Never. Uh, okay. Ashley, I have six o'clock. We we good to go? Okay. Welcome everybody to the uh July 2025 planning and Gilbert Town of Gilbert Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. We don't have a study session tonight because we didn't have anything on it. So, sorry if anyone's been waiting because we still had five o'clock on the uh on the website. I'm Bill Fay. I'm the vice chair, but the chairman's absent tonight. So, um I'd like to call the regular meeting to order and begin with the pledge of allegiance. Do I say I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to theublic which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And with that, Ashley, would you mind taking roll call? Sure. Alternate Commissioner Hang. Alternate Commissioner Lion, present. Commissioner D. Graina, present. Commissioner Gage, I'm the new I'm here. Commissioner Davis here. Commissioner Simon here. Commissioner Anderson here. Uh Vice Chair Fay present. We have a quorum. Okay. Thank you. Uh then we'll begin with discussion and approval of the agenda. Um, so item four has been continued. Do we need to do anything with that or will that do we need to make separate motion to continue that or will that just I guess we do, don't we? Or that just because it's on consent to continue. Will that be part of the consent? Uh, a separate motion if you would vice chair. Uh, and then we've got item five on consent. And um, by the way, anyone who's here to talk in general, you'll have a chance to either talk in general at the call to the public or talk about a specific item if that's what you want. So, we're not we're not excluding anyone. And if anything we're putting on consent has someone who wants to speak on it, we'll keep it off. Uh, the Bellistoria Apartments Anyone? Okay, Keith, you got your got your wish. Christmas came early. It's staying on consent and the Good Day car wash. My understanding this one's been pulled off consent. I see you putting a hand up that yes. Oh, thumbs up. Okay, that is the only emoji. I'm I'm still trying to figure out emojis. The only one I've got down is the thumbs up. Um, and then, uh, the ranch has been pulled, so we're not putting that on consent. And then the other only non-consent other thing we have is Aura, which I assume is not going to get moved to consent. So, is the only change we have right now is to pull item seven. Oh, we've got some comment cards. Uh, Vice Chair Fay, I do have a comment card for item number five. um and they do wish to speak. Okay. So, we will pull I I I would take a motion. Is that the only one that we have comments on? There's a comment card for item number nine, but that's not on consent. Okay. So, we would do a mo I I would entertain a motion from the panel to from the commission to remove items five and seven from consent and move them to the regular public meeting. Jerry, can I ask a question? Yes. So if you said earlier the ranch was pulled from consent to non-consent but being continued to August. Do we still is there a reason why that's now a non-consent if it's no continued? It was never on as I as I understand it ranch was never on consent. Okay. Can we move does it make sense to move item eight to consent if it's being continued? I mean we can but we still have to make a separate motion on it, don't we? Yeah, I understand that but let's just move it over. Okay. Yeah. If it's being continued till next month, there's no reason to have it on consent today or non-consent. Okay. I mean, I don't know that it makes any difference since all we're doing is continuing, but um Okay. Well, continue item four. So, I mean, with that logic, why not just pull off, move it over? I guess we could do that, too. Okay. I I would make a I would entertain a motion to pull items five and seven off consent and put item eight on consent. So moved. I'll second. Okay. With that, Ashley, can we You do Ashley, you're the one who does the activating thing right? I am. Yeah. Okay. It wasn't. Okay. Sorry. Okay. Uh that then the changes to the agenda have been approved. And with that we will go to communication from the citizens. At this time, members of the public may comment on matters within the jurisdiction of the planning commission. The planning commission board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified in the agenda. Therefore, pursuant to state law, action taken as a result of public comments will be limited to directing staff to study the matter, responding to criticism, or rescheduling the matter for further discussion. Uh, does anyone really what this is is to talk about things that are not specifically on the agenda? Going. Yes. It's been moved on to the agenda. It's on It was on consent. It's been moved onto the regular agenda. So, you'll have a chance to talk about that, too, if you want to. Okay. Then let's uh close communication from the citizens and uh report from our council liaison or on current events. I I don't know is he online tonight? Any anyone from council? Okay, we miss you. Okay. Uh and then we'll go on to the consent agenda. The consent agenda. Well, but as part of the all items listed below are considered public hearing consent calendar. The commission board may by a single motion approve any number of items where after opening the public hearing no person requests the item to be removed from the consent calendar. If such a request is made, which we already been through, the the commission shall then withdraw the item from the public hearing consent calendar for the purpose of public discussion and separate action. Other items on the agenda may be added to the consent calendar and approved in a single motion. Vice Chair, if I may. Yes. Make a motion to approve the continuence to August 6, 2025 of item number 4 S2501, Happy and Higley. Does anyone second that motion? I'll second. Uh, we have a a motion and a second to continue item four. Ashley. Oh, it's up. vote has been cast. All votes are in and the item the motion or the uh the motion to continue item four has passed and then the same thing for item nine. I'm sorry, item eight. Uh, chair, I'll make a motion to approve the continuence to August 6, 2025 of item 8, uh, S2401, the ranch, and DR2406 ranch. Is there a second? I'll second. I have a second by Commissioner Davis. Please cast your votes. Okay, that one's done. I'll make the final motion. Thank you. Motion to approve the consent agenda item number six, DR24-146, Bellistori Apartments, uh with the recommendation to approve. I'll second. I have a second from Commissioner Davis again. Everyone, cast your votes, please. And with that, the consent agenda is approved. And then moving into the non-consent agenda. The first item that I see on the non-consent agenda is now item five, uh, UP 2450 T-Mobile. Uh, Ashley, can I have the comment cards? So this this point I'm going to ask people who have public comment. I'm going to ask people to participate. I have two public comment cards. If anyone else wants to speak, would you please fill one of these out there and back? Uh the first one does wish to speak. It is um Neb Francois. Chair. Yes. We have a presentation from staff first. I'm sorry. Is there a presentation from staff? I'm since it was on on consent originally. I just skipped over that. Thank you. All right. Good evening, vice chair and commissioners. Planner one. Uh the request before you tonight is for a new wireless communications facility, also known as a WCF, to be located here in the town. And me, sorry, get myself ready here. Okay. The subject site outlined in red is Junior High School. Um, it's part of Chandler Unified School District and it is located at the southeast corner of Higgley Road and Coldwater Boulevard. The applicant is proposing to construct a category 3 75 ft high spell structure in a 900 ft enclosure on.5 acres of the larger 27 acre parcel. WCF is proposed to be situated along the north central section of the property behind the existing tennis courts um where the red star is. Um the subject site is zoned public facility institutional or PFI. Category 3 WCFs are permitted to be located in the PFI zoning district with an approved conditional use permit. The proposed site at Payne Junior High School was selected by the applicant to fill a coverage gap in the that exists within the area. The proposed WCF is classified as a category 3 WCF in the land development code. Category 3 WCFs have a significant visual impact on surrounding properties due to an increased height and fewer requirements for concealment and have a maximum height of 75 ft. The proposed facility will include 175 ft stealth structure and associated ground equipment. The tower and associated equipment will be secured inside a 900 square ft walled enclosure that is 8 ft in height. The WCF's placement is approximately 76 feet from the school building and about uh 35 ft from the existing tennis courts. Um, the WCF stealth structure will be over 250 ft from the closest residential existing residential uses to the north, over 400 feet from the existing residential uses to the east, over 650 ft from the existing residential uses to the south, and over 800 feet from the existing residential uses to the west. Access to the proposed WCF site is provided from an existing access drive off of Cold Water Boulevard. The site will not contribute to overall traffic conditions in the area as it will be an unmanned facility and visited only periodically for maintenance purposes. Um, all associated groundmounted equipment will be internalized and fully screened from view by an 8ft high wall enclosure which will be constructed in materials to match the existing junior high school building. Both the tower and the equipment will be fully secured within the 900 square foot screened enclosure. The proposed WCF is designed to be a large stealth structure. Large stealth structures fall under the category 3 WCF classification of the LDC and are designed to conceal and/or camouflage the WCF to ensure it blends in the surrounding area to the maximum extent feasible. A couple of different stealth designs were provided by the applicant and presented to the planning commission at a study session in March of this year. As a result of the feedback provided by the planning commission, the applicant decided on a faux eucalyptus stealth design. Staff worked closest closely with the applicant on the stealth design to ensure that the faux eucalyptus will fully conceal the tower mounted equipment and blend in with the surrounding area to the maximum extent feasible. Antennas and other polemounted equipment will be fully concealed by the stealth features of the faux eucalyptus tree. The proposed WCF will consist of six antennas and six radio modules mounted 71 ft above ground level. And these are some uh photo simulations. Um the upper left is a view looking to the east. The upper right is a view looking to the west. the lower left is a view looking um sorry to the west as well and then um the last one on your lower right is on looking uh southeast. There are seven required findings that are taken into consideration for a conditional use permit and those findings are outlined here on the screen. And staff does believe that the um findings have been met and public notification and input. Um staff has received two phone calls and one email from the public. the feedback provided related to the stealth design, location or placement of the WCF on the site and levels of radiation emitted from cell towers. In conclusion, staff believes that the seven required findings have been met and recommend approval of UP 2450. And with that, any questions? Any questions from the dis? Okay, those wishing to speak, applicant makes their presentation. Uh, if members of the public uh would like to speak, you now have three minutes for single speakers or if there's a group of spokesman, which since there's only two of you, I I believe there is not. Uh, and the first speaker would be Mr. Francois. I just wanted to know where the placement of the tower was. I actually represent developer who was to the south was pushed next month. And so we just wanted to make sure that Thank you. Now you guys can hear me. I usually have a loud voice. I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to be looming like an iron giant on the backyards or some of the uh of our lots there on to the south. So with the uh current location and the design, I think we're fine with it. So it was just a concern about the potential location with it. So that's that's that's all. Okay. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. I then the next speaker is Mr. Neville Neville. I'm sorry sir number nine. I'm sorry that's number nine. Apologize. I thought Ashley only gave me the one. Sorry. Then that is the only speaker uh on this on this topic. Uh I I assume there's no further comments from staff or no other there's no really reason to respond to any anything like that. Uh, do the any members of the commission have questions or comments? With that, uh, I the the chair will entertain a motion. Um, sorry, do you want to close the public hearing and bring it back to the DAS for conversation? Yes, that would be a fantastic idea. Thank you. Sorry. Sorry to keep correcting. No, no, that's I I need somebody to Commission members ask questions. Chair calls for a motion and second. Okay, we'll close the public close the public comment and bring the matter back up to the dis for discussion. I don't go ahead. It's a very nice fake tree tower. Great comment. They've come a long way over the years. So I mean, yeah, the thing they don't I mean, if you look at like, oh, I can tell that's a cell tower. Yeah, that's I mean they're never that good, but you if you're not really looking for them, they do seem to hide them, I think. Well, I'd like to comment that I appreciate the applicants uh willingness to go back and reconsider the design because originally when we looked at this, it didn't look like something we appreciated. So, I I think this looks much better and and for all intents and purposes, I have no problem with it. So, unless there's any other comment, I can make a motion. I I wanted to say the same thing. I think they've done a good job of of redesigning that and as that area gets developed, I think it's kind of going to be even more hidden. That's kind of an open area right now. So when development comes in, you're probably not even going to see it. So I think they did a pretty good job with it. Okay. With that, um, I'd be willing to make a motion to approve UP 2450, T-Mobile Pain Middle School, WCF Leaf Tree, um, for approval. I'll second that motion and a second. I'm sorry. Was that a second from Commissioner Simon or Okay, so we have a motion and a second. Everyone, please cast your votes. Okay, that item passes 70. And that brings us to item nine, GP 2408, Aura at Santan. And I believe we have uh seven. Oh, um you're right. God, you're right. Recall that recall that item seven, the Good Day car wash, which we do have a comment on also. And I believe this one's Keith's item also. Take it away, Keith. Chair Fay, members of the commission, good evening. Um I will go ahead and give a a full presentation since there is a member of the public that w would that likes would like to speak on the project. Um so um goodday car wash. Um the site is located um at the south of the southwest corner of Ray and Higgley roads. It's within the Mera Gilbert the Modera Gilbert um master plan development. I will go ahead and show you that in just a second, but it's the height the site highlighted in red on the screen in front of you there. So, the request tonight is for design review to obviously approve this 5,500 foot car wash with associated site improvements. So, the here's the Higgley Commons master site plan. You guys are familiar with this. You've seen this before. Um it's at the south w east corner of that master plan which the master plan um it's under construction now most of it but it has um loft unit buildings up along Ray Road and then apartment complex towards the back and then lot seven is the lot in question and that is where the car wash is. Um eventually there will be another um there's a pad site to the north lot six. We don't know exactly what that user will be yet, even though it looks kind of like some type of drive-through use, but we don't know what that's going to be. But the site in general and this small site is little about 1.38 acres. And like I said, it's phase two of this overall master plan. So, here is a specific or zoomed in version of the site plan. Um the access to the site is off of Higgley Road and they have two uh spots where they can um access vacuums and so forth in double and two-way drive aisles, but the main access to the actual car wash pay stations is towards the back of the site towards the far west side. And there's two lanes for stacking and queuing and then there is an escape lane. Um the side is zone shopping center. The building, like I said a minute ago, is about 5,500 square feet, and there are uh 21 vacuum bays. Um here's the landscape plan. 37% open space on the site, very well landscaped for a car wash site. A lot of landscaping along Higgley Road. And then there is a lot of landscaping that's uh about 16 15 to 16 trees or so along the southern boundary to help screen this car wash use from a visual impact standpoint and hopefully noise as well from the the three residents that are to the south that are immediately to the south. Um the elevations uh pretty standard uh car wash building about 25 foot tall building generally flat roofing with a pitch tower over the entry or the front portion where the cars come out. Uh building is made of stucco and with some fiber cement paneling and that green color and and then some masonry uh type veneer. So pretty standard building and they've actually some of the materials and colors match the Modera Gilbert uh development next door. um public participation. Um we've uh the applicant uh sent notices to all property owners within 300 feet which is require uh required by state statutes and have the sign posted out on the site. And then staff has not had any comments or received any comments from surrounding property owners or have we haven't received any concerns from the public. So so pretty standard straightforward. Um staff obviously recommends that you approve this tonight and we do have one modified condition that we'd like to call to your attention. Um there is a vacuum spaces. Let's see if I can find it here. And that one's not a good one. This one shows it. um in the kind of on the over near the trash enclosures kind of on that south that aisle of parking or vacuum bays that's just north of the building really close to that trash enclosure is an ADA parking space. The car wash is required to have two total parking spaces. They have they um they have two but one of them is supposed to be ADA. So that is the ADA space and um in order to maintain um ADA compliance um it has been uh we are stipulating that they remove the vacuum portion for that ADA space so that it is a standard ADA space so that employees that are ADA and so forth can park in that space and not have to worry about a vacuum boom and all these other things to kind of in kind of block or inhibit access. So we have a condition that says the vacuums for the ADA parking space shall be removed um to ensure unobstructed accessibility and compliance with ADA standards. So that is a condition that we would like to add. And that concludes my presentation. So if you have any questions I'm um here I can answer them and the applicants also here too if you have any specific questions. Thank you very much. Keith the reason this was coming off consent was because of that condition related to the ADA spot. That was the only other reason. and the fact that the public is here now. Chair uh Fay, members of the commission, that is correct. It's the only reason why uh members of the commission, does anyone have any questions? Uh Brian first then sorry Keith, thank you for the presentation. So who who on staff did an ADA review to come up with this conclusion that they're understanding the ADA um uh code correctly? Um, Chair Fay, Commissioner Anderson, um, we have, uh, our building department does look at that as well, but it was kind of a staff, uh, oversight by staff to have vacuum spaces on the come to the conclusion. So, what in the ADA code did you read come to this conclusion saying that this doesn't have to be ADA stall accessible for patrons? It sounds like you're just trying to make it a a stall in case there's an employee that works there. Yeah. So, help me understand your understanding. Um, Chair Chair Fay, Commissioner Anderson, I don't personally know the ADA code, so I can't cite to you what the requirements are, but but we wanted that space to be uninhibited, and it's been our practice throughout the town to make sure that that these ADA spaces don't have vacuum stalls. We've done this on a lot of other car washes. Um, but if you as a commission feel that that having vacuum spaces does not violate the ADA code or the ADA standards and would like to keep the vacuum spa uh vacuums there, that's your prerogative. But it has been something that we have done in other car washes throughout the town of Gilbert to have them remove the vacuum stalls or the vacuum boom and all those things to make sure that it's easily it's more easily accessible. Okay. So, if I'm looking at this plan, there's two vacuum booms on each side of that stall. So, if a patron were to show up in van accessible uh an accessible van or a car and you know they want to vacuum it somehow, do they still have that option to do so? Um, Chair Fay, Commissioner Anderson, um, I believe we would only probably want to remove the the the vacuum boom. I don't know just on the Yeah, probably on both sides, right? You're correct. So, I don't think they would have the ability to use a vacuum if they parked in that space. That's correct. Okay. Um I personally don't agree with the interpretation of the ADA codes. Um, it's not a prerogative thing up here. And I, um, I mean, we just need to make sure that we're compliant with what the ADA or ADAG really is what it's calling for. Um, and if the town is doing this on other car washes, I mean, to me, that's not a precedent unless the town absolutely did a thorough code search to make sure that they are interpreting the code correctly. Um, I mean, I if if you were to get rid of vacuums on that stall, I would suggest it would be the one that's on the access aisle side. Um because now you So now I'm thinking more about the ADA codes for when it comes to parking. Really the way it's written is you're supposed if you have different types of parking on site, you're really supposed to provide one type of parking for whatever it is. So I'm going to use multifamily as an experience because I'm really familiar with that. So if you have covered parking, open stalls, and garages, technically you're supposed to provide 2% of each of those types as an ADA stall. So would you're if I understand you correctly, you're kind of creating two types of parking here. You're creating parking for um uh patrons to use and then you want to separate that and create this ADA stall in case there's an employee there that's handicapped. So with the my understanding of the ADA codes, technically you would have to provide 2% of each type, which would mean this site would have to have two ADA stalls, one for employees and one for the public. And for the public, it would have to have that vacuum uh to meet that requirement of the code. So I'm not sure I really support that. And I wasn't Oh, I mean, I'm sure I've seen plenty of these in the future, but just wasn't aware you guys were doing that. Um, Chairman and Commissioner Anderson, if I can actually offer a little bit of clarity. Um, what what it is is that we don't allow the vacuum spaces to be counted as parking spaces. They're part of the use. And so the ADA space to satisfy ADA requirement is uh for there's two employee spaces on the north side of the aisle um that are reserved for employees and those meet the requirement for required parking for this use and then the vacuum bays are not considered parking spaces. Okay, but it's it's not required parking per code. But you get an ADA consultant to come out here, they're going to look at it differently. So, I my suggestion is whoever the architect is on this, make sure they do with thorough uh code research on this and make sure that they're covering theirelves with this whole ADA requirement. Um I just from my understanding of it, I I I don't support that um that uh requirement that you're trying to tack on to this. Thank you, Mr. Simon. I I have nothing to add actually, Commissioner Anderson. At least exactly what I was thinking. Oh okay. Uh, anyone else to to be fair, I think I'm the one who actually caught this issue in our discussion earlier and and I in the past we haven't counted vacuum stalls as parking. So, if it has vacuums, it's not parking. And if it's parking, it doesn't have vacuums. And that was kind of the that seems to be the city's practice. Uh, so I think I ra I think I raised that at you. Um, and then we also have a comment card from the public. Uh, it's one card with two names on it. Abby and Jessica Peak, I believe. Jason, J Abby Abby and Jason Peak. Yes. Sorry. Peek. Okay. Mr. Peek, you have you have three minutes. Three minutes. All right. It's my first time, so forgive me. Um, so I am one of the houses right next to the Good Day Car Wash that he that Keith brought up. Um, oh, I live directly next to it and I'm proposed to this car wash. Um, kind of some points I want to get across. First are we weren'tified. We just bought this house back in January and we haven't heard um about this uh proposal. Um, other two are rentals and one of them is empty right now. So, I don't think they've been given proper notice. Um, but I can only speak for myself and honestly as a neighbor I'm really concerned about the impact this will have on our quality of life. Uh, we already have a car wash right on um, Bigley and Ray. It's cobblestone right next to the QT right there less than a mile away. Um, and adding a third Oh, and there's actually one right next door to the Shell station that they're building. There's a car wash right there as well. And there's actually one down the road on Ray um, as well near the target. So adding a third one just feels unnecessary and disruptive. This project brings noise, extra noise, lighting, traffic, water use, all right next to my home, our home. And um I'm just wondering, has the town evaluated like what effects this will have on nearby residents? Have we looked at other options that might add more long-term value to the neighborhood? I'm asking the commission to pause this approval and consider uh consider alternatives better reflect what the community needs um actually needs. In uh in short, we need more time. I would love to talk to my neighbors more about this um and actually see if they want a car wash their house. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mr. Beck. Um Keith, can I ask you about two things? Well, first Ashley, the use as a car wash is already entitled, right? This is only design review. That's correct. Okay. So, I the the idea that a car wash is going here was decided some time ago. This is the what does the car wash look like decision? And Keith, can I get you to talk to um public outreach or what what happened? Well, can I just say something to your comment? I I No, I think the the public comment period's over. Thank you. I'm sorry. Yes Keith. Yeah, Chair Fay, members of the commission. Yeah, the the public outreach um design review case is based on uh state stat statute statutory requirements that requires that we send prop um notices a letter in the mail to all property owners, not residents, but property owners within 300 ft of the project boundary. We own our property and we're right next to the boundary line. Okay. You should have received a letter in the mail or some kind of notice. Did not. Okay. And then we also send have a sign posted a big four by four yellow sign posted should be posted along Higgley Road. So that's that's the minimum requirements for for uh notification. It's the city that sends out notification, not not the applicant. Um Chair Fay, members of the commission, um it's the applicant that sends those out. Okay. Sorry. We provide the applicant with a the like a template like a map and um like a like a little template or a notice that they can send and then we provide them with a template for the sign that they need to post. They are the ones who post the sign and send actual notice to the residents within those parameters. Okay. Chairman, if I can also remind you to give the applicant an opportunity to speak if they'd like. Yes. I Okay, Keith, would they would they like to address this topic? Commission, we'll get commission members ask questions. That's number seven. We'll get there. My name is John Redell with John Redell Architects, uh 4992 South Gilbert, Arizona. Um all the notices were sent they the city provides us a list of mailings and we mailed it to all those if they just bought their property in January. The first uh mailing that went out was um probably uh was it February? I believe we sent the first mailing out and I did receive four envelopes back as wrong address and that's all I can state on their concern that they did not receive one. Um, as far as presenting this, we looked at the location of it next to those houses. There is a 50-foot non-activity strip that is required along the south side and the driveways and things don't count as activity, but the pay station does. That's what dictated with just two pay stations there. Then along that whole landscape area, we had to provide I think it was 14 or 18 trees doubled up all down through that area to help provide for that um separation. Also, um we located the building to the kind of the center section. We have the drive-thru on the south for the pay stations, but all the activity is done inside the building. There is no outside equipment. There's just the vacuum hoses on the vacuum stansions to the north and we put all that activity to the north. Now, the operation hours are 7 a.m. to 8 and then it closes down. That's summer hours. Winter hours are even shorter in the evenings. They're they usually make them around six uh shut down or so in the winter time, but that's we've kind of looked at all this for protecting the residents to the south. This was done as part of the master plan and the use was part of that when the zoning package came through originally for the whole master plan. We just looked at trying to make it the most uh effective and uh separating as possible from the residential. Okay. Does anyone have any questions of the applicant answer for staff? Um and not hearing any. Thank you. I'm going to bring the discussion back up here to the dis close the public comment and ask if any commissioners have questions of of anyone or comments. Mr. Anderson, uh I have a question for staff. So regarding the mailings, correct me if I'm wrong. I thought mailings went out 14 or 15 days before the hearing date. Is that correct? Uh Chair Fay, Commissioner Anderson, that's correct. So, I'm not sure why the applicant's saying that mailings went out in February. I mean, they would have went out mid June. So, if that was the case, then the neighbors should have got their mailings. I just wanted to clear that up. Thank you. Yeah. Um, Chair Chair Fay, um, Commissioner Anderson. I I all I know is we sent them the information about the applicant about 4 weeks ago and we received affidavit from them stating that they sent mailers out uh um 15 at least 15 days prior. So are there any other questions? Question for staff. So, it appears that there is a 6ft wall currently between the neighborhood and where that lot is. Um, do we know the distance from the front of those residences to where that escape lane is? Um chair chair Fay um commissioner Simon yes there is a six foot tall wall on that southern boundary of the property which is actually the wall that the was built with the home with when the homes were built. Um so if I understand you correctly you're asking for the distance from that wall to the escape lane or you said I thought you said from the front of the homes but I was I was looking more for the front of the homes just to get an idea. Yeah, I mean I can look at your the diagrams and see, you know, the distance the from the wall it appears to the escape escape lane. I just wasn't sure how wide that access road is there. The access drive it looks like to the back of the residences. Chair Fay, Commissioner Simon, I I don't know the distance from the front of the homes, but the distance from that wall to the escape lane is about 34 35 ft. Um, so I don't know how long those lot deep those lots are. I I would imagine those lots are 100 110 ft deep, I would imagine. So, and they're probably set back 15 to 20 ft from the front property line. So, so I guess you're looking at I'm really bad at math, by the way. So, so you're looking at well over 100 ft 30 feet or so feet maybe the front of their houses maybe. Okay. Thank you. Bill. Yes. Keith, I got one comment on the uh on the mailings. Do you guys go off the county recorders list? Because if that's the case, when they purchase their home, it's recorded, but it's not updated. So, that might be the reason why you possibly didn't get something. I don't know the time lag, but there is a time lag. Um, Fay, Commissioner Diggerina. Now, the the applicant creates the list. They they pull the list from the county um recorder's office or from the parcel search, the map, the Maropa County assessors maps. Um so, that's where we get them. That's where they get them from. And then we verify it when we do the review to make sure that um they're notifying the correct properties and the and notifying everybody within 300 ft. We don't check to see if the all the sometimes if the owners are depending on how it sometimes they give us the the the list at the beginning of the process which could be 6 months before it comes to hearing. So if they've if there's been a change of ownership in between that time we won't know about it but we do verify the list at the beginning of the review process. Thank you. Is there anyone else? And if there are no other questions or comments, I would call for a motion one way or another. So, just for clarity, I just want to make sure we're we're keeping the stipulation or the change that staff is recommending. Is that what this motion is? Could you reiterate what um so the the change as I understand it? Well, it's going to actually I guess depends on the motion we want to make here. Modified condition. So, are we would we want to I mean, you could make a motion to approve it without the modified condition or with depends on which way we who makes the motion and what they want. I'm okay with keeping the modified condition, but I want to reward it where um project architect do a thorough ADA code review on it to make sure it's compliant. I mean, no offense, I just staff is not an ADA expert and from my workings with the ADA codes A17 and FHA, I have suspicions that this modified condition um is not uh applicable. So, if we can modify the condition stating that, I'm fine with it. And then it just puts it puts the liability on the project architect to make sure that the project is in compliance with ADA. I don't think people up here disagree with you. I haven't heard from this side of the table, but I I did from this side, but maybe make that motion because then that way we can make sure it says what you want. Before we have a motion on the table, can I make a comment? Yes please. I would just like to comment that um I appreciate the residents coming out. Um unfortunately, this is just literally looking at design review. The car wash has already been approved for this site and I think a number of us on the on the dis actually had some issue to some extent with having a car wash on this site just because of what was going in there. It was passed. It was approved through council. Um so we're actually looking at design review. Um again appreciate you coming out. I don't know what the the uh the the the miss is with regards to the mailings. It sounds like they were sent out, but it sounds like you didn't receive them. It should have been sent out. I believe they're sent to the owner or current resident when they do send those out. So, I would assume that it wasn't returned back to the sender but just want to make sure that that we make that clear that we are looking at a design re design case that the car wash is already approved. Excellent. Thank you. I I see your hand moving. that that look debating whether or not wanted to add to that. Commissioner Davis, I agree with what Commissioner Simon said. Also, I feel like um there's a substantial landscape buffer, trees. Um the applicants to put the building in such a place that it's just those drive aisles where people are coming in to pay for their car wash. I appreciate that the vacuums, which is where the real noise happens, is on the north side of the building away from the residents. It's unfortunate when you have car washes next to residents, but again, this is about the design review. I feel like done a a fairly good job of buffering the neighbors from the harshness of that use. So, I'm in support of it. Okay. Then, if there's no other comments or questions, I will call for a motion. I can make the motion. Keith, are you from what I stated earlier, are you in agreement or are you uh okay with modifying that condition the way I kind of suggested? Um, Chair Fay, Commissioner Anderson, I'm that would be fine. I'd be okay with that. Okay. I don't think I don't think we'd be opposed to that. Okay. So, I'll go ahead and make the motion for approval uh modifying the modifying condition to read such as the vacuums for the ADA parking shell parking space shall be removed to ensure unobstructed accessibility and compliance with ADA standards. Um, as long uh after a thorough 88 code compli uh code review has been completed by the project designer to show that it ADA parking remains in compliance. Does that make sense? It does. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Go ahead and second the motion. I have a second from Commissioner Simon. With that, I will call for a vote. Motion passes seven to zero. Thank you for coming out. Sorry it wasn't the outcome you wanted. And then the next item is item nine. Aura at Santan. Ashley, you're doing this one yourself. Thank you, chair and commission. Uh this is GP 2408 and Z2420 oraura at Santan. Uh the request before you is for both a general plan amendment and a resoning. The general plan amendment seeks to amend the land use classification on uh 14 acres from regional commercial to residential greater than 25 to 50 dwelling units per acre. And then the reasonzoning application is on those same 14 acres. uh and it proposes to amend the PAD for Valve Vista Square and change the zoning on site from regional commercial with a PAD to uh mixeduse large with a planned area development overlay. So the subject site is located off of Market Street. It's southeast of the southeast corner of POS and Val Vista Road. Uh you can see on this aerial map there is some scattered development um around the existing or around the site. Uh the novel multif family piece is just located at the uh to the north west of the site. The VA hospital to the west. Um and then there's an Aldi and a bank uh north of the subject site off of POS road. Looking at the existing general plan classification, the site is currently designated as general uh regional commercial. Um on the general plan, you can see there is the novel development just uh adjacent to the property that has the general plan classification of uh residential 25 to 50 dwelling units per acre. And then looking at the zoning map, the site is currently zoned regional commercial. It follows that similar development plan pattern um with multifamily uh where the novel site is located. the applicant has provided a land use exhibit uh just demonstrating the subject area that they're seeking to reszone um and then amend this portion of the pad. So, I thought it would be helpful to do um just a little bit of a walkthrough about this site um kind of where it started. It actually started prior to 2012 as part of Main Street Commons. Um but in 2012 uh they they made a pretty significant change to the plan and created the Val Vista Square development uh that planned this commercial corner. This was part of ordinance 2380. This ordinance showed a variety of um buildings and kind of parking fields but ultimately laid out circulation for the site. And then in 2019 we saw a development plan that came in and amended um this for the novel multifamily development. And so, um, over the years, there has been some changes to this property that have kind of brought us to where we are today with this vacant piece at the back of Market Street. Um, you could see as we walk through those that that it really hasn't developed in the way that it was originally planned. Um, and that has created some challenges with this site. So, the applicant before us today is requesting a reszone on the 14 acres. Um, and it would also amend that existing development plan for Val Vista Square that I had on the previous screen. When we first started having some conversations with um the applicant team on this and they had approached us about doing some multif family here, we had suggested that they consider looking at the mixeduse zoning districts that we've that we had adopted recently. We thought that this was probably a pretty good site for that type of development. Um and so that brings us to the application that we have today. Uh the applicant is processing a concurrent design review application on site. Um these specific items are not included as part of the resoning but I think it's helpful for the discussion. Uh the multif family would include um 357 units bringing the density to 25.1 dwelling units per acre on the site. Um there are three three buildings. I know it's a little bit hard to see in this exhibit, but there's three total buildings. Building one um would have is at the southwest corner of the site would had about would have about 10,000 square feet of office on the ground floor. Building three, the northernmost building, has about 5,000 square feet and then building two in the center is is primarily residential building. As part of their request, the applicant is requesting a number of deviations um to the site. Uh the first is to increase both the common and private open space within the development. Uh for private open space, our code requires 40 or 40 square feet per unit, the applicant is proposing 60 square feet. And then in terms of the open space across the site, the code requires 20% where the applicant is providing 28. In addition, they're looking to modify the build two line. So for our mixeduse zoning districts, the idea is that we bring those buildings close to the street to help activate the street. Um, in this case, the property or the zoning district requires that the buildings be built at the 10- foot build two line. Uh, with this property, there are some utility challenges that require them to to push the buildings back. And so, they're requesting to deviate that standard to 45 ft uh due to existing site constraints. The primary uh deviation though that staff wants to talk about is their request to modify the portion of the mixeduse zoning district that requires them to develop a non-residential land use um or or one of the retained uses from the existing zoning district which is regional commercial. The the code requires that they provide 20% of the total floor area would be that non-residential land use. Uh in this case, the applicant is seeking a reduction from 20% down to 3%. Uh the total building area is 460,000 square feet. Um and as I had mentioned previously, uh the total amount of office space that they're seeking to develop is 16,000 square ft. That's staff's primary concern with this request, the significant deviation from the standard of the code. Um and just as we continue, actually I think I've got a couple a couple sites. Um, so you know, as we continue to to reach build out and continue to grow, each of our commercial or non-residential properties become even more and more important to us to make sure that we have a balanced uh, land use framework moving forward. And so we evaluate where um, you know, commercial exists in the town, where multif family exists uh, within the town. And specifically, this site is part of the central 202 core growth area, which um does speak towards highdensity residential development where residential uses are closely integrated with retail office in a compact development. And so we felt that this was a good candidate, this property was a good candidate for the mixeduse zoning district, but I think we're a little bit concerned about the integration between the non-residential land uses uh compared to the high percentage of multif family that's being proposed in an area of the town that already has a significant amount of of multifamily. Um I know I touched on this briefly, but if we look at the land use breakdown across the town, uh 70% of the town is uh residentially um designated where only 9.5% of the town is uh set aside for commercial. And so as we just evaluate these land use changes, it's really important that we consider where it makes sense um to to go from commercial to residential. And I think in this case we were we're seeking a little bit better balance. We did take this um application to the Chamber of Commerce for their um review. Um back in March we did receive feedback from the chamber um that they they do also believe that it's a great a great site for the mixed juice concept um but that essentially it should comply with um the standard requirements of the land development code. So, for those reasons, staff is recommending denial of the applications, both the general plan amendment and resoning. Um, should the commission wish to approve this, uh, there are a number of conditions that staff would recommend that you add to the resoning application. But with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you have and I know the applicant's here as well. Are there any commission questions of before we hear from the applicant? Shannon. Uh Ashley, thank you for the presentation. I just want to make sure it seem I just want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. So, if we go to the deviations, uh where is it? Or the project data table. If I I'm getting the impression for staff the the big thing that you guys don't really agree with is just the minimum floor space retained for RC going from 20% to 3.49%. Is that the the big key for you guys? That is correct. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? Actually, I did talk with the or the applicant's attorney for and and um and and actually I provided some feedback that this was a too big a lift when I was um when it came for at the study session. um where does but but we were talking really came down to kind of a math problem of what's in the numerator and what's in the denominator to get you that percent to me it when I look at mixed use if you got a five-story building the first store is retail the other four are apartments that to me is 20% you're good to go um where does parking fit factor in on that equation yeah so in in our code we require them to provide garage parking spaces or enclosed parking spaces. And so, um, that is factored into the total square footage. Um, I actually broke it down here on this slide. The residential garage makes 24,000 square feet. I did the calculations and I removed that. So, say we were to not include parking as part of the total floor area. It really moves that percentage a a insignificant amount. I I I wish I had written it down. I think the um office the amount of it that was retained use from the original zoning district I think was still in the 3% range. So it went from 3.9 to or 3.49 to 38. I don't I don't remember. I'll I can certainly look that up um and get back to you. And but the surface parking that's on the north end of the site, does that count or is it only the building? Uh vice chair, that does not count. That's not included in the calculations. It's just floor area of the buildings themselves. And And how many stories tall are these buildings? They, I believe, are four. Four. Okay. A mixture of three and four. So, I guess part of it is you've got garages and you've also got the space behind the garages. Um, that that seems kind of like a tough a tough cell to put retail behind the garages on the inside it. But but maybe that goes to why we would deviate a little bit or something like that. Um anyway, at this if no one else has any comments, we could hear from the applicant. Members of commission, thank you for your time. Um, when I started this case with staff December, they said, "We like the project. We like the use. We kind of need to get a little bit more commercial." And I think the phrase they said was a soft denial. I can't think of a more kinder denial recommendation than what Ashley just gave. I appreciate the words and the way she helped set this up. Um, Mr. Fay, before I give my presentation, may I answer your question as directly as I can? If you take out the square footage of the garages on the bottom floor and just count the ratio of residential versus commercial, we're like 16%. And so, um, 16 16% of just the ground floor only. Oh, of the ground floor, not of the total. Yeah. So, it actually is correct. If you add all fours, then you're still, you know, low numbers. But anyways, for the sake of the presentation, I'd love to walk you through a little bit about why we're here today. Okay. Is it me that pushes it? Wonder why it's pointing you the laser in the eye. Here's what's interesting about this site. When you look at it, there's a story behind it that I don't think many people will be aware of if they haven't lived in Gilbert more than 20 years. But you can kind of see what's happening around here between the hotel, the a hospital, the multif family next door, the Aldi, the WCO. But on its appearance, you'd say, why not just do more commercial because you have some commercial area. This site has has had commercial zoning since 1999 and there have been zero preapps and zero development applications in all these years and I don't think it's because of the location of the site. This is a commercial area all day long. So there's other factors here that areffect affecting this site. What I want to point out here is in 2004 there was this project called Main Street Commons. Main Street Commons was from the developers Woodbine. They're the same developers that built Kierland Commons in Scottsdale and you probably are familiar with it. Bottom floor retail, upper floors residential. And they wanted to replicate the success of Kirland Commons and bring it down to Gilbert. And everybody was super excited about it. All along the plan was to do residential above ground floor commercial. But what nobody anticipated was a recession. And that recession happened shortly after this was approved. And the unpredictability of the recession in 2007 2013 directly impacted this project. It went into receiverhip and default and was purchased by multiple owners and as a result what was a great vision and a uniform master plan now became um broken pieces so to speak distress sale of multiple different property owners and at some point someone reszoned it again in 2012 for Valve Vista Square I think the thought was well broken plan maybe we can try a new plan but I think as Ashley pointed out even the new plan actually hasn't really been carried out and it's Not because they weren't good plans, it's because you have a really poor street circulation on the backside. And so after 25 years, we're here to actually correct the problem that was created. And I'm going to call the problem created by the Main Street Commons plan and the roadway that was in place. But what I'm asking for residential above commercial is actually already allowed on the property today and has been on this property for uh two decades. It's just the amount of residential uh the lack of a full commercial below is where what brings me here today. As you notice though in the staff report, those red boxes clearly indicate an expectation of residential above commercial. Now this is Kirland Commons and when you look at Kirland Commons, you can see a really good balance of a variety of land uses from residential to office to hotel to multif family. I think this really did a good job that this is the trademark for this area. Heavy heavy retail and if I could be speak on behalf of the owner, we would prefer retail here as well. um they certainly would have paid significantly more than multif family over all the years that they would have come here. We've marketed it for retail since 2009 our ownership. We've marketed it for office for seven of those years. We've consistently tried to make this anything but what we're trying to do today. But there's a reason why this is the donut hole in this trade area of a whole bunch of retail. And the difference is because of the roadway network that's in this area. Now, let me show you our plan a little bit because Ashley's covered it, but for the sake of the context of the area, we are 16,000 square feet of commercial rentable space with an additional 3,000 ft of commercial outdoor amenity space. And that's not a requirement that the town puts on us. But for us to be successful with this commercial, we need to activate it better along the streetscape. So, it has a stronger base to attract commercial users and and tenants, we've added an amenity that you don't normally see in this area. Our units are 357 and our commercial is in two of the three buildings. They are walkable. Um our buildings screen the parking lot from behind so the parking is not necessarily visible and it really is back to the urban design that was originally planned here from the beginning in 2004. We have more open space than required and we have significant amount of parking including 92 garage spaces. This helps you understand what is on the ground floor. The yellow boxes are the garages. The blue boxes are the commercial. The red boxes are the residential amenities like the clubhouse, the fitness, the leasing office, and the white is the residential units. So on the ground floor, the unfortunate part of the math, maybe to my detriment, but I don't know if the town really thought through this when they were doing the mixed use ordinance, is that when you got to determine the 20%, it's punishing us by making us count the garage spaces as part of that denominator. So, it's unnecessarily sort of reducing our percentage relative to the overall project. If you were to take out those yellow boxes and maybe not count that as a denominator, we'd have about 16% of our ground floor um be commercial uses. Clearly, still far under short what the code requires, but I also recognize we're the first one to actually implement the mixeduse district. And I think that's why you take cars on a test drive to figure out the bugs and whether you like it or not. And I think we in real time are realizing some things that we can't control like the requirement to have garages for a project but then the garages sort of prevent your ability to put commercial on the backside. And so it's a balance of these two things that really help um that we've had to be careful with. But as you saw this the first time I thought it's helpful for you to see the comparative when you saw us at the first study session to where we are today. We've reduced units from 366 to down to 357. We've almost doubled our commercial from 9,000 to 16,000 plus the extra 3,000 of commercial plaza outdoor amenity spaces. Our open spaces is significant and our parking has gone up. So why would I reszone this then if I already am allowed to do multif family above it? Well, there's four things that have changed the dynamic that necessitate a change of zoning right here. And I want to walk through these first four. First one is Santan Village versus Main Street Commons was a arms race for tenants. And it was whoever comes out of the ground first is a winner because they were both identical projects. If you go to Santan Mall, you may just be shopping at the Apple store but not realizing there's actually office above all the buildings. And that's what Main Street Commons was supposed to do. And both of them were racing for the same tenants at the same time. In fact, I remember the Apple store was here committed before they jump shipped to the yellow box because the yellow box is coming out of the ground first. So as a consequence, this arms race had this competition between tenants. Santan Village came out first. They became more successful. Main Street Common started quick. They were still willing to go all 12 rounds of this, you know, tenant fight. But what they couldn't predict was that the recession was going to come. So even though they put the infrastructure in the roadway, particularly Market Street, as it bent down through this project, the recession, it was a knockout punch for the blue area. And the recession essentially decimated the vision for Main Street Commons. And what was one master plan development, one under one ownership, became multiple owners who all they cared about was buying distress assets, holding them, and then selling off to whoever would pay for it. And so they weren't able to execute the vision. But the unfortunate part was the road was already there. And you can't change the road. And so as a result, it was a failed project. Let's take a closer look at this road. And this is the second point of why this zone change makes sense. This roadway is very different on Market Street, which is sort of the ignored, neglected part of this main street area as opposed to POS road. So this little red line here represents the analysis. And this is the city, the town's traffic data. When I look at the town's traffic data, what I found is that this red road is trafficked significantly less than POS road. And I'm not just talking about a little less. The difference is 630 to 850% less during the peak time. So if I'm a retailer, Walmart, Target, whatever, there's no chance I'm going to come to Market Street when there's no trips on Market Street. And to give you an idea, during its peak time on this data, it's 29 cars a minute on POS Road where that red dot number three is. For comparative purposes, that blue dot on the bottom, number six, is three cars a minute. So I don't have to tell you why retail won't come to this property even though this is a very very strong and healthy retail corridor. So if retail is not coming here, it's because the vision that was set forth that put in this roadway is the is is the big hurdle here. And I don't think um if the recession had started before they put in the roadway, I don't think we would have had Main Street Commons and I don't think we would have had this roadway network and we would have be we'd be having a very different conversation. The second the third thing that really changed here was because there were multiple owners and you sort of just buy these distress assets and you just look for someone to take it off your hands. VA hospital purchased this property and once you brought in the VA hospital which is neat in the area but it changed the entire dynamic of what Main Street comes was going to be but you still got stuck with the road there and so when you're trying to create this walkable retail Kierlandesque type of project it ended the moment the VA hospital came and so as a result there's no more uniform vision no more development but the streets already in place and you have to work with what what you've got at that point and so these parcels begin to sell off to just whoever is going to buy But without a master plan, it's just sort of who's presenting the best offer at the time. And that's why you start to see peace mill development happen. You'll see a bank come to the corner. Then you'll see an Aldi's come in, but ironically all these doesn't come right to the street. Then eventually you'll see the apartments come in. Now this is not a master plan at all. This is just people working with um accepted offers. And then you start to see the Bikini Beans, which um I'm sure none of you have been there, the drive-through uh coffee shop along Val Vista Road, and now you have a hotel, a fourth hotel coming to the piece behind it. So, as a result, there's no master planning. This isn't the vision that was executed originally. But the problem is you are stuck with this roadway that would never have been built here if you weren't building Main Street Commons. And so, we have to live with the consequence of that. Now, there's four remaining vacant parcels, but all those are on retail corridors where we would never put our project on there because they have vitality. They have a possibility. We believe they will develop with commercial retail uses. In fact, the ownership has had multiple offers on those some of these parcels, but they're not the type of uses that would strengthen this economic corridor. Putting a gas station there isn't going to benefit anybody. And so being picky on the right users has let them preserve and set these ones aside because they are on streets well traveled and can be successful. But this back piece, zero preapps, zero applications and almost zero demand after seven years of markets and office and 16 years marketing it as a commercial center and 25 years with commercial zoning. So what other things can you put on this property? Well, I think I already covered retail. I don't need to cover that one again. I don't think anyone, nor would I ever be able to show my face around here again if I brought single family onto this property. Well, should we consider some industrial? Industrial had its heyday, but there are better areas where they are better context contextually located. How about maybe municipal building? Can we'd love for the town to buy us put a park here because it's challenging itself. But I think somebody once asked, well, what about a large office campus? you know, um they don't need a lot of drive by trips like a retailer would be. And frankly, we would love to have a large retail a large office campus come here. Brian Companies had marketed it for years to as a build to suit opportunity. And the large office didn't want to come here. But part of it is if you look right now, there's 40,000 square feet of vacant office directly south of us that's been marketed for a year and a half and unoccupied. And so 40,000 square feet seems like that's a whole floor plate, by the way. So someone if they wanted a large office could go there right now. And then north of us is Rome Towers where there's several smaller vacant suites between 4 to 10,000 square feet. So if they wanted smaller spaces they go there. So neither one is really moving. So dumping 14 acres of more massive office postcoid would um be suicide. And if you really wanted to develop 14 acres of commercial of office, you would just go to Rivlon where office is intended to be and there's 100,000 plus square feet of vacant office over there. So if I just look at the office market, there's eight and a half million square feet of office between Chandler and Gilbert subm market. 31% of it's vacant. In metro Phoenix area, there's five offices being built right now. Five million people in the metro area and only five offices are being built. Four of which are built to suite. So that's not happening. And I don't even think staff believes that this is an office site as well. So I don't have to argue to point prove a point that you well know. So if it's so bad, why am I proposing ground floor commercial and office? What makes us different and why we can be successful is I call it the Goldilock zone. There is a sweet spot of office that does work. It's just the right amount. What's achievable on this project because we have those three different ground floor areas across the buildings. I can build offices that are 1500 square feet to 4,000 square feet. I can market them and I can flex them. I can be nimble with them. It's hard for someone to buy to at least 40,000 square foot floor plate, but someone can come say I need 1,200 square feet or I need 3600 feet. It's exactly what we can do here. The problem is if I didn't have multif family, I can't build that that nimble type of product and and lease it out at market rate. It costs significantly greater in construction costs and interest rates to build it than what it's leasing for right now up down Val Vista Road in Spectrum. But the reason why I can lease this here is because I can subsidize it with the cost of the apartments. By building apartments above, I'm forced to build retail below, but I can rent it out at the market and not at the cost to build that retail because I have the subsidized element of the multif family above it. Now, someone said, well, why not just build more of that flexible, nimble retail below? You know, can't you add it's more than 16,000 ft? Kenchi gets like 20%. And the the it's just really simply math. There's no more parking I can fit on the property to accommodate an extra square footage of commercial. So we came down from the study session nine or 11 units and that gave us the ability to add more office but I could only add enough office based on the parking I had available on my site. If you look between the first study session to today, I added 70 almost 80 plus spa parking spaces just so I could get in the extra commercial, but I have squeezed out and maxed my site up to the setback line. So, I've nowhere to add more parking short of asking for deviations on landscape islands or landscape setbacks. And so, even if I just lost a residential unit and put commercial there, the ratio between residential and parking and commercial parking isn't the same one to one. So long story short, I think the reason why we have what we have today is because of the feedback he gave us. The feedback from the Chamber of Commerce who wrote a letter of support but recognized they want us to get us closer to what the requirement was. And at the time they wrote that letter, we were less than 9,000 square feet. So now we've almost essentially doubled it. Now why while I couldn't add more office or retail because I lacked the commercial parking spaces, I could add commercial amenity spaces because that doesn't require parking. And so what we did for all our commercial ground levels is is place more outdoor spaces in front of them so they can be activating so they can be visible from the street so they can be engaging with the street and they can be utilized by those commercial tenants. So if it's a restaurant they can have outdoor dining or patio or if it was an office tenant they can have outdoor plaza whatever. But the point is I don't have to park that the same way that I would occupiable space. And so in a lot of ways we're about almost 20,000 square feet. And that's why this project makes sense. We look at these orange areas here to achieve walkability. The orange areas lead up north to Aldi or over east to WCO. So our pre our guests and tenants live here can walk to the only two retail spaces near them. And this is more in line with the original vision of the PD to begin with. In fact, it's probably the only piece that actually implemented it. Now, if I didn't have this roadway here, I wouldn't be bringing this project. Frankly, I think this whole area would have been very different. But we have to deal with the circumstances we have. I've got a roadway that was designed for a mixeduse project that didn't happen. I got a roadway almost zero trips, three a minute in the peak time of the day. It's hard to make anything else succeed here. And so for that reason, I appreciate the coaching you've given me from the first study session, the chance to share our vision with you. Even staff has been tremendous to work with. I don't think we would have gotten here but for the collaboration and the nudging to look at things a little differently. But what this does is it brings a utilization of this property that hasn't happened nor will it happen if this doesn't go forward at least maybe sometime different but I don't see it because I can't change the road and this road is such a significant deterrent and factor and impact that we had to create something that works for for that situation. At the end of the day, the office market submarket has 31% vacancy in the area. But we think the ability to subsidize it with the rental rates is a way to be nimble and increase some more appropriate for this area and not compete against the empty offices in the nearby area, but be supportive to the VA hospital next door or other things in the area. So, at the end, I think it's an ideal use. I hope you'll see that we've probably come a long way from where we started, but sometimes we're a little stubborn. It takes us a while to to get there, but I feel like we're in a much better place today than when we started. And that's the that's the reasoning, the logic behind what we're doing. And um just wanted to share that with you so you understood the why behind it. It wasn't just uh taking an easy money to put mold family here because that would have happened 16 years ago when ownership first bought it. So happy to answer any questions that you might have. Anyone on the D? Yes. Thanks, Adam. Uh, this rendering that's up here now, is this of this project or is this just a random picture? This is this project like six months ago. We have We don't have an updated rendering based on how it's changed. That That was my question because we didn't have any in the packet. Yeah. And sometimes we're simple and like the pictures. So, I was just wondering if we weren't given them um I think this is a weird location. Um, and I I I think whatever even square footage of commercial uses you're putting in here is not going to work. Um, just for what it is. So, I have no problems with this project. Yes, Mr. Hansen. Uh, Adam, thank you for the presentation. Quick question for you. What what kind of uses are is the um owner kind of thinking or anticipating for that commercial space down on the first floor? Let me go back to this slide here to help a little bit. So this is TRIC. TRIC has developed mixed use in Phoenix and in Tempe. Um so they know how to make it work, but this is more than they've done in those other locations and and in some places they've done collab spaces. What's interesting here and I think they believe this. Here you go. When I started, we didn't have commercial and the most westerly buildings. We only had them on the east side near the WCO. We think there can be some support services within these buildings here that can be providers for anybody who may be receiving services at the VA clinic. Now, I don't think all of that space will be leased by them. We could see um it could be a physical therapist, an eye doctor, a CPA, uh a sandwich shop. I don't think this is anything like a UPS store, Verizon, T-Mobile, nail salon, you know, retail will have a hard ch time here. Um but it's going to be somebody with a boutique office most likely. So you can envision more professional services compared to like something similar that you see at Epicenter with the restaurants and little shops and stuff. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the thing about restaurants is they'll have a a greater parking requirement than other things. And so, it'll be a very it'll be a math exercise to figure out how much we could fit some of that stuff in there. Okay. And they in determining the the percentage of commercial was the leasing fitness or what's in red. Was that worked into that? Because technically that's kind of commercial use. Yeah, it's a great question. Um, I think another zone attorney may have tried to get sneaky with that and count that into the math. We didn't I still don't think it would be be an honest if I try to add that as my commercial ratio. They're not residential occupying areas as far as living, but they're res residential supportive. And so we did not use that in determining the math for the office um commercial ratio. And I appreciate that. I don't consider those commercial. I consider those amenities. But if I if you don't count it as commercial, we call it an amenity. It now counts against you, doesn't it? Right. It goes the other direction, too. It It seems like we should at a minimum be able to like subtract it out. Okay. Yeah. You know, in theory and and someone would say, "Well, how how would you get to 20%." Because if you got to use all the floors and like floors two through four are residential, there's really not a way to get to 40% unless you build a parking garage. But if you build a parking garage, then you have to actually go taller on your residential because a parking garage about 38 to $40,000 of space to build. And so I know it was with best intentions, but sometimes we don't have the foresight when we're drafting these ordinances to think through the unintended consequences. So it's just a interesting exercise that I've worked and learned through. Okay. All right. Any more questions for the applicant? Yeah sure. Adam, yeah, great presentation. Um, a lot to digest there. How many stories residential above the commercial, the retail? Three. So if my math is correct or if you reduce the residential I guess the the rub is that the city wants more commercial you want more residential. So if you reduce the residential that would reduce the parking requirements would give you more ability to put more commercial. Am I on the right path there with that kind of close? In fact, that's one of the ways we got more commercial because we reduced our residential by nine units. But that's just only nine units out of 300 or whatever number it was. That's a small amount. I mean, a very small percentage. It is. But what's interesting is parking for commercial isn't the same ratio as parking for residential. Even though I trim off a bunch of residential units, I don't necessarily get a lot of commercial. I can I can put commercial in that space. I don't pick up a lot of extra commercial parking spaces. So without having commercial parking spaces, I can't build commercial suite areas. So unless I was to buy more land and put more parking on that land, it's the only way I can add more commercial square footage. If it was a 1:1 ratio, then clearly you would be right, but it's not a 1 to1 ratio when you go from residential to commercial. And you also mentioned that there's less traffic on that street and so you're not going to have the retail being observed as much. But today people go they're destination uh drivers. I mean they pull it up on their phones, they know where they want to go. You go to these big uh complex or shopping centers. I mean you're driving every which way to get to your T-Mobile or to get to your restaurant. I mean I I don't think that's an issue. if people will find the if you have the right building or the right combination of of of space or utilization of space, you'll have people there. I don't think that's an issue in today's environment with your cell phone and where I need to go. If I need to go T-Mo, what's the one that's closest and they'll pull it right up and they'll be there. So, it's more of a destination type situation today as opposed to saying they need to see it because they're driving by. Yeah, I don't disagree. Um, if I was a retail user though, it's very like if the users who will be in these spaces, you're coming because you have an appointment. Most likely come because you have a relationship there. You already know you're going. You're not you're not driving by and going, "Oh, look, there's a" and you pull in because these aren't really retail necessarily focused commercial uses on the bottom. A retail user though requires a certain number of trips to invest their dollars there. Truth of the matter is that's why you see um a lot of these retail pads go closer to the street because they have a measurement tool counts the number of trips justify them investing the project. I don't see a lot of retail happening in the in the bottom of these levels. I think they'll be mostly professional services and then some um tenant specific supportive things coffee shop uh bakery something like that. I think before we get into we're getting away from questions and getting more into discussion, we'll have a chance to to ask more questions and the applicant. Um, but I'd like to give the public a chance to speak too. I believe we have Mr. Neville. Mr. Mr. Neville is here. Neville, Mr. Neville, please welcome to the the podium. We have three minutes for public for comments from members of the public. Welcome to the to the commission. I appreciate it. Thank you, commissioners. I'll try to hurry this up. My name is Morgan Deville. with the park corporation. We're the owner of all this land. We acquired uh the subject property as part of an overall 58 acres. So, Adam told a really sad story about this thing breaking up and becoming owned by diversified groups. Um the good part of the story is we came in and we bought it all up and reassembled it um from two different ownerships, one out of bankruptcy, as a matter of fact. And we're actually we're not master planners. We're stewards of an asset and stewards of land. And so we adittly we're not master planners. I will tell Ashley that although there's a development plan, it's always been conceptual. So that's the nature of the generic jobs and shapes. It was always conceptual because we didn't know what was going to happen here. We've had a lot thrown at us uh in the last 15 years between the recession and COVID which changed a lot. Um, I'll just tell you that uh we've always views view viewed this property um as really a big mixeduse property. To date, of the 58 acres that we purchased, 34 of them are developed. 17 acres are developed as retail. That includes two grocery stores, a very big one, a small one, two banks, a veterary practice, and all sorts of neighborhood retail. We've got a nail salon, hair sandwich, coffee doughnut shop. We also were very proud about the 9acre medical facility we did for the VA. Town of Gilbert was ecstatic when that happened. Nothing else was happening development-wise at the time. Everyone was glad that that use landed there, especially what it means to the people that served our country. And if you've ever driven by there in the middle of the day, the parking lot is never not completely packed. So, we're really happy that the VA landed there. And uh Adam's right that we've just accepted the offers that meet kind of the vision that we have for the project. We've said no to 50 or 60 undesirable uses. I could just sit here and name things that you all would agree would have been horrible for this site. But if it not for the common ownership that was established with with the park corporation, uh this would have just been developed and sold off very peace mill. it would have been a really ugly corner. Instead, it's over time patiently being developed as as a nice project and we're proud of it. The latest addition to it was the uh novel's um uh Crescent Novel at Val Vista. That's the uh current multif family project. It's currently 77% occupied and by the end of October they'll be fully leased up right right in line with their proforma. though multifamilies desired here. Um there were some other points I was going to make. I was going to tell you that you know we worked for seven years with three different class A um office development companies that are national companies. Uh they marketed the hell out of this project all build to suit opportunities. Uh nothing ever developed. I'll tell you the punchline is uh this location is just too far from the center of gravity. Phoenix, Tempe, it's just too far out to support, you know, the kind of office that we all would have loved to seen. You know, six to eight story office buildings that are visible from the freeway. Uh just not going to happen. And uh CO sealed that deal. We're we're afraid forever. Uh Adam did a great job of explaining why retail is never going to happen on uh this portion of the property. Um, I I would disagree, Councilman U Commissioner. I'm sorry, but I've dealt with a lot of retailers, the retail developers on this site and other sites, and I can tell you that it's all about traffic counts. And more importantly, the people that finance them, the banks care about the traffic counts. And so maybe uh what you're describing will evolve eventually but today in today's world traffic counts absolutely matter for retail. I will also address that uh one question uh about the uses for the uh ground floor commercial. Um the broker who's represented the site for 16 years uh is excited to work with TRIC because they think they can lease up this space with medical office tenants. Uh you know, this is a real core for medical uses, not only the VA, but everything that's south of the freeway and continues to grow and expand. And so, uh, they don't think we're gonna have any problem at all leasing up this ground floor space. But, you know, there's a ratio that works between making this project viable for TRIC uh, with a, you know, a loss leader of a little bit of, uh, office uh, space that's required by the code versus the core business, which is creating a living environment for people. Um, I also just want to tell you that, um, you know, we think this is the right use for this location. Not only because office doesn't work, retail doesn't work here, but it's the right use for the right time. The nation is in a housing crisis. This this metropolitan area is in a housing crisis. Uh multif family, highdensity multif family is the most efficient way to provide uh homes for people. And so, uh, that's part of what drove us to make to really pursue this and give these guys the time and the bandwidth to get this thing done, but because we think it's the right thing. The last thing I'll point out is um there has been no public uh objection this use and to this these proposed zoning and general plan changes. As a matter of fact, uh the people who are in the area, uh the banks and the grocery stores, they support the project because of course another 700 uh residents are going to actuate their businesses and they'll allow us to realize uh we're still trying to do with the commercial things we desired to do on our three available pads and the you know the crown jewel which is a 7.3 acre hard corner and Again, we've said no to 20 different things out there because we want it to be the right thing. And uh one day I'll bring a great uh use to Kyle. I'll sit down and we'll we'll find out what's going to happen on the hard corner. But um allowing uh this multif family project to go forward, bring more residents to the area, help fill out and actuate everything else we're trying to do there. And I think that's all I have to say. So, thank you. Okay. Thank you. I don't I don't think we started the timer on that one. So, um I I assume Adam does not need to uh rebut that. Um so, we'll uh Ashley, I'd ask staff for any additional comments. Thank you, chair. I don't have any additional comments, but if there are follow-up questions for me, I'm happy to answer them. Okay. I will bring this back up to the dis and ask for questions, discussion, comments. Yes, Commissioner Anderson. Actually, I do have a question for Ashley. Ashley, at the beginning of your presentation, um or towards the end of your presentation, you know, the staff's recommendation is denial, but you said if that wasn't the case and would approval that you guys had some stipulations that you would want to put in place. Question is, what are those stipulations? And second part of that question is has those stipulations been presented to the applicant and then have they had a chance to review them and accept them or deny or how how is that all been worked out or thought about? Yeah. So chair and commissioner Anderson, those conditions were included in the pack report, the staff report as part of um attachment 8. Um and because this is a PA amendment, I think it's um conditions A through X. Um, a number of those conditions are part of the older ordinances and then we've added a couple um to kind of round out the application and and to reflect the changes that they're making. So, for example, we've updated the um table of deviations. Uh, I think we added a couple for um traffic if I remember correctly. I don't have them in front of me, but um I can certainly grab my computer and look through those. You want to hear from the applicant about those or their thoughts on those or Adam? Would you address those? Um I assume you've had a chance to We reviewed them. We agree with them. Oh okay. Anyone else questions or discussion? I'll kick off the discussion since I already started speaking. Um after you know hearing both sides, you know, the presentation from Ashley and kind of their points and the presentation from the applicant and um there was a couple of slides in there that I think were really key for me. One was when he kind of zoomed out in the entire area to show how much commercial is really in that area along that 202. And there's a ton of it. And we're talking about one little spot here that we kind of make in we want to make into this somewhat of a mixed use between the residential and the retail. Um in terms of you know the parking garages I think that area is worked in the calculation. I personally my thoughts are, you know, that area should be pulled out because that's something that's forced onto multifamily developers in this town to create these parking garages that in reality is they become storage units at the end of the day. They're not used for the intent that when people are writing the LDC thinking, well, we're going to provide these enclosed parking spaces for these residents. And that's just not the case. Other cities in this area don't have this this requirement. So my if I heard earlier in the presentation if you take out the parking garages the retail is more closer to that 16%. Um I'm supportive of just what they're presenting right now for the retail. I I kind of agree with their vision. I think there's going to be a lot of medical office space that's going to move into these areas. That's what this area kind of seems to be. Um, and also, you know, just to be blunt, the town doesn't share the financial risk by adding all this additional retail onto the site. If they force them to put this additional, you know, 9,000 or 10,000 square feet, you know, whatever the number is of retail, and they can't they can't lease that out. I mean, this site's been vacant, as what I understand, for over 20 years. Nobody's had any interest in doing any commercial or retail on this spot. So if they were forced to do this, add more retail into this space and it doesn't lease out in, you know, 10, 20 years, I mean, the town doesn't share that financial risk. So I guess you could probably hear from my tone and what how I'm talking. I I I would recommend approval of this. Um, I think what's being presented is suitable for the area and for the time of what's going on with the economy and development in general. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Commissioner Simon. Yeah, I I would uh echo what Commissioner Anderson said. I had the um some would say I was afforded the luxury of listening to the attorney of the uh No, with all due respect, with all due respect to Adam, that is um No, I I would agree. I appreciate the fact that they came back with additional office space on this or retail space on this and I could see potentially, you know, a little coffee shop or something going in here, but there's so much restaurant and retail already in this area. I mean, really packed in just north of this, but I I don't know that I see it being viable here. Um, I did take the excruciatingly long drive down to this area and through Market Street. There's just not the traffic. I actually honestly my stepdaughter lives just north of this in the apartments and I've been to the Costco a couple thousand times probably over the last multiple years and I've never driven on market. So their day was the first time I've actually driven that street. So I I would agree. I don't I I do understand um you know the premise behind throwing a location in your phone and and and driving to that location and not really worrying about it if it's closest. But I do also believe that from from a resident uh a retail perspective, you want to be visible because yeah, people are going to Google search you or what whatever, but but more often than not, they're going to drive by and they're going to see it and they're going to say, "When's that place going to open? We need to go try it." So, I I would I would probably disagree there, but I agree with Comm Commissioner Anderson. I'm okay with this. I'd like to read through the stipulations before we make a motion if we can. Other than that, I'm uh I'm I'm in favor of it. So, okay. Thank you. No, no. Okay. Um, so I I I actually go to the VA. That's that's my VA. That's the clinic for me. And I did not realize Market Street went through. So, when I gone to the VA, usually it's in the morning and then I go to work, but occasionally if I go to Santan for something, I drive around because I didn't realize you could go through. Um, one one negative is I don't everyone keeps bringing up like any normal hospital will say, oh, physical therapists and a pharmacy and stuff. That's not the way the VA they tend to have it. I don't think you're going to get any out medical outbuildings the way a normal hospital will. when and even when they outsource something, they they do it in the most deliberately inefficient manner that they possibly can and they're going to put their physical therapy clinic in surprise because that makes sense. Um but um they actually have physical therapy in-house in this one. Um but I I am and and I am still a little bit hesitant on giving up on any retail in a city that's that's already kind of short on retail. Um that said, I I am sympathetic to the way it's calculated and where this particular parcel is is stuck to. Um the the only issue for me previously when we were at study session was the amount of swing that the 20% deviation. I think everyone knows if we were talking about a deviation to 15% it would have already gone through. But I'm I'm more sympathetic to also how it has to be calculated now than I was before. Are there any more comments or questions? Name was going once, going twice. Okay, then. Um, do we Well, before I call for a motion, uh, is there any direct I was kind of done when when Adam said that they were fine with the the concessions? Do we want to talk about those or we I don't know that we need to if I I was just thinking more for getting them on the record, but they are in the staff report. Um and and they are uh a part of con attachment B conditions and approvals. If if we do approve, we could probably just reference the attachment, couldn't we? Then um with the the stipulation that we reference the attachment aid or the the stipulations or the conditions in the attachment. Um is there a motion? I'll make a motion. For or against? I don't know how this one's going to go. To approve. I was looking for the case numbers. GP24-08 um and Z24. They have to be separate. Oh, you're right. Okay. So, I'll just make the first motion to approve GP24-08 with are the stipulations of approval for the general plan amendment or they're for the reszone. Uh chairman and commissioner Gage, they're for the zoning. So, they'll be for your second. So, that's it. Is there a second? I'll second. Commissioner Simon seconds. Sorry, he's faster. Then with that, uh, we have a motion and a second. Everyone, please cast your vote. Was that me? No. My vote has been cast. Sorry. I should have known. Okay. All votes have been cast and it Whoa. 70. All right. That one. Congratulations, Adam. You got it. Sorry that I just thought that one was going to have more more of a split vote on that one. Okay. Oh, yes. You're right. There is a second one on that one. And we I would entertain a motion on that. I'll make a motion to approve Z-24 Z24-20 or at Santan with the conditions um included in attachment 8 of the staff report. We have a motion. I will second. And Commissioner Simon seconds that one also. Please cast your votes. All votes have been cast. Matter carries 70. Okay. Thank you. And with that, we move to administrative items. The only administrative items I see tonight is the approval of the minutes. Consider the approval of the minutes for the study session from June. Does anyone have any comments or a motion? I'll move to approve the minutes from the June 4th, 2025 meeting. Good. We have a motion from Commissioner Davis. I'll second it. A second from Commissioner Davina. Dav. You've been challenged tonight, Bill. Um, please cast your vote. De Graina de Graina Commissioner De Graina that mo that passes 70 and then communications we have uh no additional communic uh we have no executive session is there any report from the chairman or members chairman didn't even show up tonight u on current events and then is there a report from the planning services manager on current events uh chairman the only um update that I have for you is that we did move our September mber 3rd planning commission meeting to September 10th. Um that is the uh week of the Arizona planning conference um as well as Labor Day holiday. So we we wanted to make sure that we made that easier to attend for folks. That is September 10th. Okay. It was on September 3rd. Now it's September 10th. That is correct. Okay. All right. And then um that is everything. Um is there a motion to adjurnn? Motion to adjurnn. Commissioner Anderson makes a motion to second. And it is second. Excellent. All those in favor or actually just cast your vote. All votes are cast. 70. Thank you. I think we were I think we were unanimous on every vote tonight. I think. Anyway, um it is probably that is kind of the first thought that occurred to me and then I think about everything that came out of my mouth and I realized that that can't possibly be the case. So, thank you all very much and thank thank you commissioners and thank you for everyone who hung around except for staff. You had to be here. Thank you. Don't be shy. Don't be shy. and everyone calls. Well, you could still you could still say that I kind of second I agree. Yeah. So, I sent him a picture of this and he goes everywhere. Yeah. The other thing too is I don't This thing is agree. But the thing I think that's important, but I think that's important at times too because sometimes need to let others know that we're consistent that we do agree with what what the other commissioners said. She's always she never agrees with me. This is what I do.