Planning Commission tables Perry area zone change and proposed development agreement

The City Planning Commission on Sept. 4 tabled a request to recommend a zone change and a development agreement for two interstate-commercial lots at the Point Perry freeway interchange.

The proposal would have added an overlay zoning district and allowed a mix of uses including a car wash, two “pad” retail sites and a self-storage facility. Mark Fletcher, the property owner, and the development team said the plan calls for placing all infrastructure at once because the site requires roughly 20,000 cubic yards (about 30,000 tons) of fill, storm drainage and utilities before vertical construction can occur. Fletcher said the project team planned the work so future businesses could "just drop their building in and do vertical construction." (Mark Fletcher, property owner)

Commissioners said the draft development agreement in the packet did not show enough of the specific commitments the city would need to enforce and that it had not been reviewed by the city attorney. Commissioners also questioned whether the storage uses offered a benefit beyond what the city would receive if the site were developed under existing zoning. “For us, the storage makes sense versus the other,” Fletcher said; commission members pushed the applicant to show what the city would gain from the exception the development agreement would allow.

City staff explained the development agreement framework is a legislative item: the commission’s decision would be a recommendation to the city council, which is the final land-use authority. Staff also noted the applicant previously had approvals for the site in 2021 and 2022 and that prior approvals included timing concerns. The proposed development-agreement timelines in the applicant’s submission called for the storage units at 24 months after zoning approval, a car wash at 36 months and the two pad sites at 48 and 60 months; the applicant said its preference was to construct most of the site improvements at once and stagger tenant occupancy.

Commissioners said key implementation details — including landscaping and parking shown on the submitted site plan, signage, and whether the city’s standard development-agreement template would be used — were missing or inconsistent with code. Staff told commissioners the city has landscaping standards and a template development agreement that could be used; staff also said it had not yet received legal comments on the applicant’s proposed agreement.

Given those open issues and because several commissioners said they had not received the full, current draft of the development agreement, a commissioner moved to table the item to the next meeting to allow time for review. The motion to table passed. The applicant and staff were directed to provide the commission with the full, city-attorney-reviewed development agreement and clarified site plan language before the matter returns.

The record shows the applicant, the owner and their team were present and discussed engineering constraints, phasing, and landscaping options; commissioners emphasized they could recommend approval only if the agreement clearly protected the city’s requirements and implementation standards. The commission’s tabling leaves the street-level plan and the development-agreement text unresolved and places the application back on the agenda for a future meeting once the outstanding materials and legal review are provided.

Ending The commission did not make a recommendation to the city council on Ordinance 25N; the matter was tabled for further review and for a legal review of the draft development agreement.