Agenda - 08-21-2007-6a - Laserfiche WebLink

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(~ MINUTES ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION June 14, 2007 Present: Anita Badrock, Bryant Colson, Dan Coleman, Keith Cook, Mark Crowell, Jim Evans, Lilyn Hester, Chris Hogan, Eric Hallman, Barry Jacobs, Anne Loeb, Tony McKnight, Lauri Michel, Bob Ward Staff: Willie Best, Yvonne Scarlett, Craig Benedict, Tom Alteri Guest: Dianne Reid Absent: Mike Nelson, Alois Callemyn Highway 571Speedway Area -Anita Badrock and Dianne Reid Badrock briefly explained that this was a small area plan that about 968 acres in the northeastern part of Orange County, bordered to the north by Person and to the east by Durham County. This area was picked because right now it primarily zoned rural agricultural, but there are a number of nonconforming uses there - Orange County Speedway, a rock quarry, and go-cart track. There has also been some interest from property owners up there about other things that they might be able to do with their property. Two community meetings and six meetings of the Task Force were held with good attendance with one of the goals being to collaborate with those nonconforming uses property owners to bring them into conforming use. Another thing was to think about whether there was ways that people could do some things on their property that were a little more expansive than just the rural agricultural. Basically the outcome was to charge the community with trying to reconcile some commercial aspirations with the property with neighborhood values and goals. The Task Force recommended that the Commissioners consider an establishment of a permitted use - a conditional use permit. Which would be specific to the property, it would go through the kind of review that conditional use permitting has (the County currently does not have conditional use permitting) and that we would better define and promote a rural economic development district -which would be to allow some increased commercial use of what has been historically rural agricultural property. This Task Force Report has now been given to the BOCC, went to Public Hearing on May 21St, and referred to this Board for approval. Craig Benedict -Again, this is a small area-planning document and it has embedded recommendations. If the small area plan is approved by the Commissioners, that is a go ahead to proceed with developing new ordinances - what is conditional use district, consider new over-lay districts which is to be entitled rural economic development area, so this would be the go ahead. Some people think the document makes everything start working -this is actually (if approved) the go ahead to start preparing zoning ordnance changes -new zoning constructs and it also would not infer rights to Raceway immediately. They would have to petition afterwards to use these new rules to make them go from a nonconforming to a conditional use conforming status. A motion was made by Keith Cook, and seconded by Mark Crowell to recommend the Plan_be forwarded for aaaroval by the Board of County Commissioners. The motion was approved unanimously. Craig Benedict - a lot of these small area plans that are tracking through both the Planning Board and EDC and these are the plans that have recommendations and all of a sudden coming down the pike you will see the zoning amendment, you'll see a permitted use change possibly. So we're trying to put together a mid- range plan to let you know in advance when these things will be coming your way, so in about a month, we hope to work with EDC staff and work with Willie to plot out the course of these implementation strategies of these plans. We'll try to get a master plan for you and whatever meetings these things hit, you'll see where you are in the process of these five or six different small area plan processes and moving into the implementation phase.