A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 4201 Delaware Street in Globeville. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property from I-A UO-2 to C-RX-8 (industrial to urban center, residential mixed-use), located at 4201 Delaware Street in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 1-15-19.
Please refrain from profane or obscene speech structure comments to the Council as a whole, and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. Councilman Flynn, will you please put Council Bill 18, Dash 1484 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bill 18, dash 1484 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. The public hearing for Council Bill 18 1484 is open. May we have the staff report? Thank you, Mr. President, and Council Scott Robinson with Community Planning and Development. This is a request to read Zone 4201 Delaware Street from IAU oh two to see our x eight property is located in Council District nine in the Globeville neighborhood in the 41st and Fox Stationary. It's at the northwest corner of 42nd Avenue and Delaware Street, and that's 7000 square feet. Currently has a house on it. Request is to rezone from IAU road to which is light industrial with the billboard use overlay to see our eight, which is urban center neighborhood context residential mixed use with an eight storey maximum height and the billboard use overlay would be removed. The applicant is requesting the rezoning to redevelop the property. You can see the property is surrounded by the same IAU oh two zoning immediately, but there is a mix of CMC R, X and CMC in the 41st and Fox stationary as well. As I mentioned, the site is currently residential with a mix of industrial residential office, multi-unit, residential and mixed use surrounding it. The subject property is in the bottom right photo and then you can see some of the surrounding properties in the other photos there. This application went to Planning Board on November 7th, 2018, received the unanimous recommendation of approval. There was no public comment at that meeting, went to the Land Use Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on January 15th. This year, we received no other public comment on this application. In order to approve a rezoning, the city must find that these five criteria have been met. The first criterion is consistency with adopted plans. There are four adopted plans that apply to this property. The first is comprehensive plan 2000. As described in your staff report, staff has found the first rezoning is consistent with these six strategies from comp plan 2000, mostly relating to infill development, mixed use and mixed use development around transit stations. The second plan is Blueprint Denver from 2002. The concept land used for this property is urban residential, which calls for primarily residential, but with complementary mixed uses at a higher density. It's also in an area of change, which is an area where the city wants to direct additional growth in the city. And both 42nd Avenue and Delaware Street are designated locales intended to provide connections from the property to larger streets. Fox Street, BLOCK and a half to the West is a collector and then turns into an arterial two blocks further south and connects down to 38th Avenue, Park Avenue and the I-25 interchange. The 41st and Fox Station area plan from 2009 designates this area urban residential to date stories, which is intended for moderate density residential with a range of housing types that support the commercial in the area, which is again consistent with the proposed see our exit zone district. And then the fourth plan is the Globeville Neighborhood Plan from 2014, which mostly just reinforces the recommendations of the 29/41 and Fox stationary plan, calling for a diverse, transit supportive neighborhood in the area with a broad base of jobs and housing. So staff finds the first criterion that the second criterion is the uniformity of district regulations. Staff finds the proposed rezoning would result in the uniform application of the C r zone district. The third criterion is to further the public health, safety and general welfare of the city. Stefan's proposed rezoning would do so by implementing the city's adaptive plans and facilitating the redevelopment of this property in a pedestrian friendly and appropriate manner. The fourth criterion is justifying circumstances. Staff finds the proposed rezoning justified by the changes, change and changing conditions in the area. There's been the recently adopted plan in 2014 and there's also been a fair amount of investment in the area with the new transit station that's been constructed but is not yet open. And there has been some new development, new apartment buildings just to the east of this and some other new development in the 41st and Fox station area, making this proposed rezoning appropriate. The fifth criterion is consistency with neighborhood context, zone, district purpose and intent. Stefan's proposed rezoning would result in development consistent with the description of the urban center neighborhood context and the purpose and intent of the See Our Zone District, which is intended to apply to residential areas served primarily by collector or arterial streets where building scale to date stories is desired. As mentioned, the plans call for to date stories consistent with the district purpose and intent. And while the site is not directly on a collector or arterial, it is a block and a half from a collector in an area that is served by collectors and arterials. So staff finds the fifth criterion is met and recommends approval. I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much. We have two individuals signed up to speak this evening, so if you signed up to speak on this item, I'd ask that you come to the front row. First up, we have Isaiah Salazar. Good evening, council members. I'm here on behalf of the ownership group of 42 A1, one Delaware Street here to answer any questions. We are very. Excited about this. Smaller property we have in the area that we are looking to redevelop. We're looking at building small seven townhomes, hoping to break ground later this summer and very excited for the future of what hold in this neighborhood. This will be one of the first newer townhome projects in this area of the Fox Street neighborhood. We're very excited to see how the light rail continues to change the neighborhood once it does open up. There's been a tremendous amount of rezoning efforts going on, on multiple properties in the area with not a lot of action going on yet, but a lot of a lot of people starting for future development. And we're hoping to be a great townhome addition to the neighborhood. Would you mind stating your name for the record? Isaiah Salazar. Thank you very much. All right. Next up, Jesse Pierce. Jesse Pierce represented for Denver Homicide, a low black star action moment for self-defense and positive action commitment for social change. And I'm also an at large candidate for 2019 May election. We are against this, as has been stated numerous times. And involved in this area, this property, this area, this this area. Globeville is under a rapid gentrification. And this is just another rezoning that reinforces that this property is not going to be for those that live in the neighborhood, is not going to be affordable. There is no Amaro level listed on any of these properties. Seven townhomes in the already gentrifying neighborhood. Yeah, we're definitely against this. When you sweep the council, like they sweep the homeless every night. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our speakers. Are there any questions from members of council on this item? Councilman Brooks. Yeah. Just a quick question, Mr. Salazar. You guys owned the Regency as well with student housing? That is correct, yes. And how many students are currently in there? Over 900 students live in the neighborhood or in our complex. Okay. And can you just tell you know, I know you and your family do a lot of work in the community as far as real estate in your own life. Can you just share a little bit about that? Yeah. So my family. Purchased the Regency Hotel in 2000 for under the impression of not knowing exactly what we wanted to develop in the neighborhood yet. And we found that there was a large need at the time for a very a campus to have some sort of housing on site. Unfortunately, we're not on site, but we own and operate a shuttle service that takes kids to and from campus Monday through Friday. And we have developed we were able to renovate the entire inside of the former hotel into a college dormitory. So now gives the three schools honorary a campus, a dorm style of living. In 2014, we developed the north parking lot. That was a vacant parking lot that this property we're looking to resell and kind of overlooks, which was just an empty parking lot. We reasoned that we the actually reason that and we developed that into more traditional apartments three bedroom, three baths, conventional apartment style living. But it's all part of the Regency campus. And that is kind of a continuum of student housing that we have seen. And it's been very successful, very great for the neighborhood. It's really cleaned up the neighborhood from from what the hotel was initially. And we've also developed a lot of other. Parcels in the neighborhood. My my sister actually runs the doggie daycare service at 42nd and a lady that has over 50 employees there. It's a great doggie day care complement to the Sunnyside in the Highlands neighborhood. Uh, extremely busy. And we've also developed the the Fox Street shops is what we call it in house, but it's got the crafty fox, it's a restaurant, there's a yoga studio, a physical therapist, as well as a small liquor boutique liquor store. Okay. I'm just curious, on the Regency, is there any plans? I'm concerned about the 900 students. Any plans to redevelop that or you guys want to continue to preserve that? No, as of right now, we are our goal is to continue to preserve the student housing in that neighborhood. Unfortunately, the Regency. Property is currently under the old. Zoning, which we are looking at to rezone that this upcoming year here soon just to make it a conforming use as well as to help out with the parking requirement. Okay. But our full intention is to continue student housing in the neighborhood. And on this particular project, what have you calculated your linkage fee that a go to affordable housing. For the townhome project? No, we have not. I think it falls under that requirement, but I have to look into that. No. If it's if it's a new build. So if you could just. I'll confirm that. Yeah. Ortega is probably going to. Councilman Ortega ask a question, but just figure out the amount of square footage off of about 50 foot. Yeah. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. My question is for Scott Robinson from planning. So my question is about. Have we, as a city taken a look at this area in terms of how much more new development we can get? I know that there is the next step study that is going on in this area that's part of some of the the bigger parcels, particularly the Denver Post site. Where we're basically needing to look at that intersection at 38th and Fox High 25 Park Avenue. Can you just kind of give us an update of where things are at with that whole process? And does it include anything related to drainage? So I don't know where we are on drainage. I don't know what we're looking at for that. But as far as the next substudy, that's looking at the infrastructure needs based on the projected build out. In the meantime, we're working on rules and regulations to sort of set a cap on the development based on what the current infrastructure can handle. You mentioned the intersection, so based on what things can handle right now so that once we hit that cap, we'll hold off on development until we get the new infrastructure in place to handle additional development. We're also looking at a an overlay to limit the amount of parking in the area that we're working on right now. Any idea on when that next step study would be available? I don't know. Sorry. Okay. So in the meantime, we're continuing to take applications from the area that is basically increasing the density in every one of the applications that we've seen. This one seems to be much smaller in scale than all the rest of them that we have seen come through. But I'm just curious kind of where we're at with the bigger picture, because we've got one road into this site. And I did see on the application, I believe it was for the other one, that it did include looking at the the little two, two lane road, the two lane unimproved road that goes over I-25 and connects to Globeville, which should not be included as one of the access points into this area. And so I think, you know, as a city, we just keep bringing applications forward without really looking at, you know, how we're addressing whether or not the infrastructure can handle the volume of what is going to be there ultimately. And at some point, we as a body should be concerned about that, because if we're putting more development in there than what the roadway can handle and, you know, the assumption is the next step study identifies perhaps what some of the solutions are and parking to some degree addresses part of that. But, you know, one of my concerns is if if I'm somebody developing in the area and I'm not the first project in and you're capping how much parking can go in and I'm the last project to develop. No banker is going to finance my project if I have no parking and it's already been utilized by all the other projects. So I think looking at that big picture of who's who's managing all of that is really important for us to be paying attention to, even though it's not the level of detail that we as a body get to see. So I'm a little concerned about that. So I appreciate the fact that you all are working on the next step study and look forward to getting some information on when that will in fact, be available. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. Scott, maybe could you address for me just briefly the the district that's being applied for allows update stories. This is just one small lot where there's only a single family house right now. Correct. The way I see that from according to the map. And so I'm just concerned that this too dense of a zone, did we look at other zones that would accomplish the same purpose of redevelopment? Because as we develop this under the allowable density that this district allows, as change continues to occur on Delaware and on Aladdin, that whole Fox Island, once once we get the train running and stopping at 41st and Fox Station, it would seem that that block would justify a greater density. And if a project is built and already in place and under utilizes the entitlements. I'm just concerned about the future development here. So how did we arrive at the eight story classification and did we look at any others? Yeah. So the the eight stories was the request of the applicant. Okay. So they can perhaps speak to why they chose its story as the plan, as I mentioned, recommended to date stories. Mm hmm. So we evaluated the request for eight stories, found it consistent with the plan and the other four criteria. And so that's why we're recommending approval. But, you know, as far as whether you can develop eight stories on the lot or whether it's underdeveloped, you know, it's something for the applicant to to worry about. Okay. So we we didn't look at any alternatives. Again, they they requested eight stories. We found it consistent. So, yeah, we didn't try to steer them than anything else. All right. Thank you, Mr. President. That's all. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Councilman Brooks, you back up for. Yeah. I just wanted to respond to. Councilman Flynn. But specifically, Councilwoman Ortega, I got to tell you that, you know, I think the concern is right. Looking at the rezonings, but actually, you know, working with CPD, specifically our former colleague Chris Nevitt, and working with the building department, the power is actually in their control and now they are because of the studies that they have done and because now that they they know a number of cars are coming into the area, they're putting certain requirements on building developers and owners. And so one of them was the max maximum parking requirement. We had the community push really hard against that, and we're giving them a a year to get things under control. And we're probably going to have parking maximum and other requirements in this area because of that density that you talked about. And so I'm not sure the answer is in zoning. I think the answer is in and building requirements and the number of units and parking requirements in the area. And so, you know, that conversation is hard, but I encourage you guys to reach out to almost say Councilman Nevitt, Chris Nevitt and our Field Artillery office. And they have done an incredible amount of work on making sure they know exactly how much is coming in, per permits being poured. And they're not letting people just build whatever they want to. There are a lot of requirements things. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Seeing no other question. The public hearing for Constable eight dash 1484 is closed. Are there any comments by members of council? Seeing none. I will just think staff are putting together a comprehensive staff report. I think it's clear that this meets the criteria for rezoning and I will be supportive. Madam Secretary, Roll Call. A. Black Eye Brooks. By. Flynn. By. Herndon Cashman. By. Kenny Lopez. I knew Ortega by Susman. Mr. President. Hi. I'm secretary. Please close the voting. Announce the results. 11 eyes.