PC 120915 - Laserfiche WebLink

park on the street and that it was acceptable; and that in the context of Downtown, the pedestrian and walkable environment in the Downtown, and the desire of people to live in close proximity to Main Street, tandem parking on the site would also be acceptable. Chair Allen asked staff for an update on what the parking survey done by Hexagon in 2013 says about this area, now that there is this project and parking is a concern. Mr. Weinstein replied that that is the latest study that has been done, and there are no new updates to it. He added that there may be some with the new parking study that is currently being done. Commissioner Nagler asked staff to walk the Commission through the discussions staff had with the applicant since the Work Session that, in fact, did transition the per -unit parking from a two -car garage to tandem parking. Mr. Beaudin stated that he did not have the conversations directly was kind of a ripple effect. He noted that at the Work Session, the Commission expressed an interest to increase the amount of ground -floor retail and set it back to address some neighborhood concerns from a compatibility and visibility perspective, give it a little bit of a front yard and create more of a stepped urban design from Main Street up the block. He further noted that there was also a desire to get additional commercial parking as part of the retail and office space. He indicated that in order for the developer to hold to the Commission's desire to have a certain number of residential units, something had to give, and the developer gave at the ground floor to provide more retail and more parking for the commercial, resulting in the residential parking being pinched. He added that the developer and the applicant's team present tonight can speak a little bit more about the concessions they were willing to make, based on the Commission feedback they received at the Work Session. Commissioner Nagler inquired if there were any specific discussions between staff and the applicant on changing the number of units to allow for the continuation of the two -car garages and the number of units that the development ends up possessing. Mr. Weinstein replied that staff discussed a lot of different options with the applicant team to reconcile all of the direction provided by the Planning Commission at the Work Session, and one of those options was carving out residential units and providing either more parking or more residential space. He added that staff also encouraged reducing the size of the residential units as another way of getting more space and more usable square footage out of the project. He indicated that the applicant's team declined to actually carve off residential units from the project because they felt they needed this number of residential units to make the project work, but they slightly reduced the size of four of the townhouse units and substantially reduced the size of the fifth unit, which is now an apartment unit on the second floor. He noted that while they were able to seek out more space from that process, it did not result in the provision of more parking; instead, it allowed the building in front of the site to be set back a little and the commercial space to be expanded. Chair Allen noted that there has been a lot of discussion about retail and retail versus commercial, and that there will be 975 square feet of retail. She asked staff to define PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, December 9, 2015 Page 12 of 40