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HomeMy Public PortalAbout2001-10-30 PC minutesSTATE OF ILLINOIS ) ) SS: COUNTY OF W I L L ) BEFORE THE PLAINFIELD PLANNING COMMISSION REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS taken at the hearing of the above -entitled cause before Gale L. Barma, CSR No. 84 -003807, RPR, on October 30, 2001, at 7:00 p.m. at 12450 Van Dyke Road, Plainfield, Illinois. PRESENT: MR. JAMES SOBKOVIAK, Chairman; MS. MARILYN GEHRKE, Commissioner; MR. LARRY A. KACHEL, Commissioner; MR. WALTER O. MANNING, Commissioner; MR. ROBERT SCHINDERLE, Commissioner; MR. DAN SEGGEBRUCH, Commissioner; MR. DOUGLAS CARROLL, Planner; MR. MICHAEL S. GARRIGAN, Planner; STEPHEN AMANN, Village Engineer PRESENT: (Continued) McKEOWN, FITZGERALD, ZOLLNER, BUCK, HUTCHINSON & RUTTLE, by MR. JAMES B. HARVEY 2455 Glenwood Avenue Joliet, Illinois 60435 (815) 729 -4800 Appeared on behalf of the Village; DOMMERMUTH, BRESTAL, COBINE & WEST, LTD., By MR. JOHN F. PHILIPCHUCK 123 Water Street Naperville, Illinois 60566 (630) 355 -5800 Appeared on behalf of Wal -Mart. ALSO PRESENT: MR. JACK WEBER, Pulte Home Corporation; MR. TRACY T. RICHARD, Manhard Consulting; MR. CHRIS DANOS, Wal -Mart. - - - CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: It's Tuesday, October 30, 2001. Special meeting of the Plainfield Planning Commission is in session. All rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. (Pledge of Allegiance recited.) CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Thank you. Mr. Carroll, would you call roll, please. MR. CARROLL: Seggebruch. COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: Here. MR. CARROLL: Manning. COMMISSIONER MANNING: Here. MR. CARROLL: Kachel. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: Here. MR. CARROLL: Gehrke: COMMISSIONER GEHRKE: Here. MR. CARROLL: Schi nderle. COMMISSIONER SCHINDERLE: Here. MR. CARROLL: Sobkoviak. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Here. Thank you. The case before us tonight is Case No. 904 -083101, SPR, Sam, Paul, Raymond, slash Z, Zoo, slash S, Sam, U, union. This is a conti nued public hearing for special use and zoning and a site plan review. Due to a procedural error, we are unable to continue the public hearing for this case this evening. It's a very long story, but, in effect, we neglected to have a concept plan pr esentation which is normally required when a petitioner requests permission to develop under plan unit development orders. Due to that, the Chair is going to ask permission to continue this public hearing until November the 15th at this location. At this time, the Chair would welcome a motion. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: Aye. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: We need a second. COMMISSIONER MANNING: I'll second it. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: The motion has been made and seconded to continue the sp ecial meeting public hearing for the special use and zoning and site plan review for Wal -Mart until November the 15th, 7:00 o'clock, at this location. Vote by voice votes, please. All in favor, signify by saying aye. (Chorus of ayes.) AY ES: Aye. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Opposed? COMMISSIONER SCHINDERLE: Jim, I'm going to be out of town that day. I won't be available. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: The motion is carried. This public hearing for the Wal -Mart development will be con tinued until November the 15th. What we are going to hear tonight is a concept plan presentation from the petitioner. Ordinarily, a concept presentation is not a public hearing. It is a public meeting where the public is invited, but it is not a m eeting where we receive input, comments, or questions from the public. It is particularly a meeting just for the petitioner to show the Village and the Planning Commission what they propose to do in their development. With that -- AUDIENCE MEM BER: Excuse me. I was told by Mr. Carroll that the public could speak. I talked to Mr. Carroll on Friday and I was told I would be able to speak at this meeting, even though it was a concept meeting. And that was per Mr. Carroll. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVI AK: There will be no -- AUDIENCE MEMBER: I talked to him at 4:30 in the afternoon on Friday. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: There will be considerable opportunity to ask questions and give comments -- AUDIENCE MEMBER: I wanted to be heard last w eek. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: -- at subsequent public hearings. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, I wanted to be heard last week. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Case No. 904 dash 083101 dot C, Charles, P, Paul. This is the presentation of the concept plan fo r Wal -Mart at the northwest corner of 127th and Route 59. Staff. MR. CARROLL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to kind of reiterate and kind of clarify for the Planning Commission and the public what's going on here, the Plainfield Zoning Ordinance, which does cover plan unit developments, states the process shall include a concept plan, a preliminary plat, and final plat. Basically, the Village policy in the past has been to leave the concept plan portion up to the applicant as an o ptional stage in the development process. However, the applicant has requested that the Planning Commission village board, staff, the public, consider the concept plan because the language says it shall be considered. So that's why we're taking a step ba ck. The public hearing portion, as the Chairman said, will be November 15th. It will be a format similar to what we saw last Tuesday where there's cross -examination, where there's public input, that sort of thing. So I would say the Planning Commission tonight has a chance to ask the advocates for any additional information you may need to help deliberate on the finding of the facts for the rezoning of the PUD. For example, a traffic study, a noise -impact study, or perhaps they can do a study where -- what the Wal -Mart may look like from the second floor of a residential building, that sort of thing from adjacent residential properties. So with that, I will turn it over to the applicant. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: Good evening. My name is John Philipchuck. I am an attorney with offices at 123 Water Street, Naperville, Illinois. I'm here representing Wal -Mart and presenting the concept of our plan unit development to the Planning Commission this evening. I'm pleased to introduce Mr. Chris Danos from Wal -Mart who will be able to speak as to overall operations of the Wal -Mart as planned here, the selection process, and what went into their design and thought. Probably followed then by Tracy Richard who you heard from at the public hear ing. But Mr. Richard is our civil engineer and was involved in the basic design and layout of the various components of the site plan. So at this point, I'd like to introduce Chris Danos. MR. DANOS: As John said, my name is Chris Danos. I a m a real estate manager for Wal -Mart in the new store development. I handle the new store development for the Chicago market out to most of Michigan and the state of Indiana. That's kind of my territory and development there. Kind of what I'm going to do is just walk through the details of the plan, what we're proposing, and can obviously expand on any details that you may choose at that time. Kind of walk you through kind of how I got here tonight and where we came with the plan. Part of the plan you see tonight is based on several preliminary meetings with some of the City and some of the planning folks here in Plainfield as well as a previous meeting with the neighborhood here at Heritage Meadows. And some of the changes you'll see are ref lected from the conversations between the City as well as that neighborhood meeting. First of all, how did I get here to Plainfield? One thing that I look at in my analysis is very easy: We've got the ability with the current Wal -Mart stores with j ust a poll of the sales for Joliet, Plano, Naperville, the surrounding markets. What you can track by that is you can virtually track credit card and check purchases down to the zip code. You can't track cash very well. But you can track credit car ds and checks. What that tells you when you start looking at a map and the way that lays out when you poll the surrounding stores, all of a sudden it tells you how much your sales are coming from the Plainfield market. And then what I do is look at a trade area. Typically, a trade area on this store in this type of market, being more of a metro market versus a rural market, will be -- you can pretty much draw a circle three to four miles around the corner there at 127th and that's the trade area th at this store would target. It would lead a separation between Naperville , a separate trade area, and keep a separate market for us in Joliet. When we looked at those sales coming out of Plano and the Super Center on the western edge, Naperville t o the north and Joliet to the south, it showed a substantial amount of sales in the millions to each of those buildings that actually come from zip codes in Plainfield. So that was the first half of my job. Once you see that, it's a red light that g oes off, and you go drive out there and see you need a store. Then I narrow it down further than that. I take the market, spend a lot of time out there driving all the roads, obviously the roads that can handle the traffic and where we need to locat e in a corner there. By doing that, you narrow down to Route 59. At that point, we narrowed it down to crossroads. We do need to have a crossroad to the north/south roads and east/west roads. We looked at everything from 135th actually up to 111th , which is actually in the city limits of Naperville and it got us too close to the Naperville store. So then we backed up to 119th and 135th. Going anywhere south of Naperville impacted Joliet too much, where it made it where it wasn't worthwhile. After that we narrowed the market. It was 135th to 119th. I don't know how many concept plans we did, but I bet there's at least four or five site plans that we have drawn on other sites. Meeting with the landowners, the brokers here that work wi th us, we settled on 127th Street for a variety of reasons. Some of the land is not available at other corners, some of it's already developed, some of it's not for sale. We felt 127th put us right in the middle of this trade area that we're trying to s ervice between our current stores. I'm going to go real quick through what I'm at least proposing on the site plan. That's what you'll see on the orange -- I'll turn this a little bit. In the orange is what we call a 137,000 square feet prod uce -type store. It's what we call -- it's actually our largest general merchandise Wal -Mart store. It has the ability to be expanded. The expansion, what you're shown here, is what we believe is the maximum of what could be built on the site. That doe sn't mean in the future that will be built, but what we want to do is have it approved for the maximum that's possibly allowed by the parking code. Actually, the parking code will limit the expansion. That is the maximum that we think will allow us to ex pand right up 200,000 square feet for future expansion. What we are showing is a Super Center expansion. There's times we have not done that. We've expanded it as Wal -Mart stores. We've got several that we've expanded out and left them Wal -Mart st ores and not added the grocery facility to it. But at this time, we're actually trying to reserve the ability to expand the store so the site will do us for the actual life of the store and well into the future. One thing we learned in the past is w e know from stores, we've built some 40,000s, some 50s, some 60s, and we ended up moving out of them and I'm sure some people have seen the websites and these are some dark stores. One thing we've learned by those mistakes, we're building sites that can b e expanded and we can stay for a lot longer period of time. What we're looking at is a minimum 20 -year investment to be at this site. And this gives us the ability to do that, by building something that we feel is ideal for today but reserving the abilit y to expand in the future, if and when we need to. What does 137 Wal -Mart have? It's a typical Wal -Mart store, very similar to the Naperville location: All the same departments, fairly the same size as those. It expands the stock room some. It ha s a nicer vestibule entrance area, I think, than Naperville. Naperville has a very limited vestibule area. It has a full garden center and what we call a tire lube express. That's the appendage that you see on the back of the stores. What that is is basically an automobile service where we sell tires and batteries, and we do oil changes, oil filters, air filters, very limited auto service, basically to support the items that we sell, which is very limited. We don't do major auto repair work in the re. It's a very quick in -and -out process just to support, like I say, the items that we sell: Air filters, batteries, tires, that sort of thing. The garden center being a better enclosed garden center with what they call a lexan -type canopy. It fu lly encloses it but yet it's permeable for the sun and water to better grow the plants and live products that are sold out there. It has obviously the truck dock in the rear; services the general merchandise side. If and when it's expanded, what this allows for is the ability to expand an additional dock. If you add the food business on, you have a food dock so you're taking all the food on one side, general merchandise in the other. If you just expand it as a Wal -Mart store, we don't add on the sec ond dock. You use the same dock. All the general merchandise flows through the same type of area. We're showing what we believe we typically need out there which is what we call a five -to -one ratio of parking, which is five parking spaces for ever y thousand square feet of retail. And typically, we found that is what we need, especially in the fourth quarter of our business going into Christmas holidays. There may be some space that's available and not used for parking during the first, second qua rter, the first half of the year, and going into the spring and summer. That's kind of why we do -- we actually use the parking lot, do some of the trees, put mulch in the back, items that support the garden center, because we typically don't need all th at parking during that time it seems. Primarily it's the fourth quarter of the Christmas season which is our busiest time of the year. We're showing a proposed area for the gas station. It is a leased space. Wal -Mart does not own it. We own the l and and we lease the space. At this point, we feel like we know how to operate general merchandise stores and we rely on the gas company to operate the gas station. Today, Murphy Oil is doing the middle part of the country for us, especially for the Chicago market. Today, that's who that would be. It is a relationship we have with Murphy Oil and we lease the space. And part of that is because today we own the sites; we don't lease these from a landlord. We work with them, we own them, and we can control what is happening it. If somebody is not taking care of it and doing it right, we can find another person to do that for us to our standards as well as the City's, in the towns that we operate in. As you'll see, the green space in the front, we're kind of showing that in the area, that is for future development. I believe MidAmerica owns the fee title to the ground today and is planning that as future development. One thing we did do with them is we worked out a program where we woul d install the entrance roads, as you see proposed, because that's where we believe IDOT will approve -- and that's still subject to their approval, as well as input from the City. We've also allowed them all the access to the ring road that would be in the parking lot at this location. In return, they've done some things for us. They've agreed to break up the development out front so that we don't have a huge line of buildings or a three - or four -story hotel or something like that that would obstru ct the view of our store. They've agreed to limit the square footage and to do smaller type boxes in the frontage and break it up so that we still have a view of the store from Route 59. So they have done those restrictions. They've also agreed to self park their own outlot areas so there's not parking trying to overflow into the Wal -Mart lot. So whatever they build on these lots with self park, they would be able to take access through the drives as seen here as well as our parking lot opens up al l the access for that. They will share the joint detention area. We have agreed to at least Wal -Mart doing all the rough draining so that everything drains and goes into the one pond system so that you don't have small detention ponds throughout the building. So we would take all that, we would do the rough grading, and they would share in the detention ponds that you see. And you can ask Tracy or myself to go into more detail on the drainage and the way that flows. He's very much attuned to t he facts if we need to go into detail on that. But he is showing it at the south end of the site because that's the flow of the water and that's the way we think it needs to stay to drain this site as well as some of the other developments around, includi ng some of the residential; and the Target development across the street actually ties into some of this drainage together. So we felt like this drainage plan worked best for all the surrounding areas as well as us. That's all I have specifically on the questions. I was going to run through -- I made a list of things from last week that hopefully I can hit on some of the operational things from Wal -Mart, and hopefully answer a lot of the questions that were brought up and I did not get the opportun ity to answer. Some things that came up on the operation of the store, the truck deliveries. Typically a Wal -Mart store today is two to three Wal -Mart trucks a week. What that means is it comes from the distribution center. They bring the trailer in, they drop it in the dock, and they grab an empty one and they leave. The store has the ability to unload that during a set receiving hour when they bring a receiving load in. The driver unloads the trucks and it goes to the floor. It doesn't hold th e truck driver up. He's in and out of there and there's not a semi back there running for very much time at all. It's basically a drop -trailer system. There is times they bring something and have to unload and wait. But the majority is dropping a trailer, picking up an empty one, and leaving and they do it again the next day. It's two to three a week depending on the volume of the store. If it expands to a Super Center, you can usually add two trucks a week to that adding food and produce individ ually. In addition to that, you have your local deliveries. That would be everybody that -- virtually every panel truck that's delivered to Jewel, Meijer, anybody up and down Route 59 will still be delivered to us. We'll be right on their route. Frito -Lay, Little Debbie's, Coke, Pepsi, Anheuser -Busch, what have you on a local delivery system where they pull up the panel trucks to a ground level door, the majority. The majority don't have a semi capability. There's a ground level dock, and w e do have a ground level door in the same vicinity of the truck dock. So they pull up there again to the rear of the building, nothing comes to the front, unload their loads and they leave along the same route. Again, the same people that are delivering over to Jewel would put us, I'm sure, on their same route as they went to Jewel. I covered the outlot development plans. Again, part of that -- when we get on the outlot development plan, that agreement is a mutual agreement with MidAmerica. As fa r as us providing access, sharing some of the site work costs, and sharing some of the development costs and again in return for them breaking up the development and having some restrictions on the size and location of their building so that the developmen t then would flow very well; you wouldn't have one business blocking another. We also agreed to coordinate signage, if we have to combine signs to do some things together so there's not 15 different pile -on signs out there on Route 59. We've worked together to not obstruct signage and make it look like a quality development. Jobs -- a typical 137 Wal -Mart will employ 250 to 275 people, depending on the volume. Probably the break out, I'm going to venture to say, would probably be a 60/40 split , probably 60 percent part time, 40 percent full time. Some cases, it's 50/50. It ranges from a 50/50 to a 60/40 split both on the part time. After it expands out in its largest state there with the 200,000 square -foot Super Center, if we were to expand it out, it would employ close to 350 to 400 people, depending on volume of the store. The higher the volume, the more people we obviously have to put in the departments there. I talked about the gas station a little bit in the lease area. One of the things we heard from the neighborhood group in the meeting there that is reflective on the plan that Tracy pointed out last week a lot was the increasing of the buffer, fencing on the top, the landscaping to buffer to the north as well as to the west of the site, lowering the light poles. Typically our light poles are a 37 -foot pole. We have got it lowered down to 27. That's about as low as you can typically go without putting a spotlight on somebody. 27 feet is about as low as you c an go with that type of lighting system before it virtually becomes a hazard driving in the parking lot at night if something that bright is in your eyes. Even if we wanted to go lower than 27, I don't think you want it for a safety measure. That's something that came out of the neighborhood meeting, and we're happy to do that to lower it to what we think is the minimum height that you can lower it to without becoming a safety issue for people driving through that lot at night. One thing that c ame up last week was the operation of the trash and how that's handled in the rear of the building. There's several systems back there. There's one, a main trash compactor system. All of it is self -contained within the building. It's actually -- if yo u can picture a wall, such as what's behind you, and a hole on it with a door on it, there will be two similar -- an operation like that where all of the trash is put in there. On the rear of the building, there's a large dumpster -type compactor att ached to the building. It's actually physically attached. It cannot be removed. From inside the store, all the trash would be deposited in there, it's compacted to a time where it's picked up by the garbage service, emptied, and taken away. There's no ability for trash to be strewn outside of a dumpster, an open dumpster outside, as you've seen around some businesses in different areas of the communities. It's fully self -contained where it's only operated from inside in the back room of the Wal -Ma rt store. The cardboard is handled on a little separate system that is actually done through a baler system. I think we all use about the same balers. Sam's up the street, Jewel, Meijer, everybody uses a similar baler system where all the cardboard goes in that. It's all internal. It's where it's filled up, you bale it with some baling wire, and it's picked up by a truck, by a delivery service, and recycled so that none of that's wasted. Again, it's all handled inside the store through that baler system. They typically put the bales on a pallet, stack them. When they get a few of them -- the truck is normally on a normal pick -up system, whether it's once a week, once every other week, whenever it's needed to pick them up and take them away to r ecycle them. Some things came up about the security around the store. Typically, Wal -Mart operates on in -house loss prevention. It's a department within Wal -Mart that we operate for many reasons: For safety, for loss prevention shrinkage, theft, s hoplifting, internal as well as external. They investigate -- if a store's having problems internally, they investigate that. If they feel like they have a shoplifting problem, they investigate that. They monitor the camera systems that are in the park ing lot as well as inside the store. And typically, they monitor virtually every bit of the loss prevention of the store. In markets where we've needed to do more, we have. There's markets in Chicago. I've been in the Bedford Park store. Joliet does a few different things. And Forest Park, they actually have some -- I think they have a golf cart type electric vehicle where they will actually monitor the parking lot. They felt like they needed some additional security there and we put it in pla ce. I guess what I'm saying is Wal -Mart will have the ability to do whatever is needed to make it a safe place to shop. We're not going to open a building that is unsafe for the public. That's not what we're here for and that's not what we're makin g the investment for. Reasons: For safety, for loss prevention shrinkage, theft, shoplifting, internal as well as external. They investigate -- if a store's having problems internally, they investigate that. If they feel like they have a shoplift ing problem, they investigate that. They monitor the camera systems that are in the parking lot as well as inside the store. And typically, they monitor virtually every bit of the loss prevention of the store. In markets where we've needed to do mo re, we have. There's markets in Chicago. I've been in the Bedford Park store. Joliet does a few different things. And Forest Park, they actually have some -- I think they have a golf cart type electric vehicle where they will actually monitor the par king lot. They felt like they needed some additional security there and we put it in place. I guess what I'm saying is Wal -Mart will have the ability to do whatever is needed to make it a safe place to shop. We're not going to open a building that is unsafe for the public. That's not what we're here for and that's not what we're making the investment for. Typically, in the suburbs, we just do the in -house loss prevention and that honestly has been all that's what's needed in any of the suburb locations. Unless you get closer in towards the City, it's more the densely populated areas, then we have had a need to do some different things and we have done it. You can go down to those store today and they operate those carts as well as some of th e other retailers who I think do something very similar to us. Again, I talked about the trade area a little bit. There was some questions about the people that it would draw to the area. But the trade area here, if you draw a ring again four miles around it, that's the people that will shop here. I've driven probably every road in the neighborhood in that four -mile radius and I've not seen a bad area yet as far as an area that I wouldn't want to operate a store in. Every bit of it, every neighbor hood there is a typical potential Wal -Mart customer. Do people come from out of the area to shop, yes. There's no control of that. People could drive from Bolingbrook, Naperville, Joliet, wherever; but predominantly, the spacing of our stores and t he way this one is located with other stores in a very close proximity, it is going to be a four, possibly five -mile radius depending on which way you look and how close the next store is. That's who will be shopping, and that's who at least is what our ex pectation is today, and that's what we base a lot of our investment and proforma model on. That kind of sums up kind of what I had planned to talk about. I'd be happy to address any of the questions again ranging from any of that and go back to it i f you so choose. Or do you have anything maybe I missed on. I mean, I'm trying to address everything from a Wal -Mart operation standpoint or size selection or any of that. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Speak up, please. COMMISSIONER SCHINDERLE: One of the big questions that came up last week was the proximity of the building to the lot line. Would it be feasible to do what Target did, put green space and your retention pond on the west side of the property and move your building forward so you'd have a much greater distance between the building and the property line? MR. DANOS: It's possible, yes. But the problem we have with it is that we would have to take out parking spaces to do it. And I don't have anywhere to replace the parking spaces. I t's possible. You would have to do some type of pumping systems because then you're bringing water uphill. It's flowing this way (indicating). It's not impossible. But I don't have the ability to gain any more parking spaces to do that. And, Trac y, you may want to talk about that further. Tracy is the guy who did most of the design work on it. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: Let Tracy go. MR. RICHARD: Tracy Richard with Manhard Consulting, civil engineer. The question concerning taking th e storm water to the north side of the lot, the reason it has not been done -- first of all, the lay of the land is such that conventionally the low end of the property is where it's shown on the south, that's for one reason. The second, the outlot leased property is where the storage drainage ditch which will be running along 127th -- actually, it will be piped in by the time the improvements for 127th is done. In addition -- so the outlet is to the south. The other reason is taking it to t he north, it's not totally impossible, but the grading that has to take place in order to take it to the north side means also we have to collect that water and take it somewhat uphill but we have to agree to produce that, and then bring it back to outlet again back down to 127th. The fall of the water both to the north and then back down to the site makes it extremely hard from an engineering aspect to get it back down here by gravity which is the normal system. It very well may have to be pumped if you try to do that. That's another issue. Probably a more important one, too, is what I would call the overland issue which is a relief issue; in other words, when these ponds are filled up beyond capacity which will occur -- they're only designed for the 100 year. When those ponds are full, the overland 100 -year relief route, which must go overland, again, when they're situated to the north makes it hard because it would naturally right now flow out along 127th Street into the low spot at 59 whe n it goes to the east. And I think of it as it all basically flows all your drainage structures being filled with water. That's another hard route to take once you're all the way at the north end of the lot. Just some of the reasons. COMMISSIO NER SCHINDERLE: If you move the building forward and took the outlots and did that, you'd have open space in the back. MR. RICHARD: You're saying to move the outlot? COMMISSIONER SCHINDERLE: Move your building closer to the outlot and you pick up the outlots. Let you own the outlots and use it for parking. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: We don't own the outlots. They're owned by a separate -- COMMISSIONER SCHINDERLE: You don't now, but you certainly could buy them. MR. DANOS: They are not for sale to us. We're under a contract. For as much as we can get of that, we actually tried that. We got 60 feet, and you can see that on the plan. We're actually contracted with MidAmerica to buy a 60 -foot strip just to get us to where we are t oday. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: Does one developer own this whole plot, the whole -- MR. PHILIPCHUCK: No. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: Are you buying from one developer or are you buying from two different -- MR. DANOS: We are buying two pie ces of land. We are buying the large piece with Pulte Homes, and we're buying a 60 -foot strip from MidAmerica -- proposed buying it. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: Has MidAmerica already bought from Pulte, that front section? MR. DANOS: I don't know wh o they bought it from. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: Yes. They've already closed. MR. DANOS: They have bought it. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: I was just curious if at any time along the way you've talked about mirror image flip -flop where you wouldn't have the big box next to the individual people. The smaller commercial in the back would have made a lot more sense for the people that live back in that area. But if it can't be done, it can't be done. But it just seems like whoever was doing the planning on this when it was brought before us, brought before, it was commercial shown and it was multiple family. And now you just put a big box back in that area there. If they would have flip -flopped it, put the big box in the front, I could have see n it much easier as far as trying to satisfy the people who own their homes back there. And I guess it doesn't work out. I don't know what it is as far as the land, how it works out. MR. DANOS: MidAmerica I know was -- I think closed on this and was under a contract to do something on the front ten acres, and we came in and marketed and did that with Pulte. It's been completely separate. We actually contacted MidAmerica after they owned the ten acres, and just for that reason, trying to get as c lose as we could to the highway. If they would have sold us 100 feet, we would have moved it that much further closer. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: There's no way to work out something with them on a land spot where they take the back lot and you pay extra ? I know that gets into realty and everything else. I'm just thinking of something if you want to try to make something work out, if you have a big box in that area, something could work. MR. DANOS: I think they've contracted as much they're going to do with us. As far as the development for the back of it, it wouldn't be developable in their eyes at least , for what they're looking to do. They are looking to do at least, I believe, from my conversations with them, whether it's restaurant type us ers, possibly a convenience store on the corner, a bank. Mainly restaurant type of places. That's going to be who spends the most money on the outlot use. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: But I have seen other outlots with WalMarts where it's just reversed. T he big store in the back, the smaller ones on the other side. The fact that you have a section there, like I say, it probably won't work out the way it is right now. But I have seen those developed in other areas around here. MR. DANOS: In other s ituations where we would come in and buy the whole tract and own the frontage -- actually it's my own preference and to control my own frontage. And we didn't have the ability to do that here. Somebody already owned it, had development plans in the work s, and basically kind of slowed down and let us work together with them. And, again, that was my first conversation with them is I need to buy -- move up closer to that. And that is as far as I believe they will contract with us to sell that small portion that you see there. If we do anymore, it will limit their development of these. They'll become too small in the front to attract any type of restaurant or anything like that. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: But if you had purchased all of it along the front and they went to the back, that's what I'm saying. MR. DANOS: Sure. That would have been a possibility. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: You're still going to have the same build out and have a restaurant in that area, but it doesn't have the same impact on the people that live back in that area. COMMISSIONER MANNING: Mr. Danos, I have some questions about your agreement with MidAmerica regarding their future development of their property. If after you build your store MidAmerica decide s that they wanted to a build a five -story motel on their property, what recourse would Wal -Mart have under the agreement? MR. DANOS: The agreement is under what is called an ECR agreement. It's a deed with government restriction. It runs with the land. They're deed restricted and it runs with the land. They can't do it. COMMISSIONER MANNING: You've negotiated that with them? MR. DANOS: Yes. It's a signed agreement today. COMMISSIONER MANNING: If you had gone to them before buil ding your property and tried to get this agreement and they said no, we may build a five -story building, would you have continued with your development of this property? MR. DANOS: It would depend on if we could work out the placement of that. If it was something -- COMMISSIONER MANNING: They can put it any place they want to put it. MR. DANOS: Sure. If they were building it dead in the middle of this development and it was going to be a five -story hotel, that may change my mind. C OMMISSIONER MANNING: What would change your mind. What would you do? Would you continue developing onto that property? MR. DANOS: If that was in the middle of the development, probably not. We would look to do something different or work it out w ith them. COMMISSIONER MANNING: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Dan, do you have any comments on the parking? COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: The only comment I have so far, I've taken a good look at your site plan. And the thing I've noticed is that the -- you explained that the north end of the site, the access drive as it comes around the back of the property, okay, it appears that the berm is narrower at that point. And once it gets down -- comes down to the store, the berm widens out al ong the west property, along the west property. MR. DANOS: Back here? COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: Yes. See the northern section where the berm is in the corner. MR. DANOS: There to there (indicating)? COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: Yes. MR. DANOS: Tracy, why don't you explain that. It does have different heights and elevations as it goes through the development. MR. RICHARD: What we tried to do is the difference in the width of that, let's say, landscaped area in the back betwe en the pavement and rear property line is a function of what's anticipated for the future development of the Super Center. It is slightly different in terms of the truck dock area, say, for instance than the other rear truck dock area that will be bu ilt right now. What we do is align what we call the store front. That's always a straight line, and the back then has to take that differential that we show. I tried to maximize what I could in terms of bringing the building to the east, but to lim it the parking dictates what we have to have in the front. Again, getting back to one of the questions as to how much land would be available for berming and buffering along the west line, we tried to bring it as far as we could just as we did at thi s location as well. There's only so much area in here to work with and we tried to maximize both locations. But in essence, this is a function of the future store. It could equally be brought over to be uniform with this (indicating). It might hav e to be dealt with in the future. In other words, if this never gets filled and that drive is, say, straight with that five to ten feet -- it's probably not even that much -- it might have to be modified in the future, and that's another way of dealing with it. COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: I'm an architect, and I live right down the street right across with attached property to the Jewel store. What I'm going to suggest is you go down and study the way the back of that store is built. I think it woul d be very easy for that future expansion to shift the back wall, that expansion, east. And I believe then if you took your truck dock and angle it slightly, which is going to make your approach for your semis much easier, that's going to enable you to str aighten that driveway out and keep that berm the same width the entire west property. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: How wide is that property? MR. RICHARD: The width on there, the property line to -- both the width of the berm at the narrowest location we're talking is 54 and a half feet. The width at this larger location, I think it's 65 feet. I think it's larger than that. COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: What's the reduction in height? MR. RICHARD: The height reduces from -- I'm looking at this black and white. It's a grading plan with all the information. The height of the berm in that particular area is going to vary between 13 feet to 9 feet. COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: Again, you know, where I live, I'm positioned -- it's a very simila r scenario to the Jewel development. The driveway coming off of 59, makes a right -hand turn, comes along the back of the store. I'll tell you that that's basically when a semi makes that turn and accelerates, that's where it's going to generate the maximum amount of noise. That's definitely not the place where you want the berm to reduce in height. I think if you go and take a good look at it, it's going to affect the footprint of that future expansion very little. Again, if you shift the back wal l to the east and angle your dock in slightly, that's going to enable you to keep that berm the same width all the way. MR. RICHARD: I looked at another drawing. The actual dimension across is larger. It's actually 85 feet. I'm sorry. But fo r right now, what they're suggestion is is modification for this, Chris, so to maintain this width all the way up through here. COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: And the same height, width and height. MR. RICHARD: Width and height, right. COMMISSI ONER SEGGEBRUCH: Yes. MR. RICHARD: That can be done. COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: Again, if you go look at the Jewel store just south of here, their docks are angled slightly and it enables a semi to pull forward and pull in there. Right now, you really have it parallel to the building. That's more difficult for a truck to make a turn. MR. RICHARD: The only thing is actually the dock width that we have shown here is minimized; in other words, as you angle that dock, you will create a larger area out here than a truck needs to maneuver. So there might be a location where you might have to do something special in order to get that pavement in front of it. COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: Right. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: With a lot of the devel opers who have come forward to us in the past, we have a park -- a lot of times we look for transitional results with multiple families, which is prevented the way it was laid out commercially for you folks. The fact is you have all single families in th at area. Developers have come before us, and if you have single families, they can tell us how much your house will appreciate in price. If you have a park, if you have a golf course, your house will sell. The developers always seem to come forward with this is a sum of what your house will be worth over and above what it might be today because of what we're doing next door to you. And I've never seen anyone go it the other way. And that's a big concern of all the homeowners; that here they buil t brand new homes within the last couple of years and now you've got a Wal -Mart which isn't necessarily a bad neighbor. WalMarts are fine if you have great distances between them. But now they've built this home and is it going to appreciate or is it goi ng to depreciate. I'm just curious if there's any studies Wal -Mart has done or anyone has done along this line as far as new homes, where they're at with appreciation and depreciation. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: When we get into our public hearing portion bac k in the public hearing, we do have an expert appraiser who has looked at that in this specific location as well as others. He will be giving testimony at that time, Larry. Our experience in new subdivisions is typically that the biggest competitor is the actual home builder. When you go to resell and there's an active building going on in the subdivision, that tends to be your biggest competition as to price. MR. DANOS: Just a real quick comment about the dock. We'll go back and look at the design on the dock. We have put docks in a lot of different configurations to fit in a lot of strange places. So we're going to go back to see if there's a way to do that and increase that berm. COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: Again, I think as long as y ou can maintain the same height, same width all the way along the property line, particularly right where he makes that turn. That's where it's critical. And I think because it's a future expansion, it's all on paper right now, so I think you can look at it. MR. DANOS: Definitely Tracy will go back and look and see if there's a way to angle that. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: As far as the lighting along the building itself, you stated the poles will be reduced. Is that directional facing towards the building with shading to the back so you don't get lighting coming in the backyards? Even though it's going to light up the whole building, it makes a big difference how the light -- MR. DANOS: It's a box -style lighting. It's basically shaded on all sides except down. All four sides as well as the top are basically shielded and then it points straight down. It has got a width -- a circumference that it covers and it doesn't flow -- I think Tracy has the exact calculations how far over it exten ded, the area or circumference that is the size. But it does not flood out into the neighboring property based on those shields there. Some of the questions were brought up about the lighting in the rear of the building, and typically we do very lit tle. We've done a lot of different configurations. I've got some stores that are virtually lit up in the back and that's because the City wanted to do that, and we had to go and do that. What we're proposing is a very minimal limited lighting on th e rear of the buildings. It's not necessary for our operation that we need unless that was something that the City chose. I know that I meant to bring that up and I didn't get to get to it earlier. COMMISSIONER MANNING: Mr. Danos, you said that a store this size could expect two or three Wal -Mart deliveries a week. MR. DANOS: Correct. COMMISSIONER MANNING: What time of day do they normally deliver? MR. DANOS: They'll actually bring those trailers at all different times. They bri ng it, drop it, and leave. Typically our receiving would probably run from the early morning hours until about noontime and that's when they actually would be unloading inside. But that truck driver might come at 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon, drop the trailer and leave. The receiving crew would come in at 5:00, 6:00 in the morning the next day and unload it and it would be empty for whenever he came back. COMMISSIONER MANNING: You're leading me to believe that the truck normally would be deliver ed during the day. Is that incorrect? MR. DANOS: No. It could be delivered at any time. I am not going to sit here and tell you there's not some that come at night. COMMISSIONER MANNING: 3:00 a.m.? MR. DANOS: That's not the normal rout e. But as soon as I say they don't, one will drive down the street. COMMISSIONER MANNING: What's normal? MR. DANOS: Normally they would drop during the daylight, the daytime hours and they're back at the DC by that night. COMMISSIONER MAN NING: The local deliveries that you get, the Cokes, that type of thing, normally when do they deliver? MR. DANOS: They're typically all morning deliveries. COMMISSIONER MANNING: Morning being ? MR. DANOS: Anywhere from 7:00 -- they're u sually finished, I'm going to guess, by 1:00 in the afternoon. I'm going to look back at my store managers and district managers. Is that about accurate? They're finished by about 1:00. COMMISSIONER MANNING: Thank you. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: I know this is the concept. But the architectural look that's being so close to that building next to it, has that been discussed with residents as far as an architectural look that could solve the look of what Wal -Marts or large stores have? MR. DANOS: We discussed that. Minimally, at the neighborhood meeting, the majority of the questions were to the site plan. The architectural design that we have is based mostly on the comments and the feedback we've had from the City and some of the p reliminary meetings. It is very much from our standard. If you can picture the blue and gray building in Naperville, this one is all four sides with a brick surface. Tracy, I'm going to let you describe this because you're better at describing the architectural side of this thing as well as the way we've done the roof lines and some of the materials that are used. I'll let him go into detail on that. Yes, we have, I believe, upgraded it substantially to be an individual store for Pl ainfield versus what you've seen up and down some of the suburb areas of Chicago. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: It's not just for Plainfield. Like I said, it's the residents that live or would live directly behind that as far as what they look like, whether it's a masonry wall, a brick wall, or some type of architectural feature. MR. RICHARD: This is as shown on the rendering, and I do have to defer to the architect who would normally be here for a full presentation. But this is a full, all four sides brick -type look building. This is not your standard. This is much of an upgrade. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: Is it brick -type or is it brick? MR. RICHARD: I believe it's called a Quick Brick. For the naked eye, you would not see the difference. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: It's precast. MR. RICHARD: You wouldn't understand -- you would not see the difference between the brick look on this building. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: It's a precast building, not brick. MR. RICHARD: Quick Brick is -- don't think of it as a tilt -up panel. COMMISSIONER SCHINDERLE: I'd like to clarify to make sure I understand. You said it would be a 13 -foot high berm. Is there a five -foot fence on top of that? MR. RICHARD: Yes. There is a fence on top of that. I believe the question came up as to the height of the fence. It started at five. We have no preference in that regard. It would be a function of input from staff, the community as to its height. In other words, if you wanted six or whatever, we're amenable. COMMISSIONER SCHINDERLE: So what you're telling me is basically from ground level, you're up somewhere between 18 and 20 feet depending on the height of the fence? MR. RICHARD: That's correct. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Isn't it only on the west side? COMMISSIONER SCHINDERLE: Would that be only on the west side or on the north side as well? MR. RICHARD: It is on the north side and the west side along the berm of both locations. AUDIENCE MEMBER: All the way across 18 -foot? Sorry. I have to ask that question. MR. RICHARD: The berming on the fence is all the way along the north and the west sides for the length of the berm. COMMISSIONER SCHINDERLE: But your height is not the same on the north side. Yo u drop down. MR. RICHARD: The height of the berm, yes, does vary along the north side. COMMISSIONER SCHINDERLE: So it could be from what, 18 to 20 feet down to what? MR. RICHARD: It starts off over again from in excess of 13 back here (i ndicating). By the time you reach this section (indicating), approximately nine to ten feet. And then this very smallest behind Lot 65, in that area, that reaches down between four and six feet. And that is the height of the berm and then the fence is a dded on that elevation. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Have you done any traffic studies to show what the impact of the additional traffic on 127th will be? MR. RICHARD: The traffic study, I talked to our consultant today. He has completed what we call a rough draft. He will finalize the report by the end of this week and we will submit it in to some landscaping height. And they pointed out they like the look of the berm and the fencing as you go up Route 59, as you approach Naperville at 111th Street along High Meadow. So we went back and that's what we've tried to do here. And I think actually Tracy thinks it will exceed the heights of them. We checked with them to find out what their berm heights were. And they're going to vary a little bit . Once 59 gets improved, they're going to raise the grade over there. But even in a finished state, our berm heights will exceed those. And that's what some of the neighbors asked us to look at to try to see if we can do something similar to that. So t hat was our attempt, and that's what we came back with. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: This room is roughly about 50 feet long, correct, 50, 60? You're talking about 100 feet is where your building would be from the back of most of the property, correct? MR. PHILIPCHUCK: You're talking about the west? COMMISSIONER KACHEL: To the west, right, from their property line. MR. RICHARD: The closest truck being the truck dock would be 120 feet. So between the main building, it's probably another 2 0 onto that or 30 onto that. Almost 150 feet. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: How high -- in relation to your store, how high will the tops of the trees be? MR. RICHARD: Again, I like to point to somewhat of this perspective, which I showed before, which is basically a look from the north to south through the site being a typical residential home, the berm shown on this drawing to scale, nine and a half feet, the Wal -Mart parking lot, that's the future center, and then this is the Wal -Mart store height s hown as this built -out location. You know, the top of the trees, again, you have to look at both, you know, the type of tree planted initially as an example, an eight -foot evergreen or a six -foot evergreen and where it's planted on the berm. So tha t's going to vary. You're not going to get mature trees right off the bat. So say the tree height is anywhere from six to maybe ten feet, depending on the type of tree and deciduous or evergreen, add it on to the berm height, it's going to be not ve ry close to the -- or above the top of the building, again, because the berm is varying slightly to the north and would be fairly constant on the west side. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Is there some engineering reason for varying the height of the berm? MR. RICHARD: The height of the berm is really a function of two things: The width that is available, the green space width, and the slope of the berm. In other words, this width in here we have tried to maximize -- well, we tried to maximize the widt h both on the north and on the west and to fit all the other requirements into the project, which is both sides of the building, the parking, storm water detention, et cetera. In fact, we revised it when we first made submission to increase it to the max imum that we could shrinking this plan, so -to -speak. The width of the berm dictates its height based on using a slow -- we use a slope of 3 -to -1, three horizontal, one vertical. That's a slope that typically most landscapers still feel comfortable in cutting grass on a riding mower without tipping over. If you go to, let's say, a steeper slope, which could be a 2 -to -1, you could raise the height of the berm but it would not be something that you normally maintain with normal grass -cutting equi pment. It would not -- you would probably plant natural material that would not be maintained in that regard. So the berm height could be increased by going to a steeper slope, and really the width of it dictates how high you can get. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: I was wondering if there was an esthetic reason or an engineering reason for the top to be angulating as opposed to being just a uniform height. MR. RICHARD: It's really -- I would say it's more esthetics. Most people as a general rule from the various developments I've been involved with on a day -to -day basis -- I would say probably 90 percent of them -- tend to go with the angulating and up -and -down type berms simply to break up the regimented single height. That's all. And that's just preference. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: Is your fencing located on the top, on the bottom of the berm towards the store going up in higher width according to the placement on the lot? MR. RICHARD: On the west and the north? COMMISSIONER KA CHEL: Yes. MR. RICHARD: Yes. Those are the locations of the berms and -- COMMISSIONER KACHEL: If you have a fence. MR. RICHARD: The fence right now we have shown it at the top or say centered in the berm on both sides. Again, it's pre ference. So we would assume that right now the question was to -- for view more than anything else. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: The reason I bring that up is to view a fence at the top of the berm, sometimes the fence goes back. You're looking at the sid e towards Wal -Mart. Wal -Mart would take care of it. And people mentioned before as far as not necessarily garbage but just papers and things that blow across that got caught in the berm or up on top of the berm, people would be less likely to see it ther e. I don't know. If there's anything that Wal -Mart has picture wise, a future one that you've done something like this with a berm this size, I would like you to bring that photo and take a look at it. MR. DANOS: We do have several locations. We've done it a lot of different ways. I've done some things where actually neighborhood groups wanted us to donate the property then after it was constructed. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: That was one of my next questions. MR. DANOS: We've done that at the request of the planning group. There have been times where they wanted to donate it as city park type areas. We have done that, donating it the City. And there's other areas where we own it, maintain it. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: After it's co nstructed? MR. DANOS: We've done it all different ways. And I'm sure we could dig up some pictures and things of each one. We're open to putting a fence at any location on there. There's also different things you can do with the berm. I don't k now if Tracy is speaking on them in terms of the engineering side of it. You can go to actually higher berms in a similar area in what's called -- and they call it for lack of a better term an unmaintained type thing where you use some of that prairie gr ass. But it's the type that you can't mow because obviously the height of the berm. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: You don't have to do it now, but the next meeting, I'd like something brought forward that would be for the people who live next door so we ca n take a look at maybe two or three different options that you may have done beforehand. One other question. There was a concern that the street that came through there before is a real concern because in Plainfield, we have a lot of problems where we have streets but we have limited streets and the neighborhoods get blocked up and backed up with traffic. We did have originally the street that was going to come through there. It really doesn't come through now. You've got the parking lot. MR. DANOS: That's Bob White Lane. Is that what you're -- COMMISSIONER KACHEL: Right. Has there been any talk to opening it up? I know you don't like to have traffic go through a parking lot, but the fact of the matter is it does give people access to leave there easier because 59 is terrible. You're pretty much taking everything over to Van Dyke Road right now. MR. DANOS: We don't have a preference either way. To me, the neighborhood group was opposed to that and that's why we showed it the way we did. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Larry, most cases where we've had -- COMMISSIONER KACHEL: You don't like people cutting through, I understand. MR. DANOS: We're not opposed to it. We would do it if everybody so chose it. We could punc h that road through, but the neighborhood was against that. COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: Let me go one step further. Would you be willing to consider donating to or working with their developer and possibly take those two little step streets back out a nd put some green space in because they're very short step streets? MR. RICHARD: First of all, there are driveway accesses onto that so that couldn't come out for that reason alone. COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: Okay. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Anybo dy have any additional questions? MR. RICHARD: I'm sorry. The one to the west, since that is proposed, not built, still call it subject to review, it may never -- the question would be would it ever be built or modified, you know, a change in the l ot configuration to get rid of it. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: I have one more question on lighting. The berm portion of it -- I know I'm concerned about too much lighting. Sometimes when you have a berm and you have dense trees, which that would be ide al for the people there, then you run into problems with the safety, also, the fact that it's not lit up in that area. Have they ever done anything with lighting as far as the berm areas, very limited lighting? MR. RICHARD: You know, it is a functio n -- I'll say this. It has gone different ways. I can speak to some of the different stores I've been involved with. Both Wal -Mart and Sam's, the retailers, very limited, let's say, lighting specifically for dense landscaped areas has been done in that fashion. There have been one or two where, let's say, through discussions with the police department they felt there was a security situation and they wanted it lit and we did that. We're not opposed to it. It's just that right now, Wal -Mart, through their normal operation, especially along the rear of the store, are not normally like that. They don't anticipate or they don't normally have that kind of situation. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Does the village engineer have any questions? MR . AMANN: No, sir. We have no -- I don't have any additional questions at this time. We have some preliminary comments on the preliminary plans that we've seen, and I'm sure they'll be addressed as we go along. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Staff, have we m issed anything? Is there anything that we should have investigated? MR. CARROLL: One comment that came up last time was possibly the noise. I don't know if it might be a good idea if they have any noise data on any of the stores as far as trucks. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: It would be helpful to have information from your existing locations as to noise levels encountered at different times of the day due to delivery trucks in the rear and just all -around noise and commotion in the parking lot. MR. RICHARD: The only thing that might take a little time to obtain -- call it the exact similar store in terms of the berming and everything else to get that level. There is many locations we don't have this high of a berm. So Chris would have to stud y one of that in that nature. MR. DANOS: I've never done an actual noise study at a location. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Sound level. MR. DANOS: I'm sure there's something available. I'll have to give you one. We'll have to figure out if there is something like that. Honestly, we've never done one. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Does Wal -Mart employ a landscape service or do they rely on their own employees to do the outside maintenance of the parking lot and the environment, for instance, grass cu tting, tree trimming, trash pick up, et cetera? MR. DANOS: The overall maintenance of the landscaping area, we typically contract it out as well as the parking lot cleaning where someone actually comes and does, like, a vacuum truck and cleans the p arking lot at night. They typically do that as much as needed. They do that three nights a week at some of the locations I have actually worked in. We contract the landscaping. Typically, just trash that gets in there during the day, the folks tha t actually take care of the carts and maintain the carts in and out of the parking lot do maintain the trash in the evening as well as again the vacuum trucks that come on a contracted basis and actually clean virtually everything down to a cigarette light er out in the parking lot by that vacuum truck. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: If there were to be a berm on two sides, what is the proposal for the maintenance of this berm, for instance, the grass cutting. MR. RICHARD: It would be a contractual basis wi th virtually someone that does landscaping in the area, landscape maintenance, whether it's once or twice a week. The individual store, the district managers would set that as to what's needed. Probably during the summer, it would probably be more often obviously than during the fall and the winter. As well as the snow removal, it's also a contract basis as needed with a local person here in the area. COMMISSIONER SEGGEBRUCH: Would it be possible to request a sample wall -- a panel sample of the a ctual material? MR. DANOS: Yes. I'll have them. We will actually bring a sample, I believe, on the 15th. COMMISSIONER MANNING: Mr. Danos, do you typically have cart corrals in your parking areas? MR. DANOS: We do. We typically space th em, and they're shown on the plans, at different intervals at about the midpoint of the parking islands where we actually take it to one space per aisle. It fits in one parking space all the way through on a 60 -degree parking and it corrals the carts whet her the customers place them there or some of our own associates pick them up and bring them to our own store to a separate corral location that's within the store to use. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: The thing I notice about Jewel is you never see a cart outsid e that corral in their parking lot. What kind of procedure does Wal -Mart have to assure something like that? MR. DANOS: I don't have a procedure that assures it. COMMISSIONER MANNING: Jewel seems to do a pretty good job. MR. RICHARD: I don't know that Jewel can assure that the customers will place them in there. I wish I could. It makes our jobs easier in the stores. We hope by placing them in the locations that we have conveniently through the whole midpart of the parking lot the fol ks do use them. The majority of them do. Can I assure you that everybody is going to put their cart back, no. Somebody is going to push it out there and leave it. One of our folks is going to have to pick it up and bring it in, the same as Jewel o r anybody else. We hope by placing them accurately, they maximize their use. That's our intent. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: Doug, the way it was laid out before with commercial in the front and multi families in the back as far as bike paths, where i s the nearest bike path tied in with this thing and where's it at? MR. CARROLL: The bike path would be on the south side -- you guys aren't proposing a bike path on the east side, but that's probably going to end up being a sidewalk. The neares t bike path will be on the south side of 127th Street, the north side of the Target site. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: What about when you go across the roadway to go north, where is the tie -in? MR. CARROLL: North would be on the south side of 119th St reet. COMMISSIONER KACHEL: Has there been any discussion as far as tying anything -- you know, I don't know. You've got a berm. Did we have anything in that other plan originally for movement of bikes? MR. CARROLL: For when it was all r esidential? COMMISSIONER KACHEL: Right. MR. CARROLL: There was nothing inside the subdivision itself, no, not that I can recall anyway. MR. PHILIPCHUCK: Mr. Chairman, we will have them prior to the continuation of the public hearing. W e'll get you the traffic study so you'll have that in your packets before the next meeting to review as well as our fiscal analysis for the site. As you heard tonight, we'll look to see what we can do as far as getting you some kind of study as far a s noise decibels, sounds. And then the plan would be to go to the -- CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: We're going to have an appraiser? MR. PHILIPCHUCK: We'll have an appraiser whenever we can get him on to give his testimony. He will be here to give tes timony. He'll be prepared at the next meeting, also. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: Thank you very much. This concludes the presentation of the concept plan for the proposed Wal -Mart development at 127th and 59. I want to remind everyone that the p ublic hearing to consider the request for special use, zoning, and site plan review will continue here at Heritage Grove on November 15th at 7:00 o'clock. AUDIENCE MEMBER: That's a Thursday, correct, sir? MR. CARROLL: Correct. CHAIRMAN SOBKOVIAK: I don't have a calendar in front of me. That's a Thursday. At that time, the petitioners will be making further presentations. And I'm sure your -- the counsel that you have retained will be here to cross -examine the witnesses. A nd there will be time to take more questions and comments from the general public. So with that, the public meeting to consider the concept plan for Wal -Mart is adjourned. And I've already adjourned the public hearing, but I'll adjourn it again . Thank you everybody. Good evening. * * * * * STATE OF ILLINOIS ) ) SS. COUNTY OF W I L L ) I, Gale L. Barma, CSR No. 84 -003807, RPR, do hereby certify that I reported in shorthand the proceedings had in the above -entitled cause; and that the foregoing Report of Proceedings, Pages 1 through 69 inclusive, is a true and correct transcript of my shorthand notes so taken at the time and place aforesaid. This certification applies only to those transcripts, original and copies, prod uced under my direction and control; and I assume no responsibility for the accuracy of any copies which are not so produced. IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand this 9th day of November, 2001. Certified Shorthand Repor ter