A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 7900 East Colfax Avenue in East Colfax. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property from E-MS-3 to E-MS-5 (main street, 3 stories to main street 5 stories), located at 7900 East Colfax Avenue in Council District 5. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 10-23-18.
Speakers should begin their remarks by telling council their names and cities of residence and if they feel comfortable doing so, their home addresses. If you are here to answer questions only when your name is called, please come to the podium, 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 must stay 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 the Council as a whole and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. Councilman Flynn, will you please put Council Bill 1163 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bill 1163 series of 2018 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded and the public hearing for Council Bill 1163 is open. May we have the staff report? Good evening, Liz Wagle with Community Planning and Development. I will be providing the staff report. We do have two applications before you today for city owned property on East Colfax and Rezonings from M.S. three times five. The first application is at 7900 East Colfax Avenue. This is in Council District five in the East Colfax neighborhood. The site is located at the corner of Trenton and Colfax Avenue. It's approximately 3000 square feet and it's currently vacant, as I mentioned, is owned by the city and county in Denver. And the intention is to redevelop it with affordable housing. And the proposed rezoning is from Urban Edge Main Street District of three stories to Urban Edge Main Street Five Stories. The Main Street districts are intended to allow a mix of uses that promote safe, active and pedestrian scaled commercial areas. The subject site is currently a three story district. It's surrounded by other three story Main Street districts, and there are pockets of five story Main Street in this area of Colfax. To the south is a two unit district, and then there are additional single unit zoning around it. Here you can see the subject site, which I mentioned is currently vacant to the north along Colfax to have a mix of auto repair and commercial uses to the south, you have some single multi-unit and duplex residential in a similar mix to the north. On the other side of Colfax, this shows the subject site. Here you can see the predominantly low scale uses along Colfax with surface parking and the residential uses. Here you can see the site on the top right corner and which has surface parking on it. To the north you have a medical use and auto repair use. To the west, a restaurant and surface parking to the south, low scale residential to the east, another auto use and then additional residential uses in the area. The planning board heard this application on October 3rd and voted unanimously to recommend approval. We're also two public speakers in favor at that hearing this mentality on October 23rd and is before council tonight. And we have a position statement in support from the East Kovacs Neighborhood Association and from the Facts Partnership, registered neighborhood organization. And we did receive one comment in opposition from a neighbor of the property who's concerned about height adjacent to her property. And in addition to this process, the Office of Economic Development did attend three community meetings in the neighborhood as well. We will I will review the five criteria and the Denver zoning code for Rezonings. The first is consistency with adopted plans of which I will cover. Comprehensive Plan 2000 Blueprint Denver. The East Montclair East Colfax Neighborhood Plan and our housing plan, which is not adopted as a supplement to the comprehensive plan, but it was adopted by City Council earlier this year. First, we do find that the application is consistent with a number of planned 2000 strategies. Most most of these speaking to encouraging mixed use development, supporting our business corridors and encouraging intel development. Blueprint Denver calls out this area of Colfax as a commercial corridor, which are linear business districts and also an area of change where we're looking to direct growth. Colfax itself as a mixed use arterial in Trenton is on designated local east. Colfax is an enhanced transit quarter, which are areas that we are also looking to direct to mixed use development. The East Montclair East Colfax Neighborhood Plan from 1994 is still in place in this area. It envisions an improved Colfax Avenue with more business opportunity. More reinvestment of this area is called out as the business area, and it shows multi-family residential adjacent to the south. This neighborhood plan does not provide direct height guidance in the area, but the neighborhood plan does have general statements, again, encouraging redevelopment at intersections along Colfax, bringing buildings closer to the street, which is consistent with the main street zoning, recommending better compatibility with residential and commercial uses and encouraging less dependency on the vehicular road trips. A more mixed use development that people can walk and bike to. Again, the main street districts are consistent with this vision and they do also include building form regulations that ensure that compatibility with adjacent residential neighborhoods. Lastly, we have our Housing Inclusive Denver plan, which was adopted earlier this year, which specifically speaks to leveraging publicly owned land for affordable housing and also creating affordable housing in an opportunity areas. And this rezoning would facilitate additional housing units in an area of opportunity and the leveraging of that publicly owned land. So CBD staff does find that the rezoning is consistent with adopted plans and further will result in uniform application of zoned district building form, use and design regulations. It will implement our further public health, safety and welfare by implementing our adopted plans and facilitating building forms and site designs that will improve the pedestrian environment of application. Notes and CBD staff agrees that there are a number of changed and changing conditions in the area. This includes the closure of the bar in the current vague condition of making condition of the site, the city's purchase and intention to increase housing opportunities in this area. Our growth in job centers along the 15 and 15 hours, a new housing that has continued to develop in Stapleton for similar mixed use, affordable housing development at Pontiac and Colfax. And our planned investment both in a bike lane on Syracuse and the Bus Rapid Transit Project on Colfax. Staff finds that this reasoning is also consistent with the neighborhood context zone, district purpose and intent, and that the means specifically the Main Street districts, are intended to promote this safe, active, pedestrian scale environment and that the M5 district is intended to be applied to collectors and arterials. So with that, CPD staff recommends approval based on finding that all the review criteria have been met. Thank you. I do also have Megan Yankey here from the Office of Economic Development, who can say a few words if that's an appropriate. Hello. Megan Yang from Office of Economic Development. I just wanted to point out a couple of things. The city of Denver purchased this parcel in 2017 for the purpose of creating an affordable housing project, specifically as permanent support excuse me, permanent supportive housing. We intended to develop affordable housing on this site associated with the goals of the five year housing plan, which call for permanent supportive housing is one of the goals. The city is focused on developing housing near transit and the parcel is located within a quarter mile of the planned bus rapid transit station at the corner of Winter and Colfax. This location obviously offers some excellent opportunities for affordable housing and transit oriented development. And finally, the city has issued an RFP to identify a partner to develop the site in accordance with the city's vision and needs expressed by the neighborhood. The city is specifically looking for an experienced developer to provide permanent supportive housing on the site to meet the goals of the plan. Some available to answer any questions you have on this topic. Thank you very much. We do have four individuals signed up to speak this evening. So if we could make a little bit of room in this front bench and if you're speaking, it'd be great if you could come up to the front bench, because when I call your name, step right up to the podium as your time will start to elapse. First up, we have Susan Leahy. Good evening. I am standing up here. As a citizen and resident of East Colfax, not as. An employee of OED. For just a moment, I'm normally sitting over here. As a city employee, but I wanted to take just a moment to put my my $0.02 worth in of support for. These two projects. I've lived in the East. Colfax neighborhood for more than nine years, and I want to thank Chris Herndon and Mary. Beth for their tireless support and. Championship of East Colfax. What I call our little. Stretch of heaven. Between Lowry and Stapleton, our neighborhood is undergoing an awful lot of. Change, as many are. Housing prices, of course, going up quite a bit of transition. One thing that. Doesn't change is how neighborly and caring we are. I think it has something. To do with being low income and traditionally. High crime. We are very. Connected to each other, my neighbors and I and my experience in life. I've never been through the kind of positive neighborhood spirit that exists out on East Colfax. And I do want to say that we're grateful for the city's investment in these two projects. It's going to make a huge difference. It's been at. Least. Six years since the PHENIX on the facts and the Ace hardware store, which are back west. On Pontiac and Poplar, have been. Built. So we're we're excited about this. It's refreshing. And I'm proud to say that we don't have a lot of NIMBYism in East Colfax because we. Understand low income. Our neighbors live in transitional housing in the motels. Neighbors that we interact with. We already understand their challenges and we empathize. So there there is not likely to be a. Lot of speaking against these projects. We're all excited about it. We feel like. We know these people already and perhaps some of them are our neighbors now and will remain so when these projects are complete. As a transit corridor, of course it can't be beat. And finally again. The projects will lift up residents and the neighborhood as a whole. We look forward to. Both the groundbreaking and the subsequent ribbon cutting. Thank you. Thank you. And could you officially state your name for the record? Sorry, Susan Leigh. Leigh, 16 seconds. Is for saying your last name wrong. I'm sorry about that. That's okay. Thank you very much. Next up, David River. Hello. David Roybal reside at 742 West Ninth Avenue. Also a city council candidate for District three. Awesome plan to hear about affordable housing and I hope it brings a safe haven, you know, for people get moved out and to let them know that East Colfax belongs to them, they don't have to move to Aurora. And I wish this example was played in West Colfax because I know that when I go to East Colfax, that's the last Denver that I know that I see my people, my friends in West Colfax Day, so much so, I hope with this affordable housing plan that, you know, it could set the example of how how much variety and keep low income and middle class. And somewhere we have to bring bring the divide and bridge the gap and bring Lowry and those neighborhoods together. And, you know, when you go there at night, it's not a nice place to go at night. It's probably the only place I go in Denver that I get messed with. And I just want to put that in there because you might see it on the crime and safety in the stats. But no, you know, it's the it's the last of the last of the affordable hotels, you know, the cheapest hotels in Denver. And I hope we brings more opportunities for for the low income people that are there, more programs, more nonprofits I used to go to and made a CD out there on Claremont. So, you know, there they have the access to that. And then the 15 that connect straight to the Sun Valley to human service. So, you know, it's a good place for it, for access and services and hopefully, you know, have some family to stay there. Sounds like a good place. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Chairman CQ. Yes. Good evening. Thanks to colleagues and citizens representative here at city council. I represent the Black Star Action Movement. Who are the voice and. Action folks that represent poor working poor homeless senior citizens use. And the handicapped, the oppressed, the ones that are most likely not heard or considered, especially in the steam body where we have no seat of power or influence. Nobody up there among you are poor. No one is homeless. And yet I know from the character and the sense of folks here, you have a sincere desire to make this city work for everybody. So this one right here is important because we're talking about affordable housing. And we've got to be real clear about what that means to poor people. That means housing that we can't afford housing that well, except section eight. And families of one parent. I was born and raised here in Denver, 67 years. We're all familiar with Colfax and the owners it has on it that when you bring poor people in there, we bring problems. We bring crime increase. We bring folks that are not necessarily considered socially acceptable like addicts. But women of distinction who are using the only tools they have in order to feed their family and the kids that you'll call illegal prostitution. Return my folks who have to survive. And it's a life and death thing every moment of the day. And you have nothing for them in this ordinance. And why? Look inside this audience. There's no diversity here. There's all white supremacy. White exclusive folk who want a deal on what they're doing. Yeah, we pay taxes, too, but we get no bang for our tax money. Why? They get a bang for whatever they do. And it's not fair. And they don't care nothing about us. Nothing. So when jobs are done and all the rest of that, black people ain't even cool, you know? See no black people working in this town. I'm sorry. Your time is up. Thank you very much. Next up, Jesse Pierce. Good evening. Members of Council. Council President Clark. My name is Jesse Paris. I was born at 2842 Josephine Street in Albert Brooks district. And I'm representing for Denver Homeless out Loud, Black Star Action Movement for Self-defense and Community Action and Commitment for Change. And I am also an at large candidate for Denver in 2019. As has already been stated, I am very familiar with this area and question myself being a native as well. Colfax I'm no stranger to. It seems like this city is in concerted effort to keep concentrated poverty along Colfax Avenue. Yes, I am in support of this. But at the same time, I remember sitting in here many times hearing that the city was going to try to stop with the concentrated poverty. But it seems like this is just going to continue in this whole revitalization. That's just another way of saying ethnic cleansing. You have to get out. You are not desirable. And we're going to make it seem like you can stay because we're going to make it seem like these are units are affordable. So I have two questions. I want to know the amount of units in question and I want to know the am I level? Because, again, people are not familiar with what affordable is. A lot of times all those that are listening when I say affordable housing, what they are really saying is anywhere from 60% to 120%. Am I level? That is not affordable. Affordable for who? The city is in a crisis right now, along with the opioid crisis. There's also a homelessness crisis in the city and county of Denver. In saying that units are affordable at 60%. Am I is not is the solution. Barely making enough units for the need is not the solution. We need attainable house so we need obsessed with housing. That is 0 to 30%. Am I across the board? If you are really concerned about the suffering of the people in a city and county, then you would suggest, I would suggest that you and members of this council make that their focus and their make that their best interest. But it's clearly not. People that are black and brown are being completely marginalized as usual. It's just business as usual. And we're being displaced. And you think by making a few units affordable, that's doing something. So like I said earlier, sweep council, like they're sweeping the homeless just for council 2019 cycle for mayor and David Roybal for District three. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our speakers. Are there any questions from members of council? Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. Luis, would you mind coming to the microphone? I have a couple of questions for you. You mentioned that there was no guidance on the height in the area. How is it that the adjacent height levels have no implications on the height for this particular site? We do not have the the neighborhood plan from 1994. It does not have height guidance in it. That was what I was speaking to directly is there's not a height map that you might see in other neighborhood plans. And there were when the main street zoning was put in place back in 2006, 2007. And there were places of Colfax that got the five that have five storey zoning. So we evaluated based on the planning guidance that we have, and that specifically is must five districts are intended for arterial streets and we do feel that that's appropriate for this area. Is that generally the max of what we've seen along the Kovacs corridor. For when you get east of Colorado and there's really only three and five story districts? Okay. Can you give us an idea of roughly how many units we might see on that site with the five story swing? I'll call up Megan Yankee from OED to answer that question. Councilwoman. We did a zoning study based on the five stories, and we anticipate that the project could support between 60 and 70 units of average sizes. Of course, we expect that that will be determined based on financial feasibility. And does that include parking? That does. I know the developer would get to reduce the number because it is on a transit court or correct. And because of the army levels proposed for this property. Can you remind us what those are again? But. Were you asking for the am I level? Yes. Oh, because this is a permanent supportive housing project. We're anticipating those that are formerly homeless would be housed at the site. So certainly less than 30% of very median income. Whoever the developer is that would be selected would. Be expecting to secure traffic tax credits in order to serve that EMI level. Correct? That's correct. Okay. And have you already issued that RFP and kind of where are you in that process? Yes, we have we issued it in October. It is the responses are due December 13th. Okay, great. Thank you. LS Ortega seeing no other questions? The public hearing for Accountable 1163 is closed. Comments by members of Council. Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I'm very happy to see this come here tonight. It's a it's. Been a long process. If you read the. 1994 neighborhood plan for this group, it talked a lot about the development of Lowry and the development of Stapleton. And so much has happened that met that plan. But all of the things that were related to the East Colfax neighborhood, hardly anything has happened in terms of helping that neighborhood. And to put it in perspective, this particular property is only four blocks from Lowry and only five blocks from Stapleton. And we've seen so much development, great development at those two places, but very little right there in our island of Colfax. And I want to echo Susan Leahy's feelings about her neighborhood group. They are just wonderful. And and the city did a great outreach to and myself and and Councilman Herndon to the neighborhood to talk about this. We had had other developers before that were interested but couldn't get the tax credits. And so the neighborhood was very aware that this kind of zoning would might come to be five stories instead of three. And they're just except for the one letter, there wasn't opposition to that five stories means that we can provide more affordable housing and activate this area and just do something for the area that will help the street, that will help the people that we are going to house and not house, but to provide homes for people who otherwise might not be able to afford them. The neighborhood is actually altogether east. Colfax is the lowest economic, has the lowest income levels in the city, has the lowest education levels in the city, has the highest unemployment in the city. It's a neighborhood that needs this kind of investment, that needs this sort of this kind of attention that we're giving to it. And I couldn't be more pleased than what we are doing, and I couldn't be more pleased than how the neighborhood feels about it. But it is also a neighborhood in danger of of gentrifying as well, of housing prices going up as fast as possible. So that's why I was glad the city stepped in to buy property when it would be possible to buy it. Because as as Colfax develops, we do want to make sure that we keep it what the neighborhood said its gritty character, but also make it a place that's. Livable for. Different people of all different kinds of income. That's something the neighborhood once they want to keep the diversity of the neighborhood, both economic, ethnic in every regard. And so I think this project is one that is going to help doing that's not going to solve everybody's issues about needing homes. But it's going it's it's an important step forward for us. And I'm very excited about this one and the and the project that's coming up next. So I urge my fellow council people to vote with me and to pass this zoning. Thanks. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman, seeing no other comments. Madam Secretary, roll call we. Romney with. A black. Eye. Espinosa. I Flynn, i Gilmore, i. Herndon, i. Cashman, I. Can I. Lopez I. Knew Ortega. I. Susman Hi, Mr. President. I I'm secretary. Please close voting announced the results. 12 hours. 12 ayes countable. 1163 has passed. Guzman Flynn, will you please put House Bill 1164 on the floor?