A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 3700 Marion St. Rezones 3700 Marion Street from U-SU-A1 to U-MX-2x (Urban single unit zoning to urban mixed-use two story) in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 8-30-16.
Minute 30. We're going to take a minute break to let the stations identify this evening. Speaker should begin their remarks by telling the council their names and cities of residents and if they felt comfortable doing so, their home addresses. If you are here to answer questions only when your name is called, come to the podium, state your name, and let the council know that you are available for questions. Speakers will have 3 minutes unless another speaker has yielded his or her time, which would result in a total of 6 minutes. On the presentation monitor. On the wall you will see the time counting down. Speakers must stay on topic of the hearing and must direct their comments to council members. Please refrain from any profane or obscene speech. Direct your comments at City Council as a whole and no refrain from individual or personal attacks. Councilman Cashman, will you please put Council Bill 622 on the floor? Thank you, Mr. President. I move the council bill 620 to be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and second, it fell here for 622 is open. May I have the staff report? Cortland, Heiser, welcome. All right. Thank you very much, colonizer. With community planning and development here to present the proposed rezoning for 3700 Marion. So moving on to slide two, you can see that this proposed rezoning is in Council District nine. Fine. Slide three shows its location in the Cole neighborhood. And Slide four shows the specific location at 3700 Merrion Street. This is located at the northeast corner of Marion and 37th Avenue. It's in the vicinity of the 30th and Blake Station, which is just a few blocks away to the west. And just want to point out that the site is not in the 38th and Blake Hyde Amendments area that council voted on a few weeks ago. It is just outside of that. It's not in that area, though. Slide five shows some of the details of the request. It's a small property, a little less than 5000 square feet in size. The applicant is requesting rezoning to redevelop the site following loss of the original structure to fire a couple of years ago. And the specific request is to rezone from you someone to you annex to X. Slide six shows specific details about the requested zone district. So you an x2x is urban neighborhood context mixed use two stories maximum. This zone district applies primarily to small lots that are embedded within residential neighborhoods and allows only low skill building forms. Has a two storey height limit as opposed to most mixed districts, which would allow three or more stories. And it has lower intensity uses than other mixed use districts. The use list itself is limited to help ensure compatibility with adjacent residential uses. Slide seven shows the existing zoning context. So the site itself has USA A1 zoning as do properties to the north and east. But all of the other corners at 37th and Marion have some form of mixed use or commercial zoning. So to the south there's x three to the west, Cemex three and catty corner across Marion and 37th from the site is old code zoning B4 which is a commercial district. Slide eight shows some details of the existing zoning the you a one. So this is an urban neighborhood context single unit district that allows accessory dwelling units. It has a 3000 square foot minimum lot size. And so given the size of the property, the redevelopment potential under the zoning would be one house and one accessory dwelling unit. Slide nine shows the existing land use maps. The site itself is vacant following demolition of the structure that burned down a couple of years ago. To the north and east are single family residential homes to the south, an industrial property and to the west. Our land use map shows it is undeveloped, but it's being used for outdoor storage. So Slide ten provides some images to go along with the map. The subject property is shown in the upper left hand corner of the slide. It's the vacant lot there and then moving clockwise around the slide. So over to the upper right corner, you see the sort of salmon colored residential single family home to the north, then the property to the east. Another single family home to the south across 37th Avenue is an industrial building shown in the lower right corner of the slide catty corner across Marin. And 37th is another single family residential structure. But that's a large lot and most of the property is used being used for outdoor vehicle storage. And then across Marion Street to the west is the vacant lot that's also being used for storage. Slide 11 shows some of the historic context here. So formally, the property held an eight unit apartment building that was lost to fire in 2014. This slide shows the structure post-fire obviously, but also mid demolition. Moving on to slide 12, you can see what the structure used to look like. So this is what formerly stood on the site. This is a google street view image from 2011. And as you can see in this image, the property had a structure that was originally a shopfront mixed use commercial building with the corner entrance. Slide 13 provides a little bit of background on the historic zoning that was in place prior to adoption of the new code in 2010. Informally, this particular property and surrounding blocks are two A and then most of the cool neighborhood was zoned R two. And that's the yellowish color that kind of dominates the image there. When this area was re zoned, an effort was made to identify embedded mixed use and commercial buildings within the neighborhood and give them um. To zoning and in slide 14. You can see that pattern in place in Cole and 37th Avenue in particular, where those embedded commercial buildings that were similarly situated to this subject property received you are max two zoning. Now at some point in its history, this particular property was converted from the former commercial use to being only a residential building. And if that had been identified in 2010 when the rezoning occurred, it's likely that this property would have received your max two zoning similar to all of the similarly situated mixed use commercial buildings within the neighborhood. Slide 15 summarizes the process which followed standard notification procedures throughout. Planning board hearing was held on August 17th and Planning Board recommended approval by a vote of 11 to 0. In terms of public outreach to Arnaud's, the organizations listed here at the bottom of the slide received notification throughout the process, and at the bottom it states that no public comment was received. Actually, earlier today there was an email that was sent to the city council email list that expressed support for the rezoning and that was sent by the property owner adjacent to and north of the subject property. So one of the single family residential homes. Slide 16 lists our five standard criteria which apply to this case. Slide 17, we'll start with consistency with adopted plans, and there are three that apply to this property. Slide 18. In terms of comprehensive plan 2000 consistency, the staff report identifies the three strategies listed here as being consistent with the request. And for more details on that, you can refer to the staff report. Slide 19 summarizes blueprint Denver's guidance. So in terms of street classifications, it identifies Marion Street as a residential arterial, and 37th Avenue is an undesignated local street. The property is an area of stability and the recommended land use by blueprint. Denver is single family residential. Now the definition for single family residential does provide for some allowances for limited commercial uses, as shown in the quotes there. At the bottom of the slide states that single family homes are the predominant residential types, though not the only residential type. And the max to ex district would allow some other forms of residential beyond single family. And it's further states that the employment base is significantly smaller than the housing base. So again, providing for some allowances for there being some limited employment base within single family areas. Slide 20 shows a couple of images from the Northeast Downtown Neighborhoods Plan. So like Blueprint Denver, it identifies the land use as being single family for this subject property and it furthermore identifies a building height of 2.5 stories maximum. Slide 21 provide some additional details of guidance from the Northeast Downtown Neighborhoods plan. So starting with the single family land use classification. It states that that applies to older residential neighborhoods that do not have a significant mix of housing types, and that commercial uses are limited to small buildings that provide neighborhood services. So again, similar to Blueprint Denver, there is some allowance within the definition of single family to provide for limited commercial uses. Recommendation A-3 in that plan, which applies to the neighborhood edge east of Downing Street. So the call in with your neighborhood edge states that of in that area, we should strive to maintain the current mix of low skill building forms to allow new development to replicate existing development patterns, and finally to allow a mix of land uses consisting primarily of residential but with limited neighborhood serving commercial. So on Slide 22, just to summarize the small area plan guidance, both Blueprint and the Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan recommend single family as a land use. Both plans have allowances for some compatible commercial development in single family areas, and neither plan provides detailed or specific guidance as to where commercial uses should be located within those single family areas. And so the argument that is advanced in the staff report is that the subject site is a rational location for you or max to ex because the former structure that occupied the site prior to the fire was designed as a commercial mixed use building similarly situated buildings in the core neighborhood. Have you max two zoning and the you a max to ex district is the least intensive mixed use district that is intended for this type of situation where you do have an adjacent C two residential. So Slide 23 summarizes the remaining review criteria, but the staff finding was that the request is consistent with our adopted plans regarding criteria to uniformity of district regulations. The proposal observes the established pattern of your max to ex zone districts for embedded embedded commercial buildings in Cole and 37th Avenue. In particular. It advances the public health, safety and welfare by implementing adopted plans. The justifying circumstances a changed or changing condition. The most relevant being the loss of the original structure to fire, but also the ongoing revitalization of the neighborhood and the opening of the 38th and Blake Station a few blocks away. The proposal is also consistent with neighborhood context, zone, district purpose and intent statements. So the staff recommendation on Slide 24 is approval based on finding that all of the review criteria have been met. Thank you, Courtland. Always good job presenting. We now have one speaker this evening. Noah. Manos, you have three minute. Six. One, three, three. Okay. You have 3 minutes. Hi. Good evening. My name is Noel Mannose. I'm the applicant and property owner at 3700 Marion Street and I'm just here this evening to answer questions and provide any further information that hasn't been detailed in the report. Great. You can have a seat and we'll let you know if anybody has questions. Okay. Questions by members of Council. You know. No, you come up. I have I have a question for you. Can you tell me how you're doing the development there? How many units are you going to have? We're proposing three or four units. Okay. The development plan is is yet to be determined, mostly in part because we don't really know what our zoning conditions are. So but we feel like, based off of the orientation of the lot, the lack of alley frontage and, you know, it being a corner property that, you know, the very generalized development plan would be for either live work spaces that had apartments on the second floor and small commercial spaces on the ground floor that would support small but hopefully creative businesses that, you know, kind of were. Kind of the nucleus of the Rhino neighborhood. And I've lived in that area for a long time and kind of want to perpetuate kind of the origins of what that neighborhood was. I think the other scenario would be a more common commercial ground floor that might be subdivided into two commercial suites with apartments, 3 to 4 apartments above it, but pretty, pretty small scale and , you know, pretty diminutive in terms of other development. You know, price point of housing. Is this going to be it looks like you're not looking for any old money so won't be affordable housing, but potentially attainable housing price points? We're not sure at this point. We haven't really developed our proforma. You know, we think obviously affordable housing is a concern and and, you know, sort of an important issue in in the whole neighborhood. But we don't really have any sort of definitive numbers as far as that's concerned. And obviously, the scale of the development is such that it doesn't fall within, you know, predetermined, affordable housing as dictated by the the FHA. Okay, great. Any other questions for members of council? Seeing none. You can never see the public hearing for council bill 62 is close. Comments by members of Council. I call myself very familiar with this site and I'm sure you all are as well. This was in the news in 2014 as a site that was burned down. It was actually an affordable housing project, and it was a really sad deal. All of the folks who were in the fire, luckily, I don't believe we lost any folks, but they were all displaced. And, you know, our office, along with folks and OED, were able to provide some assistance to to some of these individuals. And for a while, the community really wanted to see this this site develop. I'll tell you right now that while you mentioned Reno, this is right on the edge of the call neighborhood where a lot of folks are seeing displacement. And so I would love for you to consider in that workers live, work space, some affordable components and love to have a conversation with you all. How we could accomplish that through the obvious economic development. Catty corner to your site is a site owned by the XTO Management Group and they are looking at a grocery store and affordable 60% of Army units above that. So this is going to be an incredible area and it would be sweet to allow some of the workforce to stay in the neighborhood. So I will be supporting this based upon the rationale of of the plan support. But also we had a long conversation at 30th and Blake and I can't believe this. You know, we didn't touch this area because this is less than 200. I mean, you could throw a rock and hit the 30th and Blake Station from here. You're going to have a pretty good arm to do it. But we looked at this corridor being higher intensity. So we this is something that we completely support and encourage my colleagues to support as well. All right. Seeing no other comments. It's been moving. Saying it. Madam Secretary, Raquel Clarke. I flynn. I gilmore. Herndon, i. Cashman. I can eat. Lopez. I knew Susman. I black eye. Mr. President. I was close voting. And now the results. Lebanese.