Session afternoon of January 15, 2026 on self-storage facilities and text amendment guidance.

Chris, I'll kick it over to you to start us off.

Actually, I'm going to kick it right over to that.

But thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody.

I'm going to give you just a really quick overview of how we got to where we are today, and then we'll dive into that presentation.

If you remember back on December 18th, when you're discussing the deferral for self-storage facilities, speak into it a little bit better.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So what I'm going to present to you today is associated with the self-storage deferral, but sort of an expansion of that discussion.

So a lot of the content is not going to be necessarily specifically focused on self-storage, but this was what you had asked us to come back to you with looking at the commercial zoning districts in general.

Okay.

So we're going to touch on a little bit of what the issue is that we're talking about here and some background on that.

We'll dive into the commercial zoning districts themselves.

There are three of them.

And then propose some options for moving forward to address some of the issues that have been identified and hopefully get your direction on which, if any, or perhaps all of them that you might want us to look further into.

And this may be also part of what the consultant that's brought on board might be charged with doing as well.

All right.

So in a nutshell, and I know there's been a lot of discussion about commercial uses and which uses belong where and and particularly how they may be affecting development patterns in freedom.

So just in a nutshell, um what we've heard the issues are that after about six years of implementation of the commercial zoning districts, which were part of the codivisions that were done in 2019.

So we'll touch on these in more detail towards the end of the presentation.

But uh just as a little bit of a highlight, some of the options that we've identified and you all have spoken about for addressing these concerns could include any or all of these three things.

So reviewing and changing uses and bulk requirements in one or more of the commercial districts for the county, developing creative zoning solutions that encourage development that's unique to the commercial core in the freedom planning area.

And or evaluating whether existing commercial land use designations in the freedom planning area remain appropriate.

We pulled some text from the Freedom Community Comprehensive Plan here just to illustrate where these sorts of issues are addressed.

In the upper right-hand corner there, you see the freedom vision statement.

I'm just going to pull out a few words that are highlighted in that vision statement, and that includes that growth helps to promote a sense of place and preserve the character of existing communities while supporting measured balanced commercial development and employment opportunities.

Some of this language is echoed in the land use goals and recommendations in the plan, which also talks about trying to promote development that's consistent with the existing character of the area and timing and scaling it appropriately.

So there is an economic development goal that talks about facilitating economic development opportunities that support the local skilled workforce.

And by and to do this by promoting development that creates areas with a sense of place and destinations that encourage interaction among residents and users.

And we've highlighted or bolded a few things that seem to be most relevant to this topic here.

So it may be described as a place that has an identity or character that is strongly felt by residents, and that there's a desire for scale appropriate and pedestrian-friendly places.

So those kinds of things contribute to creating a sense of place, particularly in the commercial corridors, which is what this language is relating to.

Alright, so now I'm going to go through our commercial zoning districts.

We'll show you some maps of where they're located.

We'll review the purposes, uses, and the bulk requirements.

Before I do that, I just want to call your attention to a some supporting material that you should have received as well.

That was a handout from the Citizens Guide to Zoning.

But you can look at that for some very specific detail.

Alright, so this map shows the land in the county that is currently zoned in one of our three commercial zoning districts.

So that would be C1, commercial low intensity, C2, commercial medium intensity, or C3 commercial high intensity.

And you can see that it's primarily located along our major corridors, which are generally speaking state highways.

Okay, so most of that zoning is either C2 or C3.

There are little pieces, if I can get my little pieces of C1 low intensity, like here, and over here.

So that's medium or high intensity.

So what do these mean?

Again, I'll point you to the full text on the purposes for each of the districts that are in the supplemental handout.

But this is a synopsis of each of the commercial districts' purposes.

So the low intensity or C1 zoning district is really meant to be small scale, low intensity retail, as the name would suggest, and service areas, mostly designed to serve residents of the surrounding neighborhoods.

The emphasis is on the fact that somebody could perhaps walk there, or you're not drawing people from far outside of that area to patronize businesses there.

When we move into the medium intensity C2 zoning district, that's when you start to see a more diverse range of retail service and professional office uses, really geared towards the types of uses that would serve a larger population than what's found in the immediate area.

And again, in the purpose we're talking about encouraging both bicycle and pedestrian access as well as vehicular access.

So still maintaining a little bit of a local focus, but also with a recognition that some of those uses may be drawing from a larger area for their customer base.

Sure.

I just was reading on something else.

And in the comments, a past planning director wrote that there's very little difference between C2 and C3.

And it was in a comment for St.

John's because they were trying to.

I don't know if they were three C through and going to C2, but that was a comment.