Lakewood Planning Commission Pre-Review Meeting – August 7, 2025
Lakewood Planning Commission Pre-Review Meeting – August 7, 2025
The Planning Commission held a pre-review meeting on Thursday, August 7, 2025, at 5:30 p.m. in the Auditorium of City Hall to discuss agenda items for the subsequent regular meeting. No formal votes were taken; all items were reviewed and will be acted upon at the regular meeting.
Consent Calendar
- The commission reviewed three sets of minutes for approval: the July 8, 2025 regular meeting, the April 28, 2025 joint meeting with the Committee of the Whole, and the June 30, 2025 joint meeting with the Committee of the Whole.
Discussion Items
- Lot Consolidation – 15801 Detroit Ave / 1408+1412 Rosewood Ave (Docket 08-26-25): Staff presented a request by Lakewood Detroit LLC (applicant Anthony Maione, Langan Engineering) to consolidate three parcels (PPNs 313-25-011, 313-25-056, 313-25-055) in support of the Barry Buick construction project. A setback issue from a 1908 deed restriction was resolved after the applicant provided title work showing it no longer applies. The consolidation is pending final engineer review, though it has already passed county review. No opposition was noted.
- Mixed Use Overlay – 11730 Detroit Ave (Docket 08-27-25): The applicant, Milan Milasinovic (Virginia Marti Inc.), seeks to convert a former North Coast Community College building into 12 residential units (3 on ground floor, 6 on second, 3 on third) with a commercial storefront on the first floor. The building has never been residential; the mixed use overlay is required because of ground-floor apartments. A shared parking agreement provides 13 spaces at the West 117th lot (blue lot), meeting the minimum requirement of 12 spaces (ground-floor commercial under 2,500 sq ft requires none). The applicant also discussed purchasing up to 14 additional permits from the city if needed. The project is contingent on Architectural Board of Review (ABR) approval of exterior renovations. Commissioner David Fox abstained from this item.
- Mixed Use Overlay – 13901 Detroit Ave (Docket 08-28-25) (The View on Detroit East): The applicant, Ron Tannenbaum (RDL Architects), requested to table this application until ready. No further discussion.
- Designate as Historic – 13465 Franklin Blvd – Franklin School of Opportunity (Docket 08-29-25): The Lakewood Heritage Advisory Board (L Hab) presented the application. The winning bidder, Inner Peace Cleveland (an educational nonprofit serving disabled teens and adults led by Lakewood resident David Fox), is in discussions with L Hab about the implications of historic designation. Inner Peace Cleveland initially supported the designation but now seeks a fuller understanding. Their current plans focus on working within the existing building envelope rather than adding an addition as previously considered. A “similar use determination” application will be docketed in September; the commission expects to hear both items together.
Key Outcomes
- No formal decisions or votes were taken; all items are under review and will be considered at the regular meeting later that evening.
- Staff noted lessons learned: for future mixed-use overlay proposals on multiple parcels, a plat should be requested concurrently to avoid deed restriction issues.
- The commission noted upcoming zoning refresh proposals, including changes to the C1 district on Western and Madison and allowing ground-floor residential as part of adaptive reuse in certain cases.
Meeting Transcript
So if you guys are ready, I'll run through the things really quick. Everybody ready? All right. So four, well, that we've got three sets of minutes to adopt because we have both the joint council meeting minutes appeared this month, and then the minutes from last month. And then there's four, we got four applications, really three applications, and then that uh the historic designation of the Franklin School based on the guidance from June. Had to bring that back. Um, and I'll talk a little bit about that when we get to it. Um the first application we got was for a lot consolidation. This is for the south portion of the Barry Buick project that came through that that's under construction. It's three parcels right now per the county property records. All of them are C three. Sorry, the and the graphics are terrible, but you can see there's the three parcels. It's the two parcels on the right side that had um homes in them. Uh I think one has been knocked down, one they're using as an office until they have to knock it down. And so this is a consolidation of that. Um talked with Sean earlier today, and so we dug a little bit into this uh setback requirement that I did not catch the first time around that Sean caught. Um they referenced it on here. So after we talked, I brought it up to the applicant who then sent a response back and said it's it's from an old Ulta survey or something that and then that they have done the title work, and so that is no longer in effect. So it was like what what year is it? Like 1908. Yeah. So that hopefully that that puts that issue to bed. So it's just a it's just a consolidation in support of that uh construction project. And it unlike a plan development, the mixed use overlay didn't have a requirement for the plat to come through, so that's why it's coming through now. Um good lesson learned on my part that when we go through mixed over mixed use overlays on multiple parcels. I should need to ask for the plat, like in conjunction with the uh the zoning review so that we don't run into an issue like that, and they don't build across a uh deed restriction line that it that is still in effect. So I did not see any issues with this pending, and uh the one thing I this is pending uh engineer review, so that that's kind of the standard condition. I I'll bring that up again during the meeting. But it has already been through county review. I know that second application is uh mixed use overlay. Um the building that was part of North Coast Community College that is um and I the applicant I believe was the was the head of the North Coast community college. They still like own the buildings. So he's he's basically working through an adaptive reuse of this building. Um they want to convert it to uh multifamily with a uh commercial storefront uh on the front of the first floor. Um so that unfortunately that's why we're here for mixed use overlay because there is a apartment, uh I think there's yeah, one or two apartments on the ground floor, um, which is why it has to go through the overlay. It is a specific case that we are addressing in this the zoning refresh uh that that we are going to propose that first floor residential will be a condition as part of adaptive reuse and other things that it's allowed on the ground floor as long as it's not on the commercial. There's a whole bunch of things that we're working through that. But this is one of those cases that I'm just like it's the process that's got to go through, even though there's not a lot to it. So they're not existing not non-conforming, they're new units. They're new units. Yeah, that's my understanding. Was that uh this is this was a commercial building from its inception. Property records listed as like it was an industrial use originally, whether it's like a they manufactured stuff inside it or whatever, but it has never been residential. Um it is and it's entirely within the walls of that existing building. It's all C3. It's a building that needs needs some attention. So there you can see the ground floor, second floor, third floor working left to right. So there's three units on the ground floor there towards the the north end of the building away from Detroit. And then uh one, two, three, four, five, six on the second floor and three on the third floor. This is going through ABR concurrently for the just the work that they're doing on the the outside.
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