City of Aurora Planning Council met June 19.
Here is the minutes provided by the Council:
Call To Order:
Mr. Sieben called the meeting to order at 10:00 a.m.
Roll Call:
The following members were present: Mr. Sieben, Mrs. Vacek, Mr. Minnella, Mrs. Morgan, Mr. Broadwell, Mr. Thavong, Mr. DuSell, Mr. Curley, Mr. Dibo and Mr. Hughes.
Others Present:
Others Present: Mike Frankino (Fox Metro), John Reilly (Peak Construction), Dan Stevens (Spaceco Inc.), Jim Riemma (Peak Construction), Fred Barr (Aurora Hospitality) and Kenneth Moore (Aurora Hospitality).
Approval Of Minutes:
18-0512 Approval of the Minutes for the Planning Council meeting of June 12, 2018.
A motion was made by Mrs. Vacek, 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. Sieben said this is moving forward. It is still set for the August 8th Planning Commission.
18-0400 Requesting approval of a Special Use for a retail/restaurant use with a drive-through facility on Lot 1 of Greenfield Commons Second Resubdivision located at 2340 W. Indian Trail (Mid-America Group - 18-0400 / AU18/1-15.156-Su/Fpn - SB - Ward 5)
Mr. Broadwell said I spoke with the Project Manager. It’s been on hold for a few weeks now. They are reducing the size of the building on the lot. The Project Manager said that the owner is still waiting to approve the drafts of the site plan before they send it to us. I reminded him that we were shooting for the July 18th Planning Commission and he said they were still waiting.
Mr. Sieben said we may want to eventually put this to Pending if they are not going to move this forward, but we’ll see within the next week.
18-0401 Requesting approval of a Final Plan for Lot 1 of Greenfield Commons Second Resubdivision located at 2340 W. Indian Trail for a retail/restaurant use with a drive-through facility (Mid-America Group - 18-0401 / AU18/1-15.156-Su/Fpn - SB - Ward 5)
Mr. Broadwell said I spoke with the Project Manager. It’s been on hold for a few weeks now. They are reducing the size of the building on the lot. The Project Manager said that the owner is still waiting to approve the drafts of the site plan before they send it to us. I reminded him that we were shooting for the July 18th Planning Commission and he said they were still waiting.
Mr. Sieben said we may want to eventually put this to Pending if they are not going to move this forward, but we’ll see within the next week.
18-0497 Requesting approval of a Final Plat Revision consolidating Lots 4 & 5 of Meijer Subdivision located at 716 and 724 N. State Route 59, being located along Drexel Avenue, west of State Route 59, east of Station Boulevard and south of Liberty Street, and establishing Lot 1 of Meijer 2nd Resubdivision (Peak Construction Corporation - 18-0497 / NA21/2-18.050-Fsd/Fpn/R - JM - Ward 10)
Representatives Present: John Reilly, Kenneth Moore, Dan Stevens, Jim Riemma and Fred Barr
Good morning everyone. My name is John Reilly, President of Peak Construction. I’m here with Kenneth Moore, who is the owner of the hotel, the owner for the project, Dan Stevens from Spaceco, and Jim Riemma from Peak Construction, Project Manager for the project, and Fred Barr. We’re here to talk about and present the Best Western Premier project. We’ve been working for a while and talking with the city on the aspects of the project and the civil engineering design requirements. We are excited to be here to talk about it and get the project moving forward.
Mr. Sieben said do you want to discuss kind of the brand and the amenities you have with this? Let’s do that first and then we’ll talk about some site issues.
Mr. Reilly said the Best Western Premier is Best Western’s most upscale branded hotel that they have. Kenneth, I don’t know if there’s anything you have to add about that in terms of the hotel components itself.
My name is Kenneth Moore with Aurora Hospitality. It is a 110 room or key hotel with about 6,500 square feet of conference space, restaurant, a dividable conference space, 5 story structure. Best Western has two upscale brands. One is the upscale Premier Hotel by Best Western and the second one being the Premier Collection. So we are just right below the higher tiered branded hotel for Best Western. Best Western over the last 4 or 5 years has revamped their brand and created brand new prototypes, being Best Western Plus, Best Western Premier and Collection. They also have a Vibe, which is sort of an urban brand, downtown brand, and also a Glow, which is sort of a smaller 80 room prototype hotel, which is normally found around the transient exits around the country. We are very excited about this product and this brand. I’ve visited probably 7 Best Western hotels since we started this project, Premier Collections, and most recently the one in Iowa outside of Des Moines. It is a fabulous product, very high ceilings, big rooms, nice size bathrooms, upscale. We are very excited about the fact that we have conference space, 6,500 square feet of conference space, so we can attract groups, sports teams, corporate business, corporate meetings, banquets, weddings and things of that sort. We are very excited about the project and we are very confident that it will be a successful project.
Mr. Sieben said since I have the elevation up, do you want to touch on the elevation and then we’ll go back to the site plan?
Mr. Reilly said the elevation is we’ve designed it in accordance with the requirements for Aurora. We are at least 80% masonry. The very top, starting at the base we’ve articulated the masonry with just shades of color on the building. The base is masonry. The taller, deeper grey parts are masonry as well. The masonry extends all the way up to 5th floor level and certainly it wraps around the banquet center as well. Above the 5th floor plain it turns into an EIFS project. Then at the main entry we’ve put a focal point with a (inaudible) porte cochere that slopes in multiple directions. It opens up the elevation of the building with a glass front glass entry bringing light into the entry of the hotel where the registration area is, the lobby, bar and the food amenity part of the hotel lobby exists. Again, signage is shown on the elevations as well. I think that pretty much covers the elevations.
Mr. Sieben said do you guys want to touch on the site plan? One issue we had was where you are showing your western access, I believe, with Egret and Dan I think you were the engineer on that too, it is actually slid over. That access is fully on Egret’s property where the cross access is. Are you aware of that? I believe that’s what we approved. Souts, do you have the Egret engineering there? Is that accurate?
Mr. Thavong said yes. It just basically shifted a little bit to the west.
Mr. Sieben said because Egret was going to go first. We weren’t sure when you guys were coming in, so I think it just slightly shifted just west fully onto their property with you guys connecting into that. So if you could take a look at that.
Mr. Stevens said we are pretty flexible on where that goes. I don’t think we gain much parking. It is just a coordination.
Mr. Sieben said you may actually gain a couple of spots if we move it over. It lines up with their north/south east isle there, but Souts has it there.
Mr. Thavong said like Ed said, Egret was going to be under construction.
Mr. Stevens said is it?
Mr. Sieben said no they are not. They are still trying to get financing. Souts talked to them a month ago. So that’s just one real quick site issue.
Mr. Thavong said so it shifted a little bit because they are going to be ahead of you guys, so part of their improvements was they didn’t have to have access to your site. Then one of our comments or conditions was some kind of cross access.
Mr. Stevens said is that something we can work out through Final Engineering? We’ll put it wherever you want.
Mr. Sieben said we’ve already got Egret approved so I think we would just want to see it shown as we approved it with Egret. It does line up with their isle. You could even get a couple more spaces in if you need to.
Mr. Stevens said my only concern would be if we went first.
Mr. Sieben said you may want to talk to them. I know Spaceco did both of them.
Mr. Reilly said it was a different Project Manager.
Mr. Stevens said I do know that the project is a little bit stalled.
Mr. Curley said the hotel will need 2 points if ingress and egress for the fire purposes. Egret does not need 2. They can get by with 1 because of their height and their size, but the hotel does need 2, so there might be some coordination you need to do there if you guys are first.
Mr. Sieben said so what John is saying is both of them will have to be built for you guys. I know we first started meeting with Ken a while ago. We did review this for formatting and completeness and Jill did kind of a cursory review, but we’ll get into more detail with it in the next week or so. I think in general I think you guys looked like you were meeting setbacks and things like that, so we’ll just take a good look at that.
Mr. Stevens said I think at our last meeting we spoke about the drive isle widths and the heights.
Mr. Sieben said except for that access point I think you are pretty much in keeping with what we had talked about. Souts do you want to touch on, I know you guys will start to review this in detail. Any initial comments besides the access?
Mr. Thavong said in terms of stormwater management, stormwater management is provided for this overall development. Just looking at your overall engineering, you do show existing water service lines being used and that’s good. Overall, it looks like you have all the utilities and all the storm sewers laid out properly. We’ll go into in the detail checking the inverts and the size and the calculations. We’ll start looking at the engineering and then get you guys comments and hopefully get you guys going on this.
Mr. Frankino said depending on the level of food preparation inside the building, I’m expecting some sort of a grease interceptor required. If it is a little bit more food prep than what we are suspecting is going to be in there, it might have to be an exterior type model, but most likely an interior one, a couple of hundred gallon under the floor would be more than adequate, but that’s to be determined by the card that I gave you, Mr. Rubis. He is the head of pre-treatment and they’ll make the decision on the sizing for that. We’ll work with you on that at final engineering. I see you show an 8 inch sanitary. I’m assuming because of plumbing code the building drain is probably going to be the same size.
Mr. Stevens said yes.
Mr. Frankino said there’s been smaller buildings I’ve seen that have to be 8, so the 8 is right on. We’ve seen them try to shrink from an 8 to a 6 inch service outside and you can’t do that. It seems like everything is right on for right now.
Mr. Stevens said there will be a pool on it also. I don’t know if you are going to have any comments on that.
Mr. Frankino said the pool drainage, we always ask for the actual pool drains to go to storm and for the backwash, the filter system, that can go to sanitary because that’s a polluted water, but I think if you allow chlorine to dissipate, I think it is safe to go to storm.
Mr. Sieben said we do not have our Fire Marshall here. John, are there any comments you have initially?
Mr. Curley said to be honest, it has been a while. I don’t recall if the Fire Marshall is going to accept the hydrant on the north side, the driving isle for the Meijer, but I do know that Egret was planning on adding a hydrant that might substitute and actually be more preferable to the Fire Department anyway. Again, that might just end up being a coordination thing and timing between the two projects and then be acceptable. I think in the short run if you could locate that on your engineering plans and show for the Fire Marshall and then detail out the hydrant condition that’s in the Meijer lot. As an example, if it is behind parking, if it is buried behind parking, he’s not going to want to accept it anyway. He’s going to want to see that as an island and accessible to the drive isle and not behind parking spaces. I just can’t tell based on what you’ve shown whether that’s true or not.
Mr. DuSell said I see you received you approval already from Kane/DuPage. That’s a little bit of the cart before the horse because we haven’t even looked at the plans yet, so you may have to make some resubmittals back to them.
Mr. Stevens said I submitted it with the fee and I didn’t get a single comment. It says I addressed my comments. I kind of expected them to come back with comments and I’d address them at the same time, but understood.
Mr. DuSell said but usually that submittal doesn’t get made until after we’ve at least issued some comments.
Mr. Sieben said Jill and Souts will be the primary in getting comments back and also the Fire Marshall will get you any comments back on hydrants and so on. I just want to stress in general everything looks good, so in general. We’ll look at it in a little bit more detail. You do not need to be here next Tuesday. Jill will coordinate on scheduling when this will go to Planning Commission. This is not a public hearing item. A Final Plan is just a general discussion item, so you will be set for a near future Planning Commission meeting once we make sure we’ve got everything lined up here. Then your final vote would at the Planning and Development Committee, which is usually the week after. This can be a pretty quick process.
Mrs. Morgan said then you have to wait after the P&D meeting until after the appeal period. Typically it will also be at the Committee of the Whole before that appeal period is over. They typically discuss it, so we recommend also going to that meeting just in case there are any questions.
Mr. Thavong said what is your timeframe for construction? When are you hoping to start?
Mr. Reilly said a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, we want to make sure that we are meeting all the requirements and checking all the boxes, so we are ready to start ASAP. It really is we are just looking to expedite the approval process within reason as much as we possibly can to get the job moving forward.
Mr. Sieben said Jill sent an e-mail out this morning with the licensing thing. I think we are right there, so we’ll get that worked out, related, but separate to the zoning entitlements.
Mr. Reilly said I’d like to just stay in touch and make sure that we know when the dates are for the hurdles that we need to jump over.
Mr. Sieben said we should know that in the next week or so what the date is going to be. I think we are pretty close. If you could just work out that access point. That’s the main thing I see here and then if there is a hydrant issue.
Mr. Curley said have you submitted to the Building Department yet?
Mr. Reilly said no.
Mr. Curly said you can do that at any point. It is entirely up to you. We’ll review concurrently.
Mr. Reilly said we’re just straddling the final engineering with where we are at so we don’t the cart ahead of the horse.
Mr. Curley said they’ll cut up the project to help make your milestones work too with the foundation and some other things as well.
Mr. Moore said I do have one question. So just a rough timeline you’re thinking from today’s date until we get to the final process.
Mr. Sieben said I would say within 60 days, hopefully closer to 45.
18-0498 Requesting approval of a Final Plan for Lot 1 of Meijer 2nd Resubdivision located at 716 and 724 N. State Route 59, being along Drexel Avenue, west of State Route 59, east of Station Boulevard and south of Liberty Street, for a Hotel, Select Service (1360) Use (Peak Construction Corporation - 18-0498 / NA21/2-18.050-Fsd/Fpn/R - JM - Ward 10)
Representatives Present: John Reilly, Kenneth Moore, Dan Stevens, Jim Riemma and Fred Barr
Good morning everyone. My name is John Reilly, President of Peak Construction. I’m here with Kenneth Moore, who is the owner of the hotel, the owner for the project, Dan Stevens from Spaceco, and Jim Riemma from Peak Construction, Project Manager for the project, and Fred Barr. We’re here to talk about and present the Best Western Premier project. We’ve been working for a while and talking with the city on the aspects of the project and the civil engineering design requirements. We are excited to be here to talk about it and get the project moving forward.
Mr. Sieben said do you want to discuss kind of the brand and the amenities you have with this? Let’s do that first and then we’ll talk about some site issues.
Mr. Reilly said the Best Western Premier is Best Western’s most upscale branded hotel that they have. Kenneth, I don’t know if there’s anything you have to add about that in terms of the hotel components itself.
My name is Kenneth Moore with Aurora Hospitality. It is a 110 room or key hotel with about 6,500 square feet of conference space, restaurant, a dividable conference space, 5 story structure. Best Western has two upscale brands. One is the upscale Premier Hotel by Best Western and the second one being the Premier Collection. So we are just right below the higher tiered branded hotel for Best Western. Best Western over the last 4 or 5 years has revamped their brand and created brand new prototypes, being Best Western Plus, Best Western Premier and Collection. They also have a Vibe, which is sort of an urban brand, downtown brand, and also a Glow, which is sort of a smaller 80 room prototype hotel, which is normally found around the transient exits around the country. We are very excited about this product and this brand. I’ve visited probably 7 Best Western hotels since we started this project, Premier Collections, and most recently the one in Iowa outside of Des Moines. It is a fabulous product, very high ceilings, big rooms, nice size bathrooms, upscale. We are very excited about the fact that we have conference space, 6,500 square feet of conference space, so we can attract groups, sports teams, corporate business, corporate meetings, banquets, weddings and things of that sort. We are very excited about the project and we are very confident that it will be a successful project.
Mr. Sieben said since I have the elevation up, do you want to touch on the elevation and then we’ll go back to the site plan?
Mr. Reilly said the elevation is we’ve designed it in accordance with the requirements for Aurora. We are at least 80% masonry. The very top, starting at the base we’ve articulated the masonry with just shades of color on the building. The base is masonry. The taller, deeper grey parts are masonry as well. The masonry extends all the way up to 5th floor level and certainly it wraps around the banquet center as well. Above the 5th floor plain it turns into an EIFS project. Then at the main entry we’ve put a focal point with a (inaudible) porte cochere that slopes in multiple directions. It opens up the elevation of the building with a glass front glass entry bringing light into the entry of the hotel where the registration area is, the lobby, bar and the food amenity part of the hotel lobby exists. Again, signage is shown on the elevations as well. I think that pretty much covers the elevations.
Mr. Sieben said do you guys want to touch on the site plan? One issue we had was where you are showing your western access, I believe, with Egret and Dan I think you were the engineer on that too, it is actually slid over. That access is fully on Egret’s property where the cross access is. Are you aware of that? I believe that’s what we approved. Souts, do you have the Egret engineering there? Is that accurate?
Mr. Thavong said yes. It just basically shifted a little bit to the west.
Mr. Sieben said because Egret was going to go first. We weren’t sure when you guys were coming in, so I think it just slightly shifted just west fully onto their property with you guys connecting into that. So if you could take a look at that.
Mr. Stevens said we are pretty flexible on where that goes. I don’t think we gain much parking. It is just a coordination.
Mr. Sieben said you may actually gain a couple of spots if we move it over. It lines up with their north/south east isle there, but Souts has it there.
Mr. Thavong said like Ed said, Egret was going to be under construction.
Mr. Stevens said is it?
Mr. Sieben said no they are not. They are still trying to get financing. Souts talked to them a month ago. So that’s just one real quick site issue.
Mr. Thavong said so it shifted a little bit because they are going to be ahead of you guys, so part of their improvements was they didn’t have to have access to your site. Then one of our comments or conditions was some kind of cross access.
Mr. Stevens said is that something we can work out through Final Engineering? We’ll put it wherever you want.
Mr. Sieben said we’ve already got Egret approved so I think we would just want to see it shown as we approved it with Egret. It does line up with their isle. You could even get a couple more spaces in if you need to.
Mr. Stevens said my only concern would be if we went first.
Mr. Sieben said you may want to talk to them. I know Spaceco did both of them.
Mr. Reilly said it was a different Project Manager.
Mr. Stevens said I do know that the project is a little bit stalled.
Mr. Curley said the hotel will need 2 points if ingress and egress for the fire purposes. Egret does not need 2. They can get by with 1 because of their height and their size, but the hotel does need 2, so there might be some coordination you need to do there if you guys are first.
Mr. Sieben said so what John is saying is both of them will have to be built for you guys. I know we first started meeting with Ken a while ago. We did review this for formatting and completeness and Jill did kind of a cursory review, but we’ll get into more detail with it in the next week or so. I think in general I think you guys looked like you were meeting setbacks and things like that, so we’ll just take a good look at that.
Mr. Stevens said I think at our last meeting we spoke about the drive isle widths and the heights.
Mr. Sieben said except for that access point I think you are pretty much in keeping with what we had talked about. Souts do you want to touch on, I know you guys will start to review this in detail. Any initial comments besides the access?
Mr. Thavong said in terms of stormwater management, stormwater management is provided for this overall development. Just looking at your overall engineering, you do show existing water service lines being used and that’s good. Overall, it looks like you have all the utilities and all the storm sewers laid out properly. We’ll go into in the detail checking the inverts and the size and the calculations. We’ll start looking at the engineering and then get you guys comments and hopefully get you guys going on this.
Mr. Frankino said depending on the level of food preparation inside the building, I’m expecting some sort of a grease interceptor required. If it is a little bit more food prep than what we are suspecting is going to be in there, it might have to be an exterior type model, but most likely an interior one, a couple of hundred gallon under the floor would be more than adequate, but that’s to be determined by the card that I gave you, Mr. Rubis. He is the head of pre-treatment and they’ll make the decision on the sizing for that. We’ll work with you on that at final engineering. I see you show an 8 inch sanitary. I’m assuming because of plumbing code the building drain is probably going to be the same size.
Mr. Stevens said yes.
Mr. Frankino said there’s been smaller buildings I’ve seen that have to be 8, so the 8 is right on. We’ve seen them try to shrink from an 8 to a 6 inch service outside and you can’t do that. It seems like everything is right on for right now.
Mr. Stevens said there will be a pool on it also. I don’t know if you are going to have any comments on that.
Mr. Frankino said the pool drainage, we always ask for the actual pool drains to go to storm and for the backwash, the filter system, that can go to sanitary because that’s a polluted water, but I think if you allow chlorine to dissipate, I think it is safe to go to storm.
Mr. Sieben said we do not have our Fire Marshall here. John, are there any comments you have initially?
Mr. Curley said to be honest, it has been a while. I don’t recall if the Fire Marshall is going to accept the hydrant on the north side, the driving isle for the Meijer, but I do know that Egret was planning on adding a hydrant that might substitute and actually be more preferable to the Fire Department anyway. Again, that might just end up being a coordination thing and timing between the two projects and then be acceptable. I think in the short run if you could locate that on your engineering plans and show for the Fire Marshall and then detail out the hydrant condition that’s in the Meijer lot. As an example, if it is behind parking, if it is buried behind parking, he’s not going to want to accept it anyway. He’s going to want to see that as an island and accessible to the drive isle and not behind parking spaces. I just can’t tell based on what you’ve shown whether that’s true or not.
Mr. DuSell said I see you received you approval already from Kane/DuPage. That’s a little bit of the cart before the horse because we haven’t even looked at the plans yet, so you may have to make some resubmittals back to them.
Mr. Stevens said I submitted it with the fee and I didn’t get a single comment. It says I addressed my comments. I kind of expected them to come back with comments and I’d address them at the same time, but understood.
Mr. DuSell said but usually that submittal doesn’t get made until after we’ve at least issued some comments.
Mr. Sieben said Jill and Souts will be the primary in getting comments back and also the Fire Marshall will get you any comments back on hydrants and so on. I just want to stress in general everything looks good, so in general. We’ll look at it in a little bit more detail. You do not need to be here next Tuesday. Jill will coordinate on scheduling when this will go to Planning Commission. This is not a public hearing item. A Final Plan is just a general discussion item, so you will be set for a near future Planning Commission meeting once we make sure we’ve got everything lined up here. Then your final vote would at the Planning and Development Committee, which is usually the week after. This can be a pretty quick process.
Mrs. Morgan said then you have to wait after the P&D meeting until after the appeal period. Typically it will also be at the Committee of the Whole before that appeal period is over. They typically discuss it, so we recommend also going to that meeting just in case there are any questions.
Mr. Thavong said what is your timeframe for construction? When are you hoping to start?
Mr. Reilly said a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, we want to make sure that we are meeting all the requirements and checking all the boxes, so we are ready to start ASAP. It really is we are just looking to expedite the approval process within reason as much as we possibly can to get the job moving forward.
Mr. Sieben said Jill sent an e-mail out this morning with the licensing thing. I think we are right there, so we’ll get that worked out, related, but separate to the zoning entitlements.
Mr. Reilly said I’d like to just stay in touch and make sure that we know when the dates are for the hurdles that we need to jump over.
Mr. Sieben said we should know that in the next week or so what the date is going to be. I think we are pretty close. If you could just work out that access point. That’s the main thing I see here and then if there is a hydrant issue.
Mr. Curley said have you submitted to the Building Department yet?
Mr. Reilly said no.
Mr. Curly said you can do that at any point. It is entirely up to you. We’ll review concurrently.
Mr. Reilly said we’re just straddling the final engineering with where we are at so we don’t the cart ahead of the horse.
Mr. Curley said they’ll cut up the project to help make your milestones work too with the foundation and some other things as well.
Mr. Moore said I do have one question. So just a rough timeline you’re thinking from today’s date until we get to the final process.
Mr. Sieben said I would say within 60 days, hopefully closer to 45.
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 10:20 a.m.
https://www.aurora-il.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_06192018-1492
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