A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 1969, 1975 and 1995 South Decatur Street and the west portion of 1957 South Decatur Street in College View South Platte. Approves an official map amendment to rezone properties from R-2-A to S-MU-3 (residential, multi-unit to suburban, multi-unit), located at 1969, 1975, and 1995 South Decatur Street and 1957 South Decatur Street Rear in Council District 7. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 7-30-19.
Please refrain from profane or obscene speech. Direct your comments to council as a whole and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. Councilman Herndon, will you please put Council Bill 724 on the floor? Yes, Madam President, I move that council bill 2019 zero 724 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. The public hearing for Council Bill 724 is open. We have the staff report. Good evening. I'm Liz Wagle with Community Planning and Development. This is a map amendment for property at 1969, 1975, 1995, South Decatur Street and the rear portion of 1957 South Decatur Street. The request is from R to A to SMU three, and I'll provide an overview of the application and staff analysis. The map of the application is located in Council District seven in the College View South Platte neighborhood. The subject property is located at the northwest corner of South Taylor and West Astbury. The property is approximately 70,000 square feet. It's currently occupied by three multi-unit buildings. The site's one block east of Federal Boulevard, which is served by several transit lines. The rezoning is requested to bring the site, which is currently zoned in our old code former Chapter 59 into the Denver Zoning Code. As the existing buildings are not fully compliant with our to a requirements. The applicant proposes to rezone the site to SMU three, which is a multi-unit district. In the suburban neighborhood context, the district allows for a range of residential uses and building forms and buildings up to three stories or 40 feet. As I mentioned, the sites currently zoned are to a in former Chapter 59. This is a medium density multi-unit residential district, very similar to the new code district being requested. The current buildings were developed as a planned building group, which is our former site plan process in former Chapter 59. Surrounding zoning include a mix of single unit and rowhouse districts, three storey mixed use districts and other old code commercial districts. The site is within the Ruby Hill Park View plane. Under the View plane, maximum building heights would be limited to approximately 75 to 80 feet, which is far above the 40 feet that is allowed in SMU three. The site is occupied, as I mentioned, by multi-unit residential. Surrounding sites include multi-unit, single unit, residential, commercial and parking uses. This slide shows an area of the site and the surrounding context looking north. These are photos which show the sites where you can see the existing multi-unit buildings. You can also see the small home located on the SRH 2.5 lb parcel, which is not proposed to be resolved. This shows us slide shows photos of other uses in the area, including mobile homes to the south and commercial uses along federal. And this slide shows photos also of residential homes along Decatur in parking and retail on dual to the north. The map amendment was received in February. On July 10th, Planning Board held a public hearing and voted unanimously to recommend approval. Today, we have not received public comments on the application. The Denver Zoning Code puts forth five criteria for evaluating map amendments, which I will review. The first is that a map amendment must be consistent with our adopted plans. In this area we have a comprehensive plan 2040 and Blueprint Denver. We do find that the MAP Amendment is consistent with several strategies in comp plan 2014, as are outlined in the staff report. A number of these look to increase the development of housing units and to make sure that we have a variety of housing options in our neighborhoods. Blueprint Denver identifies the subject property as within the suburban neighborhood context, and the SMU three district is consistent with this designation. Blueprint also identifies the subject property as within a low, medium residential area, which includes a mix of low and mid-scale residential uses up to heights of three stories. Decatur and Astbury are both identified as designated local streets. We do find that the SMU three district is consistent with this guidance and blueprint because it would allow a mix of building forms with heights up to three stories. The property is within what's called in Blueprint Denver all areas of the city under our growth strategy. And this is an area where we're expected to see 20% of new housing growth and 10% of employment growth overall in the city. The proposed rezoning would facilitate development consistent with this vision. Further blueprint Denver also recommends bringing properties out of our old code and into the new zoning code, which is proposed with this application. We do find that the application would result in uniformity of district regulations and further public health, safety and welfare. With regard to criteria number four. The application identifies changes or changing conditions, specifically that the site is still zoned, and former Chapter 59 as a justifying circumstance. Which is appropriate. And lastly, we do find that the proposed rezoning is consistent with the purpose intent of the suburban neighborhood context, our residential districts and specifically the multi-unit districts. With that, CPD recommends approval based on finding that all review criteria have been met. Thank you. Thank you. We have one speaker signed up. Joseph Friedman. Hi. I'm Joseph Freedman and I'm available for questions. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Sandoval. I see you chimed in. I have two questions. Oh, okay. Ah, I didn't know if that's okay. I didn't know if you were signing up, if you were wanting to speak, so. All right. Thank you. That concludes our speakers questions from members of council. Councilwoman Sandoval. Yeah. So can I have the. The planner come up, please? Hi. Thank you. Your name again? I'm Liz Weigel. Thank you. So if you go to the zone district map, I think it's page six. Sure. Can you just explain to me it's surrounded by annex. Can you explain to me why the zone why MSA was chosen? So this is IMU. So it's a multi unit. And the guidance we have is for low, medium residential, which is generally residential uses. So we feel like that that is consistent. Where you're seeing X is where we have community corridor mapped in Blueprint Denver. And I can go to the blueprint map just to give you that piece. Yep. So you can see that distinction that happens in our planning guidance between where a mix of uses is recommended in corridors and centers. And this is a recommendation for residential uses. And do you know one more? One other question. Do you know if the property owner like it looks like a jigsaw puzzle was reached out to too, so that it could be a consistent zone district? Yes, they were. The applicant probably answered that question more directly and they did approach them on that. But did you reach out to the property owner in the yellow? We? And we've been we've been in discussions with them. Did did we actually reach out about the zoning change for them? I don't I don't think we reached out to them. We sent them a letter explaining what we were going to do. We gave them notice. There's also been postings around the property, several rounds of them. So they're aware of it. But it's the zoning was basically chosen to reflect the current construction of the planned building group in order to make it make it fully usable. The way that the buildings were actually constructed in the eighties were not compliant with their zoning. And it just so happens that they would be compliant with the new zoning. So it's kind of a twofer here, whereas with that one, that house is a single family home. It wouldn't have necessarily felt like a fit. So they haven't spoken to us and asked us to be involved, but we are in communication with them. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you. I would like to ask the owner's rep to come back and. In the report that we got from city staff, it says something about historical urban Phil and I'm assuming that means a landfill. Is that accurate? Let me ask the city staff the question first and then just I'll come back to you in just a minute. And then it speaks, I believe it's under the DPA cheese response to the reason application. And then it also talks about rate on a landfill. It's called Historic Urban Fill. And I'm asking if that means that that that's an old landfill. It's not it's not it's not an old landfill. Okay. That's not a reference to that. So what is what is a h you f mean a historic urban fill? Would you mind telling me what page you found out? I got to pull the document up. Hold on a second. Maybe it was a reference to infill. That's not what it said. So give me a second. Let me pull this back up. All right. I can. Find it in here. It was under comments from the Department of Public Health and Environment. Is that in the comments that you sent back in the first round? So it's under summary for city agency referral comments from the Department of Public Health and Environment. It talks about. Oh, here under the general notes. Yeah. Says the area is of historical urban feel and then in parentheses it says HCF may exist under portions of the site. The H2 may be encountered during future soil. Disturbing activities and impacted soils or debris must be managed and disposed of in accordance with state and federal regulation. My understanding was that if ever it has doesn't have to do with the historic sort of industrial uses or landfills on the property. I think that they're saying that if older construction was used, it has to be we'd have to get rid of any dangerous materials in the correct manner. I think that I'm speaking generally, so I don't want to speak specifically for you because I don't know the exact answer, but I believe this means that they might be aware of where Phil was brought in from offsite in this property and there might be contaminants in it that could be discovered at some point in the future or. Yeah. Okay. So this yeah, I think generally that things that may come up at some point. Yeah. For the future, I think it would be helpful to have a very clear understanding of what historic urban Phil is. You know, does it mean there's more than just some other soil that was brought on or does it mean something more like remnants of an old landfill? And I can get more information and share that with council. I'm assuming here the owner has done a phase one environmental on the site, and if they have, that would determine, you know what. We're not that planning. We're not planning on doing any construction on the site. We're leaving the buildings as they are. They'll get some light lift, remodel of the interiors and freshening up. But we're not taking these buildings down and putting up new buildings or even doing additions on them. So we haven't we're not going to be disturbing the soil. So is there a reason, then, that you need to do the rezoning, given that you're not planning to do anything different with the buildings? Yes. When the buildings were built, they were built with more units than they were supposed to have been built with. And so we can't the former owner didn't have a problem with that, but we can't actually use the use the plan building group at capacity unless we are compliant. And so in order to get a new zoning permit, we had to go back and get the zoning upgraded. Got it. Okay. And you answered my my latter question. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. The public hearing for Council Bill 724 has closed comments by members of council. Seen no comments by my colleagues. I will make a comment. I see that this rezoning does meet all of the review criteria and I will be voting in favor. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black Eye. CdeBaca. Clark. Flynn. I. Herndon. I hindsight. Cashman. Ortega. Like Sandoval, I swear i. Torres, i. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announced the results. 11 Eyes 11 eyes council bill 724 has passed. Councilman Herndon, please put Council Bill 752 on the floor.