hello everyone and welcome to the august ninth twenty sixteen planning commission meeting i need approval of the minutes for the july twelfth meeting movie  communications from the audience for the items listed on the agenda that do not have a public hearing can come forward at this time which all of them do have a public hearing but if you have any other comments that's not listed on the agenda you can come to that no moving on unfinished business and table items proposed site condominium planned to be located at two ninety one east nineteenth street kill time card just tell elsie is the applicant we need a motion to remove this from the table so move mister i my name is dan turk from the owner of the property and the developer last month when we were here the proposal that i brought before you was to take a look at the property and splitting it into two parcels one had been enough square footage for a duplex and the other one for a four plex there was quite a bit of concern voiced about putting forth works in that neighborhood and one of the people in the planning commission made a suggestion of me going back and looking at a proposal of doing  one duplex and four plex so i brought in a drawing of a proposal of splitting to ninety one into three parcels looking at doing a duplex on each parcel there is one consideration that i'm asking for is that i can decrease the required size on two of the lots to make the third lot larger so that the duplexes can all be shifted to the east to line up of the ones that are good on eighteenth street which would allow me to keep a bunch of vegetation that's on the west property line turn the sun here for duplex use in the traditional residential neighborhood district there it is forty six forty eight hundred square feet per dwelling unit so ninety six hundred square feet for duplex lot and if we did three splits it would be how much on those two lots well the applicant is proposing then you can see the three eastern  or the arrow doesn't really pick up but the two eastern ones here would be eight thousand square feet in a lot area in the dimensions on the lot would be sixty six in two thirds inches wide one hundred twenty feet deep so those would be slightly smaller sixteen hundred square feet each smaller than is required in the t r in zone district  you might be asking wall how can we you know approve a smaller lot size here isn't the t r n district doesn't that require what it requires and while that's true the applicant is in asking  for three lot splits here under our state condominium ordinance which is basically kind of planting the property because they don't he does not have enough land splits available to to do these three lots he just has one land split available under our site condominium ordinance the planning commission is given the authority to vary some of the the underlying zone district requirements if you see fit so you do have the ability to to allow a smaller lot size there if you so desire and but you don't have to if you don't want to so all right thanks mark at this time we will open a public hearing you have five minutes to speak please limit that one time and state your name and address if you'd like to come forward you can do that now good evening my name is jared venter male and i live for twenty seven hazel which is kitty corner to the property i'm here once again just to revolve my concerns as to really haven't all the duplexes in the neighborhood he just referenced a t r n which i don't believe that we arizona t r n right now however the council should be made aware that we are taking steps to get our area rezone to t r and we've we've talked to the city planner whoever it is to get the required signatures and stuff like that it currently the neighborhood is well over fifty percent run tolls it's way high we're talking about adding another twenty four vehicles to a dead end street with no sidewalks in this and a subdivision with no sidewalks it's a lot of extra cars it's right across from a preschool and it just doesn't fit the neighborhood i look at the city of holland masterplan that's working on getting adopted right now you know there's a number of things in here that that strike me i don't know that this is the density that you really want in this neighborhood i know it's certainly not the density that we want in the neighborhood as owner occupied properties  you know it talks about encouraging owner occupancy but i know that already two people in our neighborhood are moving in part because of these because they don't want to live in there you know and at the end of the day understand at the last meeting it was magine that while we had to draw a line somewhere i get that but at the same time i don't think that the intent was to turn this neighborhood into one large glorified apartment complex and that's sort of what i feel like is being done and beyond even just the project well for you today there's more land back there that at some point could get developed that if we don't that if we keep doing this it's just a little bit more and i'm worried that the trickle of fact is going to keep going and we're going to end up with a whole bunch of apartment complexes up there with a few single family owner occupied homes you know many of my neighbors who were here at the last meeting are here this time around just unfortunate but i think that we made our opinion pretty clear that when it when it states that the characteristics of these patterns that people find a statically pleasing functional representative their idea holland that these duplexes don't fit into that with all due respect to the gentleman who said that they fit into our neighborhood at that last meeting i don't really understand how anyone can look at a two and a half story duplex in a house full of single family ranches and say that it fits in  know at the end of the day we may not we may not be able to do anything about it but we want to make our concerns heard because i really don't feel like i feel like this is sort of a forgotten neighborhood and it's sort of the wild wild west and you can do whatever you want you know i don't i don't think that was the intent of the planning commission when all the zoning ordinances were involved and i hope that they take that style duplexes and they serve a purpose and that's a good neighborhood what to develop her here is really marketing and you can go on the website his website see it as basically dorm rooms for rent without the oversight of the college and to put this make it up to forty eight units of dorm rooms up there and really question if that is the intent of this property that you've chased them out from a little closer to the college so they've gone to the perimeter and just put in more dorm rooms and you're losing control thank you yes just in response to comments i mean i'm not going to try to paint them into something other than the fact that they are built with four bedrooms but of the six new plaxo that i have completed right now as far as hope students living in them there's only two a matter occupied by hope students the other four are non students occupied so the market has changed i mean there is a need for rental and i mean to give an example some of the people that are living in these it's post graduate people that work in town here that have gotten together and are sharing it and it's in a situation where it gives them affordable housing so is it a ideal situation for a hope student living yes but it is not and i can't discriminate who goes in there either and i can tell you when we put them on the market we had a flood of inquiries from every spectrum of around or so it was not just hope students we had i think there was two different individuals who were coming into town that really working at the new coast guard station that looked at them so i guess in this review you know we're looking at the property and not how it's going to be used but i guess just to give you an idea that there is a need for rental a lot of people want to live close to downtown thank up today anyone else to speak on this issue close the public hearing at this time discussion or questions from planning commission members the where are the boundaries or we're looking at you know a right of use of this land which is which are seems to be a few duplexes in there we're not looking at size and structure i mean as far as density we could look at it on the opposite end i think you could have a family of four in each one of these duplex as you have the same amount we're not looking at who's running them right now i think this is a compromise he made which i think you know is that in filled it gets rid of the four clocks and gets rid of the the bigger of the buildings so and you know if we don't there are options that you know he could just take thirty more feet of the other side and you know it wouldn't even be here for us to discuss so the reason for reducing those two from ninety six feet to eighty feet is you know the compromise the developer made that the planning commission asked and i think some of the residents thought it may be a better fit than of a large four plucks and i guess that's my reason why i would look at reducing the square footage from one hundred six hundred square feet to eight t  we did receive an inquiry from some folks in the neighborhood in regards to the city's kind of initiative or or tool that neighborhood's could use if they wanted to limit or put a cap on the number of residential properties in any given neighborhood and that was an ordinance that that the city approved several years ago and so we did receive an inquiry from some neighborhoods or some residents inquiring about how does does that neighborhood goalball potentially setting up one of those situations so i think that's what the job and risk was referring to and other questions are motions from can just just to reiterate here too so the playing commission essentially has two options that the developer is the proposed to you the original option again is for two  lots for site condominium project to have two outs on one thousand street with one of them being large enough to accommodate a four unit apartment building in the other lot being able to accommodate the new duplex  the four unit in along with that option then is the four unit building would require a site plan review with the planning commission and we kind of went through this all during the last meeting  second option is as dan is proposed to this evening in that is going with three lots nineteenth street and the uses of those lots then being for duplex uses if the plane commission decides to go with that option obviously the four unit apartment building is kind of a moot situation and that whole site plan review just kind of goes away  property correct support all those in favor posed all right so it would be slim to three lots to being the eight thousand square feet so three duplexes yes good thank you new business plan review review plan review for a partial demolition in addition to the sell side of the building located at fifty four east eighth street downtown real estate properties is the applicant is the applicant here to speak on th good afternoon my name is todd rutledge representing series architect son behalf of downtown real estate properties the owner of the property at fifty four east eighth street we would like to propose  demolition of a portion of the building on the south side which is currently seven hundred twenty nine square feet it's one story and we would like to propose a new addition at that same location that would extend fifteen feet to the south  up to the existing ten foot utility easement and that addition would be approximately thirteen hundred fifty five square feet we would also like to propose new facade renovation work its street facade and also that new edition facing the public parking lot on the south side of the property this th for clarification this is the crest fifty four correct and city delhi building that's correct ok so there are two tenants on the first floor which are commercial and then a existing residential on the second floor and right now there is a combination door in the front and you are looking to you have that up on the screen over there mark the elevation plans yes yes you could just kind of describe the changes that you were going to make sure on the left side of the here you'll see the eighth street elevation we are proposing a new facade below the second floor so only on the first floor that would be the commercial space and we're trying to keep more  in the historic quality of the building which will match the second floor currently it's an all wood facade and over the years it has taken on more of the branding images of its tenants and now we'd like to return it more to its historical  aspects and you would still have a central entrance for the two tenants they would share that center entry and there would be still a single door for the upstairs tenants to access from eight street which is shown there on the right side of that elevation and then on the second elevation on the right side of the page that is the alley elevation which we're showing to single car garage spaces with  doors that have what's called a carriage door quality with some glazing in there to help with the historical aspects and the pedestrian quality of that elevation from the parking lot and then again a center entrance for the public to get into the lord tenant spaces there will be access from inside the garage is to the second floor on the south side of the building that's private and out of public view and a and then it will also still be a one story addition where the rooftop would be servicing the second floor tenants as like a roof garden where vegetation would be visible from the parking lot and really playing up the green space and in the character of what we're trying to do in the alley after the revamping of nice straightening street that little crime did but i have a question that it really concerns the access of the the the vehicles the neighboring properties it occurs to say release one down and the the garage is there are accessed off what appears to be an alleyway but it's not a public access alley is that correct ok but it is so these would be accessing through the public parking lot which is city  doesn't want that parking lot anymore and sells it to a private i'm not saying that will ever happen but i'm just running through scenarios what does that do for access to these this property well i'm i'm not an attorney i want to have a secure i mean does that is there an easement requirement or is there something like that that or is it just because going are public property just like our road or street all right owned by the city i mean you can see from the photo here i mean there's a number of parking spaces you know the back side of the manjoo losen and you know the hotdog place there and stuff i mean they are all they're all getting access to their spaces from the city property right so you know it's an interesting question brian i don't have an answer for you i mean i would have i would assume that i mean over a number of years if we just  process with that so  it's a good question and like the lines on this page aligned the green line that goes to the edge of the property or the edge of where the building is going to go that's going to the edge of the property line ok so you can see the property line goes up to the very kind of the north edge of that little utility island and you see there so that's all privately held now the only thing that is really kind of you're not going to be able of build any structures on that so in a way that that will continue to act is kind of a de facto pedestrian walkway through the area behind all of the building behind all of those buildings o back to the so you can see the little island there at the at the right side of the page that's kind of intruding in no want to say that word but it's going to it's going to a little bit further approve of that little island expansion as well as the other property owners who have the rights to that private easement have to approve that also if they don't approve the you know the the applicant would have to come back with the revised little island there ok you know is there public access to the retail from the  backside of the building is that what we're seeing on the existing yes there is right now but it will be retained on the young player if you look at the site plan proposed it's on the screen here we have see that we provide six feet between the island and where that public entry will be so those two lines there that sort of in that six what someone is meant to be like a pavement transition like maybe a brick paver that is more and signifying that this is a public entrance to this building and then the units above are accessed from the back only through the grads that's correct ok but in the front they can access the upstairs correct correct but the existing structure that lower structure stain you're just adding onto it by fifteen feet it would be demolished that lower portion because the currently that's just a one story addition to the previously original two storey building  current building going to change only by a fifteen foot addition tori's the island ok any other questions for the applicant all right thank you thank you this does require a public hearing and i will do you hoping that at this time if anyone has any comments on this item they can come forward right at this time i'll close that motion comment yes mark like you i i forgot to give you a handout in the study session we did receive comments from the d d because they reviewed this last week so i'll just read it for you now so in regards to this this is kind of verbatim from amy who is the d d a coordinator she states that the d d a is fine with the reshaping of the planter bed at the rear fifty for the state street as long as the owner makes sure utilities are property properly relocated in the ornamental light pole is still in place there was a concern about how the cars in the grudges would exit the property would they be accessing the public parking lot in the private parking spaces allocated to spring suite in in carolyn stitch are not impacted so that's that's what we have with that so the da is by and large is is in favor of the site plan but they do have some private from what i understand spring sweet is the building or the property immediately to the east or act of this one let me pull of the area for the carols stitched as the ones easement for vehicular access to the back part of that property the tenant there right now is is i guess there is a parking space or two at the back end of that building so they probably the way the applicant is set up right now in with the building expansion they would not be able to get access for parking to the back end of that property anymore however there is access to the east through kind of the kill one's property there so to say with that kind of private alley go to college avenue the owner of that springs we've building probably would be best in talking with that property owner and seeing if they can have an agreement to to allow to have access for vehicle vehicles over that property but yes there are you know soon than there was some concern noted about potential deliveries to the back into that building so certainly a i mean we have the public parking lot back there deliveries happen in that parking lot right now i mean there's probably a lot of u p s trucks were to just pick a spot in they run in with a delivery and hopefully nobody's trying to back out of the spot you know and if they do they might have to wait for a little for a little bit so i mean there's just that's the nature of parking back here in the in the high demand for parking as well as deliveries to back doors is just something in these building owners in business owners are going to have to manage of you looked at restructuring the back parking lot at all so i'm just curious if there's something that can be done back there flow to go through there we might we might entertain the but i don't think it's on anybody's radar screen right now it's bringing sweet say that deliveries would be a lot more difficult correct so i did not directly talk with that business owner i talked with the property owner so i think he he he acknowledged that it probably would be a little bit more difficult for the business  owner but you know he they have to they have to deal with what they own and you know in in the rights that they have and if they don't you know they're just going to have to work it out with property owners and thank you i just wanted to clarify that currently along inside of that eight foot easement cars do park if you want to call it parallel through there in your aerial the rear which you have up on the screen now you will see how long the island looks like a silver vehicle and that would be on our client's property and then a car in front of that which would be looks like on the spring suite property as it exists with that heat foot easement the island encroaches our property about eighteen inches according to the survey which means that there's only about six and a half feet of that easement available to any vehicle that wants to come through it which to us is not wide enough for your average car to get through so currently this spring sweet property owner would have to access their property from the west by going through our property just as it exists now so we don't think that we proposing this edition or believes edition really effects the current situation other than just a building being in the place of the pavement street maxwell is refurbishing an empty warehouse building on sixth street the renovating renovated building will become apartments so it's ranging from studio to two bedroom apartments the thirteen living spaces will be sort of a loft style so incorporating that warehouse feel into it and the entryways which is what you would be the talking about today the apartments are sort of a brownstein brownstone style so from the east side the parking area that's real have awnings private entrances from that direction there are also some great entrances that have new offerings it's going to maintain the exterior brick finishes and will be replacing utilities windows doors put on a new roof so it'll give it a new clean of the property besides the building itself which we're not encroaching any farther from that we'll have green space sidewalks were proposing sixteen parking spaces as well as a centralized garbage collection so we're helping to create more communal areas right now gravel with weeds from property line to property line our new proposal will include from the building going west it's twelve feet of green space from the building going east it's fourteen feet of green in the parking lot extends beyond that obviously paved with her daughter and then from the property line to property line will be all green space so on that from the north to the south we took into account feedback from city council and we're reviewing it with them so we went from thirteen to sixteen parking spaces which was as much as holland engineering could give us and just as a side note the target market for this is young professionals so they're smaller but also charming apartments  thank you very much does anyone have any questions for the applicant for this property how these six units on the ground floor we're going to lay out you can see there may be access to the forefront units access to off from of the entrance on six treat and the two southernmost units access off in the parking lot to the east and then this is the second floor custom attic of the footprints of those units so i have one other yes and this is a copy of the building elevation plans might be really a little difficult to kind of get a feel for what there are what they're doing here but they are kind of sprucing up the outside  building and so that's there for your information also  so this is the site plan that was submitted and i believe there is a was it fifteen units again thirteen units in and believe that there are sixteen parking spaces  being proposed on site so here again earth zoning ordinance the parking schedule does require just a minimum of one so this is meeting that requirement so but there not going to be an overabundance of parking here by any stretch of the imagination they are this is a property in three downtown commercial districts so i believe they do have the opportunity to be a part of the downtown parking program should they want to get into that additional a i'll just take a moment to on six treat here staff  property as well as the sent on a building to the east in you know probably seven or eight other property owners in this stretch there are really actively working with the city and they want to see a transformation of six street here and they see a lot of opportunity but they would like some some things to change too and they specifically they'd like to city to do some streetscape planning some of those issues in will be continuing to do so into the future so this property owner you know really is probably a pioneer in this area here and do in doing this and i think that we should applaud them for for a b in the pioneer i would hope that if there were you successful here that there's going to be a lot more demand and desire to do some additional housing in in the side of  the don't own area so i don't need to ramble on staff is recommending approval of the site plan review we do have a number of potential conditions for planning commissions consideration included in the report be happy to answer any questions if you have any mark it was stated that a lot of green space was going to go in here  some perimeter landscaping in a round the building itself as well as putting some landscaping in kind of on the edges of the parking lot area one thing we are there staff suggesting and with all site plans there's there's kind of a standard requirement that if you're adjacent to a right of way that you have to put in street trees and they have to be like thirty feet on cent r in believe the staff report is suggesting that we don't give up that requirement but we provide a little flexibility for doing that i mean if we hold the applicant really to to say well you have to do it right now they can go in there and saw some of this cement out in front of their building and put in three trees and they're going to be in the way of all the parking and they're going to get bashed with snowplows in the winter time and let's just say the trees are probably going to have a very short life so we're suggesting that in light of the fact that we're doing street up that we just kind of wait and require in the street trees and require the developer to put them in at a later date it just seems better if there is an existing sidewalk where there is right in front of the building ok note the property the front of the building is only five feet from the sidewalk now and they're window wells at the front so i appreciate the leniency with the landscaping and the other question you can come forward to make to state your name along the parking area they'll be green space wherever we can on the brownstone side which would be the east side and we want to have green space in the back and have some communal space for people to gather so anywhere that we can get green space we will like gamey said the building comes basically up to the sidewalks although you know we have to work in what we can think you question commissar motion yes it's exciting development i've loved it since the beginning and it's exactly what we want to get going there and sixtieth so we appreciate that pioneer spirit  and i'm glad that we can think beyond exactly doing everything that's done everywhere else because we have a different kind of situation so thank you staff so i'd like to place a motion to approve this support also in favor i suppose all right thank you for coming ok good we'll be happy to see it next item development plan amendment to an approved development plan for four to nine six and for three zero zero fifty second street time what i mean is the applicant the applicant  here i'm tom would have been i'm representing the owner of the two parcels at forty two ninety six and forty three hundred fifty second these are recent splits that took place towards the or at the end of  last year originally there were three residential lots all with front edge on fifty second street since that time the lot all the way to the south has been sold to an individual leaving the two remaining lot occasions and then there's also been some discussion with a builder out of hudsonville potentially building some higher end duplexes there there has been some discussion about possibly utilizing this property since there are a couple acres total here some sort of a small site condo i think it's difficult with development costs today to really justify a larger project there and i also think with the back of the property with how close it is to m forty i think that becomes a little bit less desirable to remove you know a lot of the trees there so i think putting some properties up closer to fifty second street and leaving a large you know wooded buffer there i think still provides people the privacy between fifty second street and the business of forty the floor plans as they're suggested currently are larger are meant to be higher and rental units they are just a little bit over two thousand square feet total with finished lower levels to stalk or raja's you know medium to high end finishes so we're certainly certainly going after more of a condominium feel less of a you know traditional small duplex feel so many questions for the applicant  i my name is tim slinked i live it one five four nine stillwater griped holland michigan or nine for two for myself and my fiance are also the owners of forty two ninety fifty second street the lot that was purchased from them when i sat in the office with tom would have been and the builders realtor there was conversations about spec homes going in there and how this development was originally done for single family homes needless to say when i got the letter from the city i felt pretty duped because my intention was to build a retirement home or i'm a previous property her rental property owner i can tell you that they don't go that well you're going to have problems at some point five bedrooms to me could equal five families i realize that there are ordinances against that but it still happens and it takes time to get them out when you've got a portent the other thing is property values i have a friend who is a license to praise or she's been doing a pretty funny five years i spoke with her a couple weekends ago about it and she told me it does affect property values she said it tends to affect them in market ability because people aren't interested in living by family or duplex homes you tend to have to take less she said that that effect could be as much as twenty percent the next thing that i did was t walk through the neighborhood and got a petition that i have here a lot of signatures from the folks and what i learned as i walked through there there's a lot of people that have lived there for a lot of years they don't single family homes the opposed to this just like i am they don't want to see duplex it's put there you know some of them probably aren't in good enough health to come here they've been there for fifty plus years i found no rentals there with the exception of one single family home and those folks are purchasing a home so to me i didn't go up the street to the little subdivision because i didn't have time i probably when i went there it was very receptive the folks in the township had no idea what was going on and the folks each side of it from the city rather mclean posed as i am and again him going to say i felt really duped by this because i felt like i paid fairly close to what he was asking for price with the intention of building my retirement home and haven't single family homes or i will build there but i don't know what i need to do with  we've been in our house for almost twenty years now and really we don't feel that i do plastics really fits the character of the neighborhood and we're really concerned with the density because you're basically putting four five bedroom homes in a very small area so that's a real concern or secondary concern i have is i was under the impression that the property there was actually a county drain and it gets very wet so and as an example when the p p p put up the substation next to us we actually had a huge problem with water in fact at one point we had a flowing river going on the north side of our property so i'm really concerned with kind of maintaining the drain there and making sure that it doesn't it doesn't affect our property so really are allowed in that zone district as well as single family you know three family four family apartment buildings you know so virtually any range or scale of residential buildings are allowed in the pierre de zone district the thing is is that the planning commission needs to approve the development plan in the new uses that are specifically tied to that so  so right now with the with the previous approvals that you have done for this property you basically have kind of set as a baseline in our one zone district standard was kind of the baseline and in in the in previous approvals you said if the developer wanted to sell that in ultimately some other user ins of developing it for single family detached uses that's just allowed ok but if they want anybody want to come back to do something else duplex properties or or or develop it further than it would need to have your approval so that's really kind of why it's a come to your attention tonight staff is is recommending denial on this one we don't do that that often but i but i think that you know of this is really kind of the very tail end of the city down here in just kind of taking a snapshot if you can see the aerial photo it very much is the we're on the edge of town in this is a kind of the transitioning into kind of a rural can more of a rural residential area and we do have the influence of commercial immediately to the west of this property but i think you know to concur with some of the you know the two gentlemen that spoke earlier we really kind of think that it's it's more of a single family detached neighborhood that feels like that and to just go with two with the draft master plan that we have underway right now we're actually planning for this area to be more industrial in nature so there's not so in the new primarily applied to properties north of here so that's to the left side of the screen looking at the aerial photograph here so we're really kind of moving away from you know thinking that large scale new neighborhoods are going to be built in this part of the town we're realizing that that probably is not going to happen we continue to see interest long in forty and even kind of along kind of the northern part of fifty second street here in interchange drive for more industrial uses so our our master plan is actually moving in that direction so but to have a couple duplex because mr would have been has been in the planning commission of several times but the development plan that was approved for this piece of dirt basically was to allow it to be split into three residential lot single family law well yet any approved for single family lots for they want to do anything else that would have to come back for your approval and you can approve it or or not approve it so can you tell me questions comments or motion from commission members make a motion to deny an odd situation in that our building has his own district change going right through the middle of it in this happened from his staff had noted about ten fifteen years ago there was a what they call a office transitional property so where the building was originally there was an addition put onto it the property line went right between between that area and it was considered in the same zone for lack of a better term at the time but yes so so we are in the process of trying of coming to the ass to put a t m building a t m kiosk  drive the property in order to do so we everybody i believe feels that we should be in the proper zone to do so and so we're looking to clean up that situation  be happy to answer any questions if anybody has any concerns about the a t m itself or anything of that nature but this purpose i believe we're really just looking at the rezoning right gerri thank you thank you just a regards to to the a t m so they're not in the epoch it is not in foresight plan review because they don't need to have a site plan review so one of the loopholes so to say is an a t m is an automatic teller machine so we treated it as a piece of equipment it's not the structure or a building so it doesn't trigger a site plan review requirements so they don't need a formal site plan review for this so the site plan that's up on your screen can move can move forward that being said  brian white the city engineer is i know he's already got some some concerns about the driveway location in there so there are there will be some give and take to probably get that drive we've pushed a little further to the west the applicant here is already anticipated there's a house immediately to the west and then maybe have some issues with noise and lighting and stuff so it looks like there are putting in a row of of landscaping in whole play offense or something there too so we just want to point out that that will not require a site plan review in order to do what they want to do does site on the east side of the church building in the original i came in for an administrative staff review which they were allowed to do so we sent out notices and one of the adjoining property owner