are also nature paths um that run throughout the open space area and around the rain garden so
that totals about a mile of walking paths throughout the site
yeah thanks lindsey and one of the things i'll add for the board about the walking trails one
of the things we did as we went through the community process uh at the suggestion of
councilman o'neill was add some connectivity to the lackman playground so there will be a way to
to access this city recreational area through a gate in our in our community lindsey can you just
tell the board briefly uh what this slide is showing in terms of the plans for the stream bed
yeah the photos at the top are existing photos of the stream um there are invasive plants along
the bank there are some dead trees and fallen trees so below are photos of the um the goal so
there's a list here of the things that would be part of the stream restoration so removal
of invasive plants, installation of erosion control, mat and plugs.
Excellent. And when you mentioned rain gardens earlier, are these some examples of what you
were testifying about? Yes, this is what we anticipate for the retention spaces.
Okay, great. Thank you very much, Lindsay. Thank you.
um turning very very very quickly board um i can get into more detail on this if you would like to
but these are the floor plans of the various units that are proposed around around the complex
these are going to be a mixture of one bedroom and two bedroom units the one bedroom units are
approximately 1016 square feet this two bedroom unit here is 1200 square feet and the styles go
So they're fairly consistent as you move from building to building.
This is the material palette for the exterior.
There's going to be wood cladding with some brick and some metal fascia.
And I'll pause briefly on these shots just so the board can see the difference in the styles of layout of the various buildings.
They're all going to look similar to each other, and they're all going to have a similar floor plan.
These are the various elevations.
Again, these structures are also designed to be a height that is compatible with the surrounding area.
These are some elevations, so the board can see that our height line is relatively consistent with what's around it,
and a rendering showing how we're going to fit in terms of the apartment complexes that are around us here, here, and the Goodwill facility back there.
And some additional renderings of what we anticipate the interior of the complex to look like.
I could very briefly ask Leslie Cunningham to raise her hand.
Mr. Klein, who's the next one?
What's it about?
Leslie Cunningham is the engineer who prepared the site plan.
And then very, very briefly, I have our traffic engineer, Andy, to give a very brief statement for the board.
That'll be it.
If the board does not need to hear from Ms. Cunningham, I can skip to Andy if the board would prefer.
I think you should go to Andy.
Okay, Andy, can you raise your virtual hand quickly, please?
And I will be as brief as possible, Mr. Chair.
Sure, sure.
You don't have to be that brief.
Andy Heinrich has been promoted.
Hi, sir.
Could you state your name, please, and spell for the court stenographer?
It should be coming in now, Chandra.
should be coming in now sure good morning good morning could you state your name please and
spell for the court stenographer uh my name is andreas heinrich andreas is a-n-d-r-e-a-s
heinrich is h-e-i-n-r-i-c-h and i'm a traffic engineer okay do you swear or firm to tell the
truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth i do proceed counsel thank you andy i think you
just mentioned that you're a traffic engineer? Yes. And did you perform a review of the anticipated
traffic impact from the 90 residential units proposed at 9-0? Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Can you
briefly tell the board what your conclusions were about the way that the traffic flow is set up and
what any impact this would have? Yes, certainly. As explained previously, the driveway will
intersect Busselton Avenue opposite Northeast Boulevard at a signalized and existing signalized
intersection. We anticipate that the proposed development will generate about 650 vehicle
trips per day. That's 325 in and 325 out. The morning and afternoon weekday peak hour traffic
volumes are estimated at 51 during the morning peak hour, mostly exiting traffic, and 59 trips
during the afternoon peak hour, mostly entering traffic.
To provide a little perspective with what that traffic volume means,
Busselton Avenue currently carries 2,800 to 3,000 cars an hour
during the morning and afternoon rush hours.
So this increase in traffic due to these multifamily homes
is going to be negligible compared to what currently exists on Busselton Avenue.
And there is currently a curb cut and traffic light at the intersection that this site borders?
That is correct.
Okay. Thank you very much. Does the board have any questions?
I think we're fine at this point. Do you have someone to adopt your testimony, Mr. Klein?
Yes, I do. That was where I was going to go next. I just wanted to add before I do that for the
board that we did meet with the Greater Busselton Civic League. Their letter of support is on the
screen before you. And to adopt my testimony, I'd ask Jack Beinenfeld to raise his virtual hand.
Good morning, sir.
Hello? Hi, could you state your name, please, and spell it for the court stenographer?
Yes, my name is Jack Beinenfeld, B as in boy, I-E-N-E-N-F-E-L-D, as in David.
Right. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Proceed, counsel.
Thank you very much. Jack, did you have a chance to listen to my presentation this morning?
I did.
And do you adopt my statements as true, correct, and your own, as if you've been given a chance to more fully testify?
Yes, I do.
Thank you very much. Mr. Chair, we're happy to answer any questions. And as I mentioned, we do have the site engineer available as well.
Sure. So questions from the board?
No, Chair.
No, Chair.
Questions from our attorney, Hillary Emerson?
No, Mr. Chair. Thank you.
Questions or comments from the virtual audience?
Yes, Chair. Brian O'Neill had to hand up.
morning uh councilman mr o'neill can you unmute yourself good morning mr chair members of the
board could you could you just state your name and spell for the court stenographer
uh yes brian o'neill b-r-i-a-n-o apostrophe n-e-i-l-l i'm councilman for the 10th district
which includes his property right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and
nothing but the truth yes please proceed sir okay thank you um this property is zone
C1 commercial. I believe it is the right, the correct zoning for the property. And
for many reasons would be preferable for the community and my district at large.
The meeting that was held, well, let me first start out by saying the meeting,
Mr. Benefeld is a good landlord. His family, his dad, himself, I'm sure there's children,
they run a good business. People show up and say at a meeting, you know, I'm giving you a
testimonial to how good they are as landlords. I agree with all of that. I don't agree that this
I don't agree that this is a nuisance property. My office is right across the street. I've never had a complaint about this property. It is quietly sits there waiting for another development, and that's what we have before us today.
is a nuisance property. I've never had it. My office is right across the street.
What we don't have is a CA-1 development. We have a stream running through it and rain gardens for meeting the water department's requirements for stormwater.
They're beautiful. They'd be beautiful in a commercial development as well, and they'd be required.
And that's basically the open space that we have here.
So I would just ask the board to put aside the nuisance property aspect of this, put aside the open space of this, because it would be the same in same situation if it were commercial development.
What I what I do see is and I submit it as an exhibit, an article that was well read and well written about this project in the Philadelphia Inquiry and Daily News just a month or two ago.
There seems to be some statements that this is loaded with open space.
If it were an apartment building and needed a variance just for apartments, it was already zoned for apartments, I would say it's an overbuild.
But this isn't what's in front of us.
This isn't trying to get multifamily and a variance for some reason or other, dimensional or whatever.
This is a commercial property.
And it is built to the hilt.
I have about 60,000 homes, residences in my district.
40,000 of them are single family.
20,000 of them are apartments.
There's no need for apartments.
There's been no testimony about that.
There's been no testimony about the hardship that's required of why this can't be used as a commercial property.
So when I look at if somebody were to say to me what.
What kind of residential is needed, it would be senior housing, it would be 55 and over condominium developments, single family, smaller for people that are downsizing or younger people that that want to start smaller.
That's not that's not the case.
I have no problem with the neighbors. Mr. Bienenfeld, Henry, Jack's father, built the condominiums right next door, probably a little over 40 years ago.
They're well built. They've never been a problem. They line up right to the south of this.
The Bienenfelds have a lot of apartments, not contiguous, but to the north, very close by.
They're great landlords. Not not an issue. But there's also embedded in that inquire article statements that this is better have better have apartments than than than industrial warehouses.
zoning. And that's not a choice here. If we were here with industrial, I would have the same
problem with somebody trying, I don't think they could. I think it's a red herring because I don't
think this is possible to be an industrial warehouse site. But the fact that people have
that on their mind worries me in terms of what were they thinking. The Busselton Civic, I've
been associated with them for 44 years they have never agreed to apartments where there was
commercial zoning never once there are no if you look at the there are no nearby neighbors
that come out to these to this uh uh these meetings so what you have is possibly people
worried about an industrial something or other not ever going to happen and people who were there
to be helpful and talk about Mr. Bienenfeld as a landlord, but not an issue in this case.
The issue in this case is, should the property be used as it is zoned? And I believe it should.
And from a zoning standpoint, not only is it not a nuisance property, but this is so far from the
least variance for this commercial property, that it's not even a close call. So no nearby
neighbors. So I'm responsible. I have to make a determination.
So I'm, I'm responsible. I have to make a determination. Is this the right thing for
that property? There's not an inch of this property that isn't part of, well, I shouldn't
say an inch. There's very little of this property that is not parking or apartments. It is packed
in and you couldn't put another apartment on there without going higher. And the, and that's
a non-starter, but
I just want to get back to the fact
that this is a commercial property
should stay that way
and I have not seen one good
reason why it
can't be. Thank you.
Thank you.
Are there other...
Mr. Chair, can I briefly respond?
why don't we wait to see
if there's anyone else and you can respond.
I'll give you the last words, okay?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Is there anyone else in the virtual
audience sir oh yes chair hand up jack o'hara okay good morning could you state your name please
hi could you state your name and spell it for the court stenographer
hello jack o'hara please unmute yourself wait for the chair good morning mr o'hara could you
state your name please as spell for the court stenographer yes mr chairman uh jack o'hara o
apostrophe h-a-r-a right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the
truth i do proceed sir uh the community uh the rco is uh in support of this uh project uh the rco
met with the developer twice prior to the presentation to our membership, so three
presentations in total. There was never a mention of anything other than the apartment complex that
we were considering, and my understanding is it's at a high end. I don't know if you'd
describe them as luxury apartments, but I think they begin at $2,000 a month, but they're on the
higher end of apartments. And we welcome that. There was not a request for commercial. There was
not an objection from neighbors about this. And neighbors did attend. Yes, Mr. Bielefeld does get
a lot of support from other tenants of his, but the neighbors did come out and they were in full
support of this. Mr. Bienfell is unlike some other developers in the area. He is literally
his business is in Busselton. This is not some out-of-state developer.
So we welcome that. He has other properties that have good reputation. So that is important to us.
So it's a quality project that we've screened pretty thoroughly and did not get any negative statements for commercial.
No one was no one was requesting this to remain commercial.
This is the first we've ever heard that that mention.
So we as an RCO, we did our homework and the community heard it and it was pretty supportive of the project.
So we welcome it. Yes, that's my statement, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Howard. Is there anyone else in the virtual audience?
No hands here. Mr. Klein.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We certainly appreciate the councilman's comments. And I just want to respond to two things. The first, in terms of the concept of density for this lot, I won't put the chart back up, but I would encourage the board to go and look at the exhibit we included that compared our density to other projects that exist.
I think for the acreage of the lot that we have, we're actually providing a less dense product than what is available in the neighborhood and did that intentionally.
On the issue of the hardship, to the extent that it was not articulated clearly enough, the hardship here is the unique shape of the lot, which, as I showed the board, goes in and out and is very long, narrowing as it goes through the site.
The history of its non-use and the fact that there is commercial saturation already in the area.
As Mr. O'Hara referenced, no one at the community association had a desire for additional commercial.
And the fact that we only have a single point of ingress and egress means that the site.
And the fact that we only have a single point of ingress and egress means that the site lends itself better to a residential component than the more continuous in and out that would accompany a commercial use.
Thank you.
Planning Commission.
Thank you, Chair Bergman, and good morning.
David Effecto, F-E-C-T-E-A-U, with the City Planning Commission.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Yes, sir, I do.
Receive, please.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. Chairman and board members, the comprehensive plan recommends no change to the commercial shopping center zoning at this location.
This property completed its civic design review in July of 2023.
The Civic Design Review Committee's advisory recommendations are not an expression of the City Planning Commission's recommendation or opinion regarding zoning variances, special exceptions, or other discretionary approvals associated with this proposal.
We would argue that the unusual configuration of the lot and the presence of a large multifamily development adjacent to this site create hardships to this parcel's use under the current zoning.