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HomeMy WebLinkAboutRIVER MODERN - PDP - PDP150005 - MINUTES/NOTES - CORRESPONDENCE-NEIGHBORHOOD MEETING (5)NEIGHBORHOOD MEETING NOTES Project: River Modern - Single-Family Homes and School Date: April 1, 2015 City Staff: Seth Lorson (Planning) Stephanie Blochowiak (Environmental Planning) Joe Olson (Traffic) Sarah Burnett (Neighborhood Services) Clay Frickey (Planning) Beth Sowder (Social Sustainability) Wes Lamarque (Stormwater) Presentation Summary • Applicant Presentation o Have made numerous changes since last meeting  Centered main drive aisle  Increased number of units from 28 to 30  Removed alleyways behind northern most buildings and reoriented garages to face south  Moved structures away from western property line  Removed structures from Spring Creek buffer area  8’ fence proposed along west and east edges  Detention area will treat stormwater  Providing a connection to Spring Creek Question (Citizen): Why did you draw the adjacent properties in such funky shapes? It doesn’t look like it is including everything. Response (City): These are the shapes of the surrounding multi-family properties. Question (Citizen): So it doesn’t include character of surrounding areas of the single-family neighborhood and its character, so it’s misleading. Question (Citizen): Are the drawings to scale on the building renderings? Is that a one way street you are showing or is it a two way street? Response (Applicant): It’s a drive aisle. It’s a 16’ drive aisle. It’s 31’s curb to curb with a 16’, two-way travel lane. That is the city’s local street standard. You’ll see it in Pinnacle and other areas. Question (Citizen): That’s pretty narrow. You will have to drive around cars. How wide is a firetruck, 8’? If a firetruck is 8’ and you have a 16’ drive aisle, how is a truck supposed to pass a car? Response (Applicant): The drive we provided is acceptable to PFA. Question (Citizen): When will these units be available and when will the purchasers have input on kitchen design and finishes? Response (Applicant): It is tough to say since they just went through review. Do you like quartz or marble for your counter tops? These will likely be available sometime next year and we will be more defined with that then. Question (Citizen): Is it in a floodplain and will there be flood insurance required? Response (Applicant): No, it won’t be in a floodplain. There’s a blue line that is shown on the map that represents the floodplain line. We can look at this after the meeting if you would like, but that line represents the flood plain and we won’t have any units in that area. Question (Citizen): But which line is the buffer and which is floodplain? Response (Applicant): The green line is the buffer and blue is for the floodplain. Question (Citizen): Where is the developer located? Response (Applicant): Our offices are in Denver, next to the Art Museum. Question (Citizen): On the Montessori school, I will presume you will make it clear the main entrance is in back? Response (Applicant): It’s a Waldorf School. Question (Citizen): I just want to know where the entrance will be. Response (Applicant): You bring up a good point. With the queueing that is happening in the proposal, they would drop off in the back. The front of the school will be on the east so if people were to walk up they could access the school on the east. You will get trained quick on how it works. The front of the house will now be east and the back will now be on the west. The northeast corner will be the main entrance. Comment (Citizen): I’d like to make a comment about the fence. We have taken a great deal of care to integrate this new development with surrounding developments and I think if one puts an 8’ fence around the new development there will be a feeling of isolation. It is a question of not letting one in or out. Just knowing that the new houses will have an 8’ fence will not solve the problem and would not be compatible with what goes on in the rest of the development. I think it is an absurd idea. Question (Citizen): Is an 8’ fence allowed in Fort Collins? Response(City): 6’ is the max. We haven’t discussed the fence yet since the final site plan isn’t done yet. Comment (Citizen): So it’s a moot issue. Response (City): There are ways to request modifications such as if neighbors want an 8’ fence, then we the City and the developer would be open to that. However, I think from the City’s perspective we would want neighbors to work with neighbors on the size of fence and this would be a condition of an approval for this project. Question (Citizen): I think it is a handsome development and you have done a professional job but in terms of parking I think what I heard there is actually .3 off-street parking spaces per unit. Am I correct about that? Response (Applicant): There are 21 off-street parking spaces. Question (Citizen): You included driveway spaces so you subtract 2 from that parking ratio and you get 2.7. Then included in that 2.7 are the 2 spaces inside the garage, correct? So there is .7 excluding garage? Response (Applicant): Yes. Question (Citizen): In terms of density it is a 3.7 acre lot and it’s 30 units total but the density is 7.63 dwelling units per acre, but does that include the floodplain? Response (Applicant): Yes, and it counts for calculating density in other developments since that is how the City calculates it. Pinnacle also has a floodplain and it is 7.6 dwelling units per acre. Question (Citizen): What about the other development to the east, did they include floodplains in their density calculation? Response (Applicant): They are City owned and are not included in this calculation. I think the property owner dedicated or sold that land to the City. Comment (Citizen): Great, I was just making sure it was apples to apples. Response (Applicant): The area for the childcare facility is excluded from the density calculation, though. Comment (Citizen): I live in Brookhaven and live next to it and it so happens I am the first and most southeasterly unit and I have this 7’ or 8’ retaining wall and sit in a pit. I am tucked in there and imprisoned and when you put this development in it kills my place. If we want solar, our sun is gone. I have a couple of issues. I would totally be against the fence, it is too imprisoning. I am sitting down there so I have 2.5 stories against me. I appreciate all of the considerations the applicant has taken, but please don’t mention wildlife there. I have never seen wildlife there. It is so intensely developed, there is no wildlife there anymore. It’s laughable, but that is how it has to be. The 8’ fence and 2.5 stories is a killer to the 12 units immediately adjacent to the west. I don’t know, could you stop the half story, that would be valued. I would appreciate if I ask one of you if you want to live in that, you would have to say no. Please don’t do that to us. It’s a big deal. I’ve lived there for 23 years. Response (Applicant): I agree with your comment about the fence enclosing your property. Comment (Citizen): It’s more than that, it imprisons us so thank you for that consideration. Response (Applicant): You mentioned a concern about the sun, one of the requirements from the City is we do a shadow study. It will show you the shadows to expect that would be leaving our property at different times of day and different equinoxes. Comment (Citizen): You can probably game with what the density number is but the effective density is higher than the surroundings. You can tell just by looking at other areas. If you look at what’s going on it’s different. The development looks huge and overwhelming. Question (Citizen): This development is occurring in the Low Density Mixed Use Neighborhood zone district and what is happening here in vacant land is a super high dense development. Wouldn’t it be more practical to consider the entire neighborhood when considering compatibility as opposed to selectively comparing to other dense developments? Response (Applicant): We are well aware of how to calculate the density as it is well expressed in LUC. There is a mixture of single-family homes and higher density residential units in this neighborhood than ours. We tend to match up closely with some others but if you look at the broader context there is a mixture of density and that is good. If all you had was apartments or single-family homes it becomes boring and unattractive and undesirable so this is a way to keep neighborhoods strong. As to our density, it is not high density. High density would be high-rise or mid-rise. We are not proposing single- family homes either. But having this density does fit securely into what the code allows for this property. It would allow up to 9 dwelling units per acre, which would be denser than what we are proposing. Once we get beyond the density calculation it gets down to how people want to live. The fact is suburban style subdivisions aren’t as desirable and density is desired and that is proven in the numbers. Comment (Citizen): Looking at the map it looks like, I live in Indian Hills, and it strikes me that we will get a lot of people who want to skip the stop light on Stuart and cut through residential streets in our neighborhood. That is a concern to me. Response (City): You live on Cherokee? Comment (Citizen): I live on Seminole but I would like to keep this area a neighborhood comprised of single-family homes with kids. Response (City): I can’t say with a straight face that cut through traffic wont’ happen. Comment (Citizen): I am concerned about property values and all of the people moving into the area. Response (City): Does that happen a lot today? Question (Citizen): Was a traffic study required? Response (City): I had the same question, is that happening now? Comment (Citizen): Yes, cut through traffic has increased. Response (City): What we would want to do is we would want to work with the neighborhood through our traffic mitigation program to work through that issue. Comment (Citizen): I have noticed it lately and some people have driven fast on Seminole. I look at this and I see the street connection as a cut through opportunity. Response (City): As far as the development review process, there are standards for traffic and that is the criteria we have to use to evaluate the development. If they meet it we can’t say no to the development. But again, this notwithstanding, if there are issues we have tools to try and help mitigate this cut through traffic. I can get your name and follow up separate from this meeting. Comment (Citizen): Same with Dartmouth Trail in mornings and afternoons. Response (City): We would support anything to prevent cut through traffic. Comment (Citizen): I live directly on Stuart and I pull out on Stuart with 3 children on half acre and one of your tools has now been placed in my yard and that is the school zone lights. I am curious about the Traffic Impact Study and my understanding is that the traffic is a concern, which is why the light turns on during Lesher school hours. I believe the City did a Traffic Impact Study that instigated the placement of that which indicated speed on Stuart was high. The photo radar van lives outside Brookhaven. It’s entertaining but a concern by a family that commutes by bike and foot. Stuart is a collector but it’s also a bike route so a low stress bike route is something I would want. Response (City): Let me try and answer that. You are correct, we worked through our traffic mitigation program to place that school zone light. I apologize for the light shining in your window. Most people like them except people who get light impact and we will look into that to try to lessen that impact. As far as this development goes, there are criteria to evaluate all of those impacts. The criteria is also about if adjacent intersections can handle the additional traffic and how much traffic will the new development generate. They meet all the criteria. There will be impacts but it’s within acceptable levels according the code and that includes the schools. Response (Applicant): We will make the Traffic Impact Study available to you. It’s part of our submittal. It is included online. We are improving traffic for the school by removing it from Stuart so it’s safer and better. Comment (Citizen): I have some comments. Thanks folks. First of all is the density. If you compute this without the school, you can only put 20 units on here. You are overbuilding. Also, I want to talk about the drainage report. It says from the preliminary report for River Modern the property is approx. 4.4 acres and is located in north portion. It is located within a FEMA and City of Fort Collins 100-year floodplain. The existing site drains north and discharges into Spring Creek. From right here, right now, this drains to Stuart and then into Spring Creek. So urban drainage and flood controls recommend a 4- step process for water protection that focuses on reducing runoff volumes and treating…and implementing long-term sort control. The four-step process refers to management of smaller, frequently occurring events. Take note of that smaller event on July 27 and 28 1997, 14.5” of rain fell in the Spring Creek drainage basin. On the 28th of that July, more than 30” had fallen by 8:30 PM, filling detention ponds to capacity leaving no storage for the additional 6” that fell from 8:30 to 10:00 PM. I don’t think this is in your competition there. What I’m telling you is, this is very important, if you live here it is important. That night I walked down to Stuart and Stover that is on this side of Stuart. The floodwater was 15’ high on the house and a gentleman was outside with a raft and floodlight. All you could see was water down towards College. ”What are you looking for,” I asked? He replied, “Bodies.” 5 people died that night. There was over $200 million in damage. Water comes down off of here and goes into water quality pond which is just a sediment pond and a good place for mosquitoes to breed and we still have West Nile Virus to deal with. So what happens if this flood came down like it did in 1997, that quality pond would be gone. These folks here would try to get out and the fire department couldn’t get anywhere if there’s any traffic at all. Anyway, I will let someone else talk. They said an 18” pipe goes north somewhere which goes into railroad right of way and then into Spring Creek. I asked Wes, where’s the 24” pipe? It doesn’t exist. That’s a typo. The pavers, that’s a good one. They have pavers but they’re asking for a variance for the amount of pavers. They said you need 50%, the City says you need 25%, the applicant says they have 15%, I calculate they have 6%. Response (City): To start, I will summarize our criteria for new developments. Our criteria cover two areas: we protect downstream properties from 100-year events. That is something that has a 1% chance of happening every year so that is what we design to. The other we look at is minor storm events. This site here for the 100 year storm, we have a general rule that you have to detain your water. What that does is slow the peak flow down so it can slowly release downstream so it prevents flooding and reducing peak flows. Here it would be in Spring Creek. This project is unique since it is next to a major creek. Same with these other developments, this is a little bit complicated. The master plan for Spring Creek has a peak flow and time associated with that flow. It happens over 2 hours after a storm starts. For 2.5 hours they will flow to Spring Creek. As a staff, this is 5 people that discuss the site with to get this judgment on, we basically have the developer prove this could happen. So for this site’s drainage it would be more beneficial to have the flow from this site leave the area before a big flow comes down, as it would remove water before upstream water comes down, reducing peak flow. It if were to detain, it would increase flood flow in Spring Creek. This is hard to understand sometimes, in these areas at lower ends of watersheds, this is what you will see most of the time. For minor storms, we require Low Impact Development and water quality treatment. This tries to clean the water, remove contaminants and heavy metals, and mimic natural hydrology. These standards also encourage infiltration. The water that would fall on pavement now has to enter through pervious pavers or bio retention ponds. These are new standards. Bio retention will take the water and will remove a lot of the soil and create an infiltrating system that brings in gravel and an underdrain and it does two things to help water absorb and clean the water. This site is meeting that requirement. We have a requirement that 50% of the impervious area has to be treated with Low Impact Development. So in this area, all of it will be draining into this area on the north portion of the site and the pond will be sized to treat entire site. They are going above and beyond that requirement and by doing so we are more flexibile with their pervious pavers requirement. Generally, 25% of their impervious vehicle areas of parking or driveways have to be pervious as well. They came in and proposed initially around 15% so that is under our requirement. So our requirement talks about two areas: an infiltrating device and pavers that treat 25% of their impervious surface area. They work in conjunction so since they are willing to treat 100% of site we are willing to reduce that requirement for impervious surface area. I made a comment last week to get as many pavers as we can so now they are around 20%. Also, the reason is because there are utilities that conflict with pervious pavers so we would rather not put those above water or sewer lines and not create a cost burden in the future. Overall, this site meets our preliminary plans and I will go further into detail on the pipe system. That was a misprint. There is no railroad right of way around here. It probably came from another report. We copy and paste a lot of these reports so this probably was copied in error. It has no effect on this site it was just a mistake. I think what you are talking about is computation 12”, 24” and those are areas we will look at, and these pipes can be upsized easily. These pipes have to be built to carry to 100-year flows. So the whole site has to have conveyance for 100 years so we have to make sure 100 year flows get to Spring Creek. Question (Citizen): There is runoff from the creek and it doesn’t flood. It seeps into that grass and where you are talking about on the north of the site is where the runoff goes. That is where tree branches fall and debris piles up and that is where it floods. How are you saying that isn’t in a floodplain? Response (City): It is, but no structures will be in the floodplain. Question (Citizen): How can you build when it is in a floodplain? Response (City): Hydrology is tough. You cannot build in a floodway, you can build in a floodplain. We are not building in either. The buildings are south of the floodplain. The insurance is a non-issue. What you are saying about flooding happens all the time. Spring Creek is mundane until a storm event. The design of where these floodplains and floodways are done by Federal government to prepare for the worst event. There are things you can put in floodways and floodplains like sidewalks, etc. So you are right, but the homes will not flood. Question (Citizen): My main concern is you are saying this is built in compliance with other areas. It only has one road in and out. There’s a new development around here where you can go in on one street and out on the other. If you go to Prospect, there’s a cul-de-sac. There is no way in there for ambulances or firetrucks to get through there. If those homes are facing the stream, their garage is in the back, how do they get to those people? Response (City): The project has been scrutinized by PFA and emergency. PFA is one of the reviewing agencies and they provided comments that some elements needed to be changed and they will review it again. They were not satisfied with everything in the first site plan but they will review it again so it meets the codes. Question (Citizen): I don’t know how you can have one road in and out. How are these people supposed to turn around if there is parking in the street and turn around? Comment (Citizen): So you know the natural area Brookhaven has, during the 1997 flood, the stream changed its course. So you’re looking at this little thing like a flood situation but it can change the course of a stream and it did in that area. You can talk about the ponds and all of that but if this is a really huge flood the stream will go where it wants to go and it may change and go a different way. Response (City): What I am going to do is read from PFA comments. Copy and past comments here. Every perimeter building will be within 150’ access and that is what is required to provide emergency services to this site. We work with PFA and they highly scrutinize everything and they find it meets standards. We would be happy to put you in touch if you would like to ask about that. Also, the turnaround is a hammerhead rather than a cul-de-sac. Response (Applicant): The most important thing is that the firetrucks can get in. Question (Citizen): No, getting out is really more important. Comment (Citizen): My wife told me to not be frustrated, angry or nasty so I won’t. I have a serious concern about traffic coming onto Stuart. Well, not so much traffic but parking. I’ve seen what happened with the Summit and everyone said they met the parking requirements but it was a bad idea. No one knew they would park in neighborhoods and that residents would have to get a permit to park in front of their own house. I would like some kind of assurance that people won’t park on our street. I know it’s impossible since you can’t predict the future but I think changing the density might help and I mean number of vehicles in there really. Response (City): I’ve been working on parking a lot lately, it’s an emotional topic that you wouldn’t’ expect. The Land Use Code requires 2 parking spaces for 3 bedroom units and 3 parking spaces per every 4 bedroom unit and this is for single-family attached housing. Currently, they have 30 units, 16 3- bed and 14 4-bed units, they are providing 34 parking spaces for the 3 bedroom units and 43 for the 4 bedroom units. That is not including their driveways, so they have 20’ driveways for 2 car garage. We don’t count those towards parking. When you have cars in driveways you can’t get into the garage. Just because we don’t count it doesn’t mean driveways won’t be used. I believe in all of the parking work the applicant has done and that this place has ample parking compared to the Summit and more than the other two developments next to it. If this turns into a problem, the City would be willing to implement a residential parking permit program that privatizes parking. Comment (Citizen): Too late, it’s already there. Question (Citizen): How about you do something before the problem arises? Response (City): These are all public streets. You have to prove there is a problem first. Question (Citizen): I just wanted to know what the landscape plan was for the rear portion, will you keep tall grass or will it all be bluegrass? Response (Applicant): That is a work in progress. The concept is a natural landscape similar to the lots north of the creek. There will be no bluegrass. We will be adding native plants and trees but we will have to balance that with the floodplain. That is the direction we’re headed. Question (Citizen): For that sidewalk, will you put a gate in that fence to keep the cut through bike traffic to a minimum? I am afraid if you leave it open and pave the sidewalk we will get a bunch of bike traffic as shortcut. Response (Applicant): We are open to putting a gate in. Question (Citizen): Is River Modern the final name? Response (Applicant): We’re taking input on that. It doesn’t need to be marketed that way. Every project needs a unique name for the City, but it could be something else. It’s open for discussion. Comment (Citizen): I live on Cherokee and you can look onto this property from our house. But I just want to say something: I am not for or against this proposal. I am a realist. This land is more likely than not to be developed. I am glad to see the proposed value of homes is so high, this is good for our property values. I am happy to see they are putting a non-profit school on their property. Both of my kids have attended the River Song Waldorf School, for 6 years, we bike down Stuart so we are your neighbors and I am not 100% against development, I think it is forward thinking. I think the City looks out for us and we hope you make the best decisions for us. I will miss the horses and foxes but this is 2015, this is progress. Comment (Citizen): Thanks for taking a beating I can’t imagine living in something so high density. I missed the first meeting but why did it go from 26 to 30 units? And how did it go from $240,000 to $400,000. Why? I can attest to the water issues as I am a cyclist and I go through it but the water can get pretty high. The water gets high and I can’t figure out why you would build there. Whoever commented with the 3 kids, I live in Brookhaven and I sit on the board and we will put up signs for people to not go through our streets since it is private property. I hope traffic will use the bike path and not our neighborhood. In the past everyone uses that as an exit so we are putting a stop to it. Every neighborhood now has an entrance and exit for bike path except us and we like some people, but I couldn’t get on the path due to all of the people the other day. You also mentioned the patrol car, don’t worry about him, last fall he was parked on the wrong side of the road in a bike lane and sleeping in his car in front of a no parking sign. I go over there and I say, you are parked in a bike path in a no parking zone, you have to move. He gets himself together and moves. This is the guy catching cars. Maybe he isn’t sleeping anymore. Response (Applicant): It was 28 units before and at that time, we weren’t certain about whether or not we would have the childcare center. What happened is the City asked us to align our entrance with Cherokee. This created more space so we could add a unit and when we flipped the units on the north side of the property, we were able to add a second half to unit. Question (Citizen): Could you do some backward thinking and go back to 28 units? Response (Applicant): Also, pricing was always in the $400s. Question (Citizen): Are you asking for any variances? Response (Applicant): Yes, for 3. The first is for the neighborhood sidewalks. We proposed doing attached sidewalks to keep consistent with the existing sidewalks along Stuart. The City’s new standards call for detached sidewalks with a tree lawn so we will have detached sidewalk since our request for a variance was denied. Our second was the driveway spacing between your driveways next door and our main access. This was looked at from a traffic perspective and our variance was approved. Question (Citizen): Do I get a say on the driveway variance? I would say no. Sometimes I have to go up on the curb to get into my driveway due to parked cars already. Response (Applicant): Part of what the City asked for was visibility. If you have cars stacked up it is tough to see so we would eliminate on street parking and that works well to improve visibility. Question (Citizen): That will put more pressure on my house. Do we get to vote on variances? Response (Applicant): We would love to see on-street parking in front of this and we may get some but we are hoping some of it will solve issues. It sounds like there are more conversations we need to have. The third was the fact that even though we are trying to align to Cherokee and we are 2.4 feet offset by trying to save some trees and a garage. That was the other variance that was supported so far. Question (Citizen): What about the detention pond, water quality and paver standards? Was that considered a variance? Response (City): No, a variance is where you can’t meet a requirement for this site. For this site, it’s not a requirement. Response (Applicant): For the pavers, we can add more pavers to get to the 25% if that is desired. We have tried to place them so roads are crowned so that all drainage will cross into pavers. The alleys are high on the driveway and low on the property so everything will run into pavers. We can add them into parking, on the dropoff area, and other spaces where there are no utility conflicts. We are meeting it and treating more water than required. It doesn’t require a variance. Response (City): The paver requirement would be an official variance. But our variance calls for equal to or better and they would be meeting it. Question (Citizen): I have two questions: what will happen to the old Waldorf school? Response (Applicant): The City owns the current building and so their intention is to sell it once the school moves out. Question (Citizen): Out of curiosity, what is the square footage of the footprint of the buildings? Response (City): Each side is 20x56, so that is half of the duplex. Question (Citizen): What is the total for the house? Response (City): 4,480 square feet for the entire duplex. Question (Citizen): What is total square footage for all of the units? It is so much more covered up than the surrounding developments but the numbers say they are the same. Response (City): There are 30 units of 20x56, so that would mean 67,200 square feet in total for the entire development. Question (Citizen): There was a comment from a gentleman from Brookhaven along the property line at the first meeting and I don’t think he is here. His home is recessed and he has a real concern with car fumes coming into his window. Response (City): I just want you all to know that all of the comments do go to the hearing officer. Question (Citizen): I have another floodplain question. I have a friend who used to live along Prospect and the creek and his house was flooded in 1997 and came very close in 2013. We were trapped in New Mexico then but other people had terrible water that was underground flooding basements. I am not convinced this will be out of the flood range. Was the 2013 storm a 100-year flood, less, more? Response (City): I am trying to recall, it was lower than what you would think. I think flows were 20- year flows. It was a lot smaller. The Poudre saw a larger storm event but Fort Collins was spared in that storm. Question (Citizen): My comment is the City is doing anything they can push this through. My comment is what do I have to do and you folks have to do to stop this thing? Everything is presuming they will actually build this thing. I would like to stop it. I don’t want it there. People have moved because of this. What do I have to do to stop this? Response (City): I gave your wife information on how citizens can contribute in the review process. Projects do evolve over time due to these comments. I encourage anyone interested to take one of those. Question (Citizen): First about water, for the impact study, does that take into account the impact of the new outfall on Stover? We live on Stuart street but we have I would say the last 60 yards of our property seeps water due to a well we have in high rain or wet summers. There are a series of wells, I did some investigating and there are wells along Spring Creek on both sides from the 70s. The State dug these wells to test agricultural products and how they affect wells. Has anyone looked into what is underneath the land? I would never build on the back portion of my lot due to the well issue. Response (Applicant): Yes, we have taken borings of the site and you can see it and we have stable soil. I’m not suggesting your experience is wrong, but the back portion of our site has stable soil. Comment (Citizen): From our house, there are portions that are sinking at a slow rate. Response (Applicant): The final engineering will have to respond to final test. Question (Citizen): Has the outfall at Stover been included in this development’s calculations for its stormwater impacts on Spring Creek? Response (City): It wouldn’t alter this development’s requirements. Comment (Citizen): There is a well on that property. Response (City): We don’t regulate wells and they don’t impact stormwater. Comment (Citizen): There’s a well on Spring Meadows, too. Comment (Citizen): I live next to the development, I have lived here for 15 years, and these neighbors will run off due to the increased traffic on Stuart. Some have already left. They said they couldn’t sit in their backyard and talk anymore due to all of the traffic noise. When I first moved here, you could pause at the stop sign on Stuart and go. But not anymore. When Drake had construction, people discovered Stuart. When I lived in a development like this back east, I was ready to have some space when I left. I would come here and shoot right down here and the light at Stuart sucks. You could sit through three lights before you even get to College. Lemay is not as bad. People are now using Stuart to come home as opposed to larger street. The front of my house has big windows. I know traffic is increased because I can see it. Your eye catches movement outside and I am noticing more cars out of my big window. I catch service people park and then turn around in front of my house. So this has really gotten busy. I love my property. Stats say people want to live like this, but I have a hard time with that. I have been there, done that and this is where I live now and I am not going anywhere. If this causes things to change, and it will, I am going to renovate my house so I can have renters. Right now this house next door has been a rental and has been for years and same with this one close by. You’re saying people don’t want ranch style homes but these houses sell without a sign going up. I do want to say, this is my question, it is about how this development will impact traffic. I will call you. Comment (Citizen): I have a couple of comments. It may surprise you I am a builder, I have done some development, I am a realtor, and I live right next to this proposed development. The first thing I have trouble with is it would be nicer as a field and we are giving this asset away. I want to hear why you are doing this other than money? This density, where we’re building, and it is so much more dense than other areas. I know in some areas people like higher density but this lot is so tight and it is too narrow and so there will be no yards so no families will want to live there. If it was up to me, if I would develop the site, I would try to build some houses with natural areas so I could break even. The number one issue is density, let’s cut that down. Traffic is another issue. Mr. Traffic is looking at how it adds loads to the street. This is rampant throughout city. We have a lot more traffic on College, Prospect, and Lemay without trains. The train will back traffic up on College, Prospect and Lemay so people use Stuart instead. Has anyone driven on Lemay during rush hour? This traffic on Lemay pushes traffic onto Stuart. So when you add 30 units and a childcare center, this will be a lot of traffic since everyone does everything at the same time. I think the density is too high and in addition the massing of the buildings are tall. They are taller than these developments on either side. Notice their renderings; these aren’t a fair representation of what they will look like due to the perspective used in the renderings. They are modern design with saw tooth roof, which is a slightly pitched flat roof that is very different from how it affects light than pitched roofs. There is more aboveground for square footage as than the townhomes adjacent to the property. Question (Citizen): Other than money, why are you doing it? Response (City): They will answer and then we are done. This meeting was supposed to go from 6-8 and we have done everything to answer your questions. My office is always open and I will talk to you at any time to talk to you about this. Response (Applicant): What originally made us look at this development was to help school find a new home. So that is why we’re here to donate the house to them. Question (Citizen): How about a bigger play area for children if that is your reason? I’ve never lived in something as claustrophobic. Response (Applicant): You asked and I answered.