AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 25th Street and Glenarm Place in Five Points. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property located at and around 25th Street and Glenarm Place from G-MU-3/UO-3 and R-3/UO-3 to U-RH-2.5/UO-3 (general urban, multi-unit to urban, row-house) in Council District 9. Amended 4-23-18 to modify the rezoning boundaries to exclude four parcels due to the impacts on nearby redevelopment. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 3-13-18.
11 eyes. 243 has passed. Congratulations, everyone. Okay, we are on to our last council bill of the evening. Councilwoman Gilmore, can you please put 244 on the floor? Yes, President Brooks, I move that council bill 18 dash 0244 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. Council Bill 244 is now open. May we have staff report? Oh, yes, I will. I'm going to do an amendment first before the staff report. Thank you, Madam Secretary. So good. Before the public hearing is open, I have an amendment to modify the rezoning boundaries to exclude four parcels due to the impacts of nearby development and commercial space, which was never the intent of this of this bill. I move the Council bill to 44 be amended in the following particulars on page two, line three, strike two, number block 183, Lot 17 through 31 and replace with block 183 colon lots 17 through 28. I need a second chance. It has been moved. And second it is. If there is any questions by members of council, I'll just make a few more remarks. What happened here is when we drew this, there was a property that was inadvertently added to these boundaries. And these boundaries include some commercial property. That commercial property is actually the rezoning development which just got announced this week. And so this is something that obviously this community in in five points, but the city has been waiting for for 40 years. And so it would be an issue if we downs on this property. So we saw that we caught it and worked with CPD to address the issue. Okay, we are now ready for you. Do we need to vote on this? Yes. Or can we? You should go ahead and vote. Okay. It's been moved a second to Madam Secretary. Rocco. Black eye. Clark Espinosa i Flynn I Gilmore I Cashin. Carnage knew Ortega I. Susman, i. Mr. President, I. Please I was watching this. Results. 11 eyes. All right. 11 eyes. Council Bill 244 has been amended. Councilwoman Gilmore, we need a motion to pass as amended. And move that council bill 18 dash 0 to 4 four be placed upon final consideration and do pass as amended. It's been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary. Roll call. Sorry. One moment. We're not going to. You won't vote on it until the end of the night. Okay. Till after the speakers. Excellent. All right. A public hearing for 244 is now open. Now we're ready for you. Sorry about that, Jeff. Okay. So Jeff Hurt with speed again. So I'm here to present KP's analysis of this legislative map amendment that's been brought forward by Councilman Brooks. So the request is for the Council District nine. It's actually in the Five Points neighborhood. That's a typo. So the area is about a 12 acre area in five points with a proposal to rezone from GMU three. So general multi-unit three story in you oh three that's a historic structure overlay. There is actually no locally designated historic structures in in this area and then are three. There's a small portion. That's our three. I'll show you the zoning map. The request is to go to your RH 2.5 to align the zoning with the pretty explicit specific recommendations for building height in the Northeast Downtown Neighborhoods plan. So current zoning, as I said G three and there's a small portion that's are three in the surrounding properties are mixed but along the Welton Street corridor is where you see the most intensity with CMCs eight so mixed use eight stories and then to the east and south is mixed but ranging from Cemex five, you mix three and then some old code zoning as well. And so existing land use is mixed as well, but mostly residential. You see some, uh, nonresidential which is mostly surface parking lots. And there's one church, but it is a mix overall of single to family and multi-family residential in the boundaries and so on to some images. So I want to spend a few minutes on this because it's particularly important. This is what the rezoning request is really about, is the existing kind of built environment and character of this neighborhood, which is pretty clearly articulated in the in the Northeast Downtown Neighborhoods plan. But looking at images first of properties within the boundaries. So you see along the street these are generally late 1800s, early 1900s structures you see one and a half to two and a half story at most is the predominant sort of pattern. But you do see the introduction of three storey buildings onto this next slide here in the top image and you see some two storey buildings. But for the most part, there really is no buildings over that 2 to 2 and a half storey, um, height within the boundaries. And then more images of some of the new development that's happened in the area and in and around the area. So these images focus on the surrounding area. So properties around the legislative map amendment boundaries and you can see the the rapid redevelopment that's happening, particularly to the to the south and west along the Walton Street corridor , mostly three and up storey residential. But along the Wall Street quarter, you see more mixed use going higher than that. Five, eight stories in more images just showing how this area is really transforming the surrounding area. So the existing zoning is Jimmy three such general multi-unit with a maximum of three stories. So this zone district allows three stories and 30 feet in height in most places. So a lot of it's calibrated based on the width and the size of your lot. Most slots are less than 50 feet wide, so you have this three storey and 30 foot height limitation on most of them. But for lots that are greater, they're 50 feet are greater, wide. There's more allowance for you have three stories, but also you can go up to 40 feet with the row house and apartment building form. So right now it's you three. You can't necessarily achieve three stories all throughout the area, but there is some allowance for it and it does allow for accessory dwelling units in the rear, 35% of these lots. So the propose on district is your 2.5 sets. So that's a two and a half story zone district where you would have the same use allowances in terms of still allowing single family, duplex, multifamily, a range of housing types. But essentially it lowers the building height by a half a story. So year 2.5 allows up to two and a half storeys and 30 feet in height. So similar to Jimmy three in that it's 30 feet in height along in a lot of places throughout the neighborhood. But it would allow up to 35 feet in height and two and a half storeys again, based on the width of your lot, if you have a lot that's 50 feet or wider, which is a very small portion of this area, actually, you could get up to 35 feet in height with two and a half stories. So it's really about reducing the building height by half a story. And you'll see in a second here the plan recommendations that this is calibrated to. And your 2.5 does also allow accessory dwelling units like Jimmy three. There's just limitations on the height and the scale. So the process is there was an extensive community process leading up to the application, even making its way to CPD. This actually is a 20 and 15 case number to show you when it actually started in the in the queue. But in terms of the more recent notification, I'm going back to January of this year was the initial notice. And then, of course, all the other signs in the posting that went along with planning board and city council. And I'm sorry. Plenty more did recommend approval on February 21st unanimously. So the Arnaud's that were reached out to are on the screen. So each one of these in I've got a better summary here. Each one of these were notified of the request. And as of today, there have been 13 comments total on this specific request, ten and support. I think there was nine in your packet, but we got another late one tenant support, including the Curtis Park Neighbors Registered Neighborhood Organization. And in general the support is related to conservation of motion, of conservation of community character relative to building scale. There are two comments and opposition mostly related and certainly in your packet, but mostly related to the concerns over loss of property values. With losing that half story increment and some concerns over our notification process and the public outreach that was done leading to the decision to go with you as 2.5. There's one comment I would classify as neutral that has some concerns, but I don't know that there's actually opposition in there. And so these are the review criteria staff look at. To formulate a recommendation, you have to city wide plans, of course. And then the Northeast Downtowns Neighborhoods Plan is really the sort of the focus of the analysis. So related to comp plan, 2000 staff looked at a number of different policies related to encouraging infill development while at the same time being respectful of neighborhood character. And so there's a number of policies that sort of call out that goal and staff does find the request consistent with that. Relative to the existing character of the neighborhood blueprint, Denver is actually mixed within the boundaries of the rezoning area, so it's mostly area of stability, but some area of change in mostly single family and duplex feature land use in terms of the the staff position a recommendation on this. So in terms of what an area of change policy states and that's kind of paraphrase, it's really about accommodating investment and redevelopment in strategic places. But then you also have an area of stability, goals and policies of promoting maintenance of neighborhood character. So on balance, staff does find that it does require strikes, a balance of the two. So sort of encouraging reinvestment and investment while at the same time being more consistent with neighborhood character relative to building scale. And like I said, Single-Family duplex and urban residential are the blueprint land use classifications, both of which support the idea of a mix of housing types and staffing 02.5 Consistent with that in terms of you still have a wide range of housing types that would be allowed under that zoning. So the Northeast Downtown Neighborhoods Plan is really the the the focus of at least three adaptive plan analysis. That plan actually calls out this specific area explicitly has 2.5 stories. And there's a small area to the south of 24th Avenue that's actually called that is three stories. We could talk about the nuance there, but essentially three stories is not possible because of the intersecting streets under any sort of the list of zoned districts that would be feasible here. I'm happy to talk about that. So but the concept building height of 2.5 stories applies to the majority of the rezoning area and STAT finds that consistent with the neighborhoods plan and the future land uses really follow a blueprint in Denver in terms of promoting a range of housing types between single family duplex and urban residential. So staff finds year 2.5 consistent with that. And there's also some other sort of non map based policies in the Northeast Downtown Neighborhoods plan related to specifically this area Enterprise Hill as it's kind of called out. And that's about reinforcing existing development scale in about protecting neighborhood fabric, maintaining character. And it even goes so far as to say to make use of upper story setbacks and minimizing massing where appropriate. So staff finds overall that the zone district is consistent with these policies as well. And so since this is a legislative rezoning request, these are the three criteria that are used to evaluate it so you don't have the justifying circumstances and all the additional criteria. But staff did look at these three criteria and found that the request is consistent with the Northeast Downtown Neighborhoods Plan and other plans, and that it furthers public health, safety and welfare through the implementation of adopted plans in implementing that vision of maintaining neighborhood character related to height and massing . So staff recommends approval of the request and happy to answer any questions. Great. Thank you so much, Jeff. We have eight speakers. I'm sorry. Nine speakers this evening and I'm going to call the first five up to the front bitch, please move that way. John Haydon. Sam Hargraves. Deborah Jacobson. Keith Pryor. Maggie Miller. That's five. John Hayden, you're up first. 3 minutes, sir. Thank you. Members of council. My name is John Hayden. I reside at 2418 Champ Street in the Curtis Park Five Points neighborhood. I am the president of Curtis Park Neighbors, and I'm here to let you know that our neighborhood organization had multiple presentations on this rezoning and that our board voted in favor unanimously of the rezoning. And you should have our letter expressing that. And then just from a why why we think this is really important, the area that we're rezoning tonight is and is a collection of of of five points homes of small, medium single family homes that were built in the 1880s, very similar to the homes in Curtis Park. And we want to make sure that those small homes remain a part of our community, that we don't lose all of the the housing stock, that that makes up the character of Five Points and Curtis Park. And so that that is what what this is about to me is maintaining a degree of affordability by maintaining those smaller single family and row homes and not seeing them wholesale demolished in favor of larger luxury homes. And and so that that is what I see coming of this. And I will leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Hayden. Sam Hargraves. Hi. I'm opposed to this on several grounds. Can you. Can you say your name for the record? Yeah. Samuel Hargraves. Good. Okay. On a couple of grounds. One is procedural. As you've heard, this has been a multi-year process. I didn't receive any notification and I've spoken to many neighbors who weren't aware of it until they saw the first signs posted on corners a couple of months ago. I spoke to some women who were neighbors. A couple of years ago or. Several years ago, and they still own their house. They use it as a rental house. Their address of record is current. When I talked to them, contacted them last week, they had no. Idea about this and they are reachable because they did receive a. Letter regarding the demolition of a house behind them. It seems to me that primarily opposing or non avid supporting voices were not included in this process. I'm not at all surprised that the Curtis Park Neighborhood Association supports this. Curtis Park is a different neighborhood. It's across Welton Street, several blocks over. It's a self-defined, historic district. People self-select to live in this district. Of course, they're going to support a down zoning. Of another place. I'm also curious about how many of. The homeowners whose houses will be directly. Affected by this. Support it and have been directly involved in this discussion. And I think there are a fair number of people who support it whose houses and properties will not be directly impacted. Yeah. And then in terms of the sort of inevitability of this that I've heard from some people regarding Blueprint Denver in the 2011 thing , Susan Barnes Gail said. That every town in a blueprint. Talked about putting density adjacent to transit and encouraging. Of change where directly. Adjacent to Welton Street Core Transportation Quarter, which has a light rail. And I'm not sure why you would. Go to a. Less dense zoning. From GM. You three also believe GM Year three is appropriate. As a transitional zoning from CMC's five and eight on Welton to GMU three where we are, and then you step down a couple of blocks over, then you get down to 2.5 across Washington as opposed to going from CMC's five boom straight to 2.5. And I would argue that the character of our neighborhood is. Not as as as. Posited. These are these this sort of charming character. The character from their neighborhood. Is already. Substantially a mix of non historic homes of and larger of. Non historic homes. Including four plex is three story duplexes. We are not blocks of of. Quaint single story Victorians. We are not Curtis Park. We don't resemble Curtis Park in any way, shape or form. We are a. Different neighborhood. And which includes larger a substantial number of larger structures. Some of these supporters live in those structures. So it's weird. Thank you, Mr. Grace. Deborah Jacobson. Thank you, counsel. My name is Deborah Jacobson. I, I have lived at 2437 Clumber place since 1997 with my partner who bought the property in 1990. And I would like to briefly review how the zoning that we have now, which is GMU three, came to be when the current zoning for this area was proposed in 2010. Several of myself and several neighbors signed a petition asking for our zoning to match that of of the Curtis Park neighborhood. At that time, our neighborhood was not represented by an R.A. and we we we failed to get the urh2 point five that we were trying to get back then. Just a year later, in May of 2011, the Northeast Denver neighborhood plan was adopted and building height and land use maps, as have been pointed out now support the you are h 2.5 zoning. The momentum to change our zoning started to build a few years ago and a group of neighbors got together and started outreach to the proposed rezoning area. And you will hear from my neighbor, Robbie Hobin, regarding the details of our outreach and my neighbor, Maggie Miller, regarding the outcome of that outreach. We have seen the neighborhood in the surrounding area go through many changes over the last several years, especially the last four, 4 to 5 years. And we are in full support of the increased density we are seeing along the commercial corridors of Welton Street and in Arapahoe Square. But we feel strongly that changing the zoning to reflect what is called for in the Northeast Denver neighborhood plan will help preserve the character of our neighborhood. And, you know, some may say that changing the zoning would negatively impact the monetary value of our properties. But I would argue that replacing historic homes with multi-unit apartment buildings would significantly impact the things that we value most about this neighborhood. And just thank you, counsel, so much and I appreciate it. All right. Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. Keith Prior. Hi. My name is Keith Pryor. And this is all about, you know, our tools in our toolbox. And so we have the northeast neighborhood area plan that was adopted basically after we had done the major rezoning of the city. And unfortunately, this neighborhood, which was adjacent to Curtis Park, in a sense, has been because of the neighbors, reached out to Curtis Park and have become a part of Curtis Park and really now have the advocacy there. And what we really want to do is basically work with tools in the toolbox to really match what's on the ground with the zoning that's appropriate. There are a lot of single storey homes that are still there and we're constantly seeing these cannibalize through the current zoning into a three storey. So basically they got the house, they keep the first storey walls and then they go up three stories which next to a one storey house looks really odd. And it also then removes that house as a one storey house to being a 600 square foot, very affordable property. It's a great starter home that a lot of people are able to get into. And so as we've seen in other neighborhoods such as Bonnie Brae, Washington Park, when you're zoning doesn't necessarily match what's on the floor, you have this cannibalization. And so what we're finding is as a tool to help maintain the area's character, but yet still allow wildness in the street, which is actually the transit corridor, to have the density of the five storey and the eight storey and really concentrate that on that corridor. But then yet let a mix of income survive that has been there. That has been the cornerstone of this five points area. It is the most diverse economically area in the city. Pretty much started out that way. And if we don't down zone to actually protect the land values, then the land values go up to make the houses no longer affordable. So you're buying the land underneath the house and then that then creates the problem. So when your use and your land use actually matches what's there, those opportunities to have that affordability and to keep the character of the neighborhood there is lost. And so one other tool in the toolbox, landmark preservation, that is one area that, you know, we've obviously looked at in in Curtis Park, we have 11 landmark districts. Is that something maybe something would be supported in the future? Sure. But we have immediate needs. Obviously, there is great change and we really want to make sure that the character of the neighborhood maintains itself, the affordability, the diversity maintains itself. And we just want to make sure that what's on the ground matches what's in the zoning and the plans support that. So please support this tonight. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Mr. Pryor. Maggie Miller. Good evening. My name is Maggie Miller and I live at 451 24th Street. I am here to ask you to approve the Denver Planning Board's unanimous recommendation to rezone our little triangle. I would, since not everybody who supports this is actually going to be speaking. I would like to just take a minute and ask anybody who supports it to stand up whether they're speaking or not. Thank you. In my time tonight, I'm going to focus on how much support this proposal has from our neighbors. We did a very thorough outreach that Robbie will be talking about, and we got a lot of support. I don't know if you can picture our little triangle from the street level. We're basically nestled. There's Curtis Park, there's San Rafael, there's Clements, and we're by the Safeway. So I don't know if you can picture that this neighborhood currently has a mix of housing. As people have said, single family homes, both large and small duplexes, row homes, condos and an apartment building. And not surprisingly, therefore, has a wonderful mix of people. You'll hear you have a detailed letter about our outreach, and Robby will be talking about it. So what I'm going to talk about is the results of the outreach. So here's the math. At the time of our initial outreach, there were about 100 properties in our little triangle, 107. Just over half of those were owner occupied. So you can imagine what it was like to reach the owners. That's why we had to do so much outreach because only they weren't all owner occupied. Despite that, we managed to contact owners of 69 properties. So that's about two thirds of the properties. And it is a minor miracle that we contacted them. Again, Robby is going to talk about all of our efforts to contact. Of the 69 properties, 56 had owners who signed our petition. I'm going to repeat that of the properties we contacted 56. That's 81% had owners that signed our petition. So that's a lot of support for this. And not only did we make contact with those owners, we had thoughtful conversations with them in person, on their front porches, on the phone, over coffee. We learned why they did or didn't want the rezoning. And I don't have time now in my 3 minutes to describe all of their reasons. But my point is that we had substantive conversations with our neighbors that we were able to contact. If you have any questions or concerns about our outreach or level of support, for goodness sakes, please ask. We have the answers. I have we all have copious notes. So in closing, I want to ask you to approve this rezoning request and to thank you again for your attention and for your service to the city. All right. Thank you, Miss Miller. Okay, I'm going to call the next five. Robbie Hoban, Joel Noble. James. Two minus. TerraCycle. Come on. Yeah. Terms like know you're not ready yet, but Robin hoping is you. But you can sit on the first front row. For the next. For the. First time. For the first time in five years. Okay. Go ahead. Hey. I'm Robbie Hobin. I live at 24th in Glenarm. And I also want to thank you and the city planners for meeting so much with us and for your support and getting through this process that took us two and a half years. I'm going to speak just to the process part. Just to summarize that, I sent you about 30 pages of maps and photographs and letters that we sent out and fliers and the mailings we sent to mailings just to speak to at the very beginning of this, Maggie. And I don't know where she went. We kept telling ourselves, well, this may not work, but at least we're getting to know our neighbors. And we did. We hit every house, hit as in like knocked on at least once, twice, dropping fliers, mailing letters. We created a Facebook group just to stimulate conversation because sometimes people work and it's hard to get a hold of people. We created a fan of five points at gmail.com address, so if you got the flier, you could at least email us. We created it, not we. Maggie The Excel spreadsheet Ninja created this enormous spreadsheet to keep track. We had to look up every address one by one on this Realtor real property website and write down who owned the house and did they? Were they owner occupied? And it was just amazing. We had a scale of 1 to 7 on super supportive or not supportive or you know, Maggie left a message and we think we saw them at some point, you know, at a meeting we held meetings at the Five Points Curtis Park neighborhood. R.A. which is how I got to know everybody in the neighborhood, just about besides the walking and talking. We met at the library and Blair Caldwell Library. Coffee At the point I sound like I'm rambling. There's just so much to tell you. The point is, when it comes to process, we really did want to know what the neighbors thought because we wanted we didn't want to make enemies of the people we were. It would have been pointless. That was not what we wanted to do. And Maggie's number really do speak to this. That of the people we were able to reach, 80% were supportive. And that includes mailing letters out of state to Elsie's and trust funds and that kind of thing. As people use some of these properties as rent, what do you call it, income properties. So for sure it's been a long, sustained effort to get here and I'm so glad to be here. Finally, to ask you respectfully for your vote of yes tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Holbein. All right. John Noble. Good evening, Council. President. Council. I'm here to speak in favor of this, but really to speak in favor of the process because this is something I think should and Joel Noble take seven or five, I don't think and that's great, so to speak, in favor of the process, because I think this is something that can work well in every neighborhood. What we have is a recent neighborhood plan and neighborhood plans are fantastic because as supplements to blueprint Denver, they capture the consensus in the community for what the future of over the next 20 years should look like. You can imagine this little triangle going a number of possible ways. It would be very reasonable. I had the pleasure of leading the the community input process to the Northeast Downtown Neighborhoods plan for Curtis Park. That that neighborhood plan is quite large. It covers essentially all of five points. But this Curtis Park sub area, as you heard, this little triangle didn't have an R.A. And in the previous couple of years during the zoning code update, they realized, hey, we don't have an R.A. we're not we're not getting input. So they came over across Welton Street and joined our input to the Northeast Downtown Neighborhoods Plan. And through that process of consensus building found the consensus that you see in that plan today, two and a half stories and a range of building types from a single detached house through row house. Having found that consensus. Then it comes to us now after a lot of outreach and making sure people understand the implications after support with our council member to make the zoning match. The planning. In her neighborhood. Cooperation has not taken a position on this, and I wouldn't expect them to take a position on individual rezonings. But I would like to point out that in the ANC zoning and planning platform, not only do they talk about the importance of neighborhood plans, but they also encouraged legislative rezonings, just like we have here in front of us. When the community consensus has been found, then don't don't waste time. Go ahead and legislatively rezone so that the zoning matches the intention of the community. And so we're grateful that Councilman Brooks has brought this forward. I'll be available for questions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Noble. All right, James Tobias. Did I say that right? You did. And thank you. It's it's not an easy one to pronounce. My name is James the Midas. I live on just one of the fringes of this triangle that we're talking about tonight. I want to thank the members of the council for letting us talk. I want to make four brief points, two of them with respect to support of the bill and two of them with respect to the process. I think passage of this bill will allow us to maintain at least some modicum of diversity in this neighborhood, not only with respect to the economics of the people who live there, but also with respect to the cultures of the people who live there. And also with respect to the architecture of the places that are there now. I think we have. Excuse me. I think we've all seen in the various neighborhoods in Denver the kind of the scramble to make as many square feet on a lot as possible, livable and sellable. And that's something that I think we see everywhere. And this is an opportunity and it's a relatively modest request, but it's a request that will allow some livability of the neighborhood to maintain itself. So. So obviously, I support this. I do live in the neighborhood full time. I am not an absentee landlord and I am aware of everything that goes on, even though I'm fairly anti-social in the overall picture. I see all of the activism from everybody here. I am not one of those people. But with respect to the process, Ms.. Miller and her colleagues have always been very forthcoming with all the information associated with this, and I have been privy to it. I've asked for it, I've taken a look at it, and I've been impressed by it. I've been impressed by their efforts on behalf of the community to the same effect. With respect to some of the concerns that were excuse me that were brought up with with regard to the getting in touch with everybody in the neighborhood. I am. I have the dubious distinction of probably being the. Least social, most unacceptable person that I can think of in that neighborhood because I'm always working. And between Maggie Miller and some of the other people that she's been that share her viewpoints on this, they've contacted me no fewer than five times since this thing kicked off . And I'm not very accessible. I'm always working. I always have other things going on. So in some I would support the bill. I would very vigorously support it. And with respect to the process, I think that they've put every effort possible forth to get everybody's feedback, and I think it's been very overwhelmingly positive. So thank you. Thank you. Mr. Thomas Turner, stay cool. So we want you on that first bench so you can be closer. And so maybe when he is winding down, you can start just suggestions from the from the president. Go ahead. You're here. 3 minutes of starting. Thank you. Terrorist registration movement for self-defense. Oh, yeah. I have to step outside of myself. To actually support this. Because this is the neighborhood that I was gentrified out of, that I was born and raised in for 65 years. And my love for the neighborhood supersedes all actions and events as happened in my personal life because I am connected spiritually to the land. And those little small houses that you saw. With the houses that we black people occupied and lived in as we served the white folks that was in the bigger houses. Those who are quarters. And we lived in those properties. And when movement came, we could move and other folks moved out. We moved into the bigger houses, and those are the biggest houses that we just got gentrified out of. By the folks who are proposing this because they don't even know about the people that were in those houses because they came from here. So I supported it on a moral obligation. To maintain the integrity of the community I grew up in that I could not live in today. Because it's principle and it's not personal. Because of my love. For my community. So that's why I'm supporting this. And that is it. That's it. And so as I can step outside my personal feelings about things and put my community first. I'm seeking a similar behavior from them and from this council and begin a process of repatriation of folks who were moved out of this justification so that you have a diversity of a neighborhood as opposed to a all white community of settlers outside of this neighborhood. Outside the city. So I can do it. I expect us all to do it. Because this is about teamwork that makes it dream work. It's about principle for personality. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Chairman Sekou. This concludes our speakers questions by members of council. Councilwoman Ortega. Yeah, I would like to ask city staff if this creates any nonconforming properties with the changes. So the only thing it would create would be noncompliant structures. So for example, the the new three storey buildings, newish three storey buildings that were built under Jimmy three would be noncompliant, which is different than non-conforming. You get a little more flexibility to make improvements and maintenance and things like that. You just can't increase the extent of the noncompliance, if that makes sense. So the zoning essentially allows them to exist, which, you know, is similar to a nonconforming use, but it gives more flexibility on them being able to do improvements. So that's the basic difference. That's right. In terms of the terminology. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Do you have any idea how many? None. What's the word? Using non-compliant properties. This this creates. I don't have that offhand. It's in the others that know the neighborhood better than me. Okay. Probably. No, I would say. Well, less than ten, maybe even less than five. Okay. I'd like to ask one of the speakers who is involved in the. Maybe outreach. Process. I don't know if anyone has that information in front of them. I can assure you no one has that information. I mean, we can get it back to you. That's a that's an analysis that needs to be done very specific. It could be. The number of stories. It could be the setback. You know, there's a number of things that could could get at this noncompliant issue. Yeah, I guess I was looking mostly at the height issue than anything so that that would be helpful to know that information. Anybody in the audience have the answer to that question. If you could raise your hand. If not, Joe, I figured you would. If he has a precise number right now, we can switch places. Councilman Brooks is correct, of course, that nobody nobody did the analysis measuring every every building. I think it depends how strictly you look at it. With these older neighborhoods, 1880s through 1910. The two storey buildings tended to be quite tall and quite narrow and. A lot of them, I would say most of them don't fully comply with every piece of both the new zoning and the old zoning, because there's some way in which just just think about the side setbacks. The houses in this neighborhood were built very close together. And to build a new house today, to be fully conforming with the zoning code, you need to have a five foot or a three foot side setback, and generally they don't. So if you looked at every provision in the zoning code and say, are they conforming in every regard? None of them in this area are. And that's true with the current zoning is true with the proposed zoning. So in this area, we depend very heavily on tools in the zoning code like administrative adjustment. When you're looking to do something, there's a way in the zoning code to have some flexibility on some measurements like height, like bulk plane, depending on the character of what's on the block. And that's basically how we get by. Thank you. I have no further questions. Yeah, thank you. Councilman Ortega, councilman connection. Thank you, Mr. President. I would love to talk to city staff as well. So I want to follow up on Councilman Ortega's question first, which is just about non-conforming or non-compliant buildings that are apartment buildings or multi-unit. And I want to dig in to this question about what's the difference between density versus size, because I don't think they're the same thing and they're kind of being used interchangeably by some of the speakers. So are there apartment buildings for Plex's, whatever you wanted to call them, that would would not be able to continue in this zoned district that exists now? Not that I'm aware of it. This is really about the the massing of the building itself and the envelope of the building itself. It doesn't really get at uses meaning number of units. So those two things remain the same between Jimmy three and George 2.5. So I don't I'm not aware of any I don't see any issue with current units being able to continue in perpetuity. It's more about the building scale and placement and size in the case. You said something really quickly in there, so I'm going to slow you down. Is a big building more dense than a small building if the same number of people or households live in it. I mean, what is the definition of the word density? Oh, boy. Well, it's not something that we as a city actually regulate that closely. So the whole idea of our sort of form based code and post 2010 was to get away from that, in a sense, regulating number of dwelling units. We regulate it based on parking and things like that. But for the most part, you know, multi-unit is still allowed. It's allowed under current zoning and it would be allowed under future zoning. It's just a matter of the number of units you can put into this new footprint. And so I don't know if that we don't have density is just not something that. My my definition of density is the number of people per acre and the number of people who live in an area. So if you have one building and it's 25 feet tall and it has one household in it, and you have one building and it's 35 feet tall or 45 feet tall, and it has one household in it. They have the same density. It's one dwelling unit on that, you know, so. So I just it sounds like you guys don't go down that road, but. So you said something really slowly and I just want to go back there again. So to folks who say this is near transit and we should have density. Is there anything in here that's reducing the number of dwelling units can be in this neighborhood? You said you said it in the middle there. But I just want to go through that again, that if you're going from three stories to two and a half stories, that's not the difference between two dwelling units and one dwelling. No, not at all. It's just about the scale of the building. The only difference is, is the building itself obviously could have an impact on the number. It depends on the type of dwelling units, the size, the orientation and all that. But it's not about this change is not about changing anything. Relative number of dwelling units. No. And I just want to clarify, because we did have one we had one one opponent who said this is not going to reduce density near transit. And I don't see it as that. I see it as a character. And then we had one proponent who said, you know, it's about apartment buildings, but I'm not hearing anything in the zoning that's changing the ability to have apartment buildings. This is really just about height set back character. That's what I'm hearing. That's right. Well, they both kind of had a misstatement, so we're clarifying that. Yeah. Multi multi-unit is still allowed under 2.5. Thank you very much. Okay, Councilman Espinosa. On that line of questioning. Is the apartment form allowed in the RH? No, it. Is not so. I want to clarify what was just transpired, because that is a in fact, on an adequate zone lot size. That form would afford you potentially more units than a row house. Well, what would now be an urban townhouse for? Is that correct? It allows you more building massing, but not necessarily. It doesn't explicitly allow. Yeah. So let's get back out of the density conversation because that's. That's true. Like, you could, you could put a bunch of little mike very narrow row houses and be conforming. But you can't, you couldn't stack them because you would be in an apartment for. So you couldn't do horizontal vertically stacked in in. And so inherently that limits the amount of density that is is potentially accommodated in the same mass. So we're not changing the massing, but we are changing the density. The density potential. I mean, eliminating the apartment for. Yeah, I really do think it comes back to massing. I mean, you could do the duplex form, for example, in your 2.5 and I believe have the ability to still stack. You have limitations on the massing. Obviously we got out of that business, remember, because that was something we adopted last year, which was we had some seven unit duplexes and things like that. Now duplexes, two units and we did get into the units per unit in the density conversation there. And now with that townhouse forum, we're getting into side by side units by definition, which also would be limited by the size of the zone lot. Yeah. I'd have to look at it again. I believe in the duplex form, even with the slot home amendments being proposed, which, you know, kind of may in fact give you 3.5, I believe you still have the ability to stack in the duplex form in the RS 2.5. It's the real house form or you're required to do side by side. But the duplex form at least I don't think that stipulation is in there. Yeah. I guess the simple, you know, maybe you can answer it this way if I have a 50 foot a 6000 square foot lot. Interior. 6000 square foot lot in the gym. You three with only 50 feet? No. With with only with less than 50 feet of frontage. Well, let's give it a specific number with only 40 feet of frontage. Let's say that. Would you would the row house zone district would limit the number of. You know, I guess you could make every row house the width of a door and an insurance. But let's say you'd be limited to eight units. But on an apartment form, you could. Well, now you need 6000 square feet. You could build a substantially denser apartment building on that. If you have a 50 foot wide lot currently and 6000 square feet, which for which there's a limited number in this area, I think there's only maybe 12 or something of the. 60. I forget how many persons there are. Then you could do the apartment form currently. But again, it gets back to the massing. So that allows you three stories or 40 feet and that allows you to stack. Um, and so, um, yeah, that, that, um, that would no longer be allowed in yours 2.5 But it's only allowed in a limited area. Councilman Espinosa, I know you had some other question and it sounds like we're getting down into the yeah, you know, the detail of this. And this is a good conversation because it gets more to maybe the higher conversation of are we not allowing density already allowing density, but I'm afraid we're gonna go down a rabbit hole here that well. Let me go with my three questions. And believe it or not, this is not related, but it's sort of related. Is it possible to remove the apartment form with an overlay? I'm sorry. Would it be possible to remove the apartment form with an overlay? I mean, I think that that you could say that's possible. Yeah, but I mean, that's not something that has been considered. At least that answers the second question, which of course an overlay we're moving apartment form ever considered. So the last question is. He says. A typical zone lot for single. Do you have any sense about what the typical zone lot existing condition but the existing the typical zone lot for these single family and duplex houses are in the area right now. Dimensions wise or area wise. Let's see. I'm terrible at math. I know that 35 feet wide is very common by 125 foot depth. So if ever that comes to be less than 6000 square feet. But um, so that is a common dimension I will say. Um, so what does that. That's 4000 375. Okay. And that's fairly typical because I'm trying to understand because I was looking at the granularity of the of the existing housing and there was a lot of conversation about the desire to maintain that character and massing. And I wanted to make sure that we were in fact mapping something that was consistent with those lots. Okay, that's it. All right. Thank you, Councilman. When what I as I see you over there, Councilman, New. Jersey, every time I see garden court, my ears perk up. And I just want to make sure that this applies to after the moratorium ends. Right. The use of this garden court feeling for me will be with the new design criteria if it's approved. I am not sure about that. I'm not sure when that moratorium expires so soon. Okay. Okay. Well, in May. Yeah, I. I am not sure about that. Okay. Well, now, as I understand it, that that building forum will be changing. You know, the criteria design criteria will be not not drastically, but it will be. And and. Councilman A, that's one unit, right? One unit decreased from the typical. Well, that's the smart homes. Okay. That's a brand new building form. They'll come into play, but the guard car still stay there. But the design criteria, the height and the width of the garden court, the landscaping, it'll change. And so just just knowing what they know. Yeah, that's. Good. I think the garden court isn't allowed form in the yards 2.5. Um, actually so. When you go to list is. Okay, I'm sorry, that's a typo then. I'm sorry. That's the reason I brought it up. Okay. Okay. Sorry about that. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman, you. All right. See no other questions. Public hearing is now closed for 244. Thank you all for showing up as legislative sponsor. I'll open this up for comments. I got to tell you, you know, many folks have heard me say this in this city. I believe that revitalization and preservation can coexist. And this is a a perfect example of this. And if you have not been to the five points, if you have not been to the historic Walton corridor, you need to come and see it because it's construction is everywhere and it's kind of exploding. And there are some buildings that are eight stories. You go four blocks downtown, there's some buildings, some 15, 16 stories, and then you have this little neighborhood right next to it. And so it's quite interesting when people talk about density, because that's the last thing I'm thinking about for this neighborhood. This is a neighborhood who has been working on this. There have been individuals in this neighborhood who have been working on this for a long time, and it's so exciting to see it come to fruition. The the the deal that, you know, I think folks talked about just a little bit was when the late Carlo Madison was in office, didn't get a chance to sit down with the neighborhood and advocate for this specific zone district. If she would have been in office and there could have been a more robust campaign in this neighborhood, that they would have had this zoning. And so I do not see it as a sort of a downside. I see it as a right fixturing towards our plan of the north, the downtown, the northeast downtown neighborhoods plan. And so I'm excited to support this this this group right here is serious and doesn't play around. And really, you know, every person who had a question about this rezoning, I would immediately say. Hey, Maggie, do you know this person? Yeah. We met about, you know, a year ago. We talked and, you know, like this entire group had specific individuals. And so hats off to this neighborhood. And I hope that this neighborhood is an inspiration for the rest of the city to say we're okay with density. We just want some protections for our single family neighborhoods. And and that's why I'm so supportive. And I know not everybody's on board. And I appreciate I appreciate opposing views. And in conversations, I think this is what a city is about. It's about having these conversations and agreeing to disagree and trying to move forward together. And so that's what we're doing here. I'm excited to to support 12 acres of this legislative rezoning, to preserve a community in the midst of revitalization. And I think it's actually a perfect mix. So good work to everybody who did so such a good job. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa. Yeah. Seeing this. You know, it's one of those things that if you know me, you know, I would be super excited to see this sort of this sort of zone change because I look at this area and go, it's a minor miracle that it has not radically transformed, like Jefferson Park and Sloan's like the other areas that have this, what I consider atrocious zoning of GM you three. But that's fortunately there's an effort to change that which would truly benefit this this because it will apply if, if those changes are approved to the RH 2.5. So for naught, you know, for a lot of reasons, I'm excited about this proposal. But there is one question that I had, but I forgot to answer it because I got a little sidetracked, you know, but it's because I still have the same sort of concerns that have impacted similar communities in my district negatively or I mean , that transformed character. And again, we are working the zoning zone district as is intended, goes to address the character concerns. Change plan changes would also go to address character concerns. And if there are any lingering ones, I'm sure we'll work on those as well. My outstanding concern is that it's clear that the existing context is largely single family detached homes, and there was even conversation in the public testimony, I mean, comment about that and I wish we were actually the proposal was USA, ESA, A2 or something that was actually about that character because you still are going to a multifamily zone district to that whole question about density, you know, the only way you can capture more density is through multifamily where you once had single units. And so you still will have pressure to see this now as row houses larger, more substantial row houses rather than this existing. So I mean, we almost needed to go the full Curtis Park with a conservation overlay or something like that. So I mean, we can only weigh what's before us and I can't telegraph how I would support or not support something like that in the future. But you could probably know my own sympathies in general. But it is a concern that, well, you will get different outcomes than a GM, you three that are more positive, positive, more community sort of public realm focused. There will still be pressure on this area to radically transform, despite the smallness of the parcels and despite the limitations , which aren't that many because and that's the other thing that was struck me as odd is the GM you three, and this is why I asked about the overlay to remove the apartment form because it's the apartment form that created the slot home. It's not the GMA three by itself, it's the form. And this is the fundamental problem with our form based code is that actually the GM, you three without the apartment form is more consistent with this underlying fabric because it has a smaller zone, lot requirement for a duplex. You know, you actually need a bigger zone lot in the new zoning than you did before. And it's just it's the problem of this form base code which captures. Urban town. Urban home. Duplex. Tandem house. In the case of what we're going to row house in both of them. You know, it could be all those things and some of those things are great and consistent, but then that apartment form creates this this anomaly. So I applaud you guys for what you've done, the outreach that you've done, the, the, the, the, you know, but I still pray for this community to some degree on the future and its outcomes because you're still the zoning code still doesn't get to a lot of the character concerns and you can get some redevelopment that is is incompatible with that character that this community has gotten accustomed to. And so the other thing there is that. Yeah. I lost my train of thought. But it is a. Yeah. It slipped my mind. But you get the gist because there are legitimate concerns that still need to be addressed. And I hope that you're involved in the Denver Rite Process encouraging more guidelines and standards that are more granular to communities so that new development is in a way that sort of is compatible and that we can preserve general character of areas like this. Well, encouraging what you were talking about high density redevelopment in areas that are in fact closer still to transit. We can have both and we sort of need both as relief. So, you know, this does meet the criteria and I'll have no problem supporting it. And I and I applaud the work that Councilmember President Brooks and his community have done to sort of make sure that this could happen. Thanks. And thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Appreciate that, Councilwoman Canete. Thank you, Mr. President. I was thinking about this almost in the reverse, because one of the things one of the key criteria is that there's plan support. And when you think about the plan is so clear about what this area needs to be in terms of two and a half. And, you know, if you were to imagine that this area had different zoning and someone came in and said, can we put in you three? There would not be support for the zoning that is there now. And so I think that is like the most compelling criteria meeting ever, which is that there's no plan support for the existing zoning. So, so that I just want to lay out there in terms of the criteria. The second thing, and you know, I do not want to invite my colleague into a big tit for tat. I think it's okay for us to see this differently. But the map actually doesn't show that this is all single family residential. The map is pretty clear that there's a lot of multi-unit, and I think that that's key. And so I want to say thank you to the community for not trying to erase that density that's there. Those are affordable units, whether they're being rented or whether they're being owned. You know, that is density. And so I, I commend your restraint in saying we have multi-unit properties throughout this neighborhood now and we should continue to have them. I would I would have had a challenge if it had been a try to push out and reduce. So I just I reject the language that this is a down zoning. In my mind, density is not the right to a big house. Density is about fitting people into an area. You know, more and more people are more households into an area. It's not about having huge footprints or huge ceilings even. We've got two and a half storeys here. So you you can't even tell me you get fewer bedrooms. You just frankly won't have nine foot ceilings. You know, there'll be a, you know, a different shape. So I feel strongly that this is about character. I feel that it was community led and so so it already met the criteria. But it's also great to be able to say thank you for the thoughtfulness with which you pursued that and for the community leadership. So thank you. And kudos to Councilman Brooks for for trying to find that way to to both incorporate multi family units and character together. And Councilwoman Kennedy, you're right. It isn't about zoning. You know, I've been trying this. What's the right it's almost like a right sizing to the original plans and guidelines from 2011. And I'm excited that folks kept pushing. So. Way to go. Way to go. You guys are going to be giving clinics all over the city of of how to right size to neighborhood plan. So well done. And again again, I just want to point out again, you know, I think there's so much division over this city about development. It's it's it's really it's painful what's going on in the city. And I think this neighborhood is a great example of saying, I may not like all of what's going on, but I'm going to do something for my contacts in front of me. I'm going to make this right. And so I think that's a great example for the rest of the city. Madam Secretary. This has been moved and secured. It's amended as amended. Please do a roll call. Black. Clark. I. Espinosa. I. Flynn. I. Gilmore. Cashman. Kinney. Lopez knew Ortega. I assessment i. Mr. President. I. Plusieurs voting in US results. One vote is missing. Somebody saying in fire. 11 eyes. All right, there it is, 11 eyes. COUNSEL About 244 has passed. Congratulations. All right. Please hold your applause. And I'm sure on Monday, May 21st, 2018, Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 323 series of 2018, amending the zoning code with multiple substance of clarification and usability amendments.