October 7, 2024 — Meeting Transcript

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Planning Commission ARB for October 7th. If you have any electronic gadgets, please silence them at this time. We'll start with the roll call.

Yeah, it's okay. We'll do it. Steve Lichtenfeld? Here. Bob Denlow? Here. Bridget McAndrew?

Yeah, it's okay. We'll do it. Steve Lichtenfeld? Here. Bob Dunlow? Here. Bridget McAndrew?

Helen DiFate?

Ellen DeFate?

Kimmy Waldman?

Jim Arsenault? Here. David Gipson? Here.

Jim Arsenal? Here. David Gibson? Here.

We have minutes from the previous meeting on September 16th. Are there any changes? Seeing none, do we have a motion? I move to approve the minutes.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Okay, thank you. Before we get started, I'd like to thank everyone in the audience for coming. We appreciate all the support and the comments that we get from our citizens. We'll move into old business, and item number one is 801 Seminary Place, and it's the Plan Commission Institutional CUP. Let's see. Anna? Anna?

So this is a continuation of the proposal from court, Concordia seminary for new housing that was presented and the. Site plan architecture review and conditional use permit are all being considered. So in this staff report, we covered some revisions and additional information that's been provided by Concordia and their design team. And I'll just turn it over to them to walk through starting with the CUP or if you go through your presentation, then we can highlight what's different for each application.

Welcome back.

Oh. Hello. Do I need to restate my name? Please. Okay, I'm Angie Esslinger with Lawrence Group. It's nice to be here again. We did prepare some additional exhibits to share tonight we will share them at the appropriate moment, but we would like to start off by saying we did hear the questions and comments from the 916 meeting, and we did formally prepare a narrative and distributed to you all to give you answers to formally address that. But for the benefit of the people in the room, if they did not read that, we'd like to go through that quickly. For conditional use, it's actually for all three things, but I think it applies to the conditional use permit. So I'm going to go ahead and read them all now. One of the questions was for the conditional use permit, where are HVAC units located and how are they screened? The HVAC units at the townhomes will be located at grade and screened with a cedar fence and landscaping. The HVAC units at the three-story apartment buildings will be located in a rooftop mechanical well. The roof itself will be screening the equipment. The rooftop mechanical well equipment at the residence hall will be located on the rooftop at the center of the building, and the parapet will screen that equipment. We did prepare an exhibit, and we will show updated exterior elevations in a few moments to note those locations. The next question was, how long are the new buildings expected to last? Well-constructed homes can easily last 100 years. The proposed materials were selected with quality and maintenance in mind. Many of the buildings on Concordia's campus are over 50 years old, actually 50 plus, which speaks to Concordia's commitment to building maintenance. A third question, is it true the existing buildings need to be demolished? What kind of study was done to determine if the existing housing can be repaired? Concordia has determined the existing buildings should be replaced primarily due to their design and construction. It is not a maintenance issue. The seminary will not be sharing any internal documentation related to the condition of this housing or the decision to abandon it as it's not germane to this application. During the site plan review comment and question time, we received five questions. How will the Western parcel appear after housing demo? The existing housing will remain in place until the proposed housing is built. After the student families are relocated, the existing housing and related parking and drive will be demolished. The area will be returned to green space with the intent that it be developed in accordance with the zoning overlay proposed by the Clayton Director of Planning at the September 16th Planning Commission meeting. Another question staff proposed a 20% reduction in the caliper inch replacement requirement. The plan commission would like to see where the existing tree canopy coverage being removed is currently located. Lawrence group prepared an exhibit to clarify canopy coverage and the design approach for tree replacement. They increased the number in caliper of proposed trees, updated the tree chart and identified the remaining contribution to the city's forestry fund. Concordia plants trees on the property annually. It is not a requirement, but an example of Concordia's commitment to maintaining adequate tree canopy coverage. I did put a question in here. Would the Planning Commission allow new trees planted outside the development area to count toward the caliper inch replacement requirement of the site? I don't expect an answer right now, but we did go ahead and formally ask that. Third question, where are detention basins proposed and to what storm system do they drain? Will the new system drain to the storm system along San Bonita? What happens at each storm sewer inlet connection during a major rain event? And then it says 100 year, for example. Cole prepared two exhibits to clarify the current proposed stormwater management system in the San Bonita drainage area. Do we need so many parking stalls at this particular site? How much of the existing parking is really used on campus? The proposed parking replaces the parking near the existing student housing and at the chapel perimeter. The parking calculations meet the current zoning regulations. Parking is needed to serve the housing in this area. The car-to-kitchen distance is a big deal for young parents with small children. Concordia will continue to prioritize their students and their families, particularly their safety and convenience when parking and getting the kids into and out of vehicles. These apartments become the student's home for nearly two years. Are the first floor units at the residence hall staring straight at a retaining wall? There is a retaining wall 22 feet north of the residence hall. The proposed landscape buffer includes a variety of low shrubs and perennials, as well as boulders and decorative gravel for visual interest. The density of the proposed landscape is in proportion with the available space. I have three left. When we were talking about the architectural review comments and questions, the first question was staff report recommended approval with the condition for approval after understanding HVAC unit placement and screening. We already addressed that the screening will happen either on the roof or with a cedar fence and landscaping. The ARB asked that the proposed use of stucco ephus at the townhomes asked about that. and voiced concern with the use of Ephus due to quantity and appearance of control joints, potential drainage issues, and overall life expectancy. Lawrence Group did research on the appropriateness of stucco and Ephus in the St. Louis region. Both require control joints and the spacing and location should be considered in exterior design. Both projects are used in the St. Louis region. Both products are used in the Saint Louis region, yet stucco is most appropriate at a smaller scale. EFIS offers a drainable product. Concordia considered other materials and prefers fiber cement panel siding. The updated drawings reflect the material change at the townhome. I would note, I didn't put this in this document, but we are also recommending a fiber cement lap siding as the second material on the three-story apartment buildings in place of stucco as well. The ARB asked how materials and color relate on the three proposed building types. Lawrence Group will present material samples at the future meeting to communicate design intent. I am going to let my colleagues come up first and speak to the CUP related stuff. We can go to the materials maybe during the ARB if that's more appropriate. Two other items, sorry, one other item that I did not address when we sent it off to you was utility location. I don't recall if that was in the CUP or the site plan development, but those will be defined and located with the engineers once they're on board, once the project is further along, and that will be submitted at time of permit review. And that's all I have. So we have a couple exhibits to show, and I'll let Jared come up and start.

Oh,

perfect. There it goes.

Thank you.

Okay, this is it. Appreciate it. Good evening, Jared Wilson, Cone Associate Civil Engineer. We thought it'd be good to bring a more colored plan for clarity to understand the stormwater system. So I'll be more than happy to regurgitate what we talked about at the last meeting. But in short, we have two drainage areas, one to the north and one to the south. The color boxes, if you will, represent underground detention. So if you recall last time, MSD has waived the infiltration requirement, which is water quality volume reduction. So the north drainage area, the red box would be the proposed location for the detention that would then discharge to the east and the existing storm sewer on site. The yellow box for the south drainage area would be collected in a yellow box and then discharged to the left or west. That would then connect on to Concordia Lane sewers, so the green lines represent the existing storm sewers. So it's important to know that MSD is going to require us to design this as existing conditions are undeveloped, which means grass to field, right? So we all know there's proposed buildings or existing buildings and parking along with proposed buildings, which is going to increase your runoff, right? At the end of the day, from a detention standpoint, we'll be releasing less than what it is today because of the undeveloped conditions that MSD is gonna make us adhere to. That's one. Two, we take it a step further and go downstream and evaluate the existing storm sewers that are provided in green. We have to analyze those existing sewers as if the detention is offline and then it has capacity to take that 100-year storm event. Okay, so I think there was some concern about what the detention was offline. How is that going to be treated? We still have to analyze and verify that that's existing system has capacity. If it is not, that's when we have to look at making improvements. And that's when improvements would be made to that storm sewer system. We're not there yet. We don't know what that looks like, but that will be required and dictated by MSD. I think that's in short we wanted to speak about. So next slide. Thank you.

Good evening. Jordan Wilkinson, landscape architect with Lawrence Group. Happy to be back in front of you. So a quick summary of what has changed on the landscape plans from last time we presented to you tonight. We've had added around 14 additional trees. We have increased the specified caliper inch on a number of trees in our plant schedule. We further diversify the plant palette by adding two additional species and that breakdown brings us to roughly 82% native to Missouri. We did create two exhibits here. So this is a color overlay on top of the tree preservation plans. So this is the proposed development and all of the existing trees on site shown in yellow and red. And the trees shown in yellow are trees that we are preserving through tree protection measures, and the trees shown in red are unfortunately trees that are affected by the development, so they will be removed. So you can see there's a larger impact to the existing tree canopy on the northern half of the site. But at the same time, we are able to manipulate our grading and work to save as many of those as we can, and they'll be protected during the construction process as shown in the yellow there. If you flip to the next slide, please, this adds another layer on top that shows all of the proposed trees from our design kind of in conjunction with the preserved and removed trees, so you can get a better idea of where everything's going. The canopy shown on our proposed trees are not the mature canopy, but obviously they will grow. I wanted to show it at this size for clarity, otherwise it'd kind of get lost and jumbled together. But you can see really that we're lining the parking lot, the sidewalks, the streets. There's a great deal of planting around each building. All in all, I think we landed at 253 proposed trees going in with this project. and we're preserving 290 existing trees on site, which really adds up. Again, we've gone through and tried to diversify the proposed plant palette. We have 16 different tree species going in here. So the plan is to make up for the tree caliper inch replacement deficit with compensation to the forestry fund. And that's in the amount of $112,000. $112,500. So that's how it all lays out and open to any questions.

We'll have questions later from the citizens.

That concludes the formal part of the CUP piece of the presentation. So we would open it now to any questions or comments from

you all. Well, Jordan, I have a question about what's up on the screen right now. All of the green proposed trees look very small. Some of them seem very close together. are they going to grow into mature large trees with canopy coverage?

They are. Yeah, so as I mentioned before, if I showed these all at their proposed mature canopy, it would be really hard to read the diagram. But I can walk through some of the species in particular. In terms of some of the greatest canopy trees, we have some London plane trees. We have some sugar maples. We have some bald cypress. We have black gums, which are not sweet gums. We have river birch. We have white fringe tree. We have ginkgos. You can go on and on. There are several trees that are smaller in nature like flowering trees such as red buds, fringe trees that are stacked closer together. Like you can see just south and north of the chapel, there are a number of trees that are very close together. Those are some of the smaller canopy trees like the fringe tree. Some of the smaller trees very close to the buildings are trees like Taylor junipers, which will have a smaller footprint but provide a lot of foundational structure to support the architecture. So I hope that answers your question.

It did. I was really concerned around the chapel. They seem very tight. But the other ones, as they grow and mature, will some of them actually die because of larger trees around them?

No, I think... The way we have it planned, it's going to be almost a tree succession plan. So as some of those more mature trees start to get more mature and towards the end of their life cycle, the trees that we're preserving, we'll have a head start with the new trees that are proposed with this project. So when down the road, when that mature canopy comes down from natural causes, you've already got a good start with the tree that went in years down the road or years before, and you have a leg up on that canopy coverage.

Okay. Thank you. Before you leave, any other questions for Jordan? Amy?

So the existing trees that are being removed like to the north of the chapel, just kind of like along that sidewalk. I'm just curious why you're choosing to remove like those large trees and just replacing them with newer ones. Because they don't seem to be like in the way of the buildings.

Where specifically?

Like in between the chapel and I think those are the apartments. Okay.

So across the top part. Unfortunately, there's a lot of grade change there. In some cases, it's minimal. It might be a few inches or a foot. But grading within the critical root zone or the canopy zone of a tree can be done, but it usually sets up a tree for failure. So wherever possible, we are adjusting our grade to stay out of those areas Canopy zones, but unfortunately sometimes the grade necessitates that we do encroach on those trees too much and therefore we're removing those trees. There were some comments on the landscape plan reviewer that pointed out a few of the trees kind of on the perimeter of the site. That could be saved, and so we are working to adjust the grades and potentially build a few small retaining walls to make sure that the project disturbance doesn't encroach too closely on those. But in that location specifically I think the grading was just too much to preserve the trees

right. And then, like to Steve's question like as these trees mature like the canopy coverage, I mean. I know you said a bunch of species. I'm not familiar with like the diameter of the canopy coverage of those. Is that, are they going to be comparable to what was there? It

will be. Yeah.

Okay.

It'll take time, but it will be comparable. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

Jordan, I'm saying, can I ask, I do a lot of the trees and I know we've had our landscape reviewer look, but you know, we're, I mean, we're currently in a drought. Do you feel like a lot of the species that you've chosen will withstand Missouri summers? You know, it would just be a shame to have to water these. I mean, we plant trees around the city and unless you put them in those like plastic bucket things and constantly fill them with water but do you feel comfortable that you've, you know picked species that'll withstand our climate changes?

Absolutely. We have picked, I think we're 82% native, which is the biggest benefit of that is drought tolerance. The remaining trees are also very adaptable, that extra 18%. It's not like we're picking very exotic species that don't have a chance at surviving in our climate. So that is always one of the biggest considerations we have when we're selecting the plant palette.

Thanks.

You're welcome.

David, anything?

Okay. Actually, we're handling the first three items all together. We'll be voting on them separately, but it's good to get all the information up front. Right now, we're talking about the conditional use permit. Thank you, Jordan. And are there any questions about the conditional use or comments from the audience? No. Okay, were there any hands up?

No. Okay.

Well, we do have, of course, we've read and heard the criteria for the CUP. Are there any comments about this before we go further, Bob?

The CUP is the right vehicle to use in moving forward with Concordia's plan. It's zone residential, but to give you people and us the review opportunity, we force them to come in asking for a conditional use permit for their institutional uses, and that's why we are able to be here. My question is basically a little bit unrelated to the district that you're going to be, the portion you're gonna be working on. You're gonna, at the end of the day, you're gonna shrink Concordia Seminary roughly 35, 40%, whatever, on the Western end by Big Bend. And For the first time, I was looking at your maps and I finally realized Concordia Park is owned by Concordia Seminary. You guys still own it. And to the world in Daman and around there, we look at Concordia Park as really a public park and it's beautiful. Everybody uses it. And I don't know what you know, but now that we're shrinking Concordia Seminery, by 40%, are you aware of anything that would suggest to you that Concordia Seminary may wish to utilize what has been a park and an integral part of the DeMunn area in the future?

That's a good question. And there's absolutely no plans to do anything to Concordia Park at this time. The word shrink is appropriate, but what really we're trying, what they're trying to do is to create more community around the chapel by bringing the housing closer to the center of campus. So, but to answer the question, no, not in the park.

Okay. Do you have the understanding I have heard found secondhand. That is, it's basically Clayton city of Clayton maintains the park. There's an understanding formal, I guess something, some agreement, but that it can be terminated in a short period of time at any time.

I I'm unaware of what you're speaking of.

Okay. All right. Okay.

Anything else? No. Angie, while you're up there, You posed a question, which is in the written response. Would the plan commission allow new trees to be planted outside the development area to count toward the caliper inch replacement requirement? I'd like to ask our professional staff, have we done that before? Can you repeat that?

Oh, yes. So in this site, we do a canopy coverage and a caliper inch replacement based on the site as a whole. There aren't any property lines that are subdividing Concordia. So if they were to plant trees on other parts of Concordia's parcel, then that would still be sufficient without having to actually reduce anything by the plan commission.

So then you could augment even the park area with trees.

That was the intention for asking the question, because again, they do routinely plant trees anyway. So now if we can purposefully select locations to replace some of those caliper inches, that would be ideal. Obviously, we didn't study that yet, so I don't have an answer, but that would be something we would definitely look into to lower the value that we are donating to the fund.

And we do review the... The tree charts and all of the information that they've provided here that was reviewed by our landscape architect, we do also re review that at the time of building permits and those are being issued because very. Frequently similar to what they're experiencing right now will get utilities amaran will kind of say here's where we want you to connect, but then when you're actually have your engineers on board and you're doing the detailed. utility connections those lines move or shift which sometimes impacts trees so under that permit of the built before we actually permit any construction activity on the site we would be able to adjust what might be that deficiency balance if they plant some more trees or identify other trees within this year that have been planted

okay thank you if i could stay on the trees that seems to be the sexy topic right now okay um And since Steve has said we're going to look through all of them, materials and all three. I want to talk about this. When you guys finish your work on the trees, you're going to be. deficient in the amount of calibers, the inches of trees that you're removing versus what you're replacing it with. And that there's this tree fund that says you will be required to pay $182,000 because of this deficiency. Do I understand it right? And then I read, but we can recommend a 20% reduction of the minimum so that instead of the net result is instead of paying 182,000, you'll pay something less. And the staff has recommended to reduce it 20%. Do I understand that right? And I assume you're not arguing with that. No. Okay. And so you'd be prepared to pay $182,000 if we don't reduce it? Yes. Yes. Okay, I noticed that little hesitation like you're a goal is

because it's not me. But yes, the understanding is is that we will do what's required based on the calculation and what's accepted.

Okay, thank

you.

I'm sure we'll have more questions when we go into the site plan review. So stick around Jared. um okay uh for the cup um i think we've gone through it were there any other comments on the staff report any other comments from the audience on the staff report hopefully you all read it online no okay we If you have a question, please come up. We have to capture it on the recording. Please give us your name and address.

David Kramer, 1 Brentmore Park. And to your comment on the trees seems to be the subject. I have a question regarding if anybody, as opposed to the caliper, has anybody looked at the potential wildlife impact that reducing the larger trees would have on this? Because I know in our area, there are many hawks that you see flying. There's owls that are in that area. I know from knowing people in the Concordia Seminary that there's fox and other animals that live And so with this development and the reduction of the trees affect those species of animals or others. Thank you.

Let's see. Jordan, do you have a comment on that?

I'll do my best. I don't think there are any code requirements that require any sort of wildlife documentation or study for an application like this. But I do think that the rigorous tree code requirements have that wildlife in the forefront of their mind when they're written, at least that's how I interpret it. You know, there's obviously great wildlife benefit to some of these mature trees and we understand that, but I don't think there's any other specific documentation or study that we would have to do as part of this in regards to that.

Thank you. There are a sufficient number of existing large trees that are remaining from what we can see in the plan, so hopefully the wildlife will continue and probably grow as we see what happens over time. Were there any other comments on what the applicants have presented. If not, we'll go back to the item number one, which is the conditional use permit, which will allow them to go ahead with it. We'll get to more of the site plan and the architectural review board next. But we do have a staff recommendation to recommend approval of the CUP to the Board of Aldermen as submitted.

I'm going to make the motion.

Please.

I move that we approve the staff recommendation recommending approval of the conditional use permit to the Board of Aldermen as submitted.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Got that one down. Okay, now we've heard the site plan discussion, but let's go back to it. I'm sure we have a couple questions in there. Bob has already commented on the payment amount, but Jared, if you could come back and go back to where we saw the detention basins. We'll have to back up. There we are. Okay. I seem to understand the red and the yellow, but I'm a little fuzzy on when the water goes down into the green area along San Benito and into Tuscany Park. So... You indicated that MSD has already looked at this, correct?

Yes, conceptually. And

feels comfortable with it. And I believe you gave us some numbers in here, which really indicated a little less water going out. Did I read it correctly?

With the detention online and with the condition that they're going to require us to adhere to, With the existing conditions as undeveloped, yes. We will release water, stormwater, less than what it is today. What does online mean versus

not

online? Detention basically being there and serving the site and or being removed. So reality, I look at it like two different components, reality and from a hydraulic standpoint. So reality is detention is there. It lives there. It's going to be online. It's going it's going to work and capture that stormwater, detain it and release it at a rate that's less than than it does today. OK, from a hydraulic calculation standpoint, that's when we have to look downstream and evaluate the sewers that are in green, the existing system, and verify that they have the capacity for the 100 year with the detention not there. So even though reality it's there, we have to look kind of a worst case situation as if it's not there and confirm that that system has the capacity. If it does not, that's when we have to look at making improvements to that downstream sewer system.

So then I think what I'm hearing is The capacity is there even when the yellow detention is offline, if that's the proper word.

That's what we have to verify. We have not analyzed that yet. That's the next phase in design. So that'll be included in the construction documents. MSD will have to review that design and they will, we will have to be in a line and make those improvements if required before they permit the project.

So that will come back through the staff, I would assume for their review.

That goes through, right now they apply and they have conceptual review by MSD. When they come back to us to get an actual construction permit, their building permit from the city side of it, that's when we just verify that they have an MSDP number for a project that's been approved. But the actual review of the capacity or any other improvements that they might or might not have to do, that's completely under the review and jurisdiction of MSD. Other than us verifying that they've applied to MSD to get a permit before we issue our permit, we don't get involved with the sewer connections.

So we really rely on MSD in this?

Right. We don't have the ability to override what MSD might feel that they have in terms of the connections in the sewer that they control and own and manage.

Okay. So then today we really don't have a complete answer. Is that correct? That's correct. It will be

included in the construction documents.

Okay. We've gone through many of the landscaping items. I had that on the stormwater drainage. I think that covered mine. Comments? No, no.

Just so I just have one, just a clarification then. So once MSD reviews it and looks at your construction documents, they could potentially determine that you have to build a larger sewer where there's like green right now. Is that so potentially if they look at the water runoff on the site, you guys might have to or Concordia might have to pay for a larger sewer facility. And all the green is just underground sewer systems that are way below the surface, right? Is that correct? Okay.

All those

green lines are way under like, I mean, under homes, under sidewalk streets, way below.

Correct. Okay. They're buried in the ground. All of the lines basically represent hard pipe sewers and even the detention basins will be underground. Right. Kind of a pipe system, a sealed system.

Right. And then, so potentially then all those green lines might have to be updated or enlarged as needed, but that would be determined later.

Correct. Okay. Yes.

Thanks.

Any other comments, Helen?

No, you've answered all my questions.

Amy?

I do have a quick question. So along this, the yellow lines that are going to this detention center that are going along Founders Way that all the houses on San Benito back up into, you know, there was there were residents that were concerned that the water's already coming down into their backyards and causing problems. How does this help with that?

Well, I think from the proposed development, we're going to be capturing that and putting it in a pipe and reducing the runoff. So the at-grade runoff, if you kind of envision rain hitting the ground and whatever sheet flows across the site, okay, that's now going to be captured and put in a hard pipe system and then diverted to the west.

And that's just from all the new buildings, right?

Yes. And I'm sure it'll capture some existing infrastructure as well. So there's, it hasn't got detailed to the point that where we're going to reach back and maybe collect some existing downspouts or some existing yard drains. But the idea is to everything in that corridor and that yellow corridor will be captured even from an existing condition standpoint, pipe put in the detention basin and detained or at least less than what it is today.

This like yellow pipe right now, that's also underground.

That's correct.

So like the runoff from like this Founders Way parking lot and all that, how does that get captured?

I believe if there's not a curb there today, there will be in the future with this proposed development. So what that curb does is collect that runoff, that at-grade sheet flow runoff, and divert it to an inlet, and then that inlet will then be directed to the detention.

But there's currently, you know, like when it's a hard rain and there is a lot of water coming down, Under this new development and design, that will not happen because you have to meet the newer standards.

I can never predict Mother Nature. Sure. However, we absolutely will take that approach to capture as much runoff as we possibly can and detain it. And we'll be regulated to do so. Thank you. Jim?

I know you were talking a little bit about this for the calculations, how you have to calculate for undeveloped versus developed. And I'm just curious where MSD for those calculations basically like puts the property line for this. So this kind of cut line that we see in the middle, obviously we're discussing this overlay district that's going to be to the west of that. Does that involve that land that you're having to figure into your calculations right now as that being part of Concordia Seminary now, or is it just more the development part that we kind of have in our picture here?

That's a good question. At this point in time, this is just specific to this proposed development that you see on the screen, which is the Concordia side. That's what we're reviewing and analyzing and will be included in this package.

And then a follow-up question. I know at the last meeting there were some questions as far as the detention basins, as far as the volume that they collect, and then the rate at which they discharge to the sewers. Do you have any information kind of those as capacity, how at the rate that those discharge, kind of just like how those work in a major storm, just to kind of add some color to this.

Yeah, I think I don't have the volume off the top of my head. I don't have it in my notes, but I can kind of give you an idea of the CFS, which is a number that we cubic foot per second that we kind of analyze this runoff. Okay. So existing conditions today, current as it sits 26 CFS. Now these are rough. Okay. So 26, the proposed development does increase the runoff. We all know that at that number it's 33. Okay. So Because we have to treat this as undeveloped, we have to release that runoff at around 18 CFS. So you're going from 26 today to 18 in the future, even though we're increasing it to 33. I know it's a little up and down, right? So the idea is we're actually reducing that runoff. And that will be, again, held into the detention basin and released to an overflow structure. So it's controlled by an overflow structure. And all of this, we do have to analyze like a 15-year storm event. But at the end of the day, the 100-year is what drives everything because it's the larger storm event. So everything's designed for the 100-year. The detention, the storm sewers, the downstream existing infrastructure that we're tying into, all 100-year storm event, and it'll be regulated by MSD to do so.

Just I want to repeat it back to you just to make sure that I am fully understand. So as it exists today, we're operating at 26 CFS. Roughly, yes. Yes. And after it is developed, it should operate more as 18

CFS. Correct. With the attention online. Absolutely.

Totally. Okay. Thank you.

Just to follow up with what Jim is saying, I think what we're dealing with is the fact that you're putting seven new buildings in around the chapel that weren't there before, basically, and making sure that the water doesn't go, especially for me, my looking at founder, you know, the San Benito because it slopes down there. And, and In the years I've been here, when they say MSD, we did the calculations, and I always will meet a property owner who says, well, they didn't include my house. Something happened. So how do I get assurance that you're going to handle these seven buildings and that increased runoff, especially like the San Benito or even anywhere else?

So I can't speak for MSD, but the approach is to capture as much water as we possibly can within this project site on the surface. Whether that means yard drains, curb inlets, curbing, if you will. So as the site falls from north to south, as you mentioned, the idea is along that south property line within our project limits to put that kind of what you call a barrier, capturing that water. So if it's a structure or a curb or a swale, whatever that may be to direct that water to the detention, that will be the design approach. Do you know if there's a water problem now? I do not. That would be a good question for MSD. I think we've heard from the bleachers. Thank you. Again, MSD will require us to analyze that, though, when we get to that next design phase.

Right.

Okay. Thank you.

follow up on that. You have essentially two different underground detention areas, one to the north and one to the south. Currently, those do not exist at all. That's correct. So do you know where the water is going right now? Or is it just

percolating into the ground? At this point in time, yes, that's part of it. And then the other part where you see impervious pavement or buildings, they're being captured in hard pipe and then directed to that existing system. Now, they may go on a couple different avenues, but it's being hard pipe with no detention.

So currently, they're using both the northern and the southern existing on-site storm sewers. That's correct. Following up on site plan, are there any comments from the audience? Come on up. And we'll limit it to three minutes.

No way. I'm Anne Martin, Tuscany Park. But I know a little more about the sewers because I watched it go in in 74. The sewer, when it was put in, wasn't in before married student housing. So that added to the load in the sewer. As they were putting the sewer in, it's a 36 inch sewer, some workers from MSD told me That should have been a 42. So when you say it'll just drain, we'll put it in a detention pond. Eventually, because it's downhill, all of that water goes to the San Benito sewer, which by the way, goes under our houses, literally under our houses and goes entirely through Tuscany Park. And when I say it goes under, when they put it in, it was a 12 foot wide, 12 foot deep hole to put it in. All that water goes, it'll go right through Tuscany Park all the way to Clayton Road. I watched it go in, we had horrible damage from it, never recovered the topography that we had. I think it's a little too easy to assume it'll all be taken care of. And then to make a comment that, well, MSD can fix it. So if they have to fix it, that means digging the thing up and redoing it. And so who covers that? There's no insurance for that. Does Concordia cover it? Does MSD? I can tell you MSD doesn't, but we've been through this before. This didn't even accommodate the marriage student housing. Now we've got fields and additional structures. So I don't quite trust the... The notion that there'll be less runoff. It's downhill. That's where it's going to go. And to make a change to accommodate it, that sewer has to be enlarged. And by the way, they just put in in situ foam in that sewer a couple years ago. So the capacity is less. It's a problem for us. And the solution is actually a lot worse.

No way. I'm Ann Martin, Tuscany Park. But I know a little more about the sewers because I watched it go in in 74. The sewer, when it was put in, wasn't in before married student housing. So that added to the load in the sewer. As they were putting the sewer in, it's a 36 inch sewer, some workers from MSD told me That should have been a 42. So when you say it'll just drain, we'll put it in a detention pond. Eventually, because it's downhill, all of that water goes to the San Benito sewer, which by the way, goes under our houses, literally under our houses and goes entirely through Tuscany Park. And when I say it goes under, when they put it in, it was a 12 foot wide, 12 foot deep hole to put it in. All that water goes, it'll go right through Tuscany Park all the way to Clayton Road. I watched it go in, we had horrible damage from it, never recovered the topography that we had. I think it's a little too easy to assume it'll all be taken care of. And then to make a comment that, well, MSD can fix it. So if they have to fix it, that means digging the thing up and redoing it. And so who covers that? There's no insurance for that. Does Concordia cover it? Does MSD? I can tell you MSD doesn't, but we've been through this before. This didn't even accommodate the marriage student housing. Now we've got fields and additional structures. So I don't quite trust the... The notion that there'll be less runoff. It's downhill. That's where it's going to go. And to make a change to accommodate it, that sewer has to be enlarged. And by the way, they just put in in situ foam in that sewer a couple years ago. So the capacity is less. It's a problem for us. And the solution is actually a lot worse.

Thank you. Any other comment? Come on up.

Jonathan Katz, Three Tuscany Park. Well, of course, we've all seen pictures from North Carolina recently where the local version of MSD didn't do a very good job because it didn't anticipate a storm that actually happened. Now, we'd also like a few numbers, like what are the capacities of these two retention basins? And what's the area of the watershed from which they drain and whose rain they must retain until it can be released in a gradual and controlled way? I'm We really need those numbers in order to make any rational judgments at all.

Thank you. Let's see. Jared, do you have any response to that with the numbers?

So as far as the drainage areas, the detailed drainage areas are concerned, they will be included in the construction documents in the design phase. As far as pre-post calcs, I think that was included in our original package. Again, that's what's provided that increase in runoff. I don't have the exact numbers other than to kind of regurgitate what I said previously with the CFS numbers, the 26, the 33, and then at the end of the day, the reduced runoff at 18. As far as specific drainage areas, those will be included in a future design package.

So that goes along with what you were saying previously, that this entire drainage process will be answered hopefully with MSD and the building permit process.

Correct. The overall drainage area to that system, I don't remember the acreage off the top of my head, but it's kind of envisioned. The project site that we're focused on is 20% roughly of this overall drainage area. To get an understanding, that would require a drainage study. So again, we're going back to the project site and understanding specifically for this project site pre-post runoff. Anything outside that would be a question from SDE.

And when you say the project site, it's only what we see on the screen right here. It does not include the portion to the east, which we call Concordia Park, nor the portion to the west that is being considered under the Washington U overlay. That's correct. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Oh, online. Thank you.

OK.

Hey, Barbara, do you have a comment?

Yes, I actually have a question. So I'm on a rundle place, so I'll talk further to the east. I have a question about the new pavement that's going to be going in. Is that going to be completely impervious? And would that help the situation with the water runoff?

In short, the new pavement is impervious. At this point in time, it'd be just asphalt, your typical asphalt. Again, MSD waves, the infiltration that would typically be required because of the surrounding infrastructure. the way the site falls again north to south, right? Putting water in the ground, understanding that that water has to go somewhere to the south, potentially infiltrating basements and existing infrastructure. They waive that. So that's why we're keeping everything sealed, if you will, underground at this point in time. It's a sealed pipe system for detention and just your typical storm sewer pipe. So no infiltration, permeable pavement at this point in

Okay, thank you.

Were there any other hands up? Okay. Any further comments? Bob?

I think before we have a motion, we have to decide whether we want to reduce by 20.

Right. Do you have a comment? I don't have a problem with it.

Other comments?

David.

I don't have any comments or questions Steve if you want,

we can pull up their drainage area map really quick that's what i'm pulling up right now, if you want to see it, it will have the numbers he was referencing.

Okay, so what we're seeing is the black angled line, is that showing existing or proposed? Or both?

Well, it's pretty close to existing, but the proposed drainage break, if you will, that would divert the drainage north and south. But it's pretty close. Okay. So that's why you see, it's kind of hard to see on this plan, but the darker gray boxes, again, that's where the detention lives. So we're capturing that runoff to the north before it leaves the site. When I say site, the project site, the new improved area site, and then again to the south. We'll capture that runoff and that detention before it leaves the

Right in the middle.

Oh, that's actually a proposed fire lane. It represents pavers, not permeable pavers, but pavers that kind of make the connection for the fire and emergency access.

Okay.

That's why this plan is a little hard to read.

But about half of it is actually going through the new drive that circles around the chapel. Yes. Okay, so then the additional part of the paving is from the western edge of that drive to the north south driveway at the west end of the development area. Right. So it's not that much more paving.

I think the buildings, the roof are really driving the increase in runoff just because of MSD's guidelines without getting into the weeds too far. The additional roof is what's driving the increase, not so much the pavement.

Were there any questions about this screenshot? No? Okay. Okay. Uh, any other comments from the commission? No. Well, we do have a staff recommendation with four conditions and I believe they're still valid. Do we have a motion or do we need to modify any of these?

Um, two. As long as we add that we are approving the 20%. And with regard to four, are there any remaining comments?

I don't think we have any additional. No.

So, I move we approve the staff recommendation for the site plan review together with three recommendations that the staff set forth. The first being the applicant shall file a deed restriction noting the location and maintenance requirements of the stormwater detention basins and submit proof of filing prior to approval of a building permit The applicant shall either revise the landscape plan to meet the caliper inch requirements or shall compensate the city forestry fund per the requirements of section 402.4110.C.2 Furthermore, that the Planning Commission has agreed to the 20% caliper reduction, which it has in its discretion. Three, the building permit submission shall include the location of new utilities and specifications for chosen light fixtures.

Okay.

Ana, do we need to read the fourth?

The fourth was placed in there just to cover because not everything that has been resubmitted for tonight's meeting was re-reviewed by the SWPPP reviewer and the Landscape Architect, so that condition was included in case anything else came. As of today, we haven't received any comments that they would need to address, but that's why we put that in there.

Like I said, we're going to add point four. The applicant... If it hasn't already been addressed, shall address any remaining landscape or stormwater PPP comments prior to approval of a building permit.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. We can now move on to the architectural review. And we've heard some of it. But Angie, do you have anything? I think you do have more to talk about.

Thank you. I'm going to pull up two additional exhibits that we prepared. We discussed a lot about the materials on campus, and all of you should be aware that there's a lot of stone, and the stone has a variety of color within it. So we first looked at the existing brick that was on campus, and then we looked at the dominant stone. And again, previous designs and complements as they came and were added to the campus They took that into consideration as well. So when we look at what the new building types are going to be and where they're located and what they're adjacent to, we tried to consider the direct adjacencies and complement. We don't want to try to mimic, again, I said previously at the last meeting that housing just typically can't afford this level of cost to replicate the stone that's actually there. So we proposed a cultured stone product and have selected one that we think fits the color family and general style of what's currently on campus. And when I say general style, if you were to look at all the variety of cultured stone out there to study, some is very linear, some is a dry stack and has no mortar, some is tumbled and rounded. Some is just rectilinear, others has round pieces. There's a variety is my point. So we have tried to mimic, sorry, compliment what is there and keep in mind that the three-story apartments are a bit away from the chapel. Nothing is immediately adjacent. The townhomes on the other hand have the chapel at their back door. And the existing staff housing, which is all brick at their front door. And then the residence hall is proposed to be all brick to be more of an institutional building type. And we're trying to use a color that resonates with existing buildings that are going to remain to the south. yet complements what's already on campus. And again, we don't want to replicate bad. I'm not saying there's anything bad on that campus, but we tried to focus on what the dominant materials are. So with all that said, last time we presented a couple materials and on a rendered screen, this screen looks different than my computer, which looks different than anybody who would print it. So we thought it would be best to bring in actual material samples. But I am going to go to two additional slides quickly. So these are examples of existing buildings on the Concordia campus. You can see the stone is in most of the photos. The center picture at the top is an existing staff home and it's brick. And it is kind of a blend that hues a little orange, but there is red and brown and some gold tones in it as well. And then on the left, you probably can see the slate shingle or slate tile roof. That is fairly dominant around campus as well. So although we are making a choice to not replicate the slate itself, there is a synthetic slate tile roof product out there that we have used personally on other projects before and it has been successful. So that's what we're recommending for all of the three building types is the synthetic slate tile roof. These are still hard to see, but we tried to enlarge the townhome elevations. To repeat, there is a five-group of townhomes and a four-group of townhouses, and every other townhome steps back and forward. So the forward-facing townhomes are brick, and the ones that are recessed are proposed to be a fiber cement panel siding. This was previously presented as stucco. And after meeting with Concordia again and reconsidering different materials, we've decided to move forward with the fiber cement panel siding. And what that is, is it would be a board and batten look. And for those that don't know what that means, it would be a flat sheet product of a fiber cement panel, which is rather maintenance free. And then to cover the joints is a batten strip, which is typically an inch and a half to three inches in width. And those strips that you can't see very well at all in this, but are approximately 24 inches apart, the batten strips for scale. So every two feet, there's a batten strip which we've strategically located to coordinate with the window and door locations. I guess we'll go to the next slide. Okay. The difference between these two renderings is comical to me on how the color shows. The intent here is that the cultured stone veneer is on the peaked, bridged elements that are, again, forward in the wall plane. And that is the stone that we would select to complement the existing stone on campus in color and shape and style and general scale. So if you're standing in the middle of the new green and you saw the chapel on this side and you saw the apartments on your left, that they would feel like they were cohesive. The slate tile roof is depicted as well. And then what's showing up almost creamy on this rendering is a lap siding. So again, fiber cement, which is lower maintenance and has longevity in it. We've actually specified the hardy panel product, if that sounds familiar, but there are many on the market that are equal. This would be a lighter tone. And again, we have samples of all that on the table. So if I can step over, I can at least point out and then you all are welcome to come walk up. Is that acceptable?

If you could do that. We don't want everyone walking up. So if you could hold it up as you describe it so everyone can see. We have a camera. Oh, okay. Oh, there we are. Great.

But I'll just talk loud and stand by it then? Sure. Okay. This is new for me. Okay, these three pieces are three different colors of the synthetic slate. Trying to turn my back to you. The synthetic slate tile. There's a, I'm not going to try to venture, a brownish, a grayish and a lighter gray. This blend we were on site recently with Concordia and we had these laid out and we had things in the distance and we held them up to other buildings and this complement, this combination complements the existing that's on campus today.

Is that the real size of the slate?

I believe so. Yes. So nearly half of it is covered, and then this is the exposure is about seven inches. And we would then dictate based on which we would dictate the percentage of which color is more dominant to mimic what was happening on the existing roofs. So this is a product that would be on all three building types. If we start with the townhomes, again, remember the townhomes to the north of the townhomes are the existing staff houses, which are orangish-reddish brick blend. We did not want to mimic that, but we wanted to stay within the same color family. but immediately to the south and actually closer is the chapel. So that's dominantly the stone blend. So what we selected was, yes, you can see that. It's almost an aged looking brick. It has a little bit of a dusty color, but it's a red undertone. And it's funny, we actually had it set up and stood 30 feet back and had the staff homes in the background. And it actually blended in almost with the bark of a tree. So it was subtle. It looks natural. It seems to fit and not contend with anything that's already there, which is a goal of the housing is to let the existing architecture stand out. This would be one of the materials on the exterior wall. And then the other is this hardy siding. is actually shown in a wood grain what we're showing it for is just the color so it would be a smooth panel siding and then this is actually a representation of that so when i was mentioning the board and batten before should i just do this on the screen yes if you had two pieces of the panel siding adjacent to one another this batten strip sits right over the top of it so it gives you a little bit of a shadow line and then also adds to the arc that the

So we will not see any open joint, a vertical joint. Yeah. What about horizontal?

There will be a horizontal joint between the townhomes. I don't know the number of the height right now, but they're too tall to have because they're two story to have one panel. So I believe it's two and there's a central joint that happens approximately at the floor line.

Will it be an open joint or with a batten?

It will not have a batten. The battens are only vertical. So that would be as tight as we can get it for the details of the manufacturer.

And then sealed, I would assume

typically with a horizontal joint you want to flash it. To where the water if it got behind would run out and over so again we would we would follow manufacturer details to get water out if it were to get behind it, so you seal typically below flashing not above it. Okay, so that's the townhomes and again with this roof and then. the three-story apartment buildings, the front facade, that stands the most forward would be this cultured stone product. Again, the color family and the variation and the overall style of the rectilinear and then larger components is similar to what's on campus. This doesn't really give you a good view, but when you can study the book and the palette's bigger on a screen and see it in place, you can get the full picture. Again, the colored palette was very complimentary to what was existing. And then the part of the townhome, I'm sorry, part of the three-story apartment building that steps back would be the lap siding. Again, this has a wood grain we would be proposing smooth, but it would be a seven-inch exposure of a traditional lap siding product in the fiber cement material. And then there's a red blend of brick here, which we are proposing for the new residence hall. That also has some banding in it that would be of a cast stone material, and we would be matching the color of the cast stone that's already on campus. So, for example, there are some retaining walls that already have the stone on it. and then they have a cast cap, and we would be matching that directly. This is a nice complement. The building where the residence hall will go is currently Loeber and SSB is what it's known as, and it's also a reddish-orangish blend of brick. We don't want to repeat that, but what's right south of it is still that brick, so we wanted to bring in a red tone again to pull the red out of the stone that was in the existing stone on campus and also complement what's behind it. with these shingles.

That's all. Thank you, Angie. I think the colors of the materials that you've picked will complement the existing beautiful campus. And I'm comfortable with it. You have actually just a few materials going in, in all these different buildings. So they should hang together quite nicely and relate to the existing building, buildings. Okay.

Comments? Out of curiosity, can you refresh my memory? What's the color of the chapel, which is the centerpiece?

The chapel is the same brick blend or stone blend that's in the historic buildings on campus.

Okay. I think it's going to look great. I love the way you've laid it out. I think if your goal was to build community, I think you really are going to achieve that. Although I can't find where the two playgrounds are supposed to be.

The two what?

I think I read, are you guys putting in two playgrounds somewhere?

Oh, playgrounds. Yeah. I did not hear that word. I don't know if I have anything in this exhibit. Did our original, does your landscape phone show up?

Is it near the townhouses,

the apartments? It's east of building D if you look in the corners kind of.

So the chapel's to the east and then there's a green space as you move west and then there's apartment building CD as in dog, correct? And there's two playground elements that are just east of building D. One is for a younger group of children and then the other is for older children.

And finally, I love the style of your buildings. I love its diversity. And I love the fact that you built the garage into the hill. So it doesn't really stick out. And then the entrance is at the low point by San Benito, right?

There's a low and a high. And then the two levels of the parking structure do not communicate. So meaning there's no ramp or any way to get from one to two except going out on the drive to come up. And that is because we could use the topography that was there to be able to enter high and enter

low.

Naturally.

Since that garage is going to be close to San Benito, are people going to be seeing lights into their bedroom? I'm sorry.

Go ahead. There are walls around, so it's open air. So the upper level is very much a parking plane and then a low wall around it. And we have that currently at 48 inches. I own a Silverado and I measured it and that actually is above my headlight line, but I don't have my truck jacked up. So we hope that we have it high enough that you would not naturally have lights because we do have certain parking spaces all the way around it facing in all directions. So the intent is that the wall is tall enough to cover that.

Thank you.

On both levels.

Going back to Bob's question about the playgrounds, they're both east of Building D but west of the

driveway? West of the existing circular driveway?

Or let's say west of the new circular driveway so that all residents... and children could reach the playgrounds without crossing roadway?

The drive goes around the entire housing complex now, yes. So you could leave any of these buildings and enter onto this green space to either of these playgrounds in these triangular shaped areas. So yes, you don't have to cross a street to get to the playground. Richard?

i have no comments i think it looks nice and thank you for bringing the materials it's nice to have the visual

ellen

nothing further to add i think it looks good i like the fiber cement panels um and the siding i think it'll be really good

amy

Yeah, it looks great. And again, thank you for bringing all the materials. And I think it was just very smart to just relate them to the surrounding buildings to get a cohesive campus look. So

Jim, I appreciate the use of fiber cement over the EFIS product. And I also appreciate the synthetic slate and think it's a great looking option. I was just out of curiosity. Do you have any information as the longevity of that product versus like architectural shingle?

I believe, and I can follow up with that data, but I believe it's longer life than an architectural shingle, but it's not as long as a slate. So it's somewhere in between. And a typical architectural shingle on a traditional home is 25, 30 year. Thank

you. David? No questions or comments.

Any comments or questions from the audience on the architectural review? Come on up.

Hi, I'm Patty. I'm in Hillcrest. I was looking at earlier drawings of this and I don't know if it's changed but I felt like the height of the buildings was because they're so close to the chapel the chapels on the highest point of this really important ridge and I just felt like they were encroaching around it a little bit to the point where they were the same height or taller. And I would just be really careful about that because I think you're diminishing the prominence of the chapel by doing that. The other thing that I, it's probably too late now, but the campus is so beautifully laid out with a series of open spaces, courtyards and pedestrian paths that have particular alignments and then passing through like areas between buildings. And it seems like this is a lost opportunity where that whole system of the campus totally stops. And this is a more suburban layout with parking lots surrounding a building. And I just wonder if that was part of the conversation at all, like to actually extend the logic of the campus itself because it seems like it's shifting And then the last comment is whether these materials can take solar panels or not, and whether you might reconsider their roof structures to think about a future for solar panels, because I don't think it would add that much cost. And you're taking so many huge trees down that you're going to have major exposure and it seems like a huge opportunity to save costs in the future on solar. So those are just like, they're more urbanistic comments than architectural.

Thank you. I'll try to address each one. So the building height, you're very accurate in that we were trying to respect the height of the chapel in the initial design. We do have the challenge of a three-story apartment building, so we specifically tiered the site as the topography steps down from the chapel while also trying to maintain that open green space that you can see in this location. It will be utilized or potentially utilized for intramural sports for the people that are students on campus. It's not regulation size or anything like that, but it is supposed to be meant to remain green and open, hence no trees. We did put those two new retaining walls around the west side of the chapel so we could quickly drop. I think there's approximately a 15-foot drop between the chapel elevation and the ring road that goes around on the west. We were doing that intentionally so we could keep the floor plate of the first floor of building C, D, and E at the same level Those are also just shy of what buildings A and B are. You can see that the finished floors is noted on this particular plan. They step up a foot or two to respect the topography as well. So with all that said, we have a three-story potential residence hall, we have three-story apartments, and then we have the two-story townhomes. And the goal was to keep the ridge line of those three largest buildings, C, D, and E, lower than the tip of the chapel. So I believe right now, I had this in my notes last time, I'm going to say this wrong, but I think we were at maybe a 512 pitch of the roof. So we can always consider looking at that pitch of the roof to make sure that we are below the chapel. The intent though is that the base of the buildings where they're grounded is significantly lower so it will feel less dominant in that it's not taller. To address the second question, I agree that there are paths set around campus already that take the natural walking path of students as they're going to go. That is a great way to lay out sidewalks. In this particular case, we tried to respect it by creating two areas for the playgrounds that have access on all sides also lending itself to a walking path that would be more natural. But again, we also wanted to try to maintain a quite open green space These retaining walls, I don't know if we got into the detail last time, but this is almost a pad. So it's virtually flat up above this first retaining wall. Then this area is relatively flat in between and then it starts to tear as you come down. So each of these retaining walls are a couple feet tall and the intent is that those could be activated and we'll have plantings there, but people can also use that as an area to sit and enjoy the green space as well. That is why there's no paths that go through there. And we tried to keep the parking on the outside of the building specifically to make it a safer environment for the students and specifically the children that will reside in these homes. The third comment about solar panels, to be completely honest, we have not talked about that yet, but that's something that we can consider and talk to Concordia about in the future.

Okay, thank you. Any other comment or question? Were there any...

Online? No?

Okay. We do have a staff recommendation that the plan shall be revised to identify the location of the HVAC units on the architectural elevations. I think we've seen the beginning of that also. Okay. That was a motion, but...

With regard to the architectural review application, I move that we approve the staff recommendation with the following condition, that the plan shall be revised to identify the location for HVAC units on the architectural elevations.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Okay. Thank you. As we go forward, the next four items are a continuation of a public hearing that we had at the previous meeting. So we will continue that and begin with item number four. Before we go ahead, Angie, are you going to stick around or? Yes. Yeah. We'll start with item number four, which is at 801 Seminary Place Chapter 410 Overlay and Urban Design Zoning Districts. And it is a text amendment.

Which one are you going first, Big Ben or South 40? Yeah, it's Big Ben. Took me a minute to say that. Who we are. All right.

So I just wanted to start us off the same way that we have been for a few times, just talking about the importance of community planning. So the goal here is really to get all of the institutional partners, our residents, plan commission, elected officials in the room to have a discussion about the future of planning and land use of various areas, knowing some of the interests that we have in development. So our goal here is is really to get a better vision established with all of our community partners and balance these community interests the public the private and also kind of create some established predictable sets of regulations that will guide and dictate development moving forward So our community planning timeline, this started over a year ago with various community meetings and we find ourselves here in October looking at revised plans. And then next steps into the future are the board of Alderman meetings. So today I'm going to take us through a quicker summary of kind of how we got to the overlay district parameters. where we're coming from, from staff's perspective and recommending those. Then we'll go through my proposed tonight going through the Big Bend Overlay District. We'll first discuss that element and then go actually on to the South 40 Overlay District that's been proposed based on last meeting. The majority of our comments and questions from the residents had to do with the Big Bend Overly District. So I figured we'll get straight to that one. So here's a table, and this kind of highlights some of the big piece takeaways from the previous meeting and how we're looking to address them within the code. I'm not going to go through this all, but it will be online if you saw the staff report for tonight. It also included this table. So how did we get all in this room together tonight? So we just heard about Concordia relocating some of their housing to the interior of their campus to align with some of their master planning goals. And after that process, city staff are approached by representatives from Washington University with the idea that they themselves want to go through some future planning and phased development to accomplish some of their own campus goals. The idea that was brought to the city was relocating, um, the athletics uses from South 40 campus and what Washi refers to as their South campus or a lot of, uh, locally we, we call it the old CBC site. So then this includes multiple outdoor athletic fields, as well as some facilities that support indoor recreation for some of their, but not all of their varsity athletics, but then a lot of club and intramural resources as well. And so the idea was relocate those to create kind of a center of some of that athletic community uses, which would free up space for some of their longer term goals for redevelopment of South 40 as a housing campus. So city staff sat down, listened to these uses and thought, what does our existing zoning say today? How do we balance the goals of these institutional partners with the residential character of areas adjacent to Historically, under our zoning code, we seek to do this by having different zoning districts. Zoning regulates use of buildings, so what's appropriate operations there, residential, commercial, institutional, and so on. The intensity of that use, so what are the demands of it? How many people are usually involved? What's the density? What are the building sizes? And then also the bulk, what does that physical development start to look like? So currently under our existing zoning, the way that an institution would navigate these long-term changes is what we just saw with Concordia going through a conditional use permit process. However, city staff felt that that would not really create a starting point that from the beginning balances the interests of the community. So we already say that the athletic uses and the housing uses that are associated with our institution's are allowed under a conditional use permit. So in our code right now, conditional use is essentially desirable, necessary, or convenient to the community within that district that we've designated it for. So in our R2 residential district, we have decided that institutions and universities are essentially desirable, necessary or convenient to be located within that residential district. But they have other aspects of their operations such as traffic volume or capacity for parking or other impacts to light and noise that might impact some of those single family characteristics in directly adjacent neighbors. And so we wanted to be able to review those on a case by case basis. It leaves a little bit to be desired, though, because essentially we're already on the back foot as we respond to those proposals as they come on a case by case basis. And so we said, let's get the universities, the residents, elected officials, professionals together. and start the conversations earlier in the process. And that is how we have arrived at overlay districts. So proposing one for a South 40 overlay district, which would really address the primary housing uses and what is associated with those. And then the second overlay district, what we refer to as the Big Bend overlay district, that would address the athletic primary uses of the university. Overlay districts are common within our code. We use them for a variety of reasons, but the real heart of an overlay district is that we're trying to address some sort of special or unique circumstance of an area. And in this case, we're looking at one parcel owner, but there are many instances where overlay districts might cover multiple parcels or multiple neighborhoods. But the idea here is it allows us to really address some specific conditions, whether those are because there's historic character, there might be drainage area issues, topography features, some sort of building characteristic, design characteristic that we want to address. within that district. And we want to create the phase development, the box that that will occur within to really reinforce some cohesive development patterns, but also identify what we need to be more predictable to our community from both sides of the equation here. So overlay district parameters. Our goal is to become more prescriptive. The goal of the overlay district is not to allow or introduce uses that are not already allowed under our existing zoning regulations, but we want to tighten how we address those uses by having regulations that more respond directly to the intended primary uses of each overlay district, as well as the context of those neighborhoods that surround them. We want to be really clear that any overlay district, the two overlays that are proposed tonight do not constitute approval of any specific project, We went through a very specific proposal from the design team for Concordia. They showed us material samples of buildings. All of that would still be the next step that would happen if an overlay district would be approved. The design team for Washington University would have to come in with specific site plans, with drainage area maps, with tree preservation plans, With building material samples for all of us to review, the difference is that they would be at a starting point of setbacks that align with what our neighborhood is interested in, with criteria for review of what we hear is most important that they would need to address, as opposed to starting with our two development standards. So project review. I wanted to go over just the existing process compared to what we're proposing. So the existing process... Okay. The existing process starts here with a project being conceptualized and designed under the R2 or district regulations. So that says for an institutional use, you have a setback of probably somewhere between 50 and 60 feet. You're usually going to hit that maximum based on the parcel size that we have here, but you can go up to a taller building when you increase those setbacks. And then you go through and you design your project to that. So you're already starting with a design kind of in... based on smaller lot sizes and smaller uses. Applying for a conditional use permit, and this is where the more professional review starts to come into play. Once we receive an application for a conditional use permits, site plan review, and architecture review, now the professional reviews become an important aspect. In the case of Big Bend, anything that would impact that, we're getting professional traffic engineers, and we also have St. Louis County who would have the jurisdiction over that review. lighting, photometric plans, looking at heights and layouts of buildings. And that's when staff or some of our contracted reviewers would likely have some comments that might adjust the site plan slightly. And eventually we get to the Plan Commission Architecture Review Board where we are today, and that would start to involve public input and they would be responding to those plans that we received. The Plan Commission Architecture Review Board would make decisions on site plan review and architecture review. And the conditional use permit, which really focuses on the operations primarily but can influence site plan, that goes on to the Board of Aldermen for consideration before construction permits. The process that staff's proposing now, one of the main elements of it is actually to begin public input much earlier within that process. So public input allows us to really establish the heart of the overlay district that is geared towards what the biggest concerns are for the neighborhoods and that allows The first time that the professionals get involved in designing any specific project, now they're designing in response to the parameters that have already been highlighted to them. So we'll talk about it a little bit more, but very clear from the public that some of the concerns have to do with activity on the outside as that relates to noise and lighting. So it's a lot easier to start designing the process when you already know some of those impacts from the start. Then the applicant would apply for cycle interview and architecture review under the proposed process, which again triggers the same professional and staff review that we had previously. So right now there's a conceptual traffic analysis that had been done for the Big Bend Overlay District that is purely conceptual based on some existing parameters that were provided to us, but it does not constitute an official approval from St. Louis County for anything. So there would still have to be an official traffic study that was done and any sort of agreement on what might need to be analyzed further, reviewed, work with San Luis County, ultimately before anything was there. And after those professional studies are done and staff may require some changes to go back to what our district criteria for review is, and then we get public input again when we have something that comes before the Planning Commission and the Architecture Review Board. Anything that already goes to the Planning Commission Architecture Review Board for Site Point Review or Architecture Review, there is the ability to appeal those decisions to the Board of Aldermen. So as opposed to in the existing conditional use permit process where the Board of Alderman uses their administrative authority to officially approve a conditional use permit, they would be involved in the process if there were an appeal moving forward. Otherwise, the project would continue on to construction permits. So I really wanted to highlight quickly on some of the review criteria for a conditional use permit versus site plan review. There's a lot of similarities when it comes to both of these. A big piece in site plan review is that it gives the plan commission the authority to modify or request modifications to a site plan. to address some of the existing conditions, natural environment, good planning practices, et cetera. And similarly with the criteria for review on conditional use permits, some of the big elements that we highlight within the reviews are traffic and parking. How is the site layout? What if we have environmental protection? So where's drainage going today? Where is it going tomorrow? How could we make those conditions better? What about landscaping, signage if that applied? How is the space being used for different amenities or other general conformance with considerations? In the proposed overlay districts, this is where we would add to number seven. So the overlay district will have additional criteria for review that's really specific to some of the characteristics of either what's within that overlay district or what's adjacent to it that we would also want to make sure the planning commission was considering when reviewing any sort of site plan. So heading right into there, I wanted to highlight a few things for the criteria for review that's added under the overlay district. Some of this language is more general. And then as you go into the overlay district, that's where you start to get into the really prescriptive elements. But it does give us more of a starting point and more of a starting for any sort of designer in terms of what they need to focus on. So a great one to think about. Is, you know, planting relying on native and non-invasive species and outside of plain surfaces, usually having low maintenance non-turf areas. So that's something that we don't go into the detail of saying you're required to have X percent of your site low maintenance turf. But if we know from the outset that that's important, we just don't know where maybe those those landscaped areas are going to be located. When the designer starts to lay out the district in phase developments, those are items that they can pull in at the beginning. Another one has to do with kind of locating our noise and activity to the interior of the district to minimize light and noise as it trespasses. So within the district itself, we'll get into more specific regulations that have decibel levels or the requirement of a photometric plan for lighting. But we also have that general criteria in the back of the mind of the designer or the the best practice in terms of what's the best layout for the site are there slight shifts within their site plan could they move a field here and a building there that reinforces this idea of having their the activity centered within their the internal part of their campus so i'm going to go through just a couple of items that apply based on our conversation last meeting to both campuses and then i'll dive into some more details for the big ben district Um, so one item that I wanted to talk a little bit more about is canopy coverage. So as we just saw with Concordia, currently our institutional uses are governed by a caliper inch replacement requirement, and that is really reactive to a development occurring. So right now they're removing trees to support the construction of new buildings. And so based on how many trees they're removing today, That's what they need to plant. Now, they actually that's maybe part of their own campus planning is that they have an emphasis on canopy trees. So it was mentioned by their designer that they have the goal to be planting over time to thinking about canopy. However, when we just have a caliper replacement based on a construction project, the city is not reinforcing that goal because we're reacting to only when they remove a tree associated with development, then they need to replant. going to a canopy coverage we're saying that they Washington University or whatever institution has this land would need to be proactively planning for a canopy that they know that to be maintaining and you're less reactive that and it also allows us to evaluate how the canopy is currently outlined on the site to kind of support growth over time to what we want so on the image here this is an overlay Through our comprehensive plan, which we just completed, we had some LIDAR data that basically the company uses aerial images to map out where existing canopy is. Here this highlights the outline of the Big Bend Overlay District. These green globs are actually measuring the medium to high volume canopy. Not every single tree is really contributing, but we can see where the concentrations of canopy are. in this area. The kind of purple pink outlines are established tree growth areas, which I'll get more into. And then the lighter blue lines are the transition zones. So within those pink and blue areas, that's where we want to enhance and protect the existing canopy. And so you can see we've really concentrated it in areas where there's an existing canopy concentration. But then there are other areas of the existing site today, such as the southeast corner that backs up with a lot of homes on San Benito, where there is not a concentration of canopy, but we're proposing through the requirement for a transition zone that they have to be intentionally planning to build their canopy coverage in that area. So essentially, we're able to say just instead of removing trees over time and planting some as you come across, we're saying we intentionally want you to plant a canopy that also serves an additional purpose of acting as a buffer, is better to protect shadows, heat, light from the neighborhoods. Stormwater is also a lot better when you have a lot of natural trees to soak some of that up. So we were trying to be really intentional about how we want the site planted and managed over time. Lighting is another one that we hear a lot about. So the dark sky outdoor sports lighting I mentioned is a requirement for any playing surfaces, and that's a process that they would have to go to with reviews of plans and inspections and ongoing maintenance requirements through dark sky lighting. So really, when you think dark sky has programs internationally that they're trying to really protect light pollution. So there's various recommendations and programs through dark sky. You can get a certified community, a certified park, or you can also have certified sports lighting. Really, the principles of dark sky are to make sure that you are lighting what needs to be lit. So you're targeting that certain area with your lighting. It has to do with the temperature of the light itself in terms of the appearance, as well as the shielding. And then also the idea that you're controlling when the light is on and off. So we're kind of covering a similar program within our overlay district regulations. So using a time management that says lighting needs to be off by a certain time. So it's 930 except for university baseball and softball games that are on have their inning underway by 10 they can finish that inning that is underway and then we add in kind of the measurements of light at certain angles and so this is where we have the horizontal light level at property lines which is 0.5 foot candles which is equivalent to a full moon so this requires many of those practices such as shielding the angles of the lights etc the maximum field height lighting is 80 feet and we've heard um Questions about this from a lot of residents. But it's important to have that slightly additional height because it allows for more efficient targeting of the light itself onto the fields. So yes, they are a little bit taller, but it actually prevents that glare because the angle of the bulb is better. And I'll show you in a second in an image. But you can have reduced lighting heights for some of your parking lots and other roadways. And then how we'll actually test this is through a photometric plan requirement. And so they'll have to show us as they do their design and outline what kind of fixtures they're using, what the actual bulb is going to produce. And then they'll do some based on the grade and all the other aspects of the site. They'll be able to give us measurements of that field to verify. So within Dark Sky, I wanted to show a couple of images. These are two existing sports complexes that have been recently certified through the Dark Sky program. And so you can see from this image on the left here. So this person was standing approximately 150 feet from the edge of the field that these lighter or the taller light poles allow for the combination of the shielding and the efficient light today. It's really focused down on the field. And so that glare, that overflow of light doesn't spill to where we don't want it to be. And there isn't even any sort of landscape screening, visual screening buffer here like we would be requiring within our transition zones in the proposed overlay district. And on the right hand side, another element that's important about the dark sky certification program is they take into account what you're trying to light. and when you need it to be lit. So you can see the different colors of lights, the temperature of lights that they sometimes refer to. So along the walkways here, we have a more of an orange tone of light compared to the fields where it's a more bright white light. So they're able to kind of rate fields based on what the purpose of the lighting is for. which just further helps us protect the areas that we don't need that lighting from. I just wanted to put two examples of this compared to what a lot of what you see today if you were to go to some of the high school fields that they have older light systems and different ways that they're designed that probably would not pass a dark sky certification at this point. Um, if you go to the city's fields in Shaw park, not ASIC field, that's a stainless or that's Clayton high school field. But the other two fields that are just next door to that, that have a mixture of softball and baseball, the lights there are 60 and 70 feet tall. And they actually did some studies to see if the fields are well lit. And there are some dark spots that are frequent and within the middle of the field. And so then they added two 90 foot poles to try and meet those, but basically what ends up happening is the lights are going to face kind of more outward to try and cover those darker spots. But if they had used 90 or 80 foot poles is like we were proposing here with some more efficient lighting than probably would have needed less poles to light both of those fields. So just something to keep in mind when you're thinking about lighting. Okay, I'm going to go into some more specifics about the Big Bend Overlay District. I'm just going to try and touch on some of the changes that were made. So for uses, we heard some questions related to pickleball and the noise that's produced by pickleball. So first of all, I... Not sure that pickleball would even meet the noise regulations the way that we've written them right now. So I'll leave that to professionals, but I think that would be hard to do because we've limited the noise at residential property lines to a conversation that would be held between two people three feet apart, a normal conversation level. But just in case somebody could figure out a racket that didn't make any noise, we also added in the accessory uses a prohibition of pickleball. So they can only have pickleball when it's located inside. So we don't need to worry about the pickleball noise. For events and capacity, we've reduced these slightly. So the maximum outdoor event capacity was previously 1,200 people. We've reduced that to 900 people and then also added a specification that only two of those outdoor events could be happening at the same time. Another thing that we've done in terms of capacity is reduce the permanent seats. So we have 300 permanent seats for a spectator venue and only one can have 500 outside. And also just to mention for the seat capacity, I think seats are sometimes it's deceptive when you think about a field. So if you go to Washington University, if you ever have looked at their existing softball and baseball fields, each of those existing fields seats less than 300 people currently. So the context of the permanent seats compared to the existing activity and uses is what we're trying to align those with. Site access, so this has not really changed one element we've gotten some questions about that would need to be designed. And this is where having the level of requiring still site plan review to be approved by the plan commission is some of the questions about the passive access versus the access that just supports the users as they're designing those facilities. So we've tried to accommodate with some flexibility within the overlay districts with primary access points being those that are intentionally designed to facilitate the access, the ingress and egress of the people that are going to use the facilities that are being designed on that site. So we want to have some options so that people can get in and out safely. And this is where a specific traffic study will need to be done based on the capacity of the facility that they're building at that time to figure out how that access will be facilitated. But we want to make sure that the primary access to facilitate and support any specific facility that WashU builds would be supported through access, not in the neighborhood. But we also at the same time have heard from a lot of residents who enjoy kind of what I would say the passive access is right now on Concordia's campus where you wanna walk Maybe you use the connection off of Dartford or maybe you're coming off of Seminary Lane and you walk through their campus. And so we don't want to restrict that either because we understand it's important, but we know that it's going to be a sensitive item that needs to be addressed when a specific facility is done so that we make sure we're balancing kind of those primary and those secondary or passive access points that are going to be necessary. Okay. So buildings and setbacks is another big one. So on the right, this time instead of using aerials, on a few I've overlaid some setback lines on the survey of the site itself to highlight a few different areas. So a big one that we want to address is the context of different areas that are being developed, and that means the context of what uses might occur on those areas adjacent across the property lines, but also, you know, what is the topography where the drainage patterns, et cetera. So we have a 65 or 67 feet is the maximum building height here. One thing that we did remove is now it's prohibited to have fields on top of any building. So that was another comment that we heard previously. So now no longer would there be an athletic field on top of the building, how that's written today. Okay. But looking at the site, we wanted to be able to reflect the kind of development pattern or the use and operation pattern across property lines. So you'll see here along the east, we've overlaid the new site plan that's proposed for Concordia's housing that was just previously approved So you can see the relationship of that surface parking as it nears the line that will separate the overlay district, as well as the height of some of those buildings that were just presented. So we wanted to kind of reflect that nature of almost the backyards, the rear yards of our two institutional properties as they talk to each other. So the buildings are allowed to under the overlay district and the playing fields would be permitted to be closer to this new property, the boundary of the overlay district as it relates to Concordia with a setback for buildings that are 55 feet or more slightly greater. Then as we go kind of south and north, now we're interacting across the boundaries with single family residential districts that have a density that's different and a style of development that's much different. So this is where we wanted to introduce some of our more prescriptive. setback requirements, such as the transition zones are established tree growth areas that were protecting but also just additional building setbacks. So along the the South here these red shaded this red shaded area is our transition zone, so this is where we wouldn't have buildings surface parking. plain surfaces, anything like that located within our transition zone. The idea is that this would become a more intentionally planted buffer that would provide more protections for the neighborhood. And then we have the established tree growth area where I highlighted earlier that there are a number of existing trees that we want to protect. This blue dashed line here is the increased setback for buildings. So we wanted more of a setback when you're related to the shorter single-family properties to, again, allow for more of a transition. And so this is the setback of 150 feet that would be required for buildings that are 55 feet tall or higher. So now buildings are going to be over 150 feet if they're located down here. So again, the idea of squeezing our active uses and our larger buildings interior to the campus. Similarly, along the north and Hillcrest, we have this 150 foot setback that's measured from our single family property lines as they come, our established tree growth area. Along big bends, we wanted to protect that kind of existing separation and visual separation. So we have the larger transition zone of 100 feet here with our larger established tree growth areas. Something that's changed previously, now the transition zone is 90 feet on the south. It was 100, but then we've also expanded some of our established tree growth areas in a few places. North one thing that we wanted to do again is now we're returning to a property lines that shared with an institutional use again, so we have surface parking as well as buildings that are going to be taller in scale and closer to this shared boundary. So what we wanted to do was try and, again, try and mirror some of those development patterns for the neighboring institution as it is. But we also wanted to provide additional protections, knowing that the neighbors in Hillcrest don't have much of a setback from their rear yard property line. It pretty much goes end of the Hillcrest parcels to a small strip of grass or evergreens in a few places, but other than that, surface parking lot. or a drive access of a building. And similarly, there's a kind of a view gap here when you look north from the proposed overway through the Fonbon campus, you see a lot of gaps over Big Bend that take you directly to a Southmore house or a Forest Ridge house. So we wanted to have additional protections for some of those outdoor functions that are likely to have more noise than a building would be. So in the north area here between the end of the transition zone, which was extended and the established tree growth area. This darker blue line is where a building setback would be. So buildings could go much closer to the property boundary along the north edge, but plain surfaces would have to be set back 80 feet. So that will allow for any of the, so there's more access. active spaces that would have outdoor noises or lights associated with them are shifted more towards the interior of the site. And you can use a better kind of use of a building or a surface parking that mirrors what's happening on the property adjacent to provide additional buffering. So really, um, the, the gray area that's highlighted here in the middle of this becomes kind of their buildable area. So this is where they would need to be focusing any sort of parking and playing surface building, et cetera, would be in here. There's also going to need to do some regrading drainage. So we saw previously that it might be an underground detention pit for drainage, et cetera. those elements would disrupt the transition zones. And so they would need to also be located within those gray areas as well. So the transition zones, I've highlighted most of this in the previous one, but everything outlined in red is really what we're trying to protect. The shaded red areas are transition zones, and you can see they kind of run through the established tree growth areas. A big part to understand about transition zones is that they cannot be modified by a setback. So it's just... writing the zoning code to give a parking lot a 10-foot setback, except we're modified by a transition zone. That kind of exception of not being able to modify a transition zone is really important because that transition zone overrides anything else. So in these areas where you see these shaded red, even though you could have a surface parking lot 10 feet away from In this gray area, because there's a transition zone here, you cannot have it there, similar with our established tree growth areas. And then really the goal is... For these, we also removed conditions that would have allowed any below grade parking to encroach into a transition zone. So that has also been removed. Really the goal, as I mentioned before for these is proactive planting and protection of grading and trees and facilitating the next generation of trees or replace the ones that you see today to really protect that kind of boundary and character of the area along the edges of the district. So tree requirements, I kind of went over canopy coverage earlier in the presentation. So using an aerial image this time highlights where those existing trees are. So we have these additional protections from regrading and tree removal and construction activity and all of that. from within these protected areas of where concentrations of our larger trees are today. And it really is going to concentrate activity in terms of construction activity, but also long-term built activity into the blue area within the interior of the site. Grading and drainage is a really important one. So we wanted to use the survey again to highlight a few things that help reinforce how the planning will need to be done for any specific project that is planned here. So within our established tree growth areas and our transition zones along the boundary, we've highlighted those existing trees as they sit today. So all of the trees that are pinkish in color would be, in terms of size, considered landmark trees. Some of them might be more healthy than others, and that gets into other elements of what they might actually do when they plan for growth. replacing or adding to certain areas, but the landmark trees are the largest ones. Those are 19 caliper inches or more compared to our contributing trees, which are also important. So now we're starting to contribute to the canopy. So when I say contributing, that means they're adding to canopy. So then that's where we get into our three to 19 caliber inches. And then there's a few less than three caliber inch trees that are that are on the site today. But you can see again how we've established these tree growth areas to try and capture some of those larger landmark trees and pink that are along the edges. Another important element to layer into this is some of the existing utility connections and where those are located. So highlighted in yellow are some of the existing MSD connections to sewers that are on the site today. So we know there's going to have to be some sort of focus on these areas where you see those yellow lines highlighted because they're going to need to be doing something to those connections. Either they're removing those connections because they're going be replaced elsewhere or they're going to enhance them, etc. There's going to have to be some regrading in those areas and so that's where we know as they remove houses over here and they remove houses over there's going to be disruption of construction activity. It doesn't make sense to try and capture some of these areas within an established tree growth where we say you can't do any grading but we at the same time want you to improve msd's connections so you're going to need to get into that area so the goal here is to establish large protection areas but then also through some of our criteria for review and some of our other regulations, reinforce the ideas of respecting some of those existing grading and drainage areas as they plan. A couple of requirements, they cannot do large-scale regrading. They would not be allowed to submit a site plan that establishes one giant retaining wall that goes along the south and a giant retaining wall along the north to create one level grade across the surface. So we just said that's not a good place to start. So they know they're going to have to build in some terracing using buildings, using fields to help get themselves from different aspects of grade. We also added in a requirement for stepping walls once you are starting to hold back grades of 15 or more. then you need to create a terrace area. So that's where you can support some planting to, again, reinforce the area of actually having some green space throughout the site because we know there's going to be swaths when you have a field of places you can't put trees. So let's reinforce terracing as areas when you cannot. And then another element that we can require is we can also, within our codes, reiterate the fact that they should not create more water leaving the site than there is under pre-existing conditions. And another element that we've heard about with grade and drainage is we also did require that for fields, if there's any sort of synthetic turf, then it needs to be engineer, they'd have to provide us how they're engineering this turf to function similar to a natural pervious space where water would go through. But we also recognize that there are some issues out there with synthetic turfs and other influences to the quality of the stormwater. So we're going to require some quality treatment. So those are a few areas where we're trying to force a little bit more proactive planning about how you're treating and managing water on site beyond what might be required from MSD. Okay, so test fits. This is the last piece I'll go over. So many presentations ago, representatives from Washington University showed us a few really quick test fits of how the site could be laid out with a different number of fields and field houses and interior uses. One thing I'll note for the test fits is this doesn't address the grading question. So you already know as you see, you're looking at all these test fits, that fields and buildings are getting pretty close to each other. Now when you add in the requirements that we have for grading, you add in the maximum lot coverage requirements that we have, it makes everything even more tight. So there's really not going to be ways for the institution to all of a sudden come back to us with three times the number of fields because they won't be able to meet all of the capacity requirements of the site. One thing that we did hear from the public, though, is that they're still concerned at this conceptual level about how many fields we're contemplating. And so that's where we added in the requirement of the four outdoor fields, which you can see that they could meet in a number of ways. They could do what is here on this test fit. So you would have a multipurpose and a softball overlapping each other. That would count as one the way that we've written the proposed overlay districts today. Then they would have baseball, soccer, possibly tennis, any sort of combination of these. but they could get additional capacity with an indoor field. So the idea, again, is we're trying to limit the outside activity that is more likely to be involved with noise and light that might trespass a property line. So when we look at a test fit a little bit closer and I highlight a few things, this is kind of reinforces what our overall goal is with the overlay district. We're trying really to protect large amounts of the boundary of this overlay district in a way that you don't have those protections in our current R2 zoning. If something went on this site that meets our current zoning as it sits in R2 today, we don't have these same protections in place. We also want to reinforce and redirect that location to the interior. So you can't do anything in the red. It's a non-starter. The trees there have to stay. They couldn't just wipe out all of these trees and use that area as part of how they grade the site. Those trees are going to be remained and enhanced in a lot of ways. Um, and then, as I mentioned before, if we think about the, they're going to need some circulation, they're going need drainage areas to collect water. Um, they're gonna, they're gonna need some additional pervious space that's passive and not covered. So the site becomes pretty restricted the more that you focus them in on the inside. So that was a summary of big bend and now I'll take any questions.

Oh, okay. Well, that was very comprehensive, I must say. But the last drawing that you showed... Go back. Yeah, that one or actually any of the eight I think you had. How does circulation and potential parking fit inside the... the tested area given all the grade changes and the terracing

right so that's um that's kind of where the test fit just looks at the amount of space that would be required to support one of these facilities so kind of roughly how much space would a baseball field take up as a playing surface and when you layer those next to each other and you don't even take into account the grading, you get to a kind of a maximum capacity just space-wise here. But then you know you really can't do anything else because they're going to have to accommodate all those other elements. But that's where the actual site plan review will come into play. So then they'll come with the grading. But I think you end up, hopefully, the goal behind these kind of planning policies is that By knowing at the outset some of their constraints and what's important to the community within the overlay district, they know, well, if I design a baseball field first, I have to be thinking about elements like how am I terracing this site over time? Because otherwise you really quickly design an overlay and then you put your baseball field in and then you realize you can't do anything else. But as far as actual capacity for parking is concerned... Those will be those will have to be studied as they occur. So we know that that the intention from what they've shared for Washington University is to move the baseball and softball fields from South 40, as well as the multipurpose field and some of the indoor space from the south campus or the old CBC site. So we know that those are the uses that they want to originally move here. Once you start to facilitate that, then you would do a parking study when they came to us with here's the size of these two fields and what's our capacity. Then we look at parking and how much parking do you need? Is there ability to share parking with the FOMP on campus next door? What does that do to our access from the site from a traffic perspective if we do or do not share parking? Those elements are what all need to be addressed when they actually come to us with a site plan.

So then going back to the very beginning of your presentation with the stepped activities, it seems like the very first one, which we did talk about at the last meeting, is that the overlay really sets up the parameters in a proactive way to define what can be done with the land. as opposed to the CUP process, which really leaves it up to the applicant to come in.

Yeah, the goal really through the overlay is to tighten. So again, we're not adding uses that are not already contemplated as part of an institutional use. So the idea is to further tighten what those primary uses would be specifically for this site, as opposed to just institutional, because then that allows us to add development standards that are specific to those. That's why you see some of the requirements that may be different within the Big Bend overlay district from the South 40 overlay district, because The kind of characteristics of those two primary uses for those overlays are different. So it allows us to do this, but it also allows for the community and for the institutions to know that they're planning this use properly. in the future for the different site as opposed to knowing it could be anything that the institution might decide they want in five years so if they decided to abandon the south 40 as their housing campus for their first years then they would if an overlay district were adopted then they would have to revise that overlay district to reintroduce other uses that are have currently would essentially be removed from the institutional bubble through the overlay district

So then following up on that, it seems like the first step is to consider the Big Bend Overlay Zoning District. And if that were to be put into effect, then there are several steps in there that include public discussion, like we have tonight, as well as both site plan and... architectural review. Yeah, ARB review. So those three things give seem to give us quite a bit of checks in the entire process. If I'm reading it correctly, that's the goal. Yep. Okay. Okay, that was my general thing, except I had one other general thing. It was item number seven. And I forgot which it was near the very beginning, but it was general conformance.

Oh, under site plan

review? Yeah.

There we are. If you could go into that again, that seems very general and open-ended.

It is. So general informants is the header for under our criteria for review and site plan today. there's a general conformance header. Basically, that's referring back to any other adopted codes by the city. So our fire codes, our building codes, it might refer to like the overlay district where we're adding in additional criteria for review within the overlay district. So it's almost a little bit of a catch-all. But their site plan review is already kind of a little bit of very beginning it basically says that the plan commission has authority to to emphasize authority with good planning practices which is more general existing environment built environment not limited to so these seven things are the headings where there's a little bit more detail underneath all those but basically the general conformance is intentionally general to reference codes that might be adopted under our municipal code over time

um one other general item that i had before we get into specifics and it is sort of specific it's in the lighting and the sound and whether we have 40 foot light poles or 80 foot light poles the control of the spread of the light how will that be controlled

That's a good question. So the big part about this diagram comes out of the dark sky guidelines that they would need to adhere to, but basically for sports lighting and identifies these target areas. So those are the areas that need to be lit to a certain standard. for an athletic field, as opposed to some of the other principles within Dark Sky that they would adhere to, such as on a walkway, you would have slightly different performance standards, so to speak, for those two areas in terms of lighting. So this diagram is part of how they would measure it. When we would have an actual field design, then you would identify the size of that field, the location of where your actual lights are, within proximity to that field, and then how you're highlighting your targeted area. And then they measure under dark sky what they call the glare evaluation offset distance, which is approximately 150 feet. And that's where they're starting to measure some of that glare. So in our local proposed overlay district here. We have a lighting measurement of 0.5 foot candles at a property line that we say they need to meet, but they also would have these glare offset distance requirements through the dark sky overlay district. that basically says that they need to essentially dissipate the light from their targeted area within a certain distance. And as you can see on this image here, the taller lights here allow those lights with their shields to be more directed straight down at the field with the shielding where they could meet this targeted area at the level of light that they need to meet for that surface. If you have shorter poles, in order to meet some of the light that you need to meet towards the middle, essentially instead of going straight down, now you start to change the angle. And we have what we see sometimes in terms of lighting is often referred to as glare and it's where you can kind of, you can see the light bulb, but if you had a light meter and you were standing there, it might not register that that light is actually shining. really bright, but it feels like it's more than 0.5 foot candles because of how you're seeing straight into that bulb, so to speak. So we want to allow the poles to go a little taller because that reduces the possibility of a light appearing to shine into somebody's window. And this is where the color of the lighting also starts to come into play. There's a lot of images out there where you'll have a picture of like a floodlight over a garage, for example. So a lot of people think this bright floodlight is going to provide safety, but I'll have to pull it up in the next one. But if you have a floodlight, that glare in your eye often actually reduces your ability to see around the light because now all your eye is catching is the glare. But if you reduce the color of that light to be more of an orange, kind of like they have on the walkway. Even though you feel like it's less bright, you actually can see more because of how your eyes are adjusting to the bulb versus the lighting that's appearing around it. So that's where the height of poles start to come into play is when we're looking at the angle of the light bulbs themselves and how they can be shielded.

Okay, I appreciate that. But let me go back to the word control. And what happens after we have potentially all this installed, we get a windstorm and it turns some of the light heads or we have a little minor subsidence where a pole may go off kilter. whose responsibility is it to monitor that or just live with it? Is it the city's responsibility? It would

be the same. So this would be all adopted under our municipal code. So it would be enforced in the same way. So anybody, we have lighting regulations for like our downtown lights a lot now. So it would interior nature of this overlay district that we're proposing. It's probably if the light is shining where it's not supposed to, or it's brighter or something like that likely is the neighbor is going to know before any of anybody else does because it would impact them. So all they would need to do is report that to the city. If we haven't already identified it and then the light would need to be shut off until they could show that it's back in compliance with the regulations. And if they did not comply, then we could process that as a municipal code violation. So that would be in our code. Yeah, we would be able to process this as a municipal code violation, yes.

Let's go on, Bob. So first of all, Anna, I've never seen anyone talk without taking a breath for at least 25 minutes, I'm telling you. It was amazing how much you covered, and I sincerely appreciate that. Thank you. You know, as I approached this overlay district, I had to keep in mind that there's nothing before us right now. There's no ball field, there's no building, there's nothing. All we're doing is kind of setting the ground rules as to protecting the neighbors, you know, light, noise, traffic, those type of issues, the aesthetics around the perimeter. and trying to make sure that Washington U knows that when it obtains this property, it can know what it could build or not build. And even when it comes to building, they still have to come before us, as Steve said, to get our blessing, so to speak, on those. And there's a lot of public hearings along the way. There's a lot of input from the community and and the professionals as this process goes through as opposed to concordia where they have their buildings approved they could start moving forward with the board of aldermen and then go from there um this is like a long-term plan with a lot of guardrails um I'm amazed at how, you know, I put myself in the shoes of a neighbor living there. You know, how will I see the light? Will I hear the noise? Is it unreasonable? I mean, this is an institution. This isn't going to be a... a free noise, a free light place. That's unreasonable to expect that. What is reasonable for the university and what is reasonable for us as neighbors to expect? And by addressing it now, Anna, which is you have done with the Overlight District, is a wonderful method because look at all the people are here making sure that they feel that they can live with this new neighbor, Washington U, and keep in mind that they also are taking control of Fontbonne. So this will be contiguous all the way through. In terms of my comments, I think subject to hearing some more from the public, I think you've really addressed the setbacks quite well. I like your answer to the light. The obsessiveness with protecting the trees is something we all enjoy. I think we have, and the fact that you actually started revising some things after the first hearing tells me that the staff has really listened and tinkered with some of the things I have nothing further to say. I just want to hear the public comments because I'm at this point pretty impressed with the work and the detail and the big picture and the use of an overlay district as our vehicle to make this all come to fruition.

Yeah, I just have a few questions on us. So, you know, I guess from a procedural standpoint again as Bob and we've all mentioned there are no plans before us. So let's say down the line, you know, there's a soccer field is up on the area closer to Fon Fon, or maybe the field houses, I don't know. You know, obviously there's concern from Dartford residents about people spilling out, you know, whether they're leaving because they just exercise because again we don't know if this is if the new field house is going to be a new exercise facility because again we haven't been told anything so So can we look at access, I guess, as we get there? So like we will consider, so residents would come to us once we get plans and residents would come to say, you know, residents on Dartford, Arundel, Aberdeen, and say, we're not sure we want access here or require access. Cause again, like WashU owns Bon Bon now. So require them to only have access there. Is that something that will come later on?

So that will come later on, for the most part, especially when you're talking about vehicle access, because St. Louis County plays such a big role in how... And I'm just talking about pedestrian

access.

I mean, I

know we're not allowing vehicles in New Dartford, so...

Right. Yeah, pedestrian access, a big part of where we have our primary requirements is to try and reinforce... those connections between WashU from a Big Bend side and then also through FOMP on that they own right now and have not required access through the, from the Hillcrest off of that end of Dartford. But we've heard, and I understand why there's probably not a set not everybody's on the same page on whether they do or do not want that because there's a lot of benefits to the neighborhood to have direct access to the open space, the way that Concordia has always managed that for people. So I think we want to support that where it is beneficial, but then also restrict it where it needs to be restricted and We want to make sure that all of the access points that are necessary to facilitate wash use use of this site is done in a way that provides that access, but also ensures that that's how it functions. So that's where in this point, we don't want to say no to the pedestrian access from Dartford because we know a lot of people want it, but we also know it's going to be important in terms of how that might actually be designed within the district where we walkways are, how regrading happens, what facility is actually located in that north corner and so on. And that will all come through site plan.

Okay. So I think it's, again, it's just important to note that discussions about whether there's access from Dartford will come later and there'll be plenty of time to discuss that later. Right. And then can you just talk a little bit about, you know, if the overlay was not approved, then presumably, you know, then WashU would apply under the CUP process as we've talked about. Can you talk a little bit about just trying to understand if there are things that, you know, for instance, like as you suggested, what we have up on the screen is setbacks right now are as little as five feet on the north and south property line. So under the CUP process, presumably they could apply to have a field 15 or 20 feet from the north and south. But could then we say, no, no, no. We actually want it to be 90 feet. So we could, but again, we'd have to be reactive, I guess.

Yeah, the biggest thing is that we would have to be reactive and we would have to based on what they're proposing at that time, understanding kind of the reasonable conditions to place on them that also protect the neighbors. So that's where we can go through this process and agree on a setback. And then if they went through a CUP process instead of an overlay in the future, we could say, we already discussed these, let's start there. But it's a lot easier when we talk about the phase development of this area in the long-term to be starting out with these larger setbacks in the transition zones highlighted today instead of starting at zero because once uh you know once a design professional comes and they've done an entire grading plan and talk to utilities and they have the building found and all the drainage is worked out that's usually when we get their site plan not everything's perfect but it's pretty far down and you saw the detail on the site plans we got from concordia so Yes, there's still some stuff at play, but it's a lot farther down the line. So it's a lot harder for us to get them to change it significantly at that point. And so that's where the overlay district is good to start out with these larger parameters from the box at this standpoint. And then they also understand where things are heading as they go, because in all likelihood, it will be one field or a field and part of a parking together and potentially probably not going to come to us with three indoor fields plus the parking area plus a field house all at the same time that would be surprising so you want to make sure that we're thinking long-term phased as we approach these are these

but you do think that a lot of the protections i guess that we could build in like dark sky sounds a lot better to me than you know what we have now so you know but again it's adding those things in later rather than approaching it from the front

Yep, it's adding in later. And if we don't add it in now, the difference is an overlay district is adopted into the municipal code. So if you guys propose this and the Board of Aldermen actually adopts this into the code, now it's in the code. And then to get anything changed, If it's a whole new plan commission or a whole new elected official board, we need to go through a text amendment process to change it, as opposed to having these discussions and just saying, it would be great to have dark sky, but there's nothing actually in the code that requires it. But then maybe we go through a conditional use permit and have a discussion on whether or not we require dark sky or that sort of element. So by establishing the overlay district, we're removing that kind of administrative flow of a conditional use permit. And we're saying that you're doing a legislative act as the board of Alderman to add these as actual regulations within the code of ordinances of the city.

Okay. And then just so I'm understanding, just because you keep talking about tree growth area, I know you're talking about protecting the trees, but trees are very important. So are you saying though that your protect, so in this area, like in the top right corner, like everything in that box, including it's not just the canopy that's protected, it's every single like tree trunk under that. So it's not just like the branches that, so there could potentially be more canopy that extends off of that area. Yeah.

Right. There would be more canopy that extends, but also the important part is establishing protections related to some of the grading aspects that happen within those because that's a big... I mean, we kind of heard earlier, you can try and protect trees with retaining walls, but that becomes hard and you kind of restrict growth. And so what we wanted to make sure was... The transition zones didn't kind of become the area where the retaining walls were thrown to establish grades. So we wanted to protect that, but then also that allows the canopy as it matures over time and they infill other elements, you're really maintaining the true grade and character of that area. The only disruption would be for a primary vehicle access point that went through there. So off of Big Bend, we're going to, in all likelihood, there'll be one there. We have to write this code as if there will be. At this point, so if we anticipate that there will be some disruption, but by having the protections the way we word it for the established tree growth areas. They really have to limit regrading so they have to you know show us how they've limited their regrading and the system that they're going to use to support the. like bridge that might be required or something over there to protect it. And then in the other elements, because in the established tree growth areas on the north by Hillcrest and on the south by Tuscany Park, as we highlighted on the other image, there's a lot of connections to existing MSD sewers around there because those are kind of areas where you have a pretty good change in grade within those protected areas, but also have a pretty significant low point when you think about the whole site. And so that's areas where we want to make sure that we're protecting some of the grade there, but also establishing larger protections from the built environment where those could be really nice, natural kind of holding areas for overflow water and that sort of thing.

And just in terms of like the grading and the terracing plan, I mean, a 15 foot wall still seems pretty tall. I know. So does it have to be stepped at like five

so we didn't

point. part of the code, we

propose that. Now that's something that could be discussed here. We do have the requirement for just a break within 50. So we would measure, you know, grade to grade of the wall. And so they could have a two foot wall and then, you know, so they could grade it in a different way as long as they had that set area. So we don't.

So you could have like a 13 foot wall potentially.

Yeah. The way it's written right now, you could. So I think that if that's an element that is too tall for certain areas or something within the grading plan, then that's something that you would probably want to address within the overlay code. But the way it's written right now, you could have a one foot wall with us four foot setback with growth and then a 14 foot wall. Could

you address that later on then? You

can, but it's, as I mentioned, I think in a lot of these, it's nice to have it within the, the ordinance, the way that you're writing it, because then that would have an impact on how you would grade terracing areas with those walls. And so if that's a really important part, depending on where it faces. So the wall, as we're protecting existing grade of the site today, when we think about where the walls might be located and what they might be facing, I think if the wall is located kind of inside of their site and you have a 15 foot wall that's facing their field or something that might be an area. We don't really feel that 15 foot as largely from a neighborhood perspective, but if the wall is down along the Southern line, so it could be in this corner, 90 feet away from these homes on San Benito. Do you want to reduce a 15 foot facing or change the terracing there?

So potentially changing that, it would be better to do that now rather than later. Yeah.

Yes.

Okay. I think those are all the questions I have right now. Thank you.

Ellen?

Yes. Ana, you did a fantastic job. But I do have a question about how many people would be allowed It says 900 for an outdoor is maximum, and I can't have two, so I can't have 1,800, two 900s. And then it mentions a 500 indoor facility. So conceivably, I could have 900 and then being kind, maybe 800 and 500. 2,200 people on the site.

Right, and that's where we need to evaluate with the capacity of the layers as you add them together. So as they would build a facility, that's when we would evaluate those. There's going to be impacts to this site, such as if we have all of those uses, can they actually... How do they handle the parking that would facilitate those sorts of capacities as they layer them on? What is the traffic impact on Big Bend? Those studies would need to be done. And that's the same way that we analyze what a good density or maximum threshold is for a lot of our zoning, actually. So if we look at our high-density commercial development district in downtown, that doesn't have a maximum number of stories. Okay. But we all know that the infinite number of stories, there is a limit to what the actual capacity is on that site when you start to layer and how much is supported. So we put in some facility maximums and attendee maximums because we wanted to reinforce the idea for the public that it's not infinite. They will have to have maximums as we add levels, but that will be something that will be reevaluated every time they come with a new facility for us.

Okay, the other question refers to site plan and architectural review. That would be a new structure of building construction with a gross floor area of 10,000 square feet or more. What if it's 9,000?

For a building, yes. So there is also the discretion for the director to refer other projects. So there's a few different ways that they would automatically trigger site plan review or at the director's discretion. So the threshold's a little bit smaller for architecture vboard for that review of materials, which is similar to how our structure is right now with site plan. We also have just grading elements that would trigger site plan review. Right now, when we look at the existing grade, when you're measuring the height of a new building, we use existing average grade. We're going to in this overlay district we propose reflecting how you calculate height under the building code. So we've established basically if they're changing the existing grade by. six or nine you have it next to you I can't remember what is that would also trigger site plan review I have it on the slide in here somewhere I didn't know if Stephanie was looking at it next to me but so that would trigger site plan review as well as just sizes then we also have outdoor facility sizes see if I can get to that

slide really quick

Here we go. So we have 10,000 square feet for a new facility, but then we also have fields with 2,800 square feet or more. So that's where we reduce it down based on like a tennis court size. So the outdoor playing fields, even though those are going to be smaller in square footage, would still trigger site plan review. Then we also just have our general grading land disturbance area. So if they were doing a project where they just... wanted to do some regrading, but they weren't actually putting a building there. That would all still trigger all of the reviews and requirements of site plan review. So basically that stops the process of somebody just kind of trying to over time level the site out or something like that, and then come back with a project. So we've tried to capture the different scale of project, which is another element that's really nice. And we're able to do it easily under an overlay district because we kind of know the overall primary uses that they want. So then we could see what types of construction projects are likely going to facilitate that and make sure that we captured a lot of those to go through site plan review that are not just what would naturally trigger site plan review today without.

Okay. That's it. It looks great. You know, Those are my

only

questions,

Amy.

Okay. So just so I understand right now as an R2, all of like any, like we're looking at right now, all of these fields are allowed right now under R2.

Right. As a, as a conditional use for an institution. Okay.

So this overlay is not adding this availability to put these here. It's just constraining the requirements to put these here Correct. Okay. And so what I heard a lot from the residents in this past meeting was their concern that they no longer will have like an appeal process because, you know, when you go through a CUP, you get to go through the Board of Aldermen with elected officials to actually, you know, say yay or nay. But you described in that like building block. Can you go through that appeal process if this gets passed, how that works?

Sure. Okay. So the big piece here is that we kind of are just almost reordering the existing process in a way. So right now, the process starts with the R2 district, which is really set up to regulate development at a single family level, but uses a conditional lease permit process to regulate development. Some of the uses that we feel are appropriate for a residential district, but are going to be a little bit different than in a single family. And so through the CUP process, you get the Board of Aldermen at the end approving a conditional use permit. Instead, with what we're proposing now is we kind of moved a bunch of that public input of the overall uses and the Board of Aldermen's approval to the beginning and switched from Board of Aldermens exercising their administrative authority over a conditional use permit and switched and said we're going to have the Board of Alderman exercise their legislative authority to actually change the code of ordinances with public input at the beginning to establish an overlay district. So then it goes through almost an identical process from there. So if the overlay districts were established, then we would go through the design review process of site plan review and architectural review. with professional studies done by staff and also our contracted professionals that we have, and go through back-and-forth process with the design team. And then it would come to the plan commission or the Board of Aldermen to make a ruling on those two projects. At the end of this, there was a belief that the decision made was not appropriate or accurate. There's a list of criteria of what can be appealed by somebody. So there could be an appeal filed against the decision, and then that would re-involve the Board of Aldermen at the end of the process to review that item if it were appealed to the board. So there's still – it's already outlined in our code – There could be an appeal of any decision of a planning commission or architecture review board to the Board of Aldermen. And that's kind of that added fail-safe at the end. And so I think the biggest piece is that idea of moving the Board of Alderman and the public from the end of the process to the beginning to be in a legislative action. And then we still have the fail-safe of the elected officials getting involved in the project at the end if we need to. Okay.

So that's good to know that there is still an appeal process if this moves forward. Okay. So a couple of questions along the traffic. And I know that we don't have control over that, but I know there's, you know, traffic studies were done and I guess they were done in January. So not an ideal time. However, like, you know, if they come to us and propose a soccer field, which is not going to be like it's just an intramural soccer field. So that might not add a lot of traffic. And so we're like, okay, you don't need a traffic light, but then they add, you know, the varsity baseball field. When does it like tip or is each time, will there be a traffic study done that says, okay, well finally we do need a light and how does that work?

yes so it will work in a phased way so we've done um you've seen this probably so there's been a lot of change since this but like when centene's uh original plan for their multiple phased office buildings was done you do at the beginning kind of a conceptual traffic analysis based on what you intend to move in the next few years in terms of uses and so what was done at the beginning to help with this conceptual conversation with St. Louis County was, we got from WashU some information about visitors and capacity of their existing facilities that they know they want to move. And so that included the two fields from South 40 as well as the field and the indoor uses from South Campus. So we kind of wanted to do a conceptual analysis on that one that went into some, understand some of the parameters from St. Louis County in terms of what they would look at for an official study or review. But we also wanted to see, based on those capacities of those, would it even warrant a signal or not? And basically what that said is that we do get to the level with some of those elements where, especially if they're using multiple field, if they have a softball and a baseball game at the same time, it will help significantly to exit that site if there is a signal there. So from that conceptual standpoint, then we kind of understand where the threshold is for what would warrant a signal and what wouldn't. But what still would need to be done is another version of that once it's more sure they would probably want to choose a couple of facilities because that access point along Big Bend's important and So when they would study that, that could shift in these next conversations with an actual study being done when we know, are they building two fields at once or is it an indoor and outdoor, whatever. It might be how do we, you know, that was also done before Fonfon was announced to be purchased by WashU. So there's parameters that have changed. changed even since that conceptual one was done. So they'll do another one again, and then that's when they'll go through a process with St. Louis County to understand any requirements or restrictions on vehicle access from Big Bend. But then that study would also likely be updated as additional facilities continue to be built, because it could be that St. Louis County says build an access point today with... a signal that looks like this, but we don't actually want to start using the signal until you hit capacity of the site of X or something. So that all would come into play over time.

Does the county choose that access point along the Big Bend or is it the design team or who picks that? I

mean, it's probably going to be a little bit of both because St. Louis County will likely respond to what's originally presented to them, but there are some basic kind of traffic engineering points that they'll want to be addressed, site distance angles, distance from other access points that they'll have standards for. And then looking at kind of the topography of Big Bend, all of those will come into play. So I think it will naturally fall into one site. The aspect that We also want to align with from St. Louis County is they would really prefer that any new access points are across the street from existing access points to line that up. And that's something that we don't always have along big bend, even in this kind of block, so to speak. So those, once you start looking at those parameters, it would likely be something where the design team from WashU would do a, do some sort of a study, propose something with their site plan. And then that would have to be responded to and reviewed by St. Louis County.

And so like also like a center turn lane, is that something that they would also probably?

Right. That is likely to be required, but then part of what they would study is how long is it? So how many cars need to fit in the turn lane? How does it reflect or relate to other access points that it might overlap or it doesn't, but it could be extended to overlap. Those elements are kind of all to be determined.

Okay. I'll start just real quick. Four... Okay, so when we're looking under like the building height requirements, it says 65 feet is the highest. I'm just curious where that number came from.

So 65 feet came from looking at the interior capacity difference. that. So basically knowing the types of uses that they want to put inside, if you wanted to do a field house and then some of that just roof aspects on top of that, that is about the height that they kind of would look at for those facilities in conjunction with heights that we see on a lot of our other institutional properties. So that similar in heights to some of the buildings that you see on other or other WashU campuses and areas. And so that's kind of where we landed on for that one.

So like, even though that's on other parts of the WashU campuses, how does it relate to like the properties around this area? So it looks like, I guess the new.

Yeah. So these new dorms over here for Concordia, I believe are about 50 to 55 feet tall and she's gone out, but I'm pretty sure that that's around what the height of these are. That's where we wanted to reflect that same element on the proposed overlay here. Buildings that are over 55 feet or higher or more have additional setback requirements within the overlay except for this gap here where the existing surface parking is for Fonfon. And that was to try and reinforce the idea of, we would rather you not put your tallest building in the middle of the site. That's where we would rather you put some of your more active outdoor uses and have your other building where it can kind of relate to the uses that are on the Fonbon campus and the building heights that are on the Fontbon campus. Right

because that kind of goes to my next question because when I was thinking like if this were going to be behind me would I prefer to have a building back up to me or would I prefer to Have the baseball field back up to me and like my husband I had different ideas about that but I'm just curious if that is something that you know when we hear from the public is that can we kind of put that into this it says, you know, we would like the building's kind of closer to the properties of the home so that it protects. Yeah,

that's kind of what we heard in generic feedback throughout this process so far. In a lot of our neighborhood meetings, we kind of talked it through and there were people who felt that a building, because it wouldn't necessarily have lights or noise, would be more desirable. I don't know that I have an audit of every single neighbor that backs up and what they think, but if there are other neighbors that back up that have their preference that reverses what we've established in the overlay district, this is the perfect time to...

Yeah, I think that's important for them to kind of really speak their mind on how that all works. I think that might be it. Sorry. That's all for me now. Thanks, Anna.

Yes. First, thank you for the very thorough report and rest of staff. The general public, I want to thank you guys for your very thorough questions last time, which sent me on a very deep dive of information since our last time two weeks ago. Part of what I came up with that is I looked very closely at a similar large institution, St. Louis University, and the process that they went through back in 2016. And I kind of want to compare and contrast those two projects. So back then in 2016, through that process, the city of St. Louis blighted 395 acres and then gave developmental control to St. Louis University to basically develop that land as they pleased and be able to hand out incentives. The pro that came out of that from people is, okay, this large chunk of land, we're able to kind of proactively plan in a large group. The con, obviously, is you give up all control What I see from this process is kind of the best of both of those worlds in the sense of we retain control in the sense that we still have site plan review, we still have architectural review. But then at the same time, we do get to put those larger planning documents in place that kind of help that along. Also, I know like through a lot of this, the comment that's come up a lot is we, there's so much that we just don't quite know. And unfortunately with a lot of that, I think we automatically go to the maximums. So I worked to try and get like very hard data, especially with, uh, WashU baseball and softball. And just so I can rattle off those numbers. So we're kind of working with real numbers when we talk here tonight. Um, Currently, the softball fields can hold 222 spectators. There are five grandstands that hold respectively 35 people, 35 people, 60 people, 49 people, and 43 people. WashU softball has 32 home games, including the playoffs. This is in 2024, they made the playoffs. 22 of those 32 games were held on the weekend, and 16 of them were comprised of doubleheaders. Ten of those games were on weekdays. Four of those were comprised of doubleheaders. The earliest start time was 10 a.m., and the latest was 6 p.m., and that was a playoff game. Women's softball goes seven innings, and those games average an hour and a half to two hours. Attendance numbers are not necessarily reported for WashU Athletics so much, but it is spotty for certain games. The game on April 13th versus Case Western, who was the sixth-ranked team in the country at the time, The attendance for that softball match was 205 spectators. For WashU's baseball program, Kelly Field, WashU's baseball facility can hold 265 spectators currently. There are two grandstands that hold 70 people and the other one holds 195 people. WashU baseball had 26 home games. 22 of those 26 were on the weekend and 16 of those 22 were part of doubleheaders. Four of those games were on weekdays. The earliest game started at 11 a.m. The latest started at 3 p.m. The average game lasting for two and a half hours. So I know there's a lot of consternation as far as a lot of attention as far as, you know, the lights and oh, if a game is going, you know, NCAA regulations, if a game, you know, is past 10 and it's in the ninth inning. at least real world situation, how it exists right now. Those games are ending well before those times. Also as far as soccer field house goes, stuff like that, it's important to keep in mind that this is, I believe the intention here is to replace the intramural facilities, not to go to varsity level for WashU. Washington University varsity soccer, They have a facility on campus that allows play. Washington University has a field house. That house is 3,000 people where the maximum on this is 500 people. So just something to keep in mind as far as where events would be scheduled and what would be held there. It's also interesting to know as far as people attending from inside the university versus coming from outside the university, that field house that holds 3,000 people, though a lot directly servicing that can only hold 52 cars. So the vast majority, I believe, of this use is coming from student use with Washington University not being a commuter campus like some other universities. There's much more pedestrian activity. There's much A lot of this, I think, you know, we're looking at worst-case scenarios. And I was hoping just to kind of put some real numbers to that for us to consider tonight. But thanks.

Thanks, Jim. David?

I don't have any questions or comments.

Okay. We covered everything?

Very familiar with it.

Okay. We've come to a point where we'd like to have citizen reaction. However, since we're coming up to three hours sitting still, I'd like to take a 10 minute break for everyone. So no, are you ready to sit another three hours? Okay, we'll give it another try. What I would like is whoever would like to speak, we will limit it to three minutes. If you speak once, you cannot come back and speak again. Well, please, may I finish. Thank you. The intention is to allow as many people to speak as possible tonight so that we do get out of here before midnight. So if you would follow that I would appreciate it and Who's first

I have a question rather than a comment, which is about implementation. So when we talk about what time these facilities will be used and the noise level, we are looking for that to be implemented by teenagers. Right. So whether whether games go late, whether there are whether there's music and loudspeakers, whether drunk people are playing tennis in the middle of the night, all of that is determined by teenagers. And we love them. A lot of us have them. We've all been them. And I'm wondering how will we as neighbors implement or rather enforce these rules that are really implemented by people who are outside of our control? So do we call the police every time? Do they get fined? Does WashU get fined? are they i i i'm really just speculating how is it because it seems to me that that's a weak link in this process that it's unclear what recourse the neighbors the neighbors have if any of these uh these criteria are not followed so i just would love to to find out the answer to that thank you

So that quickly, I would assume that it would be a very similar process to anything that's going on any part of the Washington you campus currently but if there's anything else for staff.

Yes, enforcement wise, you could call the police because it would this is adopted in our municipal ordinance so we can enforce it. The nice part also with Washington University is they have their own police enforcement and security teams and other elements so They will also be responsible for maintaining operations per our municipal regulations that they would be governed under. If they did not, then we can enforce it through the tools that we have at our disposal, including police, including municipal court, fines, etc.

Hello, I'm Sally Lieberman. I live on Southmore. We do not agree to this project. Big Bend is already a very dangerous street as it is. If WashU continues with this project, there could be major infractions with how my family lives our lives, day-to-day lives. I walk to school every morning, and my family uses Big Bend for a ton of reasons. I ride my bike and scooter all the time, and I walk to and from school with my friends too. My family does not want it to become any more dangerous than it already is. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Jean Cowan. This is going to make me emotional. I live at 1 Dartford Avenue. I live right at that top tip. And I appreciate all the information. I've been slow to absorb it. It's kind of snuck up on us. I enjoyed, didn't enjoy it. I appreciated looking at all of it when I look at the, what did you call it? The... The layout testing, it is extremely disturbing. I've lived in Clayton for 30 years and I've lived at 1 Dartford Avenue for 17 with my husband and my two daughters. And this overlay impacts the quality of our life and the quality of my neighbor's lives. Live on Dartford here, I see them in the audience. And not just Hillcrest, it's Southmore, it's Ridge, Forest Ridge, it's everyone in Clayton. This is... I don't understand the R2 district. It says it's a single facility dwelling district. How can they put athletic fields? Your question was, would you rather have a building or a field? I would rather have neither. I work 50 hours a week. I come out of my backyard. It is peaceful and tranquil, and this is going to destroy all of that. So I've talked to some lawyers and they say that this, and I agree, this is an inconsistent and inappropriate and unreasonable use of this area. I just wanted to come here. I told my kids I'd be home by seven. I had no idea. This is the first time I've been to a meeting like this, but now I understand. Um, and, um, I just wanted to go on record, um, that I completely oppose this. Um, and I will continue to be involved and, um, and stay connected to this because it's a quality of life issue for all of us who've lived here all of this time. And I think I have all these disjointed points here, but those are the main ones. Oh, pedestrian noise, the pedestrian traffic. Obviously, we don't want any actual traffic through Dartford, but the pedestrian traffic, who's controlling that? There was a comment how access will be designed. I have no idea, but I used to be in college and I know the shenanigans that can occur. And I don't want that going up and down my street, bikes, pedestrians, everything that that all of this will bring is I see no benefit to any of the residents. I don't see the benefit to the city of Clayton. I don't know why we would approve this unless we're just forced to do it. I see none of that. I realize we have to get along with our neighbors and I say all of this in the most respectable way, but I have huge concerns about this and I appreciate you listening.

Hello, I'm David Katzman. I live on 3 Dartford, so going down the street. I too oppose this proposal as it currently stands. I think we need better protection in the northeast corner. The transition zone and the setbacks are not nearly large enough. And I would urge all of you to walk that area and look looking at it on the map is one thing but to stand on the ground and to look how close it is to our homes is another and um you know the transition zone is allowed to be encroached on by five feet by the lighting for the fields which i think having an 80 foot light in our backyard would be very, very upsetting. And then in that regard, you know, the 930 time to turn out the lights is awfully late. The building heights are awfully high. And, you know, I think as the proposal stands, everybody in the Hillcrest area, anywhere within the vicinity would certainly oppose it. I'm welcome to revisions, but until then, I think we would all oppose it. And I thank Anna for all of her work and communications, and I'm looking forward to some additional changes to the proposal. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Anne from Tuscany Park. I'd like to remind everyone that the zoning right now that exists here is R2. There's no conditional use there. Those are not transferable. When in 1994 Concordia wanted to build student housing there, if they had to get a conditional use. That doesn't go with this land. It's zoned for single family houses. The height limits are two stories. The height of fences and retaining walls is for feet. You can't cover more than 45% of the property with impervious material. The whole WashU thing has nothing to do with this area. Further, WashU has not been held to any standards on this. It doesn't even make sense that they would use this area, the Concordia area, for a playing field. They said, oh, well, we want things to be convenient for our students, so we'll move this to Danforth area, the student housing. It'd make much more sense to move the athletic facility right next to the athletic facility that's already there on the South 40. That's where all this stuff is. Also, the zoning that you're suggesting, particularly an overlay district, is much more invasive and intensive than any zoning I could find in Clayton, including all the way up to high density commercial. And I'll tell you why. in uh what c1 they never get in c2 which is along clayton road which is commercial um those limits are up to in the area by clayton and big ben the building heights can be five stories um there's uh There's no EIFS allowed in any of that area, that Taco Bell material that they want to build the student housing out of. Retaining walls can't go over five feet. There's so many things. It's more invasive than any commercial setting that we've got in Clayton. Even high-density commercial downtown, except for the building height and setbacks, it's they're restricted more than the people in an overlay district. And I think it was said a couple of things that WashU, I think David, you said something, WashU doesn't owe Clayton anything. They're not obligated to do anything for us. And yet, We have to go up with the overlay district with 10-story buildings. That doesn't matter what the CUP is. You can have 10-story buildings, you can have food service because they're gonna eat. They've gotta have a doctor's office because it's a sports facility. They'll have a store, tennis balls, all the stuff that kids need for that. It's all sorts of stuff that wouldn't be allowed in even any commercial area around here. It's also interesting, Washington doesn't even own this, they're leasing it. Why allow such permanent buildings to a leased area of land? It doesn't make sense. If I wanna do something to my land and Gary could back this up, I have to, if I didn't want to follow the rules, if I wanted something special, I have to go to the Board of Adjustment. And if I want to break the rules, I have to apply about three alternate plans give to the board to show that I've tried everything possible before I did all this intrusive stuff. Why? I don't understand the grip that WashU has on everybody. It's like, hey, Sandy got this because it's short hairs. It's really invasive. Nothing about this is... compatible with anything around it. And the overlay district just gives them a free reign. It's basically because it's anything that school wants. It's like a town. They can have anything the little city wants. It's bad. And I think I sort of resent that WashU is not held to showing us some alternatives or do it somewhere else, not in an R2 district, which it is, by the way, R2. uh i object mostly to the um zone change i think that's a huge huge deal and totally opposed to that so i think it's start over and the answer could be no they didn't allow two big projects before this the international headquarters for uh the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, and no ingress or egress on the Big Bend. This is so much bigger than that.

My name's Dave Jump, 5 Southmore. I've got questions as much as anything. When you talk about the building height, Is that the building height versus the existing grade or whatever the grade might be at some time in the future?

No, there is restrictions based on the existing grade. So they wouldn't be allowed to build a giant hill and then put the 67 road building.

And thank you for asking the question about the maximum number of people. I'm still confused about that. Can you pull that slide up? I just... there's 900 here and there's 900 there and there's a few hundred more in the building. And what does all that add up to?

Well, through this where we are not regular. So when they provide a site plan, that's how they would have to show that you can meet certain restrictions to provide the access and the parking and everything else. So this is just a starting point that says some maximum capacities for operating the site.

but there's a maximum of two outdoor events each with 900 people. So we've got 1800 there, right?

Yeah. If they had, yes. Assuming they would be able to actually facilitate development of two facilities that could hold 900 plus the parking and other aspects of it under the special event.

I'm just reading your slide. And then, then you've got up to another 500 people or another 300 people or Another 500 people. Well, anyway, it seems like a lot of people to me. I just want to understand what it is. But what I really think is nobody's talking about a fence around this whole thing. Nobody's talking about, I mean, are they taking tickets? When you get to 900 people, do you really know 901 just showed up? Are there wristbands? Is there a tall wall or a fence or a... I mean, whoever wants to come is going to come until somebody says stop. And these people out here, they're not going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's that's a thousand and prove it. I mean, these are college students. Whoever wants to come is

Hi, I'm John Hutkin, and I spoke last time. One, the first thing that keeps coming out here, we're going to protect. We're going to protect the neighbors. The neighbors need protection. I didn't see that we needed any protection with what just went on with the seminary. They didn't need any protection. Just wanted to make it right. This idea, and I love Washington U, and I think we support it, but not that particular program. That is a house built on a false foundation. You mentioned the first thing was, well, we won't think about lights. Well, in Kirkwood, the high school got the courts denied the lights that they want to put in. The sound... There's no way that that's going to be protected. There's no way. We have a building that had three dog, three pens and each dog for the tenant. And it was one person felt that they were going to hear it and they were going to turn us down. So the company said, we'll just take one pen over 200 feet away for one dog with a sound wall. You're talking 900 people? Last night, we heard very loud. I don't know if it was font font or whatever. Somebody was doing something. And I live at 11 Brentmore. Was there something going on with Washington U? Well, it did stop at 9 or 930, something like that. There's no way. There is no way you can protect. Are you going to have everybody calling the police all the time? That's not their job. There is no way that you can, if you had one ball field, you would have this whole protection program going. We're going to protect the neighbors. Wait a minute. You've got three. You've got another indoor version. You've got all the, you've got other buildings that are 67 feet. That doesn't, you can't protect anybody. And so this, and the last thing is, Anyway, I was just saying that the whole sound thing, I don't even know how you're even dealing with that. That's like if you vote for that, you are putting in place something that you can't enforce. And so you already know, and you know that you can't do what you say you're going to do. You're going to keep that down to 70 dB. It's not doable. Now, the traffic. This is the biggest piece of the puzzle, which was mentioned how many people could actually be there. And the new traffic that comes in and the exceptional piece of pedestrian traffic, that is the most unique piece of the puzzle. Now, and the shenanigans going, we all, when we were younger, had the shenanigans and people that are coming there under the influence. And you have all these people. My neighbors have four kids, and they were telling me, I said, well, you know, I see even kids on the back with the bicycles in the front and the back. He says, yeah, we're one of those. They are worried about it. The gentleman that came up earlier last time, he was very concerned about his kids. I see all the schools letting out, and you have groups of people that – nice people – But they're coming to a games like that. And intoxication is part of sometimes going and yelling and screaming. And I know when I've been to baseball games and I'm rooting for a team, I'm very excited. And they're going to be excited. And there's no way you can maintain this thing. If you had one field, we'd have just as much steel. Now you've got all of these things in one place. It's inappropriate. I don't know how you can see it any other way. And when I say that the House is on a false foundation, none of those things can be contained. You cannot contain the groups. You cannot obtain the amounts. You cannot who's coming under influence. You cannot contain the sound and you can't really contain the lights. And so none of these things can be done. That's the foundation of which all these, I think everybody's trying to be helpful. How can we do this? But it's the wrong product in that particular location. Okay.

I'm Chuck Shagrin, 14 Southmore Drive. Earlier in the day, I sent you all a letter outlining my concerns about changing the zoning in this district. But I'd like to take this opportunity to build on this building height conversation. A long big bend, yes, the height limit is 65 feet. I would like to point out that Clayton measures building height only to the midpoint of the roof, so the roof can be taller than 65 feet. In a particular overlay district, they're allowed another 12 foot in height for elevator overruns, mechanical equipment, and stairs. Anna described that 65 foot height as being typical of university, Washington University buildings. And in fact, this is a photograph of one of their buildings on campus, not quite 65 foot tall, but this is what is proposed building could sit along Big Bend to the east of the setback area that's required for the tree ring. I don't think any of you would expect to see this building as part of what sounds so benignly as an athletic complex. What could be more innocent than some playing fields? The reality is there's nothing particularly innocent about the size, scale and scope of the buildings that are permitted under the overlay district.

Jonathan Katz, Three Tuscany Park. Well, we see some possible site layouts, but there's no topography on those site layouts. It all looks very flat, but this land is not flat. It's about 50 feet elevation drop from upper end to the lower end. There's a deep ravine running along just east of Big Bend Boulevard. There's going to be a lot of bulldozers changing, moving land, building it up by 20 or 30 feet, reducing it by 20 or 30 foot. It's going to kill all of those really handsome old trees in what we call the Concordia Woods along Big Bend Boulevard.

Hi, my name is Carol Needham. I live on Tuscany Park. I appreciate the work that you've done and I really appreciate the seriousness with which you're accepting comments and ideas from the community. Regarding noise, the noise from the amplified concerts at Oak Knoll Park carries now all the way across over Big Bend through to St. Rita, which is on the edge of the current playing fields at CBC. This is obviously tolerable 5 to 7 p.m., a couple Sundays a year. It would be an entirely different thing, and in fact it would lower property values if amplified concerts, music, announcements were allowed any day of the week, all day long until 10 p.m. That is, it makes your patio unusable, it makes it impossible to enjoy your current use of the property. I have no objection to the Oak Knoll Concerts, but just if it were all day, every day permitted, that's a different animal than maybe on Friday and Saturday nights until 9 p.m., something like that. As a general item, you had asked after an overlay is approved, my understanding is that the property owner is only constrained by the limits that are specified in the overlay. If a limit is not specified in that overlay, they can go ahead. That's why it's really important to put things like a correct decibel level at property line early, rather than thinking we can't appeal later. Like if a tout that 60 decibels, which is in the current, is just 10 decibels less than a vacuum cleaner. And if you want a vacuum cleaner sound at your property line permitted, Nobody wants that. That's ridiculous. That's unrealistic in terms of a way to live. But we can't later in an appeal process say, oh, we made a mistake. It really should be 20 or 30 decibels. So the overlay has to correctly state the max that you want to allow people to do. All right. If I'm wrong about the appeals process and we can change the overlay parameters later, let me know. I Okay, it sounds like whatever we set that's that is the specifications, then, in that case, the noise level at 60 is way too loud at the property line. Right right now it's something like 10 decibels you can hear leaves rustling and and you know it's a quiet situation. I propose it should be 30 decibels at the max. That's the sound of a dishwasher going all the time. And I frankly think that it would be nice if it could stay where it is now, you know, don't change the neighbor's ability to enjoy their yards. I'd like to add no vibrations from the district, no amplified intermittent noise like music with drums, amplified announcers. If we have to allow amplification, which is again a choice, it isn't required, but if we permit it, then it should only be Friday and Saturday nights until 7 p.m., 8 p.m. There's no reason to have announcements going on into the night. just because a baseball game has started already. We should also, I don't know if it's possible to enforce this at all, but I would prefer no orders and smells coming from the site. You know, frying food and that kind of thing is annoying. Any of you who have lived in a city in a really congested neighborhood know that if you ever live on top of a bar or restaurant that has frying food, It can be disgusting to smell it. It's premature to approve an overlay district at this point. It hasn't been fully developed, even though we have taken a number of months. I think there needs to be a little more consideration of precisely what the permitted dimensions ought to be. um we need to see more details about specifically how the land will be developed within the overlay and honestly the change in fact where bonbon is now available says to me that if i were washu i'd want to make it a unified plan i imagine that they have thought about how they're going to use the Fontbonne section as well as the Big Bend section in the South 40. We should know what their thoughts are so we can understand what the impact will be on our neighborhoods. But I guess my main point is intermittent sound is forbidden except Friday and Saturday nights, and no decibels at the property line more than 30. That's already an increase over what it is now. but it certainly should not be as high as 60 allowed at your property line. Thank you.

My name is Marie bone I'm at 28 sophomore and I appreciate the time and the professionalism that you all have brought to this. But I have to speak for myself, and I think for some of my neighbors who are a long big bend it's been elegantly stated that it is already dangerous. It took me seven and a half minutes to get able to make a turn out of my neighborhood at 505 this evening so. You know, come visit. Come visit when it's already bumper to bumper, cranky people in traffic. I expect this proposal, because of the volume of people who can be allowed as this stands, and the... The way access is designed, driven on Big Bend, I expect it to be a profound deterioration in the quality of life in my neighborhood and a financial burden to us as neighbors in terms of the decline or resale value of our homes declining significantly. This will create an element of uncertainty because it will pend out there for years and You have chosen not to require that WashU present their font bond plan as a piece of it, which potentially could mitigate some of the issues, particularly the ingress-egress issues. And The period of time, there's been no discussion of the period of time during which they're undergoing construction, which will, and the way this is set up, all of that construction access would have to come through the Big Bend entrance, at least as I understand it. So I'm sitting here expecting somewhere in the five to 10 year range of increased traffic, reduced property value, and deteriorated quality of life. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Jerry Lauder, 110 Arundel. And I'd like to echo so many of the comments tonight, and particularly the ones of my neighbors that live right at the beginning of Dartford. I live right on the corner of 110 and Arundel, and I think some of the pictures we saw tonight with those potential layouts made it even more unsettling to me. And I invite, if you haven't walked the line, especially on any of the property, but particularly the north one, to do it. And I'm sure our neighbors, like we did on Saturday with our alderman after our Ward 1 coffee, we walked the line and you really got an impression of the impact that it could have. And particularly in that kind of hollow where the single houses are currently. where again, there's probably, I don't know, 25, 30 feet drop, if not more from the field, the large existing field down to Dartford. And, you know, even with the increased offset of 150 feet, I could have the back, the outfield fence of a baseball field at the second level of my house, 150 feet away. And the other night came home and heard, a loudspeaker from the baseball field at the corner of Big Bend and Forsyth, which is about six-tenths of a mile away, and it was very loud and clear. So can you imagine what it's going to be like if a baseball field was positioned there day, evening, whatever, how loud it's going to That area particularly could be developed. Technically, it can be with deep pockets. It can be. But the question is, should it be? And I would say no. Okay. And I think that to, you know, I think it could be your job to help honor and retain some of the natural topography of that property, the ones that we've all enjoyed as a privilege to use the green space and actually require ideally fairly large swaths of land on the north and south boundaries particularly. to be maintained in its natural topography, maybe for public use and further restrict the area where they can develop. And I think that would be a good neighborly gesture by both Concordia or WashU to potentially agree to that. But in its current form, I can't support it either. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Angela Lieberman. I live at 1 Southmoor. directly across from this monstrosity you're talking about creating. So Saturday night, just one thing I want to say first, Saturday night was Fon Fon's homecoming. It was about 9.30, 10 o'clock at night. And we had to – it was above our TV, which is right by the – you know, our TV, our master suite faces Big Bend. And we're like, what is that noise? You know, we're getting ready to wind down. We're putting our kids to bed too. We're kind of helping them. We hear this loud noise, music from the Fon Fon Homecoming. I thought, wow, imagine if that were a sports team and people cheering. Imagine if that was multiple nights a week. It's ridiculous. This is not the place for this. Seriously. Yeah, that's all I have to say. Please strike this down. This is a no. From everybody I've talked to, this is a no.

Hi, I'm David Edison from 30 Southmore with my mother, Marilyn. I also live right across the street from this monstrosity. I remember 40 years ago when my mom stopped Concordia from building their international headquarters right across the street. And she can't do it this time. She's done it before. We all need to stand up and say no to this horrible idea. I appreciate the overlay squeezing back. I see seven boxes, seven fields, seven buildings into an increasingly smaller parcel of land, which makes me beg the question, why are we doing this? It is obviously not a good fit. It does obviously not sit well with the neighbors the faculty, the donors, the community that has welcomed Washington University. And why? Why do this? Why do this to us? Don't do it.

Hi, I'm Josephine Weil from Forest Ridge. I thought I'd start by thanking you all. You know, you want to do what's right for the city. You want to do what right for all of us. We know that. You also want to do what is right for WashU. It may not be possible to make us all happy, but I wanted to tell you a little bit, take a different tact and tell you about some of us. I am here tonight. My husband and I have not gone out on October 7th for 10 years. Tonight we're here, and it's our grandson's birthday. And I'll tell you, we live for this boy, I'll tell you the truth. I wear an E every day on my neck, a beautiful necklace that my husband gave me. E because Sammy calls me E at two or three months or four months, whatever. He picked up the E probably from Granny. I don't know, but it's always been E. We're crazy about him. It's the first time we've missed his birthday. I said, you know, this may be more important. We'll celebrate your birthday another night. Birthdays can go on for a month. I also want you to know that there are two people in this room who are having birthdays tonight. Chuck Shagrin's daughter moved here to be with her father and mother. She lives in Clayton with her two kids. You know they would have loved a family celebration. It's Chuck's birthday tonight. It's also Marilyn Edison's birthday tonight. And we know this because we're family. We're more than just neighbors, we're family. I know stories about some of these people in this room that are just terrific. And I know it because we share our lives together. And this is not, our opposing this construction is not just a prejudice. It's not just a dislike of somebody changing our world. It is changing our world, our close natured world where we love nature. We love trees. We love our families. We love our community. And we'd like, I guess, hate to sound old and grumpy, even though you could say I am. I think we really just really want not to have that development right in our face. I've walked the area from Dartmouth with Diane Katzman, our good friend, her husband's our doctor. Everybody here has a connection and we love each other and we want our world to stay the same and we want it to feel free and open and wonderful as it is. Thank you so much.

So I just wanted to ask if it's possible at all to have a kind of a, like an overlay that would establish the protections that you're doing on the edges, but then still require these additional conditional use applications and stuff for the more detail? Because I keep, like the Fontmont, I think a lot of neighbors are confused about why You wouldn't consider all of that area of Fontbonne, especially like a field house, parking lots, lighted, amplified fields. Why wouldn't you consider that some of that might be able to be put where there's already built up infrastructure? area in Fontbonne or looking at the whole campus like where the existing fields are now and understanding like okay we're going to have amplified rec stuff here, maybe this could be like practice fields. not the same level of the sort of talking and the music and the event space because it is a residential neighborhood. So it just seems like this could be a downgraded version that would support WashU, that would have the fields, but maybe not the field house because maybe the field house could go where Fontbonne is. Like it just seems like you have to look at it all together before you approve all of these initiatives uses here which seems to like pave the way for this sudden rec center in the middle of the neighborhood does that make sense like i'm just looking for a kind of a more of a mediated study that considers broader scenarios that would not put all of this big stuff here because it doesn't make sense especially not knowing the rest of the planning

Would you give us your name again for this time?

I'm Patty. I'm in Hillcrest on Aberdeen. Thank you.

I'd just like to break rules for 30 seconds. Could I have that?

30 seconds.

You're on. One of the things in our company is commercial real estate. If something is unsafe on the lots or whatever, don't get it bid. Just get it fixed. Not now. Right now. And I see what the big thing with this traffic business is really the pedestrians. And we are adding a lot of risk to the pedestrians. On that alone, if I were sitting on these boards, I would not vote for this just for that reason alone. All the people coming in, they're coming in from a different reason and looking for a different time there. And I don't see upgrading the risk factor. It's not worth it.

Hi, my name's Obi Griffith. I'm at 104 Arundel, which is right backing onto the development. I'm a professor at Washington University. I completely echo all of the concerns. I'm not going to repeat those. You might have noticed when I came in, I had two little ones before my wife could pick them up. I wanted to try to just represent the other families in Hillcrest, many of whom have small children. You know, we've got elementary schools, multiple elementary schools, middle school. Every morning there's fleets of kids walking through this neighborhood. Talking with our neighbors with kids, many of them can't make these meetings. You know, it's just really hard when you've got little ones to get to a meeting like this. And many of them also just don't have time to even be informed about this. Like they're some of them just aren't even aware that this is really happening. Despite all of your great efforts to reach out to the community, I think most of them are on the same page as the people here where they have serious concerns about especially the safety that could come from the increased traffic from something like this. Thank you.

Joan Downey, Tuscany Park. Thank you for holding this meeting. Sorry it goes on so long. I want to make a few points. One, Tuscany park has polled itself. We are 100% against changing the zoning from R2. I hope this process doesn't waste a lot more neighborhood time to have to pull itself to message that I don't think any of the adjacent neighborhoods are in favor of this proposal. I think it is very premature. I appreciate all the hard work that's gone into it because I think it has improved the knowledge base, hopefully of yourselves and certainly of us on the complexity of these projects. But it is sad to me that you had to spend your time providing useful information regarding census and times, really? Did that have to be your work? That should have been part of this. This is all very premature. WashU can give us a lot more information. I'm speaking as a retired faculty member currently. And they have options. The North Campus is flat. What I learned when I saw this much reduction reduced number of boxes was the proposal, the first panel that had eight things it was very clear wash you plan to. flatten fill and stick as many boxes in all these additional restrictions clearly have resulted in way less capacity I don't see where parking is. Personally, I don't think there should be any parking in that entire space. And there should be no ingress and egress off Big Ben. Clayton and Big Ben, that intersection were not in the preliminary parking study that was handed out because it's already an F. You can't get worse than F. There is no capacity for Big Ben to take more cars. And if you put parking, you invite cars. And it took me 14 minutes. To get out of Tuscany tonight I specifically waited, I did it several times between 4pm and 515 to get here, it is quite a long haul I can gun it too, and you see us all doing that. But I have very little respect for the county's perception of big Ben you'll notice that big Ben from clayton road to the university. was up to 40 miles an hour. The Wash U piece of Big Bend, from Forsyth to Skinker, they maintained the 35. How is that? It's the same cars. We were told that our piece had to go to 40 because Clayton Police, well, the county's wording was the lack of the ability to enforce, meaning so many people go faster than 35 that they up the speed limit to minimize the number of people breaking the speeding law. That was the reasoning given to us for why our piece went to 40. I'm not sure what WashU said, but their piece stayed at 35. So that makes no sense. And as to MSD's, my confidence in MSD's ability I've counted eight times they've tried to find where the water is coming from at Clayton Road and, like, right in front of Walgreens. It's at least eight or ten times they've dug up that entire piece of Clayton Road trying to find where the Water comes from that creates the ice slick if you're trying to get into Redco. And it's still there. It's a little bit more south now. But it's still there, so I have very little trust, I am very worried that you don't. This approval doesn't have the facts on whether that runoff down to Tuscany is even at capacity or exceeds capacity and I really learned that tonight when he said he couldn't tell because the MSD study still needs to be done for him, the engineer. So please don't approve this is premature, this is all good work, but I do think it's still premature thank you.

hi my name is Pauline Kim I live in a rental. I had sort of two points, one is the difference between the overlay and the cup process. Um, and I, I do appreciate all the work that's gone in. There's a lot of thinking I've learned a ton from getting involved in this process. And there's, I think a lot of thought that has gone into it, but to the extent that the goal is to protect the neighbors, I don't think it's sufficiently protective. And what we are giving up is the opportunity to have the CUP to actually look at the usage again when there's a specific plan on the table. So that's one thing in terms of the process. In terms of the current overlay there's a point that I want to make a couple people have sort of mentioned, but I really want to highlight it. This is not a flat surface, it has very significant topography and particularly in the northeast corner. If you're looking up if you're looking sort of South towards those fields there's a very steep grade that goes up and there are a whole lot of mature trees at the top. And this plan would allow the tree canopy to go from 40% to 20% in this area. That's going to have, and that together with grading the property in order to get those fields in, it's going to have a significant effect on the surrounding communities in terms of heat, water runoff, pollution, biodiversity. And that is not being taken into account or protected here sufficiently. Thank you.

Any other comments from the audience?

One hour.

hi david kramer again i'm in brent moore um so my comments are um other than my concern about the wildlife um i would actually push back on your comment that we have to be good neighbors here because this land isn't owned by washu they're coming in and they're going to rent the land so they're the new neighbor And so, as such, you know we're having to or you're asking us to adjust to them, so my big concern here one of my big concerns is the traffic right, so I think this is going to drastically disrupt traffic on big bend I think it's wrong. I would push back on your comment that you feel like this is a better way to do this because if you do it in the more traditional manner that everyone else in the world has to comply with, that once they come with their plans, then it's difficult to push back. Well, you're the planning commission. you can push back on anything you want to. So do you have any backbone or spine? Or maybe you can give them all these things ahead of time and say, we're still going to go through the other process, but this is the stuff that you want to comply with. That's it.

Good evening. Jeff Gershman here on behalf of the Wiles. First, I want to thank the staff. Ana and Ryan and David have been extremely helpful, extremely communicative. Met with them all. They've explained what they want to do. We respectfully disagree, but they've been nothing but professional throughout this entire process. The comment that Bob made earlier, I respectfully disagree with in strong terms. We're not just setting parameters here. We're skating by the central question, which is what's the appropriate use? You ask, is this reasonable? It's not reasonable. And the reason why in two meetings you've had a room full of people each night is because you're proposing to take away protections from the conditional use permit process. And let me just tell you what that says here. Colleges and universities are permitted uses within an R2 district provided that buildings shall not occupy more than a third of the area site, and the height, location, and use of these buildings will not have a serious and depreciating effect on any adjacent residential property. Okay? That's a protection we have now in the CUP process. And then you go to the CUP process, and it lists... 15 different criteria. The first criteria is the proposed use is compatible with surrounding uses and with the surrounding neighborhood. That's where we start on this process. Now, I've heard the explanation about if we go to this overlay district there's some sort of generalized requirement that in the site plan process that there be general conformance but that's not the same protection there's no analysis there as to whether this is an appropriate use in this neighborhood and with respect to the staff report there's nothing in the staff report about whether this is an It talks about lights, sound, how high the poles can be. But the very first question is, does this make sense in this location? And I would suggest to you that it doesn't. Finally, I think what you're trying to do here through an overlay district is to avoid a piecemeal approach. But piecemeal is exactly what we're doing. We all know WashU has expanded beyond their traditional campus. They've got the CBC site. Now they have the Fontbonne site. Now they want to do something on the Concordia site. The obvious thing that they should be told is, let's see your master plan. What's the overall plan? Fontbonne already has an entrance off of Big Bend. Why do we need another one a little farther south? Maybe their home... Maybe their whole plan contemplates things on the Fontbine campus that we don't even know. Shouldn't we know that stuff now before we piecemeal approve these athletic fields? So these are the things I think as a plan commission, as a staff, that you ought to be asking the university so we can make an intelligent judgment. You all can make an intelligent judgement about the overall plan. That's what I suggest to you. Thank you.

We have,

do you guys, I'm Rand Summer. I'm in Fort Tuscany. That means I'm in the backyard of this, which means you've incorporated me into your college campus. I don't appreciate that. Okay. So that's not the way I bought my house. That's not why I moved to Clayton. Number two, do you guys know what Tuscany Park is? Tuscany Park has a pond. In 1890, it was a pond. That means it's a natural drainage site. That's why my basement got flooded to almost seven feet a few years ago. Now, that is not good in terms of a drain. You have a sinkhole right there. Right behind Tuskegee Hole is a sinkhole. That's natural drainage. You're going to create an artificial drainage system that's not going to endanger us? I've peered my house twice now. He twice appeared it Okay, that means we're built on clayton that it's not named clayton because of that, but it's all clay. you're going to move all this dirt all around all around our houses and not expect peering problems who's going to pay for that me I don't like this, they shouldn't happen if it does you're not protecting those who pay your taxes.

We have two people virtually. Yes, let's go. Anne, can you unmute yourself? No, let's go to the next one. Okay, DeWitt Cross, if you can hear us.

Yes, I can. So I'm DeWitt Cross. I've lived at 8 Southmore Drive since 1992. I was a Southmore trustee in the 1990s when we participated in the deliberations about the Fontbonne parking lot development. so I'm familiar with this process. I've also been on the WashU Medical School faculty for 33 years, so I can appreciate both perspectives in this matter. I'd like to make two points about the proposed WashU development. The first point is that regardless of whether the conversion of a residential neighborhood to athletic facilities across Big Bend Boulevard from my home would be accomplished through a conditional use permit or through the establishment of an overlay district, I am for the record Strongly opposed to such a conversion for all the reasons others have put forth. This would be of no benefit to residents. The project itself should be rejected. The second point has to do with transparency and disclosure. WashU demands of me whenever I give a presentation or publish research that I publicly state my financial disclosures so that whatever relationships I have with medical device or pharmaceutical companies that might bias what I say or do are known to all. What the university expects of us should likewise be expected by the citizens of Clayton, of its elected and appointed officials, the people who make decisions that might favor Washington University over city residents. All members of the planning commission, the board of aldermen, the city manager, and the mayor should publicly post their prior, present, and potential future business and consulting relationships with and perks or benefits received from Washington University that could potentially bias voting in matters before them that stand to benefit only the university. Thank you.

And can you hear us? Please unmute yourself. And we'll try it one more time. Can you unmute yourself?

No, well. I

think we'll go on. Are there any final comments from the audience, from people who have not spoken?

Vladimir Kolev, 6530 Southwood. Because of so many people would be able to attend those facilities, what I predict will happen is Everybody will park anywhere they can in any street, in any neighborhood, just to be close and to attend. So what's going to happen in the middle of the night, everybody 10, 11 o'clock would go to their car, make a lot of noise, wake up the whole neighborhood. We're not talking about one, two, five cars. We're talking about hundreds of cars. And it's going to make such a disturbance that would make life hard for everybody. So I'm against it.

We have one more.

And I'll be really quick. I'm Mary Campbell, and I'm from Washington University. I also want to compliment you all, the commission, as well as city staff, for putting together this really robust process where we've been meeting for a year and a half. We've had a lot of citizen engagement. I've certainly learned a lot. And The draft that is on the city's website now, it appears to me that a lot of community input is being incorporated. And I know we have further to go, but I appreciate you all listening and being thoughtful about this process. And all I really want to do tonight is we did just look at the draft that's on the website. And generally... the recent changes that were made we'd be comfortable with i think we've got a couple of points that we'd like to raise um that we'd liketo have the plan commission review and city staff review and that's it i just would like to get this short letter into the record

okay thank you if you would hand it to the staff

She handed it to me when I sat down. Well, we will scan it and put it on the website tomorrow for everybody.

Any final comments? Well, we certainly thank everyone for their thoughtful comments, willingness to speak. And I'm sure that we have all listened carefully and will move on beyond that.

Ana,

I'd like to ask... We did not really get a staff report on this. It was all verbal. We received the Big Bend Overlay Zoning

District. You received a staff report. So we've recommended that the public hearings are advanced to the Board of Aldermen. We think staff believes, based on the feedback level, that at this point we really need to hear from the board on how to proceed. um so that was our recommendation is to continue the public hearing at the board level so that we can be directed by them

okay i apologize i okay thank you bob i see it okay um with that in mind i think we'll go around and we'll we'll see jim would you like to uh begin with comments

uh i just want to thank everyone again for their comments. I think this is all stuff that, you know, we take very seriously. I'll say for myself, I can see this site from my own home, so I am very close to it. I have my own small children who go to Clayton Early Childhood who are right here bordering the site, or five and three. So I completely understand the concerns that a lot of people have, and definitely taking them into consideration. Thank you.

Thank you, Amy.

Yes, thank you for all your feedback. I think it's very helpful to hear, you know, when you're so close to the project and the different perspectives and understanding of the site and how it impacts each one of you and your families and your homes and all that. It's definitely a lot to take into consideration. So thank you.

Helen?

I would like to thank everyone also, and thank you for participating. That has always been a goal of mine, is to get people to speak up, whether they're right or wrong, say what their feelings are. So thank you so much.

And I just had a couple questions. So with respect to, I guess, you know, some thoughts about perhaps amending the overlay. Is that something we would perhaps do at the Board of Aldermen level later on? Rather, I guess, I don't know how Washington is potentially objecting to this. I'm just a little concerned about voting and not really understanding what... I mean, I guess we'd be voting on what's before us.

Right. If there are specific changes that this board is interested in hearing or making based on the comments, then let us know and we can make those. But a lot of the comments seem to not be about adjusting the overlay, but is it the overlay versus not an overlay process with the CUP? So that's kind of something that's hard. It's stuck at this level for us. We really need the Board of Aldermen to weigh in on that decision. So at this point, I think if there are elements, if you want to move the overlay district forward with recommended conditions that are looked at again before it goes to the Board of Aldermen, that's one way or making another vote. But at this point, I'm not sure what to change necessarily to continue addressing an overlay district unless you give me pointed action for that.

yeah i just don't know what so then depending on like what was she like if we vote if we approve something that they're they don't they don't want you know what i mean depending on and then you know they don't want concordia site anymore so is the anticipation then that we would vote on it one way or another and then it would go to the

It has to go to the board either way. So you would just be making a recommendation to the board on what you feel to address for this text amendment. So if you make a recommendation for denying the rezoning to the overlay district, then the only thing that changes is that the Board of Aldermen, in order to approve an overlay district, would need a supermajority, which is a vote of five. If you recommend approval, then it could be approved with a simple majority. But either way, the real decision on an overlay district is at the hands of the Board of Aldermen. So I'm happy to come back to this board again and have another meeting, but I don't want to waste everybody's time with another meeting at this level when I think we really need to come to terms with are we proceeding forward with an overlay direction or not and

And I was just wondering, Stephanie is our legal counsel, can you weigh in. I think there's been a lot of suggestion tonight that I mean it is and I want to let you all know that I have watched the property multiple times. I am still concerned about, you know, some certain things related to the topography and But, you know, this is ultimately a piece of land that the city of Clayton doesn't control. I wish that we did. I wish that I owned this land. I wish I could buy it and make it into a park. But the fact of the matter is we've got two private entities who are negotiating a land deal. So if under the scenario, whether or not the overlay is passed, can we say no to athletic facilities on this site?

It would be more difficult to say no through a conditional use permit and here's why you act in two different capacities, you act legislatively and you act administratively legislative you have a lot more discretion. You walk into the courthouse. If your legislative action is challenged already on the winning side, because the court presumed your legislative actions to be correct. And there's a very high standard to challenge those administratively you're on equal footing with whoever is challenging it. So if you deny a conditional use permit to wash you and they decide to sue you, then, um, you're not presumed to be correct, the court's gonna look at the evidence to determine whether it's reasonable or not. So if you take legislative action upfront and you make certain requirements, you're doing so legislatively, which puts you in a much better position to enforce those and to survive any kind of challenge to those. And I'm not saying that, you know, you can't place limitations and restrictions to the conditional use process because you can. It's just that you have more power to do that legislatively through the overlay district than you do through the conditional use permits.

Thank you.

First of all, I know a lot of you people out there And I live right next to it, too. Personally, I feel the overlay district is the right tool. I know you're not going to like me saying that, but it is the right tool from a real estate developer having input in the process that as each project comes up, There are added regulations and restrictions put on them to make it all work. It could be parking, whatever. When the FONPAN starts coming online, that's going to affect how this area is developed as well. It's gonna be the Board of Aldermen that's gonna have the ultimate say. and they can add restrictions, change it, whatever. If it's the setback line, if it's fewer fields, whatever. But I do think Washington U has a legitimate opportunity legitimate interest in doing something with this property that they're going to acquire, I assume, over a long-term lease. I don't know if it's 99 years or what have you. I do think the access is an issue. I'm not sure how that's going to be developed in the end. I don't know if it's going to be a stop sign with a turn lane across from Southmore. I don't and make it work. Those are things that will be done over time. What we are doing now is simply telling Washington U, you're on notice. These are things that we are concerned about. They also have legitimate concerns. They want to be able, they're not moving anywhere. They have only so many ways they can grow and facilitate their students. You know, they live there and they're gonna play there. and to do it in such a way that all of us who live around there have adequate protection from noise, light. Those are all legitimate goals. And if we go project to project, I think we could accommodate those a lot better. At the Board of Aldermen, I think you will have, this is not the final round, so to speak, because I think a lot of you are speaking from the heart and speaking from your own personal experiences. I don't want the noise. loud enough so that my children can't sleep at night. Legit, all that's legit. And I think the goal is that we're on the same page, we're on the page in that we wanna make sure that as changes do happen and they will happen, this is not gonna be a permanent park for us as it has been for a long time. There will be changes, and as changes come, it's our job to make sure we are protected to the extent that we can while allowing Washington U a reasonable use in light of its surroundings. That's all.

David? I don't have any additional comments related to the overlay itself. I just want to thank everybody for their continued participation in this process.

And not to repeat what everyone on the panel has said, but I do feel that I've come from really supporting the CUP process over the past several weeks to moving toward the overlay district as being a stronger control for the city of Clayton to work with, in this case, Washington U. So I do feel that we need to go ahead with it. I think there are sufficient structural care taking areas in there. We would still have to go through a detailed site plan and an Arb, which could scuttle a project completely. But I think we need some parameters to work with. We do not really know what Washington U is proposing at this point, but having gone through several CUPS recently on this plan commission, I feel that we can improve the process by going with the Big Bend Overlay Zoning District. So that is my concern, and I believe, Bob, you showed me that we have a recommendation for

Yes. I make a move to approve the staff recommendation that is the proposed text amendments to the Board of Aldermen.

Second.

All in

favor? Aye. Opposed?

Bob, did your motion apply to both overlay districts or just the Big Bend? Just the

Big Bend that we talked about. Okay.

Okay. Thank you. We do need to go on.

Right. Oh, yeah. We only did the text. We also have software.

But we're going to take a 10-minute break now. Okay? We'll be back in 10 minutes.

I'm going out. I'll see if I can get to San Francisco. which

is, oh, I'm

sorry.

Okay, well, we'll continue. We're on the rezoning aspect of 801 Seminary Place. So I don't have that, but if you would go ahead.

Yes, so we recommended recommending approval on both text amendments and both rezonings. So, so far you've made a motion on the text amendment related to the Big Bend Overlay District.

The rezoning issue, it retains the R2. Correct. So the only difference is setting the boundary.

Right. So in the actual text amendment language, the ordinance would include a description of the boundary. So you kind of already established the boundary within the text amendment, but then the rezoning is when we officially amend our zoning map to match that boundary that you created of the overlay district within the text amendment.

So it'll be R2 subject to the overlay district. That will be the zoning.

Okay, so really I don't see much need for discussion. It seems to have followed the overlay district quite well. So I will call for a motion.

I move that we adopt a staff recommendation to approve the rezoning of what has become known as the Big Bend district or overlay.

No, no, Big Bend. Big Bend. No, not yet. Just Big Bend.

We're planning to

rezoning. To R2 subject to the overlay district, the Big Bend overlay district.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Let's now move on to item six, and that's 6500 Forsyth Boulevard, and it is the other text amendment.

Yeah.

So for South 40 Overlay District, I'll keep this one pretty brief since the majority of our audience has left at this point. I'm going to cover some of the changes that are reflected. So our accessory and primary uses and prohibited uses within the proposed South Overlay District have not changed. One item that I wanted to give a little more context to is our housing density. So currently under the conditional use permit, The CUP for each individual building provides a maximum number of bed count for that building. And then there is actually a couple of times throughout the history of South 40 CUP is where we have included an overall bed count that applies to the South 40 in addition to an individual building count. And so what we've ended up with is a bed count of... 3,300 beds, but there are actually the ability for more beds. There's rooms that are occupied at a lower density, so maybe one bed where you could have two or other items. So within the actual structures themselves, they could facilitate more than that but our maximum number based on the cps is 3 300 beds what we did to understand the density of these existing ones so highlighted in purple here is approximately 10 acres which is attributed to the athletics uses currently on south 40 so right now then if you take the area of everything else that remains in the proposed south 40 overlay district And you take the number of beds that are currently there. That's how we get our 94 beds per acre calculation. And what we're recommending is that we maintain a 94 beds per acre across the entire site. So the number of beds would be increased over time because as you convert these parts of these 10 acres into residential uses, you'll be adding overall beds. But the same kind of density that has been developed at not including that 10 acres would be maintained. So building setbacks. We made a few adjustments after the last meeting. So the first one is that the transition zone on the southern boundary on Y down has been increased before it was just 30 feet, but the building setback was 60. And now the transition zone aligns with that building setback requirement there at 60 feet. We also heard some requests for building heights to kind of step down towards Y down. So we have added this dashed setback line along here, and that's the additional setback for buildings that are over 50 feet in height or parts of the building. So we would allow a building to be designed with a step back. So it could have floors that are the height of less than 50 feet for the first portion the southern portion of the building that would be located in front of the dashed line and then it could step up to the maximum building height of 67 feet once you get past that 150 foot setback so that's how it's kind of a setback or a step back depending on how they might design a building the other element that we've included here highlighted in this south East corner is the existing surface parking lot with the church located next door that utilizes this parking lot. We also establish protections for that parking lot to be maintained. Moving forward, pretty much the same way that you see it today. This surface parking lot, while not utilized by Washington University except for a few occasions, it does provide a nice service to the rest of the neighborhood because without it, this church here wouldn't have any off-street parking. um for the school and the services that they provide so that maintaining the surface parking lot here to support that use i think is important moving forward so i mentioned these slightly already the transition zone similar with uh the proposed big bend overlay we did remove the um ability to have parking garages that are located below grade encroach into a transition zone. The idea here, and I can't remember based on how much we talked about in the last overlay if we touched on it too much, but the reason being in our code right now, it allows parking garages that completely below grade to encroach into setback. And so the building would be underground because you would be maintaining that light flow airflow within that setback area at street level. So the idea is that it doesn't really impact a lot of those development patterns or shadows. However, we recognize here that there's more than just the light and air flow at the surface level of our setbacks and transition zones in both the overlay districts, and so we want to be able to support the large canopy trees and the growth of the things that are required to maintain those as well as some of our existing grading and other elements within our setbacks. So we remove that ability, which is important because it's something that's in our code right now that they could do. So in order to make sure they can't, we have to actually prohibit that within the overlay district to override that R2 element. So that was the quick synopsis of changes because i touched before the big bend on some of the canopy coverage items that related to this one as well so happy to provide any more information for south 40.

okay if you could go back to the original site plan here we are so that means there could be an additional 900 beds

right

okay um But we really don't know what their proposal might be at this point is that correct

that is correct so um basically the the bed calculations they also look back historically at some of their requests that they've had over the years for their number their bed count and there's been kind of i don't know if it's ever like five to ten years the washoe you could could tell you better they'll they would request a new cup because as they replace and rebuild some of the buildings um they would request some that in Sometimes incorporated asking to be able to use unused beds and other buildings, at the same time as approving the new building and other ones so. Through all of that we've been able to kind of track a lot of how they're using their development today what the demands are on parking and other elements, and so with the natural desire to shift everything north and replace. Those dorms north, I think a lot of the density of what it would feel like to add that number of beds to this campus is going to feel, you'll feel it maybe if you're in the middle, but it's going to be kind of negligible in terms of its impacts to the surrounding areas.

I appreciate seeing this with the 34.96 acres or 94 beds per acre, because over the years it was extremely confusing as they came in to add And take away buildings.

Right. And it's hard to track, especially because you come in to get a conditional use permit. And as we've seen with many development units, if you think about the apartment developments that we get, it's often that the number of actual apartment units or the ratio of one bedroom to two bedroom apartments for when they actually finish building that is slightly different from when they come to you all to get... their initial approval. So that happens as WashU builds all of their buildings, as well as maybe convert spaces over time. So we have, I mean, the diagram that I can come to at the end here with existing CUPs, when you actually pull out I mean, some of these CUPs will pull a specific building and it will tell us some really strict restrictions to that building. And then I'll find a CUP for another building 10 years later that pretty much says the opposite of what was being restricted before. And so then we kind of have to count, okay, this building, this dormitory is allowed to be four stories with 163 beds, but we waived 26 parking spots for them. But then we added another count for an overall CUP that limits the total bed to 330. So it gets hard to understand over time where you're headed. And that's the big part about adding that overall density of a bed count per acre spread across the entire site. because that will do a much better job in conjunction with setbacks, building heights, understanding parking requirements phased in over time, because we'll kind of know where we're headed as opposed to this, which changes sometimes and stays the same in others.

Well, seeing this effort and having gone through what we have on this page here, I think it really shows us the benefit of an overlay district in lieu of multiple CUPs.

Yeah, just in terms of, I mean, they asked, the public asked about how do you enforce things over time? And that's something that will be so much easier. I mean, look at the, we have this one building here. I don't know the name of this one. But it has a requirement of an acoustical study for just its mechanical equipment that was supposed to be redone every 10 years to see if that specific mechanical equipment is creating any noise increases. But then we have tons of other buildings that have no mechanical equipment acoustical study requirements. So that's a huge part of why we wanted to take what we've learned from this process of layering CUPs, because there are some other things we've learned that are great. And so we want to kind of use those that may be applied only to two buildings and want to prime across the entire site. But then we've also learned where there's some downfalls, especially when you look at consistency and enforcement over time.

In hindsight, I wish we had reviewed the South 40 overlay before we did the Big Bend overlay.

Yeah, I've explained this document to people in public settings a few times. But yeah, it is an interesting one when you start getting into the weeds of it. Okay. Bob, any

comments?

Basically, no. The overlay district makes sense. All we're doing is basically finishing a pattern that is already well established here, unlike the Big Bend overlay district, which is just bare field for a lot of it. You're maintaining the same density. Nothing else. Richard?

I mean, I still have some concerns on the retaining all step requirement because i'm just concerned about like how that's going to look I mean, I feel like that's less of a concern on the South 40 because it's not necessarily facing um. residential, you know, I mean I you know if it's like facing Forsyth I mean, not sure why she would want their students looking at a 10 foot retaining wall so maybe they would adjust it as needed. And I don't find that the typography there is different than it is.

Can I just say this Bridget. even though there's maybe 15 feet or whatever, in site review for the specific project. Can we not say, well, we want it broken up this way for reasons A, B, C, and D?

I mean, if there's reasons we can tie it to for impacts under site plan review, we can request modifications, but it's not just completely... I would

just rather, again, I think if we're talking about here, I'm less concerned. I'm more concerned when we're talking about a 10 foot rotating wall stepped off of two, you know, facing Tuscany Park. I'm just, I just want to be careful about where we're putting giant retaining walls. So yeah. But other than that, no, I appreciate the larger setback along Y down. And I think that is it.

No further comments. It looks good.

Amy. Just a quick question about the transition zones. Who maintains that? That's the planting and everything. Washington

University. Okay. They would be having to look at that all the time. And through this, so we kind of talked about it before through when Stephanie explained how you kind of uphold and enforce these legislative acts. So we would be able to just like we can right now write a property maintenance citation to somebody for a violation if they were not actually maintaining these transition zones as they're required to do so under our municipal code then we could write them violation notices.

And we do have other remedies outside of municipal court because municipal court is basically a mechanism to, you know, we would hope to gain compliance. But at the end of the day, it's a fine for a violation. But our code also allows equitable actions. And so we could actually take them to court. And let's say that there was an ongoing violation and that they just, you know, continue to refuse something. to comply, then we have the right to go to court and ask for an injunction or ask for other relief. Our code does allow for that. And to prevent the use or the violations from continuing.

Jim? I just appreciate this being considered in an entire overlay district versus piecemeal and giving the university an opportunity to take beds offline and plan in a more comprehensive manner. I mean, I'm looking at this, I see eight separate buildings that are 80 plus years old. So clearly the need is there to kind of replace these with some newer structures and to be able to think of this holistically versus one at a time I think will benefit everyone in the long run. David, any questions?

Any comments from the audience? Come on up.

The definition of the density, which is the 34 acres? Does that not include the athletic field?

Right, so today this evaluates today so everything that's in kind of the L shape that does not include this purple highlight is where we get that that. 34 acres correct

so it's 44 acres total

right so they'll just just over 44 acres okay.

So it was relevant because of what the previous discussion is about. If they suddenly decided they wanted to build on the other 10 acres, then how would that affect the numbers? They would then be able to have 3,300 plus whatever that ends up

being. So right now the total number of beds is regulated – every conditional use permit that governs a new dormitory that they would build would have, some of those would have total numbers of beds associated with it. And then other CUPs would also attach a total number of beds for the site overall. And so that's where it's been kind of regulated in two different ways. So if they were to under the process today to replace athletic fields, then they would need a conditional use permit for the new dorms they were building. But if they were going to not remove other beds in order to be able to actually occupy more than the 3,300 beds, then we would also have to amend that count because it is mentioned in a different conditional use permit for a different dorm.

So, if they radically decided to put beds on the athletic 10 acres, then what's the review process for density and the effect of that on the overall

neighborhood? Are you speaking about the proposed Big Bend area?

No, I'm talking about... The athletic 10 acres. Oh,

so this right now is just highlighted for the purposes of showing how we completed the calculation. So under the proposed overlay district, we would have a cap of 94 beds per acre that we would track. And then they would have to go through site plan review and architectural review with the new dorm that they would build and show how the number of beds on the site was less than 94 beds per acre.

Okay, but if they decided to do the full amount, 3,300, and then they decide to put some more beds where the athletics is now, because we're talking about a long period of time, then the safety of that density, the emergency services, et cetera, would it not be better to have that athletic also strictly athletic rather than leaving a loophole for, well, we're going to make that.

That athletic is part of why they've requested They want to remove that. That's part of this whole process is moving those two fields to the proposed Big Bend overlay district with the goal of making this campus primarily housing focused. So that's part of what the request in the changes, which triggered the overlay district instead of

the

conditional use permit.

I thought that was the other set of fields.

Yes, no, the other ones that are north. This is Forsyth Boulevard so Francis field their football field and the fields that are north of that the tracking field, that stuff is not being moved, that's going to be staying on Danforth campus.

I still urge you to consider traffic and noise. There are residents, they may not be our residents, but there are residents across. I would like to know in the future how that setback from the dorms that are there now compares to what the setbacks are going to be for the big bend overlay. Looking at it, I was just trying to eyeball it. It seems like they're pretty far set back too. I've heard that the students in those dorms, it's not their first choice of dorm because of those fields. I just like to say that. I don't care if it's a rumor or a fact. I have heard that. Those lights are on all the time. That's another thing. So I understand that that has nothing to do with your issue about the overlay district, but the big picture is what I think the conclusion was from the earlier meeting, that we would really prefer to know what all the plans are. Thank you.

Any other comments from the audience? Do we have any hands up?

No.

Okay. Well, we... We do have a recommendation.

I move that we approve the staff recommendation to approve the proposed tax amendments for the South 40 overlay.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Let's move on to item seven, which is the rezoning for 6500 Forsyth.

So this is the same as the big bend overlay. So the rezoning would maintain an R2 based zoning for this and then put the overlay district on top of that.

Any comment? No. Any comment from the audience? No. I think this is pretty simple and I would recommend a motion.

I move that we approve the staff recommendation for the South 40 overlay to be placed on top of the R2 zoning.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Okay.

Well, thank you everyone who stuck with us tonight. And we've come to the end of the meeting. Jim, any further comments? No further comments. Amy?

No further comments except for a thank you, Anna. This was a great meeting. All your information was perfect. Thank you.

Ellen?

Nothing to add.

Bridget?

Nothing further. Thank

you. I just want to thank our staff one more time. You guys were really uh troopers tonight

david nothing more tonight and i uh follow up what bob said um we expect professionalism and uh we exceed it every time and we thank you for it

yeah i'll just thank you guys you have some good questions and also with audience it's a It's a hard concept to try and necessarily explain or understand when you're not in this world, but asking a lot of questions is what will help continue this discussion with the Board of Aldermen layer now.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you. We're adjourned.