Local Planning Agency - Jul 09, 2025

The July 9, 2025 meeting of the Local Planning Agency of the City of Dunedin will now come to order. The Local Planning Agency is an advisory board of citizens appointed by the City Commission. This board is comprised of volunteers who represent the thoughts and concerns of the community. The purpose of tonight's meeting is to make recommendations to the City Commission regarding each item on the agenda. Except for Item 1D, tonight's format will be as follows. I will introduce each item on the agenda, after which the City Representative will present information about it. Therefore, thereafter, the members of the Local Planning Agency will have an opportunity to ask questions of the City Representative. Finally, anyone from the public may come forward. Those from the public wishing to provide comment would need to please approach the lectern, state your name and address, and then utilize the microphone in the speaker's lectern in order for your comments to be recorded. Individual public speakers will be limited to three minutes of speaking time. And we will kindly request that speakers are respectful of the clock countdown. Citizens speaking on an agenda item or during citizens' comments shall not engage in loud, boisterous, or disruptive speech or conduct. That would never happen in Dunedin, would it? Any speaker that has continued inappropriate or irrelevant comments will be requested to relinquish the podium by me. The first item on our agenda is an update from our City Attorney on our meeting format. City Attorney Calvin. Thank you, Chair. So I just, I think it was a while back, possibly during a Sunshine Law training, there was a question that came up from an LPA board member where I was asked, well, you know, we have a speech at the beginning where we talk about that we hand, even though we're a legislative or a recommending body, we handle this and our hearings in a quasi-judicial manner, and is that always necessary? And so the simple answer is no, it's not always necessary. There are some items that come before you that are strictly legislative. So for instance, when there is an ordinance that's going before the City Commission ultimately on any land development regulation, it passes through this body first. There is no need for sworn testimony at that point. Any citizen can come up and speak, and you all are free to discuss it as well. And with quasi-judicial items, there are, I believe, a couple that come before this commission. One tonight is an example when it's design review. They come before the commission for the ultimate decision making, but you review it first. So because the commission will ultimately make that quasi-judicial decision, we do ask that this board treat that item similarly, provide the sworn testimony and the evidence, because ultimately that's what you're basing your recommendation on that will go to the commission. So the question was asked, well, how do we know whether or not it's going to be a legislative or a quasi-judicial item, and staff is going to identify that. So on your agenda, you will have legislative items, and if there's a quasi-judicial one, you'll have quasi-judicial. I don't know whether they'll be, which will come first and which will be second. That will be decided between staff and the clerk's office, but they will be grouped together in that way. So for tonight, all of your legislative items are being handled first. People are free to come up and provide comments when appropriate, you know, when the agenda item is heard, and we're at the public comment section, and there won't be sworn. When we get to the second part of the agenda, and specifically item 1D, then we will go through the formality of swearing everyone in and taking their testimony, and it'll be more rigid as far as the time frames on the applicant to present and the city to present. Super. Are there any questions? It is a legislative item. I'm asking tonight whether this issue of the Historic Preservation Ordinance is a legislative issue. Yes. Yes, the Historic Preservation Ordinance is an ordinance that is revising or proposing to revise the land development regulations, so it must come through this body, and it is a legislative item that will go to the commission, and they can determine whether or not they want to proceed with this ordinance or not. Any other questions? I think we're good. Okay. Thank you. Absolutely. All right. The second item on our agenda tonight is to approve the June 11, 2025 LPA minutes. Are there any corrections, additions, or deletions? There wasn't. Okay. No additions, deletions? Hearing none. Is there a motion? Motion to approve? And just so you know, even if you weren't here, or even if you recuse yourself, you can vote on the minutes. They're just a description of what occurred in the meeting. While I read them, I would approve. Okay. Motion to approve? Second. All in favor? Aye. The motion passes. Thank you. Item 1C, recommendation to the City Commission regarding Ordinance 25-02, amending Chapter 111 of the Land Development Code, Historic Preservation, and Resolution 2513, amending the Certificate of Appropriate Matrix as required by Chapter 111 of the Land Development Code, C. Deborah, you want to? Thank you. I've got a helper over here. I will again recuse as the sitting chairman of the Historic Preservation Advisory Committee Committee, and under exceptional circumstances, as known by the city attorney. And may I ask if to go sit out? Of course. Thank you. But eventually she'll be gone. All right. Staff presentation? Yes. Good evening, Chair. Chair LPA members, Frances Leong Sharp, Planner 2 for the City of Dunedin. Once again, this evening, we are bringing you back the Historic Preservation Ordinance and local district information to you in relation to the ordinance that is presented to you this evening. Tonight, we do have Blair Knighting from Kimley Horn, who is here to provide you a brief presentation of what we are following up with you based on the items that you have requested from staff and consultant regarding the ordinance. So I'll leave it to Blair. Evening. Thank you all for the time. We appreciate it. Nice to see you guys again. We are going to quickly go through a presentation, and I'm happy you can interrupt me if you have questions, or we can go through the presentation and have questions afterwards. Today, we're going to talk about the changes to the matrix, changes to the proposed landmarks section, and then also answer some hot topic questions that came up last time. Some of these things we felt we didn't kind of go into detail too much, and so that's why we just want to kind of briefly give you some overview on some of the things that we didn't quite get to last time. So for example, we're kind of giving you a situation where if you have received approval on your property that it's a landmark, and now you want to make changes to your property. So you have a historic landmark, and you want to make changes to it. Currently, the COA matrix is used to kind of tell who approves what type of work, right? So the old matrix is on the screen there, and really currently, the matrix requires the city commission to approve nine out of 30 of those items. And we kind of alluded to it last time, but really, the city commission really didn't think that they felt that was needed for them to review all of those types of items, and that's why we addressed the new COA matrix. So now we have this new proposed matrix where if you're a non-contributing structure, you do not need city commission for approval for exterior. You only need commission approval for seeking demolition over 20%, and this allows owners for a quicker, less burdensome process. So I think Frances and I were talking about this right before, and she said, you know, she's kind of waiting, she's got a couple applications for COAs that are waiting for this proposed ordinance to go through if it does, because some of their repairs and things that they want to do, currently, the commission has to approve. But with the new proposed matrix, only the HPAC has to approve it. So it's a less burdensome process for the people who have, who will require COAs. For those who aren't familiar, could you kind of give what these initials stand for? Yeah, sorry about that. I'm jumping right in, aren't I? So a COA is a Certificate of Appropriateness. So any exterior changes, alterations, you have to get a COA unless it's repairs. Repairs, you do not need a COA. Thank you. And then you mentioned HPAC. Oh yeah, the Historic Preservation and its Advisory Committee, which we're trying to change to Historic Preservation Committee now. And then we did do some changes to the local landmark section to make it a little bit easier. We added the distinction between landmark site and landmark. So you can now landmark just a building versus the whole real property. So we're trying to make it a little bit easier for people. And then some of the hot topic questions that came up, you know, who can apply for a local landmark? Currently, right now, the HPAC, the City Commission, City Manager, the proposed ordinance now adds that the owner consent must be provided for landmark or landmark site designations. So I think we kind of got glossed over that last time. But that is a change that we felt was really significant for landmarks and landmark sites. One of the concerns about the local historic districts is who can apply for the local historic districts. Currently, it's property owners with 100% owner support. And then the city manager, when failure to designate a proposed district will result in irreparable harm to the character of the city. So those are the two entities that can apply. So who can approve a local landmark, local landmark site, or local historic district? Only the city commission can approve those after a review by staff and the HPC. And then we did want to give you an example of other municipalities and how they handle the application for local historic districts. So for example, the city of Jacksonville, the application for local historic districts can be provided by property owners, the commission, their historic commission, city council, any member of city council or the mayor, the city of DeLand, the historic board may apply, and property owners. We just kind of wanted to give you a breadth of different types of historic cities. So there's larger cities and smaller cities too. City of Fort Lauderdale, the board, the city commission, the property owners. The city of Tarpon Springs, we've got the board, property owners. So it's a wide range of different people who can apply for the historic district. But ultimately, the ultimate deciding factor is the city commission, city council for those. And then there was a lot of questions about, you know, what happens if my house is damaged in a flood? So we wanted to make sure we kind of address those. So this scenario is if you're just not in a special flood hazard. So if a storm comes, while there's a historic district owner-initiated application, what happens? What do we do? You can, normal repair and maintenance does not require a COA. So there's no issue there. You want to repair your house. There's a pending application. You can repair your house. You could, the owners could withdraw the application, do whatever they need to do with the structures, and then maybe reapply or never reapply. And then owners may obtain a permit to repair to pre-damaged conditions. So then another scenario we kind of tried to delineate was if you're in a special flood hazard area, which we kind of looked at. It's mostly the western portion of the city, correct? So what if a storm comes while there's a historic district owner-initiated? So, for example, I'm in a flood hazard area. The owners got together. We want to be a historic district. But now, all of a sudden, there's a storm. Normal maintenance and repair does not need a COA, so you guys can move forward. If there was, you know, damage and the property owner says, hey, you know, this is a little bit too much right now for this application, they can withdraw it. And then other scenario would be owners may obtain the permit to repair back to pre-damaged conditions. So owners could repair back to pre-damaged following the 50% rule. Or if there's substantial damage, so let's say it's more than 50%, it's really unlikely that that application would go forward if there's structures within that district that are substantially damaged. We were kind of discussing the staff and really the integrity is probably lost at that point and the application would probably end up being withdrawn because the structures are probably gone, you know. I don't want to say that, you know, it's a terrible scenario to talk about, but, you know, the structures are probably beyond repair. And so at that point, the application would probably be withdrawn. So the other scenario we tried to come up with was, like, if you're in a flood, special flood hazard area, what if a storm comes while there's a historic district application and the city initiates? So, for example, the city manager initiated that application. That was one of the concerns is, hey, out of some extraordinary situation, the city manager applied for this historic district. That historic district is also in a flood hazard area, and that district happened to get damaged during a storm. Normal maintenance and repair may happen. You can obtain a permit to restore back to pre-storm condition or same situation. If it's substantially damaged, most likely the structures are not historically significant anymore, and more than likely the application would be withdrawn just like the other one. So we tried to give you those examples because it's very if this, if that, if that. So we just kind of wanted to go through those hot topic questions with you. And then we also, as requested, we provided you with a frequently asked questions document. I'm not going to go through all of them because it's, like, six or seven pages. But what we tried to do was delineate the different tables. So table one is frequently asked questions about the ordinance in general. And then we have table two, which is local landmark frequently asked questions. And then what we also did was table three would be local historic district frequently asked questions. And these are all based on if the ordinance was supported, right, as proposed. I know it's a lot, but we were trying to kind of follow up from last time. And we're here for any questions. Super. We are now open for public input. Who would like to approach our lecture? Michelle, I appreciate you passing all those up to the meeting, but I thought you'd... Thank you. Ryan Saunders, 250 Lyndhurst Street. That paper kind of speaks to what I'm going to talk about here at the beginning. In the last meeting, the LPA voted unanimously for the city's consulting team, Kimberly Horn, to return with answers to three things before recommending approval of this ordinance. Those three things were clear FAQs on the city manager's power to initiate a district, specific homeowner protections after storm damage, consideration of an expedited city manager process. While this unanimous motion of the LPA, A, the presentation kind of FAQs that I saw there were a little bit short. I didn't get a chance to read them beforehand, all the FAQs. The city manager's initiation power remains a little bit vague. And I'll walk through some examples of what we in the community see could be classified as irreparable harm. We just question who decides that based on what. What's the timeline? Nothing really addressed permanent delays or timelines for owners facing those rebuilds. I know we talked about it briefly, but I'm going to kind of dig into a scenario where I could see this being a challenge when it's not every home, but it's a single home, which isn't unthinkable in the sense that somebody's living on the lake, the other residents are not, and there's a chance for the other residents to go through a historic district process. We'll walk through that. Storm damage is mentioned, but just kind of rehashes the FEMA 50% rules. It doesn't explain what actually changes for residents before or after designation. And another key point was consideration of an expedited city manager process. The word expedite does not exist in the FAQs or the presentation you just saw as well. This matters because as LPI members, as Charlie, you mentioned in the last meeting, you noted the contract language puts an undue burden on homeowners to fight a designation after the fact when the city manager initiates it. That's why I and other residents submitted those questions to you. Appreciate you guys taking time to read that. But I want to walk through the scenario. Having studied the ordinance, just imagine a two-block stretch that's characterized by well-preserved mid-century modern homes, all built around the era of the 1960s. While none of these individual homes might meet the specific historic landmark beyond being 50 years old, together they create a distinctive sense of place. Now consider a situation where one home is destroyed. Just that situation of flood on the lake right next to that one home. It demolishes. The resident says, I need to demolish this structure. One resident can now stand up in this micro-neighborhood and say even though that person is a long-term resident, any demolition on their block could architecturally be incompatible with what we want because this person wants to demolish and build a home that's higher up that meets his family needs. Maybe the family's growing and they want to add some square footage. The ordinance language includes preserving the cultural, historic, architecture, and archaeological heritage of the city. And the loss of that single home or multiple contributing properties could result in somebody's perceived irreparable harm. And the city manager could agree, executes their authority to initiate a district under these circumstances in which failure to designate by the city manager's input would be irreparable harm. This would freeze permits on all homes on the block regardless of whether the owners want it or not. So I know there's a lot in here about the COA. I just want to wrap up one more point. I think there are pieces of the ordinance that are important for those people that volunteer for this. What I think is unnecessary at this time and could maybe be handled in a separate documentation is giving the city manager the authority to move forward with this. Thank you. Thank you. Is there someone else who would like to speak to us? It's time of the day. Paul Gionis. I live at 159 Beltree Street with my wife and mother-in-law. I sent y'all a late night email last night. I don't know if you got it or not. I hope you guys got a chance to read it. Okay, so I grew up on Clearwater Beach. My parents have lived at 61 Midway my entire life. I've always been here. I was a beach kid. I used to come to the Dunedin Fine Arts Center and learn how to use Apple IICs, which are now like an artifact, and people spend a lot of money on eBay. I chose to live in Dunedin. I have my house. We have two lots on Edgewater. My law office is on Main Street in Dunedin. This is my home. This is where I like to be. I think it's a wonderful community. It's great. Ultimately, what's going on here today is that this ordinance was started in 2020, and contemporaneously with it was a master survey plan where four different contiguous zones were surveyed to look for the historic houses. And in this plan, from the very beginning, it always had an eye towards, can we turn this into one big continuous historic zone, district? The word historic district, I think, is used 99 times in the 200 pages of this document. It went on for five years. It's 200 pages long. It cost $125,000 just to Kimley Horn. About $100 of that was paid by state grants. And you guys don't know about it. It's not on the city's website. It's not made available. I asked Frances why, and she said we've complied with the public records laws. That's fine, but the public should know because there's 600 homes within that district. Like, there's commercial properties, and all those will be affected. And ultimately, what will happen is if anybody wants to change the exterior of their home, they want to paint their front door, make their garage a little bit bigger, change their windows, they're going to have to go in front of 12 strangers and say, is this appropriate? I mean, that's the name, right? It's the certificate of appropriateness. So they're going to have to go in front, and 12 people who don't know anything about you or what you want or how much you invested in your home or how much it means to you is going to tell you whether or not it looks appropriate. And my parents' house got flooded during the storm, and, you know, they were lucky. They could have died. The water was up over the outlets. My brother, who has some emotional issues, wouldn't let them get to the circuit breaker. That entire experience has been very terrible for them. Luckily, I have a house on Marine Street. I put them in it. They're sort of settled, but they're also not, right? Like, it's traumatic. It's hard. Now, imagine being 82 and 72 like my parents and having to go in front of 12 strangers and say, hey, I want to rebuild my house. Is it appropriate? Do you like what I'm doing? Is the color okay? Are the awnings how you like them? Does it match the rest of the community? And have to go through that. This ordinance doesn't take any of that into account. And you guys should ask, why this master survey plan that has language that directly tracks this ordinance has never been brought to everybody's attention. And more to point you- You need to finish up, sir. Yes, sir. The most important part of that is that master plan creates an evidentiary basis that if anybody tries to appeal this after the fact, they'll lose. Thank you very much. Sorry. All right. Appreciate y'all. Is there anyone else? All right. Then we are closing public input. Thoughts, questions from the agency? I have a few. First of all, I do want to say thank you for putting the FAQ together. I've read and highlighted it extensively. Along with everybody else's messages and so forth. So I've got to be honest, I think I've got almost as many questions as I had before, even after reading this, though. So the first question I've got, the current code printed off our code of ordinances talks about historic landmarks but has no mentions of districts. Did I read that correctly? That is not something in the current code. Okay. So this is entirely new. Okay. So under question number four, a couple of things, you've got the city commission wanted to have subject matter experts like staff and HPC determine most COA applications because it was burdensome for the applicants to go through the commission process. My question is, for you, is did the commission ask for changes to add historic districts or was it simply to remove those nine of 30 topics in the matrix that they were having to do approval for? Based on my understanding of the reason why we are creating the inclusion of the historic districts is that we have the historic preservation advisory committee who is charged to look at areas in the city to be surveyed and to determine whether a district could potentially be formed. And with that, in fact, that the existing ordinance does not provide a toolbox, a tool, as you will, for anybody to create a district. And there are, as far as I understand and working with the historic preservation advisor committee, an interest in possibly wanting to create a district. This is one mechanism that is included in this ordinance to allow one to create a district. But that is being driven by the committee, the historic committee, not the commission to add districts. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Got you. And then a question on your presentation here with the city manager, failure to designate a district could result in irreparable harm to the character of the city. How is that defined? And is there any legal basis for that? That seems to me that could be very subjective. So it's actually irreparable harm is a legal term of art. And so it means that harm or damage that cannot be adequately compensated by monetary damages. So it's something that is, every time a court deals with it with regard to injunctions, it's one of the basis is irreparable harm. So it is a common legal term of art. Okay. So who would prove irreparable harm in that case? If the city manager is filing the application, it's upon the city manager to demonstrate that they're filing this application because it's met this criteria of irreparable harm to the character of the city. To the character of the city. How do you define character legally? Because irreparable harm is also the property values, the enjoyment of life of their properties that could create harm to those property owners who now are subject to more owner's restrictions on their properties. So generally with regard to like tax issues or money issues, those aren't considered irreparable in the sense of there is a monetary value that can be provided. With regard to quality of life and enjoyment, those would be arguments that could be made if there was somebody who was opposing it. Okay. Thank you. I may come back. Okay. Just a second. Could the, okay, the city manager would then have to approach the commission to approve what he or she has done. Is that correct? No. So the city manager would have to file an application in that application. They'd have to identify how this, you know, how they meet the criteria, not just the criteria for meeting the district, but the other additional criteria of the irreparable harm to the character of the city. So that would all need to be included. That's going to move through the process with all the notice requirements. So there's notice to the property owners that's given upon the application being filed. Um, then there's, it goes through the process to the H-PAC and there's notice that's provided to all the property owners in the district prior to H-PAC hearing. Then it would go to city commission. Again, notice to all the property owners before it goes to city commission. So there are, um, there's noticed, a lot of notice throughout the entire process. Good. Thank you. Kevin. Okay. So if I'm a homeowner, just enjoying my home that I bought, lived in it for years, all of a sudden city manager says irreparable harm is going to happen. All of a sudden my value, um, could be impacted and I'm having to defend my current rights against having these new restrictions put on my ownership. So a couple of things. So it seems to me I'm, I'm suffering potential economic harm because I'm losing flexibility. I could lose buyers and market, which is going to affect my property values. Well, a couple of things. So the first thing with regard to that is that, um, that scenario assumes that the, the city manager has filed something, has filed the application, that the homeowner is against it. And the way you described it was just that you wake up one day and they filed this application. Um, I would question whether or not a house just sitting there with nothing else going on, um, whether, and out of the clear blue that the city manager comes up and says, as you said, irreparable harm, I'm filing this application. But please note that even that would require like some sort of almost bad act or unethical behavior without there being a true reason of irreparable harm for the city manager to bring this. I think there's two things that we just need to consider. One is that the person is acting ethically and they truthfully believe that there is irreparable harm to the character of the city. And so they're filing that application. The other scenario is that you have a city manager that isn't acting that way and is acting in an unethical way. Okay, so with the ethical way, they file the application. The homeowner receives notice of it within five days. The homeowner, at that point, there's nothing that's been, it hasn't been designated. There is no designation on the property yet. So to the extent the homeowner has concerns regarding this, there will be numerous opportunities for that homeowner to voice their concerns. Only after the designation is, if the city manager says, forget the homeowner, H-PAC says, sorry, homeowner, and the city commission then says, sorry, homeowner, we're still designating this property, then the homeowner also has the recourse of going to court where there would be more of the legal fees. Yeah, but that's their time and their money to fight this thing. That's, a lot of people can't afford that, either of those. So right now, just as the ordinance is right now and has been on the books, the H-PAC, the commission, the city commission, or the city can initiate a designation of your home as a historic home. It would go through, again, the process of the H-PAC and the commission, and if the commission designated it and you didn't want that, under today's ordinance, you would then be going to court to challenge that. So this isn't a new idea. No, I don't think it is, but I think a single home versus a broad home. Kevin, has your question been answered? I'm not sure fully, but yeah. But I'll give a chance for others to ask here for a little bit. But I do have more questions. Well, please continue. May I continue with that? Yeah. Go ahead. As Kevin was just saying, you're speaking of a single home. Now we're talking about a whole neighborhood that they want to add in, not just a single home. And we're not talking about after the application has been done. The fact that an application has been done is where it starts. The fact that they want to take a neighborhood, a certain block, and make it a historic district, it right now requires 100% of the people's input. But we want to add that the city manager, if one person opts out, I'm sitting there just thinking about the fact that I may want to add a porch to my house or do something of that nature, but that's not going to fit in with their historic district idea. I'm going to have to fight that as soon as they put an application on my home. Right now, they don't have that ability to put it on my home as they're doing a district. They only have the ability to do it on singular homes. So the possibility, I think, right now is much less than it would be if they started doing an entire district. Let's keep in mind that our job is to recommend or oppose this. Well, that's what we're trying to understand in order to be able to do that. That's what we're trying to understand so that we can recommend or oppose. At this point, quite frankly, I oppose it quite strongly. That's fine. I'm just curious about what is it you don't understand yet? the legal side of it. What's irreparable harm? What is irreparable harm? And that is not definitive because it's a very open statement. And we have our lawyer to respond to that. Yes. And I would say that it's actually, it's not an open, it is a term of art. It is defined in the law. This is a law that's being considered to be passed. And irreparable harm in the law is a harm that cannot be adequately compensated by money. And so there is, you know, that's what the definition is of it and how it would apply in this scenario. To be honest, I still don't understand how the city is harmed. I mean, we're ranked one of the top communities in the country in travel and leisure and the travel magazines and others. They always talk about the quaint downtown core and Honeymoon Island. I don't hear them referencing quaint housing in neighborhoods that fit historic definitions. That's never mentioned in those. So how are we being harmed? And that... As a community. Right. So I don't... You're asking me a question where there isn't an application. There isn't any kind of facts that I can rely on with regard to this. What I can answer is what the definition is and that it's irreparable harm to the character of the city and that would have to be demonstrated. And many of the questions and comments that you have may come up if there was a city-initiated application and it was put before H-PAC and then on to the commission. Okay. Okay. Got it. So no precedent has been set? No. So the... The city has never had historic districts. Right. And to my knowledge I believe that most... No, I believe that all of the designations of individual properties have been with homeowner consent. consent, yeah. And actually with the homeowner bringing the application. So I think that's something else that just to... For your consideration is that even where there were opportunities for a multitude beyond the city manager to bring applications forward that that hasn't occurred to my knowledge in the history of the historic preservation ordinance. Do you know? Has H-PAC or anyone else initiated an application without homeowner consent? There has. Oh, there has. Okay. Yeah, there has. A perfectly good example would be the Kellogg Mansion where the Historic Preservation Advisory Committee had submitted an application for a landmark designation without the owner's consent. That is the very only precedent that I'm aware of other than that. As a result of that, a long and short of it, unfortunately, that application in itself was withdrawn. And unfortunately, as probably many of the local people that are here may have been well aware that the home is no longer standing. How many homes do we have that would be comparable to the Kellogg Mansion in terms of time when it was built, scale, history, and so forth? A full survey has never been done of the city. We started with the areas that we have on file now. So I can't really answer that. Okay. We have, what, 20 historic homes designated right now? We have 25. 25? Okay. Out of how many total houses in Dunedin? I'm curious. I'm trying to get a sense on what's the demand for historic homes in the market. Yeah, I don't... No idea? I honestly don't have an exact number, but I could tell you that I have a pending application right now for a landmark designation that is in the process right now. A landmark? A home? Yes. Okay. Okay, good. Okay. Kim Lee Horn, maybe you can handle this one. So on page five, you talk about the benefits of being in a local historic district. It's the third question on that page. Helps create a sense of place, protected, enhanced property values while living in an area with character. City also adds a tax incentive and so forth. Do you have any experience on what that has done to actually improve property values? I think the perception is often that it's the opposite. Can you give me any factual background on actual outcomes? Yep. You know, we did a presentation to City Commission about this, and I don't have the exact number, but it is proven that local historic districts have higher property values and it actually bleeds through to neighborhoods outside just on the border too. So it is proven that local historic districts have higher property values than non-local historic districts. Okay. Okay. And then lastly, on the last question, the last page, would local historic district design regulations include resiliency or floodplain guidance? You say that they would address resiliency and floodplain best practices. What does that mean? What does that answer mean? I don't understand that. Thank you. So we're kind of, if this ever happens, right, so if a historic district were to ever come through fruition, typically historic districts have design regulations that go with them. And a lot of historic districts in coastal areas are anticipating flood measures and trying to do resiliency. So, for example, in Charleston, they're trying to work on how to raise the buildings, how to have design regulations on how to raise the buildings and keep the character and really show how you can work with that. And so I anticipate that if a historic district were ever to be, you know, pushed forward in this area, that those design regulations would address that. But that's based on the neighborhood and the historic district that they, you know, typically this is a grassroots thing, right? So this isn't someone from the top down coming in and saying, we're going to make this historic district. I've never seen that happen. It's always a local group of people who say, we want to save this area because it's special. And they all get together and they have a neighborhood meeting and they talk about, let's do this together. And then they come up with design regulations for that district. Okay. Okay. That's helpful. But I do want to call it one thing you said. This has been a grassroots effort. And I think the consensus concern here is the city manager would now have the power to call this instead of it being a grassroots effort. Typically it is a grassroots effort for the applications for it. That is typical. But if you look at other municipalities, I gave you some examples. Other people are able to submit those applications. At least in this situation, it says irreparable harm. So we're trying to show, at least in that, we originally had it to where the HPAC could do it and people had concerns about that. So we removed that. We kept at least some type of failsafe with the city manager. Okay. All right. I'll take a break now. Some others. Other questions? Well, part of what I'm hearing is a lot of this is centered around the historic district and something we don't have currently. So I think the thought of the unknown is what's making it difficult and with the ability of someone else other than the property owners in that case because it would be multiple property owners for a district coming together as that grassroots group that you mentioned. So I don't know if there's any appetite that we amend the ordinance removing the city manager approval for that. I don't know how badly that would hurt your district and possibly then come back later and add that in if it is indeed an issue with folks wanting to step out of bounds because it also looks to me that the historic district has design regulations that are either from the HPC or the individual homeowners themselves. There seems to be a lot that goes into this. I'm kind of picturing a district and it being defined by a good-sized book of things that are required and I think for this board here it's hard to discuss or even fathom any of those things if it wasn't just the grassroots and those folks that wanted to be involved in that. So that was just something I'm throwing out as a suggestion. Thank you. Other questions? Then I'm going to ask for a motion to recommend or oppose the commission's approval of Ordinance 25-02. May I, Mr. Chairman? Very quickly. I'm sorry to interrupt. George Kinney with the Community Development Department. So just in listening to this it sounds like maybe the sticking point is the city manager's ability to initiate the application. The rest of it I think you're saying sounds pretty good. the certificate of appropriateness adjustments the adjustments to the landmark site to the site designations and all of those have actually been loosened up so that they're even better for the applicants. So I don't know if we can do this legally and I'm looking at the city attorney but my suggestion would be if you're comfortable with the balance of the document with the exception of that one piece that maybe the motion goes in that particular direction so that there's at least an assurance that's going to the city commission that they feel like the overall document is in good shape with the exception of this particular issue. Your thoughts? Can we do that? You certainly can. You can recommend approval with a condition that the city manager's initiation of the application for historic districts be removed. Good. If that was the board's will. Well, I'm up for a motion. Okay. Before that I just want to I kind of want to follow up on that just with the points that for the landmark designations and things like that I think this ordinance is better. I think it clears things up. It does a better job. It gives the community as a whole better input and better say in what's going on and you know and from that standpoint I really do think that that's good and I think it'll make things easier. So I just kind of want to mention that too because it is. Would you like to make a motion? So yeah I would like to make a motion of approval but with the removal of the city manager's initiation of the historic district. Thank you. Is there a second? Can I amend that motion? I'd like to amend it that property owners can't have the historic district imposed on their property without commission approval. I thought that was already in there. I don't know. I need time to read that. I'm okay with the landmark stuff. It's just the historic district stuff. If a few neighbors come together goes to the committee it gets recommended and somebody doesn't want to I don't want that to necessarily be imposed on them. I thought you mentioned that if one person said no that it wouldn't happen. Could not happen. With the motion that is on the table removing the city and maybe you can jump in but removing the city manager's ability to apply that reverts back to only 100% owner to submit the application. Okay. Okay. That's okay. I'm comfortable with that. Right. And I guess the way I look at that to say there's five homes and the one in the middle does not want to participate you'd basically make two historic districts one on either side of it. Correct. That makes sense. That makes sense. All right. Okay. Do we have a second? I'll second. Paul's motion. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? I'm sorry. Ma'am I'm afraid you are out of order. Well yeah but we're going to approve it or not approve it and then the commissioners get to have their say. Thank you. Okay. So you had called for a vote but I couldn't tell how many were yeas or nays so. Well I have not asked for the nays yet. Oh okay. Yes. Is there anyone that disapproves of the motion? So the ayes have it. So it's that the my understanding of what we've just done is we have approved the ordinance with the exception of the city manager approved. of being able to submit a COA. From here it will go to the commission to see what they want to do with this. But we have simply done our duty. Okay. Thank you. Okay. They did. They voted they voted yay and then you can look at their vote and then it goes nays and this is one one day and it's a jay. Okay. All right folks let's get going to get. Are they in a district? While the local planning agency is not a quasi judicial board and therefore has no final decision making power our procedure for quasi judicial items are structured in a quasi judicial manner for the benefit of those who come before it. the commission could somebody close the doors there please. Thank you. The commission will be the ultimate the commission will be the ultimate quasi judicial decision making authority. The item on our agenda tonight is quasi judicial nation in nature is item 1D and the format will be as follows. I will introduce each item after which the city representative will present information about it. Thereafter the members of the local planning agency will have an opportunity to ask the city representative questions. The applicant will present information about the item. Thereafter the members of the local planning agency will have an opportunity to ask questions of the applicant. Finally anyone from the public may come forward. Those from the public wishing to provide testimony will need to approach the lectern state their name and address and then utilize the microphone at the speaker's lectern in order for their comments to be recorded. Individual speakers will be limited to three minutes of speaking time and we kindly request that speakers are respectful of the countdown clock. Finally both city representative and the applicant will be provided any final comments. Upon conclusion of each public hearing the local planning agency will consider the evidence before it and will vote on the agenda item. The voice vote is the rendition of the order of the board and there will be no written decision by the board. Anyone in the audience wishing to give testimony to any items on the agenda will need to be sworn in by the deputy city clerk. The deputy clerk will now swear in persons wishing to speak or give testimony to tonight's quasi-judicial agenda. Do you swear the testimony you are about to give in this proceeding is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Thank you. Has anyone had any ex-parte communications regarding this item? No. Thank you. All right. Application 1D. DR 2025 0001 request for design review approval for the development of an affordable multifamily residential housing project called the Flats on Main Street consisting of 78 apartments on 3.4 acres of property located at 1419, 1421, 1422, 1490, and 1445 Carnation Drive, and 1150 Friendly Lane. Staff presentation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the board. George Kinney on behalf of the Community Development Department. I am feeling a little lonely up here because normally Bob Ironsmith is with me from our economic development team, but he is on, he's enjoying a brief vacation. And I normally have Clay Watkins here with engineering and stormwater, but he is also unavailable tonight, so I'm going to do my best to present this without them. So again, as was mentioned, this is a design review. You may recall that you saw the development agreement recently and that has been approved by the City Commission, and I'll walk through some of that, but this is the design review portion of it. I'll just remind the committee, the board, that design review is conceptual in nature. It's really the infrastructure review, and once this is approved, once and if it is approved by the commission, it would go for a further infrastructure review, but all city departments have signed off on this particular design review, and most of the items that are kind of outstanding from an engineering and technical nature will be handled at the infrastructure review stage. This is the flats on Main Street, as was mentioned. Just quickly, first slide is showing the dates for approval. The first is obviously tonight with the local planning agency, July 9. This will then be heard soon thereafter by the city commission at first reading on August 7, and if it goes further than that to the second hearing on September 4, and I say that because the applicant does have the opportunity to collapse those two readings into one if requested of the city commission and approved. Just a little bit on the applicant and property information. The request, again, is design review. The applicant is here in the audience. They are in the back and prepared to make a presentation if needed. The street addresses were articulated by the chair. The area is comprised of basically six parcels totaling 3.34 acres. You can see by the slide on the left-hand side that location, which is behind some of the retail and commercial establishments along Main Street, and then surrounded to the kind of northeast and west by single family residential and multifamily residential development. This current site holds, I believe, three structures, two multifamily structures and a single-family structure, or I might have that wrong. It might be two single-families and a multifamily, but approximately three structures on the site right now that would be removed in favor of the project. The land use plan I'll walk through. It's residential medium. The zoning district I'll also walk through, which is multifamily residential 12 and a half. This is not in a special flood hazard area. Oh, and there are the three existing uses, as mentioned. I'm sorry, there's three existing single-family homes and one two-family residential on the site as it currently sits. A little bit on the project description. The flats on Main Street is an affordable housing development consisting of 78 apartments on those 3.34 acres. The project is proposed to be built as a three-story garden style apartment building consisting of 42 one-bedroom units and 36 two-bedroom units, plus clubhouse buildings, surface parking, and common green spaces, as you can see by the site plan on the right-hand side. That little oval blow-up on the left-hand side is an indication of the architectural style that the applicant will be utilizing, although I will mention this is not in one of our corridors that require an architectural adherence with one of our five Cooper-Johnson guidelines. They have actually done some of the stuff above and beyond what is required of them. Very quickly, some past... I'll go through this very quickly because you've been part of most of this, but the past City Commission actions include the financial commitment they made to this project back in June of 2024 in the amount of $610,000. The development agreement, which you were intimately familiar with, was entered into negotiation back in February of this year and then concluded with the second reading just this past month, approving that development agreement. That agreement really had two pieces to it, as you'll recall. The affordable housing density bonus of 50%, which is permissed allowed by our land development code pursuant to section 10527, and they also requested and received a public art exemption of 50%. So those two items are in play and part of this ask as well. The land use plan and zoning maps are here, and I'll repeat these again on the next few slides so you can see, but on the left-hand side is the underlying land use. It is residential medium. It does cover all six parcels, so there's no fragmented land use, which is a good thing from a planning perspective. On the right, you can see the zoning, and again, it's at MF 12.5, which does cover all six parcels, so that is also unified throughout the site. And then just a little bit more in kind of a breakdown of that aspect of it and how the density is arrived at and decided as the planning board knows, it's our underlying land use that dictates the density for any particular property. So in this particular case, the chart that you can see here in this particular slide shows how that's broken down. So the underlying density permits 12.5 units per acre. At 3.34 acres, that yields 42 dwelling units. With that 50% affordable housing density bonus then that was afforded through the development agreement, now you're looking at that same acreage at half of that, 6.25 dwelling units per acre, which adds another 21 dwelling units. And then the African also took advantage of a state statute that allows for a density bonus for what's called gray water at 35%. So when you tally all those three, you can see that the total that this site would allow or yield is 78 dwelling units and that is exactly what the applicant is asking for here. George, can you describe what gray water density bonus is? Yeah, so I actually have a little, it is, I have to read it, Mr. Chairman, because it is a, it's an engineering perspective, but I have it here, where did it, ah, here we go. So this gray water density bonus is offered by Florida statute 403.892 and it offers important incentives to multifamily home developers and home builders to adopt solutions for treating and reusing the drain water, i.e. gray water, it's called, from baths, showers, bathroom sinks, and laundry. And then the primary aim of the statute is to promote reuse of that gray water for non-potable purposes such as toilet flushing and irrigation. So, and they are providing a loop gray water system as part of this project. That's great. I mean, you're the expert. It used to be, he still is. It's not potable though. It's not potable. I'm dealing all kinds. So is that per unit? Do you know? I mean, the specifics of that? Yeah, the system has to apply to, I believe there's a percentage of units has applied to, but I think the applicant has applied it to all of the units. So it's applied to all 78 units, is my understanding. So yeah, each unit will have its, basically its own tank for, additional tank for toilet flushing and things like that that you would normally use gray water for. That's my understanding. Brett's here if you want to clarify, Brett. Let's finish your presentation and then we'll move on that. All right, so that is the land use aspect of it from a zoning district evaluation. As the board knows, what we draw mostly from the zoning district evaluation is a dimensional standard, the setbacks, the requirements for open space, those kinds of things. So there is a chart here to the left. I won't spend a lot of time on that, but the project does comply with all of the provisions of the zoning district of MF 12 and a half including lot size, lot width, lot depth. A number of stories is actually interesting because this district would permit up to five stories. Applicant's only talking about three, which is, when I get to the compatibility piece, you'll see how that's a good, makes it for a better fit. The building height max is 50 feet in this district. Applicant is proposing 43 feet, so seven feet under what would be the maximum height allowed, and then you can see some of the setbacks and then the floor areas per unit. So the applicant does also comply with all of the provisions of the zoning ordinance and the land use code. So I'm going to spend a little bit of time on the compatibility evaluation because this is a little bit different in the fact that it's not a like-to-like comparison. Like normally when we're looking at compatibility, we're looking at DC next to DC, or we're looking at MF 12 against MF 12. In this case, we're looking at a multifamily district against some surrounding residential districts, so it's a little bit more complicated, but I kind of just want to work through this, but as part of what the land development describes, the purpose of the MF 12.5 district is, is to provide a medium to high-density district which offers the convenience cost savings of urban living district. This district can be applied to areas adjacent to commercial development, which is what we have here, in urban activity centers and in freestanding locations if well buffered from low density residential uses. So what's neat about this site from a planning perspective is it is really acting as that transitional piece between that commercial that's lining Main Street and that residential activity that's occurring around the backside. So that's what this provision is getting at. The surrounding area is predominantly built out and includes a mix of uses ranging from low to medium density to single-family residential and multifamily residential to commercial retail. So it's just a mix. It's a real mixed bag out there. Given locational characteristics, existing land use, the zoning district designation, and the economic conditions, the subject parcels are really ideally situated for medium-density affordable housing to effectively transition between the more intense commercial uses and those residential pieces, as I mentioned. And again, as I mentioned, this is a bit of a unique analysis in that the adjacent zoning categories are not like-to-like and, in fact, actually includes some unincorporated properties, which I'll show you in another slide, but the project sits kind of between all of that. There appears to be only if you're kind of picturing back to the site where Friendly Drive runs north and south along the eastern boundary of the property, those properties are really, for the most part, unincorporated, and they are residentially zoned at R4. What's kind of interesting about R4 is it allows for a maximum residential height of 35 feet, which is significantly higher than what we would allow in Dunedin under R60, which would be maxed out at 27 feet. So there is some exceptions for height that the unincorporated Pinellas County has that we don't. So that's another piece that went into this compatibility analysis. And then, you know, we knew that we wanted to be as complementary as we could to the surrounding property owner, so, and this is that slide. So if you look to your right, a line in yellow are those properties in unincorporated Pinellas County where that R4 district designation exists, and that 35 foot height limitation is allowed. But one of the things the applicant did was they heard a lot of the conversation that occurred as we were working through the development agreement process, and they provided an exhibit, which is in your packet, which is the design modifications compatibility review, and it really talks to some of the things they've done to try and make that even more palatable as we transition from this property into the surrounding properties, and some of that's articulated here. You know, they've looked at actually four other alternatives for the building site location, and staff ultimately concurs that this is probably the best location because it not only preserves large mature trees to the north and west part of the site, but it also provides for really uninterrupted vehicular movement for our operations folks, for our fire and emergency personnel. They have also, as part of this, offered to enhance the landscaping along the eastern property line to include additional palm trees and a hedge structure, and then you're going to see we're going to ask for that to be part of the condition of approval moving forward. And then the applicant has also agreed to allow the property owner, so we're talking about that, really that property, if you're looking at the top yellow box, that second property down, that's, I think, the person that owns that is Mrs. Cruz. What the applicant, the applicant actually allows her to traverse onto their property to gain access to that property through an easement, and they have, they're going to formalize that, their idea is to formalize that agreement on behalf of her, but also if she wants to relocate at some point, then they have offered a spot for her in one of their developments. So they have kind of done all of those things. So long story short, you know, given the criteria and the analysis, this 78 unit affordable housing residential project is designed and assembled on the property we would consider compatible to the surrounding development. The next piece, as you know, from when it comes to design review is really meeting those design standard evaluation criteria that are located in the land development code, and those are listed in this table on the left-hand side, common open space, circulation, mobility, parking, loading, stacking, off-street parking, buffer screening, fences, walls, architectural style, sustainability. I'm not going to run down through each of these, but they have complied with each of these, and in many instances have gone above and beyond what is required. You know, one example is the traffic impact analysis was such that we did a peer review on it, and they actually had an enhanced analysis that we wouldn't necessarily require. One of the things I know that's been coming up routinely is the stormwater piece of it, and one of the things they have committed to is a 100-year retention versus the 25-year retention that's required by the code. So a lot of what they have done has actually been much more than what our code requires, and that's just a couple of instances, but I'm not going to go through each of these. They're articulated in your staff report, but there is a small write-up for each of the design criteria, and they have complied with all of those criteria. Some additional items, and again, these are some things that came up as part of the process with the development agreement, and again, it's also in their exhibit that's titled Flats on Main Street with the Design Modification Compatibility Review, but some of the other things that the applicant has done above and beyond what is really required for this stage is they've looked at some fire emergency access, so there's some questions arose during previous public hearings about the adequacy of access for emergency vehicles. We have confirmed with the fire marshal on two occasions that there is no secondary exit required. He is very comfortable with the access and circulation of the project as it's proposed. The stormwater system management, the stormwater management system, again, I kind of already mentioned that, but they're looking to hold to a hundred-year storm event, and I double checked with the city engineer yesterday before coming into this meeting. Again, he is extremely comfortable with what they're proposing at this point. There was a lot of discussion about occupancy, so this exhibit, actually, and I'll defer to the applicant a little bit more on the occupancy, but they've actually looked at a couple of their existing operations, and they have put together a table in that exhibit that talks about what they're really seeing on the ground when it comes to occupants, the number of occupants per unit, and it's usually right around, it's usually slightly under two, so not any different than you would see from a normal residential home. They also provided a parking study to back up their parking study. Obviously, their parking is compliant pursuant to code, but they went the extra step and actually provided a study, and the results of that study are also in that exhibit. I would add one other thing that's not on this particular slide is there was a question about light pollution, and they actually did a photometric study, so they have that included as part of that exhibit, too, and it shows that there will be no spillover onto adjacent properties. Committee actions, I won't spend too much time on this. Development review committee heard this particular ask on December 18th of 2024, recommended it to the architecture review committee who recommended the project to the local planning agency on January 7th of 2025, and then finally, our staff determination. Staff finds that the application for design review is consistent with the applicable review criteria for approval subject to the four following conditions. The first three are those routine conditions that you're used to seeing, that the applicant's responsible for meeting the minimum criteria of the land development code and acquiring all other jurisdictional permits and approvals. Two, construction plans shall be consistent with the approved design review plans and drawings. Three, design review approvals shall expire in 12 months from the date of city commission design review approval unless the applicant obtains infrastructure review approval and vertical building permits. And then four is kind of piggybacking on that additional landscaping on that eastern property line that the city arbors shall approve the landscaping between friendly lane and consideration of the maximum realistic planning size as it pertains to the proposed palms and hedges. So we want to get those put in as high as possible that where they, you know, where those plants are still going to survive. So with that, I think I'll shut it down and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Questions of the staff before we move on to the applicant, Archway? Oh, did you have a question? Oh, I do. I know that we did ask that there be a community meeting with the neighbors and I noted that it was May 7th. Do we have any minutes from that meeting? Who attended? How much attendance you had? Did you, were you able to talk to the neighbors? Yeah, so I'm going to defer to Brett on this. So staff doesn't attend though. I know. I'm asking them. Yeah. Yeah. Good afternoon. Brett Green, president of Archway Partners. For the record, 7575 Dr. Phillips Boulevard in Orlando. Yes, we did have about an hour, two hour public meeting here at City Hall. There was numerous attendees and we had a robust discussion about the property, what we were planning to do there. We heard, you know, concerns and comments from the residents and we've, you know, done our best to, you know, address those, those comments. I don't have minutes or, or a roster with me today, but we did have that meeting. Okay. That was one of my questions. Thank you. I also had a question on Carnation Drive and I see Jerry, is that you? Not Tim. So, are you answering Carnation Drive? Jerry, Jerry's firm is the one that conducted the peer review. So, I'm certain he'll be happy to answer some questions if you have them. I think his conclusions were that what they had presented was pretty much spot on from, from his perspective and they really had no issues with. With ingress and egress on one, on one road, which is Carnation Drive. That's correct. There's no issues with ingress and egress. You know, the funny thing is, Deborah, there was, as part of the design review, as you know, we have FDOT that sits at the table for that and they had no comments, believe it or not. So, there has just not been any issues with respect to the engineering review of that, the engineering or FDOT review of that particular piece of it. Okay. I wanted that answered. Thank you. And then, let's go to the gray water because I don't get gray water. I mean, I'm trying to figure this. Oh, wait a minute. I have one more for that. And this was on the Friendly Lane. There is an occupied owner house and you have talked to that owner about what? That if they decided they weren't going to occupy that home on Friendly Lane, they would have a place? What was... The developers offered that. Okay. Tell me, please. Yeah. So, we've had numerous meetings with Mrs. Cruz and members of her family. And just to... George did a great job explaining kind of the situation. But to add a little bit more detail to that, Friendly Lane is a very old right-of-way that's not very wide. It's 10 feet in some sections. And there's, you know, overgrowth and trees that are actually in the right-of-way. So, in order to properly access some of the single family homes, the residents have been driving on the property that we're going to be building on here in order to, you know, turn into their property. And, you know, when we purchase the property and start the development, we could close that off, which obviously we don't want to do that. We want to be good neighbors to those folks. And what we've mentioned to them as far as the access is, we just will give you an easement to allow you to permanently, you know, and legally drive on this piece of property so you can continue to access your property without any disruption. And we've already accommodated that in our design as well as where our landscaping and where our fencing and everything is going to go. So that has all been accounted for. We haven't legally documented that, but that has been on the record and proffered to the Cruz family to ensure that they have, you know, no disruption in their service. To the easement. It's more of an easement, Yeah, because right now there's no legal ability for them to actually do that. And it just would, you know, once we started construction, it could cause issues for me and we don't want that. And then the other thing is we've, you know, obviously we understand there's multifamily going next to her single family home that's right there. And we've, you know, offered to, you know, do whatever we can to accommodate her in this development when, you know, as you may know, these type of affordable housing and developments where the rent is reduced from the market. There's a tremendous amount of demand and we've, we've made a indication to her that we'll do everything we can to allow her to move in to this development or several others that we have throughout Pinellas County. We're currently building development in downtown Clearwater on Cleveland Street. That's 80 units. We have one that just started over in St. Pete. That's an elderly development that's going to be 80 units as well. They haven't said whether they want to take us up on that offer. That's just something that we wanted to offer to them as a courtesy to just be good neighbors to those folks because we're not blind to the fact that we're building a multifamily property next to her home that she's lived on for quite some time and we just want to do everything within our power to, you know, try and be good neighbors as we will to the rest of the community. I mean, every development or every neighborhood that we go into, there's always some concern and we haven't had any issues on neighbors on any of our other developments. We always, it's going to be a professionally managed, high quality development. We'll be owning this development for an extended period of time. We don't build these and sell them. I'm the president of the company. We're a family owned company and we plan to be here for a long time. Okay. Thank you. Can I follow up on that real quick? So you did mention fencing. I know there wasn't anything specific in the renderings with regards to fencing. So, but you've got it worked out where you'll be able to put that fence in on the friendly side and still be able to allow the ingress and egress through that easement. If you want to just pull up the site plan, that might be helpful. But if you look closely, you can see where it jogs a little bit over to the west and and it accommodates that access or I'm sorry, you'll see it jogs a little to the right up there, right? Where it says residential. Yeah. Liz, you had a question? Yeah. I got the one. It's 78 apartments. How many two bedrooms? 36 and 42 one. Yes, ma'am. So does your affordable housing have to follow the same thing as a multifamily on its two heads per bed? I'm not aware of that being a requirement. I believe our standard occupancy requirements are no more than three per bedroom. Okay. It's two heads per bed. But what I'm asking you is that how you came up with how many people, what is it? 128? Yeah. So we looked at our existing developments. We have one that was just completed over in Largo and had the total number of occupants that includes adults and children and use that same per bedroom occupant and just apply to here. Other questions? I think we all were still excited to hear about the gray water system. Okay, great. So the gray water system and as George mentioned, the state legislature added this new statute where affording us density bonuses based on the amount of units that you utilize gray water, reused water on your development in this situation and in others. We're doing it on 100% of the units. So essentially, we will be collecting all the water from bathroom sinks and showers and tubs that will all be separately drained and piped to a centralized area. If you look on the, you can't really see it well here. On the south portion of that building, there'll be a little bump out of the north-south building. Then there'll be a bump out that houses a central gray water tank, multiple gray water tanks. So the water will be piped from the drains to multiple cleaning tanks. They use some system to filter the water, clean the water, and then it's pumped to a holding tank where it's held and pumped back to the toilets to be used exclusively for flushing toilets. We're not going to use it for irrigation, but it will be used to flush toilets. Back to that. So there'll be tanks at each building? There'll be one gray water facility that services both buildings. Both buildings. Okay. We were able to design it in a central area so that we don't have to have two systems. And we're actually implementing this on several other projects. One over in the one I mentioned earlier in St. Pete. This is being incorporated there as well. Well, while it was mentioned, I was busy looking it up. And one of the comments of the bill is most local governments have not approved projects utilizing the gray water density bonus implementation of the bill is new to most jurisdictions. So I guess that's why it's new to all of us as well. So you guys will be the first. I think we're the first in St. Pete as well. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I've got a number of things, but I'll be happy to share, Kevin, if you want to go. No, no. You go first. Okay. So storm water, 100-year storm event, that's awesome. Right? Because the requirement by Swift Mud is only a 25-year event. With that said, if we have a 125-year storm event, where is your top-off water going to be going? Where is that directed to or into? What system does that go? You know, I'm not 100% sure on the storm water. I'm not a civil engineer. I don't have our civil engineer. I know that's going to be submitted as part of the permitting and so forth with Swift Mud and the local engineer. I know it's an enclosed system. Beyond that, I don't know exactly how it overflows and things of that nature. I'm sorry. I just don't want to speak out of turn as far as that goes. So it does not attach to anything currently in the city that's in place? My understanding is it's a closed system. That's all I really know as far as the details around it. We're maintaining pre- and post- conditions all on our existing site. Okay, and that does make sense as well just because it is 100 year. So there- I don't think there's actually even a requirement for that. I was just wondering if that too with having the DOT system, you know, right there on Main Street, if you would be plumbed to that as well almost for a tertiary treatment. We do tie into the FDOT. Okay. So a portion of our stormwater will flow into FDOT system. Okay, perfect. So now- Another portion will be- Right. And based on that, you know, location having nothing there now, you know, a 25 year would be great, 100 years even better, and then having the additional overflow into FDOT is like icing on the cake for that, just from the water guy. Okay, great. I have a few other things to- One other point to mention on that too, in addition to what you see here, I think in order to get the amount of volume, I think there's also some stormwater vaults that you can't see on the picture that are going to be included as well. Okay. Talked about the fence and easement. We talked about gray water. Looking at your sustainability matrix, it talks about a community garden. And so I wanted some more information about that because I didn't necessarily see that called out on the rendering. Yeah, sure. Dave Hayes up with our toy partners as well. We have a- as you can see in the top of the picture, there's two green circles. Those are the two grand oak trees. One is on our property and then one is just off, but the canopy extends over. So we'll have a community park area underneath the one that's on our property. We'll also have a sculpture garden that's in the middle of the parking. And then next to the gray water system, which is on the south end of the north-south building, there's going to be a butterfly garden as well. Okay. And George, does a butterfly garden qualify as a community garden? Yeah. I don't want to speak on behalf of Natalie. I'm not sure. I think they might be referring- she might be referring to the sculpture garden. Did she actually say it was that? Well, that's part of the sustainability matrix of the points. Yeah, yeah. And there was points associated with the community garden. Yeah, I'd have to follow up with our sustainability coordinator. I'm not sure what she was, you know, what she was thinking when she listed that as an item for approval. Okay. I'll do that. All right. And then, thank you for saving the Grand Oaks. That's awesome. But my question is, so I've driven the site actually many times. I was out there on my way here today. So, to take a look at it. And there are numerous live oak trees out there. And so, I didn't know, is there a donation to the tree bank that will be happening? And those kind of things based on, you know, the site will be developed. It won't be wild floored anymore. So, there will be a lot of trees. Some of them not so good, but some of them still pretty nice. So, I didn't see that in anything that I read. So, I was just curious about the tree bank. Let me give you the arborist comments. And so, City Arborist Rick Warner, based on the lot size of 3.3 acres, there must be a minimum of 71 shade trees required on-site post-construction. Please refer to Section 105.34 of the Land Development Code for specific landscape plan requirements and feel free to reach out to him. So, he's not, he's simply saying post-construction there has to be a minimum of 71 shade trees. And I don't know if there's any, he doesn't refer to the bank in here. So, I think there would be no bank if they'll 71 are provided post-construction. I'd like to get verification on that, like I said, because there's a lot of, it's still really good looking trees out there. Our arborist and landscape architect mentioned we would have to pay some funds into the tree mitigation bank. Okay. I don't think they've calculated exactly what that number is, you know, because there's still some things that are being final. Right, and you still haven't got to final design yet. So, you know, small things could change, which would affect that. So, that's understandable. And I think, too, some of, maybe the points I'm going to be bringing up are just for everybody to hear as well, right? So, because it is a very tree lot and things will obviously be changing out there. But at the same time, anything that changes, there's the reason and purpose behind it and the rules and regulations of the city that will be followed as well. And then, I guess my last one is impact fees. George, are there any impact fees being waived on this? So, the Parkland impact fee is not being waived. If you'll recall, that was part of the original development agreement, but that was pulled out. So, the only impact, and I wouldn't call it an impact fee waiver, the only fee waiver at this point is the public art contribution is half of what? And that's been reduced by 50%. That's been reduced by 50%. So, but as far as it being new construction, having, you know, new residents and new density to the area, the water and sewer impact fees will be covered to help with the water and sewer plants, along with transportation impact fees and everything else that goes along with that list of impact fees. So, that is my understanding. But, you know, I wish Bob was here because, you know, I don't know. He may have had some conversation or might have some contributions that he can help with. That, I just don't know. But, yes, the impact fees would all be applicable. Great. Thank you. I know it's your turn. It said in all the, it's 195,163 was the Parkland impact fee that was mentioned in the write-up. I think that's correct. So, and that part has not been waived by the commission. So, that is still applicable. Oh, anybody looking at me? I know, I know. This is a pretty exciting opportunity for the city. I mean, it's an economic benefit. You know, clearly we need this housing. And the way you've been able to sort of thread that needle between a commercial district to a residential district is not easy. So, I'm pretty impressed with what you've done here. It's great. I have a relatively simple question about landscaping and fencing. You did a lot on that friendly side, on the west side. Can you describe a little bit what the fencing and the landscaping, how that'll screen across the north and the east side, since that's where more of the multifamily and single-family homes are? What will their view look like? From the architectural review committee meeting, it was a little while ago, but if my memory serves me correctly, on the north, there's already an existing fence, a vinyl white PVC fence. So, that would remain in place. The only fencing that we were requested to add was on the south side of the clubhouse to shield our property from the Lukens Liquor store. The rest of the property, we don't intend to put fencing. Fencing, it'll just be the landscaping. Correct. And I don't know if it's helpful for the board, but exhibit F, about halfway through, there is a piece on friendly lane landscape buffer, so just along friendly lane, and that's that enhanced landscaping that I was mentioning. Yeah, that's the pictures I'm looking at. But it was just on that side. I didn't see any pictures for the other sides. Sorry, it was on the south of the clubhouse, and I think on the west side of our property as well. I don't believe there's a fence there, so I think we were requested to put one in, so we will. Okay. Thank you. That's it for me. Where is the pool? Stormwater. Yeah. Big blue thing. I was like looking for a pool. Is there a pool here? The beach is just west of... So there's no pool? Nope. I was like looking going, okay, and then I thought this was the big pool. Are there other questions? You done, Sharon? Thank you. Thank you. I have one more for you guys just to catch me up on some of these things. If you're tying into the water system, as you're well aware, back in October, we had some major issues with that, and even though you're going to a hundred-year blue pool pond, whatever you might want to call it, I would be interested in finding out where that's going to go because there were some areas in town that no one thought that anything would happen, and we had full neighborhoods go under that we thought that would never happen. So I wonder if that is backed up and it fills up. Where does that go? Okay. We can look into that. I'm sure you've probably answered the question with somebody, but I just wanted to make sure that somebody looks at that because that could affect some neighborhood somewhere else that we don't know about. And since I came into this late, I couldn't find it on the pictures as far as traffic was concerned. I know we go back to San Christopher. Is the only exit and entrance out of here Carnation? Yes, sir. Out onto the racetrack? Okay. Is that all of our questions? Super. Then we will open up for public comment. Please. Good evening, everyone. Nancy Schmidt. I live at the San Christopher Villas, 1380 Daffodil Place, number five. At a recent commission meeting when this whole project came up, it was mentioned that sacrifices are going to have to be made in order for this project to go through. 112 families in San Christopher's are the sacrifice. And you talk about accommodating one lady, and I appreciate that. I'm not saying anything bad about that. But 112 families are being sacrificed that we live here for 78 families that don't live here. It was, oh, I think about four or five years ago, I had spoken to the commission about another project that was done just to the east of us, small development. And I was very concerned because there were an acre of grass and trees. I was concerned about the water impact onto our development. And I was assured by the engineers, by the developers, by everybody, everything was being done very similar to this. To date, we have had over $20,000 in dealing with water coming onto our property because it doesn't make it to the detention pond. And I am very concerned we are going to have the very same thing. You have how many acres that are predominantly cement now? It's all cement. And yes, there's a detention pond there, but I'll guarantee you it's not going to make it there. It's going to wind up on our property. And I want to know from this group, and I'd like to know from the commission as well, who is going to pay for it? Is it the developer? Is it the city? Because you're going to approve it. I know you're going to approve it. Everybody says it's going through, no matter what any of us have to say here. I'd like to know when we have to fix that water problems and it have diverting around our property and it's just a sight. It really is. I want to know who's going to pay for it. I'm serious about that because I don't want my HO fees, HOA fees to go up to pay for water that everybody else has approved. Thank you. Is there anyone else? Rob Refo from 1341 Azalea Drive. And your name is again? Rob. Last name is Refo. Got it. Thank you. All right. So I had written something, but pretty much just going to piggyback on what she said there and cut some of this off here, which is three separate residents. So it's going to be along the same lines as what she just said. Three separate residents who spoke at last month's meeting, including myself, asked basically the same question, which I never heard answered or addressed by the commission. The question was essentially, what guarantee do we have that this project will not cause damage to our property? A variation of this question asked was, what responsibility will the city or developer take for any damage that is caused by the development to property or homes, such as flooding to property or housing that demonstrably never flooded before. Almost all surrounding buildings and private property have existed for approximately 40 years. It would be clear to see if a property was directly impacted by this development. However, it is clear to see that a portion of San Christopher Villas property was impacted by development that was referenced by her to the north of the community. Nonetheless, it is San Christopher Villas that bore the cost with seemingly no recourse and no responsibility taken by the city aside from an engineer stating that it meets code. So again, the question is, what assurance will the city provide and what responsibility will the city or developer take for any damage that has caused to property or homes of residents as a result of this development? Please address this question. It was not addressed or answered at the previous meeting and something should be said in response for the record. In addition to this, since there's a little extra time, I'm glad someone brought up because I didn't think I would have time for this. The entrance to this because there's matters that come up as far as light, you know, there's emotional points that residents have. It's understandable in one of the residents. But there's also a point of safety and this is certainly not something that has to be sacrificed. That entrance into the, I brought this up at one meeting, the entrance, this is just where someone just goes and observes this. It goes between parking lots. There's one entrance, all wheelchairs, bicycles. Again, it's going to be family homes. Just go look at this, on Carnation Lane. Bikes, kids will be riding bikes to that in order to get to Main Street. Anywhere in a wheelchair will be going through parking lots with people backing their cars out. They're going to be lower to the ground. That is just something that has to be, I know it's been considered, but that's where any of the commissioners go out and observe with your own eyes what that traffic looks like going into Lucan's Liquor and there's another establishment there, an empty building that will be filled to the right. It's empty now. It used to be a Dollar General or something like that. That's going to be filled too. The owners of Lucan's Liquor are trying to lease it right now. So you just have, again, just the thought of children, people who have to use scooters, you name it, going through that are going to be low with all that traffic going in there is a serious consideration as far as safety. Thanks. Thank you. Is there anyone else? Please come up. My name is Deb Swinicki, 1271 Powerpuff Drive, number two. And I was looking at the 12.5 zoning per acre number of units and it said that it was the maximum net. And when I looked that up, it said that that's the developed part, not counting the parking, the green space, and all that. So it looks like there's only about two acres of the development which would really limit that number from 12.5 and then all those additional variant, whatever you call it. But that's my question. Thank you. So a max net is not the gross parcel. So isn't that where the math comes in for allowable units? We'll see if we can get you an answer. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Is there anyone else? And we're going to close public input and we'll give staff and the applicant a chance to respond to the questions that have been asked. I can probably hit two of them real quick. So on the stormwater piece, you know, I know for the traffic impact piece, the city commissioned a third-party review of that situation. I don't see why the city maybe couldn't do that also for the stormwater piece and get an independent review from a third-party consultant. So I would throw that out there as maybe something for consideration. On the density piece of it, the underlying land use is R-U-R-M, residential medium, which actually permits up to 15 units per acre, but the zoning actually then limits that density because it's zone MF 12.5 to 12.5. So that might, I'm not for sure, I'm not clear if that's what she's asking, but I think she's asking about the difference between the 15 and the 12.5. So the 12.5 is the more restrictive. That's not our question. So what is your question? I put the units on it, which looks like we're talking maybe half of that product. The rest is green and... So the density is a product of the acreage straight out. That's it. It's just a simple mathematical formula. Is it gross in it? It's calculated at 12.5 times the total acreage, which is 3.34 acres. So that's how it works. I'm not sure what part of the code... So are you pulling that from the land development code? Yeah, I don't... I'd have to go back and look at our land development code. Would it be possible for you two to meet some other time? Sure, yeah. I mean, we can... Clarify this. I just need the land development code section and we can take another look at it, but this is how we've traditionally and routinely applied it. Thank you. Other answers? Those were the two I heard. I don't know if there's... Well, there was the question of who's going to pay and I wonder who would have an answer to that. Well, that was part of the reason for suggesting a third-party review and, you know, another independent review just to make sure that to try to assure everybody that, you know, what is being shown not only is it acceptable to our own city engineers, but maybe it has an outside look for an additional look. I don't know. I'm saying that I would have to get an authorization probably through the city manager to do that because there'd be a cost to that, but we would proffer that. Maybe we'll make an amendment to the motion. George, just along those lines with the stormwater and San Crist Villas and the property to the east of San Crist Villas, which is what has caused the problem with the flooding there. I know that was brought up last time. Did the city reach out to those folks or did the engineering department get involved to see, to make sure the original appurtences that were put in originally with the villas that were installed, are those still maintained and, you know, was it because it was a 100-year flood and they, you know, built it to a 25-year storm? You know, the differences between that and, you know, has the city gotten involved with those folks? Yeah, so that's, I mean, that's handled by our engineering division, so I don't have an answer for you. It's certainly something I can follow up on. Other questions? Then we're open for a motion. I think she's got one more answer to possible answer to a question. He just asked me a question that was basically if there was, if the property is already being built to above what the legal standard is and then it was built, you know, it was built in conformance with the plans and well in conformance with the code, if there was then subsequent flooding, it would be a dispute between the neighbors and he asked whether or not the city would be involved and, you know, from the city's perspective, it would have been built to code, assuming it is, you know, that would have been built to code and are built to according to the plans. Okay. Thank you. That is it. Does that make sense? If everything is now built to the code to answer your question because I want to make sure you get your answer. If everything is built to code now and they're actually doing it four times more than what they're supposed to, then there wouldn't be any recourse. You would be suing back and forth but if they didn't do what they were supposed to, then you would be able to come back to the city and have a different conversation. That make sense? I'm sorry? Yes. Because he had a question and he wanted to make sure he had an answer so we're just trying to make sure that the answers are there. Well, tell you what, right, let's see what kind of motion we come up with and we'll see what happens from there. So, so we have a motion? I make a motion to approve application DR 2025-0001. And you had an amend, Penman? Yeah, I would like to amend that to include the third-party review of the stormwater system. I would second that. Good. I'm good with it. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Hold it. Was the motion agreed? Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep. Oh, okay. So all in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Right. I think it's time for us to adjourn. Thank you, everyone, for coming. Okay. Nancy, Rob, can I grab you just...