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HomeMy WebLinkAboutORC minutes 040616APPROVED 5/4/16 1 SUMMARY NOTES 1 ORANGE COUNTY PLANNING BOARD 2 APRIL 6, 2016 3 ORDINANCE REVIEW COMMITTEE 4 5 NOTE: A quorum is not required for Ordinance Review Committee meetings. 6 7 MEMBERS PRESENT: Lydia Wegman (Vice Chair), At-Large Chapel Hill Township; Lisa Stuckey, Chapel Hill 8 Township Representative; James Lea, Cedar Grove Township Representative; Tony Blake, Bingham Township 9 Representative; Paul Guthrie, At-Large Chapel Hill Township; Kim Piracci, At-Large; 10 11 12 MEMBERS ABSENT: Buddy Hartley, Little River Township Representative; Laura Nicholson, Eno Township 13 Representative; Andrea Rohrbacher, At-Large Chapel Hill Township; Maxecine Mitchell, At-Large Bingham 14 Township; Patricia Roberts, Cheeks Township Representative; 15 16 17 STAFF PRESENT: Craig Benedict, Planning Director; Michael Harvey, Current Planning Supervisor, Ashley Moncado, 18 Special Projects Planner, Meredith Pucci, Administrative Assistant II 19 20 21 AGENDA ITEM 1: CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL 22 23 Lydia Wegman called meeting to order and introduced new member, Kim Piracci. 24 25 AGENDA ITEM 2: UNIFIED DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE (UDO) TEXT AMENDMENTS – O/I 26 (OFFICE/INSTITUTIONAL) ZONING DISTRICT AND NEW PERMITTED USE TYPE 27 TO REVIEW AND COMMENT UPON PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO THE UDO REGARDING 28 REVISIONS TO THE O/I (OFFICE/INSTITUTIONAL) ZONING DISTRICT AND ESTABLISHMENT OF A 29 NEW PERMITTED USE TYPE. 30 PRESENTER: ASHLEY MONCADO, SPECIAL PROJECTS PLANNER 31 32 Ashley Moncado reviewed abstract 33 34 Craig Benedict presented information on map 35 36 Tony Blake: So the part that would be OI or OI/RM is the green/gray place but not Buckhorn? And you would not 37 want residential in there at all? 38 39 Craig Benedict: The mixed use that we’re promoting in this we checked with economic development department, the 40 mixed use their interested in is employment centers and possibly retail, but there’s other land uses in the Efland area 41 that allow for multi-family and even single family. So, right now we want to protect our economic development zones 42 as much as possible for non-residential because if you allow a multi-family or a single family, which was allowed in 43 some of our other uses, if they happen to be the first proposals to come in and they were permitted by right in many 44 cases we most likely would allow them. And then when the business comes in we have residential people saying 45 they don’t want that business there, even though the intent of the economic development zone was for jobs. Ninety-46 five percent of Orange County Planning jurisdiction allows residential, it’s only about 5 percent within our power to 47 focus on our economic development efforts, so we want to protect that from too much residential in that area. 48 49 Paul Guthrie: I have a basic question. How are you defining residential? I asked the question because I can think of a 50 circumstance when a business that this area would be useful to be in might very well want to have a residential 51 security manager or residential over-seerer for research or something like that where the residents would actually be 52 on-site. How would you handle a situation like that? 53 54 APPROVED 5/4/16 2 Craig Benedict: We could allow that as an accessory use. We’ve had mini warehouses where they wanted an on-site 55 resident and you could accommodate that as not a primary use but as an incidental and secondary use. And we can 56 make sure that’s allowed for big factories there might be some residential or over night component to it. 57 58 Paul Guthrie: It just occurred to me that if you barred that completely it could give you a problem. On the other hand, 59 if you allowed it then I think somebody could attack the whole principal on the basis. 60 61 Craig Benedict: We’re allowing hotels and motels, and someone might say that’s residential but that’s a commercial 62 use. 63 64 Michael Harvey: I would make the argument that’s not a residential land use. The principal use of the property would 65 be X and it’s up to the applicant to justify, “I need this for this reason” and again I know we shouldn’t be fixating on 66 the examples, but in that example that’s what I would say; that it’s not functioning as a residential development, there 67 is a component, but it’s in support of the principal use which, let’s say, is this research manufacturing unit. 68 69 Lisa Stuckey: So if I drove through this, what would it look like? 70 71 Craig Benedict: These would be more of a corporate park but, corporate parks and business parks and industrial 72 parks have changed over the last 15-20 years. Our zoning, as evidence by office institutional, was very regimen. This 73 is where you put your Class A office building, and then somewhere else you put your warehouse, and somewhere 74 else you put your manufacturing, and somewhere else you have R&D. Now they don’t do that anymore, they put 75 everything in the same place. They’ll have their clean office, they’ll have their R&D Park they’ll put it all together. This 76 district will allow office, and research, manufacturing, and distribution. So, the buildings could be from 20,000 to 77 100,000 square feet. So you could see a few of those buildings in there that have multiple activities. And by the 78 secondary uses that are allowed means that somebody could come in with a business and say, “I don’t see enough 79 restaurants around here, how about if I bring as part of my master plan a Chili’s with me?” and that’s a bonus. When 80 we were looking at another retail site, Cabella’s, even though that was all retail they brought a hotel with them and a 81 restaurant. We’re definitely not having this as a retail focus, we’re listing this stuff as secondary uses in there so we 82 can keep that prime use as job based light industrial manufacturing. 83 84 Lydia Wegman: Have we heard of any companies that are interested in this particular kind of land use? Or this is just 85 to make us attractive to companies if one is interested? 86 87 Craig Benedict: This is just to make us attractive. When the candy factory came, they were designated 88 Office/Institutional, and it did say manufacturing was okay. I’d say it’s a relatively small fix, as you were mentioning 89 some of the economic development zones; we need to go into there and take a look at the way the uses are 90 fashioned in there too. The next project that you’ll hear from Perdita Holtz, probably in the next month or so, is in the 91 Hillsborough Economic Development. Because we have a joint agreement with Hillsborough we’re trying to align both 92 our joint land uses and the zoning categories that can go within that land use. And right now, they’re all over the 93 place. 94 95 Tony Blake: I have a question. I read through this and I read the column and what it allows and accessory use and all 96 that stuff and I came down to the automotive/transportation and because I’m sort of passionate about the way we’re 97 doing our transit and thinking that BRT is a good rapid transit solution. I noticed that it would allow a bus passenger 98 shelter, which I view as one of these little cubicles by the side of the road, but not a bus terminal or garage. And Bus 99 Rapid Transit has a raised platform appeal, especially in an area where there’s a concentrated number of transit 100 people. Would that be allowed in this zone? 101 102 Craig Benedict: Well, we can make it. It does make sense. I think what they were thinking about was kind of a simple 103 city bus terminal, so we can make sure that our bus stops and level platforms and all stuff could be allowed. Because 104 we do have our bus service that is going very close to this zone, if not through it, and if we get some employment 105 concentrations we will modify that transit system. 106 107 APPROVED 5/4/16 3 Tony Blake: If you can. A lot of people live within walking distance; the least we could do is provide a good, raised 108 platform sort of transit. 109 110 Lisa Stuckey: What is raised platform? 111 112 Tony Blake: The big slam against buses versus light rail is light rail you board and you walk directly from the platform 113 onto the platform without steps. But BRT actually has the ability to pull a bus in at a raised platform and where you 114 are walking directly onto the bus, the same way you would walk onto a light rail train. And it’s being deployed and it’s 115 a lot cheaper than light rail and more flexible. And the travel lane down Martin Luther King will actually be able to be 116 used for emergency vehicles as well. 117 118 Ashely Moncado continued with the presentation 119 120 James Lea: What would that do to the property owners? Would that raise their taxes? 121 122 Craig Benedict: No. The property taxes are based on the properties of a similar zoning category sell over time. So, 123 putting even sewer on a piece of property eventually would raise the value of it but changing the uses would not 124 automatically, until somebody determines that this new use list is better and therefore more valuable but, we’re a 125 couple years from where that would ever matriculate into higher values. 126 127 Lisa Stuckey: It leads to the potential of higher value, so higher taxes. 128 129 Paul Guthrie: It could potentially. Property is less and less areas available for residential, for example, outside of that 130 district if someone wanted to sell their house in that they would have, potentially, a sale of their house that would 131 raise as assess valuation in the next re-evaluation. 132 133 Craig Benedict: We have examined which districts have residential. If they sell their residential property for office 134 research manufacturing and they get more money for it at some point in the future, they’d love that. 135 136 Paul Guthrie: But you can’t keep them from selling it for another residential person. 137 138 Craig Benedict: Probably not. 139 140 Paul Guthrie: This is a far out thing, but we’re still in the area. I spent a good part of the afternoon reading about this 141 other thing, the Supreme Court case, and these are the kinds of things you start getting trouble with down the road. 142 143 Craig Benedict: One last thing about that, we addressed this in the Buckhorn EBB area. We asked the people if they 144 would like the zoning rollback to residential one that would allow the house to be reconstructed and burned down or 145 would you like it to remain Buckhorn District 2 that has higher value if you ever sell it, it was resounding to leave it 146 EDB-2. 147 148 Michael Harvey: One more thought in question when I read this. There’s a demand right now. There’s a lack of wet 149 lab space in the area and this talks about laboratories, not limited laboratories, prototype production, general facilities 150 but, wet labs sometimes have some pretty onerous stuff going on in them. Is there something that you would put in 151 here to protect that or restrict that or change that? Basically, this is something I can see where somebody would want 152 to come in and put in a wet lab and this thing they’re dealing with some kind of biological agent or something like that 153 and people go crazy, but it’s permitted by right and so I’m just trying to air on the side of caution here. 154 155 Craig Benedict: Two answers in there. There might be room to add something here. One is we tried not to legislate 156 water consumption, even though there are some provisions in some of our economic development zones that talk 157 about it, but it doesn’t say that if you use over one galloon per square foot we’re not going to allow you. So that’s one 158 element we try not to legislate uses by the water they use but, admittedly in all of our economic development zones 159 we have limitations on water use because there’s just not a lot of water. In Hillsborough there’s some water limitation, 160 also in Eno. The bigger restriction is the sewer outfall that comes from it, that’s where the restriction is. So with the 161 APPROVED 5/4/16 4 sewer element of it there are some pre-treatment requirements that al utility providers have. And we could note that 162 they must meet the environmental regulations of the utility. For example, Morinaga; there is a pre-treatment function 163 so there’s not high level organic matter that goes in the sewer that can create issues. 164 165 Michael Harvey: I guess I was asking; is that covered somewhere else? Or because we’re permitting this by right are 166 we leaving the door open for a big use? 167 168 Craig Benedict: I think either turn it into a policy, like a small area planning policy so that we have be aware in of that 169 and I agree if you have something permitted by right you better have some way to have it black and white; it’s okay 170 by the site plan or it’s not okay by the site plan. So, I’ll work with Michael and Ashley to see if there’s a way to keep 171 that in mind. 172 173 Michael Harvey: Also, remember that just because something is permitted by right, there are still regulatory 174 permitting processes that we may say we could use. But using this example, if a local utility or even the state says 175 you can’t do what you’re proposing in this manner. 176 177 Tony Blake: But given what’s going on in politics right now, relying on the EPA or the state for things like that might 178 not be the wisest. 179 180 Craig Benedict: The one area we may consider is some of those performance measurements. Vibration, glare, and 181 soot; maybe we could have some sort of sewer. 182 183 Tony Blake: Yeah, or require them to contain whatever it is and dispose of it in some other way, elsewhere… What 184 I’m worried about is somebody is going to come in here and do something that’s potentially dangerous or harmful and 185 not be properly regulated. 186 187 Lydia Wegman: But as Michael says the EPA or the state. They would have to have some kind of hazardous waste 188 disposal or incineration permit in order to do that. 189 190 Ashley Moncado continued presentation. 191 192 Craig Benedict: And the last thing, if you have any more comments on this or any of the other Board Members have 193 comments send them to Ashley and before the next meeting we’ll try to answer them. So feel free to send Ashley 194 some additional comments. 195 196 AGENDA ITEM 3: ADJOURNMENT 197 198 Meeting was adjourned by consensus. 199 200