A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 2600 High Street and 1919 East 26th Avenue in Whittier. Approves an official map amendment to rezone land at 2600 High Street and 1919 East 26th Avenue from U-SU-B1 to U-MX-2x (urban, single-unit to urban, mixed-use) in Council District 9. If ordered published, a public hearing will be held on Monday, 2-12-18. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 1-2-18.
Calcium, our protein here. I'm going to ask you because Councilman Espinosa is not here. Will you please put Council Bill 1461 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move the council 17 dash 1461 to be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. Thank you, Councilman Herndon. The public hearing for Council Bill 1461 is open. May we have the staff report? Jeff Hurt. Is here again. Are we talking about parking or. If you to be my pleasure to go looking around if you want. So Jeff, here with community planning and development. So this is a request for a rezoning from a single unit to a neighborhood mixed use zone district in the Whittier neighborhood. So it's in Council District nine. Again, Whittier neighborhood, northeast corner of High Street and 26th. So the subject properties are two parcels that in total are about 6300 square feet. And there's two. Commercial structures that were. Kind of built in different periods and that share a parcel boundary. And the request is to you Max to X, which is a neighborhood mixed use zone district, and the request is to accommodate or to support redevelopment of the Western parcel. And so the existing zoning is UCB be one, as are the surrounding sites or the surrounding properties. Excuse me, existing land use is of commercial and retail and industrial actually. So under some images of. The subject property. So you can see there's two buildings that share a parcel boundary. So the Western building actually is a filling station originally that was built in 1953 and it's been in a number of different commercial uses over time, including restaurants. The Eastern Parcel is that buildings about 800 square feet and the Eastern Parcel is about a 2000 square foot warehouse building built in 1901. So both structures have been used for commercial historically and under some images of the subject property. So just looking. East and west. And then images of the surrounding properties. So this is looking at top images, looking north on the. Subject block and then looking south on the. Bottom image across 26th. And so this is looking east west along 26th Avenue. And so the proposal in district is you Emacs to X. And so it's a neighborhood, urban neighborhood context mixed use district intended for small lots that have embedded commercial with the neighborhoods. And so the zone district has a lot of restrictions on more neighborhood intensity or higher intensity uses. So for example, drive thrus are prohibited and a number of other things to kind of ensure that neighborhood context. And so in terms of the rezonings that have. Happened in the area and. This is just kind of background information for the decision several properties and I think most properties in the area that were historically. Commercial and on commercial corners. Were re zoned as part of the 2010 citywide rezoning to your max two or you max to ex. These particular parcels were not although we do have some information that some requests from the community actually to go to your max two. But we don't have good information as to why this one was not rezoning to your max to ex. But again, it has been used historically as commercial. So the public process has been our standard process. Public outreach was done directly with a number of different registered neighborhood organizations in the area. We did receive a letter of support from the Whittier Registered Neighborhood Organization. Their support was with a sort of a comment that the support was. For commercial. Uses here rather than necessarily residential. But the letter was in support of the zoning district in the request, and there was one nearby resident letter of opposition who stated preference for residential zoning to stay the way it is. These are the review criteria staff uses to evaluate rezonings. So in terms of citywide plans. A number of different conference and. Plan policies support the request and most related to encouraging. Infill development. And reusing existing structures, things like that. In terms of a neighborhood or excuse. Me, blueprint in Denver. The subject properties are classified as an area of stability. And as single. Family residential. So that is a mismatch that is actually common throughout this neighborhood. Do we have an existing commercial embedded use that has the similar mismatch? So those properties with a max two X nearby we just looked at have a similar issue. And so in terms of a neighborhood specific plan, the only one is the Whittier Neighborhood Plan. And so there are a number of policies this request supports, mostly related to reusing and. Redeveloping. Underutilized commercial properties and commercial sites. And so the only other criteria. That I'll touch. On relate to justifying circumstances. So that's one finding staff has to make to support a rezoning. And there has been some redevelopment nearby, the subject properties. And then of course, there have been a number of closures for restaurants and other uses in the filling station over time. That was that represents a change condition. And then lastly, in terms of the consistency with the neighborhood context, the new annex to ex district is really designed for neighborhood scale sort of context sensitive, embedded commercial, unlike these sites on this scale. So staff thinks it's consistent with that. So staff does recommend approval, and I'd be happy to answer any questions. All right. Thank you, sir. Okay. We just have two speakers for the public hearing this evening. Journalist DiCaprio and Chairman Sekou. Mr. DiCaprio, you're up first. And you have 3 minutes. Councilman. I'm Joyce Caprio. With the same platform where the agent for the owners of this property. So really just here to. Answer questions. If you need. Them. Thank you. Thank. All right, Chairman Sekou. Yes. Good evening. My name is Chairman Sekou. Founder organizer for the Black Star Action Movement. For self-defense, representing poor, working poor. And senior citizens. We see. That. This has the possibility. Of enhancing the. Neighborhood. One, which I attended high school, Emmanuel Manual High School, right around the corner. And there's a caveat in it because it needs to be this whole zoning thing needs to be consistent so that, you know, we know exactly what we're doing with this and people aren't caught up in the process. That's economically. Not fair. Many of these projects, you have to spend thousands, tens and thousands of dollars before you even dig a hole in the ground, because you got to go to this zoning process and changes and whatnot. And we're moving forward with this thing as it comes out. We're changing it. So that's a good thing. That's a good thing. Now the question becomes. What's coming with this? What's coming with this? Because when you change it into another deal here, you open up the door and Pandora's box. To housing that folks in the neighborhood can't afford does number one. It don't look like none of the stuff that's there. Well, they throw up a building and then, whew, in the midst of brick houses, we got this ultra super kind of looking kind of thing, and we got this witness. It was a Mendez. You wouldn't want to have in your own neighborhood. I mean, come on. Can you imagine putting this in Cherry Creek, man? Come on. For real? It wouldn't happen. So we see the vulnerability of our neighborhood and us organized. And that's why we need City Council to ask some real specific questions like, what are you going to do with this? What's going to do it safe? And some people feel this zoning and a place for it to go. But I know all of you know, most of you have talked to these folks before, even came to the floor about what is to do, what's to do, what is what's the planning. And we don't know what that is because that's not on the agenda. See, and most people in neighborhood don't even know these folks. All right. So gentrification comes in on the down low because you start building stuff that people can't afford in a neighborhood, and then they had to move out because you increased them corner lots. And then what we have is increase in property taxes for folks who are in the middle of that, who are fixed income, who lose their houses because they can't pay the property tax. But the house is already paid for and here comes the developers are gone. The banks will go mosaku. Your time is up. It's time to go. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Say who? Thanks for our speakers. Questions for members of comment. Members of the council. All right. So another public hearing for 464621 is now 14, 61 is now close. Any comments from members of council? All right, Madam Secretary, roll call. Black. Clark. Espinosa. Flynn. Herndon. Cashin. Carnage. Lopez. All right. New Ortega. Sussman. Hi, Mr. President. I. Political goals. Voting in US results promising to. SUSMAN And my husband was not. A screen. Is frozen. Okay. ESPINOSA Great. 12 eyes. All right. 12 Eyes Council vote. 1461 has passed. Congratulations. Okay, Madam Secretary, we have a couple of bills we need to put on the floor here. How would you like to do this?