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Commission approves PUD to allow Carter Blood Care expansion at 2205 State Highway 121
Summary
The commission voted unanimously to recommend approval of a planned-unit-development overlay allowing Carter Blood Care to add laboratory and automated testing space with tailored parking standards; the application will proceed to City Council.
The Bedford Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously recommended approval Thursday of a planned-unit-development (PUD) rezoning that would allow Carter Blood Care to expand laboratory and testing space at its site at 2205 State Highway 121.
Planning staff said the PUD would permit alternative development standards tailored to the site's automated lab and clean-room uses and would reduce the parking requirement compared with ordinary commercial zoning. Staff described the existing site as having about 660 parking spaces and said the applicant's proposed standards would result in a requirement of about 601 spaces instead of roughly 694 that standard commercial math would produce. "By doing the PUD, it allows us to do math outside of the parking spaces per square footage, which is the main driver for this request," a staff member said.
The applicant presented site plans calling for approximately 19,540 square feet of additions (a series of additions described in the staff packet) and a total resulting building area of approximately 193,811 square feet. The proposal would raise the allowable building height in the PUD to 50 feet (the planned addition would reach roughly 46 feet) and set a maximum lot coverage of 40 percent. The applicant proposed a development schedule beginning in April 2025 with completion by October 2026.
Josh Schulich, a representative from Liquidity Engineering, and Michael Ramey, facility manager for Carter Blood Care, spoke at the public hearing. Schulich described additional lab, maintenance and office space and said the expansion includes automation. Ramey described new automated testing and lab equipment the organization has implemented and said the machines "will take the sample and go through all the testing without a human touching it." Ramey also said the site now handles metroplex bus operations for blood drives but that the long-term plan is to reduce buses at Bedford as additional regional facilities are developed.
Staff recommended approval; a motion to approve PUD 24-1 passed unanimously and will be forwarded to City Council for final action. Commissioners and staff noted the PUD approach preserves the ability to require amendments for any future changes to the site plan and that landscaping and tree-preservation credits address the removal of nine trees identified for the project.
