Planning Commission Deliberations on Zoning Map and Ordinance   10/4/2023

All righty, we will be in order and we'll be

I'll do that.

Ms.

Just our regular logistics that we will not be taking verbal comment this evening, but if anyone sends an email to my address during the meeting, then that will be attached to the minutes, or if our in-person audience would like to use paper and pen, then we have that option as well, and those will be attached to the minutes.

Hey, uh, a couple points to note.

We will

anti-displacement language.

Hopefully we'll get that language and be able to review it in the second part of our meeting on Tuesday of next week.

I'm sorry.

And there are only three actions that we require next Tuesday.

One is the zoning piece, one is the consistency with comprehensive land on the road, and the other is the critical slope.

Those other things are things council will need to take action on.

Thank you for the coach team, Ms.

Creasy.

All right, so you guys hopefully have looked at this.

What this is, is we start out with the things that are in it.

And then the red lines are James' attempt to embrace the input that we've got.

All right, so this evening there's actually two documents that we sent forward.

One is the

proposed text changes based on y'all's comments coming from Article IV through to Article VII.

That document stands at just over nine pages.

And then the second document we have was potential edits for the historic districts.

This is based on comments we received from Preservation Piedmont.

These are mostly technical edits.

Sensitive really one policy discussion really in here though that is worth discussing I think what I'd like to start with is the article 4 through 7 and this time they're numbered so this should be a little bit easier the first number one is the provisions related to affordable dwelling units

Last time we had people speak, I mean, I can just kind of introduce each of these items and then we could discuss from there.

Is that how you want to do it?

All right so there were there were four components to this and I believe so the first one was a proposal from Commissioner Stolzenberg to increase the affordable housing bonus to three floors in the

8, 10, the 8 and 10-story districts.

The notion there, well, I'll let you explain what the notion was.

I looked into this a little bit, but so it does as, well, let me go ahead and let you explain what you were proposing in that.

Sure.

So the basic idea is, you know, previously we had a blanket two-floor bonus based on, no matter what the height was, right?

So a two-floor bonus in a CX3 district is like a very large bonus, 66%.

whereas in an NX10 bonus it's down to 20%.

And so the goal we really want, we would love to have people offer these deeply affordable units and especially in these tall buildings where you would then get a whole lot of units.

They're also in the places in the city where we most want people to live like near downtown and in great places to redevelop.

Also, to be honest, once you're at 12 stories, a 13th probably doesn't make a huge difference visually.

Plus everyone skips 13 on the elevator, so they can bill it as 14.

But so the goal here is just to make that bonus a little bit more proportional based on, you know, the height you're already getting.

That and because at eight stories you are

I just wanted to note, you know, in looking into this, one of the things I wanted to check is, does this help address the issue we're facing where the taller projects, the projects that are using concrete and steel, you know, right now aren't

financially feasible by the model, by the analysis that our consultants provided.

This doesn't change that calculation in any way.

It does exactly what you're describing in that it equalizes the incentive, but in terms of making the numbers work for those taller buildings, it still doesn't.

No, so maybe no one will use it, but, you know, if they do, we get a lot of deeply affordable units.

I will say, I think a deficiency of that model is that it doesn't assume that your marginal cost decreases as you add a height, as you add a floor, for example, within the same type of construction, where, you know, typically, you know, your foundation and engineering and whatever costs probably won't change proportionally based on that extra floor area, but, I mean, it

But I don't know.

Mr. Schwartz.

My only question, I'm not sure if you got to this, is whether if someone, to take advantage of the bonus units or the bonus provisions, you know, how many, how much residential would you actually have to put in there?

So, I mean, I discussed that with our consultant team and they're basically suggesting that, yeah, one could take advantage of the bonus with just putting in some nominal amount of residential.

They don't anticipate that being a likely scenario.

Well, we've seen, as I understand it, I mean, single units, but someone would need to put in a whole floor, presumably, of residential in order to, they'd have to put in multiple units.

Is that explicit in the code?

Because in order to get to the bonus, you would need to

One unit, 100% of their units are at 50% AMI by putting in one unit at 50% AMI.

But that may not be the

Yeah, that all of the bonus height goes to, you know, all of the difference goes to affordable housing, goes to residential affordable housing.

We won't all be going to affordable, right?

Yeah, that's the other way we did it, which got a little...

Your comment did not include DX.

Yeah, I guess.

It looks like you guys are pretty comfortable with this.

Yeah, I would also say the red lines aren't, the things that are crossed out are not right, but it's fine.

How do you mean?

And the second one, it says they're both 10.

All right, so going once, going twice.

We're cool.

Okay.

The next item is really kind of a cleanup item, unless anyone has any comments on it or feels that it hasn't.

All right, now I've got to make sure it's actually in here.

So, hold on.

My apologies, it looks like that one is not actually included in here, but I had language for that.

Oh, the parking lot?

No, the lower finishes I have, it's the parking one, I had language on that.

The flexibility for affordable units to have.

I mean, the language was simply to note that the parking was only where the parking was required.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Next.

I'm a little concerned.

I mean, what would that generally flexible be?

Well, I mean, finishes would be interior finishes.

Right.

Maybe.

Right.

Then they might have regular, it might make sense for them to do regular finishes all the way around.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, you know, the same idea with the

The same idea with the appliances, they have to be of new and of good quality, quote-unquote, but you don't need a Viking stove.

Particularly, incidentally, if you start trying to line that up with the notional cost of appliances and rents and that sort of thing, you probably need a standardized set of affordable, everyone understands, particularly if you're going all in and saying this is a utilities-included affordable unit.

So equivalency and concurrency, I think this was mine.

The idea here, so for required affordable units, I think we want them to be equivalent and concurrent at the same time.

But for bonus units in the R zones, I think that doesn't really make sense.

You know, there's no incentive here.

We're not giving people things in exchange for those.

They're just, if you want to provide us affordable units, you can.

And so

if you have a plan to build you know three townhouses and you have extra space in the back and you want to give that extra land to Habitat, Habitat should be able to use their standard you know model like architectural plans that Carl made for them or you know build it as they see fit rather than having to match the way you've built the other units in the building when you might not even be like

The same people aren't even contracting it, right?

A non-profit's building one, your developer's building the other.

We're not getting some information.

I would prefer my proposal.

It's also, I mean, somebody who, a homeowner may decide to put a couple tiny houses in the backyard, and then that's, you know, do those.

But we're not, but so now we're basically saying where there's the units in it that they could not follow these standards.

As long as, you know, even if it's a, you know, built-in ADU in a sort of, you know, English basement apartment or something and they want to make that permanently affordable, um,

So the objectives of that section of the ordinance, the reason that exists is so that one can't go to a mixed income project and say, oh, those are the affordable units.

That's the objective.

We don't want them to be identifiable and picked out.

And if you go to most projects in the city, that's not the case.

I think that makes a lot of sense when you're talking about a building where we're requiring 10% of the units to be affordable.

If we're talking about a bunch of sublots on a property,

Just set a threshold for a number of units and be done with it.

It doesn't have to be more than 10.

I mean, you could say six.

It's under six.

So I think the fundamental difference here is some of them are the 10% we're requiring to be mixed in, which is part of the requirement.

And then some of them are the, well, you can build extra units in low density R zones if they're affordable.

Yeah, that's why the number of units fixes, sort of fixes that problem.

That's with the bonus.

Yeah, which is, yeah, which, I mean, it would seem to me that these would not be large developments.

Therefore, the way to deal with that is exempt projects with less than X units and just, fine, that applies.

Well, I think the way to do it is just to exempt the R zones.

because it's the required affordable unit.

Right.

I think we're going backwards.

I'm saying there is no mixed-in requirement.

There's no consistency requirement if it's six or fewer units to pick something out of me, and it's not a problem.

So your objection is that somebody who may want to build 10 units on a RC is going to say, but I have to have consistency.

Yeah, I guess I'm characterizing it separate as, look, you've got two or three units that are sort of eclectic and that's that.

It's a whole different thing.

I didn't really consider the idea.

I mean, but I'm still...

I mean, that is then an apartment complex and I think it's, I think that- It's not, it's townhouse.

You said two rows and then something that you've given to Habitat or PHA to build on.

All right, colloquially, that's a 12 unit apartment complex or a 12 unit development.

Three different buildings on one, I mean that's, to me, that stigmatizes the affordable units in that case.

And I can't put that requirement in.

Okay, let's back up to the English basement scenario, right?

What I'm providing is a waiver pathway to that rather than what I'm concerned about is basically saying in these districts there are no requirements for equivalency or concurrency whatsoever, which also means I could simply come in and say, yeah, I'm in the process of transferring that property over to an affordable housing builder.

And yes, but in that case, you can't, you're still only up to your buy right limit and only an affordable housing developer can build those units, right?

So you could build something and then 10 years later say, oh, I would love for the land trust to build something here.

It would not be concurrent.

Well, the alternative is no affordable units at all and no change, right?

You could simply not build the affordable units.

So it seems to be, and again, I think back to the great work that Greenville did from their redevelopment.

The affordable units look just like, including the finishes and the appliances, look just like the market rate units.

I'm pretty comfortable with the language that Mr. Brees has written, but we need to land this.

So let's... So his language is... It is on page 2, second from the top, section 4.22 C1, little c. All right.

I think I may be on the wrong.

Second page.

Yep.

And I'm on page two of the, all right.

Yeah, I'm on the PDF.

Page three of the PDF.

Okay.

Three of the paragraph, okay.

There we go.

Sorry about that.

This is exactly what they did in Greenville.

Yeah.

And while we're at it, I would suggest, and I know this is sort of adding to our, that in the equivalency of units section, we add

this language that's at the very top of page.

What are we doing?

Right, we need to make a decision.

We've got Mr. Stolzenberg's request.

And we've got the NDS colleagues' recommendation.

We need to figure out which one we're going to go with.

With Mr. Frieser's language.

Mr. Schwartz.

Mr. Palmer.

I mean, Mr. Havala.

I see strengths on either.

I mean, I just don't see why you would disincentivize affordable units that they're only providing... We're not giving anything away to get them, right?

So they're...

were saying if you don't meet our strict requirements about this and the administrator doesn't agree or doesn't like them in some way because they're visually different or something, then just don't provide them at all.

I appreciate that we're not giving anything away, but I'm thinking, I'm looking at this from the perspective of the person who's living in the subsidized housing.

Again, I think that we need to make a distinction between an eclectic R-A yacht lot that may have three units on it, where it can be, where that is consistent.

It's an R-A lot.

There are going to be different looking houses.

So I think that distinction is the R zones versus the other zones.

You know, if you have eight by right and they're

townhouses, and then you get two extra as a bonus, that's, they're gonna be a duplex in townhouses.

In that way alone, they'll be different, right?

I'm talking myself out of it.

So, I mean, again, your market rate units are whatever.

If you don't allow affordable units, that's all you get.

Or if they choose not to build any affordable units, that's all they get.

Because they're physically different.

It must reflect the composition of the overall project units, the number of bedrooms, exterior appearance, and overall.

Well, I mean, that's actually a fairly substantial issue, particularly with larger projects, because that you can, even if you're stacking on a fairly large, you're like, look, this is a two-bedroom with walk-in closets and high-end finishes, and above it is a three-bedroom unit without those walk-in closets, and all three bedrooms are a little smaller.

All right, I'd like to get a neutral opinion.

Mr. Balmer, do you have any thoughts?

Not particularly .

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

Is it manageable?

Can you state it again?

I mean, in terms of writing it?

No, managing and enforcing it.

Everybody comfortable with Graham's recommendation?

I think it's going to make it unnecessarily complicated and I don't think it makes a lot of sense.

Well, that's certainly the intent of the comprehensive plan and the affordable housing plan.

Yeah.

Then I guess I don't know what the criticism is then.

I think the issue here, and I think the chair and I sort of vocalized this, you do not want to open even a small door for stigmatizing and differentiation.

That what you're doing is you're building a second class building and you can't have the appearance of it being a second class building.

Period.

That is not furthering an affordable housing goal.

It looks like we don't have consensus but we've got a majority in favor of Mr. Bob's recommendation.

My concern for this one is that it requires that right of first refusal, which makes me wonder if it now prohibits those 99-year terms.

So, you know, the model where it's simply required to be sold to a qualifying household at a qualifying price versus there's a right of first refusal.

Yes, for the model we didn't accommodate before and want to accommodate.

So the model of there's simply a deed restriction that says you have to sell it to a qualifying household at a qualifying price.

There's not necessarily a right of first refusal to sell it back to the initial, like the builder.

So I envision the

The right of first refusal is not necessarily to the developer.

The city or whoever.

And that's just to give the city that touch on that property at its first turnover.

And I think that if you try to impose these 99-year affordability, you know,

I'm just saying we should also allow that.

So in the land trust contract, is there a right at first refusal right now in their current contract?

I have no idea.

That's on page one.

No, I guess they actually do have a right of first refusal.

All right.

All right.

Right, well, that wraps up what I have on the ADU section.

Are there any other questions?

I'm sorry.

Blocks and connectivity.

Perhaps this one will go quicker.

So this one was represented, I think really there were some kind of technical corrections that were identified.

Do folks understand these?

Oh, there's a typo.

It is a challenge.

Yeah, it's a challenge when spellcheck doesn't recognize that it's a word even if it's the wrong one.

Corresponding is what I'm going to go with though.

I like that word.

Thank you, Commissioner Solla-Yates.

On the last bullet there, Carl, this was your comment.

You understand that we've gone with the more flexible option, which is why we didn't reflect a change.

Yeah.

That's one.

Great.

See, that one didn't take out an hour.

All right.

Number three is streets.

There were no... What page is that?

I numbered the bottom of the pages.

That was a question that was raised by Commissioner.

Sorry, that's not clear.

Commissioner Schwartz had asked the question, what was the street grade we arrived at for 240 stripling when you guys were considering the waiver in that case?

So my concern is that we are still making it more restrictive than then, right?

Because before the administrator staff could give a waiver to 10% and then that could be appealed.

And now we seem to be saying that you can give a waiver to 10% and that cannot be appealed.

So 240 stripling could not have happened.

And look, I spent two months in a wheelchair.

I'm all for flattening everything.

I think I said it back then, too.

Hey, there's all kinds of problems that you can solve by simply picking the city up and moving it to a more affordable location.

The maximum allowable street grade is 8%.

In areas with existing steep topography, the administrator may allow a grade of up to 10%.

In the current, yeah, but then there's another section that says, like, all these things can be appealed to the Planning Commission, and I don't think that's there anymore.

and I don't know if that was intentional because there was talk of removing our ability to hear an appeal or if that's just because those appeals in general were removed.

In the existing code?

No.

You can appeal up to 10.

You can appeal the denial of the waiver up to 10.

Right.

So right now, the appeal of an administrator's decision goes to the BZA, if I'm not wrong.

I'm fine with BZA hearing it.

As long as there's no process.

All right, and then so then the second bullet there under number three is about the greenscape zone preserving the existing trees.

The greatest extent possible sounds a little weird.

Curve around.

Feasible would make me feel better than possible because you could certainly do a lot that's possible.

So this was a clarification.

The question was raised.

The table at 451C2 is referring to, it's a C district in the pedestrian access type 1.

It's just noting that where in the district one looks would be the entrance standards and that defines the spacing between those pedestrian access types.

So this is just a clarifying language.

The question that's raised, so in the next item, so the bottom of page three, basically presented a choice here.

So this last sentence of that line, so I'll read the whole thing, where a retaining wall, open drainage, or similar obstacle interrupts a required access way, the connection must be designed to facilitate passage through or over the obstacle.

So where we're required to provide a pedestrian access way to the street, and it's interrupted by one of these things,

that language applies, right?

But if the connection is not ADA compliant, a separate compliant access way must be provided.

That language was added based on a comment provided by our ADA coordinator position in the city, right?

So I think Commissioner Schwartz raised a reasonable concern with that requirement as being a strict requirement.

So there's two options for dealing with that.

One is to remove the line entirely and simply rely on the general ADA rules.

The other one is to make this something that can be decided by the administrator in working with the applicant.

Yeah, so my concern was just if you've got something blocking you from having

There might be a place where it's nearly impossible to get an ADA route from the street to the building, so my suggestion was

So, I agree with Carl's suggestion, except that

and it's a bit of a semantic difference.

I'm fine with that.

So required but waivable.

So basically the other way around.

Yeah, this is just a cleanup item.

Okay.

All right.

Number five, transitions and screening.

As long as, yeah, so I think I was confused.

I think I'm still confused, but as long as you can,

Absolutely.

You can.

With two lanes even.

Perfect.

Okay.

All right.

Chain link fences?

Lyle loves them.

Why?

So, well, it seems like when we remove that line, we're also removing the requirement for vinyl coating.

So I guess that means bare metal.

Speaking as a guy with a chain link fence.

Is it final coded?

It is not.

Seems like a conflict of interest.

All right, the next item is a very technical item.

Ate up more time than I anticipated.

No, that's all right.

We're digging into the details, but this is a situation where it's dealing with fence height on top of a retaining wall.

and the question was raised about well what if that height as set in there ends up making your fence too low to sufficiently serve as a guardrail so we basically have addressed that issue I believe yeah all right all right and that just repeats and then this is a missing word in 481 d2

So just for the 481D2, so if the fence is 10 feet into the yard and on a little rise, is it still measured from the alleyway?

I remember discussing this issue with our consultant.

Oh, right, well, and there it is.

So there's the bullet.

Do we need a ad case?

All right.

All right.

All right.

Well, next thing.

You ready for the next item?

Okay.

Moving to landscaping.

Yeah, and I'm happy with what you did for the finials and posts.

So, I mean, if we have a drought, that's one thing.

I don't know.

James can wave it.

It just seemed like it was... This is for city-required trees and planting, right?

Again, this isn't a deal killer for me.

It just seemed like it was best practice.

Well, and during drought conditions, we just declare an emergency and tell you not to water.

I think, I mean, what this is, is without saying it, I think you're trying to steer folks towards native plantings.

Right.

Yeah, you're not relying on things that you just shouldn't be doing in the first place.

On someone turning on the system for our required plants to stay alive.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good point.

It doesn't prohibit the installation of an irrigation system.

So we're good keeping the scratch out of what an irrigation system must be provided?

I agree with it.

Yeah.

No concerns with the adding harmonious, sustainable, and resilient to the intended tree preservation?

They are.

And again, we were looking at a

Some ability to allow for greater than 20-foot trees under overhead utility lines in certain circumstances.

I'm thinking High Street.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

Is it you again?

I think you answered a bunch of these.

Jeff handed me a bunch of the existing language.

It doesn't make sense to me and I feel like we see these things all the time and no one's been reading the actual regs.

But your general assessment is it's not only are the rules not being followed, the people enforcing the rules are not being followed.

Well, I don't mean it like that.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Maybe they were there for a long time.

It just seems like they're, like, you know, the Omni is in an ADC district.

It's got a monument sign.

The Jefferson School is an IPP.

It has a monument sign.

Well, that was my thinking.

So what do you agree?

What are we doing?

Let's go to the, I think it might be easier to see.

The side of the room is confused.

So going to the red lines, large temporary signs are not permitted in the residential ADC and IDPs.

My question about that was what if we have a big event sign on the mall?

Isn't that a large temporary sign?

Which we do all the time.

Yeah.

So that seemed just, yeah, as, um,

The proposed, I don't know if it's proposed, the red line shows striking it from ADC and IPP.

Yeah, comma, ADC or, yeah.

I read it as not something else other than residential, I think.

Right.

I'm perfectly prepared to have someone argue the other way and win.

Wait, what?

There's no sense, actually.

Would this block churches in R from putting up signs?

Churches put up signs.

Well, it's a temporary sign.

They put up something different.

or it's like a big happy Easter banner or something.

Yeah, right.

That's pretty good.

Well, it's interesting also, I'm now noticing, the start of that section is a large temporary sign is any sign with an area of greater than 10 square feet, which is placed to blah, blah, blah.

Then three under that says large temporary signs must not exceed 32 square feet.

Oh, wait, so 10 to 32.

That does make sense.

That's pretty big.

Well, 10 feet isn't that big, right?

Thirty-two is pretty big, yeah.

Which is... But it's, I mean, we see those on the mall.

Well, that, yeah.

One that comes to mind is fraternities often put pieces of plywood painted into a sign for their spring bamboo parties or whatever.

Probably not.

I can live with that.

The awning thing was not my comment, but that makes sense that you could put a sign on the side of an awning.

Temporary signs not over 32 square feet, not over 10 square feet in an ADC district are permitted.

Maybe it's in a different section.

All wall signs for a single building must be coordinated as you color and lettering.

You know, you get a building, like the flats has, you know, every sign is a different brand, different.

Each business has their own branding on their sign panel.

So there's coordination, and it obviously goes through a comprehensive sign plan.

So there is some coordination.

The language didn't seem necessary to me.

The suspended pool sign must be located in a landscape bed.

Illumination, Jeff disagrees with me, so I won't push this, but I swear that we allow internally lit signs as long as it's only the letters that are lit up.

So the Jefferson School has this.

The Marriott has this.

In the daylight, it looks like a big red plastic sign with the Marriott in white letters, and at night, you just see Marriott.

I believe that is what we have in the ordinance.

They're prohibited in certain districts in downtown corner West Main.

Oh, except in West Main internally lit channel letters are allowed.

which I guess is what we have on the Marriott.

And then an entrance corridor is internally signed when permitted and shall have an opaque background.

This really shouldn't be different from district to district.

Did we redo the sign ordinance in like 2007?

Is that right?

Yeah, maybe we just make a note to go deal with signs at some point in the next couple of years.

We were talking about illumination.

Oh, that was, yeah, sorry, I went off on a tangent there.

I didn't realize that was only reserved for emergency colors because I swear that Mary Joy had a problem with, she allowed it for,

Five Guys when they used to be in the mall.

And she used to always say that she regretted that.

So I thought that was just a, I thought that was an aesthetic thing that we don't allow red light.

But it's a safety thing.

Well, that's what staff's comment was.

So, okay.

So elimination.

Forgive me for digressing.

That's what we require in entrance quarters currently.

Yeah, but will that language make it back into the code?

That's what I just read.

I'm reading from the code right now.

Oh, sorry.

Got it.

Got it.

Cool.

Outdoor lighting.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, okay.

Okay, moving on.

Okay, string lights are not prohibited.

Great.

It seemed to me that holiday decorative lights still probably need to meet our regulations.

Like we shouldn't have big old spotlights or something just because it's a holiday light.

Scrooge.

Sounds like you're trying to kill the Christmas life decoration race.

I am the Grinch.

The security lighting, my concern is just in the our districts, and yeah, I understand that we,

So I don't know if I'll... So just to the language, security lighting controlled by sensors, I mean, I don't know much about security lighting, but the sense is that

One wants something that lights up dramatically, right?

Because that's the point of security lighting.

It is.

Maybe we can't tackle it tonight, but I think at some point we need to figure out if there's a way to ward it so that it's not shining into your neighbor's windows.

because that's where, I mean, yeah.

If it's a motion detector, it's like my neighbors have a motion detector on the alleyway behind my house.

And fortunately, I don't have any windows that really face back there, but my neighbors, their whole house is illuminated anytime someone walks down the alleyway.

Yeah.

Or a large animal or, you know.

Although it has prevented their cars from being broken into any more.

So I get the point.

I agree that 6,000 is very, very high.

I just Googled what a regular bulb is and what 270.

How about 3,000?

Let's just reduce the lumens.

I mean, you know, an interesting thing here, right, is, like, if it's a big parking lot fixture or something, like, for a large area, you know, like, a commercial area, maybe a lot.

Like, that makes sense.

But then in a residential area, that seems kind of out of scale, and we don't have any differentiation there.

I don't know.

Well, I mean, you might.

I don't care about this as much in a commercial district as I do in someone's... Yeah, like side-side yard.

and the R Districts take it down to 3,000?

I'd take it down further, but I'll live with 3,000.

Please, can we go to compromise?

Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that worries me is, like, you can always scale it up later.

This is the one time I'm actually worried that people will put in lights and then they will stick with those lights forever.

Whereas other things, you know, a building, you can... Three thousand is the consensus.

Did we gloss over the Christmas thing?

No, I, I, oh, that, sorry.

No, holiday lights that are, that don't, so like string lights and whatnot are not part of the, they're exempt.

Under 1600 lumens?

Yeah, under 1600 lumens.

It should be.

Some pretty bright Christmas lights.

People seem to like them.

I like them.

I like them as well.

Don't delete the words holiday lighting.

Light color.

And it should be no more than 3000 Kelvin, so you've got to put a K in there.

You got the sale.

So maximum of 3,000 numbers.

You got the sale.

Next.

What was the answer on that one?

They proposed putting in maximum foot candles at the property line.

It must be zero?

Yeah.

Is that?

What did you say to that?

We don't have any comment on it.

No spillover, even onto a sidewalk.

Well, I must not trespass onto adjacent property sidewalks or the right-of-way.

What half?

Can we stick with that?

Let's see what we got.

The maximum for non-cutoff fixtures, I feel pretty strongly this needs to go down to 1,600.

Not the most.

so you can have an uncovered 100 watt incandescent bulb or its equivalent.

So that gives me some heartburn just because over in the downtown area,

Committee, Downtown Mall Committee.

Everyone's talking about the historic uplates that Halperin put on the trees on the Downtown Mall, and there's a whole thing about how even the dark sky people think that can be appropriate in a place like the Downtown Mall.

Technically, the mall doesn't

But the tree is blocking it with its leaves.

But it doesn't have leaves all year.

I'm not sure where my uplighting of trees and buildings.

Uplighting comes from.

We've just been dead in the kingdom of the blind and all that.

I think we're getting away from it.

There might be places on grounds where there still are uplights, but generally, yeah, we've gotten away from it.

uplighting trees.

How come?

From dark skies.

It's just generally a maintenance headache that we don't need to deal with then, things like that.

I think security-wise, too, I don't think it shouldn't be like a security, help with security.

So, you know, there's really no benefit.

It's, you know, use electricity, which is a carbon suck.

I don't.

3, 1,600 is the consensus.

With one guy kind of going like this.

So the last note here, Carl, just to differentiate, the reason GC is different from C2 is C2 is referring to pole-mounted lights, and this one could be a building-mounted light or similar.

So that's why I'm suggesting just keep them both.

Yes, it's kind of repetitive, but there is a differentiation.

That's fine.

But they are at least consistent.

Okay.

Yeah, additions and deletions to the, or reviewing the contributing buildings, is it not?

Yeah.

And just the language was different for each.

I think the ADCs required residents and business owners to weigh in, and the historic conservation districts did not.

Yeah, I mean, I don't have any problems about doing it.

I mean, I guess what it's,

The difference was the amount of public input that goes into changes to the historic conservation districts.

What happens if the...

You don't want to know.

It doesn't disappear?

No.

Okay.

for 15 years.

Do you feel resolved?

You do not need that language.

Jeff would prefer to leave it as it was.

Wait, why do we not need that language?

Is it because we already assume that our design guidelines prevail?

There are.

So what Jeff was saying is that the actual portion of those standards, it's only 10 items and they're pretty small.

But our CLG requirements mention the

Secretary of the Interior Standards.

So we can fix that later.

Hopefully we'll get around to doing our guidelines at some point.

We have started.

We are doing it.

More than hopefully.

Those guidelines need to be updated.

All right.

Good.

So the next two items were just typos.

Again, appreciate the ayes for typos.

Number 12, subdivision.

Oh, right.

This is mine.

So think about a PUD or something, like Robinson Woods or whatever.

Typically, you subdivide it up, you make a bunch of parcels for houses to be on, and then you have one parcel that's kind of like the remaining land that's

either or both used for stormwater and for recreation.

And they are almost never like shaped correctly.

So the idea is basically you can have a stormwater parcel or a recreation parcel that doesn't meet the like lot frontage requirements and the shape and size requirements.

Yeah, and there are a lot of them like that already.

No, it makes sense.

Great.

All right.

Moving into general standards.

Just noting, this is Chapter 7.

That's the last one.

It seemed funny that trellises, arbors, pergolas, these seem like things that people put up against their fences and we are specifically prohibiting them from being against a property line.

It just seemed a little odd.

Maybe you're really competitive with your neighbor and set up opposing teams.

I don't know how to fix that.

So what I'm hearing is a general consensus that, because what this section is simply saying is how far they're allowed to encroach within the setback, but what we're,

One way or the other, yeah.

Like your trellis could burn down, I guess?

I feel like that item is resolved.

Great.

No, we will specify only where there's teams set up on either side of the line when it's allowed.

Yeah, sheds are easier in greenhouses.

Dog houses and chicken coops, most chicken coops are up against the building.

So is any of this being currently enforced because the number of sheds that have been converted into sort of

a jack leg improvised garages along alleys in Belmont could be measured in the dozens and they are not finding back and forth.

That's right.

That's why I went down to like one foot for encroachments, right?

Or is this separate from encroachments?

I don't know.

I mean, this is part of encroachments.

I guess this could have been one of those, you know, it was 2 o'clock in the morning and I was getting confused and frustrated and...

If it's not important, it's not important.

And then the question, you said the question was that we need to add a section for freestanding and closed structures, sheds, dockhouses.

So what I would say also in response to this is probably our response from the consultant team is these are considered accessory structures.

I think they were generalizing.

Sheds and greenhouses would be accessory structures.

The rest of them we probably wouldn't actually take, we wouldn't

I'm sorry, don't we have a section for enclosed structures?

I see.

Projecting.

Is that what we're talking about?

It just says projecting and not...

Yeah, yes, that's right, the definition section.

Yeah.

It's separate, but it's also sort of definitions.

Or they can't encroach, in which case they're four feet side and rear.

Right.

It's a little less than current, anyway.

Well, for accessory structures, it's five feet, currently.

Yeah, the restrooms thing, I was confused if that was part of active depth.

I think it should be.

It looks like on the diagram that it is, but then I think the definition said it wasn't.

Right.

Please do.

A boarding house, group living environment, it's

is not a household.

Physically, because the bedrooms can be locked out.

But it's not just that they can lock out.

It's the understanding that those are private spaces, i.e., it is not a household.

In a household, theoretically, each member of the family can access any room.

I guess you get four unrelated people renting a four-bedroom apartment.

And I know there's only four people at that point, but I'm just the difference.

If you guys feel comfortable with it, I'm fine with it.

It just seemed like it was something that was questioning if that's something someone could take advantage of.

Right.

Gotcha.

But we permit group living, so.

What do we think?

No thoughts on this issue?

That's good.

I don't think it's a challenge, I guess is what I'm saying.

It's a feature.

I think that's fine.

I was starting to wonder what happens when you have an extended family living together and there are over eight people.

Yeah, I mean, we're not going to get involved, especially with the new code.

Okay.

It's not a concern.

Do you guys want to exclude restrooms from the definition of active spaces?

Okay.

Now, I mean, from a practical perspective, the, well, yeah, I'm not going to go into it.

It's fine.

This is the historic district's provisions.

So the vast majority of these are kind of technical edits, and I apologize that this arrived today.

This came from a letter that you all have received from Preservation Piedmont.

Again, the majority of this is basically making sure that we have consistency between our existing, bringing forward provisions of our existing ordinance and kind of cleaning up

some aspects of that.

The one thing I want to highlight, if we can skip to it, is number nine, which would be on page two on my document.

So if you look at the first paragraph now leaving aside this is all red because it's moving around and that's one of the issues with redlining right but so all of this is existing language except if I go to the very first paragraph of 9c or c the very first paragraph in this section the last sentence of that is new and this is getting at something that Preservation Piedmont has specifically requested in their letter they suggested basically including language in every single

section saying that BAR has the authority to reduce or modify these limitations and this is putting that authority in one place.

I would note the existing language allows

to provide conditions relative to this compatibility with the scale and character of the district at play.

This is making it even more explicit, saying conditions may require a reduction in height or mass inconsistent with the city's design guidelines.

Now, if we took this approach, I would also then suggest that we follow what has been Carl's recommendation of removing the step-back requirements that are explicitly written in the downtown district and relying on the BAR, which again, Carl has raised a number of times.

And I'd also remove the BAR review language from the downtown district and rely

simply on that condition is allowed.

Well, you know where I stand.

Well, but we already have it in downtown.

The question seems to be whether it's appropriate elsewhere.

But I, yeah.

Well, I'll note the existing language does speak to the scale and character.

So to the extent that it's been exercised or not, it seems like there's at least some language that's pointed to the idea that the BAR had this authority.

But also note the next line, prior to attaching conditions to an approval, due consideration must be given to the cost of compliance with proposed conditions.

I do appreciate that balancing factor.

And then the last thing I'll note is

The only new sentence in here is that last sentence where I added the words consistent with the city's design guidelines.

It cannot be arbitrary.

It's got to be reflective of design guidelines, and this speaks to the need to update those and make those even more clear.

I mean, our guidelines, and we usually are, we've been pretty liberal with them.

I mean, they say, I think 200% is a number that's used for how much taller something can be built in surroundings.

But again, we, you know, a previous BAR approved the Dewberry.

And I was on the BAR when we approved an extra couple stories on top of that, which had not been built.

You have mentioned West Sacken a couple times, and that's actually not how that went down.

I was the swing vote on that, and it was not about height.

It was the fact that the entire South Street facade was three stories of unmodulated mass.

So it just would have been a flat wall all the way down for 200 feet, which would not meet our current zoning code.

So that was why I voted down that one.

And there's a lot more to that.

That was a complicated... It was a...

I don't think that was an honest application by the developer.

We whittled a little bit of mass out of the Wharton Baker house, or Wharton Baker apartment building, but that's still, I believe, a four-story building that sits, it wraps a historic structure.

The BAR has been pretty liberal about height in NASA and just reducing it where it's absolutely necessary.

We can use it.

Yeah, you're the other architect.

I hear Rory.

I was contemplating that, you know, we already have it in downtown.

But I'm listening to what Carl is saying.

And there's that.

So I'm comfortable with the new language that they may require a reduction in height or massing.

I always try to make things more complicated.

Have a limit to how much they can reduce it.

I believe Commissioner Soli-Yates may have mentioned that in the last meeting.

That just makes it a little more predictable for applicants

But the BAR can only provide the approval once it's for the entire COA, even though you all do have preliminary discussions and other discussions along the way.

So it could

There could be some confusion because they wouldn't have necessarily everything designed, per se, but maybe they're trying to get some feedback on the height, and then as they get more things designed, maybe it doesn't work.

I don't know.

You know, there may be a natural point for a building to have a, like if someone is building on the mall, we have existing structures, and maybe there's a certain depth that makes sense to preserve before you go up with a tall building behind you.

So that would be the BR determining how deep that step back has to be.

Is the BR the only entity that can

And then there's, if the applicant or public doesn't like the decision that the VAR made, it goes to council.

I mean, but the VAR is like the primary arbiter.

Not the public exactly, right?

Yeah.

I think I'm all right, but where are you going with this?

I mean, we have the ADC, you know, districts for a reason.

Okay.

I think this, I get really worried about putting specific, no, I think it needs to happen elsewhere as well.

I mean, I think on Portland we have the, we should have the ability to whittle away at a

what potential massing.

Similarly on West Main.

If we can get guidelines that make it very clear that there needs to be some clarity for applicants, and I'm especially thinking about affordable housing here, especially thinking about LIHTC here, some way to actually get the units in reliably, then I'm good with it.

Yeah, I mean, that would be my concern, that it's a stalking horse.

I'm sorry the BAR wouldn't let us do that.

And I guess that's where you have council as a fallback.

So if the affordable units are worth that much to make the building out of character, council will go for it.

It definitely will slow the process down because it will be really hard to parallel the site plan process because there's a really big element that will be a variable that wasn't necessarily before.

Yeah, I think I'm congruent.

Yep, and the BAR has explicitly refused to consider that.

Yeah, so we send the affordable housing providers with their LIHTC deadlines and everything else through this gauntlet to get to City Council.

City Council will say, yeah, okay, never mind.

And we're X number of months later.

As James mentioned, I do like the addition of due consideration will be given to the cost of compliance.

My problem with that language is like,

It's talking about direct costs, right?

Like, oh, you have to put brick instead of vinyl and not, you know, opportunity cost of your building now doesn't have all of this floor area, which does not seem to be covered.

I don't know why I wouldn't read it in the broader sense.

Due consideration will be given to the cost of compliance with the proposed conditions.

Consistent with the city's design guidelines and intent of the comprehensive plan.

And they do all the time, and we always say that's not our purview, but I think that would open the door.

Well, if it becomes your purview, then you're going to have to deal with that.

Explain to me what we're

Well, because we prioritize the housing and living in an environment, and so we could sort of point it even more directly there.

But the BAR is now allowed to take that into consideration.

You said they are allowed now.

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

Like with the solar panels, they were like, oh, I don't care that we have a climate plan.

It's not in our standards of review.

Lyle, does that make you feel better?

Yes, I can see how that can work.

I might find a different place to put that to make it actually more prominent.

Yeah, because it shouldn't just be about masking.

It should also be about masking.

It should be about the whole time.

No, this is good.

I think this is good.

We'll find out.

Or they may kill me in two weeks when I, you know, at our next meeting.

This is...

Well, I mean, I'm not following on on Carl's fears of harm.

Just a related topic, I mean, I want to emphasize that this does make the work on the BAR guidelines all the more important.

So to be clear, with this change, we also would be getting rid of the step-back requirements in the zoning ordinance.

I might suggest that the BAR guidelines would need clearer standards around step-back.

So I was looking at them today, and it's there.

So it's not like it's not referenced within those guidelines.

And so other topics.

So things for you to carry forward.

Any other, does anything else stand out within these changes for folks?

What I really, you guys are going to hate me for this.

But I think we would not be doing proper due diligence if we didn't take at least 20 minutes just to read through this.

Sure.

I'm sorry, guys.

Do you want to take a recess for us to read it?

That sounds good to me.

I think it's just, it's our job to.

So 20 minutes.

At 6, 7, 10, we'll, we're on recess now.

Sorry about that, but I agree.

Did the line about the, um.

Can't read if you were talking.

I'm just kidding.

I'm just kidding.

Secretary of the Interior Standards.

So we're not on recess now.

Ooh, I had one question, but Mr. Freeze straightened me out so we're good on that.

Any questions or issues?

We got 20 minutes, he said.

I have five minutes to call.

I was going to read it in three minutes and be done.

I mean, yeah I mean, if it's helpful, I can walk through each of these and Yeah, that's just the right thing to do, please It's the right thing to do Alright, so, number one, we don't need the acronym, we never use it anywhere in the ordinance

Grammatically, this reads better with or.

This is a recommendation from Preservation Piedmont that notes that we had this exact language in the historic conservation district sections, but not previously in the ADC district.

It's good.

It's kind of considered a best practice.

So we didn't have it in the, oh, the re-up part.

The re-up part, yeah.

The ADCs, I feel like we talked about this last time, but I don't remember.

We did talk about this where we went ahead and took all the individual language about it and consolidated it into one paragraph that was consistent.

We're really going to do that.

We need to.

There you go.

That doesn't determine whether they're contributing or not.

Yeah.

All right.

It was noted that IPPs were missing from that section and ought to have been there.

Commas make that more readable.

I don't know if I can't explain this one, but Jeff and I talked about it at length.

It's redundant.

Right, exactly.

Something like that, yes.

This one is noting, so we already had this rule, so this is all windows and doors and any change in your materials for roof coverings or sightings need to go for major review, major historic review.

This was already in the minor review section where it said these things are not subject to minor review, therefore they are subject to major review.

This is simply clarifying by bringing it into major reviews.

Right.

I will say this is one thing where, I mean, I don't know.

Windows are an issue, and we need to discuss windows as a group, but there's...

The preservationists throw out study after study saying that if you keep the window, you're actually, and you put up a storm window, you're doing better, you're not throwing away materials.

I like a window that opens, so we need to look at our guidelines on that.

I think that's a good point.

I think that's something that can come up through the guidelines and may also come to a head when we get into doing the environmental review of our environmental regulations as, if you will, phase two of all this.

All right, number eight in the Historic Conservation District.

This is clarifying, there was a lot of repetition in this section, so we did two things.

One is we clarified that the first paragraph of this section is about construction of new buildings, because the subsequent sections cover the additions and demolitions.

Then the other thing here was noting that we were using the term visible from any abutting street.

There was a concern raised by Preservation Piedmont that, well, if it's hidden by vegetation, vegetation can die and then it becomes visible.

So they were concerned about the temporalness of that standard.

So we are noting here that it doesn't count if it's only hidden by vegetation.

Right.

And the conversation that Jeff and I had on this note was that there could be a large accessory structure, say a garage, that is hiding something from view.

And the garage is contributing structure.

It's going to stay.

Therefore, we should be able to have the advantage of that

That makes sense to me.

What's the rationale behind a fence being like vegetation that can die?

I'm happy to take the fence out.

I just put it in there as, I mean, the fences are often not opaque anyway.

But then it wouldn't be in front of you.

Right.

It wouldn't be visible.

Hey, we can take the fence out.

Doesn't bother me.

I think vegetation's fine.

I would say keep fence.

I mean, yeah, it's basically, I mean, there's going to be so few cases that this has actually come up, but I mean, someone could have a toll fence on the street and it's a corner lot and we should be able to review what happens upon that fence.

Now the example of like a contributing garage or, you know, outbuilding or something that's, that makes a lot more sense.

Yeah, I don't care that much.

Yeah.

All right.

So number nine, we've talked about the big issue in number nine.

The other issue here was that it was reorganized for clarity because it was kind of all over the place.

Yeah.

And then number 10, this was a comment raised by Preservation Piedmont.

They noted that the criteria for review was different.

It was different between ADCs, IPPs, which are together, and historic conservation districts.

We had merged those because they are, to our eyes, very similar, but the feeling was that there were nuanced differences that needed to be reflected, and so we separated them out again.

Can you explain what those nuanced differences are?

Well, if you compare the language here, let's see if I can pull out an example.

Wow.

They are different.

But this language is identical to the existing ordinance, correct?

The ADCs are missing bullets?

HCDs.

Oh, they do.

Yes, they do.

Yes, that's one of the differences, yeah.

The text is fine.

Yeah.

The only difference between the existing and the proposed is and this was something that was reflected in the proposed text in number 10 in our existing draft.

One of the criteria referred to impacts on the neighborhood and we changed that to impacts on the abutting structures.

because we think that is both more measurable and ultimately you're going to get to the neighborhood by looking at each abutting in a historic district where everything is supposed to largely stay the same.

So we felt that that was inappropriate.

change.

So that is a difference that was reflected in the draft we already had and I believe carried forward into, yes, if you look at D under the HCDs, the effect of the proposed change on the adjacent buildings or structures as opposed to in the existing language it says on the adjacent, or it says on the neighborhood.

So this actually is an expansion of what's in the current ordinance, right, which applies to ADCs and IPPs but not conservation districts.

Could be, yeah.

I was not really plugged into the whole

Bull and Mills Conservation District controversy, but I seem to recall that some concern was that it would open homeowners up to enforcement actions by the city because people don't like their exterior paint job or whatever.

And maybe that's also come up in talking about

Don't like the color or flaking paint?

This is talking about demolition by neglect.

I think it's trying to talk about demolition by neglect.

And in an HCD, you do have to get permission to demolish the building.

I think if you took out produce a detrimental effect upon the character of a design district,

The second part, the life and character of a contributing structure or property is talking about demolition by neglect.

Do those need the character of a design district?

Well, you should drop a dime.

That's what I'm hearing.

So what am I doing for HCDs?

I think you're removing

Um, detrimental effect upon the character of a design district.

Um, so just removing, uh, the character of a design district.

Yep.

Uh, leaving in life and character of the contributing structure of a protected property.

Is there, is there existing?

There's nothing in there about maintenance for conservation that I'm seeing.

Nope.

And that's part of the appeal of HCDs being, you know, a light historic district is you only have to go to the BAR when... You're making a change.

So, Carl, what I'm going to suggest is as you guys are doing your guidelines review, I was...

That's what I'm hearing, and that be an ordinance change that's carried separately so that it can be considered, because if it's true that the HCDs were intended, again, if it's a feature rather than a loophole, then it should be given due attention.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what I'm doing.

And that's everything that was on the agenda for tonight because we are waiting for more input on the anti-displacement districts from legal.

So we'll get that next Tuesday.

So are there any other issues you guys like to raise?

Let's just go around the room and start with Bill.

Bill, anything else?

So I got a request earlier today about from a church on the corner.

They are in CX3 abutting an RB and they want to add an addition.

And they, the problem is, well,

Arguably that whole area shouldn't be RB or RC at all.

I proposed that in 2021.

It wasn't taken up.

Whatever.

We're stuck with that now.

It doesn't make a difference if we make it RC.

But their addition they're proposing doesn't seem to really be