A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 219, 221, 223, 225, 227, 235, 245 South Holly Street in Hilltop. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property from E-MU-2.5 and E-SU-Dx to E-MU-2.5 (urban edge, mixed-use and single-unit to urban edge mixed-use) with a waiver, located at 219, 221, 223, 225, 227, 235, and 245 South Holly Street in Council District 5. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 11-6-18. Community Planning and Development has determined that the requirement for a legal protest (signatures of the owners of at least 20% of those property owners within 200 feet of the subject area or 20% within 200 feet of the outside of the subject area) has been met (petition signatures represent 0% and 27%, respectively).
State your name and note that you are available for questions of council. Speakers will have 3 minutes and there is no yielding of time. On the presentation mounted on the wall, you will see your time counting down speakers mostly on the topic of the hearing and must direct their comments to the council members. Please refrain from profane or obscene speech. Direct your comments to council as a whole and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. All right, Councilman Herndon, will you please put accountable 1346 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move the council bill 18 hours, 1346 to be placed upon final consideration and due process. It has been. It's moved. And can I get a second? Second ID? The public hearing for counsel go. 1346 is open. May we have the staff report? Good evening. Theresa Lucero with community planning and development. Let me pull up a PowerPoint and we'll get started. So this is an official map amendment to rezone properties to 19 to 20 1 to 20 3 to 20 5 to 20 7 to 35 and to 45. South Holly Street from Urban Multi-unit two and a half stories and urban single unit d ex to urban I'm sorry urban urban edge multi-unit two and a half with one waiver. But the property is located in City Council District five in the Hilltop neighborhood. It is over just over half an acre, 28,129 square feet. It is consists of three one story residences, two single family homes and one multi-unit residence. Again, the proposal is to rezone from urban edge multi-unit 2.5 and urban edge single unit to urban edge multi-unit 2.5 with a waiver to redevelop the property into a multi-unit structure. The waiver is there's only one aspect to the waiver that the apartment building form within the urban edge context would go from two stories to two and a half stories. This would bring it into consistency with the other building forms in context and would allow a three story structure to be built. And of course, with all of the other EMU, two and a half story standards applying. CPD usually doesn't support waivers, but unless there is a text amendment pending to make that change to the zoning code and there is such a text amendment on our list for future zoning code changes. So that's why CPD is comfortable supporting this waiver. Existing zoning in the area EMU two and a half and ESU x were the subject site. The surrounding properties to the North Mex or urban edge mixed use two stories to the South approved PD 101 to the East Urban Edge Multi-unit two and a half stories and urban edge single unit and to the west urban edge single unit. The land use subject property single unit for two of the structures and multi-unit for the third to the north is commercial to the south of that multi-unit residential to the east, a mixture of single unit and multi-unit residential and to the west single unit residential. This just gives you an idea of the context of the subject properties and an idea of the building form and scale surrounding the property. Top is this subject properties. The commercial to the north is the upper right hand picture. And then across Holly streets, the lower right hand picture, the townhomes to the south is the lower left hand picture. And then across the alley structures are is the upper left hand. So as far as the process goes, this went out for informational notice in April of last year. There was a planning board posting prior to their November 7th hearing where they unanimously recommended approval with one abstention. And then the committee passed this on to full city council on November 27th of last year. And then, of course, we're here for the hearing and the signs have been posted properly for this hearing. So there are several R and O's in the area as far as and they were all contacted and notified at every step. There are two are Nos, Cranmer Park, Hilltop Civic Association, which does not oppose this rezoning. And Chris Moore Park Neighborhood Association, which does oppose. And then there are six letters of support and 35 letters of opposition. In your with your application and staff report. So review 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 two plans that apply are Plan 2000 and Blueprint. Denver staff believes that this application is consistent with the. The strategies shown here and detailed in your staff report, basically talking about environmental sustainability and strategies that. Allow a diversity of housing structures to be built in our neighborhoods. The AM You 2.5 zone district again is an urban edge context, which is a blend of the suburban and urban contexts, primarily single unit and two unit residential, with some smaller multi-unit structures and some commercial structures embedded in the area. The multi-unit forms allowed in this context are rowhouse garden court townhouse up to two and a half stories. And then, of course, the apartment building for him currently allowing that two storey height limit. Denver. This is an area of stability where Blueprint Denver talks about preserving and revitalizing neighborhood character and single family. Residential is the land use concept, which is predominantly single family, but does include new development and a diversity of housing types. Size and cost. Street classifications. Harley Street is a residential collector, street balancing mobility and local access. Half of lockdown is East Alameda Avenue, which is a residential arterial and an enhanced transit corridor where we want to connect major urban elements and locate higher intensity, mixed use, commercial development and multi-unit development, and where transit supportive land uses are generally sent. So staff believes that this is consistent with the strategies and blueprint Denver and Compton 2000 that by using a standard zoned district with one waiver, that we are furthering the uniform application of zoned districts of similarly situated properties in the city. And by implementing our plans we are and allowing some reinvestment in our neighborhoods, we are furthering the public health, safety and welfare. The changed conditions is the justifying circumstance. There are several changes specific to the area, as many. Residents in the area are. Scraping their houses and building new single family homes in the wider area. There are some changes on lead with a new community center and some rezonings we've got pending for commercial areas on retail. And of course the further afield, the locally annexed changes that have occurred in the last few years. So staff believes that changed circumstances is the correct justifying circumstance. And of course, we've already talked about the urban edge context and this zone district fitting in with that blend of suburban and urban. So our staff believes that the review criteria are met and recommends approval. Thank you very much. We do have 39 individuals signed up to speak this evening. So if you are sitting in this front row, I'm going to ask you to clear that so that we can bring five speakers up at a time to try and get right through everybody. When I call your name, please step right up to the podium as your time will start to elapse. And so when I call five, come up so that you are ready for that. Also, if you get to if we get to some people later in and someone has already said everything that you wanted to say, you can indicate that and you don't need to reiterate everything, but you have your 3 minutes to use as you choose. So I will call up the first five speakers and a Dawit, Don Saul, Jaron Lewiston, Jennifer Preston and Carmen Marga and Anna DeWitt. You are a first. Go ahead. Good evening, City Council. I'm honored to win. I'd like to begin by explaining what makes this project and rezoning request so unique compared to many rezonings. I, the applicant, am an owner of one of the properties and I'm a French teacher at Denver North High School. Myself and eight of my neighbors in the Hilltop community came together to redevelop our property. However, it was important to some of us to be able to stay in the neighborhood, and therefore we decided to support a project that we could afford moderate priced and moderate sized condos. As you're aware, the average price of a hilltop home is over $1,000,000. It's a very hard place to find a moderate priced home. This rezoning is also unique because a portion of the property already contains the zoning we are requesting. Immune to five. The two single family homes located within a project proposal lie directly next to a two story pad. These two single family homes are therefore completely enclosed by multi-family zoning. The future of these two single family homes are most likely a multi-family zoning. The essence of my proposal today is that the EMU 25 zoning is extended to these two single family homes and that we are given the waiver that the 2.5 floors are included in the apartment building form, as they include for every other building formula e m2 five zoning. With this will be able to build a beautiful building that houses moderate priced units. We also will be able to spread the density we could build on just that one already emu two five zoned lot to all three lots. Throughout this process we have held public meetings, met with neighbors upon request, and met several times with our neighborhood R.A. and the R.A. in the next neighborhood Crest Swarm. We have also used city mediation over a mini month process. I'm glad to say that we've reached an agreement and have signed covenants and restrictions with our R.A. that will take effect if you approve our rezoning. Some of these covenants include no rooftop decks, which was a difficult concession for us to make a significantly reduced backyard from which is not allowed now reduced side yards, a 17 foot wall along the alley to eliminate sightlines in the neighbor's backyard, added trees if desired, in the backyards of the three neighbors closest to the project and several other smaller accommodations. I believe that representatives from the Hilltop R.A. will speak further about the covenants that we agreed to. Some of the parties in the negotiation as we build very significantly reduce density. That is a direct quote from the media's report, which you have a copy of. We explain that the entire purpose of this development is to create a place for moderate price units. If we were to build a few large townhomes on this property, they would undoubtedly cost upward of $1,000,000. This would price out myself and my neighbors involved in the project. We have also been criticized on the other end of the spectrum for not building affordable units here. These units are moderate price, which in this neighborhood is under $500,000. We have also been told that the building is out of character for the neighborhood. Actually, the 1957 units that they are now are terribly out of character for the neighborhood. Our building or Rita's townhomes for the front. I'm sorry, but your time is up. Okay. Thank you very much. Don Saul. Good evening. Could they mean city council members? There is a single sheet that you have related to the performance of this project. So as a good engineer, I will start with the end in mind and address the building scale of this project as it relates to the rezoning we're requesting at the building scale. I've already worked on the engineering for a prototype building. That'll be for this project. Our analysis shows where 25 to 35% energy use savings, 45 to 55% energy cost savings. All of this is without the planned Peavey on site. This will be achieved through high performance envelope, 100% LED lighting, all electric heating and cooling systems onsite PV. If we move to the community scale, I want to commend the Council for approving the Green Building Ordinance recently, which requires a cool roof and one compliance path. This project will likely meet many of the compliance paths when we're completed and we move to the global scale. I would like to note the 80 by 50 Climate Action Plan that's been put in place with some specific building goals by year by 2030, buildings by 30%, energy use reduction by 2035, new buildings net zero, energy by 2040. Move away from thermal heating emissions. All of these things are being accomplished by this project today, not 20 years out in the future. So I want to mention that I agree with a statement made in the 80 by 50 climate panel. I quote, The tools to solve this generational challenge are available and affordable today, and that is represented in this project. My name is Don Sol. I'm passionate about transforming the built environment. I want to thank the mayor for stating in the Climate Action Plan and reinvigorating my passion that I quote in pivotal role in pivotal, pivotal times . It is necessary to shed complacency and raise our voices for progress and prosperity. So I am raising my voice as a climate reality leader. As a past chair of the USGBC, Colorado, as a professional engineer, as a concerned citizen, and most importantly, as a father. We can and should be aggressive on all of the 80 by 50 sector specific goals, not only buildings and achieve them today like this project will. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up, Jared Lewiston. Jennifer Preston. Hello. Good evening, council members. I'm Jennifer Preston. I am the owner at two, two, five South Holly Street. So one of the applicants. I have not responded to a lot of the negative comments that have been, quite frankly, thrown our way from every direction by members of the public and our surrounding neighborhoods that are not interested in this project. And. My original decision to purchase this home with my husband was we needed more space. We were living in a downtown high rise, wanted. We had gotten a dog, we were going to start a family and we wanted to be in a good neighborhood. We found Holly Street. It was absolutely perfect, but we also were looking forward enough to the potential investment opportunity in purchasing this home. Our home inspector very clearly said your sewer is is getting really old, your roof is getting really old. So you're going to have to put some money into that or the land is really valuable. So that was absolutely part of our plan to purchase. This was the investment opportunity. And I think obviously in today's age everyone can understand that investment. Preparing for your future is something very smart to do and sometimes difficult to do when you're in your mid twenties like I was. And while living there I have obviously seen a lot of the original traditional 1950s ranch homes be purchased and torn down and become a three storey 5000 square foot. They take up every square inch of their 6000 square foot lot and that makes me sad. But at the same time that is the right of the owner of that unit. I just request the same respect as the right full owner of my unit to be able to build what is best for me, for my family, and . What I feel would positively. Contribute to the neighborhood that I love to live in. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Carmen Marga and I'll call the next five up to the front bench. Marc Passman. Cecilia Ratelle. John. Ricky. Lisa. Ah. Unkrich and Logan. Maya. Carmen. Margot. No. Carmen Marc Pressman. Hello, everyone. Good evening. I am the husband of Jennifer Preston who just spoke just earlier. I don't have a massive amount to add to what she said. I think she spoke fairly eloquently about it. I will speak a little bit about the the the reaction to what we have proposed within the hilltop community. On the one hand, I understand the change is difficult for everyone. Unfortunately, Denver is changing from the city that it was ten years ago and will change still further to be a different city ten years from now. Our goal with this redevelopment has been to honor the architecture and the kind of quality of architecture and craftsmanship that we see already within Hilltop and to find something that works within those parameters. If we wanted to simply make a quick buck and slap something up quickly, we wouldn't have taken the last 12 months to ask for this rezoning. We already have zoning to be able to place in some, I think, what was classified as slot homes that we really didn't want to put in there. We have also taken the time to speak to many different neighbors, registered neighborhood associations and many different people. We have listened to as many of their as many of their issues as possible, and we have made the changes that they have requested us to make. Things like trees for additional privacy. We've reduced the initial density of the redevelopments as well. And so even though some who do not like our redevelopment may say we haven't consulted our neighbors enough, I honestly don't know what more we could have done to be able to speak with them and try and appease our neighbors as much as possible. Through the process, though, it has been shown that change of any sort has not been welcome. And unfortunately, that's just not an option for us with the land that we own. So we respectfully ask for the right to be able to change the zoning so that we can build something that is going to stay in our neighborhood , be it will fit within our neighborhood and will be there for years and years to come and that everyone can be proud of. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up, Cecilia Ratelle. Thank you, Mr. President, and members of the committee. I'm here to speak on against Bill 1346. I am a member of Mary Beth Assessments District. I live in Chris Moore. And there's really three issues here that we're concerned about. The first one is the continuous rezoning, right? So as you I'm sure you guys have all felt like no, the area you've got what some people refer to as Buckley Annex, but Boulevard one, which is still not complete. You've got multiple other condos and apartment buildings in the area that are just coming on the market that have four rental signs all over. I just did a quick Zillow short search and there's hundreds literally within, you know, just like you can zoom right in. You can see it yourselves, right? There's plenty of inventory. So when you continue to. Reason is different large parcels of land. The long term impact is still unknown. Right? So we had this Villawood is Boulevard One or Buckley Onyx, which used to be the payroll area for the Air Force. That's where there was a lot of wildlife. And now we have literally deers and rabbits running through our neighborhood because they have nowhere to live. Right. So it doesn't in pieces. And when you just rezone one thing at a time, it's not as big of an issue. When you continue to rezone one thing after another, that's where this becomes an issue, and that's really what our concern is. So we also had on the other side of Christmas Park where there used to be a church, there's now multiple huge units there that are buildings and condos. And all of this is within, you know, a very small area. The the apartments that I'm talking about now are less than a mile away from where this new development is being talked about. So that additionally, the traffic issue, Mary Beth, was nice enough to come to a meeting. I want to say it was December four. We had a traffic meeting and our neighborhood showed up in droves. I mean, it was unbelievable the number of people that came to that meeting. And from that, one of my neighbors put together a list and had people sign a petition that were concerned about the traffic, the safety and the enforcement of the traffic issues that are being developed. People are going 50, 60 miles an hour around the park through the neighborhood. And this is an issue. Right. And so now you're adding more dense traffic to Holly, which is where a lot of these people are coming off of to cut through to get over to Monaco or Quebec. And that's an issue in here. He has over 450 signatures in just the last five weeks. And that's not that many. That's a lot of people for a neighborhood that's not that large. Finally, the safety, right. We need to address the impact of what these additional people constantly in these small areas are. There's no problem with having high density housing in cities. However, when you continue to put them in these smaller neighborhoods, that's when it becomes an issue. So I encourage you to really think about the full impact before continuing to rezone Denver and the neighborhoods that we're trying to call home and oppose. 1346 Thank you. Thank you, John. Ricky. Hello. My name is John Rickey. I want to speak to the project itself, except to say that it's a well-chosen, reasonable and worthy. Because we're here. To speak about the zoning. The zoning is a minimal change in other parts of the city, have seen much larger changes in zoning next to the same current low density. This is not a big change. It's actually the next increment of change. It's as small as you can get while actually allowing more people to move into the neighborhood. So the scale is reasonable. The location is ideal. As I was looking, there's coffee in local grocery. There's a burger place right next door. Within walking distance, there are furniture stores, gyms, dry cleaners. My goodness, there are elementary and high schools. There's Crest, Moorpark. This is a walkable neighborhood. And the more people who have that opportunity to use it as such, the better the transit. How has no one ever told me about the three? L How do you guys know the three? L That bus goes from Aurora City Center to Cherry Creek to downtown. That is like a commuter dream right there. That that's this is a perfect place to add a little bit more density. There's absolutely no reason not to put it there. But moving on from that is the bigger question that everyone I think is probably really upset about. And that is, are we going to be a Denver of Denver rights, a people with a common cause building a better city? Or are we all a bunch of individuals who just happen to live next to each other and we put up with each other just as much as we have to? Where does our civic duty lie? Are we going to fight tooth and claw for our tiny little piece of property to the detriment of everyone else? Does our responsibility to our Cindi, to our city, and at the four corners of our lot are a green lawn and fresh paint as far as it goes. As you pick out your window, you know. Or do we want or do we owe it to Denver? You know, the very idea of the city to to to strive for better to to invite more people in, to make the city more accessible. Is that something that we as Denver ites need to be doing? We could just sit here and revel in our comfort. You know, we're comfortable where we are. We like the way it is and we don't need the change. But is that fair to everyone? Is that fair to our neighbors? What about the neighbors we haven't met yet, the neighbors who can't move here because there's no place for them. The question it really comes down to is, are we going to build higher fences or longer tables? That's that's the way I see it. Are we going to try and get more people here to make Denver even better? Or are we going to wall ourselves off and be happy with. What we've got? Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Lisa Ulrich. I'm Lisa Urich. My husband and I own the home at 230 South Hudson, directly across the alley from the proposed project. I also was chosen by my immediate neighbors to participate in the mediation process. They say good fences make good neighbors and good zoning laws make for good neighborhoods. The applicants are asking you to waive the current zoning laws. The zoning restriction that currently exists for an apartment style project is to limit the density of the property. It's not too long ago in just the same neighborhood, that hilltop that the city council limited lot splitting in hilltop in the same neighborhood. What for? To preserve the nature of the community as it is. It's a bad idea to violate your zoning laws without a compelling reason. The homes that are there now are livable. They're lived in. It's not that you need to pass a waiver in order to fight some sort of a blight. And it's a bad practice to allow the planning board to, in effect, change the zoning, do it piecemeal by granting waivers without a powerful reason to do so. I'd like to talk about the mediation process. I thought it was a good opportunity to see if we could come together with the developer and see if we could find something that we could all live with. And the developer did make some concessions. In the end, I took those back to my neighbors. And the basic concern, which is the danger, the safety issues of the density. It just there was no agreement to be had. The developer wanted to triple the number of families in these properties and the neighborhood believes that that was would be detrimental. Sometimes the middle ground is just too far away. Next, I like to talk about the crown or Hilltop R.A., which was deeply involved in the mediation process, too. And I want to acknowledge that there was a lot of time and hard work and effort put in by the R.A. to become familiar with and to deal with this issue. But don't let their hard work, which I also put in, convince you that their decision is the right one or that they represent me or my neighbors are for this project and our property is on the very edge of the crown or hilltop. R.A. This project more fully affects the rentals on the other side of Holly than a large number of the people in Crown or Hilltop. I believe Crown or Hilltop R.A. approved the project with concessions out of fear. Out of fear of what could be built. The developer had made some comments that something worse could be put in there. I if the if the applicants want to redevelop their property, I think they should do so. I just think that they should do it following the current zoning codes. Otherwise, why do we have them? Thank you. Next up is Logan Mayer. And Logan, before you start, I'm going to call up the next five major Katie Burke, Tom Hart, John Pratt, Wendy Rioch and Siri. Maggio I'm really sorry. I'm not I'm pronouncing a lot of those apologize. Logan Mike, go ahead. Hi. My name is Logan Mayer. We have been addicted to single family houses and low density spread out white picket fence development for over 60 years since the Highway Act of 1956. This spread out low density suburban development has deep roots and economic, environmental and social injustices. And the consequences are becoming more and more apparent. Every day we have car clogged roads and freeways burning our valuable time day in and day out. We have an ever increasing number of typically young, poor and nonwhite people struggling to find affordable rent, let alone the American dream. And we have increasing infrastructure liabilities from the miles of sewer pumps, water lines and roads needed to service these areas patched over with municipal bonds and bad debt. And when we are developing, we are promoting monstrous beige tower blocks that are notoriously bad at standing the test of time. This is opposed to middle development that has been proven. That has the proven flexibility to be reused for generations. Think up Hill and most of Europe. Additionally, middle development often is built with character and heart by long term residents who have a vested interest in the city. And they are also who provide us provided us with some of the best historical buildings Denver has today. Perhaps most importantly, with our addiction to low density, suburban building esthetics, we are promoting heating and cooling 5000 square foot homes for four people, for two people and car dependent lifestyles that have zero with car dependent lifestyles. And these have zero objections from the zoning code. These zoning policies may not affect you today, but the cost of the sprawling, manicured lawn and white picket fence, keeping the right neighbors the right distance away and copious carbon dioxide will have devastating environment, environmental costs that will haunt my generation and many generations to come. Today, you will hear from people who will maintain that this proposed variance is not in line with the neighborhood that they thought they moved into. I would suggest that these neighbors build a time machine and go back to the decade of their preference. As the challenges that Denver and America face today and the challenges that will consume future generations is largely the byproduct of zoning wisdom. In the built environment of previous generations. As for the approval process, requiring such high barriers to entry for middle class developers will continue to prove to be a disaster economically, socially and environmentally for Denver . While the rigorous approval process and gaggles of architects, engineers and lawyers that are required for such a project is a complete nonstarter for most middle class Denver ites. When someone has the creativity and drive to follow through. Despite these considerable obstacles, we create absolute spectacles like this one involve all of Denver and make our neighbors go on trial and feel like bad guys for simply trying to make where we live a better place with some slightly taller housing. Given the economic, social and environmental consequences of our current built environment. I think we can afford this variance and have a moral obligation to allow situations like it be right in the future. Thank you. Next up, Major Katie Burke. Good evening, city council members. I'm Katie Borsak. I live on South Ivey, south of in Alameda, about one block from the proposed development. I picked this neighborhood because it's single family housing, because there's a yards and it's near a park. Over the last five years, all of us who have live on South Ivey and in this neighborhood have had a front row seat to watch. Alameda and South Holly Street just become so busy that there's traffic all the time. If anyone really wants a lesson in patience, take Holly Street around rush hour in the morning or in the evening. It's backed up for blocks. It's therefore pretty normal for people who want to skip Holly Street to get on Ivy Street. My street or a few streets down to skip the traffic. And as has previously been noted by Cecilia, they go 60 miles an hour. They run the stop signs. And this isn't this is a neighborhood. There's people walking to the synagogue that is 50 feet from where this proposed development is, a 65 year old synagogue. There's restaurants there. People are walking their dogs. There's joggers. It's a resident. There's the residents, a resident neighborhood with lots and lots of people who are out there playing in the streets. This does bring a lot more cars, a lot more of that traffic to the area, regardless of what people say about how many families. Yes, maybe it's only triple, but we're talking about a road that's already congested beyond belief. And if you don't believe me again, take that little drive down Holly around rush hour. And I hope you have a book on tape. It's a neighborhood where we've seen, as previously noted, a lot of already a lot of development that's already congested beyond what we can tolerate. No one seems to be listening to us about what we want in the neighborhood and the kind of development that we want. It's not about being opposed to development. It's about being listened to what we want that development to be in our neighborhood. So I think when we look around and I know myself, I look at people walking in on Saturday, I look at people playing in the street and I'm just waiting for when someone's going to get killed by one of these cars. And so I think we all have to ask ourselves, like, how complicit are we willing to be in negligent manslaughter if we allow these developments to continue to happen and this traffic to become so bad that it's regular for people to go down my street going 60 miles an hour and put my dog and my neighbor's kids and my neighbor's neighbors kids at risk, because we want these streets to have so many houses and so many people. And we picked this neighborhood because we want to have a yard. We want to have, you know, single family houses. So just please consider our arguments with that. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Tom Hart. Good evening. Thank you. My name is Tom Hart. I live at 4530 East Cedar Avenue, which is just down the street on Cedar. I am the zoning committee chair for the Premier Park Hilltop Civic Association and an architect. Our neighborhood is from Colorado to Alameda to eighth to Holly. And so this property is within our boundaries. We've been working with the neighbors for over a year on this issue. And our goals have been to have some control over what is going to be built and to get the best possible project for our neighborhood. We are aware that with current zoning, up to 20 dwelling units could be built where there's now a multi-unit building, then the adjacent single family homes would be vulnerable to rezoning and on those properties would probably get another 25 units on there. So 45 possible on this property. We believe that these properties, however, which are along a collector street adjacent to a neighborhood center, adjacent to other multi-unit properties within a block of a transportation corridor. And along the edge of our neighborhood are an appropriate location for increased density that provide more housing that is more moderately priced and is currently available in Hilltop. We had multiple meetings over many months past year. These were open to the public. We have heard and understand the concerns of the neighborhood. We had mediation. Included in the mediation was R.A., the adjacent property owners, the current property owners, adjacent Arnaud's and the developer. The mediation concluded with a report that summarized our agreement, and we voted to not oppose the rezoning contingent on covenants. And the covenants include were limited to 23 units. The height would be limited, there'd be no rooftop decks above the third floor. There would be a rear setback from the alley of 65 feet to habitable space compared to 12 feet by the current code would provide. They will provide 36 parking spaces which exceeds the code by 50%, and no short term rentals would be allowed. So these covenants, and this is important to know, will not be in force unless the zoning is re-approved is approved. So we want to have control over what is built. We have negotiated covenants. We don't oppose the requested rezoning and we respectfully request that you approve the rezoning. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, John Pratt. Father, John Pratt, 2/10, alcoholic. At a property in the alley across from the main green here. Okay. I'll keep it real simple. I'm not going to give you all the detail. I'm going to keep it real simple. Life and death. The applicant has proposed that they use the alley between Holli and Hudson for entry and exit. Of their residents of the main green. Okay. I don't know how this thing got got by somebody in the city without turn in and turn out of Holly. But they're gonna use the alley. I find that a little strange, but let's just take that as the basic fact. Everybody remembers the old thing from the seventies. If you're old, as I am, or the eighties. Speed kills. We're not talking about methamphetamine here. We're talking about vehicular speed. Now, if you've been the intersection of Alameda and Holly, it's the highest point of the relative terrain. If you approach the intersection from the east, going west towards the mountains, there's a distinct rise, not a real hilly rise, but you can't see over the intersection. All you can see is the traffic lights, if you can see them. Now, there's been several axes there. The most recent one was a motorcycle accident. I'm not sure where he lived or not. Seemed like in the summertime the the the low setting sun. It's longer in the sky at the perfect angle that blinds the drivers. It's blinded me a couple of times, I'm aware, but so I try to avoid the circumstances. Some people are not not as privileges that they have to sort of look for the light. Maybe they can't see the light. We've all been there some time in this room where we've driven into a setting sun or a rising sun in Denver, Colorado, and had not seen the light at the intersection at all or have mistaken it. We've all been there. We've all maybe somebody in this room has run a yellow light. Maybe somebody has maybe even gone their car to make the yellow light. And worse, even they a reception under a red light. We've all seen it. We see it every day. Maybe we've done it ourselves. The applicant attends. Applicants intend to exit their residence vehicles. To the Alameda side. Or the Cedar Side. If it goes to the Alameda side, you're going to kill somebody. It'll happen. Here's why. Because as people increase their speeds. The reaction time increases, the braking distance increase, and they won't be able to to to assess the situation a half a block until the impact the cars exploded in the alley on alameda , ca. Those people only know they're turning out onto a perfectly safe situation. They can't see the car coming over and vice versa. To the north is not much better. It's a slower speed. There is parking, lack of visibility and a lack of a four way stop at Cedar. And that's Cedar and Hudson. That's reason to shortcut for Alameda. So. Police. Say in Denver. Protect and serve. I asked every member. Same. I'm sorry, sir, but your time is up, sir. Next up is Wendy Roach. Hi, I'm Wendy Rehak, and I am the interim. President of the Cranmer Park Hilltop Civic Association. And I, I wanted to tell you a little bit about the association. We're approximately 2500 households within the boundaries that Tom just mentioned. All the households are considered to be members of the association, whether they are dues. Paying members or not. We take seriously our responsibility to individual members of our neighborhood, particularly when they hold opposing points of view. Our board of directors is made up of 22 residents. Who are annually elected and live throughout the neighborhood. And we strive. For geographic diversity as well as a diversity. Of skills. And interests that they bring to the board. Our association has a deliberative process when it comes to matters of rezoning liquor license requests or Board of Adjustment Appeals that come before us. And what we try to do is gather information about the matter at hand, invite the affected. Parties to the table to hear what their concerns are. We try to work. Toward a mediated solution whenever possible, and in the matter of recent zoning applications. We have made use of restrictive. Covenants. To achieve. Protections for the neighborhood at. Large and for those closely. Affected neighbors. Rather than engage. And protracted and often unsuccessful lawsuits. So our Civic Association's position, our official position is not to oppose the application. I want to tell you, this has been particularly difficult for us because it involves sets of opposing neighbors. We have the seven. Applicants asking for the rezoning and immediately. Affected neighbors that are ten or 12 or more in the homes, the single family homes across the alley as well as in the pod and surrounding areas. So we this was difficult for us. And. It was a tough decision. To make. But what we feel is that we feel strongly that we are. Protecting the neighborhood. We're protecting it by assuring that there is a set of restrictive. Covenants that limit the number of units. Require a minimum number of parking. Spaces that is above the current code required to keep those folks from parking on the residential side streets in the neighborhood. We address privacy concerns that the neighbors expressed. And other concerns noted in the mediation. Report. These are in place to protect. Both the nearby neighbors and the neighborhood. At large. If this application. Is approved tonight, and I. Respectfully request that. You approve the zoning application. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up is Siri McGill and I'll call the next five to the bench up front Mike Hughes, Katie McCrimmon, Leslie Tau Gorski, Gail Hamlett and Adam Astrof. Go ahead. Good evening. My name is Siri Maggio. My husband and I live four blocks from the proposed development. My R.A., Cranmer Park Hilltop Civic Association never once solicited my feedback. About the proposed development. My husband and I are vehemently against this development. For the following four reasons. Number one, the project has been proposed as a moderately priced solution for the neighborhood. I tell you, it is not. The average listed. Sales price proposed for this development is $550. The current average dollar per square foot in our neighborhood is 435, so it's about $115 difference more than what we would normally pay in our neighborhood. Number two. The project brings absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever to the neighborhood. Unlike the coffee shop and the burger place, other than over densification and more traffic issues. You've heard from a number of us about the traffic issues on Holly and Cedar as well as Alameda. The only they only. Reduced the number of units by a very small handful of units. So their concession really is no concession at all. Number three, the developer, Jason Lewiston, has employed what I consider to be sneaky and threatening tactics to prove his point and to get this approved. He was quoted as saying. If I if we get rejected on April 4th, watch what I submit on April 5th. If you think this is bad, see what I'm allowed to do by law. You think you're upset? Now, wait till April 5th comes number four in my last bullet. Any time you allow a waiver, you set a very dangerous precedence. In closing, there are many of us here tonight who do not have speaking roles. I'd like for those of us here who oppose. This, to raise their hand so that the council can see you. Counsel, I please ask you to reject this waiver. Thank you for your time tonight. Thank you. Next up, Mike use. Council members Mike Hughes, 40, South Bellaire. Street in Hilltop and a board member of the Crown Park Hilltop Civic Association. I simply want to. Stand here and stand behind. Wendy and Tom in the work that they did to try to find a compromise that would work for everyone. As you can see, that's a hard thing to do. But I commend their efforts. I commend the efforts of the applicants, our neighbors who are here asking for your help. As they. Try to move into their own future. And I. Believe that this is an. Appropriate compromise and a reasonable choice. So I'm going to ask that you support. The. Rezoning tonight. And again, I wanted to be on record. Supporting the hard. Work that went into the mediation and that Wendy and Tom in particular did on behalf of our neighborhood. I'm proud of their efforts and hope that you will support the rezoning tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Katie McCrimmon. Hello. I live just blocks from the proposed zoning change. And I just want to thank all of you for this hearing tonight. I've attended a lot of these over the years. I know they last a long time and it's hard to listen to public comment for so long, but we're very grateful that you're willing to hear our voices. I want to talk to you about two key issues. One is traffic that you're hearing a lot about. And want to give you some data that I hope will help you. And I think you have a packet with this information so you can refer to it. And the other is polling. I helped do polls in our neighborhood in the crust Moorpark Neighborhood Association and also in the larger adjacent press. More filings, too. We wanted to be sure to represent our residents without assuming what they thought. And so we did polls. Let me start first with traffic. This is a picture that I think you have a copy of. We're lucky we have some synagogues right in our neighborhood, too. This is just across the street from the proposed site at the synagogue. And you can see the car ended up on their front lawn. These are folks who are our Jewish neighbors, walk on the Sabbath on Saturday and on their holidays. And this is the kind of traffic we're dealing with now on Holly. Holly is a small it's a narrow street. People park on both sides. So you end up with about 24 feet across. There's just not a lot of room. And you're hearing about this traffic. So we got the data. And in fact, what we found is that last year alone, there were six hit and runs just on Holly and a couple of blocks. This is Denver data. You can check it out yourselves. 20 accidents in a couple of blocks and it's been kind of consistent for the past few years. We have the park burger that got redeveloped and we do have a lot of traffic people coming in to go to the park burger and the novo coffee shop. They're great in our area, but people are walking across the street. It's really tough. There aren't there's not a traffic light there at all. In cedar there are traffic lights further down the way between hilltop and and the cross more neighborhood. Another thing you're hearing a lot about tonight is affordable housing. And I just want to convey to you that some of these folks are making it seem like they're doing us a favor. We do have a challenge in Denver. I'm a native and and I want teachers and firefighters to be able to. And I have a kid who's as a son who's studying to be a teacher. I would love for him to be able to buy a home in Denver, and I worry about that. But these homes that currently exist that they want to tear down, these are the most affordable homes in our neighborhood. They're not technically restricted, but they are the least expensive in our neighborhood. And finally, I didn't tell you about the polling, but all of our polls in our neighborhood of nearly a thousand people showed opposition between 80 and 95%. So we're here tonight, but there are many more people who are at home and agree with us. Thank you. Next up, Leslie, to our guests here. Thank you. Hi. My name is Leslie to our galaxy. As many of you know, I ran against Mary Beth Sussman. She and I don't always agree, but on this subject, we're in agreement. I feel that this development is thoughtful. I think it's considerate of the neighborhood. To quote a line from Diane Carmon today, neighborhoods rail against plans that would increase density. And yet the affordable housing shortage cannot be addressed unless we make room for more homes in our midst. It is not fair to ask every district except Mary Beth to add density. And that's why I'm here tonight, speaking in favor. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Gail Hamlet. I'm Gail Hamlet. I own a home at 200 South Hudson Street. My family has lived in Hilltop for 45 years. So I've seen change. You have to change. I am opposed to this zoning change and I'm going to make it short because some people have already expressed my concerns. But my main concern is safety, traffic and the health and well-being of the citizens of Hilltop. Holly's street is a narrow two lane neighborhood street on an established, stable neighborhood, with the addition of Park, Burger, Restaurant and shops as street has become more and more congested. I live immediately in back of Park Burger on the alley across. In the last year we have listings, increased multi-family dwellings and Cedar East of Holly and Monaco, making Cedar even more busy. From 11 to 9:00. I cannot find parking around my house. All the parking is taken mainly for people going to park. BERGER The developer's plan is to add 30 or more cars to a very narrow alley, which would be the main in and out access to these proposed units. My home is at the corner of South Hudson and Cedar with a front driveway to get in to my homes. But many of my neighbors have to get into their homes through the alley. The alley is very small, as I said, and this presents a dangerous situation. There's been a dramatic increase in accidents in the last year. As one of my neighbors already said, there have been 20 car accidents and six hit and runs. What would happen with an increase in traffic in cars from an alley to flow on to Alameda, which would be one way and to get out of cedar? The Hilltop neighborhood has lots of walkers. We're a walking neighborhood. Many children and parents are walking to school, and many of our neighbors are worshiping at the synagogues and temples in the neighborhood. And they walk. Rezoning would result in more traffic and definite safety issues. This is a Denver part of Denver that's already stable. There is no justification for a zoning change. I joined 90% of my neighbors in opposing this change. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Adam Astrof and I call it the next five up to come to the front bench. Lynda Lewis, Patrick Quinton, Amanda Sawyer, Jane Harrington and Sara Franklin. Go ahead. Hello. My name is Adam Astrof. I currently live in District nine and I wanted to come here and speak in favor of this project, both on a personal level and on a citywide level. I am a Colorado native and I've been really heartened to hear all of the concerns that many people have voiced for housing teachers here in the city of Denver, as I am married to a kindergarten teacher. I also really appreciate the concern for the Temple Emanuel community, which I am a member of, and that's kind of what makes this development a potential dream home for my wife and I to start our family. These condos are something that I married a teacher with a master's degree, many of whom are in DPS can afford. This is walking distance to Temple Emanuel, where we could send our kids to preschool. It's a beautiful neighborhood. We go there regularly and it's a place that we'd love to be a part of and set down roots. And so we could really make Denver our home. I think that the concessions that have been made by the applicants are really effective. The building, it's nice, it's brick. It's not one of these slipshod slat homes that we've seen go up around the city. This is something that's going to stick around. And I'm especially attracted to the ecological, you know, component of it with the green roofs. On a broader level, I've lived in a number of districts in Denver over the past eight years. Right now in District nine, I live adjacent to the Highlands and to five points and there has not been an area of stability for them. There is a lot of change throughout our entire city. It's been borne primarily on one side of the aisle that I learned about from a recent Denver ite article. And frankly, it's time for everybody to bear their share. I know from History, Colorado that Denver's population didn't really grow a lot from 1960 to 2010, and now the city's exploding. I've heard a lot of concerns about traffic. You know, more single family spread out. Development isn't going to help with that. And I think that especially as the city is, I think conservatively expecting to reach a million people by 2040. We just can't keep up with the demand for car infrastructure. I'd really encourage the council to embrace this zoning change. This is something that it's not going to solve all of our affordable and attainable housing needs. But this kind of missing middle housing will help get young professionals out of the rental market. And, you know, I will tell you that we're driving up those prices. We can't afford the mortgage on $1,000,000 home like the ones in Hilltop, but we can pay 1500 or 2000 and rent, and that's certainly not making the city more affordable. So thank you so much for your time and I hope that you will support this rezoning to make Denver a city that's more livable for everybody, especially teachers . Thank you. Next up, Lynda Lewis. My name is Linda Lewis. I've lived in Hilltop for 48 years. I live 14 feet from this project. My views are not represented by my councilwoman, Mrs. Sussman, nor by my R.A., the Cranmer Park Hilltop Civic Association, which focuses on Cranmer Park and its beloved sundial and tells me I am lucky that the board has members with expertize in real estate and architecture. Why they not protect me out of all I own. Despite its mission statement, it tries to represent the bricks and mortar of the neighborhood, not the people who really live here. I am vehemently opposed to this project. First, this is not affordable housing, but luxury condos. Second, this is seven units of 1950s housing in the neighborhood of 1950s housing. The owners talk. Of redeveloping their units. Because they don't want to pay for the maintenance that 1950 housing requires. Third, they want to put up 23 units on Holly Street with no bus route and only one lane of traffic each way. Near an intersection with no. Stop sign or a light which has a grocery store, a synagogue, a restaurant with an outdoor play area for children, an ice cream shop and a coffee house. Parking is grossly inadequate already, and traffic backs up for blocks. There have been 20 auto accidents in the past year. To add an additional 46 cars to this, all to enter or exit through the alley between Hudson and Holly poses not only a constant difficulty for those whose garages are in the alley, but a clear and present danger to the children who play outside the restaurant near the alley entrance. Fourth, the R.A. set up to guide your deliberations by telling you the prevailing sentiment in the area most affected by your proposed development has decided it prefers. A more. Activist role for. Itself. Rather than describing what the local residents think it is prescribing, what the board wants the residents to think. Think how by doing the magical two. Step one We are neutral, but we sign covenants. I am sorry, but your time is up. Thank you very much. Next up, Patrick Quinn, Tana. Patrick went on a Amanda sawyer. Hi everyone. My name is Amanda Sawyer. I'm a resident of Hilltop. I live seven blocks from this proposed development, and I'm also a candidate for Denver City Council in District five. Respectfully, I ask that you deny this rezoning request. We all know that there's a housing crisis happening in Denver. We desperately need to add housing in our neighborhood for middle income earners, and we need homes where retirees can move when they're ready to leave their single family homes. But we also need to make sure that the families who live in this neighborhood are safe. If this development were actually going to serve a public benefit, I would support it. But even families making 120% of median income, 120% of median income will not be able to afford to buy these properties. And this developer is not selling the physical, affordable units. He's paying into the fund. So it's just another set of $10 million luxury condos. So why should we sacrifice our neighborhood safety for it? It doesn't make any sense. This neighborhood doesn't have very many sidewalks and it doesn't have any bike lanes. But this project is going to add at least 24 vehicles to this block. The density it adds, will create more than 35 units per acre in the middle of a neighborhood of single family homes, 35 units per acre in a neighborhood of single family homes. There's no neighborhood plan governing this, but an analogous plan like Mayfair caps density at 14.5 units per acre. That's more than double. The city is using leaps in logic to justify this development like considers considering building builders sorry scraping single family homes as quote unquote changed circumstances. Councilman Flynn, you brought this up at the land use transportation and infrastructure meeting. That's within the current zoning code. That's not a changed circumstance. This developer is also requesting a waiver to make this work. Waivers are supposed to be used sparingly and to provide a public benefit. Where is the public benefit here? It doesn't make any sense. The truth is that there are other options for this land that would serve a compelling need. But they won't make this developer enough money to make it worth his time. This project is not about serving the general public of Denver. It's about lining the pockets of a developer. While the hardworking people who live in this neighborhood get left behind with rocket high rents and unsafe streets. Our city needs to find its soul again, and it will not be found in lining the pockets of the developers. It will be found in the spirit of the families who live here. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up, Jeanne Harrington. But ladies and gentlemen, I will ask that you contain your applause, your cheering, your booing. We are here to hear everyone. And that is eating up time. There is a room right next door where you can watch on TV if you feel compelled to cheer in there. That is okay in this chamber. If you would, please let us timely get to everyone and make sure that everyone has a chance to voice without cheering, clapping and booing. I would appreciate it. Thank you very much. Next up, Jeanne Harrington. Okay. All right, Sara Franklin and I'll cover the next five. Jesse Paris, Mary Conway, Jonathan Remo, Kofi Snow, Mark Gibson and Betty Zimmerman. Sorry about the names. Go ahead. I'm Sarah Franklin. I live at 456 Dahlia Street. I am a native of Denver and I have lived in Park Hill. I have lived in Cherry Creek. I have and I have lived in Hilltop where I live currently. So I'm kind of aware of problems with parking and especially like when Cherry Creek where you go down to Cherry Creek, you don't have parking because the residents have their space where they can park all day. Is that what you're going to create over here on Holly? Because right now there's no really good parking on the street for the residents. If you go over to Pearl Street and the Sushi Dan area, what has happened there with the parking? And you already have. They have like seven spaces. At the park burger and the ice cream shop and. And the people, if they do have parking for these new this new complex, where are their guests going? To park. Whose parking are they going to take? Like down in Cherry Creek, where we have to pay to go into the Cherry Creek Mall now. Are you going to have parking? What kind of restrictions are there going to be? I just feel that between the parking and the traffic, with the addition of what's going on at Eighth and Colorado Boulevard, Holly is going to become more used than ever because Colorado Boulevard right now is that. And I think it's time for city council to take into consideration what they've already approved and let it soak in when they all get filled up and figure out just exactly what's happening before you add more to this. So I would appreciate your voting no and setting a new precedent for the city and county of Denver. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Jesse Paris. Good afternoon. Evening. Members of council. My name is Jesse Pierce. I'm representing four Black Star acts. A Moment for self-defense. Denver Homeless out loud. And Positive. Action Commitment for change. And I'm also an at large candidate for 2019. Clearly this is not what the neighbors want. This is definitely a NIMBY. After hearing all the testimony today. I am definitely against this. This is more. We don't need any more unintended consequences from this rampant development that's going on in the city. The members of this neighborhood have literally told you like it's going to be an issue with the parking is going to be an issue with the layout of the neighborhood. It's just not right for this district at all for this neighborhood. So I have to honor the wishes of the community and vote that, you know, in response to this, because this is not what this city needs. This is now what the community needs. And they're very blatant and crystal clear about it. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Mary Conway. Hello. How's everybody doing? My name is Mary Conway. I live at 238 South Harley Street, which is directly across the street from this development. Both of my sisters, both owned units at 227 and 225 South Hall. They were first time home buyers and they were able to buy in the neighborhood that we grew up in, luckily enough. And they were great first, first time homes and they built a little bit of equity and they bought bigger homes. That's what Denver needs. We need first time homes. So now you're going to change the zoning and allow them to take out any of the affordable housing in our neighborhood. This is it. This little five plex. 225 to 20 7 to 20 3 to 21 and to 19. That's the affordable housing we have in our neighborhood. And you're going to do away with it so that because they didn't put enough money in their highway to replace their sewer line or replace their roof. That doesn't seem right. The traffic I wish you could I wish you could spend an afternoon on Harley and realize how horrible the traffic is. I have to deal with it every day. And, you know, I'm worried my son is going to get run over all the time if he goes out and he's 14, 15. So I'm worried he's going to get run over because people fly down, Holly. They fly. If it's not bumper to bumper traffic, people ask if people flying by 35, 45 miles an hour, just like like it's nothing because, oh, it's in Colorado Boulevard. So backed up. So I'll just use Holly. Well, that's what everybody does. So Holly is already. It's it's ridiculous how how unsafe it is and for you to even entertain the thought of adding it would amount to 50 cars in this in this project. I it's it's mind boggling how bad of an idea that is. So thank you. Thank you. Next up, Jonathan Remo can you know. Hello. I'm Jonathan. Remote Casino. Good evening. City Council. I was formerly a resident of 540 South Forest, which is just south of Leeds. Still, they call it Hilltop Adjacent. I was one of these people who was walking to synagogue on Saturdays, pushing a baby stroller, you know, wife, kid, that whole deal. We had a two bedroom condo which was walk up outside. We were aspiring to live in the neighborhood. You know, there really aren't a whole lot of affordable options, certainly anywhere near Hilltop. You know, frankly, you know, this this is my my religion. I mean, like I would like to walk to synagogue. I realize that's not exactly a governmental Denver city and county issue, but it does speak to a broader issue of inclusivity. My wife is also a Denver Public Schools special education teacher on the West Side. I'm a federal government employee. I'm not furloughed. I mean, to give you an idea, like I used to take the 83 L, I was like one of these transplants that took, you know, like, I didn't drive a car at all. I didn't own a car. In the four years I've been in the state of Colorado, I think I've had a car in the last year. And the reason I've had that car is we had to move farther south to Yale and Quebec. So. You know, that's a great neighborhood. We're happy to live where we live. You know, my strong preference, you know, my my my affinity community is in the hilltop neighborhood. I guess what I'm trying to say is if. People who are making. Probably in the upper. Third of the income spectrum, can't afford to live in the inner core of Denver. Who can? And I think. But that'll just yield the rest of my time. Thank you. Next up, Marc Gibson. Mr. Chairman, members of the Council, thank you for your time. My name is Mark Gibson. I live at sixth and Bel Air since 1995. I urge you to deny this zoning request since the 300% density increase you are opposed to bestow on this assemblage creates a 500% increase in cars. And in reality, this amount, this density increase amounts to a ten X increase that is 1,000% higher density than the average in this neighborhood. This rezoning or this way, in this waiver, this amounts to basically writing new rules for developers, not for the city. And you're abusing the argument that unmitigated growth and changes somehow justify more more unmitigated growth. And once again, we're entertaining the zoning density increase without asking or or requiring any real growth in gridlock mitigation. Now, this city government has presided over recent years and the proliferation of stacks and stacks of soulless shacks in this community. And now you want it down on the Holly Street neighborhood. Let's kill this cluster right now. Thank you. Next up, Betty Zimmerman. Good evening, honorable members of the council. Mr. President, I first of all, in full disclosure, I promised Wendy that I was going to publicly apologize to her because I misquoted her in the letter that I wrote to you. So please accept my apology. That was not my intention. I leave in 255, thankfully, the first house adjacent to the proposed project. I want to say that this is not old versus young. This is not about not in my neighborhood. This is about not this in our block. I cannot even begin to sense how families will move into these $500,000 apartments and be comfortable walking with their kids or their kids riding their bikes down the street. The only access I have to my house is through that narrow alley. That's the only access I have. I believe that when you rent a waiver, there must be extenuating circumstances. Maybe we want to implement Blueprint Denver, for which I worked very hard. We are as Blueprint Denver as they can be. We are diverse, different economic backgrounds, ethnicities. Just come and take a look at us. Affordable housing. What does that mean? No. 500,000 other apartment? Is that what we call affordable housing? Their scarcity of housing? Maybe that will be a reason. However, just down the street, they renovated 12 garden homes that tried to sell for $500,000 each. Individual individual units, they are now rentals for sure. They are vacancies on Monica in Cedar. Honorable members, I am going to ask you to deny this petition because a waiver, if I did my research correctly, sets a precedent that would prevent that open, which will serve as a springboard for other developers that want to do something like that. Getting to do this without having to even ask for it because we are ruled by precedent. Please, are we being a test site to see what happens here? Because. This makes no sense in our block. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. I'm going to call the next five up. Michael Rich. Meg Whitelaw, a niece reached reach. Larry and Larry brawl. Oh, and I'm sorry, John. The Rungs, you're also in that group, and I had scrolled past you, so. Michael Ulrich, you're up. Okay. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Michael Urich. I'm a property owner located at 230 South Hudson Street, which is located directly across the alley. And I'm one of three property owners most directly affected by this proposal. For reference, I have lived here with my family for 26 years, 28 years, and have been enriched by the neighbors and the homes built in the fifties, the owners of the properties and to 19 to 20 1 to 20 3 to 25 and 2227. South Holley have indicated that as first time property owners, they are short of capital for the improvements they would like to make to their properties. As a homeowner, I also experienced this situation and paid for those improvements, sacrificing the enjoyment of other things I would prefer to spend my money on as this is a. Part of being a homeowner. If this is clearly the reason for a rezoning request, then it is misguided. An approval of a change to s m you three would drastically alter for the neighborhood, raising several concerns. Of which safety is a major one. As you may or may not be aware, that volume of traffic in the neighborhood has. Increased dramatically since the addition of the Park Burger Restaurant. While cars and pedestrians navigate through the neighborhood, there are constant near misses with children and families. As we currently travel out of they out of the alley, north to Cedar or south to Alameda. An addition of residents of 27 units and 40 parking spaces exponentially increases a probability of tragedy. Technological distractions do play their part with drivers. If covenants have been agreed to by the developer and have been filed in the public record, who is going to monitor and enforce them? Should the developer run out of money? The possibility of an unfinished project exists. Due to competition and economic downturn. Leaving a large open space in a residential. Neighborhood and the current residents of this complex with no place to live. This is not a neighborhood in transition, such as Lowry, where large tracts of land have been cleared to create neighborhoods. As mentioned in the status report, the neighborhood is a stable neighborhood. I asked that you consider the damage potentially done by the approval at this rezoning request. This is clearly. Not a good fit and the approval of this request would. Be misguided. The correct decision will be to deny this request for approval of application 201700153 as there is no compelling reason to approve it. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, John, drugs. Members of council neighbors. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I'm John de Rawlings. I live at 40 Kearney Street, right on Crest Moore Park. I tonight am. Conflicted. Participant I have spoken with Anna and Jason many times over the years. I've spoken to neighbors. I was asked by the Moorpark. Organization to be involved in the mediation sponsored by the city. What I noticed noticed. That and and Jason had pretty much. Religiously rejected any. Changes to the proposed apartment. Building, which no one has mentioned is net zero. As far as I know, this hasn't come up tonight. Consequently. According to the plans I got to begin with and. Have still have here after they were revised its over 50 beds. To start with and there's still 50 beds. And if you double up that's a lot of people that location. In mediation. I offered, along with Pete Casillas. Support if the project. Included. Some townhomes. A portion to be townhomes and kind of what was built on the property over near the church, what used to be the church on Monica after it was zoned and a place we thought maybe if our wives threw us out. We would be. Able to live there. Without being in a shoe box. We were told there wasn't enough revenue generated. By that project, but on the other hand. Getting back to this to the net zero concept. I was taken with the idea that. Maybe this. Might be something the city was working toward, even though we're talking, you know, decades from now to some kind of standard. My concern. Is. That. There. Hasn't been anything built. In Denver that's net zero in apartment apartment buildings. There have been a couple of thrive projects up in Stapleton at Lowry that were. Strictly single family. Attached projects. I might they might get my vote alone. I'm not talking. Just me, not the neighborhood. If I knew that it was possible to start to make some headway with this concept. On the other. Hand, the. Other thing that. No, I've run out of time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up, Meg White La. Hello. I'm a resident. Of the Cress Moore Park neighborhood. We are a small community located. Primarily on. The south. Side of Pressman Park. We are bounded by large streets. That carry heavy, heavy traffic. Monaco on the east and Alameda on the south. Our westerly boundary is Holly Street, which in recent years has seen greatly increased traffic as vehicles. Try to avoid Monaco and Colorado boulevards. The results are speeds. And volume on Holly, not appropriate to a residential neighborhood. The entryway to our neighborhood is Cedar Avenue. It is the street that binds our neighborhood together and which is. The access point to all of our homes. The intersection of. Holly and Cedar is the gateway to our small neighborhood. We are a religiously and. Ethnically. Diverse community of about 186 total homes, businesses. And synagogues. Historically, ours. Was a place where African Americans and Jews could reside. Unlike the Chris Moore neighborhoods. In earlier years. What happens at the. Intersection of Cedar and Holly is vital. To the interests of our community. Obviously, the addition of another housing development across from this gateway has a significant impact on us. Why is this so important to us? Very simply. Safety. This is an area we traversed. Day in and out. Cedar Avenue is the heart of our community. About six years ago, on the hilltop side, a trio of businesses were slotted into this intersection a burger place. Coffee place, and an ice. Cream shop. The number of vehicles at the intersection has greatly. Increased, both. In terms of traffic. And parked cars. All over our immediate. Neighborhood. To this already congested. And dangerous area. Dangerous to try to make a left. Hand turn out of our. Neighborhood. Dangerous to try to make a left hand turn into it. There is now. A. Proposed high density 60 bedroom development to be shoehorned in next to the businesses. The access will be off Cedar. Avenue on a less than 12 foot wide alley. I went out and measured it myself. It's 11 it's 11 feet six inches. Wide for all these cars. Both existing. And and new residents are smaller. Than the standard residential. Alleyway. You as council members. Members are the final decision makers and sadly. The very first ones in this entire process who will consider safety. The proposed. Development burdens an already bad. Situation. We do not think we should be frightened into accepting this development just because the developer. Has threatened us with a, quote. Worse alternative if we don't go along. And the Hilltop Board has sadly bought into this fear. We would support we are not NIMBYs. We would support a modest development appropriate to the scale and circumstances of the surroundings. Please, we ask you do not hide behind hilltops. Decision not to oppose that decision hurts some hilltop residents. And every one of ours. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, a nice rake. I live on first, then I the traffic. If you take and look at your traffic count there are two every two weeks from. They are two seater to Alameda. There are there is a traffic accident. There are six hit and runs. Now. There is a problem with that. We also have an air BMB at 244 South Hawley, which the city is unable to enforce. It is illegal. There are 22 residents that are invited in to smoke marijuana, adding further to the congestion. Mary Beth is well aware of this. The city is well aware of this. And we were told that they didn't want to interfere with their already reservations. The owner does not occupy this. 244 South Hawley It sleeps 22 as it's advertised. Again, another addition to the 20 to the Holly Street. The developer has not operated in good faith. He was they were offered an adequate $25,000 to pay for her roof and her sewer problems. That was from the lyrics. They turned it down. The exaggeration of the people that are involved in this project. It is not. The average house in Hilltop is not $1,000,000. Good God. Where did she get that? She pulled it out of a pile of hay. Affordable. It is the only affordable housing in hilltop. She paid too much and she has been whining ever since. We all paid too much, depending on the market. We all bought 1930s, 1950 houses. But we sacrificed. So why are you even considering sacrificing entire neighborhoods for so few? Why did they buy into the neighborhood to change it? And it was quoted yesterday in Denver. Right. That she is no longer going to live there. So she leaves us with. God knows what it is a myth to say that. We are. I am sorry, but your time is up. Thank you very much, Larry Brown. And then I'm going to call the last four Pete Cassius, Greg Kerwin, Keith Whitelaw and Sean Emery, if you want to come up to the front. Go ahead. Hello. I'm Patrick Allen, and I'm representing one of my neighbors. Who? I'm sorry. It's Larry Brown. This is for Larry Brown. He gave me a statement to read. I don't think we allow statements to be read. The person who signed up has to read. All right. I'm sorry about that. So is Larry Brown here or. No. Okay. I apologize, Pete, because. Yes. All right. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for your patience. A lot of good points have been made and I'm going to try hard not to be redundant. I'm Casey is a live at 175 South Jasmine's street which is about three blocks from the development. I am the vice president of the Customer Park Neighborhood Association and I am the member of the Mediation Group on behalf of our neighboring neighborhood association. And really, I just want to add a little something to the flavor of the mediation. So if we if we are if we derive any kind of satisfaction from the fact that there was a process that arrived at a set of restrictive covenants, I have to tell you, in all honesty, at least half of the people that were present at the mediation effort were not in favor or supportive of of the takeaways from the particular, you know, two meetings that we had as a group. In fact, you know, it was one of the stranger processes that I've ever been a part of as a business person around and mediation and negotiation. We started from the rigid point about the very specific proposal. We were encouraged by the mediator to come with creative ideas and thoughts and represent our constituents the best of our ability, which was and is our our desire. And we got to a place where I believe a subtle reduction to the total number of units was taken as kind of a win and and a reason to rejoice. And that was not our that was not certainly the instructions from our constituencies. We wanted to have a substantive discussion about alternative building forms. You know, mind you, on the property itself, we have a garden court building form and two single family units to jump all the way to a apartment form with waivers was just a jarring change to to the neighborhood and to to from a density perspective, certainly. So we would have loved to had more conversation about is there a more appropriate interim step that we could get to that would still drive some of the affordability issues that the applicant put forward as the whole reason for them going down this path. And we just we just they just wouldn't go there, frankly. So I am disappointed that we didn't get to a better outcome from the mediation process. The covenants are made as stated between the Hilltop Cramer, Cramer Park, Cramer Park, Hilltop Civic Association and the applicant. They don't represent, I think, the opinions and desires of our broader neighborhood. And I'll just I'll just leave you with, I think, net net, if you just kind of back up and apply common sense this thing, we're taking a a large structure that's very dense and we're plopping it in a really, really bad spot. We've heard, you know, chapter and verse on how bad it is to traverse between Holly, between Alameda and Cedar. And and that is no joke because as a father of a young family, it can be downright scary sometimes. So for no other reason, we would encourage you to to turn this down. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Greg Kerwin. Good evening. My name is Greg Kerwin. I live at 200 Kearney Street in the more area I drive on Holly almost every day to get to and from our home. I oppose this rezoning. I have three points to make to you at this public hearing about the constraints that the Denver zoning code puts on what this body can approve as a rezoning. First and most important, when you deliberate tonight, do not. Do not tell us that you cannot consider traffic and parking in a rezoning. And I'll explain why. In fact, because of the 2017 court decision that I helped win, in part for some of our neighbors, the white law decision. You are required to consider traffic and parking. Problems for this proposed rezoning as a factor that weighs against it. Under the Public Health, Safety and Welfare factor in section 12 .4. 10.7 C of the zoning code, that's what the Court of Appeals told you. The city of Denver's position did not get accepted in our case. For many years, one citizens have attended a hearing like this or a planning board hearing. What we've gotten used to as the refrain from council members and planning board members is. Oh, we understand traffic and parking problems. Are the major concern we're hearing about tonight. But too bad we are not allowed to consider traffic and parking problems when evaluating a proposed rezoning. That excuse never made sense to me and because of the recent court decision we helped obtain, it's not lawful anymore. There's nothing in the zoning code, the Denver Charter or any Denver ordinance that tells this council it cannot consider traffic and parking problems. In our lawsuit, we ultimately lost. You're probably familiar with that, although the days of the expert contacts between developers and this council are over because of our lawsuit. You don't hear. From developers knocking on your back door or. Sending emails to your private email anymore. That was our lawsuit. I explained the rationale of the Court of Appeals in my written comments, and I brought a copy of the decision. I would urge you to check with the city attorney's office to confirm my interpretation. Paragraphs 53 and 54 of the White Law versus Denver District Court decision. You should not be telling citizens anymore, and you should tell the planning board not to use that excuse. Finally and very briefly, you construe what. Is the adopted plan requirement? Don't construe it as meaningless, where any strategy citywide can constitute an adopted plan. There's no plan that calls for this density and don't construe justifying circumstances as meaningless. Here development. In Lowry and on. Lead stale or changes from small homes to big homes. Those aren't justifying circumstances here. Thank you. And Mr. Clark, may I put this copy of the court decision in the council record? You can hand it to the council secretary. Thank you. Next up, Keith Whitelaw. Good evening. My name is Keith White. I live at 6300 East Cedar Avenue, seven blocks from the rezoning site. I'm the president of the Crisp Park Neighborhood Association, which is a Denver. R.A. Our R.A. boundaries are on the North Bay and Cedar, Alameda, Locust and Hawley. The R.A. includes 187 more or less households, businesses and institutions within its boundaries. All residents, businesses and religious organizations within its boundaries are considered members. Following receipt of notice of the subject rezoning application, the R.A. communicated with its members through multiple email and hardcopy notices. Online surveys, an extensive informal discussion to determine a position regarding the current application. On October 15th of last year, the R.A. conducted an online survey directed to all known email addresses of its members. The survey produced a 91% rate of opposition of its members to this application, and that's the basis for our owner opposing the application. Our members have valid reasons for their opposition. These are stated in the numerous letters and emails that you have before you as a concession to the brevity of life. I will not repeat them all now. These reasons, though, make clear the failures of the application. The requested rezoning is not consistent with Blueprint Denver an adopted plan. The application itself admits that the land in the area that the land subject to the rezoning application is in an area of stability where redevelopment of the type proposed is generally inappropriate. A recent well, we've heard about the recent Colorado Court of Appeals decision just now, which does direct you to consider parking traffic and certainly safety and your rezoning decisions. So you heard it from the expert prior to my speaking further. There are no just just circumstances to justify the rezoning in this vibrant, stable neighborhood. The proposal is wrong on many levels and should be denied. One final point. The other R.A. has touted ill conceived restrictive covenants as some sort of a solution that supposedly will protect the neighborhood. Who can enforce these covenants? The applicant developers themselves. Who are the only persons able to restrict their own properties? That is pure foolishness. So please don't be fooled. Deny the application. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next up, Sean Emery. Hello there, city council. My name is Shannon and I have lived with my family at three, six, seven South Kearny Street for over ten years. Even though I live in South Hilltop, the proposed rezoning site is only four blocks from my home. I travel the intersection. By the proposed rezoning site at least two times a day with my family and used to walk through the. Intersection to visit Park, Berger. And Highpoint Creamery, a donor walk to this area for the past year. Given the history of my family and my family's safety when crossing Holley along Cedar. There are always parked cars along Holly, down to Alameda, obstructing view of drivers and pedestrians crossing the intersection. I've seen numerous. Near misses by both vehicles and pedestrians. The other concern I have with the rezoning proposal is the precedent of rezoning the single family home to a high density three story structure. When we moved this, when we moved to this neighborhood over ten years ago, we chose this neighborhood because of the lack of population. Density and. Towering structures. If we desired living in congested areas or high rises, then we would have moved. Stay closer to downtown. The next logical move, if this rezoning is accepted, is that developers will be emboldened to rezone other single family homes and our neighborhood to high density structures because of the precedent set by the creation of this high density structure and waiver. When considering your vote in this matter, please don't vote for the sake of your fellow council members. Instead, they should vote for the consensus of the neighbors directly impacted by the. Proposed rezoning of this property. Thank you. Thank you. And lastly, I think we've ironed out Patrick Allen. All right. Thank you. Thank you for being with us. Well, we got that figured out. Go ahead and thank you for doing that. You know, it's great to be. These people do sit at my table, never use that table fence thing. I love having them at my table. But great comments and it's a wonderful community. I worked very hard to build up equity in my Washington Park home and thank God Chop was my favorite class in high school. But I built up this great home and I was able to sell it because I always wanted to come to Hilltop Crest Smart, the park, and I did. It worked hard. Now for the rest of you are looking for some living spaces. That huge monstrosity of a development behind my home. That was rezone two years ago. We have 50 units for sale, so come on over. We need to fill up. You know, Kudlow Donald Trump. Want to be. Developer banging on my door at 715 in the morning to talk about the cost of the fence we've asked him to help us with. Be careful. Scuse me, sir. I just ask that you address the council, not the audience. Just be careful when you're working with them. This has not worked out for me for the last two years. I've been there for a president privileged to do that. I have a very small budget, $43,000 to pay taxes in church, you name it. And I've spent 1500. Dollars. On legal fees. On zoning. Issues just to deal with deeds and things. And we're still not done. So it has not worked out very well. The density is huge. One of the original owners, one of my neighbors, great guy. Has left. He has moved. He just cannot handle the density of that little neighborhood. My wife was involved in a terrible car accident at Monaco on Cedar. Made me a believer in the rob for all those bags deployed. Thank God. But that guy ran. That red light. Who knows? Late for work. All that traffic beats me. And then when I went to the this the traffic meeting, here's these city planners where they had I don't know, they got to readjust. Recalibrate. We have people driving on Locust Street because they don't want to handle the traffic on Monaco. They're on locusts. Think about locusts, the Lever to Beaver community. And they're driving they're all around going through the parks and all that. That's not good. I ask you guys, the city, it's getting out of control. My beautiful hilltop neighborhood, community, it's going downwards. Please give it some thought. I've worked very hard to live there, so it's all the people at my table. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That does conclude our speakers. I want to thank everyone for helping to create a safe and respectful place for everyone to share their opinions. I know that's not always easy when we're here with neighbors and we don't all agree. So thank you for that. We are going to move on to questions from members of council. Council. I will ask that you please keep your questions concise. Be cognizant of the time that you're taking and stick to questions during this portion. Councilwoman Ortega. Your first one. I want to ask someone that can speak to the restrictive covenants that have been discussed in terms of when they would be filed. And maybe just a little bit more details about what those covenants entail. If someone can come and address that, please. So the and. If I could ask you just I know you've already spoke, but if you could reintroduce yourself, if you're asked to come up for a question, that would be great. Thank you. Tom Hart and I am the zoning committee chair for Grammar Park Hilltop Civic Association. And so we let's see what really in the covenants we have put a limit on the number of units, the 23 we have or you can't go any taller than the rest of the neighborhood zone, which is 35 feet. We've got 36 parking spaces. I'm sorry. Could you speak more directly into the microphone thinking. There'd be no rooftop decks, which is a lot. Thank you very much. 23 units, the height, 35 feet. No rooftop decks. Really limited number of building forms to permanent townhouse, suburban house, duplex. Materials should be brick on all four sides. Setbacks where they're going to meet the front and the side setbacks, including the third floor being setback. Additional differences. The rear setback is 60 feet. Have a little space, 60 feet, 65 feet to habitable space. The code requires 12. This can be garages built along the west property line, which is the alley, and that wall will be brick and will be 17 feet tall. That was done to restrict views to the neighbors across the alley, 36 parking spaces, minimal light trespass to neighboring properties. Trees divide provided for the neighbors across the alley. So. And no, I don't see it right here. Yeah, short term rentals. Here we go. The the covenants then are not going to be put on the title until and unless this zoning passes. Obviously, you wouldn't put the covenants in its own passes. So if it passed, then they would be filed thereafter. So it's not contingent on whoever the developer is, it's based on the property. That's regardless of who would develop. Right. We had a similar you might remember the project, the 3050 South Colorado. We got covenants placed on that. Now the property could be sold to somebody else. Somebody else could build fewer units. But these are the limits. Okay. Okay. At this point, I don't have any other question. So I yield to my my colleagues. Thank you, Councilman Ortega. Mr. Hart, are all the covenants on that piece of paper? We've had a member who's asked if you could turn that over to our council secretary to take a look at or do we have the print copy of it here? You have a print copy of those covenants, would you? Okay. Handing that to our secretary. Thank you. All right. Next up, Councilwoman Black. Thank you. I had some of the same questions that Councilwoman Ortega answered. So that is good to know that those covenants would go on to the title if it passes. I have some questions. Maybe this is appropriate for Teresa Lucero, but I'm interested in how many units are on the properties now? How many can be built there now and how that compares to the proposal? Teresa Lucero With Community Planning and Development. There are currently seven units on the properties. On all three. Parcels? Yes. And. If the properties were redeveloped without being re zoned, how many units could go on each of those? I don't generally get into estimating that the it depends on how parking and how things are designed and the building form selected. So there are a lot of decisions that need to be made before you can decide what you're building. Currently, I will say currently the zoning is EMU two and a half for the larger portion of the property, the five unit. Portion. So there is existing. Authority to build multi-unit. So what are the forms that could go on that without doing anything? There is the garden court, the apartment, the townhome. Sorry, let me get to the right page on my notes there. And then can you also define what apartment means? So the forms that could be built under the EMU 2.5 are suburban and urban house. So single family homes, duplex, a tandem house, townhouse, garden, court and apartment. So the apartment form is a multi-unit structure that is basically your basic boxy apartment building. And are there parking requirements? There are one unit. No matter how many units are in there. No matter how many units, if there are 40 units, then the requirement would be 40 parking spaces. As we've heard, the current proposal is 23 units and the parking. They've negotiated a higher parking. I think it's 36. Right. Okay. And then I have some other questions. I'm a me. I'm not sure. Okay. Let's start with you since you're there. So immediately south there is a development that's a PWD. This is clearly not as old as the rest of the neighborhood. Do you know anything about that? How many years? I know it's seven units. It was approved, I believe, in the late eighties. So, yes, seven units. And and was that rezoning into that PWD, had that previously been single unit? Yes. So it was a pretty. And then immediately to the north, there are the commercial properties that people have talked about that seem to be causing a lot of traffic issues. Has that always been zoned for commercial or was that zoned? It was resolved in 2010 with the citywide rezoning, but it was risen to a commercial zone district because it was an existing commercial zoning. It was. So those retail spaces had always been there. Oh, okay. Someone told me, I don't know if this is true, that Holly used to be a streetcar line. Is that does anyone know? Is that correct? I don't know that we. It would not. Surprise me because a lot of our collectors streets were. Streetcar lines. And Holly is a collector, is that right? And Holly's a collector. Okay. I'm going to ask one more question and then I'm going to give someone else a chance. Okay? Okay. It's not for you. Okay. Some people were referring to the developer, but after hearing our first speakers. You're the home. Are you the homeowners and the developer? Could, could, could. Can you come up to the microphone. And clarify what. Can. Sorry about. Your question. So some people were referring to you all as the owners and then also referring to the developers. And so it sounded like you are where the developers are now, clarify what they are. There are seven separate homeowners that all own their individual properties. And then we have been approached by a developer, Jason Lewiston, with a proposal to purchase all seven units and redevelop the lot into more multi-family housing. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Councilman Brooks? Yeah. I want to keep going on that line of questioning. I'm going to ask, can you come back up to the mike? Thank you. So I want to. The existing zoning is EMU 2.5. Correct. Can on one lot. On one left. Yes. Okay. On the other lots. It's it's single family. Okay. So you. Have R s e, SMU X. Right. And Theresa, why don't you come up to Lucero? Yeah. And could you could you pull the microphone up? Sorry. Thank you. Sorry. So, um. So that's helpful. I don't think we've. You know, make that distinction. So on that lot where it is EMU 2.5, what's the maximum you think as a developer you could build there? I'm not a developer. I'm just the homeowner. Oh, do we have a developer in the. Yes. Oh, there is. Yeah. Okay, I'm 60 inches away. Okay, great. What's the maximum you could build on that? Um, m e IMU 2.5. I'm Jason. Lowest and. Introduce myself. We we believe we can get 20 units, maybe smaller units. We're essentially limited by that. It's. There's no set. Amount of units that are limited. It's parking. And if we do. One space per unit and we built an 18,000 foot building, we'd have to do structured parking underneath. But you know, I'm very good at infill and I know how to maximize, you know, parking spaces and building sites. So. So if you had the EMU U 2.5 on all of the lots, you're saying you get the 20 units. No, I'm saying on the existing lot. Yeah, I could have we could have taken the five out of five units. Thank you. And saved all of this. Grief. And it's been some grief for us particularly. Well, I'm not. But, yes, we could do 20 minutes without any meetings, any neighborhood discussion. Right. And are those 20 units what those have to be for sale, for rent? What would be the sizes? Just give me a ballpark, I. Well, I mean, they be, you know, smaller units. It'd be between 500 feet and 800 feet. And I don't. You know, they could be for rent and they could be for sale. Okay, great. Thank you. Theresa Lazaro. This came before planning board. I didn't get a chance to attend. Can you tell us the outcome and the outcome? Well, this came before planning board twice. The first application was for a different zone district planning while CPD opposed and the application was denied. What was the original suburban multi-unit? Three stories. Okay. And then the applicant revised their application to the EMU 2.5. And the result was there was a unanimous recommendation of approval at planning board with one abstention. Okay. And it was the abstention for conflict. The abstention. He didn't say why he was abstaining. He just said he was abstaining. Great. And did you get any. I'm sorry. I didn't look in my packet here. Did you get any letters of opposition. From. Any neighborhood? Well, Chris Moore Park. Yes. From R.A. or. Yes, Chris Moore Park. And the of no position. What neighborhood was that of? No position. Oh, that's Hilltop. No opposition. Thank you. You done, Councilman? All right. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Councilman Flynn. Thank you. Mr. Lewiston is here, so I have a chance to ask him something on the architectural drawings that we were given. There's a term that I'm not familiar with that says that the units will be. Fully. Accessible. What does that mean? Physically handicapped. Okay. Thank you, Theresa. I don't know if you'll know this because it predates everybody in this room, probably. But I'm curious how those two commercial parcels at Cedar came to be. And I looked them up and they were built in 1955. Or prior. So it even predates Chapter 59. But it seems odd that there's because just to get to Councilwoman Black's question, there was not a streetcar line that went down. But one of the speakers looked it up. And no, it wasn't a streetcar, Holly wasn't a streetcar line. Right. So we don't know why that wasn't on Alameda as opposed to sort of in the middle of the neighborhood. Okay. So so the fact that the Park Berger in that building is new, that's not in itself a changing circumstance because that's been there since at least 1955. Nonresidential structure has been there. Right. New business, new use of the structure. But can you explain how the waiver works? And that's different than the than the covenants that the neighborhood has. But the waiver, it seems to me it allows more square footage or more density. Well, it allows a third story to be built. The other building forms in the zone, just in the context, all allow 2.5 storeys and the same height, 35 feet. Right. So everything from a single unit. Through every other building form except apartment allows the two 3030 to 35 feet depending on your width of your lot. And then. The two and a half stories except the apartment form. So the proposal is to take the apartment form to two and a half stories. And that allows the waiver allows the third level to the. Second or last level, third level only habitable. But on a smaller. It's smaller because there are. The both planes. Step backs. Yes. That are apply in this context. So the side step backs are 15 feet on either side and then in the front it's ten feet off the street. So you end up with a smaller footprint on that top level. Okay. And I appreciate the solution talking about how many develop how many units can be developed under the existing zoning, because that was that was going to be one of my questions, Councilman Brooks. And. Tom Hart listed the covenants that had been negotiated. And as you went through the list, that sounded it sounded more like the covenants make this more of a negotiated pudi than a standard zone district, don't they? They are pretty restrictive. Yes. Yes. Okay. That's all I have right now. I think Councilman Flynn, Councilman you know Theresa. Okay. I'm sitting here some discussion about obviously a lot of discussion about the traffic on Holly and the safety concerns there. Has there been a traffic study when you're in the discussions of all this, you sound like you've been through a lot of discussions after it was denied one time and now you're back again with what discussion has there been about? How do you know? There has been a lot of raising of the issue. But CPD usually takes up traffic issues at site plan instead of zoning. So that's. They didn't give you a position? No, they didn't give you any data or any. There has been some discussion of the traffic counts on Holly. There was some discussion of that at both planning board hearings. And was there a conclusion to that? Well, just stating what those counts were is extraordinarily high. Or is it. Not being a traffic engineer? I'm not privy to how they are, but I can tell you what counts. There were and these were taken four years ago, so they might not be as current. And they were 11,338, both southbound and northbound on holly between cedar and alameda. So around. Well, 11,000. Oh, okay. Question about today. Question about the Ali. You know, the access on the Ali. I know we approved a rezoning overall Colorado. And I think they're using the Ali access to the private Ali. Remember Ali? So is this Ali much more narrow than the normal? Ali I have not measured this, Ali. It is a public. Ali Right. The zoning code does require Ali access if an Ali exists. I would imagine that public works might want some widening. Okay. If it was inadequate. Okay. Great. Thanks to his assertion. Joel Noble of joke. Come up. Star witness. Jill, I appreciate you coming up. I know you're a member of the planning board. I assume you were there for this discussion. Good evening, Councilman. Yes. What about the traffic or the traffic situation? Did the planning board get an interpretation of the traffic situation? Certainly. John Noble 2705 Stout Certainly Planning Board heard as you have concerns, as we often do at rezoning time about potential traffic impacts, because a zoning allows a range of things that can be built, it's generally not felt by CPD and what planning board follows that we are in a position to analyze traffic at that time. It's later at site plan. When somebody proposes a particular building with a particular number of units, with a particular set of uses, uses would determine the time of day traffic might come and go. That that's analyzed by staff. So while we, as you did, heard those concerns, it really didn't factor into if this is the appropriate zoned district for the location. So it's site plan you can probably get into whether there needs to be a traffic light added at Seton Hall or the speed reduced over there on the Harley, those kind of issues. I would expect public works would. Yes, that's exactly what goes on. Okay. Thank you very much, John. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Miss. Mr. President. Teresa, help me with a couple of things, if you would. See if I can get to where I need to be here on the review criteria too. On uniformity of district regulations. Further see uniform application of district regulation because the same regulations will apply to the subject site as to all other areas on the AM you 2.5 in the city. Correct. But we have a waiver in this case. Mm hmm. So that one. That would. Standard would be different. Yes. Okay. Okay. So it is slightly different in that case. Until we until we complete the text amendment. Okay. Oh, I see. I see. On the third criteria. Furthermore, public health, safety and general welfare by allowing redevelopment that is in character with the neighborhood in scale and design. I'm having trouble seeing how what's proposed meets that. Can you help me with that? Well. The same height restrictions are consistent throughout. I mean, if you're building a single family home, you have two and a half. You're allowed to build two and a half storeys and 30 to 35 feet if you're building a townhome. You're allowed to build two and a half storeys and 35, 30 to 35 feet. The only building form in this context that has that two storey is the apartment for all others, including single family, have the entitlement to build two and a half storeys. But it talks about in character within the neighborhood. So not not with the code. When when this first came in, the proposal was that SMU three. Right. That would have allowed an apartment building to cover the entire lot from the front to the back in a three storey apartment building. Staff felt like that was out of character because this is a neighborhood that has. A different height in the front and the back. And that's what the zoning standards are, the way the zoning standards are written in the context. So with this new proposal, this new zone district, there is a height limit in the front, 65% of the lot. That's that higher height. But the rear, 35% of the lot is is held to one story. So Steph felt like that was more in character with the urban edge context. So the three of the of the original proposal differs from the three created by the waiver because of the setbacks on that third story. Is that. Correct? Well, that's plus those three stories are restricted to that front, 65% of the lot. It can't cover the whole lot like it would have in the suburban zone district that was first applied for. Okay. Thank you. And I don't I don't know who whether the developer or the owners. I'm just wondering along the lines of Councilman New was talking about. Has anybody had this discussion? I'm sure you've all heard your neighbors concerns. You may share your neighbors concerns about traffic in the area. I'm wondering if anybody's had any discussions with Denver Public Works about what might be done. And I understand that normally it waits until site plan to do this. But just wondering, I see no hands go up. Okay. Thank you. Further developer, Mr. Lewiston, without without the waiver. How many units does that would that limit development to? What? What does that third story waiver get you? Well, we can still build. An apartment form a 35 foot tall building. It has to be two stories. Okay, so I show on the. I show on the. 20 unit version is. Yeah. So that we can see what you'd end up with. We could do mezzanine and the second story and have a third, you know, so the second, the second floor units can have 15 foot ceilings and a mezzanine that takes up one third of no more than one third of the space below. I'm you know, I'm good at what I do, right? I mean, I'm not good at very much, but I'm good at land development. And so, I mean, I know how to max out of sight. And that's what whether it's me or the next developer, that's what would happen. So that's why we're we're hoping you'll consider. Yeah. And the last question I have for you, we heard 23 units. I've heard 50 beds. 60 beds. Do you know where you designed that far along. Yeah. Again, the math I'm not I, we have 9/1 floor units with three bedrooms to that. That's 27. 9/2 floor units with two bedrooms that's 45 and then not five is is 50. And then we have a penthouse unit that we haven't designed yet. So it's that's a little high, but. Okay, so about 50 beds. Yeah, something like that. Okay, that's all my questions. Thank you, Mr.. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilman Espinosa. I had questions for the four for you, Jason, but I'm going to skip first to Teresa. Are you aware that the city has never approved a stacked structure using their rowhouse form? I'm not aware of that. Okay. Well, they they never have. And it's in eight years of the existing row house. The row house, as you know, is the is the row house form an allowed building form in the zone this. It is. Are you certain of that? Well, can I go get my zoning code? Yes. I find the right page. You can do 4.3-5. I'm sorry. 4.3. Dash five. Three. Oh, that's my. And you're looking at probably something newer than I am. You're right. It is not. Okay. So the city has never allowed that form to you to have snack units. So what we did through the legislative means, through the slot home text. Councilman, I just want to make sure you're getting into a question and not a comment here. It's it's trying to get the staff up to speed on changes that have occurred in the life of this of this application. So is the townhouse form allowed in this zone district. In the EMU? Yeah. 2.5. I thought that's what we were just talking about. I meant the row house. And townhome is. Yes, but Row House is not. In the townhouse. Do you know what the difference is between the Townhouse District and the row house with regard to unit relationship between units? It's limited to. Understanding what you're asking. Me. It's limited to side by side only. Meaning we had to write a whole thing, a whole. It's been two years to create this sort of a bility to have street facing rowhouses units that weren't in fact stacked. And if you look at that zone district because you're saying something, you've said something in answers to my colleagues that sort of try to equate garden corps. I mean garden mean apartment forms at three. Stewart I mean at 2.5 and all the other forms at 2.5. So if so, if we look at the apartment form. What is the lot coverage? Maximum light coverage for an apartment dorm? Well, it would be restricted by those setbacks, so it would be a minimum 6000 square foot lot. But this is, of course, larger. There would be a block sensitive setback if there is. To. Where the condition exists. That you have a front rear and side setbacks. Correct. In every single one of the form standards. Right. But in the case of the apartment form, you can build the entirety of the space inside of that. Is that correct? Say that again. I'm sorry. You can build a building the entirety of the maximum height and volume inside of your setbacks. Yes. Which is what sub for that. The applicant has to step. Back. Right. Which is what I am. Which is what the applicant has depicted. Right. In their other drawing. Okay. Yes. So now going back, is there is there a lot coverage? So when you said that apartments mean that we're trying to equate the fact that you can build two and a half storeys in a suburban home, an urban home, a tandem home, and now an apartment. Can you build 100% inside of the setbacks in the in the other forms? And so is there a zone lot coverage maximum? Well, there's. The 6535. Split. That's on a height. That's the man in the massing. We don't have that restriction on the apartment form as of course we do. We do. We do. Where I see it for 65%. On the apartment for on. The apartment form. Front. Page 4.3. Dash 23. I'm looking at the zoning standards. Yeah. And so I told you, you're probably going to see something that's more updated than I. I'm looking, unfortunately, at the 21 that is predates the urban townhouse form. So you're looking at before the slot home. Text we did, we modified the apartment form to have this front back separation. Mm hmm. Okay, that's good. But we're still but I'm still talking about block coverage. So on the Urban House form, do we have a maximum lot coverage? Um. Let me get back to that one. Urban House. You have the front 65 and the rear 35. I'm talking about line I in the in the zone standard. Rear alley building coverage per zone long including all accessory structures for. It depends on your lot size. So it ranges between 37.5% and 50%. But we're only talking about the EMU 2.5, is that correct? Right. And so doesn't that just have one number? Um. No. It has a lot size. Okay. Oh. For depends on on the width of the light. Or we're talking about in this case, we're talking about a greater than 75 foot lot. Mm hmm. In width, that's 37.5%. So a maximum coverage inside of the setbacks of 37.5? Yes. Is that the same for all those other zone districts? Except for the. So for duplex in tandem. Well, on this chart it says all s u t u r h amu districts. You know, I thought I mean, let me, uh. It's a. Question. Councilman, if you already think you know the answer to your question, you should save it to comments. If you're asking a question that you don't know the answer to, then happy to entertain. What I'm just. Saying is, how did staff come to this idea that this is this is an appropriate waiver when we have in fact, articulated whole. Rooms. Rule changes to precisely to prevent the use of the rowhouse form first stacked apartment forms and that in fact, the apartment form is a different form, entirely akin to the representation that the the applicant has already shown on the existing parcel. And so I don't understand, I'm struggling with trying to understand that, but unfortunately I'm getting I'm not getting the answers from staff that sort of give me any sort of clarity that they understand these things. And so, um. Do you, do you have a question to ask? So you said that CPD is contemplating a text amendment. How did this perceived shortcoming in the zoning code come to your attention? How did. There's this shortcoming that that there's not enough stories in an apartment form that you need another story in a permanent form in this zone district. I'm. I'm don't know that. I just know that this is. I'm not on that committee that works on the text amendments. So I just know that it is on the list of text amendments to be done. I don't know how it came to our attention. So my colleague, Councilman Flynn, noted that this is a very complex waiver that is akin to a PUD. Is that the waiver? That the waiver. Is simply a number of stories. I think the councilman was talking about the covenants being complex. I think they are also restricting. Well, so it is so is is the waiver that staff is contemplating is it a because you've said three story a lot. And as you know, none of the zone districts here have three stories. They're all 2.5 in the waiver itself. In the code allows three stories. No, it only allows a half a story. I can't point to the language, but they're my understanding of the code is that if you have a two and a half storey height limit, you're allowed that third story. So I think we need to speak purely in the code. Write the code allows two and a half stories so you can have a have a partially habitable third floor. You cannot be the entirety of the third floor. A third story would be three. Because if we were to talk the what is the what is the change in condition that you cited? For the justifying circumstances, correct? Well, the applicant cited the change in that people are demolishing their houses and building to the newer standards of two and a half storeys. I cited the likely annex changes and the changes occurring on still as changes occurring in the area. So has anything actually changed with regard to the actual structures on the three subject parcels? No. So that was one of the interesting, too. Oh, I'll mention that later. And if this. So the applicant has shown us two options. One is this option. The other one is he's just concentrating an apartment building on a single parcel that already has the existing entitlement. If that applicant had come forward, hypothetically speaking, if the applicant had come forward with the request for these waivers on that parcel only. I mean, just simply a two and a half storey waiver would then staff supported down. I, I would assume so since we're supporting it on the larger parcel. So we could. Based on the proposed text amendment that. Okay. And then the last thing is, what is the number of snacks? So adjacent to this parcel is the. Adjacent. On which side? Yeah, on the on to the north. mx2x is the number of stories allowed on that. For which form. It's the the general building form is the only allowed form in that district. On my older version of the. Okay yeah. Mix 2x2 stories 30 feet. So. So there there is an existing and again, that too has the same similar to the apartment form. It doesn't have. It's not encumbered by a maximum lot coverage requirement. No is allowed to have. So it's allowed 100% build out to its setbacks. But it is restricted to two stories uniformly the same way the apartment form had been historically in this own district for the last eight years, or actually till today for the last eight and a half years. So staff is contemplating a waiver, I mean, a text amendment to grant through two and a half storey or three. Which is it? What is the text? The moment that staff is contemplating a two and a half story text amendment or a three story text amendment? Okay. So staff is constantly a two and a half story text a minute in an area where we already have 100% building capacity and it's restricted it to stories in other similar forms. The reason why I'm asking you that is if you go back to your townhouse form. You're talking about two different zone districts. In the same. Mix versus the EMU. In the same context. So let's go back to the town townhouse for what is the maximum building heights in the townhouse for. 30 feet or 35, depending on the width of the lot. Can you double check that one for me? Because that's all I have. You know, I apologize. See. Here's one of the things I'm trying to understand here is in the staff report, it said that the purpose for the waivers is to get to the three storey height, doesn't say to get an additional half story of development entitlement, but. The 30 to 35 foot height is the same, regardless of whether it's limited to two stories or as in this in the current incarnation, or if they were to get an additional half, is that correct? So the heights are not actually changing. No, the number of feet are not changing. So it's just additional development entitlement by the additional half storey on this floor. Right. Now, there are two different townhome forms. I'm not sure which one you're referring to. There's one for the mixed use district and one for multi-unit districts. Those are the slight home changes. Yeah. So it just maybe it's because this process started before this lot homes. But I don't know that we would review this as an apartment for other than the fact that they stacked it and moved it to the front. You know, it's once again, it looks this is weird because we're sort of talking about are we we're talking about a zoning change, but we have an actual project that is then articulated by. Other things, and I'm confused. Well, that's why we try not to talk about specific projects when we're doing zoning entitlements, because things can change. Yeah. And so thank you for that. And that leads to my one question for Jason, which is the letter that was passed out is not a restriction or covenant. Do you actually have an executed covenant that could be recorded on the property if this zoning were to go? Yes, we do. Do you have a copy of that? You can actually see I. I didn't bring it with me. Is that a two party deed restriction or a single party deed restriction? Okay, Captain. It's in the proper form to be recorded. It signed. Notarized. It's ready to be recorded just by the property owner or by a second agent. I'm sorry. Is there is it, say, Cranmer Park, Hilltop Civic Association, a signatory to the deed restriction? Yes. Okay. Because that that's crucial. I'd like to see. I'd like to be certain that the owner couldn't simply remove that recorded deed restriction, but that it would require two parties to do so. Well, I can have cranmer. The Cranmer had an attorney. I mean. You have to have. Faith that they're not quite that. Naive. Yeah. That's my problem, though, is that even though these are not matters for council to actually consider in their criteria, it is sort of crucial that, you know, there are a lot of things that are being codified for support that that need to actually have some measure of law to to go to. Because once the entitlement is granted, it's the entitlement for the entire mass that you have already articulated. But now across all three parcels, not just the one. Yes. And you mentioned at the planning board something that I do agree with, that there should be more interactions with the board and the developers rather than private parties. You mentioned that to me at the Ludie meeting. I agree with you and I have a lot to say about that. About developers meeting with city council members. I mean, I essentially now it's treated as a criminal trial and I'm a defendant like I'm O.J. Simpson and I'm not allowed to talk to my city council member after I've applied. That's absurd. Okay. I'm going to just check it, make sure that we're still questions about the the thing that's in front of us. We could, for another time, talk about how we wish the world was. This is the world that we're in and we're in a public hearing in the questions section. Councilman, do you have any further questions? No further questions. Okay. Thank you. Teresa, did you have an answer to one of the questions? One of the questions was the covenants. And you have a copy of the covenants attached to Tom Hart's letter. So in the in what we've been provided. Thank you very much. Councilman Flynn. That letter. Thank you, Mr. President. And Mr. Lewiston, just a couple of follow up questions on the. There was some testimony about affordable housing that these would be affordable units. And then there was other testimony. Yeah, these and I don't. Mean affordable capital AA, but generally affordable for the neighborhood. And then we heard some testimony that the price points would be up to a half million and and more. What is your plan for the price points of these units? They'll be three in the three hundreds to five hundreds. And I yeah, I don't like the word affordable because then everyone jumps down my throat and says, it's not affordable. They're moderate. Right. Anything that's purchased. Purchased as affordable by the party to purchase. Yeah, there are holes there referring to the building, the houses behind it. Behind there. Right. Okay. And then there was you had a quote that if you think this is bad, that if you didn't get the rezoning and think you're upset now, where do you see what I'm allowed to do by law? You know, that was badly out of context, but. Okay. Well, I'm giving you the opportunity to contextualize it. Thank you. The reason I brought that up was in your option two that I'm looking at here in your architectural drawings, you have 22 units. One fewer, except 20 of them are on them are on the parcel already zoned. So your option two is based on your current zoning. And is this the one that you were? Is this what you were referring to about? Yes. I don't know how to do by law. And you spoke to this earlier. I met with these. I'm I'm it. My girlfriend is one of the owners. I mean that's everyone knows that. Most people know that. I don't. Like. Well, I. Don't I don't read the society. I'm bragging, which is I'm. Bragging because she's a tall, hot blond and I'm excited. That she is. But I will lose you a couple votes right there. The point was, I was starting to hear these people are going to have to pour money into these buildings and I wasn't going to allow that. That's insane. It's a 1957 crawlspace building. So the options were, do we sell it to the to the you know, I'm also a broker. Do we sell it to a developer? And a developer would would do this a developer wouldn't put up with I mean, who needs this this aggravation? I mean, frankly, I mean, to get called names and to be called accused of things. Mm hmm. So. Okay, so. So option two on your architectural drawings. That's what that's what you were telling me. But, I mean, someone would max it out. We've seen what happens when I mean, when developers are given free reign. I mean, I never imagined we'd have a problem convincing the neighbors that that that that this was a bad option. But, you know, Lord knows. I just wanted to hear from you what was meant by that quote. So this is there's going to be a new development on this street period. These units are going up for sale. So if if we get the rezoning, we're going to build this project. If we if we don't, we're going to probably sell to the general public. And you're probably going to get some a lot closer to option two, not for me, because I want to come back here and I don't want people to hate me and think that I'm tasteless. This is tasteless, but it's allowed to be built. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn, Councilman Herndon. He was president. Nate Mesereau had a question for you. I'll try to bring this back to what I thought we were actually supposed to be talking about was the zoning. So, Nate, the charge before us is we have a question of we have a current zoning and they're requesting the rezoning to go to another zoning. And that is what we should be talking about. And the reason why I'm asking this is because there have been a lot of conversations about the development. However, what they have, what they have proposes development they're not obligated to because we're creating a zoning that allows X. Now, there is a covenant in place that says you cannot go above these restrictions. But if the current proposal that they have said in front of us, they're not obligated to that. There's just obligated to whatever the zoning affords are allowed is correct? That's correct. Nathan Mr. Assistant City Attorney. Thank you for the question, Councilman. You are correct. What you're considering tonight is a rezoning and whether or not the particular zoned district that's being requested. Is. Appropriate and meets the. Criteria that's outlined in the Denver zoning code. You're not deciding on any particular project that may be proposed for the property. It's simply whether or not the rezoning is appropriate in this location. And Theresa and Joel touched base on this, but just to kind of hit a little harder, conversations about traffic are kind of futile because we don't know what the proposal is going to be because they have not gone through the site development process. That's true. It's kind of tricky to consider the traffic impacts, but this council may consider traffic if you sort of look at the rezoning holistically and what could what could be built at this location, then certainly there is going to be some traffic considerations. And the opinion that Mr. KIRWIN referred to earlier did indicate that that this council may consider traffic in certain circumstances is what the opinion says. But but it is difficult. To to know. What the project is going to be. So you kind of have to. Take take. It into consideration. And give it whatever weight you think that deserves. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Herndon. Are there any other questions? That's one black. I just again, like to ask about the covenant. So. Say this. This did pass. They are immediately will go into effect. They'll be filed tomorrow morning and they go into effect. Could you come answer that of the microphone for all the people watching on TV who can't see or hear you? Thank you. Yes, they are immediately enforceable upon approval and will be recorded on the deeds. And and does that require that you or someone come down to the Kirkland Recorder's office and do that? Who files them. Let's see who files it. Yeah. The buyer. Yeah, we could. Either one of us could do it right there. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. They're signed and notarized and. Okay, then, Councilman Black. Thank you. I see no other questions. I just want a quick clarification. Teresa, I know you thought you were off the hook earlier. I believe it was. Councilman Cashman was asking along the lines of scale mass heights in the neighborhood. We had one of these in my district a little while ago where there was a lot of talk of that because the existing buildings in that area are one story, but the zoning allows. And in that area, it happened to be in our very tall buildings when when we were looking at the legal criteria for rezoning. We're not looking at the form, scale and height of the buildings that are there right now. We are looking at the form, scale and height of what is allowable under the current zoning. Is that correct? Okay. CPD is looking at. Thank you very much. Okay. That concludes the public hearing for Council Bill 1346 is closed. We're going to move to comments by members of council. Each council member will have an opportunity should they choose to comment. And we're gonna start with you, Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to all the people in the in the chambers, too. I know those seats are pretty hard. And for you to sit through that, I think I really appreciate your being here. I didn't ask a lot of any questions because I know a lot of the answers. I think that considering the traffic is really important and we have had some counts on Holly recently. I don't have them in front of me. But it is the some of the reasons why we were able to put in a new left turn signal on alameda and holly. It was why we were able to put a speed notification permit, permanent speed notification sign near the school. And it was a reason for us to put the pedestrian kind of strobe light thing at Holly and Cedar. So the city has taken into account to a great deal how the traffic has changed on Holly. I live at fifth and hudson very close to all of this and I have lived in Hilltop for about 47 years and so I have seen some changes myself since I've been living there. I remember in our neighborhood, just just a block from my house was this project to put in some stacked flats condos at Third and Holly. I will recognize those if I talk about them. There's 32 of those I learned. I thought it looks looks like there's about ten, but there are 32 of those. And excuse me for sort of waxing historical here. And I was, you know, a young mom when they went in. But 20 years ago, I'm going to guess and actually fought the fort. They're going in not because of the number of people that were coming into the neighborhood, but because we were going to lose our grocery store and our drugstore. For those who have been there a long time, like I am, that losing that was a very hard thing to do because having those kind of amenities in a neighborhood are wonderful. The ability to walk to some of the places that we can do and we have some embedded retail in this neighborhood, the Holly and Cedar Place being one of them. We used to have more of it at Third and Holly, we used to have have it in other places because when neighborhoods were built a long time ago, they had they had the opportunity that people could at least set some time during the day, not have to get in their car to go to a place they want to do, wasn't going to take cars away, but it was at least going to give some opportunities to not have to get into a car every single time. And that particular 32 flap project at Third and Holly has never really presented any particular traffic problem that that Hilltop has ever noticed or worried about . We're talking about 23 residences here at on at this part, at this project that is close to being able to walk. So that's some of the things that you want to do during the day. You wouldn't need your car like that. Gosh, there's a grocery store and a liquor store and a butcher shop and a couple of restaurants, and there are opportunities to not have to use your car every single time. When we were building Lourey and Stapleton, we knew that we had to also produce neighborhoods where people could walk to things and not get away from what we did in the sixties, which was remove all housing from all commercial, which increased the use of our cars enormously. Now we have this huge population coming into the city and if they cannot find a place to live, they move to the suburbs, which increases our traffic exponentially, exponentially, because 60% of the traffic we get in Denver is from the suburbs. Most it is the most of the traffic which we have. The more spread out we become, the more traffic we have. And so when when thinking about projects like this in a neighborhood, it's almost returning to the kinds of neighborhoods we used to build. If you take a walk through Capitol Hill and those of you have been around here a long time know there's lots of apartment buildings right next door to single family homes so that people of all walks of life would be able to live in the same place together. You do want to have the ability for young people to be able to live in a neighborhood you want to. You able to have your teachers and your nurses and your craftsmen to be able to live in in neighborhoods? The hilltop and increase more are some of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the city. But I'm pretty prejudice about it. But I think there are some of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the city and we won't build them again because the land is too valuable. The the the and the need for housing is too great. So if we're not going to build those again, how do we give people an opportunity to enjoy some of the amenities that these neighborhoods have? How do I make sure and I and I know that these are not affordable in the technical sense. But it is true that the median price of a house sold in hilltop last year and this is from the data, was $1.1 million. That was the median price of a hilltop home. Interesting. The median price of a smart home was 833,000. I would have guessed it was reverse. I would have guessed the homes and cars more would have been more expensive than the ones in Hilltop. So if you have a way to move into a home in this neighborhood for 300 to $500000, that is a lower price point in order to to move into that neighborhood. And the what we need to have is a housing stock that has is it has a variety of the kind of housing that people can possibly want to live in. In our in our cities. Because if we don't, they're going to move to the suburbs and we're traffic is going to get worse. Now in zoning. And, you know, the thing we worry about a lot about in zoning is scale. You don't want a huge behemoth building next to smaller ones. I mean, we certainly have examples of that. We had examples of it was flat homes and we decided that just isn't going to work. It just doesn't work to have smart homes. We have examples like the Darth Vader building on South Colorado Boulevard, this huge monstrosity of thing that's around all the small. It looks like some huge middle finger, if you ask me. And so we don't we want to look when they're doing zoning that it be in scale, that that it's at the size of the other buildings near it. And this is the exact same height as a with setbacks that are similar to the single family home setbacks by the covenants that are in place that if if if the if if we didn't do this if we didn't have the covenants in place that the neighborhood worked very hard on. And there's a very like, you know, Miss Bowman has left the work that they did on 50 South Colorado Boulevard. They were the neighbor worked work really hard to get covenants on there to have reached an agreement with the developer so that that one could go by. We didn't have that we wouldn't be able to ensure the scale that the covenants can help us insure for so that it doesn't look strange in the neighborhood and the process certainly asking for mediation and having neighbor neighbors get to talk to each other. Not only that, the neighbors in which neighborhood this is in, but also the neighboring neighborhood, because everybody has a feeling about it and effect on it. I think it was a very good process and certainly even a mediation. You're mediating between people who don't agree with each other. And so somebody is going to be some people are going to be happy and some people aren't. But to go through the long process of mediation about this, I, I think kudos belong to the Crowder Hilltop Association for taking that kind of time to do it. So for all of these reasons, it's not going to be popular with the people who are against this. But for all of the reasons related to a variety of housing stock, to traffic concerns, to scale, to process, I am in support of this project and I encourage my counsel for council members to do the same. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Sussman. Are there other comments? Councilman Espinosa. Yeah. So I want to thank Councilman Herndon for getting us back to the subject matter of right, which is the zoning and looking solely at the zoning. Why that helped me. Because the thing that I was struggling with in my questions was how did we end up what? What is the city really, truly contemplating with respect to changes in this zone district that justifying these waivers that then some how does it result in what I think is actually a pretty awesome project? If this proposal came to my neighborhood, I would be fighting like hell to get it through. I'll just be honest, but we're not getting things like this, you know, we're not getting this level of compromise or concession and sort of voluntarily. But I can't overlook the fact that, yeah, it's simply a mass and scale question about the zoning at hand. And so what I did is I appreciate the applicant bringing forth these renderings, right? Because this is what the zoning district would be approving of tonight. Not the one gray box, but the gray box, plus the blue box, plus the half story above. That's the entitlement. What we're talking about is this proposal. You can see the difference between those two. This is why I support this idea wholeheartedly. But there's nothing. The only thing that could tell me that, yes, this would happen is the actual deed restriction being ready to record on that property, which actually is not a matter for this council to even consider. I have articulated and he did it. Ludie and the applicant agreed that the Council should be able to consider a good, solid deed restriction that gets this outcome. And then that would be a justification on why you would never go here, but you would allow compromise to get here. That's actually really way, great way that the city should operate. And I have articulated to Legislative Council that we should have that rule in our rule book. And I have been told that nope. The way we already defined our waivers and conditions is adequate enough. I'm telling you tonight, this whole fight doesn't happen if we have a way to get here without enabling this. Because that's how we've done it in District one. And so you have this solution sort of I don't have that covenant. And I'm telling you right now, and this is going to probably set this thing up for litigation. If I had that covenant, I'm probably siding with this applicant because I know this isn't going to happen. But as a legislator, I have to think about, is this appropriate? And that's where I'm struggling, you know, because I would argue that, yeah, if we just look at the gray box, that entitlement exists, it's the other 60% of that lot that does not. And that other 60%. You can't develop that many square footage. That's where I was going with my comments. Mean my questions to staff there's maximum zone lot coverage of restrictions on those other two parcels to the tune of 37 to 50% depending on which which form you use. And so right now that whole half a story isn't an option in that zone district. And that's consistent with all the other I mean, the other two massive forms, general form and storefront form that are allowed in this this context in the adjacent immediate area. So I appreciate Greg KIRWIN bringing up the white law matter and then putting it in into comments here. It's in here. Thank you for having it in filing it. Not because of the question about health and safety, regarding traffic, because that's legitimate. You're adding an entire half a story. There are units that come along with that city. Sort of pretends that we don't consider density because we don't. But Plan Blueprint Denver the one that's on file, the one that applies here contemplates density all. I mean over and over and over again. So we cannot assume that a half a story is just void of people. It's going to have people. So that does have other ramifications. But what was interesting to me in that same decision was the other matter of justifying circumstances. And I'm going to call it up here and. So that was. Where? Oh, sorry. Picking through things. It reads, Finally, competent evidence exists on the record to support City Council's conclusion to justify justifying circumstances existed for the rezoning. And as noted above, the Denver Zoning Code provides that justified circumstances exist when either the land or its surrounding environs have changed or are changing again. There is no the only rezoning that occurred sort of just solidified an existing commercial development and existing non-conforming situation. Didn't change the zoning for the sake of changing the existing situation. And the neighbors in that case asserted that the land refers to the overall neighborhood itself rather than the parcel subject to rezoning. Because. Because. And but the city argued the city that's us landed that the land refers to the parcel. That's why I asked that question. Well, what's changed on the property itself? Nothing. It is still five modest homes that are affordable in this area. And yeah, I'm not naive. You look at that gray box and the entitlement that's on that gray box. Those five units are just like so many in my neighborhood are ripe for the picking. Probably why the property was bought in the first place and it will go away and you can still pack. I laid it out. You could take that same little row house structure and put two of them there and have nine. The 99 unit part nine space parking garage. So you get eight units and nine garages all in the same thing. Take the design that they have. Probably can for. To the new urban townhouse standards. So it's going to it's going to there's money to be made here. And density to come in the same product that we're looking at, just not as many of them is possible. So. So I, I go back to this this to my colleagues here. This is what you're approving, not this. That's the difference. And so I wish we had the tool. The tool isn't, unfortunately. In this letter it alludes to it, but I don't see it. And unfortunately, legally, even if I had it, I'm not supposed to use that as the justifying circumstance to approve this rezoning. So the criteria to me are not met, changing conditions, just health and safety concerns. It's not it's clearly not consistent with the adopted plans. And then the form and scale are already appropriate, even for the apartment form that is allowed on the existing parcel that is multi-family. So with that, I will be I will be voting against this rezoning. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa, Councilwoman Black. Thank you. Thank you, all of you, for being here so late. And I particularly want to thank a few of the speakers. I didn't catch all your names, but some of you said some things that really hit home to me. Logan Mayer and Adam Ostroff and you both reminded me to be forward looking. And in another recent council hearing, I talked about advice I was given by a councilwoman who was in office in the nineties and later became chief of staff to a mayor and then director of Public Works, who reminded me. That all of. Our decisions we make our for the for the future. And so thank you for reminding me of that. And Councilwoman Sussman talked about the. Dangers of sprawl. And. You know, traffic is bad because we all get in our cars and we drive on the streets in our cars by ourselves, except for Councilman Clark, who takes his bike to work. But sprawl makes traffic bad. And so infill projects are really important. And so you both alluded to that, and I appreciate that. Additionally, housing diversity is really important in our city, and we don't want to have exclusive neighborhoods where you just have a bunch of. Large suburban houses that only a certain kind of people can live in. So thank you for remind me of that. Also, I heard all of you and. The two things I wrote down, what everyone said. There was some of you think that the housing the proposal is not affordable enough. There's a lot of discussion that could go around that. But the the number one by far and away the. Number one issue was traffic. And we all. Hear that every single day. Traffic in Denver has changed so incredibly much in the last ten years because. 100,000 people. Have moved to Denver. The metro area has grown by, I don't. Know, a million people since 1990. Everyone has a car. That's why traffic is bad and that's why we're all working on. Trying to get people to take other forms of transportation. But, you know, that's the cause of traffic. I was surprised to. Hear that four years ago, 11,000. Cars a day. Go on. Holly. I do think that is a lot of cars. I did. Calculate on my phone if you added 46. Cars because if you had 23. Apartments and each one had two cars, that is less than half a percent increase. And that that's pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. I also I like this idea of of it being green. I am I like the idea that there was a compromise negotiated with the neighborhood. I think a lot of the features that you negotiated address some of the concerns we heard from people, particularly. Parking and landscaping, the. Reduced density. The alternative that could happen. I think, would be. Less consistent with the neighborhood. And I know some people expressed concern that this might set a precedent, and I don't think that that is true at all. I think our single family neighborhoods. Are very secure. This is a. Completely unique block. That has the PWD with townhomes and the commercial and just the two little single family homes. And those are the things that are the odd man out on that block. I think those two single family homes are the things that that don't fit in. So in addition to that, I do think it meets the criteria and so I will be supporting it. Thank you, Councilwoman Black, Councilman Cashman. Well, thank you, Mr. President. This is such a different world we're living in today. It's amazing. We're all seeing the same amount of change. The one thing that I heard that really rang out from me is Mark Gibson's statement. I'm looking at all the faces. I forget which one was Mark? If you're still in the house. Thank you, sir. About growth without mitigation. While I'm aware that we we're we're. We're looking at zoning category rather than a particular project. I think we need as a city to start looking at these zoning categories differently and to be doing traffic studies on what would happen if that zoning were taken to its maximum. And an approach in that direction. I believe we need to be a lot more attentive to mitigation then than we are now. And I do think we basically know what's going to be built on this site if this zoning passes. It may not be 23 units. It may be 20. I don't think those five houses are going to be there much longer. I may be wrong, but just looking at the evidence of what I watch around the city, it doesn't. The economics don't seem to reinforce the guess that it will remain single family homes. So, you know, my neighborhood is looking at neighborhood streets that are going to see somewhere between from the developer's estimate, 300 to 7 800 new units on neighborhood streets. What I figure we're looking at here is the difference between seven units. 14 units. 22 units. My tendency is to look at this as. By the way, the way I interpret the legal requirements that we're supposed to look at and I have trouble with the fact that the consistency in applying the zoning regulations is if we pass a text amendment allowing that extra half story. And I'm not convinced that the third element of health and safety is met. So I'm sitting here leaning towards not approving this rezoning. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Councilman Cashman. Councilman Neal. I found this so interesting tonight because it just parallels and goes right along with what I was going through with one of my neighborhoods and one of my districts in very similar situation. Yeah, a couple of parcels asking for some rezoning from additional units and the zoning allowed for those parcels is two units less than what they're asking for, for the rezoning two units, you know. And so what can in your situation is so much better because their situation is they stay with the zoning, they're going to build nice homes, they'll fit character. You'll be fine. Your situation if you if we do know this today and not approve it, you're going to have a piece. I honestly what I'll say about this design but are apartment. Blocks. That will not fit character it will be ugly is terrible. We won't do anything to help you in the long run. And because that property is going to be developed here, you got a chance to build something so look nicer, at least in conformance to it. It may not be it may be more units, there's no question about that. But it's only on a main busy street. So I think that you have a chance to do a better with the what you see the means in the main thing. You don't want to stay within the zoning and see that other kind of alternative developed. Plus the other thing too is very similar to the other neighborhood. And guess what? Their issue big issue was traffic that this gave them the opportunity to address traffic with the city because they all rallied around traffic and safety and we'll be making improvements in that area here. You have a great opportunity to address traffic that can't be addressed by zoning. We've heard that can be addressed by that tonight, but it gives you a great opportunity to do something about Harley to make it safer. Like councilman assessment is mentioned. She's done it a little bit earlier. So I think that there's some opportunities there. So I will be voting for this tonight and knowing that it has to does meet the zoning and we can't consider the traffic. And I understand your frustration and I really do thank you for Mr.. Thank you, councilman. New Councilman Flynn Thank you, Mr. President. I know I was listening very intently to council members Espinosa and Cashman because they were touching on some of the things that concern me about the review criteria. And and I I'm concerned with what I see is perhaps an overly broad interpretation of some of them, such to the extent that there may be no rezoning application anywhere in the city that we couldn't we couldn't find a criteria here or there. If we if we sort of squint and say, well, justifying circumstances, changing circumstances here. And I think the the presentation said there are things are changing in the wider area around there that well, if you want to, you know, depending on how far you want to go and say, well, there's change over there and there's change over there, but I don't I don't see a change. I don't see changing circumstances on in the near vicinity of this block. One of the missions that we have in our plan and in Blueprint and unfortunately, we don't have a neighborhood plan here that we can that we can look to. But among the things that it says is that we can that we look for infill opportunities where they're appropriate. And I see a lot of places around Denver where they're appropriate, and I don't believe that I see that here. I also wanted to note that there was a comment and I want to differ a little bit with Councilwoman Black. There was a comment about single family neighborhoods. And I think one of the statements that was made was that the the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 sort of promoted the expansion of single family homes. I grew up in a town that had single family homes built in the teens and the twenties. And we have single we have Queen Anne's and Victorians built here in the 1800s. Single family homes have been a standard for a long time. And I think. The city needs to understand that if we don't also conserve single-family neighborhoods, we will not be a city that offers a diversity of housing forms. Density is appropriate where we have high frequency transit. I have some of those in my in my district. I have Federal Boulevard, for example, with excellent transit service. And we would welcome proposals down there. But as far as embedded in the middle of a single family neighborhood, that's to me, that's not conserving our diversity of housing forms and our single family neighborhoods. Denver has to be a city where your own where your only option, where your options to raise a family with kids are not limited to a high rise condo, but to a single family place where you put a swing set in the backyard. And I want to push back a little bit on the affordability of single family and whether that leads to segregation or not. My district is almost is very heavily single family and they're very affordable. My district is one of the areas of Denver that that still has affordable, single family units. And my district is majority minority. And we have increasing diversity. In my district, I'm very proud of that. And so I considering all that, I, I I'm going to vote no on this. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I have listened to all of the input and have sort of leaned both ways based on the input. And, you know, we sit in a quasi judicial capacity here where our decision is based on the input that we get from you all at this public hearing. I know many of you have sent us emails and whatnot prior to tonight. Most of us don't look at that until this evening when the public hearing happens. But I just want to go through a couple of things. First of all, you know, large parts of of Holly are an arterial street. Some parts of Holly are more single family than other parts. Right. But at the end of this block is some commercial. I like the fact that the developer in the neighborhood worked out an agreement and that the details will be filed as a covenant on the property so that there is some assurance, regardless of who will develop the site, that that agreement holds. Still, I can remember when we did something called the Regulating Plan that was only an agreement between the developer and the neighborhood. And if the developer sold the property, guess what? That agreement didn't mean a damn thing. And so that's where this one matters. Yes, the project will generate some linkage fee funds for the amount of square footage that will be put into the development. But it's not going to be equal to the value of the units that are lost or the units that are being replaced. It just doesn't the math just doesn't work out that way. I share the concern about the justifying conditions, and we see this happen across the city over and over. And if you haven't looked at this, you all need to be paying very, very close attention to Blueprint Denver before it comes to city council, because it gets away from the verbiage of neighborhoods of stability. And my concern is that means every neighborhood is sort of up for grabs, if you will. And there is value to the single family character that we have in our residential neighborhoods. It's what people love about our city, right? We have great neighborhoods in our city. But when you look at some of them, like Jefferson Park, where Councilman Espinosa lives, that neighborhood doesn't look. Much of anything like what it used to in terms of the housing stock that is in that neighborhood, because it's pretty much changed significantly. I live in one of those neighborhoods and had I not purchased my home when I did in the Highland neighborhood, I couldn't afford to live there. So there is some value in in trying to protect our our single family neighborhoods. It doesn't mean that we don't want to see some development on the edges, which is what the old blueprint plan was all about. It was to look at how do we support development and some neighborhood services and creating more mixed use opportunities where you can have your residential with your commercial in your neighborhood, with that you can walk to without having to get in your car and drive, you know, a few miles away to access some of the services that you want. We know that growth is here and it's happening, but I'm not convinced we need to continue to do that at the expense of our residential neighborhoods. And how far is that reach where you say justifying conditions are what you use? I remember a rezoning in Councilman Lopez's district where because we have a light rail stop a few blocks away. That was used to justify going into a block that was a few blocks in from a commercial street right in the middle of a residential block to resolve. And then what happens? That domino effect. Right. I mean, I see Holly as a commercial corridor, but I also am concerned about. That that domino effect that we've seen happen in many of our neighborhoods. And it actually started in the Cherry Creek community. We've seen it in Sloan's Lake. We've seen it in Highlands. We've seen it in Jefferson Park, we've seen it in Park Hill all across the city. It's happening. And does that mean all development is bad? No, not necessarily. Because where we have density, we're getting greater services. Right. For our communities. But it's it's how we do it and ensure that bless you, that it's it's blended into our community and it's not. Having a degradation effect on the rest of the character of our neighborhood. So for all these reasons, I'm really struggling with being able to, you know, give a yes to this particular development. And part of what's what I'm struggling with is the fact that if you look at the west side of town, we're going to see well in excess of 500 units, 500 acres of development that is going to be happening basically west of I-25, west of, you know, along the federal boulevard corridor. That will stretch all the way to Councilman Flynn's district. And these are huge acres of of parcels where we're going to be seeing hundreds and hundreds of of. Square footage, thousands and millions of square feet of development. And we have to, as a city, look at the impact to our infrastructure. Can our sewer systems handle the volume of what we're going to put into these areas? Can our our our, you know, all of our utilities, our roads, our highway system, I-25, is already congested. And the plan they're doing right now with the Powell study does not go all the way to I-70, where we're going to see 43 acres at the Denver Post site alone. And that doesn't include all the rest of the sites in that same area that we've been rezoning. And we've got three of them that were just filed last week with more yet to come. So as a city council, we don't we don't dove into the details like the previous council that I served on used to, because that was delegated under the 2010 zoning change to the planning department. And the planning office gets to the planning board, gets to weigh in on some of this when it comes to them. But we don't get that level of detail. We don't get to vote on that level of detail. And I'm concerned that, you know, there's no predictability for the neighborhoods and to a large degree, there's no predictability even for the developers, because they come in, they get the form base right, the scale of what they're asking for. But then it's our planning department that gets to make the decisions on the details. And so for all these reasons, and I've been really vocal about the fact that. The way that the form based zoning works doesn't necessarily work in the best interest of our neighborhoods and the people who are planning these projects. And so for all those reasons tonight, I just am not comfortable voting for this one to move forward tonight. Thank you. Gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Ortega. Right, seeing no. Other. Comments. Councilmember since community planning and Development has determined that the requirement for a legal protest signatures of the owners of at least 20% of the properties within 200 feet outside of the subject area has been met with petition signatures representing 27%. This means ten affirmative votes instead of the standard seven affirmative votes of council are required to pass this bill tonight. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 1346. Sussman, I. Black eye. Brooks Espinosa. No. Quinn, no. Gilmore Eye. Herndon Cashman. No. Kenny Lopez. No. New Ortega? No. Mr. President. Madam Secretary, with close the voting announced results. Eight eyes. Five knees. Eight eyes. Five knees. Since it needed ten affirmative votes and it only got eight then. Councilor Bill 1348 has failed. We do have two more public hearings tonight. But I will I will ask that if you are not saying for both of those, you please be quiet as you're leaving so that we can get on to those in the people who have been waiting a really long time for their chance at the microphone here. So we are going to get right into it. Councilman Herndon, will you please put Council Bill 1387 on the floor?