The New Orleans City Planning Commission convened on Tuesday, September 24, 2024, at 1:44 PM in Council Chambers. The meeting included roll call, adoption of previous minutes, and a full docket of zoning items and a strategic master plan. After public hearings and deliberation, the Commission voted on 17 agenda items, approving the majority, deferring two, and denying two. Key actions included approval of the BioDistrict Strategic Master Plan, several zoning changes, and notable denials of a bar on South Front Street and a hotel height variance on Piety Street.
Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. It is September twenty-fourth at one forty-four. Uh thank you for coming to today's city planning commission meeting. Uh first uh we will start with uh the roll call followed by uh for our reading our formal public hearing rules, and then we will move forward to today's zoning dockets. Okay. So uh Commissioner Brown. President. Commissioner Johnson? Commissioner Josh Gupta? Commissioner Lund? Here. Commissioner Flick Present. Commissioner Whitry. Commissioner Jordan present, Commissioner Steve here, and Commissioner Stewart. Present. Okay. Uh so the public the the formal public hearing rules are read as follow. The city planning commission has established certain rules governing the procedures to be followed at public hearings. Before speaking, each person shall give their name, their address, and state whom he or she is representing. Proponents proponents for the proposal will speak first for a period of ten minutes. Each speaker shall be allowed a maximum of two minutes. Opponents or other interested parties will speak second for a period of fifteen minutes. No material, written matter, photographs, maps, or other items will be accepted by the commission or its staff at any time during this public hearing. This procedure shall be followed except at such a time when the presiding officer shall with the approval of the commission members present. And now we will start with the adoption of August twenty-seventh meeting minutes. Yes. Commissioner Steve. Yes. Commissioner Stewart. Yes. Okay, so our meeting minutes are adopted. The first item of business is zoning docket item zero seven two four. No? Yes. Okay. This uh zoning docket was deferred from the previous meeting uh on August 27th. Um as a quick recap of the proposal, the this is one of two companion hotel developments on Tesh Street and Alders Point. Uh they were approved by council last year. There's now an amendment that would eliminate a requirement that the residential parking for the residential component of one of the two buildings be provided on the same site. And so this is a request for a waiver of the on-site parking requirement as well as uh to add a regulation that allows off-site parking uh for that residential component of the corner building. Uh when this was before you last time, um the applicant, the property owner's argument was that this is needed to accomplish the council's intent when they approved the matter uh last year. Uh there was a little bit of uncertainty as to what the council's true intent was at that time, and so you all deferred it to allow uh us to get with the council staff and confirm their intent. Uh the council's land use staff person has confirmed that yes, their intent was to allow for off-site parking. And so the the request here would be consistent with that stated intent. Um I will note that this would require a variance of the regulation that requires residential parking to be on the same site as the residences themselves. The staff finds that the waiver component of the application does not meet the nine criteria for and you know that's kind of the the linchpin of the whole thing, and so the staff uh recommends denial due to the nine criteria and analysis. Thank you. We have uh one comment card from the applicant, uh Zach Smith. Good afternoon, Commission Zach Smith, 1000 South Normancy Francis, really appreciate uh staff kind of giving you guys an update on this project.