opography i'm hearing that it necessarily won't be all a mold but it you know so so that's in part part of the reason why i was curious how the 170 comes just to make sure that it more conforms with the neighborhood versus bring something that makes it look different you know there's a tall building when you drive into derm you can see it before you even get here or you rope or something but you know you know we don't want to keep creating those type of you know features where it's a landmark but a landmark probably for the wrong reason in particular neighborhoods but uh those are my only comments in regards to thinking through uh i'll finish by saying again this is like the last case again it's like we know what the existing zoning is for it's not going to happen so the question i think or us as a body is what's the best alternative and is this it and if not you know how can we get to something that's a compromise that works for what the developer would like to do but for what derm is trying to do on multiple levels but in particular with meeting some of the goals and the opportunities and challenges so i'll keep i'll plug that thank you other commissioners would like to speak if not well commissioner elter thank you chair um just quick uh comment on what commissioner johnson said about the price point and i appreciate uh the applicant kind of giving us a sense of how expensive these will be or how what the cost will be per month um you also mentioned affordable housing and i appreciate the the commitment to the housing fund but i i would you know i i think this is uh an area and where affordable housing units on site would be in my opinion preferable to just you know committing to the the trust fund because you know first of all there's public transportation nearby and i think we should and i know that the neighbors maybe said something about that i respectfully disagree with that point of view but i you know i i think providing some affordable units here would you know be a positive for the city um and even if it's uh you know a few units here and there so that's and that's notwithstanding some of the comments that commissioner bicker mentioned about you know the the health impacts of of uh living close to a major corridor like this um but that's just just something i think we should consider when we think about where affordable housing is going in the city um i think somewhere like this would be you know a good place for that thank you uh commissioner johnson um thank you chair well just so one comment today and and that's a question that i failed to ask is that when we say affordable housing it's such a broad term there's low income housing there's unaffordable housing for workforce so that's an affordable housing issue and so when we're talking about affordable housing i think we get caught up in this larger box in which in that we really don't understand who are we actually trying to create affordable housing for you know the housing bond will focus on and this is to hopefully pair on to what uh commissioner turk is saying and so when i heard that the neighbors didn't want affordable housing what came to my mind was not low income housing is there are teachers and firefighters and other people in the city of in county of derm who can't go to the bank and get a three hundred thousand dollar loan or two hundred and fifty thousand dollar loan for a house or who can't pay twelve hundred and fifty five of twelve hundred and fifty dollars a month for rent but they need a housing product that works for them they are like caught in the catch net uh you know in this little in that that area where we're not directly focusing on bringing a product that works for them and their budget and so that that's why you know i make the comments that i'm when i always ask about price points because when we when i'm saying affordable housing i'm not only focusing on the low income you know population here in derm that is critically needed but there are people who go to work and earn a paycheck but they can't pay thirteen hundred dollars a month for an apartment or they can't pay three hundred thousand dollars for a house that everyone i meet when i'm asking and that's where we're looking to that's the entry point now for building housing here in derm so i just want to make that point so when we hear these these comments about the need for affordable housing and this this tastes for affordable housing in in particular communities is what are we really saying when we say affordable housing and so um i'll put that plug in and with that i'm done thank you commissioner johnson are the other commissioners who would like to speak if not i'd like to entertain a motion chair i move that we send case a 180 0008 forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation second okay motion by commissioner alturk and second by commission on buzzfeed that we send item a 180 0008 fox crossing forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation may we have a roll call vote please commissioner morgan yes mr johnson yes commissioner bryan yes commissioner alturk no vice chair busby yes yeah hyman yes mr miller no mr ketchan yes mr santiago yes mr baker no commissioner low no yes and commissioner macgyver yes motion passes nine to three thank you madam chair yes i would like to move that we send case z18 00029 with the three additional committed commitments forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation second great motion by commissioner bryan second by commissioner alturk that we send item z18 00029 fox crossing with uh appropriate three appropriate proffers forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation may we have a roll call vote please commissioner morgan yes commissioner johnson yes mr bryan yes commissioner alturk no vice chair busby yes sir hyman yes commissioner miller no mr ketchan yes commissioner santiago yes mr baker no commissioner low yes and commissioner macgyver yes motion passes nine to three thank you moving right along to our next public hearing fairington towns our staff report please good evening i'm lice brothers again with the playing department i will now be presenting case a19 00008 and z19 00023 fairington towns the applicant is jim anderson and jared edens the area of the rezoning request is 3.87 acres the site comprises two parcels and is located at 419 old chapel hill road and 415 fairington road the site is within the city limits the applicant proposes to change the residential suburban multifam let me slow down the applicant proposes to change the zoning to residential urban multifamily with a development plan rsmd from residential suburban dash 20 rs 20 the applicant also proposes to change the future land use map designation to low medium density residential from low density residential the proposal commits to a maximum of 25 multifamily residential units the site is shown in red and located in the suburban developments here the site is at the corner of old chapel hill road and fairington road the site is primarily undeveloped with a mixture of pine and hardwood forest and contains areas of wetlands the site is located in the falls jordan watershed protection overlay district b the site is adjacent to the paris in place compact neighborhood tier which has recently been adopted into the compact suburban design district the surrounding area includes a mix of residential uses including multifamily apartments condos townhouses and single family houses a place of worship and school are also located in the vicinity the site is presently commercial center with a development plan is that true no uh the site is currently rs 20 uh they proposed changing to rsm sorry i've done all these power points today uh the applicant seeks to change the zoning to commercial general nope sorry uh the property is designated low density residential on the future land use map and the applicant proposes to change this designation to low medium density residential the development plan provides site access points tree coverage areas uh the location of building parking envelopes and project boundary buffers key commitments uh include multifamily residential and accessory uses a maximum of 25 units and transportation improvements the proposed rsmd zoning designation does not comply with the current low density residential designation on the future land use map for that reason the applicant has requested a change to the future land use map in this area to low medium density residential which would be consistent with the proposed zoning the proposal is consistent with comprehensive plan policies outlined in the powerpoint and further in the staff report uh staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other policies and ordinances and is available for any questions thank you thank you i do have one individual who has signed up to speak i do want to um just get clarification i have a name that has been marked through so is there james evans okay if not then um our first jared evans who has um for the applicant and so we'll just start you with 10 minutes uh good evening thank you appreciate your time this evening jared evans with evans land uh i won't take anywhere near 10 minutes we've been here a while already i know uh i feel we've got a simple request before you this evening um as emily mentioned we're uh proposing only 25 units over about four acres i think it's a fairly straightforward project um the road widening road improvements are in place at the intersection already which is convenient um we have one driveway proposed old chapel hill road that's been vetted by dot they're okay with that location um there's a pond on the side on the southern part of the site that will remain untouched so really most your development is going to be concentrated on the northern portion of the property uh we had a neighborhood meeting in june of this year had no attendees no opposition i'm aware of and again i said i'd be quick i'd be glad to answer questions that you have thank you okay i do not have any individuals who have signed up to speak so i'm going to close the public hearing at this time and give our commissioners an opportunity to ask questions i'll start with commissioner brine and then commissioner busby thank you madam chair one question for the applicant um what would be the price point for these multifamily residences and so the short answer would be that i don't know for certain um we're proposing townhomes but you know often when we stand here as developers and real estate people we often don't know the end user when we're here it's uh more often than not we don't know the end user we don't know the builder we don't know the architectural specs and things like that and that's no different with this case tonight obviously this area is a you know nicer nicer area and um i'm sure there'll be price appropriately but i don't know the numbers tonight thank you okay commission about speak thank you madam chair mr eden started to bring you right back up so you mentioned in in our meeting and you said it here was well i believe that the the bigger pond on the southern i guess is that the southwest portion of the site would be left intact and so on the existing conditions map it says that it will be removed and so i assume that that should be changed and then it's not shown on the proposed site improvement plan so should that also then be shown on that plan as well i think that's an appropriate change to make before we go to city council because the intention is definitely to keep that pond there great that's just a typo and i'll have to fire that person tomorrow just kidding thank you so it wasn't and then the smaller the smaller pond though is also shown that it will be removed and that is the plan yeah that's a small pocket of wetlands that um it's fairly easy to remove with a nationwide permit from the core of engineers so that that pocket will will be removed the larger pond will remain and is the larger pond will that be the storm water feature or there'll be an additional storm water feature on the site correct yeah there'll be additional we're not allowed to use uh inline jurisdictional features and ponds like that for storm water treatment and so we'll have a separate pond outside of this one so it would be totally just native untouched great thank you okay are the other commissioners who would like to speak commissioner baker a quick question for staff um sorry i come all the way up here just for one question um if they wanted to uh if the applicant wanted to uh rezone to the design district would they be able to do that we would have to evaluate that request uh to determine if we were comfortable expanding uh the design district um future land use map compatibility there i don't know that we have an answer off the bat on that one okay thanks uh quick question for the applicant uh are there any green building elements like solar panels green roofs recycle materials anything like that no i can't make any of those commitments tonight okay that's all i would um i would support uh a rezoning to uh the design district and i would uh encourage and support development that promotes green building that's all thank you are the other commissioners who would like to speak if not i would like to entertain a motion madam chair i move that with regard to case eight nineteen zero zero zero zero eight we send it forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation i'll second but we do with the additional property well that's in the zoning case oh i'm sorry thank you thank you um motion by commissioner miller and second by commissioner busby that we send item a one nine zero zero zero zero eight fairington towns forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation uh may we have a roll call though please mr morgan yes mr johnson yes mr brine yes mr alturk yes vice chair busby yes chair hyman yes commissioner miller yes commissioner ketchum yes commissioner santiago yes commissioner baker nope commissioner low yes and commissioner mcgyver yes motion passes 11 to 1 thank you um may we have the staff report for no god another vote oh that's why i'm sure i move in connection with case z one nine zero zero zero two three concerning fairington towns that we send that forward to the city council with a favorable report including the additional proffer made tonight okay commissioner miller second second by commissioner busby sounds like i'm in a real hurry um um a motion by commissioner miller second by commissioner busby um that we send item z one nine zero zero zero two three fairington towns with the additional three proffers with the additional one proffer forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation may we have a roll call vote please mr morgan yes mr johnson yes mr brine yes mr alturk yes vice chair busby yes chair hyman yes mr miller yes commissioner ketchum yes commissioner santiago yes mr baker nope commissioner low yes and commissioner mcgyver yes motion passes 11 to 1 thank you now we are ready for the next public hearing godwin crossing staff report please and any sign ups to speak thank you i'm getting my steps in today i'm emily struthers the Durham playing department i will be presenting case z 19 00010 good wooden crossing the applicant is anderson marlowe and jared edens uh the site uh let's see the area of the rezoning request is 75.43 acres the site comprises two parcels and is located at 1301 and 1312 goodwin road the site is located within the city limits the applicant proposes to change the zoning to plan development residential 2.167 pdr 2.167 from previous plan development residential 2.310 pdr 2.310 the future land use map designation is low density residential and the proposed rezoning is consistent with this designation the proposal commits to a maximum of 149 single family lots the site is shown in red and located in the suburban development tier the site is located on both sides of goodwin road the site is undeveloped with a mixture of pine and hardwood forests the site contains streams wetlands floodway floodway fringe and steep slopes the site includes cabin branch creek wildlife habitat by the little river corridor open space plan and natural heritage inventory program the site is located in the falls jordan watershed protection overlay district b single family residences are located in the vicinity as well as a water treatment plant and duke energy parcel the previously approved development plan 0531 committed to a maximum of 155 single family lots the legacy development plan included a number of commitments more fully outlined in the staff report and attachments if the proposed pdr 2.167 rezoning is approved commitments on the legacy zoning case would no longer be in effect the properties designated low density residential in the future land use map proposed zoning is consistent with this designation proposed conditions include the development plan provides site access points stream crossings tree coverage area and project boundary buffers a summary of key commitments key commitments include single family residential and accessory uses up to 149 maximum of 90 units without a second access point 300 foot wildlife protection buffer along cabin creek 50 foot perimeter boundary buffer in some areas greenway easement and transportation improvements again more fully outlined in the staff report let's see with regard to comprehensive plan policies the proposed rsmd zoning designation does comply with the current low density residential designation on the future land use map the proposal is consistent with comprehensive plan policies those outlined on the PowerPoint further in the staff report staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other policies and ordinances and staff is available for any questions thank you thank you Emily I have I do have one individual who has signed up to speak for and to against so I'm going to call on the applicant first Jared Edens you have 10 minutes thank you good evening Jared Edens again with Eden's land thanks Emily for your time worked on this project we worked a little bit longer on this project than the previous case but the main purpose of the rezoning is really to what I would say modernize an existing application because we have an application that was approved in 05 that has several conditions on it that maybe in 05 we were talking about those things and they made a little bit of sense but in 2019 and 20 current building practices they don't so the goal here was to basically make the project better you know the density we're seeking is there the use we're seeking is there you know those are the main things you know density and use so we have the things we're looking for it's the other things we're trying to modify to make a better overall project for both us and the neighbors so I'm just going to highlight maybe two or three I know staff did the chart where they compared them which I thought was very helpful and I'm just going to talk two or three of those speak to two or three of those for a moment if I can masquerading there's two commitments on the existing zoning that basically restrict masquerading and in the early in late 90s early 2000s masquerading was a topic of conversation here I mean we were designing multiple projects I'd say 5050 projects in early 2000s were masqueraded versus not masqueraded and by not masqueraded it doesn't mean that the lots themselves won't be masqueraded also it just means that the grading has to occur in phases so per the current plan we would have to in the current conditions we have to go build the road but all the roads balance the earth work for all those roads in those just in those corridors and make all that work and then when that's done then we can go and clear and build houses but the end result between those conditions and what we're proposing today are the same it's going to look exactly the same the houses are going to be in exactly the same location the same number of trees and street trees are going to be on the property with that proposal versus ours except when you eliminate the no masquerading restriction and you allow everything to be graded at once we can balance all your dirt earth work at once and everything I mean we're talking about affordable housing there's I can't think of anything that would add to cost of housing more than requiring separate construction for roads and homes when you've got homes on parcels that are six and seven thousand square feet in size you know no masquerading makes sense for 70 and 80 foot wide lots that are half acres where you can grade the roads and then you can go and selectively clear on each lot and say I want to keep this tree and that tree and whatnot homes that are you know this size home on these sides of lots that's just not typically how it's done so if we eliminate the masquerading provision it will definitely lower the prices of these homes I mean I feel 100 confident in saying that that it will definitely lower the price of these houses um that thing I want to talk to is excuse me I was to mention about uh being additional bmp's and and previous restrictions and things I didn't notice in the the existing condition says that additional bmp's will be added quote where space allows unquote which is a commitment to zero additional bmp's because the space doesn't allow it there's no extra bmp in that condition goes away so that condition in itself doesn't have a lot of teeth to me as far as as I can tell uh the 24 maximum pervious that's just again not consistent with present day practices your modern day bmp's have been you know modified over the years and made better and they can easily handle much higher percent pervices the end result is the same as far as storm water goes durham has the same storm water goals whether I have 70 percent pervious 50 percent pervice or 30 percent pervice I've got to look at my quantity and my quality and I've got to meet their thresholds and whatever it takes for me to get there that's what I have to do but arbitrarily maxing the impervious to 24 percent again I don't think that has a net effect change between existing and proposed and also I want to talk about neighborhood protections we had a couple neighborhood meetings um uh first one you know general presentation talked about some concerns I came back with a second one proposed some additional protections but you know as you see we look we looked at all of the perimeter properties and every adjacent parcel that has a home on it that's occupied we applied a 50 foot undisturbed buffer adjacent to that parcel that's all around the perimeter so you'll see on the develop on the d2 sheet you see those little 50 foot undisturbed buffers all around everywhere we found an existing home we try to add protection that is definitely better than what's existing now easily better than what's existing now um so again those are just three things I wanted to point to um I'm sure there'll be some questions I'm glad to answer them but uh I appreciate your time thank you okay the time I have two individuals who have signed up to speak against um Ashley Dale and Nancy McMurray start with Ashley Dale you have five minutes thank you very much this is my first meeting of the sort um we're happy to have my name is I'm really tired now uh my name is Ashley Dale I live at 13 to 03 Goodwin Road um I moved to Durham two years ago uh from Riley I lived in the same house for 20 years in the Mordecai area um I loved it except when all the development started it just got way out of control and it was I realized it was just the time to leave and I wanted to get someplace where there was more breathing room and that ended up being northeast Durham and so far in the last two years I have absolutely loved it it's dark um I can hear the coyotes in in the woods uh the deer uh I have probably hundreds and hundreds of frogs that live in the yard and that's just fantastic coming from downtown Riley um one of the things that I wanted to mention is that there are no lots at all on Goodwin Road at all that are under 0.43 acres none the the the legacy plan that was proposed I'm not exactly sure a year ago um but there are 16 light items in the presentation that was or the document that was put online and there were 16 light line items and of those 16 light items the current proposal 11 of those proposals are less strict than the legacy 11 um one is equal and so there are only four that are considered uh improvements so out of the 16 11 are the legacy the legacy proposal had more stringent uh regulations so that's one of the things I wanted to point out um my lot is 1.8 acres the other lot that's adjacent is two acres the other lot that's adjacent is 12 acres 14 acres 1.6 acres 1.6 acres um when we're talking about a development especially in some place that's more rural in nature like northeast Durham um I think we have to be really considerate of how many houses we decide to put in what lot and in what conditions um like I said I came from Riley where the development is just astronomical traffic is horrible um I came to get away from that not to have 150 houses right beside me um even with the 50-foot buffer I that's a great idea and it's nothing against any development we need development but we don't need this kind of um like mass housing in this one particular area uh nothing else on Goodwin Road supports that kind of development um and I have some really bad dry mouth I apologize the other one thing I wanted to mention that uh doesn't seem to be mentioned much of any place is the cabin that's on the landing question there's a cabin that was built in the 1800s um and originally this land was a part of the Paul Cameron land and Paul Cameron of course owned uh the Stagville Plantation and uh owned the Snow Hill land which he had sold uh before the Snow Hill Plantation took off and there's a cabin on this land that was a part of the Snow Hill Plantation and it it's actually called the Snow Hill Snow Hill Tenants House and uh nobody seems to mention that the house is there and that at some point some overseers lived in that house in um 36 seconds back in I want to say 2007 maybe 2006 the Durham Historical Preservation said that that house was listed but it was not protected and that they thought that it held some extremely valuable archaeological information and uh I don't think that we should just plow that over I think that somebody needs to take a look at that before we make any kind of arrangements on building 150 houses on this land that's it thank you thank you Mr. Dale I'm Nancy McMurray hi I'm Nancy McMurray I live at 1313 Meadstone Drive that's in um Briardale that's the adjacent neighborhood my 90 year old mother also lives there she lives at 1316 Briardale Lane and she did receive a notice it was only one week ahead of time in the mail so if you would like to see what's what's sent to the residents I can offer that to you um I don't know if you're familiar with the movie Groundhog Day but this is Groundhog's Day to me because I stood here in 2006 before the planning commission and asked that this property not be rezoned from rural residential and rural residential 20 because all the reasons that uh a neighbor mentioned this is a rural area there's no public transportation there's it's solid hardwood trees it just doesn't support this kind of neighborhood unfortunately your predecessors agreed with a developer and did allow this high high density um zoning to go in but the concessions that were calling legacy were in deference to the individuals that owned property there um we have committed great resources to purchase homes in this area this neighborhood I've been there since 1994 I still have the original file from 2006 I have the petition signed by all my neighbors and most of these people are still in this area there's very low turnover in homes um it just doesn't go with the neighborhood so as somebody who backs up to it and they have a half faker lot or somebody that has larger property they really don't deserve to have the rules changed over and over again how many times do you set up ordinances and zoning laws and then somebody comes in and wants to change them I don't hear anybody from the planning department saying it doesn't fit it's not consistent we had people from guest road worrying about um storage facility well a storage facility is necessary because people are putting these tiny little places and people have no place to put their stuff people on guest road where the storage facility could be going it should you know they're asking for a storage facility that zone residential that property would be more appropriate for something like this to go in so I ask you please to not um negate the legacy because I am part of the legacy and it's very important that we have some rules and that we keep them where we have a little bit of chaos in our society so thank you for your consideration and um a neighbor bill ostag is still had signed up I guess on the different yes William ostag I live at 1400 Meadston drive and I did sign on the wrong sheet and I apologize for that the error was entirely mine um it's going to sound redundant but um I've had a great deal of experience in the construction business I spent 25 years on active duty as a civil engineer co-officer CB uh was responsible for construction and environmental projects both planning and restoration uh in in Asia Europe and throughout the continental United States I'm a registered architect I've understand the I've had the opportunity to look at a site plan just briefly and in very small scale so I can't comment in particular on what was discussed earlier and what the proposal is exactly except to say that yes mass grading will be required to to make that site uh buildable um and when it's after all is is said and done in the roads are put in you're going to have lots that are too tense of an acre maybe less and given the nature of the site and the grading that's going to have to be done in the grades that are going to have to be maintained not all of that site will be not all of those lots will be buildable it's only a relatively small or a portion of that of each lot will be buildable and in order to maintain the riparian areas there's going to have to be an awful lot of environmental action taken it's not as simple as is being portrayed in my opinion I don't pretend to be a civil engineer but I've moved around a lot of dirt and I think I know what I'm talking about I'm familiar with the site as I mentioned before I run my dog through there on on occasion um second thing is traffic and this this uh this also affects the uh this is going to affect I'm sorry forgive me um the way that the traffic is portrayed in the report that I read uh it talks about traffic on Goodwin road and traffic on infinity road what it doesn't say is that um access to the site will also be through the Briardale area both through Bardak court and coming up from from Goodwin road to uh via Ventoria road and then under Shady Lane and I don't have to go through it but it it it it accesses is via city street or residential streets not roads streets in order to get to in order to get to infinity road that's the shortest way to get to Roxboro road from that area because it goes through Briardale and because the traffic and along Meadston drive is very likely to be increased that poses a problem for me right there are a lot of kids that live in that area like kids that play in that area the last thing we need is for the traffic that it's gonna folks are gonna take that shortcut um through those residential areas uh Briardale and advantage point in order to get to infinity road finally I have to agree with what uh with what Nancy said um that's a it's a rural area there's a lot of a lot of land it's quiet there's there's a lot of wildlife the last thing we really need in that area is uh is a very high in my opinion high density housing there are going to be small houses on small lots and I don't think that's consistent with the uh nature of that area like thank you um Mr. Eden would you like some additional time to respond to as I went over a bit on the again so I appreciate that thank you um and I appreciate the neighbors concerns and um I understand them honestly I just want to say just because a commitment exists doesn't mean it's a good commitment and some commitments that are on here now are really not good I don't think they're not they're not in line with what we're trying to do here um another thing I did mention before was you know we're dedicating a 300 foot wide wildlife corridor along Craven Creek undisturbed that's not on the current plan 300 feet I mean it's it's like five to ten acres of my client's area that we've voluntarily said here let's preserve this and it just makes us compact things even more but that's the goal see when you've got seven like a minimum lot size of 7 000 square feet that might have made sense in 05 when the homes were 55 feet wide or 60 foot wide or whatever homes now are there people wanting smaller homes and smaller lots that's the market I think that's what we want in the city I think we would like that uh smaller homes and smaller lots don't require 7 000 square foot lots it's just it's just not sensible so to me the more things are compacted in the middle of the site like which they are the more we can preserve on the perimeter of the site which we have so in my opinion I mean traffic and things like that someone can go build 155 homes on here tomorrow and in this residential market I don't think it's going to take a long time for somebody to come along and say okay I'll do the phase construction I'll just make the homes more expensive and do it that way I mean the ability to develop 155 homes is here now so we're just we're actually lowering that by six homes and adding more restrictions to it in my opinion so I think it's a better project again I'll answer your questions thank you thank you um I do not have any other individuals who have signed up to speak um Emily do you have something for us uh staff would like to clarify about the um Goodwood and Rood log house uh looking at the maps that's located on a lot 17 reference in the development plan um it's outside of the development plan request it's one of those lots that's kind of um surrounded by but not part of the Goodwood uh request so it's not on the subject proper correct thank you thank you sir um I'm gonna call him to okay he'll get a chance we'll give you an opportunity to come to the mic to speak but speaking off-camera um you know we're being recorded and you really cannot hear so thank you Emily sure staff can clarify that wow we pulled up the the maps and that's not identified um on them what was the map we were referring to the state historic preservation office maps thank you those maps only identified the one which is located off-site thank you um I do not have other individuals to speak during the public hearing at this time I'm going to close the public hearing and give our commissioners an opportunity to ask questions I'm going to start with commissioner brine thank you madam chair um one thing I just want to emphasize to the people who spoke in opposition and I appreciate your point of view the damage has already been done this has been rezoned you can put 155 houses out there now the question is how will this property be developed uh if we deny this rezoning you're still going to get houses out there whether you know you like it or not that's the damage has been done um would it be possible to get a the slide with the development plan on it put up I can pull up a uh a screen clip of it but it won't be the entire uh area um that's this is I think good enough um yeah I think we we could probably do five thousand as a minimum um I wouldn't want to go lower much more than I mean five thousand I think is a good number it's consistent it's sort of what we're doing now okay so five thousand uh square foot outside another question that was raised in the staff report was the question of an off-site sidewalk and I would like staff if they could point out exactly where this sidewalk was supposed to be the off-site sidewalk the the area that it has um let's see looking at the map that's that's up there right now it's the area that's outside of their quest but located in between the request along that frontage okay um another question for you mr. Edens uh would you be willing assuming right away was available to construct this sidewalk off-site I think that would be that would make sense I think we could do that again subject to available right away with the standard language that we use okay and another question another comparison between the legacy plan and this one is some open space but I know that the ordinance does require a certain amount of usable open space which I'm assuming you'll have to provide a question also came up about uh disturbing steep slopes but with the uh 50 foot undisturbed perimeter buffers and the 300 foot uh wildlife quarter buffer it looks to me like most of your steep slopes are now in the buffer areas is that a fair assessment yeah that's that's correct I appreciate you pointing that out because some of the conditions may be more you know legacy may be more restrictive technically speaking but if you look at if you look at the overall application we're protecting steep slopes more than the existing application because we're undisturbed in those areas okay we have I think slightly better transportation improvements we've got the the buffers we're getting the trail dedication uh the one thing that you know I go back and forth on is the mass grading uh because I've never been a big fan of mass grading but I think in this particular instance whether it's mass graded as Mr. Edens wants to do or not is going to make a difference in the price of the ultimate product I think with mass grading it will be less expensive I agree with his point on that uh and since we like to talk about affordability of housing up here I think here's a chance to uh give in or for me to give in and allow mass grading to swap off being that the final product will be less expensive thank you madam chair thank you are the other commissioners who would like to speak staff would like to make one comment with regards to the off-site sidewalk we wouldn't be able to accept that commitment at this time with the the subject to part we would like to see the applicant do that due due diligence before committing to it so that we know that it is an actual commitment okay thank you so we can't accept that tonight but we could uh work with them um okay so sooner or later it can be worked in is that what you're saying yes we can't accept it now but they we can revisit it once they've done that due due diligence so we don't know if um having completed that due due diligence if they would be able to commit to it or not okay thank you yeah okay commissioner Miller so this gentleman I'm sorry sir I don't remember your name would you come to the mic so we can get your picture I do not have a look shot please state your name again please if you would show the site plan so that he can see it we can see it but I would like for him to be able to see it okay thank you so looking at that map realizing what I was having him state his name again please oh all right Ashley Dale 1303 good one row okay thank you Mr Dale yes looking at the map that's now displayed behind us uh or in and behind you can you show me where the structure is that you're referring to the cabin that you talked about that you think is on the subject site yeah so how can I point the oh the mouse so yeah oh thank you okay put my glasses okay can you see the mouse yeah so excellent this is my house right here okay the structure is right here and and so say again what that structure is that structure is a what's it called snow hill tenants house the snow hill tenants and tell me what you how old is that house do you think and what and tell me where you've gotten your information it was estimated uh sometime 1800s um I finding information on it was extremely difficult um the only map that I saw that had the correct drawing location was a night it was from the original plat book when the land was owned by Clyde Goodwin and they did a survey of his land and uh my house was not there yet but that little little cabin was there you read some sort of historical assessment of that somewhere I have done so much research on this land it would make your heads bend yeah but just this house just this one cabin yes sir so what have you read um trying to discover the the source of your information so I read the original request for the rezoning and I'm not sure exactly what year that was when pictures of the cabin were taken by Nancy um and actually have those on my phone but I don't know how to get them to you it's all right but what I'm trying to and that's the end of my question for you okay what I'm trying to understand is whether or not this is a structure which it falls in the category of resources which are comprehensive historical resources which our comprehensive plan favors protecting is this in the county historical inventory I mean I know it's probably not a national register site so it's not showing up on the SHPO site but I'm talking about the county inventory so Sarah Young the planning department we have we rely on SHPO to have displayed all of our mapped county inventory sites national register local all historic resources are mapped on the SHPO website that's why we use it because it's our most comprehensive resource I'm on there now and I've searched for snow hill farm tenant house that is mapped but it is mapped on snow hill road it is not according to SHPO located um on Goodwin on Goodwin of course the only historic snow hill road snow hill farm being eight square miles probably had a number of tenant houses since it's we now call that trade burn so we can certainly look into that further I'm sorry my device just died literally right now so the um so I'm really concerned I don't if we have a site which is covered by the comprehensive plan that we have neglected to include in our analysis of this rezoning I'd like to know about it Grace Smith planning department we'll certainly look into that but we're going to use the same resource that we just pulled up during the meeting and it does not show another resource that's protected other than the other one that's off site so we can certainly look into that did you want the case to be continued and we come back to visit you about that or would you like that looked into between now and council or what did you I'm not sure so let's go at this from from what we do know remind me what the comprehensive plan says about our policy with regard to historical resources so normally um I can't say it verbatim but normally in a situation like this the applicant would provide the resource to be available to be moved or relocated or someone else could take the resource um like fendal bevers well I mean we say something and then we knock it out if you remember the Cornwallis case years ago there was a house on that property that they had made a text commitment to provide it to be moved and they were even going to I think pay part of the moving fee if someone would take it right but that that's the extent that I'm aware of that we can that's the extent of our policy and we would have to verify that it's actually protected resource before that would even apply and according to what we just saw it does not look like it is but we could certainly dig a little deeper just to make sure if that would make people feel better here comes sir young yeah from the planning department my device may not have battery but I still got a little left yeah the energizer bunny so just to clarify that historic resources that are not they may inventoryed but are not designated to be protected um essentially we're in a mode of trying to be proactive with applicants about what they might do with that with those resources so that's certainly something that we you know can do a little more field investigation and verify and then discuss with the applicant what what options they may have but there's nothing that requires that I realize there's nothing that requires to make sure that it's a policy question exactly in other words I would be because this is this is something that really matters to me uh I would be more inclined to vote in favor of a rezoning that protected historic resource uh at the developer's option than one that that doesn't I realize that that we don't have a rule that requires them to protect everything but we do have a policy in favor of that uh my problem is is I've I failed to notice this house when I went out there so and of course I can't always tell where the property lines are and this is this is like several of our cases this time odd shaped pieces of property uh thank you for coming to for drawing entire attention I'm not sure what my response is yet but I'll be thinking about it um see the house on the uh the GIS pictures the 2000 about the 2007 um back in 2007 you can actually see that there's a little road right there and you can you can see the house it's got a tin roof but you can't see it it's it's covered after 2007 the pictures you can't really see it can't see it in the aerial it's provided to me and and uh anyway um thank you for for that thank you um Jared we've got an old house on this piece of property uh what can we do to protect maybe we haven't I mean I mean I'm not sure I agree that we have but if we do and what can we do to protect yeah um because historic by whose measure I mean I um we're just sort of assuming it's historic just because we're just assuming that I mean my understanding my my client bought the property and about 10 years ago and he's aware of it but my understanding is that the roof is basically the thing is the lap to collapse I mean I don't know what there is to move well and I don't know either uh I mean honestly you're at this point you're not proffering uh you're not coming up and saying oh yeah I know what house that is we can shift this over here and make it the community center I don't think that would be a wise I just don't think there's much to move that's all I have okay are the other commissioners who would like to speak okay commissioner Baker and then I think commissioner uh Brian often brings up wise statements such as the damage has already been done and I wonder how often when cases come before us we might be doing that very damage as well I think in general this specific application is actually going in the right direction when it comes to uh reducing lot uh minimum lot um minimum lot requirements getting rid of this setback requirements I think that that goes in the right direction um I think that uh in particular combined with the wildlife protection buffer um that's important uh one policy in uh the Durham comprehensive plan that I'm looking at is um this isn't the suburban tier right policy 222c suburban tier conservation subdivision promote the use of conservation subdivision provisions in the suburban tier especially where conservation by design methods would protect environmentally sensitive lands preserve historic and archaeological sites uh protect scenic views and conserve prime agricultural lands while encouraging more efficient use of the land in permitting up to one-third increase in the density for projects that utilize these provisions I dream of uh following many other policies in the comprehensive plan and I look forward to uh maybe maybe with the new comp plan we will we will do that that's all thank you uh commissioner Brian um thank you um I was looking at the development plan from the legacy case and reading as fast as I can uh the small print with my poor eyes I see no mention of this historic structure uh in in that plan either that was 2005 but if you look at the attachment to the aerial view that came with this particular case at the piece of property the gentleman pointed to it looks like there might be a building there but I can't tell you anything about the condition of that building thank you they're debating I think they found something so um let's let's see what Mr Miller has to share let me say his house uh Mr Miller we were asking if you had something to report back to us on the structure okay we just go with the same ground again all right but it looks like that's enough yes um Mr Eden would like to offer this might clarify something it's my understanding that the whatever structure would whatever it is is close to the parcel line I know it's very close to our property line we have a 50 foot undisturbed buffer proposed in that area so anything inside that 50 feet is not going to be touched so whatever is there now we'll stay there thank you that's a committed element on the plan okay thank you yes uh fairy young so one quick thing that I wanted to add um is that had this been identified as a historic resource at the time originally when we reviewed the plan and we just identified that the plan has teeny tiny little rectangle that's hidden among all the other stuff so it's um almost impossible to see but had it been identified to us we would have reviewed it against the one applicable policy from element five the historic preservation element of the comp plan which says historic resources and compatible development promote new development that is compatible with significant historic resources by addressing impacts through the development review process so the question to us would have been is this a significant resource um so that's kind of what our assessment would have been I appreciate that right are the other commissioners who would like to speak yes commissioner alter thank you chair this is a question for transportation um so uh the bicycle and pedestrian advisory commission you know they often ask for off-site improvements uh like this sidewalk um and but the the city's transportation department you don't always also request that can you say why you did in this particular case because I'm sorry can you repeat the question so um attachment nine BPAC they they asked for a the sidewalk the off-site sidewalk improvement and in this particular case you also requested that right you asked the correct in other cases so I think two cases ago uh I can't remember which case that we had earlier tonight BPAC also asked for this but you didn't also you didn't request it I'm so I'm curious why did you request from the applicant uh the sidewalk improvement in this particular case is there something about it growing Thomas transportation um we specifically requested the proffer to avoid to basically fill in a gap that would exist in the sidewalk system um sometimes that's not the case of a gap it's just off-site um sidewalk that is being requested I guess I I think BPAC usually also asks for that when they're they they think there's a gap but so is it because the gap is between two parts of the same prop of this property and not a gap between this property and a intersection yes that is correct requested okay yes this site will be required to construct sidewalk along their frontage which will leave a gap okay in the sidewalk and so that's why you requested in this case and not others okay thank you that's that's helpful um well I'm glad that you're uh Jere that you're wanting to make this commitment you know subject to right away um I I was on the fence about this case but I I think I've been convinced by commissioner Brian that there are a number of things about this that are probably maybe better than the legacy uh case um thank you all right are the other commissioners who would like to speak if not I think we're ready to entertain a motion chair I move that we send case z19 000104 to the city council with a with a favorable recommendation so I'll second uh with the with the provision of the one committed element that was accepted okay uh motion by commissioner question actually I do although the staff can't accept the sidewalk in uh if there's right-of-way commitment we're not making a final decision we're making we're giving advice to the council yeah and so I'd like to go ahead and include that in there as a condition of our favorable recommendation I agree I'm in my second okay I can I can revise it to to make that sub yeah the maker of the motion if you would revise it yeah so I I move that we send case z19 000104 to the city council with a favorable recommendation subject to the applicant making a commitment to sidewalk improvements if the right way is available if the right of way is available okay plus the one commitment that they have already the additional commitment they made tonight for the uh minimum uh lot size of 5 000 square feet motion by commissioner el turk uh second by commissioner brian that we send item number z19 00010 Godwin crossing forward with a favorable recommendation subject to the inclusion of sidewalk provisions subject to the inclusion of one proper as identified all in favor of this motion roll call please commissioner morgan yes mr johnson yes commissioner brian yes commissioner el turk yes vice chair busby yes chair hyman yes commissioner miller yes commissioner ketchum yes commissioner santiago yes commissioner baker yes commissioner low yes and commissioner macgyver yes ocean passes 12 to 0 thank you moving right along we have arrived at glenn road townhomes which was continued from november 12 2019 meeting good evening i'm jamie sunyak with the planning department i will be presenting case number z19 00018 this is the continuation of the glenn road uh townhome application subject to the november 11th 2019 planning commission hearing the applicant has offered um the following text commitments which are listed on the slide uh staff has reviewed these text commitments and found them to be legal and enforceable i'm just going to read them into um the record a minimum of 25 percent of the townhouse uh townhouses shall be alley loaded again a minimum of uh 25 percent of the townhouses shall be alley loaded the development shall have a maximum block length of 800 feet all townhouse units shall have a habitable heated square footage that will not exceed 1700 square feet prior to the first certificate of occupancy the developer shall contribute 41 850 um to the city of durham affordable housing fund prior to the first certificate of occupancy the developer shall contribute 4500 to the durham county public school system in addition to these uh text commitments the applicant had also shifted the northern access point to the east which was shown on um attachment five again staff has determined that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and all policies and ordinances and i will be happy to answer any questions that you have thank you i have two individuals who have signed up to speak four and three against the first one is the applicant bahati matissia okay thank you good evening my name is bahati matissia uh with parker po adams and burnstein at 301 fable street here representing the applicant um ashen woods uh who'll be the developer and bob micheler um is here with ashen woods and we also have our site planner charlie oakley um i believe charlie is the other person that's signed up to speak so i will i will speak and he and i will tag team and handle questions if that's okay um so yeah as jamie mentioned and thank you very much for that great summary um we were here before you all on november 12th um and continued to today's date we took under consideration many of your comment all of your comments as well as comments from some of the neighbors we evaluated those comments and and to determine how we can incorporate them into the development at this time if possible um we added those additional proffers in response to some of those comments and for some of the comments we realized that while we would like to accompany or accommodate some of those requests into the development we either realized that we were not able to or we're just not able to commit to those particular requests at this time given this early stage but we do think that the additional proffers um helped to provide a bit more clarity of what the development will look like for the community um and ultimately um for the commission as well so i will just go through an overview and then we'll also go briefly so that we can then open it up for questions but as you know we're requesting to rezone from rr to a pdr with a max density of 7.046 units per acre um and this is a particular development um that is between um residential community and the commercial node and i 85 to the south and looking at the zoning map we believe that placing pdr on this particular site will provide a nice transition between those homes and the commercial node in i 85 to the south and as you know the site itself is designated as modern density residential moderate density residential in the flume which requires a density of between six to eight units per acre um and we were advised early on in this process that we should maintain um the flume as it is and keep the density on the site as mdr and so that's how we have arrived to a townhome development um but going into the different comments and how we arrived at the different additional proffers one of the um many comments that were made is that there was a preference for a mix of single family and townhome units in the development as i mentioned previously we initially wanted to do all single family and then we considered doing a mix but we had to keep within that six to eight um units per acre density on the flume as i mentioned staff advised us that it would be um more appropriate for that given that the flume calls for a higher density in this area but looking at the different ways that we played around with the site plan we were not able to incorporate single family into the development and stay within that six to eight unit um density on the in the flume so but one of the reasons that we were asked to incorporate single family is for variety can we have some variety and some some difference within the within the development so we decided to incorporate that by adding a proffer that a minimum of 25 percent of the units shall be alley loaded and alley loaded means that the access and the garage would be located in the back of the house and that means that the the unit itself will be brought towards the front and so that as you're driving down the street or walking down the street you're not going to see the same frontage on every single unit there will be some variety in that way um so we're committing to at least a minimum of 25 percent of those units being alley loaded um that will also provide some variety in unit sizes um because alley loaded are typically larger than front loaded units um there was a comment that it would be helpful to make the development more walkable for the residents for that reason we added the proffer that there will be maximum block length of 800 feet um there was also comments about making the development affordable or some type of concrete um commitment to making the development an affordable development um to address that we have added the proffer that all units will have a maximum heated habitable square footage of 1700 square feet um and we spoke with and we believe that that would yield um units that would be around the the low 200 000s that would be the price point and I believe I mentioned this before but we did confirm with the city's um the community development department that that a price point of 230 000 would make the units affordable to those who make 80 percent or below of the AMI in this area so we are place making sure that the development itself all of them would be at least affordable to people making that much but we do hope to have the units be um varied in sizes but they will not go above the 1700 square footage so that will keep the development generally affordable for for this community and then of course we are making the contribution to the Durham Affordable Housing Fund and then the fourth um one of the other comments that were raised was a concern about student capacity or the school capacity in the area glenn elementary being over capacity um or at its maximum capacity currently um so we are contributing 4500 to this to the school system townhomes generally yield a smaller um student yield than single family homes do and in this case our student yield is only nine students so um we we are we are aware of that and we are making a contribution to address that and so the next slide I just want to provide a summary of all the commitments so that we have them all listed out there as a reminder looking at this picture here as um Jamie noted we did move the access the northern access point away from the neighbor's property so it's been moved further east I believe it would be if it was oriented properly um so the total that list of commitments includes 279 townhome units as a max maximum pervious surface area will not exceed 70 percent um we are dedicating additional right away for the glenn school road realignment we will be providing an exclusive eastbound left turn lane along glenn school road at the site access three which will help with traffic that's going along glenn school road we are providing a minimum of five feet of additional asphalt for a bike lane along glenn school road and then of course the new proffers that we've added 25 percent of the units will be alley loaded maximum block length of 800 feet maximum unit size of 1700 square square feet and then the two proffers um the two proffers are contributing the the donations to the affordable housing fund and the school um system and then I also wanted to point out again we will be meeting the 20 percent tca requirement and the 17 percent open space requirement so 37 percent of the site will be preserved and and not developed so that kind of goes into the reason why we had to consider if we're going to be keeping within that six to eight density um six to eight units per acre density for the um mdr flume designation we have to consider what's going to be preserved and if you look at this picture here there's a there's a large pond there that will be preserved and that will be cleaning up that area around it so it can be can it conserve as somewhat of an amenity for the residents and of course the stream buffers that will be preserving also um and of course just going into the criteria that will be measured against compatibility with surround with with nearby properties again I talked about the transition between the residents um up to the north and the commercial node and i-85 to the south um suitability for the project this town home development is suitable for this particular site it is meeting a specific housing demand in Durham and um as staff as the staff report noted um an attachment six and eight the existing infrastructure um are it do exist to support this particular development and then of course as staff mentioned the particular um comprehensive plan policies of this this development is consistent with and of course it is consistent with the flume map designation as well um so I will just reserve the rest of my time for to answer any questions thank you i'm charlie um yokely who was tag teaming with you if you okay very good thank you then um we'll move to those individuals who've signed up to speak against i have three individuals joe joey sharyl rodney porter and joni brown and um looks like we have three and a half minutes each three and a half three and a half first of all i would like to thank the commissioners for allowing me to speak tonight um my name is joey sharyl and i reside at 2805 darrow road that's the community just north of where this development is going to be i've been there for over 20 years and over the time i've seen the um traffic increased tremendously out there it's a rural road and i think with this development being built it's going to put a lot a lot more traffic out there um i'm more or less against this i would rather see um single family residential houses out there compatible and suitable for the area rather than town houses so i'm against um this project thank you thank you um rodney porter hello and thank you for the opportunity to speak um not absolutely against it but what i've seen more and more frequently occur particularly in northeast durham is that we're trying to cram a lot of housing up there simply because there isn't anything there well that's a fairly good reason to put something there but there's no infrastructure there's no transportation for instance the subdivision i live in there's the sidewalk that we put in because we had to to build the subdivision but it's not connected to anything on either end so it's a bit foolish and if you have these townhouses that are built beautiful you put a sidewalk in front of it what's it connecting to there's no bus service out there there's no there's no grocery stores out there there's nothing decent to get to and there's no uh provision to get us into the city so when you're considering these things also consider the cost of what the city is going to have to do to truly make that part of the city of durham because i don't see anyone that's living out there that's going to be able to do anything except drive and that is inconsistent with durham's uh projection of trying to have affordable housing because everyone doesn't have a car and if you're if you're on the low end of the income spectrum you have a higher chance of not owning a car owning a car is expensive you have insurance you have maintenance now you're going to offset the housing the affordable housing by building these structures but it something doesn't mesh it doesn't reconcile in my mind so um i just ask you to bear these required city services in mind as we expand and we try to fulfill that obligation of affordable housing thank you thank you so much um joni brown i'm joni brown i live at 38 22 alameda street same community where um um joey lives and a couple of houses down so i've lived there about i think it's been about 33 years somewhere like that moved out there because um i wanted property for my kids to grow up and be able to play where sports oriented um didn't want houses on top of me uh wanted some land and um i was disappointed to find out i'm not against developing that that area that used to be a tobacco field um but i'm disappointed that it's going to be townhomes um it doesn't jive with the rest of the area there um i'm i'm i'm concerned about you know we don't even have a park out in our area so the land was really important that my kids had a place to play baseball in the backyard and play soccer um and now i hear that they're putting townhomes up which means pavement and um so i'm disappointed about that and i just really wish you would reconsider i mean i moved to the county for the reason of not being on top of people and um so that's the main thing the other thing is is been mentioned by the others the schools um the roads i mean it's a two lane road glenn road is two lane glenn school school road is two lane i hope there are plans to to widen those if we're going to put this many housing units in there and i don't understand why there's a minimum uh what what was it that she used um six to eight units i don't know where that came from i i'm not a i haven't looked at the plan or anything like that but uh why that particular property has to have so many units per acreage or whatever um i don't understand where that came from and why it's it is that so anyway that's all thank you i yes since you had reserved some time so um i think it was three minutes left yes if i if i could just to address some of the comments that were made yes um so first i think i misspoke when i said six to eight it's the mdr six to twelve units per acre so i wanted to make sure i corrected my statement there and then of course we're proposing a pdr at seven point zero four six units per acre which is closer to that range to the bottom half the bottom part of that range we're not going all the way up to 12 we're going much closer to the six but we're at seven point zero four six and the mdr allows six to twelve units per acre um i wanted to to touch on traffic um at at this time we have spoken with transportation and um the tia has not required for this development so it's not as significantly large of a development that would require a tia um but also we have complied with all of the transportation all the recommendations are requirements from transportation at at this time and if transportation comes back at site plan and requires additional road improvements we would be happy to address those at that time so it's it's not um it's not the end of the conversation regarding those with transportation department um going to the the housing type um townhomes are generally a more affordable product than single-family homes townhomes um yield less traffic than single-family homes um i believe the the stat is that it townhomes yield half a trip compared to a full trip um that single-family homes produce um and of course townhomes also yield a smaller number of of students so i think that um i understand that that the neighbors want something that looks like what they have on their properties but when we consider germs in need for more housing and placing a development here that would meet that need um without having as great of adverse impacts as we possibly could be having i think townhomes meet um that goal and i think that's all of oh and i also wanted to touch on um the point about bus service um so there was a comment made that there's no bus service here and that there are no um preferable commercial uses in the area so there is a commercial note to the south with a super wal-mart a Verizon store a game stop in other restaurants i mean we have heard comments from neighbors that they are not um they would prefer to see something better there and i think that as more development grows in an area more commercial uses will come and as as far as the bus service there's no bus service in this area currently but we did speak with staff and the city will be constantly looking and evaluating whether or not bus service should be brought to this area and i think having more units in this area would help with that um but until then we have recognized that there is enough space along glenn road in order for us to dedicate an easement for a bus stop um but at this time that that would have to be evaluated at site plan whether or not um the bus service would be brought to that area and if it is at that time when the city does decide that then the um the owner of the property would be able to dedicate an easement to to have that service built there but that would be something that would be decided later um and having more units in that area would help with that decision thank you thank you um i do not have other individuals who have signed up to speak so i'm going to close the public hearing and give the commissioners an opportunity to ask questions i'm going to start to my right commissioner johnson thank you chair woman so um i won't get into the whole design elements because i'm sure that'll come up as we go down the line so the point i want to raise is is i think the challenge that we're faced with as a commission so the future land use map has this area of derm in this particular site as being more dense in an area of derm that has been known to be less dense so the question that i find myself as i've reviewed this and re-reviewed it and trying to come to some trying to rationalize myself which way i could go to sleep and feel comfortable with but it keeps kind of keep coming back to the question of what is the roadmap that derm is trying to to go so we're undergoing a revision of the comp plan i don't know if this area of derm will continue to be envisioned as becoming more dense to this level so to answer the question to the the the individual who asks well where the six to it came from the future land use map is it the developer is creating a product with that being the roadmap your concerns are based on what's existing today and that there's existing neighborhoods that it's not compatible with what the future land use map is saying that derm will be supposedly be moving towards and so without knowing when we get that final roadmap in two three years whenever it comes how do how can we be comfortable with bringing something to this community that is going to look differently even not from a height or whatnot but it's you go from single families to you're going to have a compact little community that's going to be visible and noticeable and it's going to put more traffic on the roads and the reality is is the people who are who are going to buy this more affordable product they're likely going to own a car because they're going to choose to live in this part of derm and you wouldn't move to this part of derm knowing that you're going to have to trans to travel to get to the grocery store to go get your hair cut to it's going to put more cars on the road and and so it's i feel like having lived in atlanta it's like what we're challenged with doing is exactly what created the atlanta sprawl it's like we built houses and then we said oh we got to figure out the transportation infrastructure so my thing is i'm struggling with this because is it it's like build it and the infrastructure will come but we don't even know how we're going to fund the current capital improvement plans here in derm so the concerns from the existing neighbors are warranted and at the same time the developer is trying to request something based on what the city is saying is right now it's a road map for the city and so i don't have an answer right now but i put that on the table to see what the subsequent feedback and comments are but i've struggled with this so thank you commissioner bryne thank you madam chair um this may or may not help my colleague here uh one of the problems i have with this area is that i think there's been a whole bunch of mistakes made on the flume the uh medium density residential 6 to 12 dwelling units per acre is one that can be used in the suburban tier and in the urban tier and i questioned whether it was really wise to put it in the suburban tier at a point that is so far removed from the urban area so part of my answer is i think this is wrong i don't think it should be there i think it should be something different uh there is shopping uh at the walmart center and the surrounding stores but they're over on the other side of 85 you're gonna have to drive to get there uh uh the i think the applicant made a mistake in not recognizing that this uh flume designation would lead to such a what i consider a really gross incompatibility between the density of seven units per acre up against rr to me that just doesn't fly you've got that to the north you've got it to the west and based on the buildings down here and what's on the flume industrial uh you've got it a little bit to the south uh i think had you tried to get a lower density flume designation then you could have easily done some of the things that have been suggested which is maybe put single family homes adjacent to single family homes and maybe put a few townhomes somewhere in the middle where they're not really up against rr development so uh i think you know that was an error on your part i also think as far transportation is concerned uh a mistake was made probably by ncdot who does occasionally make a few of them in not requiring turn lanes on the entrances off of glenn road because potentially if you look at your three entrances uh and assume that they all handle about the same volume of traffic you're putting about 900 additional cars additional trips per day on this rural road which i don't think is designed to handle it and without having turn lanes there i think you are not helping to help safety and welfare of the people this area i think you're putting it in jeopardy uh so those are my comments thank you thank you commissioner brine our other commissioners would like to speak okay okay commissioner baker and then commissioner miller yeah i think um going back to something that commissioner buzzby said at the beginning of this meeting we have a lot of very challenging cases tonight in particular um you know this is just our we're just reacting to two kind of suboptimal options every time something comes to us um and i and i i i do feel i do feel for my commissioners at the end who are trying to rationalize using the existing future lane use map you're gonna get a headache trying to do that uh there's arbitrary and capricious is built into this map so uh you know uh the need for this few new future lane use map in the new comprehensive plan is great and i hope that coming with that will also be criteria and or a growth related map so that they're both layered on top of one another this is something that we talked about previously so we can have a list of criteria that says this is when you grow your future lane use map or place that map whatever it ends up being called we'll say this is what what you grow as this is what the development looks like and so we do have a site that is on the outskirts of the city and you know if we look at it today should it develop today no no absolutely absolutely not it doesn't make sense to develop this property today but uh but it is currently uh under the current future lane use map sort of labeled as this higher higher density higher density property one thing i want to say about this is um and this is a message to the development community is that uh this developer did respond to a lot of really important things that have been stated by the planning commission more than any other develop more than any other development that i have seen come before us um now i also think that there are a lot of best practices that weren't necessarily followed so i just want to run down a list of best practices sort of having the compact dense integrated variety of housing types this development proposes one housing type having connected streets with short walkable blocks preferably 600 feet long and this does actually have a commitment for 800 foot long locks having sidewalks in street trees having a variety of accessible appropriate uses this only has one use having a centralized public civic open space i didn't see anything about that protection and access to green space connection to anticipated future bus transit which is something that we that's something where the connectivity comes in and you know if we look at if we look at this map if you look if you pick up whatever you've got on your desk and you look underneath it you look at the map of Durham and you look at the street connectivity you know just south of 85 you know in this triangle area here to the west of 70 to the east of 15501 you can see that pattern you can see the difference in the pattern in these pre-war war two neighborhoods versus if you look further south if you look further east north everything around that is disconnected low density doesn't will never support transit very well it'll never get as to kind of the direction that we want to get to so some of the things the 25 percent alleys the 800 foot block length these are very very laudable that i'm going to emphasize that when my in my comments to city council just how important that is and again and i keep saying this i just want to stress it i do think that it's important that we adopt those as standards not just because it's going to provide improvements for the community at large but also because it will eventually provide a less volatile and uh a less volatile and more predictable process for developers who are coming before us and are saying why are you guys coming out with all of these commitments for us so um my one issue my the biggest issue that i have with this development is related to policy 231a continuous development support orderly development patterns that take advantage of existing urban services and avoidance so far as possible patterns of leapfrog non contiguous scattered development this is not contiguous with the city limits so there are a lot of things to balance in this case again if if we always approve developments that are not contiguous with the city limits you can imagine and gentlemen sitting on the front row here made a really good point you can imagine the impacts that will have the fiscal impacts and all the other types of impacts that that will have on city services uh solid waste has to go out there police fire they will have to cross over uh land that is outside of our jurisdiction to go to land that is in our jurisdiction and you can imagine that sort of death by a thousand paper cuts situation i said a lot and i'm still undecided and i want to i want to hear more from my other commissioners about what they're thinking about this project thank you commissioner miller so first i want to begin with a question um so in your design commitments which are pretty good design commitments it just says siding can you tell me what kind of siding or any kind does that mean any kind of siding or so this is what it says materials materials will be brick or stone masonry siding or parched concrete what kind of siding are we talking about do we have anybody who's going to be able to respond yeah we do but they're conferring okay thank you for your patience so at this time we have not narrowed down the particular material the siding so at this point it could be vinyl it could be cement it could be brick stone accents it's it's not determined at this time at this early stage we have not narrowed it down so you have siding in there so that because if it wasn't in there it would have to be brick or stone masonry i'm sorry say that again i said if you did not have the word siding in there then the houses would have to be brick or stone masonry okay uh so i get it i was just wondering if you had left out a descriptor uh or if i had misunderstood design commitments and material commitments are important to me uh because that's an aspect of compatibility we tend to think of compatibility in terms of dwelling units per acre but there's lots of elements of compatibility and i think they can you can trade one against the other a little bit another question i had is how many units per building and would you be willing to make a proffer about mixing those up i mean because if this is going to be a whole bunch of buildings that are all eight units per per building all of a sudden you've got a lot of pretty big buildings there and that in my opinion compounds the compatibility problem but if you mix it up uh then i'm more interested if some some buildings have four units and some buildings have six units and uh that that provides at least some visual variety that that essentially i don't want this to look like scofield barracks i'm gonna let my colleague charlie take that one evening charlie yokely with the academy's company here in durham uh there are three different building types so there's a building with three units up to a building with five and they are mixed throughout the development so you won't see would you be willing to make a proffer that says that there will be a variety of of of a mix of building sizes in terms of how many units are in the building i mean i can't craft that but somebody can that's that's a writable thing and then ultimately i wanted to note this isn't a question so i wanted to note that the actual density here according to at least one allowable way and the one then the way that we most commonly do it here is only 5.2 units an acre and that's because we allow developers at their option to include in their density calculations um their buffers and what have you or they can opt them out here the decision has been made to opt them out so the actual density is 5.2 and here again this is another dimension of compatibility and i think we need to take it into account but also taking this into account i find it hard to believe although i've heard the developer say it in at the microphone twice now at two meetings and to me in meetings is is that there's no way to mix unit types but at this density i just find that hard to believe that you can't mix townhouses and some single families in here uh this is a piece of property that's pretty flat and while it does have some uh some stream buffer issues and things like that and then there's the pond there's a lot of buildable space here there's lots of acts well there's you know the practical access points or there's uh two or three of them i just find it really hard to believe that we could not mix unit types and work in some small single families that would certainly come in under 1700 square feet um we uh had another speaker tonight talk about the importance of of of people buying houses and what have you but i think in order to integrate this into the larger community i don't think it's although i frequently rail at what i think are mistakes in the future land use map uh i i don't think i think we can overcome that with this and i can understand why it might be more expensive to build some single families and it makes it certainly would complicate the organization of how this is developed but this is a big site and um that has got lots of buildable space and if we really mean that a variety of housing types then we need to start really leaning into this and to me if if 20 of this was single family homes or perhaps a mix of single family homes townhouses and something else even uh i could vote for this uh because i think we could organize this in a way so that this notion of of transition from the from the commercial node there at id 5 uh up to the the less dense rural residential i think we could make that even more effective instead of you know it's like a staircase are the stairs are we going to do this in two steps that are great big ones um or can we more subtly uh create a a graduated change and i i believe that it's possible at the at this level of density uh we're you know we're down actually below arguably the actual density is below the minimum called for in the future land use map i can't believe there's a room for variety i'm not a developer i'm not a land planner and maybe you can show it to me but i will see these other projects that come in in much higher densities and i just can't believe there isn't room there maybe i'm wrong and we have land planners on the panel and what have you and i'll and if i'm wrong then tell me so and i'll take that into account when i decide to vote thank you commissioner mitchell no i'm looking over at our uh at commissioner kitchen and mix his name with you i so we're often confused we're tired uh thank you um i want to first of all thank the applicant because i think you know we said to continue it and we had some concerns and comments and uh i appreciate you all going back and and good faith trying to figure out a way to make it work so thank you for that i do have a question regards to traffic i heard some comments about increased traffic on that road i think you said to us that because it's going to be um townhomes there's going to be fewer trips uh and less traffic can you talk a little bit about that you don't mind to kind of clarify those points if you don't mind is that for i'm sorry they have a trip i don't know who it's for i don't know if it's for me i was going to then say that i should probably hand it over to transportation for them to address that because they're the experts on it so thank you sorry early in thomas transportation so the way traffic um the number of trips are generated um we use the industry standard institute of transportation engineers where they have trip rates that are associated with um each type of land use and townhomes generate less trips than single family homes typically because they're larger families multiple vehicles um things of that nature thank you thank you did you have any additional no no thank you thank you commissioner thank you chair um you know part of the frustration i'm hearing is about the the flum designation of you know six to twelve units i think miss brown you know it seems like an arbitrary number or why is it so high compared to the surrounding area and i think you know commissioner johnson and brian mentioned and mentioned it as well and i mean in some ways it doesn't make i don't know if it makes sense or not but i i do think that i would like to get away from just talking about density as the only way that we can have compatible development and so you know commissioner miller said that there are other ways to talk about compatibility than just units per acre and i and from what i understand from the you know upcoming comp plan we might be going in that direction i don't know if that's true or not but um you know based on what we've discussed um it seems like we're going to be you know we're more interested in the form and of the development and i think that's something we should consider in this particular case uh you know it's i like you know i like this commitment you know aside from the the two commitments that commissioner baker mentioned the the the block lance and the what's the other one number two alleys the alleys the the one on square footage i think is a nice commitment to i think it's a commitment to a modest size home that will you know we cannot ensure that it will be affordable you know it is not going to be affordable the developer is not going to uh check you know a a renter or a homeowner's income but it does ensure that it will be at a modest price and i think that is a that is a laudable commitment and i think that's a it's a good commitment and it it's not just about affordability but i do think that it one of the things that i've heard from a lot of the emails that we've gotten is that this is a modest neighborhood right or they you know they are trailers and single family homes and again i think this one commitment you know again it doesn't it's not a perfect commitment to to ensure modesty but i think it does go a long way and i really appreciate that one so i i think it addresses both affordability potentially and you know this this question of modesty or this you know this compatibility with neighboring um uh neighborhoods right so i i like that um i think that the you know kind of to echo what commissioner kinship said i think that the applicant has made some some commitments here that are above and beyond what we usually see um and you know and i think we should at least in my opinion you know we can signal to city council and others and the development community that you know these kind of things get rewarded and it's not maybe perfect i i understand that but i think they can go a long way i want to just address the or maybe i have this is more of a question to both commissioner commissioners baker and miller because both of you have mentioned housing types right a mix of housing types is what we prefer so yes there are not a mix of housing types within this development but it but because there are going to be townhomes here and there are single family homes around it would that be i mean to me if you zoom out right that that's a mix of housing types what is the benefit of housing types uh why should we be focusing on this and why would this not actually contribute to that it and i'll let either start and then he's going to give you the real answer okay the fake answer first uh to me i think you've hit on a really good point it's a question of scale and you said zoom out and that's about scale so i believe that you can have the a desirable mixture of housing types in different projects when they are all relatively small uh in other words it doesn't have to be one development they don't all have to vote in the same homeowner association meeting in order to get a desirable mix of housing types uh because it is a question of uh inclusivity uh and housing types a mixture of housing types to me can also mean mixing big houses and little houses of the same type but to get the variety but when we start talking about projects that are bigger that are 50 acres and up then i believe you get concentrations that that are contrary to uh variety in other words big parcels each divided into unit into monotypes uh of all the different ways you can measure variety in my opinion argue against variety if we have a whole bunch of of five and ten acre sites you can variety can be achieved across project boundaries but when you start talking about great when we start talking about farms then uh then variety i think to get what we want in variety we have to start creating it inside the the projects of of acreages of that size and of course there are examples uh in derm that we've done this and not recently i mean woodcroft is a place uh where the intentional and deliberate mixing up of rental and single family and big big single family and relatively modest single family and it's true it's kind of done cul-de-sac by cul-de-sac uh and and uh we haven't seen anybody who has done you know four townhouses and then three single family homes and then three townhouses that would be interesting i would like to see a project that was done that well i say we haven't we have actually approved that very thing in the pinecrest development all at the very high end uh but it's like it's like nothing we've ever seen before so i have a lot to learn and Nate's gonna teach me no i think that's a really great question because i mean there you can have a situation you walk down a street it's a great street in a great neighborhood uh that does have one housing type but i think commissioner miller uh hit on a really important point which is the scale it's so easy to get to lose sight of what the scale is at these 50 acres is so much you could do so much with 50 acres and if you only have one housing type in all of 50 acres i mean that is really true i mean you you should be able to have a lot more housing types in there and i want to hit on a i want to hit on a really important uh planning concept which is the concept of aging in place and the importance of creating built environments that are amenable to all ages so that everyone and that also makes it more amenable to a variety of different income levels and so you might imagine a block or two blocks or or three blocks in an urban area or in a neighborhood that includes a single family house where you know maybe maybe a middle age family lives there with their kids um then they're uh you know their kids grow up and go to college and they can rent um an adu in someone's backyard that's another example of aging in place they grow up they want to move into a town home starter home something like that that could be in the same neighborhood and so uh it's a really important concept it's certainly falling in line with best practices it's certainly a trend that we're seeing throughout the united states and uh really when i when i talk about trend i'm talking about going back to the old to the way of designing uh places before places it's not a it's not a risky thing it's it's something that's well established um something that benefits pedestrian uh oriented nature of of cities and so i i think it is important to think about what commissioner miller was saying in terms of uh scale of development thank you that i mean that's helpful but i again i um yeah and i think we should continue to encourage that but at the same time yeah think about the scale of it so you know if it if we are if we do now have town homes here close to single family homes i do think that that you know is a mix of type housing types it it may not be the ideal but i think it's a step in the right direction and i i don't i think that on the whole this this development has more benefits than than um than costs and i i just vote for it thank you are there any other comments commissioner johnson thank you chairwoman i know you're hanging in there with us tonight we are i just want to make one comment based on the difference of housing types within so with within a site or like you said zooming out so when i talk to developers about you know the feedback i've gotten it may not be germane talk developers you know one comment i get is you know it's more costly right because if you're doing town homes and now you do single family you can't get the density i think that in Durham this may actually be an experiment that we can get some good insight on i think that to prove what actually occurs when you approach is i think that we should start trying to see this because i think one of the trade offices offices that these areas our communities are not going to be as if this is the case that my development project costs will increase relative relative to say a single product that affordability may be one of the tradeoffs i think we need to see it so it won't be anecdotal so it's like when we look at you know both sides of the arguments and some may be willing to accept that this is probably not something that will be a reality or come to market for us because oh it may be more costly and affordable well when we start doing it and we see it maybe someone would be like someone who who started out pro maybe like well i see that one of the intended outcomes is not going to be a reality and so we'd be more mindful of that but i think at this point right now we're still it's in our heads because we haven't seen it and we don't get proposals where we're seeing this and it actually becomes a product here in Durham where we can go to a community and experience with what commissioner baker highlights but then see oh a townhouse is more expensive because now you're building a single family because i think i had the price at a certain point to get people and i in here in Durham people will come so i had a conversation with two developers recently i was like the thing about Durham is if you build a particular upper end product i think that will get them because we have people coming into the city yeah so we have to be more mindful of like the people who are already here are we providing for them but i think we're in a situation where we may be a case study to get some actual actual like real-time information and beyond the anecdotal so i just want to raise that point thank you commissioner Santiago thank you madam chair so one thing i'm sorry give some water so one thing that we have to worry about being commissioned i believe is setting president but i think in this case is a little bit of an exception when it comes to president for the area and i agree with commissioner thank you commissioner johnson that this could be a good opportunity for a case study or something because if you look at the future language map as it is if you zoom out which seems to be the phrase of the night if you zoom out in the area current industrial industrially zoned areas become recreation or open space past that some becomes industrial but there's not much residential out there in terms of the current for future language maps so this might be the one opportunity or the one case that comes before us in the general area so this might be a good opportunity to let the developer who's done a great job of trying to compromise with us in the community to see what it could look like just one small thing chair thank you i just wanted to mr baker thank you i just want to add one one additional um uh thought there is that in addition to sort of single family in townhome and ad u that you could also incorporate small scale multiplexes and multifamily i think that that is included in the variety of housing types and i also think we're only going to get any of this stuff and all this stuff if we code it if we put it into the requirements if we put it in the udo and it's not very difficult to do that and um so we're obviously not going to get a lot of volunteers out there to do this and quite frankly it's not it's not a risky thing it's it's not risky to do it's just a lot easier if you go around from community to community just stamping down your typical single family or whatever type of uh development so um we need to be thinking about that is coding this stuff into the udo thank you commissioner buzzby thank you madam chair i've been really quiet on this particular case because i was thinking really hard and listening to everyone i was i was on the fence i would have voted against this last month i appreciate that the proponents took the time to i believe improve the plan even coming in tonight i think my main concern is still is this orderly development pattern it still strikes me that it's a jump and as commissioner miller has said it would be i would be more comfortable with a stair step at the same time i've been on this commission a number of years i've never seen this many commitments and many of these are quite good i believe this is just enough to exceed the bar so i am going to plan to vote for this but i still do have some level of concerns about the location if you if this was further south and you were talking about this number of townhomes with these commitments and it was closer to transportation this would be an easy vote in my opinion and i i agree with the neighbors who have legitimate concerns but i do feel like we've put in enough commitments and safeguards i hope that will continue to be the case as this moves forward to city council but again i think these are good steps in the right direction that give the existing neighbors some level of certainty about what will be coming and i think it does begin to help with the transition that was my biggest concern but i do plan to vote for this thank you thank you do i have other commissioners who would like to speak if not i think we're ready for emotion madame chair if it's appropriate at this time i move case z19 00018 concerning the glenn road townhomes project uh that we send it forward to the city council and this is this an annexation case too okay send it forward to the city council uh with a favorable favorable recommendation second motion by commissioner miller second by commissioner al turk that we send item z19 00018 glenn road townhomes forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation all in favor of this motion may we have should we mention in the motion the additional commitments that were made certainly thank you which were well there's a whole bunch of them let's go back to james to see if they were recorded yeah they're in the report but jamey sonyak with the planning department they were the list of the proffers that i stated in my presentation that were put on the record okay yeah those are in the plan yeah yeah we don't don't okay so then we can move forward uh motion by commissioner miller and second by commissioner al turk that we send this item forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation uh may we have a roll call vote for this item please commissioner morgan no mr johnson no commissioner brine no commissioner al turk yes chair uh vice chair busby yes chair hyman no commissioner miller no commissioner ke anchin yes commissioner santiago yes commissioner baker yes commissioner loo yes commissioner mckyver yes motion passes seven to five thank you we're ready for the staff report for the next item soft mineral springs and pleasant good evening i'm jamey sonyak with the planning department i will be presenting case number z one nine zero zero zero eighteen i'm sorry nineteen south mineral springs and pleasant road the applicant is jared edens from edens lands the property is located primarily generally speaking at the intersections of south mineral springs holder road and pleasant drive it is currently located within the county jurisdiction and they're seeking an annexation the site is just over 52 acres the request is rural residential and residential suburban 20 to plan development residential four point zero zero one the property is currently located within the low medium density residential future land use designation and there is no change to that the proposal on the development plan is up to 191 single family lots i didn't want to mention before i get into too much detail there were two corrections that needed to be made to the staff report one dealing with top of the first page first line requested correcting the requested zoning district there was a reference to rsmd which was not correct and then i believe it was on page five there was also a reference to 19 units and it should be 191 units thank you well not sure why the aerial map is missing here but in your staff report there is the aerial map that shows the property in red these are some of the site photos the property is located within the suburban development tier and the falls jordan watershed protection overlay district as you can see and if you've visited the the area the property is mainly undeveloped and heavily wooded there are two existing dwellings located along south mineral springs road frontage which will be removed as noted on the development plan there are also areas of wetlands flood plains streams and associated buffers it's getting late so i'm not going to go through all of the names of the various developments that surround this site the staff report goes into a lot of detail in terms of the number of units and what surrounds the area in terms of this subdivision names i would note however that as shown on the development plan there is an existing roadway stub at the end of red robin road which would connect this site to additional 41 single family lots as part of the handover point residential development this is the my apologies this is the wrong context map the property is located within as mentioned before the rural residential and the residential suburban 20 zoning district and the applicant is proposing to change the designation to the plan development plan residential development 4.00 on the correct map is in your staff report again the property is located within the low medium density residential future land use designation which is consistent with the zoning request a portion of the site is within the recreation open space at future land use designation and there is no change to either that designation the development plan provided in the staff report provides site access points project brand new buffers riparian buffers the 10 foot no builds the building and building envelope and parking envelope as well as the tree coverage areas and the maximum impervious coverage in terms of the i'm just going to keep going it seems this i must have a duplication of the previous application for this power point and i'm not going to go back through the other one that's on here i'll just keep going in terms of the key commitments on the development plan the development plan is limited to single family units up to 191 there were other key commitments included additional asphalt for the construction of a future bicycle lane and dedicated right of way for roadway improvements in terms of consistency with the comprehensive plan and its policies this proposal if approved will increase the density and commit to residential units while still remaining consistent with the future land use designation of low medium density residential as stated before the proposed residential development is contiguous with adjacent single family development it serves as in my opinion it serves as an infill site to the built environment and the areas residential character which includes flutters hills residential neighborhood the grove park residential neighborhood hanover point residential subdivision ashton hall residential subdivision ox orchard ridge townhouse development and several several others as well as the roadway stubs that were put in to accommodate interconnection to the red robin road development to provide for interconnectivity to the site there is existing infrastructure including roads water and sewer capacity to serve the site and the proposed development is consistent with policy 1111 a relative to the school system capacity so staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other policies and ordinances and i will be happy to answer any questions that you have thank you i have two individuals who have signed up to speak the applicant jaret eagans and then one other individual who is signed up against so jaret you have 10 minutes thank you jaret eagans with eagans land thanks jamie for your help on this project um summarize a couple things 191 units total single families what we're proposing uh barely conforms with the land use plan of four to eight we're at 4.001 on a four to eight land use plan it's very consistent with stuff immediately south of us we have pdr 4.0 immediately south and pdr 4.76 uh just southwest of the site so it's sort of conforms to that um i do want to point out a couple of public improvements being made and this is rare i've had a lot of single family zoning this is the first one it's been all single family that's proffered to a traffic signal that it's fairly rare that just a single family only project will be generating enough traffic to cause that but we are going to add a signal at mineral and holder which i think will help quite a bit in that area we're also improving there's some sewer improvements we're doing just downstream of the site um required by by the city utilities department some sewer improvements um really again that's all i have i've got to answer your questions thank you thank you so much um i do have uh one individual who has signed up to speak um sukinia noor yeah last did we outlast um mr noor or was it miss okay well are there any individuals here who would like to speak during the comment period to this issue um south mineral springs and pleasant if not i will close to public hearing the comment period and open um the give our commissioners an opportunity to ask questions am i right they're yarning okay to my left are the any commissioners who would like to speak if not i'll entertain a motion oh she hit me madam chair i moved it uh we sent case z19 00019 concerning the property at south mineral springs and pleasant forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation second second it um motion by commissioner miller second by commissioner morgan that we send item z19 00019 south mineral springs and pleasant forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation may we have a roll call vote please mr morgan yes mr johnson yes mr bryne no i'm sorry no commissioner al turk yes vice chair busby yes chair hyman yes commissioner miller yes commissioner ketchan yes commissioner santiago yes mr baker no commissioner low yes and commissioner mcgiver yes ocean passes to thank you and we have one final item text amendments to the unified development ordinance signs welcome michael thank you michael stock with the planning department um myself and donno tool with the city manager's office um we'll want to go through this with you in a brief powerpoint presentation we'll try we'll try to be as expedient as possible at the late hour um and understanding um the topic at hand um just as an overview we'll do a project background um don specifically we'll get into legal issues i'll run through a quick summary uh overview and then um the next steps um um the a lot of most of this is based upon uh the supreme court decision to read versus tana gilbert that don will get into uh momentarily in short it focused on non-commercial temporary signs um uh and it focused it on very much on time place in manner aspects um we consulted with uh uh consultant um back in uh 2017 um and we uh staff took over in the late fall of 2017 we had the jcc pc review in april of 2018 public review in may of 2018 and then we did present an informational item in august 2018 um and then uh and now we are here um i will now turn it over to don to go over more of the legal background thanks mike hey everyone i'm don otul from the dorm city attorney's office i hope you all are not as exhausted as i am at this point of course um but i did we previously came before the planning commission and gave a brief summary of the read v gilbert case i'm basically just going to summarize that very quickly again without belaboring the point as mike said um i guess the first thing about this case is i think this is a situation in which bad facts unfortunately upset the way most municipalities in the country regulate signs but we're now forced to deal with that um the town of gilbert arizona regulated um what they call temporary directional signs and their ordinance define those signs as signs directing the public to a church or other qualifying event so question why you would need a sign category that specifically dealt with churches but the town of gilbert felt that that was necessary the um town's ordinance also defined other qualifying events as any assembly gathering activity or meeting sponsored or arranged or promoted by a religious charitable community service educational or other similar nonprofit organizations so as you can see it was a very narrow care category of signs that the town of gilbert wanted to regulate in a specific way and i think it's unfortunate for the town and the rest of the cities in the country that they further regulated those signs by saying that there could be no more than four of those signs limited to six square feet on any single property at any time and they could only be up for 12 hours and that that ultimately was the real problem um the plaintiff in this case was a church a small church they didn't have a building and so every weekend they had to put up temporary signs so that the parishioners could figure out where the service was going to be held they did the heinous act of putting up 15 to 20 signs every weekend and the church members would post the signs early in the day on saturday and then remove the midday on sunday and the town of gilbert saw fit to cite them for violation of the sign ordinance because it exceeded the length of time that this the sign should be in place um so the court looked at this regulation and um it basically said that it would apply what's called strict scrutiny which is the most onerous kind of first amendment constitutional scrutiny that the court could have applied and because of that it said that the the rules of the town were not that there was no compelling governmental interest and that the rules were not narrowly tailored to achieve that interest essentially um another kind of ordinance if it only if a sign ordinance only regulates time place and manner without going into the specifics of naming different categories of sign that would just be subject to what's called rational review and typically um when something subject to rational view it it will uh pass first amendment muster so uh justice thomas wrote the majority opinion although there were there were many different opinions that were written by the court and um one of the print justice thomas basically said that this ordinance didn't pass strict scrutiny and um justice thomas indicated that if this if the sign ordinance regulated size materials lighting moving parts or portability then that sign would be acceptable um he also went on to say that governments are free to regulate signs that are on government property and um that signs that are narrowly tailored to protect public service uh safety sort of like street road signs speed limit signs that those would likely pass strict scrutiny um there was another consenting opinion and or concurring opinion and it was written by justice alito and his opinion is very helpful it's been cited by most lawyers around the country because he gave a list of sign ordinance provisions that likely would be acceptable so he went on to say that local governments can regulate the size of signs the location of signs whether they're lit or not fixed message versus electronic signs and that um there could be public versus private property distinctions for sign ordinances um he also recognized that uh commercial and residential property distinctions could be recognized um that a city might be able to regulate the number of signs allowed in the right of way per mile um on-premise versus off-premise distinctions could be recognized and that there could be time restrictions placed on signs generally everything that justice alito listed would fall into the category of time place and manner restrictions so as mike and i um and the other planners have looked at our sign udo provisions that's been the focus of what we've done with the ordinance is try to only have time place and manner restrictions and mike so thank you so one of the big things that what that in your thick list of changes is that a lot of um the changes are more organizational than anything else um a lot of our ordinance actually already fell into a lot of time place and manner uh uh standards and thus didn't really require many changes um so uh although you see a lot of strike-throughs and cross-outs a lot of it is just replacing and restructuring how that section works um as it's noted uh in the report and on the screen um uh we didn't really change or made very limited changes to the stand general standards themselves uh prohibited signs and off-premise signs um and the sign types that require sign permits uh wall signs restating signs and such we didn't make a wholesale changes to those um so but what is changing um we did revise the purpose statements to make them more meaningful and relevant um to um the regulations themselves and to um in consideration of read read Gilbert um we took a look at the definition of signs and compared them to other jurisdictions uh signage uh definitions uh we did create an exempt category that took into consider government and safety signs and then other signs that were already regulated by other uh statute or organism or um ordinances um we did add some real time uh sign changeable copy allowance for parking structures based um based on safety justification for that um we did create new temporary and permanent sign sections um and as we as noted in there to um it replaced a lot of other sections such as signs allowed with permits signs allowed without permits and signs within right away right away distinctions were built into the temporary and permanent sign categories um specifically with time the probably the biggest changes that you would see are with temporary signage um we did assign a specific sign budget to properties focused on time place and manner we did limit um uh one of the biggest concerns was temporary signs in right of way um we took into account um the ghost bike or other memorial policies uh signage policies that the city um has already uh followed um we tried to stick to um signage allowed in right of ways following election periods as a window of opportunity for any kind of sign um following time place and manner procedures and we relocated sidewalk signs that are allowed per certain zoning districts um permanent signs uh we added a new minimum signage allowance for any property for permanent signs that didn't require a sign permit um again we maintained most of the current sign types um and most of those standards again are we're already time place and manner TPM um we did do a little clarification of the definition between monument and pylon signs we did pull out um from previous drafts further changes to monument and pylon signs because there we felt that it was getting a little bit beyond it was more mission creep and and um if we really felt that we needed to change those standards that can be handled in a separate uh amendment um we did modify a little bit of residential identification signs we did get an email I just want to mention this um about reconsidering how we allotted the the square footage for that um we didn't really change any of the square footage we just changed how that square footage was assigned to single family and two family developments versus pdr districts and we said that we would take another look at that um not committing to anything but I just want to make sure we got that out there um we did remove wayfinding standards um and off-premise non-residential signs uh the wayfinding standards are found through exempt sign uh handled through exemptions and we relocated the landmark signs section into the actually the landmark designation section under the historic preservation section so it's all in one place um and then we did make some as you see some modifications additions to the definitions related to signage um other notable changes um we did delete um some larger allowances for changeable copy that were associated specifically just with theaters um and we clarified how the change in displays are uh the timing for that was calculated and then we got rid of a section that took in a consider consideration of aggregate sign area conflicted with individual sign type allowances and and um uh we felt that that that that was a necessary removal um but other than that those are the changes and I'm sorry I'll be happy to and Don and I will be happy to answer any questions thank you I do have uh five individuals who have signed up to speak against um and I'm going to just go ahead and uh open the public hearing so we can allow these individuals to comment during this period Jared Eden's Tammy Brooks thank you Jared Eden again with Eden's land I'll be very brief and again like most cases I've signed up against but that just means I have a couple questions doesn't mean I'm completely against the code obviously uh no doubt staff was forced into this by by the Supreme Court and and from my reading it's a very well written code and we're very capable people working on it uh my main issue is just with the real estate signs directional real estate signs and things like that uh the report says that part the decision was partially made uh to avoid clutter along our streets uh was one of the reasons but I was thinking do we have a problem with clutter now because if we don't have a problem with clutter now I don't know that we'd have a problem with clutter later with the new code because I think it's a little bit more restrictive I understand there's a concern of it of open up a can of worms and things like that but uh my understanding is most of the objections and concerns are coming from the real estate industry there aren't other industries who are rushing to put signs in the right of way it's just us mainly so really I just look at you have public roads and public right of ways built maintained with public dollars I think you could argue that real estate signs are for the public good and in those situations I would just hope we would err on the side of allowing more than restricting more and that's all I have thank you thank you Tammy Brooks esteemed commission members thank you uh for this hearing this evening thanks for sticking it out it's way past my bedtime my name is Tammy Brooks and I am here on behalf of Durham Regional Association of Realtors which I served as president in 2018 the revisions to this signed ordinance before you today first came to our attention in April 2018 and our local state and national association have been analyzing these revisions and offered our feedback to the planning department we emailed all of you copies of this yesterday and I hope you received that I hate speaking in public so I'm in my nervous mode right now so forgive me temporary commercial and non-commercial signs are a vital and affordable form of speech I am here before you representing the 1600 plus members of the Durham Regional Association of Realtors who work in this community but I am also here representing the nearly 300 000 citizens of this community our clients who work for nonprofits who attend churches and run small businesses and we all use this form of speech temporary signage to communicate small businesses need temporary signs as the community gets to know their businesses and their locations schools advertise summer camps and their much needed revenue volunteer firefighters point the way to their fish fries churches host bazaars and nonprofits point the way to their calls to action these are all amazing pluses that require our community tolerance of the mattresses for sales and we buy home signs that clutter some of our intersections way signs another form of temporary signage aid the public in finding unmapped streets and new subdivisions hard to access one way streets which we have plenty of here in Durham and rural locations that are sometimes hard to navigate we cannot when we cannot direct consumers to businesses or products citizens or citizens to events they wish to attend we underserved them your citizens and our community as a whole on page one of the draft amendment two of the stated goals of the amendment are one enabling the effective use of signs as a mean of means of communication and free speech but you're taking away a huge section of that in the in the restrictions on temporary signage and two ensuring standards do not favor commercial speech over non-commercial speech commission members respectfully the pendulum in this proposed ordinance has swung too far this complete elimination of some forms of non-commercial speech and most commercial speeches out of compliance with read and ultimately erodes the rights of local businesses and citizens thank you thank you um geon hasbrook hi good evening i'm yon hasbrook this is my 27th year in new home sales in durham and i live at 13 piney park lane durham 27713 i was the president of the home builders association of durham orange and chatham counties in 2018 and i speak for the home builders and i speak against the total restriction of temporary signage particularly when it comes to new homes communities i just started a new neighborhood you cannot find it in google maps you just can't it's not there yet signage is an essential way for people to find us and i would submit to you quite frankly that gilbert made a big mistake and durham shouldn't make a similar mistake and there is a compelling governmental interest for us to respect and promote what real estate sales particularly new homes and communities which is what you guys are in the business of overseeing how important that is to our tax base to the general welfare of our citizens and overall improvement of our quality of life and i would say to you that um uh read versus gilbert was a volcano in municipal rules and uh i don't want to see us get uh run over by a lava stream that we don't need to real estate signage and particularly for those for new home neighborhoods are commercial speech that presents a compelling governmental interest in not being limited and um i appreciate your consideration on this important issue durham is too good to limit free speech thank you thank you dan malon malon before the clock starts and i'm allowed to hand to each of you why don't you hand it to one of us and we'll pass it down i didn't know if there were gonna be 15 people here tonight so brought 15 of those and hopefully that's one enough we'll give you your extras back o