2015-0521 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Regular City Commission Meeting May 21,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida Ethan Wasserman aid in rebuttal,ebuttal, a lot of the comments evolved around traffic and so he asked his Traffic Engineer Richard Garcia to speak about that. Also,in terms of their neighbor to the north and south parking,they cannot control their neighbors parking but they would be happy to proffer putting up signs that say no parking on the neighbor's property. They will do what they can but cannot control their neighbors' property. The City's Comp Plan and Zoning actually encourages mixed use and that is where their restaurant on the ground floor comes from,the residential project with the restaurant on the ground floor. It activates the pedestrian experience, it is a positive addition for their project. Guiding principles of the City were mentioned,that is your Comp Plan,your Comp Plan is updated and that is what provides your guiding principles, and we are building in accordance with your Comp Plan. Richard Garcia, Traffic Engineer, said they did a Traffic Impact Study for this project. That Traffic Study was peer reviewed by your Traffic Consultant. He summarized some of the findings: they analyzed levels of service for the nearby affected intersections at 174th, 175th Terrace, 178th,and they also looked at the driveways to determine their levels of service. They also looked at the queueing for the mechanical lifts,and he understands that the City hasn't yet used mechanical lifts. They have been involved with mechanical lifts in Miami Beach for several projects dating back five(5)years. All the existing levels of service remained and that is where the comment came from, that there would be no impact with the traffic. There was one intersection at 178th and Collins Avenue where the level of service changed,however the change is because the existing level of service is really on the threshold. There is a delay there at that intersection where it changed from 19.9 seconds to 20.5 seconds, and so there is a 6/10's of a second change. Every project that you put in brings additional traffic, brings impacts, but the point is whether these impacts pass a threshold that caused some offsite mitigation or require offsite mitigation because we need all the levels of service. Mr. Garcia said there was also some discussion and comments regarding the parking where the lifts are and the staging for delivery vehicles, there is a Dock Master as was mentioned,there is also space for trucks where all the deliveries will be made on-site. We did a queueing analysis to determine if we have sufficient queueing, and he worked with the Architect in order to improve the ingress. He is a former FDOT Traffic Operations Engineer,and Collins Avenue is an FDOT road, he was the District Permit Engineer. FDOT is going to ultimately have to look at these site plans and various Traffic Studies that he has done,and revisions that he has made,to determine whether that will work. The last thing they want is any cars backing up and blocking Collins Avenue. They took a look at that using statistical analysis and found that the queueing will be exceeded probably less than 5% and so it has a 95% success rate. There is also an additional three (3) spaces that he convinced the Architect to design into the driveway ramp off from Collins Avenue so that if there is some failure, some additional traffic, to queue these vehicles. The intent is for all the traffic to be contained on-site including truck traffic. Truck traffic is something that is generally managed, it is off peak,we do peak hour analysis and so it is the worst case scenario. Mayor Scholl asked him if the truck traffic would be able to drive through or do they have to back out? Mr. Garcia said there is a spot for them to pull into, they will be able to back out, not out onto the roadway, but they would be able to make a U-turn on the property. 11