July 20, 2026 — Meeting Transcript

Good evening and welcome to the Plain Commission ARB for July 20th. If you have any electronic gadgets, please silence them at this time. Ryan?

Steve Lichtenfeld? Here. Helen DiFate?

Steve Lichtenfeld? Here. Ellen DeFate?

Jim Marcineau? Here. Claire Queskin?

Jeff Morrisey? Here.

Jeff Morsey? Here.

Susan Buse?

We have minutes from the previous meeting on July 6th. Are there any changes? Seeing none, do we have a motion?

I move to approve as submitted.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Now's the time for the open forum. I see we have one person, Rafael Resende. Okay, that's what we assumed. Okay, thank you. Were there any hands up? No. We'll move on to new business tonight. And the first item is 42 North Central. We'll begin with the staff report.

The applicant is seeking a conditional use permit to allow for the operation of a gelateria, which falls under the category of restaurant uses and therefore requires a CUP. The subject property is located on the east side of North Central between Maryland and Forsyth. The property has a zoning designation of planned unit development and is developed with a mixed-use residential and commercial building. The tenant space has not been occupied prior to this proposal. The proposed hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 9.30 p.m., Sunday through Thursday, and 10 a.m.-10 p.m., Friday and Saturday. The tenant space measures 1,565 square feet and will include approximately 45 seats. Off-street parking is not required for restaurant uses located in the Central Business District, measuring less than 3,000 square feet, but three employee spaces are provided. Deliveries will be made via the adjacent alley as needed. The gelato area will use the existing recycling and garbage pickup services via the adjacent alley. Staff are of the opinion that the use meets the requirements contained in the regulations governing conditional uses. Staff recommend that the Planning Commission recommend approval of the CP to the City Council as submitted.

Thank you. Hey, come on

up. Introduce yourself and add anything you would like. All right. Good evening, Chair,

members

of the board. My

name is Rafael Rezende. I represent Treycore Gelateria. It's a small business owned by my wife and I. We started the business four years ago. We have one store in Ellisville, Chesterfield area. We've been very successful over the last four years, being awarded and recognized by the quality of the gelato that we produce in-store and all made scratch by my wife. It's a premium quality gelato. It's a good ingredient and a good product compared to the ones around Clayton. So we've always been meaning to expand and have a second location. We are very excited by the opportunity to do that location in Clayton City and surround the cities that we have around here. Part of our plan, as you see proposed, it's one location. It's right actually behind this office here. So over close by, I just walked distance from here. which I'll invite you guys to come and stop by. And then I'm here for answering any questions, if there's any around the actual, let's say, product or the store, what we do, how we do things. One thing also is that as a small family business, our goal is actually to not to make any disturbance to the actual location or to the surrounding areas. We've been very good neighbors with the current location that we are in, which we intend to continue. My wife and I, about a month ago, also moved to Richmond High, so we've been close to the location, been close to oversee the construction, and that will be also the location where my wife, which works full-time, intends to stay throughout the business opening.

Well, the first comment is we are very excited to see you. We are, yes. Thank you. I think I speak for everyone here. We have not had a business like this for years. Awesome. So we wish you the greatest success.

Thank you.

Will it all be gelato? Will there be other items also? Great question.

About 80% to 85% of our current sales, it is the gelato product, which is the main, let's say, driver. We do also call ourselves Gelateria and Açaí. Açaí is a berry traditionally from Brazil where we were originally born, my wife and I. We also serve acai bowls in our location, and we also have auxiliary products like coffee and some other small sweets or savories as well. But 80%, 85%, it is driven by the gelato.

It sounds great. What does the tre cuore

refer to?

It's a great question. So tre cuore is an Italian word for three hearts. It represents myself, my wife, and our son, Pedro, who just it's about a year now. It's in Kansas City in college. So we also work with us when we invite him to come for the weekends. He comes and also works. So it's great for us. But yeah, that means three hearts.

Very good. Well, looking at everything, I believe you were not looking for outdoor seating at this point. Is that correct?

Not at this point. According to our plan, the outdoor seating, actually, it's super small for our part of the business. We are actually right adjacent to Sushi Eye, which is another business that has a greater outdoor area. It has available seats already being placed. We don't plan to do anything like this for now. And surely if that becomes an opportunity, we'll eventually request it. But there's not in our plans today. I don't think actually there is enough space even in the front of the street or the area for it. We don't have that correction in Chesterfield area. We do have an outdoor seating place above four tables, but it is a long drive walkway. So it is actually purposefully for that, but we don't have here now.

Well, my grandchildren are at Sushi AI regularly. Now I know where they will be. That will be your favorite dessert moving forward, hopefully. It sounds good for me. Let's see if there are any other comments. Ellen?

Sounds delicious. No comments.

Jim? Yeah, no comments. Thank you for choosing Clayton. Thank you, Jim. Laird?

Great question. So we proposed during the Sunday through, let's say, Thursday. 10 o'clock to 9.30, and Fridays and Saturdays go to 10 o'clock. Part of the reason for the hour is also matching the sushi eye closing hours, so 9.30 and 10 during the Fridays and Saturdays. And the 10 o'clock starting, which is in Chesterfield, we normally start at 12.30 and 1 p.m. When we work with the landlord and the tenant owner, he said that there's a lot of demands for businesses around the area early before lunch for either coffee or some sort of a suites before that. So we worked on starting a little earlier for that purpose.

Jeff?

Yeah, nothing at all regarding the conditional use. Yeah, congratulations. I hope you guys do well. I know this is an architectural review. Does the development, maybe this is a staff question, does the development have signage standards that will apply to this facade? I recall there's a sign sub-district for this site. Okay. I saw that this was the first piece of signage on that brick band on that side of the building, which makes sense, but I want to make sure you're compliant. And

I would assume so. And we already are aware that part of that requires not only seat approval, the board approval, but also the landlord approval from the signage perspective.

Be a little careful too. There's a roof scupper right about where your sign is going to go. So you might want to make sure your coordinator, but no, good luck.

Thank you. Susan? My main question is, I'm looking forward to your success here so that you can expand and find a place along Lydown and Hanley. But actually, I did have a couple of things. One is, I don't know at what point people can qualify to participate in the Green Dining Alliance. And the city does support that with the costs that are incurred by the business. Even if you don't go to that level, I would certainly hope that you start looking at the types of products and practices that are encouraged, you know, those lots of plastic spoons and little bowls with ice cream, hopefully they can be compostable and all that as you, you know, continue to expand the business.

Yeah. No, thank you. I'll definitely take that in consideration. We'll work with my wife and understanding exactly what are those requirements and how to be part of it. Yeah.

That'd be great. And the green dining alliance does come in and give people pointers wherever they might be along that process. So that might be a resource for you as well.

Thank you.

Um, Otherwise, it looks great. I think that without the outdoor seating, you're gonna have people sitting on these sitting along leaning against your your, your place and it's gonna be wonderful. And we look forward to you being part of the community. Thank

you.

Any comments from the audience or any hands up? No. Okay. Any further comments?

Well, thank you for now. We make ourselves at your disposal, myself and my wife. She was trying to join remotely as she was in the other location coming back. And also invite you all to join us at our Chesterfield location if you're around the area for any time. We're open every day, but we're looking forward to opening. Hopefully, the plans is the construction goes and we start to open early next year. So Q1 next year, we should be opening for business, assuming construction goes according to plan.

Okay. Any further comments? No. We have a recommendation to approve the conditional use permit and send it to the council.

I move to recommend approval of the conditional use permit to the city council.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you. Thanks for coming in, and good luck with it. Okay, we'll move to item number two. And that's 122 North Bemiston Avenue is the okay.

The subject property is located on the east side of North Bemiston between Maryland and Pershing, is zoned R3, and is developed with a single-family house. The applicant is seeking approval for alterations to the front facade and front yard, and the scope includes the following. Removal of front yard hedges and lawn, removal of existing front yard paving, removal of front door limestone surround. installation of native planting area in the front yard, installation of artificial turf area in the frontyard, installation of a new front porch with a copper roof, installation of concrete pavers leading from the front steps to the front porch, replacement of two existing front windows with French doors and all the existing trees are proposed to remain. Right garden facade configurations vary on this block and most of the project scope is likely to have a minimal visual impact. The use of artificial turf in the front yard is uncommon is likely to have some visual impact staff or have the opinion that the turf should not be permitted in the front yard staff recommend approval with condition that artificial trophy removed from the project scope. Okay,

the applicant. Welcome.

Welcome. Hi, I'm Lisa Seligman with Red Dust Studio. I'm the architect for the project. I'm please to be following the ice cream guy. I have no ice cream for you guys. I do have samples, so we get some eye candy out of this. Thank you, Mr. Heller, for your summary of the project. My clients, Kevin and Beth Krakowski, moved to Clayton last year to this house, and they've been trying to figure out what to do with the front facade to make it work better for their lifestyle. So they called us up and had a variety of different things that they wanted. They wanted a patio where they could watch people come and go in the front yard. The existing front yard is not really designed to be used. It's designed to be seen. Yeah, the second sheet's probably the best one, Ryan. Yeah, there you go. And so they wanted a space where they could sit and watch what was going on on the street. They wanted a space for their dog, Rosie, to be able to play out in the front yard. You'll notice in the backyard, the entire backyard is driveway and there's a patio back there. There's very little green space in the backyard. rigid appearance it has a very severe appearance right now so uh our solution meets all of those things that provides a little bit of a power forward over the new

you can pass it around if it isn't too heavy

So we've taken out the existing stoop and narrowed up the walkway and made it stepping stones so that it does not force the perspective so formally. Then the new patio is about six feet deep, and it's just deep enough for them to be able to have a couple of chairs and have a more convenient access to the driveway from outside. to the house then the copper roof over the top of it to provide a little bit of shade and finally the last piece is the yard taking away the hedges putting in a naturalistic we're intending native plants we don't have all of those selected yet leaving the existing trees but to provide a filter to the street that still allows our clients to see in and people to see more that is perhaps, is the turf. I actually brought some supplements under this. So I understand the question about artificial turf. I do, it's not something I would normally consider. It is low maintenance. It is not damaged by animals walking on it and it stays neat and tidy with very little maintenance. I've got a couple of photos here that I brought of an artificial turf installation that's in the central west end that I walk by frequently. And from about 20 feet away, which is the distance that this is from the front yard, it's kind of hard to tell. Sorry, those of you on Zoom, you can't really see. But it's kind of heart to tell that that is artificial turf. It becomes much more obvious when you're within six or eight feet of it, which would be on the property. I really think this is not an aesthetic issue. I think it should be pretty easy to work with. You would have to be standing next to it to see that it's not turf. Let's see here. I think that's everything. I'm happy to answer questions.

How does the artificial turf drain?

So we will be installing this based on the manufacturer's instructions, which have a typical gravel base under it and a sand base. So it's got a full drainage system under it as you would have with any kind of permeable paving or anything like that. That's how the manufacturer says to install it.

Okay.

So it's got a four-inch permeable base.

Before we go into that in depth greater, I'd like to look at the facade of the house.

Let's go for

that. I really like what you're doing, making it less formal, more up-to-date, let's say, and Having a porch out there, I think is fantastic. We've lost the idea of front porches and to see it coming back and to have chairs out there, whether they be rockers or whatever, is a great idea. Will the canopy, I know we had a section, will the canopy cover the entire porch?

It's just about a foot short. It's about five feet. We were trying to get kind of the opt and the porch is six feet. We were trying to optimize that difference between covering the entire patio and having the slope come down too far at bunker. Yeah,

okay. I think that part really intrigues me. I think it will give life to the street as well as to the property owner. The front door itself, you're removing the limestone trim.

Yeah.

What goes back on?

It's just going to be brick. We're just going to patch the brick back in. So behind that limestone right now, it is the brick that was added at some point in the past. And so we're going to pull the limestone surround off and we're going to patch in the brick and paint it to match the rest of the house.

Oh, okay. So...

We're actually going to end up repainting the whole facade out of

it. I couldn't tell that visually from the draw house, but okay. I think we need to talk more with everyone about the two things, the native planting, how high would it be? because you're taking down the hedges right now, whether it's a low level of planting or a higher level of planting, and then behind it, the turf. I like the idea of the native planting. I'm not too crazy about the turf. It seems like a more commercial application than a residential application.

It's becoming more common in residential circumstances. This particular owner has installed it in previous houses he's owned. And I have discussed it with another client who was looking for a solution. They opted not to do it in the end, mainly because of the cost. But it's something that's happening more and more. Because it doesn't die. You don't have to water it. You don't need to replace it when your dog digs it up. It's just a good solution for pets.

I'm questioning it. I'm trying to be nonjudgmental. Yes, I

understand. I had my own challenges overcoming it and becoming an advocate.

Well, let's hear what the rest of the commission or board says. Ellen?

I do like the idea of a front porch. I have a front porch. Mine faces east, so in the evening it's quite comfortable. This will be facing west, and my back deck faces west, and it's not comfortable in the evening. But I do think it's important to a neighborhood to bring life to the street. And I think that front stoop idea, I think we've lost that a lot. And everybody retreats to the back and high fences. So I do like that. The native planting... The height concerns me, too, and what it will be. I've seen native planting that looks like it's gotten out of hand. And it's prairie-looking, and that's not quite that street. So that would be a concern. And the artificial turf, that... I don't have dogs. I have three grand dogs. And there is no place in my back area for them to run around. So do I put it in? And how much is enough? And am I doing the whole front yard? You know, you're not doing it here. But those kinds of issues, I think, are raised that what should be allowed, what is too much, what is too little. Those are the two areas of my concern. Other than that, I think it's a great idea.

Jim? Yeah, going through, I had a number of questions. I know in your letter you had mentioned kind of at one point that maybe some of the colonial design integrity was stripped of this house. So do you have examples of what that was and when that happened?

Well, so the owner has a photograph, which I should have gotten from them and put in our package, so I apologize for not doing that, of the house pre-1990s, okay? And it was red brick. It had shutters. It looked like any one of the typical houses like that that are in Clayton or in the city, 1930s colonial, not very extravagant, but all of that's gone.

Well, in this case, the red brick would be gone and the shutters would be gone, but...

Yeah. So, yes, the red brick was gone, the shutters were gone, and they stripped some of the detail off. The limestone surround came about at some point pre-1990, but I haven't been able to locate when. Okay. Historic photos of Bemiston Avenue are not easy to find.

Yeah. I, I understand obviously that the homeowner probably has a bit more of a contemporary bent. Um, I, I struggle that it really seems like kind of, you know, forcing a square peg into a round hole as far as a house that is so symmetrical and just like really trying to force that asymmetric county. Um, Also, I know, so it says on here, it talks about the expanded window openings. Are you talking about just going down to the ground?

Yes.

Okay, so not expanding.

Same width.

Okay.

Long enough doors.

So at only three feet wide, those openings, I mean, you're talking basically like only an 18-inch door on either side. And when those open, you're going to have less than a three-foot opening. I assume off the dining room it looked like it was?

I believe they, yeah, that is the dining room.

So I question a little bit just as far as, you know, if we're kind of taking that out and everything, kind of the practicality of the openings that are created and, you know, would those be used? How necessary that is. The other thing that that brings up, at least to me on the exterior of this house, is you have these six over six windows. Then you have... a door that is here for the French doors, and then possibly a third source with the steel door on the front. So we take what is like as far as like very kind of orderly right now, and we might have three different examples of like this very classic window versus extremely contemporary front door. And then maybe something a little bit in between for these French doors. So I'm worried about kind of how that could, my concern is that it could come across as very muddled when looking from the front.

So our intent with the doors is basically to take the style of the windows know similar view lines similar uh pattern and extend it longer so that you know if they want to come from the dining room out they can yes they're narrow openings but they'll be you know two foot six open opening width such something like that clear um and you know if they choose to use them they choose to use That is as much about bringing more light into that space, which is a very dark space. And also starting to offset the symmetry of the building. And yes, I hear what you're saying about forcing the asymmetry. What we're trying to do is we're trying to take a building that is very formal, very severe and make it up to date and less more of a reflection of the casual lifestyle of the owner.

If your goal with making these full doors is to bring more light into the building, don't you think that's going to be negated by the overhang that you're creating in the front? A little bit, yeah. Agreed. Also, there's no dimensioning on your drawing or anything. The lights appear to be very high So typically, a light surrounding a door or something like that would be typically somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 65 inches high. Your French doors here are showing a height of 6'9", and it looks like the lights are going up even above that. It seems visually very high, so I'm concerned about how high those are placed and with no dimensioning exactly how high those would be placed. If you could walk me through your thinking on to... Why they're so raised for that style of life?

Basically, I'm once again trying to maintain head height underneath where they come out. I mean, they're only four inches, well, six inches deep. So, you know, people can walk around that, but that's, they can come down.

My concern also, like, once again, you know, we're talking about a very symmetrical facade and you have a placement which is Once again, there's that dimensioning on this drawing. So fairly kind of cropped on either side of the door. Then you move over one space and then you've centered it in between those two French doors, those two sets of French doors, and then brought this other one over here, very cropped in. I feel like the spacing of those lights is also going to very much stand out with symmetricality of the building. So I would have concerns about that too. Also, as far as the overhang, just the very simple bracing on the side, my worry is that it's just going to look more commercial and kind of underdone, in my opinion. I just worry about it veering into modern farmhouse and... This strikes me as modern farmhouse and just maybe just thinking through a few of these things a little bit more. I just wonder if there's some sort of middle ground that we can create that, you know, maybe addresses some of the needs of the homeowners in maybe a little less of a severe way. Thank you. Mayor Mrakas,

Jeff? Yeah, thank you. I have, there's things that I like very much going on here and other things I'm struggling a bit with. We can start with the site. I don't, I agree, I don't have an issue with the turf. I've actually seen it more and more and including in a couple places in Clayton, whether it was permitted or reviewed or not, I'm not sure, but it actually turned out pretty well. And a house on the corner, I don't know, is this Clayton or U City? Large house at the corner of Pershing and Flair. close to this, within a couple blocks of this house. Yeah, the big, I call it the haunted house. Yeah, yeah, the big corner one right near the park, right near the small park. Anyway, they used turf on both sides of it with planting around it, like you're talking about here. And it actually mostly is like a play area for children, I think. And it really seems to work. relatively well, you know, and I could see with the dog that that makes sense. Now, that being said, if the dog is to use the front yard, I don't know if there's any fencing or electronic fencing planned, or is that needed? I'll let the owner speak to it. Okay. That's something I think you need to get into. There's also, because of the way that front side is built up off of grade quite a bit, the existing hedges kind of serve as a safety rail, which won't be there anymore in your plan. So I don't know if there's any concern at all for the drop off of that platform down to both the sidewalk and the front side. and the driveway on the side, because it's pretty substantial. I don't know what the height is exactly. I have, I mean, I'm not against native planning, quote unquote, but I would hope that maybe staff will be looking at exactly what that native planting is, because I think I've seen really nicely done native yards, and then Others that have turned into a mess and we'd want the former, obviously not the, not the latter. So it, I, it makes a lot of sense now that you've told us that the house had shutters on it because it, you can, it looks like a facade that had shutters on at some point. I agree. I think the stone surround that is there now that was added is a is pretty unfortunate. And so I don't have a problem at all with you changing that. I actually wish a little more was being done. It's still, I think the modern farmhouse comment that was made sort of sticks with me also. I wish it had a little more guts to it because it's still relatively stark. I like copper on the front. like the copper on the little roof on the side. I sort of wish they lined up with each other, actually, and maybe even had a little detail of that copper porch on the side to pick up a little something. Because I think the front facade just needs... a little more, and you're the designer, so I'll let you decide what that is. I agree with Jim's comment very much about traditional windows, six over six mountains, a very European-looking front door, steel, a different set of wood clad patio doors and the muttoning there doesn't seem to work with either of the other two elements. So I really wish you could do something with the openings to make them talk to each other a little more. I agree that the lighting because of the way it's spaced Looks a bit. I think it needs to work in terms of where the lighting is and where the supports for the porch roof are, because they kind of fall here and there and everywhere. So I just I like the idea of what you're doing, I think. the actual doing of it, I wish was a little more detailed and a little more thought through. What is the porch surface, the patio surface? Oh, it's concrete. Okay.

And that would be finished to match the existing stone caps.

Oh, okay. that's an area where you could add a little texture, a little whatever to the house also just with a material that was a little more than that. So yeah, I guess that's my main comment would be can a little more detail be added to it that will help the front facade? That's all I've got.

Hi. Yeah, overall, I think it's the neighborhood benefits from trying to soften it, putting the porch for, it's more welcoming as a community base. And having a west-facing back porch, we did do, you're right, the canopy over and we stopped at the distance out that started hitting heads. So I appreciate that, and we use it a lot because of it. It's a great idea. I struggle a lot with the turf. We have been, especially since the tornado, very aware of reestablishing our habitats and drawing back our birds in Clayton. Does one property make a difference? Maybe not. But turf does increase the heat that's retained in the neighborhood. Even when it will drain the water, it's not the same infiltration and cleaning. of everything as a natural soil, especially a native turf might, a native grass might be. It's the heating and you're also right that it stays where it is and those plastics from it do stay in Clayton. They're not going to go away. So those are my big concerns with the turf. And again, we're more and more aware of this as we work hard to restore our trees and everything since we've had all the tornado damage and done some research on all of that. So that's my hitch. Otherwise, the ideas look good. The other issue with the turf is that this property has a front yard that meets and a little bit exceeds Clayton goals for green green surfaces the backyard does not so overall the property is significantly under what the clayton goal is and when we put turf on top of that i think it aggravates that mismatch which what clayton is trying to achieve so that's my hang-up the the native plantings when done well can add a lot of of color and uh texture to to the property that can again make it more of a community welcoming area so i like that as well if it's done when it's done well so those are my comments

any further comments lisa

uh not for me i think my owner wants to speak up

oh

Mr. Gretkowski, can you hear us? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes.

Okay. Thank you. I'm sitting here with my wife, Beth, and thank you for entertaining this project. review. I just simply would like to, I guess, emphasize that turf is, I heard and I respect the comments with regard to turf. Turf for us is not a deal breaker. However, we have experience with turf. We really like turf. We use it in a very limited way. We don't replace grass and plantings with it. In this case, We also really like this little dog. I never had a dog in my life, and four years ago we got Rosie, 20-pound golden doodle, and now I would take a bullet for this thing. And we only need to throw the ball about 10 or 15 feet for her to chase it. She really wouldn't be using it as her, to do her business, so to speak, as much as just sitting out there, could be out there while we're out there in a mud-free, you know, and a clean environment that we can toss the ball and she can chase it. It's... We have noticed turf in Clayton, and that's why we felt comfortable proposing it. And we think it's a really terrific alternative in its limited role here as it's proposed. It's not very much turf, and it doesn't by any means dominate the front yard. Lastly, this house has given us a lot of trouble since we bought it a year ago. And one of the major things is when they built this house, they laid about six courses of that very porous red colonial face brick beneath the grade. And then they watered the heck out of hydrangeas for the last umpteen years. We bought the house with... peeling paint and blistered surfaces on the inside that we couldn't, we didn't have the ability to investigate, but we're told it was an old roof leak turns out. And we, we had to, of course, because it's Clayton, we had multiple offers. We had to pay over list asking price and we had to waive all inspections. So we find out that the house is like a, like a wick and it is drawn the water up from that front yard. I'm a handyman and I have spent no less than 200 hours digging and working on water, water related issues in the masonry of this house. And I really, really liked the idea of having something around the front of the house that isn't doesn't need water. You know, There are unfriendly things about using plastic, but there are also environmentally friendly things like you don't have to water it and you don't have burn gas to cut it. There's just a lot of things, pros and cons. And I respect those who have expressed the cons and I really appreciate those who see it a little different way and have an open mind to this as well. Finally, I just wanna say, We're thrilled that in general there's support for changing the look of the house, and we've been really happy with the work we've done with Lisa to try to get here. I don't see any reason why we won't circle the wagons and address some of the issues and concerns and make some tweaks and that we can meet the concerns and the flags that some of you have mentioned. That's all I have. I think Beth would like to say something.

Hello, everybody. I too appreciate all of your comments. And I was going to simply talk about the plantings that we're looking at for the front yard. When I read native in our plans, I'm thinking more native to Missouri, not native prairie field. I am a lover of peony and hydrangea and more orchestrated plantings versus wild plants. plantings. So that's what's in my vision for the area in the yard that's going to have plantings. And with regard to the height, we feel that those shrubs really hide too much of the house, the current shrubbery, those hedges. And again, they have that formal English garden, which we want to do away with. The new plantings, I do not see them being higher than these hedges, but they're probably not going to be low ground cover either. But just some very natural, very pretty shrubs and mostly flowering shrubs if they'll grow in the summer. in the sun out there. And again, the only other thing I wanted to say too, is I'm really pleased to hear that everybody's excited about us having a front porch because we're very thrilled at the idea of sitting out there. Maybe not in July, maybe not in August, but there are a lot of beautiful days in October, November, December and so forth. And we, we love the looking out on the street and we look forward to that.

And in closing, the young lady who suggested she spent a lot of time there. She's welcome to stop by. We'd like to hear a story or two about the house because we love it too. Just not so much the aesthetic, I guess. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Mr. Gretkowski, with the water infiltration problem, are you doing anything to remedy that, whether you go with artificial turf or natural grass?

Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I have excavated by hand the entire front and north side of the house about 18 inches and have used, the name escapes me, a very, very kind of tar-like viscous material that... is about $400 for a five gallon bucket. Or maybe it's a two and a half gallon bucket. I troweled it on and it cures. And I took that all the way down to the poured concrete, about three or four inches past the sill plate where the masonry hits the poured concrete foundation. And in this project, my desire is to pull the grade at the house down about six inches if, uh, we can. And then a very mild, uh, grade toward the front of the house such that the, um, And we would. So anyway, the ground would slope away from the house right now. I believe it may even slope toward the house. And I haven't had a transit on it to pull elevations and see. But that's what it looks like. So I'm hopeful that waterproofing that. brick that's currently below grade and potentially getting it to, if not all of it, most of it to be above grade. will help solve the problem. And one full year of letting that dry out inside seems to be helping as well. I've patched and primed over and over as I've seen it continue to come out. And I feel I've got a moisture detector, and I've taken readings, and it's improving. But it was literally like a sponge. And you couldn't really, you couldn't tell it even if you touched it because of the wall coverings and all the paint. But it was blistered and bubbling.

Well, it sounds like you're taking effective measures to hopefully control any moisture infiltration. When I looked at the property, I thought the... the ground was fairly level from the top of the steps to the bottom of the stoop going into the front door. So if you were to lower that near the house, I think that could only compound more water entering near the front of the house, especially with some of the windy, heavy rains that we get coming from the west.

No, I'm sorry. I wasn't clear. I was hoping to lower it at the house and lower it equally or a few inches more at the at the west end of the stairway to the front walk, et cetera. I want it to be graded. I agree with you. It looks level. I'm not so sure it's not level, but rather sloped toward the house today. It's ultimately my desire to slope it away from the house. And to the extent we can lower the grade altogether and slope it is yet to be determined. I don't know if that's part of this review, but it would be our hope to have a yard that is sloped to the street, not to the house.

I think we would all agree with that, no matter what the final surface is at this point. We were, I think we were all unaware of water infiltration until tonight. So, thank

you. Yeah, it's a really big thing for me, having worked on it and, you know, and lost sleep over it for the last year. And so, in addition to all the... ways we rave about our turf because we have about, I don't know, six or eight years of experience with it. I saw it as a way to obviously not have to irrigate something within six feet of the house. And that would be ideal whether we're allowed to put turf in or we're not. It's my intent not to have any irrigation near that house. I mean, you know, within reason. We obviously have to keep the plants alive.

Can I just ask one thing? One of the things with native plantings and with having any type of planting, you've got the roots, and it's very effective for controlling water. Now, that's a big picture statement. I don't know your house, but to put a surface in that doesn't have any absorption doesn't I've got to think on that, how that actually helps with the water. I understand that maybe what you're getting is, I guess what you said, irrigation. It's not adding more water all the time to keep the grass growing. So it may be getting a balance between those things.

Yes, that's correct. I mean, we're not adding water to the equation. It's going to rain. on the turf and the turf is, allows the water to percolate right through. It's, and then the base that it's installed on is also a total drainage type of compacted, you know, limestone. It, we have had really, really heavy rains where we're sitting and looking on our turf lawn right now. And we've never had a puddle. I've never even seen the water run off of it. It goes through turf. Um, so I, I'm not trying to keep the soil dry by the house. It's going to get wet because the turf allows it to get wet. I'm just saying we don't have to, there's irrigation lines in there right now. They're all cut and capped. I pulled all, I pulled 14 hydrangea plants out and, and tons of sprinkler heads that were just And the prior owner, I don't think they thought, you know, more is more is more. And I don't think there had any conscience about it, nor did they realize the whole house was soaked. Well, I exaggerate. The house was soaked as you stood on the first floor and looked at the street to head height. That masonry wall was was soaking wet.

We successfully transplanted all of those hydrangeas into the backyard, and those hopefully might get reused in the front yard redo. So I don't want you to think we killed all the hydrangea. We were very successful in transplanting them into the backyard.

Sorry, I have a question, and this is probably for Ana. Can you talk about, I guess first, with this level of change in the front yard, why this project didn't qualify for site plan. And then if they were to change the grade, wouldn't it have to go through site plan review at that point?

So, in my opinion, based on the scale of the project, there was not a substantial change in grade that was going to directly impact a neighbor that would cause that. The reason this project is actually before you right now is really because of the facade changes. So pure landscape changes, as they've been discussing, would not normally rise to the level of coming to the ARB, but the turf in combination with the porch and front facade changes is why the scope is here. But the native plantings... or some slight grade changes that in all likelihood would not be significant because we're dealing with an existing wall that they're, you know, if they wanted to take out that front retaining wall and regrade the site completely, then that would rise to a level of us looking for some sort of SWIP or other management techniques. But the amount of grade change that we're talking about here is relatively low. So that in and of itself would not likely trigger site plan review, but we'll see it once that scope of the project is submitted.

Thank you for that clarification. I can say at least for me, and it would be helpful just, I think, an additional layer of detail, you know, we're talking about native plantings, what are those native plantings and like where are they going to be placed? You know, maybe more dimensioning, maybe specific lights, specific doors, instead of something like this. because I know it's tough to be in this position and be like, oh, it's going to be something like this. And then you walk by six months later and you're like, I don't quite think it's like that. And then your name's on it. So I think if we were able to come back with a greater, maybe an extra layer of detail on a lot of this stuff and maybe refine, I think it could go a long way in giving at least myself and maybe some others a warmer picture of it. I would second that.

So the purpose statement of the ARB is pretty general in the impact of character. Historically, though, just in terms of plantings in the scale that has not triggered our tree and landscape requirements. we have really left that up to the discretion of a homeowner. So we define green space. So that's an element that's come up here. So as long as a property is meeting our minimum green space standards, and then they also maintain it per our property maintenance code, which is where we identify if it's grass or weeds having a six inch cap, unless it's a shrub or a cultivated flower, then it can exceed that six inches. So as long somebody is maintaining their yard in combination of the property maintenance standards and the minimum green space requirements, we typically don't get involved with the planting species.

Thank you. The other, oh, go ahead. Does the turf qualify under the minimum green space?

So that's something that we've been talking about. So under our new, historically with turf, we've allowed the turf to be installed when they provide the detail of the manufacturing specs showing that it is permeable and water will flow through it. And so it's not going to operate like an impervious surface. In our new definition of green space, though, we do have something that Ryan and I have kind of talked about needing to probably put out a statement of how it's interpreted because we talk there. Now we use green space to talk about cultivated resources. green space for growth. And we specifically outline that permeable pavers regardless of their permeability does not count as green space. So we've kind of have a slightly different definition, but as of right now, the green space here, even if that turf was counted as impervious coverage, their front yard coverage, they have room to play with or they're exceeding that. And then under a lot of the other projects that you guys have referenced within Clayton, they've probably either been done under one. The approval of turf was because they showed it was permeable or we see a lot of people because replacing lawn with turf doesn't trigger a construction permit. It gets installed at some point and then there it is. Thank you.

Jeff? Just a quick question, Lisa. As part of the project team, is a landscape architect involved or no?

So the Krakowskis had pulled a landscape design with Chesterfield Nursery. Yeah, they have, and that will change. That hasn't been completely updated to the new plant as of yet. But we did have a schematic plan from them that was related, that actually didn't integrate any of these other paving changes or other changes that we're making to the hard surfaces.

Yeah, we actually engaged them had a design done thinking that's all we really wanted to do to the house. And then, yeah, that kind of morphed into doing some tweaks to the facade. And we told Chesterfield Nursery to please hold off. We'll come back to you when we figure out everything we're doing and then let's try to integrate your ideas into that because we changed directions on them a couple of times and could tell that they wanted a final site plan or a configuration to work with. So that's what we're trying to get to.

Well, thanks. If we had a design professional, especially somebody with some horticulture knowledge, specifying that native planting, I think that might work. solve some of our questions or issues about what it might be in terms of a planned design versus a design that ends up not looking so great at the end of the day.

Well, that person's waiting in the wings.

And that's always been our intent is that once we knew that our design direction was going to fly, we could pull them back in and get them to start working on those plant materials.

Well, as Jim indicated a few minutes ago about seeing more detail going forward and what you're hearing, I think if we had some more detail both on the minor revisions to the facade that we have said, but also to how the landscaping and the horizontal surface would be treated, where we would be more comfortable with the appearance and the control of water. we might be able to move on a little more. I'm still on the fence with the turf, so I'd like to see more on that also.

Other comments? Just a quick technical question. Does the turf system eventually pipe its way all the way to the street or no?

Well, there's a storm drain shown on the northwest corner of the yard.

Oh, okay.

So my thought on that was really to enforce that slope all the way to that drain.

Okay, and given the house's water issues that the owners described here too, you might also want to consider what sort of pipe drainage might be put up against the house as opposed to just, Kevin, as opposed to just stopping it from coming in, taking it away via actually a drainage system would probably be the best way to keep the water out of your house, I think.

I'll just add to that again. I am concerned with turf. And again, not necessarily for one site, but as it starts getting approved elsewhere, because we are focusing, as I think Ana said, on growth, on keeping those things going. And the idea of buffalo grass or something like that can also help control the water when those things are done well. So a little more detail on those plans could be helpful in us understanding that. But yeah, turf for me is still quite an issue. So thanks very much.

Okay. Any other questions? Or Kevin and Beth, any further comment?

Not at this time.

Thank you.

Okay. Well, I know we have a recommendation to approve without the artificial turf, but I think we may want to change that to move it forward to another date.

I move to table 13. the proposal to a future date to be determined. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

okay. Nay. You're a nay. Okay. Okay.

Just for the record, if you're okay, we'll put you back on an agenda based on when you resubmit information to us. So that timeline of an overall 60-day decision by the ARB may not happen depending on when you resummit. If you're okay with that, we'll follow up with you with a form that just identifies that so that we're all on the same page.

Good deal. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank

you, Lisa.

Okay, we'll

move on now to 7701 Forsyth. And I believe the applicant is here. But we'll start

with Ryan.

Subject property is located on the northwest corner of Hanley and Forsyth. This site is split zones between M3 and R4 and is developed with a mixed-use commercial tower. The applicant is proposing a sign sub-district to govern the future signage at the property. Sign districts establish a framework for cohesive, coordinated signage tailored to a specific development or property. It provides design flexibility while maintaining compliance with the intent of the sign regulations. Proposal prioritizes more wall signs in exchange for less window signage. The plan would not result in any nonconformities and references signs which are not identified, but would otherwise be permitted. The plan requests discretion for a feature ground sign. Staff rep the opinion that consideration of an additional ground sign be deferred until a formal proposal is submitted. The sign district would allow a ground sign where one presently exists, but does not require a cohesive design language with other ground signs at the adjacent peer look lead center property. A cohesive design language is not required, but may have some visual impact as existing signs are replaced. Some existing accessory wayfinding signs are not identified. Staff are of the opinion that proposed sign district will have some visual impact, but balances the redistribution of sign area and is compatible with the existing structure. Staff recommend approval with the following conditions. One, sign type F shall be revised to identify an accessory wayfinding sign compliant with Clayton sign regulations and shall remove reference to a future conversion to a sign type E. Then two, existing accessory wayfining signs not identified on the plan shall be identified as the sign type F designation.

Okay, thank you. The applicant?

Good evening. I'm Matt with Zieglin Signs. We are representing PLC Towers and they are just wanting a few more signs added and this is, according to Ryan, the best way to go about it.

I believe the signs that are proposed here are similar to one that's already up there on the southeast corner.

Okay, that's the monument sign. The ground sign is what you're talking about? I thought it was in front of the window hanging. Yes, there's two on each side now. One says Hoffman. Yeah, Bank of Washington. They got a few more. The MAC, the Missouri Athletic Club, is going into this building. This is what triggered this. They are maxed out on their signage. They can't have any more building signs. And the MAC would love to have visibility for guests and patrons that are coming to it. So we're not proposing adding all these signs. Just maybe in the future, if needed, we can have that option.

There are a variety of them. The A and the C, which are up high below the second floor, and then the Ds that are on the ground floor window, if I understood correctly.

Correct. Window signage would be hours of operation for the bank. Hoffman, family of companies on the doors. Which, if any, are lit? Of the hanging signs? Just the A's and C's and B's.

Just the hanging signs. Okay, but the D's would not be lit? No, that's window vinyl.

I also agree with the staff comment on F to wait for a future conversion on that one. Okay. Overall, I really have no problem with it. At first, I thought it's an awful lot of signage, but I think the building owner and the tenants are going in that direction from what we've seen.

Right now they have 17 tenants. A lot of them would like to have a sign for clients coming in. The MAC would definitely love to have a sign. There is more future tenants. I know one of them would love, they would only resign a lease if they were to get a sign. And I can't speak as to who that is because I do not know.

A sign C, which is hanging. That's where the garage entrance is,

I believe.

No,

the garage

would be over to the left further. Sign C is where that garage entrance is on the south facade. It's not clearly depicted in this south elevation here, but sign type C was set up so that way it could accommodate that existing wall sign that's in place there above the garage, but then give them future flexibility for future signage to be placed right under that colonnade like the other proposed signs are, the other existing signs are.

Oh, okay. That clarifies it a lot better. Okay. I'm okay with the staff comments on this.

Helen? I, too, would agree with the staff comments. The sign that is spoken about in the information, that F sign, that on the, yeah, that area there is dangerous when you're driving. Cars are merging onto Hanley from Maryland, and you have southbound cars on Hanley trying to make a right-hand turn turning west on Forsyth. So the sign designated as F there should be purely This is where you can park. Very, very minimal.

Sign up is not something we're proposing at this time to get.

Okay. Just it wasn't clear in what was written and it indicated that it could be almost like sign E.

Okay.

Which would be...

We can change that language.

Disaster there. That merging is... interesting to put it mildly nothing else i think everything else is fine

i can say i read it like you like that sign f they were hoping to get something like sign e so i'm glad to hear that that's not the case but i would agree with the set the staff comments on sign up um i certainly understand why tenants would want a large sign that being said uh I think the Bank of Washington side and the Hoffman side already are just about some of the largest that you see in Clayton. And I have some very deep concerns of it basically looking like a giant billboard across three sides of the building, having signs that are that large. You know, we're basically taking the intent. I understand it's a large building, but we're taking all the signage that other than, like you said, the vinyls that would be D would be more just like ours, not like a sign for our company. So basically, we're taking all the allotted signage for a very large building and we're concentrating it in one concentrated band all the way around and having it look kind of like a giant advertisement. So I think I'm worried. Like I said, I think basically the Hoffman and the Bank of Washington signs kind of push it to the brink of what I would imagine those signs are about as large as could possibly go in those spaces. Adding two more signs of that to the front and then have both other side contain signs that large, I think would be very out of character, unfortunately, for the rest of Clayton. I think the way the sign code is written now, there's room for people to have signs that are be more... Especially something like the Missouri Athletic Club is not necessarily servicing people off the street. So something more... ground level that was like a vinyl or, you know, something within the current sign district that's not a giant illuminated sign that's continuing in this band all the way around the building. I'd like to see it kind of more be within the sign guidelines now.

Claire?

Jeff. I'm going to third those comments that we just heard. Just the idea of a signed sub-district, which is essentially saying we want to rewrite the rules for this building, it feels like. I don't agree with that. I think we've got a code that allows a certain amount of signage. I agree that the signs out there now are substantial and twice as many of those signs are is a big change that is not good. I don't think the give and take of hanging signs versus window signs and the square footage allowed isn't applicable here because it allows too many large hanging signs. So I agree, I'm not in favor of this proposal.

Susan.

Give me a lot to think about. I am very much in favor of supporting our businesses, but are there other options on the signage for the building that you want? Sounds like we're passing up

with some.

Okay.

The monument sign E at the corner. I'll be honest, I did not even look at that. Do we have a picture of that? because most of our tall buildings have up to five tenants, I believe, on a monument sign. Is that

correct? We updated our regulations. So this actually, the previous owner of the Pierre Laclede did a sign modification approval under our old sign regulations to get three monument signs, one on this property and two on the next door property that all match. So this sign that's approved here was approved under a sign modification. So Ryan, I don't know if the sign that's here right now today would meet our existing ground sign regulations or if it would exceed them because it was previously under a sign modification of our old sign code.

As I said, these ground signs do meet the current sign code for ground signs.

So then what we have from the picture we were just looking at, we're not listing the tenant, any tenant.

No, so we don't. And that's also part of what Ryan Stafford did. The update that we made since these monument signs were installed to our sign code removed all content-based regulations. And so something that Ryan Stafford tries to do is, again, remove all content-based. Regulations even for the proposed sign subdistrict. So the sign type size location is not based on what the sign would say. So that's where the wall signs are offered and then how the property owner wants to designate them between naming a building, naming a tenant of any type of tenant, et cetera. That's all been removed. So the sign codes now really just focus on size, material, location, and type of sign. But not content. But not content

Well, that really opens up virtually for the tenant and the building owner to decide what's going to be put out there.

It does because it's a first amendment right protection. So we, we should not have to read what a sign says to tell them what they can do with that sign. So that's why everything is based on the size location, lighting material of that sign. And then they can decide if it's going to say, because Hoffman is the building owner, um, I don't believe they're actually a tenant of this building, but they have a sign. Bank of Washington has a sign. MAC is not an office tenant, but they want a sign. So in the package plan proposal, it says that signs are designated for office tenants. In Ryan's staff report, we removed that designation because MAC is not an office tenant, but they clearly are part of what's driving the sign. So we won't have to look at what the sign says to say it would just be here are your sign options.

There was just a landmark Supreme Court ruling on the First Amendment protecting signs. A lot of cities are adopting this new guideline.

But just so I'm clear, Anna, the corner sign that we were looking at, the Monument sign, for instance, is one of those panels on the light gray vertical chunk there? Is one of those panels, say, Washington Bank on it? Does it repeat the tenant? They

could choose to repeat the tenant. Okay. They could choose to put every sign under this package or under our code could say the exact same thing. Okay.

Yep. Okay, so I am confused. So to support the businesses to have some identity on the outside of the building, the landlord could put it on one of the existing sign spaces that you're saying like on these monument signs?

Um, yeah, I mean, basically what we're saying is that, right. It's just based on the number and size. And so our existing sign code uses the proportions of buildings and properties to determine how many signs and how large of a sign you have. And then the owner and the tenants work together on who gets which of those options. So in this sign sub district, they've taken those proportions that are current code allows. and they've worked on essentially removing some options of window signs. They say, we are going to forego some of these options that you currently allow in exchange for you essentially giving us that signage square footage back in a different sign type. So that's what's resulted here is the overall square footage of signage that could be on this property still meets our total code. It's just they've re-differentiated the types of signs under their proposal.

So then the location of the sign in the current regulations is still below the floor of the second floor.

That's correct. So the location of the existing Hoffman sign and the existing Bank of Washington sign, those meet our current requirements because that is a You can kind of see it behind the Bank of Washington. That first floor extends. So that would be the Bank of Washington signed, and I don't believe you guys had to approve that because that just met our standard sign code regulations. What has triggered this is that they've now exceeded the number of wall signs that could have on a facade based on the length of that facade.

So my understanding of this, just to make sure we're all on the same page, is that the way the sign code's written right now, they can only just have two of the hanging sides, such as on the front here, that would be Hoffman, that would be Bank of Washington. So I don't think that there's any problem with there being additional signage because that fits in with the sign code. Where the problem is here is they just can't do four hanging signs in a row across those four bays. So you can't basically, like I said, get this long band of nothing but signage where it almost looks like just kind of like an advertising strip around the whole building. At least that's my issue with it. Not necessarily who's getting signs, where something like that, just the exact same type of sign in the exact same location all the way around the building.

Well, the more I hear the comments, um, beginning to feel that we might be going with too many signs, but I don't know how to balance that with the tenants and the building owner wanting to give that availability of having their name out there. And it looked like the western sign at the The other one out there. No tenants on it. Is that correct?

Say that again.

The sign at the Western Building, not the Pierre Laclede Center, but the Pierre LacledE Building. That one.

So they've got two signs here. This goes back to that sign modification request and that design language. So the other similar ground sign is down here.

Oh, it does

have tenants.

Well... It's a quandary how to balance giving the visibility of the tenants and the aesthetics for the building.

If I may, Mr. Chairman, the business point is up to the owner to decide who gets the signage that they install. We have nothing to say about it. As mentioned, if you want eight signs saying Bank of Washington, You can do it. So the question is whether or not the arrangements of signs, whether reallocating space from wall sign to hanging sign or window sign to wall sign fits the aesthetic and proportionality of the building, the liveliness of the street engagement, and that sort of thing. I think that's the review that you're undertaking here. And whether or not that accommodates landlord-tenant issues is up to the landlord to figure out. If I have not sufficiently confused the situation, I can keep talking. We

may get there.

And Steve, I'd say it a different way, but trying to say the same thing. There could be in a building this size, there could be 20 major tenants and they all may want to sign. We don't, I think some of us don't believe from an architectural standpoint that the building should have 20 signs on it. Now, I'm just making up that number. Don't take that literally. But I think the way the code is written to begin with seems like an appropriate number of especially these large hanging signs. I don't know what they're called exactly here. It's sign type. To allow the addition of more of them just by taking away some low window signage doesn't seem appropriate.

Balance against what best serves our businesses. Not increase signage space. I'm with you, it's a quandary. We want people to want, we want tenants in our buildings.

I just always look at this from a standpoint of, I kind of, and I think a lot of us in this position where we're going around Clayton or going around other cities and you see something be built or you see signs on a building and you say to yourself, did they get this right or did they get this wrong? And largely when I walk around Clayton, I'm like, man, you know what? Our our signage regulations just really seem to deliver a very strong product. So then when someone wants to stray outside sign guidelines, you really have to kind of look at it on a case by case basis and be like, you know, sometimes like before we updated the blade signs in some of the buildings where it's like, OK, this giant building with this itty bitty blade sign that really doesn't make sense. But, you know, you have to kind of think through what the implications are. And what I like about the current sign code is that it doesn't feel like a giant advertisement. And that's something that we've discussed kind of in previous sign discussions. What I like, I think our sign code gives sufficient square footage for signage and like as stated, that can be distributed however the building likes. Where I take issue here, like I said, is to take all of that square footage and concentrate it in a small area. I think by spreading it out a little bit more, it doesn't come across as one giant advertisement where everyone can get a sign or can get representation then, just not all in the same band, all in the same type of sign. So at least that's how I look at it in this case.

From a sign company perspective, this is probably the most aesthetically pleasing sign having everything uniform on the same level, not different, you know, not getting gaudy window vinyl. It's just my two cents.

Correct. But it changes sign type.

and sign location. I just want to make

And are we able to comment on the color and materials of whatever signage goes up?

So the sign sub-district as proposed references materials, but it just says that it needs to comply with essentially the Clayton sign code requirements. So for example, we had before this board not too long ago, there was a sign that was proposed that had a material question about it. That was an example of a sign that came before you. But if they proposed like a backlit channel letter sign or something, we probably suspend that. That's something that's typically approved that wouldn't necessarily come before this board.

That's where I'm going with it, is looking at the renderings of the three elevations. Those white signs just stick out very prominently and really destroy the base of that building. If they were shown as backlit letters with a dark sign in front of that glass, which appears dark. I think it It would look much better.

This is just a rendering. The signs... I realize that, but we may not have any control

over whether the sign is a white background, a black background, or anywhere in between.

Question for staff, and this might get to, I think, what you're saying. If... if we say like we just didn't approve this sign sub-district, but let's just say they wanted a third hanging sign, that doesn't fit into the sign regulation. So that can't be administratively approved, but they could come back before this board with that one specific sign and we could then consider and vote on that one specific sign, correct? They can do a sign modification first process. Okay. I personally would be way more comfortable with something than that, then an entire science sub district, because then it could be considered on more of a case by case basis. I, I, Yes, if I have to consider allowing four hanging sides on each side, the possibility of what that yields is too much for me. But I agree with Steve that there's situations where maybe a third one could be added still within the square footage. And if it's done in a certain way, then it wouldn't necessarily create the overwhelming facade that I think I'm concerned about.

Well, that would also be with the science sub-district. If we agreed to the science sub- So, yeah, I would agree with you saying doubling it where, okay, on all four sides, no, I wouldn't be okay with that. Maybe one additional one on one side when presented like, okay, this is what the sign is looking here and we get to consider that sign. I think that's a better situation in this case than a new sign subdistrict.

General question. Are there... As I started with before, this seems like it's rewriting the signage rules for this building. Do we have many other signage subdistricts in the Central Business District?

There's quite a few around and they take various forms. So a lot of your science districts are going to have a combination of a design aesthetic component, and then also a little bit of that rearranging component. So if you think about Forsyth Point, that building, they're not doing a lot of rearranging per se, but they have a lot of very specific size and aesthetic requirements. Whereas not terribly long ago, there was one that was approved for a building at the corner of Maryland and Forsyth. There's a couple of buildings there. And they did a little bit of rearranging. They had some aesthetic, but it was largely to do some rearranging so that way they could get more ground signage and a little bit more wall signage. They took away other wall signage or ground signage from different locations. So you can see a combination of those.

Yeah, I'm just looking to not defeat our sign ordinances by 1,000 cuts. If this is approved, then will the guy across the street go, well, we want to change too. So I know we're not deciding on precedent.

It sounds like even if you want to proceed with the sign subdistrict, I think we probably need more information on a few things like the aesthetics. So what are the materials? What are the lighting? A good example is the Crescent. So that's a sign subdistrict for those retailers on the first floor of the Crescent, they require all the same material of the channel letter and And just the names change versus the other sign sub districts like Forsyth Point, where you see every sign is completely the brand material, but they all are required to be backlit or channel letters. This is one of the few buildings that has historically had those cabinet lighting signs. And so this is an example of a building where there's already multiple cabinet lit signs. So that might be something that staff would approve because it would fit with this building. But it sounds like the lighting form size material would be very important for you and what you're considering with this. So my recommendation would be that if this continues to be a pursuit, that we would need more information about those.

I think that would be a good way to go because I think at least a few of us are, we don't know which way to go right now.

Yeah, I would also say that it would be really helpful. Obviously we can pull some old reports, but I believe like the title company sign that's been there for quite some time. It would be really helpful to have the dimensions of the existing sign types and how those compare to one another because we have quite a few existing sign type size. So what's the existing lighting material of all the existing ones? What are you proposing? How do those compare? all relate to one another.

So we don't know if the existing signage is within a 50-foot limit? Is that true or no?

The sides, the east elevation and north elevation have two signs apiece. They are 44 square foot, 24 square foot each. They're 12 by 2. The Bank of Washington is 44 square feet, and Hoffman is 50.

Okay. So the whole Bank of Washington sign total, all the surface area is 44? Is that

correct? That one's 44 plus 24. The back is 48 square foot. The front's maxed out. We're at 50 plus 44, so 94 square feet.

Well, from our discussion, I think we need, as Ana was saying, we need, and everyone has been saying, we need more detail to see what it would be like and how we could implement it going forward, whether it's on an individual signage basis or an overall sign modification. Would

that be the right word? The sign modification process is something that's available. It's a, it's a quasi variance process, so to speak, that's established under our sign code for one-off signs for more regular signs. That's the process that's been requested here for a sign sub-district. So I won't say which one's necessarily or appropriate in this instance, but we are currently evaluating a sign sub- district request.

Does that give you any information or enough information? Take it back to

our client. You're probably in a quandary like we are. Yeah, I'm going to take that back to the client, see what they're

interested in doing. But I know that they're trying to get the MAC sign approved. That's what started all of this.

Well, you may be back looking at that one sign.

I move to table to a future date to be determined.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? OK. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Okay. Well, we've gotten through new business. We have a little more discussion. Okay. We'll wait. Thank you. Good luck.

Pleasure. My wife wanted to bring gelato for you guys, but I wasn't so sure how it works here because I didn't know if There were nine. It was easy to plan for it, but I don't know if it was more like participants and if there was a setting where we could actually offer some sort of a lot of what we'll figure out at a point in time that we can bring

back. We appreciate it. And whenever you're comfortable.

Yeah, no. Put all the efforts. Thank you again. Thank you.

Good night.

Excuse me. Okay.

Okay, we're ready for a discussion session on the Clayton 2040 plan, the residential UDC.

All righty. So this presentation is going to go over what is becoming the evolution of our residential code. This was presented to the city council last week. So for those of you who have seen it already, get ready for round two. Never wait to let me go on. And it changes every time. All righty, so kind of the structure of the part that I'm going to go over is I'm going to talk about what are the findings that came out of the comprehensive plan that sort of moved us in this direction. We'll give a brief summary of some of the research related to residential zoning and sort of our infill guidelines that we were looking at, how that has evolved into the new structure of zoning code that we're looking at, and what some of the details of that are going to be. Ana's going to talk about a piece after this. So we might be able to take a couple questions in between. Just be aware that there is a little bit after what I'm going to discuss. So coming out of the Clayton 2040 comprehensive plan, there was a lot of consistent feedback from residents. They really value the existing character of their neighborhoods. They're open-minded to development, but they want to make sure that that development is context sensitive. And we also want to make sure we're incentivizing maintaining those existing structures rather than incentivizing teardowns. So a couple of those key results that came out of the housing section is that we want to make sure that we have appropriate infill development guidelines and standards. And we also want to make sure we're looking at our existing zoning regulations to make sure that those actually reflect what our neighborhoods look like. So a summary of some of the research that we did into these items, looking at those dimensional aspects of our zoning regulations, setbacks. There was nothing terribly dramatic that we wanted to change there, but there is a consistency of older, smaller garages in neighborhoods that are closer to the property line than five feet. It's pretty common for those folks to have to go and get a variance, and they're pretty consistently getting those variances. So we're looking at revising the setback for those smaller garages to be about one foot from the property line. Those are going to be garages that are under 14 feet, so not something tall enough that you could necessarily put a second story over. Also, there's going to be a bit of a buffer and that they need to be at least 10 feet from, you know, structures on any other properties that we're not getting garages that are, you know, two feet from one another for maintenance purposes and such. In terms of lot width, the only standout there was that the R5 district has right now a minimum of 50 feet wide, whereas most of those lots actually tend to be smaller. And that's a zoning district where if somebody was to subdivide a lot, of which there are very few, it would actually bring those lots in conformance with what the rest of the neighborhood looks like. So we're looking at revising that lot with an R5 to 40 feet. Density, there wasn't anything we really wanted to change there, but there is a ratio of dwelling units to lot area in the R3 district. It's largely redundant because it is equivalent to the minimum lot area and removing it doesn't really send any properties into noncompliance. So it's been redundant. And then as we were looking at all these, the R7 district, which comprises four lots along South Brentwood, just north of Forest Park Parkway, there's a lot of aspects of the R7 zoning district that does not reflect what those properties actually look like today. And so it may be more appropriate to rezone those to M3. Which is also what the adjacent zoning is. So, you know, it'd be an easy sort of transition for those properties and make them make those properties more in compliant with zonings. That way, if there's, you know, ever a reason they need to do something to those properties in the future, you know, they're not running into constant zoning roadblocks. On the infill side, we're looking at, you know, we have a lot of great existing infill items in our urban design district. So how can we apply those more broadly? We also want to bring in some new strategies such as finished floor heights, basement exposure call-outs. We want to actually identify what a half story is. And we also want to remove ineffective strategies that we've seen people use but maybe aren't necessarily appropriate for infill development. Just to clarify, some of these changes that we're looking at are not necessarily gonna impact urban design districts. Although those aren't gonna impact those urban design districts, what we're trying to do here is set up our base zoning to provide a good foundation so that way whenever we go back to those urban design districts we can really evaluate what are the changes we actually need, how effective are these urban design districts? So the structure that we're going to move to is a unified development code. For those of you that were here to observe this for the commercial zoning, that's what we did with commercial zoning to bring it over to that mixed use non-residential zoning. Essentially, we're moving from a paragraph framework to a more structured Like a chart and graph style framework. So right now, if you go and you read the residential zoning code, you're going to read the words, the maximum height of this, you know, building can be is X. Whereas in a unified development code, you're looking for in a chart. Okay, here's my zoning district. Here's the metric I'm looking for. You can more easily jump to it. And what the difference in that structure is, if you look at the bottom here, our existing residential zoning is about 35,000 words and all that's not counting the urban design districts. To talk about the same and slightly more things is about 3,000 words. It's just a matter of density. We're able to pull out a lot of things that are repeated so that way, if somebody has never looked at our zoning code before, it's gonna be a lot more approachable for them to sort of digest what all that looks like rather than seeing all kinds of paragraphs that could be kind of overwhelming. So this is kind of a brief overview of what that zoning section is going to look like. And I'll go into a couple of these in a little bit more detail. But first, we have a couple of definitions that we're revising. We're adding a basement exposure limit in there. We're adding... Oh, clarifications for, I just lost the term, half-story. That's the one I was looking for. That half-story definition, a half-story can be 60% of the floor below it, 6-0, 60%, which is quite generous for half-stories. But we have a lot of varying sizes of homes here, so we felt that that was going to be the most appropriate. There's not going to be any changes for the purpose statements or the applicability, applicability largely saying, you know, these regulations apply to X, Y and Z zoning districts. We've just, you know, consolidated those into what this structure is going to look like. But let's dive into some of these other aspects real quick. So this chart that you see on the right here, this is not the full chart. We just wanted to give you an idea of what this structure is going to look like. And this has some of those changes that we talked about before. So that R5 lot minimum width has been revised in this chart, removing that R3 dwelling unit ratio. Some other items is we've clarified some front setback requirements. For example, in our current zoning, the front setback is based on a percentage of the depth of the lot. But there's then if you go down further in a paragraph, it's going to tell you actually if your blocks are developed, we need a block phase study. Well, the vast majority of blocks in Clayton are already developed. And so we want to prioritize folks looking at that so that way they're not doubling back on work that they may be doing. So that's going to be called out first. But we also then say, hey, if the block here is undeveloped, here's what you need to do. We're also clarifying those front yard fencing requirements because as you all have experienced This board, folks, if they want to do some kind of front yard fencing, they can come before this board and they can request whatever they want to do. The language in the zoning code has been a little bit ambiguous, so we've just sort of cleared that up so that way it's clear that folks can come before you guys and get some feedback on that. We've removed a lot of redundant sections. For example, there's all kinds of references to, you know, the parking requirements are see this section. The non-conforming requirements are see this already going to have those sections in there we don't necessarily need to repeat people go back and see those then we've also added that bit about a reduced setback for those smaller accessory garages jumping over to our use regulations um some items to call out here is that they were previously there was previously an allowance for offices in r4 that was clearly geared towards what's now the gay avenue town homes so that's redundant we don't need that in there There was an allowance for restaurants in R6. There's presently no restaurants in R6, that's all the Morelands area pulled that out. There's an element in a lot of those higher density residential zoning districts that allows parking lots within 500 feet of commercial zoning. That's actually quite far. On Clayton Road, for example, that takes you all the way to San Benito. We're getting almost to Concordia's property there. That's very, very generous. We see why there might be a need to have some parking adjacent to those commercial structures. but we felt that 500 was really, really generous. 200 is a lot shorter, which still provides a lot of flexibility and it's pretty generous there. The last bit to call out here is that in the R1 district, Currently, the use table does not allow like pre-K, university uses, education related uses. But then there's a paragraph down somewhere else that says actually these items are allowed. They're just allowed in a very specific location. That's pretty contradictory because whenever you look at our use table, you should be able to look in there and see, okay, is it permitted? Is it not permitted, conditional, whatever. You don't want to have to go digging through another paragraph to find out what that is. So what we've done is we've said, hey, that's actually conditional. We've had a little callout on the side of this column on the left here. You'll see there's those little asterisks there where there's an additional regulation. We're saying, hey, actually, we're acknowledging that this is a conditionally permitted use. And then we still have that language in there that says, actually, these are only allowed in specific locations. So not necessarily adding something that wasn't permitted before, but just cleaning up how that information was displayed. Jumping into some of our infill items, basically the purpose of this is that we would just want to make sure that we're having good responsible infill in these neighborhoods. This is going to apply to R1, R2, and R3 districts. This is because whenever we looked at what the size and massing and presentation of structures were, is that in those R1 through R3 districts where you have a lot of single family houses, there's a lot more uniformity in how those present. Whereas once you get into your R4, R5, R6, that's your multifamily. And there is actually quite a range within individual neighborhoods of what properties look like. Not that we don't need to be sensitive to infill in those neighborhoods, but these infill guidelines here are specifically targeted to the size and massing of a lot of single family homes. Additionally, we're gonna add that element of alternative compliance just as we have in the urban design districts. We want people to use these infill requirements, but if somebody has a creative idea that maybe we didn't think to accommodate in here, then they have that path to come before you guys and advocate for that. So we've brought in a lot of height scale and massing items from the urban design districts that have been pretty effective. But we've removed, for example, using tree plantings as a method of height mitigation. While we always want to encourage more plantings, those are not permanent elements, and they were often used as a bit of a scapegoat to say, look, I'm putting up a tree here, you know, we should be supportive at the height of this structure, whereas that wasn't always passed in the smell test. So we've taken that out of there and say, hey, no, we actually need to lean into some of these other requirements. Another one to call out here is in the urban design districts right now, there's about a one to five ratio of if you increase your setback by one foot, we'll give you an additional five feet of height. That's an interesting ratio. That's quite a bit of height to get for one foot. So we've reduced that to a one to one ratio for every additional foot of height that you want. You need to bring back that setback a little bit. Any questions? The one to five ratio is currently in effect in Clayton Gardens, Clayshire. This would change into base zoning. These are not proposals to change anything in the urban design districts at the moment. We could touch on that one piece, but really these urban design districts are gonna need a little bit more love and attention, in my opinion.

Not these necessarily, but would a revised ordinance like this include graphics or would it all be words?

It will include graphics and actually it's going to include some of these graphics that you see here on the right. So another item that we've added in there is finished floor heights. So this is a common element that comes up for any new house is does that finished floor match or is it compatible with what the adjacent structures are? So under these requirements, you're going to have to take the average of that finished floor height of the adjacent properties and you're going to be within the foot of that. We're also adding in a basement exposure limit. So right now you might see, hey, there's a, you know, regardless of what the foot height is, there's a two story, there's a 2 1⁄2 story maximum. You have a lot of examples of maybe larger garages on what are not considered a story or largely exposed basements that are not considered a storey. And so on paper, this structure might be two stories, but visually it presents as three. So what we're doing here is we're saying, hey, if 50% or more of your lower level, your basement explodes, that's going to count as a story for the purposes of measuring at your height. For dormers, dormers cannot exceed 50% of a facade that is by a lot of standards still quite generous, but we want to be accommodating to all the different home styles that are in Clayton. What this is really designed to do is to present sort of those faux roofs that we've seen sometimes of, hey, I'm doing a half story with this dormer and then the dormer is the size of the entire floor. That's not exactly the style that we want to go for. We want to go for something that's a little bit more restrained on that half story. Garage width and location. Currently in the urban design districts, there's a lot of good language around where garages should be placed. Right now in those design districts, it's paired with incentives for green space ratios. We're not pulling in that incentive piece, but we want to pull in the rest of that language of, hey, we want to emphasize garages either detached in the rear of the property. We don't want long garage structures facing the street. We don't And then pulling in some of that architectural detail language, there's kind of been this maybe informal rule that design should lean in a more traditional direction rather than a super modern direction. There's been conversation, you know, as folks have come in before, they're like, I want to do something really modern. You know, why can't I do that? And I'm saying, well, you can, but we want to make sure that when somebody goes and they spend $30,000 on their, you know, architectural plans, that they don't have to sort of redo everything. So what this is going to encourage people to do is lean into those more traditional styles. Not that you can't propose something a little bit more modern, but we're going to let people know up front through these regulations, hey, Clayton, you know, the context of Clayton is an older traditional style. We want you to look at that before you look at other options.

Just a street facing facade.

And I'm going to tag team. We ask questions together. If you flipped back a page, do we have anything or have we ever considered anything in our codes that talk about gutter line height, not just building height, because per your middle diagram there, yes, those house heights are the same. Contextually, they're incredibly different houses just by the slope of the roof. So do we ever say... To be contextual, quote-unquote, you have to have a gutter line within X feet of X percentage of your neighbors.

Has it really been a part of this discussion? And maybe, Ana, you can speak this too. I haven't really seen this come

up. I'm thinking of the games that can be played with code language like building height, et cetera.

Yeah, the middle graphic on that slide is actually in the urban design districts. But the way you're describing it, it's in the urban design district. And I think that's what it was trying to say, but there weren't any words associated with that. So it said we prioritize sloping roofs and there's a clear no under the house form that is probably 80% of the homes that have been built under the urban design district actually meet the form of the no, not the form of the yes. So anyway, so Ryan is talking about the base zoning and establishing some standards that will give you all you know, more teeth in terms of all these infill, but then also direct us towards general design, you know, where we want people to approach a design from. And then I'll go over how we're going to take that a

Because I'm suggesting you can, if you start to have some regulations like that, you can do a modern house that is extremely contextual with the traditional house as long as its shape starts to match up a bit. Right.

Exactly,

yeah.

Yeah. So the second part of this project is the architectural guidelines. So right now we have architectural guidelines that have touched on the list of features on the right-hand side. So we have the paving that you all have approved and the different retaining wall material types. And then we have some language that talks about using columns or the lighting, facade materials, et cetera. But this is all really just kind of found in the form of language text on a page of our website. So it's not in the code. It's accepted or adopted, so to speak, by the ARB. But that kind of is where it starts and ends. It's an interesting grouping of things. So as Ryan explained, the evolution of our residential zoning for base zoning, the evolution for architectural guidelines is to replace those with some neighborhood pattern books. So one of the elements that we saw during Clayton Tomorrow is that came out of that is establishing an identity standard. So a lot of people spoke about protecting the unique character of their neighborhood. So what we did and we've presented on before was in-house evaluation of character. So trying to first identify within our neighborhoods, is there really prevailing character across different neighborhoods? And then does that differ neighborhood to neighborhood? So we looked across all that inventory that we did. Jim helped us with Clavirac and have established some patterns that we can use then to elevate what the architecture review would be. And I'll also note, because Ryan kind of touched on it, We really did hear support generally. People don't want development to stop completely. I think there's obviously benefits for continued reinvestment in our properties that's good for property values, et cetera. And there is a desire to support the personal tastes of people as they choose to invest within kind of some natural restraints. I think that's also kind of what you were alluding to with your last comment. So what we're proposing here is to designate all of our single family and duplex properties into four different neighborhood typologies. And then underneath each typology, we will identify the character of that neighborhood type. We'll identify some patterns for massing composition, proportions for height, roof and dormers, architectural features, garages, materials. So there's going to be a lot of general language about the patterns that you would see in a Type A neighborhood designation versus a Type B. And then there's also going to be some call-outs where maybe a specific neighborhood, so if we look at all of our Type C neighborhoods, we might say, okay, actually in High Point, there's a pretty... consistent maybe character to that architectural style of the homes that you're seeing in High Point that's going to differ from a type C neighborhood that you see in Old Town. So the neighborhood pattern books will allow us to have some of those general patterns that apply to across different neighborhoods to be called out. And then where there is a more specific one, we can call that out for a neighborhood. Generally, the neighborhood typologies follow kind of the same path of our base zoning district. So A is our least dense neighborhood, and then it works up to the more dense. The exception there is the type D is only the Clayshire and Tanglewood neighborhoods because we really found that they had their own pattern in terms of how the lot orientation was resulting in the massing and the form and how all of those buildings are relating to one another. So what I'm going to do today, and I'm not going to walk you through every single thing of all the neighborhoods. We'll put that together in a book when we bring everything back to you. So I'm just going to use type A neighborhoods as an example of how we've put this together. So the type A neighborhoods includes R1 and R2. And these are the an average lot width that's wider than the standard for the single family. So what I found in that pattern is that a lot of that width then related to how a lot of the homes relate to each other. So what were the massing techniques? What is the shape of the house? And then an interesting thing to look at also is the floor air ratio based on the year built for all of the homes that are under type one. So on this chart here in the bottom corner, you can see the vast majority of homes in Taipei or all of the Taipei homes were actually constructed prior to 1930. So this is a pretty historic housing stock out of the city of Clayton. And the average kind of floor ratio trends you can see really haven't changed over time. Even when you start to get to the homes that have been constructed later, close to 2020, we're still hovering really around that that same maximum floor error ratio. So that is not the standard for some of our other neighborhood typologies, but that's really allowed us to narrow down this neighborhood type. So when it comes to the masking composition, proportion, height, roof, and dormer, the neighborhood pattern book will have a page that identifies some of the, you know, really what we're seeing with that character pattern. We've identified then essentially those yes massing types or the yes patterns for the facade. And then we'll use photo inventory. So we'll have some photo examples of yeses from type A neighborhoods all over. And we'll have some examples of those no massing types. But here, what we really looked at is that wider lot allowed for a lot of that broad face rectangle. So the face feels wide when you're standing from the street, but there's implementation of the step downs on the sides that really reinforce that. the height of the structures in the middle, or those larger setbacks. So when you think about some of our really large lot neighborhoods. And then the balance facades, we do see that you get a variety of asymmetrical forms though. So if you think of Claverack Park, which has a lot of Tudor influence on homes in Claverack, you see a lot more of maybe that asymmetrical presentation from the front with the higher pitch roof forms compared to maybe Brentmoor Park, which is also a type A, but you have much more of that traditional balanced facade presented there. So this is where we kind of try and highlight both of those. Highlighting that slope roof is the dominant feature. And then the use of dormers is actually pretty prevalent in type A neighborhoods as well. For architectural detail, this is where we kind of go into seeing what that pattern looks like. So you can see that the influence of different styles actually kind of ranges across some of the different neighborhoods. So if we look at Brentmore, there's quite a mix here. We have multiple different types. But then, as I mentioned, Clavarac, that's pretty heavy on the influence of Tudor. And then across the board, Colonial is probably... one of the main influences. So this is where we'll identify those details, the material types, looking again at the window placement and how that will fit in. So in this instance, to use the example Jeff was talking about, if somebody wanted to propose a more contemporary home, this is where that architect could see, okay, well, we really want to balance the open to void, solid to void ratio of the facade. How is that still balanced regardless of the of the actual architectural style or influence.

Are the white areas indicating there's just too much variety in those areas to classify it?

No, this map is only showing the lots that are type A.

Oh, I see. I'm sorry.

Yeah. Thanks. Yep. Yeah, there'll be more graphics. I've just tried to do a summary slide of these different ones. And so then again, for the accessory structures and also materials is where we'll call out the kind of the yeses and the nos of what somebody should look at. And then... Before you go into this one, one other thing that we did pull out too with accessory structures kind of related to the front yard fence element is identifying the especially in type a, we, there's a little bit of a pattern of these larger lots where some of the homes, either they're a corner lot or the home was actually originally constructed kind of in a reverse way where your front door is kind of behind the house. And so that has in the way that then the building is being used, domes makes your front yard, actually the backyards, that's where you get kind of these accessory site features like patios and pergolas and pools and things that become more prevalent and more impactful on the street. So this is where we kind of call out, okay, how do you integrate those designs then? And why maybe if you have a pool that's in a more visible side of your yard, the fencing of that pool then needs to be done in a way that doesn't negatively impact kind of the open character of those neighborhoods compared to somebody who's enclosing a pool that's completely private in their backyard. That set of things. So the architectural guidelines are really meant to build on more detail and context for specific sites that are developed, that then provide one, the designer with more of a heads up of what to think about as they're presenting. And two, you all with a little bit more to review against the general language that's adopted in the code. With architectural guidelines, though, they are just guidelines. So these are standards that the ARB, you all, would be able to then waive because they are not adopted and codified within our code of ordinances. So they don't go through the variance process or other things to waive or modify those dimensional standards. Okay. Any questions on that before we go into a little Floria ratio? All right. So, flora ratio is something that's come up a lot. So, we use this as a tool within our mixed-use zoning districts to try and kind of evaluate and identify the density and massing for some of those target goals. It's come up in conversations in years past and with the city council when trying to, again, address this idea of having homes that are too big for the area. The thing that I will note with four-year ratio, we were hesitant to include it as an actual cap within the hard-coded requirements because you can have a large variety of structures that will have the same floor area ratio and they look completely different. So floor area ratio, especially in the context of single family development is really just part of a tool of a huge tool set. And I really think that the infill development tools that Ryan went over that we've included in the code are probably going to have more of an influence on how the development actually feels and looks from the street for single family. So in this, we've identified some floor ratio caps that we recommend including. So we called in the actual pattern book, we call it an ideal floor ratio cap for So neighborhoods are identified with what we think that cap should be. But I think that the real impactful tools are going to be the actual finished floor height and what do we count a story as and so on. So looking at floor ratio to still include this as a tool because the city council was pretty clear they wanted to. We looked at the pattern of floor ratio in different neighborhood types over time. So as you can see here, I think that the distribution by neighborhood typology tells a story pretty well. So type D, this lighter green line, this is Clayshire. So this tells us that this is distribution by neighborhood typology. The floor ratio distribution in Clayshire is pretty tight. So if you have that one-off larger home, it's going to stick out a lot more in Clayshire than it would necessarily in type C, which includes some of our higher density single family. This is where there's also a lot of duplexes, where there's a larger distribution there. When we look at the one above, this is that same one I showed you earlier for type A, but it has all of them. Then floor area ratio by neighborhood typology over time. This is where you can see the trend. So again, this is where Clay Shire is in this lighter area. Almost all of the homes in Clay Shire were constructed right around between 1940 and 1960. And there really hasn't been a lot of infill or teardowns in Clayshire since then. There's kind of a few one-offs that you might not notice, like right here. But the pattern, again, is still pretty consistent. With the type B neighborhoods, so this type B, the biggest neighborhoods are going to be like Davis Place and the Morelands and Hillcrest. You can see a really significant trend of a lot of homes, and Ryan's talked about this before, a lot of homes being built prior to 1960. And then we have a decent amount of teardown and rebuild, and it's at a significantly higher floor air ratio. So this is where that trend over time of the later homes that are being built are, you know, almost twice the size just in terms of floor area ratio of the homes that they were replacing. So in those type B and C neighborhoods where we've seen significant rebuilds, Clayton Gardens, Old Town, the homes that they're replacing are significantly larger. But I don't think just capping the floor area ratio is going to necessarily stop the form that those homes take because it's a lot easier to build these homes kind of more generic rectangles with the lower pitched roof and everything else. So that's where the other infill comes into play. So what we've done here on this map, what this shows you is it identifies the color outlines of each block, that's the neighborhood typology. And then the lot itself is highlighted in two different shades of gray with the darker gray shade being a home that the existing structure would exceed that proposed floor area ratio cap. On the left side, we have kind of the distribution, the box and whiskers chart that shows you the floor area ratio of those neighborhoods. So you can see the dark colored line is where we're proposing that maximum floor area ratio cap to be. So what we're trying to do is really understand what the pattern of the neighborhood was and then put the cap there. There are a few neighborhoods that differed from the pattern of that typology they've been assigned, and that's where we've proposed some exceptions that modify based on that cap. So the dotted lines are the neighborhoods that we've proposed modifying. So for example, with type A, our Ellenwood neighborhood, right over here, Alexander. When you look at that, the proposed floor ratio cap, we actually moved it up from a 0.3 to a 0.4 because the existing pattern of that neighborhood supported a little bit of a higher floor area ratio. So what you're seeing on the map here is the number, these darker gray, that's the number that again, meets that proposed increase cap. So if we left the proposed cap for Ellenwood down at 0.3, we would be way over three-fourths of the homes would be non-conforming. And I'll go then to this a little bit more with two examples on the next slide. So there are different reasons why we actually left some neighborhoods with a higher non-conforming under the proposed cap, and I'll go over two examples. Clayton Gardens and Clayton Gardens Addition. These are two Type B neighborhoods under the typology with a proposed cap of 0.5 for the FAR. And you look at this area here again, the darker gray are the parcels that have existing homes that would exceed the proposed cap. Outlined in red are all of the homes that have been constructed since 2000. So in Clayton Gardens, that's an area that has seen a really high concentration of tear down and rebuild that's changed the neighborhood. with consistent feedback that the newer homes are too big for the neighborhood and feel too big. When we look at the proposed FAR cap for the type B here, 48% of the lots would exceed that proposed cap. normally that would be a sign that maybe that cap is not appropriate for the neighborhood. But then when we took another layer of data, we realized that actually out of that, out of almost half the homes that don't comply, 81% of those non-compliant homes were constructed after 2000. So I think that actually fits the pattern that we've been talking about of the newer homes are too big and so we don't want to continue to support that pattern of development. And so in this case, the proposed cap of 0.5 really fits with the kind of home type that people think of that we're trying to match moving forward. Claverack Park, on the other hand, is a little bit of a different story. So Claverack Park is a Type A neighborhood typology, and that has a proposed FAR cap of 0.3. In Claverack, the dark parcels represent lots that would exceed that proposed cap. which is about 30% of the neighborhood. In this instance, that cap, instead of stopping to perpetuate development that we don't think is compatible, this is almost a backwards way of reinforcing the value of those existing homes because in Clabberrack you can see that there's significantly less parcels that are outlined in red. There really is not that same level of teardown. What we wouldn't want to do with any of our regulations, including the floor area ratio caps, is accidentally highlight an opportunity for teardown and rebuild to get you more than what you have. That was a big spur of what has led the charge of Clayton Gardens, especially the Clayton Gardens side. And when you're looking east or west, sorry, Forsyth was tearing down the ranch style homes and building homes that were significantly larger. So in Clive Rock Park, having the 30% of lots that exceed that cap, that almost provides an opportunity to support or encourage reinvestment in those homes because they're larger than what you would get if you tore them down. So therefore, maybe it's worth it to continue to preserve and enhance the existing structures that you have.

Have they probably exceeded it in Clavaret because of additions to existing structures? I see you don't have a date note here. So those the ones that are the 30 percent that are too large, is it because they took a 1930s home and they did a 2000 addition to it in some good way and it became larger than we wanted?

Well, I don't know. So that's the hard part about trying to backwards back into an FAR cap is that it's not like they were exceeding something we told them not to exceed. So now we're trying to look back. It's just when we look at that pattern... What we're finding is that they didn't tear down Clabrack. So, yeah, I guess

essentially the general idea of the house is too big. You know, there's a way to to to make houses that are too big because they're all new and too big and fitting the volume of the site.

right yes that's exactly the point of this being one

of the

tools

yes jeff i can say just from experience uh there's actually a whole bunch like some of these are just completely original homes that haven't had an addition but are still over the cap uh which i actually found really interesting when looking at this chart so like there's some that you can look at where you're like yes that edition that new home or something like that clearly it was done in a different way of thinking but some of these are

So that is the run through of how kind of the base zoning is evolving and then that secondary of these neighborhood typology books to try and build on or help outline what the neighborhood characters.

What are we to expect next?

Yes. So next Ryan has already, he's further along than I am in the actual language, but next we'll finish the full drafts and start the process of providing you with the red lines, providing Kevin with the red line versions to start that text amendment process. So what Ryan went over will be a formal text amendment to change the existing regulations. And then what I've gone over will just be the architecture review board essentially adopting these to replace the previous architecture review guidelines.

Well, this really shows a lot of research and work. I'm amazed at it, but you know how long you've been on it also. That's

right. It has been a long time coming.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, Ryan and I both are a little bit data nerds. So we approach things very analytically compared to maybe what other people would do. But I'm glad that you all seem to find that interesting as well so we can present it to you.

Well, especially graphic form. Yeah.

And you're pretty confident that, I'm all for the simplification, that you can take 35,000 words and use 3,000 words instead in a better way and get across the full message. I'm confident

because it's already drafted.

Yep, I'm confident too. Yeah, well, I don't remember what the end result of the mixed-use districts was, but we cut that. I mean, we regulate more. We really do. And even in what you've drafted, I think we actually have provided significantly more information in how we're going to review and evaluate projects with significantly less verbiage.

That's why I asked about graphics earlier, too, because sometimes just literally a picture tells you what it might take you 5,000 of those words to describe.

Right, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the words that Ryan's drafted haven't seen the attorney's side yet. They like to have words, but that's giving Kevin some trouble. Only if we want to enforce

them. I'll just add to something that came up when you all presented this to the counsel. was concerned with law consolidation or buying two lots and without consolidating necessarily but putting the big garage here in the house here trying to keep the neighborhood character in that respect as well and that's something i think that i mean you can answer better but that that you all are going to consider more and yeah that

will be that will be part two because we understand the desires there and where it comes from. We really have to be careful in doing it because you're solving for problems while creating other problems, anything you do within zoning code. So yeah, we took off this trunk and then shortly to follow that will be the evaluation in terms of densities. Zoning's really set up to protect against higher density impacting the lower density in terms of those impacts as opposed to the opposite, which is kind of the potential issue identified by the council of actually taking a medium density and impacting it by having lower density surrounding or, you know, infiltrating that development. So that will come as the next step along with the urban design district modifications and review that Ryan alluded to.

Now let's add one more. Today is actually refreshing with the home modifications that are presented to us, opening it up to the streets and to the neighbors. Something else that I know that I worried about as I thought about all this is increasing fence lines, allowing garages to be there. Closing off our homes from each other is something I hope we don't move toward, and that these can help us control as well.

just the nugget of information i wanted to add that anna talked about previously is in this bit of floor area ratio there's a little bit of incentive we can use to play with that for example maybe a higher floor area ratio if you're building a duplex in the neighborhood that allows those

well we'll look forward to seeing the next steps It may be a longer process than we had imagined. Well, thank you for all that work. I think the graphics made it much easier for us to see and go forward. Any other comments?

Have there been other municipalities, maybe especially in the St. Louis region, that have simplified their language and the way we're talking about successfully? Do you know of examples of that? Or maybe not in St. Louis? Yeah,

I mean, to varying degrees, yes. So the Unified Development Code framework that we're slowly implementing over time is a kind of national standard. So you see that across the board. There's definitely nationally best practices to introduce more diagrams, charts, things to help streamline the information. So that's happened in St. Louis. There's been various levels of those codes adopted. I wrote a few of them when I was in the private sector for various communities around here. A lot of times, the piece that we're doing that I think has both good sides and bad sides is that we're doing it in-house. We have to do it in chunks as opposed to writing the entire unified development code and then in one full swoop. repealing and replacing. So it will take a little bit for these pieces to come in over time, but it allows us to really tailor everything truly to the Clayton community. So when it's all said and done, it will be really nice. It's just going to take us a little bit longer to get there. But yeah, there's a few of them. Lake St. Louis is one that, gosh, there's probably like or five years, well, at least four years, five or six years ago that we did that. But that was one that we wrote and repealed and replaced all in kind. And it doesn't go as far as we're kind of headed in terms of the use of diagrams, but it's definitely heavy chart based.

Yeah, I just didn't know if there's lessons learned in any of those places. Or, for instance, the most, and I don't know what it is, the most Clayton-like portion of Kansas City. How is the residential zoning code written there? And does it work or does it not work? Or have they even redone it or not? I don't know, you know?

Yeah, I would say more of our takeaways are going to be less in graph versus text paragraph language and more in what has actually impacted the design. So even looking at I know when When we were starting the base zoning district, Brian, I talked a little bit about Kirkwood and Webster to neighboring communities that have really seen impacts of teardown construction. Now the style or the character of the homes and materials used probably they don't match really what we have here, but the impacts on blocks you can see. So that was one where we kind of looked and we saw what does their code say and how are What's the response been to things that they do or do not do? Finish floor height I know is something that Webster has. I don't remember off the top of my head. I think Kirkwood has it as well. Anyway, the finish floor height I think was a big one that we polled So it's a little bit more of that. Other neighborhoods and cities outside of Missouri, because I would say, generally speaking, this is a huge generalization, but generally speaking, Missouri is not on the forefront of zoning code. So, for better or for worse, like you said, you can learn about everything, but that's not really where we're going to probably go to see the waters tested in our residential zoning. But looking at other communities and bringing that back, the concept and versions of neighborhood pattern books are similar, neighborhood typology type concepts. Information has been helpful. I think we're really trying to find that balance, though, of not becoming a deterrent to development because I think that would be to our detriment if we all of a sudden became really development unfriendly as a community. So trying to find that more clear. So we set those expectations for the people trying to change their property, as well as the neighbor that's going to then see the change occur. So creating some clear expectations and identifying our priorities as a community, but then also still being willing to work with people who want to enhance their property. So that's what we're trying to get that balance with the codified regulations and then the more standard or guideline recommendations that we would have.

Anything further?

I just want to say quickly, I really appreciate the height setback ratio piece of things. As someone who has banged the table for that, and I believe, Ryan, you might have been referencing that a little bit in your speech to City Council. But yeah, I listen to the City Council meetings like a podcast. And when Ryan was talking about it, I literally stood up out of my chair. I was very excited for it. So I think a lot of this gets... gets everything really right. And I really appreciate the work you guys did on this.

Anything further, Jeff? Thank you. Claire?

No, thank you.

All good, thank you. Ellen?

No, thank You. Susan?

All good.

Heard enough from you, Ryan. Nothing else from me. And Anna. And thank you for your comments, Mr. O'Keefe. Good to be here. Thank you. We'll come back. We'll try to give you more meaty things in the future.

That's okay. Don't go out of your way.