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HomeMy Public PortalAbout20060117_PCMinutes 1 MINUTES Planning Commission Meeting January 17, 2006 – 7:00 p.m. Chairperson Dick Smith called the January 17, 2006, Planning Commission meeting to order. Other members present were Barry Brown, Sandy Chandler, Susan Hill, Gene Kindrick, Brian Renner, and Lawanna Tsoulos. Member Rachel Perkins was absent. Building and Zoning staff present: Dee Anderson, Chuck Bargeron, Warren Millikan, and Dianne Otto. Gene Kindrick motioned to approve the minutes of the December 20, 2005, Planning Commission meeting. Lawanna Tsoulos seconded. The vote to approve was unanimous. Ron Jacobs of Jacobs Builders, Inc., introduced a Zoning Variance petition for Lot 12 North Wave, owned by Steve and Judy Sims. Jacobs said the Sims purchased the lot in 1998 but due to medical problems did not develop the site. Jacobs said the Sims’ want to get their plans back on track, but when the property was resurveyed the Department of Natural Resources line had moved landward approximately 20 feet. He said the lot was basically unbuildable without applying to build in the 25-foot buffer. Dick Smith asked if the variance was to build in the 25-foot buffer but not to disturb the jurisdiction line. Jacobs said that was correct. Barry Brown asked if environmentally friendly pilings would be used. Jacobs said yes, and that the owners have suggested using pervious materials under the house rather than a concrete slab to minimize impact. Gene Kindrick asked how far into the tree line the house would be. Jacobs said the house would not be as far back as the trees, and no significant trees would be impacted by the construction. Brown said that when the Sims bought the lot they had a lot more land to work with. Susan Hill asked if the site was on sewer or septic tank. Jacobs said it was on sewer with grinder pumps. Audience member Joe Craft said he was in favor of the variance because it was not feasible to come out into the 20-foot front setback because it would be out of line with the rest of the houses. Audience member Keith Gay also spoke in favor of the variance and said this was an appropriate request. Brown motioned to approve if environmentally friendly pilings and pervious materials under the house were used, and if a permit for a bulkhead was obtained and the bulkhead was put in. Kindrick seconded. Lawanna Tsoulos asked if DNR needed to approve a bulkhead. Brown said yes, and Jacobs would have to come back to the Planning Commission if the bulkhead permit was denied. The vote to approve was 6-0. Smith advised Jacobs that the petition would go before City Council on February 9, 2006. Chris Solomon, Jr., and Chris Solomon, Sr., presented a Special Review petition for 6 Miller Avenue to build a guest cottage over a storage area. Chris Solomon, Jr. owns the property. Chris Solomon, Sr., said the 797 square foot guest cottage would be in the backyard. He said the existing home was 1,039 square feet and was a small, one-story cottage. Solomon said the construction would disturb no trees, and the building would be on a 25-foot by 30-foot slab. Solomon said it would be a one-bedroom, one-story guest cottage. Gene Kindrick motioned to approve. Lawanna Tsoulos seconded. The vote to approve was 6-0. Chairperson Dick Smith told the petitioner that City Council would hear the matter on February 9, 2006. Lou Kietzman of ELK Property Development presented a Major Subdivision of Land petition for 1112, 1116 and 1120 Highway 80. Chairperson Dick Smith verified with Kietzman that he wanted the petition changed to a Sketch Plan. Kietzman said yes, because they do not know what they want to do at the site. He said the area was zoned C-2 and there was 300 feet of frontage and they were asking that it be divided into 5 lots of 60 feet each. Smith said no buildings were proposed at this time. Kietzman said the three existing structures would be taken off the property and destroyed. Brian Renner asked if all of the curb cuts were existing. Kietzman said yes, they were existing. Renner asked if Downer Davis’ drainage comments could be met. Kietzman said that he had reviewed them and that when they decide what they are going to put there they will submit application to the city for approval of the designs, and they would comply with all the requests of Davis. Kietzman said they do not expect to use any of the street curb cuts as an entrance or exit for the property because there was a 20-foot easement on the west side and they expected to use that as the entrance for the complex. Renner said one of the plans had a driveway at each curb cut. Kietzman told Renner to look at the colorful drawing that was done by Rachel Perkins, whose company they had hired to assist them. Smith asked if the easement on the west side would be utilized. Kietzman said yes. Renner asked if the ingress/egress of all vehicles would be from one curb cut. Kietzman said it would be an existing 20-foot drive. Smith asked if it was okay to not have engineering on 2 a Sketch Plan. Dee Anderson said engineering was not required on a Sketch Plan. Susan Hill asked if they needed to be concerned with the swimming pool at this point. Smith said only the colored page showed what Kietzman wanted to do. Barry Brown asked about the squiggly lines on one of the plans that he was seeing for the first time. Smith said what Kietzman wanted to do was confined to the colored page and they did not need to concern themselves with engineering at this point. Sandy Chandler asked if what was being considered was the recombination of the lots. Kietzman said yes, the recombination of 3 lots into 5 lots. Smith said the tree survey shows the ingress/egress and the square footage of each lot. Gene Kindrick motioned to approve. Chandler seconded. The vote to approve was 6-0. Smith told Kietzman that the petition would go before City Council on February 9, 2006. Mike Hosti presented a Special Review petition for 1107 and 1109 Butler Avenue for a parking lot adjacent to the Tybee Market IGA. Hosti gave the Planning Commission a drawing of the site and a letter from the property owner. Hosti said he was trying to do get approval to make additional parking for the store, and that he does not own the property but has permission from the owners to speak about it. He said he needed additional parking for the business and it would make it more sellable and it would also be less of a strain on the neighborhood with tractor-trailers that go in and out of the store now, running all the way to Center Street to get out, including the ones that are turning on Eleventh Street to come to the back of the store. He said with ingress/egress between the two blocks it would allow the trucks to cross his property and not have to go through the streets. Hosti said he was trying to be a good neighbor and at the same time trying to increase his business. He said that he had made a couple of changes on tonight’s drawing from the one the Commissioners had seen at the agenda meeting. Hosti said he realized the changed parking would increase some of the car traffic on Lovell Avenue but at the same time it will alleviate tractor-trailers, which he knows have been a nuisance to everybody back there. He said the curb cuts on the front of the property that exist now that are right adjacent to one another will probably go away and he will probably approach the city about the storm drain which would be dead center in the parking lot and the city will need to allow him to move the storm drain to the south or the north. Hosti said knowing they will be running heavy trucks over it, the center of the driveway was designed to be roughly 20 feet wide and have 8-inch poured concrete and the centers of each of the parking spaces would be pavers. Hosti said it would be uphill to get into the parking that exists now. He said there would be a ramp coming down from the sidewalk into the new lot and he will probably only have to put in five loads of dirt. He said if he needs to put in additional drainage, he could arrange to have that done. Hosti said he does not own the property and the owner was not really interested in selling unless the price was right, but he gave permission to look at this and pursue it further with the city. Barry Brown asked about a buffer on the north side of the proposed parking lot. Hosti said there was already an existing buffer there along side the house at 1105 Butler Avenue, with palm trees and natural growth, and the house cannot be seen from the inside of the lot. Hosti said on the front half he wanted to put a wooden fence and cover it with ivy, instead of putting vegetation there that would have to have a lot of room. Barry Brown said this was a commercial use in an R-2 zone and asked if the 20-foot buffer requirement would apply. Hosti said he thought a wood fence with ivy, honeysuckle or something that will cover it so that the noise won’t go through to the next door neighbors and, they could not see anything pulling into the parking lot because the trees are so thick along that property line, and it was just the front that he wanted to protect. Hosti said he put a fence up on the south side when he first put up the building to take care of his neighbors on that side and they did not ask him to do it. Barry Brown asked about the cars coming in from Lovell and cars coming off of Butler. Hosti said the trucks could go in and out, and that a lot of the older folks that live on the island do not like to fight Butler Avenue in the summer time. He said that one of the things he hated to do when he rebuilt was block off the ingress/egress that he had prior to the fire. Brian Renner said he does not have a problem with the concept of acquiring the property for parking, but city code requires a 20-foot buffer, and he does not consider the trees next to the house adequate to meet the intent of what the buffer needs to do. Hosti said a 20-foot buffer would take out over half of the parking spaces that would be available. Renner said he realized that. Hosti asked if he has to pay $800,000 for the two pieces of property, and he gets 10 parking spaces out of it, what has he gained. Renner said he was also concerned about additional traffic onto Lovell Avenue. Hosti said the offset of that was the fact that it would alleviate the wear and tear on the streets from the big heavy trucks, and it would give the residents of Tybee easier access. Renner said he did not think the residents of Lovell would like it as much. Hosti said maybe not, but you have got to look at everybody involved. Renner said Butler Avenue was designed for heavy traffic and that was where 3 it should stay. Hosti said he agreed, but from 1934 until 1992 traffic went in and out on Lovell, until the store was lost to fire. He said one time the city issued him a citation saying trucks could not come up Twelfth Street and the city made trucks turn around in his parking lot. Hosti said he was not trying to cause a hardship to anybody, and he was actually trying to make it easier for the people that live behind the store by moving traffic in and out through the parking lot, especially the trucks. He said he did not think the car traffic would really hurt anything any more than what the trucks do; it would be less of a problem than the trucks already are for the people that live there. Renner said the car traffic would be continuous though, whereas the truck traffic would be only specific times of the day. Hosti said that was true, the truck traffic was primarily in the mornings. Hosti said that Mr. [Jimmy] Brown, who lives on the corner behind the store on Eleventh Street, had an issue with the Coke truck trying to make the turn and getting up into the city’s right of way, which was Brown’s front yard. Hosti said he did not blame Brown whatsoever, and that Brown put out some pilings which kept the trucks pretty much out of his yard. Barry Brown asked the dimensions of the site and asked if Hosti had considered parallel parking on the north instead of angled parking in order to at least have a 10-foot buffer of green space. Hosti said the two lots totaled 60 feet by 160 feet. Susan Hill said she could understand the need for additional parking, the pervious parking spaces were great, and she hoped they could come to agreement on a buffer. Hill said they had talked at the agenda meeting about planters and trees. Hosti said the front corner was to be a big planter with another planter area along the front about where the marquee sign was now, but he had to regroom for buggy corrals and for the hill coming down from the existing parking area. He said he has rumble strips at the current entrance and exit to keep buggies off of Butler Avenue. Hill asked how the new configuration was going to keep the bigger trucks off of Lovell. Hosti said now they are coming in Twelfth Street and go all the way to Tenth Street to get back out. He said what they are going to do was still come in Twelfth Street, service the store, and go back out the parking lot to Butler Avenue. Sandy Chandler said that on the drawing there were twelve angled parking spaces on the north side, and he asked Hosti if there was a 10-foot buffer with eight parallel parking spaces would that make it worth his while. Hosti said it would be better than getting refused, but the 10-foot buffer would still be a little much to take out of the 60-foot lot. He said the whole idea was to have enough room for the cars to back up without running into one another. Barry Brown asked if there was a way to consolidate the relocation of the dumpster into this. Hosti said he would love to be able to move the dumpster somewhere other than where it was. He said the building was originally designed with a hole in the back of it for the dumpster but the garbage truck could not back up to it without going in the yard across the street so there was an agreement with the city to move the dumpster to the edge of the street. He said where it was now was not really affecting anyone as far as the smell because of a vacant lot. Barry Brown asked if it could be relocated to a spot on the southwest corner of the proposed parking lot. Barry Brown said the drawing was not to scale so he could not see the dimensions. Hosti said he could move it there but he was sure there would be a lot more complaints. Renner said that Hosti said it was a 60-foot lot but the drawing he was looking at said the lot was 122.15 feet wide. Hosti said that was not correct, it was 60 feet. Lawanna Tsoulos asked if Hosti would have to get a variance for the non-pervious pavement as well as a variance for the buffer. Hosti described the parking spaces as having pervious pavers underneath the cars with 4-foot concrete strips where the painted parking lines would be so people could roll their grocery carts. He said the main driveway was going to be 20 feet wide and non-pervious pavement. Barry Brown said that pervious concrete would not hold up to big trucks. He said a 10-foot buffer was probably about the minimum with parallel parking along the north side. Hosti said a 10-foot buffer and 9-foot parallel parking space would be 20 feet off the side of the property. Renner said he agreed with the angled parking being converted to parallel parking and a 10-foot buffer. Chandler said what was being proposed was parallel parking along the north side and a 10-foot buffer. Hosti said the parking spaces he has now are 8 feet and on the new plan he expanded them all to 9 feet. He said he could have doubled the number of parking spaces if he had drawn 8-foot instead of 9-foot parking spaces. Chandler said he could vote for this with a 10-foot buffer and the parallel parking. Hosti said he could deal with a 5-foot buffer. He said a lot of people do not realize that there are 3 lost feet in every block on Tybee from the park all the way to Eighteenth Street. Hosti said it would cost too much per parking space to make this feasible, and he was trying to save a Tybee cottage by moving it. Brown asked Hosti how deep the store was. Hosti said it was 80 feet. Brown commented that the drawing Hosti brought to the meeting had changed directions of the angled parking from the drawing that had been submitted with the Special Review petition. Hosti said he changed direction for the spaces for coming in on Lovell and he did it to make more room. Brown asked if he was trying to create 2-way traffic in the 4 20-foot strip. Hosti said that employees would take up most of the spaces on that side because by moving the house to the vacant lot behind the store he would lose that parking area, and that he has eight employees that drive cars. Barry Brown said there was a serious parking problem. Hosti said the plan has to be feasible and affordable. Chairperson Dick Smith asked if this was a continuation of a non- conforming use. Dee Anderson said that was correct. Smith said proposed was a 10-foot planted buffer, not a 20-foot. Hosti said that when the store was built he was allowed to build all the way to the property lines, but he gave up 5-foot on each side for service access to the building. Smith said that the Planning Commission could recommend the 10-foot buffer and if Hosti wanted to go with a 5-foot buffer he could apply for a variance. Audience member Jimmy Brown said the he and his wife have lived at 1001 Lovell since 1994. He said that Hosti wanted us to believe that this was our problem, but Hosti designed this problem when he chose to build a larger store after the fire so he would have enough square footage to become an IGA. Jimmy Brown said there have been up to four businesses at a time in the building. Jimmy Brown said to go back to what Hosti said: this will make his property more sellable. Jimmy Brown said he and his wife are very opposed to Hosti’s request which would convert more R-2 residential property to non-conforming use as commercial parking. Jimmy Brown said they already have enough traffic, congestion, delivery trucks, hazards, and trash in the neighborhood and they do not need any more. He asked what Hosti wanted to do about the existing problems. Jimmy Brown said Hosti wanted to create more congestion, more trash, and safety concerns by converting more residential property into a commercial parking lot, and adding a thoroughfare from Butler Avenue to Lovell Avenue. Jimmy Brown said he would like to know how an 18-wheeler was going to make the turn from behind the store with traffic coming from the other way and then pull out onto Butler. He said they do not want this in their neighborhood. Audience member Gail Hollingsworth said she lives at 1105 Lovell Avenue and she understood Hosti’s need to expand, and that the grocery store has been great for her, and he provides a great service for everyone. She said that the public hearing sign was not posted properly because it had curled up. She asked what the laws were on Tybee for proper displaying of a variance sign. Smith said that the zoning office places the sign and not the petitioner. Hollingsworth asked about the required site distance for coming out of the parking lot, and she said the Lovell entry/exit would be dangerous for kids walking home from St. Michael’s. She said she would like access from Butler Avenue only. She said she has here for almost ten years, taxes are so high, and she was forced to rent her house to make ends meet. She talked about the smell and a rattling machine behind the store and that she worried about kids putting their hands in it. She said she would like to see the white house in the front of the site moved to the back. Hollingsworth said a streetlight shines in her bedroom window, and that already people were flying through there, but that Hosti provides a very valuable service for us. Audience member Gloria Leonard said she lives at 1103 Lovell, and much to her regret she did not fight the previous variance request that was sought when the store burned. She said the new market has been a detriment to the neighborhood and to the quality of life in terms of traffic, noise, smells, and litter. She said variances must be based on a hardship and this request does not meet the city’s definition of a hardship. She said they did not need the added congestion and noise, and she urged the Planning Commission to vote no for this project. Chandler said the noise, the trucks, the congestion are all there now and the vote was not going to change that, but he did have a problem with the rezoning to a commercial application. Tsoulos motioned to deny and said the IGA provides a service but the plan needed more work. Renner seconded the motion. Hill agreed the plan needed more work. Barry Brown asked about tabling the matter. Anderson said this was not like a variance where he has to wait 6 months if denied. Hosti said if he comes back next month there would be the same opposition. He said he felt the parking lot would alleviate a considerable amount of the problems. Renner asked Hosti if he had considered not connecting the two parking lots so there could be about six more parking spaces. Hosti talked about the location of the storm drain. Tsoulos said she wanted to withdraw the motion to deny and make a motion to continue. Barry Brown asked about turning the house on the back lot. Hosti said that would not get the big trucks off the city streets. Barry Brown said there would still be deliveries at the back of the store. He said the trucks would still be running diesel engines in the early morning hours. Hosti said he had curfewed the trucks and they are not allowed to pull up behind the building before 7:00 a.m. Gene Kindrick seconded the motion to continue. Renner asked if Hosti could come back with the same plan. Smith said yes. The vote was 6-0 to continue. Chairperson Dick Smith asked the Planning Commissioners if they had received an email from Jodee Sardowski. 5 Susan Hill said that at the Council meeting last week they sent the 60-foot minimum lot requirement in C- 1 back to the Planning Commission for study. Chairperson Smith said it would be on the next agenda. Lawanna Tsoulos asked about a proposal that went before City Council that came out of the sub- committee regarding parking. She said the Planning Commission had voted it down and asked if it should have gone to City Council in that case. Dee Anderson said it was the same as any other denial by the Planning Commission – City Council has the final say. Susan Hill motioned for adjournment of the meeting. Barry Brown seconded. The vote was unanimous.