By Patricia A. Scheyer
NKyTribune reporter
Boone County commissioners listened to the usual collection of ordinances last week at the regular Fiscal Court meeting, which were requests for zoning map amendments, and changes in concept development plans.
Customarily, the ordinance is read, and commissioners have a few questions, but since commissioners get quite a lot of information about every project before the meeting, they are fairly certain about whether they are going to vote for the project or against the project.
But the atmosphere is beginning to change.
As soon as the first ordinance came up for a second reading, all the commissioners voted to take it off the table, where it has been since April 4, so they could discuss it with the goal in mind to pass the second reading. It concerned a request for a zoning map amendment and a change in concept development plan for a 4.8 acre piece of land from Suburban Residential 2 district, Office one and commercial two/planned development district to commercial one district. This property is located at the southwest corner of the intersection of Oakbrook Road and Burlington Pike.
County Administrator Jeff Earlywine gave a brief synopsis of the previous discussion, going over the Planning Commission’s unanimous vote and reading the seven conditions that were imposed.
“I definitely wanted to clarify something Jeff said there about condition number 7,” said Commissioner Chet Hand. “The issue about the access to Oakbrook was not –the concern wasn’t about when or how there would be access to Oakbrook Road, the concern was that there would be access to Oakbrook road at all, because that would be the first and only commercial access to that road from end to end. I wanted to clarify that because it does make a difference. It’s about whether it’s happening at all.”
Earlywine said the wording would help since it does say “if” the traffic study determines that access to Oakbrook would work, and “if” the engineer agrees, so he amended his earlier statement of ‘when and how’ to ‘if, when and how.’
But Hand wasn’t satisfied. He said theoretically if the traffic impact study happens and they would not find any safety issues with the access and then it went to the county engineer and if he would give it his stamp of approval, the verdict would be approval for access to Oakbrook road.
“My concern with the whole thing originally was a very firm ‘no commercial access to Oakbrook,” Hand stated. “So is there any way to have the Fiscal Court evaluate that in the future?”
Commissioner Jesse Brewer agreed, saying instead of having the county engineer approve the access secondarily, could the traffic study then go to the Fiscal Court for approval.
“Part of this ties into one of my other concerns, that at least from the original reading there was no intention to ever execute on this project, so this project was just a suggestion, the intention was to sell the property after rezoning and then somebody else would come in and build, so their project might not look like this, theoretically, but we would have already granted commercial access to Oakbrook,” explained Hand. “So today we would be considering commercial access based on this project but in the future that access might be for something totally different. It’s kind of a two pronged thing.”
Judge Moore asked if the traffic study and the engineer considered it safer to have the access on Oakbrook to come out to the traffic light by UDF rather than a right in right out off of Ky 18, why they would want to box in a development there, but Hand countered, saying although the court is requiring a traffic impact study in this case, if the study found it to be safe to have commercial access, and the engineer agrees, it is basically approved, but that is at odds with the commissioners’ opinion that they don’t want commercial access to Oakbrook.
Hand suggested that future owners would be advised that commercial access to Oakbrook would constitute a major change, and thus put the issue back to the court. He said he would like to see the rule say the access would be granted if the traffic study ‘required’ it instead of if the traffic study ‘warranted’ it.
Judge Moore asked if the other commissioners agreed with Hand, and though Commissioner Cathy Flaig said they had never done that before, she thought maybe they as commissioners ought to start pinning down the circumstances about projects.
“One of the other concerns in this whole project that I have voiced from the first reading is that I just don’t know why we rezone things that aren’t going to be built and why we even consider the entire proposal if its not going to happen,” he said. “That just doesn’t make sense to me. I think the new owner should apply to rezone and the new owner should propose what they’re going to do, and then we can evaluate it based on what is actually going to happen.”
Bill Burcham, representative for the owner Akram Othman, said he understands that Oakbrook is residential but commercial properties already dump onto Oakbrook. He said it is difficult to market property that has three zones, and first of all they need to get the three zones into one to make it marketable. Then they need to know if they can have the access onto Oakbrook. He also said the owner has to put a lot of money into the property because the topography of the land is very uneven, and will have to be filled in and leveled to be usable to a prospective buyer.
Hand said he does appreciate the willingness of the applicant to work with the court, but he stressed that they are getting ready to approve rezoning an initial 7500 sq. feet to a 60,000 square feet. He said not long ago, the court apparently approved a 1.8 million square foot building when it was supposed to be limited to 350,000 square foot building.
“We have a history in the county of approving exceptions that are almost ludicrous at face value, so I’m just concerned about approving something when we don’t even really know what it’s going to be because we don’t even know what that next project is going to look like,” he stated. “Which is why I’d love to see some sort of a re-eval of any Oakbrook access which is going to be the only access; or to
say ‘required.'”
Commissioner Brewer worried that if the state would start on their project of making Burlington Pike a super highway like they have planned, would that project wipe out any access the property would have on Ky 18. He wanted to know if they could change any decisions made that evening if circumstances changed.
Judge Moore said it could come back to Planning and Zoning. Moore said he thought with the timing of the traffic study and the word change, the project would all work out for everyone. The vote was held and all four commissioners voted for the zone change and the concept development change, with the 7 conditions specified by the Planning and Zoning, and the word change from ‘warranted’ to ‘required.’
Three more times in the meeting, Commissioner Hand had comments on how the developers and the owners of property should not assume that zoning amendments are automatically an approved thing. He said he has talked to many residents about these developments, and if anyone wanted to talk with him, he would be glad to sit down and explain about how things work in the county.