Planning Commission Minutes 2019 01 10

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Planning Commission Meeting Minutes January 10, 2019 Page 6 of 16 Cindy Bedell, 662 West Willow Street in Louisville, stated that the mass and scale of this proposal was better than the past application. She still did not think that the two- story section fit in the downtown area. She noted that there was a jolting height contrast between the two-story structure and the one-story neighbors. Bedell suggested that the eye line could be improved by softening the roof on the northern section with a gabled roof or architectural features added to the top like the State Mercantile building. This was an iconic location and she thought we should take our time to get a design that fits and enhances the historic downtown. Moline asked about parking lots being obsolete by 2030 and wondered if the Transportation Management Plan would be looking at parking. Zuccaro replied that the Transportation Master Plan would not be looking at parking policy, however the update to the Commercial and Industrial Design Guidelines will look at parking, but not for downtown. Policy work downtown would require a City Council work plan to look at that item. Moline asked if staff had done downtown parking studies recently. Zuccaro replied that there had been several studies over the years to make recommendations on acquisitions and promoting biking and walking to implement the previous planning efforts to provide more public parking. Brauneis asked where most of the newly purchased parking spots came from. Zuccaro responded that the numbers came from the three areas around DELO, Lucky Pie, and the Corner. Brauneis asked Mr. Sinkey for his thoughts on the fee -in -lieu amount of $18,000 per space. Sinkey replied that creating a parking space in a small garage downtown would cost about $40,000 per space. However, the fee -in -lieu payments were for parking spaces that did not have leasable benefits for the tenants. He noted that there were many approved PUDs in town that were not being built largely because the economics did not support it. But in the scheme of things, $18,000 for a space was probably fair. Brauneis closed public comment and opened commissioner discussion. Hoefner stated that the Commission did not have a lot of direction from Council about what they did not like about the previous proposal. That said, the changes to the application do respond to the concerns from the Commission and the public from the last proposal. Moline appreciated the street music concept. He agreed that the northern portion did feel a bit out of place, but thought that it might help offset the two-story building from the historic buildings. He thought the massing had been improved and was no longer a problem.