A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 7800 East 53rd Place, 8130 East 56th Avenue and 8900 East 56th Avenue. (LAND USE, TRANSPORTATION & INFRASTRUCTURE) Changes the zoning classification from M-RH-3/OS-B (Master Planned context, Row House, 3 stories max./Open Space context, recreation) to M-RX-5 (Mater Planned context, Residential Mixed Use, 5 stories max.) for property located at approximately 7800 E. 53rd Pl. and 8130 and 8900 E. 56th Ave. in Council District 11. A PUBLIC HEARING WILL BE HELD AT LEAST FOUR WEEKS AFTER PUBLICATION. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 12-10-13.
We won't take a little recess. We do have a required public hearing on Council Bill 956 changing changing the zoning classification for seven 800 East 53rd place 8130 East 56th Avenue and 8900 East 56th Avenue. Anyone wishing to speak on this matter must see the council secretary secretary to sign up. I think we'll just stay in our seats and ask those who want to speak to sign up and continue on. Go grab some water. We did not take a recess, so I don't need to reconvene. We have one required public hearing this evening. Speakers should begin their remarks by telling the council their names and cities of residents and if they feel comfortable doing so, their home addresses. Our two speakers this evening are very aware of our rules about public speaking, and so I won't go through all of them. But I would ask Councilman Brown to please put Council Bill 956 on the floor. Thank you, madam. Thank you, Madam President. I move the council bill 956 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. And it has been moved and seconded. Council Bill 956 approves a zoning map amendment. The Council is required by law to conduct hearings on zoning map amendments and Council's actions are subject to court review in order to provide a record for court review. Testimony is recorded and any items presented to the Council are marked as exhibits and become a part of the record. They may be picked up from the council secretary after 30 days or after the conclusion of any court cases. Speakers should begin their remarks by telling the council their names and cities of residents, and if they feel comfortable doing so, their home addresses. The public hearing for Council Bill 956 is open and we're ready for the staff report. Mrs. Sarah. Thank you. Recently, Sarah, with community planning and development. This is a application to rezone property located at 7000 East 53rd place and 81,089 East 56th Avenue. The current zoning is master plan context rowhouse with a three storey height limit and open space B, which is privately owned open space. The proposal is to change the zoning to master plan context residential mixed use with a five storey height limit. The property is located in northeast Denver in City Council District 11 in the Stapleton statistical neighborhood. It is on the very edge of the city on the northern boundary with Adams County, north of I-70 and the Northfield Shopping District, just southwest of Rocky Mountain Arsenal and west of Central Park Boulevard, east of Quebec Street. It is about 122 acres. It's currently vacant. You'll see in the pictures there is a lot of dirt work with utilities being installed. Property owner is for a city Stapleton. They are requesting this rezoning to continue developing of the residential mixed use land use and again the proposal is to rezone from master plan context rowhouse with a three storey height limit and open space b which is privately held open space to master planned context residential mixed use with a five storey height limit. So the master plan context was actually written for the Stapleton neighborhood. It is intended for areas that are redeveloping over time in phases. And so development takes a variety of different shapes in residential mixed use employment centers, industrial centers, town centers, high density transit. So a wide variety of uses and the mixed use. Five storey residential mixed use zone district is intended for residential mixed use areas. We've already said three times what the residential current zoning is, so it is that row house three story, it is vacant ground. The street pattern going in will be a modified grid. Surrounding buildings are between one and five stories. The residential subdivision to the south is currently under construction and going very fast. And north of 56th Avenue is the Dick's Sporting Goods Arena. So surrounding zoning, we have the mixed use, mixed resident master plan, residential mixed use to the east, to the south. We have a little bit of rowhouse in there. That area will be part of the open space and when the Parks Department is ready, will probably be zoned to open space. We have some industrial to the east city owned warehouse and a post office. So and then south of Northfield Boulevard, some of our old chapter 59 mixed use zoning. As I said before, the site's currently vacant and with utilities under construction, the surrounding land uses you'll see way off to the east some industrial in Adams County. The site itself, a lot of dirt work as utilities go in. On the right, lower picture is the subdivision under construction to the south of the site. On the right, on the left, the post office, the city warehouse. And then, of course, this Dick's Sporting Goods across 56th Avenue. This was a planning board in November of 2013, ludie, in December of 2013. At that point, the property owner asked us to delay filing the ordinance. There was a glitch in transferring some property ownership from the school district to Forest City, and they wanted to wait for that transfer and that's occurred. So we're moving forward. There was public outreach to the affected resident Arnaud's, including the Stapleton United Neighbors, which that just that organization does not currently claim this area. But we just wanted to make sure that they were aware of this zoning and of course notification of this hearing was posted on the property today. We have no public comments on this rezoning. You're aware of the criteria, consistency with adopted plans, uniformity of district regulations, furthering the public health, safety and welfare, justifying circumstances and consistency with neighborhood context and zone district purpose and intent. The plans that that we are looking at for this property, our current plan 2000 Blueprint, Denver, the Stapleton Development Plan and the North Stapleton General Development Plan, which was adopted in 2012. Staff believes this rezoning is consistent with current Plan 2000, which talks about building a legacy of high quality urban design and stable, attractive neighborhoods and promoting mixed use development. The Blueprint Denver land use concept is single family residential and it is an area of change. The only streets that were in when Blueprint Denver was adopted in 2000 were 56th Avenue and Spruce Streets 56th Avenue in Blueprint. Denver is a mixed use arterial and Spruce Street is an undesignated local street. The Stapleton Development Plan adopted in 1995. This area is in District seven and the land use concept for it is mixed use, residential and an employment, and they call for a town center, a walkable scale and significant outdoor amenities. Now the North Stapleton General Development Plan is the reason that we are doing this rezoning with the movement of the elementary school and high school from the original sites that they were conceived at. We did shift land use around and the North Stapleton GDP. GDP codified that. And so this area is a land use concept of residential mixed use in the GDP. And we did also start talking about some of the streets that would be built in this area. Northfield Boulevard is to be a six lane major arterial. That's the street kind of at the edge of the red circle on the right central. I'm sorry, that's Central Park Boulevard North. Northfield is below where you see the hotels, if you can see down in here. And that's a six lane major arterials Central Park Boulevard is here on the right at the edge of our red circle . And then Spruce Uinta and Wabash are collector streets that will be built in the in the area. So staff believes concludes that this proposed rezoning is consistent with our adopted plans and general development plan. That it will further the uniformity of district regulations and it will further the public health, safety and welfare as it implements our plans . The Justifying Circumstances, Changing Conditions. CPD finds this criteria is met as we are redeveloping our former airport. And we did talk a little earlier about the master plan context and this site being consistent with that and the zoned district intent of a mixed use residential neighborhood. So in conclusion, CPD recommends approval, finding that all criteria are met. Thank you very much, Mr. Cicero. We have. Two people signed up. Mr. GOLIC, Would you like to say a few words? Thank you. Madam President, members of council. Good evening. My name is Bob Garlic. My address is 609 South GABLER Street, and that's in Denver here on behalf of four city Stapleton, too, who is the property owner and applicant of this 121 acre site. This is a this is a parcel that we refer to as filing 45. It's part of our numeric system that we use for our subdivisions and for city. If you recall back in February, I think I brought filing 41 in front of you. The impetus and the necessity for this rezoning is that these this filing is part of the stapled North Area General Development Plan, and it's very clear that GDP is matter of fact. It requires it that we rezone this area to match the land use and development patterns within that approved general development plan. Thus, that's why we're in front of you this evening. The proposed more x five zone district is a terrific district. We were more H-3 in the past, but we can we can accomplish our development goals with one zoned district and the mere x has the general building form which allows us to pick up not only single family , row, home and townhome, but also our attached products like walk up apartments, five story apartments, the more five can accomplish. All of that was just that one's own district. So that's the reason we're here, is because of the general development plan. However, it seems like it's a routine rezoning, but it's really not. This is a very important rezoning. We have the Northfield Commercial Center, which has about 1.1 million square feet of development, very similar to the Cherry Creek Mall. But we generate a tiny fraction of the sales tax that the Cherry Creek Mall generates. We need more residential units and we need them near Northfield. And this will put about 790 new units within close proximity of Northfield. So planning boards supported this unanimously and I hope you'll do the same. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Mr. Garlic. Mr. Sekou. Yes, sir. I'm Chairman Seiko, the founder and organizer of the Black Star Action Movement for Self-defense, representing poor, working, poor and homeless people. I'm sure you guys already know what I'm going to say before I even said it, because this ain't the first time I've said this. I would be remiss as to not acknowledging Metropolitan State College and its basketball team because it release similarly to this issue. And if you give me a minute to tie it all up. When I was the president of student government, we won the championship was national champions. So we went to the university and we went to the mayor's office, said, Hey, man, we need to be like Chapel Hill and have a Road Runner sign up here. That's named after the street coming off us. The highway. So they know we're here. We're champions, man. And we were even willing to pay for it through our tuition thing. We want to do a tuition thing and increase the thing and see if we can both want to get the signing. Of course, nobody. Nothing. Administration squashed it. And I went over to the mayor of Wellington Webb, and he squashed it because you said the school ain't down for. Why would I be down for it? All right, champions. Acknowledging with proclamations and words that when it comes to putting your money where your mouth is, all of your patriotism and loyalty and good accolades go down the drain. There's no excuse for Road Runner's Avenue not to be over there. After what you just told me they did over history. Come on. If this was the University of Colorado Boulder, where he never won nothing since the Orange Bowl. Come on. Mr. Sekou, let's bring it to this issue. Prior to this, we give these accolades about how we need housing for poor people and blah, blah, blah, blah. But then when it comes down to doing it, we put no pressure on the developers to make this happen. We go along with some half meal measure and some compromise. The tokenism. LA 100 units we're going to put forward is in here for low moderate income people, some Section eight and call that moving toward solving the housing issue. There's hypocrisy in all of this mess, all of it. So let's just start where you can get in, where you can fit in. Try putting a sign over there, recognizing them schools in them students, and then maybe poor people will take you serious because every last one of them come from broke families. Okay, that is the last of our speakers questions for the speakers or for the staff. I see. Councilman Lopez, do you have a question? Actually, I did. I can pull up the materials on the on the screen, the staff report. Hmm. I don't know. Why not? It's to fix that for his wife. Was there something you wanted to see? I just wanted to see. I know that. And I'm sorry, Mr. Sarah. I know that you. That you went through it on me. Okay. There it is. I don't see it on here. I can't put up on here, you know. Oh, shoot. Okay. Sorry. Excuse my 30. There's no excuse for that one. Oh. So I was looking at the context now. The existing context. I'm not too sure what is around the proposed site. And I don't know if it's human society or Mr. Garlic or even Councilman Hernan. I'm kind of filmy and I'm just really trying to. I kind of went through this fast, so you see. And I'm glad you went through. I just did. Pictures I'm referring to. Okay? I've done it once. I was trying to. All right. So so the. Top right is way off across Havana. It's in an aurora, actually, an industrial land use the land in between that and the site we're talking about is vacant. Then where you see the red arrow itself in the middle. On the right. Yeah, that's the site we're talking about. It's currently they can although there is a lot of earth work going on with utilities going in. Mm hmm. And then on the on the lower right. Is the subdivision being built now, which is another Stapleton development. It's just north it's just across North Field Boulevard from the shopping center. And then on the left, on the bottom is the post office that's on Spruce Street. Right then above that city, warehouses at 56th and Spruce, and then Dick's Sporting Goods Arena across 56th Avenue. I appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Sorrell. Mr. Garlic, is that intended for commercial use? And if so, what kind of use? What kind of. A is this site intended for commercial, though? This is going to have approximately 800 residential units. Okay. And not by no commercial attached. To no commercial mixed. And no, this is residential only because we're so close to commercial Northfield commercial development just to the south of us. Okay. And the only reason I ask that is because I know it's a touchy situation with the other counties. It might as well take advantage of it. Oh, we have a we have a lot of room. Keep in mind, this is a small area of that GDP and we have a lot of room for more commercial development, as well as the 1.2 million square feet that's there now. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that, Mr. DA. You're welcome. Thank you, Mr. Councilman Lopez. Councilwoman Ortega, if you have a question. Yes. Thank you, Madam President. Mr. Cohen, can you tell me what happened to the school site? So where was the school. Site and where. Where is it now going to be? Because I know they're in the middle of this, in the middle of building a new school. It was part of the last bond issue. And I don't know if this is where that school was supposed to be. So can you help me understand a little bit more about those dynamics? Sure. If you pull up the let's see. Hide it. The school said, I'll tell you where it's been relocated to. It's moved from the location to Therese is going to show you to 56th and Central Park Boulevard, so about a half a mile to the east. So a roughly 20 acre site, the two sites. That's true. That's the new one. Yeah. This is for a high school, right? Okay. So this is the land use plan from for a city you see next to 56th Avenue where I have the cursor. That's the new high school that has actually been in the news over financing lately. And the way that it is going to go in or where it was proposed before it's going to go in. Okay. And then below that, where I have the cursor now is the new elementary school. And originally actually if we go up a little bit, well, maybe where the zoning. Is. Start there where it says my three there, that was the high school site. And then down below it was the elementary school under the old general development plan. So with this new concept, schools have moved a little in, land use shifted around. So that's why we needed to rezone. Okay. And then my next. Question is about affordable housing and what is the expectation for this particular area? I think Bob can maybe answer that better than I. What I do know about affordable housing at Stapleton is that they have their own development agreement with the city. They are required to build a certain amount, and Bob probably knows more detail than I. Think of the 781 units. 80 will be affordable. And this are these expected to be all rental or will some of these be expected to be for sale units as well? Do we know? I don't know. But I think they're going to be for sale. But don't lock me into that. I think they're going to be for sale units. So out of 797, 80. Okay. 80 of them will be affordable. Right. 10%. Okay. Thank you. Are you finished with your questions, Councilman Ortega? Thank you, Councilwoman Kennish. Thank you, Madam President. Kind of an odd question for you, Teresa, but this is one statistical neighborhood, all of Stapleton, which when it was previously not yet developed or even now when we started south of, I think it might have made sense. But does the city have plans to divide it into two statistical neighborhoods? Eventually it means it is anomalously larger than many of you know. We also have a couple other large ones in far northeast. But I was just curious whether you mentioned the R.A., which, of course, Arnaud's and registered neighborhood organizations and statistical neighborhoods do not need to be doing the same thing. But I was just thinking about for our own statistical purposes, in keeping track of it, just a very, very large area. Probably be revisited once it's all built out. Currently it's such a large swath of vacant land, but just going gangbusters and building. I was shocked actually, and going out and taking pictures that how much is already built north of Northfield Boulevard. Yeah. So I can envision that once the population is all there that we might have to take another look at the statistical neighborhood because it is all based on the taxes that which are the cash. I never know what he stands for, but the Dr. come units of population that we all add together and I imagine in at least 2010 we are not in 2020 we take another look at at the statistical neighborhood boundaries. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Kenney. Councilman Herndon, you had a question, Madam President. I was I was going to respond to Councilman, can you just go? Go ahead. We said I responded the deputy nine neighbors hadn't taken effect, taken control of this area that we're talking about right now. But that's just because it's an empty field. However, the plot of development that's below that, the Conservatory Green Neighborhood, Stapleton, the United Neighbors does have block captains, and they're taking people of those community as a part of that registered neighborhood organization. So realizing that, it's my understanding that Sun will represent all of Stapleton when the overall population and overall development is complete, it's approximately 30,000 same population as my fellow, same as Green Valley Ranch. And in both of those neighborhoods, they're all one statistical neighborhood. Okay. That looks like all the questions. I'm going to close the public hearing and ask for comments from council members. Councilman Herndon, would you have a comment? Yes, Madam President, thank you for the afternoon. I think we spoke really well about the reasons for the rezoning, and I appreciate my colleagues asking about affordable housing. If you're not aware, Poor City has a 10% requirement in their development. So with the 790 plus units and 8080 will be planned to be affordable. That is with them achieving that goal. They are a little behind now, so they are going to need to keep up. But I'm happy to know that that's something that they are planning and they're moving forward with. I certainly urge my colleagues to support this rezoning. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Herndon. I see no other comments if I look down. Okay, it looks like we're ready for the roll call vote. Herndon I. Can eat. LOPEZ All right. Montero. Nevitt Hi. Ortega I'm Rob Shepherd. Brooks Brown. Hi. Fights. Hi, Madam President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Close to voting. Announce the results. 12 eyes. 12 eyes. The bill does pass on Monday, May 12th. Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 267, chaining changing the zoning classification for 4300 Warren Avenue and 4275 11th Avenue. Any protests against Council Bill 267 must be filed with the council offices no later than noon on Monday, May 5th, 2014. And seeing no other business before this body, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everyone.