Planning Commission Minutes 2016 07 14

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Planning Commission Meeting Minutes July 14, 2016 Page 9 of 33 not live there yet, but this building predates it. This is a location where a building is adjacent to residential. The Balfour Retirement Community is the oldest building and is located directly across Plaza Drive from the proposed project. The Lodge at Balfour is the building you are most familiar with along 951h Street. It has the cottages that back up to the street with the larger building behind. The Residences are directly to the south of Hecla Drive and is the newest of the three buildings and part of the overall Balfour campus. Our proposed Balfour at Lavender Farms will finish out the Balfour campus in this part of Louisville. SITE PLAN: It is a U-shaped building with the courtyard oriented to the south, connecting to the detention pond and open space directly to the south. The building is located generally in the middle of the overall site. It exceeds the required minimum setbacks by quite a bit in each case. The arrival zone is off two spots on Plaza Drive with a drop off location. We have guest parking along the front part of the building and then staff parking and overflow guest parking in the rear. We do not anticipate the residents of this community to have vehicles. One criterion in locating the building on this site is the existing mine shaft of the old Hecla Mine. We will put a new cap on the existing mine, but we are not allowed to build any vertical structure or construction over it. This is a constraint we have to work with in terms of locating building on this site. HISTORIC ELEMENT: The historic element is down in the corner and there will be access for the public. We believe this element was part of the system to bring coal cars up and down out of the mine. FLOOR PLAN: The main plan has a lobby and club room. Balfour tends to have a room called the Jockey Club which will have an outdoor porch, so residents will have a front porch associated with their environment. The dining room will have access directly to the courtyard on the south side. On the first floor, the resident wing is on the northeast side. The administrative and other amenity functions are in the south wing. SETBACK: The front yard setback is 20' and the guidelines ask for 15' along Plaza Drive based on it being a local street versus a collector street. We have 10' setbacks required on all other sides. The building is placed generally in the middle of the site. The front is about 53.5' back from the property line. On the south side, it is about 21'-23' and it is the two ends of these wings. This is double the minimum requirement for setback. On the north and northeast side, with a 10' setback requirement, the building setback ranges anywhere from 31' up to 80' which is 3 to 8 times the required minimum setback. I don't have an exhibit that speaks to the north- west setback, but it is in the neighborhood of 40' which is up to 4 times what the minimum requirement would be. Part of the important part of the criteria for locating the building was getting the site circulation emergency access ready for the Fire Department. We want to make sure they are satisfied with our access points. They can use either entrance off Plaza Drive. There is a lane in front of the driveway so that the larger vehicles can get past without doing under the porta cochere to drive to the back. There is a variance request to pave to the property line to that the fire trucks can back up. SECOND AND THIRD FLOOR PLANS: The second floor is the bulk of our resident lodging. There are two elevators. The third floor is contained to the middle of the building. The east end has been moved back so it steps down on that end. Assisted living residents tend to be less mobile than those in independent living. We want to reduce the amount of travel distance from a resident's apartment to the main amenities such as the dining room. Keeping the travel distances as short as we can is an important consideration. We have a material sample board. The accessory building which we call a character building was inspired by the idea of an old ice house or smoke house that accompanied a historic farm. This is an iconic element as part of the entrance to the community.