TOWN OF GILBERT

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Stephen Earl displayed an aerial which showed the project site. He indicated that there was a joint access driveway on the West side as well as an access point in the middle. To the east of the property is a street called Quinn that goes into the neighborhood to the south, however, the applicant does not have access to Quinn but access only to Baseline and Greenfield Roads. He noted that they had a reciprocal access agreement with the property owners to the west and noted that there was also a driveway behind the Chase Bank. The logical route for people to get out to Greenfield to go north or to go west on Baseline was to take the access point that he indicated on the map. Mr. Earl said that they would have five faculty members onsite during all peak hour movements both to help children get into the school and to help parents leave. He said that they could meter the people going west so that they don’t have a big lineup going through the shopping center. Making a left out at Greenfield may be difficult because of the adjacent public school so they will tell their parents that if they want to make that kind of left to go south and are really better off making three rights by going right to Recker, right down Guadalupe and going back. Mr. Earl said that part of the concern that staff is indicated in the past has been that people will leave the facility and make U- turns and go west in order to go north on Greenfield or west on Baseline Road. He said that he wanted to make it clear that they will control all of the impact of their development on their own site. If there is a delay that gets to service level B it will be their parents leaving the site. They will be signing a contract that obligates them to go in the routing pattern that the school has asked them to go. There are also a lot of children who come in ridesharing situations and that help a lot on the reduction of traffic movement. The concern that they will have a great number of cars turning left out of their joint access way is simply not correct. They know that it is a normal fear of traffic engineers in that you have a place where people can turn left that they will or will try and make left-hand turn setter and safe or make a right-hand turn only to make a left U-turn. The applicant’s position is that they have been able to confirm that their parents do as they ask and actually form patterns of exiting the site. As far as they know, PM is not an issue as it is not the normal PM peak of 4 PM to 6 PM it is really at 3 o’clock so that is not a legitimate problem either coming to the site or leaving. AM is during the normal AM. peak. Mr. Earl said the challenge appears to be where they are going to leave the site and initially they were not sure that they had the ability to have a joint access out across the properties to the west of them to Greenfield and now they know that they do. They will not cause any off-site driveway to drop below service-level D because of the traffic that they are introducing to the situation. There is the possibility that the intersection of Baseline and Greenfield may need to be modified, re-striped to have dual left turns. There is current pavement there where they could restripe and then change the signalization to allow more capacity in a left turn movement at Greenfield Road. They could absorb the cost of that if that is necessary as the traffic report suggests. The only other potentially problematic turn is someone trying to turn left onto Greenfield. They can simply tell parents that if they are going south on Greenfield Road they need to go east instead and make 3 right-hand turns or wait a great deal of time at that location. Mr. Earl said that they believe that they have the ability on-site to make things work. He noted that there are 2000 feet of stacking on-site and that the site was specifically designed so that everyone could get into the site and not back up onto any arterial. He said that he believed that they were dealing with only the AM peak exit and that they control that by having a number of faculty members on-site to control and meter out that traffic. He noted that they have a facility at 56th Street that used to be a Motorola plant, which has this exact same set up with a number of faculty members going out to make sure that drop offs and exits occur normally. Mr. Earl indicated on the site map where the parking lot was located. He noted that it did have 32 spaces and was for high school student parking and was merit-based. It was an incentive to get high grades to get one of those 32 spaces. No one is allowed to park off-site and that is one of the standards in the booklet that is given to students and parents. If there is an infraction of that rule there are consequences that could lead to expulsion. Mr. Earl said that they would be happy to sit down with the traffic engineer and figure out any nuances to what they are proposing to make sure that it works and that they are not degrading any off-site intersections from normal service levels and that they have sufficient queuing on-site to bring their people on-site and that the delays that occur are delays that they force their people to make in order to leave at a metered rate so as not to negatively impact their neighbors. Mr. Earl displayed an exhibit listing the permitted uses in General Commercial. He noted that the ordinance allows charter/public schools on residential property without a Use Permit. If they went down the street into Planning Commission Regular Meeting 10-2-13 8
a residential zone, which was their second choice, they would not be coming before the Commission for a Use Permit they would just be able to do it at right. That would not have been right because it would introduce a considerable amount of traffic on Recker Road into a neighborhood. Instead, they came to a commercial site which does require a Use Permit. He listed the uses allowed without a Use Permit in that district and noted that their use is a very quiet use during the day. It does have an issue of traffic morning and afternoon but they feel that they can completely control that on-site. Chairman Fuller asked for clarification on the 30 parking spaces. Mr. Earl said that there will only be sufficient passes given out to the total number of spaces that are there. No other passes will be given out. Students will also sign a contract that they will not park anywhere else on neighboring properties. Chairman Fuller asked how it would work to have staff outside directing traffic. Mr. Earl said that he would encourage them to go over and observe the facility at 56th Street in Phoenix because it is a rehab in the sense that used to be a Motorola plant but has a very large athletic field and the same kind of stacking that is being shown for this project as well as alternate arrival times for younger and older children. There are seven faculty members who are outside every day to guide the process to ensure that it runs in an organized fashion. Part of the reason that individuals want their children at this school is not only for the academics makes but because it is also highly organized so that they have confidence. Part of that confidence is showing them that they can get in and out of the site in a controlled fashion. Vice Chairman Oehler said that in his personal experience with schools that have staff metering the parking and driving it works fairly well and there is a lot of value in what he has seen. Chairman Fuller said that they could decide in two months that they don’t have the budget for staffing so they are not having staff do that anymore. He said that he did not believe that that was a condition to the Use Permit. Mr. Earl said that they were certainly willing to making that a condition to the Use Permit because that is exactly how it will work. Stipulating them to have on-site faculty monitors of traffic coming in and out of the site would be agreeable to them. He said that they would also agree to submit to the Commission the manual that they provide to the parents so that they can see exactly what they require their students and parents to do. Chairman Fuller said that that would add to his comfort level if it were possible to add that as a condition to the Use Permit. Commissioner Peterson asked the Town Attorney if they could set conditions on a Use Permit. Town Attorney Phyllis Smiley responded that they could. Commissioner Peterson said that she believed that the staff that the applicant was referring to were not additional staff hired just too direct traffic but would be full time school staff. Chairman Wittmann asked if their traffic impact analysis included the school located south on Greenfield on the east side of the road. Mr. Earl said that the traffic engineering report that they had filed does take into account all background traffic including that school. He said that they realize that the elementary school traffic could potentially be making left-hand turns onto Greenfield can create difficulty for some of their parents making that same Planning Commission Regular Meeting 10-2-13 9
Page 1 and 2: TOWN OF GILBERT PLANNING COMMISSION
Page 3 and 4: October 2, 2013 public hearing and
Page 5 and 6: ZONING DISTRICT TO APPROXIMATELY 22
Page 7: Commissioner Powell said that he ap
Page 11 and 12: and then you must go north up to th
Page 13 and 14: and affect the drop-off area. Staff
Page 15 and 16: Chairman Wittmann asked if she unde
Page 17 and 18: Chairman Wittmann opened the public
Page 19 and 20: study of evaluating how many reside
Page 21 and 22: was built at Cooper and Warner and
Page 23: (SF-6) with a Planned Area Developm

TOWN OF GILBERT

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