A bill for an ordinance approving the Service Plans for the creation of Hurley Place Residential Metropolitan District and Hurley Place Commercial Metropolitan District. Approves two separate service plans for the formation and establishment of two Title 32 districts: The Hurley Place Residential Metropolitan District and the Hurley Place Commercial Metropolitan District in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 8-28-18.
Councilman Flynn, will you please put council bill 944 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President, I move that council bill 944 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded and the public hearing for Council Bill 944 is open. May we have the staff report? Good evening. Council members Michael Harrigan again with the Department of Finance. Council build number 18 0944 is for an ordinance approving two service plans for new metropolitan districts supporting redevelopment of the site known as Curley Place in the Rhino Community. The districts are called the Hurley Place Residential Metropolitan District in Hurley Place, Commercial Metropolitan District. The service plans are being submitted for City Council on behalf of the Noto LLC pursuant to the requirements of Special District EC Section 30 212001 and more particularly 30 21205.52 or 4.56. The service plan contains the District's purpose, powers, requirements and financing plan. The District shall be responsible for compliance with the city's municipal code rules, regulations and other applicable laws. The District shall ensure that the District's public improvements are designed and constructed in accordance with the standards and specifications of the city and all other governmental entities having jurisdiction . Is anticipated that the Shirley Place Residential Metropolitan District will ultimately include all residential property located within Hurley Place and the Hurley Place. Commercial Metropolitan District will include all commercial property located within Hurley Place, within the birthplace place development. The new metropolitan districts will be responsible for coordinating the financing, acquisition, construction, completion operation and maintenance of all public infrastructure and services within and without the service area, including without limitation street and sidewalk improvements, parking infrastructure, water, storm drainage detention, sanitary improvements, sanitary sewer improvements, landscaping, irrigation, public plaza and traffic safety controls and improvements. The new metropolitan districts will have the power to raise revenues pursuant to the authority's granted in the Special District Act, including the imposition of up to 50 mills plus rates, fees, tolls, charges for debt and district operations and maintenance. Once the district imposes a debt mill levy, the district's operations and maintenance mill levy cannot exceed ten mills. The new metropolitan district will be authorized to impose up to five mills for regional improvements at the direction of the city. The total estimated cost of the public improvements necessary to serve the contemplated development are approximately 28.1 million. In order for the new metro districts to have the fiscal wherewithal to provide funding for the upfront costs of the public improvements needed in the service area, the new metropolitan districts will have the ability to issue debt and impose a debt service mill levy. Hurley places his plant is a residential and commercial mixed use development. The project will support and enhance the existing development within the Rhino neighborhood by creating a new iconic entertainment and residential hub in the center of the community. The development plans include a mix of creative office, restaurant, retail, hotel, entertainment and residential uses for a total of nearly 1 million gross square feet of development. Approval of the service plan establishes the following There are sufficient existing and projected need for organized service in the area. The existing service in the area is inadequate for present and projected needs. The districts are capable of economically providing sufficient service to the area within the proposed boundaries. The land and proposed development to be included does and will have the financial ability to discharge the proposed indebtedness on a reasonable basis. The facility and service standards will be compatible with the facility and service standards of the city. Staff recommends approval of the service plans. The applicant, their representatives and city staff are here tonight to respond to any questions regarding this council bill. Thank you very much for the presentation. Your PowerPoints are almost as compelling as your colleague Andrew Johnston's. Thank you. We have six individuals signed up to speak this evening. If you signed up to speak on this one, if you would please come to the front bench. I do apologize if I mispronounce your name. I think we might have a few of these in our system incorrectly. But I will start with Bernard Hurley. Go ahead. Good evening. So. Thank you, counsel, for allowing us to present. I mean, Early Place is a development that's located between 38 basically and 36 between Arkin's court and Del Gainey, one block down from Brighton Boulevard to include the New River Promenade. And and so we've got mixed use of residential. The residential we have we're taking advantage of the up zoning and the overlay and providing the affordable units. We're taking advanced advantage of the the overlay and and and using community benefit. I think that we have an opportunity to create a truly iconic part and sense of place that doesn't exist in that side of Reinoehl right now. And I believe that with the team that we have together in our plan, I mean, there's 13 acres of greenspace surrounding this project. So between the Reinhold Park, the six and a half acre linear promenade park, and then the green space that's in the private development that's on Chestnut, I think that this project is going to be iconic and impactful for the city for years and create a sense of place to bring people together and also create a lot of services that are lacking in that part of. Ryan All right. Now, as in we've got 65,000 square feet of retail and other services as a part of our development, as well as a large plaza area that opens up to the river and the river promenade and the project interacts specifically with that promenade. So thank you. Thank you. And again, I apologize on this next one. If I get this wrong, Tom, go screw. Good evening. It's Tom George with the law firm. Spencer Fein. Might not have gotten. Fully translated in our system, but. Go ahead. That's a new one for me. I just like to say thank you to city staff, particularly Michael Carrigan and Andrew Johnson and also city attorney's office for the work with us. And I'm here to answer any questions you might have. Thank you very much, Mark Tompkins. Good evening, Mark Tompkins with Stray Advisory Services. I'm an adviser to Mr. Hurley on this project and I'm here to answer any questions. Thank you, Michael Persichetti. Michael Persnickety with RBC Capital Markets. We're financial consultant. And just here to answer questions. Thank you, Kirsten Beck. Hi. My name's Kirsten Beck with Foster Graham, and I'm here to answer any questions. Thanks. Thank you very much. And our last speaker is Jesse Paris. Good evening, members of council. My name is Jesse Paris. I was on a 2842 Josephine Street, which is an Albert Brooks district, and I am also a candidate for our large city council 2019. I had a few questions in regards to this development. I was overheard that this is going to be a mixed use residential. I want to know what is the and my level for this affordability? Is it going to be 30 to 60? Is it going to be 60 to 90%? What do you consider affordable? Um, something about services. What kind of services will be rendered at this property and also where the local Arnaud's notified? Because the last time I was at this at a city council meeting, I was told that these metropolitan districts had not notified the local Arnaud's of what they were up to. So I just need clarification that this Metro Politan district notified the local Arnaud's. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our speakers. Are there any questions from members of council? Councilwoman Ortega I do have one. And this sort of applies across the board to all of them. But Michael, you might be able to help answer the question, if not maybe somebody from the team in terms of how the financial team is picked for any of these meet districts. Is that handled separately by the people requesting the approval from council to create the Metro District to, you know, put it on the ballot and whatnot? Or does a city play any role in any of that in any way, shape or form? So so the city plays a role in reviewing the the application that comes before us. And then we and then we also engage the city's financial advisor for that. But the initial kind of financial team for for the applicant, that's a completely private decision made up by the property owner. Okay. So somebody from the team, can you give me an idea of the total square footage we're talking about for the proposed development at this location? Mr. Hurley. Maybe there. It's approximately a million square feet. Okay. Yeah, because I mean, I was just looking at the one that came before us, and that was. I don't believe they were approved for 50 meals. Maybe I didn't hear that correctly. But this one is and clearly the amount of square footage on this one is a lot more. Almost 400,000 square foot more than the other one. So. Okay. I have no further questions. Thank you. Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Espinosa. Yeah. At a finance committee. The slide deck showed these artists studios with some of them being some of the ones that are on the private property being mirrored in the public, in the parks. Right, in the parks area. And there was some discussion about these being sort of publicly available artist studios to sort of and but there is no mention of that in the service plan. The service plan doesn't doesn't include the area outside of the property lines. There is some language that manager finance can sort of add area. And so I just want to know, you know, you know, are the artists studios, in fact, part of this service plan in a way that I don't quite understand? Councilman Espinosa That's a really easy question to answer. So as part of the 38 and Blake overlay, the value incentive that we are providing for the commercial height provides for community benefits agreement. So it's terrific about this project. This will be the first community benefits agreement that we will be entering into and we will have as artist studios as part of that. So we've worked in conjunction with Parks and that's why it will be on the promenade, because Parks would like it to be located on the promenade. And so all of the requirements with respect to the artist spaces will be something that is part of a community benefits agreement with OED. So how would that sort of legally be captured? And the service plan has defined boundaries in the exhibits, and these sites are not included in those limits. So it's part of the property owner. It's a developer's agreement that we're required to do because again, this is part of the 30th, an overlay, incentive overlay. So as part of our requirement to be able to get the additional height for the commercial property, we have to enter into this agreement directly with the property owners. So there will be some participation with the district once it's formed, but it will be entered into between the developer and the an EADS in order to be able to implement that 30th and Blake overlay incentive. So in theory, it's the developer is privately developing these improvements on city land and district money is not essentially being used. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And originally, the artist spaces were going to be located on this property as part of the plaza that then would obviously feed into the promenade. And again, that was conversations with parks and kind of the spirit of what we've been working with the entire time, which is really cooperative nature. And so the parks request was to have this as part of the promenade, to activate the promenade, which was an easy request. Thanks. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa, Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Michael. On this one, the regional mill levy, it doesn't specify any projects that the city envisions levying this for or asking the district to levy it for. What do we have in mind for this? At this time, I'm not sure what we have in mind for it. I imagine it would be some kind of cooperation with the the city, the Greenway Park or the Promenade Park. But, you know, I'm not sure exactly what. What what discussions have gone? I don't know. Somebody from the development team. Is there a specific project that the last one that we did? The reason I was questioning that one was we had a specific project that were already that we had already funded. And we were asking the new metro district to provide a mil levy, a levy for that. Here we don't have a specific project for 25 years. We have this authority to ask the district to levy an additional five mills to provide revenue to the city for some undefined future need. Is that am I reading that correctly? Yeah, I think so. Did you give some comments? Yeah, it's. It's it's the ability to be able to enter into a future idea, to be able to. To levy those bills for a to to be determined. It's interesting. Okay. So we're creating with these metro districts, we're creating future financial capacity for city projects as yet undetermined. But but it is an IGA so the idea has to have terms with although the service plan says we don't need an IGA if we don't have one, we simply take the revenue from those five mills into the city rather than flowing them through the district. Okay. That's that's interesting mechanism. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn saying no other questions. The public hearing for Council Bill 944 is closed. Comments by members of Council Councilman Brooks. Yep. Thank you, Mr. President. And Councilman Flynn, I don't know if you're going here, but, you know, we just approved with the bond this entire the rhino promenade and this this this development actually is going to go in conjunction with that. And I think what I like about some of the metro districts is as we can live, we if if we do decide to go into an idea. And so you don't need an HCA, but we can levy both. We can use both mechanisms to fund your development and to fund what we're trying to do some improvements on to our development. So that passed the bond pass overwhelmingly and this rental problem promenade was actually on the first tranche of dollars that would be spent. So that's one of the reasons I'll be supporting this. The other reason that I'll be supporting this is if you seen again, I always say, you know, you you need these mechanisms to fund infrastructure. And if you saw this area, if anyone's ever been to Blue Moon, this is the area of which Blue Moon is in. And Mr. Hurley owns Blue Moon and the welcome in. He doesn't own that, but the welcome in that whole area over there, it is in desperate need of infrastructure and we need to activate that river. And so this entire project does that. Ms. Hurley does not have to activate the river, but it's part of his vision and it's part of the neighborhood's vision. And so we want to see that happen. But even even more of why I'm supporting those are the I think the criteria for me in funding a metro district. But one of the things that Mr. Hurley did not talk about is his support of formerly incarcerated individuals in the eight or two or five neighborhood. And I personally know of several that he has hired from the community in his company, Family, Environmental and you know, you know, his work with Impact Empowerment Group, led by Haroon Cowans , has been great, but my hope is that we see more of that, right? We see more of that with this development. We see an incorporation of formerly incarcerated individuals who were gangbanging in this area and now part of the economic success. And so I appreciate you hiring folks and I hope that we can grow its capacity. And I hope that many other business folks and developers in the city recognize their ability to connect folks with the economic success of the city. So I'll be supporting this. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. Excuse me. I'm also supportive of this. My historical note for the evening is that, if I recall correctly, Denver's first Catholic Church was built down here, and I think it was flooded out and then moved up to where Sacred Heart is now in Larimer Street, the the issue of the regional levee and the promenade. Councilman Brooks, if I recall, the promenade was funded in the bond issue. So it strikes me that this additional capacity to have a third party, a metro district, taxed its own property up to five mills is a bulwark against the city incur incurring cost overruns on the project or the infamous scope creep that we've seen in a lot of projects. So to have to have that five mills authorized with no project in mind strikes me as a little prospective protection against city overrunning on the Promenade project. Nevertheless, I do support this project. I'm familiar with the area having worked on the the A-line project and and think it's going to be a great project and I fully support it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn, I'll just add I'm very excited about the activation of the river have. He spent so much of my life along it. So thanks for bringing this forward and look forward to seeing the final product. I'll be supporting this tonight with no other comments meant. Oh, Councilman Brooks, right at the deadline. I just had to say one more thing. The the Hurley in the team is is going to take advantage of the affordable housing incentive overlay. The incentive overlay is a ceiling of 80% am I but allows you. To go below that. We have folks going in at 60% am I by 30th and Blake. And so I just want to encourage you to use that 60% that 30% and come talk to the city, put that affordable housing plan together because this neighborhood needs it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. No other comments, Madam Secretary, roll call. Brooks Espinosa. Hi, Flynn. Hi, Gilmore. Herndon. Can each. Lopez. Hi. Ortega. Sussman. Black. Hi, Mr. President. I am secretary. Please close voting. Announce the results. 11 eyes. 11 Eyes with a name shown up on the screen. Oh, no. Okay, I'll fix that. Okay. Thanks. 11 a council bill. 944 has passed. Councilman Flynn, will you please? What council? Bill? 820 on the floor.