Planning Commission Minutes 2016 07 14

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Planning Commission Meeting Minutes July 14, 2016 Page 13 of 33 Schonbrun says Balfour views itself as being on the leading edge nationally in senior housing, not simply warehousing folks, putting them in a box, feeding them the same meat and potatoes meals, and having ordinary and cheaper products. We have this balance between affordable rents and expense, but trying to anticipate the needs of seniors. As we enter the era of the baby boomers and the Eisenhower generation who are the current residents, they will become more particular. As a business matter, they are going to expect that. Moline says regarding the mine shaft you mentioned, the only constraint you had was avoiding that particular area which will be capped. There are no other subsidence issues. Obviously, you have looked at it from a geotechnical perspective. Williams says we had on -site drilling all the way down to the old mine workings, and all of those have collapsed which is good news for us on this site. The primary constraints for locating the building were the shaft itself and making sure we get that drive for the emergency vehicles in front of the porte cochere. They don't want to drive underneath it to access the back of the site. Moline asks about the need for a setback for the six compact parking spaces. Does it tie into the need for the fire lane? Williams says we could push the building back further and get those spaces out of the setback in front, but that puts the building further to the east. It pinches the back side. There is a single row of parking with the drive lane. I am not confident we can get all of the parking we need on the back side without encroaching in the rear setback. We are dealing with mitigation of that and make them compact spaces. Having spaces up front is important for visitors so they have convenient access to the building. We have a series of walls along the rows of lavender which we think will take away any kind of appearance that these cars are facing directly on the street. Moline asks if the fire regulations require the two accesses. Could you have a single access for fire access purposes and would that allow you to do things differently? Williams says based on our experience with other communities much like this, having more than one access point into a site is typically required. We just did it and we didn't ask the question of whether it would be okay to not have it. We do it as a normal course of business. We could talk with the fire department and see if they are willing to look at another alternative. Rice says I think it is no secret that the main controversy is the height waiver being requested. My questions are geared toward understanding the justification for that. If we went with the 35' limit, can you build a three story building there? Williams says it would be tight and be a significantly different level of quality and finish in terms of its appearance. The floor to floor heights would have to be reduced to allow that to happen. As Michael mentioned, there is definitely a trend at trying to get higher ceiling heights in these residences because people expect it when they are paying the kind of rent they are paying for these places. It would also require that we go to a flat roof. I don't think we could get these pitched roofs inside of a 35' limit. It would be a flat roof box with some articulation horizontally. It would be a definitely different project entirely. Rice says because of this need to not have people walk a great distance to get to the elevator or the common facilities, is that why you build vertically as opposed to going out? I appreciate the graphics you prepared that show the areas of where the roof exceeds the 35'. It shows me what I'm looking at in terms of the waiver being requested. How much of this over 35' is driven by the fact that we're going with sloped roofs? Williams says that is the major driver of all of this. 35' in a three story portion of the building comes just under where the eave line of the sloping roof. If we had a flat roof there, there might not be a need for the height waiver. Where the two story section is, we might be able to incorporate some sloping roofs. You are exactly right; the place where we get above 35' is where the roofs begin their slope. Rice says I was able to divine from looking at this is that if you take those ceiling heights and make them higher, then put the sloped roofs on, that's when we get the need to go over the 35'. Schonbrun says in speaking about the ceiling height issues. The assisted living apartments in this building will be a good deal larger than what we have in our first building, but they are still small. They will be 500 sf or 600 sf. The experience in our other buildings is when you get to