>> Good afternoon and welcome to the city of Denton's planning and zoning commission
meeting for Wednesday, April 12, 2023.
This is our work session and with a quorum present I will call us to order at 5.01 p.m.
First item on our work session agenda is citizen comment for consent agenda items.
Is there anyone wishing to speak on consent agenda?
Seeing none.
Let's move on to the clarification on tonight's agenda.
Let's work on through the minutes from the 29th.
Any questions on that?
Any questions on consent?
Four A has been withdrawn by the applicant so we will take no action on that.
Four B, commissioner Cole, I know you're going to recuse on that, correct?
Okay.
Are there any questions on that?
Want to go ahead and give a quick -- how are you, Ashley?
Good.
>> Ashley, assistant planner.
This is a final platform industrial use on approximately 37 acres at the intersection
of Mosh Branch and Jim Crystal.
We are currently recommending denial but we have no objection to the requested extension
until May 10th.
>> Okay.
May 10th.
Okay.
Questions for Ashley?
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Okay, commissioner Cole.
All right.
That will move us then to public hearings.
We have three of them on tonight's agenda.
Five A belongs to Angie -- you are here, Angie.
Hi.
Come on up.
Thank you.
>> Hey.
Good evening, everyone.
Angie Manglaris, senior planner.
And if you'll bear with me one moment.
Okay.
A bit of background on this case, this is PD 210007.
It is a plan development request that's going from suburban corridor to plan development
with a mixed use -- with a base zoning of neighborhood mixed use.
The intent of the plan development is to facilitate the development of a multifamily use consisting
of both horizontal multifamily and your traditional mid-rise apartment style complex.
It is consistent with the 2040 comprehensive plan.
It has a future land use designation of community mixed use which applies to key corridors in
the city that serve as transitional areas between residential and commercial areas.
It is consistent with our housing and population projections and staff is recommending approval
of this request this evening.
In addition to that summary, I wanted to follow up from our meeting that we had back on March
15th.
If you all recall, we did review this case and it was postponed to the 29th and then
again until this evening.
In that time, there were several questions that came up from the commission that staff
was directed to look more into and I wanted to give you a little bit of overview on some
of the responses to those questions and also let you know that the applicant will have
a representative of their traffic engineer who prepared the TIA at the meeting this evening
should you have additional questions of them.
But the questions that were asked at the 15th meeting that kind of wanted to summarize for
you all tonight was one question that was asked was were the nearby Denton ISD facilities
taken into consideration with the preparation of this TIA as you all know it was prepared
in the summer of 2021.
Summer is not typically a time that would account for school traffic which is why you
all asked that question.
So the traffic counts were adjusted for the school year traffic for the morning trips.
The TIA made an adjustment factor of 45% which essentially means that they added 45% of what
they counted on top of the AM peak traffic to accommodate for those DISD facilities.
I do want to point out that the same was not done for the PM trips because typically when
school is let out versus when rush hour is for office facilities, they didn't overlap
so much as in the morning when you would expect parents to be both dropping off their children
and going to their respective workplaces.
Angie, if I could ask you, so PM I assume is like 5 PM?
Yes.
Can I go to the next one if that's okay?
I just wanted to make sure I figured it was better to do a call and response type thing.
The next question was were recently approved developments in the region included in the
TIA?
So there's a few developments that have been approved in past years that are north of the
site including Stark Farms, Stewart Ridge, and Agave Ranch.
Stark Farm and Stewart Ridge were included in the TIA.
They accommodated for, they projected an anticipated build out of 2024 for Stark Farms and 2026
for Stewart Ridge.
And so the full build out for each site with a projected horizon of 2028 was incorporated
into this TIA.
Agave Ranch was not included in the factor for the TIA.
You, staff anticipated using the ITE's eighth generation manual that a development of Agave
Ranch's size you could predict an additional approximately 2400 trips per day.
So as part of this TIA Stark Farms and Stewart Ridge both of their projected build out were
included Agave Ranch is not included in that TIA.
COVID was also brought up as far as was that accounted for in the TIA.
Again this was done in the summer of 2021 where working remote was possibly a little
bit more predominant than we would expect today.
The TIA doesn't mention specifically any adjustments that were made for COVID-19.
The applicant does look at background traffic and projected traffic and uses the historical
traffic patterns over the last 10 years and comes up with an average growth rate of 1.17.
The applicant rounded up and used a 2% growth rate for the future for the TIA but the answer
is no.
COVID specifically was not adjusted for but a more conservative growth rate was predicted
than what the past 10 years had shown.
And then finally one of the questions that came up in the meeting was if the development
were to develop entirely as commercial would we expect to see a higher trip count or lower
trip count than if it were to be developed as proposed which would be the 20 acres developing
as multifamily development.
So using the eighth generation of the ITE we find average trip counts for different
uses and I looked at two different sites in the city to kind of give us a base comparison
rate.
One of them is the southeast corner of Sherman and Loop 288.
So while this is not exactly the same size, this is approximately 8.72 acres, it is just
on the south side of Loop 288 and kind of shows the development pattern that is in that
area today.
So with some convenience stores and gas pumps, restaurant with drive through, one restaurant
with drive through that is currently in review, the self-storage institute and the financial
institution also currently in review, you would anticipate approximately 5,600 traffic
trips to be generated with the development of that 8.7 acre site.
And then looked for a little bit larger of a site because this is a 20 acre site and
the southeast corner of Bonnie Bray and University felt like was a good example to show kind
of a comparison of rates.
This has a variety of commercial uses, all of which would be allowed in the SC zoning
district including restaurants with drive through, medical offices, dental offices, small
home improvement store, a grocery store which was Aldi, I believe that was mentioned, and
additional convenience stores, you would anticipate with these mix of uses on approximately 17.5
acres, we would have roughly 11,500 trips generated from a site of that size developing
in that matter.
Now this was used, again we used the eighth edition of the ITE manual to generate these
and got the traffic counts based on those proposed uses.
So it's an example of what could be anticipated if the site were to develop as commercial
entirely.
And then I did want to point out a few concerns were raised during the public hearing regarding
driveway spacing.
So the driveway spacing requirements for the city are met, the plan is compliant with that.
However, for text that approval there would be a variance required for those locations
to be approved as shown.
The italicized text which didn't show up quite as well as I had hoped, but allows, we added
additional language recognizing that a variance to text that is still needed and that those
locations may need minor modifications.
So the PD development standards have been amended to reflect that there may be a shift
in driveway location required as part of the text that approval process and that those
minor changes could be approved administratively by city staff rather than having to go back
through the entire public hearing process.
Now if there's a major change that's made that requires some sort of site design reconfiguration,
it probably wouldn't fall under the category of minor anymore and it would have to come
back to you on city council for ultimate approval.
So that was my brief summary of the case as a brief reminder of what we're discussing.
We're going from SC to plan development with the base zoning of MN to allow for the development
of multifamily uses on approximately 20 acres.
And then just some backgrounds on the requested information from PNZ from the last meeting
and that's all I have for you at this time.
>> Thanks Angie.
Questions?
Commissioner Cole.
>> Thank you Chair.
Thanks Angie.
So Northwest Denton has now entered the process into having a small area plan.
Would this area be in the aegis of that small area plan?
>> This area is at one of the most southern point of that area plan at the intersection
of 288 and FM428.
Yes it is within the boundaries of that study area.
So my concern is now that this small area plan is in the process, I'm counting the opinion
that maybe we need to respect that process and wait to see what comes out of the small
area plan.
I mean this is in it.
You know, I'm just struggling with this because I want to respect the process and this small
area plan is not only city generated but it's resident generated.
And I understand time is money to these people, these developers, I totally get that.
But I'm kind of of the mind that maybe we need to let this process play out to see what
comes out of it, if anything comes out of it.
>> Yes and we recognize that.
So it is and it doesn't surprise me that you're expressing that opinion.
So that is an option for the commission to consider as you deliberate this case as to
whether or not, you know, if you find that the existing request may not be appropriate
for this site and are more interested in allowing that area plan process to play out, I mean
that is your prerogative and you can voice that and have that reflected in your actions
this evening.
You know, when we take on these area plans, we know the timeline associated with them,
you know, it's roughly a 10 month process.
So we anticipate from time to time that we could have some overlap where we've got cases
that are filed while we are working on these efforts.
So it's -- we've been very transparent with the applicant, especially once city council
identified the areas that they wanted to focus on for the area plan.
So we tried to make sure that we're very transparent in communicating that message out.
You know, obviously this project when they filed it, it started well before that effort.
But we have kept them apprised of that through this project.
Yeah, the timing on that is really -- it's really rough for sure because that's an excellent
point and certainly a concern.
Other questions for Angie at this point?
Okay.
Thank you.
Thanks for bringing the information regarding the TIA.
That definitely cleared up some of our questions from last week.
Thank you very much.
Okay, let's go ahead and move on to Item B of our public hearings.
Mia is making the way up for that.
That is our reconsideration item.
Good evening, Chair, members of the commission, Mia Hines, Associate Planner.
Yes, this item is a request to rezone just under 13 acres from PDMN to PDSC.
That's an overlay PD.
The request itself would permit certain commercial uses appropriate for the context.
It would require compliance with the current EDC and require additional context-sensitive
site design considerations, keeping in mind sort of the adjacency to Teasley as well as
the adjacency to the residential properties to the west and the multifamily property to
the west.
Just a brief recap, if you followed along, this has been on your agenda a few times.
The P&Z initially heard this item on February 15th and recommended denial, and then on March
1st the item was -- this body voted to reconsider it.
It did come back again at the last meeting on March 29th and was continued by this body
mainly as the applicant requested it be continued because one of the reasons for it to be reconsidered
was for the full body to hear that case at that time, and we did not have a full body
that evening.
So staff is recommending approval of the request.
I do have a full presentation that I can go through during the regular session.
I did want to go ahead and skip ahead to the recommendation slide.
Within the PD regulations that were initially sent to you, the wording for -- at the bottom
of Section 2 of those PD regulations was a bit different.
This is given -- it's giving the same -- or serving the same purpose as what was initially
sent to you but sort of clarifies what was intended by that, and that is that the applicant
has agreed to limit the number of drive-through facilities permitted on this site to three
as long as they can be built on either Track 1 or Track 2 within the site, and so there
is a bit of a different language than what was initially sent to you, and that was -- that
markup and that clean version should have been sent to you this afternoon.
So with that, I will stand for any questions or comments that you have.
>> Questions from you?
>> Commissioner VilleRail.
>> Quick question for you, Chair.
Do you know if Commissioner Pruitt is planning on attending today?
>> Yes.
Commissioner Pruitt is running late, but he will be in attendance.
>> Gotcha.
Thank you.
>> Thank you.
Commissioner Smith.
>> Mia, on the staff recommendations there, it's going to be tied directly into the PD,
so there's not -- because of the base zoning, by right, the drive-through facilities are
allowed, but because of the PD, it's going to be built into there that it has the specifications
and stipulations within there?
>> Correct.
Yes, sir.
>> Okay.
I just -- when it gets to really minute, small stuff like this, it gets -- I always feel
like it gets hairy, and it gets a little bit worrisome on five, 10, 15 years from now,
how do we run into something like this when someone wants to take out a building that
is there and replace it with a facility that's going to have a drive-through, but it runs
into that issue?
So just, Grace, was there any consideration from city staff on that, kind of looking at
this kind of being a really -- it's kind of -- it feels like almost a really small footnote
into the development itself.
Does that make sense?
>> So we would make sure it's very clear in the PD ordinance with this limitation being
provided.
And as, you know, say five years from now, somebody wants to modify a building that was
originally not constructed for drive-through purposes, but they want to add the drive-through,
we have checks and balances put in place that would help protect the scenario and bring
to the permitting process, but even in all likelihood, it's going to require modifications
being made to the site.
So they would be submitting zoning compliance plans to us, and as part of our review of
the zoning, we would be pulling the plan development district ordinance, looking at the requirements
in there, do an assessment of how many drive-throughs are currently within the district existing
at that time to see whether or not it would trigger a specific use permit or if it's still
one of the three.
>> Cool.
Great question.
>> Anybody else?
Mia, with this change, do you know if the neighborhood was -- or was there another meeting
held at all?
>> So this change --
>> Because this is a little bit different than when it was heard the first time or when
they had their meetings originally.
>> Yeah.
The change was sort of an added -- after the initial meeting and the feedback from P&Z,
the neighborhood, when they responded, there wasn't a restriction on drive-through uses
at all.
So this would actually be an additional restriction to the PD that I haven't received any further
feedback from the neighborhood regarding the change.
>> Okay.
Okay.
Then the overall major concern about the whole thing is that light that is not there.
Is that part of your presentation tonight?
Are we going to discuss a little bit about that?
>> So I can answer -- we do have our transportation planner here to answer any TIA-related questions,
but I will say that we do estimate that -- or we -- the TIA will be required.
We anticipate some improvements might need to be made, but we will not know for sure
until that TIA is submitted and reviewed for the city.
>> Okay.
Understood.
Any other questions at the moment?
Okay.
Look forward to hearing it tonight.
Thank you.
That will take us to our public hearing item C for this evening.
Julie is making her way up.
Hello.
>> Good evening.
Let me pull up my presentation.
All right.
Julie Wyatt.
And this is the 230004 Camelot.
This is a little different.
We don't do these quite as often as we see other rezoning cases, but this is a city-initiated
rezoning proposal from R3 district to R6 district.
The subject property is located at the intersection of Hercules and Stewart, kind of situated
to the north side of town.
A little bit of history before -- I won't go into all of the details, but just a little
bit of history.
The property was plotted in 1979 with 20 residential lots developed with fourplexes.
I think in my staff report I also talked about triplexes.
I think it's mostly fourplexes.
We don't know exactly.
And a couple of single-family homes on that Camelot Street.
As you're aware, we updated our development regulations in 2002 and then in 2019 with
that associated rezoning, which essentially created a nonconformity for most of the lots
on this street.
All those fourplexes are now nonconforming uses.
This was brought to our attention late last year by a property owner, one of the property
owners of the single-family dwellings who would like to convert it to a duplex.
And we said, that use is not permitted.
And so we looked a little deeper and realized that rezoning in 2002 and then the transition
in 2019 had created this nonconforming situation.
So the purpose of the rezoning is just to get those nonconforming uses conforming.
They are existing fourplexes that people are living in, provide certainty for those property
owners if they want to make investments, also those residents who are living there.
Denton 2040 comprehensive plan designates the area as low residential, doesn't quite
fit within that low residential designation, but it does meet our overall goals of our
comprehensive plan, the things like infill housing and maintaining our neighborhoods
and providing that housing choice.
So we are recommending approval of the city initiated rezoning to that R6 district.
I'll be happy to answer any questions.
And I've got a full presentation if you'd like to see it or wait till the regular session.
- Questions for Julie on this?
Okay.
Yeah, and we'll go over all the responses and whatnot with your presentation, I assume.
- Yes, ma'am.
- Okay.
- All right.
- Thank you very much.
And that will move us to our work session reports then for this evening.
First one is 3A, receive a report, hold a discussion regarding regulations related to
nonconformities.
Speaking of.
- I'll just stay here.
All right.
It's a surprise boot camp.
So this is about nonconformities.
I know it's not the most exciting topic, but we'll try to make it as lively as possible.
So our nonconforming regulations are in our Denton Development Code and it is section
1.5.
That first chapter.
So generally a nonconformity is something that was legally established under prior regulations,
but no longer meets current regulations or development standards.
Standards allow for the nonconformities to remain.
So if you own a property and it's not conforming right now, it can stay as it is.
But what we want to make sure is that we're not investing more in those properties.
We want to discourage that further investment to make sure that we can be more in line with
our current regulations, our current desire for neighborhoods.
So while we want people to maintain their properties, we want them to know that a tremendous
amount of investment would not be something that the Denton Development Code would allow.
There is one caveat to our nonconforming regulations and that is for single family duplex and town
home dwellings.
There was a consideration discussed in DCRC when we were adopting or crafting our 2019
code and that is we didn't want to make any of those land uses, the single family duplex
and town home dwellings nonconforming.
And so there is a carve out for those.
And that any of them, any of those uses that were legal at the time of the adoption of
the 2019 DDC remain legal and not nonconforming.
So I've got an example on your screen.
It's a lovely little street that has duplexes that are no longer permitted under that existing
R3 or the current R3 zoning.
And so technically those would be without that carve out would be nonconforming.
But with that, those are lawful structures.
So as I mentioned, nonconformity can continue.
It can continue to be used and occupied, but there are limitations.
Of course, we want people to maintain their properties.
So those repairs are permitted.
But that degree of nonconformity cannot be increased.
So you can repair some physical damage or deterioration.
You can restripe parking.
You can replace landscaping.
You can paint.
You can do those sorts of things.
But you can't increase that nonconformity, and we'll go over that a little more specifically.
If that nonconforming use or structure is discontinued for a year or more, all of those
nonconforming rights cease.
So then you would have to come in conformance with the current regulations.
And then we also have a provision in the code.
I'm not sure if it's ever actually been used.
But we can amortize nonconforming uses or structures.
And that is that the ZBA is responsible for setting that plan.
So let's talk about types of nonconformities.
We actually have three types of nonconformities.
The first one we're going to go over is nonconforming use.
So it kind of what it says it is.
It is any use of land established legally, but that is no longer permitted.
Nonconforming uses may not be expanded onto another structure on the site.
No structural changes to an existing building are permitted.
And you can't add any more dwelling units.
So if you have a nonconforming use and you have a big building, you could potentially
expand that use within the confines of that building, but you cannot increase the size
of that building.
You cannot then jump over to another building, nor can you make structural changes to that
building to accommodate an expansion of that nonconforming use.
A nonconforming use could be changed to another nonconforming use if a property owner can
prove that that new use is not more intensive than the existing use.
But it can't be converted back.
So you can't skip back and forth.
A really good example of a nonconforming use within the city of Denton is we have a manufacturing
use that was established prior to 2002.
At that time, the zoning was LI, and so the use was permitted.
In 2002, that zoning changed to downtown commercial general, and that use was no longer permitted.
And then that zoning transitioned to MN, and that use is not permitted now as well.
So that is a nonconforming use.
And really, it's because the vision of this area has changed.
This is kind of near our downtown in southeast Denton areas, and so that vision of the area
has changed.
It might at one point have made sense in that area, but it no longer makes sense now.
So it is that nonconforming use.
And that's where it comes in that, you know, that's how we look at our nonconforming use
is to say we want you to maintain your property, but maybe not a tremendous amount of investment,
because we do want to see those areas redevelop in a way that's part of our vision.
Commissioner Smith.
Thank you, Chair.
The intensive use change here.
So let's say a bar owner comes in and wants to buy that property, and it's obviously a
less, and I'm assuming it's not allowed in that area, it is.
But I'm just trying to think of a scenario which would get to the point of my question,
which is expansion, no structural changes, a decrease in square footage, is that going
to be permitted if they wanted to modify the building, but decreasing the usable square
footage?
Let's say they're tearing down a portion of the building to then build it out to be
a beer garden.
That's the best thing I can come off the top of my head.
But it seems like all the nonconforming uses pieces within there, the only thing we really
ever see with nonconforming use issues is the expansion of it.
Is a decrease or a modification, but lessening square footage, is that allowed within that,
by how that definition is written?
These are always tricky, and I'm going to look at my ... But probably ...
It's technically a structural change, right?
Is it a structural ... Yes, it is a structural change.
And are you asking, could they change to another use, like a beer garden?
So for instance, an MN, a beer garden, because it sells alcohol, would require a specific
use permit.
Yeah.
I'm thinking more of like, let's say there's a manufacturing plant that's all been enclosed,
but they now need a space that's actually open air.
It's a nonconforming use.
They tear a portion of the building down that's now open air storage.
It's still a nonconforming use, but it's a reduction of the structure itself.
It depends.
Give you tough ones too.
I'm going to toss that to Tina.
So you raise a good question.
We would look at their drawings and plans and seeing what is it that they're proposing
to do.
My first thought would be is, we've got to look at the schedule of use charts to see,
okay, is the use that's being requested truly less intensive from how we classify the uses
in the use table?
We would look at the footprint of what was used previously.
So let's say this building is a thousand square feet, but they want to use 500 square feet
for office and use the remaining 500 square feet for storage purposes.
If they were using the existing building, we'd probably say, yes, we could work through
that because they're not expanding the building.
If they're wanting to alter the building though, then I think that would become more of an
issue because I thought on her prior slide, you cannot have any structural changes to accommodate
non-conforming uses.
That structural change would be accommodating non-conforming use.
Bottom line, and Julie may have not necessarily gotten to this yet in her presentation, but
the goal with non-conformities is that they go away, especially non-conforming uses.
My apologies if I'm stealing your thunder, but the zoning regulations presumably changed
for a reason, probably because of policy direction that was provided to the city of we want this
area to change and evolve.
We don't like how it's been, and so we want to set a new course and direction and accommodating
a new path for areas, and I've been in communities that have done that.
When it comes to non-conformities, when we change regulatory requirements, the goal is
eventually that those uses will go away.
Our ordinances are set up where they allow the non-conformity to continue operating,
but we purposely put limitations on them so that they cannot be comfortable for expansion.
We'll allow you to continue existing, but we're going to keep parameters on you, and
some of those parameters might be uncomfortable for you, but we, the city, made a conscious
decision that we don't want more of these uses happening within this area, so that's
why we made the change.
We actually allow for modifications to a certain extent.
To me, the fact that we allow for a property to go from one non-conforming use to a lesser
non-conforming use causes me a little angst as a planner, but that's the path that we've
chosen here in Denton, and so be it.
I've worked in communities where we've been more aggressive with that, because we are,
especially if we are trying to direct change in an area and wanting certain uses to go
away, then we want conforming uses, because keep in mind, while that one use of the building
may be non-conforming, there are a variety of other uses that are allowed within the
zoning district that somebody could do in the property, so those are the uses that we
want to get to, right?
We don't want to make it super comfortable for the non-conforming uses to be able to
continue to expand and exist, so that's kind of the planning 101 behind that, and sorry,
like I said about this.
Part two to the question.
Thank you, Tina.
I appreciate it.
Everything that was talked about non-conforming has always been land use and zoning.
There's never really anything in the code about operations occurring, right?
Manufacturing plan, shut down, owner never sold it, and eventually the owner is still
going to own it or a trust owns it, son comes in 15 years later, manufacturing plan hasn't
been operating, comes back in and wants to take that property.
It's non-conforming, wants to start operation, operating it again.
It doesn't change ownership, but do we kick in anything at that point in time, the non-conforming
use is there?
So if they ceased operations for more than a year, they do not get the non-conforming
use back.
Got it.
Okay.
Was that in there a second ago, and I just missed that?
It is, but yeah.
Right.
And here in Denton, in my opinion, we're actually generous because we give people a year.
Many communities that I've worked in, it's six months, so it is, because like I said,
the goal is for these uses to go away.
So if a non-conforming use ceased operation, and in our case in Denton, if they have ceased
operation for more than a year, then they don't get the non-conforming use anymore.
They can have all the conforming uses available to use the property for, but they don't get
the non-conforming use, because it's in some of the things that we look at going through
ours, especially when we're hitting that one year market, was there truly one year mark,
not market, but was there truly an intent to abandon the use?
Was the water account disconnected, has there been no activity that we've been able to document?
Because we take these issues seriously, right, but we look to see, okay, was there true intent
for abandonment of that use, because on the flip side, we are sensitive to the fact that
properties have, especially when they've got non-conforming uses, if the property owner
had a tenant that closed its doors, nine months later, they finally get a new tenant in there.
We realize they have those property rights, and so we honor those, right?
So, but, you know, if that year comes and goes, and somebody wants to try and reopen
that business, and that use is not allowed, then we'll inform them of that.
Commissioner Cole?
Thank you, Chair.
I think the most likely scenario for non-conforming use, though, are all the homes that are within
500 feet of a gas well.
There are many here in this town.
So that was the catalyst for why we put residential uses, not non-conforming.
So a swath of the vintage gets, takes out, gets, you know, trees fall, whatever, on Vintage
Street, where that, you know, all those homes are within 500 feet of a gas well, and they
have 50% damage or whatever.
I mean, my problem with it is, is that it's going to, you know, some of these people are
going to be homeless, and it's going to take them six months to even, I mean, to go through
this process if the ZBA even allows them to do this.
So by right, can they rebuild those homes?
Is that what you're saying, or?
So I'm going to call my gas well expert, because that's the part of the code I'm still learning,
so I'll admit.
When the gas well ordinance was updated a couple of years ago to the 500 foot reverse setback,
council intentionally built in an exception that all of the existing residential uses
and lots within that 500 foot radius are considered legal.
They're not non-conforming.
Right.
Because I put in, you know, I was the one that suggested the grandfather clause that
would have made this so much easier, but council and their wisdom didn't see it that way.
That, you know, I just don't want to process people to death in that scenario, you know.
So thank you.
Yes.
That's great.
Yeah, in that case, they're completely protected.
Awesome.
Thank you, Haley.
Julie, I think we're going to let you continue with the presentation, and then we'll.
Otherwise, we're going to steal all your slides.
All right.
No, no.
Y'all are doing great.
Our two other types of non-conformities are non-conforming structure and non-conforming
lot.
So a non-conforming structure is any structure established or constructed legally, but no
longer conforms.
This is important to look at because if a non-conforming structure is damaged by natural
causes and less than 50% was damaged, they can rebuild to that original condition.
But if 51 or more percent of that building is damaged, then it may not be rebuilt.
And so that comes into, you know, all of those considerations that Tina was talking about
or that Tina mentioned.
And so we want to keep that in mind.
Non-conforming lot, that is a legally established lot that no longer complies with the current
dimensional standards.
Structures on non-conforming lots are considered non-conforming structures.
I want to mention one thing, non-conforming lots may be built upon.
So legal non-conforming, if it was a platted lot and it no longer conforms, someone can
build on it.
We wouldn't prevent it.
But they do have to meet current dimensional standards.
So my example here is if a platted R4 lot is smaller than the minimum requirement of
7,000 square feet, minimum 50 feet width, 80 feet depth, someone can still build on
that, say, if it's a 6,000 square foot lot.
But they do have to conform to those setbacks for R4, and that would be 20 feet front yard,
20 feet side yard adjacent to a street, 5 yard interior side, and then 10 feet rear.
And then we have -- I'm sorry, we have four non-conformities.
I misspoke.
And then lastly, we have our non-conforming site feature.
That is a legally established site feature that no longer complies.
That's where we're getting into those site design standards, like where your parking
is located, where your driveways are, what kind of landscaping and screening you have.
So we have an example here.
The property was built in the -- we think it was built in the 1960s.
It has zoning of MN, which does not allow front parking.
So that front parking can continue in perpetuity as long as it stays as it is and it's being
used.
But if they expand the building, if they tear down the building, if they want to do specific
thresholds of additions, then they will have to address that non-conformity, and they cannot
increase that non-conformity.
You know, they also have potential challenges with maybe the driveway throat length and
those driveway separations.
So in the event they want to redevelop that site, we would have to look at that site,
see what they're proposing, and see where that site can become -- come into conformance.
So Tina mentioned how to -- eliminating non-conformity.
So we do -- there are instances where our vision of an area is changed, and we want
to look at those non-conforming uses and see how to get them in compliance.
A non-conformity can cease.
We talked about that.
If it -- after a year, they lose those non-conforming rights.
Or the code does allow the amortization.
Once again, I'm not sure it's something that the City of Denton has used in the past, but
it is in our Denton Development Code.
It can be modified to come into compliance with the DDC and become legally conforming.
Or in the instance of some cases that we have, it can be rezoned to a district that permits
the use or a PD, which would establish unique standards to accommodate especially that non-conforming
site feature.
One --
>> True.
Can I stop you for a minute?
>> Absolutely.
>> You've said the word "amortized" a couple of times.
Do you want to just expound upon what that means?
>> Yes.
I have my -- and I'm going to try not to talk out of turn.
But it can set a deadline for when that -- when that non-conforming use would cease.
So say 10 years out that everyone's investment-backed expectation would have been met.
And then that non-conforming use would need to go away.
So did I say that, and then Tina might want to add to that?
>> Well, and just to expand on that.
So what Julie said is correct, and I've worked in communities that have employed something
to this nature.
You know, the goal is to allow for a property owner, business owner who -- maybe non-conformity
to be able to continue operating for a defined period of time, but to allow them to be able
to recoup some of the investment that they've made into that property.
It is -- to me, it is a little bit more aggressive approach, particularly if the city were to
embark on that path.
It is an option that cities have utilized.
But it -- to me, it is -- it becomes a little more challenging, because the business owner
or the property owner is having to prove up that they need a certain amount of time in
order to be able to amortize all of their investment or to recoup all of their investment
that they've made within the property, and then presumably possibly wanting to have some
sort of financial benefit in the end, right?
So then it becomes potentially something that's negotiated between the city and the property
owner.
You know, the property owner may say, well, I need 20 years, and the city is saying, well,
no, we only would give you 10 years.
Help us understand your numbers, right?
And so it's -- in my experience, it's not something that has always been implemented.
I've seen it done, particularly like with some specific use permits for temporary uses,
which is even a challenge, because then you're coming back to a property owner, you know,
say five years, 10 years from now and say, oh, hey, by the way, remember, you agreed
to this?
So -- and so it's -- hence why it's not the most popular option, but it is an available
option that's out there.
And I don't know, y'all might have remembered many -- several years ago, I would say maybe
about five years, plus or minus, there was a case that played out in the court of public
opinion on the news with respect to an automotive business down in Dallas.
But --
Well, I saw you.
Okay, so -- you're obviously familiar with it, but anyway, but, you know, the city of
Dallas was looking to have some non-conforming uses go away, and apparently there was agreement
put in place with a particular automotive-related use, and the time was coming due, right, for
them to have to close their doors.
And so it was well advertised within the news, and -- but it was, you know, there was an
amortization schedule that was put in place as to when that business would agree to cease
operations.
So it sometimes makes the city look really bad in that effort, and, you know, on that
one, I knew there was two sides to every story, right, but that is something that, you know,
the city of Dallas used in that particular instance.
Thank you.
And then ultimately, some of you may remember this case that came before you.
It probably had been three or four years ago, but a -- there was a hospital use.
That use was permitted, that zoning was MR, but the parking space, the number of parking
spaces that they had and they wanted, and then the parking lot landscaping no longer
conformed to our 2019 Denton Development Code standards.
And so in order to eliminate that non-conformity, they actually rezoned to a PD to accommodate
their existing development and then actually a hospital expansion.
So we've mentioned the ZBA a couple of times, just want to go over kind of their duties
briefly as they relate to non-conformities.
ZBA is a quasi-judicial board, and it has seven regular members plus alternates.
Quasi-judicial, actually, when you present or speak to the ZBA, you actually get sworn
in, so it's a little different than P and Z. 75% of the members have to be in attendance
for a quorum, and their decisions are final.
The next place to go, if the outcome is not to someone's liking, would go to court.
So that's where it gets in that quasi-judicial.
And they hear variances from the DDC and the sign code.
They hear relief from from gas well setbacks, appeals and administrative decisions, and
then also where you get into that request regarding non-conformities.
They can establish, reestablish, change, terminate them.
All of their decisions require a supermajority, so six out of seven of the members have to
approve something.
And they are bound by Texas Local Government Code Chapter 211, Denton Development Code,
and also our city charter.
And that concludes the presentation, if you have any questions.
Excellent, Julie.
Thank you.
Any questions?
We answered them along the way.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
If I could add a follow-up comment.
Yes, of course.
So as Julie pointed out, we did a surprise boot camp presentation for you this evening
on non-conformities, but we felt it was appropriate to have this conversation in light of the zoning
case that you have on your agenda this evening, because of the fact that with those properties,
they are in a non-conforming status.
So just want the Commission to be able to understand, you know, the rules that come
along with non-conforming properties to hopefully provide some better context.
Thank you.
Very much.
Okay, we've got one more work session report today, and it is 3B, Receiver Report Holder
Discussion Regarding Regulations, Procedures Related to Public Hearing.
I think this is a follow-up to one of our studies from before.
Hello.
Hi, Julie Wyatt.
I think Hillary's going to be the star of this to talk about notification in the ETJ,
and then I do have some follow-up information regarding notifications in our city website.
Haley's been working with our tech services group, our social media group, and so I don't
know if y'all want Hillary to talk first or how you want it to go.
You're welcome.
However you would like to do it.
We're experts.
So this will be fairly short.
At MemoryServes, I was asked to look into the risks of affirmatively, like, opting into
notifications within the ETJ and whether there were litigation risks or reputational risks
if someone received a courtesy notice from being in the ETJ and thought they were to
be counted within the 20% protest threshold and were confused and annoyed.
So the very long story short of my research is that as long as our notices are drafted
carefully and, of course, upon receiving direction from city council to do so, there's not appreciable
risk of litigation from a protest counting standpoint if courtesy notices are sent to
members of the community who reside in the ETJ.
I can expand upon that if y'all wish, but it ended up being fairly straightforward.
Yeah, and you're basically talking, having language maybe on that notification that states
something about--
Something to the effect of you were, because of your proximity to this project, you're
receiving this courtesy notification, please be aware while you're welcome to come to the
meeting and give comment and PNC can absolutely factor your comment into your decision.
You're not going to be eligible to be counted and cite to the 20% provision in TLGC.
That's good.
And there was no-- Sorry, Chair.
I just talked about that.
Commissioner Smith, go right ahead.
The 500, because we have the 200 and 500, so it would be the 500-foot kind of boundary.
Was there any conversation about the distance from the legal standpoints that keeping conformity
would just be those that are in the 500-foot boundary that fall into that?
I think I assumed that it would be within the 500-foot threshold.
Because that's the courtesy notice boundary.
Because that's our courtesy threshold, absolutely.
That could be modified by direction from council.
Okay.
Oh, the last little tidbit I have is if there's appetite for such an action among PNC, the
best way to sort of elicit that direction from council would be to talk to your council
member.
It's our thought.
About the desire to-- About the desire to do that.
And the idea being that they would probably ask for a two-minute pitch and then build
consensus there and then direct staff to implement.
Great.
What if we don't have a council member currently?
Pick one and email him.
Okay.
Find somebody at-large.
Hilary, thank you for talking it down.
Yeah, of course.
That's great.
Julie, we'll give it back to you.
Yes.
There was additional discussion that evening about our website, there's some kind of concerns
about finding those notices and lots of clicks, and so we've been working with tech services
to try to get that a little more streamlined.
I did check it before I came.
I typed in my zoning case in the search bar of our website and it popped up.
So it looks like that is working well.
There are also two places on the City of Denton landing page that will get you to our development
notices, and I'm sorry, it is really hard to see, but it was difficult to take a screenshot
with the drop-down menu.
But one place you can look is under residents, and then news and stories, you've got development
notices here.
And then also you can click on business, and that will also have an option for you to click
on development notices.
It then pulls up our development notices page.
It not only has notices regarding our zoning cases, but also our area planning efforts.
I looked some of our northeast and southeast area plan, upcoming public engagement activities
are actually on those notices, so it's got a lot of information on it.
We met with tech services yesterday to also see how we can still continue to improve.
One thing we talked about is just maybe updating the copy, the kind of language that we use
to make sure that while we are all very much engaged in the planning speak and those buzzwords,
and we all know what they mean in terms of everyone in this room, the citizens at large
may just not know what all of those things mean.
So we're still workshopping that because we want to make sure we get it right.
And then also they talked about quarterly social media posts as well as front page news
flashes to advertise those development notices.
So the news flashes, if you go to the City of Denton, the landing page, you've got kind
of the trending topics box.
So to add that in there every once in a while to continue to advertise that and let people
know that we do have a development notices page that they can look at at any time.
So that really concludes kind of what's going on behind the scenes in terms of the website
to get that information out.
>> Yeah, that's a little bit better.
I was really hoping for a button where we've got like public meetings, job opportunities,
those kind of things, it just being right there on the front page instead of finding
it under residence, finding it under business and finding it that way.
So I think it could be -- >> We tried.
>> I mean, that's really what I was going for.
Like no more of the hunt and hunt and hunt and oh, okay, found it.
It just being there, you know, like, I mean, if they didn't want to, because they've already
got buttons that go across the page maybe and they didn't want it to scroll, then maybe
lose the -- I don't know, probably lose one of these.
At any rate, thank you.
It's better at least.
Two clicks.
That's good.
So part of our challenges come from the way the website's formatted and so there are limitations
because we did -- you know, I have witnesses, both Julie and Haley were part of that conversation.
But we did talk about, you know, is there a way to make it much more obvious especially
on the city's home page?
You know, the challenge is we're also -- we're competing with all of the other information
being communicated out to our residents and property owners within the community and businesses
for that matter.
So hence why we were exploring what other options did we have available to us to be
able to help get the word out and obviously, you know, you all can be advocates, too, for
being able to encourage persons to be able to sign up for these development notices and
in particular the project opt-in notifications aspect that we have as well.
So it's -- the word's getting out, I think, slowly.
We looked at some of our -- they were able to pull some of the analytics and probably
not as many folks have signed up that you all would prefer, but part of it is just helping
get that word out and that's where I, you know, where I come back to, you all can be
advocates in that effort as well.
Maybe one place I would suggest if you ever have this tech meeting again is, you know,
we've got a public meetings button there.
Maybe when you get to public meetings, maybe it could be in that list of, you know, links.
I think that would make sense.
Okay, as well.
I don't know who's first, but I'll go here.
Commissioner Villarreal.
You're next.
>> Thank you, Chair.
Would it be permissible for us during concluding items to put a future motion on an agenda
to make a recommendation as a body to add ATJs into the notification system?
I understand we can individually go to our council members, but I think it would be more
effective if we as a body made that recommendation to council.
>> So procedurally or structurally, there's not necessarily a problem with that.
It's just not something that from what I've seen and been told from MAC and such that
there's not usually -- let me back up a step.
The form that that action would take would likely be a resolution recommending this action.
And we just don't typically see recommending boards make policy recommendations in that
manner.
I think it could be done.
I don't have a problem with it per se from like a procedural compliance perspective.
Tina, do you have any thoughts?
>> My thought was if it's the general concurrence of the Planning and Zoning Commission that
notifications, at least courtesy notifications, be extended into the ETJ, if that's the result
of our conversation, then to me, Chair Ellis as the chairperson of the Planning and Zoning
Commission could also approach the mayor, for example, and have that conversation with
them and just say, hey, the Planning and Zoning Commission discussed this and it was the consensus
of the commission that council strongly consider courtesy notices within the ETJ and would
respectfully request that the council take that up as a two-minute pitch.
So to me, you could have that opportunity to be able to have that conversation with
the mayor because presumably you have conversations with the mayor about how things are going
with the Planning and Zoning Commission from time to time, and so to me, that would be
perfectly within the realm of the chair.
>> Thank you.
>> Commissioner Smith?
>> On the concluding items that we'd like to include kind of going forward with this
note, the development notices piece of it, could we just, I think maybe just as a reminder
from a chair perspective to say, hey, you know, thank you all for very much, like by
the way, you guys can sign up for development notices in the future by going to the website
residence, click residence and then you can see it and just, if we say it from the day
us, it'll probably get even more so out there, especially maybe if we say it at the very
beginning, but just kind of throwing it out there, beginning of meetings and everyone's
there.
Shouldn't do it at the end because usually at the end everyone had, they've already
left.
So the, so say even at the beginning of the meeting, say today is a quick PSA, throw it
out there at the beginning.
>> Procedurally we could do that since, I mean, do we have to wait for concluding items
to do something like that?
>> No, I don't think so.
I don't want them speaking.
>> You could do it during a public hearing, in my opinion, especially if we have folks
that are interested in the project.
Before you close the public hearing, you know, that's the opportunity to make the PSA announcement
as well.
Just part of an educational effort.
>> Okay.
Great.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
>> Yeah.
Great.
Good.
Commissioner Pruitt.
>> Thank you, Chair.
And I apologize if this had already been discussed since I arrived late.
Was there any discussion amongst staff about whether sort of already ongoing city outreach
activities could include this as a component of that to try to grasp people who are interested
about city stuff, but they haven't ever considered this avenue of being an active citizen?
Does that make sense?
I think last time we talked about this, I had brought up the possibility of doing so
at the State of the City meetings or maybe at the public events like Jazz Fest or stuff
that we already have a city booth there with some information.
>> Yeah, when we're doing, when we have those presence within the community, for example,
right now we're really working on public engagement efforts associated with Northeast and South
East and eventually downtown, I mean, we can include that also in promoting that.
You know, hey, if you're interested in following development activity within the city, we encourage
you to go on our website.
We've even talked about like having a QR code presence at those events, whether it's something
we hand out or, you know, have the QR code available where people can just scan it right
there and then.
So, yeah, we've had some of that conversation.
>> Thank you.
I appreciate that.
>> Thank you.
Anything else on this?
Okay.
Well, at 6.01, I will adjourn our work session and we will meet back in council chambers
at 6.30.
Thank you.
>> Good evening and welcome to the City of Denton's Planning and Zoning Commission meeting
for Wednesday, April 12, 2023.
With a quorum present, I will call us to order at 6.35 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.
>> Honor the Texas flag.
>> I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible.
>> Thank you.
Next item on our agenda tonight is the approval of the Planning and Zoning Commission minutes
for our March 29th meeting.
Commissioner Smith.
>> Make a motion to approve.
>> Commissioner Villarreal.
>> Second.
>> We've got a first and a second for approval of the minutes for March 29th meeting.
Any discussion?
Okay.
Let's vote on the board, please.
That motion carries 7-0.
Next on our agenda is the Consent Agenda for this evening.
Commissioner Villarreal.
>> I move to approve all the -- >> Okay.
Commissioner Smith.
>> Second.
>> We've got a first and a second to approve the Consent Agenda.
Any discussion?
Okay.
Let's vote on the board, please.
That motion carries 7-0.
Next are our items for individual consideration.
Item 4A has been withdrawn by the applicant, so we will take no action on 4A.
That will bring us to 4B, FP 23-0006.
Commissioner Cole is recusing himself from this item.
And Ashley is here to give us presentation.
Good evening.
>> Good evening.
Ashley Eckstead, Assistant Planner, City of Denton.
This item is FP 23-0006.
This is a final platform in industrial use at the intersection of Mosh Branch Road and
Jim Crystal Road on approximately 37 acres.
At this time, staff is recommending denial, but we have no objection to the requested
extension until May 10th, 2023.
Happy to answer any questions.
>> Thanks, Ashley.
Any questions?
Okay.
I don't see any.
Thank you so much.
Commissioner Villarreal.
>> I move approval of the extension to a date certain of May 10th, 2023.
>> Thank you.
Commissioner Smith?
>> Second.
>> We've got a first and a second for approval of the extension request to a date certain
of May 10th, 2023.
Any discussion?
Okay.
Let's go ahead and vote, please.
That motion carries 6-0.
We'll give Commissioner Cole a minute to get back in, and that'll bring us to our public
hearing items for this evening.
Our first one this evening is 5A, PD 210007C.
Angie's making her way up to the dais.
That public hearing has remained open.
Go ahead and give it to you for presentation.
Thank you.
>> Yes, ma'am.
Good evening.
Angie Minglaris, Senior Planner, City of Denton.
All right.
So this is PD 210007.
This is a rezoning request from suburban corridor to a planned development district with the
base zoning of mixed-use neighborhood.
The site is generally located at the northeast corner of FM 428 and Loop 288.
It has a future land use designation of community mixed-use in the Denton 2040 Comprehensive
Plan.
As it is today, the site consists of predominantly open pasture.
It does have mature tree canopy on site and a detention pond situated along the southern
boundary of the property.
The approximately 20.92-acre site is part of a larger 25.48-parent tract.
You can see here in both your aerial and the zoning exhibit, the very hard corner, which
is approximately 4.5 acres, is not part of this planned development request.
The intent is to remain as SC zoning for future development of commercial.
Surrounding zoning in the site consists of a variety of zoning districts.
We have some residential 4, suburban corridor, and then across the street, 428 is public
facilities district.
A little bit of background on this case before we go further into detail.
The site is zoned SC, which typically allows for multifamily development with approval
of a specific use permit.
The reason you're seeing this as a planned development district case before you this
evening is the development plan contemplates approximately 52 units as horizontal multi-living
units.
Given that this application came in in November of 2021, the DDC did not have a definition
that really encapsulated the horizontal multi-living use.
Since that time with the demand that we've seen in the city, the DDC has been updated
and that is now in allowed use.
So if this site were to come in today, they would likely be applying for an SUP as horizontal
multi-living is in allowed use in the DDC.
However, given the timing of the application, it came in before this was in allowed use
and it had gone through several iterations and reviews.
Staff continued with the plan development path that this case was on.
A little bit more just on the area of where this plan development is located.
FM 428 and Loop 288 are the two roadways that would serve this site.
FM 428 is a textile owned and maintained road.
It is currently constructed as a two-lane road.
The 2022 mobility plan does reflect this as a freeway.
However, since that plan has been adopted, TxDOT has informed the city that that is to
remain as a primary arterial roadway.
And then Loop 288 is to the south of the site.
It runs east-west.
It is also owned and maintained by TxDOT.
It is currently an existing limited access freeway and is currently constructed as a
four-lane divided freeway.
A bit about the development plan itself.
Again, this is a plan development request for the development of a multi-family site.
It includes both horizontal multi-family units and your traditional mid-rise apartment units.
In the blue here on your plan in front of you, you can see where the 52 proposed horizontal
multi-family units would be situated and as you move further south on the site as you
get closer to Loop 288, you have five traditional mid-rise apartment buildings totaling 305 units.
As part of the development standards, the horizontal multi-living component would follow
the architectural and site design standards of our single-family neighborhood development
products.
And then I also want to point out on this plan you can see here on the eastern side
of the site there is a reservation for the half width of a future residential street.
While at this time the TIA did not support the need for the dedication and construction
of additional north-south roadways, should as the area continue to develop that need
is warranted.
The city does have the 25 and a half foot right of way reservation for the eventual
dedication and construction of any north-south connectivity that's needed in the area.
A little bit more about the development plan.
They did include detailed landscape plans with their submittal.
The base zoning of MN calls for a 20% landscaped area and 40% tree canopy coverage.
Both lots one and two exceed that requirement.
One proposes 31% landscape coverage with 50% mature tree canopy, and lot two has a total
landscaped area of 36% and 73% mature tree canopy.
In addition, throughout the site there are various on-site amenities meeting our open
space requirements including pocket parks, dog parks, a few passive recreation lawns
and trails throughout the site to connect residents to those locations.
And then to the north of the site there is a landscape buffering between the development
and what could go to the north and then also along the property line where future commercial
development could go there is additional landscape buffering.
A TIA was performed for this development request and there were three main takeaways from this.
I'll point them out here as I kind of talk through them.
One was that a southbound turn lane be constructed at driveway location one on FM 428.
So that's this location here.
The second recommendation was that a northbound right turn deceleration lane for both driveways
one and two be provided and that's shown on the concept plan here running north-south
on FM 428.
And then finally that a westbound right turn lane be provided at driveway location three
which can be found here along loop 288.
In reviewing this, staff did review this plan against our general criteria for approval
as well as approval criteria for plan development districts and did find that this meets our
criteria for approval.
Specifically, the project is consistent with the Denton 2040 comprehensive plan, provides
a greater level of design quality than what could be achieved with straight zoning.
It's compatible with our surrounding areas and there are public facilities in the area
that are adequate to serve the development.
A look at the Denton 2040 comprehensive plan, the future land use designation shows this
area as community mixed use.
Community mixed use applies to key corridors in the city that are designed to service transitional
areas between our residential areas and our commercial developments.
Residential areas are permitted within the community use future land use designation
and are designed to be complementary and supportive of commercial uses.
The proposed project as it is today does provide that transition from the residential sites
that you have to the north as you get closer to the more intensive developments that you
see along Loop 288 and the residential that's developed would be supportive of the future
commercial that could go in on the remaining SC portion of the site.
This is just a little bit closer look at how the area has been developing.
You have a similar development pattern emerging to the south of Loop 288 where the apartment
multifamily uses are situated and then the outlying parcels are remaining for commercial
development.
They are located at the southeast corner of Loop 288 in Sherman, however across the road
was a recently approved ZCP for Sherman Crossing which also has the same multifamily coming
in and the remaining out parcels for commercial are left there along Loop 288.
In addition to that, the plan development is consistent with our housing and neighborhood
goals which do call for providing a variety and diverse range of housing styles and price
points in various locations throughout the city.
The development standards do have some proposed deviations from what would be allowed via
straight zoning.
I'm not going to read them all out to you but I did want to point out some of the main
ones.
If the site were to have a base zoning of MN, the permitted uses allowed in the DDC
are varying.
There is a wider range of uses that could be allowed in MN zoning.
With this plan development, the applicant is proposing that the uses be restricted to
multifamily and horizontal multifamily with any of those accessory uses that are typical
of multifamily developments, amenity centers, leasing offices, pools, garages.
Then in addition, the horizontal multi-living standards for this particular site refer to
using the single-family development architectural style and site orientation for the horizontal
multi-living component rather than the multifamily design standards that would be typically applied
if this were to come in under straight zoning which allows for just a greater variety of
architectural design standards on site than what could otherwise be achieved under the
DDC.
Public outreach was conducted in accordance with state law as well as the Denton Development
Code.
Notices were sent out as well as this was posted in the Denton Record Chronicle.
At this time, we've received 17 responses in opposition to the request.
The applicant did hold a neighborhood meeting and that was back in March of 2022.
Staff is recommending approval of this request as it does comply with our general criteria
for approval as well as our criteria for approval for plan development districts.
The next step in this project would be a public hearing at City Council which is currently
scheduled for May 2nd, 2023.
With that, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
I believe the applicant is also here with the presentation.
Thanks Angie.
I don't see any questions at this time but we'll call you back if we do.
Thank you so much.
Yes, I do have a group presentation from the applicant so I'll go ahead and have them come
up first.
Amy, did you want to start it off?
Thanks.
Good evening Commissioners.
Amy Bissett, 97 Land Company, 109 North Elm.
I appreciate being here this evening.
We're going to take a little bit of a different format than you might normally see from me.
I am here with a group.
I'm going to open the presentation tonight with a general overview of how we've gotten
to where we are today as well as the neighborhood engagement activities that we have completed
and then I'm going to hand off to Brian Schomburger with Kimley Horne.
He's our traffic engineer and he's going to go into some detail regarding the methodology
of the traffic study and then lastly he's going to hand off to Brian Grant with JPI representing
the developer of the multifamily and horizontal multifamily.
Appreciate your patience as we work through this.
I won't reiterate what Angie has gone through but I do just want to say that in the suburban
corridor zoning district it is moderate to high intensity commercial office and retail
uses.
If you looked at the slide that Angie presented on the 2040 plan just moments ago you can
see that when you look at the northeast quadrant of Denton there's this one node that allows
for some density and some commercial from a future land use standpoint and everything
beyond that that was visible on the screen was low density residential which we understand
and respect the neighbors and the residents of this area and their desire to keep this
low density residential moving forward.
Our site specifically is on the far south end of the coming small area plan and has
taken into consideration or attempted to take into consideration their concerns and their
desires for the future of their area of the city.
And as Angie reiterated when we came in we applied for a PD in November of 2021 that
was really our only option at that point in time due to the horizontal multifamily that
we were proposing.
So just to give you a brief overview of our development plan you can see here from south
to north we decreased density we have concentrated the vast majority of the density a long loop
288.
We have 52 single family for rent units and 305 multifamily units on the far south end
and we are reserving the hard corner for future commercial.
I'm going to show you a couple of things related to that in a moment.
JPI is in partnership with Standridge companies to develop that corner and Stacey Standridge
is here tonight if you have specific questions for him on timing or intentions going forward
on that.
I'm going to show you a couple of pictures of the renderings and elevations that are
proposed.
This is a rendering of one of the multifamily buildings and here are building elevations
associated with those buildings and then here's the horizontal multifamily detached.
So what I really want to focus on a little bit here is our timeline and we did initiate
a zoning change in November of 2021.
We attempted our first neighborhood meeting in February of 22 mailing to everyone within
the 500 foot requirement and we did not receive any RSVPs beyond the property owner and we
voluntarily broadened our communication to the northeastern neighborhood association
neighborhood group and opening that up to their full invite list and held a neighborhood
meeting in March and had approximately 60 attendees.
Subsequent to that between March and May we fielded multiple questions, requests for additional
information that we pushed out to the neighborhood when desired and I'll go through a little
bit on what that included in a moment.
In April of 2022 we were very close to being released to go to public hearing when a couple
of asks were made of the city that really sent us back to the drawing board.
The first of those was the right of way reservation on the eastern side of the property and the
second was the addition of a 40 foot utility easement for a potential 30 inch water line
along loop 288 in the future.
We went back to the drawing board and accommodated those requests, it took us the better part
of four months to just redesign the entire site and then have been through multiple subsequent
reviews with staff since then to get to where we are today.
We did update the traffic study during that time frame as well to reflect the changes
made to the site plan and then now here we are today at public hearing.
As it relates to community engagement, we did host a virtual neighborhood meeting.
We opened it up to anybody that's on the mailing list for the northeastern neighborhood group.
We recorded the meeting, we provided a record of that meeting as well as the slides and
the chat record to the neighborhood group afterwards and then over the course of a couple
of months we got additional requests for information everywhere from unit mix and sizes, parking
ratios, trip generation tables, intersection level of service, days and times of traffic
counts, methodology for how we calculated open space and landscape requirements, roof
peak heights and we followed through and provided all that information as requested.
We also made some improvements that were reflected in the update to the traffic study but were
also borne out of some feedback from the property owners that were participating in the neighborhood
meetings.
The first one being that southbound left hand turn lane, one of the biggest concerns we
heard was the stacking of traffic at the Loop 288 light and then secondly was the consolidation.
We had multiple access points on Loop 288 and they were specifically concerned about
the western most access drive being too close to the intersection and somebody trying to
cut across to turn south on 428.
We pushed that intersection as far east as we could to still meet city requirements.
So when we did go back and make the right of way reservation and the offset for the
40 foot utility easement, we reworked the site plan.
We had intensive reworking of the tree preservation plan including multiple visits by an arborist
with city staff and because that eastern part of the site is where most of the trees are
and then they were discounted out of our calculations.
We lost about eight and a half percent of units and unfortunately it aligned us with
the timing of the kickoff for the small area plan when we got back here today.
We heard from you guys on March 15th some concerns that were expressed there.
I'm going to hand it off in just a moment to address the traffic concerns.
As it relates to bicycle path and safety on Sherman Drive, we have been working both with
the retail developer on our side of the site to provide connectivity that is off road connectivity
along the sidewalk path on the side of the road there and then we've also been talking
to the property owner on the other side of the street about connecting from the existing
sidewalk at the water park all the way down to Loop 288.
I'm going to show you a few concepts by Standridge companies and then I'm going to turn it over
to Brian with Kimley Horne.
These are just a few of the developments that Standridge has done in recent years that are
representative of something that might go on this corner.
All right.
Brian Schomburger with Kimley Horne.
Good evening.
Brian Schomburger with Kimley Horne, 801 Cherry Street, Fort Worth, Texas.
Traffic engineer for the project have been involved since we've begun the process.
Look forward to want to talk a little bit about some of the, again, Amy mentioned some
of the questions that you have, want to discuss some of those.
Also want to address some of the comments we've received from some of the neighbors
and just talk a little bit about how we're addressing some of those issues.
So there have been some comments on the traffic counts and the actual level of service results
that were provided as part of the traffic study.
As far as the timing of when the traffic counts were made, because of when the development
was moving through the process, we were in the middle of the summer.
And it's not uncommon to have that happen.
And so we sat down with the city's traffic engineers and staff and talked about that.
We frequently gathered information, traffic counts during the summer and then we can make
adjustments to account for school conditions.
It's very best practice when that happens.
And that was agreed to with city staff as we were completing the methodology for the
scope for the traffic study.
In what we did to develop a school adjustment factor, we had counts that we then compared
our current counts to historic counts in the area along Sherman Drive.
Interesting, obviously with an evening peak for a development like this that happens outside
of school conditions and with after pickup and drop off.
So the evening peak was real similar to what the normal school time conditions are.
In the morning, we noticed that is about 45% lower than when school is in session.
So we applied an adjustment factor.
We increased the AM peak hour traffic conditions in the area 45% to account to get it back
to normal conditions, which again, it's a common thing we do to apply that seasonal
adjustment factor.
I know there's a question about a COVID adjustment factor.
We discussed this during the scoping of the traffic study with city staff.
Based on the traffic volumes and everything that they've been seeing in the area, the
traffic volumes had already really returned to pre-COVID conditions.
Everyone's kind of getting back to normal operations and so the COVID adjustment factor,
which had been done in previous years probably, but it was not required by staff.
Also the accuracy of the traffic counts themselves and again, the level of service results, you
know, there's been a lot of eyes from professional engineers.
I'm a professional traffic operations engineer, been doing this for almost 30 years.
It was reviewed and accepted by the city's traffic engineers, also an outside third party
traffic engineering consultant, looked at the scope, looked at the results, everything
was reviewed and accepted.
Also a consideration for why the Agave Ranch traffic was not included, that development
was not approved at the time that we were preparing and submitting the TIA, so it was
not included.
We did include the other planned developments like Stark Farms and Stewart Ridge planned
developments in as part of the traffic study, so that was accounted for, but we also included
a 2% background growth for the time when the project's going to build out and also the
horizon year, so there was significant additional background traffic growth that was accounted
for, which included in the PM peak an additional 500 trips during the PM peak, which more than
was double the traffic that would have been generated by the Agave Ranch traffic.
So another comment on the consideration of football games and the other, the nearby stadium
events, something to, you know, we look at this, we talked about this, you know, the
frequency of when those events occur and whether that should be used to really drive the recommendations
and any type of things that would come out of a traffic study.
Those events only really happened about 10 to 15 times throughout the year, and given
that infrequency, really the overlap between stadium traffic and the planned development
traffic was not a requirement by staff.
Important to note that when those types of events happen, in relationship to, when we
talk about, let's just talk about the overlap of our peak period and the evening type traffic
on it, when an event occurs, especially for football games or things like that, that spread
out over several hours prior to the events.
The busiest time really happens in that six to seven, right before the seven o'clock game,
and that doesn't coincide with the PM peak of the development, which traditionally occurs
between five and six.
And so, and really the most congested time for any type of game day type of event traffic
would happen immediately after games, and that's when that surge of traffic and people
leave, because everyone leaves at the same time.
So we did look also at the, when those, what's happening and how the management of traffic
happens during those game day events.
Denton ISD does have a special event traffic management plan.
All of the home traffic, they exit to Stewart Road, enter and exit off of Stewart Road,
and then the visitor traffic enters and exits off of Sherman Drive.
So really, less than half of that traffic is really ever going to be seen on Sherman.
So they're doing their best that they can.
That's happening outside of the peaks for our development, again, when our traffic is
considerably less.
Some comments about whether or not traffic related to Hartleafield Road should be included,
and that intersection up to the north should be included as part of the TIA.
None of the development traffic actually has access to Hartleafield Road, so based on discussions
in developing the traffic study scope, it was not included, and we talked to city staff
about that, and we all agreed that that should not be included.
Similar, there were some comments about site distance relative to both at Hartleafield
Road and the conditions up there, but along Sherman Drive, and we wanted to talk and provide
you some information about site distance at our proposed drive, the main northernmost
drive along Sherman Drive.
All of the driveway locations meet all of the requirements for both TXDOT, federal,
and also City of Denton transportation criteria.
The actual required site distance is 500 feet, and you can see that distance from the northernmost
drive is that yellow marker there.
This gives you a view of looking at that point up the road to that yellow point, and you
can see all the vehicles that are coming in this direction.
We also took another vantage point of right at that northernmost drive looking north,
and as you can see up there, there's that warning sign.
That's actually located right at Hartleafield Road, and that's further north than the actual
required site distance, so if you look at that, that's another 150 to 200 feet further
down the road, and we can see that sign, so there's more than adequate site distance
at the northernmost drive.
There's also looking south, which is almost 600 feet down to the interchange at 288.
Again, that exceeds all the site distance requirement.
That driveway, you've got really good site distance in both directions, so you can see
anyone, so you can be able to get in and out onto Sherman Drive.
Speaking of the driveways themselves along Sherman Drive, we had city staff supported
two driveways along Sherman Drive.
It makes sense from how the development will ultimately develop.
All driveways exceed the city's arterial driveway spacing criteria.
As Amy mentioned, we are providing right turn lanes at both driveways, and the southernmost
drive will be constructed as a right-in, right-out, and that's going to fit real well with the
future roadway conditions as being a four-lane divided, where there would be a median opening,
so you'd have right-in, right-out conditions.
The southern driveway, though, will require variance approval by TxDOT, and we're continuing
to work with TxDOT to ... What we did as part of this, we found the optimal location based
on spacing, both from 288 and the northern drive.
And then the driveway along 288, that meets all TxDOT driveway spacing criteria.
And Amy mentioned multimodal access, bikes and pedestrians on the area, bicycle and pedestrian
safety along Sherman Drive.
It's important we understand that, and again, we're continuing to have those conversations
about how we can make accommodations and explore different types of off-street bicycle and
pedestrian facilities to improve safety along Sherman.
Thank you.
I'm going to go very quickly, it looks like we've got less than three minutes.
Brian Grant with JPI 600, Las Clienas Boulevard, not very much time, so I ask a lot of questions,
and I answer them for you, but quick history about who JPI is, what we're going to build.
I've got a lot more pictures than words, because words are harder for me, because I'm not as
smart as the other Brian, but JPI have been around for 33 years, we're headquartered in
DFW, we've been in Irving, the existence of our company, multifamily is what we do, it's
what we've always done, we're the most active developer in DFW, and have been for the last
seven years, so we know the market well from the area and like developing in the community.
Picture some of our exteriors, I know Amy showed the rendering earlier, but just high
level, lots of nice materials, lots of glass.
Each exterior is unique to the sub market that we go to, we try to design to the area,
there's not a cookie cutter elevation that we use, we're very intentional about how we
design these communities.
Clubhouse shot, some examples there, you can see lots of double volume space, lots of glass,
high end finish outs, we'll hire interior designers, we have several firms we work with
who are very intentional with their design, and they're on top of design trends, and
know what's gonna be timeless and look good and mesh well, and so we spend effort on making
sure that these are nice spaces, good gathering spaces for the residents, it feels more boutique
hotel than what most people would think of when you think of apartment complex, I think
there's sometimes a negative connotation with that word, but it's not what we're building
and not what we're in the business to do.
Unit amenities, we've got some JPI standards that we adhere to, 10 foot ceiling, stainless
steel appliances, hard surface flooring, gonna go quickly through those, but you can see
it's a high quality, you know, granite countertops, things that you would see more in a new single
family home, and good quality materials there.
Here's the project that we've most recently completed, kind of what have you done for
me lately, this is down 35 and Haltem City, this is the clubhouse, you can see big expansive
space, vaulted ceilings, big open area, lots of glass there along the outside of the building,
again, another shot in the inside demonstration kitchen, we'll host resident events here,
we had master's watch parties at a lot of our communities this past weekend, and so
they're very intentionally designed spaces, there's another picture, cool arcade games
and intentional big screen TVs, 30 seconds.
Fitness center is a big deal, we have a minimum of 2,000 square foot fitness centers in all
our communities, our residents use this as their primary fitness facility, so make sure
we have, you know, top of line equipment there, 20 seconds, yoga room, this is units, two
different schemes we'll always do, demographics we always get asked about, so for our average
income 115,000, average age 32, we expect about 30 kids, again, come back and ask if
you want to know more about that, and then one to quickly show is, if I can, rendering
versus actual.
Yeah, go ahead and finish, it's fine.
Okay, we kind of get asked, and I'm happy to go through demographics and things if you
have questions on that, but we get asked a lot, kind of how do I know you're going to
build what you are showing us tonight, and so hopefully the track record is evidence
of that as well as these last two slides where this is a project that was in Gravevine, the
top is a rendering that we showed during the zoning process for that community, and the
bottom is what was built and is now existing today, I'm biased, but I think the southern
picture looks better than the rendering itself, the architect that did the rendering is actually
here, funny enough, so not to knock on his rendering skills, but I think the actual building
turned out better than the rendering, and then here's another one in Irving, that same
concept, the top is one we've shown in zoning during council, the bottom is what exists
today, identical, strikingly similar, even the grid patterns on that kind of rooftop
amenity there exists, and actually was this architect as well who's doing this project
here, so funnily enough, the examples were his design, but I've got a lot of team here
to hopefully answer questions, and I know I went fast to try to stick to the clock,
so I'm happy to answer more questions if you have.
Thank you.
We do have a question for you, Commissioner Smith.
Thank you, Chair.
How many horizontal multi-family properties has JPI worked on, I guess you had 51 apartment
complexes, is this your first, 10th horizontal multi-family project?
It's new for us, this is our fifth, so it's kind of a new product offering in the market
in general, so this would be the fifth, we've got one in Anna, McKinney, and Fort Worth,
this would be, yeah, it is a new one for us.
Average rental rates, I know that's a hard thing to look at when you're talking about
a zoning conversation, so this PD and this guy have a site plan put into there, what
numbers, I didn't see those in there, I saw your average income, I saw your average age,
what are your rental rates you're looking at?
Yeah, so for the stacked flats, the three-story buildings, the average size is $885, and the
average rent is $1,696, so just under $1,700 a month, and then for that SFR, the horizontal,
I call it SFR, single-family rental, the average size there is $1,300, and the average rent
will be about $2,350, and that's, we have market studies, it's not just pulling the
numbers in the market studies that kind of go into that.
That's true.
All right, thank you.
Yes, sir.
Anybody else?
I don't have any questions at this moment, but we may call you up later.
Thank you.
Angie, I've got a question for you before I get into calling the public hearing.
Just want an overview.
A lot was mentioned in discussion with the TIA and what staff required.
Can you run me through the process and how those decisions are made on staff of what
the scope of the TIA is?
I could, but I do have a better equipped individual.
That will work.
Who is Karina, so I'm going to have to pass it off.
That sounds good.
Thank you.
Hi, Karina.
Hi.
Good evening.
Karina Maldonado, Transportation Planner for the City of Denton.
So I can speak to our TIA process as of today.
It is mostly similar, slightly different than in the past.
We are trying to improve our processes and procedures in the City of Denton to be more
transparent, more accountable.
So for traffic impact analysis, there are a set of criteria within the transportation
criteria manual that indicates when that TIA is triggered.
Once it's triggered, we do have a TIA scoping meeting that is intended to be held with the
city's traffic engineer and/or designee of the city engineer, which at this time is Development
Services.
So that would be Transportation Planning and our consultant, HR Green, that does our off-site
reviews.
So within that scoping meeting, staff looks at a certain radius of the site, dependent
on how many trips are generated.
So there's a sort of threshold.
There's an analysis category, if you will.
So based on the number of trips, the number of peak hour trips, it would determine the
radius of the boundary, so whether that's a half mile, mile and a half, two mile.
It can be increased by staff based on context of the area, so it's a staff determination
as to whether we need to make that two miles or less.
That determination is based on environmental things like, I should say, site characteristics.
So if staff is aware of safety issues, we can make adjustments, but for the most part,
everything is outlined in the criteria manual.
So we look at growth patterns, perimeter street improvements.
We ask for studies of intersections within the study boundaries, so signalized and unsignalized.
We ask them to analyze those that we believe are operating at a lower level of service,
or we know that there's significant traffic issues, resident concerns.
So there's an outline process in our transportation criteria manual that outlines everything that
should be within it.
What we do in those scoping meetings is have that discussion with the traffic engineer
to ensure that the scope is well within the proportionality of the development.
So we're not asking for two or three intersections away from the site.
It has to be proportional to the site's traffic.
So it's sort of a negotiation process, but most of the information is already outlined
in the transportation criteria manual, and those criteria manuals are adopted by council
and updated annually.
So it's a group discussion of how that's done.
So you started off the answer with, this is how it's done now.
Do you know how it was done with this development?
Did it change?
The process in the past was the same.
The only difference, I would say, is the documentation of the scope.
Most of it was a conversation, here's what we'd like to do.
There was no formalization of the documentation to say, here's the approved scope and let's
move forward.
So that is the process that SAF is implementing now, to formally document and stamp an approved
TIA scope before you go to a TIA application.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate the information.
We'll get started on some of these cards that are in front of me now.
I will invite Brian Bentley.
Hi, if you'll state your name and address, your time will begin.
Yes, hello.
Thank you.
I'm Brian Bentley, and I used to sit here on the PNZ when this property was originally
rezoned from agriculture to commercial, and I think you all need to know the history and
background of what was told to the PNZ at that time, and it's amazing how nervous you
can be on this side of the microphone and you're nice and calm over there, but anyway.
So this was probably about 10 years ago, I want to say, when it occurred, the family
that owned the property, it was agriculture.
It was an elderly woman and her children, adult children, came up and asked it to be
rezoned to commercial because they could not sell it under the ag zoning.
I believe it was an estate at that time, and we did rezone it, but we did it based on some
of the information that city staff gives us, and one of those things was PS Aurora, who
was traffic engineer, came before us and said, "Hartley Field Road will have to be closed.
We will close it at 455, we will move it north, it has to align with Long Avenue," I believe
that's Long up there by the school anyway, "and there will be a traffic light put in
there."
Well, obviously, this plan doesn't have anything about it.
I use Hartley Field Road a lot.
I can tell you personally, I have been scared sitting at that stop sign at Hartley Field.
You cannot see the traffic come up the hill.
Some of us out there, we're still agriculture.
We haul trailers, long trailers, cattle trailers.
It's scary trying to pull a trailer across there at that intersection.
I do have problems with this idea of all these curb cuts and traffic and stuff, but let me
back up a little bit and present what happened during the PNZ.
The proposed purchaser, if I remember right, was a veterinarian who was a neighbor.
There's a veterinarian type complex on Hartley Field Road.
The city at that time was promoting this idea of small commercial places like pizzerias,
cleaners, dry cleaners and stuff, so you wouldn't have to travel so far to get those services.
That was kind of what was proposed for that corner.
The traffic was supposed to come in off the new Hartley Field and come in the backside.
Now, you say that's too far away, it doesn't happen.
Well, look at Razor Ranch.
The traffic comes in on the backside on many of those big corners at Razor Ranch.
Let's see, I got my notes here.
It wasn't supposed to be that intensive a commercial.
Now, when we rezoned it, we rezoned it to the lowest classification of commercial that
we had at the time.
Then of course, the DDC has went through another rewrite and now you call it SC and say, "Oh,
we can put all these apartments in there."
No, that was not our intent and I can tell you it was not our intent because at the time,
we were very concerned.
The city asked for a ratio of apartments versus single families in the city of Denton and
they wanted to keep a balance, so apartments were never discussed at that rezoning.
I know economic times have changed and there's a lot of stuff.
Speaking of economics, I don't buy this.
Everybody's making $100,000 and can pay $2,400 a month rent.
I'm a landlord.
I got over 20 units.
I know what people make and what the average person does.
I would warn you about Woodhaven in Fort Worth when they built all the multifamily in one
cluster.
I know it sounds good because there's all the multifamily to the south side, but today
in the Wall Street Journal, 3200 apartments were repossessed from one property owner.
It happens.
Woodhaven in Fort Worth was so bad, the city had to come in and start tearing down apartments.
When you get too many apartments in one area, when a bad landlord gets in there and stuff
starts going south, it drags the rest of them down and that's what happened in Woodhaven.
I can talk to you in depth about that, but my time's up.
I appreciate you coming.
Thanks.
Just to clarify something that was stated, the current zoning on it is multi-family is
not allowed by right there, it's allowed with an SUP, or in this case, they're actually
requesting a zoning change to this PDMN.
Just wanted to clarify that statement.
Next card I have is Bridget Marshall.
Thank you for allowing me to speak again this evening.
Of course.
I want to reiterate how serious the traffic safety issues are in this area and why a new
traffic impact analysis is needed and the PD be denied.
And Angie, you might just want to stand by just in case she needs further help.
Thank you.
So this is an aerial view with some of the traffic issues, both loop 288 and FM 428 Sherman
driver text dot roadways with FM 428 being expanded eventually to four to six lanes.
Ms. Marshall, can you speak into the microphone?
There we go.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
So here you can see the crest of the hill and right there is a large Botania bush.
Driveways one and two do not comply with text dots, minimum access spacing of 360 feet for
a 45 mile per hour road.
The traffic will impact Hartley Field Road, which is right here.
This is the main ingress egress for many residents who live in this area.
Signal analysis should be conducted for this area due to the amount of traffic being generated,
not just by this development, but the other three large developments that have been approved,
Stark Farms, Stewart Ridge and Agave Ranch.
Agave Ranch preliminary plat was approved on August 19th, 2020 and should have been included
in the TIA, even though the final plat was held up by engineering issues.
The 2% growth factor in the TIA should account for background traffic only and not for another
large housing development like Agave Ranch.
And Agave Ranch is going to generate about 2,500 plus car trips per day.
And then up here is Long Road and as far as what was said in the supplement about the
games at CH Collins, those were done actually two years ago according to the assistant athletic
director that I spoke to the other day.
Last year they reverted back to allowing people to enter from any direction before or after
the games.
He forecasted only one to two big games where they might use controlled traffic pattern.
The admin assistant told me that there are on average 26 events per year.
And as you can see there are no, and they ve pointed out that there are no crosswalks
or sidewalks except for the section in front of the water park.
Okay, Angie, how do I get back to the next one?
Okay, you want me to toggle.
So this one is from the supplemental memorandum which you ve just seen earlier, but it s misleading
because the sight line is actually much shorter.
Remember I showed you that Fotenia and the crest of the hill is right here, okay?
Right up here.
And you ll see that in the next photo from the supplemental memorandum.
And driveway also down here, this driveway one is also situated farther north and shown
in the supplement according to the development plan if you were to look at that.
So here is the other photo from the supplemental plan.
And here s that Fotenia shrub, okay?
So this is the crest of the hill.
May I continue?
Yeah, go ahead, we ll give you a couple more minutes with all the technology interruptions.
All right.
So a field observation is insufficient for determining traffic impacts, especially for
a hill with two driveways accessing it.
A visual evaluation and photos do not provide empirical factual data.
A detailed full sight distance engineering evaluation should be required showing all
values applicable formulas used and the results for each using text dots criteria.
More importantly, an engineering vertical sight distance evaluation should also be done
to see what restrictions the crest of the hill has on each case.
And this just happens to show that corner and it s way up here in the corner, that driveway.
All right.
And so this is from our field observations and this is looking north from about where
the driveway one would be and you can see this car coming over the crest of the hill
and this Fotenia shrub right behind it.
And now this is a view of at the Hartley Field Road intersection, what we see and the properties
down here below the crest of the hill and to the left, okay?
Driveway one sits below this hill and it's out of sight.
So a left turn at driveway one is going to create a very hazardous condition turning
left into southbound, into this southbound FM 428 traffic, especially for inexperienced
high school drivers coming from La Grone Academy or CH Collins Stadium.
This is going to be especially dangerous at night.
Okay.
And this is a view of the crest of the hill and there's actually two crests in this area.
One's north and one's south of Hartley Field Road.
And this is the one, this is Long Road right here.
Okay.
This came from the TIA Exhibit A and the access spacings and lane lengths for driveways one
and two on FM 428 will be to City of Denton standards, but driveway three will be to TXDOT
standards.
Both are TXDOT roads, therefore all three access spacings and lane lengths should be
required to adhere to TXDOT standards, which are more stringent.
I'm probably going to have to ask you to wrap it up there Ms. Marshall.
Okay.
I appreciate it.
Any questions from the commission?
May I continue?
No, I'm going to have to ask you to stop, we've given you a couple extra minutes, but
thank you for sharing your thoughts and your visuals.
Can I summarize?
You got like one final statement?
Yeah, there are just many traffic safety issues and that I haven't even covered on here that
need to be taken into consideration.
This is an extremely poor location for this type of development due to the proximity of
the hill and the intersection and two heavily trafficked roads, TXDOT roads.
Okay.
So please deny this PD and require an updated TIA.
I appreciate it.
Thank you very much Ms. Marshall.
Appreciate it.
Okay.
The next person on the card I have here is Travis Eckmark.
Good evening.
You'll state your name and address.
Your time will begin.
Good evening.
My name is Travis Eckmark.
I live on 405056 Hartley Field Road.
I am a member of the steering committee for the Small Area Plan.
I just want to kind of address a couple things that I saw with the presentation from these
gentlemen.
I first want to iterate again that the traffic is crazy there.
Getting in and out of that is a race and I and my wife have agreed to never cross over
from Hartley on 423 when we're taking our children.
That's how bad that traffic is.
I taught at Irving High School for seven years.
I've been to more football games than I care to count.
I agree that the football games start at seven but our most precious cargo, our children
that play the games, that cheer the games, that do the band, they get there at five.
They don't get there at seven, they get there at five.
So taking that path that I won't take my kids with, we're asking our children to take that
path with more congestion right now at a point that I think is almost negligent and irresponsible
on our part.
There has to be something done to keep that from happening.
It's negligent.
I also want to talk about the bike paths.
I saw that we acknowledge that there are bikers here.
We acknowledge that there should be paths.
We have no plan.
Again, I think it's negligent for us to go and say and approve this without generating
a plan for that.
I'm not saying that a plan can't be conducted, I'm not saying that a plan can't be made.
We have no plan.
We're just, hey, we're going to make a plan at some point.
That seems wrong to do that.
I don't see how that's feasible for us to approve.
I lived in Frisco from 2012 to 2016.
I was there for all of that.
The way this happens is we generate one section of development, then we generate one after
that.
The seeding development does not account for the next one.
It just doesn't.
How do we account for that?
What we do is we plan for the roads for the first one, and then the second one comes along.
The roads aren't big enough.
We talked about Agatha, we talked about all this stuff.
We all know the situation going on with Carter Ranch.
We all know that is coming up with proposed 1,000, 1,100, 1,200 new homes.
Has anybody accounted for those homes?
No.
I have not heard that mentioned once.
That development is going to dwarf whatever we're talking about here.
Again, negligent.
I don't think that that is feasible.
I also want to talk a little bit about the small area plan that we're saying we regretfully
have not been able to be participating in.
The people that I talked to, they don't know which of these sessions to latch onto.
When we talked about we reached out to the dentonites, we reached out to them, there's
so many of these that nobody knows what to do, but what they do know, and what the turnout
at that workshop has proven, they do know that that small area plan is where they need
to hear the voices heard.
You go look at those pictures from that, it's clear what dentonites want and do not want
from this area.
I think not accounting for that is also negligent.
I also want to talk a little bit about how we as denton view ourselves as a county, as
a city.
What is our architecture?
What is our essence?
The way this worked in Frisco is we let developers come and dictate that for us.
We had no say.
What does it mean to be denton?
Is it a square apartment house that we think some architect that doesn't live here is going
to dictate upon us?
That is inevitably how this works.
We have no plan on this, but like I said, dentonites have put their weight behind the
small area plan, and we believe that the city of Denton is going to listen to us when we
say these things.
We can talk about all these architectural plans, they look nice.
I do think that they look nice, but is that Denton?
Is that what we as dentonites want that to be?
That's really all I have.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next card I have is Nathan Toon.
Good evening.
Angie, can I help you with that?
Or actually technology will turn it on I think in the back, right?
Yeah they turned on technology.
There it is.
Thank you.
You've done it.
Perfect.
Nathan Toon, 3201 Carmel Street, Denton, Texas.
My name first went on a for sale sign on this property in 2016.
I've worked with the property owner for seven years on this property.
The gentleman who previously spoke about a woman and her adult children, although he
does have a wife and adult children, I can promise you he wasn't sending them to rezone
his property or do anything on his behalf because that's just not his style.
So I'm not sure exactly what he was referring to, but I wanted to tell just a brief story.
This is about the first three or four years that I worked on this property.
This area was really green.
There wasn't much growth going on.
So we were being patient and about that time, about five years ago, I cold called Mr. Standridge
right here, Stacy Standridge.
He's one of the most reputable experienced land developers and DFW has been doing it
for a long time.
I went down and met with him and it was a very brief meeting.
He asked me if that was a limited access highway and I said yes.
He said, "Well, you need to learn the difference between an off ramp and a frontage road because
there won't be commercial development on this site if there's no access off of Loop 288."
So myself and Mr. Riley, the owner, we got together and we developed this early iteration
here of what would be a frontage road where we were proposing to add turn lanes, right
turn lanes, so that we could have a driveway onto the property so that we could get commercial
development.
We met with the city.
We met with TextDOT and it took us two years of meetings with everybody you could imagine.
We didn't have necessarily a development plan and we were asking just for a letter or an
email saying from the city and TextDOT that conceptually this idea was okay because at
that time there was no development anywhere along Loop 288, specifically commercial.
So this was kind of a new idea and after two years we finally did get this email right
here.
This would have been in October 2020, basically they tried to, I'm not accusing anybody of
anything but I'm just saying it was very hard for us to get this email which basically said
the city had no problem with it but TextDOT would ultimately need to decide if we could
accommodate a driveway on Loop 288.
And then after we finally got that I called Mr. Standards back after this article came
out after a study that was done by the city of Denton back in 2001 that said Denton needs
9,500 housing units in five years.
This article spread all over the internet I presume because not long after that we started
getting calls from multi-family developers from all over the country and since this study
was done and this article was posted I'm not exaggerating, I've probably gotten 150 calls
from developers all over the country, a lot of DFW developers and I didn't print the whole
article but it talks about the need for 4,100 to 4,400 rental housing units, multi-family
units, it talks about affordable housing, it talks about the need for duplexes, triplexes
and the like and in the two years that we've been working with the city on this project
I've probably gotten another 100 phone calls so I think, you know, what this basically
says is that by our own admission there's a need for more housing units like this.
If you look at the landscape of Denton there's not much undevelopable land so you're seeing
a lot of these projects taking place along the Loop 288 corridor and I think it's appropriate
from that regard I understand the traffic concern, you know, I think it would be hard
for a signal to be put in at Hartley Field and one at the C.H. Collins and/or the neighborhood
behind it and so from that regard I also find it hard to believe that apartment residents
or residents of this community or development when they leave here or come here I would
say a vast majority of them are not headed north, they're headed south, they're headed
to Loop 288, meanwhile certainly there will be some increase in traffic, I don't know
that it's going to be that much to create such a safety hazard for everybody out there,
you know, I do have a question about Hartley Field Road, is that a city street?
Because I know if you look at the ETJ, the city of Denton ETJ map a lot of the land behind
this parcel and out on Hartley Field is not in the city limits and so the feasibility
of trying to put the honus or the blame for traffic or congestion on the corner property
on a tech stock road that's, you know, got county roads behind it and land that's not
in the city, I don't know that that should be held against them and so I know my time
is up, I had more I'd like to say but I'll leave it at that.
I think after seven years and several hundred discussions with developers from all over
the country and the landowner, I think this is the best project that I've talked to or
discussed with potential buyers and developers and that's why we're all here tonight and
JPI, Stacey Standridge, they're engineers, they're first class in every regard and so
that's why I support this project and I would ask that you do the same, thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Tune, I appreciate it.
Next card I have is Greg Johnson.
Good evening.
Good evening, Commissioners.
Greg Johnson, 3190 Teasley.
I don't really have a dog in this fight but as I was looking at the agenda because I'm
up later, a couple things struck me and I kind of dug into this one a little bit.
So my only comment really here is this is a hard corner of what's essentially an interstate,
right, I mean loop 288, large divided state highway and at the corner of a state highway,
right, text dot road.
So when you look at this corner, when I look at corners, I'm in the business, I look at
what else goes on these corners.
So I look just south of it, we have a very similar development that's working well.
When we look south and west of it, caddy corner to it, very similar development that's been
approved and so when I look at land like this, I say well what's going to go there?
Nobody's ever going to build a house there, right, I mean it's a hard corner of a state
highway and a state highway.
So then when I put my city hat on and I think about putting our land to use to generate
quality revenue for the city, something jumped out at me in the back up like I think it was
something like five and a half million dollars worth of revenue that this thing creates.
So I don't know where that was, there was a ton of back up but my point in this is just
there's been a lot of talk about the small area plan, 7,000, 6,800 acres isn't a small
area one, but two, as a city we no longer have the right to annex ETJ property.
So one way you can ever annex that is the property owner agrees.
So the way we used to think about ETJ is well when we take that in, it will be part of the
city and therefore blah, blah, blah.
Well if this property is sitting on that corner, everything around it is ETJ, so that's county
land and really today in my mind because we don't have the right to annex ETJ property
anymore, I really think we should start referring that as county property because we don't have
the right to go take it or get it.
So if you look back at the map, that property sitting on the hard corner is really an island
of its own because everything around it with the exception of the very small strip that's
its own like R4 or something is county land.
So to me this corner of a highway and a highway really isn't in my mind part of a small area
plan.
I totally get where the residents who live up there north of it are coming from because
428 should have been expanded just like all of our roads, right?
We should have expanded and anticipated the growth, but it always comes down to text out
budgets and none of us can control text out of what they do.
But when I look at this development, commercial on the corner, the horizontal multifamily,
the multifamily, there may be somebody who lives there that works in Aubrey that's going
to go north, but for the most part those kind of projects, those kind of developments, those
people are working in the city.
So I look at that land, it's ag exempt, it's producing nothing for the city and I don't
see it really as a part of the small area.
I see it as a hard corner on two very major roads and ultimately 428 is going to have
to get expanded, but I don't know that the property owner here should be penalized because
428 didn't get expanded in advance of all that growth that's already happening out there.
So my two cents don't have anything to do with it, but as I looked at it I felt like
I should get up and speak my piece, so I did.
Thank you.
I appreciate your sharing your knowledge.
I appreciate it.
I have some other cards here not wishing to speak, but if you change your mind let me
know.
Susan Smith has filled out a card in opposition.
Tony Riley is in support, not wishing to speak.
Mary Aren't in opposition.
Steven Aren't in opposition.
Those are all the cards I have in front of me, but this is a public hearing.
If there is anyone else wishing to speak on this item, please come on down to the podium.
Come on down, sure.
Come on down to the podium so we can hear you.
Hi.
Hi, I'm Dana McMillan.
I am in opposition.
I live at 312 Deerfield Drive, which is Kings Row and The Loop.
That is the main entrance to our neighborhood.
We also exit through Hartley Field.
Many times we were unable to get out of our neighborhood.
They've just added, I think, over 300 new mobile homes.
It's not in the county.
It's just on the other side, but it doesn't matter.
Their main entrance is also at Kings Row, which is why we do have to go back through
the neighborhood and exit at Hartley Field.
Also, that is zoned for the elementary school that I have taught at for 22 years.
Hodge Elementary is the name, and it is the highest need school in Denton.
That beats all the high schools.
It beats all the elementary schools, and that is because we have all of the trailer parks
all the way down, these people are mobile, they pass several schools to come to us.
We have apartment complexes, and they're saying there's going to be 30 kids.
I highly doubt with that size, there's only going to be 30 kids.
Our school is at 700, where I think the highest elementary school as it is.
We do definitely have kids that live on Hartley Field Road that come to our school.
Our population is in mobile homes and apartment complexes.
It turns over, it turns over, it turns over.
We're losing teachers left and right because of the constant ... We don't have a steady
student body.
We have mobile children.
We teach mobile children, and it's not that we don't love it, but we are a high needs
campus, and sure they can change zoning at any time, will they?
They haven't yet.
They go all the way out.
We are a bilingual school.
We have 70% Hispanic, and over 50% of our classes are Spanish classes.
They also bring kids from all up and down 380 to our school, and up and down we have
our students that live in Aubrey.
They live in Green Valley, and they live in the part across from Elm Bottom, I believe,
but they come to our school as well.
It is a very highly trafficked area, and on football games, I live down by Kings Row,
and then there's Sherman where you go off to the water park, that's the next intersection.
We have trouble getting out and in our neighborhood on game nights.
They have several schools that utilize that stadium, so that whatever, 10 to 15, that's
not even ... They have games on Thursday.
They have things on Saturday, so that's not really a good estimate.
I'm concerned that we do a lot of building of apartments along the loop, and there have
been 10 complexes in between 380 and the new high school, which is right on 35 basically
in that area, and it's all down in there, and the traffic has gotten crazy, and this
is just in the last couple of years, and now we're going to put another complex there where
just over the overpass of 380, they were putting giant complexes there, so that's all going
to count on that traffic, and they're not taking any of those new developments into
consideration.
The ones that are in the process of being built already, and what they want to add.
I think that traffic is being minimized, and I don't think that we need another 380 right
through to.
Thank you.
Another card I have in opposition is Cindy Gilbert, and I have Katie McGuire in opposition.
Again, those are all the cards I have, although I think I see one coming down now.
This is a public hearing, whether you filled out a card or not, you are welcome to speak
if you have not done so already.
I've got a card from Marni Sadri in opposition.
Good evening, sir.
Good evening.
I am Dr. Stephen Arndt.
I did not anticipate speaking, so this is not prepared, it's just off the top of my balding
head.
I live at 3375 Hartley Field Road.
My wife and I like to take walks down what used to be our nice country lane.
One Saturday recently on our short one mile out and one mile back walk, we were passed
by 40 cars.
This is a very windy road, they drive at 30, 40, 50 miles an hour on it.
It is extremely dangerous.
Going out from Hartley Field and turning left onto Sherman Drive is extremely dangerous.
Our next door neighbor got hit once doing it, trying to turn left.
As soon as you turn again on the loop 288 towards I-35, the one thing you can be absolutely
sure of is a traffic jam.
The plan for loop 288 seems to be build on every single square inch that is available,
leave nothing unbuilt on.
I think Travis hit the nail on the head.
We have to ask ourselves, what do we want for ourselves as dentonites?
Do we really want to be another Frisco?
And why stop at Frisco?
We could be like Dallas or Houston or Austin, but why stop there?
We could be as big as Chicago or New York City or Tokyo or Mexico City.
My question is, where does it stop?
When is it big enough?
What kind of place do we really want to live in?
And our children, thank you.
Someone said we need X number of living units.
You may remember the movie with Kevin Costner, Field of Dreams, with the slogan, build it
and they will come.
The converse is also true, stop building and they will stop coming.
We have enough apartment complexes.
And what I understand, we can't even fill the ones that have already been built.
And we're building them on every single corner.
In the last two or three years, we've had, I don't know how many new neighborhoods spring
up around us.
I can't count the number of apartment buildings.
This is not the kind of town I want to live in.
When I moved here 30 years ago, this was a pleasant place to live.
It has become miserable to get in a car and drive from A to B. You have to fight traffic
all the way.
And once you get there, you probably cannot park.
Development, we're talking about what kind of development we want.
We should be asking, do we want any development at all?
And my answer to that is no, bigger is not better.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Earnt.
I don't have any other cards in front of me, but if you would like to speak, come on down.
Just state your name and address and your time will begin.
Katie McGuire.
I am 3574 Pine Trail and I was opposed to one of the cards.
Me and my husband and our brand new newborn son just moved over off of Hartley Field because
we did love the area, the environment.
I've grown up in the Idiots Hill neighborhood my entire life.
I'm 35, so Denton has been my home my whole life.
I love Denton.
I love it very much.
But we moved out there and immediately I noticed because I do drive to Borman Elementary, so
I have to go into Denton and across I teach kindergarten.
And I have to get up much earlier to sit on that corner to turn left because as they said,
I can't always see.
I feel very uncomfortable with the people who are coming over.
And so I need to leave at least 30 minutes early to make sure that on that corner I can
turn because there are times that I would be late at the beginning of the year because
I wasn't prepared for this knowing how many and that's at 637 in the morning knowing how
many cars are coming.
Also I just wanted to say I'm really glad that the landowner is happy, but all of the
people around are not with the sale.
We're very upset.
I've only been there since August.
Imagine the people who've been living there their whole lives.
They're very upset.
I've become this passionate because I want my son to be able to appreciate and be able
to feel comfortable driving.
We're right there.
I mean, he's two months old right now, but I can't imagine what it's going to be like
when he's driving.
So please think of the people who are up here who came to a meeting who are away from their
newborn child because we feel so passionate about this.
So do not do this.
It's not where it needs to be.
There's already an apartment complex, there's tons and they haven't even filled.
There's now leasing, haven't even finished.
We don't need to build another one.
Thank you.
Hi.
Hi, my name is Isabelle Spinelli.
I live at 5408 Pagewood Drive, which is in the Stark Farms area.
Something I hear a lot of tonight is a lot of what happens at the athletic complex, right?
The football games, I'm not hearing a lot about the band competitions.
Not hearing a lot about the various other events there.
Also you have a massive natatorium there that hosts multiple clubs for swimming, for water
polo, for various sports around the area.
Any given Saturday that you guys go out there, water polo, swim, those fill up that parking
lot and those also fill out a lot of traffic in that area.
It's very difficult to get out of the neighborhood, very difficult to get down that hill.
I don't hear that being talked about a lot.
There's more than just the football games, there's more than just all of those events.
It's dangerous as it is.
I think adding a giant apartment complex, multi-family, whatever you want to call it, is a dangerous
thing to do without taking proper traffic considerations in.
That's all I wanted to say.
Thank you for speaking, appreciate it.
This is a public hearing.
Is there anyone else wishing to speak?
Yep, come on down.
Good evening.
My name is Marni Sadri.
I wasn't planning on speaking tonight, but I hadn't heard anyone ... Oh, sorry.
I live at 3105 Deerfield Drive.
I've been a resident on this street for 17 years.
My husband has lived in the area 28 years.
He's a university professor.
I haven't heard much mention of the 2040 small area plan, which I think is very near and
dear to our hearts.
We have a small footprint where we are right now.
I think it's the only small footprint left in Denton.
The one thing that really concerns me is where we are in this northeast Denton corner is
where everyone goes to relax.
When I see the apartments going in, I'm fine with that.
I really thought the plans were lovely.
I just don't think another one on northeast Denton is the place to put another apartment.
The small area plan and our vision for 2040, I'm wondering why can't we put in something
else the light commercial, make it light commercial use for the residents to enjoy that maybe
goes along with the theme of what's already there?
Why can't we just expand on the theme of nature and bee city?
I'm talking honeybee city, monarch city, we're right on the edge of the central flyway, migratory
central flyway.
Why not capitalize on that if we want to talk about making money?
I mean, we're right here and I just think we should keep the footprint small.
That's all I have to say.
Thank you.
Sure.
Come on down.
Good evening.
My name is Brett Stewart and I live at 5012 Golden Circle which is off of Hartley Field
Road.
I moved to this area about a little over two and a half years ago, I guess, after living
in Flower Mound for 21 years.
One of the reasons we moved, we graduated from UNT, my wife and I, in '89 and lived
here until about '94 and the reason we came back to Denton is to get away from all the
congestion and so forth we had in Flower Mound and so I'm seeing the same type of pattern
here as we go across, as we're building up here.
I can't reiterate any more than what we've already talked about tonight and if I could
give my time to Bridget, I would, but I know I can't, but anyway, I'm in opposition.
Thank you.
Thank you for speaking.
This is a public hearing.
Is there anyone else wishing to speak who has not done so already?
Sure.
Hi.
Good evening.
My name is Stacey Standridge, Standridge Companies, 15640 Quorum Drive, Addison, Texas.
So the reason that my company is interested in this property is because of its location
and as previously said, it's at two main roads and a major intersection and the zoning
allows for commercial development and that's what my company specializes in and we've developed
50 plus centers throughout our company's history, includes grocery anchored to service retail
so we do it all and my goal here for this property was just going to be a large commercial
shopping center, happened to be playing golf with one of the JPI guys.
We have a friendship, told him I was looking at buying it.
Like Nathan said, he's had a ton of people or developers, multifamily developers interested
in the property, but I know JPI is one of the best.
We decided, hey, let's go try to get this zoned and I think because I've been in this
situation many, many, many times where I've had meetings like this and traffic is an issue.
There's no question the traffic is immense, but as a developer that's what I look for.
I want intersections that have high traffic and I would venture to say and I'm not a traffic
engineer but a project that gets built there someday and it will, it's a great intersection,
one of the best properties left in my opinion in Denton, it will develop and I would venture
to say that there, the traffic could potentially be three times once this develops to its capacity
than what is planned tonight and a lot of times I think that's lost because the homeowners
on a zoning case like this get to speak and they get to touch the project in certain ways
and get to ask for things that either get added to or adjusted.
Safety is a huge issue.
I get that.
I understand.
I have four boys.
I get it.
Safety, we'll do everything we can from a safety perspective, but if it gets denied
and someday I come back in here with a project that doesn't come to you guys, it just goes
through staff because it's zoned and I want to develop a shopping center, then I'm going
to do that.
We won't have this meeting.
I'll be going through staff, site plan approval, going through the normal channels and there's
not really any, I mean, public input because I'm following the guidelines in my zoning.
This particular development would have a service retail component to it that we do a lot of.
You saw some pictures, we have our restaurants, we have our salons, we have our dentist, just
to help serve the neighborhood at a location that people can get to easy and we're making
improvements to the roads.
So again, I'm going to go back to traffic is a concern, but the traffic's coming and
someday it very well is going to be a lot more than what this plan shows.
So I think that what we're proposing here meets the comprehensive plan supported by
staff.
We've gone through almost two years of effort to try to get to where we are tonight.
And so again, safety, we want to address however we can, but obviously I'm in support of the
project.
Thank you.
I think we have a question for you.
Commissioner Smith?
No?
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Standridge.
I appreciate it.
Hey, Karina, can I ask you a question?
I know, I'll put you on the spot.
So Mr. Standridge brought up, and I think that's something I've been looking at, we've been
talking about this project for a while now, but Zoned SC has commercial uses that are
already allowed by right from a traffic planner perspective, can you enlighten everybody in
the room on traditional differences and daily trips between a multifamily type property?
I know this has multifamily and commercial mixed use within there versus some sort of
shopping center retail use, I would probably say that falls into the subuses of probably
the 15,000 less size on the use table.
Yeah, so I can take pieces of that and attempt to answer that question.
I think Angie provided a great slide during the work session doing an analysis within
the city of what that would look like in comparison.
So within the suburban corridor zoning, what that trip generation would look like and maybe
we could pull that slide up to help.
I don't have the traffic codes off the top of my head, but in general, it really depends
on the type of commercial development.
So whether it's a shopping center, whether it has pad sites and it has drive-through
uses, the drive-through use is going to increase the traffic.
So there's a combination of uses that could go in there.
In scenarios like this where there is a land use and maybe not an intended use identified
yet with the traffic studies, we'll tell the traffic engineer to identify the most intense
use and provide trip generation based on that.
Generally commercial is going to increase traffic.
I think it's been said a couple of times by several people here that general retail would
increase the amount of traffic compared to what's proposed.
However, it depends on the mix of uses and square footage and things like that.
In general, yes, you will see more traffic with retail.
You typically do see it on intersections of arterials and higher classified roadways.
So I hope I answered that question.
Thanks Karina.
This is a public hearing, still open.
Is there anyone else wishing to speak on this item?
Sure, come on down.
Good evening.
If you'll state your name and address, your time will begin.
My name is Mary White.
My address is 3217 Deerfield Drive in Denton.
I hadn't planned on speaking again tonight like a number of other people are.
I've been living in Denton, I grew up in Dallas, moved here to go to school in 1968.
Took three years away to go to Florida and I've lived here ever since.
So over 50 years I've been in Denton.
I've seen it grow, I've seen the square move out to Sunset Boulevard and the university
and then the square go down and now become the vibrant thing that it is now.
My biggest thing is I feel like we only have two places in Denton that I can call unique.
Everything else has become commercial like Frisco, Prosper, even Salinas going that way
now.
We've got downtown Denton which I think is really cool compared to what it was 15 years
ago when there was nobody there.
Most people have done a great job and it's hard to park but I love seeing all the life
down there.
I love seeing all the inclusiveness that the city of Denton has.
I kind of view us as a little Austin.
We're unique, we have our own way of doing things.
The only other place that we've got that's like that now is our northeast Denton area
and it's a quiet habitat, it's a place that people can go to, get away from everything,
nature's out there, we've got the creek, we've got the creek bottoms, it's just, it's the
only unique place left other than Denton that we can all Denton and I hate to see that change.
I also hate the fact that we go and the city council and the input from everybody else,
they develop these plans.
We had our 2020 plan, we had our 2030 plan, we had our 2040 plan and no sooner they get
in place then we're asking to change it.
I don't know why these people spend all these days and hours and months planning this and
then it's kind of like this is what the plan is but no sooner is it in place than we want
to change it.
I'm probably a little bit different from some of the people that I know who need industry,
keeps our tax base growing.
We've also got to have places for these people to live and they all can't afford housing,
we've got to have apartments, I understand, I get all that but we still got to have places
that keep Denton unique and this is one of the two main places that's happening on.
So I ask you please, we don't want to be Frisco, we don't want to be Prosper, I've told people
this over and over and over again, we had our great big small area plan that they had
that Hodge that the city put on big dance and pony show for us and hundreds and hundreds
of people showed up and we told them exactly what they want and this is our schedule to
be changed before that was even in there.
I talked to these people and said why are we doing this when you don't listen to us?
No, no, no, we're doing this because we want to listen to you but we're bringing this up
there and we want to change it.
So please keep that in mind, you've heard safety questions on here, just keep part of
Denton for us please, that's all I can ask of you, thank you.
Thank you.
This is a public hearing, if you have not already spoken, you may come down.
Hello, I'm Mary Arndt and I live at 3375 Hartley Field Road and I so appreciate the time that
you all put in to all of the decisions that you make for Denton.
I just, I can't even imagine all of the extra time that you put into this.
I so appreciate this fine, fine group of builders and designers that we have, they seem to be
top notch and truly, truly able to do a good job but you're hearing from our neighbors,
you're hearing from the people who live here.
We count too, we matter and my question is, whom do you all represent?
The developers are the people of Denton.
How many people who live here want more of this kind of development?
We need apartments here, we've got two universities, we've got young people moving in, we need
some.
But golly, any direction you travel in Denton, we're doing really, really well with that.
Have you asked the people who live here, do you want more?
Because the people with whom I speak are fine with what we have and wouldn't mind as my
husband said, "Let's get rid of a few."
We have plenty.
Let's keep the quality of life for the people who live here and again, whom do you represent?
The developers or the people who live here?
Thank you.
I think what I'll just say to that is we technically don't really represent anyone just because
we're not elected.
We're a recommending body to city council so we're here to hear any application that
comes before the city that requires a P&Z recommendation and that's what we're here
to do and we do that to the best of our ability while we hear them.
Is there anyone else wishing to speak on this item who has not already spoken?
Seeing none, I will go ahead and close the public hearing and we'll open the floor for
a motion or discussion.
Further questions if needed.
Commissioner Cole.
Thank you, Chair.
I mentioned in the work session the problem I had with this development and it is about
the small area plan.
Is Northeast Denton special?
Absolutely it is.
In my opinion, Clear Creek is probably the most environmentally sensitive area we have.
I grew up fishing it and this is fishing season right now.
All the white bass are up there running up in the creeks.
I've been on a small area plan committee that was, you know, recommendations were adopted
by P&Z and council unanimously.
They're important and I believe in the process.
So I want to see the process through and then make my decision but I think we need to go
through the process.
Thank you.
Commissioner McDade.
Thank you, Chair.
I just want to first off I want to thank everybody for coming out and I can say I'm personally
I am not a fan of apartments.
I think Denton has too many and I actually, the past month or so when this project came
up I actually I don't work too far from Hartley from Hartley Field so two or three times a
week I would drive that road and I know the issue you're having.
It's horrendous.
But my main issue is I don't know how long the stadium and the water park has been there
but when they talk about the bike and the sidewalk that's something that should have
been in place years ago.
I don't think you wait for an apartment complex to come.
Now we want to go in and put in safety measures.
The safety measures should have been there 10 years ago.
But the traffic and all that, that's why I can say without a doubt that I'm going to
be a no on this project and pretty much that's all I have to say.
We do have a motion on floor.
Commissioner Villarreal.
I think the feedback from the neighborhood is pretty clear on this.
Not only are there safety concerns in terms of traffic but we have concerns in terms of
the path the city is going on and that's why we have the northeast area plan taking a look
at this.
So with that in mind I'm moving to Nile.
Commissioner, okay if we could stop so we can continue the discussion please.
Commissioner Pruitt.
Yeah I'll second that and if you'll permit me a few thoughts.
Of course.
I'll try to do what I attempt to do and that is make everybody in the room a little bit
uneasy because I think that really what we need to think through and what this body is
tasked with is understanding complex things and unfortunately you know when everybody's
speaking for two minutes you can only try to simplify it.
So just to be honest Sherman Drive is bad now especially right at Hartley Field.
It's not going to get any better.
I don't see a future where that happens.
There's a lot of county land as one of the public described it that we don't control.
We need homes.
That's absolutely true.
There was somebody who said that if we don't build it nobody will come.
That's not true.
What is true is if we don't build then the people who have more money will come until
the people who have less money move out because housing will be way more expensive and your
children will not be able to stay here.
However the question is where.
And I think as Commissioner Villarreal put it very well it's a situation where we have
a few different options going into the future.
Should it go here?
Should it go toward the center of town?
The only way that this area especially that county land doesn't just all of a sudden spring
roots and have 18 subdivisions is if we build 9,000 more homes toward the center of Denton.
That has not been happening.
So that would be a change with the status quo and that would need a lot of public support
to accomplish that.
I think we have a good comprehensive plan and often we don't refer to it so I'm just
going to read a short excerpt I think that speaks to many of the points that have been
made tonight by the public and the commission.
In the housing variety section it says outside of Denton's urban core are a number of designated
centers and corridors which are targeted to undergo redevelopment from primarily commercial
or undeveloped areas to a mixed use character incorporating moderate and high density residential
uses in walkable patterns near transit and employment.
The means of reinvigorating these areas begins with the creation of area plans.
I won't belabor the point but, you know, this plan is a traditional second half of the 21st
century, sorry we're not in the second half of the 21st century yet, second half of the
20th century hard corner drive to retail with back access doors and a drainage ditch facing
the residents behind it.
This is not walkable.
This is not what our comprehensive plan envisions for reinvigorating these areas.
So I'll leave it at that, you know, I will say just one more thing.
I understand the length of time that it's taken to get here.
I don't put fault at any one person or any entity.
I think everybody has worked hard and honestly the site plan is drafted with staff.
It looks like staff has done an amazing job at trying to make lemonade from lemons.
But sometimes what we have is lemons and we don't, we're not sure that we want lemonade.
Okay.
So thank you.
And I will second.
Commissioner Anderson.
Thank you, Chair.
First, thanks to all the residents that came out and spoke today.
As Commissioner Cole said, I'm born and raised and did it my whole life as well.
Fished that creek many, many times and used to ride my bike.
I still live in the Northeast area, didn't.
And that traffic is horrible.
I admit that.
To Mr. Riley's point, we don't know what's coming later though.
It could be something that causes more traffic.
Unfortunately, the way I look at it is the city and county kind of had dropped the ball
on this.
If there was more access roads off the loop, if there was, if they did make Harley Field
intersection where long road intersects, it might be a little bit easier.
But if there was another road off of Harley Field, they proposed a side access road.
If that side access road would go to Harley Field, I think that would alleviate some of
the, some of the traffic problems.
You could come down Harley Field, exit that side road and come down to the loop instead
of going to Harley Field and 428 and trying to take a left.
I've driven it many times.
I get scared every time I go out there too.
We can't put the gentleman sitting here with the plaid shirt on.
You said it perfectly earlier.
We're letting the kids down and, excuse me, and the thing about it is safety.
We have a high school kids like the other lady said, not just football games.
They have band competitions, water at the auditorium and she used swimming lessons, parents taking
their kids to the skate park, the skate park, anyway, there's a, the, the Gonzales school
down the street.
They have different random hours than just normal schools.
But anyways, that, the traffic is horrendous there.
Trying to put those deceleration lanes there, I think that's going to cause an issue.
Not only because you're going to try to get into lane one, well the person up here pulling
out of lane driveway two might think you're trying to pull into lane one, but you're actually
trying to go into lane two and then you pull out in front of them, there's an accident.
So I think there's a lot of problems with this thing.
I think you guys did a tremendous job on the project.
I think it looks great.
I just think if there was more access roads to work around it, to get the traffic flowing
better, it'd be a done deal.
But with the traffic pattern the way it is, it's just horrendous.
I can't, unfortunately, I can't help you out on that.
I can't vote for it.
So thanks.
Thank you, Commissioner Anderson.
Commissioner Smith.
Thank you, Chair.
This is what I guess in the six years I've been on PNZ is what I call one of our chicken
and egg projects where the concern from the neighborhood is traffic and the conversation
is what is the main area in thoroughfare for traffic and it's a text dot controlled road.
And sadly enough, text dot is reactive, not proactive.
It makes it tough for development community, city planners, neighborhoods to be able to
create a safe environment that is conducive for those that wanna live there and those
that currently live there since the reaction from the State Highway or the State Department
of Transportation is once there is a project there to predicate the need for us to look
at it, we will then look at it.
With that said, I think what Mr. Standridge brought up, the fact that this property being
already zoned suburban corridor also brings this to a chicken and egg project because
by right, this could develop as a commercial property and by right, that commercial property
could have higher traffic than a mixed use property could.
To be honest with you, I'm torn on the project entirely.
I think that I hear the neighborhood and I understand and recognize the concerns growing
up and did myself understanding how busy and how crazy Hartley Field Road is and how crazy
that section of Sherman is and playing at CH Collins and knowing how hectic it is getting
in and out of there, that it's a tough project to look at.
With that said, I think it's something that needs just be a fair warning to the neighbors
who have spoken tonight that whatever ends up happening in the future, it doesn't end
with a planning and zoning commission meeting, it doesn't end with city council, it doesn't
end with this project or Mr. Standridge, the buyer or the prospective buyer of this property,
that it could essentially develop into something worse than what you're here thinking tonight
would be.
I think that's a fair consideration to take into account and the only difference between
tonight and what could be worse is you have no say in what could be worse.
You have no weight in it.
And I think that really it's just something that has to be said and has to be clear because
I think that very clear from what's being said today is that what is going to happen
when we come to a vote has been made evident and so I need to make sure that I take the
time to say that.
Thank you, Chair.
Thanks, Commissioner Smith.
So, I guess I'll just say a few words and then we'll go ahead and vote.
First of all, thank you for everyone from the applicant to our community members who
came out to speak tonight.
Multiple issues were brought up.
Traffic is obviously a problem.
We've been talking about this area for the many years that I've been on this board and
it's a problem and it will get fixed when, we don't know, we're dealing with two state
roads.
It's obviously not the developer's problem, whatever is going to go here on this corner.
This corner is going to develop.
It's zoned SC, which I think is actually proper zoning for this corner.
But our future land use does say community mixed use.
The request tonight is not, it's against the future land use map.
It's not community mixed use.
It's a very nice looking multifamily development.
It really does look fantastic.
I think this is a really bad location for it and I think we as a city would be giving
up a prime commercial corner.
We don't have a whole lot left in the city to develop well.
I understand the timing with the small area plan is poor for you all, but it's so important.
Development is something that we have wanted to do for this area for so many years because
we need a plan for this area.
If you're not from here, this is a very special, special area of our community.
Development is going to happen.
Obviously it already has, but what we need to do the rest of the way to preserve the
uniqueness and the special character of this area is to have a plan and develop it well.
I do think again that suburban corridor sticking with our future land use and community mixed
use I think is good.
I hope what will happen is the small area plan will determine what goes there and how
the rest of this is going to develop and steer that forward.
Unfortunately, the request before us tonight, I can't support basically the location.
I know it was brought up by a speaker that, well, this type of development is working
on the other side, and it is, and it's working really well on the other side, except it's
the other side, which is very different than this side of the loop.
It really is.
I do think that we have to pause, let the small area plan play out, and development
will happen hopefully in the right direction for our city.
With that, thank you again for everyone.
Let's go ahead and vote on the board.
That motion does carry 6-1.
I'm going to go ahead and pause at 8.30 p.m. here.
We'll let the room clear out.
We'll come back and hear our next public hearing.
Five minutes.
Welcome back.
Thank you for letting us take that pause.
I will call us back to order at 8.42 p.m.
Next on our agenda is Item 5B, PD-220010C.
Mia is going to come up for presentation.
That public hearing was opened and has remained open.
Good evening, Chair, members of the commission, Mia Hines, Associate Planner.
This item is a request to rezone just under 13 acres located at the northwest corner of
Teasley Lane and Ryan Road from PDMN to PDSC.
Under the current PDMN, permitted uses are those commercial uses that are permitted under
the former NRMU zoning district, but the site would be subject to the current MN development
standards.
There's a hodgepodge, a mix of development code requirements and references that are
currently applicable to this site.
This zoning request would permit certain commercial uses appropriate for this context and that
development regulations with those use restrictions are included in your backup.
The base zoning would, of course, be SC and so those permitted uses would fall under the
SC category.
Additionally, this request would require compliance with the current development code.
It would just remove any reference to the 2002 development code and bring everything
up to compliance with our current code.
It would also require additional context sensitive site design considerations considering the
recent expansion of Teasley Lane as well as the existing residential to the west of this
property and some of the growth that this area has experienced.
Just to give you a brief reminder, this is one of the first overlay PDs that you are
seeing since we've made that split within our development code.
You might be used to for PD seeing development regulations as well as a development plan.
In this case, it's just the development regulations with those additional overlay restrictions
as that's the separation between this overlay, this application and the standard PD that you're
used to seeing.
So staff did review this up against our criteria for approval in subchapter two.
Some of the things that I wanted to call out within this presentation is that this proposed
PD would again be subject or allow the site to be subject to the current development standards
of our DDC as well as respond to some of the growth that the area has experienced.
Additionally, the proposed PD builds on additional buffers that we currently have in place and
to minimize adverse impacts on the surrounding less intensive uses like the residential that
I mentioned earlier, as well as this proposed rezoning is in line with the community mixed
use future land use map designation of our DIT and 2040 comprehensive plan.
Speaking of which, that designation again is community mixed use.
The proposed PD is consistent, a base zoning to SC would be consistent with that zoning
district in this case, but that PD is being proposed to add some of those additional context
sensitive design standards and restrict some of those uses that again might not mesh with
some of the surrounding areas.
As far as development standards, again the PD regulations and some of the things that
would be required are it would be subject to the existing SC zoning development standards.
Those items have been included in your backup, but I did want to note that since the first
time that this body heard this case in February, the applicant has proposed to add a cap on
the amount of drive-through facilities that could be permitted within this PD.
They are proposing to make that three and that would be what would be permitted by right
on either track one or track two within this PD.
That has been added to the PD regulations and within our recommendation since the publication
or as I mentioned in the work session since the publication of this item, there are some
changes to clarify what would be required within that area or for that specific land
use.
Just speaking to some of the context sensitivity, this area has experienced significant growth.
The image to your left is from an aerial from 2017 and the image to your right is an aerial
from 2023, as you can see several of the sites that were vacant just six years ago, undeveloped
just six years ago have now been either built out or under construction to the point of
being built out.
The commercial piece of this would be supported by that growth in this area.
Additionally, Teasley Lane has grown from a two-lane roadway to a six-lane divided roadway
and again, so some of those mixed use neighborhood standards that might be ideal for a lower
classified lane or roadway that's not as wide, not as many lanes is not necessarily appropriate
with the expansion of Teasley Lane and so again, this would provide for a development
that would be more appropriate for that.
In accordance with our code and state law, we did perform public outreach at the time
of this report, we had received three responses in favor.
Those are being the multifamily complex to the west of the southern tract as well as
two property owners to the west of the northern tract.
Those are single family homes and then one commercial business owner responded in opposition
just south of Ryan Road.
With that stuff is recommending approval as it does comply with our DDC and all of those
items that I've mentioned before and this is just that clarified version of the PD regulations.
This would replace that last paragraph in section two of the PD regulations and part
of your backup.
With that, the applicant is here with the presentation but I will stand for any questions
that you have for me at this time.
Commissioner Villareal.
Real quick, how many drive through restaurants or drive through establishments would you
expect to be able to fit on these tracks if the cap wasn't there?
So it depends.
I think you could probably configure them to work that way for all of those sites.
I think for the preliminary plat that was approved in the summer of last year had, I
believe it was seven total lots but I don't think that's the intent of the applicant
but just I think they would all fall within the SC district so the land use would be permitted
on other of the tracks.
That was going to be questions at the moment Mia.
Thank you very much.
I'm going to call it Mr. Johnson because I believe he has a presentation before we get
to a couple cards I have.
Good evening.
Good evening again.
Greg Johnson, 3190 Teasley.
Thank you for your service as always.
Pays great.
So I'm not going to piggyback on top of what Mia's already presented but by way of background,
as I mentioned when we first started talking about this, the legacy PD terminology can
be really confusing, right?
So when we say PDMN it kind of comes across as if this was a PD, right?
This is a legacy PD because of when the citywide rezoning was done.
PD zoning, any parcel that had zoning on it with any kind of a condition, like in this
case no multi-family, it became a PD so when we say PDMN, I think it seemed to some of
you guys the first time we talked about it like well it's already a PD.
So it's old, falls under the 2002 DDC, the underlying MN zoning presents many, many challenges
to be able to develop the site and when we talked to staff about it the first time, basically
the way that the staff responded was hey this is an opportunity to clean up what's kind
of a really messy PD, not anybody's fault but it's really old.
So what I wanted to do with my presentation was basically say here's the concerns that
I heard from you guys the first time we talked about this and I hope to be able to address
those for you.
So the concerns that I heard that I had in my notes, I went back and watched the meeting,
I thought my jokes were funny by the way, but they still aren't clearly.
So the first concern was school children crossing Teasley to Nelson, increased traffic causing
congestion for the neighborhood, like to see a signal at Teasley and Hunters Creek, it's
already a PD, you guys can read right.
Honestly I wasn't prepared to answer some of these concerns at the first meeting, I didn't
really expect much of that discussion or push back just because of the way the conversations
have gone with staff and so I'm glad to have the opportunity to address those concerns
today in a better way.
So first one, school children crossing Teasley, I thought this was the case, I didn't really
get a chance to come back up to answer questions at the end but you can see the school boundary
map here, the reason there's no crossing guard or crosswalk there is no kids have to cross
Teasley to go to school at Nelson.
Secondly, increased traffic causing congestion for the neighborhood, I thought it important
to point out when this neighborhood, which is the neighborhood Teasley trails adjacent
to the west was developed, it was developed with three main entrances, the main main being
main entrance number one on Ryan, but then there's another main entrance on Teasley at
Ranchman and then another one on Teasley at, I can't read the name of that street, Hunters
Creek Road was put in because of the apartments, the apartments had two modes of egress, negress,
there was a way to stub it into the neighborhood for some future point, but the congestion
for the neighborhood, the neighborhood has three entrances already today, this is a fourth,
really see it as an ancillary access point for the neighborhood.
So you can see I mean very major inferences here, the entrance one which is on Ryan, which
obviously is signalized at Teasley and then Ranchman and then the third one, the Ranchman
is a very large entrance as well.
Next concern, we'd like to see a signal at Teasley and Hunters Creek, we would too, I
mean commercial users want a signal and so I heard the comments and obviously you guys
have seen the comments from some of the folks that live in Teasley trails, many of them
from the from the neighborhood and their Facebook group, you guys got basically the same message
over and over.
We don't want to see this thing happen without a signal, clearly, right, and we have petitioned
text dot, we want a signal here too.
Since the last meeting we had Kimley Horn update their traffic study to determine if
these lots were built out with the proposed use types that we have conceptualized there,
right, we have two users today and others that will ultimately come and we just showed
a mix of what would likely go there.
The signal would warrant, it would meet text dot's warrant requirements once built out
with these commercial uses as we have shown.
But that's all we can do, right, we can't we can't make text dot put a signal.
We have, I've asked them to consider if they knew the signal would warrant when all the
lots were built out, would they consider allowing the signal to go in on the front end because
of the concern that the gentleman from Summit Oaks brought up last time which is we can't
see trying to get out because of the way Teasley was built right up against their neighborhood
brick wall.
I went and drove it, he's exactly right.
It's a very dangerous place to exit and Summit Oaks doesn't really have another way to get
out and so I have proposed to someone at text dot that just ask them the question.
If you know ultimately it will warrant, would you allow it to go in on the front end because
you've got a problem at Summit Oaks just like you created on 2499 with the wall at Hickory
Creek.
It's the same situation, you just have to keep inching until you can see.
Don't have an answer yet, you don't get an answer from text dot in a week or two or a
month or two.
But what I did get in the conversation, it's highly likely that text dot will ultimately
approve a signal at Hunters Creek or Ranchman which is then next to the north because of
all the traffic coming from the east side.
The point is if a signal happens at Hunters Creek or it happens at Ranchman, either way
the neighborhood gets a signalized intersection on Teasley.
We would hope that it would happen at Hunters Creek but we don't have any control over what
text dot does.
So we've asked them to consider and we hope that will happen.
I think I mentioned this already but one of the concerns was it's already a PD, why not
develop under the existing PD.
It's because it wasn't a PD, it's a legacy PD so there's no PD requirements in it.
It wasn't put in as a planned development.
So the only thing in the PD is you can't build apartments.
And so which is why we've worked with the staff to put these additional things that
the staff asked for to make Hunters Creek more of a nicer entrance into the neighborhood
and into the commercial development.
Again the underlying zoning presents a challenge which is MN is a fantastic zoning class for
like urban redevelopment, make areas walkable.
You think about Carroll Boulevard here close to downtown and some of these infill, pushing
the buildings up against the street makes it more walkable and inviting.
The challenge with MN on a suburban corridor is you can't circulate the buildings.
So where's your fire truck turn around, you know all those issues right.
So I think Tina said at the very first meeting you know at some point we need you to trust
your experts right.
And so not to say that you guys aren't smart and do all this but the staff has worked through
this and the SC underlying zoning was their recommendation to solve some of these issues.
So without it, what essentially happens here is every one of these lots becomes its own
PD.
You'd have to look at essentially because of the PD modifications that would be required
for anyone a lot to develop, you'd have seven basically individual PDs to consider.
Which is what started all this in the first place.
Instead we just knocked this out in one conversation.
Seven public notices in addition to the two already done, you know four neighborhood meetings
etc, etc.
We had two neighborhood meetings the first time around.
We had no opposition from anybody that lived in the neighborhood.
Much less 200 or 500 feet.
And so then we've had two more since then.
Teasley is a major suburban corridor and I thought this was kind of telling right.
Six lanes or more through eight different cities.
And so this isn't a neighborhood street right is my point.
What's going to develop on a major suburban corridor, this is what this is what's going
to happen.
In fact that's what's already there.
So if you look at Teasley and Wind River, you've got drive-through, drive-through, drive-through,
retail, drive-through.
Teasley Robinson Road, sea store gas, drive-through, storage, you get it.
Teasley Hickory Creek, you know this is Kroger, this is Sprouts, this is Walgreens.
One, two, three, four, five drive-throughs, drive-throughs across the street.
And so here's the subject site right.
Here's Walmart, automotive, retail, liquor.
And so this is what goes on a suburban corridor on these types of corners.
And what we attempted to do with the staff in the conversations was hear the staff of
the neighborhood.
Like what do you want to see there?
What do you think people would have a problem with?
And so we've gone through and we've eliminated.
And in fact you know you guys all know that I had a conversation with Margie after the
first meeting.
I wanted to get her input, she's been doing this a long time, and so we've added other
things.
No automotive repair, minor or major, no fuel, etc. because I value the input of people that
have been around a long time and seen a lot of this stuff.
We had, again, four neighborhood meetings, nobody signed up for the third or the fourth.
And I'll wrap up.
You've already seen, I didn't know there, you saw me as Matt.
We have people that are adjacent to the site here in support.
Obviously the apartment complex here, you've got a big buffer in between the existing,
which makes it pretty unique.
If you look back up to some of these, Walmart, Kroger, Sprouts, a lot of these, I mean they're
right up against the houses.
We've got a really nice buffer.
This is a huge drainage easement through here, so nothing can ever go there.
And the fact that the only two people who responded of all these houses here are in
favor.
So in summary, obviously the uses are consistent with the master plan, they're also consistent
with what's already built up and down this corridor.
The staff's recommendation of the SC underlying zoning makes sense for a lot of reasons.
The concerns from the first meeting seem to all be answered or addressed, in my opinion.
We have no neighbors opposed, only neighbors in favor.
And we would request your approval and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you, Mr. Johnson.
I do have a question.
Regarding the fence that is part of the PD regulations that's going to be built on that,
the track where there's residential crack, that'll be a fence happening there.
Can that be constructed like before development happens or what is the plan for that?
I would love to see it happen like at the beginning before anything happens, but.
Sure.
So that actually came from the first neighborhood meeting, this gentleman here, I don't recall
his last name, Chris something.
We've got this big buffer, right, of the drainage easement, which really is full of trees.
So that'll all remain.
But one of the things he said was, you know, in the winter I can actually hear the cars
on Teasley when all the leaves fall, et cetera.
What about a fence?
And so I just said, I don't think anybody have a problem with that.
I talked to the seller, which is who I represent, he won't be developing the sites, but I said,
would you agree to this, which would mean anybody we sold a site to would be required
to build a fence.
And I said, I think we should make it a requirement that it's on the commercial side, right.
So that all of the green space and that buffer is seen by the residential and not really
to the benefit of the commercial because commercial tenants don't really care, right.
It's back there, you see the top of the trees.
So as I understand it, that would have to get built as a part of any commercial development
that happened here and it would have to be built outside of the drainage easement on
the commercial side.
So I don't know that, I don't know that it could all be built at one time.
So it's just going to be built piecemeal, though?
Well, I mean, I guess that the staff could tell us, I don't know how, if you could go
like, could you go get a permit just to build a fence on those two different properties
prior to development?
Okay.
I'm not sure.
But I would also expect, though, that in all likelihood, like those two lots are in contract.
So in all likelihood, and they're just waiting for this to be completed because otherwise
they're going to submit their own SUP or PD amendment request, whatever you call it.
So I would expect that those two likely get developed on a very similar timeline.
Obviously, we couldn't control that once they bought it.
So I don't know how to answer.
I'll get with staff on that and see.
If it is the city's desire that that fence get built like all at once prior to any structures
getting built, and the city can tell us how to do that, like, because maybe it's just
a fence permit, then I'm sure my seller would go and just build the fence, right?
And then just get reimbursed by the buyers as they come.
And I don't think you'd have a problem with that.
Okay.
Thank you.
Any other questions for?
Okay.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Mia or Tina, did you want to just jump in on my question or?
Sure.
I guess with respect to the fence, I think some of it's going to depend upon what type
of fence it is.
For example, if it's a masonry wall versus a wood fence, typically those screening devices
get constructed at such time when each of the individual lots develop, because that's
when all the construction activities happen, that's when the sites are graded.
If this is something more structural in nature, like a masonry wall, then presumably if he's
going to build it all at once, it would have substantial grading work already occurring
on the site and getting the development of the site more prepped, if you will.
I think the proposal to have the fencing installed prior to issuance of a CO is reasonable.
Mia, what kind of screening is required in the PD?
I seem to recall there's some point selection choices that might be available.
Yeah.
It just specifies that screening is required, because usually it's not a requirement.
We have the buffers between commercial and residential, but it does not specifically
require a wall or screen.
It's a part of the points, and so this just requires a fence.
Right.
I know we're making it required because we're writing it into this PD, so we probably need
to clarify what kind of fence are we building.
I think we would, or the way it reads, it could be anything, right?
What we're just saying, a fence shall be constructed.
Per the specific section of the DDC.
The materials that are permitted under that, the section 7.2.8.
Whatever materials are offered, and I would trust that they would have to be the same.
Whatever is decided when the first track develops.
Unless you want that included in the plan development district, that could be.
As of right now, what we did was we tried to rely upon the standards that are within
the DDC.
Obviously, the plan development district provides for a wider buffer, and I believe increased
points that the applicant has to choose from, but we were relying upon the standards in
the PD that any developer of the individual lots could choose from.
Again, I guess the reason I'm ... I'm just trying to get with whatever was discussed
at the neighborhood meeting.
I wasn't there.
This came as a result of the neighborhood meeting, so what are they anticipating is going ... Are
they thinking it's a masonry wall fence, or ...
To me, that'd be the applicant to defer.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah, I know.
You obviously don't, but yeah.
Mia was on the call on the video meeting, but my recollection was would you build a
fence in addition to ... Because I think the answer was, well, screening would count.
Right.
He said, "Well, would you build a fence in addition to, because when the leaves fall,
et cetera, et cetera?"
So we said, "Yeah, sure.
We will build a fence."
Right, but no one discussed what that would look like or ...
Because we knew that we would just have to ... We would have to abide by whatever the
code says in terms of material.
You can't use chain link.
You can't use ... Right, so we would have to abide by whatever the code says.
I don't know exactly what the code says, but whatever the code says we would have to use,
we would use.
Okay.
So it wasn't discussed with the neighborhood, like what that would be?
No.
Okay.
I'm not specific.
I want these material.
I don't think they cared.
Right?
It was just ... We know we've got this big green space.
We'd like to have a fence in addition.
I think they cared only because they mentioned it to you because when the leaves aren't there,
they can hear the ... So a material that would buffer sound is probably what they want.
But to be clear, what I mean by didn't care was they didn't say, "I want it built of
stone."
Oh, no, of course.
Or a brick or whatever.
Right.
Like, "Would you build a fence?"
Yes.
Right.
So I'm just trying to make sure I'm capturing what was said.
Right.
And we would abide by whatever the code says over and above.
We couldn't just use the buffer, which is allowed.
Sure, sure.
We're agreeing to the buffer.
In addition, we'd build a fence on the commercial side.
Okay.
Yeah.
And I'm just trying to get clarification on what they're anticipating.
But I guess we may never know that answer.
But okay.
Thank you.
Commissioner Pruitt.
Thank you, Chair.
I just wanted to provide some context because we've had recent discussions in DCRC regarding
fencing and buffering and that sort of thing.
If you recall, there were some amendments that came through specifically for automotive
uses and some screening requirements and that sort of thing.
And through that discussion, we really kind of digested and dissected a two-page table
in the code right now that describes which fences should be used in which conditions.
And there was a lot of thought that went into that.
I imagine many of your thoughts back on DCRC back in the day.
And so I would just say that looking at the types of fences that would count as buffering
so they would be opaque are perfectly applicable.
They're not ugly things.
So I'm fine with anything that staff thinks is reasonable without complicating the PD.
But I would remind everyone that this is an overlay PD.
And I think the intention of that was to have a lighter touch so it's easier to understand
in the future.
Understood.
Thank you.
Commissioner McDade.
Thank you, Chair.
I don't know if this question could be for me or the applicant.
But when you made the comment, when the applicant made the comment about text dot is likely
to put a light there, it's just something about their word likely.
I mean, that's at their own discretion or it is something that they can do at any time
or they don't have to do.
It's just something -- I don't know how -- because I don't know how text dot works.
But I know as far as the light goes, that's eight other places on Teasley that are even
worse than Hunters Creek, that could actually take a light.
But I don't understand the likely part.
It's like, well, we'll do it, or we may not.
There's just nothing written in stone there.
Yeah.
I'm going to bring up our transportation planner and speak to it a little bit.
And then if the applicant wants to talk about any conversations that he and his team has
had with text dot as to that response and bringing that forward, I can let him do that.
Okay.
I forgot about Karina.
I'm sorry.
I'm sad.
Don't forget about me.
I'm still here.
I'm Karina Maldonado, transportation planner for the City of Denton.
So in regards to the likelihood, that really is a text dot decision with the recommendation
from staff after we review the text dot permit.
Text dot does look at that signal warrant analysis to identify whether it's triggered
or not.
There's several factors that go into that.
In addition to that, text dot will look at other things like the volume, the traffic
volume, turn movements, pedestrian crossings, general safety concerns.
So it's hard to predict what text dot would ultimately decide.
We did have preliminary discussions with them about this site in particular to give them
the heads up of, "Hey, this project's coming along, it's at P&Z."
We have discussed it with them so they're aware that it's coming through, at least through
the area office.
Some concerns that they would have to address once that permit comes in is the request for
traffic signals at other locations on Teasley and then the spacing between them.
So considering the speed of the roadway, the amount of traffic, and of course what that
would do to the facility, it being a primary arterial.
So as you know, traffic signals would then kind of add to stop traffic.
It could also facilitate increased flow.
It depends on how that signalization is.
I'm losing the word in my head, but they're coordinated.
So there is no specific answer.
It will be reviewed in the traffic impact analysis when it's updated.
It still needs to go through the scoping process with staff.
We'll look at that as staff in that process.
It'll be a future decision.
So that's why you're hearing the likelihood versus it will or will not happen because
right now the city can't make that determination.
And then I guess the last point I'll make is we have to review it from a proportionality
standpoint.
So the developer wouldn't be required by the city to put in the full signal.
They would only be responsible for their proportional share of the cost, and then the city would
have to identify the additional funds to then install it at that location if it were warranted
and if TxDOT approved it, unless it was at the discretion of the developer to put in
the full cost of that.
But we as a city cannot ask for that beyond the proportional cost.
So hopefully that answered that question.
All right.
Thank you.
I'm happy to answer since I said it, because I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth.
So I said it.
So that was the result of after the first meeting and hearing the concerns, we went
back and so we paid Kimberly Horne to go do an update on the traffic signal warrant, the
TIA that we had done just for our site.
But hearing from the gentleman across the street at Summit Oaks at the first meeting
about the safety concerns coming out of that neighborhood, so I went and actually tried
to pull out of that neighborhood to see, is it real?
Because I don't want to say something to TxDOT that wasn't true.
It really is true, like you can't see.
And so I talked to some folks at TxDOT, and I said, this is a real issue, and I'm not
sure if we meet the distance agreement between Hunter's Creek and Ryan.
That's one question.
And secondly, if it warrants, and we were able to say the commercial lots would pay
for the signal, would you guys put it on the front end even before it all got built out
because of this safety concern?
So the comment that I got back was, it's likely that there's going to be a signal put somewhere
over there north of Ryan Road because we are getting a lot of input between Summit, Teasley
Trails, Ranchman, which is a huge outlet over there, and the construction that took so long
over there, there's been a lot of information coming to them, I guess, from that HOA.
And so the comment was, it's likely there's going to be one over there somewhere, either
Ranchman or Hunter's Creek, because that's the two areas that line up both east and west
across.
So my likely comment was coming from that, but again, they're noncommittal, so I don't
want to say we're confident it'll be here, but for the neighborhood's concerns, if we
don't get it to Hunter's Creek, then it would be likely that they would get one at Ranchman.
That's what I was trying to indicate.
All right.
Thank you.
You bet.
Anything else?
Okay.
Got a couple of cards here to speak.
Michael Doranski?
Good evening.
Thanks for your time.
I have the property at 3924 TZ Lane, and first I want to say, I'm not opposed to commercial.
This thing is going to be commercial over there.
It's just a matter of what kind of commercial and what kind of review process it goes through
for that commercial.
And I think as everyone has sat through tonight, part of one of the issues where people were
upset with the zoning that was done on that property earlier tonight and the zoning that
was given out, and the previous planning zoning guy gets up here and talks and says, "That
was not our intent when I voted on this," and the entire community out here are upset
about it.
And part of what that was is the review process, and these people, he's got two businesses
already online that want to develop here, and if he says they're going to submit the
SUP if it doesn't get approved, that's what I think they should do.
The SUP is there for the protection of the neighborhood, so they can review each individual
project.
And as if you just give this first blanket overlay, I assume there will be more to follow.
So whatever time may be saved, it's going to be more of these to follow as more development
says, "Hey, I don't want to have all of my projects reviewed.
I've already got two people lined up, but I don't want to present those.
I just want to go ahead and just build those, and I don't have to worry about coming before
this piece."
And it's been proposed that you have the safety concerns and the things that come into those
safety concerns.
And I agree with Eric.
If you don't put in the development, people won't come, but the stuff will get more expensive,
and that is a very true statement.
But the whole thing is this needs to be reviewed.
And if you already have the stuff on the stuff, I don't know why it can't be reviewed.
There's a school right across from this as well.
Yes, the kids don't go to that school, but as was discussed last time, supposedly I guess
it's a coffee and custard, which is I would assume is going to be pretty popular with
that kind of area.
You could still run into those type of issues.
That speed limit over there is extremely fast.
And I heard from someone tonight, it's like, "Well, we should have the safety stuff in
place before you build this."
And as Mr. McDade has said, "Hey, do we know we're getting the light?"
No, we didn't say for sure, but it's very likely.
But hey, that's the whole point is we're supposed to have the safety already in place.
And if you continue to expand on giving these broader zonings without having to go through
each individual process, things will go in there that maybe people didn't anticipate.
Again, as Erica said, "Hey, we can put a big shopping center here, and you're not going
to like it."
And Mr. Smith said the same thing, "Hey, I could build a big shopping center, more cars
can go in here, you may end up not liking the result."
But as such, if you give the blanket overlay, it's going to continue where they don't have
to seek the permission.
They can just build it.
And they don't have to seek the sub-permission because the overlay was given and they can
just build it off of there.
You know, I see a lot of mention of the traffic off of Teasley.
Yes, it's a very high-trafficated road, but Ryan Road as well is going to see a ton of
that traffic that comes through there.
It is a two-lane road with a park and where all those neighborhoods come in, they actually
kind of come out, go to that neighborhood, Walmart or whatnot, and then exit onto Teasley
and make a left or a right.
So I do feel like, it's not that I'm against the commercial development there, because
I do believe it's going to be commercial, but what I am against is that they don't have
to come and present to you and show you what they're going to put in there, how many cars
are they going to have, what is the traffic study for this piece.
And if we have this one, what other ones are they expecting off of here.
And I think by removing that protection, you're just opening it up where what the people expected,
just like they expected earlier tonight, to be on that piece of property is not necessarily
what they envisioned off of there, because they can build it, because they don't have
to seek the special sub for it.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Next card I have is Nathan Toon.
Good evening again.
Good evening, Nathan Toon, 3201 Carmel Street, Denton, Texas.
Carmel Street is located in Montecito, right in between Ryan Road and Teasley Lane.
So this is my hood, if you will.
The way I understand it, the base of the case here before us tonight is basically just changing
the underlying zoning of the property from MN to SC.
As some of you may know, I own a property in Denton that's zoned MN that basically I've
become accustomed to the MN zoning and just by and large, the way it was explained to
me is MN is intended to promote walkability in more of your mixed use areas, downtown
areas.
Teasley Lane is not that.
Teasley Lane is a heavily vehicular trafficked area.
And as a result, and one of the aspects of the MN zoning district that I think is problematic
for vehicular areas is the requirement to build within 15 feet of the front of the property.
I personally don't think that commercial properties on major roads should have buildings built
so close to the front because it is dangerous.
If you drive around the square, for example, if you're coming on Carroll, turn it on Hickory
or any of those streets and you've got buildings that are built right up to the corner, you
can't see around them.
And so aside from the compatibility of the use, I don't think anybody has a problem with
commercial uses on this property.
That's what is all up and down this corridor.
I just don't think MN should be the base zoning here because it's dangerous on heavily trafficked
roads.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Schoen.
This is a public hearing.
I don't have any other cards.
Is there anyone else wishing to speak?
Hello, Amy.
I'll be quick.
Amy Bissett, 109 North Elm.
I just wanted to say that we were engaged by the seller, or I'm sorry, the current property
owner, to coordinate and facilitate the neighborhood meetings that Mr. Johnson mentioned.
And we heard all positives out of even the closest neighbors that were going to be coming
in.
And we did, when we extended the invite, we opened it up for the second round of meetings
to all of Teasley Trails HOA.
We contacted their board and their board pushed it out through their distribution lists and
social media and we had no additional concerns raised from that.
So just wanted to elaborate on that a little bit, that we did handle those neighborhood
meetings on behalf of the property owner and that was the outcome.
And it was with this current information, right?
Which is updated slightly from the original meetings.
Okay.
Great.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
This is a public hearing.
Is there anyone else wishing to speak who has not?
I don't think there's anyone else here.
Okay, I will go ahead and close the public hearing and open the floor for a motion or
discussion.
Commissioner Pruitt.
Thank you, Chair.
I'll move approval with staff of the PDSC as presented.
I think I appreciate the time and effort on this.
I'm sorry that it took us a little bit longer than expected to get to the end.
But I'll just clarify, I think, you know, at the initial hearing that we had, I had
safety concerns.
I still do.
But under further reflection, I think that we did pass some transportation criteria manual
updates that specify how TIAs should be handled.
And though I'm nervous about how we are going to end up working with TxDOT here, I think
it warrants giving everybody a shot.
And I also appreciate the attendance zone map.
I think we need to keep in mind that while I've heard the superintendent of DISD say
that he is adamantly opposed to having attendance boundaries cross over those dangerous roads
for that very reason, when you look in the rest of the city, it often happens as a result
of development and there's just no way around it unless you're going to start drawing lines
worse than our political boundaries.
So I, you know, I'll trust the process.
I'm nervous that eight years from now after more housing is built west of here, those
districts move and something happens.
But I think everybody's aligned on the goals and I'm satisfied with it, so thank you.
>> Commissioner Smith.
>> Being this is my first time, you'll see the project as presented.
I live in that neighborhood and I drive down Ryan.
I look at that ugly corner of what was a nasty pad-sided trailer park that is now going to
be developed into something.
We need commercial up and down Teasley.
We have commercial sites up and down Teasley now that are accessible.
I understand the traffic concerns up and down Ryan, but like I said, I ride that road every
single day.
I'm not concerned by safety or traffic issues here and if anything, I see commercial development
at that corner being a way to help mitigate some of the some of the speeding and the going
in and out will slow down some of the traffic that happens there on that thoroughfare.
So with that, I second.
>> Thank you.
Got a first and a second for approval.
Commissioner Villarreal.
>> I appreciate the restrictions you're putting on the number of drive throughs on the development.
At the same time, I still have the same safety concerns I had when this was last presented.
I understand there have been positive conversations with TechStat, but considering nothing solidified
at the moment, those concerns still exist.
I have concerns with removing the SUP process in general for those three drive throughs
and all the additional protections for the neighborhood to come and speak their mind
on particular projects.
At this time, I'm still a no on this project.
>> Thank you.
Is there any other discussion?
I've got a first and a second for approval.
I'll go ahead and say a few words.
I asked for this reconsideration and did an extensive amount of deeper dive into the backup
and a lot of research on the site, including multiple, multiple visits at various times,
school times, not school times, drove through Teasley trails, drove Hunters Creek back and
forth every which way.
What I didn't realize at the beginning when I heard this the first time was how messy
the code is right now, and that was another meeting I had with staff to understand exactly
how messy it is right now.
We've got these NRMU uses because they were codified in place to where we have to abide
by those, but we rezoned it to MN with the new code, and so now we're dealing with those
design standards, which absolutely do this and makes this really difficult to develop.
With the research that I've done with knowing these kids, that was one of the first things
I went to do was the next day, went to school time, realized there's not a crossing garden.
It's like, hey, I don't think these kids do cross Teasley, which is great.
Obviously we know a traffic signal is needed.
I live in the area.
We know it's needed, and it will happen.
Obviously none of us can ever say with Tx.1 that's going to happen.
I think with the way this PD is built, we've added some extra protections of certain types
of developments that won't happen, which protects the neighborhood, which was my biggest concern.
In looking at this again and with these new clarifications and protections, and then in
engaging with the neighbors, everybody was in support that we got written comment on,
was in support, well, I don't know if they said they were in support.
They weren't against the project.
They were wanting a traffic light.
Every single one of those emails said the same thing.
We don't have control over that.
The developer doesn't have control over that.
When things do develop here, it's going to happen, and it may not even take that long.
Maybe it will happen even prior to that because of the Summit Oaks issue.
I think that's all I have to say on that.
Is there any other discussion before we take a vote?
Let's go ahead and vote on the board, please.
That motion carries 5-2.
That will move us to item 5C, Z23-0004.
I will call Julie Wyatt up for that and open the public hearing.
Good evening.
Let me pull up my presentation.
Here we go.
Okay.
Hi.
Julie Wyatt, Senior Planner with the City of Denton.
I am presenting Z23-0004 Camelot to you this evening.
We usually start with the request slide, but I'm going to turn it a little bit tonight
and talk about the history because I think that's informative for this property.
The subject property is located in the north side of town.
It is north of Hercules and just west of Stewart, so it's at that intersection.
It was originally plotted in 1979 with residential lots.
It was developed with four plexes and a couple of single-family homes, which was consistent
with the zoning at that time.
At that time, the zoning was multifamily residential, which was multifamily, I believe, capped it
at two stories.
Since then, we have updated our development regulations twice, once with the Denton Development
Code in 2002 and then again in 2019.
With both of those, it essentially rezoned the property from that multifamily residential
to neighborhood residential three in 2002 and then residential three that transitioned
in 2019, rendering those existing four plexes nonconforming.
This was brought to our attention at the end of last year.
We had one of the property owners come in for a pre-application.
They wanted to convert one of the couple of single-family dwellings on the street to a
duplex and we said, "Oh, that is not permitted, nor are the four plexes that are existing
permitted as well."
That's how this is coming to you tonight.
It's actually a city-initiated rezoning, which is not something we do very often, but that
was the genesis of tonight's meeting.
These uses that were rendered nonconforming are now subject to Section 1.5.
We talked about nonconformities in our work session, but essentially if one of those structures
was destroyed by more than 50%, they could not be rebuilt.
Now we'll get to the request.
We are, the city is proposing to rezone the 6.52 acres from the existing residential three
to residential six.
Residential six allows a variety of residential uses that we'll talk about.
The purpose of this is to align the zoning with those existing uses to provide certainty
for those property owners who've invested in those lots, as well as the residents of
those four plexes, and to allow and to encourage continued investment in these properties.
This is a vibrant neighborhood and to provide that additional investment.
You can see on your screen we've got the subject property here.
As it currently looks today, the previous screen had a aerial from 1982, and what it
looks like today.
The existing zoning shows the yellow there in red, and then the proposed zoning would
change the color in the map to this tan color, and allow that transition as you can see from
that R7 at the intersection to then the proposed R6, and that would transition to the R4 to
the north and west of the site.
The first thing we always look at is the comprehensive plan.
The future land use designation for the subject property is low residential.
The proposed R6 actually allows densities that are greater than what we typically see
in low residential.
Low residential is up to five dwelling units per acre, but the future land use map is just
one analysis point when it comes to the comprehensive plan.
We want to look at lots of different parts of the comprehensive plan, and this request
does serve other goals within that plan.
One, it's consistent with the sound growth principles that are outlined in the overall
vision statement, things like diverse housing choice, compact development.
This is an existing neighborhood, as well as neighborhood protection.
Once again, keeping that reinvestment in our previously developed parts of our town.
It also serves for our housing and neighborhood section, that it provides that variety of
housing types.
And then infill, this is an existing area that is being used, and so we want to make
sure that there's continued reinvestment.
We also look at impacts to surrounding property.
Now apart from that one property, the single-family dwelling that would like to convert to a duplex,
we are not aware of any other redevelopment proposed for the area.
Really what we're looking at is not necessarily redevelopment, but in the event that the property
redeveloped, we wanted to do that mental exercise to see, well, what could those impacts be?
R3 and R6, they do have different residential uses.
R6, of course, allows that different variety of residential uses.
Not only single-family, but townhome, duplex, triplex, and fourplex does not permit multi-family.
We felt like R6 really wasn't introducing any new residential type uses to the area.
It really was consistent with what was there, and it was the most surgical precision that
we could get with the zoning.
Furthermore, if any other properties were to redevelop on that site, if somebody said,
"Hey, now I'm just going to scrape the lot and redevelop it," they would have to conform
to all of our current design standards, which are much different than they were in the '80s.
Street trees would have to be installed.
They would have to put in sidewalk, landscaping, lot tree, parking.
We'd have to have two parking spaces per dwelling, and they would have to be to the side or rear
of the property.
Then site design, they would have to meet all those architectural requirements.
We also, as we were thinking through this and thinking through the staff analysis, we
just thought through those non-conforming issues.
I won't read all of this to you.
I think it was emailed to you, and I apologize, there were a couple of spelling errors.
I typed it really quickly, so I apologize.
There are those differences in the residential uses, and as I think we've kind of talked
about that currently those fourplexes are non-conforming.
This proposed rezoning would not impact those existing property owners if they left it in
place, so a rezoning wouldn't require them to go out and make those improvements consistent
with the current code.
That would only be if they redeveloped a lot.
As far as the current zoning, those existing uses can remain.
I think where the challenges come in is that they can't make those substantial improvements
to the property, make those structural changes, or redevelop if something were to happen to
one of their properties.
If one of those property owners did want to renovate or rebuild after some sort of natural
disaster that would happen, they wouldn't be able to do that.
What they would have to do is seek one of those remedies that we talked about in work
session and likely would be a rezoning like what we're doing tonight, and it would require
them to make application with the city and pay those fees and post those signs.
That's really why we're coming today is to try to forestall that.
Public outreach was done.
A newspaper property was posted, mail responses.
The city also held two neighborhood meetings.
I did want to let you know.
We have received substantial opposition from property owners on Camelot, such that there
is 33% opposition and which will require a supermajority approval if it were to be approved
at council.
Based upon the criteria for approval and that non-conforming condition, staff does recommend
approval of the request as it does comply with the criteria for approval.
I'll be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you, Julie.
Do you have any idea why the opposition ... I mean, was it just a not understanding what
exactly was happening or you could ... I mean, did you address any concerns that they had
or ...?
With the first neighborhood meeting, we had two property owners.
Those two property owners are in opposition to the request.
I talked to them and we talked through it about what could happen.
There was a concern that they would have to modify their cart service to a dumpster and
I was like, "This would not require you to make any changes to what you're doing now."
I haven't been given really clear reasons as to why the objection really was there.
Then we had an additional neighborhood meeting after we had received all of these opposition.
Tina may have other thoughts.
We really didn't ... We had other community members or property owners attend that and
they asked a lot of questions, but no real solid reasons as to why there was an opposition.
I would agree.
We tried pulling it out and asking a series of questions and understandings, but it was
not clear.
One of the property owners, given his questions, he seemed to understand the challenges of
the existing zoning and how that might affect property owners, but he didn't come out and
say, "I'm in support or in opposition."
He just seemed to have a better understanding, but two of the other property owners that
were in attendance, yeah, they did not voice if they were opposed or ...
Anything specific?
Yeah, nothing specific.
Thank you for answering that.
Any other questions for staff right now?
No?
Okay.
This is a public hearing.
I don't have any cards and I don't have anyone here wishing to speak, so I will close the
public hearing and open the floor for a motion or discussion.
Commissioner Smith.
Make a motion to approve.
Commissioner Cole.
Second.
We've got a first and a second for approval.
Commissioner Pruitt.
Thank you, Chair.
I want to say I'm almost as happy to eliminate nonconformities as other officials that I've
heard are happy to issue refunding bonds.
It's a big need.
There's a lot of places pigeonholed and pocketed throughout Denton because we have a rich history
and I'm glad to see this coming forward, so thank you.
Thank you.
Commissioner Villarreal.
Yeah, I'm going to be in support of the motion.
It is concerning that there is 33% opposition and we don't really know why they're opposed,
but not knowing that, I will be in support of the motion to remove the nonconformity.
Yeah, thanks.
Yeah, it almost seems like we're doing the property owners a favor, honestly, by this
because we'd be keeping them from having to rezone the property themselves if something
were to happen to their property and they would want to rebuild what is currently there.
The entire street, except for a couple of single-family homes, is all a couple of duplexes
and then mainly triplexes and fourplexes.
Yeah, I commend staff on bringing this forward, honestly, because I love to clean up things
that don't make sense.
You know that with our zoning and this definitely seems to do that.
I wish that, and we have letters, I know that say opposed, but there's nothing attached
to them.
And so I feel like it might be confusion or fear of change or what, but yeah, it's really
more of a mistake that we're clearing up, I think, on our part because it probably should
have never transitioned to R3 to begin with when we went to the new code.
So yeah, I think this cleans up a much needed thing.
Seeing no other 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, and I will give
the floor to Tina.
Thank you, Chair Ellis.
So several items here, I promised Ron I would make some announcements regarding some upcoming
activities that the commission may be participating in and interested in.
So first of all, just a few reminders, we have this for the Northeast Area Plan.
We have the Strategic Foresight Workshop that's this Saturday at 9 o'clock a.m. at the Development
Services Building, so I know some of you have agreed to participate in that, so just a friendly
reminder for that and for anybody else who may be listening.
I know we have some residents within the Northeast Area that were also planning to attend that.
You also have been, or two workshops have been added to your calendar, joint workshops
as it relates to the Northeast Area Plan.
One will be on August 1st at 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., so we'll do a lunch joint meeting with
City Council.
The purpose of that meeting at that time, we will be discussing some of the draft recommendations
that will be presented as part of the Northeast Area Plan and obtain your input.
Then we will have a second joint meeting on October 17th, again at 11 a.m. from 1 p.m.,
joint meeting with Council to review the draft document and before, or to review the draft
document before we initiate the adoption process through a formal public hearing.
So similar to what we did with the Comprehensive Plan, if you recall in the Mobility Plan when
we went through that adoption process, so we had some joint sessions with Council, but
really one the opportunity for the two bodies to be able to work together and review any
of the content that's being presented before we move into that adoption phase in case there's
any additional direction that may be provided by PNZ and Council before we initiate that
particular process.
So that's all related to Northeast.
Southeast Denton.
So Southeast Denton, we're continuing with really one of our first major public engagement
listening sessions and so this week has been a big PR push and Julie's been our project
manager with assistance from me on that as well, and so in case you're interested or
if you know folks that are interested, by all means please do encourage them to participate
in what we're referring to as our listening sessions.
Those listening sessions will be with our consultant team.
Staff will not be participating in those other than making sure the room's set up and any
food delivered or snacks, things of that nature, but really this is going to be led by our
consultants because we want our consultant team to hear directly from folks that are
interested in the Southeast Denton area plan, and so really these are geared towards listening
sessions.
So we have one that's Wednesday evening, April 19th, it starts at 6 p.m. scheduled till 8.
That's at the American Legion Hall, and that's April 19th.
Then we have another one that is Thursday, April 20th at the MLK Junior Recreation Center.
That one's actually earlier in the day, so that one's at 11 a.m.
We have one then scheduled Thursday evening, again at the MLK Recreation Center.
That one will be at 6 p.m.
So again, you have two options on that Thursday, 11 a.m. and 6 p.m.
And then we are doing a virtual meeting Friday, April 21st at 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
And lastly, we will wrap up with our listening sessions Saturday, April 22nd at 10 a.m. to
noon at the American Legion Hall.
So we've got one, two, three, four, five opportunities for folks that are interested in the Southeast
Denton area plan and wanting to provide us input.
So really trying to utilize a variety of resources.
Mailed invitations have gone out, utilizing social media pushes as well, announcements
like this, passing word of mouth if you know people that are interested.
So trying to do all we can to be able to help folks learn about those listening sessions
because really that really starts the input process on the Southeast Denton area plan.
In terms of zoning and development case activity, since the last time the Planning and Zoning
Commission has met, we did have one case go before council on April 4th.
If you recall, that was the rezoning from Plan Development District 120 to MN.
It was south of Loop 288, about 1,600 feet west of Locust Street.
This was to accommodate development in accordance with the MN standards.
If you recall, this is the property that had the old 1969 zoning that we were even concerned
whether or not we could accurately administer given the quality of the conditions of the
copies of the document, right?
So this one did get approved by city council.
With respect to items listed on the matrix, from what I understand there were no new requests
that were brought forth, and so we will update this this evening also based upon the conversation
that we had with respect to the discussion about public hearing notifications.
So we can note that one is completed.
So I believe that -- oh, and Ron asked me to also mention with the downtown area plan
we're still working through our contract negotiations and selecting the consultants.
So hopefully we'll have that contract ideally on council's agenda in May so we can start
our downtown area planning efforts as well with that.
So that concludes my announcements.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Commissioner Smith.
Thank you, Chair.
I talked with Hillary here between our work session and dinner, Tina, but if we can add
to the matrix, it would be nice just knowing that we've come up on DCRC with a few kind
of more hot-button topics lately, specifically short-term rentals, if we can start including
DCRC meetings and current conversation topics into the matrix as well, they could be good
to get some feedback.
And I'll take the moment now instead of doing it at concluding items, and I'll be quick
because I know it's been a long night.
In the conversation about short-term rentals with the DCRC, the direction of the committee
has really been to kind of work through the code, the six of us, and then get public feedback
on short-term rentals before there's even recommendations given to this body.
And then from there, obviously, a public hearing, then that makes recommendations to city council
to have public hearing from there.
And so trying to have extra layers of community involvement, community feedback, and any of
the DCRC members, Commissioner Villarreal, Commissioner Prude, and myself, we're willing
to visit with any of the PNZ members who have questions about short-term rentals on a one-on-one
basis that doesn't constitute a walk-in quorum.
Gotcha, Hillary.
But yeah, not just short-term rentals, but as we keep going on with DCRC, I think it'd
be nice if the commission had, "Hey, this is what DCRC's been talking about lately."
If you've got any input or things like that, talk to your DCRC members so they can get
that weighed in.
I know when we've seen code amendments that have come to the Planning and Zoning Commission,
it's been like, "This is a code amendment that three people of the seven-person commission
have talked about.
The other four might be a little bit somewhat blindsided about what was the thought process
in this, or did you guys think about this?"
And it might be good for us to bring some insight that would be good to bring into those
rooms in the DCRC discussions.
So just to make sure I understand your request correctly, so we could include on our meeting
agenda just a standing item with respect to Development Code Review Committee updates?
I don't really think it needs to be that, so much as it is what it is with saying, "Hey,
this is what's happened at City Council with items that have come across the Planning and
Zoning Commission."
Say, "Hey, DCRC recently," because it's almost always DCRC's meeting the Monday of the week
that we have Planning and Zoning.
Say, "Hey, on Monday, DCRC talked about short-term rentals, and we had discussions around reasonable
accessibility, reasonable competition."
It's been a long day, but being able to bring those up and say, "That's the topics that
are right now.
We've had three meetings now on short-term rentals, and this has kind of been what the plan and
process has been," just so other members of the commission know what the topics have been
at DCRC.
If they're not following those meetings and watching those videos and seeing those agendas,
they're kept in the loop on it as well.
Okay.
So including those in our matrix reporting that we do?
Yes.
Okay.
So basically, when Tina gives her spiel update, right?
Correct.
Yeah.
Okay.
Very good.
We can do that.
Thank you.
100% of that, I think it's really wise.
I will support 100% of that.
I think it's very wise.
One thing I will point out, and maybe it's just because I can't find it on the website,
but I believe once the COVID additional meeting recording thing was reduced because of staff
availability, that we still record those meetings as a matter of public record, but they're
not posted on the webpage to view because they're not produced by DTV.
So even if there's just a way to circulate to the rest of PNZ, the link to go watch those
somehow, I think that may aid people getting a background of what the discussions were
like and what the tenor was.
For DCRC, correct?
Okay.
That's correct.
Yes.
Thank you.
Okay.
Anything else for the matrix?
Any concluding items?
Okay.
With that, I will adjourn our meeting at 9.52 p.m.
Thank you very much, everyone.