The Plymouth Plan Commission approved two requests during their meeting on Tuesday, April 5th.

Todd and Rhonda Thompson at 15179 9th Road were granted a minor subdivision of two lots.  One lot will be 15.6 acres and the other will be 94.6 acres.  This property is located on the south side of the railroad tracks on the west side of Pioneer Drive in an R-2 Suburban Residential District.

Tyler Thompson from Civil & Environmental Consultants in Indianapolis appeared for the clients.  He said they want to split the property but at this time it would all remain agricultural. 

During the public hearing, there were no comments, and the Plymouth Plan Commission unanimously approved the request.   

The second request came from PIDCO.  They wanted to replat of the lot directly west of Harrington Noodles in the Pine Road Industrial Park.

Planning Consultant Ralph Booker said the request is to reduce the front yard setback from 75-feet to 50-feet on Commerce Street.  The lot is owned by PIDCO and they have a manufacturing company interested in the property but they need to make this minor revision for the project to move forward. This same request was granted for Harrington Noodles. 

Don Wendel attended the meeting for PIDCO and said, “What facilitated this is the gap at the back. It works out if we can have a 50-foot setback.”

Plan Commission President, Doug Feece said, “I don’t see how we can deny anybody since we already gave it to other people.”  

There were no comments during the public meeting and again the Plymouth Plan Commission voted 6 to 0 to approve the request.

Plan Consultant Booker the Plan Commission has had a lot of variance requests pertaining to institutional and commercial enterprises signs go before the Board of Zoning Appeals. Most of them are electronic signs.

Ralph’s recommendation was to modify Article 6 section 200 E-2 to include any grandfathered institutional or commercial sign in an R-3 district, a traditional residential district.  In giving examples Booker said the Wesleyan Church on South Michigan Road, the Trinity United Methodist Church, and the Knights of Columbus all had to go through a variance request.   

       2. Signs are permitted in C-1, C-2, C-3, I, BP or PUD Zoning Districts (plus any grandfathered institutional or commercial usage signs in an R-3 district) with a permit subject to the following regulations and other applicable standards in this Chapter:

Booker said the Plymouth Building Commission Keith Hammonds also wanted the Plan Commission to consider the number of signs permitted.  Booker said currently we only allow 4 tenants on a sign.  He would like to just open that up. 

Those were the two suggestions for modification of the current sign ordinance.

The Plymouth Plan Commission took no action because a public hearing will need to be held to make any modifications to the zoning ordinance.  They will consider the recommendation at their May meeting.