A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 5101 Leetsdale Drive in Washington Virginia Vale. Approves a map amendment to rezone property from PUD 436 to E-TU-B (planned development to urban edge) located at 5101 Leetsdale Drive in Council District 5. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 6-21-22.
I. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announced the results. 13/8 13 ies council 20 20637 has passed. Councilmember Ortega, would you please put Council Bill 20 2-0694 on the floor for final passage? Madam President, I move that council bill 20 2-0694 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. The required public hearing for Council Bill 20 20694 is open. May we have the staff report? Good afternoon. Members of council. My name is Jump Benefit Senior City Planning Planner with Cabinet Planning and Development. And today I'm going to present your rezoning for 51 to 1 lead. Still drive. The applicant is requesting to resign from duty for 36 to EP to be. The proposed rezoning is located in Council District five, which is some of the district. And it is a vacant lot in the Washington, Virginia built neighborhood. The property owner of Standard Lutheran Church of Denver, Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver, are proposing to rezone part of their property from B2 436 to E2, which would allow for the development of four duplexes that they intend to sell to households making up or below 80% of the area. Median income. The proposals are given it to unit based on district allows for the urban House, detached accessory dwelling units, duplex and tandem housebuilding forms. I would like to quickly note here that while the others for the site is leads still drive, the main access to the property is on Dakota Avenue and in Fairfax Street. The next slides will illustrate better this linear axis on leaves still drag. You can see it there. The current zoning of the subject side is beauty. 436. The beauty was adopted in 1997 and applies to whole parcel as shown on the map. It was intended to allow for the construction of a single building with 66 units for a special care home for senior citizens. It allows a maximum height for a building of up to 35 feet. The facility was supposed to be an extension of the ministry of our Standard Lutheran Church, but financing was not secured and the special care home was never developed. The duty also allows for the development of uses allowed in R-1 district, which is a predominantly single unit district in former Chapter 59. The existing land use on the site is vacant. It's surrounded by mostly public possible uses where the church is to a north west single unit, residential uses to the north, northeast and east, and commercial retail uses doing so while the subject site is currently vacant. The portion of the solar that is not being resolved is currently being used as an informal open space and vegetable garden. This slide shows the existing context surrounding the subject site. With the proposed rezoning site on the top right on the bottom right image. You can see the commercial uses just south of the site on Lidl, on the top right image, the existing informal open space and vegetable garden located just west of the subject site. Throughout the rezoning process, application notifications have been provided according to Code Requirements. Planning Board recommended approval anonymously on May 18. Since the staff report was published, we have received two letters of support one from the preservation of residential South Hilltop Neighborhood Association and one from a community member. Stuff also received one letter in opposition to a rezoning that expresses concerns with increased traffic and density. As you'll know, there's five review criteria when analyzing the appropriateness of the request. The first criterion is consistency with adopted plans. There are two plans applicable to his rezoning. We have comprehensive plan 2040 and we have a blueprint under. The rezoning is consistent with several of the strategies in the comprehensive plan and they can be found on the staff report. Now looking at live in Denver, the future neighborhood context is urban edge. Within this context, we find a range of uses from single unit and multi-unit residential to commercial corridors and centers. As the rezoning would allow a variety of building forms in an urban setting, the proposed district is appropriate and consistent with the blueprint. Denver Context Description. The future place of this area is called Community Corridor, which typically provides some mix of offices, commercial and residential. And heights generally go up to five stories. Dakota Avenue and Fairfax Street are designated as local or un designated streets, and little is classified as a commercial ideal arterial future street type. The proposed E2 district is consistent with this description because it is a residential district that allows for a single unit and two unit uses and is intended to promote existing and future patterns of lower skilled multi-unit building forms. The subject property is located within the community centers and corridor's growth area. These areas are expected to see 20% of new employment growth and 25% of new housing growth by 2040. The proposed rezoning is consistent with the growth strategy map in this area. Blueprint also has policy language around rezoning properties from the former. Chapter 59 Zoning Code and out of customs zoning such as the site plan specific conditions on the subject property. Therefore, it still finds that this proposed rezoning is consistent with urban Denver. Stuff also finds that the requested zoning meets the next two criteria. The rezoning will result in uniformity of district regulations, and it will further the public health, safety and welfare of the city, primarily through its implementation of adopted plans and through improving design standards. Additionally, rezoning out a portion of 5436 will not have a negative impact on the remaining of the site and development under the current, but would still be possible. The rezoning would bring this property from former Chapter 59 Soni into the Denver zoning code. Such a change is listed in the zoning code as an appropriate, justified circumstance. Lastly, staff finds that the proposed rezoning is consistent with the Sound District purpose and intent of the E2 based on district. Based on the review criteria does recommend approval based on finding or review criteria has been met. Thank you. We have six individuals signed up to speak on this this evening. We will begin with Michael Sumwalt. If you can re-introduce yourself when you come up. Thank you. Yes. Hello. My name is Michael Dumont, a resident of Highlands Ranch, Colorado. And my daughter and I have been members of August and a Lutheran church for over five years now. So thank you for this opportunity to appear before you in favor of this of this proposal. For the past two years, I've been serving as the president of the coronation and chairperson of our church as governing body or counsel. It's a privilege to stand here before you as a representative of my church, which is overwhelmingly shown its support for this initiative involving our undeveloped property, to hopefully be used in a very small way to help alleviate the challenges to affordable housing that our city of Denver has been facing for some time now. In our partnership with Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver, we feel strongly that we can contribute to making progress in this area of need. And as an added benefit, they have helped us build an even stronger relationship with our community through this initiative that we believe will be a benefit to everyone involved along with our church. This effort is greatly supported by our local councilwoman, Mansoor Sawyer, the South Hilltop Neighborhood Association, which represents the neighborhood just east of our church and several of our closest neighbors. One of them actually has their house backing up to the lot that we are hoping to develop. So as a member and representative of the Augustine Lutheran Church, I ask for your support, this rezoning effort to help alleviate the need for affordable housing. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker in chambers is Scott Kilgore. Hello. My name is Scott Kilgour. I live at 435 South Fourth Street, just around the corner from the subject property. I'm a board member of the Preservation of Residential South Hilltop Neighborhood Association, and I'm here tonight to speak on behalf of the R.A. and reiterate our support of this rezoning request as outlined in our letter of support . We feel that the current party zoning is not compatible with the neighborhood context and that the proposed zoning district will result in a building Forman scale that is much more similar to the surrounding homes. While allowing for a gentle increase in density, the proposed development will add new homes and amenity rich central neighborhood while cleaning up an underused personal property, fixing existing drainage issues at the site. We are excited that these for sale homes will be offered to buyers under 80%. AMI and the applicant team has proven a willingness to collaborate with our neighborhood. We've had multiple points of engagement with them and they've been very responsive to our feedback. We do not have a good neighbor agreement in place with this rezoning, but we feel confident that the applicant team will continue to engage with the neighborhood and be responsive to us. They've already agreed to a number of things in writing, as described in our letter of support. This rezoning request only impacts the 51 to 1 sale parcel that faces Dakota and Fairfax and Augustana Lutheran Church. And the applicant team has reiterated to the neighborhood multiple times that the remaining piece of the parcel will continue to be used as a park and that that will stay. Discussion among our members and board has been overall very positive on the rezoning. We had eight board members vote in favor of supporting this rezoning, a zero voted opposed and one member that abstained due to the lack of response when voting electronically due to COVID. So yes, the preservation of residential South Hilltop Neighborhood Neighborhood Association urges City Council to support this rezoning request. Thank you. Thank you. Ann Hultquist. Hi. I'm in Hillcrest on the senior pastor at Augustana Lutheran Church. I've been there for six years and I'm also a resident of Denver. In 2018, our congregation began to have this dream together, knowing that we own this piece of very vacant, dilapidated property and hearing from the Interfaith Alliance at the time about the ways they were encouraging many different faith communities throughout the metro area to continue to consider building affordable housing. Interfaith Alliance helped us begin to give shape to the dream of serving our community and neighbors in this very concrete way, using our property and our resources. We've been privileged to partner with Habitat for Humanity Metro Denver. As the project has moved from dream to close to reality. We've also been privileged to receive support from the South Hilltop Neighborhood Association, as you hear and from Council Representative Sawyer, Augustine is a congregation that is firmly planted in our Denver area. We've been at our present location in Hilltop since 1958. Our core values are worship, grow and grow, and that last word go means to us that we are not turned in on ourselves, but that the purpose of being a faith community is to turn outward to see what we can do to make the world a better place . We have a number of outreach ministries that connect us to our neighborhood in the metro area, but we're so excited to imagine these townhomes, the neighbors who will live there and the way that we can play a part, a small part of bringing decent, affordable housing to people who will call our neighborhood home or call as a faith community is to love and serve. And this is a wonderful way for us to be able to fulfill that call. I urge the Council to support this rezoning. Thank you. Thank you. Kim. Sarah. Good evening, members of City Council. My name is Sarah and I reside near this location and I'm here tonight to support this zoning. I have been so impressed by the work between the community Habitat and Augustana. It's a great model to see people really welcoming affordable housing in our neighborhood. It's a great neighborhood with wonderful schools, beautiful parks, transit, and it's the perfect place for affordable housing. This also meets the criteria for a rezoning, and I'm hopeful you will support this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Corey Whittaker. Good evening, counsel. My name's Corey Whittaker and I live in Lakewood and I lead the real estate team with Habitat for Humanity, Metro Denver. I'm going to talk a little bit tonight about our application to Arizona. So back in 2009, Habitat from the partnership with Augustine Lutheran Church to execute the vision that you've heard of using some of their property to address that critical need for affordable homeownership in Denver. The rezoning request before you tonight is one step in making that vision a reality. Going to talk a little bit about how we arrived at that zoning designation that we're asking for and how it meets the approval criteria. Habitat approaches all of its developments. Balancing three things. We balance affordability, which is key to what Habitat does, and it's key to our mission livability. This really speaks to creating a functional and successful development for those who are living in it and neighborhood context. We want to respect and we want to respond to the surrounding character habitat in August and are proposing to rezone a portion of the property from PUD to E2 B to develop four duplexes for a total of eight homes that you zoned district are a two unit allowance for that duplex building form, which fits that urban edge context that this area is in and it's a more efficient building type to build. So one step in helping us make these homes more affordable. These homes will be three and four bedrooms in size with one dedicated off street parking space per home, as well as one reserved space and the adjacent Augusta in a parking lot. The additional space per home is being provided by Augusta to help alleviate some of the concerns from the neighborhood, from the neighbors about an increase in street parking along Dakota. The homes will also respond to the surrounding context by being two stories in height with pitched roofs and a mixture of siding materials. As part of our continued dialog with the R.A., Abbott has agreed to bring the building design to the R.A. for comment prior to submitting for permit. The rezoning request also meets all the required criteria, including aligning with the goals of the 2040 comprehensive plan, such as develop housing that is affordable to residents at all income levels. Goals and Blueprint Number 2019, such as expanding family friendly housing throughout the city. And it is consistent with the urban engineering context as outlined in Blueprint Number. I would like to thank Augustana for having this vision. I would like to thank the R.A. for being receptive and supportive of this project, and I would urge you to approve this rezoning. Affordable homeownership is a critical need in Denver, and this development is one small step in addressing many. Thank you. Thank you. We'll move to our Zoom platform for Heather Lafferty. Heather, if you would accept the promotion, we can bring you into the panel. Well, greetings, city council members. Thank you for allowing me to join this evening virtually. My name is Heather Lafferty and I live in Denver's first district. And I'm speaking tonight on behalf of Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver and our project proposal in partnership with Augustana Lutheran Church. I know many of you have worked with Habitat or certainly familiar with our work. We have built and repaired hundreds of homes across the metro Denver area. I should say across Denver. And we continue to seek opportunities to be innovative, to find new ways to find land and to build homes so that more and more people have the opportunity to have a good, safe, decent and affordable place to call home. Habitat supports and advocates for policies that expand our housing affordability. And just want to take a moment to applaud City Council for the work that you have done in this arena. We appreciate that you are trying to find ways to help address the lack of affordable housing and support for this rezoning. Tonight is one step towards that. Not only do we think this is a great project, we think that it is a unique collaboration between a church, a neighborhood, and a nonprofit developer like Habitat to find new ways to create the most needed, much needed affordable housing in our community. So we hope this will serve as a model. And many of the speakers before me have talked about all of the benefits of this. So I won't repeat those, but just want to take the opportunity to say this is exactly what we need in our community. We're grateful for the community support. We're grateful for the the imagination that the congregation at the church has and certainly for our city council's support as we have put this forward. Encouraging quality, infill development that's consistent with neighborhoods like the Hilltop area is a great way to get housing accomplished. So thank you for considering this rezoning tonight. And I do urge you, we always would love a unanimous yes. In support of this project. Thank you so much for your time and for your consideration. Thank you. That concludes our speakers questions for members and from of counsel and council. Bill 20 2-069 for Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. Libby, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. First. It looks like excess of the lead steel is primarily off of Dakota, is that correct? Yes. Okay. And is there any other access to the remaining part of the land off of lead steel, or will there be access off of Dakota because it looks like only part of the pad is being resolved. Right. Yeah. So the I can show you a slide if it helps. But there is there's a street. It has a lot of it's very steep. And that's the connection that comes from lead steel. So it's like a it's a dirt road right now. So there's going to be no connection there. My instinct is that when the dude like back in 97 when they did that project that was planned to be like the connection to lead still not anymore. Like the access now is going to be. And you can see it here. I have an image that shows where the is. So here you can see the corner. So it's this image on the right. So you can see that it's like direct access to the townhouses is going to be there. Okay. Can I just jump in for a minute to answer that question as well? So the the access from lead steel, it's only about an 11 feet wide. It's a very weird shaped parcel. It looks that way. Right. Exactly. And and it's an incredibly steep hill. So there's and with the drainage challenges and the infrastructure that would have to be built out. There is no way to to make it make an entrance or an exit up that hill. It has a lot to do with like flooding, water flow and stuff like that. I could get really nerdy on you, but I'll spare you. So the back. So the entrance is going to be on Dakota and Fairfax, which right now is just an ELL that ends in this empty parcel. And then the Augusta in a parking lot is right there. So access is then partially on this site or adjacent to it. So we're not just trying to understand that. I see my colleague has a map right now of the of the property looking at it. Corey, I don't know if you have any info on this as well. Because part of the reason for asking the question is it looks like at some point the the remainder of the vacant land can be available for development, but access to it seems very limited from Leeds Steel and then the access from Florida sorry to Florida Dakota. So prior to prior to something for the rezoning we submitted for concept plan and we worked with Daddy specifically on the corner of Dakota and Fairfax. And Daddy approved kind of a T intersection right there for a future entrance onto the property. So if the pad was ever to be developed, there is an entrance from Dakota and Fairfax County that. Okay. I see it on this graphic. Thank you, Libby. And if you get this back, happy to give it back to you. So I want you to just ask a couple of questions about how many units can be on the site. So I think the plan calls for units. And again, we keep it. So it's so duplex. We see it. It's okay. And then. So I think we clarified the questions of Dakota. So I think that's all I have. So I appreciate you helping me understand what that access looks like and the fact that there will continue to be opportunity for development of the remainder of the site. So thank you. Thank you. Councilmember PANITCH. Thank you so much. You probably said this and I missed it, but I didn't see it in the PowerPoint when I went back to look. So I'm really excited about the affordability. Is there agreement with hosts to do this as an alternative or they will just satisfy the ordinance at the time? How are how are we dealing with the current and or future ordinances that will be in effect when they pull the building permit? So there's no agreement. I mean. Habitat is doing 100% affordable housing. That's because they're working with the church and they own it. But there's no good neighbor agreement. There's no. Yeah, yeah. So so 100% affordable homes are exempt from the ordinance. So you're just are you playing do you want to just answer? Are you planning to just state that exemption at the time of building permit? Okay. For the record, there's a nod from the back room. Thank you. That's it. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. Fran, I'm curious to follow up on Councilwoman Ortega's questions, being a math geek myself. What is the purpose of the remnant that runs along the south side of this parcel rezoning? Because it seems to me it would have no utility at all. As Councilwoman Sawyer pointed out, it's a steep hill, but it's still part of the Peabody, but it looks a dead ends at a private property line, so it looks like it has no independent utility at all. Why would that not be included in the in the rezoning? Honestly, we have the same question. A planning board. So it's good. I'm noticing that it's very steep, as you say, it's very steep. It's not really developable. The applicant proposes an area that they want to develop, and that's the area like when you got we talked about like redeveloping the whole site. We talked about going all the way to south, but it didn't make sense because they just that's the area that they wanted to build the townhouses. And we looked at it and because it's so steep in the south, we figured it doesn't really matter. So the boat on the south is going to stay part of the rest of the beauty. Could would someone from the church be able to answer what future plan for the rest of the PD might incorporate that little strip? Is there? Do we have an outlook for development of the rest of the property because it still is under the old PD that that is very, very highly specific and particular it is. So when we when we looked at the property, there is a very steep slope, I think it's about 20 feet that stretches along the further than the portion that we are rezoning. So when we looked at what we needed to rezone, the parcel of land worked without including that. And since that feature kind of ran along the entire property, we felt like it was best to exclude it from what we were rezoning because at some future time they might be able to to redevelop that entire property. Now, I don't want to speak for behalf of the church, but currently the property is a park. It is a privately owned park, but it is open to the public and the church has no intention of changing that. Use anything. All right. Thank you, gentlemen. Okay. Um. The public hearing is closed. Comments by members of Council. Members of Council and Council Bill 20 20694 Council Member Sawyer. Thanks, Madam President. I just want to thank you guys so much. This is. It's so exciting. I'm so glad we're finally here. The first meeting that we had, or maybe was the second meeting before they filed their application was like three days before the COVID shutdown, and it looked like maybe this wasn't going to be able to happen after all. And there was a lot of challenges. The original hope on the site was to be able to build 20 units. And because of that, because of that crazy slope, it just can't be done. But there would be there would have to be retaining walls built in drainage. And like I said, I can infrastructure nerd out about it for you guys, but you don't need to hear the whole story. It's a shame that it is that it is exactly that way because it is a fantastic plan. It is a fantastic location. And I wish you guys would have mentioned, but you didn't. So the Congregation of Augustana Church actually voted on what to do with the land and what and this is what they voted on. They wanted to develop this parcel to support families of middle income earners in our community. And I don't know how many of you are aware, but others stand to have the most incredible after school program and preschool programs. And so most of the community members around the hilltop and south to help them across more areas have been in and out of Augusta on at least 100 million times with their young kids. And so this is a really exciting opportunity for the community. It is consistent with the adopted plans. Absolutely. And fits all of the criteria. And I just want to acknowledge the the neighborhood association, they have been so wonderful and supportive. Of course, there are residents who had questions and concerns and they were wonderful about going out, setting up Zoom meetings, asking questions and just really getting in back and forth with Habitat and with Augustana to see, you know, where those pain point issues were so that they could be worked out ahead of time. Just really, really excited. I think for those of you who might have missed it, this is it could have been a 63 unit senior development. And so it's a down zoning and that that sort of left hand section on the map that you saw where there is kind of nothing there, it looks like there's nothing there. But what's actually there is the most extraordinary, you know, park and community garden, an area that is open to the public even though it's private land . Augustana has been just extraordinary partners to the community for many, many, many years. And I don't know if you can tell, but I am super excited for this so I can support it strongly enough. I am so grateful for your partnership and for Habitat's partnership and for all that you guys have done. And I just I'm so glad we're here tonight and so thrilled to get started. So let me know when we need some volunteers to get building for Habitat, because I cannot wait. I'm really, really thrilled that this is just going to be such a wonderful thing for our community. Thanks. Thank you, Madam Secretary. Roll Call Council Bill 20 20694. Sawyer. I. Black I CdeBaca I clerk. I. Flynn. I. Gilmore, I Herndon, I Hines. Hi. Cashman. Kenny. I Ortega. I read. Central high. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary closed the voting and announced the results. 3939 Council Bill 20 20694 has passed. Councilmember Ortega, would you please put Council Bill 20 22040804 on the floor for publication.