November 21, 2025 — Meeting Transcript

Good afternoon. We are here for our November 21st discussion session. I think we're going to start with Anna Krane, our planning director, and she's going to talk to us about the uniform development code.

Good afternoon. We are here for our November 21st discussion session. I think we're going to start with Anna Crane, our planning director, and she's going to talk to us about the uniform development code.

Okay. So we're going to walk you through the proposed regulations. Councilwoman Buse has heard this a few times now, so she might be just as much of an expert as the rest of us. So if you want to, I'll just run it. There we go. Okay, so just a really quick overview before I turn it over to our planner, Ryan, and he will walk you through the details. So as you all recall, we have a new comprehensive plan that we've been going through our implementation of the package of commercial or what we've deemed the non-residential and mixed use regulations that we're proposing those attempt to cover wholly or in part the eight key results from that implementation matrix from our comprehensive plan so this covers a lot of goals that we have for implementing and changing especially our commercial districts today So how did we get here to that long list of eight key results that cover a lot about different districts? We started with a couple of small key results really focusing on transit-oriented development overlay districts and some of our PUD zoning and why that's happening within downtown. As we quickly realized, though, it wasn't going to be very efficient or effective for us to try and just address such small pieces of the code. So that expanded to a larger analysis covering all of our commercial zoning districts and the overlay districts within the downtown area. Another part of where we're headed is our unified development code. Unified Development Code is our framework that we're going to that will incorporate zoning and subdivision regulations to streamline everything. In the draft regulations that you see, we've converted a lot of regulations into tables. We've tried to reduce the number of repetitions throughout the code that reference back to each other. because that's where you start to get inconsistencies and conflicting governing regulations. So the next layer will be where you'll see some more of our diagrams or our guiding for design. We'll have a toolkit that we'll follow shortly thereafter. So this is still word-heavy, but it definitely introduces more tables and charts from the previous code. So just to exemplify that, the regulations... From our current zoning, so on the left-hand column, these are all of the sections and articles that are part of the high-density commercial district. There's 14. The right-hand side is how we're going to transition to unified development code. So the right-hand side with our seven sections right now, that will cover everything. So you can see in the bottom hand, we're moving from just about 19,000 words to under 5,000 words. So... really shows you how much code is streamlined with this new format. All right, so I'm going to turn it over to Ryan. He's going to take you through all of those different sections and outline what we're proposing to do and how that might differ from the existing regulations that we have.

All righty. Good to see you all again. So I'm going to walk you through the different sections of the revisions that we're looking at for these commercial zoning districts. And to clarify, these I want you to think of these as like part revision, part reorganization. Unified Development Code is going to change away a lot of things structure. But really, this is an evolution of the existing zoning. We took the existing zoning and said, what were the outcomes of the comprehensive plan and how can we sort of move in that direction? So it's going to look very different but it is more of an evolution of what we're doing presently. And so that's going to start out with, what's the first thing you see when you look at any zoning section? And that's the purpose statements. So right now, the purpose statements and sort of the visions for any of these commercial and non-residential zoning districts really focuses around that commercial aspect. But if you look at any of these neighborhoods, or I'm sorry, I say neighborhoods, if you look at these areas, they have more to them than just like a commercial or office aspect, they are more extensions of neighborhoods. And that's something that we heard as an outcome of the comprehensive plan is that people really saw their local commercial areas as extension of their neighborhoods. And they even wanted to picture the future of downtown as another neighborhood in the city, not just a place that you might go to work. And so what we've done with these is we've updated the names of the commercial zoning districts, all except for one of them. That's the S-1 service district. We won't talk about that one too much. But the traditional commercial zoning districts that we often see, we have updated their names and we have updated their descriptions to reflect the goals of the comprehensive plan. So we can see if you look in that chart at the bottom there, we've got C-1 neighborhood commercials going to M-1 neighborhood mixed use, C-2 general commercial, M-2 general mixed use, So it is a change, but it is an evolution of what the current zoning code is. Applicability, this section doesn't have too much content to it and more just is establishing standards But one thing that we did add to this is an alternative compliance section. For those of you that maybe haven't participated on the Architecture Review Board before, alternative compliance is something that the Architecture Review Board commonly sees with urban design districts and overlay districts. This provides the Architecture Review Board some flexibility whenever there's projects that maybe don't fit neatly into a box, maybe have some unusual conditions or they're really unique and creative designs, something that maybe meets the intent of a project have a standard of the zoning code, but maybe doesn't fit neatly into that box. And so this gives them some of that flexibility. So we brought that out from existing overlay districts and put that into this zoning code section because we want the architecture review board to have that flexibility. Moving into the dimensional standards. So right now, if you look at any of our zoning districts, whether it's commercial or residential, you have to read things in paragraph form. Sometimes that's the way you want to do things, but sometimes there's more efficient options. So we want to update our dimensional standards for the Unified Development Code where you're going to view things more in like a chart, like a quicker format. Because right now, you'll actually have to read in paragraph form, this building can be x feet tall or it needs to be x feet from the street. What we want to move towards is something that's going to look a little bit more... I hope I can get this to move. Some things aren't working. Is it going to make me click this button in the bottom? Oh, okay. What we're going to move to is something that looks a little bit more like this. The dimensional standards are going to be in a sort of a chart format. So we have all of our zoning districts that are going to be on this page. And so you just look for one and you go to the category. So some of the changes that we might see is we're largely updating dimensional standards to reflect things the way that they currently are. We're not creating something that is going to be, you know, bigger or more in your face or has more massing, there's more overwhelming than we already have presently. But what we did find looking at a lot of our dimensional standards is that a lot of them were not reflective of the way things actually were. For example, in the C1 commercial zoning district, that would be like things along portions of Clayton Road or in Daman areas, they have a really deep rear setback. But if you look at any of those buildings, They don't actually meet that setback. Other examples would be in downtown here. Right now, we've got a pretty low floor area ratio, whereas most of the buildings are actually quite a bit bigger than what the current floor area ratios would allow. So a lot of the dimensional standards have simply been updated to reflect what the existing conditions are. Talking a little bit about that floor area ratio, I know that we've discussed this a little bit in the past, but just sort of come back and address this one more time. Floor area ratio is a relationship between the size of a lot and the amount of square footage of a building. This is going to be the biggest dimensional standard change that you will see in these zoning districts. Again, this is just to sort of bring things to what the current conditions are. Right now, if somebody wants to build a building in downtown Clayton, they can, if they fill the entire lot, they can go up to about three stories. We have a lot of buildings that will exceed that. So we did an analysis of all of our commercial zoning districts and said, hey, what is sort of the, what does this actually look like? And we've updated the floor air ratio to reflect what those conditions are. Within our dimensional standards, we do have some specific call-outs that we wanted to look at. And this is a bit of an evolution of some of the overlay and urban design districts that we presently have. So to clarify about these revisions, we're proposing the removal of a lot of the current overlay and urban design district. If you look at downtown, it's kind of a patchwork of different regulations that can sometimes be confusing. However, there are aspects of those overlay and urban design that are effective that we wanna make sure that we maintain. One of those is the downtown character area. And this is going to provide some greater restrictions to high floor area ratios and step backs that to specific areas of downtown where we have a lot of our existing older building stock, a lot of retail and commercial character. This kind of follows the form of the existing northeast downtown overlay. The goal of the northeast downtown overlay appears to have been to create that specific retail environment and have some specific urban design character to it. So essentially what we're proposing is a smaller, more reduced character in this area. But there are incentives to build taller buildings if you step back the building at a certain point. So that way we're maintaining sort of that same character at the ground level, but giving folks some flexibility to build bigger if they need to. Another area that we're calling out within the dimensional standards is the Maryland Gateway Character Area. This is an evolution of the Maryland Gateway Overlay District. That overlay district served a variety of functions, but one of the key functions is that it protected a lot of that small retail that's on the north side of Maryland. And so we wanted to make sure that we maintained some of those protections. That way somebody couldn't come in and... do a large PUD project or tear those down to build something that maybe residents didn't support as much because residents really do support this section of shops. We want to make sure that there are incentives for property owners to maintain these buildings and keep those well into the future. Moving on to the next section focuses on the use regulations. So right now each zoning district has its own section focusing on the regulations, but we've combined those into the table as we have done in other places. Additionally, we are moving towards a format that references the North American industry classification standard for these different types of uses. Because right now we have words in our use tables But those words don't necessarily always mean the same thing that you might see at like the federal level or that you might see in census data. We haven't changed all of those at this point because there are references to other sections of the zoning code. But for example, a bakery under our current regulations may not necessarily mean a bakery under the federal regulations. So we want to make sure that we're moving in a direction that where our definitions are consistent with other definitions around the country. Additionally, there are some changes to uses across the zoning districts. So right now, for whatever reason, height references are in the use table. So you might see, oh, like a church is permitted on this block. And then they give a description of how tall it can be or something, which is not a place that you would put a height standard. That's a dimensional standard, not a use standard. So we've moved all of the height standards out of these tables. Additionally, we have changed mixed-use structures from being a conditional use to being a permitted use. That's pretty much the direction the development goes. That's a type of development that we want to support. If somebody comes to us and says, you know, I want to build something that's part apartments and part retail spaces, we want to make sure that somebody has a smooth path to doing something like that. And then there's a few other changes that you're going to see more specifically just in the M3 zoning, which is currently high-density commercial, largely in the downtown area. Presently, there were uses related to gas stations. We have pulled those out. And additionally, we're changing some things related to residential structures. So right now... it's a bit of a negotiation to build a residential structure in downtown. One, you need a minimum unit size of 750 square feet, which is a, that's a generous one bedroom or that's a really small two bedroom. Most developments nowadays, they have units that are way smaller than that. They can be four and 500 square feet. Some studios, those are really common. Every developer pretty much needs those. So we've taken away the minimum square footage requirement out of that use. Additionally, we're saying we're going to allow residential-only structures in downtown in some locations, which we'll get to in a second. But the reason for that change is that we recognize that there is a benefit to having a high density of residential dwelling units in downtown because those are going to support our other retail uses. Additionally, we're adjacent to Metrolink and office uses so people could be able to live, work, and travel in this area with greater ease. But with the addition of that residential-only use, so if somebody wants to come in and build a tall apartment building, to make sure they're actually getting some bang for our buck here and not requiring it to be mixed use on certain properties, we are requiring a minimum unit per acre, essentially. And that is 120 units per acre. We did an analysis of... what the different structures were around Clayton, what are the dwelling units per acre of different apartments, different residential uses. And so we're proposing a minimum of 120 units per acre. That's less than some other items that you might see downtown to allow for a little bit of flexibility depending on what a property may need. But it's well above what you might find in a neighborhood like the Morelands or something. So it provides a high density of dwelling units that could come to downtown with greater ease and support those other retail and office uses.

Ryan, before you move on back on that, I'm just trying to understand the impact of all of these changes. And you've tried to summarize what that is ahead of time. But this one just struck me as maybe different. The M3 changes removing gas stations. The context there, are you suggesting that we don't want them anymore or because there aren't any, it doesn't apply anymore? I'm not sure where you're driving from.

It's a little of both. So right now we don't have, I don't actually, I don't think that there's any gas station uses within all of Clayton actually, but specifically in downtown, there's no gas station uses. Additionally, this is an area where we really want to focus on the like pedestrian oriented mixed use office, commercial residential nature. And what we got in terms of feedback from residents is there's certain things that they want in downtown. At no point did they mention that they wanted a gas station in the space. Additionally, that's not a use that's going to support the pedestrian-oriented retail character of downtown.

Right. But I guess what I'm just – again, I don't care about the gas station per se. It's more – what are we looking at in terms of the overall context of these changes? And so removing gas stations would be one that's, it's no longer a permitted use. So that's sort of like a side thing that's a consequence of all this. The other thing that you brought up regarding units per acre so i'm not sure if i understood that to be something that's permitted or something that's required so if somebody wanted to do a 12 unit building for whatever reason like convert an existing building or something um that would not be permitted or help me understand how that would apply

Yeah, so somebody there's going to be parts of downtown where we say we would support a residential only structure here. But we want to make sure that somebody is not saying that they want to do this on a lot and they put like a single family house or a duplex because this is a high density area. We want to support a high density of residential units to support all the other uses around. So we are proposing a minimum of 120 units per acre. You can do 120 or higher. I'd have to double check. There might actually be a call out where this doesn't apply to existing buildings to support some of those office to residential conversions that we're seeing. But we want to make sure that if somebody is coming into downtown and they want to build a residential only structure, that they are doing so at a density that is appropriate for the space. Thanks.

Brian, then for the single use though you're calling out so would that be differentiated from something where you maybe have, I don't know, 12 condo 12 large condos, like on top of each other so it's a 13 story structure, but you have a commercial component at the bottom is that where it's going to take you out of places where there's a single use.

Correct, yeah. Condos are a good example because condos tend to be a little bit bigger than apartment units. There are a couple buildings around downtown that fall under this minimum unit density, but they are mixed-use structures. And so the retail component of structures in downtown or that mixed-use component is really important. It's part of the character of downtown. And so there's more flexibility if you have that mixed-use we're going to make sure that we're getting an appropriate density out of the use to really support those other retail and commercial office uses.

And then providing for a place maybe in downtown, probably not on Forsyth, not on Central, places where we're really trying to get this consumer emphasis. So it'd be in another place in downtown where maybe retail just isn't going to be beneficial.

Correct. So we would be moving away from the requirement for retail for all buildings.

Only in certain places.

But only in certain places we would be giving this option to forego the retail piece as long as they make it residentially dense enough.

Correct. So this ties into sort of a subcategory of the use regulations.

I got one other question there. Yes. So did I hear you correctly that we are eliminating the minimum size of a unit for downtown as well?

Correct. So right now, there's a minimum size requirement. Every dwelling unit that's in high density commercial has to be a minimum of seven. And actually, that might be in all units. any commercial district that allows residential uses. But it has to be a minimum of 750 square feet and pretty much any apartment building that you've seen constructed around here, like in the past 20 years, they have units that are smaller than that. They've just gone through a planned unit development process because the market just doesn't work for them to do a minimum unit size of 750 square feet. They have to provide something smaller. but that ties into another component of the use regulations and what we're calling this consumer emphasis areas. So although we want to allow residential only structures now in downtown at a certain density, we wanna make sure that there's areas that we are focusing on having those retail uses. We recognize that not every single property may need a retail or mixed use component, but we do have areas of downtown that we kind of think of as like our main boulevards, our main streets, where there's areas that these uses are kind of co-located. And so what we're proposing is the consumer emphasis area. And this is an evolution of a couple different things that we have from different areas of the zoning code, but most notably the Maryland Gateway overlay. That overlay had some effective requirements in it in terms of creating good retail. So what we're saying is in primary consumer emphasis areas, which is the thick black line that you see on that map, 50% of your frontage needs to be a consumer emphasis use. That's going to be a street activating use like a retail space, a restaurant, entertainment. And this 50% is... Well, less than you would see on streets like central and parts of Forsyth and Merrimack and such. So this is, it's reinforcing the requirement in that space, but it's not saying necessarily to all of your frontage has to be related to that use. We also actually call out, I'll go back a couple slides. If you look at that use table, this isn't the full use table here. But if you'll see on the very right of that table, there's that column that says CEA, that's Consumer Emphasis Area Use. Those are the uses that we want to target. In this area so 50% of your frontage would need to be those uses, but you can do whatever you want with the other. You know 50% of that of that space and then we have a secondary emphasis area. And that's the dashed line that you'd see on that map and that's just requiring a mixed use component but we're not regulating the you know. The size or quantity of that space, you just have to have that component involved there. Additionally, there's some architectural requirements that come with consumer emphasis areas. The Northeast Downtown Overlay had a lot of great guidance and regulations around creating good retail space. And you'll really see that right over here along Central, both with like Ceylon and Be Missed in Place. They have really good size proportions for their retail space. We want to make sure that that's pulled into this as well.

Ryan, can I ask you, um, I just couldn't, I didn't really know. I was looking under like under that column, the CEA column. What is, what does Academy mean?

Uh, that would be just, um, they can have a couple of different categories. I guess that could be something like somebody had like a dance studio might fall into that. If somebody had a, I've seen examples of like some smaller charter schools at times will fall under Academy, but sometimes that falls under institution. Um,

So it's any sort of teaching component of...

It could be. Truthfully, that's not a use I've ever seen come through Clayton. So that's one of those examples where I would, under our new regulations, I would look at what the NAICS definition is for academy to see whether or not something fell into that category. Okay.

And then along Carondelet, was there a reason you guys made that one secondary rather than primary? Just because that seems like a really heavy area for retail and people walking around. Like why not make that primary rather than secondary?

So you've got some unusually configured lots over there. I mean, somebody could combine, subdivide, do whatever they wanted with those in a particular space. But the feedback that we've gotten whenever folks propose developing in that space is that, oh, all the retail down at the end of Forsyth is dead. Well, okay, well, there's still a character of having retail over there. There's still a character But those spaces are close to each other. So if somebody was to actually... Say somebody was to build on that lot that's on the west side of Carondelet there at the intersection with...

The grass where the parking

garage is. Yeah. Whether or not that was a solid or a dashed line would not actually have any impact on... that aside, having the dashed line there doesn't necessarily have an impact. If you were providing a solid line there, that would actually dramatically impact that frontage because then you'd have to have that on multiple frontages. Now that's appropriate in some locations, but we recognize that there's already a character of like retail space on that end that needs a little bit more. We need some more residential density in that area. So we didn't want to overburden those parcels, but we wanted to recognize that say if somebody divided those up in a different way, we still want to make sure that those have a mixed use component.

And then like given that, I mean, would that be an example where if somebody did feel like there was going to be some sort of hardship, they could apply to the plan commission for alternative compliance, as long as they're meeting the goals of the, I guess, the spirit of what they're trying to create, whether I mean, like high density, you know, residential there, but maybe they can't, you know, they only want one retail spot there. Is that where they could ask for alternative compliance or?

Alternative compliance is a method that somebody could go. I think it would be kind of hard for somebody to propose something that didn't meet the 50% frontage requirement. But one of the examples that we've talked about before is, you know, a grocery store doesn't necessarily fall into the consumer emphasis requirements. But if somebody wanted to come put a grocery store on that corner and it took up a lot of space, that's not a use that we necessarily want to turn away. So maybe that's an example of somebody could come in and propose an alternative use or they could propose something that they think would generate a lot of activity. And so that might serve the intent of the consumer emphasis section equally as well as providing 50% frontage with X number of retail bays and such.

Okay, thank you.

The next section is architectural guidelines. Touched on this a little bit because within that architectural guidelines section, there is a component that specifically speaks to those consumer emphasis uses and how you would format, how you'd present those retail bays. But what we wanted to do here is we wanted to create a section that really gave some do a few things, give a little bit more teeth to the architectural review board to promote the design of new buildings that they think are appropriate for downtown. Additionally, we wanted to provide us as staff something to review against, and we wanted to create expectations for developers. What we commonly see is that folks will come in, commonly through a PUD process, sometimes they'll those actually zone out of their underlying zoning districts such that we don't always get a good look at the architectural section that is in high density commercial. And even though there's an architectural section that's presently there, it doesn't have too much to it. But there's a lot of great content that's in all these other overlay and urban design districts. So we've pulled some of the best of those. We've pulled some things out of discussions that we had. And what we've created here is a section that provides a lot of good guidance to developers to create buildings that are visually interesting and appropriate for downtown Clayton. Similar with the site design standards. Site design standards is a section that's going to create expectations for developers, provide staff something to review against, and provide the architectural review board some inspiration as they're reviewing these items. There are some things we do want to call out here. So parking is going to change a little bit right now. Parking generally is something that's not, like parking that I should say that's visible to the street is not something that's generally allowed in any of the commercial zoning districts. But an outcome of the comprehensive plan was that surface parking is appropriate for sections of Clayton Road. Largely, we're talking about the west side of Clayton Road, looking at spaces like west of Hanley. There's already some existing surface lots there. There's areas where it might be appropriate. We don't want to be burdensome. It can't be any more than 50% of your frontage, but we do recognize that's a place where that might be more appropriate. Let's see here. And then additionally, we have a sustainability guidelines section, another outcome of the comprehensive plan. And this just calls out a variety of different methods that folks can use to make their projects more sustainable. One thing that we want to note is that right now, most of the time whenever folks go through the PUD process, they're subject to like a LEED standard. We don't make folks go get LEED certification, like show us the certificate, but they need to design to a certain standard. So buildings over 50,000 square feet, You need to design to lead standards. Additionally, there's items here with like regarding renewable energy uses, stormwater management. I'm using native plantings, light pollution, bird strike mitigation, a variety of different guidelines and recommendations that developers can look at when they're looking at designing their proposals. So we've got a few examples here of how these changes might impact properties. Before I dive into that, does anybody have any questions? I know we've just gone over a variety of different things.

I wanted to ask about, you sort of introduced sort of a new concept, this idea of alternative compliance. And as I understood, you were describing it, it's the opportunity for the plan commissioner, ARB, to modify things. Now, my understanding, they already have sort of some discretion, like an architectural, they can say, well, that doesn't quite work, but if you do this... Now, it's not actually something they applied for. So I'm just wondering, are we creating sort of a new concept? Sounds like we are institutionalizing the ability for someone to come forward. That sounds to me it's a little PUD-like, which is... You know, we want to do things that are different than what the code provides. And so we want you to review this. And in the PUD, you know, we sort of do these trade-offs. You want to do some things that we don't really allow, but you give us some things that you wouldn't have to do. I guess what I'm really getting at is these decisions about alternative compliance, do they stop with the ARB and the plan commission? Is there still like an appeal process so that if someone comes in and says we want to do some alternative things, they get turned down. Are those then things that could be appealed to the board? I'm trying to figure out where the board fits into this because right now there's a lot of stuff we never hear as a, I'm sorry, council, not a board. that we would not hear as a council because they stop before they get here. Do you see procedurally, is this different now than it was before if this is all adopted?

So the appeal process would not change. So right now, regardless of any proposal that goes before the Plain Commission Architecture Review Board, if somebody wants to appeal that to you guys, they can absolutely do that. Alternative compliance is... is new to some things but it's actually coming from the existing overlay in urban design districts and it has very specific language to it so it's meant to apply in unusual or like specific conditions it's meant to meet the intent of a of a section so if if uh say that the zoning regulation said a building can only be you know five stories tall that's probably because there's a reason maybe there's residential properties next to it we don't want buildings getting too tall Somebody could come in and they could say, well, I want to make it 20 stories tall. If they applied for alternative compliance, we would say, well, what about your property requires you to build like 20 stories tall? What's the unusual condition? And how are you meeting the intent of this height regulation to not be burdensome to these small properties next door? It's not going to be a circumstance where somebody can just kind of do whatever they want. It really is only going to apply in specific conditions. And I

guess my second follow-up, just generally in terms of the PUD, I know we've had at least one owner who has expressed concerns that as applied to their property, that this will be more restrictive. In a sense, it'll be harder for them if they don't like it to apply for PUD because we've, in a sense, worked by refining all of our ordinances. In a sense we're discouraging the use of a PUD. Do you see, is that a valid concern that an owner would have?

My hope is that fewer projects would need to go through the PUD process, but that process is still available. So generally when I get phone calls from folks that are interested in doing a project downtown, I'll describe what the code actually allows and they'll say, but there's buildings that are significantly taller or have a bigger floor area ratio than what currently is. And I say, well, you can go through the PUD process. And half the time they just go, oh, we don't even want to deal with that because it's a... It's essentially, it's a negotiation that they don't want to do. Maybe it's overwhelming for them. My impression that I've got from most of the folks that want to develop downtown is that they don't wanna go through the PUD process. But under these revisions, it should be easier to do things without having to go through the PUT process and that process is still available to folks that would rather go through that process.

I just wanted to clarify a couple of things about alternative compliance process and how we got to it. So there are regulations right now, as Ryan mentioned, in HDC that are guidelines. So they're really like a we would prefer you do this scenario. The way we've drafted this, we've made a lot more regulations where there are requirements to do something. And we've included kind of a reasoning as to why we have that requirement. So the alternative compliance process is a way for those requirements to still have some flexibility. So we've added more teeth, as Ryan said, because now there are requirements rather than recommendations that But then we recognize that some of those requirements, especially related to design aspects, we want the flexibility in case we do get creative design. So the ARB can evaluate that. And then we also, and I want to be clear too, we have a lot of provisions that are not applicable to the alternative compliance process. So the goal here is not to replace a variance process. We've chosen our dimensional standards, our heights, our setbacks very carefully, just like you do with any other zoning process. So therefore somebody who wants to change those needs to go through a variance request process or a PUD process that have more stringent kind of analysis than just alternative compliance. So we have some specific things like a build two line that we have very specific criteria that they could go through alternative compliance to monitor that, but they couldn't go through alternative compliance. Mitigate or change the height requirement except in our character area. So. Just wanted to call those out so that people didn't think we were trying to replace the Board of Adjustment process with a more flexible compliance process.

I have some questions on what you've gone over so far. Can you help me understand the surface parking in a front yard west of Concordia Lane? Okay. I think generally like, are there, yeah. What is the example?

Yeah. So this is actually why I called out this specifically right now. There's actually a character of some surface slots. Additionally, this might be an area where it's more appropriate to have some surface parking available. So if we take an example of this property here, forgive me, I don't remember. Let's see. Okay. 7935 Clayton Road. Some of the things that would change. That's where

like... It feels like a side parking lot, but it's using half or less of the frontage. And so that's what we mean when we talk about that? Correct. What would be allowing? And it can only be half of the frontage?

Correct.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, so under the existing regulations, looking specifically at this law, there's a few nonconformities, but one of those relates to parking. So right now, if somebody wanted to do, like say that this got torn down and somebody wanted to put up the exact same thing, you would not be able to do it. Under the proposed regulations, you could propose this exact property. The one difference would be is that you would need to provide a little bit of screening between the street and that parking lot in the form of either some kind of wall or some plantings.

And I had some questions about where we have conditional versus permitted uses. And these aren't necessarily things that you're proposing to change, I don't think. But I'm curious, like... Like, why would we have grocery as a conditional use in some places and not permitted or like restaurant is still. Is conditional. But bakeries permitted, but only. If the goods are being sold on the property or something, I mean, it's like some of those things are interesting to me. And I feel like if a bakery wants to come in and sell baked goods to the public. and allow consumption on-premise or off-premise, and then potentially also source to Straubs or Vauxhall Grocer or some other place. I would want to allow that. So are we not allowing that? Or would that type of business be covered under a different provision?

So conditional uses are uses that we consider desirable in an area, but may have additional items that we want to regulate. So talking about a restaurant, we know restaurants are desirable. Why might we want to have additional conditions? There's deliveries that are taking place with larger vehicles. There's trash that you have to worry about. There's noise, heat items that you could want to regulate there. So conditional use permit is not supposed to mean like we're wary of this when we don't want it. It's just saying, hey, we want this here. And there might be a couple of additional items that we

want. Yeah. What about the bakery thing, though? I'm talking

about that. So so is right. Ryan referenced when he's going over the use table, the desire to eventually get to the next code. Well, you brought up Academy. Another great use. So our uses, the way that they're listed, we have some very specific definitions for certain uses within our definition section. Other uses are just generic titles within the use table that then we use things like NAICS or other professional resources to add a definition to. So Uses is kind of another one of those points on the spider web that as soon as you start to touch, it can really impact a ton of your codes. We have specific use call-outs in the parking code. We have them in licensing, all that sort of stuff. So what you see here is use change point one, where we've created the table and the section, but we really haven't aside from a couple of really minor changes changed anything from what the permitted uses are in your, in the code today. So definition of Academy, we have a definition of it. It's dance studios and all those things. So that's our definition. So we left Academy. Bakery has that specific call out today. So we left it as it is. But we'll come back to you with like use update part two. which is where we'll officially move all of those uses into NAICS category. And that's where we'll really revise the conditional uses, what's conditional, what's not. Another thing that Ryan has called out on, which I think is a great idea, is evaluating restaurants for potentially a better way to do this. to facilitate their permits. So we'll come back to you with all that. We just figured we'd start by throwing a lot at you with dimensional standards and everything else that this change does for commercial districts. So we'll leave uses kind of alone for right now.

So all the uses will kind of be, I guess, like re-evaluated.

Essentially, other from adding that consumer emphasis use column to it, and as Ryan mentioned, some of the residential changes for downtown, we really didn't touch anything as far as how the uses are laid out from how they are today.

Okay. Well, and so then, so the CEA, like what we would value in a CEA is new, right? And so would you be interested in our feedback on that? Because like, I think it would be, and I'm assuming that like Box Hill Grocer would be under the category of grocery store. Is that right? Or is that something

different? They're kind of a grocery store, but really they prepare and serve food for takeaway. That's when we'd have to look at a little bit more as to what category they fall into. But that's a great example of where alternative compliance would... apply because if somebody wanted to do something like box still gross where it falls into kind of this i'm not sure category and say we hadn't updated our use definitions such that it appropriately fell into a category that's an example where somebody could go through an alternative compliance process

okay it just seems to me like those are actually like like a gross like those kinds of places are actually I think really activating in my mind so like I think we would want a grocery anywhere we can get a grocery that a business thinks it's viable a business owner thinks it's viable so um that's just a night a thought I have

But what I mean, because I would think a grocery, I mean, I agree with you. It's great to have any sort of grocery. I mean, I don't know what DGX would have been, but like whether that should be conditional permitted or whether that should be in the X category under the CEA column. But I suppose like a grocery is always maybe going to be conditional because, I mean, DGX had but the cea

doesn't make it conditional or permitted does it it's a separate right designation i just mean my point is like i would want to really encourage those i mean i'd almost i must think those are more activating than an academy or personal care service if we're talking about activating like street traffic that's just my perspective i'm

Yeah, the goal of the consumer-invested area is to, it's kind of got two parts. One, we want to encourage certain types of uses in certain types of places. And two, we want to make sure that whenever somebody builds something new along that frontage, that they're designing their spaces to accommodate those uses.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think it's good to give your feedback on the uses. We definitely want that from a consumer-invested type of a grocer versus a true grocery store would be important because A large grocery store is going to come with a lot of parking. Yes, it's going to bring a lot of people to actually spend their dollars within our downtown, but a lot of times it's not really active on the street other than the people parking and walking into the store. So there's areas of downtown that I think could definitely be supportive of a grocer, but maybe a convenience style, a smaller size limit would be better within some of the actual areas that we've designated for consumer emphasis. but i think that's kind of how i would approach

that's a great distinction yeah

i want to ask this question too really quickly if i could the floor area ratio is something that's mentioned quite a bit and it's something that historically has caused some confusion. It's just kind of an abstract concept if you don't work with zoning a lot. Does everyone understand floor area ratio? And if not, would you like us to run into that in a little more detail? I know the video box on Zoom was over the little diagrams that I think are really helpful on this particular page, but... Does everybody on the council understand the floor area ratio or would you like a little bit more explanation about it? I just want to make sure everybody gets it. I

understand it well enough to trust that you're making good advice on it. Like it's confusing and doesn't actually, my understanding has been it is confusing and the way we've used it, it doesn't allow us to actually accomplish the goals that we have. i mean i couldn't actually like i'm just saying yeah

i'm just saying that because the diagram is really really helpful and it was covered up earlier so

you gave me an explanation every day for the next two weeks

i know that i've explained it with like stacking quarters and doing all kinds of things but if if you could walk through floor area ratio that'd be helpful thank you

yeah and just like the buildings are those the floors how many of that for yeah so

kind of focusing on this diagram here with the red blocks on the right. So floor area ratio is a relationship between the size of a lot and the square footage of a building. So if you have one square foot of lot and one square foot of building, there's a floor area ratio of one. If you have one square of lot and two square feet of building, it's floor area ratio of two. So we're just looking at that expanded. What this does is it regulates sort of the mass and density of a site rather than regulate a height. Because if you say, okay, a building can be 20 stories tall, though it might be 20 stories tall and built out to the maximum dimensions, you're really going to start with your dimensional standards designing people's building for them. One, floor area ratio, it does regulate that mass and density, but two, it allows for more creativity in design. It regulates both the mass and density of a site, but also it allows more creativity in design on a site rather than just saying max height, max setback.

And that's the flexibility part is what's shown in those red diagrams. So all of those have the floor area ratio, the same floor area ratio. And so the first one is you've got a one-story building that covers the entire lot, or you can have a two-story building on half of the lot, or you could go up to four stories on one quarter of the lot, but your floor area ratio is the same in each one of those examples. So that's where the flexibility really comes in. As Ryan said, there's varying heights there, but the floor area ratio is

we're talking about floor area in that third diagram basically the floor of each story okay so in theory you could go up as depending on the size of the lot you could go up Well, and then so 2030

stories. That's the rest of the analysis there and that map shows the existing floor area ratio throughout downtown Clayton so you can get a sense of what's there. The existing max is three and you can see that, you know, just with the list that they have that they've come up with this, this is just a great way to analyze what we have on the ground right now, you can see that all of these buildings that we all know really well. that support a lot of activity in downtown Clayton far exceed the existing max of three. So bumping that floor area ratio max up is something that we definitely want to do, you know, with these revisions.

So wait, all the examples?

We're

just showing a one on the...

Oh yes, the red boxes. Right. That's a floor area ratio one, each one. And so

then all the buildings you've listed are 12, you know, like 212 Clayton is 12 times

The floor area ratio is 12.6. So they're 12.6 times higher than the area of their lot.

Right, so they could either be 12 stories covering the full lot or they could be 24 stories covering half the lot.

That's

correct.

You're on it. You got

it.

So when I look at City Hall, it surprises me unless we're not talking about parking lot and things like that are included? We're only on like half the lot. Right, but when you... bill for two-story building

so this is

parking

this analysis pulled county data that we have so there's been a couple times where i've had to go in and sort of manually just based on information that we know but you know if you look at a building like city hall i'm sure we have these stories here but it includes the fire department space there's some basement space um

that's how they calculated it okay i thought i understood it until i saw that now i got it again good thanks

Somebody

else. So then are we like, what are we wanting with these four ratio numbers we're wanting higher numbers or we're just setting a number and showing that you can have different floors that allow us to have a six story building versus a three story building it would still fit within the requirement it's just allowing diversity but still just keeping the density.

Yeah, so what we're doing is we're revising the floor area ratio to reflect what's already in these different zoning districts. We're not actually proposing, we're not saying this change is going to make buildings bigger or smaller or anything. We're saying right now we've got a pretty low floor area ratio. There's buildings that go, I think 12.6 might be the highest one. And we've got buildings that go up to this certain point. So we want to actually make sure that our zoning regulations reflect the buildings that are actually here, which are buildings that we would like to see.

And then you're not pushing people into a PUD because then there's this floor area ratio that they can actually accomplish with the land they have.

Correct. Yeah, pretty much with every downtown proposal that's come before us with the PUD process, floor area ratios is on there every single time and says something that triggers a PUD with folks.

There's a table on the fifth page of the document here that shows the proposed floor area ratios based on the location.

But so looking at that north of Forsyth, you still have the maximum at three But that area, like if you go to the picture or the color-coded map, like that area north of Forsyth I think is actually kind of prime for more development than that, I would kind of think.

So we've called out some specific blocks here that have a collection of smaller, older buildings. Think about like where Chipotle is or Starbucks is, that kind of stuff. And what we've seen over time is the slow consolidation of those various parcels to eventually demolish them and build something new. What residents told us in the comprehensive planning process is that While they support development, they don't necessarily support the destruction of existing viable retail space just to build something new. So what we did is we called out those specific areas within the use regulations and say, we're actually going to reduce the height. We're going to reduce the floor area ratio because we want people to look at this site and say, I want to preserve these buildings rather than think, oh, this is a great site for me to tear down these buildings and develop.

And so the dark shaded area is where this applies. Is that correct?

Correct.

So I'm thinking about the area east of that where there's like big open lots and like old houses, like looking buildings that like that area, what, where would that be covered here? Is it not even.

Can you clarify more of the specific spot that

you're. And then like the literally blank. vacant lots across from centene oh okay

west bank

and yeah um and then the like the old buildings like that have like random stuff in them

yeah the salibi building

yeah so those aren't covered under the downtown character those would just be subject to the standard dimensional regulations um which of what

ahead of it which is yeah in the m3 district is 13. or M2, I'm sorry, five, yeah, five.

He's got a multiple of one of those.

And I see the floor area ratio for M3

there. I think Mary and I were talking a little bit about some of that. A big piece of what we're trying to do is make our regulations realistic for how development patterns might occur. without sending things to a pud process that don't need to be there so one of the like most obvious conflicts in our code right now is that our high density commercial says there's no height maximum it says we are okay with you building a building as tall as you want but we have a four-year ratio maximum of three in the same exact zoning district which essentially says You're, you know, with a typical building footprint, you're never going to get more than five, six stories on most lots because you have a three floor area ratio component to it. So it doesn't make any sense. So we want to raise the floor area ratio not only to match different buildings, but a big piece of what our review was is looking at the buildings that we have today that are of a scale that the people talk about wanting to see more of. So then you set your floor area ratio based on that. So now we want more buildings of that scale, but then we have areas like north of Forsyth where we've heard a lot in the comprehensive plan of people wanting those, that scale of building protected. And when the Northeast downtown overlay district adopted, it tried to do that through a lot of former requirements, but some of those requirements were so strict, such as a step back of a building of 40 feet and a lot, some of the lots in that area are only a hundred feet deep. So it basically was reinforcing the fact that this building will be torn down because it's not valuable and it's only valuable for redevelopment if it's combined with some other lot. So we want to kind of recognize there's probably going to be PUDs. We're never going to completely get rid of the PUD process, but we're starting with a standpoint now of here's realistic construction that represents what we want to see in certain areas so somebody could build that through our basic zoning and then they could go to the PUD process if they need to.

And Ana, you talked about like when I was asking you about it, like I think along Central, for instance, there's that vacant lot where JP Fields used to be. So somebody could come in. So there, if you're north of Forsyth, right now the building maximum is three stories. But then if there's a step back, so and I still, you know, a step back, you know, is I guess a step back from the floor. But, you know, like where Ceylon has that really cool like porch that everybody stands on. if they created something like that, they could create a seven-story building or...

Exactly. As

long as there's something that steps back that allows a little bit more...

So this red line that we have here, this represents the step back that we're proposing, the depth of that, which lines pretty closely to what you see at the second floor of Ceylon right now, right over the main entrance to the apartments. They have that little bit of a deck up there. It's pretty much that. So... through the procedures of you're going to tear down a building, here's a realistic step back that might occur to allow somebody to go up and build. Otherwise, we're just going to continue the path of everything being a PUD and people just kind of waiting for that process and that parcel accumulation. But then I'll let Ryan explain U.S. Bank because that's the site you're looking at.

Can I ask one question? When you came up with the four-year area ratios, again, not to make things bigger or smaller but to capture what's there, you were looking at the larger building and were you hearing from development requests or you were averaging all the buildings or you took it from a comprehensive plan?

We were looking at what is there presently.

Everything and then averaging that?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, not just the new buildings that have come in. Okay.

Yes. So you give an example of, to now look at a C2, which would become M2, the differences that would change. So right now height seven stories or 90 feet, that's not changing, but we are changing a floor area ratio of 1.5 to five. That's another example of one of those things that doesn't really line up. 1.5 is pretty low for a seven story height. And then five is, is about, it's pretty common for some, some stuff that we've seen. So for example, this across the street, this might be like six point something like it's that's, that's larger than five. So right now, front setback, which would change to a block face. What is it called? Build-to line. That's what it was. So right now we have a front setback. We're moving to a build-to line. So a setback is how far does it have to be from the street? Build-to is you have to put it right here. We want to make sure that's consistent with the other buildings that are on the block. One item that is changed, or no, the rear setback. That one doesn't change either. This one has a lot of consistencies. Side setbacks not changing. Step backs. So right now in C2, there is a requirement for a step back at the third floor or higher, kind of. There's a step back that's like a suggestion, but the Planning Commission Architecture Review Board can kind of waive it. So it hasn't really been enforced. But something that we've changed here is we've said you have to provide this step back at the third floor or higher against residential properties because we want to make sure that we're not putting a huge mass of a taller building up against what's probably a two-story house. Additionally, 750 square foot minimum residential size is going away. So you can put whatever size residential unit on the site that you want. Mixed use requirements. There's presently no requirement that this site be mixed use. But since it would fall under a consumer emphasis area, we would want to say that 50% of the frontage here along Forsyth needs to have that consumer emphasis component to it. And whenever I was looking at this site, so I realized that US Bank technically owns several properties. But I'm specifically just looking at this parcel here. It's like the south half of this parking lot and basically ends at the building line here. If you did a building that was the same footprint of the existing building with a floor area ratio of five on this lot, it would be about the height of the parking garages that you see across the street.

I have a quick question about the step backs. Is that on every side of the building or is it just like on a specific street side, you know, like?

So for this requirement under the M2 district, it's whenever you're adjacent to a residential property. So most of the current C1, C2 to become M1, M2, most of those properties back up to a residentially zoned property. It's like on Clayton Road more. Yeah, there's some of them that are on Clayton Road. There's some of them on Maryland and Forsyth.

Okay.

But most of them back up to residential properties.

So that's the shared space with the house is what you're saying?

So yeah, the step back would happen adjacent to the residential property line. That's where the requirement would be because we want to pull the building facade away from those smaller residential structures as it gets taller.

Is five feet? I mean, that doesn't seem like very much. Is that pretty? 15

feet.

Oh, but then the, I'm sorry, I was looking at the side setback because that doesn't seem, like, very much.

So that's an existing regulation. I think maybe we added the against residential component, but there's actually, I don't know that there's any C2 properties and M2 properties that are adjacent on the side yard setback to a residential, residentially zoned property.

Um, on going back on C1, just thinking about the setbacks, what are, what are the proposed setback step backs and for C1? Cause I feel like one of the things in downtown is that you walk around certain places and it's frankly, some of the buildings kind of tower over you in a way that's not really inviting for folks. So I liked the idea of having just step backs everywhere downtown for new buildings, but I can't remember whether we covered that in this and I just missed it or not.

So speaking specifically to C1, C1 caps out pretty low. So there's not a step back requirement on that one. As far as step backs throughout downtown, we do have them in some places with the downtown character area. They definitely have architectural appeal. We reference those in the architecture review section of this. We want to be careful about how much we're requiring step backs in a variety of locations because we do recognize there's places that we want additional density. And additionally, when you, we had this problem with the Northeast downtown overlay district. If you make your step backs like too burdensome, people just kind of go towards the PED process. So there's definitely a place for them. They definitely have a benefit and we want to be strategic about where we're.

I guess, I guess my, my opinion is it's great that we want to be more dense, but if we don't do density the right way and it feels over shadowing of people downtown, they're not going to want to actually go out of their place and go anywhere. And I've noticed with some of the, like even the centene building, like, Not only the height, but also the fact that it it just seems to tower over me in a way that I think being missed in place and some of these others did a good job of making it less imposing. Over folks so that's why we're.

Their comments, do you need anything more information from us or is anybody else have any other questions.

I have a comment. When we talked about the minimum square footage for residential, and this was at the Planning Commission ARB, there was a gentleman in the audience who came up and said, 7-Up building, what are you thinking making all these? The entire building is, what, 500 square feet apartments or something. and what does that do to the downtown character versus a diversity of sizes than a building and things like that think carefully about what you're doing and and that's that's what you want downtown so you know it i just wondered in taking away um that minimum size maybe it could be an average minimum square footage for a building so that they could have studios and they could have larger or something like that? Or are we comfortable with a development like that for a residential that is all one thing and perhaps is something that small?

So with that specific proposal, there's a variety of unit sizes that go into that specific proposal in any of these buildings because they're trying to capture a certain type of market share. They need some variety in there. I don't have any concerns about modifying the minimum unit size. One, because you're going to need smaller units to make any of these projects viable. Additionally, we talk about the affordability of residential spaces throughout Clayton and downtown. If we're going to have a minimum requirement, certain size, that's going to increase the cost of those units. Some of those smaller units may be the only lower-cost opportunity options that people have to live in

these units. I understand that, and that makes sense to me. What will cause me concern is just do we want – we're not encouraging – we're limiting how big – it can't be two condos taking up the entire space. building but um we have no minimum and is that what we want or do we want some average square footage or just because we're going from having one to totally wiping it out and i'm thinking about if we're comfortable with that

i'm kind of with you like i that's the one pause i have this whole thing is eliminating it all together i get the logic of what we're trying to do But I feel like eliminating the idea of what a size needs to be altogether just seems to be too much of a swing. And my guess is probably too much of a for our residents as well when projects pop up later. So I don't know if it's a lower minimum or an average, Susan, like you're saying.

But I wonder, like, is it our – I mean, it seems to me that a developer's not going to be able to get a project done unless they've understood the market realities of creating a unit that's marketable to people. So, yeah, at some point they're going to get too small that it's not going to become marketable anymore. But we have a housing shortage throughout, I mean,

throughout the country.

True, but I guess –

But I guess I would argue that if you take the logical conclusion, then we don't need zoning for anything, right? Because at some point, if we're going to rely on the market to tell us what can and can't be built based on what the market needs, we're already dictating what that is by all sorts of zoning. So I'm just saying why are we – I've got hesitation to – Say we're going to rely on what developers tell us they can build for size on the low end, but we're going to control all this other issues of setbacks. What do you

think is the right minimum if you would propose an alternate?

I think that, and I'm throwing this out for some talk. Can I ask Jeff a question? Excuse me?

No, the question is I would need to step back and take a minute and look at what apartment sizes are before I can give you a number of whether it's 200 or 300 or 400. But

I don't know that we're in a position to be making those decisions. I don't know why we would have the expertise to be able to say this is what we think the minimum size should

be. But again, we're making that decision. Ultimately, we're going to be voting on this for all these decisions. So either we're expert enough to make these decisions or we're not. And I don't know why this would be one place that we would say we're not expert enough to shoot.

I think the heart of it is really what is the goal of a minimum unit standard? And just speaking very transparent, you know, with Audrey, the reason that historically the reason that people have included minimums is to try and increase the value of what's developed. Essentially a backwards way of making sure you don't have affordable housing. That's just on a national scale what a lot of these tools have been used for. So I think that the goal that Councilwoman Buse mentioned about having a diversity or a mixture within a development is a very different goal that we could, I think is a good idea, and we can achieve that without a unit minimum. So that could be something that we can have and look at different ways to require mixtures in terms of studio up to multi-bedroom units, especially when we're looking at the all residential type. So we kind of said we need a minimum density. We also could easily look at how people might have required incorporation of different types of unit sizes. But at the end of the day, we can write regulations all day, but the market is still going to very much dictate what gets built. And this, not these exact people, but since PUDs have been done in the downtown for residential, every single one of them has waived to the 750 minimum unit size. And I don't know if maybe in the thought process of doing that was, oh, I'm looking at a development that includes various unit sizes and so I'm comfortable with it. Or maybe it was, I don't really, you know, who knows what every individual voting was. But that's where I would say maybe it's more of the mix is what I'm hearing rather than the actual size of the unit. That is what our goal would be. Thank you. That's great.

Yeah, I feel like an average would be a smart move to make because then you do get that variety so that if people are – if it is a viable option to get smaller units and we do want to be able to have affordable housing in our city, then it is complemented by – and also just like a little bit of a larger unit for the diversity of the housing within a building – And so to my understanding, though, is that if the developer can't meet that, you know, that small footprint of a unit, then they would have to go through the P2 process and then they could do that?

Correct. The market

would also be able to be taken into consideration that way?

I mean, I'm just going to be honest with you guys. I don't want to get in the business of regulating dwelling unit size. We have building code standards to make sure that a bedroom is big enough for safety reasons. But these are things that are going to change throughout time. Correct. So if somebody doesn't like a minimum or an average that we set, they still want to build here, they're just going to go through the PUD process. Whenever I have conversations with people and I tell them about the PUD process, most of them are uninterested. I would like people to call me and maybe be able to give them a path to approval that is a reasonable balance between something that excites them and something that we can reasonably do. There's areas where we can reasonably regulate things that are not going to deter somebody. Floor area ratio is a great example. But starting to get into the weeds of are we going to regulate the size of somebody's specific apartment or condo? I'm not sure that's something that I want to get in the business of doing.

Which is where the average would come in. And I'll defer to your expertise on it.

I mean, I would really stress instead of an average of square footage, it's the bedrooms. So if we have a mix, we would require some sort of different types of bedroom units and bedroom counts. And then again, as Ryan mentioned, what's considered a bedroom? Well, our building code tells them what a bedroom would be. So then, because like right now, if somebody wanted to build a new house in the Arjuna district, we don't say you have to have a minimum of 3,000 square feet in your home. We're getting really large 4,000 plus square foot homes because that's what the market wants for people, but we don't have that floor. So I think that if the goal is to have a diversity of housing options and have a diversity of apartment types that are available that maybe will age better over time, then that's how we should write the regulation.

It's really interesting to think about, like, I'm trying to figure out if, like what opposition or concern I would have about a building that is all studio apartments, or for that matter, all two bedroom apartments. Like, I don't know I'm trying to think about why, as an elected official, I would be opposed to that. And I'm thinking even about, I don't know, I just, I've got a lot of different thoughts.

Yeah, I mean, I guess, I mean, still struggle with, even if there's like an average or a range of apartments, I mean, that may be appealing to us or appealing to some of us, but maybe it's not appealing to a developer. And I don't want to prevent a development because then Ryan has to tell a developer who's maybe going to develop an area that is right for an apartment building. Oh, you can't have all one bedroom apartments. It has to be a range of studio, one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom. So I mean,

can we hear what if you all on if you thought it was something worth considering? Is it something that we want to hear the thoughts on it? Because I I don't have an answer to this either. It's something that came up. Our resident who spoke, our developer spoke, raised some very good points and concerns about the building, and so I'm sharing it.

Yeah, I mean, we can definitely look and see some of the other best practices, what some maybe the pros or cons to doing that would be for you all. Because, I mean, the biggest goal here is for us to write regulations that reinforce what we want to see and so that's the biggest thing here, I mean a lot of times the size of units. The type of unit in terms of the bedroom count a lot of that also leans back into density. You know, you kind of regulate density in a few different areas of the code. It's regulated through our floor ratio, through our height requirements. We have a minimum density. It's also somewhat regulated because of parking requirements. So the more dense, then the more parking they have to build, which is usually a really expensive line item in these types of developments. I think that's kind of the goal is this is a good conversation for people. Obviously, that line item probably means different things to people when they look at it right now to all of you. So I think it's a good chance to reflect back on since we're going to have a public hearing anyway already scheduled. So we'll have another opportunity to talk about it. So that might just be for all of you to think a little bit more about what your goals are related to that housing development type.

So I have a sort of a broader question, but it embraces this point. And maybe you just answered it. But I'm wondering about process for this overall, these changes. So from my point of view, it sounds very strategic, well thought out, reasonable. But I don't use this very often. And so I have no idea what impact some of these things may have. And so the impression I get is in this particular example, there was a review of this and said, oh, there could be a potential impact to my property as a result of this change. So what I'm wondering is, have we proactively sought feedback from various developers or building owners in the downtown area to say, give us some feedback on how this might impact you just so that we could then learn, oh yeah, either that's okay because that's what we want or, oh, we didn't realize that was the impact of what we're approving.

Yes, so the Planning Commission held a couple meetings about this, including public hearings. So every property owner in our existing C1, C2, HDC, and S1, all of them were mailed notice of this and the public hearing information and the drafts and everything. So we had one property owner interact with us about the corner of 47 Central, so we made some changes there. We've had a couple of people. I think the person who made the comments that you were thinking of was actually there in response to the conceptual review of the old world trade development. And that's where those comments came from. So we did. It's been online. We've been pushing it out. Lindsay's included it in her memos. In terms of developers, we have a lot of repeat developers in Clayton. So they all are very aware of it. We talked through with them one of the elements during the comprehensive plan that we had our consultant talk to the developers about was the PUD process, specifically talking to developers who had done that, why they ended up in the PUD, how that zoning process went for them. So a lot of the changes here are really removing barriers that didn't need to exist within our code. It's making the changes based on things that we've seen consistently asked to be changed by somebody building on the property, and changes that have consistently been approved by the Planning Commission, Architecture Review Board, and this council. So the removal of the 750 square feet I think has been, I've only heard positive feedback from a developer standpoint because all of them are trying to build less than 750 square feet. So I think it's gonna depend on who you ask, but so far we haven't had a lot of negative feedback on the draft.

We also had, and just to point to people coming in and speaking, I think it was the property you just mentioned. We had a property owner who came in and was concerned about the 50% retail given the size and shape of his particular property and where it was.

Yeah, that was an architect who's been talking with Ryan about a property that they want to redevelop now. Okay.

And it would be helpful when we get to the point of approval, maybe to have some summary comments that you receive since I'm not sure where to find that feedback. So as an example, in addition to here's the tweaks we made as a result of that, I'd love to hear if in fact you get anybody that says, oh, this is really going to improve the process. Thank you for making these changes.

No, I wish we got, but really silence is the perfect word. So Everybody has been noticed of it. The people that have requested changes or had questions, I mean, I've talked to... I knew as soon as those mailings hit people's homes because I started getting phone calls from people asking about it. But that's it. People really only are going to interact with a letter or come to a meeting when they want a change to occur. So we don't have like a... We didn't make everybody fill out a survey. So I don't really have like a here's a list of all the yes, go ahead with it feedback type of a...

I just want to come, you know, zoning obviously is not the answer to all the things that may ail us downtown or otherwise. I would hope that as we get a couple of these new committees going, the Economic Development Committee and the one that's dealing with the special district, that that would be a further way to get some of the input that I think Rick is kind of alluding to and that we maybe haven't gotten a lot of. But I am concerned still. We've got a lot of vacant space downtown. We still have a need to generate more revenue from property tax. We need to generate more money in terms of sales tax, things that generate those things. Now, zoning is not going to fix all that. But I do wonder if we adopt all these things, which I'm generally supportive of, does that really address any of these issues? And I know they're competing interests because the residents and others want us to retain older buildings. And we have a lot of competing interests, owners who want to sell their property at the highest price, developers who want property that they can pencil and it makes money for them. So there are lots of competing interests. But I'm hopeful that so that we can sort of run some of these concepts by these new committees to get more of a sense of what actually will address our economic distress, which we have some of.

I had one big picture comment to make, and I'm happy I've heard this a couple times because it takes me a while to kind of get in my head. One thing I still don't have my head around is a concern with being able to ask for public benefit. if we need to, if we want a public area somewhere, if we need to bump out a corner for something, or we want to ensure there's some affordable housing in a development. I think Kirkwood just put in, well, I think 10 EV chargers, maybe it wasn't Kirkwood, to attract people to come into their business areas and things like that. And we, I think the work is amazing. It's been responsive to public input. It's gotten rid of redundancies and conflicts. So it's just kind of a bigger picture of how are we, if we're in a dense downtown and there's something that we need, whatever that might be, where's our room to ask for it? Because we're trying to take

out

the PUD, really. It was just a great thing. It's not that it wasn't great, but it's just so we're moving forward, but that is something that we need. And I don't know where that comes in or how to do it, but just something to think on.

Perfect. Right. I think we have another item to get through. So, Ryan, thank you very much. Anna, thank you. Tom, right? Tom, is that your name? Yes. Is that Thomas? Sorry. Thomas is our new planning tech. He started this week.

Oh, welcome.

All right, Matt, you're up.

I'm

in charge. All right, thank you. All right, so I am here today to talk about... our street lighting standards. And we've had a couple of capital projects for a while on the books that we are progressing in design with. We were to this point of making some selections, but the tornado kind of slowed us down. So now we're back and there's a couple of projects that will get added to this. The original projects, I'll get into in a second here, and I'm going to cover a recap of kind of what we got out in the field now, some options that we think could be replacements, the reasons for some of those selections. And then my goal is to, we won't solve it this afternoon, but get an idea on the aesthetic that you're looking for. As we've investigated these lights more, we're finding that There's just so many different options, poll combinations that could be. So to try to come up with all the possible options was a challenge. So right now I think we'll look at this as step one, get an idea of direction to head, refine the design and come back with other options. before we go out to bid. So a little bit about our existing streetlight system. The map you see on the right is just kind of some different data that was pulled for all the different areas from our 2018 street lighting standards survey that we had performed. That's not listed there as there's some different voltages and a lot of different systems too. This doesn't represent something totally different every location, but there's different levels of light, different types of light. And as you can see on the left, the manufacturers are all kind of all over the board. We've got a number of different polls that we found as we were you know, doing some house cleaning for the municipal garage project that really represent this. But the colors and finishes a lot of times do lead somewhere in that gray or black category. And we're not really proposing to go away from those drastically. Materials you'll find out in the field now, this is really just these residential areas that we're talking about, not so much the downtown streetscape, but we've got Composite fiberglass options, concrete, aluminum, and steel. We don't have wood poles ourselves. Those are usually Ameren poles. The bases out in the field, you'll either have a concrete base that has bolts and it's directly mounted to that or it's a direct burial pole, meaning it's usually a composite pole that has an extension five foot or so that would go into the ground and just the soil pressure is what holds that pole up. The age and the life cycle of the existing lights, it's hard to determine. We took over the system from Ameren in 1980s. Some of them were installed obviously with the subdivisions that maybe went from private to public that we took over. There's been some upgrades over the years to the luminaires themselves, meaning replacing the portion that creates the light with an LED light. So we have a variety of color temperatures across the city. um we have in the some of our older areas where the lights still remain we've got down to 2000 to 2200 kelvin that's the temperature of the light so the scale from kind of yellow to white most of the time is what we see when we talk about street lighting the lower that number the closer it is to like a a candle it gets more yellow as it goes higher that 5000k number for instance that's very bright white so you might have that in a a workspace or something traditional. Older LEDs, in order to get the distribution of light and get the efficiency, they didn't perform well at those lower numbers, but technology is increasing. But we do have some 5000K lights on the east end of town out there because it was LED and it got the distribution that was needed at the time. Existing, one thing we'll be looking at on proposed lights is being able to adjust and shield them as we get into residential areas. We'll want to make sure that we can accommodate any concerns that come in from second floor shine in, spill back, those type of things. Right now, we've got some lights that we got attachments that get added to be able to shield that light, or we've got DIY options that we've developed over the years inside of the fixture using tape, foil, Different things that work. Right now, a replacement light is on average in the residential areas, you're somewhere from $3,500 to $6,000. All of these lights I'm going to show you are pretty on par as far as replacement value. but they tend to the higher end of that range. And then depending on the poll selection may, may go higher. So we're probably averaging 5,500 and up as we get into those for future reference, but that'll ultimately depend on the light chosen, but none of these stand out where cost is too much of a consideration from our review so far.

And can I say, I mean, the idea or the goal and correct me if I'm wrong, because a lot of the lights throughout the city are old, very old. So, but the idea or the goal would be potentially to have the same light everywhere, right? Is that?

Yes, that's a great segue to my next slide. I

wanted to make sure everybody kind of, I mean, because there are very different lights depending on the area of town that you're in. So, but the ideal, yeah, there we go. Sorry.

So a couple of options that are out there.

Yeah, that's literally the front of my house. The one in the middle with the- If you

all look close, I looked up all your address. No. So these are our residential lights. I've got a couple tacked onto the end just because they relate to our projects all the way over to the right there, DeMond Avenue and just a standard Cobra Head. But you can see the variations that we have, whether it be in the pole, the material, the luminaire on top itself. That's it makes stocking and maintenance a challenge. You get into these some of these we can't get the fixture on anymore. We will get something that's very close, perhaps, but it's not not matching. But that is the reason, as the mayor alluded to, that we'd like to unify this with the pole and the fixture in some way so that it's it's easier for us to stock and maintain to work on and to have parts ready. The two on the right, as I mentioned, Demont Avenue. I'll talk a little bit about that project. But really, that's an area where we're going to propose the teardrop light replacements for efficiency. But the spacing and the pole condition in that project is actually pretty good for uniformity and spacing. So that's not going to be a full replacement right now is our anticipation. It'll be just updating the lights. And then when we say cobra head, that's kind of your standard pole there on the right. They'll look different, different material, or the arm will be slightly different with a different head, but that's generally it. Street lighting pole, roughly 25 foot tall, spaced about every 150 foot. So when we look at just the city as a whole, the way they're distributed materials, Now, is anything in red are those Cobra heads? So it's along some county routes you'll see there too. We maintain street lighting. Anything in green are those post-top pedestrian lights, just for reference as we talk about these.

And is it just like dependent on what happened at the time those lights needed to go in? Like, did we make the decision, Cobra versus...

That's a great question. I assume we did at some point, but there's nothing that's apparent as to why some of these areas chose that. It could have been that they were always private subdivisions and that was a cost-effective way to distribute the light. I'm sorry, public subdivisions. It could have the private areas upgraded the lights when they were paying for them, and then when it got turned over, the city inherited those.

Got it. Thanks.

And Matt, would the Cobra Heads more be used for main thoroughfare roads and then the pedestrian lights? Or do you intend to use both, I guess? Yeah, we'll use both. Everywhere throughout. So regardless of whether it's a quieter dead-end street versus a busier street, you'll have a mix of Cobra Head and... the pedestrian lights.

Yeah, right now it's as they're distributed right now, it would keep about the same number of poles. One thing we want to be conscious of is people getting new poles in their yard. Some people, or if one moves, I'm sure people are going to be not aware real happy with about it sometimes. So the Cobra head does allow for fewer poles to be installed. And that's where the savings really is. The conduit and the ground is basically the same. A Cobra head pole can cost slightly more, but you're probably going to end up with close to half the number of poles.

Does on the, if we wanted to put something other than Cobra lights, so say main streets, is that an option or are we basically defaulting to Cobra lights on all the main thoroughfares that we control?

So downtown is an example. It's a main thoroughfare for site that does not have Cobra heads. It has all the streetscape lights. So you can do it, but it's just, you're going to end up with more 15 foot lights rather than fewer 25 foot lights. Significantly

more expensive. Depending

on the option chosen. Downtown

versus had we put in Cobra heads along the way. Oh, in downtown for sure. Your triple per light, the

expense. I'm only asking is like Cobra Heads and Main Thoroughfare is something we kind of almost all are used to seeing and driving. I just don't know if neighbors are going to want it in their neighborhood. So if we're trying to unify to one post or something like

that. so interesting yeah i mean like so if you look at like the high point to my area or skinker heights north of widown like those are cobra heads i walk in those areas all the time and i don't i've never even if you asked me i couldn't have told you they were cobra heads i know that and nobody's ever complained that they're like distasteful

you know i i've got to say too when you do when you look at the timing on this and you ask the question yeah when did this happen how did this happen I wasn't here in the 80s following what was happening when we took over the system from Ameren, but I can almost guarantee that if you date some of those Cobra heads, they're going to go back to the 80s. And what happened was you probably had some of these neighborhoods that had the post-op poles that were decorative. Ameren owned the system and Ameren said, we have to replace this neighborhood's light system. It's gone bad. Ameren isn't going to put in decorative poles. They're going to go The city or the neighborhoods or whoever probably saw all of our decorative lights have gone away. Cobra heads have come in. We don't want that to happen anymore. And we'll take over the system so we can dictate what types of lights go into our neighborhoods. It's really, really unusual for any community to call Ameren and say we would like to take all of the streetlights away. away from you and pay for the long-term maintenance of lights that you own. The only reason you would ever do that is for aesthetic purposes. So I've got to imagine if you went back in time in the eighties, there were probably a lot of conversations in this room about neighborhoods that had their lights switched out from the decorative type over to the Cobra heads. And that's why you see it like that.

And Aaron probably jumped at that offer the minute that

they probably took them a little while to figure out

Yeah, that was one

question. And I don't I mean, I will say we also have a very big tree canopy. So it's I mean, the lights actually don't do very much because it's just we have lots of trees. I just feel sorry.

I said one other question in terms of level setting. I know we're talking about it now because it's starting to put lights in. But the big project citywide that we're talking about probably is going to be bond issue in 2030 or whatever the date is. as we, I think, make decisions, and I don't know if any of us fully know the answer, but we're also going to have to go to voters to get approval to replace all these lights. And if we're going to run into the issue where nobody wants Cobra lights, if you put that in front of them, you may not actually get it passed. So, I mean, it's not something we can decide now. I just think it's something we at least need to be aware of as we think through this. And

Matt will go through the options here that we're looking at for these neighborhoods where we have to do some mass replacements now, and we're not suggesting that we go in with Cobra Heads where we have post-top lights at the moment. Let's basically go back as is.

Oh, that was my question.

That's the type of light fixture that we're going back in with would be our proposal at this point, so.

yeah as i was putting this map together to your point i was like oh i don't i can't remember what's in clayton garden

yeah right

well if you can't think of it it's just it blends into the background in a way

and it just lights you i mean honestly like we have my neighborhood has the like charming little lights but they actually don't always work great which i'm sure whatever we get will work great no matter what But like, I don't know if it's cost effective and there's fewer of them and we can walk through these other neighborhoods and not feel like offended. A lot of, I mean, this, these Y down results were all about like, do what's smart financially. Don't spend extra money on stuff. I mean, it'll be interesting to see what feedback we get.

One thing I'll share as it's been a while since we've talked about this, but for those newer to the council, the main reason that a lot of these areas experience issues is we have, it's not so much the lights themselves as the lines that are in the ground. We have lines that are not in conduit. They're direct burial lines surrounded by soil, and those age over time and fail, and we're not able to easily replace them. So that's a lot of this project long-term looking out for the whole city. That's really one of the major goals is to get all of that into conduit to protect it and have better reliability and serviceability. Um, so streetlight projects I mentioned early on that, um, we're leading to this discussion. We've got Y down forest, which is one of the post-top, uh, uh, light fixtures. We have high point Daman and Daman Avenue there on the right, which are a combination Cobra head and post-top light fixtures along Daman Avenue. The third project that kind of wraps into this is just a screenshot of our damaged lights and circuitry from the tornado. So, um, this is, uh, This was coming about because of the top two projects anyway, but now we're back. We're gonna try to incorporate any selections we have with any replacements we do so that the quicker we can get a kind of a uniform light in place. The areas where we have overlap, we're talking about can we, depending on the light selected, can we go back with the same color that's in the neighborhood, whether it be a black or a gray, so that it's the same style, same serviceability, and then maybe we can change that color when a future light project comes through. So to not make that light stand out now as opposed to its neighbor, but get the new standard as we start to replace lights. So that'll be evaluated as we select the ultimate fixture and pole, but that's the initial thought with the tornado impacted areas. These are some selection considerations as we finalize whichever fixture we land on. A lot of them have very similar features, but we want to look at the manufacturer who's providing these lights, make sure they're going to be around for the long term. So we look at the age of the company, talk to suppliers that sell multiple products and check on reliability. We have some good idea for some vendors, but we want check on others. Make sure they're available in the finishes that we would want, the base options. Look at the cost. The pole and light uniformity. That'll be something that designers take into account for the fixture that's selected. A lot of the areas we have in town now, we meet light standards, but the uniformity of the light, the ratio of it is too strong. There'll be areas that are very bright and areas that are barely meeting the standard. And the idea is you want a more even glow, lower efficiency or higher efficiency, lower illumination, but more evenly lit. Considerations of maintenance, just ease of accessibility. So we're making sure our operations staff reviews any light that we select. The life cycle, which factors that should have been right there with the cost. Energy consumption, color temperature and range and lumens. The lumens will be selected by the engineer doing the design. Every light comes in different brightness slash lumen levels that will be made to fit those IES standards for uniformity. And then the color temperature that we select that ties into actually the last bullet point there. which is dark sky. So 3000 K and under fixtures. What we've done with a lot of our retrofits or fixtures is we've tried to have selectors built into those so that we can change the temperature ourself. to be able to match the surrounding light. Because what we don't want to do is have mismatch of light, especially in a new area. Cobra heads, traditionally, they're getting more options available that have been 3,000K and above. So we use that in a lot of areas. But if we can get them other lights with the selector to be able to take it down to 2,700K in the future, it's good to have that compatibility. But the cost will factor into that if it adds too much. that adjustability goes with the shielding also falls into that category. Smart lighting compatibility and remote options, we're not proposing any upgrades in this regard right now, but we're going to make sure that the light we select has the ability to add the module and or tie it in to be able to control it remotely, monitor it for outages. Bigger deal in much larger cities where you're spread out, you might drive half hour to get to a light, but around here most of the time we're able to see them pretty easily. And then dark sky compatible lights, we're looking at the fixtures that comply with that. And I think what you'll see in the options I've got here, I believe, I think, yeah, all of them do. So three options that I'm going to show. These are not exact, but they maybe kind of lean towards some of the options that we saw back here, pulling from these, some of the styling. Some of these manufacturers are still around, but they don't offer great cutoff dark sky options now. So you'll notice a lot of these older ones had globes. These newer ones we're going to show really most of the time don't have a globe, but they kind of mimic some of the look. So this is more of a traditional colonial style. You can see there it creates a cage, but the fixture on the right is the one we'd be looking at. They have multiple options, but the fixture keeps that cage, but the light is all housed up in the top part of the light. So it gives it the same look as maybe like the polo area, for instance. But still provides that where the light is directed downward. The pole in the middle is just one option of a finish at the base. As we select a fixture or a direction to head, then we can come back with different options for those bases and prices. But any of the bases, you kind of jump back to our existing. Those decorative bases that aren't just straight into the ground you see there, a lot of those options are available. There's not a lot of variety, but every light has a little bit different pole that's compatible with it. So if there's a favorite style amongst there, we'll be back to ask that question. Option two is a light fixture that's similar in nature. It gives a little bit different of a shape, but it's that same with the cage with the LEDs tucked up under with the light directed downwards. This is from the same manufacturer that produces our downtown streetscape lights. They are not expensive as those, but this is not a custom light. You can kind of see a picture there on the right of it, both in the on and off condition with a couple of potential pole options. And then the picture in the middle just illustrates that this is part of a family of lights, whether it be a bollards, a cobra head or a building mounted light.

Yeah, would the Cobra heads look like that then too? The Cobra

heads we were talking about earlier, no. This is just illustrating this is part of that family of lights. That would increase the cost of the Cobra heads quite a bit. It's something to discuss perhaps, but they're not planned to look like that now. This is just to show that there are options. Option three is from a different company that we don't have as much familiarity with, but based on what we've reviewed with their manufacturing process, it seemed to be on par with the Sternberg Lighting Company that you saw on the last slide. This is called the Omniscape option from them. It gives quite a few different options. So on the left, you can see kind of the base three builds. It starts from contemporary all the way up to kind of a historical look. I felt like maybe the one in the middle there is the comparable fit to our other two options and our existing lights in town, but you have the capabilities of switching those out. What you see in the middle is this has a few more options of what that skirt or finial look like as well. And then for DeMunn Avenue, this is... There's a few options, but they almost all look exactly like this. And I should have put a picture of existing . I'd have one. So you can see that there's a cage that kind of goes around the light. The idea would be that that, I believe, is adaptable to this fixture. You see it looks smaller, but it's basically just kind of replacing the internal light fixture would be the goal. So we would see that that's adaptable to that, but it should look very similar. So this is kind of the two options for that is it's got the globe that extends downward or the cutoff style, which does not allow any light to diffuse upward. I have to check which calculations that the designers ran on that, but I don't believe that would have much of an impact on the distribution.

Are you suggesting that on Demand, you would keep the poles and just change the lights that are hanging? Right. Okay. I thought that's what you were saying, but I...

That's our working assumption right now because the issue we have along that area. Now, we would still, I believe, put the circuitry would be new, but the pole locations and bases would be able to stay where they're at because the maintenance and operations is an area of weakness in there because of the direct varied lines. And the maintenance of those existing lights is difficult the way you get into the fixture. But the illuminance levels and uniformity in that area are not a concern like they are in the other areas. So therefore, moving the poles is not a priority. And they're in fairly good condition. So that's one option we'd look to use there. Cobra heads are really more generic. These are just a couple of options that are dark sky compliant, have the ability to have some advanced features, different shapes, and there are color options available. I did not find a good couple of pictures for pole options, but they're basically metal pole options with a concrete base or the composite direct burial option. We need to get final costs on that. So similarly, we'll come back to ask about the poles on a selected light. We'll have more options and some prices for the Cobra heads. But right now, these are kind of whatever. We'll probably use a couple varieties, but we can get different colors and whatever works for operations. But they tend to kind of fade into the background, not as prevalent to look at. So those are our options for the Cobra Head and Daman. Right now, I'm not really looking for any input, but for options one, two, and three for our post tops, looking to get a direction to head to kind of shore up the design. Really, if we give the designer a fixture, they're able to place the exact light pole locations, and then we can... you know, share some of those poll options and cost impacts.

So Matt, then, so there's different lights throughout the city. Some, I mean, so the Y down forest where we're using the excess money to be able to replace all the lights that we have from leftover from those. Yeah. And then that's where the lights are going in at demand to change it out using those excess money. bond proceeds that we need to use. And then there's lights throughout the city that were damaged through the tornado that we're replacing. So the idea is cobras will get where they were damaged or where we're replacing lights anyway. Cobras will go back in where cobras were. And then light fixtures, that's where you're asking us some direction on one, two, and three. So potentially you're going to have some mismatched lighting in the Moreland's in Claverac and Polo in places where we are replacing a damaged tornado light with a new light. And the idea is these new lights will potentially eventually be used throughout the city.

With

the hope that five or 10 years from now, as Jeff mentioned, when we have to go out and really replace all the lights, hopefully we've picked a good supplier who will still be able to provide these lights five, six, seven, eight years down the road. Is that kind of So I think, does anybody, I think given that, does anybody have any, I don't know, preferences on option one, two, and three? I

like option one.

Okay.

I'm still struggling with the Cobra heads you showed us. Those look so radically different than anything I've seen before that I don't know what to make of that. The one

on the left, we've kind of got one like those already sold out in the field. Cameron uses something very similar. They're on wide? Is there one on wide? Or where are they? There probably is one. We started replacing the older style lights with LEDs, so they're sporadic at different locations.

So Jeff likes one. Anybody else?

I liked the colonial. Number one, I thought, it was colonial, but still it had a little bit of a contemporary touch to it. So I'd go with door number one.

I like one or two. I think also, like, taking into consideration the pole shape, you know, like on option two, like some of it is, like, ridged across. I think it adds some interest and things like that since these are going to be in all the neighborhoods. I definitely think the pole design is important because a lot of these are more simple than, like, all the existing ones throughout the neighborhoods. So that would just be, like, to also take the pole into consideration. I don't like three at all, but I think one or two are... Okay.

That's a fluted bowl that you see in that second picture from the right there. But yeah, there's multiple options.

What was three again?

picture furthest on the right would probably be post representation depending on the poll option selected or you can go with any three of those top fixtures on the left. This one gave a few more flexibility options but really the finial people probably don't see from street level anyway.

And then can you show one and two one more time? I think if I was going to pick, I'd pick two, but I will have no offense if one is chosen.

I tend to prefer two to one, but I don't find one offensive or anything, so...

transparency one is not a light that was provided by the designer and ran but it is a very standard light that's available from a lot of manufacturers and i don't think we would have a problem you know like

on one i like the base of that like the pole and all that like kind of the details of that but is that you're saying that we probably wouldn't even do that though

so you could That poll may be expensive, but there's probably a poll that looks like that that goes on option two. So it's really just I would focus more on the fixture on top for this process.

I think they all look good. I like the dark sky compliance with the one that doesn't extend down below. And it costs, obviously. It's important when it's that close of a call. I'll

get more information. That will

decide my vote.

With one of these lights that kind of have a family, you do have some flexibility if you decided you wanted to modify it later. But that's the only thing I would add for that.

Does option one have this level of height as option two does? We may not want to as a city, but if we wanted to have medium heights or tall heights in different parts of the city, for whatever reason, does option one give us that? Or are they all the same basic...

You could get a different pole in option one. So what you could do with option one is a different pole, a different amount of light output. Option two, you just got other complimentary similar lights, bollards, cobra heads. Again, those aren't planned to be utilized, but it's future flexibility perhaps.

I mean, as much as I like one, I agree with Susan. I'd be curious what the costs are. Like if option two is cheaper than I think, I would be fine with that because I think even though we don't plan on using bollards and other things, who knows what we may want to do seven or eight years from now. And if that's at least an option, hopefully still then and maybe worthwhile. So.

The poll all the way on the right for the scale we're looking at, you're probably, I think it was around 5,500 to 6,000 currently. So it's, if we were to replace, let's say the Clavarac light, excuse me, there the fourth light from the left, that's probably 3,500 to 4,000 for reference. It is a bit more, but I think it's a better quality light as well. Some of these we can get lights that are similar. Yes, and some of the lights you can get, but these are older style lights. They have some LED options, but none that are protected from upward shine.

Yeah, and we just want to get away from the spot where we have backstock of eight different lights or different levels of backstock of eight lights down at the garage, just taking up a ton of

space. Maybe they weren't completely replaced, but didn't Davis Place get a wholesale update not that long ago?

I think it was an LED upgrade. So internals, not the out. Okay.

So, so it's not like if again, it may be a couple of years from now, but when we go back through and do that, the poster probably needs to be replaced anyway, but we may be able to keep the tops or we just replace everything.

We would, we would probably replace everything. The tops are the more likely thing to go to swap out to an LED fixture. Okay. Because a lot of what we do is retrofits, meaning we've pulled out the driver and replaced what would have been a standard incandescent bulb with some retrofit fixture that maybe screws in or wires in, where the new LED fixtures are just an all-in-one assembly.

Anybody else? Just you, Matt. Matt, do you feel like you've gotten some? It sounds like either one or two cost is a big... I think, influence on everyone.

Flexibility, even though we don't plan it right now, flexibility of having a light family carry any

weight? I think that

seems interesting.

Yeah. I don't know. Especially if we, I don't know, yeah, think about a cheaper streetscape in areas. I don't mean to open up a can of worms, but thinking about, yeah, where some of these family of lights could go in other places that are a cheaper option. That's a very good point.

I'm also personally really torn about the idea that like because I feel like there's this idea that the cobras are worse, or not preferred by residents. And so I don't love the idea that just because I don't have a cobra today means I won't get one, even though what I'm going to get might be a lot more expensive and less efficient or effective. I guess I'm interested in like what people think about. I mean, it feels kind of crappy to me that like we think that this is a better light and I'm going to get one in front of my house because I have the old lamp. But like my neighbors in Skinker Heights or on San Benito are just going to get a cobra and we're not even going to get him a pretty cobra that looks like that matches the one I'm getting just because that's what they had before. Like, it feels like if we're really standardizing, like why wouldn't we actually decide what's best and standardize?

So. Standardized to all Cobra heads?

Maybe. Or the, I mean like standardized to all, like those Cobra heads standardized to all these people. pendant cobra heads or standardized to the like street posts whatever i don't know i just think it's worth considering that because it feels it just doesn't like feel good

no i mean if

the whole point is standardization right we're only like doing it

yeah so like and and maybe for clarification so the cobra heads because there's cobra heads you said becky on like san benita and stuff i

mean the map showed them

and i mean there's places in yeah so But I'm assuming there were Cobra heads that were damaged in Area 6, right, during the tornado? Yeah. So those will go back with Cobra heads and not necessarily one of these light fixtures.

Yeah. And I understand what you're saying about one area versus another. I would just say from the operational stock perspective, right now, stocking two lights for these areas is a huge benefit for us just to whether it be Just this one type of post-op and a Cobra head, that's a lot of savings for us. What you're talking about is a combination of that plus the resident aspect. But just from the operations side, I'll share. Stocking those two is not a big concern.

I do agree, Becky. There is this thought of if we think one is the best, maybe not this year or next year, but when we go through the bigger project, I think it's worth to consider. Like, do we take all the Cobra heads out? If we decide Cobra heads aren't in and everybody gets the same light.

Yeah.

Cobra

heads are a lot less expensive and all these other neighborhoods that have them are really nice neighborhoods. Maybe like we suck it up and take them. Like, I don't,

the thing with us though is time is really important here especially with the tornado recovery so for instance the 7400 block of the morelands you've got two circuits on streets that are completely gone all of those are going to have to be replaced if we're going to go back in with the um there thanks for putting the map up so you got 7500 block that's going to be um that's parkdale so all of parkdale you've got lights out you've got them out on audubon you've got Buckingham, basically the entire 7400 block is dark as well. You've got a neighborhood that has standardized polls throughout, but we need to put these lights back in and whatever we put in now isn't going to be replaced when we do the big bond project, you know, 10 years from now or so. So we need to make the decision. Do you want to switch to all Cobra heads citywide, for instance, or all post-op citywide? We need to do that right now with this project. And this is something that we need to get designed and out to bid as soon as possible because we have neighborhoods that are dark. So we're happy to have that conversation, but if we're going to go that route, we need to figure out what does that deliberation look like and be able to make those decisions relatively quickly.

It would be nice to know the cost differences because I can tell you looking at my house without pink flamingos – so many trees are gone if suddenly our old light fixtures are gone and we put in something like the cobra heads there's gonna there's gonna be a reaction to that because we already have an entirely different street than we had before

yeah i can certainly get the cost one thing i wanted to add to what david was saying going back with what was there so are the people doing the design on each of these neighborhoods as we look at it they're going to model it for the distribution but some of the areas that do have the taller trees if you were to take a post stop and put a cobra head the distribution of the light may not fit if they're close. So you might have to either relocate the light or remove a tree in order to get the distribution. Not saying that has to happen. You might have just put them tighter space together. So you might lose some efficiencies, but if we know we go back one for one, we kind of know what we already had was at the height that was working too.

You also have a lot of one-for-one replacements. So all those little green dots that you see on that center map there, those are individual lights that are going to have to be replaced. So And

they may be either a Cobra head or. Yes, but that's why you have to go back and whatever's there because

if it's just one on a street it would look weird to have a bunch of post stops and then we just came back in and put one Cobra head that has a lot wider distribution to it so no matter what I think in the meantime for those one offs, you're buying whatever's in that neighborhood, otherwise you're just, it's not going to look right. But the areas where we're doing wholesale replacements now's the time if we're going to make a change.

But those individual green ones, you're not saying that if we put one in now, it may not be ripped out in 10 years?

It won't be.

It won't be because it'll be the new fixture. I get the blue ones, but even the individual green ones, because you're going in light for light. So that's my question.

When we say light for light, whatever we pick here, that's what's going to go in that spot. Going forward, all the lights from now on are going to be basically the light that we select based on what we were just looking at. Gotcha. So

we're basically making a decision for a wholesale replacement of the city. Whatever that light is. That's correct. We're standardizing.

Now's the time. We've got to purchase, obviously, a lot of lights. But

then if we're going to put on the ones that have Cobra heads or putting Cobra heads back in, that doesn't necessarily make sense if we're going – Or does it? Well, no,

you're going to have

areas with

Cobra heads in the future and area with post-op if we went back doing what we're doing. And so the red areas stay red and the green areas stay green in that scenario.

So I would just say in terms of feedback, I find the plan as you've described it to be both effective and efficient in terms of your inventory management and maintaining the quality of life that our city residents currently enjoy. If there isn't some compelling cost reason that we find that we wanted to go, for example, to Alcobra and it was so compelling, maybe we should be aware of that. But I don't see an equity issue, and I'm not saying you said there was, but I don't see equity issue of putting COBRA in some areas and the other type of light and others if we're simply replacing what already exists. So I'm supportive of the plan as you have identified it. That's my feedback.

Anybody else? Yeah, I mean, I think Becky brings up a good point. I think it's a lot at this point to decide whether we do one or the other. It seems like in terms of being able to move forward to get lights back in these neighborhoods, I'm supportive of just going one for one at this point. But I mean, I'd be interested too, Matt, in places like where, you know, there is cobras where you said they're, I mean, like on our street, they There's not very good light distribution because the Cobras are in the middle of tree canopies. So, you know, I would think in the future engineers would potentially evaluate areas where you might be better served by a lower fixture. Yes. Whether that's a lower Cobra or not, I don't know, but something where it actually, it would be more useful where the light would actually distribute better. I don't know.

That could come into play, and then that would be a decision point, and if it's going to spend additional costs to meet that level. The one-offs that you see on the map there on the bottom, those would not take that into account like you're designing a whole system. It's just going to be replacing in kind. The runs that are full circuits, those will take into account the spacing, and they may not go back where the light was before, just clarification.

So is the COBRA half the cost of the other roughly, or what?

depending on the poll selected, I'll get that. The COBRA is not appreciably different in cost. It's just that you have to use so fewer of them because the spacing would increase up to approximately 150 foot instead of maybe 50 to 75 foot.

When you're doing the one-offs, it doesn't matter because you're putting them back where they were.

Just to point out, yes.

I will get costs so that we can talk real numbers.

Like if we do the one-offs now, and I won't be on the council in 10 years, but the council in 10 could decide, even though you're going to replace a street pole at the corner of my neighborhood where one went out, In 10 years, if it's clear that cobras are effective, efficient, and a cost savings, they could decide to replace all of Hillcrest with cobras. Like, I mean, that would be an option. I just want to like, I mean, we have to make a decision for now and know what it potentially impacts, but I don't know. Not actually locking in a future council to a decision that they have to

make. Yeah,

I think going back, Matt, what you said with what they have now, especially in tornado damaged areas, I mean, we need to just make decisions and move forward so that there's lights in areas where there's nothing right now. All right.

So one or two, or basically I hear KIPCOT option three. Having a family of options is important maybe for future adaptability. One for one's good. I'll get some costs and some poll options, but there's not a strict winner, I'll call it. Look at the features, the prices, and all that.

That's good. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? Great.

Thanks,

all. It's something new topic. Are we allowed to have a new topic, at least a question?

I mean,

yeah. So I just wanted, I was hoping that we could maybe talk about these at some point. So you distributed the Whiteown restoration memo. My question is, is there a process for us to collectively discuss this? Do we want to collectively discuss this is there a direction we're going to go? What's the plan?

Yeah. So of course we're limited on meetings in December. We do have the Friday session in December. That's still on the calendar. That would be a good time to have that conversation. december 9th that meeting is just jammed with items so um but yes we need to have an open conversation about what we would uh prefer to see over there so

so the reason i bring it up is i've had um so the uh clayton community foundation white own committee wants some feedback from a timing standpoint on what are we raising money for meaning which plan or have we chosen and what's the direction um and then uh you i'm sure all are aware of the newspaper article that ran about tornado recovery in the post-dispatch. And so I've had a couple of residents email me just while we were sitting here saying how they feel very strongly what they don't want. And so I'm not saying that we've made a decision, but residents are going to keep asking us more and more. So I want to make sure that we develop our vision in a timely fashion.

Yeah, I agree. And I think it also is helpful that we're having that discussion with CCF on the 9th.

I'd second since I was there with Rick as well. And I think this upcoming meeting with CCF, I really think we need to give some direction to CCF as to what the city is thinking because I think in the past, the CCF has taken direction from the city in terms of what CCF should be working on and how they should be working on it. I think we just need to have some thought of our own as they come into that meeting as to where we think this should be going. I think that's critical. Otherwise, that's not going to be a very productive meeting with them.

Thanks. The second thing I'm wondering about is the appropriateness of having some kind of discussion or feedback or study regarding the proposed exit of the County to the Northwest Plaza site in terms of the impact it might have on our community. And what are, what, if anything, are we, do we want to communicate to our community about this in terms of either the impact? Well, just whatever. So any thoughts about that?

I mean, I mean, the discussion I met, I mean, I met with Lisa Clancy this week and we were talking about it. I don't, I mean, I think from the city's perspective, they have to leave their buildings because they're not sprinkled. They will not comply with our fire code. I mean, as far as we know, their move or potential move if they're looking at those leasing options in Northwest Plaza is temporary. You know, they haven't outlined any plans to come back. in terms of like, are they going to build a new building? Those are things I think they still have to figure out. So I think until we understand what they're going to do, I think it's hard to study it, I guess.

Other than having some, maybe you are going to be in regular communication with a county official. I don't know what it is. All I'm suggesting is that... I have questions, and I'm sure other residents will, about what does this mean for our central business district? What impact could law firms move as a result of this? Will our restaurants be affected? And, you know, what are we talking about? And if we had any information like, no, this is just a certain number of people or it is temporary or anything that we can mitigate the concern, that would be helpful.

I mean, I think it's important to realize too and assure everybody that even if they move their administrative offices, I mean, everybody knows the county council has to stay here, but also the jail and the courts are not going anywhere. And the jail and the court are what keep the law firms and the banks here. So I'm not worried about that. And I don't know how much economic impact the office workers in the administrative building, I'm sure they have some, I don't mean to like not, you know, acknowledge their impact. But I think the law firms certainly are the biggest thing and they're not going where they're still paying off the courts building. I mean, it's still a big bond thing for them.

So those are good mitigating facts. And so I appreciate that. It was interesting in our CCF meeting today, one of the commissioners just brought up the whole topic of what does this county move mean in terms of membership at the center? And we don't have that data. So we have no idea what the impact is, if it's any at all. but I just know that we'll have questions and to the extent that we can find answers, that would be good.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's interesting to think about, David. I don't know if you think there's any way for us to quantify the impact of, you know, I don't know, like administrative employees or, I mean, the sheriff's office. I don't

I'm sure there's some with that. The hard thing is we don't know what might go back in that place. So, you know, the county sold that property to somebody else and went back on the tax rolls and then you know, you had some big mixed-use building there, it's probably going to generate a whole lot more activity than the admin building is at the moment. And the office workers are really what you want to look at because most of the people that are going to conduct business at the county, they go, they park, they go inside, they pay their taxes, they get back in their car, and I think there's probably minimal economic impact from the actual services that they're providing. How much those office workers are getting out and eating lunch, I'm not quite sure, but I would think that if somebody were to buy that piece of property, back on the market and develop something in the center part of Clayton, that, that, property is pricey enough where whatever goes into that spot is going to have to be some sort of substantial development that's going to drive a lot.

Yeah, I agree with that in the long run. But in the short run, we have lots of vacancy in our central business district already, and this will be more. And so will our businesses survive for the long run to get to where it's going to be wonderful some way? And so I know you don't know the answer to that. I'm just saying that's a concern.

Absolutely. I think what you just said is the kind of information we need to figure out how to get out there because I also heard for two or three people who basically don't really understand and said, oh my God, I understand everything in the county is moving. And then you have to sort of back them off and say, well, no, actually it's just the Roos building. There's already a lot of misinformation. And any way we could kind of convey, at least from our perspective, this is what they're talking about moving, but there's an awful lot of stuff that's not going to move, whether it's because of the charter or because they don't have any reason to move. But It's one of those things that I think is going to, especially after the Post article, is just arousing a lot of concern. What does this mean and how does it impact Clayton? And I think we need to figure out, is there a good way to get that message out there, whether that's in coordination with the county or on our own, but somehow before this sort of snowballs.

That's a good point. Anybody else? All right. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Yeah, happy Thanksgiving, everyone.