Planning Commission Agenda, 2025-04-24

The municipal agenda for the Planning Commission meeting on 2025-04-24 is 👉here👈

Text Amendments

There are two minor text amendments proposed to the zoning ordinance. Both would take what are currently exceptional cases and place them under administrative review.

It is possible for an owner to appeal the requirements of the zoning ordinance to the appropriately named Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA). This is an exceptional action to take - it is expensive and the grounds for appeal are high. A typical zoning appeal would be for something like a special case where the strictures of the zoning make the use of some site for its clearly intended purpose impossible or at least excessively expensive. A recent case I participated in was for an old corner store, long closed, now located in a fully residential neighborhood. It was a store, it was clear that it was a store front to anyone looking at it. But the zoning ordinance says no-retail-in-residential-neighborhoods. The BZA determined it was a store front, that was its intended use, and the owner was granted an exemption from zoning ordinance's the prohibition. This is a better outcome for the neighborhood than a persistently empty building.

Window Wells

Another type of BZA exemption is a "dimensional variance". The zoning ordinance says this or that cannot be so close to a property line, or encroach on a setback requirement, etc... That's nice, but much of the city was built before 1926 when the racists of Euclid, OH established via the Supreme Court what is now American Urban Planning's most powerful tool: Zoning. In the elder days people built stuff on their property, and sometimes they did so creatively; very close to property lines, in hill sides, with front doors on the side, siting at angles to the street, etc... Today people still happily use many of those buildings. It all seems fine until someone tries to improve or upgrade an older property and then encounters the expectations of the modern zoning ordinance.

A very common case of "dimensional variance" is for window wells. To add space to a home the owner may finish the basement. For safety reasons this means adding one or more window wells. Window wells extend from the side of the house - very likely into the required setback of the property. As this use is an extension of the primary, intended, use of the home - residential - an owner can appeal to the BZA for an exception. The BZA has an established pattern of granting such exceptions when requested.

Given that the BZA has a pattern of granting the exceptions the proposed amendment would give the Planning Department the authority to review window well installation requests administratively.

Front Yard Parking

Parking in front of a building is considered bad urban form, and doing so almost always requires Special Land Use (SLU). Much like with the window wells and setback requirements numerous properties with pre-zoning front yard parking lots exist. As an established design these are grandfathered, and they can continue to exist, up until a significant change is made at which point they must be made "conforming". Conforming by ... sliding the building forward on the lot and putting the parking in the back? Yeah. Making such a site conforming could be ludicrously expensive, meaning a site is not modernized for fear of poking the zoning bear, or it may even be abandoned.

The proposed amendment softens the prohibition against front-yard parking, allowing administrative review of changes to sites with existing nonconforming parking lots. Owners of such properties will still be required to upgrade landscaping and lighting to current standards, but the parking may remain.

928 Wealthy St. SE

This is a Special Land Use (SLU) request to provide outdoor seating with alcohol service at Speciation Artisan Ales. The intent is also host up to ten outdoor events with live music each year. Both outdoor events and alcohol service (within three hundred feet of a residential use) require approval by the Planning Commission.

Portions of the existing parking lot, which are shared by on-site office uses separate from the brewery, were converted to outdoor seeing in 2020 in response to the pandemic. The Special Land Use request will formalize this existing use. The modification of the use of the parking lot creates a parking deficit of twelve (12) spaces of the twenty-four (24) required by the zoning ordinance [seventeen (17) for the brewery and an additional seven (7) for the outdoor seating]. As the other uses of the property - office use - are daytime uses which do not substantively overlap with the hours of operation of the taproom no conflict for the required parking is being considered.

Wellspring Church (811 Wealthy St SE) located across the street from the site has agreed to provide use of their parking lot during events.

Utilizing the discounts available in the ordinance for district parking (Wellspring Church) and for proximity to public transportation (Rapid #5) the deficiency of the site's parking can be waived by the Planning Commission.

The outdoor seating area accommodates twenty six (26) patrons. The seating area occupies what were previously five (5) parking spaces and are delineated from the parking use by planters and six (6) foot privacy fencing.

Estimated attendance for hosted outdoor events are 150 - 400 people. Event times will be during the normal hours of operation of the breweries' taproom, ending no later than 11:00pm in Fridays and Saturdays; no later than 8:00pm on Sundays. Driveways and the parking lot will be closed during events. Food truck parking will be on the west side of the parking lot with live entertainment at the southwest corner of the patio area.

Both Rapid #4 (Eastern) and Rapid #5 (Wealthy) are within the walk-shed of the site.

821 Cottage Grove St SE

This development proposes a three (3) unit residential structure on a Neighborhood Residential street in the LDR (single family) zone district. Thus, it is before the Planning Commission for Special Land Use (SLU). However, although the 2002 zoning ordinance remains, this may be the first residential development to cite the 2024 Master Plan [from which the 2028 (?) zoning ordinance will be created].

• The 2024 Community Master Plan's Future Character and Land Use Map designates this area as "Compact Neighborhood", finally abandoning the "low density" nomenclature.
• The 2024 Community Master Plan calls for the allowance of a greater variety of housing types in residential zones. Comparison to the old master plan and the existing zoning ordinance the "greater" means anything more than one? As that is what was allowed previously, at least without special dispensation (at least SLU).

The current site is "unimproved" - planner speak for "vacant, no structure" - and is accessible from a rear alley. The existing ordinance requires 2,000sq/ft for each dwelling unit, the site is 8,200sq/ft, so up to four units are allowable under Special Land Use; the request is only to construct three (3) units. The existing ordinance also requires a minimum lot width of 36ft, and the width of the lot is 52ft. The minimum greenspace required for multi-family (30%) will be exceeded, the site plan provides more than 47% greenspace.

The units will be laid out as flats, with one on each floor. The height of the proposed structure is only two stories (26ft), up to 2.5 stories (35ft) is allowed under the current zoning ordinance.

The parking requirement - of course, we always have to talk about parking requirements - of the current ordinance is 1.5 spaces per unit, so the requirement of this project is five (5) spaces. The project will provide 100% of the requirement through a five space parking pad at the rear of the property accessibly by the alley. The parking pad will be buffered from adjacent uses by a 6ft privacy fence. The project is not utilizing the ability to request a 50% parking reduction due to the proximity to the Rapid #4, nor is the project counting available on-street parking towards meeting the requirement. It would appear that, without a mandatory minimum, developers will build the parking capacity which they deem necessary or appropriate for a given project . . .

One particular of the design which the Planning Commission must address is the entrance to the lower unit. A section of the zoning ordinance known as the "Building Element Requirements" (this is section 5.5.07) requires that the primary entrance of a building be located on the front of the building, parallel to the street, and clearly defined. In the design of this development the entrance for the lower unit is located on the side of the structure. The side entrance has a sidewalk to the rear parking area, but no sidewalk to the street. The occupants of this unit will have no connection to the sidewalk or on-street parking. How will this unit integrate with the neighborhood, even for mail and package delivery, or be available for canvassers, etc?

Off-Street Use Parking as Second Principal Use

Let's just say it: AirGarage! And, queue the incoherent feral rage of those who feel entitled to park their private property on someone else's private property for free! They hate being charged to park by those gawd damn $%^@&@% capitalist scum!
Thought experiment: drive your car over to their single family home and park in their driveway. Well, that's fine, right? I mean, if you needed a place to park, and their driveway was right there; cool. We hold all parking in common, as a community, yes? . . . For real, don't do that, you might get shot. People who get spitting mad about something like parking are a gruesomely humorless lot.

How should the zoning ordinance address the usage of entirely legal and legitimate for-profit services such as AirGarage and AirPark by private property owners?

The nut of the issue is that for most uses the parking on a site is considered "Accessory". This is planner speak for a subordinate usage, a use related to a primary use.

Imagine with me a barber shop with X number of chairs for customers. The barber shop - the building and the business - are the primary use of the site. The zoning ordinance specifies some completely arbitrary number of parking spaces this barbershop must provide for employees and customers. The parking spaces required to operate the barbershop are a subordinate component of the primary use of the site; the parking lot is accessory to the barber shop. Use of the parking spaces is implicitly limited to customers and employees.

What if parking spaces in the barbershop's parking lot are provided for some other purpose? Let's imagine that the barbershop's owner realizes the amount of parking required by the zoning ordinance is far beyond what is actually required [this is nearly always true]. He decides to allow a friendly neighbor to park in one of those spaces in exchange for freshly baked scones on Saturday morning. The neighbor delivers the scones, brings coffee, and chats with customers. All reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting. What could be more urban than this transaction? This may seem innocent, but that owner has created a secondary primary use! The use of that parking space has no direct relation to the primary use [the barbershop].

That plate of still warm soft buttery scones may pose an existential threat to the foundational principles of American Urban Planning!

Now imagine some large corporation - in the interest of our story picture something like a major hospital chain - came into the neighborhood, bought the barbershop, and then went to the city and said they wanted to bulldoze the [former] barbershop to create a surface parking lot. The highly paid executives of this corporation had talked amongst their friends at the country club, not one of them had ever met someone who lived in the neighborhood where the [former] barbershop was. So, clearly, nobody lives there. To have workers they need to provide parking for people who will drive in from the suburbs.

Now an interesting thing happens. The city asks that corporation to fill out a Special Land Use (SLU) application, and pay the ~$2,000 filing fee. This is because The City recognizes the deleterious impact which surface parking lots have on everything from tax revenue to the health and safety of children; the city requires special dispensation for someone wanting to build something so orthogonal to the city's fabric and function. The City requires special dispensation for using parking as a primary use of a site.

It is entirely likely, given real-world precedent, that The City will take the corporation's ~$2,000, have a meeting, and then say "Nope". Good city! 👊

The question is: did the barbershop and the corporation do the same thing?

If so, the barber did not apply for Special Land Use dispensation when he let the neighbor park in the barbershop's lot in exchange for scones and Saturday morning chats. Where is the boundary between a "secondary primary" use and an "accessory" use? Does the scale of that use matter? There is no references to scale of secondary primary uses in the ordinance.

AirPark, AirGarage, or Saturday morning scones; in principle they are all the same, a transaction for use.