August 11, 2005

By Lauren Heaton

“Hallelujah, brothers and sisters, hallelujah,” Jonathan Brown said Monday night after the Village Planning Commission gave its blessing to the preliminary plans for Phillips-Brown Homes’ residential development on the former Catholic Church property

Four months into the review of Thistle Creek, the residential development off King Street behind Park Meadows, Cathy Phillips and Brown passed the first hurdle of the review process.

“Basically I feel like we’ve gotten a lot of support from the Planning Commission and the community, and we feel like we’re ready to move forward,” Phillips said on Tuesday.

At its meeting Aug. 8, the plan board unanimously agreed to recommend that Village Council approve the detailed preliminary plans for phase 1 of Thistle Creek on condition that the builders find solutions to the board members’ concerns in the development’s final plans.

Council will likely hold a first reading of an ordinance on the development’s first phase at its meeting on Sept. 6, Village Planner Phil Hawkey said. A second reading and public hearing would then take place during Council’s Sept. 19 meeting.

If the preliminary plans are approved, the plat would be rezoned as a PUD, and the developers then would submit the final plans for phase 1 to plan board.

No comments were made during the public hearing.

After Phillips-Brown’s engineer, Brad Judge, presented his comments on Thistle Creek, the plan board spent most of the discussion on reviews submitted by Hawkey; John Eastman, the chief environmental engineer with LJB Inc. of Dayton, which has an engineering contract with the Village; and Shannon Martin, an attorney who works with Village Solicitor John Chambers. The review focused on the neighborhood’s layout and its covenants, conditions and restrictions.

According to Judge, phase 1 will consist of 22 lots on 4.2 acres of the eastern part of the development. Eight of the units will share a common wall with a neighboring unit, and 14 of the units will be detached, freestanding dwellings. Thistle Creek currently has a 10-foot single lane road looping through the site from King Street, with five parking spaces on the inside of the loop. Shared private drives lead to the back of the homes. Common areas are planned for the one-third acre inside the loop, as well as two-thirds of an acre on the west side of phase 1 along the creek that runs through the property.

Phillips-Brown also plans to connect to a sewer line from Kingsfield Court and to build a stormwater detention pond either in the southwest corner of phase 1 or along the creek.

Hawkey recommended that utility easements be dedicated in the plans, particularly, he said, because of the proximity of some of the attached units. Plan board member John Struewing suggested that hard surface parking inside the loop be clearly identified for daily use and that soft surface parking be marked for overflow use.

Eastman’s review focused on the width of the looped drive, which a traffic engineering study showed to be too narrow for standard delivery trucks and for some emergency vehicles. He recommended the developers widen the drive to 12 feet and include several extra feet on the end of the loop that has the sharpest curve.

Eastman also said that the Village’s Dayton Street sewer line could handle the entire development’s waste, but sewer lines might not be able to cross the creek because of a difference in elevation between the east and the west sides of the plat. Eastman also recommended that Phillips-Brown clarify how surface water and post-storm residual water would move across the site.

He stated in his review that none of the issues he raised was significant enough to prevent the development from going forward, and that it would be appropriate to approve the preliminary plan on condition that Phillips-Brown resolve the engineering concerns.

In her comments, Martin said that the development’s covenants, conditions and restrictions for such things as lot use, building location, nuisances and sundry issues like solar panels and outdoor clotheslines were too loose. But Hawkey said that the Village has regulations pertaining to many of these issues, and he did not anticipate a problem with the current restrictions in the covenant document.

Plan board members shared concerns about the setbacks for many of the buildings around the loop, which, they said, seemed too close to the road. They also expressed discomfort with a five-foot separation from one homeowner’s driveway to the neighbor’s house, but they agreed to waive the standard eight feet between private drives and give the developers a chance to address the problem in the plan’s final draft.

Phillips-Brown plans to submit the concept plans for the development’s second phase to Planning Commission this month. Phase 2 consists of a 4.1-acre parcel west of phase 1 and will include 31 attached townhouses. Plan board agreed to consider the concept plans for phase 2 at its meeting on Sept. 12.