Members Present:                                                              Aletha Magyaros
                                                                                              Donna Conaway
                                                                                              James Bauder
                                                                                              David Benner
                                                                                              Stephen Bergman
Alternate Member:                                                              Richard Russell

Zoning Administrator:                                                        John Phillippi
Zoning Data Coordinator:                                                 Joni Poindexter

Ms. Magyaros stated that the first matter is the approval of the minutes from the meeting held December 11, 2003.

Mr. Bauder made a motion to approve the minutes from the meeting of December 11, 2003 and Mr. Benner seconded the motion.

The vote was: Mr. Bergman-yes, Mr. Benner-yes, Mr. Bauder-yes, Ms. Conaway-yes, and Ms. Magyaros-yes.

Ms. Conaway made a motion to retain Magyaros as Chairperson.

Mr. Benner seconded the motion.  All board members voted in favor.

Ms. Magyaros nominated Mr. Benner as Vice Chairman.

Mr. Bergman seconded the motion.  All board members voted in favor.

AMENDMENT #536-04 – Stone Gate Development LLC, 2428 Whipple Ave. NW, Canton, Ohio 44708 agent for Robert L. Joliet, property owner, 4610 Yale Ave. NW, Canton, Ohio 44709 and Jardin du Lac, Ltd., c/o Raymond S. Rosedale, property owner, 5005 Blakemore Trail NW, Canton, Ohio 44718 proposes to rezone 22.15 acres from R-4 (Multi-Family Residential District) to B-1 (Suburban Office & Limited Business District), 7.13 acres from B-3 (Commercial Business District) and R-4 (Multi-Family Residential District) to R-3 (Residential Planned Unit Development District), 36.77 acres from R-1 (Single Family Low Density Residential District) and R-R (Rural Residential District) to B-2 (Neighborhood Business District), 18.70 acres from R-R (Rural Residential District) to R-3 (Residential Planned Unit Development District), and 44.12 acres from R-R ) Rural Residential District) to B-1 (Suburban Office & Limited Business District) for a total of 151 acres, more or less, Sect. 23SE, 24SW, 25SW/NW, & 26NE/SE Jackson Twp. (Legal description on file)

Ms. Magyaros:  The property is described as approximately 151.23 acres located north of Hills & Dales, south of Fulton and east of Everhard Rd. in the southeast quarter section 23, southwest quarter section 24, northwest and southwest quarter section 25 and southeast and northeast quarter section 26 Jackson Township.  We are dealing with several tracts of property and I will describe those as follows:  Tract “A” R-R (Rural Residential) to B-3 (Commercial Business) 1.51 acres on the southeast corner of the intersection of Fulton Dr. and Everhard Rd.  Tract “B” is R-R (Rural Residential) to B-2 (Neighborhood Business) 20.85 acres on the south side of Fulton Dr. and east of Everhard Rd.  Tract “C” R-R (Rural Residential) to B-1 (Suburban Office & Limited Business) 44.12 acres south of Fulton Dr. located east of Everhard Rd.  Tract “D” R-4 (Multi Family Residential) to B-1 (Suburban Office & Limited Business) 22.15 acres west of Dressler Rd. located north of Hills & Dales Rd.  Tract “E” is R-R (Rural Residential) to R-3 (Residential Planned Unit Development) 18.70 acres south of Fulton Dr.  Tract “F” B-3 (Commercial Business) & R-4 (Multi Family Residential) to R-3 (Residential Planned Unit Development) 7.13 acres on the north side of Hills & Dales Rd. located west of Dressler Rd.  And tract “G” R-1 (Single Family Low Density Residential) & R-R (Rural Residential) to R-3 (Residential Planned Unit Development) 36.77 acres on the north side of Hills & Dales Rd. located west of Dressler Rd.

This matter went before the Regional Planning Commission and the Regional Planning Commission recommended denial.  Although they did not state any reasons for the denial on the recommendation that we received, we did receive copies of the minutes from the planning staff committee minutes.  The staff committee minutes recommend approval and had some comments, but we are going off of what we received from the Regional Planning Commission and that was a denial.  But as I stated, we do not have any reasons for that denial.

At this time I want to go over a couple of ground rules before we get started.  We’ll start with the people that want to speak in favor of the proposed amendment.  When you come up to speak in favor of the proposed amendment please state your name and your address for the record and make sure that you stay facing forward in talking to the commission.  I know that the tendency is to want to turn around because there are more people behind you and talk to the crowd, but it is important that you stay facing forward so we can get everything recorded.  If your neighbor has been up here and has made a comment that maybe you were going to make try to bring something new up to the podium so we can keep the meeting moving.  I just want to make one other comment.  I know Regional Planning referred to these tracts a little bit different than what the developer did.  I would suggest that we stick with how the developer has them designated so we can avoid some confusion.  So when we refer to the tracts we are going to refer to them as how the developer has them designated and not necessarily how Regional Planning has them designated in their recommendation.  At this time I would like to call forward anybody that would like to speak in favor of the amendment.  Please state your name and your address.

Don Shultz-My name is Don Shultz.  I am one of the owners and President of the design company and construction services.  We are a development and construction firm located in the city of green.  Over the last 15 years we’ve done numerous developments and construction projects mostly in the Summit County area.  I have been asked to make a presentation tonight on behalf of the Stone Gate Development Group.  The Stone Gate Development Group consists of three individuals.  The other two individuals, of one which was unable to come this evening is Michael Miller.  He’s a Jackson resident and also a business man and a respected real estate investor.  The other partner we have here this evening is Sean Sanford.  Sean is the owner of the local ReMax.  He is an expert in the commercial real estate industry.  Other representatives that are here with us tonight are Jerry Geib and Brian Ashman.  They are the owners of Cooper & Associates.  Cooper & Associates is a long time Stark County Engineering Firm and has done numerous projects within existence for over fifty years and are very well respected in the Engineering field and they are working with us on this project.

We are here to speak this evening about the proposed project obviously for the Tam O’Shanter golf course property.  Its 295 acres and a beautiful piece of property located right in the heart of a very beautiful community in Jackson Township.  I’m going to try to attempt to focus on three areas of discussion.  The areas of discussion will be number one, the golf course use in its current status and the private property rights of the owners and people who own that property today.  Number two, we are going to try to attempt to make a comparison between what the existing zoning today on the piece of property will allow the development, what kind of development could happen, and thirdly what we would propose as an alternative to what the existing zoning would be.  As far as the golf course goes it’s been around for seventy five years and is obviously a pillar in this community.  It’s a source of not only an enjoyment for recreational activities, but it has also served as a buffer between a lot of development activity on all surrounding sides.  Currently the Tam O’Shanter golf course ownership group has taken over on a lot of form, they have over the years brought in a lot of heirs into the ownership status and they currently have multiple ownership interest in the business.  They have expressed a desire to sell the golf course because they no longer desire to remain in the golf course business.  They have made that public knowledge.  They have entertained offers from other golf course companies and other developers wishing to develop the property under it’s current zoning restrictions and classifications, and of course we are here today because we feel that we have presented to them the best alternative and the best use of this property not only for them but also for the community of Jackson Township.

I know the zoning commission itself has a good understanding of the zoning laws, but for the people in the audience we’re going to be using a lot of terms here this evening that you may not be familiar with.  This slide is a listing of the actual zoning districts from the Jackson Township Zoning Code.  As going down from Open Space Districts the first one is Rural Residential District and then we have Single Family Low Density, Single Family Residential District, Two Family Residential District, Residential Planned Unit Development District, Multi-Family Residential District, Multi-Family High Density District, Planned Unit Development District, Canal Parkland District and then we get into the business district.  Suburban Office & Limited Business District, Neighborhood Business District, Commercial Business District, Planned Business Residential Development District and Industrial.  The reason why I wanted to go over this is because we have color coded the zoning districts that we will be discussing tonight.  We have dark green, medium green and light green.  We have yellow in the middle and if you go down here we have a bright red, medium red and down to a pink.  What I want everybody to understand is that this order is not just there by accident.  That is the same order, with maybe a few changes, in districts from community to community.  They always list their zoning district from less passive uses to more aggressive uses.  Industrial for example is probably the most aggressive.  The open space being less passive and then rural residential.  There are different sizes. Rural residential for example basically goes from the bigger lots down to the most dense residential districts.  The R-6 Planned Unit Development is the highest density.  The R-R is the least density.  These colors come into play when we start getting into our slides.  Step zoning is a term that you are going to hear tonight.  Step zoning is a philosophy that was adopted when zoning was first regulated and first adopted.  It was 1959 when Jackson Township first introduced their first zoning and it was designed to keep compatible uses away from each other and to keep buffering between compatible uses.  If you were to take Jackson Township today and you were to take them and you were to pluck them out in the middle of the desert somewhere where there was no development and your going to bring all 40,000 people out there and all the businesses and everything and relocated it and you were going to start from scratch with a clean slate and design Jackson Township and all you had to start with was an airport and I-77, that design of that community would have the interchanges, the airport and the expressway uses would start down here and you would work your way out to the core, to the very outer limits of that community where you would have the rural residential districts.  Unfortunately when communities develop in a round about way they are not always sequential as far as the development coming before zoning, so a lot of communities just like Jackson have been forced to kind of adapt and move along as you will.  But the bottom line here is as a township we would like to make everybody understand rural residential and B-3 high tail retail use districts are not compatible, and step zoning philosophies would require and mandate that you use intermittent zoning districts as buffers as to step your zoning down or step it out to keep those districts away from each other.

When we were looking at this property we looked at the existing zoning.  The existing zoning of this property is half R-R and half of it is R-1.  The problem is it boarders mostly up to B-3, B-2, & B-1 districts.  We didn’t feel the residential zoning classification for this property was ever scrutinized or considered when the business districts of Belden Village were expanded and bought in towards this piece of property.  Everybody here in this room has a passion for the Tam O’Shanter golf course and rightly so.  It is a beautiful piece of property.  But the one thing that has been overlooked over the years is that it was incorrectly viewed as a permanent buffer.  This is a private piece of property that the individuals at the golf course own.  It is not a public piece of property and their rights to have it developed should have been reviewed all along as the zoning districts around it were developed.  And we would like to show you our plan and how we’ve taken all of that into consideration.

The current zoning of the golf course is as I said residential R-R and R-1.  The current use of the property right now is actually a non-conforming use.  That’s another term that is used in zoning.  A non-conforming use means that you are using that property and you’re grandfathered to what the zoning classifications is, but your use is actually different.  They are actually in retail sales.  They are a recreational facility and they are actually a restaurant and an alcohol serving business.  Those kinds of businesses are actually B-2 businesses.  So today’s use of the Tam O’Shanter property, all 295 acres of it, is being used as B-2 but it is zoned R-1 and R-R.

When looking at this from a land planning standpoint to be a good land planner we have to look at a lot of different things.  This piece of property is actually called an infill piece of property.  That term is used by development experts and planners most of the time in urban areas where you’re coming in and building and developing around a completely developed area.  That really is the case here.  This property has development all around four sides of it and the problem is that on both sides there are drastically different zoning districts.  So we look at that and we also look at some other characteristics of the land.  Go to the next slide please.

Other characteristics that we look at when we go to develop a plan for a piece of property would be the physical characteristics of the land.  Although this map doesn’t show it, it is a relativity flat piece of property with rises up here in the north section.  I will orient everybody.  This is Fulton Rd., Dressler Rd., Hills & Dales, and Everhard.  This in white is the property of the Tam O’Shanter golf course.  You can see its current zoning here again.  There is a line right here that separates the R-1 district and the rest of it is R-R.  So if you look at all this business on this side it directly abuts up to the lowest density and largest lot residential district in the zoning code.

The physical characteristics of this property also are that this is a very hilly area.   Over here there are lots of topography and train issues to work with.  One of the other big characteristics of this property is that there is a main power line, transmission lines for power that cuts and dissects right through the property.  We want to look at the zoning and again as I stated one of the things we have to focus on and probably the biggest difficult challenge is to try to develop a plan here that would be palatable to all the people involved.  As you can see this area down in here has been developed into the R-R district.  That is again the least passive residential area in the zoning text.

All of this red indicates the highest or most aggressive commercial use and retail use.  That’s a big area and everybody knows that goes all the way over to the expressway from here.  This coloring in here is B-1 that’s more of an office type use.  That is the least passive commercial use.  I don’t know how it got in here but we got a lot of R-4 stuck right in the middle.  R-4 is six or eight units per acre density that is basically apartments.  If you want to relate the R-4 the yellow area is apartment zoned property.  There currently are some apartments here and then this is all open land at this point in time.  So all the way around on the north and east sides we have business districts abutting the property line.  On the south and west sides we have residential.  Go to the next slide please.

Again this map shows our coloring.  The R-R district is zoned in here and the R-1 district in here.    R-R, just for people’s information, is 20,000 square foot lot minimum.  R-1 is 14,500 square foot lot minimum.  A 14,500 square foot lot is 85 by 190 or somewhere around in there.  That is the two zoning areas today.  So again, we’ve looked at all the characteristics and all the logistics around the property.  This is an infill piece of property.  We want to be good planners.  We look at the physical characteristics, the topography, and the surrounding zoning uses.  The problem again is that there is a lot of incompatibility.  This whole side of this property is very unrealistic and it is very non-feasible to develop this as residential property.  We’re not so sure, like I said that this property was technically taken into consideration as they moved forward with expanding the business districts.  Go to the next slide please.

One of the other things we looked at before we start developing a plan for a community, allotments, or piece of property is we will make sure we understand what the land use plan for the community is.  This is a map from the land use plan that is currently in place.  There is a land use plan in place for Jackson Township.  This is part of a 1994 land use plan that was adopted.  It is a ten year plan that is currently up for review.  That is typical in most communities.  They will adopt their plan and every ten years they will do a review.  This comprehensive review was done.  There are a couple of things I want to note on here.  I just showed you on the previous slide that this area still has some R-4 apartment type uses mixed in over here and the land use plan is actually recommending, it’s hard to read this but this is commercial development.  The land use plan is actually the ultimate change over for that to be all business over here, a complete line of our eastern property line.  On Everhard Rd. there is a small strip of yellow where the land use plan has indicated that there is an area that is currently being used as residential, but the long term land use plan would propose to turn that over to commercial because it is fronting on a five land highway.  Those are areas where you can see from this point here all the way around we have the highest yield residential zoning district directly abutting commercial uses as proposed by the land use plan adopted in 1994.  Someone said “Well that’s an old land use plan”.  I don’t think a land use plan is going to change.  It’s pretty typical for them to be reviewed, tweaked and modified, but the land use plan is not going to change because of all the characteristics that went into the adoption of this plan here.

There is no step zoning.  Actually on this land use plan you’ll see that this indicator is actually indicating that it is open space and recreational use.  Meaning they really didn’t count on it or think about it being developed and what would happen.  Again I think it is very apparent that this particular property we’re talking about today has been an over site.  It is an inadvertent use.  Next slide please.

I said we have three segments we want to focus on.  The golf course use, the private property rights of the golf course owners, and the existing zoning use.  Although we don’t feel this is the best use of the property and the best development plan, this is the plan that we came up with.  We came up with this plan just to determine a proposed density and the linear footage of roads and things just so we could kind of see what the proposed existing development would yield.  This is a complete residential development that needs no zoning variances or zoning accommodations at all.  It has 576 total residential units.  There is a slight piece of our property here that is zoned R-4 and would yield about forty apartments, but the rest of them would be all residential.  Those 576 homes would bring 817 school age children into the school district.  Now just a point of clarification, a portion of this property is in the plain township school district.  I did not split my calculations and my numbers up because I wanted to look at it as a complete development, so some of those kids of some of those homes would be in the plain township schools, but 817 school age children, 576 homes and no open space requirements in single family residential zoning districts.  There’s no buffers, there’s no step zoning, and it floods the residential housing market with almost 600 of the same price range of homes.  That’s what the existing zoning could do.  That’s why we’re not proposing that tonight.  Because we don’t think that’s good for anybody involved.  Next slide please.

As far as our proposal tonight we looked at the power lines as a line of demarcation and a place for us to transition internally within our own project.  Part of our rezoning request this evening encompasses a piece of property right here that I showed you on a previous slide that is an R-4 district that is owned by the same individual that owns this B-1 district.  This is a thirty acre tract of land.  He has business in the front and apartments in the back and it really isn’t feasible to develop it in that fashion, so we have looked at dividing our project into two different projects.  We have Stone Gate, which is the residential side of our project, and the Belden Corporate Parkway, a business center and commerce center that we would do on the north end of the project.  Taking a look at it real closely on Fulton Rd. we are stepping the zoning down from the exact specific corner.  All four sides of that corner are a B-3 use and we would propose one and one half acres of this piece of property as a B-3 use.  We would step right down into the next zoning district, which if you remember on our chart B-2 is Neighborhood Business Districts.  They call it that because those are businesses meant to perform services and provided services for neighborhoods such as banks, shops, restaurants and things like that that people come and patronized as their business.  All of these properties right here are not fed off the road because there are some serious topography issues.  You all know that big hill that exists right here, so we really have to develop these separately.  These would have access points off of Everhard and Fulton.  This would be B-2 property and this would be B-1 and B-2 and would continue up through here.  But all these lots here would be internally fed meaning no driveways off of Fulton.  They would come into the business part and be fed from the internal road system.  From the B-2 we are stepping the zoning down to a less passive use as we get closer to the residential and all of this color here ties in which is off our site.  This is our site, but we tied it all together with one big use and it is the least passive commercial group in a B-1 which is typically your eight to five office use five days a week.  That’s why it’s least passive.  We also plan on having a connection.  We are negotiating with this land owner for an extension of the road to tie in and tie this all into one Corporate Parkway.  Next slide please.

After our business district you can see that we’ve now went from red to medium red then getting down into the lighter colors.  We’ve stepped it down as we’re getting closer to the residential that we want to protect.  We have now a line of buffer and the lowest impact of business.  Our next two areas that we have incorporated into our plan are R-3 residential areas.  This project right here is an 18 acres site that we propose to do R-3 as single family attached.  This area here is R-3 single family detached.  It’s a 42 acre site over here and as you can see again we are trying to build that buffer.  We have now made the transition from high end to low end business and now we’re stepping into the higher multi family uses of residential.  Next slide please.

Multi family has a lot of negativity from people.  I have an insert from a senior housing magazine and I wanted to read some things.  The word condominium scares some people and multi family certainly scares people.  This is a trend in our housing market today and is going to be the biggest market that needs to be satisfied.  Here are some extras from an article.  “Seventy Seven Million boomers are part of the largest generation in US history.  Collectively they are the future of the housing market over the next few decades and they are changing the industry as you know it.  Collectively they are future of housing.  Boomers control seventy percent of the nation’s wealth.  They don’t need the biggest house on the block but they still want high quality housing.  Unlike their parents they would rather remain in their home town or home State near their kids and grandkids and circle of friends.  They want a low maintenance home in the community.  They won’t rule out an apartment or condo and many of them are attached and attracted to excitement of living in a multi family community”.

This particular condominium in the attached format is four units.  We call those quads.  They are very popular.  There are projects like this all over the Stark and Summit county area.  This particular 18 acres parcel has a total of 88 units on it.  There is no open space requirement currently in the Jackson Township Zoning Regulations for the attached condominium projects; however, we do have 20% open space on this particular project.  On the handout that you received this evening when you walked in, we tried to give you a real good picture of the types of uses of real life units that will be on there.  It is a very popular type of housing.  The density requirements for Jackson Township in this area allow you up to six units per acre and our design only has 4.79 units per acre.  The average price range of the homes in this project would range from $175,000 to $275,000.  Again, we are using this as another buffer between business districts and residential single family.  Next slide please.

The other multi family R-3 site is a detached community.  This is a 42 acre site that actually fronts on Hills & Dales Rd.  It has 91 home sites.  The home sites will actually be single family fee simple lots.  Jackson Township requirements have a 7,500 sq. ft. minimum lot size for this type of development.  They allow 2.2 units per acre and we have an actual layout here that represents 2.16 units per acre.  There is a 25% open space requirement within this type of zoning text.  We have 44% open space on this project.  We have a club house, swimming pool, tennis courts and a rather large open area.  We are designing a lot of mounding and landscaping.  We have setback the housing products substantially off of Hills & Dales.  The club house is going to be designed to service the complete community of Stone Gate, including the single family homes.  There will be a shared use agreement between the single family attached R-3 project and the single family homes.  The previous slide of the attached condominiums will have their own clubhouse.  In the overall master project of ours there will be two club houses with independent pools and recreational facilities.  But this one will be over sized not just for this community, but for all the single families for this community.  The Villa’s will be custom ranch homes for the buyer and the empty nester who doesn’t want the lot and the big property but still wants a real high quality home.  We expect the price range of the homes to start at $275,000 to $400,000 in this particular segment of our development.  Next slide please.

Again, you can see as we transition now through the business districts, and we are using multi family districts to buffer the existing commercial as we buffer our way to what’s left in the single family home sites.  I want to make it very clear to everybody here this evening that there is no zoning request required or needed for anything we are depicting in the white areas.  We are using as is zoning to produce that whole area of single family homes.  If you remember the R-1 district was over here and the R-R district is over here.  All of the lots that are currently in this design meet or exceed, and some areas drastically exceed, the minimum lot sizes for those zoning districts.  This zoning is not a final plan.  This plan is not part of the rezoning request.  We needed to show the R-3 plans for the zoning request and the business areas.  We have shown this strictly to show some connectivity and roadways so we could get an idea of densities in our single family and again of road layouts and linear foot and construction costs.  This is substantially accurate but we will be coming back, if we are successful in rezoning, for the over all project.  The process is we would come back with the single family for a second round with the planning commission just to scrutinize the single family.  I stress that because we had some public meetings or private meeting if you will, and we attempted to invite as many of the residents from the surrounding areas and community.  We invited approximately 300 people that we could get addresses and names for and we had maybe between the two meetings 100 people come out.  We showed the concept plans and we got a lot of comments, positives and good ideas.  Most of the comments that we got were concerning the residential development.  To our surprise there really wasn’t concern with the commercial layout and the fact that we are introducing condos, I think the step zoning and buffering was well received but most of the comments were with the single family.  I’ll talk about those comments now.  Obviously the people along the Hills & Dales area don’t want to see their nice green view gone.  What we have done here is we are expanding the buffer areas and setbacks.  We’re going to be doing a lot more mounding, buffering and setting back along Hills & Dales based on some of the comments that we got.  Let’s go to the next slide.

As far as the single family goes, again, I want to stress that this is not final and it’s not here for approval.  We did it just to get our roadways and density to kind of figure out where we are at.  We talked about the buffers and are actually planning on creating a lake and the open green space span sets back all across Hills & Dales here.  These roadway connections became a concern.  We tried to explain to the residents that the Stark County Regional Planning procedures will require us to get a variance not to put those connections in.  That is one of the points from Regional Planning that we were kind of mystified at.  They were saying they don’t like them, but they also told us we would have to ask them not to put them in at the same time, so we are showing these because proper planning is usually promoted from the developers, by the area of municipalities, and the engineering people who scrutinize these connectivity points.  These connectivity points do not benefit us in any way, shape or form.  We would just assume put a cul-de-sac here and take that stub street out.  That is something that we will actually ask Jackson Township and Stark County as to which way to go with that, but that is nothing of interest to us as far as whether we do those or we don’t.

There was some talk of open space.  Obviously in Jackson Township there is no open space requirements for the 576 homes that we talked about.  Not many communities have open space requirements in single family housing districts.  There’s a reason for that.  The reason for that is these are large lots.  Comparatively speaking across the country these are huge lots.  The open space is the people’s back yard.  Open space requirements are more typically in the condominium projects and the multi family projects.  A little community park with inside a community here has no value to anybody other than the people that live in that community.  Therefore the communities in the zoning text are more apt to have plans that create parks that are publicly owned and used by everybody in the community.  Nevertheless, in our total plan when we go back to the over view we have 13-1/2 percent total open space of all the areas involved in our plan today.  I also mentioned there is a piece of business property that we are negotiating with the adjacent property owner to connect to our business area.  If we are successful then there is also a thirteen acre pond over there that will connect to our property.  It directly abuts some other open space that we have.  If we can put that together we’ll have almost 17 percent open space for the project to be able to do some nice things with our single family open space areas.

The area here that we call the hills is the area that has topography concerns.  In this area here we could put 14,500 sq. ft. lots.  We have chosen to depict this area as 20,000 to 30,000 sq. ft. lots.  We are going to increase the lot sizes because of the topography and create the higher end type housing market here.  The hills have approximately 89 lots.  We’re going to put 20,000 to 30,000 sq. ft. lots instead of the 14,500 that we could do.  The price range of the lots will probably be $85,000 to $100,000 and the homes will start at $500,000 and go up from there.

There will be separate entranceways for the hills.  We plan on marketing that for the exclusive community and a custom feel.  We also had comments at our meeting with the residents of Amesbury.  They were a little concerned about the tree line that separates the property now.  We’ve talked among ourselves and we agreed that we are going to create a conservation easement along the back of our lots that will prohibit any of the residents of the new lots to remove any of the trees.  So that’s a little buffering that we picked up on and thought would be a good idea.

The main Stone Gate Development is approximately 170 home sites, but the lots will be mixed because the zoning line breaks it in half.  There will be a mix of 14,500 sq. ft. lot and 20,000 sq. ft. lots.  The lots will range from $60,000 to $75,000 and the homes will start at $275,000 up towards $400,000 in this area here.  Next slide please.

As you can see from the overall view what we have successfully done is kept in mind the high quality homes here and the high use commercial here and stepped zoned and transitioned from both directions from where we meet.  It used to be that the Tam O’Shanter golf course was the buffer and the separation.  We’ve actually used our power line, which is going to be a 60 ft. power line easement and that will be the transition between the single family, multi family buffers, and into the business districts.  We feel that this plan here offers compatible zoning use.  We show this plan here offers permanent buffering between the single family homes, the quality of homes we have down here, and the commercial use we have up here.  Next slide please.

This is the map that many of you have.  This is the summary of zoning changes.  The corner needs to be changed from R-R to B-3.  This area here needs to be changed from R-R to B-2.  This color here needs to be changed from R-R to B-1.  This actual zoning change is not a part of the property but we’ve included it because we think it makes a lot of sense for connectivity and transition from R-4 to B-1.  This property here goes from R-1 to R-3.  This property here goes from B-3 and R-4, this piece that has multiple zones, to an R-3 to tie this all together.  That is the summary of the zoning changes that we are actually requesting this evening.  Next slide please.

As I said at the beginning of my presentation we would like to compare what can be built here today without any zoning approvals and what we have proposed.  One of the concerns for a lot of communities when we talk about development and growth is obviously school enrollment.  Jackson Township has a great school system and it’s been a growing community for a long time.  They are currently considering building an addition onto the high school.  The growth and the rate of the amount of kids that come into the community have to be a consideration.  If you look here at my chart these are the zoning classifications that are of interest for our development.  This column here will tell you the amount of homes that are in each zoning district.  This is the existing zoning.  The existing zoning will allow 245 homes in the R-R, 291 homes in the R-1 and 40 apartment units.  If we use the R-R it has 1.25 students per household, the R-1 has 1.75 students per household and .05 for apartments over the national average.  If you equate the existing zoning to the amount of homes we could get in there that relates to 817 students coming out of 576 homes.  Our proposed project has 89 R-R homes, 170 R-1 homes, 91 R-3 detached, 88 R-3 attached for 111 R-R students, 298 R-1 and zero students coming out of the empty nester R-R districts.  Right here is your summary.  409 total students out of 438.  This represents 1.42 students per household.  .93 students per household are proposed.  To summarize, our project has 138 fewer homes than what could be built there today.  That equates to 408 fewer students being enrolled in the schools over the life of this project.  Next slide please.

The other consideration when you look at the review of a project and how it impacts your community would be tax valuations.  This is a property tax summary.  These are the zoning districts and the actual rates that are collected if you will.  You can see the business is slightly higher than the residential.  This is the existing zoning.  I’m going to let you guys follow through the numbers here and I’ll go through the summary.  We don’t have any R-3 in the existing zoning.  We don’t have any business in the existing zoning but if you follow these totals down there’s $211,000,000.00 dollars of total investment or construction dollars that would go into the existing zoning project which would create $3,171,000.00 of tax revenue annually compared to if you break it down by how many houses we have in the R-R districts, how many condominiums we have and the value for those and the rates and then you add in the business districts.  We add in valuations for the business.  For the B-1 we used twenty lots at an average value of a $3,000,000.00 investment or property value.  In the B-2 we used seven lots at an average of two and one half million dollars and the B-3 one lot at two million dollars.  You equate those over and there’s an actual total value of $222,000,000.00 of construction investments on this property which yields $3,490,500.00 and in summary your tax collections are $319,500 more tax collected annually.  That equates to $204,480 more tax dollars generated for the schools every year.  Sixty four percent of the property tax collected goes directly to the school district.  Next slide please.

Our summary for this project that we would like consideration for, and this is based on what could happen today with the current zoning, we have 138 fewer homes.  We have 408 fewer students.  This better meets the housing needs of today.  Adding the condominiums in, you’re meeting a much larger much needed market segment for housing.  We create $319,500 more property tax and $204,480 annual school income every year.  That equates to $5,462 per student every year verses the existing zoning would only contribute $2,484 per student every year.  The average, I believe, in the State of Ohio that it takes to educate a student is somewhere around $4,500 a year.  Most residential communities do not pay for their students or have businesses to pay for the students and that what your seeing here.  Our project will bring in more than it needs for the students and existing zoning would not pay enough.  We also proposed that our project has increased and retained income tax revenues.  Income tax revenues would be on the jobs that are actually produced off of the site and the development of the buildings on this site.  Not every one of the businesses that will locate on this site will be a new business in Jackson Township but some will be new.  Those will be tax dollars that you didn’t have before on their income and some will be other businesses that need to expand or need to update their facilities and might be looking elsewhere but might be attracted to our site which is a way to retain them in Jackson Township.  That is income tax dollars that the city keeps a substantial portion of.

The layout that we are proposing verses the layout that I showed you that could be done in residential has 6,550 linear feet less of roads.  The city pays to maintain the roads.  That’s 6,550 linear foot of road that they won’t have to maintain if our project is approved.  Our project has 13-1/2 percent more open space than what could be done there.  We also have two recreational facilities.  It conforms to the township and county open space activity goals.  There is a 2001 study that Jackson Township does.  They have a very comprehensive study of their park systems and what they would like to see done and what is required and the goals of the parks.  They don’t have any specific plans, but we do have some of the buildings with the power line easements and some of the open space and things that we are trying to hook to the residential portion that could add to an activity situation for the parks.  In general the park system I think is very healthy in Jackson Township.  They have a very comprehensive plan and direction for their open space and parkland.  We have a wide range of compatible zoning uses.  It conforms to the intention of the Jackson Township comprehensive land use plan.  I want to read a couple things from there.  “Jackson Township’s Land Use Plan:  A major revision to the zoning districts and text was completed in 1979.  Zoning assures separation from incompatible uses.”  That’s what we have done here, tried to create a separation.  “The primary purpose of this report is to develop a comprehensive plan for Jackson Township that will serve as a guide to township officials with future zoning and land use control decisions which they will face in years to come.  The time frame for the plan is 1995 to 2005 with a forecast to 2010 for land use and development.  Documentation set out in the following pages have been reviewed carefully and updated and reviewed by township officials and other interested parties resulting in the approval of the following plan by the Board of Trustees in 1995”.  In the residential section of the land use plan I want to read the following insert, “Discourage development in the northeast section of the township in the area of the Akron Canton Regional Airport.  Encourage site planning such as clustering homes.  Encourage site planning which allows for the design and development of multi family developments for residence who desire a different life style and which promotes reduction of vehicular traffic.  Encourage development on site for personal services and limited retail uses near residential developments to allow for the reduction of vehicular traffic”.  The concept there was the shops and the services are close to their home.  They are not out and about on the community streets.  Preserve existing quality of life by providing an abundance of different housing opportunities for residence to co-exist peacefully.  Another insert; “the trend is toward condominium developments with smaller residential lot sizes with less maintenance and more open space.  It is estimated that Jackson Township will have enough land available to meet housing demands both single and multi family for more than one hundred years.  And on the commercial section, encourage development of planned business residential development districts to blend residential, office, and commercial use in a compatible manner.  Encourage efficient use of commercial land by clustering offices and multi family structures to reduce street and utility extensions and to help reduce traffic congestion”.  Those are inserts all from the current land use plan in place for Jackson Township.  We feel our project does conform to those intentions of the Jackson Township Comprehensive Land Use Plan.  Lastly we feel our project is better for Jackson Township.  I know everybody wants me to quit, but I have one last thing.  As I said in the beginning we have three issues.  We have an issue where we discussed the current use of the golf course and the private property rights of those individuals, the existing zoning and what is allowed today and what somebody could come in and do without any zoning variances or rezone requests, and our proposal.  I have a letter here from the owners of the Tam O’Shanter group that I would like to read into the record.  This letter was addressed to John Phillippi the Zoning Administrator and it was received this week.  “Dear John, Although we have addressed this letter to you, we request that it be distributed to all Township Trustees, Zoning Commission Members and Administrators.  As you know, there has been a request for zoning submitted to the Township for the proposed development of the Tam O’Shanter golf course property.  We may not be able to attend the zoning commission meeting, and thus want to offer (via this letter) our reasons for selling and our views on the zoning request at hand.  Currently we are the President and Vice President of the Tam O’Shanter Company.  While we and our fellow shareholders understand that our property has served as a valuable recreational asset to the community over the years, we and a large majority of our shareholders are at the age when we are looking to divest ourselves from long term interests and the responsibility of managing them.  We have agreed that selling the golf club is in everyone’s best interest.  After surveying the interest of other golf course companies and real estate developers, we have entered into an agreement with Stone Gate Development, LLC.  In choosing Stone Gate Development, we felt that they presented the best overall choice for us as well as for the entire community of Jackson Township.  Not only is this group made up of Jackson residents and local business owners, but they have a plan for the proposed use of our property that is well thought out and represents what we feel is the best use of the land.  This group understands that the current zoning classification only permits the development of single family homes, but realizes that their mixed use plan and incorporation of step down zoning concepts would better serve the surrounding properties and this community.  In summary, we respectfully ask that you take the following into consideration when contemplating your approvals for the proposed zoning request: 1) The Tam O’Shanter Golf Course will be sold for development regardless of your approval or denial of this plan.  We have been proud to be a part of the heritage of Jackson Township, but must exercise our right as property owners in nurturing the sale of this property.  2) Our property has been zoned for residential use since the golf course was constructed in 1928.  We feel that it has been unjustly viewed as a permanent and unnecessarily large buffer between the residential homes off Hills & Dales and Everhard Roads, and the commercial development on Dressler and Fulton Roads.  Furthermore, we feel no consideration was given in the past as to the impact on our residentially zoned property with the approvals and extensions of the commercially zoned districts bordering our North and East property boundaries.  3) The plan before you has been designed to create buffers for the surrounding properties using step down zoning philosophies within its own borders, and represents a solution to having incompatible zoning districts abutting each other, as now exists.  Again, we would like to express our gratitude and pride of being a part of the Jackson Township heritage for so many years and hope that you, as civic leaders, view the development of this property as a positive step in the successful growth of our community.  Robert Joliet and John D. Wynn.”  That’s all I have.

Ms. Magyaros:  Thank you Mr. Schultz.  Do we have any one else in the audience that would like to speak in favor of the amendment?  (No one came forward).

Mr. Benner: Can you tell me how long this development would take from beginning to end?

Mr. Shultz:  If we were granted our approvals through the normal processing of the project it would be highly unlikely that any activity would happen in 2004.  So we’re talking about starting in 2005.  Our projections are, and one of the good things about our plan is that we have broken it down into a lot of market segments so we can actually develop and sell at the same time a lot of different things.  We think within five years probably six years to outset the residential would be gone.  Probably the commercial would drag out a little bit longer than that.  Maybe eight years.

Mr. Bergman: Twice, once in your presentation and once in the letter from the folks from Tam O’Shanter, the commentary was made that no consideration had been given to their rights as property owners when the businesses and zoning changes had been made.  Do you know, because I don’t since I wasn’t a member of the commission at that time, when those zoning changes appeared did they request that those zoning changes not be granted?

Mr. Shultz:  I’m not aware of that specifically.

Mr. Bergman:  You put up on the board that there would be increased income taxes.  Jackson Township has no income tax.

Ms. Magyaros:  Any other comments in favor of the amendment?  (No one came forward)  What we will do then is we’re going to start on this side of room and we’ll work our way across the room and any body that would like to come up and make a comment just raise your hand and we’ll have you come over and talk into one of the hand held microphones.  Anyone that wants to speak in opposition to the amendment put your hand up and I’ll call you to the microphone.

Mr. Clark Richards:  My name is Clark Richards, 5290 Schario Rd. NW. I have lived in Jackson Township for about 15 years.  My presentation isn’t quite as glamorous as the one you just saw.  I think what I want to present tonight are the facts that I think were not mentioned during this delegate presentation.  The developers have requested nine zoning changes.  This request is not only unprecedented and wholly inappropriate but it displays a total lack of understanding of the long standing objectives of Jackson Zoning and represents an arrogant disregard of the guidance expressed by our Township Trustees.

Let’s look at the facts.  Back on August 23, 2001, and I have with me the minutes from the Trustees meeting when a similar request to rezone Tam O’Shanter with commercial property where the trustees voted to deny that request.  During that hearing Mr. Meeks and Mr. Pizzino advised the owners to do their homework, communicate to the township, and to listen to the residents.  Then after the election of 2003 when Mr. Meeks was widely re-elected he stated in the Repository “I will continue to preserve the green space and uphold the boards precedent of keeping land as it is currently zoned.”  Once again a guidance.  On January 8th and January 10th, 2004 the Tam O’Shanter developers met with the surrounding neighbors where they presented their plan to destroy the golf course and seek several zoning changes.  During those meetings the residents expressed their desire to preserve the green space.  We want less commercial.  We want less congestion.  We want orderly growth and the property should be developed in accordance with its existing zoning.  Then in January 2004 Mr. Meeks was quoted in the Repository once again as a guidance “the developers should not base their plans on a change in the golf course’s zoning.”  Well members of the board the plan presented tonight clearly demonstrated that the Stone Gate Developers, their owner, and their investors choose to ignore the Trustee’s guidance and the concerns of the local residents and file for not one or two zone changes but for nine.  What is imperative here is that our Trustees guidance is not and was not arbitrary, that guidance was based on the long standing Jackson Township Zoning Policy.  Jackson has already provided amply for commercial, business office, and concentrated residential development.  Therefore, zoning changes, particularly of this magnitude, are neither justified nor needed.

 When the first comprehensive zoning was completed in 1980, one of the guidance objectives was to keep major industrial, commercial, and office building development in the northeast sections of the township, encourage growth along the interstate and toward the airport.  Our current zoning provides for that opportunity and is still appropriate.  This commission is aware, but many individuals in this room will be astonished to learn that one-sixth or six square miles of Jackson Township is already zoned for commercial and office buildings with substantial portions of those areas underdeveloped.  Therefore, additional zoning for such uses is not needed.

 I’d like to put up a zoning map and I want to point out here that the sections in red is this land is currently zoned for industrial use.  Under industrial use you are allow to build office buildings, retail, commercial and other businesses.  Those are allowed on those properties.  Roughly in those sections that I have marked in the north east corner is about four square miles.  As you go down below that and look at the orange section that is the current B-3 zoning.  That is Belden Village.  The low section down here is the golf course and you saw during Mr. Schultz’s presentation where the B-3 butted up against the golf course.  The one thing that he didn’t point out is that the B-3 practically destroyed single family residential homes in this area because we kept zoning around and around it until now you’ve got several homes encompassed in commercial development.  We do not want this to continue on.  If I took all the orange that is currently zoned for business use and filled in the white spots that once again totals up to about six square miles of commercial use that is zoned in Jackson Township.  That amount of land is about 1/3 the size of the city of Massillon.  And if I took those six square miles and made roadways with it, it would stretch all the way from Canton to Akron with commercial development on both sides.

 Once again I’d like to talk about the vacancies that are available in Jackson Township.  Between the year 2000 and today Jackson Township has built 74 new commercial buildings.  That’s 1.5 buildings a month and still we have empty vacancies throughout our area.  I’d like to point out several of them.  Belden Village Corporate Center across from Tam O’Shanter, vacant commercial property adjoining Tam O’Shanter and West of Dressler, Foxboro Plaza on Fulton and 241, DeHoff properties on the corner of Fulton and 241, Acme Plaza at the corner of Whipple and Hills & Dales, SH Kim Tykwondo on Whipple, Kenetix on Whipple, Offices besides Best Buy, Vacant Office properties along the west side south of Portage, commercial properties for sale along the east side south of Portage, the old Sam’s Club on Dressler with several vacant commercial properties and land on both sides, Stark Equipment on Portage and 241, both Old GE Capital Offices on Higbee Ave., Belden Village Commons, Belden Village Glass Towers in the Belden Village area, Lakeview offices on Munson, Jackson Lake on Munson and this list could go on, but I’ve just identified a few.

Although Stone Gate Development said that they will have better taxes because we have commercial property, just remember when you’re driving past that empty building its more money to our schools.  Not to mention with the impending development of a super Wal-Mart and the remolding of the Canton Center less than two miles south of the township line additional vacancies can be reasonably anticipated.  Furthermore, this zone change could possibly allow for additional establishments such as Christie’s Cabaret, Three Diamond Royale and the possibility of three story buildings built on the B-1 and B-2 zoning.  That’s what they don’t tell you.  The zoning that’s currently structured today allows for three story buildings to be built in office districts such as B-1 and B-2.  They also didn’t tell you that they can build plaza businesses such as Hollywood Video and the Men Warehouse Club.  Such buildings like that could come along Fulton or could come down Everhard Rd.  I’m not sure about you but with me that belongs north not south.

Finally what I’d like to talk about and what I think is the most key point next to the guidance that was given to the trustees is the need for our comprehensive plan.  Although we have a land use plan established in the year 2001, that land use as well as our current comprehensive plan is outdated and not current with our current growth that we have experiences over the past five years.  Our trustees have recognized the importance to have this plan revised.  The commission understands that zoning must be done in accordance with a comprehensive plan.  This plan is the threshold of all zoning that should come to our township.  As members of the board I’m sure that you are aware that our township is establishing a Comprehensive Planning Committee and has retained a consulting agency named, The McKenna Group.  This group is the same organization that helped Hudson develop their comprehensive plan, their resolution for zoning, and their community development plan.  They specialize in comprehensive planning and community development.  Therefore, I think the township deserves the opportunity for this plan to be revised and to be adopted before any major zone changes are approved.

In closing because the nine requested zone changes are totally inconsistent with current township zoning, the developers have arrogantly ignored the guidance of our Township Trustees and residents, the substantial under development of the current commercial property, the numerous commercial vacancies already available and there should be a moratorium on any major zone change until the comprehensive plan is completed, this zone request is unnecessary, unwarranted and should be denied.  Thank you.

Dave Grabowsky:  My name is Dave Grabowsky and I live at 2015 Brentwood Close NW, Canton, Ohio.  I look at myself as a Jackson Township resident and also a resident of Hills & Dales Village.  I have lived in Hills & Dales Village on and off most of my life.  I was five years old when I first moved in and I’m forty seven years old today, so I’ve lived there not continuously but a good part of my life.  I’ve seen a lot of changes.  I guess my first question is why rezone.  What’s the purpose for rezoning?  I’ve gone through this with a couple of developers now and I always get a kick out them showing us what we can do with this development.  Somebody sits down and say’s okay let’s put 14,000 sq. ft. lots and 20,000 sq. ft. lots and show them all the houses that we can build.  But we’re not that stupid.  You don’t put a bad product out there and expect people to buy a bad product.  That’s not going to happen.  If their going to put a good product out there their going to have to put a good product out there.  There’s a good reason why this is zoned R-R and R-1.  There’s a reason we live in a township and not a city.  A township means its people want to live with yards, dogs and cats and people can know their neighbors.  I know my neighbors and I enjoy knowing my neighbors.  These developers presented a plan and the only reason they put a PUD in commercial is because they don’t want a car running off the road and hitting a small child or their mother in law sitting out in the back yard.  They know that isn’t going to sell.  I think one of the things we missed in this whole development is the size of this development.  We sit and we talk about developments.  The Village of Hills & Dales is 200 acres.  This is 300 acres.  The Village of Hills & Dales has 112 homes.  This proposal, which they’ve said they’ve minimized, is 438 homes.  So this is one and one half times the size of Hills & Dales with four times the amount of homes.  But remember, there’s also another 30% of that property that’s going to be built up in business throughout this whole area.  So we’re going to see businesses taking over 30% of this area.  How are people going to get onto Fulton Rd.  Has anybody driven Fulton Rd. recently or even Hills & Dales Rd?  Sit at Fulton Rd. and Everhard at 10:00 on a Saturday morning and there are 20 or 30 cars each way.  How are you going to pull in?  How are you going to pull out?  None of that is taken into account.  These people don’t take into account what it’s going to do to the development outside the area, the road systems, and even the water systems.  They don’t care.  We talk about step down development and that’s, you know, as I heard this is a step down development and what we did was we took an area in the middle of the community that three quarters is surrounded by rural residential area.  I look at Avondale.  I look at Hills & Dales.  I look at Glenmoor.  Glenmoor took Hills & Dales and Avondale and took the best attributes and built it up.  They didn’t build a checker board.  Another thing I ask is where’s the landscaping plan for this?  I don’t see a landscaping plan.  Where are the roads?  Where are the sidewalks?  We don’t see any of that.  If you go to Hudson you cannot propose any development in Hudson unless you have a landscaping plan.  You know why?  Because they want to know what you’re going to plant and what it’s going to look like.  These people have not proposed that because there’s no intention in my opinion that they want to propose that.

I don’t like that word that this is infill area.  This 300 acres is not an infill area and the green space that they refer to was only a border area from what I can see.  All of this is border area is what I call setback because you can’t build a house right in front of it.  This is kind of interesting.  This is Hills & Dales when it was developed in the early 20’s and this is a duplication of their original brochure.  You got to remember back then people knew how to write things, but I thought there was some beautiful language here.  “Hills & Dales impresses the visitor with a sense of restfulness. One rises through its miles of graceful winding roads without seeing a thing that offends.  This consistency of environment is a source of wonder to those accustom to haphazard development of residential sections of rapidly growing cities.  Hills & Dales is not to be classed as speculative property and because of the stringent restrictions it will never appeal to the commercial influences which have been destroying home site values in other places.”  Doesn’t that ring true today.  We have to look at this community and this development, something that affects everybody around us in this community.  Clark Richard’s just brought up that we have the land available for commercial development.  We don’t need to put in more commercial development and we don’t need to step down an existing infill property.  That’s not what this is.  Michael Hanke wrote in the repository, “When T.K. Harris had the incredible foresight to establish a golf course and adjoining Village of Hills & Dales it’s unlikely he envisioned a time in which one group of individuals without regard for the future handed over the golf course to another group of individuals without regard for the past.”

I have one more because I’m quoting this because it’s out of the repository.  I think most people if you read the paper feel this way.  This was an article by Rick Senften and Rick said, “But the development boom in Stark County is happening to all of us all the time in this County.  The loss of Tammy is happening to all of us even if we live no where near and never golf.  Like wise the development coming to Edgewood and a portion of Bob O’Link.  All of these represent examples of construction gone wild.  Construction without consideration of consequences.”  What about water runoff?  Do these developers talk about water runoff?  There will be, believe me.  Where will it go and aren’t there places that desperately need the facelift that responsible development can bring?  Stark County needs to develop a land use plan and stick to it.  Yes, we now have the Stark County Regional Planning Commission which as the name suggests endeavors land use on a county wide basis.  We need a comprehensive plan.  We need to look at Jackson Township as a township.  We don’t want to be a city.  We don’t want to have the problems of a city and I don’t believe this as quoted is an infill area.  We don’t need this rezoned.  What we need is to let progress take its course.  Go talk to Glenmoor and put a nice development in and put nice lots in and put in a good product that everybody can be proud of.  I want the developers to make money.  They deserve to make a profit, but we as citizens of Jackson Township also deserve a nice place to live.  I’ve already talked to some people here who have said to me, “I’m thinking if this goes of moving out of Jackson Township.”  I said, “Don’t be so hasty, this hasn’t happened yet”.  That’s a horrible thing to have to listen to from fellow citizens.  I’m speaking on behalf of a lot of people but I’m really speaking for myself.  Before you make any decisions think about the rest of us and let’s look at the whole Jackson Township and let’s put together a comprehensive plan and freeze any zoning changes until we have a comprehensive plan.  Thank you.

Joseph Sturrett:  My name is Joseph Sturrett and I live at 2710 Glenmont Rd. NW in Hills & Dales Village.  This is one of the most controversial things I’ve encountered in my life.  If my kind of professionals would see this I would get an “F” and it would go in the waste basket.  They don’t even know what they were talking about.  He said they are going to raise taxes $316,000.  They will have over 400 units.  That will only be about five or six hundred thousand dollars in taxes not $316,000.  I’ve been to meetings like this before and they should have printed copies so we could look at it.  Mr. Harris used to come to my house and he hired someone by the name of Harris, another engineer, to layout an allotment where the west side of Tam O’Shanter would be used for homes and east side would be used for the golf course.  But T.K. Harris died before he could do it.  But the zoning was never changed and he promised us that the zoning would be the same as Hills & Dales Village but they never did the T.K. Harris plan.  So I did two other plans.  I made a design for Tam O’Shanter and the west half was for housing and the east half for golfing because the east half has a water problem.  There’s no way to drain it.  You can spend and waste your time listening to this kind of garbage and it doesn’t mean a thing because the State of Ohio decides the taxes.  When they built Glenmoor they did a lot of grading and all the mud went down into Brookside County Club.  They had a foot of mud in their ditch and that’s against the law and now Brookside is stuck with it.  When you build this you’re doing a lot of earth work and a lot of mud is going to go right down to Brookside and they are going to stop you.  I think the best thing to do is look at the option and the designs that I made for Tam O’Shanter where the golf course is on the east and the west side is housing.  If approved it will change the way of life for everybody in the area because you will have to rebuild Hills & Dales Rd. and you’ll have to put in a traffic light.  There is not one connection to Everhard Rd. on the drawing and it’s a four lane highway.  The traffic has more than doubled in Stark County over the past four years.  Don’t let them change the zoning because you will be sorry.  Thank you.

Greg Feczko:  My name is Grey Feczko and I live at 4010 Bramshaw Rd. in the Amesbury allotment.  I would echo the sediments that everybody has already spoken.  I would like to take this opportunity this evening to ask the commission to think a little bit outside the box if this zoning request is turned down and if the project does not go forward as planned I would like to suggest that you use your influence with the trustees.  I think everybody in this room wants that to remain open green space for us and a golf course.  Rather than use the money that Jackson Township has perhaps spent on other projects, maybe we could spend some of that money and perhaps organize this as a community asset.  I think there are plenty of people in this room and elsewhere that would be willing to kick in money to make this a community golf course.  Let us have investors like they do in other communities and keep this as a golf course.  I agree that Mr. Joliet has the right to develop this, but I think if he is made a reasonable offer to get his money out of it we could use it as a community asset.  Let the people of the community put their money where their mouth is and let’s save it as a golf course.

Katie Schmidt:  My name is Katie and I live at 8050 Fayette.  Have you ever gone golfing and had the most amazing round of your life and was shocked to find out that lovely course was going to be turned into some type of development?  I have.  During the golf season I heard rumors that Tam O’Shanter was closing half of its 36 holes.  I was pretty much okay with it because that still left another 18 playable holes.  When I heard all 36 holes may be gone I was furious.  I didn’t know how to act or feel other than angry.  I’m a junior at Jackson High School and a varsity girl’s golfer.  I’ve played golf since my freshman year.  I plan to keep on playing in college.  Jackson’s athletic program has been exceptionally rewarding to me.  Before I entered Jackson High School I was a member of Shady Hollow Country Club.  I won many golf related awards.  I kept on reading newspaper column after newspaper column and they keep talking about one of the main reasons they are building homes on Tam O’Shanter’s beautiful course is because the home owners think that Jackson not only has good schools, which I agree with, but also wonderful athletics.  How do they figure that our athletics are so wonderful if they are going to take away our home golf course?  Golf is the only athletic sport I play at Jackson so if they take away our golf course that we practice on daily how can they say that about our athletics.  There are so many golf courses around that have been torn down.  It’s not like we could go some place else because for golf season a lot of places have already been sold to developers.  We would have to go out of our own district to find a golf course to play at because other golf courses don’t allow us to play there.  Tam O’Shanter is not only our home course but also Central Catholic High Schools.  So where are Central and Jackson suppose to go?  Where are we supposed to find another golf course?  Central and Jackson aren’t the only schools that no longer have a golf course.  School’s like McKinley, Glen Oak and Hoover don’t really have anywhere to play for golf season.  Districts brought athletes from all over northeast Ohio and they are taking away the place where not only districts are held but many other events that play at Tam O’Shanter including the Ohio Open.  I guarantee you that if you drive around Stark County and go look at other golf courses there will be future development signs up in place of the beautiful summer greenery.  If people want to buy a home they could buy many of the unclaimed ones.  Right now the economy is not doing great and a lot of parents have lost their jobs because of where our economy is right now, so what makes these developers think that residents can pay for these new houses.  On top of that where Tam O’Shanter is isn’t the best place to raise a family especially if you have little children.  The Belden Village area isn’t meant for homes in my eyes.  We already have way too much traffic because of the over population of Stark County.  Do we honestly need more traffic that can cause more accidents?  I don’t think so.  Even though it may not seem like a big deal to some of you I would love to see Tam O’Shanter stay as a golf course or maybe they could only build on one set of 18 holes and not all 36.  Who knows maybe one of these high school golfers could be the next Tiger Woods.  Would you want to ruin a chance like that by putting up homes and other buildings?

Deanna Wendt:  My name is Deanna Wendt 4404 Larchwood Circle NW.  I have been a teacher in Stark County for years and one of the things that I’ve learned in teaching is that I can’t stand a bully.  As I was looking and listening to this very soft spoken well done presentation there was an under tone of bullying going on that I resent.  What I heard them saying to us is that you better take this folks because if you don’t it’s going to be even worse.  I have to say with all do respect, I don’t buy that.  We have rural family zoning that would be absolutely appropriate.  What they are worried about is that they won’t be able to sell it as houses.  That’s the issue.  I’m sorry but that’s their problem that’s not Jackson Township’s problem.  We do not have to accept this zoning change.  It’s not necessary.  I love the rural nature of Jackson Township and we don’t want to see that change.  We are not anti-growth; we are pro-responsible growth.  Jackson Township does not need to bulldoze over an historic landmark that has been there since 1928 and put up another strip mall.

Jim Bennett:  My name is Jim Bennett and I live at 7275 High Mill which is no where close to this but I’ve seen some problems with an allotment close by us.  I live close to Emerald Estates and that was a severe mistake as any body knows that’s read the paper.  All these silt problems are part of the action.  Within two years Jackson’s studies involving all aspects of the zoning were completed with the general opinion that no substantial changes be made.  We have to remember that once business zoning is incorporated there is virtually no chance of having it reverted back to R-R.  You have to remember that once these proposed plans are accepted there is no real situation that these people have to stick by.

Aletha Magyaros:  I would like to make a comment on that for the audience’s knowledge.  If an R-3 PUD is approved, which they are proposing two R-3 PUD’s, they have to stick to those plans.  Nothing else in the plan, but the two R-3 PUD’s would have to be done according to the plan and what is approved.

Gary Johns: I live at 3167 Edinburgh Ave. NW.  I cant’ image anybody coming to you and saying, "Is this a great idea or what?"  Can you tell me if anyone has done that to you?  Will you not answer that questions or what?

Aletha Magyaros:  We aren’t permitted to talk to residents or anybody about the proposed project until we are here tonight.
Gary Johns:  The other thing is presenting a buffer zone.  Right now their going to put in a buffer zone.  There is a Speedway gas station and now you’re saying I could get a dry cleaner which is two blocks away right now.  There’s a bank another block away from there and a drug store another block from there.  Where is this new buffer zone I’m hearing about?  I just can’t believe that we as a community would want to get rid of a golf course.  If anything I agree with the person who said that we should be using that and Jackson Township should be buying that and using it as a money maker for the township.  To get rid of it I hope you people can live with yourselves and if you guys are elected officials, and I don’t know if you are, but I guarantee you will have almost all of the people in this room coming after you.

Aletha Magyaros:  We are appointed by the trustees and we are not elected by the public.

Shane Locke:  I live at 5546 Bridgecreek Ave. and I’d like to reinforce what Mr. Sturrett was saying concerning the potential development and the problems with traffic.  Obviously Hills & Dales is going to have to be improved and Fulton will have to have the same.  This is only going to compound the problem and make it more severe.  I work for ODOT and I know recently we’ve gone through a lot of changes as far as the future development of our roadways requiring much different control of water runoff and control of sediment and that type of things that are involved.  We’re going to have to do a lot more cleaning up of the water and I didn’t see anything in their proposal that points to those ramifications of what they are trying to develop.  I think that they haven’t looked at this thoroughly enough as far as the runoff and also as far as some of the future regulations that they are going to have to deal with.

Mark Skakun:  I live at 4072 Bramshaw and I have been a resident here for over 15 years.  Make no mistake we are talking about a massive commercial development involving millions of dollars and when that much money is at stake the best sales people are hired.  People who are so good they probably could sell ice to Eskimo’s, notwithstanding the skill of the advocate because he did a very fine job.  In hearing it for the first time I found easily six to eight flaws or mistakes.  If I can do that hearing it for the first time, and I’m not even an expert in this area for example the taxes for the schools, I’m sure people like you found even more.  One major truth came true from his speech.  He said that that golf course has not been properly included in the planning of this county and township because of over site.  We need, before we give it away, to properly plan and properly consider a comprehensive plan for this township.  Somebody talked about whether you’re elected or appointed.  We’re all neighbors, this is a small community, and you represent us, so we are looking for you to express our hopes and our desires and I think the response you’ve seen tells you what your neighbors would like you to do.  Thank you.

Sandy Turner:  I live at 3902 Bramshaw NW.  I would like to echo many of the speakers tonight.  I think the reason we’re all here is because we respectfully ask you not to vote for these zoning changes.

Randy Gonzalez:  I live at 6929 Frank Rd. NW.  I am here tonight as a private citizen of Jackson Township.  I would like to commend this board.  With some of the comments that have been made I would like to make it quite clear to this crowd that these people up here tonight are serving as volunteers.  They are no more than everyday citizens on this committee that sign up to spend their evening to get yelled at on many occasions.  They do it for very little pay.  They are paid by the meeting and I’d like to commend them for getting through this and many more meetings later.

One of the other comments was made about the township trustees and their feelings on this subject.  One of the things not specific to this zone request is this board that you are looking at tonight in front of you is a pretty new makeup of zoning in Jackson Township.  As you heard these board members are appointed by the township trustees and the trustees are your elected officials.  A lot of these people were picked for the sole reason of what I said.  They are not tied to developers.  They are not tied to realtors.  They are everyday citizens with the same concerns for Jackson Township that you have here tonight.  One of the concerns that I would like to speak on as a citizens in regards to this development is that Jackson Township for years has been playing catch up with our infrastructure.  This year we will spend well I should say next year, 2.3 million dollars on the intersection of Fulton and Wales.  As you saw we spent over one million on the portion of Fulton that was widened a few years back.  Portage was this season and Portage phase two will be next seasons.  Those are things that Jackson Township has been able to contribute to largely because we have been blessed with some of the monies that we’ve had and mostly because the county has not had the money to do a lot of the projects and the state has refused to and many times to do anything with Wales Rd. which happens to be theirs.  I would like to challenge the process tonight more about the overall plan for Stark County.  This development has a much bigger impact than Jackson Township.  Two of the main thoroughfares that we use to go home and our road department does a great job keeping the snow removed and holes patched, but in order for us to get to those streets we use streets like Fulton and Hills & Dales.  Those are our two largest thoroughfares to get us back to our homes and it doesn’t end at Jackson Township’s boundaries.  Those continue to Plain Township and to Massillon on the other side of the Township.  This development has a larger impact than us just looking at our square of Jackson Township.  It has the largest impact on our residents though because those of us who work in Massillon or Canton that are trying to get home have to drive down those roads.  Those roads will not get fixed.  We’ll wait as long as we have to on Fulton until Jackson Township ends up footing the bill to get those roads fixed and they don’t belong to Jackson Township.  I believe the process should call for a larger plan and developers should have to contribute to those improvements before they can come in and just build an allotment like this.  I believe those specifications of Regional Planning really need to be addressed more than just saying it’s going to cause traffic.  Give us some way to enforce that.  The water flow of this project was mentioned.  It’s a major issue and as everybody knows we have that.  We, meaning the citizens of Jackson Township, are paying to fix what was approved when Emerald Estates was built.  It flooded out areas all around it and it flooded itself out from one neighborhood to another and Jackson Township’s tax dollars are paying to fix that now.  It went passed Regional Planning and it was approved by Regional Planning and it was approved by a former Board of Trustees.  I really believe that needs to be looked at again.  The subdivisions regulations then were absolutely a failure and those water retention basins did not hold and those people were flooded out.  There is a long range plan coming and there is going to be hopefully a chance like someone said to put your money where your mouth is if you really want to protect some of these areas.  I believe the trustees, who will end up with this and I’ll be sitting up front and won’t be able to talk so I took my chance tonight, this will end up in their laps again and it would be good that this many people come and speak again so they can hear your thoughts.  But this board tonight and the Board of Trustees have to deal with facts and with laws and those two issues, the water and the roadways, which really are a major issue and are much larger than Jackson Township and what Regional Planning is looking at as an overall right now.  Once again I’d like to thank you the board members for sitting through all of this.  Thank you.

Todd Crajack:  I live at 2040 Tennyson in Massillon, but more importantly I grew up at 5344 Blackthorn St.  One thing I thought was ironic from Mr. Schultz speech is that he lives in Green so none of this really affects him although it’s happening in Green too.  It used to be a farm community and now there is a shopping center on five acres of land that my cousins, uncle and aunt used to live on.  The big thing I want to point out is the education and how it’s going to affect Jackson.  With 400 more students that's equivalent to one class at the High School be it freshman or whatever.  The Jackson local schools are not swimming in money.  Jackson High School fills everyone of their rooms at all times during the day and teachers are on carts because there is not enough classrooms for the teachers to put their books in.  They are running out of laboratory room because there is not enough room for the number of students that they have.  This development is going to add 400 more of them.  Let’s say that we go with Mr. Schultz numbers and get about two hundred thousand dollars more in taxes, which is not the case but we’ll say it is.  The addition that they would have to put on to the High School would cost in the millions to accommodate four hundred more students.  That’s a far cry from two hundred thousand dollars a year.

John Eisenbarth: I live at 4057 Bramshaw NW.  I’ve only lived in Jackson Township for about one and a half years and I think it’s a great place to live.  I think this is a terrible idea and it is a disregard for our neighborhoods and I hope that they revise their plan so we don’t have as much traffic through the neighborhoods.

Maryann Manns:  I live at 6576 Danforth Circle NW.  I want to clarify something regarding the schools.  We are on the ballot March 2nd because we are already filled in every classroom.  When we did our projects to go on the ballot and we were anticipating our growth for the next ten years in the Jackson Schools it did not include the Tam O’Shanter development.  This was not on our books at that time so we neither speak for or against development, but I think you need to be aware that the projections do not include 400 or 800 additional students that this will bring in over the next ten years.  Thank you.

Maryann Miller:  I live at 8205 Edmund Ct. Circle NW.  I’ve lived in Jackson Township for over 25 years and about five years ago we decided to keep living in Jackson and build a new home in Carrington because it has sidewalks and lights and seemed like a nice place.  Carrington has been under development for eight or nine years and there are many unsold lots.  One of the gentleman earlier spoke about the vacancies in the business area, but there are many vacant residential lots and I don’t see a need to bulldoze something that is beautiful and an asset to our community and turn it into a field of mud for five, ten or twenty years until all the lots sell.  I encourage the zoning commission to do a long term study to do an inventory of how many unsold lots there are and where they are.

Fred Sperling:  I live at 3481 Perry Dr. NW.  I have nothing new to add but I am opposed to any change in the zoning and would like to see the golf course stay.  We recently had development around us and it was uncomfortable.  Many of the promises weren’t fulfilled by the developer so I caution and request that you do not change the zoning.

No one else in the audience spoke in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Don Schultz:  I would like to offer an apology because I think the tone of voice was misconstrued for threatening.  I think it was more frustration.  Although I’m not asking for any sympathy it is quite intimidating for a developer to come and present things to the public that we think have a lot of merit and sound planning.  I personally have a lot of respect for the people who come and speak publicly and are willing to make a difference in their community.  Especially for people who offer substantial ideas.  The gentleman that spoke up about the community owning the golf course is probably the one and only best idea that I heard this evening other than our plan.  However, at fifteen million dollars and if the township of Jackson were to do a business analysis and a study of the feasibility of owning the golf course at any kind of a profit I believe they would find that it’s totally impossible.  I believe that’s why other golf course owners have passed up on it.  The golf course is out dated and the golf industry has changed substantially, and it has become very hard for them to make it a profitable business.  If the township was going to look at this as an option and willing to lose money on an annual basis that would obviously be the best case scenario for this community in retaining that beautiful piece of property long term.  I really don’t think this is a feasible option.

Some of the points that were made this evening were very legitimate and I appreciate the passion but a lot of the comments were based on trying to keep the golf course.  As we talked about this evening if the golf course would stay it would be great, but if the golf course can’t stay I think you as commission members it is your job to look at what is the best reasonable approach to make sure it is developed in the best manner for this community.

Clark Richard’s made a comment that it should be developed under the existing zoning and we shouldn’t assume that we are able to make zoning changes.  My point is that I thought I made a representation here tonight that proved that nobody should assume that the existing zoning had any rational thought process in the development and the way it has occurred.  It is quite clear that there are R-4, B-1, B-3 and R-R districts all adjoining each other.  The fact that we are here we didn’t assume that we could get rezoning.  The fact that we are here is because we thought outside the box.  We didn’t just come in here with what the current was because that’s the way it is.  We wanted to make sure that we were offering the best plan for this community.  The fact that there is a zoning commission here and that there is a process for any individual, citizen or non-citizen, to come in and ask for something other than the current zoning is one of the best things that our country offers.  We’ve heard both sides of a very good rational discussion this evening.  The facts of this are that this property has some very diverse characteristics to it.  On one hand we have all these people and I would venture to say that most of these people live on the south or west side of this property.  There’s nobody here that lives on the north or the east side of this property.  What’s on the north and east side of this property?  Here’s a statement made from the overview of the Jackson Township land use plan.  “Proximity to I-77, State Route 687, and State Route 241 provide excellent potential for vigorous growth and development.  The Belden Village area draws 21,600 vehicles per day to patronize the approximately 2,000 retail businesses and offices and 108 restaurants.”  That is what abuts up to this property.  I’m speaking tonight on behalf of the land owner.  He has a piece of property that on two sides is Belden Village.  Belden Village is one of the highest commercial dense business commerce areas in the State of Ohio and it borders this property on two sides.  What we have done is try to bring a plan that introduces step zoning, and I didn’t hear anyone not agree with the step zoning or say that they wanted 817 students in their schools or they didn’t want 576 students or 6,000 more linear feet of roads on that piece of property.  The question is do we develop it the way it is zoned or an alternative plan.  We are bringing an alternative plan and all I can do is ask you as commission members, and there is a couple of hundred people here that have a direct interest in this property and there is almost 40,000 people in the community, to look at these and scrutinize the plans for the better of the community.  This is not going to stay a golf course.  There was some question about water runoff and traffic issues and I think the commissions members will agree with me that a zoning change request does not in any way get us off the hook for providing adequate storm water management for the development.  That’s the next process.  After the zoning changes would take place we would have to come back in with a development plan and complete engineering plans.  When we come back in with the development plans we will be asked to do traffic studies and there is specific criteria as to whether a traffic light needs to go up or a road needs to be widened.  The studies will be done and if lights and improvements need to be done then they will have to do them.  The traffic will increase whether the property is developed with 576 homes or our project.

There was a comment made about the schools and a ten year plan.  I had a conversation directly with the superintendent of the schools and she told me that they had a ten year forecast and that over the last five years that there were nineteen new subdivisions and she has all the facts and figures.  She also told me that over the next ten years they were projecting the same amount of growth.  No, the Tam O’Shanter allotment wasn’t on the books and there weren’t any future developments on the books but they did project the numbers over the next ten years.  But again, our plan reduces the amount of kids in half from 817 to 409.  It’s not whether we like the golf course it’s should it be developed as it’s zoned and was the current zoning well thought out or the alternative.

The comprehensive plan that has been mentioned, I will tell you that you have a land use plan now that had planning experts and I’ve read things from here that make our offer consistent with the land use plan.  The RPC staff recommended that our plan was a good plan and I believe that the in house zoning people for Jackson Township will agree that our plan is well thought out and used and I don’t care what planner you bring in they are not going to radically change the face of Jackson Township with a new revised comprehensive plan and they aren’t going to look at the Tam O’Shanter property and say high end homes should be built right up to Fulton Rd. and against the business district.  There going to say it needs buffered and to have multiple uses.  It is a good plan that we have and a yes vote tonight will mean that you are ensuring that there will be a permanent buffer between the homes and the Belden Village district forever.  A no vote does not mean that the golf course won’t go away.  I ask you this evening to please consider our zoning request.

Ms. Magyaros:  At this portion of the proceeding I will open it up to the commission members for comments based on what has been presented.

Mr. Bergman:  As I said before you made a couple of comment about it’s going to be sold either way and that there wasn’t any thought or the owners weren’t given any thought when the zoning was done, and I question as to whether they ever opposed any rezoning that occurred.  The one thing that I did want to talk about is you said very early in your presentation that given the state the way that the golf course is now with the businesses around it there is no way anyone would buy a high priced home zoned rural residential with the construction.  Given that thought how can you confirm that you could build that number of homes as a rural residential district?

Mr. Schultz:  I’m not sure I quite understand.

Mr. Bergman:  You said the way the golf course is laid out there is businesses along each side and it goes along Fulton Rd. where there is business across from it and because of that you really couldn’t sell large scale expensive homes; therefore, you wanted to put the buffer zones in so those kinds of homes could be built.  So it makes me question whether or not the numbers that you present as a rural residential district could really be supported by the ability of the developer to develop the kind of homes that would be bought there and the ability of the people to buy them.

Mr. Schultz:  I think that the layout that we showed in what is a proposed conceptual layout for the existing zoning and it is very realistic and the value of those home sites would be diminished and they just wouldn’t be as valuable or marketable, but eventually there would be homes there.  We would have to create some kind of mound or landscaped area.  Again, the general concept of having homes next to business districts is not an acceptable good planning method.

Mr. Bergman:  I believe when you talk about taxes, the way taxes as I know them are constructed when the property taxes are set and the value of the taxes that you propose would only be after new property taxes are approved and those homes are already in place.  So they don’t come in initially with the building.

Mr. Schultz:  My slide was a one hundred percent build out.

Mr. David Benner:  I appreciate everyone coming out tonight.  It’s good to see the Township come out and voice their opinion on the kinds of things that they would like or not like to see.  I would like to suggest that many of you are probably unaware that we have in the Township zoning regulations and from time to time the zoning commission is asked to review those regulations.  There have been a number of times over the last few years where we’ve been asked to change or exclude certain kinds of zoning districts from the code book.  If you really don’t want a PUD or a PRD or an R-4 or R-3 in your back yard then show up when we do these the next time and let everyone know how you feel.  The problem is if these are on the books developers are going to see these on the books and say I can meet the qualification and requirements for those zoning districts.  That’s what Mr. Schultz has come here tonight to tell us.  He can meet what is on the books today.  The reality of it is when those codes are met we are left with little choice in some instances for how we can actually rule on zoning requests.  I want you to know that so the next time one of these comes up you’re going to have some participation from more than just the developers.  The last couple of these we’ve had we had developers show up and provide input, so if you have input you need to show up and do that.  The particulars are adding business districts to a township of residents and I have a problem with that.  I have a problem adding any more business districts in Jackson Township.  One of the gentlemen who spoke said that there are many areas of business districts that are already under utilized and it has been that way for several years.  We can’t control whether someone wants to build on that area or whether someone wants to try to get something rezoned, but we can control the changing of rural residential where we all live from rural residential to business.  I would also like to suggest to the developer that it seems to me like you’ve gone to an area, and a lot of these people are from Hills & Dales and you did meet with some of them, but you’ve gone right across the street from a very old and very well established development and you’re going to put houses on lots that are significantly smaller than theirs.  That’s why they are here, because in that area the R-3 development that you are asking for on Hills & Dales does not fit the surrounding development across the street.

Mr. Schultz:  I like to make a comment specifically to the project where you think that it is adverse to have that R-3 project there.  Actually in our mind it is the ideal place.  The demographic of the potential buyer for the homes are the people who live in the Hills & Dales allotment.  They are the people who have lived in a large home and are at the age now that the yard gives them a hard time and they want to buy projects like this and it is typical of what other projects are in the township today.

Mr. Benner:  Respectfully sir if that were the case these people wouldn’t even be here.

Mr. Bauder:  I’ll be speaking in addition to what has been said.  I’m a very strong believer in ownership rights from a foreign background but also responsibility to my neighbors.  I’m concerned about surface runoff and erosion as designed.  I’m not necessarily saying that it would happen but I’m concerned at this time.  I’m in no hurry to push through this with the information that we have.  Although it may meet all the requirements in the book I am still concerned.

Ms. Conaway:  I have to concur with everything that has been said.  One of the biggest issues I think is that we do have a lot of businesses in our township that are not being used right now and when they’re not being used then they start to run down.  That is not something that we want to see.  The other issue is, and it is very real, a different development which is Emerald Estates.  I know what has happened to people that have lived there and suddenly there is a new development going in and the next thing they know is that their front yard and their basement is under water and who is there to help them.  Even at Carrington they have a retention pond and when we have a really heavy rain the water goes over Arlington Rd. and the houses across the street are under water.  I have a problem with developments going in and allowing things like that to happen.  I don’t know that that’s something we as zoning commission members can do anything about, but I think that’s something where we have to look at the county and they need to be more responsible when they approve some of these developments.

Ms. Magyaros:  My comments are going to echo what my fellow commission members have stated.  My first main concern is the amount of business that is being proposed for the area.  If you look at the project the developers are asking to rezoned approximately 151 acres out of the 295 that is there and they are asking to turn into either B-1, B-2 or B-3 over 88 acres, so we are looking at approximately fifty nine percent of the property that they are proposing to be rezoned to B-1, B-2 or B-3.  I totally agree with the concept of step zoning and I think it is appropriate, but I don’t think you can nor should you put one half million dollar homes right on Fulton.  It is not feasible and it is not realistic and it should not be done but at the same time I don’t agree that we need 88 acres of commercial space.  It’s just too much and referring back to the zoning map review committee report, it’s a little dated now, but it specifically addressed the issue of the increased number of vacant commercial spaces.  There was an increase from 1999 to November 2002 that they noted in this report.  They had 32 spaces vacant in 1999 to 74 vacant spaces in August of 2001.  Of the 32 vacancies in 1999 fifteen were still vacant two years later, so I have some real concerns for the need for developing more commercial.  I do believe that there should be some commercial along that area but I would propose the standard set forth in an R-6 PUD which is only five percent of the total acreage.  That would give you approximately fifteen acres to work with there to create a buffer zone and to kind of match the zoning that we currently have now across the street.  The 88 acres I think is really beyond what the community can support and needs.  It’s nice to have businesses that can go in there to service the people that would like it in that area.  It kind of reminds me of Washington Square out in North Canton where they have a development there with some stores that primarily serve the people that live in that development.

 My other area of concern is the one raised by Mr. Benner and that is the R-3 PUD that they are proposing across the street from the Hills & Dales development.  I’ve looked at the factors that we are to consider in the zoning code and those are set forth in section 805.10 and I don’t believe that what is being proposed in that area is consistent with what currently exists.  We have a well established neighborhood across the street and I think that area should remain the R-R.

 Do we have any further comments from the commission member?  (There were none)  If not I would like to have a motion to vote on amendment #536-04.

Ms. Conaway:  I move that we vote on this amendment.

Mr. Benner:  I’ll second.

The vote was: Mr. Bergman-no, Mr. Benner-no, Mr. Bauder-no, Ms. Conaway-no, and Ms. Magyaros-no.

The recommendation for amendment #536-04 is for denial.
Mr. Benner made a motion to adjourn the meeting.

Ms. Conaway seconded the motion.

The vote was: Mr. Bergman-yes, Mr. Benner-yes, Mr. Bauder-yes, Ms. Conaway-yes, and Ms. Magyaros

Respectfully submitted,

Joni Poindexter
Zoning Data Coordinator
Clerk/Secretary