City of Aurora Planning Commission DST Staff Council met March 6.
Here is the minutes provided by the Council:
Call To Order:
Mr. Sieben called the meeting to order at 10:05 a.m.
Roll Call:
The following members were present: Mr. Sieben, Mr. Minnella, Mrs. Morgan, Mr. Broadwell, Mr. Feltman, Mr. Beneke and Mr. Hughes.
Others Present:
Others Present: Mike Frankino (Fox Metro), Debbie Van Sickle (Invest Aurora), Derek Conley (Invest Aurora), Greg Haggis (Wendy's Restaurant) and Jeff Gylling (Wendy's Restaurant).
Approval Of Minutes:
18-0188 Approval of the Minutes for the DST Staff Council (Planning Council) meeting of February 27, 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 staff is still working with Schoppe Design, the consultant, to put together the Existing Conditions Report.
18-0107 Requesting to downzone the property at 1201 Dearborn Avenue from R-4 Two Family Dwelling District to R-3 One Family Dwelling District (Ana Lopez - 18-0107 / AU23/2-18.037-Dz - TV - Ward 7)
Mr. Sieben said this will be going to the March 21st Planning Commission.
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 proceeding behind the scenes.
18-0154 Requesting a Plan Description Revision to the Special Use Planned Development on the property located at 2962 Kirk Road being north of Butterfield Road and west of Kirk Road (Wendy's - 18-0154 / BA36/3-18.006-SU/PD/R/Fpn - JM - Ward 1)
Representatives Present: Greg Haggis and Jeff Gylling
I am Greg Haggis. I’m the CFO for the Wendy’s franchisee looking to develop the Wendy’s site.
I’m Jeff Gylling. I’m the Construction Manager for Wendy’s.
Mr. Sieben said do you guys just want to just give us a little bit of detail on kind of what prototype this is, what’s your seating, kind of just the layout in general?
Mr. Gylling said I can address that. This is a brand new Wendy’s design. In fact, we’ve only got one restaurant here in the Chicagoland area that would be near identical to this design and that’s a store in Villa Park. The next closest store is actually in, I think it is, Grand Rapids, Michigan. So we’ve got about, I believe, about 15 of these new designs throughout the US. It is a brand new design for us. As you can see from the building elevations, it may not be perfectly clear, the front of the store is primarily glass and it is full height glass. It is roughly 16 feet in height and our dining room with all that glass, we have no ceiling. You walk in as a customer and you are sitting down and you look up you actually see the exposed metal deck and all the trusses. So it is a pretty dramatic new look for Wendy’s. As far as seating goes, what we’ve discovered is that with our building designs, we were building buildings with way too many seats. This design that we are proposing has 40. Typically we are in the 80’s. With our new building design it is down to 40. What we are finding is that our drive-thru percentages have been increasing, so with 40 seats, that’s our current footprint. As part of the submittals we made, we also submitted a landscaping plan, a site plan and survey, so I believe all the pertinent drawings were submitted. As far as the site plan goes, we are showing currently 41 parking stalls. You may be thinking well why 41 if you’ve only got 40 seats. That would be for our employee parking as well. So we have plenty of parking proposed. The landscaping, in working with staff, we do meet the landscaping requirements. I think we are going to have a conversation about placement of some of the materials. The trash corral will match the building, which is a requirement of the city. The circulation is our prototypical circulation that you would find at all our locations. This site, because of no direct access off of Kirk, our access points would be at the rear of our parcel. We’ve got a designated entrance and then a designated exit on our site plan.
Mr. Sieben said so it is really a big site for your building.
Mr. Gylling said yes, it is way too large. Typically we go in at a half acre. This site is a little bit north of an acre. It is much larger than what we prototypically pursue.
Mr. Sieben said just real quick before I turn it over to Jill, so we did talk regarding the landscaping. We actually did have a conversation with KDOT, who controls Kirk Road, and none of the other outlots, I believe, has street trees or parkway trees, which is a typical requirement, so similar to kind of Orchard Road what they’ve gone to is we usually put that material back on the property out of the county right-of-way, so we would definitely work with you on placement of that. We don’t want to block your visibility, but we do want to provide a nice look to this site. We’ll work with you on that through Jill. Jill, do you want to touch on just a couple of other little things?
Mrs. Morgan said yes. So for the building elevations, so the vertical board is like a cement board type?
Mr. Gylling said it is a concrete board, yes.
Mrs. Morgan said what is the taller portion?
Mr. Gylling said the exterior of the store is either glass or Nichiha. We’ve got three different colors for the Nichiha. The majority of the building is wood grain. Above the pickup windows it is grey and then at the front of the store it is red. So we’ve got three different Nichiha materials. I believe we are showing the.
Mr. Sieben said so you guys went away from any brick because I was looking at some of your recent stores or recent remodels, which is a similar scheme, but not totally and you still kind of had some brick at the back kind of and then went with the red and the dark grey, or the wood look. This is going to have more glass and then you did away with the brick.
Mr. Gylling said correct. The only masonry that would be on this site would be at the monument sign. We’ve got that little band of brick. The rest of it is all concrete panel.
Mrs. Morgan said I think those were my only questions. There wasn’t a whole lot of comments. We are working on the landscape plan and figuring out that. There was a question about the sidewalk.
Mr. Sieben said the pedestrian sidewalk coming in. We had looked at the whole shopping center and we looked at other shopping centers and didn’t we already have a pedestrian access off of Butterfield coming up?
Mrs. Morgan said yes. Advanced has one and the empty lot has pedestrian at this location. Sonic does not.
Mr. Sieben said so you guys are kind of like half way on this frontage, if you will, here and you do have the right in there on your north side, so we were kind of looking, there is a major bike path, I think, on Kirk Road, it is kind of a regional bike path, so we were looking at maybe trying to make it another, just a pedestrian sidewalk in from the bike path coming from east to west across the north end there.
Mr. Feltman said is the grading going to work on that?
Mr. Gylling said that was our concern.
Mr. Feltman said I thought this was.
Mr. Sieben said I went by there the other day and you guys are pretty high.
Mr. Feltman said yes.
Mr. Gylling said that was one of our initial concerns when we saw the staff comments. That was a concern. We are still working through that, but that was a concern.
Mr. Sieben said we’ll discuss that further.
Mr. Feltman said it has to make sense.
Mr. Sieben said we are looking at a flat picture right now. Maybe it doesn’t look that way.
Mr. Gylling said so with the public walk, obviously, it would need to be accessible and with the existing grades can it be done. We are still looking at it, but that was a concern.
Mrs. Morgan said I think that was really it. Most of the other staff comments I think we’ve kind of talked through. This is going March 21st. They’ve already advertised for it. The public notice sign is ready.
Mr. Feltman said from Engineering, this already has stormwater management. All the utilities are available.
Mr. Beneke said the Fire Marshall and I looked the Fire Plan and we’ve approved it. It is good to go.
Mr. Gylling said wonderful. Thank you.
Mr. Sieben said again, just for the record, it does need a Special Use. There was a limitation originally on the Plan Description. There was a certain limit on the number of drive-thrus on both Butterfield and Kirk. So because the allotment of drive-thrus have already been taken up, that’s the reason for the Special Use on this. We’ve had a lot of discussion on this over the years. There have been some different drive-thrus proposed. Originally we wanted to try to get a mix of restaurant types, but that hasn’t happened and I think this has been here for 12 years now.
Mr. Feltman said and Engineering hasn’t been submitted. We’re fine with that. I understand that you guys are going to be following up.
Mr. Gylling said yes and on the permit submittal, our goal is to submit for permit, hopefully, within the next week and that would be architectural and engineering plans. We want to make our full permit submittal. It is important for us to get this project out for bid and I don’t want to do that until at least we get preliminary review comments back. Once we get those, we are going out for bid because we are working with some very tight contractual timelines and I’ve got to get this project out for bid.
Mr. Sieben said so we did move you as quick as humanly possible, so you are going in 2 weeks to Planning Commission on March 21st. That worked out well. We actually had an opening that came up, so I was glad you could work with Jill on notices. The decision at City Council would be the second Tuesday in April.
Mr. Gylling said that’s great.
Mr. Feltman said if you could submit the engineering directly to Engineering because sometimes that gets a little confusing because you are submitting to Building and Permits for their review on the handicap accessibility, but it doesn’t come to Engineering, so if you could just submit it directly to us that would be great.
Mr. Beneke said what you are going to need to do is submit engineering, their sets for both site review. You also need to submit, I think we ask for 3 sets, for the site plan for us for looking at the accessibility and we’re going to see the grease trap on it and a few things like that. So you kind of have 2 different things as far as the civil is concerned, so when you send it to us for full building permit, just make sure you include some of the civil.
Mr. Sieben said any other questions?
Mr. Gylling said yes, and I know this is going to end up in discussion hopefully yet today, with the landscaping and sidewalk we are going to need some type of resolution so we can revise our engineering plans and complete those.
Mr. Sieben said we can do that this week.
Mr. Haggis said we’re excited. We have not done a new restaurant from ground up within the franchise for 8 years, so this is kind of an exciting one for us, especially with the new design. It is something kind of contemporary and kind of very vibrant for Aurora and for us.
Mr. Sieben said so this will even be more modern than your more recent modern.
Mr. Gylling said absolutely. It is night and day.
Mr. Sieben said the glass will be pretty cool.
Mr. Gylling said it is a slick looking building.
Mrs. Morgan said for the landscape plans, are you submitting something back where you want them to go?
Mr. Gylling said that would be our preference. I know you’ve been working with Ken.
Mrs. Morgan said we’ll wait for that.
Mr. Sieben said why don’t you do that as quick as you can. We’ll comment back within 24 hours.
Mr. Gylling said we’ll get that completed right away. When I pick up the sign, I’ll go meet with Ken and tell him of our meeting, because they are just right down the street, and we’ll get those plans into you.
Mrs. Morgan said thanks.
18-0155 Requesting approval of a Final Plan for Lot 4 of Savannah Crossing
Subdivision located at 2962 Kirk Road being north of Butterfield Road and west of Kirk Road for a Restaurant with a drive-through facility (2530) Use (Wendy's - 18-0155 / BA36/3-18.006-SU/PD/R/Fpn - JM - Ward 1)
Representatives Present: Greg Haggis and Jeff Gylling
I am Greg Haggis. I’m the CFO for the Wendy’s franchisee looking to develop the Wendy’s site.
I’m Jeff Gylling. I’m the Construction Manager for Wendy’s.
Mr. Sieben said do you guys just want to just give us a little bit of detail on kind of what prototype this is, what’s your seating, kind of just the layout in general?
Mr. Gylling said I can address that. This is a brand new Wendy’s design. In fact, we’ve only got one restaurant here in the Chicagoland area that would be near identical to this design and that’s a store in Villa Park. The next closest store is actually in, I think it is, Grand Rapids, Michigan. So we’ve got about, I believe, about 15 of these new designs throughout the US. It is a brand new design for us. As you can see from the building elevations, it may not be perfectly clear, the front of the store is primarily glass and it is full height glass. It is roughly 16 feet in height and our dining room with all that glass, we have no ceiling. You walk in as a customer and you are sitting down and you look up you actually see the exposed metal deck and all the trusses. So it is a pretty dramatic new look for Wendy’s. As far as seating goes, what we’ve discovered is that with our building designs, we were building buildings with way too many seats. This design that we are proposing has 40. Typically we are in the 80’s. With our new building design it is down to 40. What we are finding is that our drive-thru percentages have been increasing, so with 40 seats, that’s our current footprint. As part of the submittals we made, we also submitted a landscaping plan, a site plan and survey, so I believe all the pertinent drawings were submitted. As far as the site plan goes, we are showing currently 41 parking stalls. You may be thinking well why 41 if you’ve only got 40 seats. That would be for our employee parking as well. So we have plenty of parking proposed. The landscaping, in working with staff, we do meet the landscaping requirements. I think we are going to have a conversation about placement of some of the materials. The trash corral will match the building, which is a requirement of the city. The circulation is our prototypical circulation that you would find at all our locations. This site, because of no direct access off of Kirk, our access points would be at the rear of our parcel. We’ve got a designated entrance and then a designated exit on our site plan.
Mr. Sieben said so it is really a big site for your building.
Mr. Gylling said yes, it is way too large. Typically we go in at a half acre. This site is a little bit north of an acre. It is much larger than what we prototypically pursue.
Mr. Sieben said just real quick before I turn it over to Jill, so we did talk regarding the landscaping. We actually did have a conversation with KDOT, who controls Kirk Road, and none of the other outlots, I believe, has street trees or parkway trees, which is a typical requirement, so similar to kind of Orchard Road what they’ve gone to is we usually put that material back on the property out of the county right-of-way, so we would definitely work with you on placement of that. We don’t want to block your visibility, but we do want to provide a nice look to this site. We’ll work with you on that through Jill. Jill, do you want to touch on just a couple of other little things?
Mrs. Morgan said yes. So for the building elevations, so the vertical board is like a cement board type?
Mr. Gylling said it is a concrete board, yes.
Mrs. Morgan said what is the taller portion?
Mr. Gylling said the exterior of the store is either glass or Nichiha. We’ve got three different colors for the Nichiha. The majority of the building is wood grain. Above the pickup windows it is grey and then at the front of the store it is red. So we’ve got three different Nichiha materials. I believe we are showing the.
Mr. Sieben said so you guys went away from any brick because I was looking at some of your recent stores or recent remodels, which is a similar scheme, but not totally and you still kind of had some brick at the back kind of and then went with the red and the dark grey, or the wood look. This is going to have more glass and then you did away with the brick.
Mr. Gylling said correct. The only masonry that would be on this site would be at the monument sign. We’ve got that little band of brick. The rest of it is all concrete panel.
Mrs. Morgan said I think those were my only questions. There wasn’t a whole lot of comments. We are working on the landscape plan and figuring out that. There was a question about the sidewalk.
Mr. Sieben said the pedestrian sidewalk coming in. We had looked at the whole shopping center and we looked at other shopping centers and didn’t we already have a pedestrian access off of Butterfield coming up?
Mrs. Morgan said yes. Advanced has one and the empty lot has pedestrian at this location. Sonic does not.
Mr. Sieben said so you guys are kind of like half way on this frontage, if you will, here and you do have the right in there on your north side, so we were kind of looking, there is a major bike path, I think, on Kirk Road, it is kind of a regional bike path, so we were looking at maybe trying to make it another, just a pedestrian sidewalk in from the bike path coming from east to west across the north end there.
Mr. Feltman said is the grading going to work on that?
Mr. Gylling said that was our concern.
Mr. Feltman said I thought this was.
Mr. Sieben said I went by there the other day and you guys are pretty high.
Mr. Feltman said yes.
Mr. Gylling said that was one of our initial concerns when we saw the staff comments. That was a concern. We are still working through that, but that was a concern.
Mr. Sieben said we’ll discuss that further.
Mr. Feltman said it has to make sense.
Mr. Sieben said we are looking at a flat picture right now. Maybe it doesn’t look that way.
Mr. Gylling said so with the public walk, obviously, it would need to be accessible and with the existing grades can it be done. We are still looking at it, but that was a concern.
Mrs. Morgan said I think that was really it. Most of the other staff comments I think we’ve kind of talked through. This is going March 21st. They’ve already advertised for it. The public notice sign is ready.
Mr. Feltman said from Engineering, this already has stormwater management. All the utilities are available.
Mr. Beneke said the Fire Marshall and I looked the Fire Plan and we’ve approved it. It is good to go.
Mr. Gylling said wonderful. Thank you.
Mr. Sieben said again, just for the record, it does need a Special Use. There was a limitation originally on the Plan Description. There was a certain limit on the number of drive-thrus on both Butterfield and Kirk. So because the allotment of drive-thrus have already been taken up, that’s the reason for the Special Use on this. We’ve had a lot of discussion on this over the years. There have been some different drive-thrus proposed. Originally we wanted to try to get a mix of restaurant types, but that hasn’t happened and I think this has been here for 12 years now.
Mr. Feltman said and Engineering hasn’t been submitted. We’re fine with that. I understand that you guys are going to be following up.
Mr. Gylling said yes and on the permit submittal, our goal is to submit for permit, hopefully, within the next week and that would be architectural and engineering plans. We want to make our full permit submittal. It is important for us to get this project out for bid and I don’t want to do that until at least we get preliminary review comments back. Once we get those, we are going out for bid because we are working with some very tight contractual timelines and I’ve got to get this project out for bid.
Mr. Sieben said so we did move you as quick as humanly possible, so you are going in 2 weeks to Planning Commission on March 21st. That worked out well. We actually had an opening that came up, so I was glad you could work with Jill on notices. The decision at City Council would be the second Tuesday in April.
Mr. Gylling said that’s great.
Mr. Feltman said if you could submit the engineering directly to Engineering because sometimes that gets a little confusing because you are submitting to Building and Permits for their review on the handicap accessibility, but it doesn’t come to Engineering, so if you could just submit it directly to us that would be great.
Mr. Beneke said what you are going to need to do is submit engineering, their sets for both site review. You also need to submit, I think we ask for 3 sets, for the site plan for us for looking at the accessibility and we’re going to see the grease trap on it and a few things like that. So you kind of have 2 different things as far as the civil is concerned, so when you send it to us for full building permit, just make sure you include some of the civil.
Mr. Sieben said any other questions?
Mr. Gylling said yes, and I know this is going to end up in discussion hopefully yet today, with the landscaping and sidewalk we are going to need some type of resolution so we can revise our engineering plans and complete those.
Mr. Sieben said we can do that this week.
Mr. Haggis said we’re excited. We have not done a new restaurant from ground up within the franchise for 8 years, so this is kind of an exciting one for us, especially with the new design. It is something kind of contemporary and kind of very vibrant for Aurora and for us.
Mr. Sieben said so this will even be more modern than your more recent modern.
Mr. Gylling said absolutely. It is night and day.
Mr. Sieben said the glass will be pretty cool.
Mr. Gylling said it is a slick looking building.
Mrs. Morgan said for the landscape plans, are you submitting something back where you want them to go?
Mr. Gylling said that would be our preference. I know you’ve been working with Ken.
Mrs. Morgan said we’ll wait for that.
Mr. Sieben said why don’t you do that as quick as you can. We’ll comment back within 24 hours.
Mr. Gylling said we’ll get that completed right away. When I pick up the sign, I’ll go meet with Ken and tell him of our meeting, because they are just right down the street, and we’ll get those plans into you.
Mrs. Morgan said thanks.
Pending:
17-00639 Requesting approval of a Final Plan Revision for Hometown Farnsworth Subdivision, Phase One and Two located north of Montgomery Road, between Hill Avenue and Farnsworth Avenue for new building elevations and footprint change (Bigelow Farnsworth, LLC - 17-00639 / AU35/2-17.024-Fpn/R - SB - Ward 3)
Announcements
Adjournment:
Mr. Sieben adjourned the meeting at 10:22 a.m.
https://www.aurora-il.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_03062018-1383
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