Good afternoon. It is March 24th. We're here for a planning housing and parks committee and We have a number of items on the agenda. We're gonna change up the order just a little bit item two is gonna be the last item on our Agenda that we take up the save ZTA as it is known Otherwise, we're gonna keep the agenda as it is we have the Planning Board chair and the Planning Department with us for this and a number of the items that we have today. We have Miss Dunn here from Council Staff. We're going to continue our conversation on the Bethesda Downtown Minor Master Plan amendment. We have a packet that includes a continuation of the conversation that we began last week with some follow-up items and then the aspect that starts talking about next steps which we hadn't begun to get into to go through those items as well. With that since I spoke at length on this and the importance of it at our initial work session and as we welcome support and support for the staff. I'm going to thank the staff for the support and support for the staff. I'm going to thank the staff for their support and support for the staff. I'm going to thank the staff for the support and support for the staff. I'm going to thank the staff for the support and support for the staff. I'm going to thank the our conversation and I'll turn it over to you to walk us through the packet and hopefully to move forward and conclude this item. So with that, I'll mean turn it over to you, Ms. Dunn. Great, thank you and good afternoon. So it does start on the second page then of the staff report. First is just setting the framework for what we're covering in this work session on the Bethesda Minor Master Plan Amendment. And we are going to spend the first part of this covering follow-up items. And the first one was the development limit. What I wrote in the staff report was simply that the direction from the committee for council staff to work with planning staff to reach out to the IEC and to work on an outline for that five-year comprehensive monitoring report. And it was discussed last time that that would go into the attachments to the master plan, which is usually called the appendix. This is kind of their calling of attachments. And that's not under the same requirement deadlines as approving and adopting the plan. The attachments or the appendices aren't considered part of the adopted plan. That's why they can change. That's why it's also a good location for the outline of this report so that sufficient time can be spent trying to figure out what elements and what metrics are going to be measured in that report. And that'll come back to committee once we have a draft of that. The next item is transportation and adequate public facilities. Councilmember Joando had asked the planning staff to reach out to Montgomery County Fire Rescue and the second district police station To see if they had any input regarding any potential change in intersection delay that might occur through future development and I'll turn it to Mr. Heismal Koi Sure, thank you good afternoon for the record. Elzel Heismal Koi Chief down County planning. I was able to connect with The folks at fire and Rescue and the police department in Bethesda. In terms of Fire and Rescue, they, in terms of the limitations of the network, I mean, we saw on the bus tour that many streets in downtown Bethesda are not made to accommodate a ride on bus. accommodate a right on bus. So they balance the limitations of the road network with the Vision Zero improvements. So. but that's not made to accommodate a right on bus. So they balance the limitations of the road network with the vision zero improvements. So the bike lanes, the improved sidewalks, all of these things, the new crosswalks, that enhance pedestrian and bike safety, are they balance the value of those improvements from development with sort of the limitations of the road network and then in speaking with the second district folks in Bethesda, I think recognizing the emergencies or police calls happen during rush hour and non-rush hour, They, as a matter of policy, remind their staff to be cautious and control speed and be safe when they're moving through downtown Bethesda. And in terms of response times, said that for emergency response times have gone up a little bit, but are within sort of industry standard for urban areas. They did say that the non-the routine sort of non-emergency times have gone up, but that was as much a staffing issue in terms of having folks available to attend to those as it was any impact of traffic on the streets of Bethesda. Thank you. Thank you. The next issue has to do with the Recreation Center. Again, Councilmember Juano had asked Planning staff if the Recreation Center, when constructed in downtown Silver Spring, had required any increase in height related to either affordable housing or the Rec Center itself. There's a paragraph I received from planning. It's in the staff report that basically said that the Elizabeth Square development did receive additional height for both the recreation facility and workforce housing in accordance with the zoning ordinance. In particular, Elizabeth's House III received an additional 45 feet in height for the Silver Spring Recreation Aquatic Center and Elizabeth Howe III received an additional 73 feet in height for the Senior Housing Replacement and Edition, the Silver Spring Recreation Center development overall provided 25% moderately priced dwelling units and 10% workforce housing units. And I'm sure Mr. Cronenberg could speak to any other details you have about it. Does any? Nope. Just as a reminder, it was an HOC Housing Opportunities Commission partnership with the private developer on that which obviously relates to those items. Right. Thank you. The next is the park impact payment and with this we had a long conversation with the parks department staff and clarifying that the recommendation to allow for a reduction in the park impact payment for privately owned public spaces that were made available in redevelopment or development not be I am equal to the reduction in the park impact payment that is allowed currently for dedication. So you'll see some amended language at the bottom of page two and at the top of page three that would go into the master plan itself. Then in the middle of page three there is suggested text from the parks department that would actually modify the Bethesda overlay zone itself which is where we provide more detailed information on how these things are actually implemented. And with there, just the thing to note, because you'll see this text again when we go and review the Bethesda overlay zone, which will probably start in June. You'll have the hearing on it April 1st, and then we'll start this up after budget. So we'll have a chance to address this language in specifically then. But what you'll just note is that what Park staff has recommended are two caps for the park impact payment reduction for a privately owned public space. One for standalone pops, there's a cap up to 75% reduction and if you're expanding park land through a privately owned public space then the cap is up to 85%. If you have any questions, parks is here to address those. Appreciate that. I think, at least from my perspective, this language looks good and is consistent with what we had talked about before. So I appreciate that the second part of the language is we're not necessarily taking that up today, per se, but we had asked to see it as part of the context. We're taking up the first part in the red items just to make sure everybody's on the same page which should be included in the Minor Master Plan amendment which is the broader language. So that's what we're actually deciding on and agreeing upon and formalizing today, but it's helpful to have the secondary language which will formally take up when we take up the BOSI TA. So thank you. Okay. Okay. Okay. Councilmember Draup. I'll just say thank you for the previous two things. I appreciate it. of checking in with fire and rescue and also on the heights really appreciate the follow-up and I thought that might be, those might be the answers, you know, but it's good to, good to get them. Yeah, and on this, I think generally as we talked about last time, the concern is just that we make sure that we're not, we're appropriately, not losing the, we're appropriately, not losing the, we're appropriately placing what we would want in the right order. So I think this goes a long way to in doing that. So appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Let's continue. All right. Thank you. We're now going to do one quick follow-up to affordable housing conversation. it's the very bottom of page three. Well, you'll note at the top of page four is an updated revised map. It hadn't included some of the HOC properties that are provided along Battery Lane. So we wanted to include that in this version. And the other is just to redress the discussion we had on the heightened incentive area. The committee felt the most comfortable with modifying the language in the plan to indicate that it would support further study and a future ZTA that would address any changes to the heightened incentive area rather than language that recommends changing the heightened incentive area at this time. And so that would be language like you'll see at the bottom of page four. I just want to touch base on that. So the language is to clarify because that's not in red, interesting. I wish you could start by. The MMPA recommends further study the expansion of the HIA, which is the height incentive area along Arlington Road, which could be addressed in a future ZTA to the BOSS. Correct. Okay. The BOSS is the Bethesda Overlay Zone just. In the context of the plan, those have been defined so it doesn't read so jargony, but it's there. Okay. With that, we'll turn to the second half of this staff report for this work session which are those changes to the Bethesda Overlay Zone reason we're going to discuss them today as really these are coming through your recommendations for the master plan. You're going to revisit the actual text and language when you review this overlay zone itself this summer but it's still important that we get these pieces right right because they will be referenced in the master plan so they have to be consistent. So the first one is the requirement to purchase BOSS density and currently the master plan, the way it is stated is that to receive BOSS density, it requires a project use all of its map to density before it can take advantage of the BOSS. And if you have a project that has a total density that is greater than both its commercial and its residential, it is then required to be a mixed use project in order to make use of BAS density. What this recommendation is to create a little more flexibility and change that slightly to allow a project that uses all of its commercial or all of its residential to then request BODS density, which would allow say a project that is completely residential to come forward and request BODS density and make that park impact payment without also requiring it to have some commercial space that it may not currently have a market for. And may then not come forward to redevelop. So. Okay. Council staff supports the recommendation without objection. We will accept that. Great. The next one is the current president vision that the density from the making use of Bos density those projects need to apply for a building permit within two years of site plan approval and pull that permit within additional two years. As we move away from having a development limit this is sort of less necessary that was done because there was a worry that with a cap, some developers may go in, request an approval for a project, and then it not move forward, and it would be holding a limited amount of development that couldn't otherwise be used by somebody else because there was that cap. So without the cap, this becomes less important. And just point out that there is adequate public facility finding that the board must make. When it makes that, it really requires moving forward in five years to retain your adequate public facility approval. So council staff suggests the committee support this recommendation as well. All right, we have council staff suggestion to support without objection, we'll support the recommendation. The next section is looking at the public benefit points themselves. Each master plan creates lists of priorities and in this case the Bethesda overlay zone and the plan were very specific about certain public benefits that they wanted to see in downtown Bethesda. And if you remember, the plan itself has a high performance area where you to achieve points in the high performance area. You must achieve 15 public benefit points from energy conservation and generation. And as the council since 2017 has moved forward with more and more ambitious energy requirements for development within the county, achieving what's in the plan becomes even more difficult because as a percentage above what's already required but we have now heightened those requirements. So the recommendation here is to change the language to simply be that it must achieve more than what is currently required under the code. And of course, the planning board would be reviewing that and it would be better defined in the guidelines that accompany the public benefits, the implementation guidelines. And Council Staff, did you just the committee support this recommended change? Okay, this is an update based on updates since this was originally put forward. We have a staff recommendation to support the recommendation and without objection, we will accept that recommendation. The next one's relatively administrative. It's just a reminder the planning department has spent the last couple years doing an incentive zoning update. Council received it in the fall. We did some high-level overviews of it. And you'll be getting that zoning text amendment in the coming months that will be, and basically a complete update to how the public benefit point system works. What this recommendation is that the committee and the council support just being very clear and being intentional in the way that the Bethesda overlay treats public benefits and the way it works for this master plan in any revisions made through the incentive zoning update. So it's just recognizing that yes, we will read all of our overlay zones and make sure that the intentions of our master plans are met in any update or change to the way the public benefits work. This is kind of a value commitment statement. I don't think it hurts. I don't think committee members think it hurts by their nods. So without objection, we'll accept that. I will note that the committee began its work and has been briefed. the council has been briefed on this update and look forward to coming back to take it up. You know, thermal legislative process. Right. Thank you. The next has to do with public art and other public benefit that's highlighted in the Bethesda overlay zone and it requires the public art goes from 15 to 20 points in this Bethesda overlay. And it has to do with where the money, if you make a payment in lieu, where it goes and who's involved. And right now that fee was able to be accepted by the Public Arts Trust Steering Committee, but the master plan is recommending, given that Bethesda has been designated as an arts and entertainment district by the state that the fees can actually also go to the Bethesda urban partnership that implements art or Bethesda arts and entertainment district itself. It's board to manage It just broadens the organizations that can achieve art in Bethesda by allowing them to collect that fee We have a a designated district as determined by the state. They can do this. We have a nonprofit that has a board that largely implements these issues allowing for them to be able to receive funds directly. So that we're cutting out the middle person here would make a lot of sense. We did get public testimony on this as colleagues will recall. And I don't see any concerns. And do you see a couple comments? Let me turn it over to Councilmember Drujondo. Yeah, just so we had we had a talk this morning with the Arts and Humanities Council. And we were talking about the cultural plan coming up and the work that they've been doing with planning as part of that plan. And public art is something, it's always important but particularly right now to create safe spaces here in the community. So just wanted to mention that since we had that conversation earlier in the Education and Culture Committee and this seems totally flying to provide better flexibility to just to move that around and decide who pays for it and where it goes. We're finding ourselves. I just want to state that I'm falling support, especially because some people may know we just created a five one three three nonprofit inaton for arts and statement. Just like we have in Bethesda, the press release is gonna go out soon. So I'm just giving you the other preview. And this makes a lot of sense. And the also on the cultural plan, we're gonna have, since you mentioned that, yeah, we're gonna have're going to have a youth town hall on the Cultural Planning Weed in on Monday, that 31st. So, very good. Great. I did just want to acknowledge there's been a number of great public arts examples through Bup and the Arts and Entertainment District in Bethesda, murals on the sides of parking garages. And several great examples of that. We'll note that Park and Planning had a great mural in Wheaton. As an example, on the side of a building that really activated that space, which these are fairly ugly public facilities at times that can be spruced up in a significant way with public art, but it costs money. And we have to pay artists. And having a mechanism in order to do that, that makes sense is important to actually implement it. So this is just one vehicle and mechanism to do that in one place, but there are lots of other examples. And we should be doing public art everywhere. And I know that the arts and humanities efforts that are underway to try to move forward because public art was part of the conversation in Thrive that we talked about in order to activate our spaces. So I think this is a step in that direction. So without objection, we will support that recommendation. Thank you. The next two have to do with the enhanced efforts to get the recreation center in the plan area. And so one is that the new recreation center or other civic buildings or spaces is added as a place that would qualify for a fee and loop payment. And the other is that the new recreation center is added as specifically identified major public facility that would be prioritized and incentivized through public benefit points. I've spoken at Nazim about the recreation center. I won't re-litigate that here, but obviously there's tremendous interest and support for that. And it's a key recommendation as part of this minor master plan amendment. We heard quite a bit of public testimony on that as well. And I know there's been broad support among colleagues of that as well. So this helps to move us in that direction. We'll turn over to Councillor Marjoranda. Just on this, totally agree. We want to move in that direction and supportive of the idea of that recreation center Moving forward the payment and Lou that would be like a Made on a based on the proposal before that could be a case-by-case Kind of how would that operate? Explain to me how that works So I think again, it would be It would be a reduced parking pack payment. It could be a getting credit for public open space. So it would necessarily be a payment directly for it, but it would be credit from other fees based on the amount of space provided. I mean, of course, be impacted by the design, but that would be determined as part of the development review process. Above that specific proposal or plan. That's correct. Awesome. Thank you. Great. Without objection, strong support, and let's continue. Great. We're on page seven of the staff report. There's one final recommendation, which is related to expanded tree canopy in downtown Bethesda and the surrounding communities. And basically has minor master plan language that just says to build on current incentive programs like Reforce Montgomery that offer property owners a variety of incentives to plant trees within the county, which is always a good thing. So of course the council staff suggests the committee support this. Under the similar value commitment statement, this is an important priority that we continue to have, including the language that doesn't hurt. So without objection, we will include that as well based on the recommendation. The next is the fiscal impact statement that was received on Friday for this plan. It is posted online as an addendum to the plan. There wasn't much time for staff to analyze much of it but wants to present it present it to the committee. It basically pivots off of work that was done and transmitted to this committee and council in 2022 for the Bethesda Unified Mobility Program that's not moving forward, but the amount of fiscal work that was done for that, it pivots off of that, takes the three development scenarios and estimates out costs for future infrastructure or potential. So that's before you, planning is here to answer questions. So am I and do you just can we have a memo previous mo not related to do the minor master plan from the county executive right we have the executive branches. Yeah, we have in April 4th. What's their position on that? 2022 memo that they are not recommending the implementation of an UMP to address downtown Bethesda's infrastructure needs this time. I think that the UMP had moved forward on a pace that was slower than the redevelopment that was occurring privately. Much of what is occurring in Bethesda was occurring through private contributions through their LATR or through frontage improvements for site plan things that were regulatory and nature. And so by 2022 the plan was already five years old and so the thoughts on moving forward. found it interesting that the fiscal impact statement was based on the ump that the executive had decided not pursuing previously. But you know, I appreciate the fact that they submitted the fiscal impact statement. I just wanted to make sure I confirm that. Okay. No. Councilmember Drona? Yeah, I just, are there any comments from planning? I think about the statement. Have you had a chance to take a look? This talks about additive square feet or anything. Yeah. Feel like it's worth spending a couple seconds on. Sure, so I think, you know, we on on the monitoring and tracking website for Bethesda now, we have a list of all of the CIP projects that are recommended in the 2017 plan and their current status. And as Ms. Dunn pointed out, there are, you know, there's been significant public investment in bike lanes and in planning stages for BRT and the capital Chrystantra tunnel under Wisconsin Avenue. And then there have been a lot of improvements made. Again, is misdone pointed out as LATR improvements and front-end improvements. So a lot of the CIP items that are recommended in the plan are in have either already been implemented or in the process of being implemented. I think we would all like to be implemented sooner rather than later, but I think they're moving forward with development. As always, I don't think we have any big ones before us. This year, but next year we'll have a lot of those come up as we do the full CIP. Yeah, one that probably won't come up before us is recommended by the county executive, unfortunately, notwithstanding it being mentioned here. To my chagrin, this is the capital question trail, tunnel under Wisconsin Avenue that the executive has decided not to pursue based based on a number of factors including but not limited to the cost, but I just wanted to note that. It was mentioned. Obviously I have advocated pretty strongly for the capital question trail tunnel, but that is not something that has been included in the CFP. Yeah, and I would just note, it does say that no school, they don't necessitate any school buildings. So that's a chair of the education committee. I was happy to see that, but you might have some people that disagree in the planning area about that, but interesting to see. All right, thank you. Appreciate that. All right, I don't see any other comments from colleagues. Do you want to just do a rundown of next steps and then we can take a vote and move forward. Thank you. Right. So this minor master plan amendment schedule for the council is that it will actually have its work session next week at council on the first. And the reason for that is we will cover everything the committees covered. And it gives us the opportunity then to post a resolution representing all of the things that the committees decided. That would get posted the next day Wednesday, allowing a week online for people to check it. We'd come back on April 8th for adoption of the Master Plan Amendment. One thing to note, this minor master plan amendment will be followed by the changes to the Bethesda overlay zone as we've been discussing. The public hearing on that is April 1st. The work sessions will be then following the budget. And there will not be a sexual map amendment following this minor master plan amendment because there are no specific changes to zoning on specific properties. There are recommended changes to the way certain things have worked like the cap but no specific property level changes were made and so there will not be a sectional map amendment. I think that pretty much covers it. Great. Okay. Councilor Drone. I'd meant to say this at the beginning but I'll just say it now at the end. Appreciate the work but the one to emphasize the importance of the five-year comprehensive monitoring report that we talked about at length last time. You know this is obviously a lot of works been done bringing by the community members and development community to try to come out with some, I think productive recommendations. Everyone agrees we want more parks. We want something to be come out of this this time. But also, you know, as we're looking in the report, making sure that as the development and redevelopment does occur, we're really tracking any potential unintended consequences like displacement of naturally occurring affordable housing areas and how that's being monitored. I just want to make sure this report, like we really come back in even in the interim if you're noticing some trends that you come back and you mentioned it to us, I just wanna emphasize that and appreciate the work and appreciate Mr. Duh. Thank you. Appreciate that. I spoke quite a bit at length in the last meeting and made some specific recommendations of what we could include in other reports. We could specifically look at related to the five year comprehensive report and there's broad agreement on that. I think we need to hone in specifically on what to include to make sure that we are being as comprehensive as possible and to make sure that we can actually follow through and fulfill what we commit to fulfilling in terms of the report. I think both are important and appreciate that being noted and the follow-up that's occurring. So with that, appreciate all the work and we will take a vote, all those in favor of the minor master plan as amended. That is unanimous, read nothing. We will afford along to the full council for review. Okay, thank you. All right, thank you. We're going to move on to item number three on our agenda. We're going to skip the save ZTA-25-01 on self-storage and take that up as the last item on our agenda. We're going to welcome Miss Nidil, who has joined us I see on screen for the balance of the agenda I believe we are moving forward on zoning text amendment 2503. I expedited approvals, commercial and residential reconstruction. This is the Zoning piece of the commercial to residential. We're not going to discuss today the incentive piece. This is just the expedited review and land use process, though was part of the broader package that was introduced and referenced, but the focus of today's conversation is specifically on the commercial review. Time is important, which is a key aspect of this in terms of the approval process. It also matters here. This opens up some of the projects wouldn't even have been allowed to move forward as residential or as housing. So this both expedites the process but also makes it possible for some of these projects to even move forward at all because some of the underlying restrictions would have prevented a commercial to residential conversion to take place at all. And so this attempts to address both. With that, I'll turn it over to Miss Nidil. I keep looking over to Council staff and Council staff is virtual today. I'll turn over to Miss Nidoo to walk us through the packet and we can take up the items on an item by item basis. All right, good afternoon committee members. Sorry, I can't be there with you in person today. So as noted, this CTA is part of the more housing now package. I did include a link in the staff report so that the members of the public can go find all the different staff reports and when each of those work sessions are. So this CTA, 2503, will do a few things. First, it will create the commercial to residential reconstruction use, as well as an Exprited approval process and then reallocation of FAR. We had two public hearings on this actually. On March 11th, there was both an afternoon and an evening public hearing. Page two of the staff report summarizes a lot of what we heard. Test Mondaymoney in support noted that this would bring young talent back to the county by creating needed housing supply and developers testified that the lengthy approval process can make financing difficult. And so having an expedited process will make a lot of those projects more feasible. Test-m opposition did note a negative impact on already crowded schools as well as losing walkable retail spaces and then some testimony with questions about parking and traffic as well as some store-mortar management. The planning board reviewed this and recommended approval unanimously with a few amendments, which I will discuss in a minute. There is a climate assessment as well, which noted minor positive, basically minor impacts on positive, some negative on carbon sequestration and community resilience. And then lastly, the RISJ statement found that it could not predict which group of stakeholders would benefit, and therefore could cannot predict the impact of the ZTA. So I've now jumped to page three and if the committee is ready, I will dive into some of the proposed amendments. The first is, as noted earlier, one thing that the ZTA does is it reallocated FAR and going going back interviewing the Zoni Ornans, Council staff does recommend a change here because of how FAR works in these zones. It would actually make more sense to change the cap in the specifications for density table, because that's what's really limiting the residential and commercial piece here. So that language is here in the middle of page four. And what this would do, the recommendation here is to strike that language and instead amend the cap, probably by striking it, although I will come back to this amendment in a minute. So that was the first one, is sort of a technical change to how you're going to allow more residential density in these zones. And then a second piece of that is including the GR zone as introduced. The CTA was only NR and E OF in looking at the different employment zones. The GR one would actually be really appropriate here. It's another employment zone and it could benefit from that increase in housing near places of employment. So that's a two-part amendment for amendment one here. Okay, any comments from planning on that? Specifically on the GRZ. On the GR, Robert Cronberg for the record, we believe this is something that should have been included, makes sense to include GR for that threshold density issue. Okay. Without objection, we will agree with the recommendation. Amendment 2 is about the intent of the employment zones. So if you look at the zoning ordinance, every zone and every family of zones, say what the intent is, which is how we decide what's allowed and not allowed in every single zone. The employment zones overall say permit non-residential uses, including office technology and general commercial uses with limited residential use at varying densities and heights. And then if you go to the top of page five, you can see the intent statement for each zone, so the GR zone, the NR zone, and the EOF zone. If you read these, once now that we would be allowing those office buildings to convert to full residential, the intents of these zones has really changed. So Council staff agrees with planning staff here that it would be a good idea to amend these intent statements given that there's going to be an increase in residential development being allowed. Which overall still works. It doesn't change the zones too much. There's still going to be employment focused areas. The idea here is that employees should be able to live near their jobs, which reduces commute times, reduces traffic, helps the environment. So there's still a lot of benefits to allowing this use in these zones. It's just the intent statements aren't going to match as well. If the committee is uncomfortable with that change, Council staff did provide two alternatives, one of which is allowing a higher percentage of household living rather than eliminating the cap. So instead of saying there's a 30% cap, you could say there's a 50% cap on Rose Floreia. The one issue here is technically that might be difficult for developers because the FAR in these zones is much lower. And the second option, because we heard a lot about the disruption to WAPWN neighborhood retail, is considering whether you want to keep the NR zone in here, which is a little more neighborhood retail from its name than the GR and EOF. Overall, Council Staff's recommendation is to just revise the intent statements, but I wanted to provide those two options as things for the committee to consider. The Council are finding his house. When I start by thanking the Blanning Board, I thought there recommendations were right on spot. So I'm truly thank you for being a partner with us. And I'm glad you caught this day's that Councilmember Fritton and I did not. So I appreciate you for that. And I agreed with with council staff and the planning board of pretty much working on a many the intent statements and keeping simple that way. That's just my recommendation to the committee. All right. I'm comfortable with that. Let me see what Councilor Drona thinks. So, Mr. Ndue. Your problem. No problem. That's what he wants me to do. Yeah. My phone does at least. Yeah. Siri. Mr. Ndue, I just, So we're on the intent of the employment. I felt like you kind of merged the expansion of use discussion a little bit in that what you just described. But did I miss here you or? Yeah, it was a bit of a puzzle I apologize. So the recommendation here from planning was to revise the intent statements now that these zones are no longer going to be employment focused or they will still be employment focused but allow a lot more residential than those intent statements in flock. So if the committee had decided we do not want to revise the intent statements, we don't want to change these zones quite that much. One alternative is to keep in place that 30% cap. not want to revise the intent statements, we don't want to change these zones quite that much. One alternative is to keep in place that 30% cap but lower it so you could have more residential. The issue that's that first bullet point on page 5. The one issue here is the FAR is kind of low so it might be difficult to get the level the amount of residential projects that you you Alternatively, you could keep the GR and EOF and amend those statements But leave the NR zone out of it the NR zone of the three says is intended for commercial areas with the neighborhood orientation which supply necessities such as frequent purchasing so it's the one one that's the most focused on those neighborhood walkable retail areas that we heard about in testimony. So those are two alternatives to revising all three intent statements. I appreciate that. Thank you. So yeah, kind of dovetails into the next discussion. So I'd be in favor of the last thing you said. I do not think the retail zones should be included here. It's something I was gonna bring up as a consistent theme. You know, these two story retail zones that, you know, I'm thinking of my San Tucci's Deli and Woodmore. I do not think we want to incentivize. This is obviously related to the discussion of the pilot, but not it could stand on its own, but it's another way of incentivizing it because you're speeding up the regulatory process, which I'm generally in favor of for conversions as an incentive, but I don't think we want to do that in the case of the retail. So my, because it's connected to that larger decision point, I would say my suggestion would be to do what you just said at the end, which would update the other two zones in the intent language, but not update the, the in our zone. Obviously, we'll have to determine at the committee and council level whether retail is included, but my view is that it should not be. So I don't know where to. So just to click, so the expansion of uses will take up next. This is really a question of even within what we're talking about now, how we address whether or not the way in which the zones are described in the zoning code are reflective of the change. I'll note, and it's noted in the packet, that we're only talking about vacant spaces here. So they have to be 50% vacant spaces, no matter what, in order to be part of this. That would not be vacant, but half vacant. But OK. Well, half full, too. It's half full, half empty. OK. But so I just I think it's important. We're not talking about all of those items. But the second piece of the expansion of uses, I think we got let's put a pin on that for right now. I hear the point of the preference would be, essentially option three, option one was what staff is recommending and then there's two other alternatives, so we'll call that option. One is the recommendation, option two is raising the percentage and option three is removing the residential cap for GR and EOF but not for NR. And your preference is option three. So just to make sure everybody is being reflected properly here. I agree with the council staff recommendation option one. That's where council member funding and sales was suggesting. So that will be two to one to move forward with the language at the top, which would be the top of page five. Mr. Nidoo, does that make sense? Is that clear? Yep, that's clear. That's what I heard. All right, so two to one vote, two for your recommendation, which is the top of page page 5 and 1 for what we're calling option three, which is the second bullet in the middle of page five, essentially, which is Councilor Mayer and Juwanda's preference. Also her recommendation, but not primary. But yes. Another option. Correct. Okay. And I will, by the time we get to council, possibly much sooner than that, have consent revised. What those revised intent statements could look like. Okay, so with that segment. Now let's make to expansion of uses because we were starting to have that conversation. I just wanted to take this one at a time which I think is important, but there is some overlap of at least philosophically on that which I totally understand. Mr. Nd, let's go through that please. Okay. So, for the expansion of uses, the way the ZTAG was introduced it included two uses. First was an office which is defined as a room. Set of rooms are building where the business of a commercial, industrial organization, or professional person is conducted. And then the second use that was included was retail sales and service. That's your combination, retail, your stores, your antique shops, your rural country markets. I know we lump office and commercial together a lot, but in the zoning ordinance, they are all very separate uses. So the ZTA does not include restaurants, medical offices, hotels, conference centers. All of those are different uses under the ZTA. We received a lot of testimony about expanding this list. Council staff does not recommend expanding the list of uses. The reason being that the intent of the CTA originally was to address the office vacancy issue. Then we had empty office buildings that could be repurposed. There may be other policy reasons also for preserving spaces for the other uses. For example, if you include restaurants or hotels or other industries, now all of those buildings and uses are open to this with the vacancy cap as well, of course. So Council staff's recommendation is to not expand it at this time, which doesn't mean revisiting it if this pilot goes amazingly. They could of course be expanded at a later date, but that's the Council staff recommendation for now. Now, there was received, again, going back to this neighborhood retail issue about removing the retail use. I think this is what councilmember Dawanda was hinting at. So council staff did note that in the packet, but for right now, as introduced, it is office and retail. Office and retail limited to the retail that you were noting. Yes, the retail is in as it's defined in the zoning ordinance. So retail service establishment, combination retail, I believe country markets are in there. Yeah, it's important to know because when people in retail, it sounds like the broad definition of retail, there's a limited definition of retail in what is introduced, the question is whether or not to expand, that to broader retail. broader retail, yes, to other uses. The main ones we've heard about are things like restaurants, hotels, banks, those types of uses, but council staff's recommendation is to leave it to the limited retail that is in here and office with a consideration for the committee to discuss the retail that is in there already. Okay. And I probably don't want to. Council, I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I've heard of interest of multiple colleagues. I will start with you. I'll start. So as I kind of already started, I'll just continue. And then we can have the discussion. Kind of weird. I'm not going to look there because you're not. That's not where you are. You're at the camera. So I'm going to orient this way. This is the first for me. Yeah, so I think when most people here office to conversion, they're thinking office buildings. And I think that's how it was the public. If I went down and did one of the, you know, J. Lino used to go. When most people here office to conversion, they're thinking office buildings. And I think that's how it was the public. If you asked if I went down and did one of the, Jay Leno used to go and ask people like, what's the embarrassing questions? Like do you know the 50 states or whatever? Like if you asked the person on the street, they would think like, yeah, people aren't going to work. Everyone's doing Zoom. There's buildings that are not better empty. we need to do something about them. So I think everyone broadly agrees with that. I do not think people are thinking that there are two story retail place where their favorite shops are would be in that category. Even in places where they are half full or half empty, you know, 50%, which I live in an area where that is common in the eastern part of the county where there are because of the cost of rent for those lease spaces, because of other factors, the pandemic for certainly, obviously, was a factor that you may or may not have different businesses in and out of the shopping center and any given point. That doesn't mean that there's not a deep desire for those retail shops in those communities. And so just to step back about what this would do, this would create an incentive, an expedited pathway for some of those shopping centers where people want those shopping amenities to be there to be converted into housing. A major complaint we got this in Thrive, I still get it today all over the county, particularly in parts of the county where there are not enough amenities, is that we get all the housing, we don't have enough amenities, right? Just to oversimplify it. There is, it is a legitimate concern. I will raise the Burton'sville Crossing, which is a huge success story of an area that is this type level, it's one level retail shopping retail shopping that was abandoned and not used for years. And there were a lot of ideas and a proposal, well let's just put housing there. And people were like, no, we need, I need my sprouts grocery store, I need my, and now, I don't know if you've been over there, but like it is awesome. And I was there for the ribbon cutting for sprouts,. You've got a brand new gym opening up. You've got an Ulta, which is my preferred girls, my daughter's, you know, store of choice. And we had to do a lot. We had to put money in. We had to work with the developer. We had to do a lot of things. So my concern is, that would have been lost if we converted it to housing or if we incentivized it, incentivized that to be converted into housing. We need housing, but I don't think we open up enough areas here in intent with I think the sponsors intent as I saw it, which I'm supportive of creating a pathway, an expedited pathway for office, truly office conversion. The neighborhood retail, I do not believe is an appropriate incentive structure here and I feel the same way in more about the pilot, but I just wanted to lay that out. So my suggestion again would be that we're taking a significant step here of moving the offices along the faster path, but I don't think we want to it for some of these retail, even though it is limited retail, it's still significant enough. So that would be my suggestion. Appreciate that. I'll note, Bernadale Crossing is a very good example. I'll note the county didn't do much on that. The state did the work on that. Three and a half million dollars that the District 14 team put forward to facilitate that process. That project does not move forward without the state stepping in and doing what the District 14 team did. And credit to Senator Zucker in particular for his efforts. But that was $3.5 million incentive of taxpayer money that went in to facilitate the community benefit that is now there. That is a success story, but it does highlight the fact that if you want certain outcomes, you in many ways have to incentivize them if the market is not going to provide the benefits to the county in general. But I appreciate that the point I'm'm glad that Burnsville Crossing was specifically noted and do think that we should acknowledge the credit where it's due, which is really not the county, really is the state, because they stepped up in a significant way to address what we were not seeing in terms of public benefit for that community. Councilmember Fennigen's house. you, and I appreciate that concern from Councilmember Yawondo. I do. Let me just start by saying that I support the staff recommendation. I do not want to expand this even more than what it is right now, so I was one. But I wonder if the planning board and planning staff can talk a little more about the retail and not Ms. Lee Wu talked about it but the difference between retail's because I think it's very confusing. Restaurants are not including. That's one of the things that people think of but they're not. Perhaps you can expand a little more. I'll try a little bit, but I will say that we can, when the ZTA was introduced, our understanding was that this was really geared more towards the office conversions and not kind of the broader perspective of retail. So that said when the planning board does provide approvals, it's typically non-residential. So it's a little bit a much broader category. So I like the way that Miss Na'Nadoo kind of separated the retail functions, kind of the broader retail functions and the office part of it. So I'm not sure if I'm answering all the questions that you that you had but we do agree with council staff on this one that at least where this initiated was was a focus on on the broader and more specific as well office conversions. And I agree with that I mean my main number one intention was definitely office that's in a soul with councilmember Freetzen. Definitely not expanding anything as it was suggested by some folks during the public hearing, but I'm open to have it just as it is right now and keep an eye on it, but I do hear your concern. So, you know, and I can do you have a strong feeling here. Well, it is absolutely the case that the focus of the ZTA, the intent of the ZTA was commercial office. And that is what was before. I personally would be open to expanding it, either here or in other cases, based on limited circumstances. Exactly what those limited circumstances are. You know, I haven't been fleshed out here. But I do think that, you know, vacant commercial retail is also a problem. And, you know, something that is not supporting or helping. I don't know of a lot of people who are desperately interested in maintaining open storefronts that are not being filled. I think people want filled storefronts or they want productive and constructive uses. Having said that, this was introduced to be office to commercial. There's no amendment here. You know, there was public testimony that this item is addressing there's no proposal that's on the floor so we can keep it as it's drafted. It doesn't sound like there's an interest in limiting from what was introduced. There just isn't an interest in expanding beyond what was introduced. It is to keep it as was initially introduced, which would not that include, among other things, a% or more vacant bank, or a 50% or more vacant restaurant. Yeah, because I just want to get to, so when the board took this up, we also thought it was primarily commercial. It was e-accommercial to rather, but I do think that, like you said, because, Freed's in there are some limited circumstances where that you could see brought in it, if they're totally vacant, commercial area. And you're like, so, but our bigger intent was true commercial to residential, but I can see there are opportunities out there where there are some very shuttered or primarily in this repair of vacant. I think we can we can take up that question in that issue and exactly what those limited circumstances would be separately and and take a look at that if there is an interest there, but there's clearly not an interest here. Which I, even though I would be, I would be open to it. But I'm confused now. There is an interest for me to remove the NR zone. I just want to be 100% clear about that, which is incurrently included in the ZTA. So I want to remove all retail from the zone. So we can elumerate what the limited retail are in the zone. Why don't we start with that? Because there is retail included in the ZTA. I understand everyone saying the intent was to not, to just be commercial building and office buildings, which I'm fine with. But I am saying the the old comment I made which maybe wasn't clear enough was that in the areas where you're going to have 50% of the current retail like that I don't think we want to incentivize that. So missing to do maybe correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is there is under the current language of the ZTA the in ourR zone is included. Yes, so it's two different pieces. So, excuse me. So one, the ZTA does include the NR zone, which we dealt with in the prior amendment. For this amendment, the ZTA, as introduced, has both office and the narrower, excuse me, sorry, the narrower definition of retail. Councilmember Jawando proposed removing the retail use from the ZTA, whereas council member Freedson and council member Fanny can what Salas want to keep the ZTA as was introduced and leave office and retail. And then all three of you agree to not that you don't want to expand the uses. Yes, no expansion. I'd be open potentially to think about expanding, but we'll take that up in a separate, if we take it up at all, because there's obviously not interest of that. So, you're proposing to remove the use of the NR. Well, that's the two separate issues. One is the uses and one the zones. NR is a zone. The uses. That was a two to one vote. It's already been reflected that you want to eliminate out the NR zone from being an eligible zone to be covered here. That even if it was 100% commercial, if it's in an NR zone, you would not include it. That's what you voted on last time. I thought when you talked about, that was the intent of the employment zone vote that you're talking about. That was the two one vote. The two one vote is what zone, not how it's, it's what zones are included and how those zones are defined. That's a zone question. The question that we're on now is the use question. Within a zone, E-O-F, G-R, N-R, whatever the case may be, of what is the use? And under the language as it was introduced, there is commercial, which is the primary, and then there are limited examples of retail that doesn't include, for instance, a bank or a restaurant, which is where much of the sensitivity was and is. That is what is included. If you're suggesting, which is fine, I just, this was not clear at first, I think clarifying is important to my work. I'm in discussion if you're suggesting to eliminate in all zones anything that has any retail in it. Then that would be the proposal that would be to that would be instead of the question of expanding, which is what was presented by staff and what was being requested in public testimony, expanding it to broaden the definition of retail to a broader retail category and additional retail categories, if your suggestion and your proposal is to restrict it to all retail categories, then that would be the proposal. But it's not related to the zone. Well, it is, but I understand what you're saying. It is related to the zone. I mean, Miss Dunn, who knows a lot about zones, is shaking her and saying, I'm right. So I'm having them know, welcome her to tell, say why I'm right. So to clarify clarify, if NR is included as a zone to which this applies, NR is primarily retail. Say it is 80% of the zone is probably developed as retail. It is really about those people in the community stores. So if you include NR as this being an eligible zone, then it is still a conversation about whether the retail should or shouldn't be. If NR weren't included as a zone, including retail would probably be a little less of an issue because you wouldn't be focused on these 15 minute living area neighborhood places that could be redeveloped as only housing, right? GR is a little weird in between. It's definitely a commercial zone, mostly retail as well, but it probably does have some office buildings in it, and it is much larger. It is supposed to be a regional draw. That's its definition. So a master plan has recommended it, where it's gone down in the county. It's a regional draw. It has multiple uses in it. So including GR does seem like it could make sense in component properties that may be less attractive right now that aren't thriving. But it is that weird interplay between having NR, which your right is his own, could have other uses in it but is primarily retail and retaining retail. So we're Councilmember Joondo wants to remove NR. If NR came out, maybe his concern with retail would be a little more. One is that we already made that decision. So the decision has been made of committee. It could be re-letigated, which is fine. But there are two separate decisions. That's how we have it laid out. Right, I understand that. The NR zone decision was made. You would prefer to eliminate the NR zone, which I understand that preference. The question now is the use and are you proposing to eliminate retail use that the limited as introduced in the underlying ZTA, which is different than how it was what I heard in the beginning and how it was presented by council staff, which was, should we expand the retail use beyond what was introduced, which could include things like banks and restaurants that are 50% or more vacant? That's the question. Right, and I had, I brought it up in the last item because I felt like I needed to, because were talking about the you know the retail issue. So yeah, I stand by that vote for the reasons I stated before. I still think it would be good to remove the retail. The council staffs, Ms. Nidu's recommendation, was against expanding, just to be clear about her recommendation. It was against expanding, which you are open to. she was not for that. And so what I'm saying is, if we've, yeah, I want this, it's a connected issue. But yes, in this use discussion, I think we should not include. So maybe I will ask staff to, what would be my appropriate based on what you're, I'm trying to accomplishment. What's the appropriate recommendation in the context of the uses? So if I'm understanding correctly, your proposal is to remove retail from all the zones included in the ZTA, which right now are the GRN, REOF, so it would only be office and not any retail regardless of which zone. Correct. The amendment that I'm hearing. Correct. As a backup to Ms. Dunn's point, if we got in our out of there, I am most concerned about the neighborhood retail, but because there could be retail in other zones that were included like GR, but I still am concerned about those. So I think, yes, that would be my proposal, given the intent of this was to focus on office conversions. I mean, in the planning board, planning said that. And I think that still gives us a broad category of folks. I think the other thing we've got to remember is that where you're going to have, and I just want to emphasize this point, where you're going to most likely have 50% or less neighborhood retail that's vacant are going to be in the very areas where the people are desperate for that retail. And it's not going to be because shops didn't open and closed. They open and close all the time. Entrepreneurs people have ideas. It's hard to run a business. But once you remove that, and whatever replaces it, in this case housing, which is also needed, that's not going to come back. And I think that's the concern. So I would, yes, that would be my proposal to remove retail as a use. In the use discussion, Councillor Mordredeux proposing eliminating retail from all the zones as a use, Councillor Mordredeux else. I'm sorry to money. Return to planning. But almost all office parks or office, traditional office places have some kind of retail that's associated with it. So there is a component of the retail, I think, that's why we were supportive of the office and the retail. Namaste standing, office was the traditional or at least what was being discussed here as kind of the primary conversion piece. But there should be some type of retail component to that. And as I understand the conversation here, expanding that use is I think what council staff was more opposed to and keeping the retail use as it was presented was something that was, I think that's why we were supporting that. I missed it. Okay. Councilmember Finance, I'll. Come on. Ha ha ha. Look, I'm very open minded. I will say, as from the very beginning has always been office, as Chair of the Economic Development Committee, we spent over a year just on the office. I hear your concern and we don't want to create situations that we didn't want. I appreciate and embrace small retails, moms and pops. I do. I am willing to compromise and say, take away retail, but I was keeping an eye on it and see if we had to come back and put it back at some point in the future. If that's what takes it to have full support here, but I do hear your concern. Nobody wants to eliminate those special small stores. That was never my intention. But the big business, the big office, yes. So if that's a compromise, I'm willing to take it. What's the practical and based on what you were a misschreumer of what you were saying earlier? What's the practical impact of a 100% vacant office if we were to remove this use? If they're including the possibility that there could be a piece of something that is in this category. And how common is that? I mean, I just, you want to think through what the full, I think in most office, at least from what we've seen over the years, for most traditional office parks, there's some type of ancillary, like ground floor, retail uses that do a company that, it's some type of grill or it's some kind of service for the people that live in that office complex. So, like a cafe or something that serves. Right, so civilly or primarily the office building itself. Right. That's correct. That's correct. And that's... You would not be able to convert that office under this scenario if you removed commercial. That's, I mean, a literal read of that, yes. That's cool. You could correct for that, right? Couldn't you just allow it retelling the EOF zones, for example, like to... Like, in their way to correct for that and get at the issue, I'm trying to get at, you probably could in the intense statement. Well, maybe that's. I think what he's saying is could for only the EOF zone, would you allow retail to be part of the conversion? Because you're only going to get such a minor amount of retail in an EOF zone compared to the retail you have in GR and NR. So it would be structured such that it applies, office applies to all three zones, but only in EOF zone. Do you allow also retail to be part of that conversion? Yeah. And my making sense, because that's what I think I'm hearing. Where you're giving an example, it sounds like an office park, which tend to all be in our EOF zones. So if you segment the spizone, you might be okay. All right, so I just, because as was suggested, that would have basically gutted the entire zoning text amendment. So if you addressed the EOF, at least that wouldn't fully gut the entire purpose of the entire zoning text amendment. So, to councilor Drona's point earlier, then we would be relitigating the prior issue. So we should probably reopen that back up. And the question would be the use in the zone. So to say you eliminate the retail use in NR and GR. Correct. Yes. Okay. So I'm not going to support it, but I just, I want to facilitate a way that you can move forward with your, you know, suggesting and you can support it in the interest of compromise which I respect. Could I ask for, we're going to reopen this discussion for an updated, just to confirm this is what you would like to do based on the feedback that we have now heard from planning to eliminate the retail use in GRNNR. And I want to make sure from planning and from this NADU that that would address that issue and is clear and then to confirm with Councilmember funding and so on that she agrees with that. I just ask one question to suit. Are there currently no office component in our in GR zones? there could be office buildings in those zones, yes of course. Could be a small tax office. I mean, you would still have... zones. There could be office buildings in those zones, yes, of course. Who is a small tax office? I mean, you would you would still have the same potential issue that you could have some type of ancillary retail use in those buildings. That's why I'm not going to support this. However, If you include the EOF in it, that's almost every building in EOF. Every office in EOF has some modest, limited use, and that's what I'm concerned with. What was originally proposed would have completely gutted everything. So this would at least not totally undermine all of it. And again, gutting and undermining just in context of you don't get the extra-died review, right? No, but that's the point of this, I understand. That's what I'm trying to say. But the point of the extra-died review is to turn it into housing. So just to be clear, if there's a tax office, I'm gonna go back to Sanctuary Woodmore, because I'm thinking about them hungry. if there's a tax office above the San Tuchis, okay? You're not, it's still gonna be there. It's not, this isn't restrict saying that that retail use cannot be there. It's just saying that if redevelopment were to, it would not be part of the redevelopment for the fast track to housing. That's all, that's all that's saying. So we're not kicking any retail out. I just wanna be clear. saying you're saying that, but I just, what it would mean is that for those mostly residential retail places, that would not be considered as an incentive to fast track redevelopment to turn those into housing and that which would have the effect of removing those retail businesses. That's my goal here. So, but the primary is still correct. So I so the proposal Mr. Do you didn't say anything but it would be to remove retail as a use from GRNNR. Does that make sense? Yes, that is perfect. I had not to complicate things further. Sorry. Is there might also be a way I can go back and think about some wordsmithing if there's a way to say it's an office building with let's say ground floor retail to say that that's okay rather than eliminating retail in the GRNNR zones instead you're saying if that retail is just a part of the office building and not the whole use. I have to look back at like how towards Smith that but that is another option you could think about. That would be much more elegant if you could figure it out because that's the same goal of what I'm trying to get it. Yeah. So. All right. So you're going to work on that. Do you want as a placeholder to do your recommendation but it could be replaced if she finds a better alternative? Yeah, let's do that. Okay, is that where you are, Councillor, okay. So it's gonna be a two to one vote. It's gonna be to eliminate retail in the EO, or excuse me, eliminate retail in the NR in the GR to retain it in the EOF zone. However, it's going to be also the entire committee is tasking misnadeu and staff with finding an alternative that would address the issue in a more elegant way. Okay. Glad we flushed that out. Now I'm happy to support the ZTA. Hey, it's about compromising. Go ahead. All right, let's continue. Okay, so the next one is about mixed use, actually. There were questions about whether this will allow mixed use buildings. The definition of a multi-unit living, which is how it's defined in the ZTA, is a multi-use building, which is defined as a building with retail along the majority of the ground floor facing any street or open space and other non-residential uses. So, Council staff did just want to flag that here. That mixed use would be allowed in the resulting residential building, because that's part of the definition of a multi-use building under multi-unit living. But for that reason, since the intent was to create more housing, the committee may want to consider and Council staff recommends a cap on the level of mixed use. So the example Council staff recommends is limiting the non-residential uses to 30% of the resulting residential building. And I just took that number from, it's the sort of the reverse of the cap that existed in the NR and EOF. You're of course welcome to play with that number. Yeah, and this addresses the prior issue that we were talking about in the opposite way, to not prevent that from being part of the ultimate goal and seems like there's nods here. So without objection, this provides a level of flexibility to be able to address that issue. Next is the building height. So as introduced, the ZTA required a vacant building to be at least two stories high. The intent of this was actually to preserve those community serving retail uses, such as in those neighborhood shopping centers, although again, noting that they have to be 50% vacant. We get to get some calls and there's some testimony about vacant commercial spaces that aren't in a strip mall or in like a really tall one-story building. So Council staff has some recommendations here on page seven for the committee to consider that would expand the two-story limit. So I gave three options here. Option one is you could say at least two stories or at least 40 feet in height. So then you're capturing only taller buildings. And we assume that most of these will go through demolition. But if they did do conversion instead, that would get you more residential units. Option two would be to focus on transit as the council often does by saying it can be one story if it's in within half mile of a metro station. And then option three is that committee could recommend that the same square footage of commercial that was lost has to be replaced. So let's say you have a one story retail space. Now it would have to be, let's say you do four stories and because you got rid of one story worth of commercial, you have to have one story worth of commercial. So you don't lose that, again, neighborhood retail please that we've talked about a lot today. So those are the three options that Council staff is giving the committee if you'd like to expand that two-story limit. Well, I will say the decision made on the prior issue impacts this one. I mean, we still can take this up if there's interest, but it would be pretty limited if at all based on the previous decision that we made. My personal preference, if we were choosing among these options, the transit accessibility option would be the preferred option. If there was a reason to move forward with this, but as previously decided, in the interest of trying to stick to my own rules of not relitigating prior issues that you've lost to two to one vote on, I'm not sure that this is still relevant, unless Mr. Duhum mistake. And having said that, if I were choosing among these, I would say that the transit accessibility is the best of the options. But let me turn it to colleagues and then to miss the due to make sure I'm not missing something to think that this might be more relevant even with the Sony Texas amendment as currently amended before the committee based on a prior decision point. We'll just quickly say that the two-story limit was thinking about conserving or preserving the small retails that we were just talking about. And I understand and I heard very loud and clear the testimony of people asking for, especially the second point, the one story building within half an hour of Metro. I don't, I can't do it. I just, I wanna stick with what we have right now. In the future, I'll commit, especially in the economic development committee to focus on retail, study on retail as we did with office. I commit to doing that, but at this point, I just cannot support. So I leave it as it is. Thank you. Yeah, I would agree. I think if anything we could have gone higher, I think you're whatever suggestion you said of three, you know, making it taller. Forty feet. So I'm saying two stories or forty feet kind of being able to pick, right, I would be option one essentially yeah I don't know many neighborhood retail that are more than two stories so I'm not I think it kept what we did previously I think covers my main concern so I don't think we need to do anything unless you tell us there's something we're missing yeah I missed it because you just I mean unless I'm missing something the vote was taken before to limit this, this would have been if we were essentially looking at other options of how to hone that in and address some of the broader categories. But am I missing, are we missing something because it sounds like all of us are in? You are not missing anything. I agree with you all that this, can, if we find the solution to the prior two votes, this will resolve itself. So. Okay, so no need to take action on this, but thank you for raising it and providing us with options that in this case, based on the prior conversation, are not necessary at this time. They may be at a future date based on additional decision points that we might make. All right. Technical amendments. Yes, everyone's favorite. So the technical amendment here is to reference the building type instead of the use in the red policy area discussion. And that language is in the last box on page seven. Okay without objection we appreciate technical amendments and we will accept that with that. I don't think there are any other items anything else that you have for us amendments or decision points. Not for ZTA 252503. Okay. I don't see anything from colleagues. We have the one follow-up. No action is needed per se in order to present this to the full council because the action was already taken by the committee. Although if there's a more elegant solution, we can effectively swap that out at full Council and I can present it on behalf of the committee even though it was a two-to-one vote. But I would present that because we did make a recommendation to look at an alternative to that. That's a nice answer for colleagues. All right, all those in favor of the Zoni Tech's amendment as amended by committee, please indicate by raising your hands. That is unanimous, three to nothing. And I appreciate that. We're going to move on to item number four, the subdivision regulation amendment, 2501, administrative subdivision, explicated approval plan. This is the accompanying SRA that goes with this ZTA, and I will turn it over to Miss Nidu. Yes, this one should be quicker. So what the SRA does is because ZTA 2503 created an expedited approval process, the SRA creates an expedited subdivision process. It's going to allow an administrative subdivision for the Commercial to Residential Reconstruction Plan. There is one amendment proposed here. As you know, there are several expedited approval plans now. ZTA 2503 combines them all into something called an expedited approval plan. So the proposed amendment here from Planning Board and Council staff is to do the same thing in the SRA where you consolidate all the expedited plans into one category instead of listing them out in different sections. You can see the list of the different sections on page two. For the expedited plans, we have signature business headquarters, biohealth priority campus, mixed income housing, and now the commercial to residential reconstruction. There are two options here. Council staff recommends option one because it has the benefit of not needing a new SRA every time we do an extended approval plan. What it will do is under the administrative subdivision, it will say subdivision application for properties approved under next but I had approval plan under section 735 of the zoning ordinance. Okay, any comments from colleagues? Yes. All right. More comfortable without objection. Okay. And that is it for the SRA. All right, all those are favor of the SRA as amended. Please indicate that raised your hand. That's unanimous. All right, we are good on that item. So we're going to move on to our final item today, which is item 5 of the day, but item 2 on your agenda, and we'll welcome the council. Yeah, number 1 in the heart of the council president, I believe, although she is a co-sponsor of the aforementioned two items that we just move forward, the ZTA and the SRA, but I imagine this one that she's the primary sponsor of Zoning Text Amendment 2501, self-storage, civic, and institutional use, also known as the Street Activation and Vacancy Elimination Save ZTA. The council president is the lead sponsor, along with council members fundingález, myself, council member mink, council vice president, juando, sales, cats, albarnas and luki. I think that's everybody but one colleague. And I will before turning it over to council staff to walk us through the packet, I'll turn it over unless there's colleagues that wish to speak to the sponsor and council president to make a few introductory comments. Great. Well, thank you very much. And I want to thank the PHP committee and my colleagues who have co-sponsored this. This is really an issue of getting rid of what have become known as ghost buildings, that are vacant for a period of time. And because of that, in many cases, especially in our downtown areas, it has an impact on the entire community, particularly on street activation and just community life. And so what this aims to do is to allow self storage and buildings that have been vacant 90% for the last two years with the provision that the ground floor is used by a charitable or philanthropic organization. As we also know, there is a great need among our nonprofit and charitable organization community for space and having something in a downtown area is also beneficial. But we are requiring site plan approval for this and that any structural improvements to the building be limited so that when there are conditions that may be suitable for a commercial building to be turned to residential, which I know this committee has just taken up, that there were no impediments to that. So that is it. Just thank you very much. Great. Thank you for your leadership on this issue. Let me turn it over to Miss Nadu. Oh, yes. So the planning board recommended approval of the CTA by vote of 3 to 2 actually. Some proposed amendments that staff will discuss shortly. The climate assessment found very slight impacts and the RISJ impact statement noted that it could not discern the anticipated impacts of the CTA. So I won't go through the big overview here since Council President Stewart already went through that. One thing I will note, this is another one like the last CTA where the definitions of the uses really matter here. So this CTA includes two uses. First, a charitable philanthropic institution and second, a cultural institution. So the charitable philanthropics, what we normally think of as our nonprofits, those are your private tax-exept organizations that provide services, research, or education activities, and then cultural institutions are things like our libraries, our museums, and our art galleries. And then also the ZTA has language that that use must have fronted a budding public sidewalk or other public pedestrian route. And the goal there, of course, is for street activation. And then lastly, the applicant must provide proof of vacancy. I'm sure many of you have heard of Coast Guard. That's a third party vendor that many many people use. But the ZTA is flexible in that the planning board can choose any third-party vendor to confirm vacancy or use evidence that is submitted by the applicant themselves. The vacancy here, very different from the last one. It is 90 percent. So these are very, very empty buildings, really the ghost buildings, as they called. And that must be in the two years immediately preceding the time of application. So a few proposed amendments here beginning on page four, but really on page five. First was a suggestion from the planning board that the applicant provide proof of intent for the community use. This is something we've talked about with other ZTs as well, where we have a use that we want the applicant to do, but unfortunately the way that zoning works is it governs the property, not the owner, not the tenant, we're not really supposed to talk about the actual person involved just the way that the building is. So, Council staff has a tweak here to the Planning Board's recommendation, which was to require proof of intent through a management or lease agreement. Instead, Council staff recommends an amendment where the applicant has to get a use in occupancy permit within two years of site plan approval. So this is similar to what we do with the expedited approval plans where you require a building permit pretty quickly. The idea here is that it'd be very difficult for a developer to do that if they did not already have a tenant in mind. So that's the first recommendation from Council staff. All right. First recommendation, we've got a thumbs up from the sponsor and the committee are all co-sponsors and we have nodding heads so without objection we will accept thumbs up. Council are drawn. I would say feel free to beat that. You know like you know but yeah we want to obviously appreciate the planning board bringing that up obviously if it's a key component and appreciate President Stewart for introducing, he component of the thing is that we have this entity in place and we want to make sure that it's in place since it can benefit. So thank you. Exactly. All right. The second is sort of like a technical amendment. So the way the ZTA is written, you have to have on-site loading and unloading facilities from a Boulevard Street classification. But if you go to the street and road chapter, there's actually several different types of boulevards. In addition, T&E will shortly be reviewing the master plan of highway and transit ways, which I believe will be adding some more. So the recommendation from planning staff, from planning staff, the council staff agrees with here is to say any of the Boulevard street classifications and that amendment is on page six. All right, technical change just to address the intent but to make sure there is encompassing of it without objection, we will accept that recommendation. And I believe that is it for this. Okay great. All right. All those in favor of approving this zoning text amendment 2501 with amendments. Please indicate by resurion that's three co-sponsor committee members and one non-vote of the council president with strong enthusiastic support. With that, we'll pass this along to the full council. That will be scheduled at the date that the council president so chooses. And that is all the items we have on our agenda for today and with that colleagues, we are adjourned.