PLAINFIELD PLAN COMMISSION
August 1, 2011
7:00 P.M.
CALL TO ORDER
Mr. Gibbs: I will call the order of the meeting for August 1st, Plan Commission meeting. Mr. Carlucci will you poll the board to determine a quorum.
ROLL CALL/DTERMINATION OF A QUORUM
Mr. Carlucci: Mr. Satterfield- here
Mr. McPhail- here
Mr. Brandgard- here
Mr. Dunkin- here
Mr. Kirchoff- here
Mr. Gibbs- here
We have a quorum for the purpose of conducting business.
Pledge of Allegiance
Mr. Gibbs: If you would please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES
Mr. Gibbs: I assume everyone has had an opportunity to review the minutes from the May 2nd meeting. If so, I will entertain a motion or corrections.
Mr. Kirchoff: I guess I would call to your attention under the approval of minutes from last time, I mentioned that Vaughn Wamsley's name was misspelled and it is still misspelled, they have B-A-U-M and it should be V-A-U-G-H-N it should be Vaughn Wamsley.
Mr. Gibbs: So noted.
Mr. Kirchoff: I would move that we approve that we approve the minutes as amended.
Mr. Brandgard: Second.
Mr. Gibbs: I have a motion and a second, all those in favor signify by saying aye, opposed, motion carries.
OATH OF TESTIMONY
Mr. Gibbs: Since there is nobody here from the public, we will need to take the oath of testimony to the staff.
Mr. Daniel conducted the oath of testimony.
PUBLIC HEARINGS
Mr. Gibbs: Joe we will just go ahead and turn the agenda over to you and you can bring us up to date on the continuations.
Mr. James: Thank you Mr. President, we have two requests to continue RZ-11-002 Dennison Partners, LLC. Mack McNault, we met with him last week and we wanted to continue so it would give him time to meet with the home owners in Sycamore Estates to the west of this request to address any concerns that they might have before we went to the Plan Commission, so he would like to continue this to the September 8th meeting.
Mr. Brandgard: So move.
Mr. McPhail: Second.
Mr. Gibbs: I have a motion and a second, all those in favor signify by saying aye, opposed, motion carries.
Mr. James: The next petition, PP11-001, the requested a continuance as well. Mr. Wiggins told me last Monday that he thought he had a development plan ready to bring in that would be on the property with this request, he thought he would have a development plan for a gas convenience market, told him to be here at the same time, he will have to get me the petition and plans by July 29th and he failed to do that, so we probably should continue this one to the October 3rd meeting.
Mr. Brandgard: We are going to move this doc over the September?
Mr. James: That is correct; he missed the deadline for the September meeting for a development plan review, because he wanted to review them both at the same time.
Mr. Brandgard: I would so move that we move it to the meeting in October, which will be October 3rd.
Mr. McPhail: Second.
Mr. Gibbs: I have a motion with a second; all those in favor signify by aye, opposed, motion carries.
Mr. James: Then the next petition DP11-001, Stoops Buick we had a snafu with the notice requirement, they failed to send out the notices, the notice requirement, the failed to send out the notices. For the interested parties list notices so we are going to have to continue this request to the September 8th meeting.
Mr. McPhail: So move.
Mr. Satterfield: Second.
Mr. Gibbs: I have a motion and a second, all those in favor of continuing this petition signify by saying aye, opposed, motion carries.
OLD BUSINESS/ NEW BUSINESS
Mr. James: That closes our public hearing portion of the meeting. Now under new business, the packets you received a Metropolis PUD Redevelopment Plan, it was done by our summer intern, Ball State Cory Banacka, I think he did an excellent job and so Kory is going to present that to you tonight.
Mr. Banacka: Thank you Joe, I hope everyone can hear me. In working over the summer we have been looking at the Metropolis Mall in Plainfield and the three big sections that this topic will cover this evening will include who is Plainfield as a Town and area? How have others looked at a similar situations and what issues and challenges that the Metropolis Mall area has to offer and what should be done with the Metropolis Mall moving forward. We will start out by identifying the area itself. In 2005 from the Air Properties designated this section as Metropolis Mall and Plainfield Commons along US 40 and Perry Road. It originally called for 2.4 million square feet retail and in 2007 all the construction stopped due to Premier going bankrupt, so there now sits a significant portion of the area vacant between the existing mall and the Rolls Royce headquarters building. Batteries of our subject here are going to look at here are defined by the red box. In first looking, this is actually covered in detail on your projects; this is an overall summary of the demographics that we looked at in trying to better define what Plainfield is as a Town, we will go over a little more of the specifics here. First starting off in overall population trends, the population had been steadily growing from 2000-2007 about 4-5% consistently with the housing bust it did slow significantly and imagining that the housing market will not reach the plateau that it was before, it is projected that the population probably won't start exceeding again as that much as it did before. Breaking it down a little bit farther into the age distributions, something of interesting note, typically when you see the trends over time you will actually get certain groups that shift through the demographic sets, something that is peered for Plainfield is that the 15-24 and the 25-34 demographic sections have shifted in kind of in opposite directions. The time in which would be considered typical college portions has actually decreased significantly in the portion just after in starting a career has actually grown by 5% more. This could be any number of factors all ranging just from there is actually not a lot of options for those early graduate high school students here in town and something that people really enjoy is staying afterwards once they actually get within their careers, they find the Town to be very helpful. The home values themselves are starkly different than what Indiana considers average. The 1,000-2,000 dollar range accounts for just about a third of the total housing stock in all of Plainfield which is starkly different from Indiana as a whole, the shift itself contains a lot farther up in the range towards the 100-150. The incomes themselves are also higher than the Indiana averages; this could be any result from where residents have higher qualifications in their job placements or the fact that different groups of people are eating in the same households. The most starkly different is in the low poverty range areas of the income breakdowns. There is little actually within Town, it's a 10% difference from the State.
Mr. Kirchoff: Kory, what are your two different colored bars? I don't see a legend on this one.
Mr. Banacka: Sorry that one actually didn't get placed in, it is the same through all of them, the blue is Plainfield, and the red is Indiana.
Mr. Kirchoff: Thank you.
Mr. Banacka: This actually does show up a little bit in the occupational status. There is a significant portion of professionals and executives within Town than there is as a State average. Something interesting to note, the percentage of jobs in Town that are based in the distribution section of the Town is significantly high for the total amount of jobs available in Town, yet the distribution of people that live within the
Town that actually has those jobs is actually average with the State. This could be identified a lot better in looking at the travel times to work, it turns out that a lot of people that live here in Town commute a great distance thirty to sixty minutes is 10% more than the State average that shows that there must be something else out here that people have that they want other than to be closer to their jobs, such as school education for their children or some public amenity. One of the other things that we will also have to note, would be the housing costs here within the Town are significantly less than a lot of other Towns within the Indy Metro area. These are just a couple short breakdowns of some of the other cost of living indexes within the area. $100 is the national average; most of the Towns within the area are below that. Ok, moving onto our second section, we looked at how some of these demographics have been used in different projects to see what can correlate to helping the Metropolis Mall section, and our first case study was actually Belmar, Colorado. The original project was a vacant mall site which there was a similar style area around with suburban homes all around the vicinity. The Town itself was more or less a suburb to Denver when it first started. What they have done with it since then is actually taken that mall and tore it down as it was vacant and re-established a civic and community center with the icon building in the middle is actually a movie theatre and then they have two sets of parade streets and then an icon park at the end, it is called Hummel Park if I remember correctly. The big thing, something to take away from what was done in Belmar includes the mix of various uses within the section, there is a good portion of retail office and residential most of which is at market price. They did a good job of incorporating civic uses in with a lot of the building mix. The breakdown of the superblock was important for this project as a lot of the area around it had their small streets for their suburban style residents but giving it a defined center city with the superblock broken up streets helps really make this place a walk able section. The connection to transit options really helped this place first because just, I want to say a mile or so out is actually a stop on the mass transit rail line that connects to the Denver and the Metro so being able to get to other places from this area really helps. Then the last one we are looking at was use of engaging public spaces and how parking was integrated in. The parking was actually shifted a little bit away from the public street, and letting the buildings take the frontage and be the activity centers which kind of defined where people were going. Our second case I have for you to look at was Park Forest, Illinois it was originally a suburb of Chicago and the mall itself that was there started as an outdoor mall, it in the late ‘70's though it actually started to decay because of the massive expansion of Chicago, things shifted outward and the mall got surpassed on the loop. What they ended up deciding to do with this one as well, the Government within the Town actually pushed a lot of major progress, and they ended up buying the land for about $400,000.00 and shifted all of the projects into getting a new Community Center with the Government Center being here in the center along with Public Plaza, and they did a fairly good job of integrating the major arterial streets that run through the section along, while incorporating residential and office uses within, this one does have a significantly larger portion of retail as anything else compared to anything else in the project. Some of the big things were that we should learn from this, the surrounding conditions very similar to what Plainfield is actually seeing currently. A lot of the demographics were fairly similar, again the mix of various uses as a good way to transition and try to help the project survive by having different options for growth. The use of scales are important, most of the structures themselves are only one to two stories, there was very low density feel, yet they did a very good job of incorporating the personal space and the relation to the streets help a lot with that, having the building frontage up close to the streets creating public plazas and having those dedicated sidewalks for walkers. Our final case study to look at was Cottonwood, Utah this again was another vacant mall that got passed on over on major arterials as growth expanded. They did an excellent job of actually trying to break up their mall; they actually kept some parts of it and moved the anchors that were originally there at the ends of the terminus, they shifted them and they could actually create a single parade street which most of the retail and office works off of, along with a central plaza area and a movie theatre surrounded by a lot of residential. The big focus of this really was having the housing stock around the retail to support that kind of activities. The collaboration of the public and private was really important here. The government did a lot of work in trying to get the word out about the projects that were going and shift the land into private hands. The relationship between the major thoroughfares is really important as these are the two largest arterial streets within thirty miles or so. The parking orientation again was very important, it helps define space and what people understood was public a private realm and then the use of the central plaza again, they actually let that be not only a social focal point but a visual one as well as looking down these corridors you clearly see and define where a public interaction space is supposed to be. Moving onto our final study, we actually look at what our recommendations will be in shifting the PUD style zoning use to incorporate more of the area and that would encourage a lot more creative designs and something that would really bolster the space rather than just divvying up zoning ahead of time, letting some RFP's do a lot of the idea creating, this is covered and we actually did a couple different design concepts with symmetrical a lot of them listed here, big ones just kind of the ultimate transit options is a big one, right now a lot of the driving situation in Plainfield is about 90% automobile by themselves so being able to offer options alternate ways to get around, a lot like the Parks and Trails systems that exist, expanding off of that, there is possibilities of multi metal transit as well, the neighborhood environment with the sense of place, the mall itself already had a unique design in looking at that modern style that a lot of the younger up and coming persons look for in what architecturally they did in expanding that and letting it grow throughout the site would really create a unique sense of place and a lot of having the mixes of uses is important in all three of the case studies that we studied, because if one thing doesn't work right away there is other things in which the project can grow off of then collectively it builds, it doesn't require the perfect implementation of one thing. Our preferred design is covered in your packet; I can break down a couple parts of it just real quickly. First one is again the centers of activity along with we have such things as re-orienting the vacant Walmart building to make it more accessible and more friendly to the mall itself while still having that frontage along Main Street that a lot of businesses really want. The second would be the street façade kind of to mirror what the mall has already and having that closed in space with a plaza/amphitheatre that can seat about 6000 people as an anchor, actually letting a community gathering spot be an anchor rather than relying on retail. Third one would be having an open space also become an anchor rather than finishing off with the retail center like the original planning called for in extending this section of the mall. Have that become a civic center where people can gather and you co-mingle and you really get to know what's going on, it is a good transition point in the whole sector. Our residential cluster to the southwest would be design primarily as a restricted age living corridors. Just for the fact that you are looking at some of the demographics moving forward and the resistance from certain parties towards a mass use of multi family and last are primary social anchor, or I don't know if it is really social but it would be a medical center that operates and it would specialize in certain parts of your medical field like optometry and physical therapy, something that Indianapolis as a whole, they have a couple centers but they are majorly focused in the Castleton and Greenwood areas. Right now the west side of Town doesn't actually have much of that, plus just half mile to a mile to the east is one of the major regional airports in all of the U.S. and it would be a great opportunity to use that as a selling point, saying you can get anywhere to here and be able to get your specialized care that you need. The second thing looked at was really important was enhancing the street and sidewalk system, letting there be different kinds of activity along with bus and pedestrian walking, biking trails. Connecting all of the roads around so there isn't just dead ends to where people have to turn around and go back, and they don't get lost where they are going. Getting that sense place, having that feeling you are in the crossroads of a section is real important. And then a third one for this project was seeing how the parking is in the buildings were oriented. A lot more of the buildings were shifted closer towards the street to create those enclosures while the parking wasn't out of site, you could still see your fairly close to within walking distance of anything, and you know where the parking would be, but it is not a predominate feature. For our alternative we actually look at some different things, finishing out the mall itself as originally planned is a major focal point of this one along as getting the building footprint that kind of honored the original design that was there. Changing up what was in that use however was majorly important. There's highly unlikely that the demographics that we studied will be able to support an additional million square footage of retail within the next ten years or so, so it is important to mix in the uses of other things that can support that retail and bulster what could become another center, things like the amphitheater theme, having another recreation facility for example or have that iconic hotel that was originally planned for this corner that is missing. Again we see a lot of the residential here towards the central park areas, it helps try and support what was wanting to be done here and again the street and sidewalks system is important and being able to get around and understanding where you are at, where you are going, nothing is really effective if you can't get to it. That is what we are looking at, and we are open to any questions.
Mr. Brandgard: I don't know if I have too many questions but I do want to commend you on the amount of work you have put into this. Good report and presentation.
Mr. Banacka: I appreciate that, thank you.
Mr. Daniel: I have one question for you Kory, you said something about restricted residential, or age restrictive, what kind of age restrictions were you talking about?
Mr. Banacka: That would typically be something that would look more at above the retirement age or you can have 50 and above, something that is beyond what would consider a family household status where there would be a lot of young children, more one or two person dwellings, something a little more high density wise.
Mr. Daniel: I know it is hard to deal with the children issue on the one hand but doesn't that seem like with the theatre and eating places and stuff like that you need a younger group of people to support the retail.
Mr. Banacka: In the original proposed, the entire sector itself is not actually what would be considered age restricted, it would only be the three sections here and below the center and age restriction and then the primary agents. The original design actually called for a fair amount more of living options including would be multi family and incorporate more to the family aspect that was just a small portion that was noted, because it would have a special use to it.
Mr. McPhail: I think there's some issues that we really have to be cognizant about as this thing begins to evolve and change there, particularly with the current businesses and the mall that is there, there are some lease commitments in terms of what effects further development in there and if we approve development on some of that empty land could cause some of those businesses to go dark and give them a way out of their lease and those types of things so I think there is going to be a real complicated project for us as we move forward, but certainly to have a concept to work on makes a lot of sense. I think it will be a tough issue for us as we go forward.
Mr. Daniel: A lot of good information.
Mr. McPhail: Yes, absolutely.
Mr. Banacka: Just to clarify the proposal in front of you is actually for the addition of the PUD zoning use, it is not actually for the proposals themselves. I was just kind of looking to see what could be done with the site.
Mr. Brandgard: One thing you mentioned was the area being able to support additional retail out there, and I think that is what has made that successful so far is, it is retail. It is a big regional mall area. It is not so much a local, have you considered that?
Mr. Banacka: Yes, actually the squares that I have marked here were for possible locations for mass transit like for bus routes or anything. There has been talk of a bus system expanding into Plainfield along with; I tried not to dismiss all of the parking options themselves because it is such a regional aspect. The structured more condensed place is just as a focal point, it becomes more you get that iconic destination where people recognize a place with a certain part of the section. You get that feel when you just hear what a place is talking about.
(Inaudible)
Mr. Banacka: Next to the amphitheatre?
(Inaudible)
The amphitheatre itself just by rough dimensions on square footage and stuff but we used about 6,000 I think for that specific object. I pulled an existing structure and just used the footprint, it was 5,300 seats.
(Inaudible)
Mr. Banacka: There can be a lot of community activities like Friday night gathering points. The theatre itself can be actually used for a like a marketer or whatever you don't actually have to have permanent seating with them, they are on the lower portions on the deck. Some even like Fort Wayne and Terre Haute for example actually get a fair amount of mid sized concerts, along with the old Murat Theatre. Something like that a stomp along the way for the west side of Indy would actually be fairly beneficial as a regional icon, which was the thought originally.
(Inaudible)
Mr. Banacka: That goes back to a lot of the streets and pathway section of the original design wall. I didn't have any specific drawings; it called for a pedestrian bridge along Perry Road. The fact that this is such a major arterial and a lot of different transit that goes across it, it was important to really identify these notes as these areas of inner activity where you've got to get people across. That was one of the major challenges with this project.
(Inaudible)
Mr. Banacka: Correct.
(Inaudible)
Mr. Banacka: Do we have anything further? Thank you.
Mr. Daniel: Good job.
Mr. James: The timing of this study works out fairly well because last week I was getting a lot of calls from a realtor representing Hillcrest Bank, which they have this piece of property right here and…
Mr. Kirchoff: I was going to ask, how many owners are there out there right now?
Mr. James: This is Hillcrest, Redico owns a lot of property over here, but right now I only know of Hillcrest and Redico, there could be more.
Mr. McPhail: Did First Merchants get that one site sold or is that still in limbo?
Mr. James: Right here?
Mr. McPhail: Yes.
Mr. James: Yes, I think Hearthview did pick it up because they filed a petition Friday to amend the commitments, the zoning commitments that were made with the PUD, and so to extend the expiration of the PUD.
Mr. Kirchoff: I said it wouldn't be a bad idea to pull out the original PUD to just refresh our self, do you still have that?
Mr. James: Yes, we still have that on file.
Mr. Kirchoff: That would be nice to be in our packets next time just to have for a reference. It has been a couple of years.
Mr. McPhail: One of the issues that we are going to be faced with, we were dealing with one entity with all of that property, that PUD was designed for phases and things to happen and that didn't happen, so that zoning has expired and I'm concerned that we are going to have individual owners come back and want to just take a chunk of that and the rest of it isn't a part of any overall plan, it's tied in and we can't let that happen. Whatever happens out there has to be for that whole area.
Mr. Kirchoff: Some sense of integration. I don't know how you get that done.
Mr. McPhail: It will be a challenge.
Mr. James: If we did do something like this we would of course get the property owners involved and get their ideas so we could come up with a compatible integrated plan. The realtor was asking what is the current zoning on this and I said well, it is our opinion that the zoning is expired and so I told him that we are going to discuss this at the meeting and so he probably would like to set up a meeting with us to see what we would like to see happen on that piece.
Mr. Daniel: Do you think you could get the Plan Commission a plat showing the different pieces of who owns the different pieces out there Joe? I know that would be helpful. What size they are and all.
Mr. James: Yes. We will do a report and…
Mr. Kirchoff: And again, some sense of what the original game plan, I know, I agree with you it is going to change, but if we had some sense of what the vision was back then and now the ownership, just before we begin to process some of that.
OLD BUSINESS/NEW BUSINESS
Mr. James: We will do a report that will go into those details. Next up on the agenda under new business, Jill did a study on taking a look at our parking standards to see if we should update our parking standards with the energy crisis and SUV's and the Hummers are a thing of the past, so we need to look at changing our parking standards as far as sizes and allowing for a electric vehicles, electric charging stations and also new uses. Assisted living center, we have no parking requirements for something like that, so Jill do you want to go over your report?
Ms. Sprague: The reports mostly just kind of a list of just random things that we don't have in our ordinance and I thought maybe could be useful in the future. The first item on there is shared parking. It was mentioned we only allow 10% shared parking, I should specify, technically this is part of the article 5.4 which is a development incentive option for commercial/ multi family, but it is something that they would have to come and get a development plan for. Just one of the options is that we could increase the amount of shared parking, if it is an evening restaurant with office uses in the daytime so that they could share that parking since they won't necessarily overlap, although I guess technically that is the next section, which is for differing time shared parking, but that is an option just to raise the percentage and give us a little bit less blacktop and a little more green space. I should say the differing timeshared parking was more along the lines of sharing with a church, you know they might have Sunday and Wednesday services or whatever, but for the most part, their parking lots might be empty. Downtown that would be a really good option if there were churches that had were closer that had large parking spaces just for example. There are a couple of communities Johnson County and Hendricks County, actually have a maximum amount of parking that they would allow people to have, like a drug store, I don't know what their deal is, but they like to have a whole lot of parking out there, I guess when the parking lot looks empty, people are more likely to come and park, whereas one of these per a maximum would limit them to, or I guess I didn't count up any numbers, but if our required was 100, then in Hendricks County they would only be allowed to have 10 extra parking spaces over that 100. Once again to limit the amount of blacktop and potentially keep the amount of green space larger. There is an issue in here on marking, this is another thing that is mostly downtown, we have a lot of parking lots that don't actually have lines on them so there is no idea how many parking spaces are actually out there, and we might be able to overcome some ideas that people think there is no parking downtown if they could actually see where the spaces were. This was a requirement that one or two locals had that could help us enforce having the lines marked all the time. There is the parking access location requirement, so I think this is once again, in these older areas of Town occasionally we have a parking lot where people will just back straight out into the street rather than into a drive aisle. It is just an option to help safety. In this case I don't necessarily something we would need to worry about in Plainfield, I don't think it happens to often, but it is just something to think about. Then the potential counts to add to our table, Joe had talked about maybe adding some uses. I think that primarily, the assisted living one is the one we are missing. There are a lot of places had like Airports, Universities, and things like, I didn't think that we would necessarily run into, so I haven't written those here. There are other options if we feel that we need to look into those. The carwashes I believe are actually covered right now by office/retail in Plainfield and the same with the beauty and barber shops, so it wouldn't necessarily be something we need to specify, but it is a different way to think about those two uses. Bicycle parking, I think that right now, we had started with something relatively simple, and we might want to look into expanding that, just getting more detailed, possibly requiring a little bit more bicycle parking, it wouldn't necessarily take up a whole lot of space, but something to think about since Plainfield's Trail System is kind of a booming business right now. Sorry, I'm back on page two, I missed one. The shared parking lots under different ownership, I actually had a call from one of the Metropolis owners who had heard that their neighbor was thinking about fencing off a section of parking, and the building owner wouldn't have access to 2/3 of the parking that they have previously had access to because now they are owned by separate people. This section was something I thought might help us keep something like that from happening, because technically we can't stop him from putting a fence up on his property, unless they have access easements that we don't have with us in Town. The bench seating is a very specific thing, there are a couple of churches specifically with pews, the recommendation for some of these locals was to use a 22” or a 20” length to count as a seat on a pew, so that you could help figure out how many seats were in a church. So that way we would be able to figure out what the parking requirement was. The cart corrals, we have a lot of just random things on here. The cart corrals, we already have our design requirements but this gives an idea of how much should be required just so that they have the right number of corrals so that they don't have carts everywhere, and also so that they don't have too many cart spaces and take up all of your parking. Brownsburg has a small car provision, it is not a requirement but it is an option, that their developers can use, where they just have 25% of the parking can be dedicated as small car parking if they chose too, but it is not a requirement but something we might think about, as Joe said as the SUV's and the Hummers go out of style then maybe this might be a more useful thing.
Mr. Brandgard: This is a comment to that comment; it is going to be a long time before they go out of style.
Ms. Sprague: I know the other day, about a week ago, I tried to come in and park and there was a guy with a dually and a crew cab, and he had parked and he parked across two parking spaces and I almost couldn't get out of my parking space while he was parked there.
Mr. Brandgard: I have problems with those types of vehicles.
Ms. Sprague: The small ones or the large ones?
Mr. Brandgard: The crew cab full length pickups when the pull into a parking lot and stick half way out in the drive way.
Mr. Carlucci: They are just so wide, when you are trying to get out by some of these SUV's, and I've got some room where you are not just opening the door in the other lane, I don't know what the solution is but maybe make specific truck parking where they go deeper in, either way you have to go out. You are always going to have that blind spot and maybe there is nothing you can do.
Mr. Brandgard: My view is the parking spaces aren't wide enough. Really when you put a car into it, you put a small car in and you put a standard car in there, there is not a whole lot of difference.
Mr. McPhail: You know of course if you go to all of these smaller cars, you can double the parking spaces because it will take twice as many vehicles to haul the same amount of people.
Mr. Kirchoff: When we were in Greece and everybody was driving those Smart Cars, they didn't worry about parking on the street, they parked on the sidewalk.
Ms. Sprague: There is only one other item I have, was for the electric vehicle parking. There is several States that have already worked on this as you might imagine. Oregon, California, Washington, it was Auburn Hills, Michigan, kind of did a research on those other States and then summarized what they felt should be in their ordinance and then I adapted that to what would fit in our ordinance. We would obviously need to add some definitions to our ordinance, but some of the primary ideas were to allow vehicle travel stations as an accessory use, especially in parking lots and then also one of the ideas was to try and jump ahead of things with current housing to have the developers put in a charging station into the garage already so that the homeowners in the future might not have to do it themselves, and maybe cut down on costs for those future homeowners.
Mr. Brandgard: Yes, but you are raising the cost for the current homeowner.
Ms. Sprague: Just that during the construction it might be simpler to put that…
Mr. Brandgard: It may be, but we need to have our ordinance that if someone wants to put them in, they can do it and they know how to do it, but I don't think I will ever sit here and say you have to put them up.
Ms. Sprague: No, it is just an option, maybe like in our checklist of residential design guidelines that could be one of the options.
Mr. Brandgard: Even right now there are three different systems, electric systems that is dependant upon the vehicle that you have. So if you tell somebody you've got to put got to put it into a house, then somebody has the vehicle that won't fit it, you are going to have to take it out and redo it anyways, so that is why I say, I have many things but that is, and I'm not convinced that's the vehicle of the future.
Ms. Sprague: That is possible. Just that is an option. I didn't know how to write it into the ordinance so that it could be an option for people to use rather than a requirement. The Michigan ordinance did have it listed literally as a recommended if you chose to do this then you might wire it in right now and just have an electric stub for future when a retailer for example, might have a demand from their customers to put in a charging station in their parking lots. I think one of the most important things in my opinion was that there is also an option in there for usage fees, you wouldn't want, the retailer shouldn't have to give somebody his electric power for free, and so that is an option in there if they want to charge for it they can do that. There are more specifics but that was just an option that we can put in our ordinance and none of this lists what is required, but if you chose to do it, this is how you should do it is how this is written.
Mr. Brandgard: I could go along with that; just like I was saying I got to the point if someone is going to develop you have to put them in or if somebody is going to build a house you have to put them in that is the way to go.
Mr. McPhail: I think our ordinance should be deciding there is a lot of flexibility but I am concerned that there written in a manor that they can't be miss implied and used in an area where they really not intended. You have always got someone out there looking for a loop hole in your ordinance and saying well it was intended for this use but I am going to use it for this. I don't know how you do that, but I think we have to be cognizant and protect ourselves but not have something wide open that we really can't control, like some of this shared parking or something like that.
Mr. Daniel: On the owner of the call from Metropolis. He doesn't have a reciprocal easement for that parking there?
Ms. Sprague: They didn't say that they did and I don't we've required those to be…
Mr. Brandgard: As I kind of understand things out there, when that was under one ownership it didn't matter. Now that the banks own different segments of it, now it is this is mine, not yours.
Mr. Daniel: That should have been done by the developer.
Ms. Sprague: They are divided into separate lots, and Premier should have done that with itself I would think, to have the access easements.
Mr. Daniel: Any development like that you are going to generally have some people who want to own their lots and some people don't want all that but you should have reciprocal easement agreements for common areas and stuff so people can use the parking and those should be in place by the developer.
Mr. Brandgard: Well I think so but I think this is a case where the developer was dealing with it all before it fell apart.
Ms. Sprague: That is true, and it is possible those easements have been recorded and we just don't have them in our office, they might be with the County.
Mr. Carlucci: Kent can probably verify this for me but I believe Lance Angle went around and got a lot of those things tied up that he could get tied up, because some of them just weren't there at all and I know he did a bunch of that, but there is still other, especially where the Italian restaurant used to be, that is the biggest problem we have.
Mr. McPhail: It is my understanding that we have one owner that could not get to agree to do anything. They help the overall project and they ended up with some property that could be developed for really high quality parking and they haven't been able to get any agreement with them at all. It happens to be, I believe one of the owners looking for help right now.
Mr. Brandgard: It is at a point that Lance was going to go in there and pave it out there for them, and they wouldn't allow that.
Mr. McPhail: And that came up with this creative financing, I don't know. I don't know how lenders lent money, I mean one building out there that has absolutely no parking without some easements and that type of thing, but somebody loaned them money. It's going to be a challenge for us, I'm telling you. Every piece that comes up that somebody wants to do something you got to really be careful and see how it affects everything else and what is going on, because we were working with a developer with a concept and a PUD zoning and tied all that together with agreements for phasing and that type of thing. I think we are going to have several challenges as we move forward.
Mr. Kirchoff: I appreciate your efforts too, and I think I understand what Robin is saying, I think it might be helpful to have potential guidelines, and I certainly wouldn't want to have restrictions requirements. If somebody wants to do something we might have something in a back file or something that says here is some potential ways to consider that. But I don't want to put any restrictions out there.
Ms. Sprague: Ideally the electric vehicle section is only written so that if they do it on their own choice, this is how they should. I don't think I have written any requirements that they have to at this point. For other things, Kent I think you said you had some concerns about the shared parking part, should I just not worry about that and leave it as we have it? Should I not try to adjust what our ordinance already has and just leave it as is?
Mr. Kirchoff: I guess I'm not comfortable not changing any ordinances at this point and time, but just to have guidelines from what other communities have done.
Mr. Brandgard: I think you've done a good job, if there is a reason to change it we need to look at changing it, but just because another community does it different doesn't it is not a reason to change it. It is nice to know what they are doing.
Mr. James: We just wanted to bring these issues to your attention, I mean we are not recommending that we go ahead and change the ordinance or amend the ordinance because parking is a major component of the land used equation and has a lot of impact, so we wouldn't take something like this lightly. We would probably form a committee and do a lot of research into it.
Mr. Satterfield: I agree with you too, I think being pro active is better than reactive.
Mr. Brandgard: Absolutely
Mr. James: We've got to update our comprehensive plan in three or four years, and at that time we might look at redoing our zoning ordinance and these are certainly some elements we can take a look at.
Mr. Brandgard: This is a quick comment about parking spaces and being concerned about pulling out into a road, I can tell you people drive through these parking lots like they are super highways.
Mr. James: Last item, our Plan Commission invitees. I have not been contacted by any of them and none of them showed up tonight. I take that back, I was contacted by 5052 West Bay Road, out at Saratoga about the portable signs for the daycare operation. They started putting these out back in May and they put a bunch down in Hummel Park, and Hummel Park called me about them, so I said I will give them a call and let them know that these aren't allowed and not to put them out, I talked to the lady and told her these are not permitted, and to please refrain from putting these out. She said ok she wouldn't put them out anymore, but two weeks ago I found one out at Saratoga and US 40, so I sent them a notice and then the husband called me last week and said we haven't put anymore out, this could have been left over from the last time they were put out. But I don't think that was the case, but they said they wouldn't put them out anymore and we got that one taken care of.
Mr. Carlucci: Daycare signs, there is one on Hadley Road as you come down the hill. It is still out and I think we need to contact. I saw another one in Town; of course I forgot where it is at now because I didn't write it down. But the ordinance allows them to have a daycare in their home, but one of the rules is you can't put signage out, that sign has been there forever and we might as well send her a letter. Sometimes it is there and sometimes it disappears. I can tell you Wes Bennett, our Clerk Treasurer's wife does this and they don't put any signs up.
Mr. James: Where is this?
Mr. Kirchoff: Coming down Hadley Road just west of the round-a-bout.
Mr. James: Is it the intersection with 700?
Mr. Kirchoff: No, it is east of Center Street on Hadley Road before you get up the hill. Before you talk about that, I had forgotten that. Do we have ordinance provisions of what can be in apartment complex/residential (inaudible) commercial establishments? The reason I am asking is, that apartment complex that is across from Hummel, in the last month a person has opened an art studio there, and the other weekend he had two signs out “art sale” and then not everyday but most weekends anyway there is another sign out about his art studio is open. Can you have a commercial art studio in an apartment?
Mr. James: It is a home occupation, it says home occupations are allowed in any residential district so that would include most…
Mr. Brandgard: You can't conduct business?
Mr. Carlucci: You can have people come in but you can not have signage.
Mr. James: You can't have signs and it has to be a listed home occupation.
Mr. Carlucci: Plus the fact, there are other requirements if you have a business and you put an ad in the yellow or white pages whatever, you cannot have the address you can only have the phone number.
Mr. Kirchoff: I don't know the restrictions, but I don't know if anybody else has seen it or not.
Mr. James: It can't be anything that is going to change the character of the residential district.
Mr. Carlucci: It can't be in a separate building.
Mr. James: It can't bring in traffic.
Mr. McPhail: They are trying to bring in traffic.
Mr. Kirchoff: It fronts right on Center Street, it is kind of parallel, and I think it is the most northern unit on the multi units on Center Street. Like I said, the other weekend he had two signs out, one said his art studio and the other was an art sale that weekend. I've been meaning to ask you if that was permitted or not. If you drive by there you can probably see his art studio sign, but probably have to wait till the weekend to see the other one.
Mr. James: It can be an art studio, where he works, where the artist works, but it can't be a studio for retail where people come in to purchase.
Mr. Kirchoff: It is.
Mr. James: It is?
Mr. Kirchoff: I'm sorry I don't have the address but I can tell you if you drive down there you will see it, it is right across from Hummel Park and like I said it is the last unit on the north end.
Mr. James: This is 1718 Rachel Drive, we had him in last year, they had the boats in the back yard and tarps all over the place, and they dug holes here in the front with stagnant water. Our Police Chief lives in the house to the south, tried to keep an eye on them and I guess back in June they had this and I sent them a notice. They cleaned it up some, of course they still have the tires, moved the water heater around to the side, but the main issue is the camper, to me it is not operable, it doesn't have plates, and then in section 120 of our zoning ordinance, it prohibits storing, maintaining of any motor vehicle, machine, or similar device. That is a vehicle you take on the road, even though it is not motorized so that is a similar device. It is never moved, they probably just use it for storage. I'd like to get that out of there.
Mr. Daniel: I thought we had one section in there where it dealt with motor homes around residential areas, but I haven't looked at that for a long time.
Mr. Brandgard: That is a trailer.
Mr. Daniel: Well, recreation vehicle.
Mr. James: It can be parked in the driveway. What is our interpretation? It's legal?
Mr. Daniel: Isn't that parked in the driveway?
Mr. James: Yes, but it is not used as a recreational vehicle. It is never moved, I'm sure they just use it for storage.
Mr. Brandgard: It's not what it is used as, it is what was designed and built to use as.
Mr. Kirchoff: Intended use.
Mr. Daniel: I don't think we know if it is moved or used or not, but my memory is, that is why I brought it to your attention, I thought it was the areas around a residents that is allowed their recreational vehicles and things like that in their driveways.
Mr. Brandgard: The thing is it is supposed to be licensed.
Mr. Daniel: Vehicles yes, but I don't think there is anything in the ordinance, I could be wrong. I think vehicles you can't; they have to be stored inside unless they are licensed in the driveway. But I don't think there is anything about recreational vehicles.
Mr. James: Yes, if they are unlicensed they have to be stored in a garage.
Mr. Daniel: Right.
Mr. James: It is not plated. What I can do is add inoperable to that section.
Mr. Brandgard: Well, how do you determine it is inoperable if the tires are inflated?
Mr. James: It doesn't have license plates.
Mr. Brandgard: If the tires are inflated, it is operable.
Mr. James: That is what we have always said; it has to be plated to be operable.
Mr. Carlucci: I think we mostly applied to cars and trucks. I would have to ask Chief Mitny, but I don't know what he would say, but I'm guessing that when I call him about these things it's inoperable vehicles that have engines in them.
Mr. Daniel: Either that or it was sitting up there on blocks or something like that and had the wheels off of it and all of that and make an argument, but just the fact that it isn't licensed.
Mr. Carlucci: I remember we had issues down at the Bay, down south, Crystal Bay, about people was bringing their campers home, and they are not allowed in there.
Mr. Kirchoff: They are for a couple of days.
Mr. Carlucci: They are allowed for 48 hours now you know if you are packing and unpacking, I can understand that. That seems to work pretty well as far as I can tell.
Mr. Kirchoff: That is part of our covenants down there.
Mr. Daniel: I know several years ago we had a couple that brought them in and just parked them cross ways right in their yard in front of their house, they weren't in the driveway, they were out in front of the house and that, they had to get it up in the driveway or somewhere where the ordinance allowed.
Mr. Kirchoff: That was over on Brookside I remember or someplace close over there, Brookside or Wayside.
Mr. James: The last invitee was extreme tenting at 2907 East Main, we invited him back in May, they had a representative come to talk for the meeting and said they were going to clean things up and comply but they still park their service vehicle out front and use it as a sign. They got have banners up on the wall, the disregarded our efforts to bring them into compliance. I would like to go ahead and send them a citation.
Mr. McPhail: So move.
Mr. Satterfield: Second.
Mr. James: That is all I have for tonight.
Mr. Gibbs: Let's go back to that motion and second to send a citation, all those in favor signify by saying aye, opposed, motion carries.
Mr. Carlucci: Before you go, I would like to burn my hand on the burner, I know I am going to do it; the Optimist Club put a permanent billboard out on 40 for their soccer leagues, baseball leagues, sign ups and all of that.
Mr. Kirchoff: Message board?
Mr. Brandgard: Yes.
Mr. Kirchoff: The sign that sits there by Duke Energy isn't it?
Mr. Brandgard: Yes.
Mr. Carlucci: It is hard to get anybody, they are not allowed by the ordinance. And they are there permanently, I think my approach would be not necessarily to go after the Optimist but call the person that owns the sign board and say we are going to ticket you for putting this out.
Mr. Daniel: whose property is that on?
Mr. Carlucci: Pretty much on the right of way because they've just backed it up off the curve. If I had to say I think it is probably on Duke Energy's property.
Mr. Daniel: I wonder if you send it to the property owner. Not a citation, just notify them and say you've got to remove that sign.
Mr. Carlucci: I can mention that quickly through the channels.
Mr. Kirchoff: That would be the way to do it.
Mr. Carlucci: It is hard to get other people to comply when that is out there everyday. I don't see how you can even read that sign.
Mr. Satterfield: Why are you going to backdoor it, why not just go to the source?
Mr. Carlucci: I am going to go to the people on the property.
Mr. Satterfield: It is just going to getting back anyway, you are not going to…ok.
Mr. James: When we put up the LED sign for the athletic fields, could they advertise on that?
Mr. Brandgard: Yes, if they pay us.
Mr. James: That seems like an appropriate place.
Mr. Carlucci: If they just had their own website they could go to they could go to they could…
Mr. Kirchoff: I don't think it is just Optimist because it has girl's softball on it.
Mr. Brandgard: A lot of people are using it.
Mr. Kirchoff: Yes, it is a community sign.
Mr. Carlucci: I may ask some questions before I ask the other question.
