A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 300-306 Elati Street in Baker. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property located at 300-306 Elati Street from U-RH-2.5 to U-MX-2 (urban row home to urban mixed-use) in Council District 7. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 5-16-17.
Two nays. Counsel Bill 497 has passed. All right, we have. Councilwoman Kenney, will you please put on Council Bill for 98? Yes, Mr.. President, I move that council. Bill 498 be placed upon final consideration and do. Pass. It has been moved. It has been moved in second at the public hearing for council bill 498 is open. May we have a staff report. Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. And Counsel Scott Robinson again with community planning and development. This is a request to rezone 300 to 306 North L.A. Street from you rh h 2.52 You and X to property is located in Council District seven in the Baker neighborhood. It's at the corner of LRT Street and Third Avenue in the Baker Historic District. Property is about 3600 square feet. There's an existing commercial building on site and the applicant is requesting to rezone and to allow the existing commercial uses in the commercial building to continue to operate without having to go through additional processes by rezoning from you. RH 2.5 The Urban Neighborhood Context Real House two and a half storey maximum height to you Annex two Urban Neighborhood Context Mixed Use two storey maximum height. Property is surrounded by you are h 2.5, although there are a few small annex to properties scattered throughout the bigger. They just don't show up on this map. The property Baker neighborhood is mostly residential mixed of residential with single family, duplex and multifamily units. Although, as I mentioned, there are scattered commercial corners throughout the neighborhood, including this one and the one directly across the street on the west side of LRT and into to the south is the Fairmont School. You can see the subject property there in the center, a two story brick commercial building and the one across the street there on the bottom. Right. Otherwise, residential buildings shown at the top and the school at the bottom there. This application went to a planning board on April 19th, was approved by nine oh vote. Two members of the public spoke in support and also went to the Lands Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on May 16th. You know, in your packet you have a letter of support from the Baker Historic Neighborhood Association, and I believe the applicants also passed out some other letters of support that have been received. As before to approve a rezoning, the city must find that these five criteria have been met. The first is consistency with adopted plans. There are three relevant plans for this property. The first is comprehensive plan 2000. In the staff report, staff describes how the proposed rezoning meets these strategies, mostly related to re-use of existing buildings and creating mixed use neighborhoods. Blueprint Denver from 2002 designates the future concept land used for this Single-Family duplex, which calls for primarily residential but with some complimentary small scale commercial use such as this building currently has. It's also an area of stability which says in some cases it may be appropriate to change the zoning in an area to create better match between existing land uses and zoning, which is the proposal here. Both LRT and third are on designated locals. The Baker Neighborhood Plan is from 2003. You'll notice in the map here that north is to the right and its property is designated a single family and row house residential district. There are multiple recommendations for that district, but mostly it's to rehabilitate and reuse existing commercial structures that provide neighborhood services. Which this proposed rezoning would allow. So staff finds that the proposed rezoning is consistent with adopted plans. The second criterion is uniformity of district regulations. Staff finds that the proposed rezoning would result in uniform application of the units to zone district. The third criterion is to further the public health, safety and welfare of the city. Staff finds that this application would do so by implementing the city's adopted plans and encouraging reinvestment in the area and these businesses allowing them to continue. The fourth criterion is justifying circumstances. There's a fairly lengthy discussion of justifying circumstances in the staff report. I'll be happy to answer any questions about that if they come up. But basically, staff finds that the proposed rezoning is justified by the change in changing conditions in the area. There's been investment in the bakery neighborhood, especially along the edges. Increased density that results in increased demand for these kind of neighborhood services. So the rezoning to max two to allow the existing commercial uses to continue. It's justified by these changes. And the fifth criterion is consistency with the neighborhood context zone, district purpose and intent. Staff finds that the proposed rezoning would allow businesses and uses consistent with the urban neighborhood context and the annex to zoned district purpose and intent. Staff finds all five criteria are met and recommends approval. I'll be happy to answer any questions. Great. Thank you, Scott. We now have let's see here. Four speakers Heidi Martin, Lucia Browne, Sarah Martin and Jeff Martin. Please come up to the front here. Heidi. Martin, you will be first and you have 6 minutes. Hi, I'm Heidi Martin. I live at 641 South Pearl Street and my office is at 302 L.A. Street. First of all, I'd like to thank Scott and all the city staff for helping me through this process. Speaker Neighborhood Association Neighbors, my attorney Allison with Hutton. Johnson They've been very helpful through this process since the building at 306 300 to 306, a lot was erected in 1936. It served as commercial purposes, pharmacy feed, store, sewing shop, retail shop and office. And currently the tenants are waffle up, which is a restaurant Blackbrook Art Gallery, which is an art gallery and Intelligent Investments, which is my office. The reason I'd like to change the zoning is the zip pin process is quite onerous, time consuming. So I have to go through that for every new tenant, even if it's the same use. It takes me several months to get through that process and identify a new tenant, so the zoned of mixed use will facilitate attracting and keeping tenants in that space. I purchased the building in May of 2000 for my family and I just saw the the beauty in it, even though it was considered an area of blight. And we had heard earlier from Councilman Lopez about a unit that was in his neighborhood that was nicely developed. We were inspired by what we saw, even though it was in terrible shape, and brought it back through the historic neighborhood association to bring it to what it had originally been designed for. The tax bill is now ten times the the ten times the amount that it was when I purchased the building in May of 2004. So I am paying commercial taxes on the property. I received Mayor's Office of Economic Development Funds to help renovate the building with commercial commercial components. I put a new electrical lighting, plumbing, floor tiles, new roof doors, all renovations to maintain the historic character of the building. In connection with the rezoning, I met with the Baker Neighborhood Association on numerous times neighbors. Also, you have letters of support from neighbors and the Baker Neighborhood Association in your packet and the tenants also support the use as you Memex to zone. Similar properties in this neighborhood were zoned residential earlier and were all developed earlier as commercial buildings as well as mine. But in 2010 they were all changed to you imx to zone and I just could not figure out why my building which was like those buildings at 61 west second to 80 Gallup pay go five or one west first and 303 West first. We're all zoned you max two but mine remained residential zone. Um, we've enjoyed being part of the historic neighborhood. We're so proud of the building we created and maintain rezoning would make it appropriate for the building type and I wouldn't have to go through the zip code process anymore. So getting new tenants in and keeping new tenants would be very helpful to me. It would save us money as far as having to go through these transitions which are time consuming and it would be able enable us to redirect funds to maintain and improve the building. I thank you all for the consideration and I respectfully request your approval and would like to use any time remaining for questions. Great. Thank you, Ms.. Martin. We'll call you up if we have questions. Let's go, Brown. Hello, everyone. My name is Lucia Brown. I live at 132 West Fourth Avenue in the Baker neighborhood. And I have been active in the neighborhood for 20 years. And as Heidi was saying, the building has operated with businesses since it was built. And the neighborhood loves the businesses that have been in there. Humble pie, waffle up the gallery. And the fact that it's not zoned unmixed to now was simply, in our opinion, an oversight on both the city's part and the zoning committee and was unintended excuse me, unintentional. The light commercial use of this site is congruous with the vision of the city for more walkable and livable neighborhoods. As a former president of the and active member of B and A, we welcome not having to go through this process every single time a new tenant goes in. We got a lot of stuff going on in Baker and we would really rather spend our time dealing with these other issues than dealing with yet another business that wants to come into this property. So we fully support this zoning change and I hope you'll vote yes. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Brown. Sarah Martin. Jeff Martin. Once you both come to the front here. And Sarah Martin, you are first. You have 3 minutes. So I love. To see your name. First. My name's Sara murray and I live at 641 South Pearl Street. And I love living in an urban neighborhood. There are tons of different little businesses nearby where I can walk to, such as over. It's a restaurant and I can go there and a place that I can go get my bike pumped up. And it's I they bought the building two months after I was born. So I've seen this building go from start to finish. And I know that this would be very helpful to get tenants in and out of there quickly and make it easier on everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Good job. All right, Jeff Martin. I thank you for allowing me to speak. Once again, like to reiterate what Heidi mentioned before. It is very time consuming and it takes up a lot of her time and also. Takes up a lot of my time too, as well. I'm the person who has to put the. The signs and the building. And what? How many times have we done this? Five times in the past couple of years. So please think about her time and putting money back into the building. It will make the neighborhood much better and will make the process, I think a lot. Streamline in the future. Thank you. Thank you. All right. This concludes our speakers. Are there any questions for members of council? All right, CNN, the public hearing for counsel. Bill 498 is close. Comments by members of Council Counsel Clarke. Thank you, Mr. President. Just wanted to thank everybody for coming down to speak on this, especially you, for taking time out of your night to represent the neighborhood association. Always very appreciated of the neighborhood voice live and in person. And I know it's not easy getting down here. So thank you. And Sarah. Yes. Awesome. Thank you for coming down and sharing your voice as a voice that we could use a lot more of down here at city council. A voice like yours. So thank you for coming down. You know, I think there's one for me is pretty straightforward. A mistake of some sort was made somewhere along the line. A property that should have been commercial was zoned in a way that allows commercial use, but only jumping through a lot of hoops. That causes a lot of pain and suffering for the the owner and for the neighborhood association. And there is a lot going on in Baker right now. I can understand why zip in on change from humble pie to waffle up is not a high priority here, especially when it's not necessary. And so I think that this is a slam dunk. Open and shut case. Thank you to CPD for the work on it and I would ask all my colleagues to please vote yes. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Clark. Councilman Cashman. Yeah, thank you, Mr. President. I just want to say, I know this building very well. It is, as Councilman Clark. Said, to think of it as anything other than commercial. I mean, it just screams out the period that it was built in. It fits in so beautifully with the area. So I look forward to supporting this. And if if we'd have had a gold buzzer, I'd have hit. It as soon as she started speaking. So I concur. Councilwoman Cashin, any other comments? This is this is a project I'll be supporting for the for the obvious reasons stated above, and because this meets all of our standards. But I really am doing it because it was so incredible. And I hope I hope that we have more young people like Sarah advocating in their neighborhoods. All right. With that, Madam Secretary, roll call. Black eye. Clark. I. Espinosa. I. Gilmore. I. Herndon. I. Cashman. I can. Lopez. I knew. Ortega. I. Susman. Mr. President. I saw the voting and not the results. 12 Eyes. 12 Eyes Council Bill 498 has passed. Congratulations. On Monday, June 26, 2017, Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 613, amending the individual Denver landmark designation by reducing the size of the landmark boundary for properties located at 1943 1946, West 33rd Avenue in Council District one.