03/18/2002 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Regular Council Meeting 3-18-02 Page 11 Council President Buckholtz said one of the things he read in the S.O.M. Center Road Widening Committee minutes is that Chairman Ilacqua mentioned to the Goldbergs how he felt about the parking. It has come up in several situations--we have a fairly restrictive parking requirement-- which may need to be looked at by the Ordinance Review Committee. Council President Buckholtz said he agrees that we need to look at areas much like Beta in general for rezoning. This came up once before where we had somebody very arixious to dive into a project and we voted it down. Council President Buckholtz said he is supporting this because he doesn't want to lose the opportunity that this presents. We should pursue looking at our ordinances for the future. Mayor Rinker said a Special Use Permit is something we have in our code that provides us with flexibility in dealing with situations that are a little bit different. The argument for those that feel this is a little bit different, the purpose of the Special Use Permit fits that. He thinks the evidence that came out in the course of Planning and Zoning Commission and Board of Appeals discussions is that this use really is not novel. The fact that it has the adjective medical on it is almost superfluous. It is a professional office use and the area is zoned for that kind of use. Terms of what the impact is- -and I think we have empirical data based from our own experience that the parking there is not a demand that has been placed on the property and we have input from a planner who provided this to the Board of Appeals that in a region across the nation, studies show that the nature of the use is comparable to any type of professional office and that the demand for parking is substantially less than what our code provides. He thinks there is a lot of insight underneath what the standards to show that in terms of any sense of a risk of what we are looking at in a Special Use Permit, that it really is a nominal issue here. On the other hand, this is a property that will become economically beneficial, it will be useful for revenue to the Village, the nature of use is one that will provide a service to our community. He thinks there are a lot of salutary benefits that we should not lose sight of. The building structure was constructed essentially for professional offices. We have seen in some of the discussion that when these issues of zoning come up, one of the concerns is where are these uses concentrated, where are they preexisting. In many respects, he thinks this is a very good match and hopes that it is a productive one. Council President Buckholtz said he had several conversations with Law Director Joe Diemert and has a document that Mr. Diemert prepared. He was always under the impression that it would be better to just rezone the entire area, but Mr. Diemert gave a synopsis where we actually exert more control on a given area through Special Use Permits because they are renewable every two years and we have latitude to go back and forth on them if necessary. The Special Use Permit explanation from Mr. Diemert will be attached to the minutes for permanent reference. Council President Buckholtz asked if there were any further comments. Mr. Ilacqua addressed Mr. Diemert and said he spoke to Jim Farmer at length about this. This was Mr. Farmer's thought: if in two years, this doesn't work (for whatever reason) and we pulled the Special Use Permit, is that clean and legal? And won't set a precedent or hinder us in any way?