Agenda - 02-28-2011 - C.1 - Laserfiche WebLink

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202 DRAFT 305 May Becker: It's also more targeted toward the bigger... 306 307 Mark Marcoplos: But that doesn't cut nut smaller ventures at all. I think if you're worried about vacant lots and possibly vacant 308 office space that is not something we can really control. If somebody makes that decision and they get caught in the 309 circumstance of not being able to rent that office space, the County really can't control that and shouldn't be trying to control that. 310 If you start out with a piece of land and you look at the water features and the land and you protect those that you decide need 311 protection and you provide infrastructure and then you make people meet all the regulations, I think we've done what we can do. 312 313 May Becker: I think that's reasonable to say as you point out that it's not the responsibility of the government or the county to 314 see to that somebody occupies the office buildings that are built. On the other hand, these are targeted areas and it seems that 315 the County and the government and the decisions that we make here are that you encourage one type versus another type of 316 development or you encourage something. If you zone something to encourage large parcels of offices to be developed, I think 317 its a reasonable question to ask, do we think that there is a demand for that? In other words, yo►i do go to other parts of the 318 country and you see large office parks and they look really nice and then years later they're empty. Since we are talking about 319 targeted areas, since we are talking about development and what type is healthy for the .... 320 321 Mark Marcoplos: Isn't it true that you could specify several conditional uses. You can specify different uses, you don't have to 322 say I am going to build a homogenous office here and an homogenous office there, you can say I am going to build this here, I'm 323 going to build a daycare here or whatever. You have options. If you are smart about it, you would be diverse in your approach. 324 They can always sell the land, right? They're not bound to this decision in perpetuity. 325 326 Craig Benedict: One additional concept that you're talking about is one small five acre developer can usually not afford the 327 offsite costs to connect their site to offsite utilities. So that small entrepreneur that wants to come in and he has an idea of what 328 he wants to put on three or four acres, its difficult for them but if somebody prepares an office park and handles some of those 329 master plan offsite turn lanes, traffic signals, and things like that then the smaller business entrepreneur has the opportunity to 330 move into that site on somewhat of a pre - organized and almost prepaid site. They may have to pay a premium but they don't 331 have to pay the entire premium that would be shared among multiple parcels. Again, that's a development pattern that we think 332 will encourage small business as well as the flexibility to have a large business. This definitely helps the smaller business 333 entrepreneur because its shared costs with some larger projects. 334 335 Mark Marcoplos: I believe it's also true that the Commissioners can make a legislative decision outside of the parameters of this 336 and have some input beyond the actual UDO, they can add.... 337 338 Craig Benedict: Yes, during the rezoning process they can listen to the public, and it doesn't have to be with a super strong 339 evidentiary standard when they're making a legislative decision. They can listen to the neighborhood and things like that. 340 341 Pete Hallenbeck: In general I'm comfortable with the process that has been outlined as far as leaving certain parts of a 342 development open -ended for later. I think flexibility is good. I agree with a lot of what Craig just said. A bigger developer can 343 come in and actually put roads that are better. There's a risk there that you lose control of the development. It shouldn't be too 344 surprising that anywhere you have risk you have a benefit and the benefit is that you can get somebody that can do an office 345 park right which a smaller developer might not be able to do. Whenever you do the next step or the next phase of the office park 346 is done it is still subject to the same regulations and still subject to influence from the master plan. As far as empty office space 347 goes, I think when that happens its a matter of the economy a lot of the time. I think sometimes you also have some bad 348 building design that happens. Somebody throws up some office space, it is done poorly, so when people are looking at where 349 they want to go they don't want to stay in it. Its a buyer's market. If you're careful when you are approving the process and do 350 things like make the parking lot look nice and the building look nice, there are things you can do to keep an office park from 351 looking like a clunker. Finally, I also think a lot of time you get empty office space because the development is not diverse 352 enough. I know I looked for office space once in Chapel Hill and it was all Class A, I would love to be able to make enough 353 money to sit in a Class A office but Class B is where you're going to have the start up businesses where things are going to 354 happen. Again, that is something that could be controlled during this zoning process to keep someone from coming in and trying 355 to go in, for example, Efland and build 20 acres of Class A office space only to find that things change and it's overbuilt. The 356 other reason I think that's important is a topic I will touch on when we get to phase two but I am always struck by how much 357 attention is being paid to water quality, infrastructure for businesses, and then in Northern Orange County its a bit of a digital 358 ghetto. There are just no bits there and if you put a big office space in Efland somebody is going to have to bring in some very 359 high speed data to get the kind of businesses you want. It's more likely to happen if you can entice a larger developer to come 360 in, let him work in stages, to adapt to the economy but still have control of that process through these regulations. I think 361 everything we're talking about in all these zoning issues, has a Board of County Commissioners approval so it's not like once you 362 give approval for something, it's out of your control forever. Each stage will still have to get approved, the overall plan will have 363 to be approved. 364 365 Larry Wright: Any other comments? Ok, what I'd like to do is go around to each of the Board members and have you state your 6