# Conway Planning Commission The Conway Planning Commission is the City of Conway's land-use advisory body, established under Ark. Code § 14-56-411 et seq. and operating under Conway Zoning Code Sections 201.1 and 201.3 (the Zoning District Boundary Map provisions). The Commission holds public hearings on annexation, rezoning, conditional-use permits, planned unit developments, variances, and subdivision matters; its recommendations go to the City Council, which retains final adoption authority. The Commission's April 21, 2025 meeting was the public-hearing predicate for the Project Stratus annexation and rezone — the Commission voted unanimously to recommend all three project-related cases. ## Roles in this corpus - **Public-hearing body for Project Stratus.** [[2025-04 Conway Planning Commission Recommends Project Stratus Annexation and Rezone]] documents the April 21, 2025 meeting at which the Commission recommended ANN-0325-0046 (39.50 acre annexation), ANN-0325-0047 (294.74 acre annexation), and REZ-0425-0052 (rezone A-1 → I-3) to City Council unanimously. [[Alan Rice]] was the lone public speaker in opposition. - **By-laws and procedure.** Per the [[Conway Planning Commission Reports April and May 2025|April 21 agenda packet]], the Commission's by-laws were adopted July 19, 1993 and amended September 20, 2021. Public-hearing speaker time limits: 10 minutes for the initial applicant or opposed speaker, 3 minutes per subsequent public comment. - **Operates on the second-floor PC channel.** The Commission's case management runs through the City's Energov system; staff coordination on case routing surfaces in the [[Conway Internal Staff Teams Chats on Project Stratus|Planning Department Teams chats]]. ## People Planning Commission membership as of April 21, 2025 (per the [[Conway Planning Commission Reports April and May 2025|meeting packet]]): - Lori Quinn, Chair - Ethan Reed, Vice-Chair - Mark Ferguson, Secretary - Alexander Baney - Jensen Thielke - [[Jay Winbourne]] — filed his own Arkansas FOIA on Forgelight Ventures and the Lollie Road project on May 18, 2026 (Request FOIA-2026-118), one day before [[Joshua Dunlap]]'s parallel FOIA-2026-126. - Brooks Davis - Teneicia Roundtree - Cassidy D Cook - Kevin Gambrill Planning Department staff supporting the Commission: - [[Anne Tucker]] — case management on Project Stratus (presented the maps to Council April 22). - [[Lauren Hoffman]] — Planning Department staff; author of the draft data-center notice ordinance. - [[Ryan Robeson]] — case owner for ANN-0325-0046, ANN-0325-0047, and REZ-0425-0052. - [[Rebecca Alexander]] — Planning Department staff. ## Notes The Commission's April 21, 2025 specific minutes (transcribing the Stratus item discussion, Alan Rice's testimony, and the votes) are not in the FOIA-2026-126 production — only the agenda packet and the Council minutes' summary of "the Planning Commission passed the request unanimously at their meeting, adding that there was one gentleman present who spoke in opposition." A follow-on FOIA could ask for the Commission's own meeting minutes for April 21, 2025. The Commission's role on Project Stratus was procedurally limited. Conway's standard practice — confirmed by the agenda's "+" annotation on the Stratus items and by Jamie Gates's [[Project Stratus Next Steps and Sequence|April 1 sequencing memo]] — is to forward PC-recommended items to the next Council meeting (April 22), which means the Commission's recommendation effectively dictates the Council's vote in routine cases. The Commission as constituted does not have authority to vote up or down on an annexation MOU (which is a Council-only action under the Special Meeting structure of April 1); its jurisdiction begins and ends with the land-use-amendment items. Whether the Commission's membership underwent any turnover between the April 21, 2025 PC meeting and the present is not established by this production. The Commission roster as of April 21, 2025 is the corpus baseline.