A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification of 2500 East 44th Avenue, 4348 Columbine Street, 4301 & 4349 Elizabeth Street in the Elyria Swansea neighborhood. Rezones property located at 2500 East 44th Avenue, 4348 Columbine Street, 4301 and 4349 Elizabeth Street from E-TU-B to PUD-G 18 (urban edge to planned development) in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 6-19-18.
I. Madam Secretary, please close voting and announce results. 12 Eyes. 12 Eyes Council Bill 797 has passed. Councilwoman Sussman, will you please vote? Council Bill 617 on the floor. Yes, I move that council bills 617 be placed upon final consideration and do. Pass has been moved and seconded. The public hearing for council will 617 is open. May we have the staff report? Technology kept catching up. My computer does that to. To push through it. So Jeff Hurt, with your planning a development here to present a rezoning for a property in the area Swansea. And this is a Denver housing authority owned property working with Habitat for Humanity to to build 16 duplex units. So we'll be talking a little bit about the project. Actually, the applicant is here to, uh, to fill in some of the details. So this is a rezoning request in Council District nine, as I said, in the Elyria, Swansea neighborhood. And so the request area is one city block. It's about 1.3 acres, and the rezoning requests is to go from E2 B So that's urban edge to unit, and the B stands for the minimum lot size, which is 4500 square feet, and they requesting to go to a PD. And so the PD it's Pdg 18. The G just means that the general PD and the 18 means it's our 18th beauty. So there's not much to the acronym there actually. And the purpose of the rezoning is to accommodate a redevelopment for residential units in the Elyria, Swansea neighborhood. And this is the site plan that the applicant handed out at Ludy. And it's a it's a an evolving site plan, but it does their plan is to build 16 duplex units for a total of 32 units in this neighborhood and for them to be alley loaded. So the existing zoning, as I said, is to be the surrounding properties north of 43rd are also YouTube. And then you look south and west closer to the tracks, and it gets more into the industrial zoning that reflects the character of that area. In terms of existing land uses, there's a mix again. So looking north of 43rd, there's a mix of different types of residential units, single unit two, unit multifamily and then south of 43rd to get more into the industrial land uses. And so on to some images of the subject site. As I said, it's one city block and this block has been vacant for really its entire history. There are two small structures there that were historically there. This area was platted in the 1890s. Those structures were demolished in the early 1990. So it sat like this for quite some time. And so looking at the images of the subject property. And then looking at the surrounding property, you see the single family. Some of the original single family structures, again, 1890s era. There's been a fair amount of some redevelopment of these houses, but it's generally maintained this character. And then this is an image looking south. So across 43rd, looking toward the both the freight rail and the commuter rail tracks and you get more into the industrial one story, uh, character of that area. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what you, what parties are, the purpose of them, why they're used. And then I'm going to get into the specific request of what their the applicant is actually asking for in speed. Speed is the city used to use them a lot more, but we've been a little bit more uh, we've used them lesson in recent years. The purpose of the party in the, in the zoning code at least, is to provide an alternative set of regulations on really challenging sites that have the term uses in unique and extraordinary circumstances. So in order to accommodate the proposed development, you would need a lot of waivers, conditions, variances, things like that. So the proposal and the reason for the PD request. So in these cases, staff works with the applicant to work through kind of all the zoning options to figure out if there's a base standard zone district that would work for their needs. In this case, it really came down to the width, the subject block, which is about half the width of the surrounding blocks. And it is, in staff's opinion, a unique and extraordinary circumstance to have a block that's this narrow and also to accommodate any type of development that's sort of consistent with the surrounding built environment in terms of two rows of of alley loaded of development. And so when you look at the current zoning ETB, there's a number of constraints. So the minimum lot size and in particular the setbacks, the front and rear setbacks, when you factor all these metrics together, it creates a really, really small buildable footprint. If you did one do alley access development and so that that steered us toward the parade route. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what is actually in the PD. So the way that we do Pwds is essentially we start with the base zone district that makes the most sense. And the PD itself sort of lists all the variations from that based on district. And so if you wanted to actually look at the PD itself, which would become the sort of the controlling zone district for the site that is in your packet in the actual application. But I'm just going to go through at a high level what those variations are, and they're all related to the building form and placement. There's no changes proposed to land uses or parking or anything like that. I think that's important to note. So would maintain the the two unit and single unit allowed uses. So the variations at a high level, again, we could get happy to go in more detail on this, but at a high level, the variations are to address the narrow block and to accommodate two rows of alley loaded development. So the first big variation is to. Remove. A there's so there's a split in the zone district in the in the YouTube zone district where the front 65% of the lot has a two and a half storey allowable height in the rear. 35% has a one story allowable height. So and then the bulk plan is calibrated by that front and we are split. Two staff does not believe that that split makes sense on this block because it's so narrow and these lots would be roughly about 60 feet deep. So and it's also sort of creating its own context within one block. So there's some variations related to the building height and the number of stories and the book plane as it relates to that front rear split. And again, I'm happy to get into those details. Another variation is the reduced minimum size. So that was a big issue with the current zoning, with a 4500 square foot minimum lot area that's actually out of character with the surrounding properties and how was originally plotted. The original slide had lots very anywhere from like 1600 square feet to something like 3800 square feet. So 2100 falls within the range that works for the applicant and and it's consistent with the surrounding context. So that is in there as well. And then the remaining changes relate to the setbacks. So reduced front, rear and side setbacks. And those are those are largely consistent with the surrounding development pattern, which has a lot of nonconforming non-compliant structures that were built well before zoning was in place. And then lastly and a really important one, the UTB Zone district does not actually mandate alleys and alley access. You could technically do or theoretically do vehicular access off the street, which is inconsistent with the surrounding development pattern. So one of the changes in the PD is to mandate vehicle access by alley only, and pedestrian access certainly could come from the street, but we're talking about vehicular access. So process wise followed our normal process. Planning and ordered planning board did unanimously recommend approval with a condition that was more of a correction or clarification. I'm happy to talk about that condition. And then that brought us to tonight. So there are a number of Arnault's restaurant and neighborhood organizations for this area. All were notified and we did receive one public comment in support of the request and in support of specifically residential development and going to a PD from the Elyria, Swansea, Globeville Business Association. That's in your packet as well. And so I have a number of different criteria to go through and I'll I'll try to get through them concisely. But we've got our standard review criteria that apply to all rezonings, and we've got an additional layer of criteria for Pwds. So I'm going to go through each of those and highlight a couple that require a little more explanation. So just listing out what they are. So starting with the standard rezoning criteria, so staff looks at consistency with adopted plan. So we certainly have the two citywide plans to look at. And we also have a very recent neighborhood plan in the Elyria Swansea plan that we looked at that addresses the site. So in terms of comp plan policies, so the policies that staff called out and are elaborated on in your staff report are listed here. I'm not going to go through each one of them, but generally relate to the policy in the concept of encouraging infill development and places where services and infrastructure already exist, which is definitely the case here. It's it's embedded in the grid of this neighborhood, and there's certainly services and infrastructure around it. And then there's policies related to encouraging residential infill development at appropriate locations. So staff does find the request in the request to go to a pretty consistent with plan policies. So related to Blueprint in Denver, the other citywide adopted plan. The subject property is in an area of change and has a land use designation of single family duplex. And so the area of change really points to encouraging infill development in areas where services, infrastructure already exists and also areas that have not realize their full development potential. And so staff finds the request consistent with these policies because as a vacant block in a in an established area, it certainly has not realize its full development potential. And, and as a duplex single family duplex zone district, it is consistent with that single family duplex classification. So on to the Elyria Swansea neighborhood plan. So this is the area specific neighborhood plan adopted in 2015. There are a number of policies related to encouraging or addressing the decline actually in residential population and residential dwelling units in this specific area. And there's actually a number of policies that point specifically to encouraging residential infill. And even looking at this specific site, it was actually called out in the plan as an opportunity site for residential infill. And so staff does find the requests consistent with the obvious ones in neighborhoods plan for those reasons. So I'm going to go through each one of these. I did want to highlight so these are the rest of the criteria that stuff looks out and making a recommendation. I did want to highlight criteria number four, which is related to the justifying circumstances. So Steph doesn't need to find or the city needs to find a justifying circumstance in support of the rezoning. There's a number of changes going on in this area that that support a rezoning and staff's opinion. One of the Illyria Swansea neighborhoods plan in itself is a change that sort of, you know, set a path for this neighborhood in this community in the future. And secondarily, also a big one. So with the central I-70 project and the expansion that's happened, there's been a number of residential units that have been taking out of the of the housing stock for this neighborhood. And so that's a big change that this rezoning in this Pudi, I think, looks to address in terms of attempting to replenish some of those lost housing units. And then related to the last criteria, again, standard rezoning criteria, the staff does find the property is consistent with the neighborhood context generally because the poverty itself is customized to reflect the surrounding context in terms of setbacks, building coverage, accessing off of alleys, things like that. So Steph does find it consistent with what that criteria applied to a library at any of these. Okay. Last set of criteria is the PD rezoning criteria. So these are the criteria specific to PD requests. And so I'll go through these as briefly as possible. So the first criteria is if the PD is consistent with the purpose and intent of parties themselves. So looking at the zoning code language for when and why and how the city should use parties, it generally addresses, as I said, where there is a unique and extraordinary circumstance and a physical constraint in this case. And this one I think is pretty straightforward. The physical constraint is the narrow width of the block, at least relative to the development proposed in a development that could go in and be consistent with the surrounding contacts with the alley loaded in the two rows of development. So stuff does find it consistent with that criteria. And so the last three criteria here. So I won't go through each of these, but um, I guess to highlight CPD criteria, see, so again, the development and looking back at that site plan and the applicant is here to, to elaborate on it, but looking at that site plan, there really is no standard zone district available, as I said, that that accommodates the type of development that kind of fits in with the with the surrounding context, without multiple variances, waivers, conditions, things like that, where you really get into this funky, customized situation. So PD is really designed to be since staff's opinion for situations like this and then last that the PD addresses uses that are compatible with adjacent properties, there's no change. As I said in the beginning, there's no change to the uses set forth in the zone district in the YouTube. So all of the single family unit and kind of ancillary use, as you would typically see, would remain the same as with the parking requirement. So it's really only about the building form and siting. Oh, there is another one. Sorry. So this is something like a bit of a broken record, but. So. So the last criteria is about users. This is more about building forms. And so stuff does find the party request consistent with this criteria. Because it does it it is calibrated. The party is customized and calibrated to respond to sort of the built environment around this block, which is highlighted in this aerial a bit. You can see with the parcel boundaries are in pink. If you can see you can see the original buildings and some of the newer buildings are not built to, you know, a 20 foot setback and a five foot side setback. They're really building out these these these parcels and they're alley loaded. You can see that the YouTube is on this. Without this pudi customized approach would be a real challenge to develop anything consistent with the patterns of this area. So with that, staff does recommend approval of their rezoning requests, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much. We have four individuals signed up to speak this evening, so I'll ask all four of you to come up to this front bench so we can get through things quickly. As soon as I call your name. There will be a slight delay for your time to start as you step up to the podium and then your time will start elapsing. So first up, we have Bruce O'Donnell. Thank you, Mr. President, members of council. My name is Bruce O'Donnell. And I am at 386. Emerson Street in Denver. I'm here this evening representing Habitat for Humanity, the applicant. And I'm joined by members of the. Habitat team. Who are here to provide some additional context and answer any questions. Should you have any? We're eagerly engaged in this process and feel that in this instance it is the perfect tool to address. All of the unique site. Conditions that were discussed in the staff report. And staff did a great job and was excellent. To work with to kind of solve the riddle. To maximize. The opportunity on this crazy. Narrow block. To get as dance as we could. To provide a permanent deed. Restricted for sale, affordable housing. We're here this evening to request your approval and vote of approval for Pdg. 18 and are available to answer any questions you. Have. Any. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Katie McKenna. Thank you, Council President Clark, and thank you, council members for having us here today. I'm Katie McKenna. I'm from Denver, and I'm the director of community development at Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver. We're here today to request your support for the rezoning of this block in Swansea, a neighborhood at Habitat. We believe that housing is the foundation from which everything else is possible and affordable. Housing is such a key piece of infrastructure and critical component in our communities. The global area and Swansea neighborhoods have been an area of a special focus for Habitat for Humanity over the last six years. With that, we we help home as Habitat for Humanity. We help homeowners achieve strength, stability and independence that they need to build a better life for themselves and for their families and for their communities. In our recent homeowners survey, we learned that 98% of people who grow up in habitat houses graduate from high school. That's compared to 79% of that's our statewide average is 79%. To me, this is important in our neighborhoods. We also learned that two thirds of our habitat homeowners have a budget and can stick to it. And seven out of ten aren't worried about paying their monthly bills because their housing is affordable. That's financial stress that's lifted from a low income family because they have an affordable place to call home. Hey. Here. In Denver, Habitat has worked with 843 families since our founding just about 40 years ago in Globeville, Leary and Swankier. We've invested more than $16 million to serve 200 families through our home repair and our homeownership programs. We're committed to these communities and to finding continuing to evolve, to find solutions for affordable homeownership. And this block is a really important part of that. I often say that I have one of the best jobs at Habitat because I get to work with all of the people. So I have the opportunity to connect with people through our community engagement efforts. We've hosted community meetings, we've attended other organizations meetings. We've connected with. R.A. is in local employers. We've canvased door to door to talk with people who don't often go to community to community meetings. We've walked around the neighborhood with residents to hear their thoughts about this vacant lot, and we're hosting homebuyer readiness classes and working with local groups to make sure that people in the area know how to buy the houses and when to apply. We're committed to making this project a source of neighborhood pride and hope and opportunity. And of course, we need to rezone it first to make that possible. So that's why we're here tonight. And I thank you for your time and consideration, and I hope you'll support it. Thank you. Next up, Cory Whitaker. I think we're just available for questions. If you want to, just go ahead and introduce yourself and say exactly that and then you can answer here. Okay. Corey Whittaker I'm the real estate manager with Habitat for Humanity. Address 3 to 4 or five Elliot Street. I'm here to answer any questions about the site plan, and thank you for your consideration of this. Thank you. And last, Kate Helberg. Cahill, Rick, director of real estate development. For Habitat for Humanity. 3245 Elliott Street. And just here to answer any questions that the rest of my colleagues can't. Great. Thank you. That does conclude our speakers questions from members of council. Jasmine. Jasmine. Jeff. The planning board recommended unanimous approval with increasing the height to 2.5 storeys on the rear of 35%. Sorry if I missed it, but what's. What's the logic to that? Yeah. So I almost think of it as an oversight. So the, um, the proposal that was before planning board had, um, I believe it was if it's 30 feet in the front instead of 17 feet in that rear, 35%, it was 30 feet in the rear. So the, the, the package that planning board saw was to increase the height uniformly across the site and sort of get rid of that 6535 split. I think by mistake, honestly, we admitted that the rear 35% would also be allowed to go up to 2.5 storeys. So we had, if that makes sense. So. So the way it was, it was put before planning board the rear, 35% height was increased from 17 feet to 30 feet. But the number of stories didn't match that. It stayed at one story and it should have gone up to 2.5 storeys to match that 30 feet. Inside is uniform the full length of the property. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Cashman, Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Jeff. That's okay. The alley. Because there is no alley in the original subdivision. The alley width is 16 feet. I'm just. I just want to verify. Is that our standard alley width? So believe so. I believe that there may be some allowance to go narrower, but I think that that is that is the standard. Okay. You're not certain whether 16 feet is our standard alley. I'm just concerned about, you know, services. Do you know of trash and recycling and composting pick up can be done from the alley with that with. Yeah. I mean so that's and this is punting on the question. I know but it is typically handled at the State Department planning stage. We did coordinate with those folks to make sure but 16 feet sounds right. I'm just I'm thinking that we've made allowances for narrowness in some cases, but I can't I don't think that that's been decided yet on this site. Okay. Thank you. That's all. Thank you. Councilman Flynn. Councilman Brooks. Thank you. How you doing? Excellent. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for leading this time, Parky. Your favorite subject on this. I remember when this came to commit. Council president. Are you laughing over there? Okay. Just make sure you're okay. On the. When this came to committee, it was an issue around parking. Can you just address and I know that came up a planning board as well. The issue of whether or not they could provide parking. Yep. Each because each of the units do not have to provide parking in the back of their in the back of the townhomes are. So I believe they do. And they they do have one space per unit proposed as part of their site plan, a surface parking space coming off the alley. Okay. So and the number of units there, they're they're you 32 total. Okay. So each unit has one parking space? That is correct, yes. Okay. There was some. There was some. I'm okay with that. Matter of fact, I'm okay with none. But there was some pushback on there, and I just wanted to make sure there wasn't any issue. Do we not talk about that in the party when we were in committee? I don't believe. It came up explicitly. I apologize if it didn't. I'm forgetting it. But, um, I didn't have it in my notes that it was a specific issue. Okay, great. And then I'm going to have come back up, Katie, and just tell me real quick, in the public, the am I level that these 32 units will be at? Yeah. Habitat for Humanity works with families, 80% of the area, median income or below for Globeville, Leary and Swansea residents where we're building three and four bedroom homes. So targeting larger families and expecting the income to be right around 47 to $49000 per year, which is also the average income of the neighborhoods. Okay. So right, about 60% of my kids are okay and all of the units are right at. How many bedrooms did you say? Three and four bedrooms. Awesome. All right. Thank you. See. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Seeing no other questions. The public hearing for House Bill 617 is closed. Comments by members of Council. Councilman Brooks. Yep. Thank you, Mr. President. I'll be supporting this number one, because the criteria is aligned with our plan documents. And I'm very excited to see these parties begin to work in our community and especially addressing all the site plan issues. But I'm really excited about this because most of the affordable units in and in the District nine area are what a lot of elders in my community say dormitory style. And these are three or four bedroom homes for families. And so hats off to, you know, Habitat for Humanity. I was there at many of the outreach meetings. You did a fabulous job. And this is one city block. You are. And I'm just this is a is a cool night in my district thinking about one side of my district, Elijah's 62 acres, all of this crazy new opportunity and exactly the other side of my district getting new opportunities for 32 families. Today with this rezoning. So it's a good night. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Brooks. Councilman Nu, I just want to thank Habitat for developing this project. You know, you're probably one of my favorite organizations across this country. You do such great service in every area, whether it's in a disaster area or just a redevelopment area like this. So I just want to say thanks for what you're doing for for Denver and for the low income families like you. Thank you. Councilman new councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. I also wanted to thank Habitat. They've done excellent work. They've been down in southwest Denver as well. And this is a project that will it's hard to believe that this block, even efficiently platted as it was, could have sat for. A century and, you know, 101, almost 130 years without being utilized, while meanwhile being surrounded by, you know, by a vibrant neighborhood. And so it's very good to see see it finally be able to host 32. Good sized families. And on a historical note. I wanted to point out that the original subdivision plat was signed by then city attorney John Schaff Roth, who went on to become U.S. representative. Senator and Governor of the state of Colorado. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn and Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you for that, education Councilman Flynn. I want to excuse me express my support for this rezoning tonight. This is part of my old district. District nine. And, you know, to recognize the fact that there are so many changes happening in the area and that these neighborhoods are actually going to be losing residents to have a focus on new housing coming into this community is really, really important. And, you know, I don't know how many of the residents in the community have gone through the application process and actually qualify for any of the homes. But I know there's a there's ironically, there's a strong homeownership concentration in these neighborhoods. But for those who are renters, they're sort of at the mercy of the the landlords. And we've seen a lot of people that have been displaced as a result of landlords being able to, you know, increase the rents and and get higher, you know, people with higher incomes that can live in the neighborhood. So that's having the, you know, displacement effect on the people who who are, in fact, there today or have been there. And so knowing that you all have made a commitment to targeting the LMI levels of the neighborhood as opposed to the entire city, is really important to trying to keep people in that community. So I appreciate those efforts. And you guys have done a great job in Globeville with all the housing that you built over there. And I know you have a lot of trust and respect of people from these neighborhoods, so keep up the great work. Thank you for what you're doing. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Brooks Becker. Yeah. Just a tidbit here, Mr. President, if you allow me, I think this is kind of a big deal. We didn't do this before, but I just want to have Kitty McKenna, who works for Habitat. For folks who are watching and want to know how to get involved and get on the list and see if they can get in on some of these units. Can she provide some information? Go ahead. She's also a Globeville resident, by the way. Yeah. Thank you. And for anyone watching, we would love it if you apply, if you're interested. The best way to get information is to visit our website at WW Dot Habitat Metro Denver. Georgie. Thank you very much. All right. And with that, seeing no other comments, Madam Secretary, roll call. Brooks. I. Espinoza. Flynn. I. Gilmore I Herndon Cashman can each new Ortega I Susman. I. Black i Mr. President. I I'm secretary. Please close voting and announce results. Sorry, I got one thing wrong here. Mr. President, my screen is locked. It says I am absent. Oh, now it says I voted I. Thanks for coming back to us. 11 eyes. 11 eyes. Comfortable. 617 has passed. On Monday, September 10th, 2018, Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 791, changing the zoning classification for 12680 East Ashbrook Drive in Montebello. Any protest against Constable 17 one must be filed with council officers no later than Tuesday, September 4th.