The December 2024 City of Hampton Planning Commission meeting will now come to order.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the role?

Vice Chair Rogers present.

Commissioner Brooks.

Present.

Commissioner Coleman.

Commissioner Callum.

Here.

Commissioner Harper.

Commissioner DeProfio.

Here.

Chair Harris.

Present.

Do I hear a motion for approval of minutes for the November 2024 Hampton Planning Commission meeting?

Mr.

Chairman, I move approval of the minutes for the November 21st, 2024 meeting as amended.

Second.

We have a motion on the floor for approval of the November 2024 Hampton Planning Commission.

Meeting minutes as amended.

Now we have public hearing items.

Thank you.

First, I will read the public hearing protocol.

The planning commission of the city of Hampton takes pride in being fair and courteous to all parties in attendance.

It is important that all involved understand how the commission conducts its hearings and how our persons before the commission should conduct themselves.

Individuals other than the applicant or their representative who have signed up to comment on the case will have three minutes to present their comments.

Speakers must remain at the podium or microphone while addressing the commission.

Speakers who have signed up may not donate their time to other speakers.

Please note that unless otherwise stated, the actions taken by the commission today are in the form of a recommendation to the Hampton City Council.

It is a use permit application by Virginia Electric and Power Company to relocate and operate a communication tower at 902 G Street.

And then I'm going to address this later, but just to give you context, the landscape area that they're proposing is in this green area right here, as indicated by the green rectangle.

So this is the proposal from the applicant.

Again, just zooming in and kind of highlighting some things that I just pointed out on the aerial.

This is their existing building complex, the parking that's all around.

This is the existing tower, is located right here, and the approximate location of the new tower would be right here within the parking area.

And that green area I mentioned where they would be doing their landscaping is generally in this area.

And just to show you an illustration of what the tower would look like.

Again, this is a proposed tower that would be replacing the existing self-supporting tower, both the existing and the new proposed or self-supporting structures.

And at this time, although Dominion is expecting to be the only carrier when this tower is erected, it is being constructed into such a way that it could support additional providers in the future.

And you see some of those kind of just indicated here that are kind of grayed out that could be potential future antennas.

So I mentioned the landscape plan.

So I just wanted to zoom in.

There are for in our zoning ordinance, there is requirements, landscaping requirements associated with the tower itself, and there's a certain number of trees and spacing as well as certain number of shrubs and spacing that are required.

There simply isn't enough green area around where this proposed location is.

And so in this case, they're opting to use existing green area, which would be located away from the tower.

But staff is determined that this is actually more beneficial because it does more to screen not only the tower from this major corridor out here on Pembroke Avenue, but it also helps to screen and provide landscaping from the rest of the complex.

The current zoning of the property is our limited or light manufacturing district M2.

And the future land use map from the community plan shows this as business industrial.

And even more specifically within the community plan, there is a section that addresses and under our utility services section that refers to communication towers.

And this specifically is talking about our hierarchy again from as indicated by the arrow on the right hand side, our most preferred situation to the least preferred.

And you can see there, co-location on existing towers, or making use of existing buildings or structures that are already there, or large industrial sites or parks where there's large land area, not immediate density where you're imposing or potentially some sort of a risk there.

And you see it, you know, and then everything kind of in between, but then down where we want to avoid is our low density residential areas, any scenic views or waterfront.

And then some legal aspects of state and federal law that limits what you as a governing body can and cannot evaluate when it comes to communication tower proposals.

And so things you can consider are the height, the size, the location of the tower, and then this idea of is it available for co-location, which we just kind of went over that hierarchy from our community plan.

Things that cannot be considered are perceived health impacts of the proposed tower, any unsupported opinions, speculation, any preference over a provider over another, or actually the basis of the need for the project.

And so our staff analysis after reviewing all of all of these things, we believe that it is in alignment with the community plan as far as the hierarchy preferred sites.

It's near the top.

It is replacing an existing communication tower that's already on the site.

So again, it's being constructed in such a way that it could be used for co-location in the future.

And as I mentioned, also just being sur the existing conditions of being surrounded by other large business, industrial, land intensive areas, the potential impact or negative impact is very minimal in this particular site.

Although strongly recommended by staff, the applicant opted not to hold a community meeting.