The Frederick Planning Commission met on July 14, 2025, at 6:00 PM at City Hall. The meeting covered routine approvals, continuances, and major decisions on the Frederick Health master plan and the Frederick Gateway cricket stadium rezoning and annexation amendment. Public comment was extensive, especially on the cricket stadium proposal. The commission voted on recommendations to the City Council for the Gateway projects and granted a continuance for the Frederick Health master plan.
Before beginning tonight's hearing, I'm going to give a little background on the planning commission and the procedures that we're going to follow. Members of the planning commission are all residents of the city and volunteers appointed by the mayor and the city council. The commission is made up of five regular members and one alternate. Its powers and duties are assigned by the charter of the city of Frederick and described in section 202 of the land management code. All of the cases tonight have been appropriately advertised pursuant to section 301 of the land management code. And cases are going to be presented tonight in the following format. We will first have an introduction of the case. At that point, we'll have commission questioning of the staff and we'll do a roll call for that. Following questions to the staff, we will have the applicant or authorized agent come up and make their presentation regarding the case. We will then give the commission a chance to ask questions of the applicant. Following commissioner questions to the applicant, we will then open the case up for public comment. And following that, we'll give the applicant a chance to respond to public comment. We'll bring it back up to the table here, have commission discussion and questions amongst ourselves, and then we will take action. So in support of the planning commission tonight, we have staff members from cities planning and engineering departments as well as the legal department. And everybody, including members of the public who want to be who want to speak tonight before the hearing, before the commission needs to be sworn in. You will see there's a the clock over there will be a time clock. You will see it count down your three minutes. When it gets to your last 30 seconds, the light will turn green, and then when your time is up, it will turn red, and we will ask you to just wrap your questions up at that point. At this point, I will do a group swearing in. If everybody who wants to make statements today will stand and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear and affirm that the responses given and the statements made in this hearing before the planning commission will be the whole truth and nothing but the truth? If so, answer I do. Thank you. At this point, I will turn it over to Gabrielle for announcements. Thank you very much. Good evening, everyone. Um our two standard announcements uh for our next week's uh items. We have a planning commission workshop on September, September, July 21st. Uh that's at 2 p.m. at City Hall in this room, and those packets will be online tomorrow. The workshop uh is for items that will be coming before the planning commission in future months at a public hearing. So it's a good opportunity to see what is um coming through the pipeline. That same evening at 6 p.m. We have the citywide planning department community outreach meeting, and that's also held at 6 p.m. in this room. And that's an opportunity to see projects even earlier on in the process. These are the latest submittals that have been filed with the current planning section of the planning department. Uh this is purely an informational meeting for the public to come, learn about new projects, ask questions of both staff and the applicants on those. That meeting is also streamed online and on channel 99, uh, so you can watch that even if you're unavailable to attend. Uh the third announcement I had this evening regards uh is regarding some of the order of items on our agenda tonight. Uh since publishing the agenda, we've received some additional information and requests pertaining to a couple of tonight's items and are asking the planning commission to consider a motion to revise the agenda as they see fit uh to address the following. First, to consider moving agenda item G to immediately following our consent agenda. This is the Historic Preservation Commission's application for the placement of the historic preservation overlay at 27 Franklin Street. The property owners legal council is here with us this evening and has contacted us with a request regarding the timing of the commission's consideration and future meetings with the council moving forward, and we would like to afford them the opportunity to make this request to the commission and accept any other public comment on the item at this time. Um after discussing that, should the commission want to move the agenda item up. The purpose of that would be just briefly to have a conversation about the timing. Uh, if the commission does not want to move the agenda item up then and wants to hear the full conversation, uh then we would recommend keeping it at the end of the agenda as it's currently scheduled. The second request is related to the timing of uh items E and F for the gateway project. Item E on our agenda is the annexation amendment, and F is the rezoning. Uh first before the annexation amendment, uh, in light of the public testimony we've received, most of it seems related to the future land use of that site, which is all attached with the rezoning, so um it may be more efficient and effective to hear the public comment um regarding the land use with that rezoning item.