A bill for an ordinance relating to the Denver Zoning Code, to create new zone districts in the Downtown context. Approves a text amendment to the Denver Zoning Code to establish three new Downtown Neighborhood Context zone districts and other associated amendments. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 11-6-18.
for questions of council. Speakers will have 3 minutes and there is no yielding of time on the presentation monitor. On the wall you will see your time counting down. The 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 council as a whole and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. Councilman Lopez, will you please put Council Bill 1 to 2 two on the floor? Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council bill eight are a series of 18 but discombobulated. I move that council bill 1220 to series of 2018 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. The public hearing of Council Bill 1222 is open. May we have the staff report? Thank you, Mr. President, and council members. My name is Christopher Johnson. I'm a senior city planner with community planning and Development, and I will lead you through the staff presentation this evening. My colleague, a barge will also assist. He'll fill in on a few slides specific to the affordable housing requirements that are part of this zoning text amendment. Obviously a topic of strong importance and a lot of interest on all of your mind. So we will get to that shortly. So I think it's important to start by saying that what we're talking about tonight in terms of the text amendment to establish these new zone districts for CPG area is really implementing nearly 20 years of plan guidance that we have for the downtown area. It all goes back to the Denver Comprehensive Plan 2000. That speaks to the Central Plan Valley as an area that is poised to become an example of both urban environmental protection and sustainable economic development. Blueprint Denver, that's in place, currently speaks to downtown more broadly in terms of the centerpiece of the city and truly of the region with the highest intensity of uses. And then the downtown area plan from 2007 spoke to the Central Platte Valley. Again, and specific to this area about opportunities that are beginning to emerge to densify these areas as parking is becoming less important and there is mode shift towards transit resources and the downtown plan amendment and the area plan amendment that was passed earlier this year and sorry, in June of 2018 really dove into a lot of detail about this area specifically. And then the future blueprint Denver, a draft of which the next draft will be coming out here later in the early part of 2019, continues on this discussion about downtown being our area of the most intensity and greatest height. So the downtown area plan amendment, as I mentioned, focused in specifically on Central Plat Valley or area. This is the district that's bound by I-25, Speer Boulevard on the north in an area parkway to the south and east. It builds upon that 27 downtown area plan and provides very specific recommendations in the same framework as the original downtown area plan to create and support a prosperous, distinctive, walkable, diverse and green city. And specifically, it addresses and establishes a vision about this area to become a neighborhood that is more integrated with the adjacent downtown and residential areas and matures into its own diverse and dense and distinctive neighborhood that connects the city to the river and really brings enhanced amenities to the existing and future residents. One of the most important things about the plan amendment is there is a very specific implementation section towards the end of the document that speaks directly to how do we move from vision to reality through a series in a system of regulatory tools, particularly, how do we calibrate the intensity of this area appropriately to be higher near the rail stations, the existing transit stations that are there, and then lower intensities near the river and adjacent existing buildings and neighborhoods. How do we promote a variety of building height and density to create some energy and excitement? How do we support diverse and desired architectural form and streetscapes? How do we start to break down a downtown environment to something that feels more comfortable at the human scale? How do we encourage those vibrant, mixed use streets in a neighborhood that's truly mixed use? And really, most importantly, how do we promote a diverse community with incentives for affordable housing? So how do we create a mechanism in a system that rewards higher development intensity with greater affordable housing? And then finally, to get to some of the more qualitative aspects that are really challenging to address through zoning. How do we use a system of design review and design standards and guidelines to really get to that rich architectural quality that people are interested in? So the regulatory framework that we're going to cover is fairly complex. There's a number of different mechanisms that we are using, four of which we are going to be talking about this evening. So the first is the text amendment to the Denver zoning code. That's what establishes these new zone districts to apply to the CPA area location. Part and parcel with that directly related is the amendment to the Denver Revised Municipal Code, which is before you as 18 dash 1407 that was just discussed earlier. This is what creates the actual affordable housing mechanism that's directly tied to the zoning. There's also design standards, the guidelines that I mentioned that will eventually be adopted as rules and regulations through our department, and then on a project by project basis, individual properties would come forward and request a rezoning, the first of which we're going to talk about this evening. And then there's a development agreement that is associated with that rezoning that will also be discussing that puts in place a process to develop. This other item is on the screen called the Infrastructure Master Plan that gets into much, much more detail related to the actual utilities and infrastructure, roads, connectivity, those kinds of things that Councilwoman Ortega was talking about in terms of how do we address some of the capacity issues when we're talking about a large development? So we're not at that point yet, but that is part of the development agreement that that will talk about in a little bit more detail this evening. So the sponsors of this text amendment to the Denver zoning code are Councilman Brooks and Espinoza. Portions of the Central Platte Valley Area District fall both within portions of District one and District nine. The Denver Zoning Code Text Amendment itself, as I mentioned, establishes new zone districts for this particular area, implements the objectives of the plan amendments , and the individual property owners need to come forward and request that rezoning. So the text amendment itself establishes a zone district, but they are not being legislatively applied. That is the individual property owners that are approaching us to request the rezoning. And then as I mentioned before, there is the related Denver Revised Municipal Code Amendment to Chapter 27 that's being sponsored by our Department Community Planning and Development and the Office of Economic Development to establish those affordable housing provisions that are related to the use of incentive height. That's all part of the zoning package. The public process for this regulatory implementation has been a robust one. We we really dovetailed right on the heels of the adoption of the plan amendment. We began right away in July with a series of planning board information items to talk about the zoning tools that we can use here. We had a series of community open houses as well, culminating then and on two months ago to the day here to our planning board public hearing where it was recommended to move forward by a vote of 9 to 1. We through the process with the ludie committee and then noticing of course in public hearing tonight just as a look forward, the design standards and guidelines are in process in our department currently. They're in draft form, they're under internal review and we're hoping that those will be completed in the early part of next year. We're targeting a March 6th hearing and planning board for that. Ideally, the public comment on the text amendment itself has been fairly limited outside of the the community open houses and discussions that we've had there. We've received seven emailed comments prior to the Planning Board public hearing. There were five speakers at that hearing, four directly in support and one in support that had a few other comments for us to consider. And then a letter of support as well has arrived into our offices. So I'm going to dove into a little bit more about what's actually in the zoning for these CPD or area districts . And I'm going to try to relate the specific design standards and items in the zoning back to those plan amendment objectives that are described and particularly address the zoning and design standards and the quality of of this area. So the first one is how do we calibrate development intensity? As we mentioned, this is a 120 to 150 acre site overall is the district. And so how do we calibrate that development intensity appropriately across that entire area? So the text amendment this evening would establish three new downtown context zone districts. That would be the downtown Central Platte Valley area. So that creates the DCP prefix, and these would be the transition river and center districts. You can see by the by the diagram here that generally those three districts then relate to an overall intensity. The two on the left, the transition and the river district are somewhat lower in intensity. And then the center district, which would be the highest intensity district, is shown there on the right. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about each of these individually, because we've approached this notion of lower intensity in two slightly different ways, according to those transition in those river districts. So the first one in the transition district is really intended to be just that, a transition from this area to existing structures that would be within the overall area of Central Valley or area or existing buildings that perhaps are on the other side of Speer Boulevard or existing neighborhoods like the Jefferson Park neighborhood that's on the west side of I-25. So here, because there is some existing context for us to respond to. There's existing structures, existing buildings. We have taken the approach that intensity should be limited through a height limit so that we create an appropriate transition and contextual relationship to those existing buildings. So here there is a building form that is allowed to go up to 12 stories, and that transition district is appropriately located within about a block of those established neighborhoods and buildings. You can see on the screen highlighted in yellow that generally the appropriate areas for that transition district would be near that intersection of Speer in an area and extending up each of those streets slightly. And then also on the western side, particularly along Water Street. The River district then is a little bit different in that it is also lower intensity. But we've addressed this through instead of a height limit, we have addressed it through restrictions on the bulk or the girth of the buildings. So basically what happens here is there's building forms that are allowed to have a much shorter street wall. So the as you're walking down the sidewalk, the building that you might experience is in that 3 to 5 story range, but then would allow for much taller buildings. But they must be very thin in relative profile and widely spaced. There was a lot of guidance from the public and from the community through the plant amendment process to preserve something like porosity or permeability, a kind of a connection to the river, both physically and visually. So we did that appropriately through allowing these taller buildings, but much, much smaller footprints as you go taller. And then finally the center district, which is the most intense district. This is really intended to have the widest variety of not only uses, but also building forms. We've introduced a third building form that allows for a slightly larger building that would accommodate a larger commercial office tenant. Typically, they need a larger footprint in terms of their architectural building to meet their requirements. And so we've introduced that here. So in the center district there, the height limits and the limitations are basically address through the various building forms. There's the general building form that has a height limit. There is what's called the standard tower, which has a little bit more flexibility, a little bit more size, but has a floor area ratio cap on it and limitation . And then there is a point tower form that has the most restrictive design requirements as you go as you go taller. So the next item here in terms of objectives that we're trying to address through the zoning is how do we promote this variety of context sensitive buildings? And I sort of alluded to that in terms of these various building forms. So these are used in combination where in different zoned districts there are different building forms that are allowed. And you can see as you move sort of from left to right on the screen, the height or the floor area that's allowed the overall intensity of those buildings increases as you move from left to right. The upper storey design requirements or the limitations on the overall size of the building also get stronger and stronger as you move from left to right. So there's a there's a connection there between the allowed floor area and the allowed intensity with the limitations and the restrictions on the architectural form. And one of the most important things I think, to note here is that all of the street level and the lower storey design requirements, the things that we as members of the public walking down the street would really experience things like street level activity, uses, transparency, those kinds of things. Those are exactly the same across all of the building forms. So this is just another summary. The general is 12 stories allow is allowed in the transition or the center district it's much shorter it's only five story high limit in the river the standard tower, which is sort of that office, commercial office building type of building form that's only allowed in the central district, our highest intensity district. And then the point tower has the highest design restrictions as as you grow taller. So this is just sort of a visual summary of how these might be applied across these various zone districts. Transition only allows the general, the river district includes that general form at a much shorter level and the point tower, but it has a much shorter street wall of five stories and then the center district allows all three of those. So then how do we support this desired architectural forum? I've talked about these limitations, these upper storey limitations. As you get taller. We've developed a series of new rules of measurement for our development services and project review teams to use as they're evaluating future projects. So really the tradeoff is as you grow taller, you must grow smaller. So we're we're really trying to shape taller buildings to make sure that we are protecting access to the sun sky, limiting the impacts of shadows and really trying to relate taller buildings to a more human scale at the street level. So there's a tower floor plate area restriction on certain building forms as the overall square footage or size of a of a floor as you go taller, a linear dimension that speaks to the relative proportion of the building. So we're trying to avoid very thin and very long blade like buildings that tend to cause really strong shadows and block views. And then also the floor separation. So if we're going to allow tall buildings, we want to make sure that there's enough space between all of those two to allow for views and sun and sky access . This is just a summary of these things, and I don't necessarily expect you to go through each of these in great detail, but I think it's important to note that you can see the on the floor plate area, which is about halfway down here on the chart. The point our allowance, the maximum floor plate allowance on the point tower is half less than half of what the standard tower would allow. And the tower separation, particularly along the river, is upwards of 120 feet. And I think it's important to note that currently in our downtown core zoning there is no separation requirement other than what would be required for fire protection, which can be as little as 20 to 30 feet. So we're talking about a very significant increase in a required tower spacing to open open this area up. I should also mention before I move on very quickly, is the standard tower, which is the middle tower form that I've mentioned that relates to more commercial office type projects. We want that tower. We want that building form to only be used for those types of projects. And so we did actually also include a use limitation so that in that tower portion you must be less than 50% residential for those. So that the so that the sort of the the largest of those buildings is used for those commercial tenants that really need it. So finally, how do we encourage active and engaging streets here? We've talked a lot about big, tall buildings. What's that going to feel like down on the on the ground floor, on the street level? So all of these lower story and street level standards apply to all the building forms and all the districts. They really attempt to create that richness and human scale that we've been talking about. So how do we use things like setbacks and reduction of mass? How do we create an enhanced setback for residential units? So when there's a residential unit that comes all the way down to the street, how do we give them a little bit of extra room so that they can there there can be a more appropriate transition between that private and public realm. There is an open space requirement on larger lots. And then how do we activate that street? So again, this mixture and these requirements for build to transparency, requiring street level active uses and also on a few key streets, we've included some standards related to requiring nonresidential uses so that we can ensure that some of those key streets that were identified in the plan amendment actually have that higher intensity of commercial retail types of uses. It's also important to note that within each of these zoned districts, all of the streets that are going to be created will be classified as primary streets, and that includes the South Platte River frontage . So if you're familiar with other areas of the zoning code, we typically have a primary street and a side street designation where the side street has lower requirements and lower standards for transparency and things like that. Here we wanted to make sure that every street was held to the highest level. Parking. Parking is a big deal. And activity, the effect of parking and particularly parking structures on the activity on the street is really dramatic. And so one of the things that is also included here is that there is a requirement for an active use to be wrapped around that parking structure for the majority of the facade along the street. So the visibility of that structure is very, very limited. We're also implementing a parking maximum. So I think that that's a very important step for the city that has not been done yet in that there's a limitation on the amount of parking that is going to be allowed as part of a project here. And so there's no minimum parking requirement that's consistent with other downtown zoning districts. But there is a parking maximum. And then just a subtle nuance here in terms of the way parking floor area is calculated that is incorporated now into the way the standard tower floor area is calculated. So in the downtown core, parking doesn't count against you in terms of in terms of your overall floor area. But here in these districts, it will finally some other quick notes on permitted uses in the parking maximums. So the permitted uses in this district are what you would imagine for a downtown type of district, a very wide range of residential and commercial and entertainment types of uses. They generally follow the current allowed uses within Arapahoe Square. We did make the additions in the center district, the most intense district of a hospital use and also the arena stadium use. We wanted to make sure that those were both available to to future projects potentially in the Central District. And then in terms of the parking maximums, most of those are based on a total floor area calculation. But in terms of residential, we based that on the number of bedrooms, we we wanted to make sure that we were not somehow disincentivizing larger residential units if we were to set a parking maximum that was strictly set on the number of units. So we we are digging in a little bit deeper and basing that on the number of bedrooms. And another key important aspect is that the bicycle parking requirements here, the minimum requirements are approximately double what we see elsewhere in the city. So we're really trying to move the needle in terms of focusing the development in this area and within the zone districts away away from the car and more towards bicycle and other active modes of transportation. I think that's excellent. Excellent. Mr. Barge. All right. So I'll shift gears for just a moment. I'm a barge with the Department of Community Planning and Development. I apologize. I wasn't able to identify myself on the earlier question. As Christopher mentioned, this is a really important aspect of the system to implement the plan for this area that the the plan amendment for CPV or area says more about affordable housing than other any other area plan that's that's been adopted, to our knowledge, in Denver. And one of the important concepts in the plan is that this this great higher density active downtown neighborhood, that the value that's created by that development potential through the through the zoning be leveraged to obtain specific community benefits. Denver has a lot of needs. The primary one, you know, that we're all talking about now is affordable housing. And so we've proposed a system that's linked to the zoning that would share the value of that increased development potential by requiring additional affordable housing for the projects that that use that use that and that they meet the plan objectives for affordable housing at low and moderate income levels and to ensure a variety of unit types and sizes and that there be affordable housing that's for sale and for rent, so that the zoning sets a five storey height threshold beyond which these special requirements would apply. And so there's no special requirements for development up to five storeys. But in at least two of the districts, there's a lot of development potential beyond five storeys. And the special requirements would would then apply. The way that it's set up is that that five storey threshold is in the in the zoning text amendment and that allows from seven stories of additional height in the transition district, which has a 12 storey height limit to potentially unlimited additional height with with a lot of design requirements in the other two districts. And then the Municipal Code Amendment, which will be before you as a separate vote, then provides the specific housing requirements that would apply when using the incentive height beyond five storeys. And the way that it's set up, the basic structure is similar to that of the thirty-eighths and Blake incentive overlay that city council approved earlier this year that ties back into the citywide linkage fee system and sets requirements a little differently depending on project type. So for residential or residential mixed use projects that are that are primarily residential, it would actually require the provision of on site affordable units, whereas the citywide system says that's just an option or you can pay a fee in this system, residential projects would actually have to provide units and then provides a higher level of unit requirement for the square footage that's in the incentive high area for primarily commercial projects. There would still be multiple options available, including the option to pay a fee or to build units. But either way, the requirement based on the square footage of height or the square footage that's above the five storey threshold would be much higher than the citywide requirements. And we'll run through some examples and then a requirement that all large phased projects that will define in just a moment that are using incentive height, height above five stories, that they actually meet those incentive requirements by preparing an affordable housing plan that would be approved. And I'll give you some details on that in just a moment. But first, some examples of how the basic incentive system would operate. So this is a really simple example. It's a it's a building that doesn't use incentive height, just a five storey building. So on the left, that building built anywhere in the city would have the option to pay a linkage fee based on the 75,000 square foot residential total. The fee would be about $116,000, or it would have the option to build units instead. In this case, the requirement would be just one unit. And so just for example, in if approved and one of the new central Flat Valley area districts, the requirement would be exactly the same because this building isn't using incentive. Fine. However, in this example, we now have a 12 storey building that is using incentive height. So if this building on the left were somewhere else in the city, let's say. See our Max 12 zone district where it was just operating under the citywide linkage fee system, would have the option to pay a linkage fee of about $280,000, or if it exercised the option to build units, that would be three units. However, in the one of the new Central Valley area districts, the special requirements would apply. Number one, it's a it's a primarily residential building. And this example, 100% residential. So the fee option doesn't exist. There would only be a unit option. And then the way the number of required units is calculated is to first take the the citywide requirement on all of the square footage in the building. So that's the three units, same as the example on the left. And then the special incentive requirements based on the square footage above the fifth floor are a multiple of six times of the citywide unit requirement that generates 11 affordable units. So that gets added to the three units for a total unit requirement of 14 units. So just to summarize on the left, if that 12 storey building were built somewhere else in the city, $280,000 or three units on the right, if it were built in a CPV zone district, there would be a requirement for units and it would be 14 units in this example. And then one more example is a big mixed use project that is in this example, primarily residential, although there's also a hotel component. So if built elsewhere in the city, this this large project would have the option to pay a linkage fee of over $1.2 million or build 15 affordable units . And in one of the DC PV zoned districts, it's primarily residential. So again, it would have to provide the affordable housing units on site or in the immediate district, and that would be calculated by taking those 15 units, the citywide requirement.