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HomeMy WebLinkAboutNovember 20, 2008 P&Z MinutesMeridian Planning & Zoning November 20, 2008 Page 37 of 48 hear it again in its entirety, would we not, if we waited for Commissioner Moe, since he was not here at this hearing? Canning: Madam Chair, if Commissioner Moe reads the full transcripts, then, you could just continue the hearing. You would not have to rehear the item. But if he hasn't, then, you would have to rehear it in his presence. Newton-Huckabay: Okay. Well, I guess the third option is to -- your third option is to continue the public hearing -- or agree to a continuance of the public hearing with -- and make no changes to your site design and wait until the Commission can have a vote with an odd number of members. Suite: Madam Chair, I think there was some conflicting testimony by the Commission and some inaccuracies, so -- and probably would be best if I addressed those at a future hearing. So, perhaps it might be to everybody's advantage that we defer this until a date certain when all five Commissioners are here. That might be the most appropriate approach. Newton-Huckabay: Okay. Everyone is in agreement with that? Okay. I feel pretty strongly that there is not a middle ground here with the four of us. Rohm: I do, too. Newton-Huckabay: Okay. Is this -- this is my December 4th agenda? We have lots of room on December 4th, Mr. Suite, if you would like to return, then. Suite: We'd love to. Newton-Huckabay: Okay. I'd like a motion to continue the public hearing to our regularly scheduled meeting of December 4th, 2008. Rohm: So moved. Marshall: Second. Newton-Huckabay: All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carves. MOTION CARRIED: FOUR AYES. ONE ABSENT. Strite: Thank you. Item 12: Public Hearing: CPA 08-011 Request to amend the Comprehensive Plan by adding the Design Manual as an addendum for Design Review by Meridian Planning Department: Meridian Planning & Zoning November 20, 2008 Page 38 of 48 Item 13: Public Hearing: ZOA 08-002 Request to amend and add to the current provisions of the Unified Development Code (Title 11 of Meridian City Code) relating to adoption of a new administrative design review process and associated implementation procedures for Design Review by Meridian Planning Department: Newton-Huckabay: Thank you. Okay. I'd like to open the public hearings on CPA 08- 001 and ZOA 08-002, to discuss Meridian's new design review guidelines and process. Friedman: Thank you, Madam Chair, Members of the Commission. I'm just going to give you some introductory comments, some of which you have heard before, and, then, I'm going to tum it over to Will to kind of walk you through the meat of both the Comprehensive Plan amendment and the UDC amendments. As he's walking you through, please, bear in mind that we do have one recommended change to the UDC amendments that we will bring up at the end of Will's presentation. It's just an administrative function. So, by way of background -- gosh, it was January 30th, 2007, when the Planning and Zoning Commission and the City Council met to talk about the feasibility in the interest in extending design review on a city wide basis. As you know, design review is not new to the city; we currently require it in Old Town along corridors and in some commercial districts for commercial buildings over a certain size. As the city has grown over time I think the Council recognized that they were too often ending up being put in a position of being the arbiters of taste, if you will, in fine design and didn't -- weren't real comfortable with that position. They also recognize that we didn't really have a design issue per se. We have had some very high quality developments come through the city, but there -- maybe there is limited instances where we want to bring some of the others up to the bar where those were at. So, they met with the Planning and Zoning Commission and the staff, we ran through a number of questions about the scope, the width, and breadth of how they wanted to see it and-they were pretty clear that they wanted to extend design review citywide to apply to almost all developments, both public and private. The one exception would be for single family detached. They were also very clear that they did not want to create another level of bureaucracy nor another board and that they wanted that any future design review process be what would lead to our existing development review process. In addition, they were pretty clear that the design review process was not to incorporate specific prescriptive standards, thou shalt and thou shalt not, but, rather, that it should embody guidelines, so that we could unlock the creativity of our design community. So, with that direction, city hired Will Thornton. Will has two degrees in architecture. And to not only develop the guidelines, but develop the process. So, wanting to be, essentially, cast a broad net for ideas, we formed a steering committee that was made up of architect design professionals and developers who do business with us and Will and the steering committee and myself at times, after the steering committee of 13 members met a couple of times a month for over seven months in developing the guidelines that are before you tonight. Now, we have had a chance to brief the Commission and the Council on this process, so unless you really want to see the whole presentation again, which Will is prepared to give you, we probably will skip that. But we are recommending to you the adoption of the design manual as an addendum to our Comprehensive Plan Meridian Planning & Zoning November 20, 2008 Page 39 of 48 and, then, we have also identified a number of changes to the unified development code that we want to take through concurrently so that when we implement this there is no lag time, we can pull it together and move it forward all as one package and put it in place once Council acts on it. I think the one thing that was made clear to us, at least by members of the Council is they recognized not only sort of the unique approach that Will has employed, but it's like anything new, we will probably have some fine tuning to do as we implement this thing. We have already at the staff level we are starting to ask ourselves some questions and so we will also keep track of those, so it's highly likely that six months from now, perhaps 12 months from now, we may be back to you with some tweaks and some fine tuning. So, that being said, I'm going to tum it over to Will at this point. He will walk you through primarily the design manual. You do have the recommended changes to the Unified Development Code before you and so, as I say, when Will concludes and maybe we get through with your discussion, I do have one amendment to the administration section of the code that we would like to propose tonight. Thornton: Thank you, Madam Chair, Members of the Commission. So, for tonight, as Pete has mentioned, I have prepared an abbreviated presentation from the joint meeting on September 30th and, basically, it talks about -- it will show how the manual is created and its contents, so -- so, briefly, I'm going to show you what the -- our original objectives were for the design manual. We needed some way to develop a -- organize ahierarchy for development within the city. So, we have chose as staff to base this on appropriate context, basically, meaning that a development fits within an area that's proposed. We wanted to encourage creativity and innovation throughout the city. The -- one of our objectives was to direct development to create the quality and building environment and the attractiveness that we wanted throughout the city and so Pete went through, basically, the process that we use to create the manual. There was some research involved in the beginning. Staff developed and organized the -- an organizing tool and the guidelines. We convened the steering committee that helped us review those guidelines and that committee was made up of architects, developers, builders, and other representatives of the community. So, before you tonight is a draft that was completed in October. It's been available on our website or a little over a month now. The contents -- we have an introduction to introduce the design manual. There is a set of guiding principles to set forth the basic concepts for design in the city. There is an applicability section that talks about when the guidelines are applicable to development. This applicability section mirrors what the UDC -- the proposed applicability section in the UDC amendment, so that the two reinforce each other. There is a section on how to use the design manual and, then, the contents -- the majority of the contents are divided into five sections, one for determining an appropriate development context and four for the actual design guidelines. And, then, at the very end we have an appendix with terms and definitions for unfamiliar words and constants. Section eight deals with development context and character. This section contains as development context -- or the development matrix. It helps determine appropriate context for a development proposal. And it also determines how the guidelines are applicable to the project. The applicability of the design manual and the matrix itself is through the administrative design review. Through the code changes that Meridian Planning 8 Zoning November 20, 2008 Page 40 of 48 we are proposing tonight, administrative design review would be required for certain developments and, then, in tum, ties it to the design manual and the design guidelines. The manual also encourages other projects and future planning proposals to help anticipate and -- for growth and future development. The structure of the matrix is based on three groupings. One grouping of land use that's based on the Comprehensive Plan. One group for zoning, which is based on the current zoning districts contained in the UDC. And, finally, a third group, which is represented by the gray scale and the colors, is a development category -- basically this refers to the patterns and practices of design that promote certain development categories, like transit oriented or urban or suburban development. It's set up on a five-by-five matrix. As I mentioned, here are the three groups and it's goal is to integrate our Comprehensive Plan, the Unified Development Code, and the idea of a development hierarchy. Here it is in close-up so you can see the components. There are 13 possibilities and they are grouped in five contents -- general contents. Here is the general process of how to use the matrix to determine an appropriate context and the applicable guidelines. Here it is blown up, so you can see it. The first step is to gather information about a subject property, its current land use, any zoning it may have, or any zoning that's been requested by the applicants. It's proposed uses, the intensity of those uses, and what's going on around the area. These are all important to determine the content -- an appropriate content. Using the matrix you determine the result. That result refers you to a general context. And that general context identifies the guidelines that are applicable that are contained in the other sections of the manual. And, then, the guidelines, the appropriate context, and the regulations in the UDC direct development. This has all been summarized in a worksheet. This worksheet is found on page 13 of the design manual. It's exactly what it is, it's a worksheet. You can circle your groups and mark off your possible matrix combinations to determine results. And the following three sections contain the majority of the guidelines. Section B is for urban development. Section C is for urban-suburban. This focuses on creating transitional areas throughout the city between differences in intensity of uses. Section D contains some guidelines for suburban development. And the guidelines themselves are broken into site character and architectural character. Here is an example from Section C on site character. This one deals with orientation and layout. You can see that the guidelines are set up for -- with an objective, the guidelines, on the left-hand side of the page and images with captions to portray potential outlooks and outcomes of development on the right-hand side. Here is some other topics that site characteristics -- or site character guidelines cover. They talk about access and connectivity within the property and two other properties. Orientation and layout of buildings and site -- site plan. Parking and public an open spaces are other topics. This example deals with architectural character. This is from Section B, urban design guidelines. This one deals with building form, similar to site characteristics, the objectives and guidelines are on the left-hand side and images on the right. Some topics contained in architectural character are building scale, building form, architectural elements, and material. Some sections in the design manual have a third option with specific criteria. These are intended to address that -- that topic of certain things that either span multiple context or deal specifically with a use such as industrial in Section C. Here in Section D we have neighborhood centers. They offer additional guidelines, supplemental to the previous Meridian Planning & Zoning November 20, 2008 Page 41 of 48 site and architectural guidelines for the section. The final section is Section E, which is residential guidelines. They are general guidelines for residential developments throughout the city, including multi-family detached -- or attached single family residential developments. They are intended to be used with the other appropriate section, either B for urban, C for urban-suburban, and D or suburban. And, then, finally, we have our terms and definitions. Before I move on to the code changes, I have a few items to mention with the October draft. Reviewing it for presentations and outreach programs we have noticed several minor adjustments to the code -- or to the manual. Most notably are formatting, numbers not lining up with text and so forth. We intend to correct these and -- before it gets passed onto City Council. One other change was an entire page was numbered wrong in Section B and we have proposed changes for that, so that the manual will move on in a reasonable format. Numbers corresponding to correct guidelines. Newton-Huckabay: I'm song, is this -- I'm hearing music. Nary: Madam Chairman, me, too. I don't know where it's coming from, but I have been hearing it as well. Marshall: A baseball field. Newton-Huckabay: I wasn't going to go there. Thomton: If there are no objections to seeing -- or not seeing an example of the matrix, we can move on with the code changes. Newton-Huckabay: Is everyone okay with that? Rohm: Yeah. I'm -- Newton-Huckabay: I thought you covered the matrix very thoroughly in our prior meeting. Thomton: Okay. Newton-Huckabay: Sorry to interrupt you, but it was very distracting. Thomton: That's fine. I hear it, too. Newton-Huckabay: Do you? Okay. Thomton: We will move on with the proposed Unified Development Code amendments. Friedman: I guess I can start out on this. What we have done is we are trying to marry, if you will, the guidelines to the UDC, both in terms of applicability, so that we have common applicability language in both, even though the manual would be a guideline, Meridian Planning 8~ Zoning November 20, 2008 Page 42 of 48 we at least have our code define what it applies to within the UDC. We were also trying -- before the UDC contains some design elements that apply to limited instances when we had administrative design review. We found that there was going to be situations where there were two prescriptive and that they were supplemented by some of the generalized guidelines contained in the manual. On the other hand, there were a couple of areas where we really felt that it was critical that we had specific standards that carved over from the UDC, we wanted to make sure they were codified, so that there was a matter of interpretation question came up just before you get your authority for that, it is in the UDC, but those are very limited in their instance, in their use. The other thing that we have done is that we have created reference to altemative compliance. One of the issues that we talked about quite a bit in the steering committee is what happens if we get a design and the applicant disagrees with the fast termination on it, well, we have an altemative compliance language very similar to that that's already contained in the UDC, which makes provisions submitting a different design or a different guideline, putting the burden of demonstration on the applicant saying this is how we believe it complies with the guidelines, so we are just kind of formalizing that. And, then, we have also created a design professionals committee. What we have done is we know there may be instances where there might be differences in interpretation where there is flat out might be a disagreement between an applicant and staff. Again, trying to build it into our existing review procedures without creating a whole new level of appeal and so forth, what we have done is we are saying that if there is a difference that person can seek a director's determination and the director has the ability to convene what we are calling a design professional committee. We have a group of seven individuals who have volunteered. They are registered architects and landscape architects who have volunteered to serve as needed in those instances where the director feels that someone would, then -- the would, essentially, provide her with a recommendation on how to dispose of the difference of opinion, if you will. And based upon their recommendation she would, then, issue a decision and like all other directors determinations, the next remedy from that decision would a review by the City Council. So, again, trying to keep it at the staff level, but also recognizing there may be instances where staff needs the assistance of a design professional in coming to a determination on the stability of the guidelines. So, we have tried to clarify what the applicability is, again, between the guidelines and the code and, then -- Will, help me out if there is anything else I have missed. A lot of it is process. There is a few standards in there that we have incorporated, a few that we have changed. For example, I think the design guidelines right now, for example, for roof design where three and 12 pitches absolutely gave no other option. We have changed that to say that you can present other options based on our design guidelines. So, that's kind of a synopsis of the UDC changes. One of the things that I -- that Will and I noticed late this afternoon is that we originally had put a 18 month timeline on administrative design review approval. However, there may be some instances where, depending on the type of application that the design might be marred to, the actual approval of the underlying permit might be shorter than 18 months and so in Section 11.5.8-8C under process number five, we would like to change the administrative design review approval timeline, rather than expiring within 18 months, just come up with a design that says that the approval shall be exercised within the approval time period of the underlying permit or the design Meridian Planning & Zoning November 20, 2008 Page 43 of 48 review approval shall expire. For example, if you have a Conditional Use Permit, they have an 18 month timeline on them. So, if you haven't exercised your design review approval within the same 18 months, then, it expires. Conversely, a certificate of zoning compliance has a 12 month lifetime. So, if the application you have submitted for -- for example a commercial development on a commercial lot, you come in for a CZC, you got to exercise that design review approval within the 12 month lifetime of the -- 12 month lifetime of the CZC. So, that's the specific language that we are recommending for a change in what you have before you tonight. That's all I have on the UDC changes. Be happy to answer any questions or be more than happy to direct questions on the design manual to Will. Newton-Huckabay: Any questions? O'Brien: I have a question that -- I don't know how important it is, but Section 11-5A- 462, Idon't know if I'm just misreading this thing, but I thought there was a 300 foot radius from -- from property owners for notification of people within 300 feet and it says here it's 100 feet. So, am I misreading this? Is this something different or -- or am I -- something's changed. Friedman: This would be in the event of the -- this would be in the event of a design professional -- O'Brien: It's regard to public notice. Canning: Can we bring up the right code? What was your -- what's your citation again? It's 4B? O'Brien: It's 11-5A-4 and I believe it's B -- B-1. So, it's prior to submittal of an application, administration with public notice, and it's -- I thought it was a 300 foot distance from -- to give public notice within a property line and it says here it's 100 feet, so I'm confused. Canning: Madam Chair, Commissioner O'Brien, the section you're in is the administrative process. Generally you don't see those items. Those are -- those are the ones we do. We have two administrative items that require notice and that's a home occupation and a day care. If you look up at the table -- actually, it's just an accessory use home occupation with customers, clients, and/or employees requires noticing. O'Brien: Oh. Canning: And so we were making changes to this one and we noticed that there was a pretty big error in this section, so we snuck this in with the design review stuff. Good job catching the fact that it wasn't really related to design review, but that's why it's in there is we had a flaw in that administrative process. We were putting the design review under the administrative process, so we had to clean things up a little bit. Meridian Planning & Zoning November 20, 2008 Page 44 of 48 O'Brien: Thank you for clarifying that. Newton-Huckabay: Any questions? We have one person signed up to testify, that's Casey Huse. Boy, when I spelled that when you testified earlier, did I get it wrong. Did you have something to -- Huse: Yeah. Once again, Casey Huse, 1703 Norcrest Court, Boise, Idaho. I am one of the volunteers for the professional review panel. I am a licensed architect with LCA Architects, in Boise and I signed in just because I'm here, but since I'm here I will give a little bit of comments. I want to applaud the staff over at Planning and Zoning for the job they have done in preparing this document. They are very deliberate, very organized, very thorough in what they came up with. I think it's also a flexible document and also takes into account the process that design professionals are going to have to go through. I appreciate them not creating more bureaucracy and, you know, allowing there to be freedom in design while encouraging some good standards to help guide your municipality along. It's also good that they recognize it as they go along, so just like I say, very well conceived. I think there is a very good chance it will be a model for your neighboring municipalities to look at in the future. So, I'm happy to support it and hopefully they won't require our services. But we are ready if they do. Newton-Huckabay: Well, from one panel of volunteers to another -- is there anyone else that would like to testify? Edwards: I'm Scott Edwards. I live at 3486 West Angelica Drive, Meridian. I am the secretary-treasurer of the local section for the American Institute of Architects. I also served on the steering committee with the staff and some of the local developers in the area. It was my pleasure to serve on that committee. It was nice to see them taking the approach that they have since in the past Meridian has only enforced design review on buildings over a certain square footage and I would say a good portion of the buildings in our city have fallen under those square footages and, therefore, the design of those buildings have not been enforced. It is also I think one of the things I have admired most over this process is that it is not just a one sided architectural design review anymore, that we are taking into effect the entire context of the building -- the entire design of the building. The staff presented to the American Institute of Architects the -- their -- one of the draft versions of the matrix and the guidelines and that was pretty well received by the membership of our organization. There was a little confusion with the matrix, I think the matrix is kind of like buying a new car, you jump in and you have got to just find where all the controls are and once you -- once you figure it out it's going to be a pretty easy process. The guidelines themselves are just that. We view them in the architectural community as something that is very flexible, being able to approach design from very many different points of view outside the box, inside the box, and being able to develop something that works for the developer, as well as the community and stay within the budget. There was some concerns during the steering committee that, you know, if you had awarehouse -- you know, if this is going to be too restrictive for somebody that just wants to come in and put in a storage unit and we -- we feel that through the process that the committee went through it was pretty flexible enough just Meridian Planning & Zoning November 20, 2008 Page 45 of 48 so that whoever is designing that storage unit or an office building, just puts their full thought and effort into the design and not just trying to come in as low and in the budget as possible, so that our community as it grows is an appealing community to be in and that it doesn't end up needing to be tom down in ten, 15, 20 years, because it wasn't something anybody wanted to keep up. It's my hope that they Commission will approve the design review guidelines and recommend approval to the Council. Newton-Huckabay: Thank you. Anyone like to comment? Staff, do you have any last comment? I guess it's our tum. Friedman: Madam Chair, Commission Members, we do have more of our volunteer professionals here, Robin Gates, who is also in the audience, so we may or may not have a chance to use the services of this gentleman over here that Dave and I can recognize, so it's an honor to have him here. Actually, we have more volunteers than we have steering committee members there at this point. Milt Erhart, who was also a real stalwart on the steering committee was here earlier, but had to leave, so these three folks are three of the seven folks who have volunteered to assist us in -- as needed where we may have some need for interpretation or guidance and disposing of some of our applications. Newton-Huckabay: Excellent. Friedman: Other than that, we have no other comments. Newton-Huckabay: Commissioner Marshall, you look ready to go -- ready to comment. Marshall: Madam Chair, I'm ready to close the public hearing on CPA 08-011 and ZOA 08-0021 O'Brien: Second. Newton-Huckabay: All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carries. MOTION CARRIED: FOUR AYES. ONE ABSENT. Marshall: Madam Chair, now I'm ready to make some comments. Newton-Huckabay: Okay. Marshall: I'm pretty dam excited about this. I'm having a little trouble reading some of it and figuring it out, you know, it's going to take a little while, but it seems pretty exciting to me. I like the approach. I'm really excited about it and I think there is going to be some -- a few little growing pains we are going to have to clean up along the way, but I think it's good. I think it's a very good move. And I am pleased to see many volunteers, architect types here behind this showing up saying, hey, they are willing to stay this late to come say what happens, so -- Meridian Planning 8~ Zoning November 20, 2008 Page 46 of 48 Newton-Huckabay: Maybe their meeting should start at 7:00. Commissioner O'Brien, do you have any comments? O'Brien: I think this is great. I'd like to make it where you can follow them and go through the process. I really think this is great, it's going to be a great model and I think put Meridian on the map regarding this kind of a thing. I think it's agreat -- great tool, so -- Newton-Huckabay: Commissioner Rohm? Rohm: Good job. Newton-Huckabay: My only comment would be I appreciate the efforts that city and staff went to and the separate training that we had to go through this in more detail and understand it in more detail. I was pretty new on -- using of a matrix wasn't so much a new concept to me, but using it in a concept for a planning I thought was -- was a little bit -- was a little bit different. I look forward to seeing -- seeing the results of it. I don't think we will see the pain of it as much as the city staff will. At the Commission level -- I think ones it gets to us we will have the benefit of all the -- all the blood, sweat, and tears will have -- will have already past, so -- but I look forward to seeing the results and I am please in raising the bar and -- there is a lot of cases where I think the bar has already been raised in the city and Ithink -- I think that this is going to just push that even more and great job and good luck. Marshall: Madam Chair? Newton-Huckabay: Commissioner Marshall. Marshall: After considering all staff, applicant, and public testimony, I move to recommend approval to the City Council of file numbers CPA 08-011 and ZOA 08-002, as presented in the staff report for the hearing date of November 20th, 2008, with no modifications. Friedman: Madam Chair, Commissioner, there was the one recommendation to the one section that we would respectfully request you pass on. Marshall: I'm sorry, I didn't get that one written down. That was -- Friedman: I'll get it for you. You want the full text? Marshall: Yes. I'll get that -- Friedman: Okay. That would be in Section 11-5B-8C, number five. Meridian Planning & Zoning November 20, 2008 Page 47 of 48 Marshall: 5C dash -- number five? I'm just looking for the number. I'll just do the number; is that okay? Well, what are we going to do with this? Friedman: What we were doing is we were changing the text, so that the design review approvals shall be exercised within the time -- within the approval period of the underlying permit or the approval shall expire. For example, if the underlying approval is a Conditional Use Permit, the design .review approval will expire in 18 months. Marshall: Can we add that to my motion? 11-5B-5C dash -- Newton-Huckabay: As stated by staff. Marshall: As stated by staff. Can I do that? Rohm: Second. Newton-Huckabay: All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carries. MOTION CARRIED: FOUR AYES. ONE ABSENT. Newton-Huckabay: Need one more motion. Rohm: Move we adjourn. Marshall: Second. O'Brien: Second. Newton-Huckabay: All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries. MOTION CARRIED: FOUR AYES. ONE ABSENT. Newton-Huckabay: We are adjourned. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 9:41 P.M. (AUDIO ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS.) APPROVED: ~ ~ WENDY NEWTON-HUCKABAY -COMMISSIONER DATE APPROVED