Approves a rezoning of 2420-2490 S. University Boulevard from G-MX-3 (General Urban Mixed Use Three Story) to G-RX-5 (General Urban Residential Mixed Use Five Story) in Council District 6.   (LAND USE TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE) Approve the rezoning of 2420-2490 S. University Boulevard from G-MX-3 (General Urban Mixed Use Three Story) to G-RX-5 (General Urban Residential Mixed Use Five Story) in Council District 6.   A PUBLIC HEARING WILL BE HELD AT LEAST FOUR WEEKS AFTER PUBLICATION. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 3-25-14.
Madam President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Kosovo announced the results. 12 days, one abstention, 12 as one abstention. The bill does pass now. Councilman Lopez, will you please put council bill 245 on the floor? Will do. Madam President, I move that council bill 245 series of 2014 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. We are going to open the public hearing on council about 245 and I am going to ask for the staff report for Miss us. Thank you. Madam President, members of Council Mrs. Deirdre O's for Community Planning and Development before you Council Bill 245 for a proposed rezoning for a 2423 2490 South University from Gmc's 32grx5 location is in southeast Denver, South Central Denver in Council District six along University Boulevard. This is the westernmost edge of Council District six in University Park neighborhood. The applicant is no doubt Colorado, and recently actually they did close on a property that had been owned by the University of Denver and Colorado Seminary. So the applicant is 100% knowed of Colorado at this time. The property outlined on your screen is approximately 75,000 square feet. And this is a request, an amendment to go from G or General Urban Mixed Use Annex three Story to General Urban Residential Mixed Use five story. With regard to height, that means that there would be an allowance of up to 70 feet for. Residential mixed use with the current allowance as 45 feet in the three storey district. Key characteristics of the grass fire district include a variety of multi-unit residential uses and building forms with a wide, wide range of heights up to 70 feet, often framing low scale single and two unit residential neighborhoods. Commercial is sometimes embedded, but often located along arterials and main streets. And you'll see in a little bit on the slide show some other areas of the city that also have a grade five zoning similar to this block. With the existing context. The current site is on GM x three to the west of Cross University is a commercial block zoned C-Max five. That's an urban center context mixed use five storey district to the south as G and U 12 with an urban overlay for historic and that is specifically a 12 story district that acknowledges the existing condition, especially at the time in 2010, when the zoning was adopted for these sites for existing 12 story buildings and 10 to 12 stories north beyond this block is tr x five as well. With historic structure overlay, there is one little piece that you will see at the corner of Wesley and University that is a 7-Eleven that is not part of this application. With regard to the existing land use context along the site, which is GMF three, it currently contains a lot of commercial business and retail uses 1 to 2 stories, built roughly between 1951 and 1972, low skill commercial with office complexes, often with parking built underneath. And so parking access is both from university and from the alley to the north. And GM x three is, again, as I mentioned, a 7-Eleven to the south. Multi-family residential towers to the east is urban single unit C. So this is a 5500 square foot minimum lot size. Generally speaking, some are larger one, two, two story homes and 5 to 7000 square foot lots. And then to the West University Boulevard and C-Max five Urban Center mixed use five story with commercial and business retail, including auto oriented convenience food sales. That block is also adjacent to kind of accessory block south of the main University of Denver campus. The existing building form and scale is you can see this block actually contains a number of curb cuts, like I said, multiple access and entrance into these sites. The site contains most of the pictures that I'm showing you here, really for the site itself. And then the adjacent block across to the east is Josephine Street from across the alley, and that is predominantly single family. So you can see in that top right photo the context changed between commercial corridor development and residential to the south of that or to the east of that alley. With regard to process, the planning board did hear this on March 5th and voted 9 to 0 to recommend support of this application. It did go to the Land Use Transportation Committee on March 25th and forwarded to City Council for May 12th, 2014. There was a petition of protest that was filed due on May 5th that had been filed by the neighborhood. That petition and protest was evaluated by CPD and does constitute a legal protest in accordance with our zoning code. This means that tonight's vote will require an affirmative vote of ten in order for it to pass. So that is a supermajority of council required tonight. With regard to public outreach, the registered neighborhood groups include University Park Community Council. They did vote prior to planning board and I believe still that vote would hold at 11 to 0 to oppose. The University Neighborhood Group also attended the planning board hearing with one representative. We haven't received a formal written notification from from that group. Signs of been posted on the property and also taken down as I understand. So they were continually put out by the applicant to ensure that there was adequate notice on the sign posting. And we have received letters both in opposition and support. In your packet, I believe there are three additional letters that have been received by us since Planning Board. It is very possible. City Council also has received additional correspondence that we have not seen at the time of Planning Board. Just to give you a visual, this is a very important project and obviously it carries a lot of emotion and weight with it. In the neighborhood, we did put together a public response mapping so you can see kind of where responses are coming from. That doesn't include anything that we've received since Planning Board. We were able to get that map together, but this does show a level of opposition and supports and then you can add three more greens to that letter of support as identified in your first packet are review criteria much like the zoning you've heard prior include consistency with adopted plans, justifying circumstances, uniformity of district regulations, furthering the public health, safety and welfare and consistency with neighborhood context on district and intent. Consistency with adopted plans. We do find in CPD that it is consistent with comprehensive plan 2000 Blueprint Denver and the University Park Neighborhood Plan in Comprehensive Plan 2000. Looking at that 30,000 foot level of environmental sustainability strategy to have to conserve land and infill property across the city to ensure that lands on the outside, that aren't served with infrastructure, are preserved and not developed until we have filled the city and adequately land use strategy three B to encourage quality, infill development and then mobility strategy for continuing to promote mixed use development, particularly in areas of enhanced transit. University Boulevard is identified as enhanced transit corridor and Blueprint in Denver. Here's the Blueprint Denver map. So the site itself is designated as urban residential. It is an area of stability. Now, in your staff reports, I have indicated the two types of areas of stability that are identified in Blueprint. One is reinvestment areas and one of the committed areas reinvestment areas tend to be sometimes larger blocks, but areas that are highly underutilized often are often dated and tend to be long corridors. Like I said, larger areas, committed areas you will often find in a single family residential neighborhood like the neighborhood to the Eastern University Park or the neighborhood to the West in the university neighborhood. This does not mean that change doesn't happen and there is stability. It means that the level of change anticipated is identified and particularly guided by our plans. And especially when you have a neighborhood plan that is of great import to decisions with regard to what happens in a reinvestment or a committed area, in an area of stability, urban residential designation typically means a higher density and primarily residential development . That may include a noteworthy number of complimentary commercial uses. The streets around the site University Boulevard and Harvard University is a residential arterial. Harvard is an and designated local and again university is identified as an enhanced transit corridor with 30 minute headways. The University Park near. Red Plan starts getting into a little more detail. It identifies this block within a couple of different distinctions. First, under a Main Street identification where mixed use oriented and commercial nodes and transit centers is central to that theme. Between two and five stories recommended on blocks like that and 8 to 10 near transit nodes. This block staff does not consider it near a central transit node like the University Station, which is roughly a mile from the site. But it does recommend 2 to 5 stories. Main Street also promotes context, sensitive variation and character, along with thoughtful parking plans, strategic parking to reduce neighborhood overflow. This is very important when you're adjacent to a single family neighborhood. Our developers work to ensure that they are parking their sites in accordance with our zoning regulations and often are are over parking. But they do have parking requirements to ensure that neighborhood impacts are reduced. The other designation of the University Park plan is the Ivy Towers district, and this is identified between Wellesley and Yale, retaining both mixed use between Wesleyan, Harvard and residential context in the remaining area. It supports moderate densities of 3 to 5 stories. So in both cases, and this designation that covers this area five storeys is is roughly the maximum that could be considered in here. And this is really a transitional block within the University Park neighborhood, within the transition from University of Denver heading south. This is a block that really starts to acknowledge a lot of that residential condition heading south down university. The Ivy Tower District also promotes ground floor retail, pedestrian oriented development and a mix of neighborhood serving shops, mix of residential types, etc.. The district's five zone district does promote ground floor retail. It does promote pedestrian oriented development through its building forms and build to requirements. And a mix of neighborhood serving shops are welcome on the ground floor just so you can see a comparison of blueprint. Denver When we do Blueprint Denver that is that is a higher level planning effort. And when you get into a neighborhood plan, you can see the distinction in the University Park plan if you start getting into a little more detail. So I read through most of the detail, but I want to do to see the map sort of side by side and how this block plays out. And that's especially playing out during very thoughtful community discussions during the neighborhood plan efforts. With regards to uniformity of district regulations and furthering public health, safety and welfare, staff concludes the proposed amendment will support uniform application of the district regulations and will maintain and advance public health, safety and welfare through advancing policies and our plans. Districts five would be applied uniformly as it is north of this block, outside of the 7-Eleven, and is a transition block from the neighborhood business core in the due area to the residential part of the corridor. This is just an illustrative this is not something that the applicants proposing to build, but this is the kind of drawing that we would have put forth when we were starting to do our zoning code. UPDATE In 2010 or when he adopted the zoning code was to deliver information about how upper story setbacks and the relationship to that block are are portrayed. So this is a very general concept, but this shows you a little bit about what a building on this block might look like adjacent to an alley and then adjacent to a single family district to the east. Isn't a university park in this case. With regard to public health, safety and welfare. This is consistent with the desired land use plan set forth for the University Park neighborhood in 2008. It provides a desirable and predictable zoning standard, capped at a height of 70 feet. And just to mention in 2010, when the zoning was adopted for the current GM x three, it replaced B2 and B2 had an affair of 2 to 1 and had there was no height limit. So depending on how you built your site, you might have a lot of parking, but a really tall building, you don't really know how that that would play out. And B to our new zoning code does establish these predictable standards. It does require upper story setbacks at 27 feet. It would step back 20 feet from the property line and then at 51 feet, it would go back 35 feet. So another 15 feet in addition. And that's the drawing that I showed you prior, one adjacent to a protected district as defined in our code, and that would be the UCC district to the east. There are also site specific design and development impact studies that are addressed and resolved at the Administrative Site Development Plan stage. This is often one of the biggest concerns for a neighborhood, is looking at what the impact is of a resulting project. We are here tonight to look at it as a district that meets the intent of the plan and for the block, not for looking specifically at the project. But we do refer this out to our development services agencies who have all provided comments, and those are in your staff report that while the rezoning is acceptable to them at this stage, that of course during our development plan, additional traffic studies and I believe ones already underway would be required in addition to wastewater and water and all of the other utility studies that would be required during that stage. A little bit about principal use differences. So that year X five district is actually somewhat more limited in use than the current TMX three. The current TMX three does allow certain uses that aren't even allowed in the District five, including auto emissions out of service uses. Those would be eliminated with the adoption of a two year x five as well as a service repair lab development. Some limited manufacturing would be allowed and that's some very small scale. With regard to consistency, never had contacts and understood purpose and intent and end justifying circumstances. Staff concludes there are justifying circumstances for the proposed amendment and that the proposal is consistent with the context and the intent of the director. Five Pursuant to Section 1214 1014, the land or its surrounding environment has changed or is changing to such a degree that it is in the public interest to encourage redevelopment of the area and or to recognize the change character of the area. This block is it is for decades has been under-utilised and with rezoning to GM x three it started to make headway toward a more predictable, understandable zoning. But it was also an acknowledgment of at the time the site that was not fully formed and could not be developed in a unified manner and had multiple owners on the University Boulevard Main Street corridor with growth on the boundary of the University Park neighborhood. University Boulevard has been developing over the last 510 years and is consistent in that development with neighborhood plan. The opportunity to reinvest in this block has really only come into play when the owner has had the ability to actually do it in a unified manner. And at this time, as I mentioned, no f Colorado owns the majority of the block outside of a 7-Eleven. Also, this is one of multiple districts that could be established on the block to meet the plan intent in 2010. The as part of that major update to the zoning code and working with the neighborhood but actually a GMC five and urban general mainstreet district and a five story district had been brought forward in a couple of different draft maps, but in a lot of work with the community and input at that time and especially with the owner not ready to really proceed with anything different. What we looked at was acknowledging existing entitlements and still looking for more predictability and compliance with the code. It is one of the districts that could be established on the block, but not the only district. The neighborhood context, purpose and intent. We believe the proposal for Derrick's five is consistent and allows encourages up to five storey buildings. That is consistent with the plan. The block directly north is on Tier x five and the proposed district introduces a focus on residential component of mixed use zoning. Really quickly, here is Derrick's five on the block just north. There is another side at 26 to 20 eighth along Downing, that is also Durex five. There is a direct five large area around Denver health and hospitals. And then a block of decks, 5/22 part Glenarm to Welton. And so there are a number of different contexts here. X five has been proposed oftentimes and in a place where there is a corridor and arterial or some focus area for that development. And here's just a comparison of those areas with regard to what their former zoning was and former Chapter 59 in their blueprint designation. So this block is not and similar to the similar to the other blocks that are that I mentioned. So just a little quote from the plan I think is important. And remember, this plan did come from the neighborhood and from the city and adopted by council that cities thrive on variety, blending different places such as corridors with neighborhoods and at a finer grain level, mixing a variety of building forms and site development patterns within these areas in a rational and orderly way. And that is the evaluation that staff has done. And with that, CPD recommends approval based on the finding that all review criteria have been met. Thank you. So we have 23 speakers and so what we'll do, I will call the first five and then when they go, I'll ask the next five so that we can have you sit up in this front row and be ready and be on deck for us. Just a little reminder, you will have three, 3 minutes unless somebody has yielded their time and you will would have 6 minutes. No personal attacks, no profane language, respectful of this of our speakers, because we do want to have everybody have an opportunity to talk about what they'd like to talk about. I'll call up first five are Bob Golic, Christopher Shears, Todd Frisbie, Sean Maley and Andrew Samaras. Madam Chair, members of Council. Good evening. My name is Bob Garlic. My address is 609 South Gaylord Street in Denver here this evening. On behalf of the property owners and support of this council bill, as Deirdre mentioned, conditions have changed in this area. And one of the most significant changes is that in 2010, when the zoning code was going through, we didn't know what zoning code update was going through. We didn't own all this property. We owned just a southern corner and then we had a gap and then we owned another parcel and then we had a gap. We didn't know the North Edge, but all in the last 8 to 10, maybe 12 months, we've been able to assemble most of this entire block. So at that time, even though there were two iterations of the zoning code update that showed us at five storeys, it didn't make sense because we didn't have a unified plan. We had a parcel, we didn't. We had a parcel, we didn't. So no one was there to really step up and lobby for it because we weren't we weren't there. We didn't make sense to have five stories at that time. But sorry for the loss. Right now we own we've assembled the entire block and the it makes a lot of sense to zones of five. We are in complete conformance with the UPC plan. The IP Towers District shows this is five storeys. It has a limited mixed use along University Boulevard. And I believe that that plan really got it right and I think our zoning really got it right. This is exactly what we are proposing for that block. We've picked the ARC Zone district as opposed to the Amex, even though there's Amex all around us, up to some 12 story zoning and five story zoning. There's a very subtle difference between the bricks and the mix, but it's very significant. The IRS only allows commercial uses on the ground floor. The annex allows commercial uses on all fours. So our current zoning, we could do ground floor retail with office above. If the R x is approved, we have to do ground floor commercial uses and anything above that has to be residential. It's a transition zone. It's a buffer for the neighborhood. It provides some protection for a residential neighborhood like it is to the east of us. CPD supports this and I have all the respect in the world for CPD and I have all the respect in the world for the planning board. And the planning board had a very thorough discussion of this proposed rezoning, and they voted unanimously 9 to 0 to support this. And the planning board chair at that hearing said if we're not going to put a little more density on University Boulevard, where are we going to put it? And this is an appropriate site for that five storey density. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Garlic, Chris shares. Good evening, Madam Chairman, and members of Council. My name is Chris Shears. I will be the architect for this project if this rezoning is successful with Shears, Adkins Rockmore. And what a pleasure it was to be here in the evening that Alber was recognized. I just have to say that I'm going to show you a series of slides that represent the three dimensional consequences of a rezoning to five from 3 to 5 floors. If I can get this to work and I think you. Dana, I get the wrong. Yes, thank you. I meant to mention that you have 6 minutes. Yes. Thank you very much. And I'm just I'm going to show you a couple of images. When we were first meeting with the neighborhood a year ago, it was apparent that it was important to understand what five stories could be and what the the zoning would would allow. And so we went through an exercise with the neighborhood to show them the computer 3D computer imaging, which you see here in this case. This is from the south west with the building up against South University. And the proposal here and what this represents actually is approximately 230 residences, rental housing, 25,000 square feet of retail, neighborhood oriented retail parking below grade. That's very important. All the parking will be below grade and parking ratio of about 1.3 to 1.4 spaces per unit, which is sort of the, you know, the real thumb for these kinds of projects. The next image. Okay. Here we go. The next image is looking from the south east. And once again, these are very conceptual. Can you make those bigger? I, I don't think that I can make them bigger unless I have Van's help here. You're about to watch this. This represents the what we think is a very sensitive way to handle the transition between the taller portions of the building and the neighborhood. We've intentionally moved the mass towards the university and stepped the building down. Okay, good. Now, this is much better. Thanks, Dan. And this is out of this is a result of the number of meetings that we had with adjacent neighbors who, of course, were most concerned about the impact of this project. So there isn't one major elevation. All the elevations for this building would be equally important and recognize the setbacks that are required. We also built a very large context model for neighborhood meetings and meetings with with individual property owners. And these to this well, this view represents really the the neighborhood side of the the project, once again, with the major portion of the building setback towards university and the setbacks. And the idea here is that there would be landscaped outdoor spaces along the alley. And we feel this is a pretty sensitive way to handle the project. We also created a couple of very quick images, mostly for planning board, which added some scale and detail to those those models. And while this will change dramatically over time, these images do represent the scale of the project. This is a view down the alley illustrating the setback along the alley. And you can begin to see some of the the trees on the other side of the alley on the right. Now, having said all of that, we've had many, many conversations with neighbors, some support, some opposed. Most recently, we have met with the PCC board member, representatives of their board and listen to their specific requests on the condition that the rezoning would be approved tonight. What would we do? And we made a commitment in the very beginning at our first meeting that we would continue to work with the neighborhood through the design of the project and even to the point where we would include them in some of the meetings with city staff and some of the departments specifically. And maybe most important, the traffic. Traffic, of course, in public works having to do with offsite improvements, access points to the building and with the whole idea that we begin to address the concerns that the neighborhood has. And we've had a I think we've had a good experience with the neighbors. We understand their point of view. It is their neighborhood after all, and we're committed to continue to work with them. It's I think some of you know that a good deal of the work that our company does is infill work. It's project in the projects that are all over the city, that are on sites that haven't been developed, and many of them are parking lots, underutilized pieces of property. And we have an attitude in our office which we require our clients to, to, to have, which. Is to shares. Your time is up. Oh. My gosh. How time flies. I, I encourage you to support this project in our efforts to continue to work with the neighbors. Thank you. Thank you. Todd Krispy. Good evening, Madam President. Madam President and members of council. I'm Todd Frisby with Fell's Burg Holt. And I'm the traffic engineer on this project. And we know that traffic study is not an that's not required in this zoning application. But we felt that the concerns about traffic and access that we should start to look at that early on in the process . And so we went. Through we went ahead and did that. We started we. Collected some traffic data in the neighborhood and on university. We estimated the project site trip generation using industry standards that we use all the time. And I should note that given the context of this development, it's, you know, on a transit line near a major employer, near a major university, you know, those relationships could be slow, it . Could be inflated. Those industry standards. Could be a little bit higher than what we're using. But nonetheless, we went ahead with those industry standards and we. Overlaid those estimates on the Street Network. Put it all together, put together a little traffic memo that was shared with the neighborhood within the last week and and to document our findings. And so this is what this is what we've this is what we found. First, two things. Traffic volumes on university would not be significantly impacted by this by this develop because it would represent a very small. Percentage of the traffic. On this sort of regional arterial. The second point I want to make is that we looked at the peak hour traffic. There's the highest level of traffic that would be, we're estimating in this development. And so we looked at streets like Josephine and Harvard and Westfield. What would be the traffic potential on those streets with this project? And we came up about of about 100 vehicles per hour during the peak on these streets with that project. Now, if that sounds like a lot, think about it this way. 100 vehicles an hour represents one vehicle every 37 seconds or two vehicles every 1 minutes and 14 seconds. So envision. That, you know, if you visit a span of time, one minute and. 14 seconds, 15 seconds. Approximately two cars will pass by that spot with this project. So hopefully that gives a little bit. Of sense of the intensity of traffic that could be generated on some of these neighborhood streets with this project. And also. Remember, too, that this is the peak. We're looking at the peak hour. There are 23 hours. Other days of the other day were that traffic level would be lower than that intensity. So as I wrap this up, you know, we believe that. That the. Levels of traffic on this with this. Project are within normal levels, that what you would expect in an. Urban in an urban setting such as this. One. On a day, and with the current zoning you could allow there could be a three office office. Building of three stories that would generate actually as much. Traffic as this project would if the. Corporate speak. Your time is up. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sean Reilly. And you have 6 minutes. Thank you. I'll try to move briefly and not reiterate some points. Good evening, Madam President. Members of Council. My name is Sean Maley. I work at CRL Associates 1625 Broadway and we're representing the owner and developer Tesla developments. This project has certainly generated a lot of discussion and so one of my main goals on projects like this is to carry out a robust public involvement plan. I suppose you could say we've been successful, but I know there are many concerns out there in the community among some of the residents, and I want to let those neighbors know that their voices have indeed been heard. And while the development team is here tonight asking council to approve what we think is a pretty reasonable and well thought out rezoning application, we will remain open to working with the community even if this project is approved in the interest of time. Instead of further detailing our community outreach efforts, I issued a memo to the City Council on May 5th that detailed some of our public outreach. I also have copies on hand for the Council Secretary. I want to spend the bulk of my time talking about a few key items. The first was reiterating the University Park small area plan, but I'm going to skip over that since that was done quite thoroughly by Deirdre and Bob. The second point that I wanted to discuss is the current three storey zoning for the site and the 2010 zoning code update. You may hear a lot tonight about how there is no justification to rezone the site since it was very zoned for 3 to 3 stories in 2010. As you know, there are a lot of properties being resolved in the city on a regular basis that were also resolved in 2010. And the fact is, just as Deirdre pointed out, there's not usually one singular zoned district that is the only of. Appropriate zone district for a piece of property. In fact, the 2010 zoning code overlay. There were a number of maps issued for various neighborhoods. I think in some cases four or even more than four maps per neighborhood. And on multiple of those maps, this property was designated for five stories. There were also quite a few members of the community that advocated against the decision to map this as a three story property at that time and advocated for five stories. Now, if we were here proposing a zone district of, say, eight or 12 stories, there would be no justification that that would not be an appropriate use of of the adopted plans and not an appropriate proposal. But given that the plan says five stories and that the city is open to accepting and processing rezoning applications that do meet the plans and carry out other objectives, we believe this request is well justified. Another item that you may hear about tonight is predictability, and that because this property was very zoned for three stories in 2010 and now four years later being considered for something other that there's no predictability. I suppose it's always the case that very good, well-intentioned people may look at properties, zoning or the zoning of properties adjacent to them and make the assumption that things will not change. But a few things I thought were important to note. The first is the University Park Community Council. The neighborhood group in this area that we've grown to know quite well was one of the main drivers and influencers in that small area plan. And the fact that this height, five storeys, is specifically enumerated in that plan, it should not be a large surprise that a zone district may come in that calls to carry out that height. Secondly, in terms of predictability, if a property owner and developer cannot come in and seek a rezoning application that carries out a height, again, specifically enumerated in an adopted plan, and also deliver upon another of a number of other plan objectives that actually might be unpredictable information. I want to say, with the utmost respect to everybody involved in this process, that the development team has tried throughout this process to go above and beyond the call and look into everything. As you heard from our traffic engineer, we advance a traffic study to share data and information with the neighborhood, and we've committed to work with the neighborhood well beyond the potential approval tonight with regards to site access locations, how southbound traffic access is handled and anything we can do to deter against neighborhood traffic. When an adjacent neighbor raised concerns about solar panels on their roof, we took it very seriously. We had Chris, his office, look into a solar analysis to see how this development would impact sun angles and the adjacent properties. And what we found was that except for a very small portion of the year, basically the winter time when the sun is at its very lowest angle, that is the only time that this project would cast shade on the adjacent block and quite frankly, many, many properties across the city at, say, 3 p.m. on December 21st, which this analysis showed are going to deal with shade at that time. So we were actually quite happy with the results of the solar study and it's something that we take very seriously. We heard about parking from the neighborhood and how in their area overflow parking on their streets would would certainly not be welcome. We also take that very seriously. As such, we've done market studies for the type of parking ratios that a project like this needs to be successful. And what we are doing is is exceeding code requirements on parking levels in all instances. And finally, we heard a number of concerns from the adjacent block who feared about their property values and lifestyle. And in response to the Josephine neighbors, we want to let them know that we really do care, that this is just the rezoning stage, that there are many other things that we look forward to continuing to work with them on. And I'll wrap up right now and be available for any questions. Thanks so much. Thank you, Mr. Bailey. Andrew Sampras. And while you're coming up, Mr. Samaras, I'd like to call Karen Hutchinson, Benjamin Blackwood, Michael J. Hicks, Jennifer Robinson and David Thorpe. Madam President, may pass some things to. Hand them to the secretary, but be great. Hi. Good evening. This has been a wild experience. It's been amazing. So thank you for letting me speak to you tonight. Madam President. Council members. Good evening. My name is Andrew Summers. I live at 2441 South Josephine directly behind the proposed property, along with my wife Tracy, my two daughters. We've lived there for ten years. Over ten years, I was lucky enough to grow up two miles from the neighborhood. Born and raised in Denver. Went to place middle school. I was ecstatic when I got the chance and my wife and I were able to purchase a home in the University Park neighborhood. It was amazing. We're lucky. I'm here tonight to appeal to you, to open your minds and think about things from a different point of view. And I'm going to paint a picture that is relatively something you've heard before in the zoning meetings and proceedings. And I appreciate that. And I'm aware of that. So I don't want to be the same old broken record that you've heard in the past. But I do ask for you to have an open mind. In 2008, the Tesla management people, along with a new tenant, tenant that they brought towards us that they soon would call the University Park Grill, approached the neighborhood to ask for support and them obtaining a liquor license for what they described as would be a family restaurant. And they were adamant about that. The neighborhood was led to believe that this restaurant would be an upgrade to the trash infested and graffiti infested parking lot that was had boarded up windows and unsafe and decrepit buildings. The neighbors agreed to construct a good neighbor agreement that would highlight a few mutually agreed upon compromises that the tenant and Tesla management would follow. The neighbors did not oppose the liquor license. A few weeks after the University Sports Grille opened, the chaos began. The neighbors had feared and it had become evident. The chaos included music past the hours that were agreed upon. Vandalism. Many alleys. Our properties were vandalized. Intoxicated patrons that were fighting in the parking lot at all hours in the evening. Park patrons parking in our driveways, overfilled trash, dumpsters. And on Sunday mornings and Wednesday mornings and Monday mornings, it smelled like a fraternity house outside. When we would call the University Park Grille or go over there, we were told things like, it's not our fault. Or they would just tell us they couldn't take the phone call. On numerous occasions, neighbors called 911 to complain, and on many occasions the police reports were filed during one inspection due to a complaint made by an an about an all day beer pong tournament that included deejays, live music and intoxicated patrons that were storming the alleys . It was found that the building permits that they filed were fraudulent, and even the permit that the management had used for their all day parties was fraudulent. And there are data in the package that you have as well to support that email to the city council, to the management company, to the tenants. They were beginning to pile up. Even Councilman Charlie Brown was involved in some of those correspondence and those were also in the packet for you. I've also included some pictures in the packet and I think it's worthy of your time to look at them and see some of the advertisements, what we lived through, what we saw, what we dealt with, and what was the comment on the web. Following a few changes and partners of the business due to lack of funding, the University Park Grill was out of business. Then they changed hands to become the Mercedes University Park Grill to keep the liquor license intact. And that just became a burrito stance on Saturday mornings. The entire University Park neighborhood is begging for Jerry develops. We are hoping it gets redeveloped, but the three stories that it's eligible to be redeveloped for, for now is perfect. It's what's needed. It's what we're asking for. And we don't deserve to live behind what we've been living for living through for the past ten years. The Tessler family has owned this property for over 38 years. The property right behind my house 38 years, the property to the right, 38 years. It's never changed. It's gotten worse. There's boarded up Windows Pictures in your package to prove it. What we're asking for is to have you look at it from a different point of view. I asked you how you would feel if it was your home, if it was the family you want to raise in the neighborhood that you're proud of. Where we want to stay. Why reward an owner who has done nothing to be part of the neighborhood and did not participate in the 2010 rezoning at all? At this time, it's pretty obvious, but I'd like to have any of the neighbors that oppose the rezoning stand up. That's an amazing support. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Mr. Samaras. Karen Hutchinson. My name is Karen Hutchinson and I reside at 2300 South Monroe Street and I am here in favor of the project. I have lived in the neighborhood for 17 years and over the 17 years the neighborhood has seen lots of change, most of it very good. I think most agree the neighborhood has become very desirable to live in. And over time, a lot of the commercial enterprises around have improved. The King Soopers University Park Shopping Center being probably the main improvement. When I spoke in favor of this at the neighborhood meeting, someone asked me if I lived close to the project. I do not live close to the project anecdotally, however. I lived in Capitol Hill for 13 years among many high rises and apartment buildings, and I also lived in Congress Park for a total of seven years behind an apartment building. In both cases, over that 20 years, I found that my property increased its value over town over time. And so to say that property values will be affected, I believe, is not necessarily true. I also want to point out that though I don't live close to the project, I do live close to Colorado Boulevard and I'm pretty close to the medical marijuana dispensary facility, which I would love to talk to each and every one of you about. I haven't found that that has been a great addition to the neighborhood. However, some things do come. I believe that this is going to be a first rate project and the neighborhood needs upscale living facility. If you're living in Denver, we've talked all night about how Denver is a first class city. The Union Station Project is going to add a lot to our living, and I believe that this is just another step in that same direction. Please support the project. Thank you, Ms.. Hutchinson. Benjamin and I can't read all of us. There it is. Benjamin Blackwood. And you have 6 minutes. Thank you. My apologies in advance. Yeah, it's 430 in the morning. I don't know where you are, but I'm at my desk. So at 9:00 at night, I'm going. To read this just so I don't mess it up. If that's all right with everyone. My name is Ben Blackwood. I live at 3275 East Wesley. You may recall that street just on the map there a minute ago, other than neighborhood for four years, we actually moved in the neighborhood. Specifically to be in the neighborhood. In that time, I've learned how the neighborhood operates. I am opposed to the zoning, of course, for a number of reasons. The biggest being that it just does not meet the test of the justifying circumstances of the Denver zoning code. The developer states in the application that a zone map amendment is warranted because the land or its surrounding environments have changed or is changing. To agree that it is in the public interest to encourage redevelopment of the area, to recognize the change character of the area. This reasoning is to change. The subject site relates to the applicant controlling or sorry, the applicant obtaining control of two of the parcels created under the ability of the master plan of the property. Underlying planning, zoning regulations for particular land use are enacted for residents of the community, along with owners of commercial property to use as a road map and rely on as a guide for the direction of their collective community per the applicant. The majority of the property has been owned by the same family for almost 40 years. This ownership period covers the timeframe from the early 2000 to 2010, when the current zoning. Was studied intently. With great participation. Between the city, the community and then quote and then codified. The applicant is surely come to understand the land, the surrounding environments, the character of the neighborhood over its ownership period. In the three and a half years since the current zoning was enacted, there certainly has been no change in the area. I've lived there for years. I can attest to that. The assumption is that a change in ownership would trigger in land surrounding environments or the character of the area is just not accurate. We understand that zoning regulations should provide a framework for the land excuse me land use regardless of its underlying ownership. City if city council were allowed to allow for the land assemblage to trigger an increase in allowable heightened density, then we would set a very dangerous precedent. I believe private development should be carefully planned with an understanding of what is allowable in a particular land parcel from the onset. The idea that solely the creation of common ownership on multiple land parcels would be rewarded with a rezoning to allow for greater density and more height. Which was. Bolton increased traffic, further loss of privacy, loss of sunlight is really not in the best interests of any community, especially ours. The planning staff, on the other hand, included differing, justifying circumstances in their report. And again, as longtime residents in the neighborhood, we fail to see how even their reasoning is support to exhibit a change in the area. They gave two reasons why the rezoning is justified. First Estate, the University Boulevard Main Street corridor has become a subject of substantial growth on the boundary of the University Park neighborhood over the past several years. Since the current version of the Denver Zoning Code was enacted in 2010, there have been two residential and commercial structures built on the stretch of South University Boulevard. The first is one observatory park, which is located in an intersection of University and Evans, which just finished up last year. It was rezoning 28 prior to the new zoning code. The second new building is an area of Observatory Park Place, located at 2350 South University Boulevard that's zoned Zurich's five. When the zoning code was enacted in 2010 and this new structure was built on the property in 2013, conforming to the existing code. While it's true, there are two new buildings constructed since 2010. Both conform to the zoning that was put in place at that time. And as a result of the efforts of the community and the city in the early 2002 2010, the construction of the two buildings in four years is not substantial growth and there are no other buildings this area currently under construction that would help support that position. Planning such second reason was I believe rezoning is justified is the University Park neighborhood has also seen substantial change in terms of meeting new demands for single family residential construction in four years living in the community. The neighborhood essentially built fully out over the last 20 plus years when movement towards replacing existing housing stock. The single family construction, which has occurred in the Unified Park neighborhood, very simply replaces One World War Two era single family home with one modern era single family home. If one family in a modern home replaces one family lived in a legacy home, then the result on the density has a net zero impact. Further, at this point, since the new zoning code was enacted in 2010, a trend that began in the 1990 of replacing existing housing stock has simply continued forward to today. The single family construction we see today is not a new phenomenon in the U.S. Park University Park neighborhood. Again, we have not seen a change in the area from 2010 to today that would support a rezoning of this property. I, along with a lot of other people, are very much in support of the redevelopment of the site. I think it's an eyesore, to be honest. There is no reason to believe a redevelopment cannot be achieved under the existing zoning of the property. The applicant nor the planning staff has provided a reasonable justifying circumstance which would warrant an amendment to the zone map. The neighborhood participated in an extensive, thorough and inclusive process from the early 2000 to 2010, and through that collaboration in the city, it was concluded that three storey mixed use was reasonable. There's truly been no change in York City Park since 2010 that would warrant a change in funding. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Blackwood. Michael Hicks. Thank you, Madam President. I've been speaking on zoning and architecture issues since Elbrus. And in that chair and suitcases that in your chair. And my late friend Jennifer Moulton had Brad's job. So I appreciate being here, being able to speak and to my neighbors. I'm speaking, in all honesty, for this development because I believe in it. I believe it's the best thing for the neighborhood. The first thing I did when I found out that the University Park Council voted against this was to look up what the developer has done. Not only do I look up what the developer has done on vacation visiting my daughter in New York, I visited five of his properties. They are impeccable. They were some of the best architecture in the city of New York, if not the world. Some of the best architects there impeccably maintained their beautiful artwork in the lobbies. Our neighborhood deserves this type of project. I've been personally involved because I really think something can be done better with that block. I also believe a development of this scope is better than individual three storey type structures that would allow a lot allow a lot of individuality, access and very little landscaping off the alley to buffer the development to the adjoining neighbors. I think the improvements in the alley are significant. The fact that the developer is going to go below grade and build parking spaces at the astronomical cost of $25,000 a car to avoid the headlights that would be coming in and going out of that project is incredible. It's something the neighborhood deserves. I urge you to vote for this project. You will be seeing a lot of projects like this in the future. This is a good development. This is a good developer. They have worked honestly and in concert with the neighborhood in several meetings. I trust them. I believe in them. I trust the architect. This process needs to move forward. We need to engage with the neighbors. We need to make this a better project. That's what University Park Community Council is known for. Engagement with the developers, improving our neighborhood. We can do this. We should do this. Do not close the door to a developer of this caliber. Denver needs this project. Our neighborhood needs this project. Please consider this very carefully. Vote for this project. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Sorry I didn't have any notes. I always speak from the heart. Thank you, Mr. Hicks. Jennifer Robinson. Good evening. My name is Jennifer Robinson. My husband, Brad Robinson and I. Are single family, homeowners and residents at two, four, three, three South Columbine Street in the University Park neighborhood of Denver. We oppose the application. To rezone the. 2400 block of South University Boulevard because it and the proposed development are not consistent with the University Park Neighborhood Plan and Blueprint Denver and not in keeping with the character of the neighborhood. The developer has plans to construct a massive 500 foot length by 80 foot wide by 70 foot tall structure with 236 units. This would have the largest footprint and possibly the largest. Volume of any building in the neighborhood. The University Park Neighborhood Plan on page 70 recommends that the mass of new construction should, quote, relate the aggregate volumes of new construction to traditional development patterns, unquote. The University Park Neighborhood Plan on page 70 also states. The goal should be to, quote, create buildings that provide human scale, unquote. This proposed building would extend nearly the entire block. No other building in the neighborhood extends this length with a height of 70 feet. You can see exhibit D of the zone map, map amendment application. The proposed dwelling units per acre or D is 137. There will be 236 units in 1.72 acres, which gives us a day of 137. This is high density by any standard. Several of the other apartment buildings one block south in the Ivy Tower district, already have high density dwellings. Blueprint Denver states that only occasionally should developments in areas of this type classified as urban residential by blueprint denver exceed 100 you. That's only occasionally. This proposed development would make the Ivy Towers District along South University Boulevard provide predominantly high way. This conflicts with Blueprint Denver. It's also complex, with a moderate density recommendation for the Ivy Towers district as put forth in the Park Neighborhood Plan Plan on page 116. The Park Neighborhood Plan states on page 58 that any attempt to alter the zoning along South University Boulevard should apply height, quote, height and box standards that are more responsive to community preferences, unquote . The community is overwhelmingly opposed to this rezoning. We support the development of a three storey mixed use building. The rezoning in 2010 concluded that Street three stories was the most appropriate for this area. The zoning should not be changed without proper justification. In summary, the current zoning Gmc's three just approved in 2010, already allows for a beautiful mixed use development of three storey buildings, which would be consistent with the University Park Neighborhood Plan and Blueprint Denver and would preserve the character of the neighborhood. We do support a development of this type. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Robinson. David Thorpe. But while you're getting up there, let me call in Linda Gill, Pat Barron, Jennifer Schmidt, Will Jones and Debbie Harrington to please come up to the front pew. This won't cut into your time. Go ahead, Mr. Thorpe. Thank you, Madam President. Good evening, city council members. It's an honor to be here with you tonight. I am a resident of University Park. I live at 2315 South Cook Street. My son attends University Park Elementary, and my wife is a professor at Iowa School of Theology right there in the neighborhood. Back in 2010, I had the joy of being a co-chair of the Neighborhood Zoning Committee during the rezoning process, and it was a great experience to interact with the neighborhood folks and and and look at all the zoning. And by and large, there was unanimity of the zoning that was placed across the neighborhood, with the exception of one place. And that is this place that we are talking about tonight. And I was vocal in my opposition to two to a GM three zoning and it was because of the height limit that in my concern and my concern is based on about 30 years of experience in real estate development in construction, including some pretty complicated mixed use projects. I expressed that if we don't give the zoning, the height, the land owners the height needed, you couldn't get the great walkable retail along the street that you need. It's just an economic challenge for any developer. Putting that retail level in at the bottom floor is an economic drag on development. I can speak from experience to that, so I'm not surprised at all that now that the land's been assembled, there is a great developer with a really great architect who I've worked with in my role at Shaw Construction, doing some doing a great plan for for an for a neighborhood that needs great walkable retail. So I think I really want to encourage you folks to consider approving this zoning to a five storey height limit. It will it will do great things for the neighborhood. I think in a net effect, it will reduce traffic if more of us from the neighborhood decide to walk to the great retail instead of driving our cars. So thank you and have a good evening. Thank you, Mr. Tharp. Linda Gill and you have 6 minutes. Thank you, Madam President, and council members. My name is Linda Gill and I live at 2394. South Josephine University Boulevard narrows quickly on this block in question. This past week, there were two serious accidents here, three days apart. Both cars struck a street light pole that has been hit and replaced at least 12 times in the recent past and three times in the last two months. The most recent accident happened yesterday. I have photos. This was Sunday morning and it was a rollover accident when they hit the light pole right at that intersection. I have been told that the pioneer owners in front of that light pole have requested multiple times that something be done and have gotten no response from the city. This quick narrowing of university on this black also causes vehicle stacking. There is no traffic light or turnout lane. Impatient motorists pull out, try to go around the stack of cars and cause collisions. Pedestrians attempt to cross this intersection to reach the DU campus or the 7-Eleven with no crosswalk, no stoplight, and now no street light. This is not a car pedestrian or bike friendly boulevard by any stretch. This entire project will only add to the current problem. We need to be proactive and realize that if the traffic safety problems are not being addressed now, they certainly will not improve with the passage of this rezoning request. Parking for this many units is also an issue. Tenants, guests and shoppers will opt to use the already scarce but free street parking to avoid the high monthly garage parking fees or the inconvenience and cost of hourly garage parking. I am standing here now to tell you very clearly we have traffic, safety and parking issues now and they will only get worse if you approve this up zoning request. Lastly, I would like to address the preliminary traffic report that was done by the developer and given to the neighborhood a few days ago. This cannot possibly be used in any way, shape or form to support this project. It is not being reviewed by the city professionals and it appears to be a check the box item by the developer. More importantly, there are glaring inaccuracies in the report. The trip generation rate claim claims 120 AM peak trips out of the development for 236 apartments. That will not attract. Student residents. According to assurances from the owner. How then will the other? At a minimum, 116 residents be getting to work. Well, these 116 people will be standing at the bus stop. 26,000 square feet of retail space was used to calculate the specialty retail trip generation figure. Yeah, this is confusing to. Me because the footprint of this building. Is 40,000 square feet. The entire first floor is supposed to be designated retail. So I'm not sure how 40,000 square feet turns into 26,000 square feet of retail space. The traffic impact chart seems designed to hide the actual number of increased vehicles by using a vehicle frequency number, instead using the provided numbers which are questionable. It can be calculated that cars will double on Josephine, north of Wesley, to 102 cars per hour, and cars on Harvard, west of Josephine, will also double to 105 cars an hour. Wesley and Harvard, east of Josephine, are missing from the report. These are the streets that comprise a huge part of the neighborhood because they head into the heart of the neighborhood and they are not included because according to the report, all car traffic will totally avoid these streets and will gravitate onto it. I live in Evans. Does gravity mean levitate? Because you get to Evans and I left. These cars will be driving through our neighborhood. Having car traffic double on any of our residential streets is completely unacceptable. Please note that the increased traffic from guest service trucks, moving vans, delivery trucks is never addressed. And finally, I will quote directly from the traffic report. Under the heading existing traffic, it states quote, In the PM peak, our university carries over 2200 vehicles in both directions under. Traffic impacts at full buildout. The conclusion states, quote. University Boulevard traffic is expected to be about 2200 vehicles. Please listen closely. University Boulevard currently carries 2200 vehicles during the peak hour. And after this monolithic building is complete, University Bill Boulevard will have the exact same number 2200 vehicles during the peak PM hour, exactly the same amount. By this point, you should be very skeptical. Please vote now. I also have further photos that I would like to show you because I have one minute left single family homes back to this project. Behind the behind all the other projects on university are fraternity, sorority and. Student housing and due. Offices. Single family density is very apparent on this drawing here, and I can leave this here for you to look a little closer if you want. This is Tabor House, which is next. It's this 1970s building that is next to this project. It's 70 feet tall. This is how it will look and feel for our entire street right here. Vacant apartments in the area. According to Denver. Apartment Market Report, apartment supply is at a ten year high and demand is not keeping place. Pace. Occupancy is down for the second straight quarter. Ms.. Gil, your time is up. Thank you very much. I'd like to call on Pat Barron. Good evening. My name is Pat Baron. I reside in Denver and I'm here to support this project. My wife and I purchased our home in University Park over 30 years ago, and that time we've witnessed the mostly positive transformation of the University Park neighborhood. Along with several other members of the University Park Community Council. I was a member of the steering committee. We worked with the City Planning Department to formulate the 28 University Park Neighborhood Plan. This parcel, as Deirdre said, and was referred to as the Ivy Towers district and states that heights of up to five stories are appropriate. It also encourages development of mixed use projects along major arterials. I developed the five story mixed use project known as University Lofts in the northeast corner of University Evans, consisting of four stories of student housing over ground floor retail and underground parking. With the density we were able to achieve through the rezoning process, we were able to construct the underground parking and maximize the building size above grade to make the project economically viable. Without that density, it would not have made any economic sense. Structured and underground parking, as suggested in the neighborhood plan, is a much better solution for the neighborhood than surface parking. You will simply get a better quality, more walkable project with five stories than you will with three. And the 30 years we've lived in the neighborhood, we've also seen an increase in traffic, which is inevitable in any city that is growing. I would much rather be in a vibrant, growing city than one in decline. Increased traffic and growth go hand in hand. And I would also submit to you, however, that I think the majority of the increased traffic is made up of commuters who drive through the neighborhood as opposed to traffic generated by neighborhood projects. But we've also seen the addition of a terrific public transportation solution in the form of light rail excuse me, the University Park Light Rail Station has been great for the neighborhood. Many of us walk to the station and use the system regularly to get downtown. The team the developer has assembled is second to none. Collectively, they produced multiple projects that are an integral part of the Denver landscape. I also applaud the developer and his team for reaching out to the neighbors, listening to their concerns and addressing those concerns in the ultimate design of the project. Thank you for your time tonight and I encourage you to support the rezoning of this property. Thank you, Mr. Baron. Jennifer Schmidt. You have 6 minutes. Thank you. My name's Jennifer Schmidt, and I'm the outgoing president of the University Park Community Council. R.A. I've been on the board of the PCC for about five years, and I took the position as president just this past August, stepping up from vice president for a brief but really exciting time. I believe it's difficult to find volunteers for Reno's and PTA and other organizations. However, University Park has stepped up. We've become an engaged and active community. During my nine months as president, I found two new board members as well as many new volunteers. Just because people started to pay attention. When we said rezone, neighbors care about their property, their neighbors property and the overall feel of their community. There have been informational meetings for almost a year held by the development team as well as our R.A. and I am still getting phone calls and emails asking to sign a petition, asking to get involved and what can I do? These aren't just immediate neighbors. These are these volunteers range from Colorado Boulevard on the east to South Josephine and South University Street on the West. This is a neighborhood issue, not an immediate neighborhood issue, immediate neighbors issue, excuse me. And it was astounding to me that in today's Denver Post article that it was said that the neighborhood talks with the developer resulted in the changes, reducing the project from eight stories to five stories, when in reality it was because it is because of the protected district negotiated regulations. Our community has been overwhelmingly opposed to this rezoning application. Not only have we taken a survey to determine this, but we have made and fielded phone calls and emails about this topic. I have spent hours and hours on the phone with people of our community explaining the process to them and expressing to them that, yes, rezoning can happen even if all the homeowners adjacent to the property object, even if we have a legalized petition, the rezoning still can pass. These neighbors have been disappointed time after time, feeling like their city government is failing them. So the planning board didn't listen and discouraged that there's nothing we can do as neighbors. We showed great representation at the planning board meeting with approximately 30 neighbors in attendance during the middle of the day on a Wednesday. And tonight, as you see and saw earlier, that we have a great number in attendance after being rescheduled, reworked and with great weather. Our neighborhood from South University to South Colorado is engaged in this project. They do not want to see it resound. We could. We would all like to see it developed. But within the current zoning requirements that allow us to trust our city government and our city's zoning, and to have a predictable system that works for its people , that pay taxes, not just the businesses that do. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Schmidt. Will Jones. Madam President. Council members my name is Wil Jones. I am the external communications manager for the University of Denver, and I'm here to speak on behalf of the University of Denver. The University of Denver supports the proposed rezoning of the 2400 block of South University Boulevard. Over the past 15 years, the University of Denver has spent nearly $1,000,000,000 working to improve the infrastructure and buildings on campus. As we continue this growth, we are supportive of projects such as this one that are both reasonable and practical and will advance the development on our immediate perimeter, the University and Evans corridors, which are both gateways to the University of Denver. This plan for this portion of South University is also consistent with the city or excuse me, with what the city of Denver has been planning for some time now. As such, and after much careful consideration by both the administration and the board of trustees. Do you sell this property at 2420 South University to the developer? The University of Denver supports this plan of the developer for multifamily, housing, retail and underground parking on South University Boulevard. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Debbie Harrington. And as you're coming up, I'm going to call the next five, Rosemarie Stoffel, Vaughn Kendall, Patrick Cashin, Jake Norris and David Foster. Welcome. Thank you. Right ahead. Thank you. I think I've got some good news. First of all, my name is Debbie Harrington. I live on the 2400 block of South Josephine, immediately behind the parcel in question. My good news is that I think most of the points that I had planned to make have been made. So I won't be. Taking my whole 6 minutes and a quarter. Of tilt here, and I hope that makes everybody. Happy. I would like to. Say a couple of things. So these are really off the cuff. One thing that I think. Deirdre. Said was that the our block is predominantly single family. And I'd. Like to clarify that it is entirely. Single family at the. Block that. Is immediately behind the alley from the property. Also, I would like to point out that no one has really talked about the fact that just about a mile, maybe three quarters of miles south of this property, I know it's an Englewood and we're Denver. But there is a property of. 600 units that is scheduled to open here in the next few months. Kent Place, which is going to create a tremendous outpouring of traffic. Onto the already congested University Boulevard, which also concerns us in addition to any other development that's going to occur, that's going to add cars. And I had another point, but I lost. Track of it. So anyway, I was going to talk about justifying circumstances, but Ben Black did a wonderful job talking about that. So thank you. Thank you, Ms.. Harrington. Rosemary Stauffer. And you have 6 minutes. My name is Rosemary Stoffel and I live at 2275 South Monroe Street. I'm a current. Board member of UPC. He was chair of our Neighborhood Plan Committee and co-chair of our Zoning Code Update Committee. Our neighborhood plan was adopted in 2008, and it created a general vision, a guide only for University Park. It informed the decision by CPD in partnership with the Zoning Code Update Committee to recommend rezoning the site in 2010 from B-2 to GM x three. That designation provided two benefits. It increased development potential and was sensitive to the negative. Impacts on the residential neighborhood. Directly behind the three storey designation was a deliberate decision. There was consensus among committee members regarding this park, with only one member expressing reservations. Both CPD and our committee agreed that three stories. Was the appropriate zoning for that site in. 2010. We were surprised earlier in this process to see the Gmc's three zoning called a holding zone in the developer's rezoning application and then an adequate replacement by CPD in their recommendation for approval. If current zoning can be looked at in these terms, what does this mean for property elsewhere in the city? There is a perception that the current public policy is biased in favor of increased density over neighborhood concerns, even with unnecessary transit options and resulting traffic. So solutions woefully lacking and that most proposals for increased density are readily approved in our area of stability. The supposed justification. For increased density seems a real stretch. CPD's interpretation of this rezoning proposal. Which is so contrary to our interpretation, adds to the perception that evaluations are skewed in favor of developer requests. We also wonder if this streamlined way of considering rezoning is geared more toward efficiency. Rather than careful consideration of each unique. Situation. We've certainly been frustrated by the constrictions in the narrow ways in which this rezoning proposal has been allowed to be considered. Our neighborhood plan does indeed include the phrase moderate density, 3 to 5 stories and making general. Recommendations for. That area. We maintain that the number three means as much as the number five, and that the term moderate. Density does. Not mean 236 dwelling units on that site. It has been frustrating to see. Many other recommendations. In our plan be overlooked and minimized in numerous places. It is recommended that future development. Be responsive to community. Preferences and the community has overwhelmingly expressed opposition to a five storey high density development on that site. The plan recommends that future development provide a context. Sensitive edge. And be compatible with the. Character of the. Surrounding neighborhood. Which do you think is more compatible and context sensitive next to single family homes? 70 Theater Fri 45 feet high density or moderate density? The plan further recommends that intensity and density step down as distance from light rail increases. This site is more than a mile from. The closest light rail station. It is also directly. Across the alley from single family homes. A stepped. Down development, both in height and density, makes sense. The assumption that residents and workers in this area will decrease their car usage is unrealistic. Although this is labeled a transit rich corridor. The transit options are inadequate. Light rail is. Too far away and bus service is infrequent. It is a given that increased density will have a negative effect on the traffic in an already problematic corridor. We are not opposed. To redevelopment of. The site. Under the existing. Zoning, redevelopment could be an asset. To our neighborhood. The fact that there is significant opposition to this rezoning is not. A kneejerk anti-development reaction. We claim foul for reasons which we believe are valid. I'd like to note that we appreciate the involvement of Councilman Brown in working with public works to. Address neighborhood concerns about traffic issues related. To the proposed project. We also acknowledge that the developer's representatives have made a commitment to work with the neighborhood stakeholders. In the event the rezoning application is approved. This rezoning proposal merely reflects an opportunity which the city provides perhaps too easily. It is that opportunity which we question, given the fact that we thought the Gmc's three zoning was a done deal, that we firmly believe that the current zoning conforms to our neighbor. Had planned better than the proposed zoning and that transit options aren't in place to accommodate the increased density. We wonder why this particular opportune opportunity has so readily been approved all the way through this process so far. Thank you for taking the time and effort to consider objections before making your final decision tonight. Thank you, Mr.. Von Kendall. Hello. My name is Vaughn Kendall and I live at 2620 South Fillmore Street. And I take a position that I support the three storey apartment complex building, but I don't support the five storey. I'm not a developer. I lived in the neighborhood for four years. My kids go to school there. It's an awesome, beautiful neighborhood, a great place to walk. And I envision when I go to bed at night and look out the window or if I'm in the backyard with my kids. I envision what it would look like to look out there and see this big five story apartment complex out there with people looking down on me and people looking in my bedroom. And it's it would to me be horrible. And so I look at how the people on on Josephine would feel, and I'm not sure they would want to stay there after that. Years ago, when I tried to put a fence in the front of my house, I wanted five feet and the code was three feet. So I had to go ask my neighbors and the neighbors wanted it left at three feet. So that's what I did. I built a three foot fence, so I sort of feel that within Denver, if you want to do something, you need to get the okay of your neighbors and the neighbors there don't want it. So I ask you if if you lived in the houses on Josephine, if if you would support the zoning change from three stories to five storeys. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kendall. Patrick Cashin. And you have 6 minutes. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Patrick Cash and I live at 2160. South Milwaukee Street. In the University Park neighborhood. I'm in the zoning chair for the R.A. for the past 12 years. In the last ten. Years, there have been three rezonings in our neighborhood. All of which the University Park neighborhood has supported. The first one was in 2004 at Colorado in Evans. This was a seven acre grocery store site. It was ultimately rezone to a mixed use site with an 85 foot height limit. The second one occurred in 2006 at University in Evans, North Northeast Corner. That was previously a B2 zoning and was zone. To GM x 30, which. Ended. Up in a five storey mixed. Use. Development. Most recently in 2008, the Southeast. Corner University. In Evans. That property was previously zoned R three and was rezone to a mixed use development as well with a 11 storey height. All these were in the very beginning of the transit transit oriented development process that the city encouraged in the early 2000s with the like with the arrival of light rail in 2006. So all these all these developments made sense. Arterial streets, lots of transit density at the big intersection corners. And we felt that that certainly. Made a great deal of sense. The other commonality with these three developments is. That there. Are buffers between these high density developments and. The single family. Dwellings in the neighborhood. Sometimes the developments. Are three or 400 feet away from the closest single. Family house. The interesting part about the last project at at University in Evans is we actually suggested a redevelopment or a rezoning to the developer. He was keen on keeping the Project. R three, which was. Residential only. And we felt that a mixed use with ground floor retail would better support our neighborhood as well as the 13,000 people a day that. Wander around the campus. So we actually encouraged him to rezone it. He was reluctant at. First, but eventually. Proceeded and we supported that. The other outcome of these projects was that we had developed an experienced staff of. Volunteers that ultimately finished the small area plan in 2008 and also then transitioned into. 2012. Zoning Code 2010 Zoning Code Update We felt that we had a good team to work with there and worked with CPD staff. We feel that the proposed zoning is not. In context with our neighborhood. As I mentioned, there tends to be buffers. Between. The high density, five. Or eight storey development further. North on university. Going down the three stories and ultimately the single family housing. This project does not provide that. In fact, the mass of this building. Even though it. Complies with the protected district ordinance, is simply out of context. There is no building in our neighborhood anywhere close to size. This building. Could be. Contextual. And Cherry Creek. North. Is probably contextual and low where there are block long buildings of five storeys. It simply doesn't work in our neighborhood. One comment from. Staff earlier report. It seems that assemblies. Have properties. You know, make it development happen. There was a project in the block north at 2350 South University. That is also what was on five stories. That project was built last year. And. It's on a 50 foot lot. It happens to be residential only they were in fact only able to grow the four stories to provide the right required parking. So in many ways. We feel that this is we have a good history in our. Neighborhood of being responsible and attentive to. The city plans. But this one. Simply doesn't work. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Cashen. Jake Norris. Good evening, council members. My name is Jake Norris. I'm a resident of Denver. I'm here tonight to simply point out the unpredictability of this zoning measure. People make life changing decisions based on how these areas are zoned. I personally purchased our current home a year ago on the 2400 block of South Columbia Pine. Two blocks east of University Boulevard. We love Denver and needed a neighborhood that was close to downtown, but one that was safe for our one and three year old little boys. Prior to purchasing our home, we conducted extensive research and due diligence on the location. We love University Park and were thrilled when we found a home on a quiet street in the neighborhood that met our needs with our little one safety in mind. We did have concerns about the proximity of the home to the congestion on University Boulevard, but after a review of the zoning, we decided to move forward with the purchase. When we were looking at our home, I even commented that if the 2400 South University block wasn't anything higher, I wouldn't buy the home due to the added congestion it would cause. Our decision to buy our home was made based on good faith of the 2010 MDX three rezoning that had just recently occurred. This is why I was shocked when I heard it was potentially being zoned even higher with larger capacity situation I find myself in is one of confusion on this whole issue of predictability. The simple question I think everyone here shares is this If we cannot rely on zoning as a predictable land use guide, then what is the purpose of zoning? To begin with, please vote no on this unnecessary rezoning. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Norris. David Foster. And as he is coming up, I'm going to call Jennifer Isbell, Sekou and Carlene Evan. Off to the front pew, please. Good evening, Madam President. Members of Denver City Council. My name is David Foster. Address 360, South Garfield. I'm a local land use attorney. I appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight. I have a I'm here representing a number of neighbors. There's a letter that is in your packet that Mr. Smart had sent out in his first comments. My letter is buried in the back. I asked to be in front, but I guess I'm in the back. But if you don't mind making reference to that letter on occasion, I'm going to point out a few issues that I'd like to relay this evening. And it is also important to recognize that as many of the comments are being made, it is clear that there has been tremendous leadership in this Council district for a number of years, resulting in a number of wonderful projects. It just so happens that tonight I'm here asking you to think twice about approving the rezoning for this particular site. And I do so because there are a number of things that, as a land use attorney, I, I do take very seriously. And one of those is the notion of changed conditions and changed circumstances, which is one of the legal criteria upon which we're able to rezone property. And in many cases, the cases that come before you. In fact, the case that was right before us tonight, you were rezoning APD that was 30 years old. Clearly, there were change conditions that warranted rezoning, a 30 year old beauty. But in this particular instance, I can't help but think that somewhere along the line we've missed the last four years. And let me give you a number of those examples and reasons why I'm concerned about whether or not this applicant can meet this important criteria in the applicant's own application. And it's the last two pages of my letter and I have included it for your ready reference. Exhibit B identifies the description of justifying circumstances. And of course we need to find change or changing circumstances. These are change or changing circumstances. These aren't anticipated conditions or circumstances. Quite frankly, when many of you rezoning the city back in 2010 and many of you re zoned properties, this property and others, you anticipated certain things to happen along this corridor. Those have happened. Development has come to South University. Those are change conditions. Those are now anticipated conditions. You re zoned it and they came and they built and they developed. So this first line that I've highlighted is the numerous developments within the area and the introduction of RTD light rail system with stations nearby. Well, folks, the station opened up in 2006. I don't really view that as a change condition which would warrant this particular rezoning. The next line. Thus, one of the change conditions that justify this map amendment is the adoption of the new zoning code by the city and county of Denver in June of 2010. Right. This property was re zoned in 2010 meeting that particular changed circumstance. The third line, possibly the most significant of the change conditions, is the adoption of the University Park Small Area Plan by City Council in 2008. Right. That was adopted in 2008. And it provided the rationale for where University Park was in their support of the 2010 Map Amendment. These things all predated the 2010 rezoning. And the fact that we're even talking tonight about a B-2 and what can happen with the B-2 is entirely irrelevant because this property and I only two, it was rezoning in 2010 to its existing zoned district. And so we need to focus on what's happened since 2010 and what change conditions have occurred. Not all of the changed conditions that have been alluded to today, again, were anticipated when this site was zoned in 2010. Mr. Gorelick got up. And by the way, I have a huge amount of respect for Mr. Gorelick, as I'm sure you all do. He said at that point the owners didn't own all the property in 2010 and he said, quote, No one, no one to step up and lobby for it. Well, these property owners have owned the property for nearly 40 years. They could have stepped up in 2010 and lobbied for themselves. Look, look on page three of the staff report, page three of the staff report, the entire property north of this particular site was regent, was redound to our ex-wife. That wasn't a single ownership. Those were multiple ownerships. What what why is there some notion that you need to have a single ownership in order to rezone a whole block of property? That's. It's false. It's a red herring. You don't need to have one ownership controlling the entire block in order to rezone. By the way, if that is a change condition, if this council finds that aggregating property is a changed condition, I'm going to go buy some property. I'm going to go aggregate property because that will be the change condition that will warrant a rezoning. So that's preposterous. We know that's preposterous. Councilman Shepard had referenced my favorite book as a young child as well, The Giving Tree. And I've thought about the Giving Tree a lot over the years. And one of the things that gives me great pause with the giving tree is whether or not the boy was worthy to receive all of the things that he got from the tree. And I think that tonight you sitting as a city council need to think about whether or not this honor is worthy. Have they been involved with the site. After your time or was. That the 6. Minutes? That was 6 minutes. Okay. Thank you. I hope that you will see fit. Not Theresa on the site tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Foster. Jennifer Isbell. And you also have 6 minutes. Okay. Thank you. My name is Jennifer Isbell. I am a native of Denver. I have been in the neighborhood for 17 years, and I live in the 2400 block of South Fillmore. I am a former zoning chair in the neighborhood. I am a citizen. I am an architect. And I am an advocate for my neighborhood. For the future of University Park. The major corridors that define the edges of our neighborhoods are opportunities for elegant, durable and sensitive transitions between busy major thoroughfares and mostly quiet urban neighborhoods, which is what we are most of the time. In University Park, we have been incredibly fortunate to have you as our next door neighbor to the west, this long standing institution with its multitude of sophisticated buildings, new and historic set much of the town. As one passes through the west boundary of the neighborhood, the attention to scale as we face and embrace to you and the rest of the neighborhood is imperative. Scale. This is the issue that I find the most important about what we are talking about tonight. We have already witnessed the recent completion of the building on the southeast corner of Evans and University, dwarfing the business school and the formal pedestrian entrance on the corner. We continue to be challenged as we seek a more pedestrian friendly environment for a mixed population of old people, kids. Dogs. Strollers and students who are looking at their. Phones all the time. This is really, really important. And University Boulevard is not pedestrian friendly, as we all know, and it's going to be less pedestrian friendly with more traffic. Scale is the most important aspect of any project. We are not opposed to redevelopment. We eagerly welcome something for this area that would provide much needed commercial, social and community outlets along a busy university boulevard. We are seeking a scale of buildings that will allow this to happen. However, an entire block of five or more storeys fronting a narrow, busy corridor with two story residents just behind, is neither respecting nor considering this issue of scale. Taller buildings come with winds, they restrict light, and they give license in a way. This is, in some ways for me, one of the most important things. They give license for the traffic to move faster. And I you know, I don't know what we do about this because we have a major, major thoroughfare through our neighborhood. But we have a problem with a lack of pedestrian life, especially on the side we live on. And then we've got all these students and all these people who are trying to come and go and it is not easy or safe. The scale of this project would not encourage a walkable world and denies the documented desire of the neighborhood over many years to enhance the built environment for the purpose of community and commerce within an appropriate scale. What we do now will affect the character of this area for a very long time and set a precedent that must reflect the desires of the collective university park. The health and future of this historic neighborhood is at stake. The longevity of any project goes way beyond the present moment of pressure to develop property, often more in favor of the investors all over this city and state. We have witnessed projects that have taken liberties officials who have given liberties and communities that have suffered the long term consequences. We are poised and privileged. We are very privileged to be able to consider what we want at this moment in an economy that is being lifted up here and there enough to give us this opportunity. We are privileged to consider what would best suit the neighborhood for the long term. Successful business ventures on ground level are dependent on the desirability of the streetscape. The streetscape is dependent on the scale in every direction, scale in every direction. And this is the scale that we start with right here. You know, this project will set the stage for the continued development of this corridor, no matter the nuances and manipulation in the treatment of the facade. The overall massing of this project remains daunting as it stretches most of the. Entire city block. It is not too late to embrace what might really. Do good for all parties involved and might best suit this neighborhood. I. I respectfully and humbly ask that you consider this. Project. For three stories and a lesser density, and and think twice about how a project of this magnitude is going to affect the neighborhood, the future of the neighborhood, the traffic in the neighborhood and public community and private life in the neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Bell. Sekou. Yes, Chairman CQ Blackstar to move this. I really can't add any more to the argument for residents or for the owners. But we're going to nip this thing in the bud and just give you the overview. I'm a former student. Do. You give me this and it's all like popcorn, Jack. Yes. And when I was there, I had no regard. Was Ms.. Mr.. I could address that. When I was. There. I had no regard for the neighborhood. I didn't get invited. Probably many party was on. And not only that, but it was a natural attraction. We was competing with Boulder to see who was going to be the party school. You understand me? Now we got we free. Open, go. Marijuana, go. You give me this jack attraction. You got to worry about traffic coming in from CSU, Boulder, Metro, Bridges, all of that, all that. Now, why would you want to do that to them? Come on, master. What is it? That. That thing is crazy? That's crazy, man. What you got going on now? Come on, y'all. And then we're going to have to pay for this whole police, this thing. Now, you look at the cost. It's going to cost. All right, we got to police this thing. Folks are going to be potty trained, even got to weekend. Why it? And then you got another one coming up just around the block. Goes outside the city and can in Denver and Inglewood is coming up. Man, do you know what you doing here? You got to be crazy. We all up in the college, we know how this thing going to work. So come on, y'all. Give the neighborhood folk a break. Now I'm down. Put development to but has got to be planned and congruent and make some common sense. Man, this does not make no sense fast. Or is it is and it's on. Now, this is my concern. Now's the time to step up. We need five votes. The people need five vote. That's it. Let them win one and then make them develop to go back and come back with this real. SUSAN Come on. Paul Come on, now. Come on. ORTEGA Oh, come on, come on, come on. Let's say. Hey, we got to give them five, five to make them make we have some faith in government, man, and give them something tonight to have a reason to vote for y'all. Otherwise, what are we talking about here? What are we talking about here? I mean, come on, y'all. So I'm a close with this list. Any time you have a develop a new attorney. And I was sitting here when it happened and we're talking about community. I mean, the planning office here and there was a person that from the planning office wasn't here to give the report. So Bob gave the report for them. Come on, man has a conflict of interest. You can't have him coming to begin report for the planning committee that's in the city. He's not part of that, so he's in bed with it. So we get a90 vote. Come on, man, this is so corrupt. Uranus's, are you talking about it? So you the last line of defense, all this mess. It's just like you take your set. Take. Just take your seat. Oh, Karlene, even if. Good evening, Councilman and Councilwoman. My name is Carlene. Even if I live at 2465 South Jackson Street. I have lived in Observatory Park for 18 years. I'm here to simply state my own experience with the process surrounding the proposed development of 2400 block of South University. Truthfully, I have never been a fan of density. So when I heard about this project, I was suspicious. But I tried to be fair and circumspect, and I made a point to do my own research as I listened intently to all parties. It's fair to say that I have ended up with more questions than answers because the issue revealed itself to me to be more complicated than just a big building. I've had to become reeducated about certain aspects of zoning, the vision of the city, and what residents really want, which frankly runs the gamut of choices. I need to recognize and thank the members of PCC and the Josephine Street community for inviting me into their process and giving me an opportunity to serve the neighborhood as a delegate to the ANC. Their endless investment of time and zoning and historic preservation and other matters is often thankless, divisive, and yet very important. But in that same vein, I feel it's also fair to recognize and thank architect Chris Shears and certain members of his team, such as Shawn Maley, for having a completely open door policy. I contacted them after the planning board meeting and I have basically pummeled them with endless questions about topics, many of which have been covered here tonight. And people who know me know that I'm never brief and they've answered every question. They responded to every call, they have responded to every email and extended an open invitation to any person in the neighborhood to directly answer questions or meet in their offices. Mr. Rogers offered to meet with a small group of us to just answer a lot of our questions. And we were there for like 4 hours and we pretty much dissected every idea and concept that they had. I have to say that this responsiveness on the part of a developer was truly new and surprising to me. So there's still many questions to be answered and with many problems to solve. And the residents here tonight have many salient points to make. And I recognize that and I sympathize with that. But my involvement with PCC, together with interactions with Mr. Shears and his team, as well as the passionate efforts of the Josephine Street neighbors, actually give me hope that somehow this blighted piece of land that everyone agrees must be improved in some way might represent a pathway for all parties to get something good out of it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Seven, and thank you for ending it on such a civil note. I want except for our notable and familiar exception. I want to thank all of you for a very civil and respectful conversation. I know there are disagreements, but very, very civil and respectful hearing. I appreciate that. I'm going to open it for questions by council. Councilman Brown. Thank you, Madam President. In the chamber this evening, we have the new director of Community Planning and Development, Fred Buchanan Dumont, coming forward. Read an answer, a few questions, really more philosophical by what some of my neighbors have stated. And I think Jake North raised the question about predictability in terms of zoning and one cannot rely on it. Would you mind addressing that? Is the planning director? Sure. The zoning on this site and in every site, we based on our on our plans, obviously, but things do change and our zoning responds to that. And with this particular area, it's all an area of stability, a defined reinvestment area also. And areas of stability are not defined to never change. And the zoning does change and they respond to our zoning classifications, respond to that change. And in this situation, developers come forward with a proposal that this was the original proposal predates my time with the city. But at a at a higher height than they're currently proposing. I believe it was eight stories. And our staff communicated at that time that we did not see plan support for an eight story solution. And then they went away and came back and asked about five storeys. And that's when our staff reviewed that, looked at the plan recommendations and thought that we could we could support that. That five storey height change conditions came up again, a great deal tonight. Would you mind addressing that issue specifically to. And to what David Foster said. Sure. You know, I I actually think to answer that question, ask our city attorney who's here to define that, because I don't know that I want to be the person arguing with David Foster, who's a land use attorney, and, and I am not one , so that I really. Do think that. Mr. RODWELL Yeah, I, there was a question addressed to you and maybe perhaps we'll ask Brad or, or Councilman Brown. And I would ask we have attorneys from our office who are staffing this application, so I may defer to them. But if you repeat your question, please. Sure. This is about the issue pertaining to change conditions. Hello, Laurie Strand, City Attorney's Office. I'll I'll read the criteria and then we're talking about so everybody knows what we're referring to. So the criterion says that one of the following circumstances must be found to exist. And the one that he's pointing to is the one that says the land or its surrounding environs has changed or is changing to such a degree that it is in the public interest to encourage a redevelopment of the area or to recognize the change character of the area. And I would just stress this has changed or is changing to such a degree. There's no definition in the code for what this means. It's really up to you, the council council members, to determine if you find, as staff has found, that there have been changed conditions. I believe that Deja pointed to the 2008 university plan, and in that plan it identified certain visions for this property. And it's also has pointed out that in 2010 you all looked at the appropriate zoning and a number of different districts were considered at that time. And finally honing in on the three storey district now. But as was pointed out previously, you know, one district doesn't exclude out any other potential districts. And at that time, there's a number of districts that were looked to. So I think in kind of looking at what was said in 2008, staff considered a number of districts landed on one, but not to the exclusion of others. So staff has found now that the conditions that were recognized in 2008 do in fact justify the now requested five storey district. So I'm not sure if that answers your questions, but there's not a straight defined term. Okay. Did Brad leave Brad? Her name was Karlene and she says she was never has been a fan of density. Could you tell us the philosophical approach to density in this city? Because this is key, I believe, to what you and the department will be looking at. Sure. Well, it's it's I'll try to be as concise as I can, because that's a very big question, obviously. But I think it our entire blueprint, Denver, which I think one of the genius moves in Blueprint Denver was to describe areas of change, air stability, enhanced transit corridors and talk about those definitions and gradations of where we were, where we were to direct density. And one of the speakers I think accurately said that if we and we heard a lot this evening about traffic and traffic impacts to the neighborhood, very real impacts. Absolutely. And a challenge for our entire city. And I think one of the frustrations for neighborhoods is that as we introduce density into in and around enhanced transit corners, particularly corridors that are not very enhanced yet, it adds burdens to those neighborhoods. And but the fact of the matter is, transit and density don't ratchet up at exactly the same rate. That's the reality of that. I was at Councilwoman Sussman district doing a presentation a couple of weeks ago and one of the RTD board members there. And we talked about that. And it is a it is a pain point as to because transportation doesn't ratchet up and improve and increase, it's it's demand based. And so the demand has to be there for the density to come. It is a is a similar situation and a frustration to the neighbors in Councilwoman Robb's district around Cherry Creek and First Avenue, where we we don't have today the kind of transit we'd like to have or will have, I suspect. Yet the density is coming, the market is there, and so we're planning for it. Our plans describe University and Evans, for that matter, both as enhance transit corridors. And we do that for what I believe is a solid reason around and and direct density to around those areas. It's why we had the zoning that the university and Evan's that we had it's why you see the additional. In all height along university, both north and south of this site. And it really has to do with without density. And here's the big picture. And I very much appreciate everything the neighbors have said. This is this is their neighborhood and this is about change. And this is hard, hard change and a hard conversation. But transportation or a and or more simplified in this situation, mixed use projects that allow us to create places where folks can live and work and study and shop and dine in a walkable neighborhood. That's what this creates. That's what this creates. And that, in fact, is what will, in the long run, reduce traffic. Reduce traffic. You're right. Fewer people getting into their cars, having to drive somewhere else in the places where the density should go. Right. Thank you, Brad. I have other questions, but I think we have a list, so I'd like to yield to my colleagues. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. The first one is for Ms. asks if you wouldn't mind coming to the microphone. So was there ever a regulating plan discussed as part of this development? No. Okay. My other question for you. Are there city plans that call for widening of university where the community described this bottlenecks on this particular block? There are not currently plans calling for widening. I don't believe that question is assessed during the site development plan. I will say that in discussions throughout the city, our director of transportation and others, our planners have been out in the community, are getting this question. It is if you are going to put density along these corridors, if it's not going to be in our neighborhood because we don't want it in the middle of the neighborhood and we want to put it in the corridor, what will you do about the streets? That's become a very forward front and center question for our director of transportation. And I know that they're thinking very seriously about how changes to the way we use streets will help affect and facilitate increased density, inappropriate places. So that mismatch that Brad has talked about in terms of the streets, they're not growing. They're not getting getting bigger just because we get more density right now. There is change in the wings talking about how we facilitate more alternatives for transportation on our streets to better use them and to make them more pedestrian friendly and more bike friendly and more vehicle friendly. So I'd like to now switch over to the developer and ask that same question. So I don't know who the appropriate person from your group would be, but I'd like someone that is familiar with all the details to be able to answer whether or not you expect that the Street will be widened as a result of this particular project if this density were to be approved. I could defer. Sean Maley If I need to defer, I will. But the question on will, do we expect the street to be widened to accommodate any transportation? I don't know if we expect it, but we expect to consider that very thoroughly with city traffic engineering and the site plan. One of the main things that we're thinking about is left southbound access and I think logically our traffic engineer has looked at two areas where that could occur. One in the Mid-Block section where we have an access point off of university. Another on Harvard, which would be the south most street. To achieve that, I believe you would require that some land come from the development to accommodate that. Now how that ultimately unfolds is in the site development plan process. I can't say that that we're expecting that, but we expect to thoroughly discuss that. Okay. So since I have you there, I have a couple of other questions that if you can't answer, I'd like someone else to. So can you tell me how many parking spaces are being proposed for the commercial? I heard how many are proposed for. The. Residential, but I didn't hear that on the commercial. Certainly I think we're parking at four per thousand, which would be 110 or 112 spaces for the commercial general retail parking requirement, if I'm correct, is 1.875 per thousand and a restaurant would be 3.754 thousand. So our aggregate for 4000 is well above the retail parking code requirement. Okay. And then what is the average size of the units that are being proposed? That I'm going to defer to the architect, if that's okay. And and when I say size, I'm also asking. Number of bedrooms. Thanks. Per unit. So are they all proposed to be just one bedrooms or are they you're expecting two bedroom units. Can you just give me an idea of sort of the average size and number of bedrooms? Well, this is all still preliminary because the program continues to change. But what we're anticipating now is about 264 bedrooms for those 230 to 240 residences. I don't have the exact mix of ones to choose, but it's predominantly one bedroom units and we're proposing 1.4 spaces per unit, which. Essentially is that it accommodates one space per patient. That's a real. Oh, my my last question is, can you provide an idea of what the price point would be? Are these expected to be student housing units or the expected to be residential apartments? Are they expected to be condos? Help me understand what. Yes, these will be rental apartments. That's currently where the market is. A strong market is. I really can't I don't know what the rental rates will be. Usually those are are expressed is is a dollar 75 or $2 or $2.50 a square foot. And I believe that this project is probably destined to be very similar to the Observatory Place Project, which is on the south east corner of University Avenue. So it's comparable in quality and comparable in price point to that project. Okay. I think that's all the questions I have right now. Thank you, Madam President. Yes, thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Robb Kushner. She might as well troop right back there. First of all, I want to say this was very good testimony tonight. It was very much to the point of what we should think about with rezoning. And boy, you gave us a lot to think about. My questions may not seem as on topic, but I have a motive behind them. We already talked that the parking is really greater than what's required. When I think of what we're talking about in our new Cherry Creek zoning. Four spaces per thousand foot of retail is pretty high. So I have some questions. So you're putting a lot of that parking underground that will make that retail possible. Can you really? Sounds like a silly question, but I want to make sure this project can really happen because someone said it's a high quality project. Can can you really maintain grass and trees on top of that, the way you've sort of laid it out? Well, I think what we're proposing is that there would be landscaped terraces. And of course, at this stage in the project, you're not right, you're not being specific. But it is our developer's desire to create a nice transition between the building and the adjacent neighborhood. So for the specific kinds of landscaping is yet to be determined. But once again, we intend to work with the neighborhood to determine, you know, what what happens there. So, so and I want to be sure this Councilwoman Ortega referred to a regulated plan. Sometimes it's tempting to like very specific plans and try to ensure that and zoning. But is this project really going to happen? I mean, if you get through this rezoning, what are you thinking of for a timeline or what is if you can speak for the owner? Well, we've been told that if the zoning is successful, that they want to move ahead very quickly. They want this is sort of a window on the market that they want to have. Okay. So now I'm want to think about the parking under this proposed zoning versus parking under the current zoning gimmicks. Sorry, how deep is that lot between the alley and university? It's 150 feet deep. Okay, so that's pretty deep. So it would be possible to do a three storey office, perhaps there under the current zoning with parking behind it? That that's correct. Parking at 2.5 per thousand or something. They would probably need to be higher than that for office uses. I would imagine 4000 would be necessary on that particular property. 4000 for office? That's correct. And there would be room to do that, that many spaces at surface, I think. I think you'd have to go below grade. You could not accommodate that parking above excuse me, above grade. And there is a requirement that there be retail on the street. So you'd have most likely retail parking behind it, as we're suggesting. And then there's no levels of office above that parking below grade it. If it were three stories with with residential above the retail, you need fewer spaces. Could you do that without going underground? That's no. No, I'm certain that we could. Could. Can you afford to go underground at only three stories? I think most. Any real estate. A developer familiar with these kinds of projects would say no. Okay. I think that's that's it for me right now. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Brooks. Thank you, Madam President. I'm going to call Shamali up on the way. You know, I think of rezonings in the city is that we are we're writing a check to the developer. We're giving them something in the city, and we expect something back. And we heard a little bit about what we get back in terms of, you know, retail housing. You know, I love wordplay, but I, I guess from the developer's perspective, what have you given back to this community as far as concessions and things like that? And if you can equate that, this may be tough, if you can equate that to a dollar amount as well, that would be helpful. Okay. In terms of what we have, I guess, given or worked with the neighborhood on, you know, I'd say the first one is time. We have not tried to ram this thing through. It's our first meeting with you. PCC was in March of 2013. It's May of 14, so about 14 months and. And time is money. I cannot put a dollar figure on that. But we've spent an enormous amount of time working with folks, again, trying to carry forward a very genuine spirit of outreach and collaboration. As Brad and Deirdre, I believe, mentioned, originally we had sought to do more height on the south corner of the rezoning district. We utilized was Cmac site, but because we are adjacent to protected zoning, the single unit zoning, you cannot exceed 75 feet no matter what. So we because residential floor to floor height is more compact than, say, office, where you have taller floors. You could do a seven storey residential building on that corner under ax8, which is capped at 75 feet. We really liked seven storeys capped at 75 feet at the south corner of that site, stepping down to five. We did not carry that application forward for a number of reasons. First off, the neighborhood did not welcome it, which we respected. Secondly, as I kind of mentioned in my testimony, it wasn't enumerated specifically in the plan. So we knew that that would be a tougher ask. So we opted not to pursue that parking. Going underground comes at an extreme cost. I don't proforma for a living, so I don't know that cost. I believe one or two people in testimony with construction and architectural experience cited some of those numbers. But it's very expensive to conceal that parking, and we thought that was the right thing to do because it carried out the pedestrian nature of the plan. Additionally, we're building more parking than required to buy code. Again, that parking comes at a dollar figure, so you can begin to see the growing value of of kind of the this project. And then finally, I think what we're seeking to give back knowing parishioners pretty well before this project, knowing him very, very well. Now I know the the way that he approaches a project and and while we're at a concept level now, if we proceed past zoning will begin with design, development and and the attention that will be given to that alley. We've often joked that the alley is going to look nicer than the front of the block. It's going to be a four sided, beautiful building. But I guess what I'm saying is that we're really going to try to do something phenomenal. On that alley side, you have requirements with the city's protected districts. I think what the architects are seeking to do is is do that and then go beyond that to create something that's truly remarkable. So I may have left a few things off, but hopefully that addresses your question. He didn't give me a dollar amount, but I understand. Let me ask you a question real quick about the setbacks and the setbacks that you did in the alley. There's been some conversation here about the traffic bottlenecking on the front side of the building. With those setbacks and setbacks, is there any opportunity I mean, is there any opportunity to do something on the front of the building at that point? Are you guys constrained now? Because you've you've made those concessions on the back end. No, I mean, we are we cannot break the protected district regulations on the alley. But what happens on the front side is a matter for the site plan development. And if the city were to require something there be done, it would be a requirement for us to get our approval of the site plan. So. So, you know. No, I think that is that is the next really important item that we will be addressing, not the one item, but one of the really important items that we'll be addressing with the city's traffic engineers taking our traffic study to the next level. But there is the ability to make requirements there. Last question. What assurances does the neighborhood neighborhood group and folks in this room, folks watching have that once you get the rezoning, number one, the project, the project is going to get done. Number two, that they will have a voice in the development of this project. You know, I think are all we can really go on at this point is our pride and our reputations and our word. And we've stated to UPC members, their president and two members of their border executive committee that we would happily involve them in meetings with regards to where site access comes from. There's a bit of a decision to you do. The second point of access off of the alley or Harvard. We could do either. There are impacts two ways on that, but it's one that we really look forward to working with the neighborhood on. So even if it's involving them in a meeting with the city traffic engineers, we're open to do that. We've actually made some good friendships and relationships in the last few months and we look forward to continuing to do that. Thank you. Well, thank you, Councilman. Councilman Levitt. Thank you, Madam President. I'm trying to think who asked this question? Councilwoman Robb kind of zeroed in on it with respect to the the the the parking and the dilemmas associated with three stories versus five stories. You know, there's in well, in a lot of things, you often face tradeoffs between competing values. And somebody wisely said the only thing people hate more than sprawl is density. And so we kind of are facing that dilemma here. So I kind of don't want to ask the development team, I don't know, maybe Brad is the right person to ask Brad. I have not seen three story projects with underground parking. Is that it's just an impression on my part. I mean, is that does that reflect the economics of of underground parking? Because one of the things that the neighbors have talked about is they want something that's more walkable. They want something that is more pedestrian friendly. And surface parking lots are the opposite of that. So is it possible to get underground parking in a three story project? Well, I think that parking becomes a continuum on typically three or four or five story projects, which are all stick built wood frame projects usually built with a first level, with a concrete podium of some sort of post tension slab, which serves to get the the building code separation between the retail use and whatever else is on top, whether it's office or residential, the fire separation oftentimes the on of over a three story project you would probably see retail to the front, retail serving parking right behind it since it's particularly on 150 foot depth plot, the retail depth typically 60 or 70 feet from the street phase. Typically, I don't know what's planned specifically here for that, but typically which would allow you not to do a double loaded row of parking behind four, 25,000 square feet? You wouldn't have enough parking, I wouldn't think, along one level. So you would have to either go up or down with the parking. If you go down, it's in that at first level, below grade is typically at $20,000 plus or minus per space cost if you go down an additional level. It gets more expensive. And if you go down a third level, more expensive than that. That's why often you'll see on these three and four story projects, they call them wrap projects where they put the less expensive above grade structured parking and then wrap the residential around it. I'm trying to think of I haven't seen a three story one three story projects with that. I have seen four story projects I know that have done typically work right behind and then maybe one level below that. I'm trying to think of any three story projects. I don't know the exact numbers, but I'm not familiar with any three story projects that do of use below grade parking. I could be wrong, but I can't think of any right now. No, thank you. That's just an authentication of the answers that Councilman Rob was getting. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Brown, would you like to go last with your questions? I see, councilman. Woman Sheppard has also logged in. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman Sheppard. Thank you, Deirdre. I don't know how easy it would be for you to find this slide again, but I know Councilman Ortega asked about a regulating plan. And this the the protected zone district kind of provides what protections to the neighborhood that a regulating plan could accomplish elsewhere, is my understanding. But I was wondering, I think you went through that slide pretty quick. If you could just talk again really briefly about the protections provided to the single unit on the east side because of the protected zone district restrictions? Are you talking about the the building envelope, the rendering of the concrete? Okay. So specifically at 27 feet, the building would step back 20 feet. And then when the building gets up to 51 feet, it steps back another 15. So for a total of 35 from the property line. So in total and that's just this is just a really generic representation of what can happen. But those step setbacks occur the higher the higher the building goes. And so in this five story district, those are the two step acts that would occur in whatever form they decide to do. They could bring the entire building back 35 feet all at once and not do those two step acts. But, you know, presently, I think in some of their initial renderings, there's something remotely similar. The alley is running north, south, and this. Runs north south. So that's an additional 18 feet. Is it drawn to scale in this picture? Roughly, yeah, because I can I can barely even see it. Yeah, it's kind of on the top. But I mean, would you say that that accomplishes what a regular regulating plan accomplishes or would you describe it differently? I say. Well, actually, regulating plan is a it's it's a plan that's used in a different context, generally speaking, a much more specific context and has been identified in the code before for master plan context, where you have a really broad zoning for a site and then you want to get into more detail. And without a pudi, it's a regulating plan and it's a tool that I know. Councilman Rob's from Tourism Cherry Creek. It's not really been used in a lot of places, so. Okay. I just wanted to get, you know, a better rendering of what those protections look like in space, even though we know the project won't look like. Right. And that that's fine. As close as we can get generically. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. I have a couple of questions actually for you. I think it was it's we heard a lot about predictability and certainly we were keeping faith with neighbors is important to all of us. I think it was masterful who said that the neighborhood plan, not the zoning, but the neighborhood plan, talked about moderate density and 3 to 5 storey buildings. Is that correct? That is correct. So the neighborhood plan that was done by neighbors in what, year 2008? Oh, in 2008, did did anticipate 3 to 5 storey buildings in this location. In this location. In this location. Okay. That was my one check I wanted to make. And then I think it was Ms.. Schmidt that asked about the or what expressed what I thought was concern about the rescheduling of this. That was done for the neighbors, wasn't it, in order to give them an opportunity? Exactly. So during the petition to protest, this is not a common thing. Council sees this fairly rarely. I think the last time I saw it was six years ago. So every one of them, we have to kind of reorder what we have to do. And we do have very specific instructions for this. And so what staff does to help out ensure that the community who you know, they're not looking at the code every day that they have the right guidance. We provide a map of a it's either a 200 foot buffer around the subject property or includes the subject property. And a clearly here the subject property. The applicant likely wouldn't sign their petition of protest. So you look at the 200 foot buffer outside. So they were provided a map that includes information about all the properties within that buffer zone and it includes a gross square footage of that area. And the requirement is that all land area within that 200 foot buffer is included and that includes public rights of way. The second piece of information that was provided to the neighborhood is a list of all the parcels, all of the owners within that 200 foot, because they have to put the petition together that has all the names as they are of record, the assessor's office. And then people have to sign it of record so they have as much information as we can give them. And that's the kind of felt that we're able to provide during the preparation of their petition. They were asking questions back and forth and I was doing my best to answer them in one particular question on that. That spreadsheet I had totaled up the amount of land area that was within the parcels, but did not realize at the time that it didn't connect with the gross square footage. And so in one of the questions that they sent via email, it was, is the math correct here? Is this the right calculation? The math was correct. They had looked at how many signatures they would need to write to for the owners of 20% of the land owners of the segment, of the 20% of the land within that 200 foot buffer. They the math was correct, but the basis of the calculation was incorrect. It was just the personal area without the right of way. When we did the calculation, they turn in their petition on time, and this was based on an originally scheduled April 28th hearing. The petition did not meet the 20% recall. Diamond. I let them know that. They said, What do you mean? Because their understanding was that they had collected enough. So we reevaluated that again. And I realized that the basis of calculation had been provided to them, and it was an incorrect answer. So while all effort was made to give them the right information that concerned us, that we wanted to make sure the neighbors had the opportunity to actually reflect their intent to get enough signatures. And they, in fact, did that by us being able to extend the time. Councilman Brown did choose to extend the time to allow the neighbors that that opportunity. You know, it's a lot of detail. I'm sorry. I just wanted I just wanted to let people know that we extended the deadline and and it would have been nice to have it have it on on good weather, but that we extended the deadline so the neighbors would have a chance to collect the amount of signatures that they wanted. And that's all my questions. Councilman Brown. A time lender. Lender Gil questioned your traffic study and I thought you might just want an opportunity to address some of her concerns. Sir, thank you. I think I wrote down the questions that Linda had. One having to do with the 2200 vehicles cited on university in the opening paragraph, 2200 vehicles cited in a later paragraph. And that's an unfortunate typo on my part. It should have been 2300 in the second paragraph. And so that was a mis on my part on that. And so I wasn't saying there's going to be no traffic out of the university, there will be some traffic out at university with this with this project. So that was one. The second one was had to do with the trip generation. So trip that she was she asked a question about there's a 236 units on how come there's not 236 trips leaving at all, leaving the site. Doesn't every every unit generate a trip? Well, I looked at the peak hour. We do this analysis, we look at the peak hour. Not every unit, not every person who lives in a unit, who drives a car, leaves that unit at that in that one hour. Some people don't work normal hours. Some people will go to work six or seven. Some got eight. So they could spread out. And in the way we do those calculations, there's a book that we use called the United Age Generation Manual or Industry Standard. It has trip generation rates that we use. The city recognizes that manual as the standard for doing traffic impact analysis. So we use that standard and that book and the rates in that book for that for that calculation. Does that answer the question? Is there any other so you want you stand by your study included the typo. I do stand by the study included in the table and I excluding the title, excluding the 5 million. I apologize for for missing that. Great. Thank you. QUESTION Thank you, Councilwoman Brown. Councilman Councilwoman Ortega, we we're going to. That's okay. Do you have another question? I have one last question for our city attorney, Mr. Broadwell, or I'm sorry I didn't get your name. One of the speakers had suggested that tonight what we should do is just approve the three story and not the requested five story for this rezoning. Which is. The correct. I'm trying to find the exact category, but I want you to help clarify that. Our role here tonight is either to vote for this or to vote against it. But we don't have the flexibility to say we think, you know, the three story is what we want. Therefore, that's what we're going to be voting on tonight. Can you just clarify that? You're correct. Tonight, you're taking action on the requested rezoning to Greeks five. So you'll approve it or you'll disapprove it. I would just note that the current zoning is three stories, so by virtue of denying it, there would be a three story zoned district there, which is what's there now. So you're correct. Thank you. I have no further questions. Okay. Seeing no further questions, I'm going to close the public hearing and ask for comments by counsel. Councilman Brown, would you like to go first? Not really, but I will. All right. And thank you, Madam President. I would like to thank the University Park community for this chamber this evening. And I really want to thank you for managing your emotions. And I hope in the last minutes that we can continue to be civil as we discuss this issue. But thank you. And tonight, we're talking in a project about a project that is not only in my district, it's in my neighborhood. And Susanna, I have lived in University Park for 21 years. Our sons, Nick and Cody, attended University Park Elementary School. And as some of you know, I have been a strong supporter of Union University Park School for years. And during my ten plus years of service in this district, one thing has been constant. And that one thing is change. T-Rex, for example, the $1.7 billion highway and light rail construction project was huge, and I spent the first five years dealing with that project because it cut right through the heart of my district very close to where we live. Personally, I can look out of every window in our ranch home and see new homes. I can drive down South University, South Colorado Boulevard and see new commercial development in South University Boulevard. Certainly has changed with new condos and new apartments, the newest one being more than ten stories. The University of Denver is a jewel in our city, and it has added a variety of buildings, including the fabulous $67 million Newman Center located right across the street from the site that we are discussing tonight. Surprisingly and sadly, there were some people in University Park that did not want Newman's Center to be built. That's a shame. I'm glad it was built. It's a welcome addition not only to our neighborhood, but to our city. And changes it. Do you? Denver University will continue tomorrow. It's almost tomorrow. But tomorrow the EU will break ground on a new five story science, technology, engineering and Mathematics Building, which will be built on the southern part of the campus. I have received, like all my colleagues, numerous calls and emails on both sides of the issue. And regardless of my position tonight, one thing is clear I'm going to disappoint some long term friends and neighbors. That's the nature of serving as a member of city council. As many of my colleagues know, especially Councilwoman Robb, who represents Cherry Creek North. Redevelopment issues are often emotional and difficult, and we have seen that tonight. Years ago, I was a member of the University Park Plan Steering Committee and I attended more meetings than I can recall . I raised the issue many times that we needed to have a broad input not only just neighbors, but property and or property owners, but residents. But business owners, developers, architects, realtors, school officials to be included in developing that small area plan. More importantly, I was concerned about the geographical distribution that the people on that committee include. Our neighbors north of Bucknell University Park has more than 3500 households, and the plan would not be truly representative if only one small part of our neighborhood dominated the discussions. It was a difficult challenge, but I believe we achieved it. And after survival, several stop and go attempts. And with the help and input from many who spoke tonight, we crafted 126 page University Park, small area, neighborhood plan. The plan was approved unanimously by this Council on September the eighth, 2008. In fact, a majority of those council members who supported this plan. Seven of us are still on council. On Pages 115 and 116. This document, the plan supports, and I'm quoting moderate densities of 3 to 5 stories, close quote on this 2400 block of South University. Yes, we have heard the document also calls for activating and I'm quoting again, activating the ground floor with retail pedestrian entries, display windows and outdoor seating and mixed use area, close quote. And as you have seen by the architectural renderings, these neighborhood recommendations are precisely what the applicant team is proposing. We've heard tonight from Deirdre, and she relied in part on this neighborhood plan for recommending changes to zoning from GM x three the grx5. The final section of her report concludes, and I'm quoting Staff supports zone districts that move implementation of the University Park Plan forward. Close quotes a word about the applicant team. I am confident that they are committed to creating and building a first class project in Michael. And as a former president of the University Park Community Council, I am delighted that you spent time looking at some of those projects and gave an A-plus ratings. Chris, I worked with you and many of my colleagues have. You are an award winning in-fill architect. I know that you and your team have spent 12 months in neighborhood outreach meetings and work groups, design workshops in your office, and one on ones to address as many concerns as possible. Chris, you always remind us that neighbor heard input results in a better project for everyone. And as we have heard in response to the neighborhood, you have already completed a traffic study and a solar study and shared them with the neighbors well ahead of this project getting approved. There are many elements of this project that I welcome, especially the alley side design that incorporates setbacks, step backs, courtyards and landscaping. I would ask any of you to drive up and down the alleys from Evans to Yale. Look at the renderings that we have seen tonight. I am confident that this will be the best looking alley side design in Denver. I also welcome the 300 car underground parking. That is a positive feature that could not be financially justified with a three storey building. Let me be clear. The applicant did request an eight storeys zoning on the south portion of the site to take advantage of the slope on that land. I told them I would not support that. A story request. I am, however, supporting a five storey building which is clearly articulated in the plan created by the University Park neighbors in 2008. As my colleagues know well, we rezone parts of this city just about every Monday night, and I hope my colleagues will join me tonight and support this rezoning. I believe it is a reasonable, creative and a workable application that stays true and consistent to the guiding principles outlined in the neighborhood plan. I have no doubt it will greatly improve this block and all of University Park. Again, I urge my colleagues to support this rezoning. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman Brown. Councilwoman Robb. Thank you, Madam President. Shoot. I forgot to ask one question during the testimony. I won't ask it now, but I do want to say that university is an enhanced transit corridor, and instead of the parking that is being proposed for this site, they could ask for a 25% reduction from the code . But that aside, I didn't make that point during the questions. I really gave a lot of thought to this rezoning and went back and forth, as I'm supposed to do, thinking about it over the weekend. And partially because I took home the letter from Rosemarie Stoffel that was not unlike a lot of the comments from neighbors, but I know Rosemary and a family member knows her and that family member grilled me also on how we zone in Denver and what is what we really talked a lot about tonight is so on topic, what's the justifying circumstance? And I kept asking myself that and I ask it during the hearing. I thought back over zoning as we've done, and I thought of one in particular since 2010, which was rezoning the golf property on Colorado Boulevard between 13th and 14th during the zoning code. Update, much like the property that we're talking about tonight, we went back and forth with the neighborhood between GMU three or GMU five. It was owned by DPS. Wasn't an easy decision to make. It ended up at the higher rather than the lower in this particular case. And lo and behold, a year or two later, we came back and rezone that to a campus district that allows even greater heights. And that was in conformance to the plan. And I said to myself, what was the change in circumstances in that in that situation? Well, it changed ownership. Now, that may not seem like a changed circumstance because as neighbors pointed out, properties change ownership all the time. And that shouldn't be the reason for rezoning in and of itself. But in this case, it very much changed the needs in the community, what could be offered to the community. So I thought about that. Then I came back to this and I said, What is changing here? And I heard the testimony about, well, everything that the report or the applicant said that has changed, already changed a bit before 2010. And I the you know, if we had spent a lot of time, we could have spent more time on questioning on this. But the way I read or would say that the developments that came in. Yes. Before 2010, I think you mentioned some of those. The neighborhood plan that they have, actually and you may not want to hear this actually increase the pace of change. The economy indeed is changing. The market is really changing. And I think what the market is doing that is so huge is it's demanding these walkable places that the neighborhood also wanted. You can't get retail on a first floor if you don't have a lot of people to shop there, whether it's office above or whether it's residential above. So and then and then I looked at that and I thought, well, just set changing circumstance by itself. And this is what I said. What wouldn't justify the rezoning? You you have to have the fact that the plan supports the height as well, which it does in this case. I would argue differently from David Foster. I think it's semantic. When this says moderate, they mean both three and five storeys. And from the viewpoint of District ten, this is moderate density. So it's like that. It's speaking also about District ten. I have also learned in all the rezoning that goes along there, which is why ask questions about three stories. Most a good part of East Colfax in my district is three story Main Street, not unlike three story mixed use, and it's really hard to get that three story development. People tend to do the one story and make it really high so they have enough parking for the retail and they don't do the residential that we want there. Four Eyes on the Street. Another experience I had in my district that I want to point out is that early on there was a rezoning in Cherry Creek East that had a legal protest. Lots of people turned out it was probably more emotional than tonight, which is Councilman Brown said was really based on sound argument, I think. And you guys really thought out your position and I turned it down. Councilman Councilman Brown didn't agree with me. He voted for it. Well, it's taken ten years to get any development there. Well, we got maybe half the site developed in the first five years after that. And a couple of years ago, we had another reason. We actually have had three rezoning on that project since. Now it is finally build out with a couple of duplexes. I think they are on on the corner. And neighbors have said to me, huh, that's not what we expected we would get. There wasn't the design. We're not sure we like it. We're not sure it's a quality project. And so one of the things you have to learn is if you have the changing circumstance and you have plan verification and you have a good developer, it's hard to say no way you can keep that bar on the corner that's not very popular or you can get some smaller 7-Eleven type development along there. You know, what is the consequence of not working with someone when the market is ready to do this? That brings is sort of pedestrian oriented development that I also wanted to speak a little bit about predictability because I did go through the plan today to look at that predictability argument because that was also a strong argument made by many of the emails that I got. And I found that the plan does talk a lot about predictability, but when I really looked at it, it was talking about predictability in the in the fact that it lacked form based standards. So in our old air code, you didn't know whether you were going to get a parking lot in the front or in the back or on the side in a B2, you didn't know if you were going in four stories or six stories. You didn't know how much transparency you would have on the first floor. And I found that much more of the predictability had to do with those pedestrian creating placemaking things that we wanted when we did the new code. So those are the thoughts that have gone through my head tonight as I consider this. Thank you, Councilwoman Robb and I don't see any other comments, so I think we are ready for the vote. Remember that we will need ten affirmative votes in order to pass this or or. No, no, no. That's not appropriate at the time. Thank you very much, Madam Secretary. Roll call. Brown, i. I. Herndon. I can eat lemon pie. Lopez. Monteiro Nevett. I. Ortega, i. Rob. I. Shepherd Brooks. Madam President, I will. We have three people whose votes are hanging fire, as they used to say. Councilwoman Lemon. There you go. Madam Secretary. Close of voting announced the results. 13 eyes. 13 eyes. The bill passes. Court. The Senate, for one. On Monday, May 19th, Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 306, designating 3241 Law Boulevard, the Beth Eden Baptist Church as a structure for preservation, saying no other business for this body. This meeting is adjourned. Church. Denver eight TV. Your city. Your source. Denver. Eight on TV and online. 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