The Dublin City Council met on this past Tuesday night to discuss the fate of the Grafton Plaza development. The Lin Family’s plans for Grafton Plaza were/are contrary to the original zoning for that particular parcel of land. Because of this, the Council needed to decide on whether to completely reject the Lin Family’s plans and send them back to the drawing board or to study the potential amendment to the Dublin General plan and East Dublin specific plan guidelines. After hearing from residents, the City Council was led by City Manager Ambrose through a series of questions to help them decide which route they wanted to take.

Councilwoman Sholz was completely against amendments based on the residential and fitness club components of the Grafton Plaza plans.

Councilman (and soon-to-be Mayor) Sbranti expressed that he liked the Grafton Plaza plans with the following modifications – ensure that at least 200,000 sq. ft. of the Plaza are dedicated to commercial space, at least 51% is dedicated to commercial/retail, and the buildings should not be more than 6 stories high. Councilman Sbranti also expressed that he’d prefer to see mixed-use within each building vs. having buildings dedicated to specific uses (residential-only, commercial-only, retail-only, etc.).

Mayor Lockhart and Councilwoman Hildenbrand were both in favor of a 10 story limit on the proposed towers and agreed with Councilman Sbranti that each building should be mixed-use. Councilman Oravetz expressed that he was in favor of whatever the Lin Family wanted to build and was not in favor of setting any limitations.

In the end, the Council voted 4 to 1 (with Councilwoman Sholz as the only dissenting vote) to study the proposed amendments to the General and Specific plans. The planning process will take a few years…so more info to come on the developments…