Good morning, everyone.

Thank you so much for your patience this morning.

Notice of this meeting has been posted online for at least 72 hours.

Staff present today are Melinda Ramos, Trey Qualls, Brendan Utterbeck, Francisco Vega, Karen Moreno, Stacey Jones, and Anisha London.

Chair, will you please call this meeting to order?

Yes, thank you.

This is Witt Walman, and this meeting of the Board of Adjustment will now come to order.

It is the 11th day of March 2026, and I welcome everyone to the Board of Adjustment.

This board is a citizen board appointed by the city council.

By state law, a minimum of nine members or alternate members must be present to provide a quorum in order to conduct business.

Today we have a quorum with 10.

Today's meeting agenda can be found online at www.fortworthtexas.gov.

Speaker registration forms for cases on today's agenda should have been turned in prior to the start of this session.

Today's public hearing is being documented by cable television and video conference recording, which will be available on the city's website.

To facilitate an orderly meeting, I'm asking everyone in the council chamber to turn off their audible alarms on your electronic devices at this time, so we will not be distracted during our meeting.

Each case will be called in the sequence listed on the agenda unless otherwise directed by me, the chair, which we just have won.

The Board of Adjustment requests the following rules of procedure be respected.

Each case will be introduced by the City of Fort Worth Development Services Department or City Staff.

After presenting the facts of the case, the Board of Adjustment members will have the opportunity to question city staff about the case and any applicable laws or regulations that might apply.

This portion of the discussion is exclusively between city staff and the board members.

As the case is being called, we ask that you move to the front row of the chambers.

You will have seven minutes to present the facts of your case and why you believe your application meets the criteria for approval.

If more than one person is presenting the case, it is necessary to divide the total seven minutes among all parties so you do not exceed the allotted time.

After the applicant has presented their case, I will call for any opposition to come forward.

This is their opportunity to express why they believe the variants are special exception.

In this case, should not be approved.

The opposition is also allotted a total of seven minutes of time to be shared among all speakers.

If opposition is presented to the variants or special exception, the applicant will have an additional three minutes of rebuttal time.

The chair may allow a few more seconds in each presentation to ensure a speaker's final point can be made.

After the parties have presented their positions, the board members will then have the opportunity to ask questions of the applicant and any opposition.

During this time, all speakers must remember that all dialogue be directed to the board of adjustment only.

There is no time limit during this period.

After the board members have received answers to their questions, I will close the public portion of the hearing.

Board members can discuss the case amongst themselves and city staff to determine whether or not an application meets or does not meet the criteria for approval.

After this discussion, I will ask for a motion to approve, deny, or continue the case.

City staff will call for a voice vote from each member.

If an application is denied, an applicant will have 10 days in which to appeal to a court of appropriate jurisdiction for more information on this and additional information on any case on today's agenda.

You may contact the Board of Adjustment at 817 392 8026 after this meeting.

If necessary, a closed executive session may be held with respect to the posted agenda items to enable the Board of Adjustment to receive advice from legal staff.

Our first order of business today is to listen from the deputy city attorney, Melinda Ramos.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, board members.

As uh the chair said, my name is Melinda Ramos.

I'm a deputy city attorney here with the city of Fort Worth, and I'm going to be sitting with you today for this appeal.

So this appeal is unlike your regular cases that you hear related to special exceptions or variances, in that this is appeal is coming in up from one of our design review boards for the specific instance from our downtown design review board.

So I'm going to provide you some training and some background on that.

Uh, just by a little way of more background for myself, so you all know for up until um 2022 when I have my current position.

I sat with the land use boards, but uh particularly the board of adjustment, probably for about 17 years.

So uh hopefully I'll be able to provide some helpful information to you all as we go through this training.

So just for a little background on the downtown design review board, uh they are appointed by the city council.

They are a board of seven and they have alternates that serve on their board as well.

They have the duty and the authority to enforce the downtown urban design standards for new construction and renovation signage and hearing applications for certificates of appropriateness is what they issue when they approve a new project or signage or any cases that come before them.

They also hear to a certain extent waivers for from their design standards and guidelines.

So when they approve waivers, though those do not generally come to the board of adjustment.

They also have the duty and responsibility to propose amendments to the downtown design standards to the zoning commission and then ultimately to the city council for approval.

Their membership is typically comprised of architects, urban planners, downtown residents, downtown business owners or managers for downtown and real estate professionals.

The ratio of that can change on the board over the over the course of the years.

So this is just a map to show you the overview of the area that is subject to the downtown design review standards.

It goes all the way from the southern edge of 30 all the way up almost reaching into Panther Island, but not quite Panther Island.

And they have different character zones within that, but the portion that's before you today is more along the freeway.