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Generally, gasoline service stations (includes repair and maintenance services) and restaurant drive- throughs are prohibited in neighborhood commercial areas. One reason for that is that those uses are car centric, while neighborhood commercial areas are more pedestrian oriented. That being said, certain car-oriented uses can function within the neighborhood environment. In fact, a fuel sales use can sometimes act as a kind of anchor tenant,drawing customers into the project and enhancing the viability of the other tenants. With such uses,however,project design is particularly important. Because of the nature of fuel sales uses, a project's design needs to buffer adjacent residential areas from fuel sales impacts,maintain proj ect aesthetics,and mitigate potential auto/pedestrian conflicts. With a mixed use development,the project must be approved through the Planned Development(PD)process. Since the PD process gives the county more control of project design,staff's position is that fuel sales uses can be appropriate within mixed use PD projects and supports the proposed change. The other proposed amendment relates to development timing. When policy 5.6 was drafted, staff's concern was that, without a timing restriction, mixed use project developers would build the commercial component of the project and not build the residential portion. That then would defeat the purpose of mixing uses. To address that issue, staff structured policy 5.6 to require that a certain amount of the residential portion of the project be permitted before commercial development is allowed. At the time that policy 5.6 was developed, there were several alternative ways to address the timing issue. Although the current policy does not allow any commercial development to commence until a certain amount of residential is permitted, other options were considered when policy 5.6 was being ... developed. One such alternative was, like the proposed timing amendment, to allow a portion of the commercial development to proceed without any residential being permitted. In the case of the proposed amendment, up to 2.5 acres of commercial could be allowed prior to any residential being permitted. That amount of acreage allows for a typical convenience retail and fuel sales development. Any further commercial development would require that at least 25% of the residential be permitted. Staff's position is that the amendment is acceptable. Generally, the change will accomplish the objective of ensuring that proposed mixed use projects do not end up as stand alone commercial sites with no residential component. Analysis of the Planning and Zoning Commission Proposed Changes When the Planning and Zoning Commission considered the subject text amendment at its October 25, 2012 meeting, the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended two changes to policy 5.6 in addition to those changes proposed by the applicant.The first change is to revise the policy to eliminate the differences between the L-1/L-2 and the M-1/M-2 land use designations with respect to the percentage of the mixed use site that is allowed to be developed with commercial uses. While the current policy allows a higher percentage of commercial area within mixed use projects in medium density, residential districts than in low density residential districts, the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended change would allow the percentage of commercial area within mixed use projects to be 25% for all residential land use designations (L-1, L-2, M-1, M-2), an amount which could be increased to 30%for projects that vertically mix uses. The Planning and Zoning Commission's rationale for recommending that change was that,because the 4 18