Planning Agenda: 2024-04-25

The municipal agenda for the Planning Commission meeting on 2024-04-25 is 👉here👈

2037 S Division Ave

This is a Special Land Use request to operate an ground floor office in a traditional business area (TN-TBA). To encourage street vitality store-front and customer serving businesses are preferred in traditional business areas as office space produces less pedestrian traffic and interaction. In order to manifest that preference the zoning ordinance requires Special Land Use for the operation of office space on the ground floor in a traditional business area.

The applicant in this case is the non-profit organization Association for a More Just Society which intends to have office hours of 8am - 5pm Monday - Friday with a staff of 5 - 7 employees.

The zoning ordinance's arbitrary requirement of 2.5 parking spaces per 1,000sq/ft of office space creates a requirement of 4 spaces (3.4, rounded up) for this use [the building is 1,360sq/ft]. There is no on-site parking, but it is adjacent to a city operated surface parking lot with 225 spaces. The corridor also provides metered street parking.

The Area Specific Plan (ASP) for this area, adopted in 2020, expresses a preference for "mixed use transit-oriented development". The text of the ASP raises the larger question - beyond this facilities need for a parking waiver for an inconsequential use - of why the city is operating a 200+ space surface parking lot? Does that encourage the development of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) use? Requirements for thee, always passive voice for me [the city].

1639 Madison Ave SE

This item was rescheduled, at the applicant's request, to this meeting from the 2024-03-28 meeting

Something other than a Special Land Use request and a parking waiver! This is a request to rezone the subject property from its existing Traditional Business Area (TBA) and LDR (Low Density Residential; aka: Single Family) zoning to Special District Industrial/Transportation (SD-IT). The applicant - Gentex Corporation - is seeking to change and unify the properties zoning to the intended use of Industrial/Transportation.

The property is bordered to the south by low density residential and to the north by industrial uses. The large green space visible immediately to the north is a drain field owned by Extrusions Division Inc, the property is not accessible to the public. Land use to the east, across Madison Ave is mixed. Land use to the west is principally residential.

The Southtown CID (Corridor Improvement District) has submitted a letter of support. CIDs and BIDs (Business Improvement Districts) should not be confused with Neighborhood Associations; no shade, but they are distinct (or should be) entities. Gentext has committed to local hiring practices and agreed to report bi-annually to the board of the Southtown CID regarding those goals.