A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 2175 South Cherry Street, 2176 South Clermont Street, 4501 East Warren Avenue and a portion of 2135 South Cherry Street in University Hills. Approves an official map amendment to rezone properties located at 2135 and 2175 South Cherry Street, 2176 South Clermont Street and 4501 Warren Avenue from G-MU-3 and PUD 277 to C-MX-5 (planned development and multi-unit, three story to urban center, mixed-use, five story) in Council District 4. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 10-8-19.
12 hours counts. Bill 1008 has passed. Councilman Kennedy, will you please vote counts? Bill 1009 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. This time I'm going to move that council bill 1910 zero nine, be placed on final consideration and do pass. Thank you very much. It has been moved and seconded. The public hearing for Council Bill 1009 is open. May we have the staff report? Yes. Thank you. Scott Robinson again with community planning and development. This is a request to rezone 21, 35 and 2175, South Cherry Street, 21, 76 South Claremont Street and 4501 Warren Avenue. From Jim, you three and PD to 77 to see Annex five again. The property is located in Council District four in the University Hills neighborhood and again just south west of I-25 and Evans Avenue and just south of the previous rezoning request. This property is about 1.3 acres and again requesting the rezoning to redevelop the site. The existing zoning is GMU. Three and 277 with single unit zoning just to the south, CSX five to the north and east and GMU three to the west. The PD comes from the eighties and allows basically what is there now. The existing building and a fairly limited range of uses are allowed under the existing beauty. Property is also part of the Colorado Station General Development Plan from 28. Also in the secondary GDP area development area one, which calls for residential transition between intensive office development and lower density, uses south of Warren Heights generally 1 to 4 stories mixture of housing types. Also calls for that open space if development allows. And again, does not specifically allocate use height or density. And those can be changed without any amendment to the GDP. Existing uses are residential on the western portion and office on the eastern portion of predominant primarily residential, south and west and commercial north and east . And again, you can see the subject property and some of the surrounding properties. This is subject to the same development agreement that has been signed by the city and the property owner, which again includes the voluntary affordable housing commitment of 10% of the units below 80%. Ami for 99 years, 25% of those units, two bedrooms are larger and units that will be built as part of the first phase. The open space commitment for 30,000 total square feet with at least 20,000 square feet of that in one pocket park with an open space easement and the streetscape commitment to build the detached sidewalks with the tree on. This also went to planning board on September 18th, received unanimous recommendation of approval. Two members of the public spoke and also in your packet is the letter of support from the University Hills North Community. With that signed Good Neighbor agreement in order to approve a rezoning of city must find that these five criteria have been met. The first criterion is consistency with adopted plans. There are four plans that apply to this property. First is Comprehensive Plan 2040. As described your staff report, staff has found the proposed rezoning consistent with these ten strategies from comp plan 2040 relating to equitable development, providing additional housing and affordable housing near transit. Providing additional open space. The second plan is Blueprint Denver from 2019. The context designation for this property is urban center consistent with the proposed Cn-Kcs five zone district. The future place designation is a community corridor which calls for a mix of office, commercial and residential uses. Heights generally up to eight storeys, which again is consistent with the proposed K'NEX five Zoning and Claremont. Cherry and Warren are all on designated local streets providing connections to Adams, the arterial to the north and east. The Collector to the south. And it is part of the community centers and corridors growth area intended to accommodate 25% of new housing and 20 20% of new jobs over the next 20 years. And there are additional strategies within Blueprint Denver that this proposal is consistent with relating to concentrating development around transit areas, providing affordable, affordable housing, providing additional open space, and bringing properties out of old code zoning and custom zoning. So bringing the pad into the Denver zoning code from 2010 is also consistent with the blueprint Denver so staff finds. The proposals are consistent with Blueprint Denver. The third plan is the Colorado Station General Development Plan. The intent is to provide the transition from higher intensity long ovens to low intensity south of Warren. Again, heights generally up to four stories, but the GDP does not actually control height, and that can be changed without any amendment to the GDP. And we are getting the recommended open space. So staff finds the proposed rezoning generally consistent with the Colorado Station General Development Plan. And the final plan is housing an inclusive Denver, which again calls for providing more affordable housing throughout the city, which we are getting through the development agreement. So staff finds the first criterion met. The second criterion is uniformity of district regulations that finds the proposed rezoning would result in the uniform application of the CMC's five zone district. The third criterion is to further the public health, safety and general welfare of the city. Staff finds the proposed rezoning would do so by implementing the city's adopted plans and again providing that a pocket park in that mixed use development, creating a more walkable and healthier environment. The fourth criterion is justifying circumstances. Staff finds the proposed rezoning is justified by the change in changing conditions. There are new development in the area, changing the character of the area to be more consistent with the proposed next five zoning and then also a portion of the site retains that old code. Former Chapter 59 Community Zoning sought to bring that into the new code is also a justifying circumstance. The fifth criterion is consistency with neighborhood context, district purpose and intent. Staff finds the proposed rezoning would result in development consistent with the urban center neighborhood context, description and the purpose and intent statements of the CMC's five zone district, which is intended for areas or intersections served primarily by collector arterial streets where a building scale of 1 to 5 storeys is desired. So again, Evans is an arterial just to the North Island. As a collector, just to the South City, the area served by arterials and collectors. And Blueprint Denver calls for heights generally up to eight storeys as a five stories here is appropriate staff finds all five criteria have been met and recommends approval . I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much and thank you for all your hard work on these two items. I see three. People this time. I'm wondering if you guys are also going to talk on this one. No. All right, then it looks like we have three. First up, Jesse Pierce. Jesse Parrish, represented for Denver Homicide at Low Black saw a movement for self-defense, positive action coming for social change as well as the upo universal African People's Organization and Unity Party of Denver. And I'll be your next mayor in 2023. I have the same questions. What is the guarantee that this is going to remain affordable at 80% AMI until 2118? And who is going to enforce this? The city is going to enforce this is to perpetuity. Do we have this all completely in writing? I want to know for sure, for sure that this is going to be guaranteed affordable housing for the next 99 years. And also how many units? Because I'm confused. Is it 360 is a 350 and how many of those are actually going to be affordable? Thank you. So what's the timeline for this? When will construction begin on this and when will it be completed? Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Elizabeth Davis. Thanks again. My name is Elizabeth Davis. I live at 2575 South Cherry Street, and I'm the co-president of the University Hills North Community Registered Neighborhood Organization. And I wanted to let you know that the board is in support of this request as well. Again, contingent on the things captured in the Good Neighbor Agreement. And if it's okay, we'd like to request that the previous statement that we read be applied to this as well. Do we need the statement to be ready in time? Kirsten Crawford Legislative Counsel I think it's fine just to put the written statement into the record. Okay, great. Thank you. Jennifer new helping. Same as with Liz Davis that what I read was the completion of the statement that Liz started. So I'd like to make sure that we'll give you a written statement for the record. Thank you very much. And do we did you email a copy of that statement over that we have? If not, could you just deliver it over to the our secretary over there? Thank you. All right. That concludes our speakers questions from members of Council Councilwoman Ortega. I have two questions for Mr. Hill, if you wouldn't mind coming back up. So, I mean, you guys are the same developer on this site as well? That's correct. So has the Good Neighbor agreement been signed between both parties? It has. Yes. This is Chase Hill with Cypress Field Advisors. And both the good neighbor agreement and the development agreement have been fully executed. Okay. And then do you all intend to apply for low income tax credits for either one or both of the projects? Currently, we're not intending to. You're not intending to. So the only affordable is are the ones that are already spelled out. That 10% of inclusionary affordable housing. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. Scott. Could you explain a little more, first of all, how many units are on this site? And then how did we arrive at 10%? Because this close to a transit station, I would think that we would try to leverage more affordable units and deeply affordable units than ten, just 10%. Yes. So the my understanding from the developers is they plan about 360 units on this site. They can talk more. About as opposed to the other one, which was 100. 150. Yeah. Okay. Three. How many? 360 is. -60. Okay. And then the the amount came through negotiations with the developer. And again, this is entirely voluntary on their part. We have no requirement that they provide affordable housing, just that they pay the linkage fee. Right. And so this is more than what the the linkage fee built out alternative would have resulted if they had just decided to build. What would. That have. Been? I don't know. Off the top of my head, we can do the calculation. Okay. But I know I know we are getting more than we would have under just the the like actually build alternative. And so it was a series of negotiations over months with the developers over what they could give and still make the project work for them. And you're right, we always want more affordable housing, deeper affordability, longer times, larger units, all those things. So they were all in play and this was the the deal we could get. How did we arrive at 25% of them being two bedroom as opposed to one? Are the others one bedroom or are they studio or. I don't know. Yes. So the way that a good neighbor agreement and a developing agreement is drafted is that it's proportional to our unit mix for the market rate units. And it's currently contemplated that 25% of our market rate units will be two bedrooms above the remaining 75%, 60 or one bedrooms, 25 or 15 or studios. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Councilwoman Sandoval. Thank you, Mr. President. I have a question for the development team. If you could come up to the mic, can you talk to us? Can you talk to us about that, the the right of way that you're vacating? I asked this question in ludi, but I just want to make sure that it gets on the public record because right now, ingress and egress on ingress and egress on cherry seems super challenging. And your rezoning from an approved new zoning. So can you just talk to me about where you are in that process and where you are in this site development process? Yes, thank you. That's a great question. So we have now officially vacated Cherry Street as of two weeks ago. So the section of Cherry Street that bifurcates our site into two east west halves has now been fully vacated. So Cherry, she will stop at war. And then we are introducing a new east west private road that will split our site north south that is actually in the GDP plan to eventually have those east west roads. So we're kind of the first domino in that plan. And that road will also allow access out of our property over to Claremont. And we have a second point of entry which is wanting the neighborhood wanted out of our project under Warren. So you can access you can get out of our garage to the north of the new east west road or to the south along Warren . And talk to me about the when you vacate, will you have sidewalks on the front going east west now or. Yes. So the new private street, which it's not going to be the city right away, it's private road that bifurcates are phase one and phase two. We're talking about phase one currently. That is merely basically a fire lane for primitive fire access. The sidewalks, which are detached sidewalks, not the Hollywood sidewalks, are running along Claremont and Warren. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Hines. Thank you, Mr. President. May I ask Mr. Robinson to come up? The developers are really kind to stand there. So the question that I have so we had a couple of concerns about the percentage of affordable housing in the last the last rezoning. And your comment just a minute ago is we have no requirement for affordable housing. Can you? I mean, I think I know the answer to this, but just to the public knows, can you explain why we don't have a requirement for affordable housing yet? We clearly have a need for affordable housing. Yes. So what we have is what's called a linkage fee. And we my understanding is we went with the linkage fee and replaced our formerly former inclusionary housing ordinance because we could not require of inclusionary housing. We could not require developers to build units when those units were rental because of state law and state Supreme Court decisions. So under current state law, we can't require a developer to provide affordable housing as part of. A. Rental project. And so we have the linkage fee instead, which does not actually require developers to build any affordable housing units. And does that court decision, this state Supreme Court decision, have a particular name or the it's known as the Telluride decision. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman. All right. See no other questions. Public hearing for accountable 1009 is closed. Comments by members of Council Council Black. Thank you, Mr. President. I don't have much to add other than to just clarify that there are. If they build what they are proposing to build, there will be at least 50 units of affordable housing, which is far better than paying the linkage fee. So I just wanted to clarify that and also just to personally make the pledge that I will make sure that they comply with the development agreement and the good neighbor agreement. Personally, I've lived in near there almost my entire life, and so it's very important to me and to my constituents who are in the back of the room. So I will make sure as I am able to hold them accountable. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Black. Councilwoman Joyce. Hi. Thank you so much. Just wanted to mention piggybacking on Councilwoman Greenwich's comments about voucher holders being able to access these particular properties at 80%, but still only paying 30%. It's a it's particularly important because not even a year ago, a lot of voucher holders were leaving Denver with their voucher because they couldn't find those units. I appreciate you including 80%. And we just want to make sure that those voucher holders are aware of what they qualify for. So thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilman Torres. See no other comments. I'll just add again a thank you to staff for all your hard work on this. Putting together the report today and the staff report in our packets, I think it clearly demonstrates that this meets the criteria and I'll be voting yes this evening. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black I. Flynn I. Gillmor I heard him. I hate. I mean. I. Can eat. Ortega Five syllable high. Sawyer I. Torres, I. Mr. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please. Before the voting announced results. 12 hours. 12 hours. Council Bill 1009 has passed. On Monday, November 25th, Council will hold a required public hearing on Council 1119 designating 1168 South Gilpin Street as a structure for preservation. A required public hearing on Council Bill 1120 designating 1717 East Arizona Avenue as a structure for preservation and a courtesy public hearing on Council Bill 1237 Adding a