06/17/2002 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Regular Council Meeting 6-17-02 Page 8 Council President Buckholtz asked closer to residences? Mr. Bell said exactly. If everyone recalls, there is a wetlands issue to the north of this site. This a 10.16 acre site (if I remember) and the wetlands prohibit us from moving further north. So, we had to shift it somewhat to the south. Rather than going the 100' that would be allowed, we've come about 55-60' closer. But the building profile, which is something that we really worked hard on the limit, grew from (I think) 170-' to 312'. The impacts are that the footprint grows horizontally east- west from 170' to 312'. The building (at least for now) comes (I think) 60' closer to the property line. Once we get into some substantive planning about how the building looks and where the parking is, it may move closer-I don't think it would ever have to move to the 100' that's allowed, I think it would always be further than the 100'. I think that our range is somewhere between where it is now and 130' off the line (somewhere in there.) One of things that has been very hard to articulate (and I know the Village has taken a crack at it with Mr. Hovancsek's office and we've tried with KA) and somebody gave me a really good way of loolcing at it: when you talk about the height and the perspective that that height makes from the back property line, we've proposed a 56- foot tall building that because of the size of the footprint we could push 262' away. That 56-foot building 262' feet away is the same height visually to a 6' tall person as a 25-foot building 100' off the property line. That is the best way to illustrate the difference we've had. Our whole goal here was to bring a Class A office building, a multi-tenant building that could be marketed as a Corporate Headquarters and design it in a way that would have a minimal impact on the residents and on Highland Road. So what we did was, we made it 4 stories so we could shrink the site plan, we didn't add a story to get more square footage, we added the story to shrink the footprint so we could best push it as far away as we could. Then, as you mentioned a moment ago, what we were able to do in the Planning Commission meeting, at the request of some of the residents and Planning, is we were able to actually take a 50 car landbank variance and move the buffer from the allowed 60'--we could have parking 60' off the line--we'd originally proposed it at 130'-no, I'm sorry-it's 78'-we've now pushed it all the way to 148' at its deepest and spread that all the way along here so iYs 130' at its minimum and 148' at its depth which happens to be opposite the profile. So, we think that though it's 4 stories instead of 3, it actually has a much lesser impact visually on the residents on Highland Road. The smaller footprint is what allows us that flexibility. Council President Buckholtz asked have the landbanked spaces already been approved as a variance? Mayor Rinker said no, thaYs not a variance. My understanding was that Planning and Zoning (as was presented in the course of the Planning and Zoning meeting) understood that that was going to be part of the proposal. So, when Planning and Zoning approved, it approved with that modification. So, that's not a variance. That's actually, iYs adding to, it's an enhancement that they have provided. And a lot of that largely was in response to a number of residents--especially the 3 properties immediately south--that were concerned. Again, Planning and Zoning having approved that, nevertheless--they also put in the contingency that its approval was going to be subject to Council's review of the Board of Appeals' decision. I think that it's fair to state that being aware of what the public sentiment was, that these gentlemen made the proposal that if we could get the landbanking and Planning and Zoning to agree, everybody ends up with more green space, more distance between rear property line and the beginning gist of the parking lot.