City of Aurora Planning Commission met March 20.

By Lhalie Castillo

Apr 13, 2018

Here is the minutes provided by the Commission:

Call To Order:

Mr. Sieben called the meeting to order at 10:00 a.m.

Roll Call:

The following members were present: Mr. Sieben, Mr. Minnella, Mrs. Morgan, Mr. Broadwell, Mr. Thavong, Mr. DuSell, Mr. Beneke and Mr. Hughes.

Others Present:

Others Present: Alderman Franco (Ward 5), Mike Frankino (Fox Metro), Derek Conley (Invest Aurora), Bob Nomellini (The Missner Group), Glenn Missner (The Missner Group), Bill Perry (Watermark Engineering) and Ken Price (Watermark Engineering).

Approval Of Minutes:

18-0242 Approval of the Minutes for the DST Staff Council (Planning Council) meeting of March 13, 2018.

A motion was made by Mrs. Morgan, seconded by Mr. Broadwell, that the minutes be approved and filed. The motion carried by voice vote.

Agenda:

17-00875 Requesting a Public Hearing to Consider the Revisions to Aurora's Comprehensive Plan to Change the Land Use Designation for the Property located at east of Commons Drive, west of Route 59, north of Montgomery Road and south of the Burlington Northern railroad tracks (City of Aurora - 17-00875 / KDWK-17.169-COMP - AM - Wards 8 and 10)

Mr. Minnella said there are no updates as of yet.

18-0135 Requesting approval of Rental Housing related Text Amendments to Chapter 12; Article 2 “Building Codes”, Article 4 “Property Maintenance” and "Licensing of the Operation of Dwellings", Article 10 "Landlord - Tenant Leases", and a new Article 12 "Rental Licensing" (City of Aurora - 18-0135 / KDWK-18.042-TXT - ES - All Wards)

Mr. Sieben said this is still going through the process. There is nothing new to report.

18-0217 Requesting approval of a Plat of Vacation of Right of Way for Dancer Drive and the adjacent public utility easements, along the properties known as Lots 11-14 of Podolsky Orchard 88 Subdivision Phase 2 (The Missner Group - 18-0217 / SG12/2-18.048-VAC/ Fsd/R/SUPD/Fpn - TV- Ward 5)

Representatives Present: Bob Nomellini and Glenn Missner

Mr. Missner said on page 1, I believe that you have just the overall site plan. The proposed facility is 172,654 square feet. All the critical data is in the right column. We provided for the parking. We will be having a relocation of Dancer Drive as we move on here. Dancer Drive is essentially riding in the middle of the site in the same direction. It is currently 4 lots that will be turned into 1 lot. There is a small variance that we are asking for to create 10 additional parking spots. If you see that dotted line.

Mr. Sieben said you are referring to the bulb at the north end of Melissa?

Mr. Missner said right, the bulb at the north end of Melissa. If you see that dashed line, those approximate 10 to 11 parking spots, that’s just basically some relief on the setback from the road for additional parking. If you go to your next page, you have all 4 elevations. We’ve beefed up the elevation along the Tollway to kind of have the corners kind of like it will look in front of the building, so it will be more appealing as you drive by the building. Your next page is the landscape plan. You see heavy landscape per Aurora. The next page, so this is the way the lots sit right now and where Dancer Drive runs through the middle. So we will be subdividing that into 1 parcel and building Dancer Drive down at the bottom of the site and then dedicating it to the city. The next page, now this shows a layout of the building in its current subdivision, which is the 4 lots with Dancer Drive running through the middle of the site. Obviously, that is going to be relocated down to the bottom and again dedicated. The next page, this would be what it will look like resubdivided into 1 lot. The last page is the vacation of the easement and right-of-way.

Alderman Franco said I don’t know if we’ve met. I’m Alderman Franco. I’ve been dealing with your brother and Ed Adler, so I just wanted to let you know who I was sitting over here. I’ll have some questions at the end.

Mr. Missner said my brother would have liked to have been here. He had a doctor’s appointment that couldn’t be changed.

Mr. Sieben said I know this is a spec building, but if you want to talk about how you are doing the loading docks. This is single sided and what kind of your intent is here. You are showing enough parking on that west side, but that also could be a flex area, depending on the user. I think we had talked about that. Do you want to just talk a little bit more on what your thinking is?

Mr. Nomellini said this is a speculative building. Our intent isn’t a distribution building. It is more warehouse type, maybe small production, so we don’t have excess trailer or dock placement. We tried to cut that down. Again, it is a spec building so we don’t specifically know who is coming in at this time. On the west side of the building we do have both trailer with dolly pads on there just in case there is trailer storage along with a car parking area. It is more flexible depending on the use that’s coming into the building. Landscaping, what we did is we tried to increase some green area on west side, adding more landscaping just to try to increase the landscaping. Then we also did a little additional landscaping on the Tollway side, the north side, of the property also.

Mr. Sieben said it is not filed yet. It will be filed soon. I know your engineer is working with our engineering team. You guys are working on realigning the intersection of Deerpath and Sullivan. Maybe I can pull up an aerial real quick just to kind of show what we are taking about.

Mr. Nomellini said this is an overlay of the realignment of Deerpath and Sullivan.

Mr. Sieben said so that will come in with the roadway agreement and if there is any additional right-of-way that needs to be gotten there. I think a little bit on the southwest corner there, whether it is a tiny little clip or not.

Mr. Nomellini said actually from your e-mail the other day, if the radius changes, so part of the question too that we need answered.

Mr. Sieben said have you gotten you answer from Dan Feltman yet?

Mr. Nomellini said no.

Mr. Sieben said Dan is off sick today. I just texted him. I don’t know if I heard back. Souts, do you know the answer to that question yet or were you in the loop on that?

Mr. Thavong said I was not in the loop, but I’ll follow up with Dan. The question is regarding the radius?

Mr. Nomellini said no. So the situation was is that the existing road right now in the right-of-way that’s there isn’t necessarily centered in it, so if we were to expand that to a 66 foot right-of-way there’s really no reason to. Right now as it currently sits, I believe it is 55 feet, 6 inches give or take, the right-of-way that’s existing right now. So what you have from the curb to the property line to the south is 18 feet, which is more than it would be if we had it centered in a 66 foot. So we don’t really know why we would need to expand the dedication to the south. The other question was this corner. The other issue that we had was clipping that corner, the southwest corner, so you see the hashed area, that would be the expanded dedication.

Mr. Thavong which is not on your property, right?

Mr. Nomellini said all of that is off-site. Our property in itself is all the way up north. It was part of the original approval process when Podolsky put the entire subdivision in. So we’re taking the expansion, or I should say, the alignment. That’s going onto us. The other thing that came up with your truck turning if we don’t want the radius, what happens there is that that’s a 30 foot radius and the only reason I’m bringing it up is at this point Ed, we don’t need to expand dedication. So that’s really the biggest question right now.

Mr. Sieben said so you think you can do the improvements without having to acquire any additional land.

Mr. Nomellini said right.

Mr. Sieben said so Souts that’s the question. Well the first question was that they don’t need turn lanes on Deerpath, which I thought the city was coming to that conclusion because you are not going to have trucks on Deerpath using that. Then what is the radius and do they need to still acquire any right-of-way on that southwest corner? We’ll get back to you on that right-of-way. I do apologize. Dan is off sick today so I thought we would have a nice discussion on it, so we will get back to you right away on that.

Mr. Nomellini said our engineer will be by tomorrow, if not this afternoon. He is going to submit the geometry. If we’re going to get this engineering done to make the agenda, we need an answer on it as soon as possible.

Mr. Thavong said the geometry has been submitted to the city?

Mr. Nomellini said no. If he doesn’t have it today he’ll have it tomorrow.

Mr. Sieben said he was kind of waiting for a blessing, but he didn’t really hear that. It sounded like it was leaning in that direction. I responded right away, but I’m not the engineer.

Mr. Nomellini said but if your request says not to have trucks going south, then that resolves the other problem.

Mr. Thavong said we’ll find something out. We’ll talk to the city Traffic Engineer. Like Ed said, I think there is some discussion already, but I don’t think the answer has been determined.

Mr. Nomellini said you guys want us to submit final engineering for that intersection also.

Mr. Sieben said what will happen in the process, so this is just starting now. I don’t think that we’ve set a Planning Commission date yet. We will do that soon. Tracey is off this week, but she will get the comments back to you shortly on Planning’s end, Planning and Zoning’s end. I don’t think there’s a lot of it. The goal is that the roadway agreement for the intersection, that petition would catch up with this at P&D because that only needs to start at P&D Committee, which is after Planning Commission.

Mr. Nomellini said we should have the roadway agreement into you today also. We kind of did what we were going to do with it. There wasn’t much.

Mr. Sieben said let’s get other staff comments and then Alderman Franco.

Mr. Beneke said on the Fire side, a couple of minor things. We just need to confirm that the Melissa Lane address will be the correct address for the property. I know you’ve got a couple of other things located here on Dancer and things. It is important because it dictates where the FDC has to be. So as long as it is Melissa Lane I think these other comments will fit in place. If it becomes a Dancer, then we have to have the FDC and everything facing Dancer. If it Melissa Lane then that works for the other comments. The only other things I have is so the Fire Department Connection that you are showing needs to be moved within 100 feet of the fire hydrant, the supply hydrant. He’s got it shown at 126 feet, so he’s got to move it a little closer. It’s got to be within 50 to 100 feet. If you just slip it down a little bit that takes care of that. Then the other comment is that from the Fire Department Connection all the way to the fire lane needs to be a clear shot. We can’t have a parking space in front of it. If the guys have to throw a hose out they don’t have a car in their way. That’s really the only comments Fire and Building have.

Mr. Sieben said Mike Frankino is with Fox Metro. Mike do you have any comments?

Mr. Frankino said I see that it’s annexed. I think the flows from this facility will be pretty minimal, probably in the 5,000 gallon per day range.

Mr. Nomellini said we don’t foresee any big water usage person coming in.

Alderman Franco said some of my questions have been answered. We had 22 truck docks in there. Is that what it is?

Mr. Nomellini said I believe so.

Mr. Sieben said I think it might be 24 if you count each of the end doors. Those are a little bit of a different type of a door, but it would be 24, I thought, with those, but you are right, 22 in between.

Alderman Franco said that originally was 32 and then down to 22.

Mr. Sieben said and that was one of the big things on the old bay that we had talked about.

Mr. Nomellini said it is 22.

Alderman Franco said because for me a lot of the concern is truck traffic coming down Sullivan there. It is a winding road. The less truck traffic the better. Certainly we don’t want anything going down north or south on Deerpath. We want everybody going to the expressway to Sullivan to get there, but the less truck traffic the better. So I was happy to see that there were less docks there. And we don’t have any potential renters yet?

Mr. Nomellini said not at this time.

Mr. Sieben said because we are doing this as a Special Use Planned Development, besides the varying of the setback of the bulb there, we did add an additional use in case we did get a food processor, we did add that just in case, so giving them some flexibility. Tracey will be getting you guys comments back early next week.

Mr. Thavong said we did start looking at the Final Engineering design. We do have some minor comments, nothing that is going to affect the overall layout. There are some comments regarding the entrance and so on and locations of water main service.

Mr. Sieben said do you want to mention too at Dancer?

Mr. Thavong said it doesn’t look like there is a sidewalk.

Mr. Nomellini said we know that we have to put one on the north side of Dancer. We already know that. I think that came up in some conversation. It is existing now, so I know we have to put it back.

Mr. Thavong said so we are just trying to match whatever is there right now. We were hoping to get comments out to guys hopefully this week.

Mr. Nomellini said we put it on the site plan that we revised.

Mr. Sieben said I see it is on this one, but it wasn’t on engineering’s.

Mr. Nomellini said we figured we take that up with comments.

Mr. Thavong said we’ll try to get all the comments regarding the final engineering and final plat out to you guys.

Mr. Sieben said we will get our comments back to you probably early next week. Then we will work with you on a date, a Planning Commission date. Once we have Planning Commission date, you final date for City Council would be set also. It is usually 3 weeks after Planning Commission.

Mr. Nomellini said do we have to have the final engineering for Sullivan Road before that?

Mr. Sieben said we need to have that in so we can match it up at P&D, but that’s the week after Planning Commission, so we be good.

Mr. Frankino said I wasn’t’ aware that there could be a possibility of a food processing facility here. Just if it does change, that means there could be the possibility of a pre-treatment unit of some kind for that.

Mr. Nomellini said that was in their works, but I don’t know.

Mr. Sieben said it is just speculative. We’re just making it a possibility that we don’t want zoning to hold it up if that was case.

Mr. Frankino said that could just change our end just a little bit if there is something there that is discharging.

Mr. Missner said I’d say it is probably less likely. The cost of the interior construction on these, on the food stuff, when they start seeing the numbers, a new building and then new interior construction, more times than not it becomes kind of cost prohibitive.

Mr. Frankino said if it does head that way, just get a hold of us.

18-0219 Requesting approval of a Final Plat Revision consolidating Lots 11-14 of Podolsky Orchard 88 Phase 2 Subdivision located at 1998 Melissa Lane and 2706, 2717, 2718 Dancer Drive, being located north and south of Dancer Drive and west of Melissa Lane, and establishing Podolsky Orchard 88 Phase 2 Resubdivision (The Missner Group - 18-0219 / SG12/2-18.048-VAC/ Fsd/R/SUPD/Fpn - TV- Ward 5)