A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 2901 Broadway in Five Points. Rezones property at 2901 Broadway from I-B UO-2 and R-MU-30 with Waivers and Conditions to C-MX-16, (industrial and residential, mixed-use to commercial, mixed-use) in Council 9. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 6-6-17.
Council is reconvene. We have three public hearings this evening. Speakers should begin their remarks by telling council their names and cities of residents and if they feel comfortable doing so, their home address. If you're here to answer questions only when your name is called, come to the podium. State your name and know that you're available for questions of council. Speakers will have 3 minutes unless another has yielded his or her time, which would result in a total of 6 minutes on the presentation monitors to your right and left on the wall you will see their time count down speakers must stay on the topic of the hearing. Ms. Director comments to the Council as a whole and please refrain from profane or obscene speech. Direct your comments again to council as a whole. Okay. And no individual attacks, please, councilman. Oh, never mind. We're okay. Okay. Council Lopez, will you please put Council Bill 615 on the floor. It is the president of the council bill 615 to please two one panel final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. Public hearing for council bill 615 is now open. May we have the staff report? Thank you, Mr. President, and Councilor Scott Robinson with Community Planning and Development. This is a request to rezone 2901 Broadway from I.B.M. to an RMU 30 with waivers and conditions to see Annex 16. This and the next case. Right next to each other. But there are two separate applications. There'll be two presentations. The property is in Council District nine in the Five Points neighborhood. In the Navajo Market Development at the southwest end of the Brighton Boulevard corridor. Property is about an acre and a half. There's currently a 29,000 square foot industrial structure on the property. The applicant is requesting the rezoning to redevelop the site. The majority of the property is zoned oh two and then a small portion at the northeast corner of the property is review 30 with waivers and conditions. Which is the ambiguity of the Industrial Zoning Review. 30 years old code. Former Chapter 59 residential mixed use zoning and then see Annex 16 is urban center context mixed use with a 16 storey maximum height. Surrounding properties are either remunerated with waivers in conditions or B you go to as well. The waivers and conditions that apply to the small portion zones ami 30 limit the height to 75 feet. There's a 12% minimum open space within the general market GDP area and a few other things. There's a GDP, a general development plan that covers the majority of the general market area. Scott, can you hold on just a second, Madam Secretary? We are not finding this PowerPoint in our. In our slide deck. Do we know if it's. Okay. You can see if I'm just looking at the staff report. Okay. So members of council, you can either look on this slide deck in front of you or there's a staff report that you can pull up as well. Okay. Go ahead. I'm sorry. So there is a general development plan for the general market area that covers the majority of site. And that was done in conjunction with the waivers and conditions zoning in 2007. But this property is not actually covered by the GDP. So there is a slight mismatch in where the zoning was applied and where the general development plan was applied. So a portion of the zoning with waivers and conditions was applied to this property. But the general development plan was not. As I mentioned, the site is currently has an industrial use. There are new apartments in the target market area just across the way to the north railroad track to the south and southeast and then vacant land on the east and west. You can see the new apartments there on the top left. The existing building there in the center and the railroad tracks down there on the bottom. Right. This application was reviewed by the Planning Board on May 17th. They voted 7 to 2 to recommend approval. There was no public comment at that meeting. I also went to the Land Use Transportation Infrastructure Committee on June six and we received no written public comment on this application. So, as you know, to approve a rezoning, the city must find that these five criteria are met. The first is consistency with adopt plans. There are three adopted plans that apply to this property. The first is comprehensive plan 2000. As described and staff report, staff has found that the application complies with these four strategies from the comp plan, mostly relating to mixed use development and redevelopment. The second plan is Blueprint Denver from 22. The plan designates the future land use concept for this property as mixed use, which calls for a mix of employment and residential at higher intensity than other areas in the city. It's also designated an area of change. Blueprint. Denver also includes street classifications. However, a waterway, the street on which this property sits, did not exist in 22 when the plan was adopted. So it doesn't have a designation in Blueprint Denver. But looking at the other local streets within that did exist in 2002, which were designated and designated locals. We assume that move all the way would be designated local as well. Which intended to provide access to individual properties and connect them to collector in arterial streets. Broadway and Brighton to the east are just a mixed use arterial. The Allegheny is a residential collector and that connects to Park Avenue, which is also an arterial. The River North Plan from 23 includes specific recommendations for the general market area, also designated as residential mixed use, which says both residential mixed use and commercial mixed use zoning are appropriate and calls for a compact, mixed use pedestrian friendly development in the area and does not include any specific height recommendations for the property. So Steph believes that the proposed Connect 16 zoning is consistent with the adopted plans and finds the first criterion met. The second criterion is uniformity of district district regulations. Steph finds that the proposed rezoning will result in the uniform absolute application of the annexed 16 zoning. The third criterion is to further the public health, safety and general welfare of the city. Steph finds that the proposed rezoning will do so by implementing the city's adopted plans. The fourth criterion is for justifying circumstance. Steph finds that there are changes in changing conditions in the inarguably development area and in the broader Brighton Boulevard corridor to justify the rezoning in this case. And the fifth criterion is consistency with the neighborhood context, zone, district purpose and intent. This is where the planning board had some discussion when they looked at it. Staff finds that the proposed rezoning is consistent with the purpose and intent of the scenic 16 zone district seem like 16 does call for development served primarily by major arterials . And while this property does not have direct access to a major arterial, the area is served by, as I mentioned, both Broadway and Park Avenue, and the locals provide pretty quick access to both of those arterials. It's also well-served by transit and has good bike infrastructure, with both the South Platte Trail and the new cycle tracks that are going in on Bryant Boulevard. So that staff finds that the intent of the Connect 16 zone district is met and that all five criteria have been met and therefore staff recommends approval. I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Scott. Great presentation to the point. All right. We have three speakers this evening, if you would, please. Yes. If you please sit up on this front bench when I call your name. James West. Dudley Simmons and Chase Hill. James West. Your first. You have 3 minutes. I'm James West. My address is 24 2017, number 316 here in Denver. I'm just the applicant here to answer questions. Great. Thank you. Dudley Smith. Simmons. Dudley Simmons. My address is 24 2017, Suite 3016. Here to answer. Questions as well. Great. And Chase Hill. Yes. My name is Chase Hill with Alcohol Residential. My address is 2420 West 17th Street, Suite 3016 here in Denver. I'm here to answer questions as well. Thanks. Thank you. You guys practice your speeches together for your candidate, okay, Councilwoman Canete. Thank you, Mr. President. I was going to ask if community development could come up again and talk about the slide that flashed on the screen really quickly. And it said that one of the conditions of the site was that there was a requirement for an affordable housing plan. But I don't remember you discussing that in any detail. So I wanted to ask if you can please go into as much detail as possible about that current requirement and then what the new zoning is carrying over. Right? So this was for the portion that was zoned AMI 30 with waivers and conditions, which was just this the small portion over here. So this was a part of the target market general development plan. When I was adopted, there was a requirement for a affordable housing plan to be put in place before the first development was approved and constructed in the target market. So that already took place with several developments having already been constructed in target market. The affordable housing plan was pretty similar to what the the affordable housing requirement was before the adoption of the fee last year. So is that for sale? If there was for sale product built in the general market area, a certain portion of it had to be affordable. And so so far there hasn't been any affordable housing or for sale housing built in the general market. But this property being re zoned out of that small portion that was covered by that being rezoning out of that will now have to comply with the current affordable housing requirements. Great. Thank you. And if I can ask someone from the team, you guys can decide who's appropriate, what your intentions are. The current ordinance, you know, has a fee per square foot, which obviously for the industrial and commercial floors that you'll be doing in your building would would would be appropriate. But for the residential, it allows to perform on site and build the units on site. Have you given any thought to how you plan to approach that? Yeah. Can you repeat the second part of that question? Yeah. So the new linkage fee that the council passed last year applies and that there's a per square foot fee on all development regardless of the type. But if you're building residential units, you could choose to include affordable units instead of paying the fee, you'd get credit towards the fee. And I was just curious if you have had some conversation yet about how you're going to go about approaching affordable housing in the project if you're planning just to pay the fee or you're thinking about building some affordable units. Rates are currently only for multifamily. It's a dollar 50 per square foot. So for the we're calling the phase three, which is the western side, it's about a 250 to anticipate it to be about 25,000 square foot sites that be about at $375,000 fee. On the fourth phase, the eastern side, that's probably about the same 200 to 200000 square feet. Again, a $385,000 fee. So combined $750,000 linkage fee. And currently that's what we intend to do. Obviously, we know that was formally adopted at the end of last year and we intend to pay that, obviously to adhere to that. Okay. I just I would just well, it's not comments. So you could talk to the department about the possibility of including units. I encourage you to think about that. Well, thank you. Let me just say that in Austin, Texas, the requirement is actually inclusive, affordable housing instead of a linkage fee. And a lot of developers and a lot of constituents and citizens of Austin are actually more in support of the linkage fee. The problem we've had and projects in Austin too that come to mind where we did have 10% affordable at 60% of in the thigh one and the other one is 10% and 80% of it. So we actually had a hard time leasing those units even at the affordable rates. And I'm not sure if it's that they're one and two bedroom units in the locations or the amenities aren't attractive to those people that that could choose to live in the projects. So we've actually had vacancy in those units, surprisingly. So we think the linkage fee is actually a better solution because it allows you, the city of Denver, to take the funds into the paid into that that linkage fee account or fund and decide where you want to build affordable housing, how you want to build it, what kind of amenities you want, include kind of finishes and , and really have a project at a location of your choosing to address that need. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Yeah, thank you. Can someone can each councilman as well? Yeah. Along that line, is there some documented stuff or is that just purely anecdotal? In Austin, Texas, or in Austin. You want me to file documentation that we did that did the timbers and affordable it to projects in Austin? Yeah, but is that true for all these projects that have. Been recalled or I can only think of the two that we've that we built in the past three years. But I've heard that's the case that other projects as well, surprisingly, that when there is an affordable component, you think there would be a line out the door to live in those units and the wait list for those units. And in fact, that hasn't been the case. Again, both those were urban infill projects. So some of those affordable units were 600 square foot one bedrooms, some were 900 square foot two bedrooms. And perhaps that's not the right unit mix or unit size for to address that need. So that could be an issue you would have here in Denver, I would imagine, if you try to do the same thing. Sorry. The the the. And this is helping me sort of understand the the sort of the option to continue to buy out rather than to provide the. Do you think. Well, I'd be curious to. To. Councilman, there's so many things you can think about. Come right back. Yeah, that'd be great. Sorry. Councilman Cash. Okay. So quick question. Actually, Scott, let me have you answer this. So we're rezoning this to 16. Correct. Currently, we're in conversations coming before this council of the 30th and Blake Station Air Station area. They would not have to comply with the design standard. Right. This this property is not included within the 30th and Blake. That's right. It's right outside. Okay. Sorry. Sorry about that, huh? Let me just ask let me ask some one of you all to address this question. This process at the rhino area has been through for the last two years, looked at addressing affordability, what you guys just talked about. But it also looked at design standards. And so we will be passing hopefully through this council in October, November design standards and guidelines. And just we're really concerned about that just because, you know, we have national and international developers now coming in and throwing up a lot of stuff. And so just wondering, have you all looked at what the standards will be and have you thought about if you'll be able to comply at all to those standards? Yes. We have looked at the proposed standards that are that are on the books. And for the most part, we do believe that we would comply. We're looking forward to seeing how those hashed out. The one stipulation. I think, that's in the proposed. Design standards is the ground floor having a ceiling height of, I believe it's 18 to 25 feet, which is a little bit awkward for residential ground floor units, unless there's a mezzanine allowed. But still, it's still within our. Intention to comply. With the adopted plans, assuming that there's also no conflict between the design standards and the normal. Marketplace. Okay. So just just real quick, just the mass reduction, you know, at the top end and also retail on the bottom or activation, I guess. So those those two would comply. Correct. And residential really counts as an active street activation. All right. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Oh, sorry I missed you because you can go. Okay. Thanks, Mr. President. Just briefly, Scott, could you discuss the transit accessibility here? Because I'm fairly familiar with the routes there, and that's kind of sitting in an island where you can't really get to Broadway because it's down in the in the cut and union stations a mile away, the commuter rail platform. Right. So there's there's no transit directly within the general market area. Right. But as you mentioned, there is transit on Brighton, Broadway, and there's a stop right up here at 28th. So that's a pretty short walk up to there. And then there's also a stop up at Warren Park that serves a lot of. That's yeah, that's a very robust one on Park Avenue. Right. The one on Broadway serves one rally. Around. 48 that has 30 minute headways during the peak and one hour in the off peak. Right. So just one in one route on Broadway there, but quite a few there on park. Okay. So the transit accessibility is the I believe it's a little over a half a mile walk to Park Avenue. I think it's less than half a mile to park. Okay. I mean, it's just. Sorry. That's just up right here. Right up the ramp. Just. Just a little cheat here. I did the Google walking distance while we were talking. So it's about a half a mile. Okay. I'll take your word for it. That's all. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Councilman Espinosa. All right. I think I got it now. So the 10% that Austin requires, is it do they provide assistance when you do that, or is it strictly on your guys's nickel? Our responsibility. Okay. Do they offer any reduction in that percentage if you increase the number of bedrooms per unit? They're learning a lot of lessons right now. Our project in the East Charleston Core Zone was one of the very first projects to have this inclusive, affordable housing. Our second project, called Burnham Marketplace, is the fifth or sixth. They're learning as they go. Initially, they did not have you allocate between ones to threes. So it left the developers the option to put all the affordable units in their smallest units, which obviously is not not right and not what the community needs for affordable housing. But so they solved that problem. But it is entirely up to the developer to provide the affordable housing and in proportion to their unit mix. Or if their unit mixes 70% ones, 30% to use, their affordable units have to be 70% ones, 30% twos as well. So I appreciate your candor. I appreciate my colleagues entertaining this because I am I am actively trying to sort of structure something to address gentrification, particularly in northwest Denver that is, I think tends to be very pro developer. But I want to make sure that we're thinking about it in ways that get outcomes that we're trying to get, which is people actually using marketing of the units. Do you have to self market or is there a centralized service that with Austin housing of some sort? You know. In in the projects in. Austin we've teamed up with a local housing authority that's helped with that that the residents and make sure that they're qualified to meet those and as units were tied down for 40 years. One one thing I want to address also what's up for consideration in Austin right now with their new. Zoning. Is the planning commission has been considering in lieu of a certain number of units the 10% number that you could do, a 10% of the gross square footage as an option to to be able to play with larger unit sizes, for example, if that's what's deemed necessary. So if you could please contact my office after this, I'd like to throw our concept out for you guys to review, because the idea is, is that we'd have our market developers doing affordable housing. If it makes if it can make sense to particular to this, then it looks like through the documentation that the application was sort of ruminating and being applied to somewhere in February of this year, there are 9 to 6 to nine nanos, depending on sort of the veracity of the R.A. that we're talking about. When did you guys do the outreach to the R.A.? We met with Councilman Brooks six months ago, seven months ago, and started the process of reaching out to all our no's shortly thereafter. So I would say the first quarter of this year, I think there were nine or nos. We reached out to all of them, had conversations. A couple of some were less responsive, as you might expect. But we did have several conversations with around our district as an example, and so we've reached out to all those groups. So was it before or after the application was filed? It would have been. I think it was right after the application was filed, we started reaching out to them after the application was filed. Okay. This is how sorry. I'm looking at my own notes. Yes, I know. That was. That's great. Well, and how how would you characterize the nature of that input? Obviously, no one's here in opposition. So I would.