February 17, 2026 — Meeting Transcript

Lichtenfeld. Here. Helen DeFayt.

Jim Arsenault. Here. Claire Cuspin.

Jeff Morrisey.

Jeff Morrissey.

Susan Buse.

I move to approve as submitted.

Aye.

beginning with the site plan review. This project consists of about 224,000 square feet of the WashU South 40 campus and is governed by the South 40 Overlay District. You would see the demolition of several structures and the construction of a new dormitory with 600 beds, amenity space, and service spaces. The district requires a maximum density of 94 beds per acre and the proposal would measure 86.8 beds per acre meeting the requirement. Impervious coverage would increase from 46.1 to 46.5%. Stormwater runoff calculations were provided per a 20- or 20-minute event and are measured in cubic feet per second. Existing runoff measures 17.04 CFS, and the proposal measures 17.23 CFS. The minimum canopy coverage required is 25%, and the proposal would increase the canopy coverage from 32.1% to 33.2%. A parking study was carried out in November of 2025 and determined that the proposal would result in a demand of 0.1733 parking spaces per bed. The existing onsite parking can accommodate 0.22 spaces per bed, meaning the requirement. Lighting has been designed to meet dark sky standards and certification will be required. Staff are of the opinion that proposal has met the criteria for site plan review and recommends approval with the following conditions. One, the applicant shall file a deed restriction with the St. Louis County Recorder of Deeds noting the location and maintenance requirements of underground stormwater detention systems and shall submit proof of filing to staff prior to issuance of a building permit. If a maintenance agreement is required to be executed and recorded by MSD, proof of such can be provided to the city in lieu of a separate deed restriction to meet the city's requirement. Two, any improvements to the Forsyth Boulevard and or intersection of Forsyth Boulevard and or intersection of Wallace Drive recommended as a result of the traffic pedestrian impact study shall be incorporated with construction permits and coordinated with the Public Works Department. And three, the applicant shall present certification of Dark Sky International OSL compliant design prior to issuance of a building permit and shall present certification of dark sky international complaint installation within six months of project completion.

Absolutely. I am Joanna Schooler. I am the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Local Government and Community Relations. Good evening, Councilmember Buse and Commissioners. As part of our ongoing mission to strengthen the undergraduate experience, we've submitted plans to build a new South 40 residence hall on Forsyth Boulevard. The new building would accommodate first year and sophomore students. And WashU requires all of our first year and sophomore student to live on campus in university housing. With demand for ongoing campus housing mounting, it's really become important, a priority for us to be able to accommodate demand for housing on the South 40 for our first year students and our sophomores. Currently, 95% of our students request to live on the South 40, and we're not able to accommodate those needs at this time. During the overlay zoning process, we discussed our intent to shift the concentration on the South 40 to be to the north, closer to the Danforth campus, which was really in response to feedback that we've heard over many years from the neighbors that are close to the South 40. And this is a step, an important step, for us to be able to move forward with that process. The plan that our student success, as I said, is really important that they're able to be close to the academic supports, the health and wellness supports, and the other surrounding supports that are available on the South 40. And with that, we appreciate your time. And I'm going to turn it over to our consultant on this project, Christiana Moss from Studio Mock.

Good evening, everyone. Again, I'm Christiana Moss. I'm a principal of Studio Ma. We're the architects working on this project, along with our local architect partner, Trivers, who's also here today. And I did want to just maybe, I'm going to go through some slides. And I just want you to kind of look at this photograph. It's about this time of day on the South 40. And this is what's referred to as, it's really their main street. But we call it the spine. So I want you to just kind of think about the picture of the spine because I'm going to be referring to it a few times as we go through the presentation. And I'm assuming I can just forward this. Okay. Oh, with the wheel? I should be. Oh, there we go. There we go. Okay. I got the wheel. Great. All right, so as Joanna mentioned, this project really fulfills many strategic goals of WashU to provide housing for all first and second year students on the South 40. It aligns with, as she mentioned, really the idea that we're going to be wanting to bring, not only moving the center of activity for students north because of course neighbors, but we also, it's important for students to also be closer to campus. The experience that they have right now is fairly disconnected and their daily kind of, you wanna call it, it's almost like a daily commute to campus because it's a strange pathway. that leads them to the campus. If you've ever experienced this, there's a tunnel and it's just kind of constricted and so we're really doing a lot to improve that experience. We're accommodating class growth and also we're trying to position the South 40 for eventual replacement of certain housing stock that's on the campus. We are designing this building as a 50-year plus building. Not all the buildings on the South 40 historically have been built that well. And we have some stock that's aging out. And so this is going to help also the kind of cycle of which will be coming as far as having to replace some of those buildings. I'll go this way. This project is at the northeast corner of the South 40. And I did just for everyone's reference kind of highlight that spine, as I mentioned, the main street, which is where we're trying to really concentrate student activity, making it as enlivened and kind of, I would say, you know, joyful and wonderful place to be for students. And their activity is really focused along that spine. We are meeting, as Ryan mentioned, the stormwater criteria, just kind of diagrams. Most of our, we are retaining or detaining all of our roof water collection, which is happening in the center of the courtyard. And then we are meeting all of the MSD requirements, both for WashU's system and also for the other areas around the perimeter. And we are meeting our requirements there. terms of layout and access, as I mentioned, we are really activating as much as possible that area along the spine. Which you can see here i'll just put my cursor over it here, so this is that area that we're really activating quite a bit there's an entry into the courtyard and it's really meant to be a space for students across the South 42 experience. We're maintaining all of the required setbacks. And in fact, most are over. We are moving buildings further away than the required setbacks in all cases. Just about a little bit about the existing conditions. This site was actually built up kind of like on a plinth. And it in a way defied the natural topography that's there, creating a lot of disconnection between kind of natural grade, which is the way you circulate and the site itself. So we're really restoring the natural topography of the site and the way that it slopes. And so buildings are really stepping down, following the natural topography and connecting and activating that spine condition that we talked about. All of the roof heights fall within the average requirement. We're actually about seven feet lower than that average in all cases. And here show that as well. Our material palette is here before you so you can kind of you want to kick the tires and I can happy to bring up some samples, if you want to touch them, but this is the palette that we've selected to really. kind of work within the context of not only the South 40 but also the Danforth campus so a lot of the material selections were inspired by its context in all cases. A little bit about the architecture. It's massing and scale are really inspired by and aligns with the South 40 structures. Its detailing borrows from the context of WashU housing and also the tradition of collegiate Gothic. The spine, kind of the ground level spaces are really meant to activate the ground and create some activity and kind of open up along that spine condition as we mentioned. The courtyard is meant to provide a variety of different spaces for student programming within the center of the courtyard. And the spine extension is really meant to extend to enable crossing both the tunnel and also at the intersection more safely. And the Forsyth and Wallace edge condition is also enhanced by buffer zones to the street and the neighborhood. So this is a view of the condition along Forsyth of our project. And Forsyth elevation, this is a view down the spine from the bridge. You can see the existing tunnel to the right, which is preserved and maintained. And you just see kind of all the activity that's happening and we envision happening along that spine. This is a bit of a closer look along that area where we're programming a lot of those areas on the ground level. And this is within the courtyard space. And we're doing a lot in terms of the kind of vegetation, really creating spaces that students want to be, where they want to hang out and where they want to program. This is an area again along the spine, where we have kind of a market cafe and other areas that are really meant to spill out into the act that activity along the spine for students. project is really a bridge between the Danforth campus in the South 40 and in terms of its language we're taking inspiration, as I mentioned from both. This is also just to give you a sense of the scale of it along Forsyth relative to other projects and buildings that are existing. This is just for reference, the existing architecture on the South 40. And just going to demonstrate a little bit here how we're kind of tying to that language using elements like portals and orioles and vertical articulation, kind of stepped masses. tone changes activated basis which we mentioned, which I mentioned earlier ornamentation and then texture and pattern to really make those connections. Here just kind of diagramming where that's happening in the existing buildings in the proposed buildings, just so you understand the kind of tie between those references and what we're doing in the architecture. And I think with that, I'm happy to take any questions I can answer or refer them on to the folks behind me.

There's nothing preventing students from doing that. We're trying to gently encourage them to actually use the spine as much as possible and actually the interior courtyard as much as possible because we do have an entryway directly from the courtyard to the intersection. So there are ways you can certainly go the long way around Wallace if you need to, and there's nothing preventing a student from doing that. Thank

doing our best. Besides having a fence around it.

Yeah,

Yes. Yeah, there is today and we're maintaining that.

And I also just want to note on that, because I think some of the renderings appear dark and some of the elevations also just appear that way. But when you look at the lightness of the materials here, hopefully that tells the story. And especially in daylight, it really they do kind of light up quite a bit.

I will reiterate, thank you for the large plans. Delightful not to be using a large magnifying glass and still struggling. And yes, it is a PDF that you can enlarge, but there's nothing like seeing the whole thing. I like what you've done. I think you've handled the site and the topography very well.

you. You're dealing with ADA, and you're dealing with a site that has a definite slope to it. So I don't have any further questions on the plan aspect.

Jim? I also want to thank you for the plans, not just because they're big, but what I really appreciated was the level of detail. And I believe it took care of a lot of questions beforehand. And that goes for the staff report too. I had some questions ready to go and they were answered before I got that. I know when I first saw as far as this site, I was very concerned with the Jim McLeod Memorial and what they would do to that. But it was very clear how it was handled in this that that's not going to be part of it. So didn't have to worry about that. One thing, at least, that gives me pause is clearly we have two historic buildings that have a lot of history to WashU that would come down as part of this plan. And I have a little bit of concern because as far as when we were discussing the South 40 overlay a while back, part of the South 40 overlay says for the activity to focus on the interior of the South 40. And this is clearly pushing a lot of that activity up to the Northeast. My concerns with that are, couple. One, what we discussed earlier with traffic, by pushing the buildings up there into the northeast, I believe, and I think some of this is borne out in the staff report and traffic studies and stuff that would need to be done, we're disincentivizing using the underpass, which is kind of this You know safe area for students to cross and you know we're creating this opportunity where we're going to have a lot more probably pedestrian crossing because there's going to be a lot more activity kind of up there at that corner. So that's a concern of mine another concern of mine is. believe currently the South 40s at 3341 beds by staff's numbers, this would add 622 beds. Based on the 94 bed per acre limit that we have, that's only going to provide a buffer of 329 beds that can be added if this project was to go forward. On top of that we have, there's eight buildings that are 60 plus years old that are probably going to be decommissioned as part of this. And if you look at the history, as far as when a building has come down, such as take Old Koenig and New Koenig, the buildings that have gone in their place have been much larger than the buildings that they've been replaced. My concern is and I'm hoping you can kind of talk me through this, and maybe some of the more long-term plans. If we push such two-thirds, basically, of the beds that can be added to the South 40 up in this northeast corner, that when these older buildings of JKL and Hig, Beaumont and Lee come down, there would only be room for almost like-for-like replacements. And I'm... I'm worried about leaving these vast open spaces on campus and all the activity being pushed in one area and demolishing the houses as part of that. And I know I wanted to hear maybe alternate plans that you've considered. I know there have been some because I've been on your website and you have a beautiful plan with the alumni house sitting there. And so I wanted you to walk me through the sighting, walk me through kind of the more extended plan, what this does 10, 20, 30 years down the road, and what that will cause the South 40 to look like? Because this is just kind of the first domino in a series, and I want to know how this would affect that.

That's an excellent question. And our work actually started when Brian said we've been working on this for about eight years. We started with a student experience plan which was actually looking at the whole experience of every student on campus and their daily lives, which included actually their academic lives, you know, their kind of, of course, their residential lives, like what they were doing in between, the third space on campus, right? To kind of look at all of their different experiences. And it was very clear that there are so many kind of barriers and blockages to the flow of movement, north-south, that that had to be addressed in some way. And actually, prior to our time, there were a lot of studies done on actual movement, on physical movement across the campus. Like, what was it called? We did a

tracker.

Yeah, the tracker. Yeah, yeah. A people mover, basically looking at how people are moving. And under the best kind of urban design and design principles for movement, tunnel was a real problem because it restricts the flow of traffic and you have bicycles. You have a lot of different things happening here, right? So making that just breathe a little bit, dealing with the intersection so that you're able to allow people to do that more safely, which is another part of this. And I know that's going to come up too. And the people behind me have an answer to that because it will need to be addressed. The idea is that we're trying to create more connectivity for the students in their daily lives. And we're trying to make it easier to really bridge that gap to Danforth, right? Because students, it's just a long kind of right now uninspired experience. And yes, Jim McLeod's little spot is a bright spot on that trail, no doubt. The options were very few. I think particularly, and sorry, I know this is the same committee, but the choices and options are fairly few because there were proposals to move, to have fields somewhere else. I want to say that. And not being able to do that didn't give the institution as much flexibility in terms of where this could happen right now. And we also can't remove beds. So there's a real conundrum in what you what you can do there. I will say a lot of due diligence has been done on those existing historic those existing buildings and in terms of research and like making sure that we're salvaging, you know, things inside of it and making sure that the history is preserved. And so this was not done in a careless way. This was done with real intention and concern for maintaining that history. I will say that after a lot of research, the president only lived there for about four months. So as far as the legacy of what this means to Wash U... It's not necessarily as important to at least Wash U's history. And it's also not technically preserved. They're not historic preserved structures. So we are trying to be as sensitive as possible. But all of these things, yeah, I'd like to think that the architecture is paying homage to them as well. So I hope that answers your question.

It definitely answers some of them. And yeah, it Yes, it does give me pause in the sense with the Alumni House being the whole reason the South 40 exists is, you know, Robert Brookings and his donation in 1923 to do that. So it, you know, as a university that's proud of their history to, you know, remove some of that history is it at least gives me pause. I guess the... The second half is, I said, like, this is a domino, and there's other dominoes that are after that. I know I looked, and I know a lot has happened since 2018, but in 20, and I don't know if you were probably not part of the process back then, or that might have been just the beginning of the process, but I believe in 2018, the university filed an amendment to their conditional use permit to go up to 3,800 beds. And as part of that, there was a timeline that

was laid out as far as... That's before my time, so I might have to point to Joanna here.

And I look at that versus this, and that was much more of a phased approach in the sense of... Let's see, I believe first it said demolish Lee and then a new building was going to be built between Danforth and Park. And then the demolition of Beaumont with both Lee and Beaumont, a new building, a new larger building going in that place. So that goes back to what I was saying earlier as far as typically when buildings have come down, a larger building has gone in its place. And by going forth with this plan, it would kind of reduce the flexibility as far as how large... those new buildings could be. So if we're concentrating 622 beds in the northeast section of this, what is that going to, what are those replacements going to look like when they happen and size wise? And then what's that going to do to the composition of the South 40 overall?

The focus here certainly is ensuring that we're able to meet the need that we've had for a long time in terms of getting those first year and second year students in the residential area and certainly trying to make sure that the uses on the South 40 are residential because of what that does for the student experience, certainly. In terms of our long-term outlook on buildings it's really in terms of replacements what we're looking at is something that would happen over a long period of time and certainly we know that we can we're looking at this area because that's where we have the ability to be able to place a building now but we'll have a longer campus planning study to understand how we develop the South 40. It's really, we're really having the need to meet this need right at this moment. But a lot of the buildings that you're talking about, the life of those buildings will be over a long period of time as we look to be able to meet the needs for students, for first year and second year students on campus.

I will say that, I mean, the density as it's presented in the overlay is intended to be the max. So I think that that is the limit that's desired by the university. So I can say that with confidence. Yeah.

Yeah, and I understand that. And I appreciate that. What I more worry about is if we're basically incorporating all that density up in the northeast when you know we know these other buildings are coming down we know there's a we know there has i know there's probably some sort of plan in place as far as what that looks like and when that looks like and my worry is by concentrating all these beds up here it's locking in what's done in the future i know I know there's font bond there too. And I know, I totally understand that font bond kind of arose out of the blue and it's not necessarily, that's something we're active planning is. But if we go back to the process that this board had where with the possible relocation of the ball fields that you mentioned, a lot was talked about the connectivity of the South 40 to Fontbonne, to that site. I would assume the university would still want some higher level of connectivity between Fontbonne and, and so when I hear that, Then my concern is if we're focusing all that activity up in the Northeast, what's going to happen at those connections to Fontbonne? Are we going to have kind of this large barren area in between or what is this? As you see, this is the first part of obviously a multi-year plan. And I know you cannot present the whole multi-year plan, I also know WashU is fantastic at creating multi-year plans and at least has a rough idea as far as what the replacement of those buildings would be, whether that's from a size massing. So my concern is if we focus all that activity up here in the Northeast, we demolish two historic structures, 10, 20 years from now, what is that going to look like for those projects?

I think, well, I know that open space is a big priority. So we are trying to balance, I would say, the additional beds, but keeping it feeling like a beautiful campus and making that open space really intentional. I will just note, too, that the buildings that are currently that border or bracket the spine that exists there now are actually as dense, if not more dense than what we're doing. So I just like it's not like there's no precedence for this. And so if you want a sense of what it might feel like, you could it's pretty much like what's there in terms of the size and scale and scope of that wanting to reserve as much open space as possible for recreational uses for the students.

I don't want my comments to say that I think that the new buildings are inappropriate in any way because I don't necessarily think so. I don't think they're overly large. I don't thing they fit into the context. It's more along the lines of This is step one, and step one governs what happens at step two, three, and four because of the density limits that are on the South 40. And if you look at the older structures that have come down, the Ligets, the Koenigs, and then the buildings that have replaced them, they've been roughly, I'd say... a quarter to double the size, much larger. And I imagine there'd be some sort of footprint expansion there too. So I hope I'm not beating a dead horse here, but in focusing all those extra beds and stuff in one shot up in this area, It's more saying, what is that going to do to those other areas? I look back once again to 2018, where I said, you know, you have these three building, these two, three building complexes that were each planned to be replaced by like one large building. And then, you know, like for like replacements in the two freshman areas. So, yeah. look at it and i look as far as like okay what are the alternatives that were considered you know is this something that could be done more piecemeal and possibly save some of these historic structures or save part of it or how that was considered and then also just if this does go through and those are demolished what is what is that process going to look like for those buildings because I believe those buildings, at least when back when we were discussing the overlay, those buildings are more in the center of the South 40, which is where the activity, at least by how it's written, for the most part, we should be thinking about focusing the activity because that's where you have a lot. Personally, that's where I see a lot less of the interactions with the neighbors. that you can educate me on too, as far as the neighbors from what direction are the ones complaining and stuff, and how this alleviates that. But it's more, if you only have 329 beds to deal with, when Beaumont comes down, with only a buffer of 329, what does that look like for the replacement of Beaumont? When Heard, Heitzman, and Myers come down, You have a very large site there. What does that do to the building that can replace them when you have limited flexibility with all those beds being pushed up here to the northeast?

I understand. But just to say, the density is basically what it is today. And I hear what you're saying. So it's really about the balance of open space to those structures. The height limitations and all of that are... basically baked into this right into the overlay so and so is the density overall and so knowing how much um the residential communities value that open space it's it's going to be fairly similar to what's there and i so i know that oversimplifies the answer but i'm i'm just trying to help you visualize kind of similarity in terms of its bulk in terms of its right in terms of its density that's pretty much buildings similar in nature to the ones that are there.

Okay. So you're saying it would be more of a like-for-like replacement rather than an increase in beds on those individual sites? I mean,

yeah. It depends on how you analyze it. I'm speaking for the South 40 in its entirety. That's what happens in terms of the math equation.

As far as the civil side of things, I don't have any concerns there, so... think that's probably good enough for me, but thank you. Thank you.

And you're talking about pedestrian traffic, correct?

Yeah. So all of the major entrances are facing the spine and also the courtyard. So that's number one. So we are doing everything in our power to encourage students to actually use those areas versus Wallace. Yeah. And, um, That we're doing everything we can and all of the, I would say the programmed activity is also along the spine in the courtyards. So you really only have bedrooms there and you don't want activity along the bedroom. So we're really trying to keep that quiet for students. So all the kind of lounge spaces and all of that are really in interior. So we're doing what we can design wise.

The other piece that I will add is that we're also focused on enhancing that spine and encouraging pedestrian traffic to the spine, as we talked about in terms of the orientation of the building. The other piece with regards to its location at Forsyth and Wallace is that we purposefully have what we refer to as a buffer. All of the properties that are adjacent to the campus along that drive are owned by our university-owned properties. And that's purposeful so that it allows us, the activities that are happening in that area will be can only, the people who will hear it, the closest to it will be university affiliated people. And we are maintaining that with this project.

We're certainly wanting to push people the other way. We certainly are, you know, going to study and work with the city with regards to that intersection in that area for sure. But our goal is always to push people the Other way. And then also to have that do what we can in terms of maintaining the buffer using all kinds of ways, and we're open to doing that for sure.

Jeff? Hi, everybody. Thanks, Christiana. First off, to the staff, I think this is really nice to see a project that is the result of the overlay process i think it shows the value of that that we went through i can see in the staff report you've kind of gone along and checked off all the boxes of doing what you were supposed to do here which is nice and i think it's uh that was a long process that many of us were very involved in and uh i think it's it's helpful here um I've got a little slightly different take, a little different concern about what happens at Wallace and Forsyth. It looks by this planning, and you've even talked about it, that you're going to move, I don't know what the percentage would be, but a substantial number of students that used to go through the underpass are probably now going to cross a grade. Is that true or am I miscalculating?

Based on the traffic study that was done, they already were.

Okay, okay. And I know there's still a traffic, another traffic study still to come, I believe, if I read the report correctly.

Yes. So there's actually our on-call engineers, CBB, have already been engaged to do a pedestrian impact study in addition to some future larger corridor planning along Forsyth that will capture bicycle, pedestrian, and vehicle traffic. So it's a little bit of a connected but tangential process. path for that analysis that's going on right now and the lead time for that. So that's why we incorporated a recommended condition and WashU understands it. And I think they also very much agree that whatever is the result of that study needs to be implemented for the safety and future development there. So that one will be ongoing.

And will we in the future, will this group see any potential improvements, both pedestrian and vehicular that might happen at the corner of this project?

Yeah. So you all don't have any direct authority over what might be implemented. I think there's going to be a mixture probably of recommendations going on into the future of private improvements that they will make as well as some within the right-of-way. So those right-of- way improvements will be presented to the council, the city council, what comes out of that probably before anything is implemented and then in terms of who's actually executing the construction. But the plan commission will not necessarily see that unless there's an additional construction projects that come across at the same time as those. Okay.

Okay. Yeah, and don't get me wrong, I think it's great. I think it's good that we're moving these folks to ground level, but I want to make sure it's done in a safe way and blend it into this project properly. I hope and I think it will be, not as its own thing just in the public room, it's in the right away, but as part of everything you're doing on the foresight side of the project. Let's see. I probably Oh, there was a detail. Maybe Ryan, you can help me with this. The stormwater runoff seems to be slightly increased. Is it to an acceptable level though?

To clarify, whenever we evaluate stormwater at the staff level, we're looking at are they providing some kind of mitigation aspect to any increase that could be there? So what they've provided on site here, which you can kind of see on this sheet, is that underground detention. They also have some connections with surrounding storm sewers. So whenever we did our evaluation, we looked, is that detention? Is that storm sewer connection? Does that mitigate that runoff? The determination was yes, that that was sufficient to accommodate the increase in runoff.

Okay. Okay. Great. Good. I think that's all I have site plan-wise. We've got a few architectural comments. I'll hold those until the second part. Thanks. Susan?

I don't have much. I do have to comment. And I know that, Joanne, you've heard this before. listening to the conversations here, sitting on City Council, we hear a lot of hope that the bike paths, pedestrian traffic can connect downtown Clayton more with WashU, that we really are one community. And so when we talk about, you know, cutting off and shielding things, I understand with dorms and with crossing at the Wallace and Forsyth, that's a different issue. But in general, looking at us being, as you all being part of our community, there's a reciprocity there. You bring things to us, we bring a lot of benefits to you. And the more that we can take advantage of that, that would be great. If you would extend the bike lane down into downtown Clayton or something, that would be phenomenal too. And the only other comment I really have is going through these plans, I have a lot of comfort in your sustainability pledges, the way you've done other development projects the what we're talking about, the water runoff, whether we're talking about the types of materials used, energy efficiency. A lot of questions that I might be asking somebody else because of what you've done before and the commitments you all have made. Hopefully that you will continue to stay true to those pledges. I appreciate the limited parking for students to encourage their walking and their biking and also to stop the vehicle traffic in and out of that area. and also not dedicating the space to parking lots. So that's all I've got. Thank you.

I do. Can everybody hear me?

My name is Scott Schweizer. I live at 708 Audubon Drive. I just had a couple of comments. Number one, there are a lot of... The very high number of beds and the low number of parking spaces is going to create a lot of requests for Uber and access rideshare. And I'm just worried that that's going to bring a lot more, even though the number of parking spaces as limited, it's going to bring more traffic to Forsyth And Wallace, for that reason, that's not really been discussed. So I think that's something really important to consider because ride share is such an important way that people, particularly younger people and students get around that that's going to create a lot more traffic than maybe is being considered. And also additionally, just the site plan that the buildings being so close to Forsyth Boulevard, when you drive down Forsyth Boulevard, this is going to be the kind of entrance you see to Wash U and they're going to be much closer and give a very different perspective from what we have now, particularly from the more of an architectural we can talk about later. But I think that's a really important consideration that's going to change the appearance for residents and students on entering Wash U from Forsyth from the West. And I think that really needs to be taken into consideration because this is really changing that appearance, how close these buildings are to Forsyth, particularly the side of the buildings are just very blocky and it's gonna create an entirely different feel for anyone entering Forsyth from The West.

Yeah, did you want to take the. I think it's important to note that certainly we want to go through the process of doing the traffic studies, understanding what the conclusions are, and certainly looking at ways to address concerns as part of that process. The other piece to consider is that the employees and the uses, the academic uses that were, that are currently in the buildings that are on the South 40 in that space, those will all be in different places now, not in that space. So that has a, that traffic, that parking, that those that traffic impact will be less in that in that standpoint. But absolutely, we will. We want we want to work with the city to understand the traffic impacts and to try to address any issues and concerns in that with with regards to any traffic concerns. Absolutely. Thank

you. I wanted to just respond to the The comment about how this will kind of change the presentation of what's there now, and I agree. I do believe that it's in keeping with what's happening down along for site we've been very careful to be contextual in that regard currently what's presented to for site that's really a parking lot. And this will create a sense of vibrancy that I really don't think exists right now. So I'd like to believe that this is going to be a really wonderful improvement. And I take the point that this needs to be acknowledged as kind of a moment when you see the university for the first time. And so I think we have been very intentional about that. Thanks.

Yeah, I just have one more. I know you spoke to the siting and everything as partially a response to neighbor complaints. Can you talk about where some of the, where I guess the bulk of complaints are coming from now and how this, what those, I guess, what the complaints are now, where they're coming from, and then how this plan addresses those?

for many years. Certainly we have had complaints that come from concerns about potentially traffic, concerns about lighting and noise, and certainly the overlay process and by adhering to the overlay, those are all taken into account. Any concerns, and I will tell you, I don't – currently, I'm not getting a lot of concerns because we listen quite a bit to what the neighbors have said to us. But certainly as we've talked about potentially adding more beds to the South 40, then the concern certainly has – has come from the neighborhood that is, from the Skinker Heights neighborhood, the neighborhoods to the immediate east of the campus. That's where the complaints have mostly come over years. Some on Y-Down, certainly we know there's a lot of activities. We have other institutional neighbors in terms of the school district. There's activity on Y-Down. But in terms of concerns about the South 40, for the most part, those have come from the neighbors immediately to the east. But I will say we are, they know I have, they have an open line of communication. They reach out. And right at this moment, things have been pretty good.

Thank you. I just want to make one quick comment. I believe the architect, it's hard to see online, had stated that the setback was really consistent with other development going up along Forsyth. And to me, when I look at it, that doesn't appear to be the case. So I just wanted to clarify that. That doesn't appear to with the height and the closeness to Forsyth of what it's doing, there would be a really important precedent to consider that we maybe don't want to set. And so that conflicted with what I was hearing from the architect, and so I just wanted to point that out. She was saying that, again, it's in keeping with what else has happened on Forsyth, and that doesn't appear to be the case. Thank you.

It is in keeping with what's on Forsyth, and it's aligned with the setbacks that are required and the overlay. And so those considerations have certainly been considered in this process.

That building is... It's closer. That building is in the city of St. Louis, and certainly it adheres to the setbacks that are required there. It's a, as you know, it's not a huge site, and so certainly we're looking to do a lot there, but yes, it's I don't think it's that much further. It is a little bit closer, but that's one of the goals with regards to other requirements in the city of St. Louis in terms of the site.

Thank

I move to approve as submitted with the recommendations of the staff.

Since the applicant has already gone over their architectural materials, I just clarify that staff are of the opinion that the materials are compatible with the requirements of the South Florida Overlay and Architectural Review Guidelines and recommend approval as submitted.

I did combine this into one presentation, so I'm happy to review anything over again if you would like. So perhaps we can take questions and then I can go back and refer to slides, if that's

Um, well, we do have some windows and we have storefront. You can see where we have glass. We have a little bit of wood accent that I don't know if we have in the bath. Oh, we do. Yeah. This is wood accent at entryways. Yes. I do have samples of the metals used for the storefront and for some of the glazing around what we call the Orioles there.

Thank you, Chairman. That means a lot.

I agree. I like what you've done. And I drive along Forsyth there a lot. And what is there now seems to be very weak visually. It kind of blends into the greenery. The buildings, the one building stands out with the parking in front. This I think will be a good bookend to the large houses going east and a nice bracket to the ball fields to the west. And you've picked up the vocabulary of the rest of the campus. I did kind of hesitate about the different bricks, but seeing them there is so much better than looking at a rendering where it isn't that close. It's kind of there, but not quite good enough and we go with it. I think it's going to look great. I'm

looking

forward to it.

Thank you so much. I do think that the materials, they all complement each other and they play together very nicely together. And that's part of that. We had done some studies initially where we were using one monolithic color and it just didn't work with the language and vocabulary of the rest of the South 40. And so thank you.

Yeah, even the yellow and green glazed brick, that was kind of like, I don't know about that. But seeing it, it's not a glaring in your face. So I like it.

Thank you. Jim? Yeah, I echo the comments that have been made before. And I don't know if you want to go to the slide where you're kind of looking at the visual vocabulary of kind of like what's there in this plan. I can just say, I think that slide was Yeah, I think this is very well done. And I'll be honest, usually when we see this type of thing, I feel like it's architects trying. It's like, well, if you squint this eye and divide by three and see, it's pretty much what's already there. And almost like trying to get one over on an architectural crit. But I really do see the commonality here. And especially, I think that's very important when you talk about how important the spine is and you're going to have basically this on either side. Because, I mean, obviously, if you look at some of the older buildings that exist now, you know, versus the new dorms, like it can be stark. So to see this fit at least so well with what's there, I really don't have any comments architecturally.

I will say there's, um, there's a subtlety going on and it's kind of more in the details there, but, um, we have, uh, maybe I'll look at a close up here to just show you there's a way that we're overlapping, um, Where are they rendering? Okay, this isn't behaving. Oh, I wanted to go... There. I wanted to just pause on this for a second because what we're doing... We're kind of layering some of the colors too. So I would just say there are areas where the colors kind of interact with each other. And that's going to create this kind of interesting overlap between the two colors. So we're creating, I like to call it a sense of transparency or overlap of those things. So I think that there's going to be more subtlety in the interplay of these than what you're saying is kind of blocky. Yeah, that there's overlap there and feathering of those two colors. Because we had that concern initially. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Jeff? I don't know it's been said yet. I like that it's a modern building or modern set of buildings and in a very contextual way, and I can see how you're trying to be contextual I can see. all the effort you put into breaking down the scale of things. I think the foresight elevation is kind of beautiful, actually, with its parts and pieces. The east elevation was scary to look at as an elevation. But in reality, with the way it steps in and out, I think scale change is being handled well on Wallace. So I really appreciate the effort. This is just sort of a detailed question. The roof color, how does the roof color compare to the existing dorm roof colors and the existing or nearby house roof colors?

I mean, there is slate on a lot of the existing Danforth buildings and there are asphalt shingles on some.

I mean, I'd love it if it was slate, but I understand there's other things at play there. Although the dorms have shingles, correct? Yes. The existing dorms. And just are those, are they similar colored or did you change or just a question?

Yeah. Yeah, I think we're being sensitive to, again, kind of bridging between, I think there are different colors being used. It's not consistent all the time. We are trying to be sensitive to bridging over to Danforth as it were getting closer to Forsyth and trying to kind of play with as slate as possible. color yeah

and i know that helps involved if you were to actually make them slate and structure and everything else um but i understand there's there's budget at play here too so um but overall yeah i love the architecture i think you've done a nice job

thank you

susan

I don't have anything to add except that maybe you replace all the asphalt shingles with solar panels.

Would you make that a requirement?

That would be phenomenal. I wish I could. Thank you.

All right. Thank you.

Chairman, we do have his

online. Cool.

Hi, thank you. I did just want to say one more thing. As a resident who moved to Clayton because of the architecture, and I know many people moved to Clayton, because of the architecture it's kind of people spoke economically put their money where their values are by moving to a place with a lot of historic architecture. This is quite a bit different. And I think something that hasn't been discussed much is even though we're kind of focusing on the silhouette here, as you would see it if you were standing directly in front of it on Forsyth Most people are going to be driving or walking from the east or the west and they're going to see this from the side. And from the side it's very blocky, it looks, I know it's kind of an industrial kind of slant on Gothic collegiate architecture but And maybe that's kind of an iconoclastic look you're going for as an architect. But for residents who've moved here and kind of economically spoken, we've paid more to live in a place with consistent architecture. And students who want to attend a university that's a top university that has historic architecture, this really, I think, would... flies in the face of that. And I think as a resident, it would be very disappointing to see it approved, particularly for the reason that I said, as you approach this from the east or west on Forsyth, you're seeing just the blocky aspect of it, something that's higher than the houses around it and something that sticks out farther. I know there was mention that the Danforth campus is getting closer to Forsyth, but not this close. This is within Clayton really setting a new precedent how close it's getting. And I just think as a resident, I think it's very depressing to see this moving forward. And if I were a student, seeing this as opposed to the historic building there is the primary spine of where I walked back and forth would really make me not want to attend. Wash U. So I think it's really important to consider what residents have, how residents have economically spoken in terms of moving to more traditional architecture and what students prefer. Students traditionally prefer something that makes them part of historic continuum in this really appears to be something that in 50 years will be torn down. So I really think based on the location of it sticking out so far, we really need to consider how it looks. When you look at this from the north, excuse me, from the east or the west, it just looks like a block. very blocky and that's what's going to be your first impression as you drive or walk east or west down Forsyth. And I really think that needs to be reviewed and considered very carefully. Some houses have been built, new houses without that consideration and it really destroys the street. And I think this project needs to consider that. It's really important. You're also setting a precedent by demolishing this old home along there I know it maybe wasn't part of the Chancellor's residence for long, but it's been part of a continuum of historic houses that are part of the campus and the community. And demolishing that as opposed to doing an adaptive reuse with dorms around it really has a negative impact going forward as a precedent and on this individual project. So that's my comment. Thank you.

I guess the contextual response that we've provided definitely has taken into account the scale and materiality and texture of what's happening along Forsyth. And I think we also have Everyone should probably know this, but wash you has the number one housing program in the country, so the precedent for what is the South 40 right now, which is not necessarily. The neighbor the neighborhood houses right. Within the South 40, there is a very strong precedent and that identity is something that's very strong and important to these students. And so I just like to say that when we think about context, I understand the homeowner who's adjacent and in the neighborhood nearby. And I think that has everything to do with those buffer conditions that Joanna's referred to previously. Thank you.

I have one more, Steve. I do think it's worth noting too, as part of the South 40 overlay, it specifically states that new buildings should avoid neoclassicist or revivalist styles. So I know, I definitely understand where some people are coming from, especially, you know, I live in historic neighborhood and I think residential architecture, I think definitely plays in kind of a different sandbox than this. But I think it's important. I think it's such as brutalist examples that have happened, the Fumihiko Maki building. So there's a lot of important architecture that exists outside of collegiate Gothic that should be considered, and especially because of how the overlay is worded.

I move to approve as submitted

Second.

We first want to say thank you. Second, we anticipate that certainly we look to do work during times when Students aren't on campus, so we'll work with the city, but certainly trying to take advantage of those time frames. So around the summertime, if at all possible, is what we'd like to do in terms of starting to get work underway for an occupancy in fall of 2028, if possible. But we understand that we certainly want to work with the city. Thank you.

Don't worry, I got your number. I'll get it for sure. Thank you.

Yeah, we're just in a quorum, so you guys can keep talking if you want to.

I grew up on campus back then.

It is. And I do think also, if the resident is still online, some background for them. When we were establishing the overlay district that fits in with that, we ultimately knew one of the goals was to increase the number of beds on the campus. And so very intentionally, the setback was somewhat reduced along Forsyth and increased along Wydown so that within the different contexts, building larger buildings would happen closer to Forsyth, where the largest impact is on a road that's basically through their campus. Right, rather than having some of the increase of larger buildings to fill the density back on the south side. So it could be as you're guessing that a lot of the building scale that you see on the south end of South 40 is replaced with similar building scale because down there they have an increased setback for buildings that are over 50 feet in height from wide out. Yes, I guess

that would make sense. Yeah.

Okay, so we're going to go through a presentation for the comprehensive plan. I see that there's a hand up because we do have one more item on the agenda. Scott, I don't want to dismiss you, but I am more than happy to have a conversation with you following this if you want to talk more about the overlay district. But I do want to get through the other item that we have on the agenda right now and can follow up. Okay, so comprehensive plan. We have some new members. Members have joined us in various levels of the comprehensive plan. So some of the slides I'm going to go through are going to be repeats for some people. You might find it familiar and some of it will be new and refreshers and all sorts. So first I'm going to take us through a pretty quick overview of the comprehensive plan then we'll get into a little bit of some of the implementation status. So comprehensive planning, this is our guiding document for development. This sets our long range vision for land use in the built environment. There are certain elements of our comprehensive plan that are required per Missouri statutes. And that is the city plan for the physical development. And that city plan per Missouri statutes is adopted by the plan commission, which is you all. So you adopt the plan. It was ratified by the city council or at that time, the board of alderman but there are a lot of elements within our comprehensive plan that go beyond just guiding physical development so that's what sets that longer term goal i think all of the vision statements that are provided in here though have some sort of influence a big part of what creates your community is the built environment that you that surrounds you so a lot of it all is kind of woven in together with our Fiscal goals and what is our economy look like and how do we address sustainability and what's our social and cultural environment all of that is all wrapped into our comprehensive plan. And one thing I always like to point out when we talk about concert comprehensive planning to is that it's a It's a moment in time's view on what's going to happen in the future. So it's a reflection of the community that we had at that moment when we created this plan, thinking about the community that will be in the future. And so there's a lot of future community elements of people who were not involved in the process and what that's going to look like. So within a comprehensive plan, you have to take that snapshot You have to address certain trends or things that we needed to act upon immediately. And then we're also trying to kind of prepare ourselves for emerging trends and being able to address those as comprehensive planning moves forward. So our planning process took right about a year, which is awesome. Sometimes comprehensive plan process, especially when you're attacking such a wide view like we do. easily creep over a year. So I thought that was awesome that we were able to really keep it in line with that plan. So we adopted the plan in June of 2024. community engagement we did a lot of it so really this slide just touches on a summary of all those elements the biggest goal for staff and our consultant through the comprehensive plan engagement was to make sure that we were out there enough trying to get enough feedback from a variety of stakeholders that the council and you all as the plan commission felt confident enough in the feedback to be able to make decisions based on that feedback moving forward so there's a lot of things that you see from Ryan and for myself now in terms of implementation, where we're pulling from that engagement feedback and we're having to figure out what to do with it. So their vision statement, we have a series of statements that in 2040 we want to be able to say we've achieved. So if you just pull one of them, in 2040 our economic environment allows for reliable provision of high quality city services and benefits. So there's a lot of things that would go into play to making that a true statement in 2040. And that's kind of, we kind of picked one of those big vision elements that came out of the engagement to guide the vision. And then how do you get there with the vision? We've used the OKR strategy, objectives and key results. So we organized all of what we learned and our objectives into four chapters that touch on different elements of community. So neighborhood and housing, and this really focuses a lot, and we'll touch more on the land use code, but Our diverse housing options. How do we preserve neighborhoods? What's the character of neighborhoods? How do we reinforce our sustainability goals and principles within our residential development? So there are four main objectives for this chapter and 18 key results, which are the more narrow details of how do you implement something. For commercial development and the economy, a lot of commercial development conversations really focused on continuing to support our business districts for a variety of uses that draw people, not only our residents, but other people from the region to come and spend time in our community. And then also really stabilizing our economic base. One of the huge takeaways from COVID in that time was some of our over-reliance on different revenue streams as a city and what position does that put you in for unforeseen health issues like a pandemic? And so there's a lot within our commercial development that speaks to diversifying that and really trying to stabilize our different revenue and commercial endeavors. Transportation and connectivity. This talks a lot about multimodal transportation. How do we support pedestrian use and bicycle use and connecting the different nodes of activity within our community? Transportation and connectivity is a little bit more of a higher level aspect of the plan. So when you talk about implementing these elements, a lot of it's going to fall back onto kind of the capital improvement projects and those larger projects within our roadways that we have to fund that will require additional studies and other elements. But at least we set our overall kind of vision of what we want transportation and mobility to look like for the community. And then the last one being community character. And this one was a chapter that tried to really catch and underline some of the conversations during the comprehensive plan about how does Clayton relate to the region as a whole? So how do we interact with our neighbors? What are relationships with the larger regional goals of sustainability or other elements of just our cultural activity, more of the social elements of the community and what the priorities were for our residents? So the focus that I want to pull out is our land use code themes. So the land use code is the chapter that includes all of our zoning regulations and our subdivision regulations and overlay districts and what use can go where. But really, the land use themes fall into four categories for most of what we heard. And there's definitely a focus of We heard this term a lot. So there's a term we heard a lot about commercial districts of vibrancy. You know, people want vibrancy on the streets. And then when it came to residential districts, everybody wanted to protect character. So there's little bit of in these themes how do we tease out what those two words actually mean and how do you relate those back to regulations or policies or anything like that? So overview really quickly, our bulk and size category covers a lot from building transitions to your setbacks to your heights. What does your density look like? And Ryan's been doing a lot of analysis on this category, I would say recently with JS. So there's exciting maps and things to come your way from him. Design and architecture, so this is when you put your ARB hat on, so looking a little bit more at materials. There was some talk about historic preservation, and that's an element that we've been evaluating downstairs, so we have the kind of audit surface level audit that we've now done of all of the residential communities to get an understanding of what the character is. We did this surface, I would call it a surface level because we did not go out and hire consultants that are actually historic preservation experts or anything of that nature. It was really internal to figure out what our ground is. Environmental impacts is a huge one, stormwater and lot coverage. We just adopted that, so we've really addressed a huge chunk of that theme, environmental impacts, and tree preservation is underway and headed towards you shortly. And then attainability and affordability is another one that we continue to juggle, and we'll probably have a lot of conversations about moving forward. land use code themes can also really be divided into two kind of parallel pressures in terms of development new construction which is can be really focused in a lot of neighborhoods have seen really high concentration of impacts from new construction but we're seeing elements of new construction pop up in neighborhoods all over the city and then we have this underlying aspect of preservation so Some of the codes and regulations will really address both. So understanding infill and how do we regulate that in its context and balancing some of the construction trends and the new requirements of codes with existing buildings. But some are really going to fall into one category or another. And I think an element that falls for both of these that's not on here is also that idea of balance. attainable. So that was a conversation of attainable housing kind of came up with how do you protect the affordability, the relative affordability of some of our older structures, especially when we talk about rental market. So some of the apartments that you see in New Orleans, how do we support and enhance invest reinvestment in those existing buildings, while not creating another level of unaffordable housing by pricing people out with that investment? So those are kind of the broad kind of two balancing acts that we have when it comes to land use codes. The future land use map, this goes right back to that statutory requirement for Missouri. So a future land use map is a requirement that we have and we should use this to guide all of our zoning regulations, our zoning districts, any rezoning changes. So this is what we tie back to for a lot of those land use decisions. The city is built out and has been pretty much for a substantial period of the life of of Clayton as a municipality. So there isn't substantial areas or anything that would change from really the heart of what they are. The most substantial change that we had was redefining some of our commercial nodes from a standard commercial node zoning to a mixed use. And that was really achieved with our latest mixed use non-residential development, our zoning district codes that we adopted. So treating those downtown as a neighborhood was a conversation in the comprehensive plan. How do we approach this as a neighborhood rather than just a center for business commerce? So that's the biggest change within the future land use map. But this is an important element that we need to make sure that we continue to be in compliance with or align with as we make our land use code updates. Also in the comprehensive plan towards the end, there's a character area section that goes into a little bit more about describing the vision or almost like the vibes of different future development in different areas of the community. So this gives us a really high level sense of where we would want to concentrate density or height changes. There is not any number associated with this map. It's completely a relative scenario. The comprehensive plan does touch a lot on How do we treat transition areas when we transition from residential to commercial nodes or those mixed use nodes? And so this is really more just identifying areas that came out as maybe connections that should be emphasized more. How do we make those connections? There was a lot of talk about how do we bridge the gaps between some of our residential neighborhoods that are most close to Shaw Park? But we have some barriers there. Or how do we do the height transitions from downtown into the residential neighborhoods? So this kind of seeks to guide that first step when we establish those land use regulations. So the implementation matrix, I'm not going to go through it side by side because there's a lot to it. But I'll just remind you how we organized it, which I think is important. This is a very important document for our annual strategic planning process with the city council to establish what our goals are. So we have each objective outlined on the page and underneath that are all of the key results. So those are the kind of intermediate steps that we need to take to implement that, to reach that objective. Each key result is then designated on how that might go back to one of those vision statements, the 2040 vision statement. So some of them are going to be a primary action, so there's significant impact in moving towards that vision statement. When we implement that key result and some would be less so. So it's a more indirect impact. We also identified some timeline priorities, which change when we talk to the council every year. You know, things shift as we react to the market and then the responsible party. So this is overall kind of how we're going to try and reach those vision statements in 24. So implementation, so we have that matrix. I would say most of our key results for implementation fall into four categories. Regulations, that's the primary, the best tool to implement your comprehensive plan and your land use goals because this actually sets requirements that are enforceable. So we codify these. You know, you all go through a text memo process and you make recommendations and the council adopts it into our code. So this is the most enforceable way to implement your plan. We are currently in the process of what will eventually be a full, but is a partial code rewrite. So we'll keep coming to you guys with sections of code to adopt as we go through that. Policies, these are often dictated through the city council and they can be more forceful than guidelines, but they're establishing some sort of framework or element or process as to why we might rule one way or another when we evaluate or make decisions. Guidelines, you all as the ARB hat approach guidelines a lot. So most of the time they're not codified. We do have some guidelines that we codify within our regulations, but they tend to use wording of recommended or may or could or, you know, some sort of strong push towards a decision rather than a shall or a must thing. that you have in the regulations. And guidelines are really supposed to help direct our preferences in that moment during decision-making. Rather than making the decision, we kind of express our preferences or our priorities. And then studies, I kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier, but there are some key results that are studies we try not to in the comprehensive plan just do an entire plan, then recommends that you do another plan. But there are elements that that's unavoidable, especially when it comes to our capital improvement projects, other larger projects, especially within the right of way or within parks and those kind of elements. So there are some studies. So implementation to date through this. So I highlighted a few keys that touch on multiple key results, but we did our executive summary. We did regulations to allow bars in downtown. The council adopted a incentives policy, a guiding framework for that, and they're working with the newly formed Economic Development Advisory Committee to flush that out even further. Moving forward, we now allow short-term rentals in downtown. You all adopted the mixed-use zoning districts to replace all of our commercial districts and our downtown overlays, which was Um, a really big feat and project that Ryan led that, that, uh, implements a hand like so many of the key results. So that was a great one. And then we've also adopted the green space and stormwater management regulations for residential properties. And that went into effect on the 12th. So, um, there's a couple of projects out there that have applied before that effective date that would be under the old regulations, but the big projects moving forward. that you're going to start seeing are going to be under those newer regulations that were applied. And then because I did this little update, I wanted to also just remind you guys that the E-code, so online, all of our code regulations are online. E-code does only really do updates about quarterly. According to the city clerk. So there is delay with e-code, with verbiage, if you just go straight to a section that we might have already adopted. So they do have a new laws tab on e-code where you can go and you can look at the ordinances. And then what we've done is on the city's website, on the zoning regulations page, we have hyperlinks that take you directly to different sections of the code. If there's a section of code like the mixed-use zoning districts that we've adopted that hasn't been reflected on e-code yet, and you'd have to go to their new laws tab to look at it, we've replaced that hyperlink. So instead of taking an e-code, it takes you to a PDF of the active regulations. So there's a little bit of a delay there, and we're doing a lot of changes. So there's still a lot of references to Board of Aldermen, even though we adopted the charter that switched them to a council charter. That's the way it is, but I wanted to make sure you guys are all aware as you might look at the code for different items. So unified development code, this is, I'm gonna go through this really quickly. This is the type, the code framework that we're gonna use moving forward. So we're piecemealing right now to get into that framework, but it really is just a streamlined format for how we present and organize our zoning and land use regulations. So in comparison, right now we have seven chapters. And under the Unified Development Code, we will continue to have seven chapters more than likely. But how those chapters are arranged is what really changes. So we would estimate that going from our current down to the Unified Development code, that we're going to go from 70 articles down to 44. So it's a substantial cut because it reduces a lot of redundancies that you find throughout the code. Those of you that were with us when we adopted the mixed-use zoning districts recently saw this slide that Ryan put together. So under the commercial zoning and the overlays, we were looking at over 19,000 words, and in the adopted version, we cut that down to probably somewhere around 5,000. So really substantial streamlining using charts, tables, other things to present information all of the regulations. So the next chunk will be hopefully doing something very similar with our residential zoning districts. I'm going to pause there because that threw a lot at you. I do have some slides that I went through the plan unit development. So this is one of our key results that we're actively working on with the council at their Friday session. I went through some slides and had a little bit of discussion about public benefit points. I have this prepared to go through it with you all if you want to stay and do this, if you would prefer to end the meeting a little earlier and I can bring this back. I just whatever is. comfortable with you guys i thought i might take advantage of the shorter agenda if you're willing to stay

i would continue

yeah Okay, yeah, so basically what I'm going to run through now, and Susan, you know, she's ready to go because she just did it. But this is a little bit more of a facilitated discussion than some of the previous process and presentations about tax payments. So I'm going to take you through the proposed structure for planning and developments and talk about how we want to, what benefits we might want to include, how we want to evaluate moving forward. So to remind all of you, some of you were there when we first started. We originally started this key result. So the comprehensive plan, this is an example of a key result that's very specific. It says review the public benefit point system for PUDs to identify opportunities for better alignment with city objectives. We originally opened this up to start work when we started the work for the mixed use and residential or non-residential zoning districts. We decided to put the PUD piece on hold, finish the base zoning and come back to it. So now we're coming back. So the purpose of PUD districts, plan districts, is really to increase the design that goes into a specific project. So we're looking for a more desirable environment. We're mixing uses that might not be allowed to be mixed under the base zoning districts. Or we're using a creative approach to address a problem or a site characteristic or problem preserve an element. It could be a natural element of the site topography, or it could be preserving a building. There's just something that's a little bit more unique about this development. So the idea being that we're implementing aspects of reaching for something with the comprehensive plan goals. Um, so reviewing where we stand today, common modifications that have pushed projects that you can see around either that have been constructed or went through the whole process, but were never constructed. A lot of what pushed them there is the minimum unit size, which I scratched off the list because we've already addressed that and it's no longer a requirement in the base zoning district. Um, increasing the floor area ratio from what was allowed. That's one where we've addressed a lot of that, especially within our downtown under the new mixed use zoning. trying to decrease the setbacks or decrease the parking so essentially what pushes people or has been pushing most people into the pud process for us is that they're trying to build more than they could under the base zoning so the project is usually a higher density than what was previously allowed as i mentioned we've addressed some of that with our new base zoning districts And then the benefits that we see a lot of are where people pointing to architectural distinction and lead development and public art. And so the idea of the benefits is that you're supposed to try to create or achieve a more creative development than you would under the base zoning. Our current process is quantified with. modifications and benefits. So to qualify for a PUD, you automatically start with needing 10 points. And then you add five points to that need category for every modification from the zoning that you're requesting. So a project that wanted to increase the floor ratio above the maximum and wanted to decrease their setback would need 20 points to qualify to get approval. So the 10 base and then five for the two modifications. And then we balance that with our benefits by having 14 categories of defined benefits that have a point ratio assigned to them. So that would be assigned and then two categories that left the point ratio to the discretion of the council. And for those of you that have been through the process, it becomes a little bit of a back and forth with a developer who says, I think that my aspects of the project fall into these benefit categories and therefore are valued at this number of points. And then you all make a recommendation as to what you value the points. And then the city council ultimately decides what the point value is. So it's a little bit of back and forth with points. In evaluating this system, what we found was the existing benefits list, and especially the ones that were being most frequently used, are not reflecting the obvious priorities of the community. So when I went over that really, really quick overview of our comprehensive plan document, there were some pretty... common themes that we can highlight that were really, we just heard about it over and over throughout that process. And those were not the common themes when you look at our points list of our current benefits of the PUD. So ultimately we want those two to match. What we also found is that a lot of projects were duplicating lead points. So we require the project of a PUD to be designed to lead silver, and then we were also giving away a lot of points for elements of lead silver, which is not necessarily a bad thing if ultimately what you care most about is being lead silver. But that was not the biggest takeaway for the priority. There were a number of categories that weren't utilized by any projects since the adoption. And then there were elements within the comprehensive plan goals that I'll go into a little bit more that I think could be stressed within the benefits categories. So what did we do? We've kind of done the column on the left. So adjust the base zoning qualifications. So the first thing that we did in evaluating the projects that have gone through the PUD system is evaluate what about that project fits with when the ultimate end development to try and better shape the development regulation so that projects that just meet the standard development that we want for that area can go through under a base zoning district. Because again, a PUD should really be elevating some level of the project so we're getting benefits out of it because that project is elevated beyond what would otherwise be achievable under the base zoning district. And we found feedback from the community identified that a lot of projects that went through the PUD process resulted in projects that are just expectations in terms of those being developed there rather than elevated beyond what people wanted to see. So we've adjusted our base qualifications, and now it's time for us to look at the benefit structure for PUDs. So the PUD structure should really guide development to what is most important. I use the example of like the flashing neon sign. Really what we want our benefits to do is be that flashing neon sign and this is what the community values and this is what we wanna see. And then the developer almost has to do everything they can not to implement what we want. That's what we're trying to do under the structure we'll go through shortly. So zoning regulations, I've been talking about this a lot recently. Zoning regulations facilitate development. So when development's occurring, zoning should make sure that it goes down a path where people who need to review it look at it and it fits with the context and we mitigate potential impacts. But zoning is not the driver of development. So you could have the perfect zoning code set up and never have anybody build anything because zoning doesn't result in building. It just facilitates building when it happens. So zoning is not going to be the catalyst, but it can very easily become a barrier to development. So if the market is dictating some sort of demand, we go back to the basics of economics, supply and demand. What kind of projects are going to be feasible? What do people want to do with their property? If zoning is set up appropriately, it's going to help facilitate those projects that are kind of at that intersection of the demand, the people want this project to happen and the supply and that the money is going to be there for the development to occur. What we don't want to happen is zoning to be this little flag in the middle that slows those two down from meeting. So we want it to be predictable and we want it to incorporate our biggest priorities. But this is a PUD system, so we also want to make sure that we maintain some flexibility and discretion for the city council when they're looking at those. So what we're proposing is moving from a point system that identifies a number to a benefit to a tiered value system. So I'm going to walk through, first of all, how this is structured, and feel free to jump in if you have any questions, and then we'll break it out into pieces. For the basic qualifications for planning and development, I am not recommending that we change those right now. I think it should be larger projects because you need that larger project to kind of create the environment for this elevated design. So the requirements of the existing zoning and the size for residential mixed use, those are going to remain the same under this proposal. what's changing then is that you would fall an application would fall into one of three tiers the base elevated or premium and what we're trying to do with these three tiers is create a platform that looks at the impacts of that so they're building more We want to try and evaluate how much more they're building and what that might impact. So in Tier 1, those changes, the modifications that they're requesting don't impact density and would only be up to two standards are being modified. So an example of that might be that they modify a setback requirement. So it doesn't necessarily increase density, but it might move where a building is located on a site. So if they modify that, the impacts are a little bit lower than if you move up to tier three where they're modifying density to substantially increase their density or they're modifying over four standards. So those, you know, the number of standards that they're waiving or reducing would have a larger impact. The base requirement for any PUD that we are going to add is that you have to choose a benefit from the priority list that's set by the city council. So these are the ones that we'll go into, kind of what does that look like, but they're the big ones. You have to choose one of these priorities. There's no way around it. And then, depending on what tier you are, you're able to choose your additional one, two, or three benefits that are required out of those tiered benefit categories. So the idea being here that we're kind of trying to, similar to as before, we're trying to balance the impact of the modifications that you're requesting and the impact of the benefits that you're providing for this development. I'm going to break these out into categories on the following page, but essentially what we're doing is we want to identify benefits that fall into the three different categories. Tier one benefits being either the benefits that we value, so we want them on a benefit list, but they're not as much of a priority for the community as a tier three benefits, which we value at a higher degree. Or, and or, it could be some combination of a benefit that has the potential to be less of a breach or an impact for an applicant. So something that maybe costs a little bit less for them to add on to a project or doesn't really have the likelihood of substantially altering whatever their design or layout of that site is compared to some of the other elements to reach that balance. We are going to maintain the requirement for LEED Silver, so that's already a PUD requirement that will remain. And then one element, if it's a mixed-use project and they're providing a retail use, then we're going to establish minimum requirements to be retail-ready. What we found in some of our newer developments, people were providing retail because that's something that the city required them to do to be eligible for that development, but it was an afterthought retail that is not quite... as marketable as other retail is. And so that's creating a little bit of a barrier in terms of them occupying that space.

Can you go into a little, because I know that was something that was discussed with the city council. So some of the examples that make something retail ready.

Yeah. So we'll, we're off to work out exactly what we're going to put on the requirement of this list. A big one that we've heard about is the height of the space. So there's a lot of times these spaces are not built out like white box or anything. So if you look in the windows like across the street at Bemis in place at the empty commercial, you know, it's just a concrete box with nothing in it. So we want the ceiling height to be high enough that once they start adding any sort of mechanical or those types of equipment elements, the roof, the interior space doesn't drop too low. That's a big barrier we've heard feedback from about the leaseability of some of those spaces across the street. Another one that substantially increases the cost is just having the infrastructure in place. So if you're saying this is gonna be a restaurant retail space, Did you build in spots for the hood? Did you build in exhaust? Are there corridors for electric, mechanical, all of the plumbing, all of those sorts of things? How is that going to be placed? We see that the tenant finish costs skyrocket when the development doesn't have that in place and then they're having to work through how do we fit these elements in, the grease traps, all of those sorts of things. So one of the biggest pieces in the PUD is if part of what you're providing is that type of a space, then it needs to be ready for a tenant. So that's retail ready. Yeah. And then also the applicant will be able to propose an alternative benefit that's not on the list because we don't want to stifle that creativity. Sometimes great design comes out of letting designers do what they do best. So they'll be able to make a case to the city council if there's a benefit they believe fits on the list and goes back to implementing the purpose statement of planning and developments and or the comprehensive plan. They would not be able to propose an alternative from the priority list, though, because that's one that's going to want to really intentionally set with the council as their top priorities. So then we break out into these tiers. So I'm going to go through. I have broken some of the benefits that I thought of going through this process into three categories. So we've got a group of design benefits, use benefits, sustainability benefits, and then we'll talk a little bit about the list of priorities. So I put on here on the left are some of the things that I was thinking about with benefits. And then on the right is a little bit of the feedback from the council. And I'm happy to provide these slides to you all so you can kind of continue to think on it. As I mentioned with the council, nothing's off the table in terms of what our benefits might be right now. I think it's important to a little bit just kind of get your initial thoughts what comes to mind when we think about design benefits and then staff can take those thoughts and figure out how do we work that into an actual zoning code i did underline one piece of feedback from the council is really understanding better defining what the goals and qualifiers are of architectural distinction i think that's come up before but that's one that is an existing element of the pud process that We hear people choose that category a lot, but I do think in order to help place that on a tier 1, 2, 2, or 3, we can work with ARB to help the council maybe envision what that means a little bit more.

I was listening to some of that discussion too, and isn't some of that solved by the zoning discussion that we had earlier? Yeah. later last year, where we kind of talked about some of the things that might make a building more distinctive than just like this glass rectangle, how in the code we mentioned step backs or, you know, articulation of facades and stuff like that without being like overly prescriptive and putting them in a box. But like, doesn't our zoning kind of give some examples for architectural distinction in those ways?

I think it does. But I wonder if that almost reestablishes what the qualifications are for our base zoning. So what is our minimum kind of acceptable in terms of your architectural design? And then if you're, if you're claiming that as a public benefit point, that's elevating your design from the basics, what does it mean to elevate it beyond that? And I do, I think you make a good point though about over-regulating and this is something we kind of touched on with the council. planned development zoning needs to retain some element of discretion that's placed on the council to review projects on a case-by-case basis. We hear the term precedent a lot in what we do here, and when we set up zoning codes, you know, we're setting up a code that makes it okay for the for the council or for you all as the planning commission, A or B, to make individual decisions. And somebody could stand up there and make a case that they're upset that you granted approval of a different project and why they might think they're the same project. But that doesn't mean you have to do it. So we want to maintain some element of discretion. So I think you bring up a good point. Is this a case of... codifying what architectural distinction means, or is this a case of establishing a guideline of what architectural distinction means that's not codified but is endorsed by you all and the council? I don't know. Yeah. So this is, yeah, you see on your screen where we're thinking. A lot of this is pulled from some of the existing language, which you can flush out. I also want to give credit to Brian for the rooftop activation discussion that came out of us kind of just having a little planning division discussion about benefits and what makes things exciting or unique or different or what are the trends these days that people are looking for. So this gives you a good idea of some maybe more achievable things, you're building a roof. Is it, you know, how, how much more does it take to make that rooftop active versus having a fully below grade parking structure, which is very expensive and would substantially alter how you program the site and design a building if you're doing a full, fully below grade parking. So design benefits, what comes to mind for you all?

Yeah.

I feel like I cheated because I listened to the city council meeting the other day. So at least I've had some, I've had three or four days to kind of turn through this and think about it. I know you had mentioned earlier in your slide, one of the slides was affordable retail. And I think that's something that really stands out to me is if you walk the streets, it's like, I feel like we have a lot of restaurants. We have, you know, a handful of services, but we have very little pure retail. And when I look at a lot of the newer buildings we have, when you're looking at $35 to $40 a square foot triple net rents, I worry that that only allows big national chains to come in and compete. And smaller... smaller more local companies or something like that that you know i feel like might have had more of a foothold in clayton before um i feel like it crowded out so especially in some of these bigger projects where we see retail just kind of languishing there. I wish more of an opportunity as a benefit to get to do other stuff. They would lower that rent barrier to be able to, A, fill those spaces and then kind of diversify what we're able to have in downtown Clayton, especially.

Yeah, go.

Yeah. I mean, you don't, it's hard to predict the future. So I don't know that that's where, I don't think that anybody's necessarily going to pull that one. And I talked to the council a little bit about affordable housing. I mean, I don't know there's a value high enough within the PUD that's going to result in somebody doing affordable housing development because of our PUD process, but it doesn't hurt to put it in there as a priority in case somebody does.

Can I say also with the setbacks in Program Plaza or as far as publicly accessible private open space, I worry about, I think a lot of the intention around a lot of that is pure, but then it's almost as if a lot of these large projects kind of have like their own private space. I worry, like I see a lot of these spaces that don't necessarily get activated. So it's one thing to create it, but it's like, are we creating something that actually has benefit? You know, it might be relatively inexpensive in the grand scheme of things to implement, but like, are we created a true benefit for the community or are we just duplicating some of what we already have around town?

Yeah, I'd agree, Steve. And I like the idea of picking from a priority list of, hey, you at least have to do one of these, and then we'll consider your next one. And is it really a benefit or not? I mean, having sat on the other side of the table, often the public benefits that are proposed don't seem to be public benefits at all, honestly. So I'm glad that you're codifying it a bit. Now, on the other hand, the other comment I was going to make about this slide, boy, I have a hard time trying to figure out what is architecturally distinct versus what isn't. And it's such a subjective category and I may love something and you may hate it. And yeah, it's tough to put limits on distinction I guess

yeah i think that's one where it might be worth taking a bit of a risk and being more prescriptive in it i i hesitate to be too prescriptive because again i don't want to stifle someone's creativity but i do think that we're reacting to a long time of buildings that have technically under a pud been called architecturally distinctive but then people walk around town and it's just a building that used nice materials. So it might be something that it's worth going a little bit further with, and then if we think we've gone too far, we go through the process and we change

it. Can we put limits on things that can't be used? Not things that she, you know, it's like, okay, is stone good? I don't know. It depends how the stone is good. Is drive it bad. There may be a way to say your building may be architecturally distinct if you don't use A, B, C, and D. I don't know how people feel about that, but

It might be an avenue with our material guidelines discussions that you can have.

I think one issue we've had is we see something and we say, yeah, and it's approved. And then it doesn't happen. It's changed. There's no follow through to make sure that we're getting that public benefit. the public space, the Emerson Commerce, two towers on the podium, the corner of Forsyth and Brentwood. There's a public space there that was a benefit that I've never seen anything where it was really open to the public In fact, the mayor, the former mayor, had an event and it was supposed to be there and it wasn't. It couldn't be. I don't know the record.

Yeah, and I think that's a good example of that. I believe it was a certain number of days a year or something that they would agree to be available to host. So that's an example of we went a little bit too far in the what's achievable direction there.

Yeah, I think it's got to be something that really is a public benefit, that it's not a stretch so many days each year, because that means someone at City Hall has to keep track of it. And you've got enough to do.

Yep. Okay. We do have a hand up. Are you guys okay if I allow this or do you want to do public comment all at the end?

Okay. I have three more slides and then we will open it up. Use benefits. So in this category, didn't identify any entry-level benefits, but elevating the comprehensive plan does touch on some of the missing housing types. So we don't get really residential PUDs in this process, but that might be a way to facilitate some townhomes or maybe apartments that have a higher mix of multiple bedroom units or something of that nature. And then that greater housing density with affordable housing is in the premier, but we'll have to see how we can make that one actually occur. Entertainment, our consumer emphasis uses, this is a category that so we have if they're going to have retail or consumer emphasis use, then it has to be retail ready as a requirement. One of the benefits that we've been discussing is potentially ways that somebody could go beyond and contribute to a consumer emphasis area use or space by agreeing to have a lower rent for a number of years, or potentially covering the costs of some of those initial tenant finishes for that first user for certain types of businesses, et cetera. So that's one that I want to call out in case you have more on that topic. And then from the council feedback, one of the um pieces that we did hear about which you can expand on susan is the if you would like is the inclusion of public parking and the concern that we if we overvalue the construction of new parking is that creating a different issue

right i think what we're talking about is whole idea that um you know what we build determines our future and if we're trying to if we build more roads wider roads and build more parking we're going to continue to be increasingly car dependent going into the future versus getting other modes of transportation

yeah okay go to the next one um sustainability so This one, EV charging is very common. That was an interesting conversation also at the council level. So under the current PUD, EV charging has been one where the council has used its discretion to value installation of EV charging higher than the one point that's currently assigned to it under LEED to try and get that going. But now there's a little bit of, especially with residential, is that kind of just necessary to make your residential development compete with the market requirements by having that affordable charging or not. So that was an interesting conversation as well. But talking about some of those green infrastructure requirements and then the highest level being, you know, elevating yourself beyond LEED Gold or LEED Silver. Another one that I think that kind of came out of a discussion with some comments from Susan and Becky is with our benchmarking because it's similar to what you were talking about, Helen. They kind of had this, well, how do you follow up with... people who are doing some of these less tangible benefits so they're kind of baked into the construction of the building and then the ongoing operation but it's not something that you walking down the street you necessarily recognize if that building is designed to lead silver or legal or anything else and so how do you follow up we do have a benchmarking that's in effect now for buildings that are 100 over a hundred thousand square feet To qualify for a mixed-use PUD, you only have to be 50,000 square feet. So it could be that that would be a benefit of them agreeing to be a part of and participate in benchmarking, even though their building doesn't automatically require that. So that was something that was brought up maybe to evaluate moving forward.

No. So the way that PUD is set up, we do have to adopt regulations so we can adopt them in a manner that creates some level of discretion. So I do think within our tiered system of benefits, there will be a mixture of some elements that are more black and white. did you achieve this benefit, yes or no? And then there are going to be some that are at the discretion of the council. The case law for establishing that zoning, as long as we've established the purpose statements and we've established the grounds that connect the evaluation of that project back to the regulations you know the initial regulations and the goals of the project that provides the basis for the council to have that discretion but it is codified so if we adopt these regulations and we have a provision like this that says you're a tier one benefit is providing EV charging for 10% of your parking spaces and we decide that we don't actually EV charging is no longer something that we prioritize as a benefit. We would have to go through the process of removing that as a benefit. You can't just decide it's on the list, but we no longer want to let that be on the list. You have to actually remove it from the list.

Anything else from sustainability?

Yeah, I have a question. If you get provision of EV charging for 10% of your parking, do you have to do... Can that 10%... of parking spaces be used by gas cars? Or is it strictly electric?

Because cars not there to use it and there's an empty parking spot.

Yeah, I mean, if you've got empty spaces, do you as a developer have to build extra to try to, you know, figure out how the country is headed. You know, are we all going to be electric or gas, you know?

We look at Europe, EVs have overtaken gas. We are way behind the rest of the world. And Maplewood requires EV chargers and all the new developments. And so we asked how that was going. And they said, oh, you'll get the one call complaining that it's nothing and people just do it. We should have them on the streets.

Yeah, I think that would be it. It would be an interesting one to try and solve because I think, and I might have it on the next slide. Yeah, I have it on the last slide in the priorities because an interesting concept that came up was at Maplewood. One of the communities you referenced is almost using that as a way to get people to come to their retail. So if you, okay, yeah. I

was just debating putting them in their commercial district so that people come and charge their cars while they shop right

so if you're looking to start your car come here and then get coffee

It is. So there's some evaluation here. That being said, throw it all. Let's throw everything at the wall and see what we can make stick as we actually draft the regulations. So then since I went to this slide really quickly, priority benefits. So ideally, the list of priority benefits would have some level of a mixture of Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 benefits. Just because if you're a Tier 1 project, You have to choose a priority benefit and also can do a tier one. So again, weighting those options from things that we think are important and priorities and might be easily achievable within a project without the developer doing much. It's okay if they have that option to choose a priority that didn't make them redefine their project to fit it. Because it, again, is a priority we're valuing pretty highly and so we want it implemented. And then a mixture of the ones that would have to really be ingrained within the development that they're trying to do. So I think it's good to have a little bit of a mixture and it would definitely be something we would have to evaluate later. at our annual retreat with the council to see is everybody just choosing that really low easier option well then we need to adjust our list because we got a bunch of those i will say though the number of puds that we get every year is probably not going to be that high and you know just you know that's going to ebb and flow with the market so when we put this list together we shouldn't assume we're going to get a couple of puds every year pulling from the priority list i think we should assume we're going gonna get one every few years pulling from that list

one of the issues i think this work is phenomenal i support it one of the things that worried me was there were more puds because the base zoning was more difficult but it's harder now to ask for the public art or something else because it's not a PED. It already just fell right into the categories of allowed zoning.

Yep. Any thoughts on priorities?

Yep. So these are the general priority categories that I pulled from the comp plan. So if you have any other,

Yep, absolutely.

Everything is. So the link for the previous, I'll send you the link to our YouTube page recordings. So those are, it's already up from the council discussion sessions already on YouTube. And then these are already up. I'll do a PDF version of the slides too, just so you guys can have that as well.

Yeah, if

are ready, I'll open up to public feedback. Scott, go ahead.

Oh, thank you. I'll just be really quick on the discussion or talk about codified versus not codified kind of architectural distinctions and retail spaces. I just wanted to bring up there with in regard to a lot of the kind of vacant storefronts for example the new be missed in place development and along central avenue there maybe five to six nearly identical storefronts in a row i wonder if we couldn't add something about forcing distinction of storefronts because we end up with kind of an urban version of a suburban strip mall and it's just not conducive to kind of independent high-end restaurants, boutiques, salons, et cetera. They don't want to be just one in a strip of identical storefronts. And so in addition to the affordability issues mentioned earlier, having that kind of identical look of just a bunch of very similar storefronts kind of is a roadblock to getting high-end restaurants and other things that entrepreneurs might want to open who want to be in a unique place, not just one of six identical storefronts, I wonder if we could add something to kind of promote or suggest that the retail spaces that are built, each one is unique with maybe different height, different setback, different material, different landscaping, just to create a unique look that's conducive to getting restaurants in. Because I don't think a high-end restaurant just wants to be one in a strip of six stores. Maybe you'll get a Subway or a chain, but you're not going to get really the high-end types of things that Clayton wants. So I think that's really important to distinguish that. And when you look at other cities and places with successful developments with the retail all occupied, it's not often a kind of six identical row of storefronts. So I hope we can put something in to codify that. And then in regard to putting in kind of I guess I'm wondering when things are laid out, how do we ensure that they're actually followed in final approval? For example, the South 40 overlay district we were just talking about, it's pretty clear about materials that can harmonize with surroundings, proportion, fenestration patterns, kind of matching surrounding buildings. And what was just approved for WashU kind of goes against all of those in terms of having industrial cladding, steel, windows that are kind of not in a typical pattern. It just, it kind of flies in the face of the surrounding architecture. It doesn't harmonize with it, particularly the north or the east and west elevations that are just blocks. And that's primarily what people traversing the street will see. So I'm just wondering what can be done so that When these guidelines are set forward, they're actually followed so that it's not just kind of a group thing. Well, we like it. Go ahead. But it actually follows, for example, in that case, what the overlay district prescribed in this new plan that we're setting up. What can we do to make sure that what's specified is actually at the end of the day followed in the approval process?

um thank you for listening in today and your opinions i um for for the second part um part of what we the council does is we've established the architecture review board and they appoint people to uphold those so the council makes the legislative decision to adopt the code and whatever guidelines or requirements might be there and then the architecture review board is given the authority to review the architecture of projects in light of those regulations. So I recognize that there's elements of subjectivity within architecture, but as we saw tonight, this architecture review board felt that the project met the requirements and regulations that were in place and was compatible, and so therefore it was approved. And that's the process that's taken for all of our architecture reviews. But I do appreciate your comments about the commercial stuff. So we will continue to kind of, I think, work with this board and it will continue to be in public meetings. So I encourage you to follow along as we kind of try and tease out what that means in terms of some of our architectural distinction and all the other benefits that we've discussed. So thank you. Okay. Any other comments from you all? Okay, great. Well then I will tomorrow I'll follow up with the links to the previous zoom meetings PDF of this presentation on engage Clayton.com, which is also linked to our city's website and, is the page where our comprehensive plan engagement process took place that's now been converted to our implementation process. So on that website, on the Clayton Tomorrow 2040 tab of Engage Clayton, is also where I continue to place little updates, links to meetings, PDF presentations, et cetera. So this presentation slides will also be placed on Engage Clayton for the public to access if they would like. All right, well, thank you all.