Plasma center granted parking request

The five members of the Board of Adjustments managed to find the time in their obviously hectic schedules to unanimously approve Wednesday evening a request for a parking variance for BioLife Plasma Services, putting the fate of the plasma donation center planned for Kyle’s medical complex in the hands of the Planning & Zoning Commission.

At least, I think the board granted a variance. The agenda said "Consider a request … for a variance," but for reasons that are probably not worth the time or the effort to explore at length, the board re-classified the request as one for "an exception," not "a variance."

Regardless of what it’s called, the result is the same: BioLife will be allowed to have a parking lot with 156 parking spaces, 55 more than the maximum allowed by current city ordinances. The ordinance allows the board to expand the number of parking spaces if strict adherence would impose "an unreasonable hardship upon the use of the lot."

BioLife presented enough evidence to the board to convince it that not granting the request "would require any additional donors to park offsite on the roadway" or in parking lots belonging to neighboring businesses, creating "a safety hazard for vehicles traveling in the area" not to mention those pedestrians who would have to negotiate getting to the center from an off-premise parking place.

The board was also swayed in BioLife’s favor by the statement from BioLife that while the city’s code restricts the amount of impervious surface on any such property to 85 percent, the plasma donation site will include only 72.2 percent impervious cover.

Current plans call for the BioLife Center to be constructed across the street for the new Goodwill Center on the south side of Kyle Parkway across from Seton Medical Center. The Planning & Zoning Commission is scheduled to consider the center’s application for a conditional use permit in the I-35 overlay district at its meeting next Monday (moved up a day because of the election).

This entire procedure has been delayed by a month because the Board of Adjustments failed to achieve a quorum of its members when this subject first appeared on its agenda on Oct. 3.

Kyle commissioners force engineer to waste 2,500-mile round trip

According to Google, the distance from Fond du La, Wisc., to Kyle is 1,268.3 miles. Eric Drazkowski, senior engineer for Excel Engineering, traveled that distance yesterday and will travel it again tomorrow. It turned out to be a wasted 2,500-mile roundtrip. That’s because two members of Kyle’s Board of Adjustments failed, for one reason or another, to travel only a half-dozen miles at most to attend tonight’s board meeting.

Drazkowski left his Wisconsin home office yesterday to come to Kyle to testify tonight at the scheduled Board of Adjustments meeting on behalf of BioLife Plasma Services’ request for a parking variance on property where it plans to locate a Kyle facility at 906 Seton Parkway. He told me while we were waiting for a pair of commissioners who never appeared that he will be returning to Wisconsin tomorrow.

Terri Thompson and Paul Terry, the two most senior members of the Board of Adjustments, failed to appear. That left the board one member short of a quorum. Not only that, neither Planning Director Howard J. Koontz nor assistant Debbie A Guerra said they received any communication from either Thompson or Terry about their intentions not to attend tonight’s meeting. In fact, around 6:45 p.m., 15 minutes after the meeting was scheduled to begin, Koontz asked Guerra to contact Thompson and Terry. She returned from that effort to say she learned that Thompson was "out of town," but that she was unable to make contact with Terry.

What happens next is somewhat unclear, even to Koontz. Next Monday is Columbus Day, a municipal holiday, which would be the next available day to have a meeting in which the Board of Adjustments could act on the variance, which needs to happen before the Planning & Zoning Commission can consider a conditional use permit for BioLife. That permit request is apparently on P&Z’s agenda for its Oct. 11 meeting. Koontz thought about having the meeting prior to P&Z’s session, which, like tonight’s scheduled meeting, begins at 6:30 p.m., but other Board of Adjustment members said traffic concerns could make an earlier start time problematic. So Koontz said he will toy with the idea of having P&Z take an hour recess right after it gavels its 6:30 p.m. meeting into session to allow the Board of Adjustments to convene and act on the variance.

But there’s an unanswered question about that as well and that’s whether advance publishing requirements for the public hearing that accompanies the variance request would prohibit a Tuesday meeting to vote on that request. Koontz did not know off the top of his head if a rescheduled public hearing had the same public notification requirements as an original hearing, although it’s worth noting there was absolutely no one in the council chambers tonight who came to speak at the pubic hearing. So there’s that.

For the record, Excel Engineering is the company that will be handling at least part of the design or construction of the proposed BioLife facility that I must admit I had mistakenly referred to in earlier columns as a "blood bank." I have since learned there are significant differences between a facility that solicits blood and one that takes plasma, as BioLife is designed to do.

Blood is the main bodily fluid and is responsible for transporting important nutrients, oxygen, carbon dioxide and waste products to and away from the cells. Plasma is the yellow liquid component of blood and constitutes about 55 percent of the total blood volume. Donating blood at the typical blood bank takes about eight to 10 minutes and donors must wait about two months between donations. Donating plasma takes around an hour and 15 minutes, but plasma donors can donate once a month, because, unlike blood, the body can easily replenish plasma.

Now if the city could only find a way to replenish a few its board and commission members.

Something economically important to note about that blood bank

I wish I could say I glossed over this when I wrote about the postponement of a conditional use permit for BioLife Plasma Services during Tuesday’s Planning & Zoning Commission hearing. The truth is I really ignored it.

During the discussion about why the blood bank, proposed to be constructed across Seton Parkway from where the Goodwill Industries center is under construction, required a comparatively high number of parking places, the facility’s architect Doug Elsbury said, among other things, that center will employ 90 persons.

That’s 90 new jobs for Kyle, folks! And I’m betting most, if not all, of these positions will be considerably more lucrative than minimum wage jobs. As far as I’m concerned, this project can’t move through the municipal pipeline quickly enough.

For an area zoned RS, which is the zoning for this particular site, the maximum number of allowable parking spaces is 101. BioLife wants 170. Why? Elsbury addressed that very question at Tuesday’s P&Z meeting:

Doug Elsbury

"We get that question a lot because it’s like ‘Seriously, guys, this is not even 17,000 square feet and you’re asking for 170 parking spaces. What are you doing in there?’ It’s amazing how many people donate. It’s a cool thing. You get money for donating as well as it’s medicine. Immune deficiencies is the main thing. So you have 72 beds. They typically have that thing at least half full of beds. And that front door is busy. And they have 90 employees. So the math adds up. We have factual evidence from the 80 centers that we’ve done that we need those (parking) stalls."

As you can see. Elsbury figuratively buried the 90 employees number (no pun intended) in his explanation so I am going to try to exonerate myself with that. But, later, I got to thinking about what he said. In the back of my mind I kept thinking "He said 90 employees, meaning 90 new jobs, at a medical facility. In my book, that seems significant and I didn’t even mention that in my original story.."

So, today, I reviewed my recording of the meeting and, sure enough, that’s what he said, albeit, as you can read for yourself above, somewhat off-handedly.

The Board of Adjustments will consider BioLife’s request at its Oct. 3 meeting. A public notice of that meeting appeared in this week’s Hays Free Press. That notice said "All interested persons are encouraged to attend the public hearing and express their opinion on the variance request." The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. and personally I hope the city council chambers is crammed with supporters who want to see Kyle become a more economically viable community. Remember: this is not about parking, it’s about 90 new above minimum wage jobs in a medical facility.

And, hopefuly, once the Board of Adjustments grants the variance, the Planning & Zoning Commission will quickly approve the conditional use permit at its Oct. 11 meeting so that earth can start to be moved to create 90 new, much-better-than-minimum-wage, jobs in the heart of Kyle.

Earlier today, I had a telephone conversation with Elsbury about these new jobs.

"Not only are you creating decent-paying jobs, you’re infusing money into the area because you get money when you donate," Elsbury told me. "I think it’s around $40. So there’s quite a bit of spending money that would just come from that, let alone the jobs."

I told Elsbury during today’s telephone conversation that the overwhelming majority of new jobs in Kyle of late have been minimum wage retail positions and that I was assuming the BioLife jobs would be of a more professional, thus higher paying, variety.

"I don’t know exactly what their pay scale is," he said, "but these are jobs that require education, a degree. There’s phlebotomists — they’re the people that are on the donors’ floor. You have to be educated for that. That’s more than minimum wage."

So there you have it.

Board of Adjustments never gets it, but ultimately gets it right

Neal Meinzer stepped right off the pages of a George Orwell novel into last night’s Board of Adjustments meeting. Meinzer and his family have owned property at 505 Old Highway 81 South for around 30 years now and they have been using that property for industrial uses. Exactly what is not important, but what they were doing was absolutely kosher because the property was zoned Heavy Industrial. In 2003, the City passed an ordinance completely revamping its zoning designations, although that ordinance (and this is the important part of this story) never repealed the previous zoning ordinance. The 2003 ordinance did not include a Heavy Industrial zoning. That meant that a property could never be zoned Heavy Industrial again within the city limits, but, because the old ordinance wasn’t repealed, those properties already zoned Heavy Industrial could keep that designation.

The matter before the board last night was an attempt by the city, using a loophole in the law, to claim Meinzer’s property did not conform to current zoning ordinances and permanently shutter his business there. Meinzer was fighting to retain it and to give you the punch line right away, the board ultimately and unanimously sided with Meinzer, although the members did so for all the wrong reasons.

According to Meinzer, TxDOT began construction on I35 access roads in the summer of 2012 and, as part of the construction process, erected concrete barriers that made ready access to his property virtually impossible. Although, he claimed, he had many prospective "tenants" who wanted to use the facility as it was intended to be used, they shied away simply because it was so dang difficult to get in and out of it. As a result, the property sat vacant. That’s when the City swooped in, claiming that if a facility located on a property zoned in a manner that no longer exists is vacant for more than 180 days, it becomes "non-conforming," and the City has the right to get rid of it.

As Lila Knight told the board during the Citizen Comments section of the meeting before it even took up the item, the city is selectively enforcing the ordinance. She pointed out that a number of homes located in the Old Town, Spring Branch, Trails, Prairie on the Creek, Steeplechase and South Lake neighborhoods are zoned R-1, a single family residence zoning that also no longer exists since the passage of the 2003 ordinance. I’d be willing to bet that at one moment in time in the last dozen years at least one home went up for sale in one of those neighborhoods and remained on the market for six months or so and during that time sat vacant. I’m also willing to bet the City never even checked into that fact let alone tried to declare it non-conforming. Why? Because, as Ms. Knight, told the board, the new ordinance states "The general public, the city council and the planning and zoning commission are directed to take note that nonconformities in the use and development of land and buildings are to be avoided, or eliminated where now existing, whenever and wherever possible, except: (1) When necessary to preserve property rights established prior to the date the ordinance from which this chapter is derived become effective as to the property in question; and (2) When necessary to promote the general welfare and to protect the character of the surrounding property."

Homes in R-1 areas will not be declared nonconforming because of the second exception and Meinzer’s property should also be spared because of the first one.

All this appeared to go right over the heads of the members of the Board of Adjustments. Board member Matt Janysek correctly pointed out that every single zoning map the city has published since 2003 shows Meinzer’s property is zoned Heavy Industrial and it’s the maps, not the ordinances, that should be the determining factor, even though, in his words, the maps haven’t been corrected to reflect the new zoning. The fallacy in Janysek’s argument is that maps are NOT wrong, so they don’t need to be corrected. They accurately reflect what each property is zoned. It bears repeating that because the zoning designations that existed in Kyle at the turn of the last century were not eliminated by the 2003 ordinance, properties that were zoned Heavy Industrial and R-1 then are still shown on the map to be zoned that way today.

Board member Terri Thompson was concerned that Meinzer was never notified in 2003 that his zoning was about to change. But, again, it wasn’t going to change, so there was no need for a notification.

But, like I said, the board ultimately got it right and sided with Meinzer, although they seemed to be voting more out of conscience than out of reason. But as long as they did the right thing, who’s to quibble why they did it.

As for Meinzer, he may have entered the meeting by way of Orwell, but an obviously delighted Meinzer left by way of Shakespeare.