Interim Planning Director David Boss convened a joint meeting of the Planning Commission and Architectural Board of Review (ABR) to kick off the final development plan process for the downtown development at Detroit, Bell, and Marlowe. The meeting began with an overview of the planned development process, schedule, and roles, followed by a presentation from the development team (CASTO and Dimmitt Architects) on an updated concept. Public comment was taken, and both boards provided extensive feedback. No formal votes were taken; the meeting served as a starting point for the six-month final approval process.
I appreciate everybody attending. Uh my name's David Boss. I'm the interim planning director. Sounds weird to say for the city of Lakewood. Um welcome you to our joint planning commission and architectural border review meeting here, uh kicking off the final development plan process for the downtown development. Um we're gonna start, we're gonna go through our typical roll calls for the boards uh and commission. So I'm gonna go ahead and start with planning commission. Say Ms. Gall. Present. Mr. McDermott, here Mr. LePoint, here, Mr. Reese, here, and Mr. Sanderson. Here Amanda. Mr. Minet? Here. Ms. Colin Plessner. Here, Mr. Aggberry. Here. Mr. Smith. Yep. Good. All right. In addition to our uh the board and commission and myself, we have representatives from our law department and building department here, as well as uh from our uh development partner, CASTO. Gentlemen, if you want to introduce yourselves, if you can. Good evening. This is on uh my name's Don France. I'm with Metro Consulting. Unfortunately, Colby Turnock found out this afternoon that he had a medical emergency in his family and can't be with us tonight. So I'm working as an owner's rep with Castro, and I'll be representing Castro tonight. I'm Gary Ogracki with uh Gym and Architects, and we're the architects on the project. Thank you. So we're just gonna uh this is this meeting's gonna follow very similar uh agenda in terms of uh our approach to this as was the May of 2022 meeting where we kicked off the preliminary phase uh for this uh plan development process. So I'm gonna go through just some introductory remarks. I'll cover kind of the the basics of plan development. Uh everyone is uh familiar with the site. We will review the objectives and then I'll get a little bit more in terms of the background timeline and then uh the specifics with uh what we're looking at for a schedule and roles and responsibilities for the final development plan. I'll then hand it over to Casto to present the updated concept. Um we'll open it up for public comment following that, and then I will turn it over to Planning Commission for comments and discussion, and then I'll hand it over to ABR for comments and discussion, and we can see how that goes. And then I've got some closing remarks before we get out of here. So just just to kind of baseline everybody uh since it has been a little bit, um purpose of plan development there, innovative, integrated, and uh with sensitivity to cultural, environmental, and economic considerations, um, and it's consistent with the community vision, specific to combat development, pedestrian-friendly sites, urban street character, energy efficiency design, and industry best practices. The approval process generally follows five steps. Uh we completed the first two, um, and now we are on step three, getting ready to kick off that final development. Uh it generally flows planning commission, architectural border review, and then to city council.