By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
A planned Aurora Health Care facility on Spring Valley Road took its next step forward Tuesday night, this time with changes being allowed for parking space size.
After a fair amount of debate – including comments by City Planner Patrick Meehan – the City of Burlington Plan Commission unanimously approved allowing parking spaces at the facility to be shrunk from 180 square feet to 171 square feet.
The spaces will be nine feet by 19 feet, and dimensions on double rows and aisles changed as well.
Meehan had recommended against allowing the variation in a memo to the city, but conceded that another planner had allowed for the smaller spaces in the Kohl’s and Pick ‘n’ Save parking lot on Milwaukee Avenue.
Director of Public Works Craig Workman said that the switch to the smaller spaces allowed Aurora to make the parking lots work with required green space at the development because of wetlands on the site.
“I think, in general, staff supports this decrease,” Workman said.
Code changed
In other business, the Plan Commission also approved a change to the M-1, Light Manufacturing District zoning code.
The change would allow for M-1 zoned areas to produce adhesives, cleaners, defoamers, dispersants, silicas and surfactants.
“By doing this, the potential is there to allow a new company to relocate to the city,” Miller explained.
The item passed unanimously.
Fat Daddyz tabled
A proposed new site for Fat Daddyz Tats, a tattoo parlor, made it through its public hearing with no comments Tuesday night, but was then tabled after a suggestion by Miller.
Charles “Chip” Hinds, who was listed as the owner of the business last year, is still facing felony drug charges from a search of the business’s former site last year. Bail jumping charges were added in October of 2014 as well.
Miller said he wants to let the situation play out in court before the Plan Commission considers approval. The conditional use application – for 160 East Chestnut, in the historic downtown Loop – was filed by Mary Ann Sander.
The motion to table passed unanimously.
Stein coming to town
The Plan Commission also unanimously approved a plan to allow Stein Gardens & Gifts to place a seasonal plant tent in the parking lot at Kohl’s in Burlington.
A representative from the store said flowers, mostly annuals, would be sold.
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I’m with Meehan on this one, as it sets a dangerous precedent which all companies building in Burlington will want in the future.
It’s what’s know as a slippery slope and those can be catastrophic to a community that’s burgeoning as Burlington is and will continue to be for decades to come.
Set a precedent like this and it will become the norm, or standard for all future development projects