September 2, 2025 — Meeting Transcript

Good evening and welcome to the Plane Commission ARB for September 2nd. If you have any electronic gadgets, please silence them now. Ryan?

Steve Lichtenfeld? Here. Bob Denlow? Here. Susan Buse?

Steve Lichtenfeld? Here. Bob Denlo? Here. Susan Buse?

Helen DeFay?

Jim Arsenault?

David Gipson? Here.

David Gibson? Here.

Okay, we have minutes from the previous meeting. And that was on August 18th. Are there any changes? Seeing none, do we have a motion?

I move that we

approve said minutes. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. We'll move on to new business. The first item is 6470 Ellenwood. And is the applicant here? Is... Ryan, do we know if Robin is for 6470?

Robin, if you're here for 6470 Elmwood, can you put your hand up?

Okay. Okay. Robin, we'll begin with the staff report and we'll get back to you in a minute.

Subject property is located on the southeast corner of the intersection of Ellenwood and University Lane. Property is zoned R2 and is located in the Skinker Heights subdivision and is developed with a single family home. Property is located on a corner which results in front yard setbacks located on two sides of the property. The primary front yard is along Ellenwood and the secondary front yard is along University. The property has an existing metal fence in the secondary front yard that is set back from the property approximately 15 to 20 feet. This fence was impacted by the May 2025 tornado and the applicant is seeking to construct a new six foot tall wood fence located about two feet from the property line. Primary front yard fencing is common on University Lane with each subdivision presenting a unique character fencing. Fences in Skinker Heights are commonly shorter, ornamental and metal. Fences in Hillcrest tend to be taller wood fences and no fencing is present adjacent to Whiteown Terrace. Staff find that a fence along the property line is compatible with the surrounding character. And additionally, staff find that the use of wood fencing along the property line would be a departure from the frontage character in Skinker Heights. Staff recommend approval with the condition that the plan be revised to one of the following. One, either construct the fence of metal rather than wood. In this circumstance, chain link fencing would not be approved. Or two, revise the plans to set back the wood fence at least 15 feet from the western property line.

Okay, thank you. Robin, do you have any comments?

Actually, it's Dan Wall. Oh, Dan. That's not a problem. So, yeah, my only comment is that I looked at the conclusion that you guys came to and your recommendations, and I would say that I probably would be willing to change it to metal now. So I guess... If that's the case, I guess, what's my next step?

Well, your next step, that really fits into the first recommendation. Construct defensive metal rather than wood. In circumstances, chain link will not be approved. Sure. And that would really go with what you have drawn, a proposed fence location.

Great. Yeah, I think that I drove around today and I realized that there are actually no wooden fences, particularly in our area here, except the one by the church. But I can see where it makes sense. So I'd be willing to go to a metal fence that doesn't necessarily have to be six feet. It could be four feet.

Okay. And that would also make it similar to the fence directly south of you. Of course, that one is a combination of brick and metal. But you would be in line with that also. Correct. That sounds fair. And it would be a very good appearance along that street with the two properties. Great. I'm in favor of that as long as you've already agreed to one of the recommendations. Let's see what everyone else says. Bob? Dan, Bob Denlow here. Do

Okay. And that would also make it similar to the fence directly south of you. Of course, that one is a combination of brick and metal. But you would be in line with that also. Correct. That sounds fair. And it would be a very good appearance along that street with the two properties. Great. I'm in favor of that as long as you've already agreed to one of the recommendations. Let's see what everyone else says. Bob? Dan, Bob Denlo here. Do

you have problems with a setback of 15 feet?

Yes. I mean, the problem with the setback is that it's just basically the same as it is now. I'd rather have it up to the property line and then it makes my yard feel bigger and would prefer to have it that way. And it's the same as the one next to me.

Let me clarify something. Ryan, have I misunderstood something? No, it was an either or option. Right. Okay. So the metal fence could be adjacent to the sidewalk.

Correct. The point of those options was to say that there's a character of metal fencing that's close to the property line, or if they really wanted to do the wood fence, perhaps setting that back further would lessen the impact on the neighborhood character.

similar to where there are existing fences, yeah.

Correct. And Dan, you want to have the fence up to the sidewalk, correct? Correct. I don't have a problem with that. Susan?

Sounds good to me.

Thanks.

Ellen?

No problem with the metal fence at the sidewalk.

All right.

Jim?

I think the metal fence, switching to the metal fence up against the sidewalk is a good solution.

David? I

don't have any problems with it.

Dan, one other question. Would you be upgrading all the vegetation in that area?

Upgrading the vegetation? The vegetation really doesn't need to be upgraded. What I have there, other than the fact that the Clayton tree knocked out a bunch of my taller bushes or trees that were kind of blocking The pool, the rest of the vegetation is in good shape. You're not going to see anything different than you see now with the fence like it is with a metal fence.

Well, that's fine. Great. And you've agreed to the first recommendation. Right. We'll remove the second recommendation. Okay. And do

we have a motion? I move that we approve the staff recommendation and incorporating the first recommendation to construct the fence of metal rather than wood. In this circumstance, chain link fencing will not be approved. Right. And what I also understand, Dan, your intent is to build a fence up along the sidewalk. Correct. There'll be a couple inches

back, but yeah.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Okay. You're on the way. Thanks, Dan.

Wonderful. Thank you very much, everyone. Have a nice night.

You too. Okay, we'll move on to the second item in new business, and that's 125 Crandon Way, Crandon Drive. Okay, we'll begin with the staff report.

The subject property is located on the west side of Crandon between University Drive and Maryland Avenue. Property is zoned R2 and is in the Clayton Gardens Urban Design District. Property is developed with a one-and-a-half story single family house. The code enforcement case was opened in August, identifying work being completed without a permit. And the applicant is seeking approval for various exterior alterations. These include a beige paint for the brick, new gray windows, replacing the dormer vents with windows, painted shutters and new covered front entry. The surrounding blocks of Clayton Gardens contains single-family homes varying in age, size, and architecture. Given that painted brick is common nearby, nearby architecture varies, and that there are no changes to the house's massing, staff are of the opinion that proposed changes are compatible with the existing house surrounding area and Clayton Gardens Urban Design District. Staff recommend approval is submitted.

Okay. Would you like to come up and give us any further comments? I'll see if the green light is on and give us your name and address.

Stacey Karlovic, I'm the interior designer for Kelly Chase, who's the owner at 125 Crandon Drive. I have no further comments. Everything stated in the report was accurate. We just wanted to update the home to look more modern like the rest of the neighborhood. We can say we really, we didn't even think about going through ARB to paint. We were going through ARB for the roof line. So we just didn't realize we had to do it for windows and painting and front doors. So we did paint the brick to update the brick. We updated the windows, we updated the front door and then we have the front patio roof line in the plans for approval. So other than that, there's, we don't have any other comments.

Okay. Well, having looked at it, I think what you've done already looks very good. But I think what you're going to do, if we approve it, will really make the house look much better. Right now it has sort of a flat appearance, but the addition of that porch will make quite a difference. But I did have a question about that porch or the porch cover. The concrete pad is already there.

There.

Okay. So it will not be

expanded? No, we will not remove that. We're just putting the posts on the very front corners.

Okay.

About three feet out from the house.

The elevation drawing that we received shows a peak of the roof. going toward the middle window.

Correct.

On the second floor. Does it go all the way back?

It doesn't. And the architect plan angles down and meets in with the roof line.

Oh, okay. We don't have that.

Okay. I wonder if he didn't give the side view of it. But it does not go all the way because of drainage issues and guttering. They have it so it kind of angles back and then the gutters flow appropriately.

Okay. And then, of course, you've shown us both the brick color, which we've seen for anyone that's gone by there, and the trim color that I think is already on the door.

Yes, it is.

Okay. And the shingles have already been installed.

New roof. Yes, we did get a new roof.

Okay. Typically, we like you to bring those in, but I can only speak for myself. I looked at them today, so... It looked okay.

Bob? I think this is truly an upgrade, and I think you'll enjoy it. Susan?

I support the staff recommendation for approval.

Ellen?

I like what's been done and what's going to be done.

Jim? I'm usually the material stickler about seeing in person, but I too drove by the house. I think it's a substantial improvement and I think the new porch is going to only improve upon that. So no problems here. David,

that's good. And Ryan, are there any other hands up? Okay. Then we have a... Recommendation to approve as submitted.

I move to approve the staff recommendation, adopting the improvements she's made together with the plans.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you. Very good. Good. Good. Well, we're excited to see you reinvesting and making the house look even better. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, well we've quickly come to the discussion session on sign regulations and Is that Ryan or Anna is going to lead off

if this pulled up All righty so if you'll call from the previous discussion we had about signage one of the items that we discussed was blade signage and coming out of that folks wanted a little bit more information so we're going to dive into some of the fun details about blade signage today so This review of blade signage has come out of a goal of the comprehensive plan to take a look at a lot of our processes and see are there opportunities where we can maybe make things more efficient, streamline things, or address general concerns that folks have. One of those tends to be that whenever blade signs come for approval, they tend to be approved at larger sizes than what the zoning code allows. There's also, as we looked into it, sort of a lack of consistency in maybe how we're approving those larger blade signs. So we wanted to take a look at ways that we could improve that. But what are the goals of blade signs? Blade signs are meant to be highly visible for traffic that is moving parallel to a building, largely sidewalk traffic. It could be vehicular traffic as well. But it's going to be those folks that are moving parallel versus something like a wall sign, which is going to have broader visibility or a ground sign, which is maybe to mark a larger structure. Your blade signs are going to be usually for specific points for that pedestrian signage. So right now, the regulations for blade signage allows one square foot, but we commonly get larger blade signs approved. And how does this happen? There's a couple different paths. One of them are signed subdistricts. These are meant to unify signage throughout an area to make it more cohesive. And ARB has previously approved larger blade signs here, and there's not necessarily any kind of trade that's required. It's tended to vary across time how that's applied through different signed subdistrict, but the newer ones have not required generally any kind of trade. And then there's also the sign modification process. It's really intended to apply in unique or unusual conditions, but we see sign modification being used to get larger blade signs. Usually that's in exchange for less signage somewhere else. So what we're seeing is that some tenants are needing to give up their signage area while others maybe don't need to. And then additionally, blade signs, they don't have a rational size metric the way that something like a wall sign or window sign does. Whenever we look at a wall or window sign, the size of that is relative to the size of a window or to the size of an area. We don't have that for blade signs. We just say, OK, maybe this can be larger for other x, y, z reason. So let me get this Zoom stuff out of the way here. There we go. So what kind of data do we have on blade signs? So we have permitting data going back to 2017 that identifies 22 approved blade signs. That is not the total number of blade signs that are out there. I took a walk around downtown, and there's blade signs that were either around before that that have just been around and well-maintained, or there seems to be quite a few that just slipped under the radar and they never went through any kind of approval process. The average side of those blade signs that we have data for is 5.7 square feet, but if we take out those two highest outliers, which are up there around 20 square feet, our average drops down to about 4.25 square feet. Now, two-thirds of those are in sign sub-districts, and there is a difference between those in and out of the sub-district. The sub-district tend to have smaller blade signs at around 3.4 square feet. whereas the remainder seem to be much larger at 9.57. That 9.57 is only the blade signs that are outside of a signed subdistrict. And then I also looked in to see if we had any consistent ratios as far as what is the size of a blade sign compared to different elements of a facade. And it's all over the place. It's really inconsistent. Unfortunately, it's not a good place to start. So some of those points that you see down there at the bottom of the slide, what's the height ratio? You could have anywhere from 0.13 to 0.22 square feet of blade sign per foot of height in a facade. So it's kind of hard to sort of extract a consistency from that. So let's take a look at what these blade signs actually look like. If we can't observe a specific pattern of consistency in the data, what does it visually look like? So Ceylon, a block away here, this one on the left here is to advertise the apartment itself. That's around 10 square feet. And then this one on the right, which is the one that's applied to all but one of the blade signs that's on there. One of those surprise blade signs was actually on Ceylon that we don't have data for, but they're supposed to be 2.25 square feet. Continuing on, Forsyth Point there on the left, that orange box that you see highlights the first watch blade sign. So all of the blade signs you would find along Forsyth Point are a consistent size, four square feet, 24 by 24 inches. And then centine, they have a couple different blade signs. Most of them that you're going to see are going to be around three square feet, like this fosteria sign that's right here. Any of those that you're going see along foresight, those are going to be three square feet. And then a couple of other ones that are out there that are maybe not in a sign sub-district. So the Barry Whamler sign, which is over on Brentwood across from Shaw Park. This 5.4 square feet is just referencing the actual sign itself, not this whole structure here. And then the Kingside Diner sign, that one's actually 21 square feet, which might present as kind of large, but whenever it's set back and as high up as it is and it's got the two perpendicular pieces to it, that total comes out to 21 square feet. And then the 10.56 square feet for the two rooster signs. Any of those signs that you actually see along that building over there at Carondelet Plaza, those are all going to be on the south side of Carondelet Plaza. Those are all going to Then some other ones. I thought these were really interesting because they're both circular blade signs. One over here for the coffee shop at Maryland, and I can't remember if that's Topton or Brighton over there that's on the corner of. But this blade sign has been around for a while in various places. forms as the tenant has changed, but the actual size of it has stayed the same. Then all of these circular signs on the south side of Crondelet Plaza, those are all going to be 3.14 square feet. The difference in 7.8 and 3.14, just because of the way the math works on a circle, I can't remember if... I want to say that this one on the right here is two feet in diameter, whereas this one on the left here is three feet in diameter. Just the way that math works out sometimes on these signs going... one square foot in length, one square foot in height difference can dramatically change the square footage. And so I'm going to give you guys a nice visual example as I walk here to the back of the room because those are great in a picture, but seeing it in person. This sign here, this is a typical yard sign that we would put out just advertising for a public meeting. This is 3.3 square feet. And then this one here, this is 12 square feet. So I also wanted to talk to Public Works to get their opinion because blade signs often project into the public right-of-way. And one thing that they thought was very important is we want to maintain a pedestrian corridor for folks that's going to be about five feet wide and seven feet tall, and we want to avoid spots where pedestrians can reach those signs. Additionally, we want to avoid Public Works infrastructure. We want to make sure that we're not approving signs that are going to conflict with light poles or trees, something of that nature. And generally, they would prefer that blade signs actually did not encroach into the public right-of-way. It happens a lot. And so in that circumstance, I said, what would you like to do? And they said, we need to have some kind of use and maintenance agreement every time. So we want to make sure that we're backing that up in some way folks are going to project into the public right of way. So I asked them what their recommendation would be if they were going to be approving blade signs. And they said they wanted at least eight feet off the ground and it can't project any more than two feet into public right-of So how do other cities regulate most cities are providing some kind of ratio, it tends to be with a facade length or height. And most cities are also going to have minimum and maximum projections typically for that that same sort of reason that they don't want to conflict with public work assets. But I don't think that those cities and reviewing a lot of these cities, I don't know if they're necessarily great examples for us because every city has a different kind of context. Something that we learned in the comprehensive plan process is it's really hard to compare Clayton. I like to refer to it as like the smallest big city out there. Most cities are applying their blade signage in different ways. There's a lot of auto-oriented contexts where you're going to have much bigger signs. You're going to have cities with, if they do have a larger pedestrian culture, they're typically going to be larger cities that have larger buildings. And so their blade signs might actually be going up the side of a 40-story building. So while we could apply a ratio, I haven't found any cities that are a great model because there just aren't cities that really compare to us in terms of form of the built environment. So having reviewed all that, we previously recommended five square feet. And I've kind of waxed and waned, but I've come back around to that five square feet. I think that one square foot is too small. While there are examples of a 2.25 and a 3, There's plenty of examples of blade signs that well exceed that or fall into the somewhere between 5 and 10. I think five square feet is a really nice middle ground. And why I'm leaning on that rather than something like a ratio or scale, I think those signs sub-districts present very, very well. They create consistency. So rather than say, we're going to base a ratio of the height of a building, I'd say, let's just have a maximum to create that consistency across the block. Additionally, I tried to just create a ratio that might work well. And anytime I tried to apply a ratio to an existing building, we were getting blade signs that were ridiculously small or ridiculously large. There's not a ratio that really worked well unless we said, okay, here's a ratio, but it's a maximum of five square feet. Because even if you had a building that's only 20 feet in height, you're going to end up half the time with like an eight square foot blade sign or something when you apply smaller ratios. So I think just creating a consistent size is really the best way to go. With that, that's a lot of information to throw at you guys. Do you want me to go back to anything or do you guys want to dive into discussion?

Oh, let's talk about it. If we need to go back, you can do that. I was surprised. I didn't realize that our signs varied so much. But then when we saw the pictures and I thought about it, they really... were related to the context that they were in, the facade width and height, and where it was, and how many more there were. So at first I thought a ratio was the way to go about it until I heard what you were saying. And I think I would agree not to have a ratio. But if we were to go with a five square foot sign, would that be a maximum?

That would be a maximum. And the way that this would actually, regardless of the maximum size that was selected, it would have a couple of other bounds as well. So let's say we had a five square foot maximum. We would also recommend it can't project more than two feet into the public right-of-way, can't be closer than eight feet to the ground. And also just the way our sign regulations are set up, it couldn't go above the first floor of the building. So there are times where something like five square feet might fit comfortably into that. And there might be times where five square feet might, not fit into that. It might actually be pressed a little smaller.

I think those three limits, two feet into the public right away and no lower than eight feet to the ground and what we already have, not above the first floor. So I would certainly support that. But at some point I was thinking of the Ceylon buildings Those signs seem to be relatively close together compared to others in the city. And it seems like the closer they get, the smaller they should be. I don't know how you regulate

that. Yeah, I don't know that I would go in the direction of, because I looked at ratios based on widths and there weren't consistencies there as well. Ceylon, both Ceylon and Beamiston Place actually though are good examples of the goals of the Northeast Downtown Overlay District and the goals of what we're looking at for some of our commercial revisions in that that area says, hey, we want retail based on these principles, that being a certain width, a certain fenestration with windows or materials. So if you were thinking about the goal of ground floor retail in downtown Clayton, that's the picture I would have in your mind is the Ceylon or the Bemis in place of where do you want blade signs to relate to in the future?

That makes sense. But then if you look at Kingside Diner, there are no other blade signs. I think that's the only one in that whole intersection. And I think you said it was 10 square feet plus or minus?

The Kingside one is about 20.

20. Okay. I had no idea it was that big. But it fits on that building perfectly. So how would we deal with that if we had a five square foot limit?

It would say that there was no king side sign there to begin with, and they wanted to come to us with that proposal. It'd be the same as it is now. The difference is we're just moving from a one square foot limit to a five square foot limit. So if somebody wants to come back with a 20 square foot sign, I think there was a similar size proposal for the Carondelet Plaza building recently. They would have to go through the modifications process or assign sub-district process depending on the context of their proposal.

Move on. Bob? Well, the test is a lot just your aesthetic judgment. Size of the building and everything that's going around that it's hard to come up with a formula. That being said, if somebody let's say this is passed and somebody comes in and wants a 10 foot. And they go before the board.

Yeah, so if somebody wanted to do a sign larger than five square feet, they could submit a proposal to us and our recommendation is going to be, okay, if you want to go through the modifications process, this is what I tell anybody that wants to go through modifications is I think you'll be successful if your total proposal of signage is not exceeding what you would normally be allowed. So if they want to decrease the amount of wall signage or window signage, whatever they would like to do, just as the current processes, they can propose exchanging a larger blade sign for less signage somewhere else.

So if I am a developer and I come in with a five-story building, I'm going to be horse trading with you?

The developer of the building wouldn't be the person that's, say, negotiating on the size of a sign. And actually, the direction that we're going with a lot of commercial stuff, like we want to get away from doing PUDs as often, is to get away from that ambiguity. What would happen is if a developer came in and built a five-story building with ground floor retail, the tenant that eventually filled that retail space could come to us and say, I want to put a four square foot sign, we would look and we'd say, okay, five is the maximum. Is it at least eight feet off the ground? Does it project no more than two feet into the right of way? And is it still below the top of the first floor? If they met all those criteria, they could put up that four square foot sign.

Remember that project that was proposed where the magazine store is and they promised a jazz place on the first floor? if they had come in and wanted to build a sign shaped as a saxophone to make it sexy, how would that fit in here?

Well, the five square feet would get them a lot closer to what they want. I mean, in a hypothetical, I'm just going to assume that a saxophone is going to take up more than one square foot. I think in the context of something like that, you'd be looking at something more akin to the Kingside spot than you would something at Ceylon because it's unique. They might want something larger. They might want Something more creative. And then it's at the discretion of the architecture review board.

I mean, bottom line, this is fine, but I really feel in the end it's such a discretionary area of design and build that there's got to be some leeway.

I can speak to that a little bit and sort of give you guys the context of why this was a particular interest to me. I have what can be professionally described as crappy vision. My vision is probably about 20, 30 when corrected. I cannot read Posteria as I walk down the street until I'm right up on it. I can read Ceylon's a little bit, but I need to get pretty close to really read it. Blade signs serve an important function to pedestrians. Downtown Clayton is a place that has a pedestrian culture, has the goal of continuing to grow that pedestrian culture. I think that signage in Clayton is generally very tasteful. It's not in your face like a lot of other places. I do think that the amount of signage that's allowed for blade signs is a tad small. I think that increasing to something like five square feet, although it is a bit of a... it's a bit of a personal opinion or if it's a little bit of somewhat of a judgment call, I do think that the context of the pedestrian character and the consistency of improving larger blade signs maybe justifies that gut call a little bit. It's not going to be excessive, but it will be a step up in size from where we are presently.

Susan? Thank

you. Yeah, I appreciate again how thorough the analysis is trying to reach that goal. It all makes sense to me. The question I have is, my understanding is that there's, is there a total amount of signage a building can have? And so this five foot of blade sign cuts into that calculation? Is that right?

This would be adding to it. So we'd be adding four square feet to the total amount of signage allowed to a building. So presently, it's not that we know off the bat how much total signage is allowed, but when somebody comes to me for a modification proposal, I calculate how much window signage, how much wall signage would they normally have. And then that's how we can make recommendations to the applicant. This is maybe what you would have success with before the playing commission.

Okay. So this is an addition to what you'd be doing anyway, if they're doing window signage.

Correct.

Nothing else.

Ellen?

I like the change from one square foot to five square feet. And I think your example of your own eyesight, I don't think you're alone. And many people need glasses, but when they're outside, no, you know, they don't bother with them. So I think it's important if we're allowing signs to have signs that people can read and your research supports the five feet, five square feet. So I would go with that. And then they do have the ability to go larger. if they want to do a saxophone or something like that outside a jazz club. So I think you've done an incredible amount of research and I think it's what you've done is really hard because we, as you've mentioned, we don't fit into a city where you can say oh it's just like us we can go here we can go there you know this will work it worked here or there we're unique which is great um and you've taken all that information and come up with the five square feet which i think that's a good size so thank you

jim I was one of the people who suggested some visual aids. Uh, and I think you, I think you did more than enough there to kind of show us kind of what exists out there in Clayton and, uh, even here getting to get an idea of that. Um, I think this is in some cases being discussed as a limiting matter where I don't see it that way. Um, the, the one square foot blade sign is kind of a non-starter basically if we look every single blade sign since 2017 is more than one square foot. Um, And that's just forcing someone to come in here and do that. So I think it makes sense. We're kind of removing some red tape by raising that number to a responsible number. I think going through seeing that five seems definitely like a strong number. And if someone does want a large saxophone or... The Carondelet building, Moneta, I believe that one was 20 or 22 square feet. But, you know, we all looked at it in the context and said, yeah, that fits. I think what was really striking about your presentation is although the numbers were all over the place on all the signs. I looked at most of the signs and I'm like, that looks good. And that tells me also that going up to five square feet and letting someone kind of feel good about designing on those limits that we're not going to get some monstrosity as a blind sign. And if there's a situation where a larger sign makes sense, then I think they can come present it and they've got a good shot of that too. So I see it as a great step and I appreciate all the research that you did.

Well, Ryan, I think you've done a great job and showing it to us visually, I think helps. I think the bottom line for me is it's good to have a limiting process as long as we have a modification process to go along with it. The five square feet seems realistic. And I think it's something we should really consider codifying and going forward with.

I appreciate the discussion, everyone. So we were to proceed with this. The next steps would be to draft the text amendment. And then also last time for our discussion, we talked about ground signs and we would still want to draft those ARB guidelines for those ground signs as well. And then we'd present those text amendments to you all and proceed from there.

Okay. It sounds very good. Great work. Good presentation. And now we can move on to the next step. Thank you very much. Well, that's really one of our shortest meetings again. Well, after a long weekend, that's very good. So before we close out, I'd like to thank Bob for his six years on the Plan Commission and ARB. You've been extremely valuable. And as we all know, you start at one end and you keep moving up. And now it's time to retire. But we hope you'll come back and be willing to voice comments, even though you will be just outside the City of Clayton line. So we thank you for everything you've given and hope to see you around. Thank you very much. And thank the staff,

especially.

Anything else? Nope, it's been a joy. We'll stop there then.

Jim? Bob, I'll certainly miss serving alongside you and this has been a great year and I'm glad I got the opportunity to meet you. Another thing I want to say, two weeks ago the staff had presented on kind of character mapping of the neighborhoods as far as how to get a feel of what neighborhoods are. I've spent a lot of time playing with those tools in the last couple weeks and I can tell you I've learned an incredible amount of just kind of the feel of some of the neighborhoods, and I strongly suggest you guys to play around and look at the different inputs. And it really kind of changes how you see the neighborhoods and even context decisions such as like this fence today. I feel like it makes those decisions a lot clearer When you look at that through the lens of several properties so i've i've really enjoyed playing with the tools, maybe that's just because i'm a giant nerd but I would suggest you guys go in there and at least take a look at. What Ryan and the staff is doing because I think it's a really neat process.

We miss you already don't be a stranger.

i just started working with you this isn't right and also now you've heard about the character of the neighborhoods maybe you got to get back across that border but thank you for everything you've done

i really feel even on skaker you're really a claytonian still

we'll take that that's good thank you

Brian.

Thank you, Bob. And I also want to give a shout out to Jim for the neighborhood character inventory he's been doing because he's almost finished with the Clavarack neighborhood. I've been working on the Morelands since June. So just put me to shame.

Correction. I did finish Clavarack.

All right.

All right. Well, Bob, thank you for all of your contributions over the last six years and definitely with your your contribution to our vibrancy in downtown as a neighborhood. So I hope that you will continue to help us in that goal of creating some regulations for downtown. And also, I hope you'll be successful in convincing your daughter, our new Clayton resident, to get involved with us as well. So anyway, thank you. And also thank you, Jim, for doing Clabrack. So Ryan here, if anybody else is interested in walking their neighborhood and helping with some of these parcels, he'll set you up.

Stephanie?

Bob, it's been very nice working with you. And I really appreciate your voice on the commission. I have really appreciated that. So you'll be missed.

Well, we will look forward to seeing most of you in about two weeks. And Bob, you'll be on? I'll be at Martha's Vineyard thinking about blade science. Great, we'll check them out there. I will, I will. They have quite a few. Thank you. Okay, we'll see you in 13 days and we're adjourned.