The reason for this request is that the property is nonconforming with our zoning, which requires
a minimum lot size of five acres.
This subject site is generally located on the west side of Swisher Road, approximately
2800 feet north of Edwards Road, and we are recommending approval.
It is consistent with the future land use map and meets the criteria for approval.
Thank you.
Any questions on that?
Commissioner Pruitt.
Thank you, Chair.
Just a quick one, because I'm curious.
Out in this area, it's pretty country-like, and I think the roads are existing, two-lane
bar-ditch kind of road.
Do we have provisions where somebody who's building a home on a site like this doesn't
necessarily have to put in sidewalks that are not going anywhere?
Because normally in R1, like in a subdivision, that would be required, is my understanding,
right?
Yeah.
So in our development code, a Corina Maldonado Transportation Planner, in our development
code, there are exemptions for perimeter street improvements for single-family homes when it's
just a single home versus a subdivision, and so sidewalks would be included in that exemption.
Okay.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Anybody else?
Ashley, as far as access on that, I know there's an easement.
Is that in place already?
Yes, it is.
Okay.
Very good.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Okay.
That'll move us to 5B.
Ron is here.
Hi, Ron.
Good afternoon.
Madam Chair, members of the commission.
This is a request for an initial zoning to LI, the reason why it's an initial zoning.
It was recently annexed into the city, December 6th to be specific.
It's approximately 82.96 acres, again, annexed recently.
The property or the roadway to the south is Barthold Road.
It's a primary arterial, and obviously you can see from the site map or the aerial, I-35
is to the east.
The proposed use, according to the applicant, is an industrial use, so they will be constructing
an industrial building or a building to house that industrial use.
Staff is recommending approval as it is consistent with the criteria for approval, specifically
the comprehensive plan actions, sorry, the goals and policies, building the land use
designation of light industrial, the light industrial district purpose.
As far as adverse impact, there are non-anticipated, and utilities and infrastructure would be
brought in to the site.
As you can see, that development has already occurred to some degree to the east, and that
is where those utilities would be extended from.
With that, I'll stay here for any questions.
Thank you, Ron.
Any questions on this item for Ron?
Thank you so much.
Okay, that'll move us to 5C, and I believe that is Julie's item.
And welcome, Commissioner Villareal.
Hi, Julie.
Good evening, Julie Wyatt, senior planner.
Let me pull up the presentation.
All right, just a summary.
This is S22-0009.
It is a request for a multifamily use on about 16 acres in the suburban corridor district.
The property is located adjacent to Mayhill, just west of Mayhill.
It's where Mills dead ends right now, but eventually Mills is actually going to connect
to Loop 288 via Hummingbird.
That Hummingbird will be punched through between Loop 288 and Mayhill.
The property is in a community mixed use, future land use designation, and we've analyzed
the request and determined it's consistent with the future land use map and with the
criteria for approval, so we'll be recommending approval of the request.
I'll be happy to answer any questions.
Thanks, Julie.
Did I say that there was a preliminary plan for this site that was approved, right?
It was actually not approved.
It was denied.
Correct.
It was delayed and then denied, yeah.
Yes.
And then they just pulled it all together?
Well, and that was denied.
They submitted that and then, you know, we told them we can't approve that preliminary
plan until your SUP is approved.
And so now they've come back with the SUP and that...
So this is the same group and the same thing?
Okay.
Correct, yes.
That is what I wanted to make sure.
And it looks like it's just phase two of what's already happening?
It is kind of an extension of that.
Related or not?
Well, the same development group is actually developing it.
And there is some connectivity with this and the adjacent forest crossing.
They're going to be sharing that access point to Mayhill.
But they will be separate, so they'll be kind of separate entities, but they are adjacent
to each other.
Okay.
Thank you.
Any questions for Julie?
Okay.
Thanks, Julie.
But I think you're up for the next one, too.
All right.
Okay.
So this is PDA 22-0004, the Preserve at Pecan Creek.
This one may look familiar to some of you because we did have an amendment for this
property for the PD in 2019.
They've come back and requested an amendment to that amendment to increase the building
coverage.
With that PD amendment, they had the 33% building coverage.
They'd like to up that to 55%.
We talked with them about that and said, "Well, we think you need to increase the rear yard
setback to accommodate any visual impacts associated with that increased building coverage."
So this amendment is for that increased building coverage and the increased rear setback.
The subject property is located along Lakeview and Edwards, outlined in yellow here.
It is actually also platted as well, and actually the streets are in now.
So this is really that last part of the development.
The future land use map is low-density residential, and it is consistent with the future land use
map and the criteria for approval.
There's one thing I wanted to mention that we've heard from the surrounding property
owners.
There is a masonry requirement that the applicant originally proposed and that they say they
are tending to comply with.
It is not something that the City of Denton, as you are aware, can enforce due to House
Bill 2439 that was enacted in 2014.
So we've tried to let the neighbors know that, that we just can't enforce that masonry requirement.
But I did want to make you aware of that, and I'll be happy to answer any questions.
- Thank you, Julie.
Questions?
Commissioner Perot?
- Thank you, Chair.
As I was looking at this, it looked like their proposed plans would be buildable by right
in like an R6 district, right?
- Yes.
- Can you explain to me what staff's thinking was to prefer the proposed option as opposed
to a rezoning to one of our standard zoning districts?
- Just because it's within the preserve, and to be honest with you, it really wasn't even
something that we entertained in that this is the very last section of the preserve.
They had that detailed plan that the PLAT had already established.
So we really felt like this was the most targeted and conservative approach for this project.
- Okay, thank you.
- Any other questions?
Okay.
- Thank you.
- Thank you, Julie.
And then with regard to, let's see, 5E, we're gonna open the public hearing, but we're gonna
ask for a post-moment to a date certain of January 25th for us to take action on that
item.
Okay, questions on that?
Okay.
Then that concludes us going through our agenda.
So our next item in work session is a work session report, receive report, hold a discussion
regarding transportation topics.
Turn it over to Karina.
Hi.
I'm Karina Maldonado, transportation planner.
Let me go ahead and pull up the presentation.
So today's presentation is just a continuation of our very fun and very informative boot
camp series, which has now come its way into 2023.
So this is a second part of the transportation portion.
So this is what we've got up till now.
I'll kind of lay this out there for you if you're interested in exploring more transportation
topics.
Happy to bring those forward 'cause this is very exciting.
Transportation planning is my background, so I'm very excited to bring this forward
for y'all today.
So today's topic is per request mobility and connectivity.
So a couple things we'll go over is mobility versus transportation.
This is really talking about some terms and how they're often used interchangeably.
We'll talk about functional classification, level of service, access management and connectivity,
and then how all of that plays into development review.
So just starting off, I thought this would be a good topic to start off on.
Oftentimes in our mobility plan or in reports, you often hear the term mobility, and sometimes
it's used synonymously with transportation.
And they don't always mean the same thing, and the difference is very slight.
So just giving you the term mobility is the term used to describe, and I underscored this,
the ability or capability of goods, services or people to move.
So how well they're able to move around.
And transportation is the term used to describe the act or movement or like the process of
goods, services and people to and from those destinations.
So just some examples for y'all.
I did provide a screenshot of a link that is linked at the back of the presentation.
If you ever want to read this article, it's probably like a two-minute read.
So example of mobility.
If you think of a roadway that's full of potholes or degrading pavement, that is actually reducing
your vehicular mobility.
So if that was a brand new roadway, fresh and clean, you would have increased mobility
because there's no obstacles in getting you from point A to point B.
As an example of pedestrian mobility, having a sidewalk that's wide enough and free of
obstacles, so not having light poles that interrupt your path or cracked pavement or
furniture in your way, that is an example of increasing pedestrian mobility.
And third, and something that you might not think about, is having increased signage and
wayfinding, that is a way to increase all roadway users' ability to navigate through
our transportation system as a whole.
So increased wayfinding is a way for all of our road users to increase their mobility
throughout our overall transportation system.
So in a nutshell, that is what mobility means.
On the transportation side, you can think of that term as an umbrella term to talk about
all things related to transportation that encompasses several modes.
So we talk about modes of transportation that would include roadway users, walking, biking,
taking public transit.
So when we talk about that, that is a form of transportation and we would use transportation
to describe that.
Transportation when it's described can also come forth as a modal or multimodal choice.
So when we talk about modal, we're talking about one form of transportation.
Modal is when we talk about multimodal approaches, that's that whole bikeped connectivity, bikeped
users and how we plan for them.
So in general, mobility, access management, connectivity, those are all things used to
describe the quality of our transportation system.
So next I'll jump into functional classifications.
And this is something that you've maybe heard as projects come forward.
That's something that you hear when we talk about TIAs or even when we talk about our
mobility plan.
So functional classification, it refers to roadways and how they're intended to operate
within the transportation system based on our desired mobility and access.
And those are inversely related.
So I've provided this chart, which is actually pulled directly from our mobility plan, actually
this is from our comprehensive plan, which talks about that relationship.
So functional classifications, those are hierarchical in nature.
If we think about the highest classification of a roadway, that would be our freeways.
So Loop 288 at the north side or I-35.
Those facilities provide the highest mobility.
So the most ease of access going from point A to point B without interruption within our
transportation system, but they do come with limited access.
So really your access to a freeway is only with on and off ramps and they're strategically
placed to ensure that there's free flow throughout the system.
On the opposite end is our local streets.
So those provide the greatest access to our transportation system, but the lowest mobility.
So just what that means is if you think about a residential street, there's driveway access
for every home, so a subdivision will have 30 lots and they all have access to our transportation
system.
But in terms of mobility, every driveway interaction is another way to stop you from moving forward
and getting from point A to B, or at least slowing you down.
So that's reduced mobility.
So when we talk about functional classifications, how do those come to be?
How do we determine what we want on our mobility plan, what our future needs are for our transportation
system?
So just briefly, this table is pulled directly from our mobility plan, which talks about
all of our roadway classifications and what the right of way looks like, volumes, target
speeds.
So what goes into it first, target speed, and I have a little asterisk by there because
this term is actually intended to refer to our intended design speed, not the posted
speed that you see on the actual roadway.
So roads can be designed to give us the speed that we want, but oftentimes, you know, as
you drive through the network, you'll notice that maybe the speed limit is 30, but someone's
going a little bit faster than that.
That's related to the design speed of a roadway.
So other things are, you know, you hear a lot about context-sensitive solutions for
roadways.
So when we think about our classifications, things that go into mind are what is the urban
context of this roadway?
What is the suburban context?
And what is the rural context?
And Denton has really all of those that we need to consider when we think about our functional
classifications.
And the last traffic volume, what is the traffic volume that we expect on these facilities?
What is the capacity that we need them to hold?
So all of those things are what we look at when we think about functional classification.
So an added level of service, I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I did provide
you with a graphic that kind of depicts what you all kind of -- you hear when we talk about
TIAs the most is, hey, this roadway is at a level of service F, you know, or it's a
level of service C. What does that mean?
This is a great graphic for you all to go back to, but because it gives you that visual
of what we mean.
So high level, level of service just refers to the objective quality of a roadway.
That includes intersections, which I won't touch on too much, but it is included in that
definition.
And it's based on the operational conditions.
So something I do want to point out is that level of service is used -- and it focuses
on vehicular movement over all other modes of transportation.
Now there are ways to capture what bicycle facilities and pedestrian facilities operate
at, but it's not synonymous with level of service.
It might be a different version of level of service, so this focuses on roadway level
of service.
And again, factors evaluated -- to evaluate its operational conditions are design speed,
the traffic volume, and then the capacity.
So basically evaluating the existing conditions compared to our functional classification,
if you want to think about it that way.
And so again, the main objective of a level of service description is to assess the flow
of traffic.
So assessing our mobility on a roadway.
And of course, the mobility of cars or trucks or motorized vehicles.
What it does not assess is the safety of all road users.
So I want to keep that in mind because it's a great tool to have in our toolbox of assessing
our facilities, but it's not the only mechanism to identify what our roadways should look
like.
There's a question.
Commissioner Smith.
Thank you, Chair.
Karina, whenever level of service is calculated, is it done at -- is it done calculated over,
you know, a specific period of time?
Is it looked at at peak -- at peak traffic hours?
Is it -- what's the methodology that goes into that?
So I will have to preface this, that I am not a traffic engineer, and this is a function
of engineering.
Why are you here?
I am a transportation planner, and we are the best, so I will say that.
But what I can say is that when they do their analysis of a roadway, they do incorporate
AM and PM peak hours.
They look at delay at an intersection.
They do trip counters, so that helps them make the assessment.
So it's not -- it's not a study or report that's done in a vacuum.
They do go out there and gather data for each facility so that they can make that determination.
They have several factors that go into it, but we can have engineering do a very specific
--
No, we're okay.
Thank you.
Great question.
So the last thing I'll say about level of service, and you're familiar with, is that
it ranges from a level of service A to a level of service F, A being that it indicates higher
vehicular mobility, and F being a breakdown in our mobility.
A and C are generally acceptable in the study of Denton.
D is the status quo, so that is the level that we maintain, and E and F are simply unacceptable.
I will say, as a last point on this slide, is that level of service A -- and you'll hear
this a lot from a fellow co-worker that I love very dearly -- level of service A isn't
always the best when you factor in bike-ped facilities as a priority, so just keep that
in mind when we look at projects that come in.
While we would strive for a higher level of service, that also means that we're having
to give on our safety for bike-ped users.
Commissioner Smith.
I'll follow up to that question again.
So from a planner's perspective, I want to ask you engineering questions.
I'll take it.
What do you -- whenever we're going through or doing a planning for a development, do
you vary based off what you're targeting, because you say basically A through C are
generally acceptable?
Do you go into certain facility or certain projects and say, hey, this is a residential
development that's near a school, so therefore, you know, pedestrian mobility and bike mobility
needs to be higher, so therefore, we're going to target this to be more of a B or a C?
Like, will this -- will the impact, the traffic impact that he does, puts out there -- will
it keep us in a B or C range?
Obviously, we're not trying to go down to D. How does the planning process go into like
targeting what is the best, or I'm guessing at C, you're basically saying this is a problem
at that point in time, so.
Yeah.
That is a very great question, and I won't go into too much detail, but what I will tell
you is that as you're aware, seeing my face come up in a different light, transportation
planning is new to the city of Denton.
It's a baby.
It's in its infancy.
It's maybe a year old.
So planning hasn't had the chance to make that much of an impact with transportation
planning reviews.
We are trying to do exactly what you're asking is.
Take a greater look at the TIAs when they come in.
Make sure that they're operating at a level of service that's appropriate for bike ped
users, and then ensure that that is incorporated into their site plans.
So if we want to have a roadway facility that's required by the development to serve bike
ped users, we're going to ask for wider side paths or a bike lane, depending on the context
of the area in general.
So you may not see that today or even in the next couple of months, but it is the goal
that we're going, we're striving towards, if that helps.
All right.
So I will move on to the next slide, which talks about access management.
So I'm going to give you the definition that Federal Highways uses, and then I'll kind
of break that down.
So access management, when we talk about this, is the proactive management of vehicular access
points to land parcels adjacent to all manner of roadways.
So what does that mean?
So well, access points, those include your driveways, your driveway approaches, any cross
streets.
So if you think of an arterial crossing with a residential street or another collector.
And then median openings is another way of managing your access.
So if you look at arterials and how they're divided by a median, we can dictate where
turning movements go.
So vehicular access is determined by the roadway classification.
So if we think back to the slides that I presented on mobility and functional classification,
for a higher classified roadway, the whole goal of that roadway is to get people from
point A to point B with less interruptions.
So those roadways would have less access to that facility.
And then the lower you go, the more access they would have.
So that's something that we think about in development review, and I'll get to that later
in my slides.
Access management does also include consolidation of access points or consolidation of driveways
to reduce bike/ped conflicts.
Going back to safety, you know, we want to consider the context of the area in which
developments absolutely need a driveway approach spacing or if they meet the spacing requirements
in our code.
And going into the next point, cross-access is one of those mechanisms that assist us
in access management.
So if one area doesn't necessarily meet this driveway spacing to get their own access point
or the facility doesn't call for it, we would ask for cross-access to the adjacent property
so that, you know, someone going through -- and this is something that you see in commercial
development if you think about the downtown crossing area.
If you go in through Target's main entrance, you can still get to Home Depot, you can still
get to Chick-fil-A, you can still get to the other developments within the area, even though
those developments don't have their own access point to Loop 288.
So that's one way you can think about cross-access.
And then to the point, the greater number of access points that you have on a facility
means the greater level of friction.
And that can be good or bad just, again, depending on the context of the facility, of the area,
and what we're really striving for.
That really plays into connectivity.
This is a topic that PNZ and Council have really focused on, especially with the recent
amendments to our code regarding access.
So connectivity is what underlies and plays towards that.
So connectivity refers to the quality of the transportation network in providing multiple
routes and connections between the same origins and destinations.
So this graphic, you may have seen it before, I'm not quite sure, but it is one of the best
depictions of what we mean when we ask for connectivity.
On the left, you have sort of a classic grid residential network, and you can see there's
a school that we're trying to get to.
With the number of routes that are available within a decent walking distance, you can
get to point A to B using this blue line, or you can take a different path if you wanted
to stroll around the neighborhood, but getting to point A and B, you have several options.
You have several options to get to the market or to any cross streets.
On the opposite end, we see something that has less connectivity, and that is the classic
subdivision in the rural area part of town or the suburban area of town where we have
more cul-de-sacs, kind of private development that you want your seclusion.
If you see same distance between the school and the home, there's not much connectivity.
You could not walk across in a direct path to get to the school.
You would have to kind of take a circuitous route to get there, and so that creates less
mobility.
The ease of access from point A to B is reduced, so that's something we don't want to see.
We want to see greater connectivity.
I'll actually skip over the points on my slide because I generally talked about them right
now, but this is one of the biggest things that transportation planning is trying to
improve in our process.
And that brings me to development review.
So we talked about your question earlier, Commissioner.
This is something that's still fairly new, but it is going to be kind of the heavy hitter
on development review right now is making sure that developments are providing access
and connectivity when they submit a development for review.
And so there's a few sections in our development code that we refer to when we review our developments.
So subchapter 7.8, that talks about access and circulation, how you can connect to an
arterial when it's appropriate, and then bike ped facilities and when they're required.
7.9 relates to parking and loading, and this is where we refer to drive-throughs.
This is a section that helps us kind of regulate those as well as parking and circulation,
making sure that internally that they're providing, you know, major drive aisles, minor drive
aisles, and that there's appropriate circulation between parking and building.
And then the last section is our subdivision requirements.
This is where we require two points of access or, you know, dictate how someone can deviate
from that requirement if they can or not.
The transportation criteria manual is another way or another document that we look at during
the development review process, and that's really the technical requirements.
So how wide or how long a drive width or drive approach should be, the actual spacing from
an intersection, things like that.
And then, you know, going back to functional classification and roadways, that's our mobility
plan.
We do refer back to what our mobility plan calls out, and so that dictates how much right-of-way
we request for a development and whether we need public access easements for sidewalks
or trails.
And then a lot of this is applied at the zoning compliance and preliminary plan stage.
So if you think of initial developments coming in, this is really where we tried to capture
all that the DDC and criteria manuals require so that when they go further down the process,
we don't have, you know, any transportation-related issues.
And then last, TIAs and what you're most familiar with, that's where we identify any mitigation
measures that we need to apply to a development to, you know, just facilitate greater mobility
and connectivity.
With that, I did provide some helpful links that you can take a look at when you have
a chance, and I can answer any additional questions that you have.
Thanks, Karina.
Commissioner Smith?
Thank you, Chair.
Of course.
Just Karina and I having a conversation.
I'm happy to have this conversation.
On the connectivity, can you go to the connectivity slides just to make sure I can remember my
question as I start doing something else.
How does transportation planning try to accurately give equal weighting of mobility to vehicular,
ped, and bicycle?
And that question comes from, I know these are diagrams to make a point, but in a scenario
like the development on the right, how can transportation planning as a department come
in and say, hey, instead of just building more surface streets that ultimately creates
more cost for the city from a maintenance level, how can transportation planning go
and say, hey, a recommendation maybe would be for this certain area pay encouraging sidewalk
connectivity or bike path connectivity to these facilities that are near school, market,
that kind of stuff?
And from a transportation planner standpoint, how you can give equal weighting to that and
be able to give direction to development when it comes to the criteria manual review?
So that's a really good question because a transportation planner brain is very different
from an engineering brain even with a focus on transportation.
And I like to make that known in the office when I start pestering people.
So to answer your question, we don't necessarily have to capture everything at the development
review.
It's basically short-term implementation of what we want.
Where planning has a greater role is when the mobility plan comes forth, identify which
roadways we feel have the ability or it's what we desire for that facility to be bike
or ped oriented.
When we do our small area plans like the Northeast plan that's coming forward or even the downtown
master plan, those are opportunities for us to say, hey, this is the context in the land
use of the area.
We know that in downtown there's a higher need for pedestrian and bicycle safety.
So we want to design or indicate that our desire is for the design of these roadways
or facilities to meet X, Y, and Z.
And then the last point I'll make on it is vision zero is another way that we're trying
to emphasize the safety of all road users.
I'll say that the safety of vehicular safety has maybe always been there in the city of
Denton, but bike ped safety is where we need to do a better job.
And so the vision zero efforts might have a greater lean on it while still focusing
on all road users.
So transportation planning is really at the beginning stage.
Planning in general is at the higher level.
If you think of it as a kind of zoom out on a map, we are at the higher planning and thinking
stage.
And then development review and going into these projects is really us implementing what
we've envisioned.
So what it sounds like you're saying is that really you allow the flume to kind of drive
what weighting you give to those three different types of mobility essentially that if you
can, I'm not saying specifically that, I know I see your face, but I'm saying that having
a future land use map whenever you're looking at say, okay, we going in from transportation
planning standpoint, you mentioned the downtown area, right?
It's like, hey, this is an area that based off of what we know this use is going to be,
which where do we have our use codified most in the future land use map, right?
Having that to kind of be able to speak to you as a transportation planner and the transportation
planning department to say this area being a budding or next to a use that would probably
more susceptible to bike and ped mobility versus if it's a parcel in the middle of the future
land use map that is deeply into just low residential, then bike and ped mobility may
not be as high as a factor, vehicle mobility is going to be more important.
Yes, and that's where the term context sensitive comes into play is we do look at the characteristic
of an area, whether that's their land use, the heavy bike ped traffic that might be there,
so sometimes in the planning world, especially with sidewalk connectivity, what you'll see
is we like to reference goat paths or there's different animal terms that people can apply
to it, I've heard very different ones, but I've always used the goat path, but that tells
you where people are trying to walk, it tells you the most direct path that they're trying
to get to and I was going somewhere with this and my mind kind of rambled on.
We can talk over a sandwich later.
But context sensitive solution is kind of I think what you're actually alluding to is
transportation planning does, we do identify that and then something to think about is
even when the city's CIP projects come through, that's an opportunity to think about the context
sensitive nature of a roadway and how we can better emphasize bike ped connectivity.
Gotcha.
I was going to say if I could add to that, really it comes down to very simplistically
is what are our goals for the area and it's not just land use space, but it's also taken
into consideration what are all of our other policies and goals and objectives that we're
trying to achieve for an area.
So when we're thinking about planning, I mean Karina's right, we look to our long-range
planning goals.
We're going to look at when we do the area plans, looking more, doing a deeper dive as
to what are we trying to achieve for an area and then looking at what are our mobility
goals for the area.
So if an area is truly more focused on implementing and having stronger goals associated with
bicycle and pedestrian connectivity, then that's going to be more of a primary focus
compared to automobile traffic.
If an area is going to be more heavily served from an automobile standpoint, and pedestrian
and bicycle connectivity is less of a concern within a given area, then obviously our goals
and our recommendations and our focus is going to be then on facilitating the automotive.
So as she alluded to, it's that bigger picture, but simply it comes down to what are our goals
for the area.
This is the same bigger picture.
And it sounds like the transportation planner role, which I think is a great addition by
the way, is yeah, it's going to be more planning and more proactive so that we can be less
reactive when we see something like, ah, it's not going to work, but having something in
place already so then these developments come forward, we've already got a plan in place
that we've thought through, yeah, so we can be better connected.
Commissioner Pruitt.
Thank you, Chair.
Just a couple, hopefully simple ones.
You touched on sort of the TIA and that sort of thing.
Not sure how much detail or how much to gloss over it, but some of the terms we've heard
in the past are trip generation and this kind of thing.
My understanding is that essentially there's an average table from some book that somebody
published that says that this type of land use for a house or a gym or a school will
attract X number of cars during the peak hour of the day and that's sort of what drives
the assumed number of car trips on the surrounding roadways.
Is that a fair kind of summary?
I will say it's an engineering document.
Sure.
It's something that our traffic engineers would look at during their analysis.
They have a different way of looking at land use and it is based on average studies, but
it's based on data that's been gathered in several areas and several sites, so it's almost
like an average of how that specific use, as they classify it, how many trips are generated
based on there's an actual formula and things like that, but when there are uses that are
not aligned, that's where you'll see in the TIA or in the review, we will kind of ask
a little bit more questions or ask for more data to support why we feel that this development
is actually generating more trips than what is shown or less trips.
So at least from my understanding, because I'm not a transportation engineer, so I don't
want to give a definition of something that I'm not 100 percent clear on, but it is something
that we do ask for every development is we use the ITE manual of the latest edition,
Institute of Transportation Engineers, their document to submit their trip generation tables.
Okay.
And then from a planning perspective, I didn't get a chance to read all the links, I'll be
anxious to go look at those that you provided, but not to confuse the terminology ladder
even further.
I promise I didn't come up with this term, so it's not my fault, but I've heard in some
circles mobility used to describe sort of the ease of movement or how far you can move
within a certain time period, right?
And then contrasting that, the accessibility not in an ADA or in an access mode, where
you talked about accessing through drive access, would describe how many, what the variety
of things that you could get to within that time period, regardless of the mode of travel.
So I guess my question is, when we do our planning and we do the TIAs and that sort
of thing, there are times when putting another large commercial store in a commercial center
are going to increase trips because more people are going to that store now, whereas certain
land use decisions where you might put a store in a different position might be in between
a longer trip that somebody was taking before, and even though the TIA says it will generate
this number of trips, it could actually provide a shorter total trip for somebody to get to
like a grocery store, for instance, right?
So I guess my question is, at what point are those types of thought processes pulled into
the planning process and evaluation of things?
Does that make sense?
You'll have to forgive me.
That was a lot.
I'm sorry.
Break it down.
Yeah.
So I heard some stuff about terms.
Transportation planning, I'll give you, there's a lot of terms that we use that don't necessarily
mean the same thing to someone who doesn't do transportation planning, but that doesn't
mean they're invalid.
So I think what I'm actually hearing is like, I would compare it to food deserts in the
sense that it's like access to a grocery store.
Or it could be anything, right?
And so what I'm actually hearing is more of a land use issue, I would say.
I don't know if Tina wants to jump in on this one.
I was going to say, so if I could summarize what you were asking and telling me if I got
this right or not, is what I heard from you is at what point in time, say in the site
planning process of a commercial site, do we factor in how someone gets to that site
and their ease of ability to get to that site?
And I would say, and if I got that correct, that's kind of what I took away from the end
given the examples that you were given.
I've challenged my team to be more thoughtful when we're evaluating site plans.
I tell them, set aside the code book for just a moment, right?
Look at the site plan and imagine you're driving through the development.
Does it make sense?
Where are the conflict points?
If our goals are to try and focus more on pedestrian and bicycle connectivity, then where
is that occurring?
We're going to have rules, we'll apply the code book and look at the rules and make sure
that those are all addressed.
But we also try to apply the common sense aspect.
And I think sometimes that gets lost when doing review of projects.
And so that's something I've challenged my team to really look at when these developments
come in is just, how is this site laid out?
I mean, we've got a code requirement that says the front of the buildings have to be
oriented towards the street.
You would think that's kind of a common sense if you want people to identify where your
main entrance is, but also what are we trying to achieve for the area?
So I would say we apply that earlier on and we're doing a better job of that now, especially
on commercial developments and when we're doing the site planning aspect.
So hopefully that helps address your question, if I got it right.
You completely understood me, I don't know how you pulled that off, but thank you very
much.
And it's mostly, you know, it's that plus making sure that we understand that even though
a commercial development might normally generate trips, if it's put in a location in the town
where it shortens the average trip length, maybe the impact to the overall transportation
system is not as much as if it were somewhere else, right?
Right.
I mean, and that's why, you know, for us, cross access, especially on commercial developments,
is really important because in my opinion, and I can get on my soapbox, but it's, especially
when you're looking at larger retail developments, there's no reason why someone should have
to get out onto the adjacent street to get to the, you know, if I'm at McAlister's and
I want to get to what's ever on the next side over, I was drawing a blank on what was over
there.
Target.
Target, thank you.
So, but if I'm wanting to get over there, I should be able to circulate internally within
the development as a whole and not have to drive out onto university to drive down university
to then turn in.
I've worked in communities like that where we gave drive approaches out like Halloween
candy and everybody got a median opening also, and it made it really challenging for the
roadway networks.
And so then that's where your level of service then really goes down, right?
So it's, you know, we really tried to focus on the site plan aspect or the site planning,
not site plan, but the site planning aspect when we're looking at the overall site and
circulation because we realized you can get from point A to point B, not necessarily with
having to travel on the adjacent roadway.
And so that helps then some of our other goals for that area.
So, but I would like to say we're doing a better job of that.
I had to give a presentation here a few months back, Cameron's not here, Cameron and Scott,
and we were talking about the challenges with our transportation planning efforts within
the community and I had the negative Nellie portion of the presentation, but part of it
is, you know, we could have done a better job with our transportation planning within
our community.
We're trying to do a much better job looking forward.
When we worked on the mobility plan update, we were trying to be very forward thinking.
The area plans will also be able to help us in that regard.
I think some of our challenges from a transportation aspect, especially from connectivity standpoint
also stem from, let's face it, in my opinion, we have our disproportionate share of text
dot roadways within our community, nothing against text dot appreciate being a partner
with them.
But that also creates some challenges also in trying to, you know, they're trying to
achieve their goals and sometimes their goals don't necessarily fully align with ours.
So we've done a much better job of coordinating with text on and trying to make sure that
we're understanding where both parties are coming from and what our goals are for the
area.
So it's an exciting time for us to be able to really be able to improve how we look at
mobility for the future in our community.
Commissioner Impro, did you have anything else?
No?
Okay.
Yeah.
And I think it's great.
I think it just adds to what we're trying to do is plan a little bit of catch up on
some things we can't fix because we just didn't have, you know, the right tools in place.
But now, you know, with this role, I think it's great to be able to think a little bit
further ahead and do more planning than we do not.
So that's great.
Any other questions, discussion while we have Carina here?
No?
All right.
Thank you for this presentation.
You're welcome.
It's always great to talk about transportation.
I love it.
So, again, if you have any other topics that you think of at a later time, happy to bring
another boot camp on another specific topic that you have.
That's great.
Thank you.
Okay, with that, I'm going to adjourn our work session at 548 p.m. and we will reconvene
in council chambers at 630.
Good evening and welcome to the City of Denton's Planning and Zoning Commission meeting for
Wednesday, January 11th, 2023.
With a quorum present, I will call us to order at 631 p.m.
First item on our agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. and Texas Flags.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for
which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
On the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and
indivisible.
Thank you.
Next item on our agenda is the approval of the Planning and Zoning Commission minutes.
They are from December 14th, one as this group stands as the CIAC committee and one for our
regular meeting minutes.
Commissioner Villarreal.
I move approval of the PNZ and CIAC meeting minutes from December 14th.
Thank you.
Commissioner Anderson.
A second.
Okay.
We've got a first and a second for approval.
Any discussion?
Okay.
Let's vote, please.
Okay.
That motion carries 7-0.
That will take us to our consent agenda for the evening.
Chair can entertain a motion or discussion on this.
Commissioner Anderson.
Make a motion to approve the consent agenda.
Commissioner Cole.
Second.
Okay.
We've got a first and a second for approval of the consent agenda.
Any discussion?
Okay.
Let's vote on the board, please.
That motion carries 7-0.
Next that moves us to our items for individual consideration.
Item A is the election of chair and vice chair.
Commissioner Villarreal.
I'd like to nominate our current chair, Margie Ellis, for another term.
Commissioner Perot.
I will second.
Okay.
We've got a first and a second to leave me right where I am in this seat.
Any discussion or other nominations?
Okay.
Seeing none, let's go ahead and vote on the board, please.
Okay.
That motion carries 7-0.
Thank you.
Commissioner Pruitt.
I'll move to nominate Tim Smith for vice chair.
Commissioner Villarreal.
I second.
We've got a first and a second to vote vice chair, Tim Smith, to vice chair.
I accept the nomination.
Okay.
Any other discussion?
Other nominations?
Okay.
Let's vote on the board, please.
That motion carries 7-0.
That will move us to 4B, which has been withdrawn by the applicant, so we will not be taking
any action on that item for this evening.
That will move us to our public hearing items for this evening.
And before we get started, let me make note that item 5E, that will be postponed tonight,
so we will not be taking action on that.
We will be looking to postpone that item to January 25th.
That's item 5E.
So with that, 5A is Z220015.
Ashley's on her way up for presentation.
I will open the public hearing.
Good evening.
Hi.
Ashley Eckstad, Assistant Planner, City of Denton.
This item is Z220015.
This is AFCM Swisher Rezoning.
This is a request to rezone approximately 4.18 acres from residential/rural to residential
1.
The reason for this request is that the site is currently nonconforming with the RR zonings
as it does not meet the minimum 5-acre lot size in RR zoning.
It is generally located on the west side of Swisher Road, approximately 2,800 feet north
of Edwards Road, and staff does recommend approval as it is consistent with the future
land use map and meets the criteria for approval.
The criteria for approval is outlined in DDC Subchapter 2.
The R1 zoning on this site is consistent with the Denton 2040 Comprehensive Plan.
The subject property's future land use is low residential.
This site will be served by well water and septic system, and the minimum lot size is
2 acres, according to the DDC.
Therefore this 4.1 acre site would not be able to be subdivided into more than 2 lots.
R1 zoning is more restrictive than RR zoning, so the subject property is not expected to
have any adverse impacts on surrounding properties.
This property was annexed in 2013 and given placeholder zoning of RD5X, which was transitioned
to RR zoning with the adoption of the 2019 DDC.
Since it does not meet the minimum lot size requirement, it cannot currently be platted
and it is currently unusable.
We posted notices in newspapers on the website and a sign was posted on the property.
We mailed out notices within 200 feet and 500 feet.
We did not receive any responses in opposition or in favor.
They did not hold a neighborhood meeting, but they did speak to several neighbors directly.
Staff does recommend approval of this request as it complies with the criteria, and the
next step would be a public hearing at City Council on February 7, and I'm happy to answer
any questions.
Thank you, Ashley.
Any questions for Ashley?
I will just ask one.
Did they let you know if the neighbors gave any opinion?
They said that the neighbors that they talked to were in favor of it.
They said that right now that there is homeless people and other people going up and down
that access that they have there, so they said the neighbors were interested in someone
actually developing that site back there.
Thank you for sharing that and I was curious.
I don't see any other questions, Ashley.
This is a public hearing.
I don't have any cards right now to speak on this item, but anyone here who wishes to
speak on this item may do so.
Seeing none, I will close the public hearing and open the floor to discussion or motion.
Commissioner Smith?
Make a motion to approve.
Commissioner Anderson?
Second.
And a second for approval.
Any discussion?
Okay.
Let's go ahead and vote, please.
That motion carries 7-0.
That will take us to 5BZ220005.
Ron's on his way up for presentation.
I will go ahead and open the public hearing.
Hi, Ron.
Good evening, Chair, members of the commission.
As introduced, this is a zoning request to zone a subject property, as shown here, to
Light Industrial, LI Ditch Zoning District.
The property is approximately 82.96 acres.
As mentioned in the work session, this was recently annexed into the city, therefore
the next step in developing the property would be to zone the property and again the applicant
is looking to zone the property to LI.
Currently, as you can see, it's currently undeveloped.
The applicant has informed the staff that it would be developed as an industrial use.
Per the future land use map, as you can see, the area that is outlined in red is where
the subject site is located and is designated as Light Industrial.
Staff did look at the subject property and analyzed it against the criteria for approval
in the development code and have determined that the subject zoning request is consistent
with the comprehensive plan.
It is consistent with the purpose statement of LI.
Also, there is no adverse impact anticipated.
As far as utility and infrastructure, those will be constructed and extended as part of
the development.
Notifications were sent out.
Notifications were posted, specifically for the public hearing.
There were two responses to the notice that were sent out.
One was from the property owner and one was from the property owner that's located in
this area here that's shown in green.
There was no neighbourhood meeting, but it is my understanding that the applicant did
speak to the adjacent residents and the applicant is here and present and will have the presentation
as well and will go further on what was discussed with those neighbours that they met with.
With that, staff recommends approval for the initial zoning of the property as it complies
with the sections that are outlined here, 245E as well as 272D of the Denton Development
Code.
With that, I'll stand for any questions.
Thank you, Ron.
Any questions for Ron at this time?
Okay.
I do not see any at this time.
Thanks, Ron.
Okay.
I do have a card to speak.
I will go ahead and invite Amy with 97 Land Company up to the podium to begin presentation.
I think you're speaking as a group.
Thank you.
We are speaking as a group and actually Charles Knowlton with Skinnell Properties is going
to start.
Great.
I will go ahead and load the presentation.
Thank you.
Get us going.
I'll introduce Charles and let him take over first.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Hello.
This is Charles Knowlton, Skinnell Properties.
I appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight.
I want to give a quick overview of the company before Amy dives in.
Sorry.
Skinnell Properties is a privately-held real estate development company based in Indianapolis.
We've got eight satellite offices throughout the U.S.
Our bread and butter is class A industrial development.
We've developed in 44 of the 50 states.
We've got two projects currently in Denton right now on Western Boulevard just west of
I-35 and looking forward to trying to get a third one going.
So that's it from the Skinnell standpoint and I'll let Amy come up here and finish the
presentation.
I'm here for any questions.
Thank you.
Do we need to name an address from Charles or from me?
I'll just do it.
How about that?
Amy, visit 109 North Elm, Denton, Texas 76201.
Thank you.
I'm not going to rehash what Ron has summarized for you.
I do want to let you know that we started with annexation and this property is subject
to a non-annexation agreement that's roughly 376 acres.
We amended that non-annexation agreement to exclude this 83 acres roughly from that and
that petition was initiated in April of last year.
We went to two public hearings with City Council and the annexation was completed in December
on December 6th as well as the amended non-annexation agreement.
So this property was brought into the city at the end of last year in order for us to
be able to proceed to zoning tonight.
So the zoning map here does show that an initial zoning designation or a placeholder zoning
designation was provided at that point in time and that we are proposing to rezone to light
industrial.
Ron already covered this slide.
It is light industrial designation in the future land use plan.
I want to show you a couple of slides of concept plan and rendering even though we recognize
that these are non-binding as a part of zoning.
We are looking at roughly a million square feet of industrial space, two buildings that
are bisected by an existing Atmos gas transmission line that you see here.
This is Barthold, actually north is to the right hand side of your screen and here is
a rendering of one of those buildings.
We do have an approved traffic study that accompanied this zoning request.
It has shown that a westbound right hand turn lane is warranted.
Barthold Road was considered in both its current condition and its ultimate build out condition
and it was considered that I-35 and Barthold Road exchange has impending improvements that
will improve the conditions in terms of the level of service at that intersection prior
to this coming online and the determination was made that all intersections will operate
at an acceptable LLC through the horizon scenario of 2029.
What I really want to get up here and talk to you about tonight is our neighborhood engagement
because we do have one immediately adjacent residential land owner who owns their home
in this location.
Outside of that, we are surrounded by either the seller's property that is undeveloped
or current and proposed light industrial uses that are underway today, but we do have a
single family owner that we, rather than doing a neighborhood meeting as a whole, we mailed
a letter directly to that owner who is with us tonight actually and you can ask them questions
if you would like, and went to their home and met with them a couple of times to talk
about the impact to their quality of life and their property values and their home and
so I want to just talk to you a little bit about where we are in terms of conversation
with them.
So I want you to see here this is their single family home and here is building one of our
development just looking at the scale of things.
This is a significant impact to them and they invited us into their home and have been very
willing to work with us and talk through how we can make this mitigate the impacts to them
and so we are working on a memorandum of understanding.
In fact, they actually brought it back signed tonight and handed us an original where two
things are being contemplated.
The first will be a screening wall that will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 feet
long and eight feet tall that's clad with masonry that matches their home that is structurally
engineered that will essentially block the view not only of this development but also
of the other industrial developments that are occurring to the east of here.
They fortunately recognize the future land use designation here and have been great to
work with frankly under the circumstances so that would be that wall would be constructed
at Skinnell's cost and to a mutually agreed upon design and then secondly we have been
discussing the alignment of their existing driveway that is curved here with our first
entry way off of the western most entry into the development, how to align that in such
a way that is has the least negative impact on them.
Today they have an access that is further west but that is going away because of the
text dot right away taking associated with the widening of Barthold Road so we have within
that MOU agreed to mutually seek the best solution as it relates to how those drives
intersect with each other so that we can minimize the impact to them and how to pay for any
cost associated with the realignment between that access point and their home to make the
topography and the fencing and everything else work.
They sit up on a hill and have a perfect view of I-35 and everything in between from their
home and so we have made an effort to really minimize or where we can negate the impact
to their property specifically.
We have also committed to doing a mailing, I will be honest it hasn't gone out yet but
we are going to do a mailing that just notifies the other property owners within 500 feet
to call us if they have any questions or concerns but most of those on the east side are current
or former clients of mine and I have already worked with them and then the west side is
primarily is completely the seller of the property so that is all I have to present
and we are both Charles and I are available to answer any questions that you may have.
Thank you.
Any questions right now for the applicant developer?
Okay.
Thank you.
Now at this time thank you so much.
I don't have any other cards, people wishing to speak on this item but it is a public hearing
so if you would like to come say anything about this project you are welcome to do so.
Just give your name and address and your time will begin.
Good evening.
I am Art Smuck, SMUCK.
I live at 5100 Barthold Road, 76207.
I have been at more zoning meetings in the three years I have lived in Denton than my
entire life in combination.
I will say this, you know, 97 Land and Schenell have been proactive.
You know, they reached out for us before we had a whiff of the project and we have been
pretty sensitized by TextDOT and some of the other stuff that goes on in our area.
And so they have been very proactive, very considerate of what the impact to us is going
to be, very collaborative, very open to our input and ideas and I would tell you it is
the first time in the three, four years we have been there, can I say rat's ass?
That somebody has given a rat's ass about the impact to us and I said it.
So we are very appreciative of it, we are very supportive of where we are at with them.
We have an executed MOU at this point of kind of the things we see that we will need to
kind of keep our tenure there going in a condition that is acceptable for us.
So everybody should approach it the way they are.
So thank you.
Agreed.
Thank you, Mr. Smuck.
Anybody with questions?
I guess the only thing I would want to say is, yeah, love the engagement and that is
all great.
What we are considering tonight is just a straight zoning case.
So if for whatever reason the project with Skinnell does not happen, there is no guarantee
here or City Council in the end will have the final say on this, that anything with
your MOU or anything, you know, that is nothing that is protected with regard to, you know,
our purview.
Very well.
Very good.
This is a public hearing.
Is there anyone else wishing to speak on this item?
Okay.
Seeing none, I will close the public hearing and open the floor for discussion or a motion.
Commissioner Smith.
Make a motion to approve.
Commissioner Villarreal.
Second.
We have a first and a second for approval.
Any discussion?
Okay.
I will just say once again, I think the collaborative nature of how this has gone about is really
superb.
It is a -- yeah, it is a gold star of how things should be done when developing land.
Okay.
So we are having technical difficulties here.
So we have to hand vote.
So I will go ahead and take a roll call unless there is any other comments or discussion
by the Commission.
Okay.
Commissioner Smith.
Aye.
Commissioner Villarreal.
Aye.
Commissioner Pruitt.
Aye.
Commissioner McDade.
Aye.
Commissioner Anderson.
Aye.
Commissioner Cole.
Aye.
Chair is also an aye.
That motion carries 7-0.
Congratulations.
Okay.
We will move on now to 5C, that's S220009.
We will invite Julie Wyatt up for presentation and open the public hearing.
Good evening.
Can I pull up my presentation?
All right, good evening, I'm Julie Wyatt, Senior Planner with the City of Denton.
I'm presenting S220009, Forest Crossing, Phase 2.
So the request before you is for a specific use permit to permit 360 multifamily dwellings
on approximately 16 acres in a suburban corridor district, that's an SC district.
Just to place the site and the mobility and all of the parameters and the context around
it, it's located west of Mayhill, north of McKinney.
It's an area that has primarily undeveloped right now, but a lot's been happening.
And so I want to talk through that.
So first, Loop 288 is to the west of the site.
It's an arterial with six lanes divided road.
There are future plans for a side path along Loop 288.
We're not sure what side of the road or if both sides of the road will accommodate that
side path, but there are plans for that.
Mayhill Road was recently completed.
It's an arterial with six vehicular lanes, a center median, a 10-foot side path on the
east side, and then a five-foot sidewalk on the west side.
Hummingbird is currently a street that is located just west of Loop 288, but it will
be extended and it will punch across Loop 288 and eventually connect to Mills at Mayhill.
So if this is approved and with the development of the site, Hummingbird adjacent to this
subject property would be constructed, and then it would continue on to the west as other
properties develop.
And then there's also future multifamily to the south of the subject property.
Some of you are probably aware of that.
You were probably on planning and zoning when that was approved.
There's also future commercial pad sites along Loop 288 that are under development now.
And so that's kind of what's going on with the general area.
As part of an SUP, we always see a site plan, a landscape plan, and elevations.
I won't go through everything, but I do want to point out some highlights.
First of all, as I mentioned, they're proposing 360 units, that's one, two, and three bedroom
units.
Amenities on site include a clubhouse, community pool, pedestrian pathways.
They have a large tree preservation area outlined here in blue, which is something that we worked
with them to maintain those trees in that larger tree stand.
They've got parking, 597 vehicular parking spaces.
They have access to that future Hummingbird.
As I mentioned, they will be building the entire section of Hummingbird adjacent to
their property.
So from May Hill all the way to their west property line, they would be constructing
both those east and westbound lanes.
Also an eight foot side path along that south end of Hummingbird.
Their buildings are sited so that they define the street along Hummingbird.
And with each of those buildings are two pedestrian connections to that future side path on Hummingbird.
That was something that we wanted to see those pedestrian connections, particularly given
those mobility improvements that the city is doing in the area.
Also one other mobility improvement is they have submitted a TIA and that's under review.
As part of that, they will be constructing a left-hand turn lane on May Hill connecting
to that future Hummingbird.
There's a signal there now, they will have to make some improvements to that signal to
make sure it aligns correctly, but there is that left turn lane to provide refuge for
people who are going to be turning left.
One other connection there, connecting to this proposed driveway for the multifamily
to the south, they're going to share that driveway access.
Make sure that we limit those access points on May Hill since it is an arterial and also
that is a median opening.
As I mentioned, they provided a landscape plan.
Couple of things I want to highlight, they are providing those foundation plantings to
define the front door to those buildings.
New tree plantings in those common areas and those shared spaces, particularly in the proposed
dog park area and around those detention areas to naturalize those detention areas, particularly
because they're adjacent to those roadways.
We want to make sure they look like good natural areas.
One thing that we talked about with the applicant and talked about internally was tree preservation.
This site has quite a few trees and that is an asset to the site.
We wanted to make sure we preserved as many as possible.
The Denton Development Code requires 30% preservation of heritage and quality inches on site.
You can drop down to 20% if you do additional mitigation.
We felt like we wanted some thresholds on that, so we are proposing a condition that
they can't drop below 27%.
They've submitted a tree preservation plan and our landscape planner has been reviewing
it and they feel comfortable with that number.
As with any project, we look at the comprehensive plan.
This property is within a community mixed use area.
You can see on the map that it's that large pink area that really hugs that intersection
of Loop 288 and McKinney.
Commercial uses are typically primary within community mixed use, but we want to see that
residential to support those businesses, those services, and any employment uses.
The use is appropriate within the community mixed use.
Provides that customer base and also that employment base, so it's consistent with that
future land use map.
There are no confirmed eases on the property, so there would not be any impact to that.
It's also consistent with our housing goals and providing those housing options.
One thing we looked at when we were analyzing this project is we're seeing a lot of densities
and residential units coming online in this area.
That makes a lot of sense when you really look at Loop 288, what amenities and what
things are on Loop 288.
There's a concentration of a lot of stores and restaurants and businesses, and so it
makes sense to have some residential in that area.
We also looked at public facilities and compatibility.
They did, as I mentioned, they submitted that TIA and that demonstrated that they would
generate about 2,400 trips during a 24-hour day.
There is adequate capacity.
It is adjacent to some arterials, but once again, we wanted to see that left-hand turn
to make sure that turning movements could be done safely, and that is something that
they will have to construct for that turn lane on May Hill onto Hummingbird.
They'll also have to construct Hummingbird at least to their west property line that's
a mobility plan road, and we're going to want to see that.
As I mentioned, that eight-foot shared path on Hummingbird is something that they will
construct as well.
Compatibility, as I mentioned, it is at supporting residential use at a scale we typically see
in commercial areas, so it's an appropriate scale, but it is designed in a way.
I think we talked about this with phase one, and the way this property is sited is it's
still leaving those exterior areas adjacent to those arterials for commercial development,
so those high visibility pad sites would still be available for commercial development.
That is along loop 288, and also on their site plan, I failed to mention there's that
reserved commercial pad site there at the intersection of the future Hummingbird and
May Hill.
That would provide additional commercial capacity in the area.
We sent out notices.
We received one in favor today that I believe was emailed to you.
Staff recommends approval.
It is consistent with the criteria for approval in the comprehensive plan.
I won't read all of these.
They're in your backup.
There are two that I wanted to just point out because these are fairly standard boiler
plate that we have for SUPs, but number four and number seven are a little different.
One is they did provide those elevations that we wanted to make sure that while there may
need to be some flexibility as those buildings are fully designed, those are conceptual elevations,
that we did get some of those architectural elements that they showed.
We have a condition that nails down some of those architectural elements with that flexibility.
Then number seven has to do with that tree preservation, providing that threshold to
make sure that they meet those tree preservation requirements at least at 27% inches on site.
That concludes my presentation.
I'll be happy to answer any questions.
The applicant has a presentation as well, and is also here to answer questions.
Thank you, Julie.
Any questions at this time for Julie?
I do not see any at this time.
I will invite the applicant up.
That's the first card that I have.
Good evening.
If you'll state your name and address.
Your time will begin.
Good evening, commissioners.
My name is Drew Geo.
I'm with Bridgeview Real Estate.
We're a multifaceted real estate company out of Dallas.
As Julie noted, we are the owners of phase one down below.
This is our second phase, which it's still its own property.
Just to talk a little bit about who we are, as I said, we're multifaceted.
We do commercial.
We do residential.
We do multifamily, hospitality, all sorts of different forms of development.
We're also very vertically integrated.
We have our own real estate arm that does the industrial, multifamily, whatever, and
then we also have our own construction company.
We also have our own capital company.
We raise our own money, and we're also a broker dealer that is regulated by FINRA.
We also have our own asset management company.
We do this because we want to ensure that all of our developments, our goal is to provide
the highest quality developments that we can.
When we're doing multifamily, we don't necessarily just see it as a product.
We see this as somebody's home, and it doesn't matter whether that person's in the home for
a year or they're there for ten years, this is their home, and so when we get to control
all those facets, we can ensure that the quality of developments that we're doing are up to
our standards.
There's not a whole lot that I can add that Julie hasn't already said.
I got to say that working with her is amazing.
I was told how great that she is in working with her, and I got to tell you, it's an understatement.
She has been fantastic, and if you guys ever get rid of her, I want to know where she goes
because I want to develop in those areas where she is.
Working with staff, we got a lot of great ideas that really, really helped this project
a lot.
The things that I really want to highlight is just Denton as a city.
The growing population that is happening here, it's exploding.
There is a lot of multifamily in the area, and it's kind of a mix of product.
You've got some HUD deals, you've got some low-income housing deals, some older market
rate deals, but their occupancies are greater than 95%.
There is demand in this area for apartments.
This is a diverse and dynamic area, which ... I cut my teeth in affordable housing a
long, long time ago, and so I love it.
It's something that I love to do.
One of the things that makes affordable housing great is being in those diverse, dynamic areas,
not just putting affordable housing in one particular area, but when you create this
community, you want all sorts of people there.
That's why we really see this site is great for a higher-end market rate apartment.
It's not on loop 288.
We've got a building that kind of edges on May Hill, but really, when we make Hummingbird,
we're creating a neighborhood back there.
It's going to be a little bit quieter, but it's also going to have the ability for people
to walk or ride their bikes to the commercial areas, and I'll get into that in a little
bit.
This is also in an opportunity zone, and so opportunity zones are very popular in the
tax credit world, but they're set up for reinvestment in an area to make it diverse, to make it
dynamic.
Because we have our own capital arm, we're able to use those opportunity zone funds to
invest in this project, which means that we're going to be holding it for a long time.
That's a 10-year hold, and so if that makes you feel any better that we're going to be
creating a really high-quality development, it's something that we're going to be there
for a long time.
Again, she already showed you the site location, but our site plan, the couple of things that
I want to highlight is just the evolution of this site plan.
When we first started, I would say our site plan was pretty rudimentary.
It was just something that we looked, "Okay, this works," but after working with the city
and really seeing what the city needs and what the city desires to create that urban
edge on May Hill, from some ideas from Julie where we reoriented some buildings, we moved
the detention pond, put it off to the side, we're hoping that that can be a wet detention
pond, because we think that that's going to be a great thing for the site.
But also, it is the urban edge out on Hummingbird, and I've got a slide here that unfortunately
there's not another screen, so I'll have to get to it here in a second, but that whole
idea of not having a fence around the property makes it open, and it is inviting, and it
invites walkability, it welcomes people.
There's still going to be safety and security, but it's a very, very different project when
you've got that urban edge and those open buildings on the street versus people walking
down the street and you see a bunch of six or eight foot bars, and it becomes part of
the community.
We also were able to create some great open areas.
We've got a dog park down here at the southwest end.
Over here is just kind of ... We actually had a building in this location one time, and
there is a fantastic cluster of trees that we were able to save by moving this building
somewhere else, and this line that you see here is like a variable height retaining wall,
that this is just another great open area that's preserving a lot of trees.
We also, at one point, this commercial site came all the way down here, and it just kind
of had a weird angle, but again, there's some great trees in this area that we decided to
square off that commercial site, make that more open space for the project.
We had, at one point in time, we had our trash dumpster down here, but as we really looked
at the tree preservation, we were able to move that somewhere else, create this other
open area down here, not just for the tree preservation, but as a kind of a serenity
park of what we want to really, really call this.
As this site plan evolved, it really became based on a few things, right?
It's the walkability and the connection, and it's the tree preservation, and a lot of sites
that maybe you guys see is that tree preservation ends up being in ESA areas, right?
They have to be preserved because they can't go in there.
We see it as an advantage to the project, and so yes, we do have clusters of trees that
we're saving, but throughout this whole site, we've got great, wonderful trees that we're
going to be able to save, and so what we think this does is that this creates a new, fresh,
really beautiful design, but it looks old, right?
It looks like it's been there for a long time because these trees are just fantastic.
Really the tree preservation was a big, big determination of our site plan.
We absolutely will agree with the 27% tree preservation.
Our hope is that we're going to be above that, because it only makes the project better as
far as we're concerned.
We are only required 32 bike racks right now.
We're at 80.
If we can figure out how to get more, we're going to do more, because what's happening
in this area with this whole 80 acres that, you know, if Greg Johnson's here, I don't
know if he's going to be able to share, but there's a lot of commercial development going
on around this whole 80 acres, and so the more connectivity, the more walkability, the
more bike riding that we can do is just better for the project, right?
And so we're going to be putting a lot of thought into what we do with our two acres
of commercial.
The existing landowner is going to be doing some commercial on the north side of Hummingbird
once it gets created, so making sure that there's synergy with those commercial sites
along Hummingbird and Mayhill.
So these are just the site plan evolution.
So this is kind of the blow-up of how we're doing our fence.
You can see that the site fence is in between the buildings as opposed to in front of the
buildings, and again, that's just something that's really going to create that inviting
environment for the site.
But right now, this is the tree preservation plan.
You know, this is the big cluster of trees that we saved over here as well, but you can
see throughout these open spaces, but also in the middle of our pool courtyard, anywhere
that we can shift a building to save trees, we're doing it, right?
And that's not to meet this 30%.
We're doing it because it just makes the project better.
And you know, if we hit the 30% or more, great, but we are absolutely committed to making
that happen.
As you can see, our required canopy for the site with this tree preservation is 246,000,
and right now we're at 365,000.
So as we are able to shift things around, that canopy hopefully will grow.
So the transportation with Hummingbird, I don't know if Julie knows this, but our TIA
was approved today.
We did get that letter sent to us, so we are good to go there.
We do have those two means of access, the one off of Mayhill.
That's not going to be a primary access, that's going to be secondary access, the primary
access is going to be off of Hummingbird so that we don't have a bunch of traffic, additional
traffic going out to Mayhill.
And you know, the surrounding area, the high school is literally almost right across the
street, but there is just a variety of commercial developments within a stone's throw of where
we are.
So the future commercial developments in this area right now, we've got tractor supply,
urban air, auto zone, there's dental, but we also see this site as something that students
could potentially live here as well.
Maybe they don't want to live in the hustle and bustle of a college project and they want
something a little bit quieter.
This is five miles away from North Texas and three miles away from TWU.
So you know, I'm kind of out of time here, but I'm here to answer any questions that
you guys might have, so thank you very much.
And thank you very much.
Any questions at this time, our applicant?
Commissioner McDade.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I believe I heard in your introduction you said that your company deals in affordable
housing also?
Our company, we do.
Right now we are converting one of our market rate properties to affordable down in Houston.
I personally have been doing affordable housing since 2002, different states, California,
Texas, and Louisiana.
That is a long-term goal for our company is to do more affordable housing, but we're doing
our first deal right now.
So these apartments are not affordable?
No, sir, they are not.
These are all market rate apartments.
Okay.
I was just curious because I know, in my opinion, what the city needs more, true, we need apartments,
but we need more affordable housing, but it seems like no one wants to do the affordable
housing.
They're pretty much marketplace.
That's interesting.
I know that there's a tax credit deal to our south.
We actually looked at a deal across Mayhill from pretty much where we are.
There's a PFC being put in place over there as well.
Then there are some older, I'm trying to remember the name of the project, but there are some
older tax credit properties over there.
The problem with doing tax credit in this location when there are other tax credits
given is that you've got the one mile, three year rule, and then the three mile, or there's
another, there's rules, right?
We wouldn't be able to apply for tax credits on this particular job because tax credits
were awarded within a small mile radius.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Yes, sir.
Any other questions?
I've got a quick question that I don't know if I fully understand with Julie's.
With the development to the south, will they connect?
We're hoping so.
Okay.
Right now, those are two separate developments.
There are some grade issues, and some of those grade issues are determined by tree preservation.
I know on the southwest side of our project and the southeast side of phase one, there
is a way there's supposed to be a big retaining wall there.
Right now, from a civil engineering perspective, we're analyzing that, figuring out how we
can change the grade and not put in a retaining wall since we're now buying that property.
Before, if we weren't buying that property, we would have to do the retaining wall.
As a result, there can be additional trees preserved on our site and potentially on phase
one.
If we can do that and have that connectivity, we'd like to.
The best connectivity is on the north side of phase one and on the south side of phase
two, but unfortunately, that grade is huge there.
We wouldn't be able to meet any kind of ADA or anything like that.
I see.
Okay.
Thank you for clarifying that.
Appreciate it.
At this time, I don't see any other questions.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Next card I have to speak on this item is Nathan Toon.
Good evening, sir.
Good evening.
Nathan Toon, 3201 Carmel Street, Denton, Texas.
I worked alongside Greg and the landowners on this property for the last four to five
years, as far as marketing to users, developers, and so I mainly wanted to just speak to the
appropriateness of the use and the demand for the product type in this particular area.
I think, as several have mentioned, we've got a lot of commercial projects planned on
this property.
It's a unique property in that it's so large.
These owners have acquired, at one time, it was just under 80 acres, spanning from Loop
288 to McKinney to Mayhill.
So you've got a big piece of land in an area that has kind of been neglected from a development
standpoint for a while, but we've had multifamily groups from all over the country, all over
the state, at least 100 plus, and they're still calling about this particular site just
because in Denton, Texas, there's a tremendous demand for sites like this.
I think the population is growing as such, that we need more product on the ground, and
aside from that, as we've looked at, there is a phase one apartment project that's already
been approved that's down the road, but I would just kind of ask the question, if not
apartments or higher density residential, what other use would be appropriate here?
I think the only other potential use is industrial, to take up as much land as we're looking at,
and I don't think that that's going to be the most appropriate use with the other multifamily,
with the coming retail and commercial, and so I think from that standpoint, I think it's
a very appropriate use, and one where there's tremendous demand from people all over the
place to get their hands on this site.
So for those reasons alone, I support this project and hope that you guys will too, and
appreciate your consideration.
Thank you.
Next card I have is Greg Johnson.
Good evening.
I know some of you, and some of you are going to get a good laugh out of my voice here,
so I lost it yesterday.
Everybody in my house and my office is very happy about that.
My name is Greg Johnson, address is 3801 Teasley Lane, Dunn, Texas, 76205, and I won't take
four minutes because I'm going to run out of voice, but I did want to just share with
you guys a little bit, put this here.
There's a saying that at some point in your life, you want to go from successful to significant,
and the gentleman who owned this property took a number of years to assemble 72 acres
and a part of town that deserves mixed-use development, a part of town that's been ignored
for a long time.
These gentlemen have made all the money that they could ever spend, but they're all Denton
folks, and they wanted to see something great happen on this side of town, so they took
the risk, and it took them a long time to buy it all, and then to decide what do we
do with it.
So our firm has been working with them for six years on this project now, and as we walk
through this, and there's a million different iterations of what we could have done with
it, and what ultimately we arrived at is you've got a mixed-use development at Razor Ranch,
you've got a mixed-use development at 35 and 288, but this part of town has been ignored
for so long, and so if you can make a place and do something great that this side of town
could have something new and shiny and vibrant and walkable and all those things, and so
as we reached out, and we spent a lot of time talking to grocers and a lot of time talking
to big boxes, and we heard the same thing over and over, is you really got to have the
bodies to support the smaller retail, and as you guys probably know, grocery stores
don't pay much.
You have to make your money on all the outlying pieces.
Most of the big grocery stores now want their piece for free, and so the idea here was to
make a place where you've got the residential component, this site is massive, 72, more
than 72 acres now, and so you've got that big hole in the donut that nobody can see,
and so that's either going to be warehouse or something like that, and whenever the team
decided, we really think we could make a true multifamily neighborhood with enough units
to where it feels like a neighborhood, enough buildings, not your typical thing where there's
five buildings and 7-11 next to it, so what's really unique here is you have the same developer
developing both sites, phase one and phase two, and as you heard before, most of you
are probably familiar with the Opportunity Zone.
The Opportunity Zone is only advantageous if you hold the property for 10 years, and
so they're married to this for 10 years, which made us very comfortable because they can't
build crap, and I just want to share with you I didn't put the names on here because
I'm not 100% sure that we can disclose yet, but everything you see that's in gray is in
contract waiting to close, and once all of the entitlements and everything are done in
terms of access and sewer and all that, the blue is future, and that's frankly just waiting
for Mayhill and McKinney Street to finish and grow up.
And so we have a national, what I call a junior anchor retailer on the north side there, we
have a national family entertainment, what I call a medium-sized box, family entertainment
facility, we've got auto retail, food, car wash, another national tenant, an existing
regional dental company, their money's all non-refundable, they're ready to close, we're
just waiting on street improvements to be approved and so on.
So this is a real deal, this is some pie in the sky, let me show you a bunch of pretty
pictures and then maybe it'll happen, everybody's already committed, and I'll just tell you
I'm super proud that our firm's been able to be involved with this because we do a lot
of stuff around it, but I think I'm going to drive by this thing someday and be pretty
pumped that we had a role in kind of changing the landscape of that side of dentin, which
has just been ignored for so long, so we appreciate your consideration and I think you should
support it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Johnson.
Any questions?
Commissioner?
I haven't seen you yet.
Greg, just one moment, Commissioner McDade I think has a question for you.
Thank you, Chair.
Yeah, I just need you to refresh my memory.
It says multifamily phase one under construction, what's being built, what's actually being
built there?
Apartments or?
Yes, sir.
So it's the same, it's really the very, very similar development, same company.
They closed on the first phase, which was about 13 and a half acres, I believe, they
closed on that over a year ago, and they've just been awaiting permits, and so I think
they've just received permits, the grading has begun, I'm saying that correct, right,
the grading's begun and so you'll start to see a lot of dirt flying out there.
All right, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thanks.
I don't have any other cards in front of me to speak on this item, but anyone else wishing
to speak is certainly welcome.
Good evening.
My name is JB Strange, I'm one of the, I'm at 531 North Locust, Denton 76201, I'm one
of the owners of this property.
We started this project over 10 years ago, and through those 10 years we acquired 75
acres between Luke 288, north of McKinney, and west of Mayhill Road.
We sold five acres off to Sir Denton, which was, in my opinion, one of the best deals
we've ever done for Denton, because that has turned out to be a wonderful organization
and a wonderful resource.
We sold a 15 acre tract off to the same developer, closed a little over a year ago.
We own property to the north, to the west, and to the south of this proposed project,
and just wanted to come to that.
You've heard all of the reasons why you should approve this, but I wanted to come and let
you know, as owner of Steel Approximately, including this site, 55 acres out there, we
very much endorse this use, and would appreciate it if you all would approve it.
And I'll be happy to answer any questions that you might have.
Any questions for Mr. Strange?
Okay.
I do not see any.
Thank you, sir.
Anyone else wishing to speak?
Okay.
Good evening, sir.
If you'll state your name and address.
Good evening, commissioners.
I'm Pat Smith.
I'm the CEO of Sir Denton 306, Northoop 288, Denton 76209.
I want to speak in support of this project and give you a little insight that you probably
isn't germane to the physical characteristics of the site, but I think it's important to
the commitment to the community.
So early on, obviously Virgil and I are good friends and Sir Denton exists because of Virgil.
He won't say that, but I will.
And when the opportunity came for him to sell these other parcels to the firm that's before
you tonight, they did something I've never heard of in Denton before.
They made a five-figure gift to a nonprofit that supports foster children.
Totally before the contract was done, they made a five-figure gift to help an agency
that helps foster children.
I can tell you that that gift to that agency was huge, and I've never heard of another
real estate developer in the city of Denton do that.
And so they're invested in Denton, and they've been excellent to work with.
For us at Sir Denton, it's important that Hummingbird goes through because that's going
to improve access to the South for us.
That's a major frustration for some of our customers is you can't really go South on
Loop 288 from Market Street.
And so having Hummingbird go through, we can connect through the commercial property through
an easement that was already in place, and that will really help improve access for us.
And we look forward to welcoming them to the neighborhood.
I think we're going to get a very high-quality product in terms of the housing stock, and
it's become very attractive.
These national retailers want to see rooftops, and they want to see rooftops with a certain
median income, and this will do that.
I think this will be a great benefit to the community, and so I have speak in support.
Thank you.
Any questions?
Thank you.
Amy Vissett, 109 North Elm, Denton 76201.
I'm also here to speak in support of this project.
I've had the privilege of being a part of this development since the initial zoning
change, which I believe was approved in 2017.
I watched Virgil assemble, I believe it was 11 tracts of land at the time, and we brought
it forward as a unified zoning change with a vision for this area that is incredibly
complex and difficult to execute on.
When Greg was up here a few minutes ago, I counted the number of lots in this 75 acres.
There are 23 lots.
It's truly a mixed-use development.
It has been complicated from the beginning.
We have shared detention.
We have a number of end users, a number of project teams and engineers involved across
this site, but Virgil and his partners in this development saw a vision for this area,
and it is incredibly unique for Denton.
It borders three major arterials and is in an area that is lacking in a number of neighborhood
services and retail and commercial developments.
I've been fortunate to be involved with Virgil throughout this entire development over the
years, and we're finally starting to see the fruits of our labor and see it come to fruition.
I'm here to support it, and we'll echo what everyone else has said, which is that if we
want to see those commercial and retail and neighborhood service uses, the rooftops have
to be there first, so thank you.
Thank you.
This is a public hearing.
I don't have any other cards in front of me, but is there anyone else wishing to speak
on this item?
Okay.
Seeing none, I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing and open the floor for
a motion or discussion.
Commissioner Smith.
I want to make a motion to approve, and I want to say thank you to Varis, to Bridgeview,
to Mr. Strange, and all the work that you guys have done, and super excited to see this
come into the neighborhood, come into the area.
For as many affordable housing projects as we see, especially in this area, for the Opportunity
Zone, you need to have a good balance of affordable housing units that can come in, as well as
market rate housing units, because if you only ever accept and look at affordable housing
units in one Opportunity Zone, you end up bringing down the entire neighborhood.
For the development code and the mission of the planning department to try to create as
much diverse housing, I'm excited to see the work and the effort you guys put in, especially
with finding the retail and other big chains that will come in, especially because of that
traction, as Ms. Bissett said, to the rooftops there.
I just want to take a moment to say thank you, and great job.
Thank you.
Commissioner Anderson?
I'll second the motion, but I would also like to say congratulations on this, because it's
been a long time since that track sat empty, and it's going to be nice to see some, you
know, something, rooftops and, you know, some commercial businesses along there.
I guess it's been, what, since ASO, not ASO, Foxworth Galbraith was there, and it's been
an eyesore for years, just broad land sitting out there.
So anyway, congratulations, and I can't wait to see what happens.
We've got a first and a second for approval discussion.
Commissioner Pruitt?
Thank you, Chair.
Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for all the effort.
I echo comments about Julie, and wish we had about four of her, but I trust that she's
working on that with all of our young planners coming up.
You know, I think I very much appreciate the attention to detail here.
Obviously, you know, you can't do everything you like because of grade, grade limitations
and whatnot.
In my opinion, you know, the whole area would be a whole lot more of a community and walkable
if it was, you know, two dozen blocks in an interconnected network, but within the constraints
of the mobility plan and the development code and how this area is parceled up, I think,
you know, there's no worry of me of this parcel.
I guess the other thing I'll say is, you know, we talked about affordable housing a little
bit, and yes, I'm all for getting more of it, but we just need to remember that if we
don't build enough market rate housing, what that does is it increases the market rate
of housing, which means that you need more affordable housing, and so by building more
market rate housing, you reduce your need for affordable housing, essentially.
Thank you.
Any other discussion after our motion for approval?
I'll just say I'm excited to see all of this happening.
I remember when the zoning change request came in, I remember when the concept behind
that came in, and to now see that concept coming to fruition is very exciting.
So with that, I believe the board's working again, so we can go ahead and take a vote
on the board.
That motion carries 6-1.
Congratulations.
All right, that will move us to 5-D, PDA 22-0004.
Julie Wyatt is here for presentation.
I will open the public hearing.
All right, good evening.
All right, here we go.
Julie Wyatt, Senior Planner with the City of Denton, and I am presenting PDA 22-0004,
the Preserve at Pecan Creek.
The request before you is an amendment to the development plan for sections J and K of
PD 132.
This request doesn't have anything to do with a change in the use or density.
The property is platted for 21 single-family homes, as well as open spaces, and it's actually
... The neighborhood street has actually been constructed, but the request is to increase
the building coverage from 33% to 55%, and also to increase the rear yard building line
from 5 feet to 20 feet.
Just a little bit of history on PD 132, that's the Preserve at Pecan Creek.
It's actually one of our older PDs.
It predates the 2002 ... Didn't develop my code.
It was established in 1988.
I think it was called Southview at the time.
The original plan had 35% building coverage.
However, a maximum building coverage was removed from the PD in 1998.
The majority of the PD was constructed without that maximum building coverage.
In 2019, the developer came in to amend the PD for sections J and K. Originally, those
were supposed to be commercial development and institutional development.
However, there were some mobility plan changes, and it really didn't work anymore, so they
changed that PD to the residential uses.
As part of that request, they did put that 33% lot coverage in.
Some of you may remember, there were also some other conditions associated with that
approval.
It included things like adherence to our current tree preservation requirements, adding minimum
landscaping in both the front yard and rear yard, as well as street trees along arterials,
and a pedestrian crossing on Lakeview.
I did want to point out, as I mentioned, it's under construction.
They have got that pedestrian crossing.
They've been working on it.
They have the barrier free ramps.
I show a picture here on your screen.
They've got the street trees.
I believe the stop signs, the poles are in, but they still have to put the sign on it,
so at that pedestrian crossing.
They are making progress toward those conditions.
The development plan, as I mentioned, is really just to modify that maximum building coverage
and that rear building setback.
As part of this request, we did want to look at impacts and compatibility.
As part of our analysis, we looked at 73 nearby residential lots to see how the preserve looked
and how it had developed.
We saw lot sizes between about 5,400 square feet and almost 20,000 square feet.
Building footprints, and that's that first floor primary structure building footprint,
so it wouldn't include any maybe outdoor kitchens or sheds or offset garages, but that ranges
from about 2,000 square feet to nearly 4,000 square feet.
That comes out to about 17% to 46% building coverage.
That's not lot coverage.
That's just the building.
She broke it down into lot sizes.
It seems that the smaller the lot size, the larger that building footprint, that percentage
was, so lots that were less than 7,200 square feet had an average building coverage of 42%.
The larger lots, it wasn't as big.
It was average about 26%.
The rear yard setback in the preserve ranges between 5 and 10 feet.
The requested building coverage is larger than what we typically see around there.
We felt like it wasn't significant to be out of character with a typical suburban development
pattern.
It would also allow for a variety of architectural styles, particularly one-story buildings to
allow that larger footprint, so you wouldn't have to necessarily build up.
What we did, we did have concerns about that increased building size, so that's where that
increased rear yard setback came in.
These are not, these are schematic, but on your screen you can see the blue line is about
where a five-foot rear yard setback is.
The yellow line is about where a 20-foot rear yard setback is, so just to kind of tell how
close those would be to those adjacent properties.
There's also a required minimum landscaping in the rear yards.
That's that 20%, 30% in the front yard, 20% in the rear yard, and 55% building coverage
is pretty comparable to what we see in our base zoning districts in Denton now, R3 and
R4 being 50% and then R6 being 60%.
Oops, sorry, went the wrong way.
We did send out public notification.
We received a couple of responses, two in favor and one in opposition.
As I talked about in work session, a lot of the concerns that we heard were related to
exterior building materials as we talked about in work session.
Unfortunately, the city is preempted from enforcing any minimum masonry requirements,
and so while of course we would love to have that part of this, it's just not something
that we could enforce.
So based upon the criteria for approval, staff does recommend approval of the request.
I'll be happy to answer any questions.
The applicant is also here to answer any questions.
So that concludes my presentation.
Thank you, Julie.
At this time, do we have questions for Julie?
Okay.
Thank you.
I don't have any cards.
I don't know if the applicant is willing.
Did you want to give a presentation or?
We don't have a presentation.
Okay.
Come on.
I've been lingering in the room with you guys since five, I think.
Before you say your name and address this for a second.
My name is Britton Seawright.
I'm a four-star real estate group, and our address is 2221 East Lamar Boulevard, Suite
790, Arlington, Texas 76006.
I really can't add much to Julie's presentation.
She had a pretty thorough detailed history of the project, and really the only thing
I can add is that we did host two neighborhood meetings last week on January 4th.
We had one at noon, and we did one at 6 p.m., and we had a good turnout.
We had 36 people show up to the noon meeting, and we had 16 in the evening meeting, and
really the only concerns that we did receive were about the masonry requirement that we
suggested, and that requirement was that we were proposing 100% masonry material on the
first floor elevation in the rear yard.
I think the PD might speak to this a little bit in adjacency to thoroughfare and HOA open
spaces, but we were proposing it for all lots in sections J and K, and the reasoning
behind that was because you are set back 20 feet from that rear property line, you might
be able to see the rear of this home, and we wanted to provide a greater level product
since it may be visible from adjacent lots, but other than that, our only concern was
drainage, and I think an amendment to the PD might not be the right vehicle to address
those concerns, but we have been in communication with the HOA and working towards at least
furthering that conversation to get that remedied.
I think the architectural requirement was the biggest concern.
We removed it after speaking to Julie, and at our second meeting, we had no questions,
and with that, I really don't have anything else to add, so if you have any questions,
let me know.
A couple of questions for you.
Is your main reason for this to just get a bigger product square footage-wise on the
ground?
Is that why this kind of came back after the original amendment?
That's correct, yes.
We actually are home-builder today with William Ryan Homes.
We've got Scott Dettmer here, and really, what we're proposing is a lot of the house
type is going to have amenities like three-car garages and large covered patios in the backyard,
which are a little bit atypical, and without that 55% building coverage or something bigger
than what we are at, it may be difficult to see those amenities.
Okay.
Very good.
Commissioner Anderson.
Thank you, Chair.
Just a quick question, since we can't tell you what to put on the product, are you all
going to keep the structural integrity of the neighborhood the way ... You know what
I mean?
You're nodding your head, yes.
That's a concern I would have, is you're not going to come in there and make craft-style
houses when all the houses around there are brick and stone, masonry and stuff, so ...
Yes, so the PD requirements aren't going to change in terms of architectural standards.
The HOA actually already has covenants in place that govern the design guidelines, and
those same design guidelines are going to be put in place for sections J and K. In fact,
they are already.
Okay, appreciate it.
Thank you.
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Commissioner Pruitt.
Thank you, Chair.
You kind of already answered half at least of it with Chair's question, but you ... So
I understand what the goal is and what the need is for the footprint increase.
My question is, what changed ... Was it a market change that led you to decide, "Hey,
we want to build different homes here than what we planned three years ago," or how does
that ...
Speaking candidly, I'm not quite sure.
I've been at Four Star for the last year, and I think this property was originally designated
as retail use, and maybe that's where that 33% building coverage came from.
I can't really tell you, but I can tell you that the standard residential zoning that
Julie presented to you earlier is around 50, 60%, and we're kind of in line with that same
standard.
And 33% is just, for our case, insufficient.
So I can't speak into more detail, unfortunately, but that's kind of the reasoning.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yes, sir.
Commissioner Villarreal.
So I was reading online constituent concerns, and a lot of the concern from some folks is
focused on flooding in the area, and permeability versus impermeability, and a drastic increase
to the impermeable surface, i.e. 33% lot coverage to 55%.
Have you spoken to constituents in the area about that concern at all, and what is the
response?
Yes, sir.
Yeah.
We've actually done a drainage study previous to speaking to constituents.
We've got stormwater protection in place currently, and a lot of those inlet protections are
... they have a buffer so that the silt and soil runoff doesn't pollute waterways.
So I think this issue may remedy itself in the long term, but in the short term, I know
our development team is in conversation with those residents that have been impacted directly
and are working towards a solution.
So we've been in contact with the HOA and with the individual residents.
Thank you.
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Julie, can I ask you a question?
Has the city done anything with ... I know we had Lakeview closed down for flooding.
Has the city been involved in any kind of remediation here or requirements or anything?
So the property is platted, and as part of that plating, they did have to go through
the civil engineering review.
I pulled those civil engineering plans just to see how that drainage is to work.
This property is intended, of course, to drain toward the street, which will then connect
to an inlet that's on Lakeview.
So according to those civil engineering plans in the review, that there was capacity within
that system to accommodate this property.
Do we know what happened that forced Lakeview to have to close for period due to flooding?
I don't know about that.
We should probably just keep tabs on that.
Maybe we're going to need some requirements as development happens here so that that does
not happen again.
That's a major effect for that neighborhood.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you.
You bet.
This is a public hearing.
I don't have any other cards in front of me.
Is there anyone else wishing to speak on this item?
Okay.
Seeing none, I will close the public hearing and open the floor for a motion or discussion.
Commissioner Anderson.
I'll make a motion to approve.
Okay.
Commissioner Pruitt.
Yeah.
I'm going to go ahead and second this and support it.
I will say that when the zoning came before this body and council, I don't know if it
was three or three and a half years ago, whenever that was-
2019, I think, yeah.
I opposed to that change and I would continue to oppose that now just because I felt like
having zoning in place to allow this corner to evolve long-term was superior to locking
it into single-family home uses and forcing these residents to drive for three and a half
or four miles to get to a store.
But given that, that's not the question here.
The question here is what's a reasonable expectation of how someone can develop these lots with
the zoning that it has right now?
With that said, increasing the lot coverage from something that's below the median to
something that's reasonable for the area is perfectly acceptable to me.
We've got a first and a second for approval.
Is there any further discussion?
Let's go ahead and vote on the board please.
That motion carries 6-1, and that will move us to 5-E, PDA 220006.
Well Julie, come on back up just to kind of introduce the item.
If you don't mind, I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing.
Appreciate that.
You bet.
Thank you.
Julie Wyatt, Senior Planner.
This is a plan development amendment.
This is also one of our legacy PDs.
It is for a car dealership along I-35.
They are making some, would like to make some changes to their buildings, reconstruct one
of their buildings, add some additional square footage as part of our PD amendment procedures.
That does require a public hearing, so that's what the request is.
Staff is still completing their analysis, and so that's the reason for that request
to that date certain of January 25th.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
You bet.
So we're going to go ahead and leave the public hearing open, and Commissioner Smith.
Make a motion to postpone the date certain of January 25th, 2023.
Commissioner Cole?
Second.
We've got a first and a second to postpone this item to a date certain of January 25th.
Any discussion?
Let's go ahead and vote on the board, please.
That motion carries 7-0.
That will take us to our planning and zoning commission project matrix.
I will turn the floor over to Tina.
Thank you, Chairman Ellis.
So in reviewing the matrix, wanted to give an update on a couple of items in working
with staff.
So the first item is regarding the report on the notification process to properties
in the ETJ, and I was looking at the date, and I guess we might be a little tardy on
non-dressing this one, so my apologies, Vice Chairman Smith.
But I was talking to Haley today and Julie, so we're going to target to bring a presentation
back on the 15th of February to just talk about our notification processes in general,
but also address the notification to property owners within the ETJ.
Regarding legislative update, I know this was something that the commission was also
interested in, so the legislature convened yesterday.
So as updates need to be provided to the commission, we'll let you know, I think we need to get
a little bit further into the legislative season just to see what is all being proposed
and to get a better flavor of that.
Regarding removing the minimum parking requirements from the DDC, so as we talked about when this
was added to the list back in September, the prioritization, and then when we bring this
back, we're going to work this through the Development Code Review Committee.
So they will be meeting here in about two weeks and having a conversation regarding
prioritizing the next batch of items.
So depending upon where that falls, we can provide the commission with a better update
as to when we think that might come back.
I was looking at the request for additional detail regarding the results of the TIAs.
This is really not necessarily a project item to bring back in terms of like a formal bootcamp
presentation.
So what I may do is move this down below annual updates or put it in other category.
So we've been trying to be very conscientious on making sure that we're addressing any recommendations
that are provided in the TIA when the appropriate project's coming forth.
And so hence why you saw that tonight, just to make sure we're clear moving that forward.
And then obviously we've got the AHD and so we'll get that calendared since that's just
a recent item.
A couple items that are not on here that I want to bring to your attention, because you
will have a role in these projects eventually.
And I know I've talked about these a little bit in the past, but the Northeast Area Plan,
we're having our formal kickoff meeting with our consultant actually this Thursday and
starting that work.
So Ron will be coming to you from time to time with additional items for discussion.
We'll be engaging the Planning and Zoning Commission at various points along the way
of that particular project.
That project is about a 10 to 12 month calendar associated with that.
So like I said, we'll engage you at certain points along the way as we work on that.
Southeast Area Plan, right now we're working on hopefully finalizing the contract with
the consultant that we're proposing to partner with.
And so hopefully we'll have that contract approved maybe late February, no later than
the 1st of March, but we're trying to work diligently on that.
But as soon as we get that contract approved, we'll be kicking off that project soon thereafter.
And then of course, we also have the Downtown Area Plan.
We have the RFQ still out on the street and we went ahead and extended the deadline on
submission just because of how the calendar was coinciding with the various holidays that
we've had here lately.
So in order to ensure that we get good, strong responses, we went ahead and continued that
until next week on the 18th.
So we'll start reviewing those proposals as well.
So it'll be a very busy year for the planning team as well as the commission because you'll
be engaged on all three of those projects at some point along the way.
So I just want to let you know what's happening there.
As it relates to items that have been considered by council since your last meeting.
So we did have city council meeting last night and we had, let's see, I know there were two
items on the agenda.
Let me get to them.
So one of them was with respect to a second reading associated with an annexation for
about 18 acres of land on the north side of university at Thomas Egan.
So the hard corner was a case that you had considered for light industrial zoning and
commission recommend approval and council subsequently approved it.
This is the remaining balance of the land that they had immediately to the north.
And so that annexation request got approved.
So I would anticipate you all having a zoning case here sooner than later on that particular
property.
And then the other item was the rezoning associated with the school district's property that they
have on Riney road.
And so that was also approved last night by city council.
There was a brief discussion on just the existing conditions of Riney road, again, the school
district partnering with the city on doing improvements to the road.
We the city are also looking into what it would take to be able to extend those improvements
on Riney road further to the to the east to Elm street.
So to know that we continue to work on that, I know the commission had some discussion
with respect to the access and circulation and just the impacts of the traffic on Riney
road.
And we continue to be in a collaborative effort with the school district as it relates to
that particular project.
So anyway, just those were the items that we had before council.
But if the commission has any questions about anything, happy to address them.
So thank you.
Thank you, Tina.
Any questions for Tina or anything to add to the matrix?
Commissioner Pruitt.
Thank you, Chair.
Yeah, this may be a very long term thing, given how full the schedule is from planning
staff this year.
But one thing I noticed council saw yesterday was the sort of report from the year's work
of the sustainability framework committee and actually just happenstance, the Department
of Energy came out with a big, big plan this week as well.
And some of those things, you know, talked a lot about land use, specifically one of
their big actions said, "Partner with local communities to develop and demonstrate effective,
equitable and scalable local or regional land use and planning solutions to increase convenience
and reduce emissions by making it possible for people to take fewer or shorter trips."
So I guess the request would be at whatever engagement level staff feels is appropriate
at the time to make sure that our commission is informed of the city's goals from a sustainability
perspective and how our decisions impact that, combined with making sure that the sustainability
committee is kind of given a little bit of planning staff's expertise about how those
things interrelate.
Does that make sense?
Yes, I believe so.
So to make sure that the planning and zoning commission is informed of the city's sustainability
goals as they particularly affect planning and zoning commission's decision, and I'm
sorry I missed the last part.
And vice versa, the sustainability framework committee would have an opportunity to learn
how planning decisions, land use and that sort of thing, impact the goals that they're
working on.
Okay.
Thank you.
Great.
Anything else for the matrix?
Any concluding items?
Okay.
Seeing none, I'll go ahead and close our meeting at 7.55 p.m.
Thank you, everyone.