04-11-2011 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING Monday, April 11, 2011 7:00 o'clock p.m. (6. #11 -3501 YOUR BOAT CLUB, LLC, 1444 SHORELINE DRIVE, Continued) within the commercial property, resulting in a total of 73 available stalls sanctioned by the City. A 4 -stall variance was granted, as the stall requirement was calculated at 77 stalls, based on 118 slips, a retail /service operation, and no credit for occasional parking use of the triangular "temporary storage" area east of CR15. The number of slips was later reduced to 98 by a prior owner during a reconfiguration of the docks. The current request for a boat club CUP has raised a number of red flags for Staff related to the variety and level of uses this site can be expected to accommodate. The primary issues relate to the parking situation, pedestrian safety and traffic congestion on CR15, fragmented ownership and zoning of the site, and having multiple commercial tenants operating at the site. It should be noted here that Browns Bay, LLC, as owner of the property only rents out slips and does not office at the site, Marine Max is a retail boat sale /service tenant of the site, leasing the main building and having the rights to the sole use of six slips for sales, display and service use; i.e., they will not be rented out. Your Boat Club will be a second tenant of the site, and the applicant indicates they do not require an on -site office to operate. However, they intend to lease space in the adjacent residentially -zoned building at 1440 Shoreline Drive for residential purposes. To Staff's knowledge it has not been common to have multiple business tenants at Orono marinas, although this is not uncommon in most other commercial settings. • The only other boat club CUP issued by the city has been to Sailors World Marina in 1995. In that case, approval was granted for a 100 - member maximum boat club use subject to maintaining the exclusive availability of 25 off -site parking stalls during May through September with the City reserving the right to • reconsider if parking issues or inadequacies arise at the marina or at the off -site parking location. That site had 75 slips requiring 45 parking stalls and only 41 available. Rather than granting a parking variance for the boat club, the City required off - street parking at a level that calculates out to 2.1 stalls per club boat. The Planning Commission in February began its first review of a staff proposed amendment to the B -2 standards which would require that for each five person capacity in boats stored in water or on land for boat club use, one complete parking stall shall be provided. To date, the amendment has been tabled twice and its eventual outcome is uncertain. An issue raised by the Planning Commission during the initial February discussion was that the term "boat club" is not clearly defined in the Code but needs to be carefully defined given the variety of boating options available today. Members questioned the need for parking standards for the boat club use, and asked Staff to more clearly define the problem, to identify the objective the City would like to achieve, and to outline the options for achieving that objective. As a result of further Planning Commission review in March, the application was tabled again, suggesting that of the four administrative options presented by Staff, they would like Staff to pursue re- categorizing boat clubs as an accessory use rather than as a conditional use. Additionally, the Planning Commission suggested that other allowable uses within the B -2 District should be considered in terms of their impacts on parking. Staff to date has not proceeded further on these recommendations. As it relates to the Your Boat Club CUP application, the Planning Commission reviewed this application at its March meeting. The Planning Commission chose to reverse the order of the agenda and reviewed • this application before their second review of the B -2 standards amendment. Page 4 of 30