City Council Meeting

Shinneberryclerkcouncilmember McQuillan I councilmember Bates I councilmember Peterson I councilmember Hardy Chandler I councilmember Hall no council Aye. Motion passed 5-1. We will now go to our next public hearing. It's a public hearing and council action on proposed amendments to the Code of the City of Fairfax Chapter 110 in Parence Zoning to amend portions of articles and sections contained therein including but not limited to zoning districts and regulations, site development standards, development review and definitions relating to accessory dwelling unit occupancy, reducing special use permits, and other miscellaneous amendments. I'll recognize Eric Foreman, city planner, to provide a staff presentation.

Eric ForemanstaffOkay. We can move on to our next other major category of potential amendments, and these are amendments to reduce the need for special use permits for certain types of businesses. So just to provide some orientation just to this part of the discussion, all uses are listed in the ordinance's principal use table, and there are essentially three types of uses. on one end is permitted uses at the other end of the spectrum or uses that are not permitted in a given zoning district but then there's that in-between category that in-between category is the special use permit now essentially a business wishing to operate a business that's listed as a special use would file an application with city staff and ultimately that ends up right here as

that currently require special use permits, but tend to be rather unobtrusive uses. and the staff feels that the permitting process would work better in these cases without being a special use. Now, like we talked about in June, these are cases where business models have really evolved from where they were even a decade ago. So we'll go through, we'll take a brief look at each one of them here. The first one here involves the use that's known in the ordinance as indoor recreation. The use interpretation that you see up here in the box, this was really intended to apply to big facilities that really could have those kind of unusual operating characteristics that would warrant a special use permit, have large crowds,

And this sets the size threshold at 30,000 square feet. This amendment would maintain the current SUP status for larger uses. is that things like bowling alleys or skating rinks, larger gyms, and so on, would still require a special use permit, just like it would today. But those smaller uses, so smaller gyms or mixed martial arts studios, day spas, those would simply be considered personal service uses. And on account of that, those businesses would not be required to go through the SUP use because personal service uses are permitted in most commercial zones. The next potential amendment here on this topic involves another example of setting a minimum size threshold. This one is medical care facilities.

And given all of that, it doesn't seem beneficial to require urgent care facilities to go through a special use permit process when doctor's offices, which are very similar in how they operate, just do not. So similar with indoor recreation, this draft amendment, this sets a minimum size threshold for a use to be considered a medical care facility. In this case, the threshold is 10,000 square feet. The reason that this number was chosen is because it's really urgent cares that we're looking at here. Urgent cares, as far as a use, they tend to average about 4,000 square feet. The larger ones, which are standalone facilities, are up around 7,000 square feet. So that 10,000 figure that's recommended, this would comfortably include urgent cares.

And similar with indoor recreation, there would be no change for larger uses in this category. So things like surgical centers or large facilities that are called urgent cares over this threshold, over that 10,000 square feet would still be considered special use permit uses. The benefit here of this amendment is that it would reduce that barrier to what's become a very common type of business. So any questions on medical care or on indoor recreation before we move on to the third special use?

as general services in most commercial and industrial zones. And here is the use interpretation for veterinary clinics. And again, it says at the bottom here that vet clinics would be permitted in CO, CR, CU, CG, and industrial zones. zones and what this would do this would eliminate the requirements for veterinarians to go through a special use permit process to open now I'd mentioned a few slides ago that these amendments update what are currently animal care use standards and and these new use standards would apply to both kennels and veterinary clinics we went over these standards individually at the work session in June. What you see here on the screen is the summaries of the actual standards.