Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

Paul CunninghamTHANK YOU. I GUESS I'LL PREFACE THIS WITH A LONG TIME AGO. WHEN, BEFORE WE HAD SMALL AREA PLANS, WHEN THERE WAS DISCUSSION OF NODES AND OTHER THINGS like that there was discussion of the fact that the city had x amount of commercial space x amount of residential space and where we were moving forward and the discussions centered around if you were going to use commercial space and we might have had excess commercial space and you were going to put residential in commercial space how would you do that in order to maintain accessibility and I guess the stated at that time in a number of meetings the idea was that if you could keep the ground floor accessible to everybody in the community then that would be a

now there are obviously exceptions to everything and in this area when now that we've gotten to small area plans in north facts if you look on the other side of chamberage road and go to the back corner you will find townhouses abutting residential and then you'll find a large multifamily building that is special purpose for senior community and has special has memory care center and other things along that line and the rest of that property is to be developed but it's all intended to be used in a a commercial or a general purpose way when i look at across the street from this at what we're developing i see one of the first exceptions because we have a class a office complex and and a residential building was allowed to be built next to it and part of the outcome of that

Paul CunninghamThe theory being that that would help the university with housing. It would help downtown with customers because students will go out and use the bars, the restaurants, the other things like that. And it would also help because students provide good part-time employees. There was a benefit all around for this kind of development, and that's what helped it come in. Now that we're moving on with greater density and the small area plans came after this time frame, we're moving into this development and one on Layton Hall Drive. The one on Layton Hall Drive proposes to add another 400 bedrooms, roughly. this in phase one will add another 400 bedrooms roughly and that's just the breakdown of one bedroom units two bedroom units is two bedrooms and three bedroom units if there are a few

Matthew RiceAnd it was just quite unfortunate that apparently that conversation had never been had and that had never been pointed out. So I do like your plans there. extra open space in the center and you know during phase two and expansion of that and that really is something that we requested although the small area plans talked about circulation on the main streets i think circulation through the center pedestrian circulation through the center of you know between phase one and phase two for me at least is what i think of when i go there and I used to walk my kids through that corridor every single weekend. And so we do know the area quite well and like it a lot. I'm regretful to think that some of the businesses that I go and patronize,

James FeatherBE AWARE THAT WE'RE ALREADY TALKING ABOUT PARKING REDUCTION CHANGES IN OUR ACTIVITY CENTERS AND SMALL AREA PLANS AROUND MULTIFAMILY DEVELOPMENT ANYWAY. SO I DON'T KNOW IF THESE NUMBERS, HOW THEY ALIGN WITH WHERE OUR THINKING IS CURRENTLY, BUT IT SEEMS LIKE THERE'S A CASE TO ENTERTAIN THAT. SO I DON'T SEE THAT AS AN ISSUE. THAT'S THE SAME THING WITH THE 25% USE FOR, YOU KNOW, NON-RESIDENTIAL THINGS. SOMETHING ELSE WE'RE ALSO TALKING ABOUT IN POTENTIAL UPDATES TO THE ZONING ORDINANCE TO BRING THOSE IN BETTER ALIGNMENT WITH OUR SMALL AREA PLANS. SO NOT GOING TO BE GREAT CONCERN EITHER. OVERALL, I LIKE THE CONCEPT. I THINK IT'S WELL THOUGHT OUT. PHASE ONE, OF COURSE, pretty well defined and as much as we'd like to hear more about phase two based